Monsanto versus the Corn Rootworm Beetle in a dangerous game of tit for tat.

Like a boxing match, in the one corner we have Monsanto – a large company aided by big money and big investment, tinkering away in the science labs, discovering even more devious ways to develop the perfect pest resistant strain of GM corn that can be easily marketed and harvested to a massively large over-subsidized monoculture industry.

The one aim is to develop the perfect food stuff that can’t be attacked by pests or disease. Sounds good.

One the other side we have Nature in the form of a humble beetle – The Corn Rootworm Beetle eying off all those wonderful acres of unblemished genetically modified corn, the silk corn heads waving gently in the breeze signally “c’mon over here little guy – come on over and eat me!”

The system is out of whack and out of balance. But pesky nature likes a balanced system.

So let the battle begin.

Recently Iowa State University researches have discovered that Monsanto’s new improved genetically modified corn that was previously thought to be resistant to all the nasty little bugs out there has struck a problem.

It seems nature has not been idle, the western corn rootworms has developed resistance to the insect-killing protein a natural insecticide found in Monsanto’s genetically modified corn.

Researches have found that the new generation of beetles are now able to munch quite happily on Monsanto’s bug resistant corn.

The stakes have been raised now for Monsanto to go back to their labs and develop even more lethal GM corn to fight the army of Rootworm beetles munching their way through their profits.

So how dangerous is the Corn Rootworm Beetle?

Should millions of dollars in research be conducted developing more toxic chemicals to get rid of a greater threat to humanity?

Its like the old cold war arms race between the US and the Soviets. Millions of dollars spent in a battle to suppress Nature?
Is that at all possible?
As Geoff Lawton says in his permaculture video’s, “We are Nature.” The war against nature is a battle we are fighting within our-selves.

The old definition perhaps rings true that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

So how do you fight a pest like the rootworm beetle?

Can it be fought in a monoculture system at all? Should new ways of crop diversity and predator habitats be encouraged?

Well, here’s University of Illinois horticulturalist Jeff Rugg with a small solution that unfortunately Monsanto may have slightly overlooked.

Perhaps the last word should be given to Joel Salatin, a renegade farmer and the crazy war against nature by agri-business.

“Well we can start with the philosophical difference that we think that food is fundamentally biological and most of the culture thinks that food is primarily mechanical.” says Salatin, “And that’s why we can pull DNA structure and genes from a pig and put some in a pepper plant and some in a salmon and have a brand new life form, that’s a parts-oriented thing, like pieces of an engine.”

Joel Salatin

“And so, 30 years later, there is this big collective “Oops, maybe we shouldn’t otta done that.” You know, as this mechanical approach toward life has caught up to us with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. And in fact, that’s exactly what has created, you know the E.coli, salmonella, all these things are modern mutations and toxic proliferations that have become mainstream with a mechanical view towards life.”

“We’ve even got research now going to try to isolate the porcine stress gene so we can take that stress gene out of the pig and abuse him a little more aggressively but at least he won’t be stressed about it. A culture that views its life with that kind of conquistador, mechanical, disrespectful, manipulative mentality will soon view its citizens the same way and other cultures the same way.”

But back to the rootworm beetle. Will this alter the way Agri-business approach their war against nature? Apparently not. It seems the new outbreak of superbugs that have grown resistant to their GM Food only spurs them on to greater heights. New Agri-business rivals have entered the market and the race amongst crop biotechnology rivals to locate the next generation of genes that can protect plants from insects is storming ahead.

Scientists at Monsanto and Syngenta AG of Basel, Switzerland, are already researching how to use a medical breakthrough called RNA interference to, among other things, make crops deadly for insects to eat.

If this works, a bug munching on such a plant could ingest genetic code that turns off one of its essential genes.

Wonderful stuff…until the next outbreak overtakes them.

We thought we’d give a plug to our good friends at Milkwood Permaculture and Regen Agriculture who have brought out to Australia some great innovative thinkers and farmers doing things outside the square – empowering people to independent action and making a success of their localized community endeavors.

Who is Joel Salatin?
Joel Salatin is an American farmer, author and lecturer. He uses holistic and unique methods of animal husbandry to sell his products to the consumer by cutting out the middleman. Joel is coming out to Australia in August and will do an intensive one day series of workshops to explain his system.

Salatin’s 550-acre Polyface farm is featured prominently in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) and the documentary films, Food, Inc. and Fresh. His unconventional farming practices have drawn attention from the alternative agriculture community especially those interested in sustainable livestock management. For example, Pollan became interested in Salatin because of his refusal to send food to locations not within a four-hour drive of his farm, i.e. outside his local “foodshed.”

“We want [prospective customers] to find farms in their areas and keep the money in their own community,” said Salatin. “We think there is strength in decentralization and spreading out rather than in being concentrated and centralized.”

Salatin’s philosophy of farming emphasizes healthy grass on which animals can thrive in a symbiotic cycle of chemical-free feeding. Cows are moved from one pasture to another rather than being centrally corn fed. Then chickens in portable coops are moved in behind them, where they dig through the cow dung to eat protein-rich fly larvae while further fertilizing the field with their droppings.

What will you learn?
This one day workshop will cover PolyFace Farms animal systems, including pastured poultry, salad bar beef, forested pigerator pork and the main-frame design of the farm.

Also covered will be PolyFace’s ‘relationship marketing’ techniques where the farm interfaces directly with consumers, cutting out the middle men and keeping things clean, honest and real.

Joel will also cover how his farm approaches their internship program, providing young people with a chance to learn PolyFace’s techniques, while providing the Salatin family with an enthusiastic labor force which further benefits the farm.

Workshop Dates
Aug.02.2011 Joel Salatin Workshop Jamberoo NSW
Aug.04.2011 Joel Salatin Workshop Nome, Townsville QLD
Aug.05.2011 Joel Salatin Workshop Beerwah QLD
Aug.06.2011 Joel Salatin Workshop Brunswick East Victoria

Where to Book?

Regen Agriculture Website Booking and Workshop Details

Is it possible to build a house entirely from the bits and pieces you would find in a rubbish dump? Dan Phillips thinks so. First watch the YouTube clip above to see the kind of houses Dan builds. To learn more about his thoughts and ideas, this TED talk below shares Dan’s amusing look on the consumer world we live in.

Dan Phillips is a designer and builder in Huntsville, Texas. In 1998, he and his wife, Marsha, started The Phoenix Commotion, a construction company that builds affordable houses from reclaimed and recycled materials. Their mission is to divert landfill waste while creating sustainable housing for single mothers, artists, and families with low incomes. The Phoenix Commotion keeps labor costs low while reclaiming human potential. They use an apprentice program to teach sustainable building skills to individuals that volunteer or intern on the Phoenix Commotion Crew.

The houses are energy-efficient, cheap and satisfying to build — and wildly, effervescently creative. To the Phillipses, any material used in enough multiples creates a beautiful pattern — so Phoenix Commotion homes are covered and decorated with salvaged materials of many stripes. Homes are built in concert with their eventual owner, who contributes sweat equity and their own artistic flair.

Catfish farming in Nigeria

Nigeria is working hard to solve the problem of depleted fish stocks by creating urban fish farms. Babatunde Akiodie was finding work hard to find until he discovered how to grow fish on the roof top above his wife’s hairdressing salon.  Using cheap concrete tanks and a well dug for $500 and some fingerlings he was in business. Now his life has turned around and he sounds like he has fallen under a spell  “it is beautiful working with fish very very beautiful”.  He sells the catfish in the market three times a week and teaches others how to do it.

However I can’t help thinking how much more sustainable this micro enterprise could be  if  Babatude  turned it into an Aquaponics system.  The water wouldn’t go  to waste and  a second crop would expand his market and income.  Nonetheless this is a marvelous example of  enterprise   and urban sustainability something cities  everywhere could learn from.

“Those who treated him as a madman in the beginning realise today that he
is a genius”
The Prime Minister of Yatenga, June 2008

“Yacouba single-handedly has had more impact on conservation than all
the national and international researchers put together“…in this region tens
of thousands of hectares of land that were completely unproductive have been made productive again thanks to the techniques of Yacouba.”
Dr. Chris Reij, Amsterdam University, October 2008

The Man Who Stopped the Desert is a full HD, one hour feature documentary telling the story of Yacouba Sawadogo, an illiterate African peasant farmer who has transformed the lives of thousands of people across the Sahel.

Soil is essential to life on earth. But much of the world’s soil has become degraded and useless. As the global demand for food grows, millions of pounds and the latest technological advances have been invested in attempts to improve soil quality. Leading scientists and agriculturalists from around the world strive against growing world hunger to find the means to bring exhausted soils back into production, but it seems that a peasant farmer from one of the poorest countries on earth has finally achieved what these experts dreamt of; halting the desert.

During the 1970′s and early 80′s this vast region was hit with drought after drought. Families abandoned their villages in search of food and water, but Yacouba Sawadogo remained and pioneered a technique that battled the approaching desert.

This is not simply an agricultural story. Yacouba Sawadogo’s twenty year struggle is pure drama. It is about one man’s conviction that now has the potential to benefit many thousands living in the Sahel region of Africa .

Through cinematic reconstruction, Yacouba narrates his own back-story; how as a small child he was sent away to a Koranic school in Mali where he endured an endless regime of physical labour and the arduous task of memorising the Koran.

Then, as a young man he fights the accepted wisdom of the traditional land chiefs who are opposed to his new farming techniques. Opposition turns to anger when jealous neighbours burn down Yacouba’s newly planted forest and millet fields.

But Yacouba is undaunted. He perfects his technique, and today his name is synonymous with reversing the process of desertification. So much so that in November 2009 he was invited to Washington DC to share his story with policy-makers on Capitol Hill.

It is an incredible climax to a gripping and timely story.

In late 2009 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation declared small farmers (like Yacouba) as key to helping alleviate famine and poverty amongst the world’s poorest, launching a multi-million dollar research and investment programme into local solutions for Africa.

Dr Chris Reij of Vrij University Amsterdam who has followed Yacouba’s work over the past 25 years had this to say of his achievements:

Yacouba single-handedly has had more impact on…conservation than all the national and international researchers put together..In this region tens of thousands of hectares of land that was completely unproductive has been made productive again thanks to the techniques of Yacouba

DianaEl-Osta, Development & Production National Geographic Channels, International:

I think Yacouba’s story is both incredibly timely and important given the current crisis in many parts of the world with desertification. It is also rare to find a conservation story with such an upbeat and inspirational ending.

For more information visit www.1080films.co.uk

Joel Salatin

ABC Radio has an interesting interview with self styled “lunatic farmer” Joel Salatin who happens to also be in Australia courtesy of REGEN Agriculture talking about free-range farming in USA.

Joel says food has become over-regulated by US food safety bureaucrats who are destroying local production through unnecessary over-regulation.

Joel is a free range beef, pork and poultry producer from Virginia and is on a busy speaking tour of Australia, including a series of two-day workshops for farmers
Over the next ten days, he will be in Bendigo and Woodend in Victoria, Brisbane and Cairns in Qld, and Mudgee in NSW.

If you listen carefully to the radio interview and click on the link here, you’ll notice Joel advocates creating a mixed compost blend from a variety of animal manures to create a potent mix of super charged bacteria as outlined in Geoff Lawton’s Permaculture Soils DVD.

Even the method of grazing cows with chickens following behind in mobile caged tractors is explained by Geoff Lawton. Its nice to see all these similar threads intertwining whether you like to call it Permaculture or Organic Gardening or as Joel likes to describe his farming method, Beyond Organic.

Joel’s Farm: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/

Ever wonder what happens to all the portions of uneaten gourmet restaurant food? Chances are it ends up in landfill somewhere.

Bistro C Restaurant

But a new Noosa resort restaurant is changing all that. Bistro C upmarket food waste is being delivered to worm farms and chicken coops located nearby.

The restaurant is located in Noosa’s prime real estate tourist hot spot along Hastings Street. Tourists come and dine – but they leave a lot of waste behind.

The chef wanted to do something about that problem so he put a call out to the local Permaculture community.

Permaculture school gardens teacher Leonie Shanahan stepped in an organised a waste roster. She knew the restaurant had a surplus of food that could be turned into something useful for the garden.

Food Waste Delivered

She had a bathtub compost system already in place that needed food waste to process.

She organized a roster of people to rid the bistro of its weekly waste. The problem was that she was getting far more food waste than she could process through her worm farms.

Here’s where our chickens at Ecofilms step in. Getting a variety of food for the chickens can be difficult. Although they will eat grain – our chickens much prefer eating greens.

But there’s never enough for their daily needs. A crate of gourmet food from Bistro C is like a huge basket of goodies for the birds.

Gourmet diners

They feast on scraps of parsley, bread rolls, asparagus tips and all the expensive uneaten portions that are left behind. If you’re wondering what they dine on – check out the menu. No wonder they give the grain a miss!

Leonie provides us with food for the chickens on a regular basis. Usually there are two heavy milk crates of food she’s picked up outside our chicken coop every week. She gets a dozen eggs for her troubles as small compensation.

Everyone wins. A great solution to a common problem.

Anything that’s left behind by the chickens goes into the compost bins and is reprocessed by the worm farm. Because the spoiled food is mixed with chicken manure – the composting process is sped up dramatically.

If you keep chickens – its worth speaking to your local restaurant about how they dispose of their food waste. Your chickens could well be dining on 4 star food too!

Weeds are one of the most despised plants on the planet. People go to many lengths to eradicate weeds from the garden. Judging by the number of herbicides you can buy – its obviously a great money spinner for the chemical companies. But if you speak with Geoff Lawton a Permaculture teacher you get a different perspective on what actually is a weed and why it crops up in your garden.

“Weeds are just plant elements that fit into particular niches.” he said. “in every square meter of soil, there can be up to 2,000 potential seeds that will germinate.”
But here’s the catch…
“They will only germinate – given the right conditions.”
Those conditions can vary depending on the nature of your soil. If you thought weeds are just weeds and you’ll end up with the same weed constantly popping up – you’re quite right – until you change the nature of the soil.

What does that actually mean?

Fire weeds bring up potassium

Weeds on Burnt Landscape
Lawton illustrates this point with a fire. “If we burn the landscape,” he says, “and we have a big fire on the soil, if you step back and watch what happens, the weeds that germinate are the weeds that are high in potassium because the fire burns off potassium.”

“The germination condition here is the important thing – and not the weed!” he said.
“The weed is just the symptom of the germination condition.”

The weed plants that grow after a fire event are the long straggly deep rooted sort of weeds. What they are doing is harvesting potassium by their longer root system and bringing it up to the surface. Its a particular sort of weed plant that will flourish in these sorts of condition.

What about Compacted Soil?
Farmers often struggle with land that is heavily compacted by machinery or hard footed grazing animals.

“If on that same piece of land we compact and knock all the air out of the soil and compact it very hard – then different weeds germinate.” he said.

In this type of soil different weeds will thrive. Dandelions will pop up in lawns. Deep tap-rooted plants will grow in these conditions.

“The plants that germinate on compacted soil have deep tap-roots.” he said. “Their function is to de-compact the soil.

Nature is in no particular hurry. When that plant dies – that long tap root is a compost corridor into the soil.

A perfect infiltration mechanism for air, nutrient and water.”

Plowed Soil encourages different weeds to germinate

Heavily Plowed Soil

“If we go the other way, on that same piece of land – if we plow and till and dig and loosen the soil and keep it loose for a while and then walk away and watch – we don’t get fire-weeds to harvest potassium.” he said, “We don’t get deep tap-rooted de-compactors in these conditions,”

“We get plants that have a very dense fine hair root system that holds the soil particles together.”
“Their germination condition is soil that is too loose and susceptible to wind erosion and easily washed or blown away.” he said.

Amazing stuff.

Overworked Soil
“If the soil has been overworked and needs to recover, and it needs more organic matter…then the first pioneer plants, the plants we typically call weeds are typically nitrogen fixing plants.

Plants that are legumes. The beans and pea family, which have root attachment bacteria on their roots which are high in nitrogen that bring the nitrogen content up.”

“Once that nitrogen content is up – off you go into succession towards a climax eco-system of very sophisticated plant and animal interactions.”

Weeds don't germinate in compost says Lawton

What soil conditions will weeds NOT germinate in?
“Weeds don’t germinate in compost!” said Lawton, “A good one that is!”
“High quality compost will only germinate sophisticated high quality trees or high quality rain-forest or woodland trees.” he said.

Why is that?

“Because the soil condition is so good,” he said, “there is no germination condition for those reparative weeds.”

“Lets make sure we are friendly to our weeds and learn the lessons they have to teach us about landscape repair.”

We take a look at weeds in depth in Geoff Lawton’s Permaculture Soils DVD when it will be released later in the year.

Imagine a world where we lost all our seeds?

it’s been estimated that each year 1–2% of crop diversity is lost and more than 75% of genetically diverse crops present at the beginning of the 20th century are now gone.

Here’s an interesting talk presented by Jonathan Drori who has a background in producing BBC TV documentaries.

Jonathan Drori encourages us to save biodiversity — one seed at a time. Reminding us that plants support human life, he shares the vision of the UK Millennium Seed Bank, which has stored over 3 billion seeds to date from dwindling yet essential plant species.

Jonathan Drori: Why we’re storing billions of seeds

Collecting Seeds
Don’t try and save seeds from hybrid plants varieties if you desire the plant to resemble it’s parent. Seeds from hybrid varieties end up producing a various mix of offspring. A lot of these hybrid plants end up having quite different characteristics than the parent.

What is the best way to store seeds?
Seeds should always be kept dry, cool (close to 4º C if possible) and dark. The refrigerator (NOT the freezer) is a good place to store seeds, preferably inside a film canister, to avoid light and moisture condensation. In the absence of a fridge, the back of a closet is OK, as long as your seeds are not exposed to moisture, heat or excesses of light. Some people recommend placing them in envelopes placed between the pages of old newspapers.

Here’s a great interview with Vandana Shiva one of the world’s most dynamic and provocative thinkers.
A physicist, ecologist, and activist, she won the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi, India, and is an Associate Editor of The Ecologist magazine. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India’s leading physicists.

An outspoken critic of industrialized globalized agriculture, Shiva has dedicated much of her life’s work to uncovering the devastating human and environmental impacts of corporate international trade agreements. Her books include Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply and Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis.

She says that if she had her time over again she would become an organic farmer. In this inspiring interview she offers some hope and advice on ways to break free and empower yourself and your community in a call to action. To start growing your own organic food.