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Photo: Peter Dejong
If we were to prevent a Malthusian catastrophe, we’d better figure out a way to boost crop yield to keep feeding the planet’s growing population. Gertjan Meeuws and other bioengineers of PlantLab have found an answer: a greenhouse where every aspect of the growing condition is controlled, where climate (or even the Sun) is not a factor at all.
In their research station, strawberries, yellow peppers, basil and banana plants take on an eerie pink glow under red and blue bulbs of Light-Emitting Diodes, or LEDs. Water trickles into the pans when needed and all excess is recycled, and the temperature is kept constant. Lights go on and off, simulating day and night, but according to the rhythm of the plant — which may be better at shorter cycles than 24 hours — rather than the rotation of the Earth. [...]
Sunlight is not only unnecessary but can be harmful, says Meeuws. Plants need only specific wavelengths of light to grow, but in nature they must adapt to the full range of light as a matter of survival. When light and other natural elements are manipulated, the plants become more efficient, using less energy to grow.
"Nature is good, but too much nature is killing," said Meeuws, standing in a steaming cubicle amid racks of what he called "happy plants."
The amoeba species Dictyostelium discoideum slime mold (or dicty, as scientists lovingly call it) is one fascinating organism. For instance, its life cycle involves unicellular amoeba, then a multicellular slug that scoots around to find food, then a "fruiting body" to disperse spores to new growing areas.
Scientists have just discovered that the slime mold is even cannier than previously thought: it can also "farm."
Research described in Nature shows that a third of these spores contain some of the bacteria to grow at the new site.
Food management has been seen in animals including ants and snails, but never in creatures as simple as these.
The behaviour falls short of the kind of "farming" that more advanced animals do; ants, for example, nurture a single fungus species that no longer exists in the wild.
But the idea that an amoeba that spends much of its life as a single-celled organism could hold short of consuming a food supply before decamping is an astonishing one.
More than just a snack for the journey of dispersal, the idea is that the bacteria that travel with the spores can "seed" a new bacterial colony, and thus a food source in case the new locale should be lacking in bacteria.
How did the sport of competitive giant pumpkin-growing get so big? I mean, it’s really big!
1. Chris Stevens of New Richmond, Wisconsin grew a pumpkin this year that weighed in at 1,810.5 pounds -considerably bigger than the previous world-record pumpkin that weighed 1,725 pounds. The big pumpkin was weighed at the Stillwater Harvest Fest in Stillwater, Wisconsin Minnesota last weekend. How did he grow a pumpkin that big? Stevens has a 10,000-square-foot pumpkin patch, in which he grows only one pumpkin per vine. He shades the fruit from the sun, and feeds the vines cow manure, fish emulsion and seaweed.
2. Competitive pumpkin growing really began with William Warnock of Ontario. He grew the Rennie’s Mammoth variety of pumpkins, which were billed as capable of growing to over a hundred pounds. However, Warnock’s pumpkins were much bigger. In 1900 and 1904 he produced fruits that weighed over 400 pounds! His 403 pound world record set in 1904 stood for 76 years. See Warnock’s pumpkins here.
3. The most common variety of pumpkin grown for world-record competitions is the Atlantic Giant, which produces the largest fruit of any plant in the world. The variety was first cultivated by Nova Scotia farmer Howard Dill in 1976. It was Dill who finally broke Warnock’s big pumpkin record in 1979, and grew record-setting pumpkins for several consecutive years afterward. The Dill family still sells the record-breaking seeds.
4. During the last few years of the 20th century, the competitive pumpkin community was rocked by cheating, scandals, and infighting -enough to power a soap opera. The main governing body of the competitions was the World Pumpkin Confederation. A split in the membership led to the creation of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, which now oversees official weigh-ins.
5. The first pumpkin that weighed over a thousand pounds was grown in 1996 by Paula and Nathan Zehr of Lowville, New York. Their record-breaking pumpkin weighed an astounding 1,061 pounds, which won the couple a $50,000 prize for reaching the 1,000-pound milestone. Since then, half-ton pumpkins have become “common”. The world record for large pumpkins has been broken every year this decade, except for 2008.
Social networking technology has contributed to the spread of a new group activity: crop mobbing. In a modern-day equivalent of barn-raising, groups of young farmers and city-dwelling locavores descend on farms to offer their labor without expectation of compensation other than a hearty meal. They focus their efforts on family-owned organic farms. Not everyone is enthusiastic about the phenomenon:
Some dismiss crop mobs as urbanites playing at farming, a hands-on variation of the popular “Farmville” Facebook game. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, history professor at Iowa State University, likened crop mobs to “agricultural tourism.” “You go in, spend a nice weekend, get your fingers a little dirty. It’s nice but not a significant contribution to agriculture,” she said.
Supporters would vehemently disagree, noting that the experience offers networking for small farmers and an interesting experience for the “agricurious.” The phenomenon began two years ago in North Carolina, and has now spread to other states.
Link. Photo: Jim Gehrz. Crop Mob website.
You think you have troubles at work? Dairy farmer Tony Goltstein of Winchester, Indiana has methane bubbles the size of houses rising up to twenty feet tall, full of gas released by decomposing cow manure. Since wholesale prices of dairy products has plummeted, he cannot afford to properly maintain the manure lagoon. Replacing the plastic liner would cost around $200,000, and Goltstein is afraid the lagoon will overflow if the bubbles under the plastic continue to rise.
This month, Mr. Goltstein asked state regulators to let him pop the bubbles. He said he and his 19-year-old son would slice them open with a knife from a paddleboat.
Bruce Palin, assistant commissioner for the office of land quality at the state environmental agency, said officials were considering the idea. But, he added, “not knowing how much volume of gas is there and how much pressure is on it, we’re concerned with just cutting a hole.”
Last year, a hog farmer in Hayfield, Minn., was launched 40 feet into the air in an explosion caused by methane gas from a manure pit on his farm. He sustained burns and singed hair.
Mr. Goltstein’s attorney, Glenn D. Bowman, acknowledged that the potential existed for an explosion: “We’re aware of that sort of common physics issue,” he said.
The Goltsteins filed for bankruptcy last month. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Lauren Etter)
Food Inc. didn’t win Best Documentary this year, but its message is clear: farming in America is not what it used to be. Thankfully, the passion for farming for a living, and doing it right, still motivates some, like the Nolan family. A feature documentary called From Grass to Cheese is underway to show the world their commitment to start a dairy farm, and more.
The Nolan family’s Laurel Valley Creamery got it’s start in 2005 when they purchased farmland belonging to Nick’s grandparents in an attempt to carry on their family farming tradition. Their goal now is to create a successful cheese business and also help people renew their relationship with food production. Nick and Celeste firmly believe that by turning grass into cheese there are rewards far greater than just filling stomachs.
The documentarians are hoping to raise money to finish the film and have it screened for next year’s awards. As the Thomas Jefferson quote rightly states: “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.” Aside from Farmville, interest in farming in the United States seems to be going the way of the drive-in movie. This kind of project brings hope for future farmers.
The following is reprinted
from The
Best of The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
Dr. Norman Borlaug. Photo: khalampre
[Flickr]
Ever heard of Norman Borlaug? Most people haven't, yet he's credited
with a truly amazing accomplishment: saving more life than anybody else
in history.
THE POPULATION BOMB
 In
his 1968 best seller, The Population Bomb
, author and biologist
Paul Ehrlich wrote that "the battle to feed all of humanity is over."
Ehrlich's chilling book predicted that a rapidly growing world population
would soon lead to massive worldwide food shortages, especially in third-world
countries. World population was just over 3.5 billion at the time and
was increasing at a faster rate than food production. "In the 1970s
and 1980s," Ehrlich wrote, "hundreds of millions of people will
starve to death." Most experts agreed with Ehrlich's dire predictions
... but they hadn't anticipated Dr. Norman Borlaug.
(Photo: Center
for Conservation Biology, Stanford University)
FARM BOY
Borlaug was born in 1914 and grew up on a farm in Saude, Iowa. In 1942
he graduated from the University of Minnesota with PhDs in plant pathology
and genetics. In 1944 he was invited by the Rockefeller Foundation, a
global charitable organization, and the Mexican government to head a project
aimed at improving wheat production in Mexico. His assignment: to develop
a more productive strain of wheat that was also resistant to stem rust,
a fungal disease that was becoming a major problem in Latin America.
Borlaug chose two locations with an 8,500-foot altitude difference for
his testing. He grew and crossbred thousands of different strains of wheat,
and worked with the latest fertilizers, looking for plants that could
grow in both environments. Reason: they had to be able to grow anywhere.
Over the next several years Borlaug was able to develop hardy, highly
productive strains, but he found that the tall wheats he was using would
not support the weight of the added grain. So he crossed the tall wheats
with dwarf varieties that were not only shorter but had thicker, stronger
stems. And that was his breakthrough: a semi-dwarf, disease-resistant,
high-output wheat. He worked incessantly to get the seeds distributed
to small farmers throughout Mexico, and by 1963 Borlaug's wheat varieties
made up 95 percent of the nation's total production, with a crop yield
that was more than six times greater than when he'd arrived. Not only
could Mexico stop importing wheat, they were now an exporter - a huge
boost to any nation's nutritional and economic health, but especially
to an underdeveloped one. And now Borlaug wanted to take his high-yield
farming global. He wanted, he said, to secure "a temporary success
in man's war against hunger and deprivation."
ANOTHER VICTORY
In 1963 the Rockefeller Foundation sent Borlaug to Pakistan and India,
two nations with severe hunger and malnutrition problems. Borlaug's help
was resisted at first; there was cultural opposition to new farming methods.
But when acute famine struck in 1965 (1.5 million people would die by
1967), the barriers came down. And the results were incredible: by 1968
Pakistan, which just a few years earlier relied on massive grain imports,
was entirely self-sufficient. By 1970 India's production had doubled ad
it too was getting close to self-sufficiency.
At four o'clock in the morning one day in 1970, Margaret Borlaug got
a phone call. She raced out to the fields and informed her husband, already
hard at work, that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. "No, I haven't,"
he said. He thought it was a hoax. But he had indeed won it for having
saved the lives of millions - perhaps hundreds of millions - of people
in India and Pakistan and for the message it had sent to the world. "He
has given us a well-founded hope," the Nobel committee said, "an
alternative of peace and of life - the green revolution."
NOTHING ESCAPES CONTROVERSY
Borlaug had also been working on other grains, such as corn and rye,
and in the 1980s began developing more productive strains of rice to increase
production in China and Southeast Asia. He was setting up similar programs
in Africa, but ran into a major hurdle: environmentalists opposed his
methods. Among their charges: spreading the same few varieties of grains
all over the planet is harming biodiversity; huge farms are benefiting
from his high techniques and killing off the small farmer; inorganic fertilizers
used in the Borlaug method are harmful to the environment; and genetically
engineered food is unnatural and potentially dangerous.
"Some of the environmental lobbyist are the salt of the earth,"
Borlaug said," but many of them are elitists. If they lived just
one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty
years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation
canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying
to deny them these things." He admitted that he would rather his
work benefited small farmers, but added, "Wheat isn't political.
It doesn't know that it's supposed to be producing more for poor farmers
than for rich farmers." Supporters argue that Borlaug's high-yield
method has actually been a boon for the environment, saving hundreds of
millions of acres of wild land from being turned into farms. The controversy
continues, but none of it has stopped Borlaug from his mission.
KEEP ON PLANTING
 In
1984, with the help of Japanese philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa, Borlaug
set up the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA), training more than a million
farmers throughout Africa. Result: using Borlaug seed and methods, cereal
grain yields have increased from two- to four-fold.
As of 2005 - at the age of 91 - Norman Borlaug is still at it. He continues
to work with Mexico's International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center,
still heads the SAA, runs research programs, teaches young scientists,
gives lectures, and of course, still works in the field.
Over his 50-plus-year career he has been credited with saving as many
as a billion people from starvation, and has received numerous international
awards. In May 2004, he was presented with another: at St. Mark's Episcopal
Cathedral in Borlaug's college town of Minneapolis, he was shown their
new "Window of Peace." The Minneapolis Star Tribune
described the event: "He gazed upward to see the sun shining through
a 30-foot-tall stained glass window. There - along with depictions of
Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and other modern-day peacemakers - was
a life-size likeness of Borlaug, holding a fistful of wheat." |
|
 |
The article above is reprinted with permission
from The
Best of the Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
The Bathroom Reader Institute handpicked the most eye-opening, rib-tickling,
and mind-boggling articles from everything they have written
over the last ten years and carefully crammed them into 576 pages of the
book.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular
books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure
yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom
Reader Institute.
 |
| Norman Borlaug was featured on Penn and Teller's BS on genetically modified food: [YouTube Link] | |
