Nearly 7 million bats may have died from white-nose fungus, officials say

More than five years since the deadly white-nose fungus was first detected in a New York cave where bats hibernate, up to 6.7 million of the animals are estimated to have died in 16 states and Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday.

The estimate, drawn from surveys by wildlife officials mostly in Northeastern states where the disease thrives, confirmed the worst fears of biologists who have been counting dead bats covered in the powdery fungus in mines and caves every winter and worrying whether the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat and the tricolored bat will survive.

“We’re watching a potential extinction event on the order of what we experienced with bison and passenger pigeons for this group of mammals,” said Mylea Bayless, conservation programs manager for Bat Conservation International in Austin, Tex.

Read More:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nearly-7-million-bats-may-have-died-from-white-nose-fungus-officials-say/2012/01/17/gIQAyixH6P_story.html

Big Agribusiness Influence Threatens to Override Public Interest in Greed Revolution

A new 30-page report that documents the growing influence of agribusiness on the multilateral food system and the lack of transparency in research funding has been released today by the international civil society organization ETC Group. The Greed Revolution: Mega Foundations, Agribusiness Muscle In On Public Goods presents three case studies – one involving the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and two involving CGIAR Centers (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) – which point to a dangerous trend that will worsen rather than solve the problem of global hunger. The report details the involvement of, among others, Nestlé, Heineken, Monsanto, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Syngenta Foundation.

"It is unacceptable that the UN is giving multinational agribusiness privileged access to alter their agricultural policies, said Pat Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group, who has been involved in the field for 40 years. "It is ridiculous that the key organizations responsible for agricultural research have no credible data on the extent of corporate involvement in their work and that CGIAR's biggest funder – at $89 million – is somebody called, 'Miscellaneous!' Governments and UN secretariats have forgotten that their first task is to serve the public – not the profiteers."

Read More:

http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5305

Jill Richardson - We've Lost Nearly All of Our Wild Foods -- What Happened? And What Are We Missing?

A few days from now, a single bluefin tuna will make international headlines when it sells for an ungodly amount of money -- perhaps more than $100,000 -- at Tokyo's Tsukiji market. And while the high price of the first bluefin of the year will be extraordinary, the rarity, and thus the prestige and high pricetag of bluefin in general, provides a clue to humans' dietary history. Once upon a time, wild foods were a regular and beloved part of the American diet. Today, the American epicure might dine on foraged mushrooms and ramps, but for many of us, fish are the last wild food we eat. What happened? And what are we missing?

Georgia Pellegrini, a chef who has worked in elite restaurants in New York and France, decided to answer this question for herself when she set out to hunt her own food. As her new book's title implies -- Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time -- she entered into a masculine realm in which she was often the only woman. Pellegrini traveled across the United States and even England, hunting everything from squirrel to elk. As much as she stands out as a woman, she also stands out among the local and sustainable food movement. (An anthropologist recently pointed out that the local food movement "has been reticent to embrace hunting as an integral part of sustainable eating.")

As a chef, Pellegrini focuses on her meal's flavor more than many other sustainable food writers. At one point, while contemplating pulling the trigger to shoot a javelina, Pellegrini says, "I wonder if I had to work hard enough for this. I wonder if I had to exert myself enough... Then I wonder how javelina taste."

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153568/we%27ve_lost_nearly_all_of_our_wild_foods_--_what_happened_and_what_are_we_missing

GMW - Indian farm suicides - key facts and figures

Thanks to Aruna Rodrigues for the following information based on the research of P Sainath, the renowned Indian writer on the country's rural poor.

The National Crime Records Bureau's all-India figure for farm suicides 1995-2010 is 256,913.

First 8 years 1995-2002: 121,157 farm suicides

Second 8 years 2003-10: 135,756 farm suicides

Pawar, Agriculture Minister's home state of Maharashtra [where Bt cotton has had a huge uptake] has by far the worst record in the country with 50,481 farm suicides between 1995-2010. That is, 1995-2002: 20,066 and for 2003-10 [the period in which Bt cotton has been cultivated]: 30,415

Main points:

*The last 8 years were significantly worse with an annual average of 1832 farm suicides, higher than the first 8 years.

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Claire Provost - Rush for Land a Wake-Up Call for Poorer Countries, Report Says

Published on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/dec/14/rush-for-land-gobal-south

by Claire Provost

Population growth, the increasing consumption of a global elite, and an international legal system skewed in favour of largescale investors are fuelling a worldwide rush for land that is unfolding faster than previously thought and is likely to continue, according to the largest study of international land deals to date.

Researchers estimate that more than 200m hectares of land – over eight times the size of the UK – have been sold or leased between 2000 and 2010. But although the food price crisis of 2007-08 may have triggered a boom in international land deals, the study argues that a much broader set of factors – linked to population growth and the rise of emerging economies – is raising the prospect of "a new era in the struggle for, and control over, land in many areas of the global south".

Forty civil society and research groups fed into the global commercial pressures on land research project, co-ordinated by the International Land Coalition (ILC), which draws on a decade of data to identify and analyse trends in large land acquisitions, and highlights the role of governments in brokering deals that may marginalise rural communities and jeopardise the future of family farming in favour of big industrial projects. This is the most comprehensive study to date of international land deals, pulling together findings from investigations around the world.

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Anneli Rufus - Bugs and Krill, the Other White Meats: Time to Start Eating at the Bottom of the Food Chain

By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet

Posted on December 7, 2011, Printed on December 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153359/bugs_and_krill%2C_the_other_white_meats%3A_time_to_start_eating_at_the_bottom_of_the_food_chain

The Eon Coffee Shop in Hayward, California serves krill. Mezcal -- a Mexican restaurant in nearby San Jose -- serves grasshoppers.

Whales and birds eat these things. A growing number of cutting-edge chefs think you should too.

They say the most sustainable way to eat creatures, if you eat them at all, is by dining at the bottom of the food chain. These organisms -- best known as bait, feed or vermin -- breed so easily and exist in such vast quantities as to be far more sustainable protein sources than, say, halibut or beef. A single baleen whale consumes up to 8,000 pounds of krill daily. Worldwide insect biomass exceeds human biomass by two hundredfold. We might manage to eat every last barnacle and roach, but we would really have to try.

It's a massive paradigm shift: Raised on steak, facing a dung-beetle future.

The rich and powerful have always eaten whatever is rare, expensive to farm, difficult to breed and hard to catch. The poor and powerless have always eaten whatever is cheap, free and plentiful.

But we might all be fighting over roadkill by 2050, according to a new UN report.

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Lester Brown - Rising Meat Consumption Takes Big Bite out of Grain Harvest

EcoWatch  2-03-2011

Lester Brown

World consumption of animal protein is everywhere on the rise. Meat consumption increased from 44 million tons in 1950 to 284 million tons in 2009, more than doubling annual consumption per person to more than 90 pounds. The rise in consumption of milk and eggs is equally dramatic. Wherever incomes rise, so does meat consumption.

As the oceanic fish catch and rangeland beef production have both leveled off, the world has shifted to grain-based production of animal protein to expand output. With some 35 percent of the world grain harvest (760 million tons) used to produce animal protein, meat consumption has a large impact on grain consumption and therefore global food security.

The efficiency with which various animals convert grain into protein varies widely. Grain-fed beef is one of the least efficient forms of animal protein, taking roughly 7 pounds of grain to produce a 1-pound gain in live weight. Global beef production, most of which comes from rangelands, has grown by about 1 percent a year since 1990.

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Fran Korten - Young Farmers -- A Growing Movement

In spite of the daily discouraging environmental, political, and economic news, coaxing living things to grow somehow seems to make folks optimistic.

by Fran Korten

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/new-livelihoods/a-growing-movement

Recently during lunch at the YES! offices, online editor Brooke Jarvis made a casual comment I found quite stunning. Brooke, a sharp, talented 20-something, said “I don’t know a single person under 30 who doesn’t want to own a farm.”

What? Own a farm? I turned to several 20-somethings at the table and asked if they agreed. They did. They waxed eloquent about their love for lambs, ducks, chickens, bees. (No one mentioned weeding.) They confessed they weren’t sure they would ever actually own a farm, but their yearning was definitely real.

What the people at the fair shared in common was not their politics, but their optimism.

I think that just five years ago the 20-somethings in our office were not longing to own a farm. Something in our culture is changing. A growing segment of people don’t want to just buy organic, healthy food. They want to grow it. This new lust to farm seems to cross class, race, and politics.

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