12/15/2004 02:41:00 AM|W|P|projectpeace|W|P|World running out of water to meet food security, warn scientists
<>Posted: 17 Aug 2004
Global water use must be reduced to meet the demand for food production, otherwise it will be impossible to meet the UN development goal of halving the 840 million undernourished people by 2015, warn experts. http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2309
Difficult choices will have to made in the next few years as pressure from the world's growing population for more food leads to greater water consumption and increased environmental degradation, say the water experts.
Influencing peoples' eating habits away from meat and diary products could be one possible solution to conserving water and the environment.
Far more water is needed for animals that feed on grain, and also for those which depend on grazing, than for grain crops. For example, it takes approximately 7000 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of beef in a developed country, while to produce enough flour for one loaf of bread requires approximately 550 litres.|W|P|110310774627354013|W|P||W|P|projectpeace@gmail.com12/04/2004 06:25:00 AM|W|P|projectpeace|W|P|What does the collapse of wild bird populations have to do with international drug policy? Consider the relevance of a canary to a coal miner.
Normal cultivation and natural distribution of the world's best source of organic vegetable protein, and the only common seed with three essential fatty acids (EFAs), has been suppressed for several human generations of Cannabis prohibition. The botanical relationship between "marijuana' and "hemp," both of which produce nutritious seed, has impacted more than just mankind's sound farming practices and food security. The health of some animal populations also depends on the availability of Cannabis seed, providing essential nutrients in uncommon abundance. These nutrients not provided by other food resources, making Cannabis both essential and unique.
In identifying the most fundamental impacts of "drug" prohibition, it is particularly relevant to realize that there are many characteristics which distinguish herbs from drugs. While it is possible to make a drug out of an herb, it is not possible to make an herb out of a drug. In objective reality, there isn't a "drug" on this planet that produces seed. Making this distinction is important for broadening several legally and socially meaningful rationale, bringing jurisdictional, environmental, agricultural and spiritual considerations into the drug policy reform process.
Cannabis is in truth a very highly evolved plant species, which plays a unique part in the complex Natural Order. Respect for and compliance with The Natural Order determines sustainable existence. Proper functioning of "The Web of Life" includes all species. Mankind is far beyond its rightful authority in legisalting scarcity of a unique and essential food resource.
Availabilty of critical "strategic" food resources determines the quality and sustainability of life on this planet. Absent the arbitrary interferance of prohibitionist policies, Cannabis agriculture has exceptional potential for producing sustainable abundance of food in a wide variety of soil and climate conditions.
By inducing scarcity of the Cannabis plant, and then marginalizing discussions of the proper use of Cannabis, as a vitally important rotational crop and companion plant, the integrity of organic agriculture and science-based stewardship of the world's resources is being comprimised by prohibitionist dogma. The fact that the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization is not investigating Cannabis as a source of organic vegetable protein anywhere in the world, is perhaps the most tragic cost of prohibitionist thinking. How many billions of people and animals have died from a lack of Cannabis protein?
Cannabis is a critically determinate agricultural resource, without which it may not be possible for mankind to achieve sustainable existence on this planet. As canaries were used to signal dangerous conditions in coal mines, the present collapse of wild bird populations and other species are indicating conditions of imbalance which are threatening our own survival.
Consider that many of the chemicals being applied to our food crops, and genetically modified crops such as soybeans, would become functionally obsolete if Cannabis farming practices and rational agricultural research were allowed to develop without prohibitionist interferance.
In up-coming discussions of Europe's changing drug policy, I suggest that the environmental costs of inducing essential resource scarcity include the impact on food security for all.
for peace,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
See
Farming 'killing Europe's birds'
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4060259.stm
Modern farming in Europe has reduced the numbers of 24 common bird species by a third in a quarter of a century, a report by European ornithologists says.
The authors include staff of the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and of BirdLife International.
They say the declines were steepest in countries in north-west Europe, in the regions of most intensive agriculture.
They say the 10 countries due to join the European Union on 1 May must learn from the example of its older members.
Beyond the EU's borders
The study on the population trends of wild birds, by the RSPB, BirdLife and the European Bird Census Council, is known as the farmland bird indicator.
It includes information for 24 common and widespread species of farmland bird from 11 present members of the EU, five which will join in May 2004, and Norway and Switzerland.
The indicator shows that across Europe, from Spain to Poland (including the UK), the species' numbers, including skylarks, lapwings and yellowhammers, have crashed by a third since 1980, and says this is because of intensive farming.
The RSPB says: "These declines have been severest in countries in north-west Europe. In the UK, for example, between 1970 and 1999, the skylark declined by 52%, the yellowhammer by 53% and the corn bunting by 88%."
BirdLife members are urging the European Commission and governments of both member and accession states to put the environment and wildlife at the heart of farming policy.
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