The Green Machine: California takes the lead on Sustainable Agriculture and the Country Follows

When it comes to what goes in our food and eventually goes in us, people are concerned. That is a fact. Global agriculture and food exports are a hot topic for politicians, scientists, and more than ever, young citizens. Millenials and the environment are positively correlated, with concern for the environment in general (including agricultural techniques) steadily on the rise. Many young liberals and even some young conservatives make the environment a priority in their political viewpoint. From issues like the Keystone Pipeline to China and U.S. carbon emission agreements, millennials are usually on the side of the action which will result in better environmental health. The cultural phenomenon is widespread, and when focused on the specific subjects within that field like the handling of today’s agriculture, we see that millennials in California are especially proponents of transparency in food production.

Everyday citizens around the country are going to work, Oregon is even voting on a GMO labeling bill this week. As far as states go though, California residents the cake for their actions towards sustainable agriculture and rejection of forced GMO inconspicuousness. In California there are many homegrown initiatives to keep food local and sustainably grown. Such examples include the Local Food Policy Groups which attempt to monitor their community’s food system so that it fits the needs of all its citizens. There website states that, “The California Food Policy Council is an emerging voice in California’s policy making process that strives to bring transparency to food systems legislation, and to re-envision a political process that includes a more diverse range of food and farming interests to the table.” While some work to build up policies and knock others down, others are making a change in the field. California has numerous community gardens which allow people to grow their own food right in the city. This has provided low income families for healthy nutritious food that would otherwise be out of reach among the cheaper processed foods. It had kept the area’s air and water clean, and it has also allowed the land to remain fertile since the soil is not deprived by aggressive farming. On the state level, California began the push to label products containing genetically modified foods which has become widespread among many states. Although the law was shut down repeatedly, the citizens have not given up. Some stores have begun labeling foods on their own, and the initiative is still being passed around in order to be presented again in the near future for another round of consideration.

                Still, California is only one state in a country whose youth are overwhelmingly choosing to eat locally, grow their own food, and boycott the current food production model through their diets. Many have gone vegetarian, vegan, completely organic, or any other special diet in order to boycott what they feel is not a fair or healthy choice of food items they are exposed to on a daily basis.

*Links in Red Font

Tissue Cryopreservation in Plants: What it Means for Today's Agriculture, the Potential, and the Challenges

Cryopreservation is a process by which cells, tissues, or any other material sensitive to time or chemical reactivity can be preserved using a cooling process to sub-zero temperatures. If the temperature is low enough, it is able to stop any enzymatic or chemical activity which may cause damage to the material. This method is mostly popularized by the media portrayal of scientists attempting to preserve humans through freezing and reanimating at a future time. It is also being looked into as a method for nonseed plant conservation. Cryopreservation methods are currently seeking a way to reach low temperatures without causing additional damage by the formation of ice during freezing. Traditionally, cryoprotectants (a class of molecules) have been used to coat the material to be frozen in order to prevent freezing damage. It should be noted though, that Cryopreservation alters/compromises the structure and function of cells as a general rule, unless it is proven otherwise for a specific population.

In a study conducted by Valerie C. Pense (2014), the benefits, implications, and challenges posed by  Cryopreservation of nonseed plant tissues were looked at. Cyropreservation of nonseed plant tissues can be used as a way to save the genetic material of the plant  when seeds and spores cannot be altered to fit traditional preservation methods in order to keep genetic diversity. Shoot tips (where the flowers or leaves emerge from at the tip of the stem), somatic embryos, and gametophytes can be used as separate materials for which a new plant grows, and therefore can be stored long term in liquid nitrogen. Tissue cryopreservation is especially important when dealing with species that have unbankable seeds or produce little to none, known as "exceptional species."



 Methods of collecting tissues and establishing cultures in artificial environments outside of the organism can be applied as a source of tissue cryopreservation. The applicability of using heat fusion to change the tissue into a glassy substance or using dehydration cryoprocedures has been shown for a wide range of species and types of tissues, and the natural adaptations of the species influence the cyropreservation method chosen and what tweaks must be made to them. When assisting in and growing these tissues in prepared nutrient mediums they are normally bred with clones or cells with similar genetic material, but preserving tissues from multiple genotypes can provide genetic diversity to a cryopreserved collection. This will allow collections to serve the ultimate purpose of providing materials for restoration if wild populations are lost or severely threatened.

Even with the great potential that these methods have to improve plant conservation efforts and secure species diversity for the future regardless of how we humans move forward in regards to the environment, there are also both scientific and practical challenges to their application. These must be assesed when looking at the appilicability of these methods. Where in vitro methods are well established for multiplying species and conserving their DNA, cryopreservation methods are still really based on experiments and observations regarding their application to new species. This can be quite the challenge for conservation, which deals with rare and often unstudied species, that may have unusual natural adaptations. Also, due to the labor involved, tissue cryopreservation is more expensive than traditional methods. This can limit already traditionally underfunded work with endangered plants. Scientists do hope that with collaborative efforts though, we can help meet these challenges. The potential for cyropreservation to allow for new species of plants to be used as food and to make sure that the diversity of flora is not destroyed through modern agriculture is HUGE. The hope is that with studies like the one linked above, we can better connect cyropreservation techniques with endangered plant species in order to help conserve them and have more time to figure out their specific contributions and benefits to the environment and human civilization, as well as keep them around as long as possible. 

Links: 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/673301

Norman E. Borlaug, Father of the Green Revolution: The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives

"The father of the Green Revolution","agriculture's greatest spokesperson" and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives". Norman Ernest Borlaug (1914 – 2009) has been called all of these as a tribute to his work in the field of environmental science. Borlaug was an american biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate whose work with bio-engineered crops helped increase world food production at a time that food scarcity was becoming a big issue around the world as the population boomed. As such, Borlaug was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor.In 1937, Borlaug received his B.Sc. Biology from University of Minnesota, and his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics in 1942. This career path was inspired by a plant pathology talk he attended on a whim which inspired him to pursue what he felt had the potential to save millions of lives, instead of his planned career in forestry. He then took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, and gained the support of farmers there to test semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties he developed using strains from different species of wheat. After a few failed trials, Borlaug created the perfect plant, and as a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. This led to the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, India and eventually the continents of Africa and Asia in the mid-twentieth century. This resulted in nearly doubled wheat yields in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations starting in 1965 and 1970.With these collective increases in yield, Borlaug was deemed the leader of what is known as the Green Revolution. Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of "his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply."Borlaug argued that we must rely on science and research to answer the questions about whether GMO foods pose any environmental risks and never backed down when it came to discussing them, no matter how controversial.  He also emphasized that education was important because there was a declining trend in support for public agricultural research, such as at CIMMYT, where the crucial discoveries that led to the first Green Revolution took place. Borlaug talked about how the fast the world's population was getting and that there were only two options to be made. Either yields are significantly increased on land already in production, or we destroy the remaining rainforests and other habitats for wild plants and animals in order to have more farmland. To help preserve the ecosystem while also reducing hunger and malnutrition,Borlaug said biotechnology was the answer.  As an influential figure, Borlaug gave speeches in which he advocated biotechnology and the crucial role he saw for it in feeding and enhancing the nutrition of those in shaky food security situations. Borlaug worked alongside Jimmy Carter and The Carter Center and The Sasakawa Global 2000 Program to promote Quality Protein Maize in sub-Saharan Africa to counter malnutrition and center diseases prevalent in the region. He also founded the World Food Prize to inspire and be like a Nobel prize for those doing work in food and agriculture. Borlaug's efforts transformed the agriculture field in China, Egypt, and other countries forever and his legacy leaves efforts to educate students and next generation leaders on world hunger and food security.

Links:

http://www.worldfoodprize.org/index.cfm?nodeID=25305&audienceID=1

Environmental Conflict: The Israeli Separation Wall and the Agricultural Heritage of the Old village of Battir

             Environmental Science intersects with many other fields on a regular basis, including economics, politics, and as will be discussed in this post, war and conflict. An area of the world in which the environmental management and conflict work against each other all the time, is the Middle East. Particularly when looking at Israel and Palestine. One ongoing battle between these peoples concern Israel's separation wall, known as the Apartheid wall to some. To give you an idea of the wall's size, in 2013, 62% of the 5 meter tall, 439 mile long concrete barrier was completed, with 855 feet of this beyond the boundary and actually into the west bank portion of Palestine (Katz-mink, 2013). 


The Decision
        The latest proposed installment to the wall's completion was a portion that ran through the historical agricultural landscape of Battir village in Palestine, which is where the conflict we will be discussing arose. It has been a long going case between the Israeli Defense Ministry (IDM) who claims security reasons for the state and the villagers of Battir who grow their own food and make their livelihoods off selling what grows on the land. This summer after years of indecision and hopping back and forth between courts, a resolution was finally made whereby the wall will NOT be built through the land of Battir. Groups of Israeli settlers and Battir villagers and Palestinian activists who had formed an unlikely friendship over the environmental concerns rejoiced in the news.        This outcome was not from a decision of the courts or IDF, but rather UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization who deemed Battir a World Heritage Site. 


History and Politics of Battir
Battir is a small, ancient Palestinian village that is located between Bethlehem and the Jerusalem.  The environmental issues the wall poses to Battir are due to its unique agricultural heritage. Perched above a valley on the between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Battir’s irrigation system dates back to the roman era and is virtually unchanged (Knell, 2014). Ancient channels bring water from seven natural mountain springs down terraces and through the gardens and orchards that surround the village (Knell, 2014). The 6,000 villagers consist of 8 main extended families that have worked the land as a collective for generations and obtain both their income and sustenance off of this land using a technique which has increased the fertility of the area over the decades (FOEME, 2012). The area contains valley and ridges that are fertile and olives, almonds, grapes, and fruit trees such as lemons are cultivated on the spring and cave abundant terraces (Sherwood, 2012).  The wall's planned path was to cut straight through these terraces since Battir lays on a 1949 armistice line to the south of Jerusalem which leaves it two-thirds Palestinian and one-third Israeli.
The problem, as stated in global reports, is that the wall will damage the physical and human character of a community that has lived peacefully for centuries.         


Agricultural/Environmental Implications
Moving away from the politics of the situation, the planned route included 500 feet of concrete wall that would have cut through the valley of surviving terraces that naturally irrigate the land. The villagers would be separated from 1/3 of their land and 40% of the land would be taken away (Rayner, 2014). Residents would have more restricted movement and the lifestyle of the village would be abandoned as the ecology and hydrology of the area became effected (Rinat, 2012). This consequence is proven as all over the world; any type of isolation or fragmentation of the landscape has negative effects on the amount and diversity of plants and animals in the area (Katz-mink, 2013). In other areas that Israel has touched on Palestinian territory, natural springs have dried up and some have become polluted (Rinat, 2012). The water table and quality of the groundwater may also be negatively impacted and harm the water security of the region as the flora which helps to maintain these become harmed (Katz-mink, 2013). The wall would block the natural flow of floodwater through its drainage-route: causing floods, soil erosion, and habitat damage (Katz-mink, 2013). An example of this was seen in Qalqilya, a Palestinian city in the West Bank in 2012 as floodwater mixed with sewage due to the separation wall’s placement and flooded people’s homes and fields.


  I am overjoyed personally, to hear the news that the wall was not built through Battir as both an environmentalist and someone who is against separation of peoples and humans rights violations in general. Here we see a good, working example of environmental conflict and justice and the intersectionality of these issues. Most importantly though, is the fact that such an old and traditional system of agriculture is preserved in a time where more and more land is being converted in the modern model of industrialized food production.

Scholarly Article Links:


FOEME. (2012,September). Community Based Problem Solving on Water Issues.
 Retrieved from http://foeme.org/uploads/13470236580~%5E$%5E~Community_Based_Problem_Solving_on_Water_Issues_2012.pdf.


Katz-Mink, E. (2013). Dangerous Separation: An Ecosystem and Way of Life
in the West Bank at the Brink of Destruction. Sustainable Development, Law, and
Policy,13. Retrieved from http://foeme.org/www/?module=projects&record_id=91


Knell, Y. (2014, January 28). West Bank villages' fate rests on key Israeli
court ruling. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25936419.


Rayner, T. (2014, January 29). Israel 'Must Divide' Ancient West Bank Village.
Sky News HD. Retrieved from http://news.sky.com/story/1202574/israel-must-divide-ancient-west-bank-village


Rinat, Z. (2012, September 13). Ministry of Defense: Minimal Damage, A First:
A Government Ministry Against the Separation Wall. Haaretz. Retrieved from
http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/1.1823483.


Sherwood, H. (2012, December 11). Israeli separation wall threatens Battir's ancient terraces. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/11/israel-palestinians-battir-separation-wall.

From Farm to Factory to Lab to Table? : The Industrialization of Today's Agriculture and the Ongoing Debates

  As an environmental scientist, when it comes to challenges we face issues that many times look like doomed prophecies. Climate change, global water scarcity, energy crises, all of these time stressed issues have consequences affecting the entire human race, and everything that surrounds it. For environmentalists like myself whose viewpoint lines up with the Gaia Hypothesis, which likens the earth one system functioning with interconnected parts, the seriousness of these issues is even more apparent. This is because, when any part of the system begins to "faulter", it could lead to the "breaking point" for the earth's entire system. This is not a dooms-day movie type of warning per-se, but more like, "man is selfishly depleting resources and making changes to the environment at an unsustainable rate and without knowledge of the consequences" way. One major issue that has taken center stage in the field of environmental health from the 1950's up to modern day, is that of food production. This blog will cover food production from start to finish, addressing what our food is packaged in, what gmo's and chemicals are put in our foods, and how the food production was industrialized in order to produce enough to feed the growing population. It will also go over the implications this system has for the health of our environment, as well as for ourselves.

To best illustrate these changes that have been enacted within the last century, let us dissect your average grocery store item.

            Common grocery store items range from completely processed candy and desserts to less processed items like natural cereals or canned beans to organic or conventionally grown produce. This post will address the chemicals and biological processes involved in the production of your commonly found food items from the inside out. From farm to table. Starting with the packaging. We find that all this products have one material in common, plastic.

The Packaging
As someone particulary interested in and who has previously wrote about them, I feel the need to make a quick addressment. Plasticizers are chemicals found in polycarbonate plastics and a huge source of xenobiotic chemicals. Xenobiotic chemicals are man-made chemicals foreign to the body and ecological systems, and have been blamed for increases in multiple health conditions.   They are found in our food and its packaging, and are usually referred to by acronyms such as the infamous BPA (Bisphenol A) and others such as BPS (Bisphenol S), ADA (azodicarbonamide), and DEHP (di ethylhexyl phthalate). The plastic chemical BPA has been detected in human urine, skin, amniotic fluid, saliva, serum and milk in addition to the human body. BPA has also taken up residence in air, soil, water, and landfill leachate according to Birnbaum (2012). The most common route into our bodies though, is our diet (Betts, 2011).

      Research was conducted on these ever-present chemicals in the 1980s and 90s and many were found to be EDC’s, Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.  This means that their chemical structure allows them to fit into the estrogen receptor binding pocket and work as an “environmental estrogen” similar to the hormone associated with the female sex. This action was associated with health issues such as infertility, behavioral changes, early on-set puberty, diabetes, weight gain, cancers, and cardiovascular defects. Due to the substantial evidence in support of these findings, and the great amount of non-biodegradable waste caused by plastics which has entered our landfills and our oceans, regardless of their convenience and elasticity I am a strong opponent of the use of these in food and drink packaging. 


Genetically Modified Crops

Moving on from that note on general packaging, I think it is most important to address the use of genetic modification on our crops in order to produce higher yields, and how it has led to more than 80% of our foods containing Genetically Modified Organisms, commonly known as GMOs. GMOs are not considered xenobiotic because they do not contain anything foreign to the body or ecological systems. Rather, they come from altering an organism's genes in order to make a plant or animal stronger, larger, able to withstand certain climates or lack of water, etc. There is debate within the field over the safety of GMOs that continue to this day as many claim they were not tested enough before allowed onto the public marketplace. These opponents cite studies in rats that found GMOs to cause cancer and a number of other negative health effects. The proponents of GMOs point to the green revolution and how the invention of GMOs allowed scientists to "feed the world" and save millions from dying of starvation in the last century. 

Fertilizers and Pesticides
With GMO seeds, came the general bumping up and modernization of the process get major crop yields from them. From the fertilizer and pesticide treatment of the many crops, to the processing that goes along in factories before the food reaches us (including the meat industry) traditional methods are no longer used. Once the GMO seeds are produced, acres of one crop type is planted, most likely soy, corn, or one of the other top 8 staple GMO crops. The planting technique with massive amounts of land area covered in the same few crops, leaves the entire crop more susceptible to mass disease or extinction by other processes. These few mass produced crops also do not hold all of our daily nutrition needs. Still, there is the use of pesticides in modern agriculture along with nutrient rich fertilizer to worry about. Pesticides are being sprayed in increasingly larger amounts and there toxins are bioaccumulating in insects like bees and have been known to negatively affect human health as well. Nutrient rich fertilizer, while not posing a direct risk to human health, also has consequences such as leaching into our waterways and causing monstrous blooms of algae which feed off the nitrogen and phosphorous contained in the fertilizer. 


Factory Processing
After all this, most crops are shipped to a factory in order to be processed into one of the family brand name items we see on the supermarket shelf with the addition of preservatives and additives. Others are simply just shipped in order to be cleaned and/or packaged. Finally, the items are wrapped in plastic or whatever material is used, and put on the shelf to compete for the consumer's dollar. This is the way food production works in developing countries such as the United States. Whether it is truly the only way to fight hunger, or all the doing of corporations in order to make production cheaper, easier, and leave addicted consumers coming back for more, we will explore together. 

Other Webpage Links:  

http://www.who.int/ceh/risks/cehemerging2/en/

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/

Peer-Reviewed Journal Links:

Betts, K. (2011). Plastics and Food Sources: Dietary Intervention to Reduce BPA and DEHP.

Environmental Health Perspectives, 119, A306.

http://www.jstor.org.mutex.gmu.edu/action/showPublication?journalCode=envihealpers

Birnbaum, L.S., Bucher,J.R., Collman, G.W., Zeldin, D.C., Johnson, A.F., Schug, T.T. and                 Heindel, J.J. (2012). Consortium-Based Science: The NIEHS's Multipronged, Collaborative                 Approach to Assessing the Health Effects of Bisphenol A. Environmental Health                                 Perspectives,120,1640-1644.
 http://www.jstor.org.mutex.gmu.edu/action/showPublication?journalCode=envihealpers