An Invisible Chain of our Time
Page 42
be so near to military industry and the investment and venture capital business. That only leads to a path, and does not require a book to understand, does it?
To jump.
In the own real life, we can counteract the loss of so many odds, by returning to common sense only. It would be a clever idea scrap our old plans and habits and dismiss an old time with hardly a few criteria in our personal pocket, and too many decisions in distant offices. Think about, the Earth diameter has not changed, and so the surface is the same, thereby you may be sure that healthy and proper grounds will endow our children from opportunities. Make it possible in your home.
If something must disappear, are those pictures so many times used of starved children, are not shocking for longer, we are undaunted. That layer of refractory bricks that we have should disappear. The same is for mega-factories of meat, is overfeeding, the loss of harmless species of every kind and origin worldwide. Many limits that could state easily the common sense have been overshot widely, and ever is there a reply for every excess: a response that I heard many times in mouth of clever people is this one, not more peanuts!
According to the current conditions, what we need more is get rid of the ignorance, learn and teach. The jump will be found over a healthy selfishness, the selfishness of owning their own decisions, the selfishness to regain self-esteem, the selfishness of knowing that do not steal from those who are far, or others far cannot steal your time and life.
20. Stories on back.
Here are three little stories. Are not spectacular, are not the last: but somehow, affect all actors mentioned: plants, animals, people, food, diseases, ways of life or attitudes.
The large road of yew, and the short road of taxol.
All trees do not live the same time, some of them have a long life: is the case of the yew family, some of whose species live over 1,000 years. The western yew is a conifer (without flowers) native to the Pacific northwest of North America, as the most of conifers an evergreen tree (larches are deciduous trees), with middle size, and a very slow grow: as they get older, may be twisted and hollow out the trunk. The seed becomes a red brilliant berry,
From this species (Taxus brevifolia), it was discovered in 1963 the effect that has a compound against the behavior of some cancer tissue-cells, when researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) extracted this from the bark, isolated three years later. The molecule is a complex diterpene with an ester side chain and a unique oxetane ring (remember the terpenes in the Section 2, Chapter 1), being needed 60,000 kg of bark to extract only two kilogram of taxol (30kg/g taxol obtained).
A company which leaded the harvesting of yew bark was the biopharmaceutical Bristol-Myers Squibb, with an amount of 350,000 kg. As this one, many other species have a publicly known economic profit. You must know that the NCI today has tested the possible use of over roughly 180,000 compounds from plants. For all this, were felled many trees, but the numbers differs between sources of information: and even over the years, some sources about these numbers provided by some specialist have disappeared from Internet. The amount varies on the range since the 3,500,000 to 7,000,000 feet of yew, recognized officially only about 130,000. Many more were burned when was applied a clear cut. One case with only one species! This is the dark fat (document) that is following a huge amount of plants.
The microbiologist crazy and the permaculture.
A focusing understanding of agriculture that influenced the approach of many people was the proposal and way of work of the Japanese Masanobu Fukuoka settled in the Shikoku Island, an island connected with the main territory of Honshu by the longest bridge in the world. Is very known by its pilgrimage of the 88 temples. M. Fukuoka studied in two centers of agriculture teaching, before the WWII, in a Japan where rice farms have had an important role. He worked in two centers once proposed by Makoto Hiura, finally working in the Yokohama Customs Office, inspecting plants, in a job closely related with plants pathologies and microbiology. As in many other cases, the abrupt change operated one day in the thinking of Masanobu, sometimes clashed with colleagues, with the opinions and attitudes of their surroundings, and with the same reality: over several years should have learned a few key lessons. The war forced him to keep working in the Kochi Prefecture Agricultural Experiment Station, where he had to monitoring with his colleagues the achievement of the best possible performance from crops.
In these years, conducted a comparative study between cultures treated with fertilizers and pesticides, and untreated - as then and until today have been conducted thousands of studies by other scientists, focusing on all possible factors - finding that, including operating costs, untreated agriculture was more profitable and safe, in addition to providing other relationship between the crop and the human environment and labor. The search for crop development to Fukuoka was never an issue or an ideal baseless, but an adjustment from the same economic base that you can never neglect.
After the war, he began to learn and apply his short experience in the remaining lands that his family kept. These years, although it has not been said so, was a period of learning in the field of ecology: remember that, a lot of concepts were born in the XX century, as may be the ecosystem (Tansley), descriptions of ecosystems (Lidenman, Odum), systems (Bertalanffy), and later concepts and evolving of this branch of the biology (Odum, Margalef).
The importance or weight of the Fukuoka work, reflected in his book “A One-Straw Revolution” (1978), has a twofold meaning: on the one hand, the proposal of a crop mode he called "doing nothing", mimicking the natural mode with which they operate plants; on the other hand, the implicit recognition of the opportunity to adapt to what the nature, and not vice versa; and this also getting a benefit. The Fukuoka-way is not a strange or spectacular path to grow crops, but is a completely natural way, full known, currently taught in ecological agriculture, applied worldwide already in very different places with success, when applied following the local conditions that marks the Nature in each place en ecosystem, soil, climate and orography.
Of course, this way of farming is not applicable in certain places, and they almost always meet the same conditions inexorably: vast expanses, one owner, high investment capacity or subsidies, the maximum removing of workforce, and total replacement crops by a "closed culture system".
Live with salts.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the WWII, in 1942 a Japanese crowd gone to the US relocation camp for internment of Japanese people, in the Owens desert of California: this was the Manzanar camp (link). There born Gordon Hisashi Sato, son of a Japanese-born immigrant who was gardener and fisherman. G. H. Sato learnt there the cultivation of plants in desert and deprived conditions. He obtained a Ph.D. In biophysics at the C.I.T, leaded some institutions, projects of funding for basic research, and resigned to his position as director of the Upstate Biotechnology, Inc.
Then he began to focus its efforts in the Manzanar Project. This was an attempt to make productive areas with salts and desert features: he tried restore a natural chain of beings which allow take advantage of sewage, and continue on the direction of upper beings, as trees and livestock, always based in low cost techniques, and following the natural chains. The basis starts from algae salt-resistant and heat-resistant: this ones grow in salts waters, as tidal ponds, and become the feed of shrimps, and this ones be feed for fish. After try these kinds of projects in many places in agreement with Governments (Chile, China, Sudan) he noticed the poor access that communities could reach to some kind of profit from this. Then, Sato began the Manzanar Project in the Eritrea region, in 1992.
Here starts a simple story: along the coastline of the desert in Eritrea (Red Sea), there is a system of mangrove forests, plenty adapted to salty waters, and as in all the riverbanks, have the function of treating waste and water, species home, food and life support. For humans, mangroves provide many goods: firewood, food for livestock (goats, ships and camels), and seafood: indirectly, the restoration with roughly 1,000,000 trees has inc
reased the improvement of local climate, the beginning of orchards, and management of incomes in order to reach a healthy livestock.
Useful links.
Here is a little sample of resources online that can help introduce and learn something about the issues mentioned. Are not always the best sites but keep all of them a necessary strengthen on the information.
AGRICULTURE
Animal Feed Resources Information System (IRA - CIRAD - FAO).
Biosafety Clearing-House (CBD): Search for LMOs, Genes or Organisms
Crop Wild Relatives Global Portal (UNEP - GEF) and EURISCO.
Crop Explorer of USGS (do not try find hemp).
Global Spatial Database of Agricultural land-Use Statistics: simple and visual, but good when you want approximate yourself into.
Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT - Main crops)
International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology (AGRIS).
International Plant Names Index (IPNI).
Land Matrix. Online public database on land deals.
Mesoamerican and Caribbean Geospatial Alliance (MACGA) / International Program USGS.
Organic Consumers Association. & Organic ePrints.
Plant Resources of