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November 24, 2010
· Round 2 for global climate talks
· The challenge of feeding the world
· DNA barcoding all life on Earth
· Savvy ag programs expand markets
· ‘Foodies’ of the Hollywood fringe
Round 2 for global climate talks
(AP
via Yahoo! News)
The disappointment of Copenhagen — the failure of the annual U.N. conference to produce a climate agreement last year in the Danish capital — has raised doubts about whether the long-running, 194-nation talks can ever agree on a legally binding treaty for reining in global warming.
"It's clear after
Even the Mexican hosts of the Nov. 29-Dec. 10 U.N. conference question whether "it is the best way to work — with 194 countries," as Mexico's environment secretary, Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, put it.
"We must be really open and sincere. Do we need to make an evolution to a new methodology?" Elvira asked in an Associated Press interview.
The core failure has been in finding a consensus formula for mandatory reductions in countries' emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases, byproducts of power plants, other industries, agriculture and automobiles.
For 13 years, the
No one expects
"We expect a positive attitude and a restoration of
confidence in the multilateral system at Cancun," said
While the global talks plod along, those impacts seem to be accelerating.
The world's warming oceans, for example, are rising at twice
the 20th century's average rate, expanding from the heat and the runoff of
melting land ice, says the Geneva-based World Climate Research Program. More
ice is melting in Greenland and
The
Temperatures then, 120 millennia ago, were only 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today, some 12,000 years into the current interglacial. In their 2007 assessment, the U.N. network of climate scientists projected temperatures will rise this century by up to 6.4 degrees C (11.5 degrees F), depending on whether and how much emissions are rolled back.
The U.N. network — the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — recommended emissions be cut by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F) above preindustrial levels. They already rose 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) in the 20th century.
In a nonbinding "Copenhagen Accord" from the 2009
conference, industrialized nations pledged reductions of only 18 percent
overall, analysts say. The
Only a binding treaty with deep reductions can ensure the
world will avoid the worst environmental upheavals of climate change,
scientists and conservationists say. But the takeover of the U.S. House of
Representatives by Republicans, many of whom dismiss strong scientific evidence
of human-caused warming, all but rules out
Instead, the Cancun negotiators hope at least for agreement on a "green fund" to disburse aid that developed countries promised at Copenhagen — $100 billion a year by 2020 — for developing countries to adapt to a changing climate by building seawalls and shifting farming patterns, for example, and to install clean energy sources.
The developing world hopes, too, for better terms for transferring patented green technology from richer nations. In a third area, delegates aim to make progress on the complex issue of compensating poorer nations for protecting their forests, key to the planet's ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
Parallel to the U.N. talks, often with
Encroaching seas already are contaminating drinking water and damaging housing in low-lying islands, she said. "It is overwhelming our capacity to stay alive."
The challenge of feeding the world
(University of Essex via ScienceDaily.com) – Despite significant growth in food production over the past 50 years, it has been estimated the world needs to produce 70-100% more food to meet expected demand without significant increases in prices.
But the solution to this complex issue is not simply about maximising productivity. With additional challenges from climate change, water stresses, energy insecurity and dietary shifts, global agricultural and food systems will have to change substantially to meet the challenge of feeding the world.
A new paper published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability identifies the top 100 questions for the future of global agriculture.
A multi-disciplinary team of 55 agricultural and food experts from the world's major agricultural organisations, professional scientific societies and academic institutions was appointed to identify the top 100 questions for global agriculture and food. They were drawn from 23 countries and work in universities, UN agencies, CG research institutes, NGOs, private companies, foundations and regional research secretariats.
An initial list of 618 key questions was, over the course of a year, whittled down by the team to the top 100.
If addressed and answered, it is anticipated these questions will have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide. They offer policy and funding organisations an agenda for change. The questions are wide-ranging, are designed to be answerable and capable of realistic research design, and cover 13 themes identified as priority to global agriculture (see Notes).
Lead author, Professor Jules Pretty, of the
"What is unique here is that experts from many countries, institutions and disciplines have agreed on the top 100 questions that need answering if agriculture is to succeed this century. These questions now form the potential for driving research systems, private sector investments, NGO priorities, and UN projects and programmes."
Professor Sir John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Advisor and Head of the Government's Foresight programme, said,
"This paper and its lead author Jules Pretty have provided an important contribution to the Foresight project on Global Food and Farming Futures. This study poses the central question, how can a future global population of nine billion people be fed sustainably, healthily and equitably. The project will publish its findings in January 2011."
DNA barcoding all life on Earth
Every species, from extinct to thriving, is set to get its own DNA barcode in an attempt to better track the ones that are endangered, as well as those being shipped across international borders as food or consumer products.
Researchers hope handheld mobile devices will be able to one day read these digital strips of rainbow-colored barcodes -- much like supermarket scanners -- to identify different species by testing tissue samples on site and comparing them with a digital database.
The International Barcode of Life Project (iBOL), which says it is the world's first reference library of DNA barcodes and the world's largest biodiversity genomics project, is being built by scientists using fragments of DNA to create a database of all life forms.
"What we're trying to do is to create this global library of DNA barcodes -- snippets, little chunks of DNA -- that permit us to identify species," Alex Smith, assistant professor of molecular ecology at the University of Guelph's Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, about 90 km (56 miles) west of Toronto.
So far DNA barcoding has helped identify the type of birds
that forced last year's emergency landing of a flight on the Hudson River in
To get the barcodes, scientists use a short section of DNA extracted from a standardized region of tissue. Once the barcode is created, it's filed in the iBOL library.
Within a week, the barcode can be viewed publicly, online, by signing up for a free account at www.boldsystems.org, the site for Barcode of Life Datasystems (BOLD). Smith describes it as being like a label on a filing cabinet.
Just as the barcode scanner at a grocery store can identify lettuce, milk or steak, the DNA barcode sequence can be used to identify different species so that anyone who isn't a specialist -- from an elementary school student to a border patrol inspector -- can identify the species, once technology to read the library is available.
The library has more than 87,000 formally described species with barcodes filed and more than 1 million total barcoded specimens.
Smith said humans live among at least 1.9 million named species, with total diversity within all those species adding up to millions more. Scientists estimate iBOL will have barcodes for all 10 million species of multicellular life within the next 20 years.
While the library is based in
"Most of life on the planet is not polar bears and Siberian tigers -- most of life on the planet weighs less than a gram, is less than a centimeter long, and isn't visual. It experiences the world through taste and smell and we're not aware of its existence," Smith said.
Aside from saving polar bears or tigers from extinction, the library is meant to help with more routine aspects of the global economy. That includes jobs such as ensuring the salmon or trout in markets and restaurants is accurately identified, or determining whether foods or other animal products crossing international borders are what they are claimed to be.
Smith said the barcodes will dramatically cut the time food shipments are held up at borders if technology to read the barcodes is available to determine whether a suspected pest on board is harmful.
Bob Hanner, associate director of the International Barcode of Life project, said the DNA barcode library will also help prevent the illegal exploitation of animals.
"Obviously trade in endangered species, in terms of the black market, is second only to narcotics right now," Hanner said. "So it's a big deal to be able to identify if something is farmed alligator skin or endangered Cuban crocodile when it is involved in international commerce, and once it's tanned into a leather, these things can be very challenging."
Both Smith and Hanner see handheld wireless devices and computer applications technology being developed to read the DNA barcode library out in the field.
"The time horizon for bringing in these kinds of new platforms for detection really depends on how quickly the public sector can motivate to complete the reference sequence library," Hanner said.
Savvy ag programs expand markets
(AP
via journalgazette.net)
The 60-year-old
Whether it’s peanuts, almonds, cranberries, oats or other products, producers have found that successfully marketing to national outlets can pay off with big sales.
“If not for organizations like the (National) Peanut Board,
there would not be as many peanut farmers in the
Some note that successfully wooing big chains can lead to pressure to reduce prices, but Higginbottom said that wasn’t a concern for the peanut board. The organization started as a decades-old quota system that set peanut farmers’ production levels and prices was about to end in 2000, throwing growers for the first time into a free market.
The board needed buyers – any buyers – and fast.
“All the sudden it became very important to that farmer to
market his peanuts,” said Higginbottom, who farms
near the West Texas town of
The board raised fees from farmers, then began spending several million dollars a year promoting cooking with peanuts or derivatives such as peanut flour. The result is the number of top 500 U.S. restaurant chains that have dishes with peanuts on their menus has increased by 39 percent in the past four years and peanut butter almost 50 percent, according to food industry data firm Technomic.
The organization also works with universities to get peanuts onto their campus menus, Bob Coyle, a marketing team leader with the board, said.
“It helps obviously to increase the use of peanuts, but it also helps us in not just education, but in feeding a consumer that is going to become a bigger consumer in their lives,” he said.
Growers of some commodities, such as Canadian oats, don’t have such a sophisticated marketing arm.
“It’s something we need to get more involved with,” said
But
“Basically when you realized that oats can lower cholesterol, that was really why oats jumped,” said Randy Strychar of Oat Insight, a trade publication.
Oats’ healthy reputation has won them spots on menus at
restaurants such as Starbucks. Next year, oats will likely snare farmers a
giant new customer: McDonald’s Corp. plans to add
oatmeal to its menus across the
McDonald’s won’t say how much oatmeal it hopes to sell, but Wade Thoma, the company’s vice president of U.S. menu management, said it plans to buy a lot of oats. Sales in test markets have been good, and not just during wintry weather, he said.
“Despite having one of the hottest summers on record, we actually did really well continuing to sell oatmeal through the summer,” he said.
It’s a big deal to farmers when McDonald’s, with 14,000
Almost 40 years ago, McDonald’s helped transform the egg business, introducing the Egg McMuffin.
Since then, many chains have added their own breakfast
menus, including Subway, which now offers breakfast in all of its 24,000
stores, said Kevin Burkum, senior vice president of
marketing at the American Egg Board, based in
“What we see then is tremendous growth, more stores offering breakfast,” Burkum said. “And we have seen hundreds of millions more eggs being sold as a result.”
‘Foodies’ of the Hollywood
fringe
(latimes.com)
– No sooner had servers set down truck-tire-sized metal platters laden with
various Ethiopian stews than the hungry private party of 26 people seated in
the back dining room of
Diners fought one another for hunks of spongy injera bread with which to mop up every dribble of spicy goat tibise and a raw, minced beef dish called kitfo, both off-menu dishes specially prepared for this group. Some people didn't even know what they were eating — and didn't bother to ask — until after the meal was over.
"That was raw beef? I thought it was lentils!" exclaimed actor Christian Magdu (who has appeared on HBO's "True Blood"). "Whatever it was tasted amazing."
There was a lot of conversation about the distinct pleasures
of Sriracha sauce and even rumors of horse tacos at
Grand Central Market. But left largely unspoken on that October evening was the
common denominator that connected nearly everyone in attendance:
Foodies, as the group is informally known, is a monthly
gathering of up to 50 core attendees — writers, directors, actors, agents and
producers among them. It's functioned as an adventure eating club in
And there's the key to what makes these eaters unique.
Moreover, when eating out on business, people in the
industry tend to stick to a few tried-and-true canteens like Mid-City's
Campanile and Ca'Brea, Morton's steakhouse in Burbank
and Kate Mantilini or Sushi Sushi
in
Spicy inspiration
So, in inverse reaction to the town's gastronomical etiquette, movie development executive Gloria Fan founded Foodies in 2000, when chatting with a colleague about their shared fondness for spicy food inspired her first communal eating expedition. "I said, 'Let's invite a bunch of people who would actually be willing to venture east of La Brea for a meal,'" Fan recalls.
At her behest, a group of 10 — industry denizens all — traveled to Koreatown's Beverly Soon Tofu restaurant to sample spicy caldrons of the restaurant's namesake bean curds. And a monthly ritual was born. Although members have come and gone over the years, the Foodies mailing list has grown to include some four dozen dedicated gourmands through word of mouth.
To hear it from Fan, vice president of production and development at Mosaic Media Group, the Foodies' aim is to boldly eat what they haven't eaten before (no sushi or chicken Caesars, for example) and to capitalize on local resources that have, in recent years, made Los Angeles one of the world's most exciting culinary destinations.
"We like the ethnic diversity of
That passion can often lead group members to neighborhoods
situated decidedly outside
"There was just this whole string of entertainment
folks who would probably have never come to this neighborhood otherwise,"
Memorable dishes
But given the group's restaurant choices, dinner can often come with surprises. TV and movie production designer Jeff Pogue fanned his mouth and winced, recalling his painful introduction to Thai curried fish kidney at Jitlada in 2007.
"It smelled like garbage, tasted like heaven, and it burned my mouth off," said Pogue (who has worked on films such as Brian DePalma's "The Black Dahlia"), breaking into a grin. "Like spicy fish sewage."
At her introductory Foodies get-together in September at Simpang Asia, an Indonesian restaurant located at a mini-mall in Palms, actress Elena Grassel (who was in the indie feature film "Tween") fell victim to a culinary bait-and-switch courtesy of some well-meaning proprietors.
"They were so nice. They put down the dish and said, 'Chicken, chicken!'" she says. "And it wasn't chicken. It was [beef] brains!"
But in stark contrast to such dues-paying, members-only dinner party groups in the city as the Supper Club or even any number of Facebook-organized epicurean groups, Foodies is more about the shared thrill of eating at unusual places than networking. "There's very little shop talk here," says production designer Michael Levinson. "It's not an industry meet and greet."
On a recent fall evening, at a long, communal table at Culver City's El Baron restaurant, conversation centered on delicacies from across the culinary universe — not development deals.
Plates of chicharrón pupusas and pastelitos rellenos started arriving from the Savadoran/Mexican
restaurant's kitchen while talk focused on cow eyeball tacos in
Something different
Movie producer Diana Williams, a founding Foodies member who recently wrapped the documentary "Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible," put a finer point on the collective impetus: "Other foodie groups can be about snobbery. We come down to throw down."
Levinson, who worked on Spike network's "1000 Ways to Die" and the 2011 feature film "Slightly Single in
"We look for hole-in-the-wall places, places people
don't know about," Levinson says. "The question, 'How'd
you find out about this place?' Or, 'I've never eaten this kind of food before'
— that makes me happy. We're trying to go wherever the typical
End Transmission