Glyphosate-based herbicides are global pollutants of groundwater, rivers and surface water. More recently it has been detected in rain.
Category Archives: Chemicals
Towards Valentine’s Day
For a more sustainable Valentine’s Day, buy your loved one a potted plant. Unlike cut flowers you can watch it grow.
Book Review: Medicinal Plants in Australia
Australia is a massive pharmacy store, where some very useful plants grow in our streets, reserves and gardens.
Predator Attracting Plants
Organic gardening isn’t conventional gardening, so why not enjoy some unconventional pest control?
Nettle, Anyone?
I like nettles, when they’re managed – and grown in full view.
Book Review: Australia’s Poisonous Plants by Dr Ross McKenzie
If you put raw silverbeet in your salad, or casually add nitrogen to your vegetables, this book is a must read. If it doesn’t save your life, it will certainly improve it.
Towards A National Food Plan
Draft notes for Queensland Conservation’s submission to aid in the development of a National Food Plan. The final draft was submitted by QC on 2.9.11…
Beerwah Farm
Introduction
A National Food Plan is vital for Australia’s ongoing food sovereignty.
Food Sovereignty may be defined as a nation’s self-sufficiency in food, where affordable staples are made available to its people irrespective of their age, personal wealth, or place of residence.
Without a well-researched National Food Plan the long-term outlook for Australian food sovereignty is not good. Our nation produces a relatively small food surplus in good years, mostly meat and grains, sufficient to feed between 30-40 million. This is a small amount of food compared to current and predicted global population statistics.
Australia covers 7.7 million km2, our fossil soils are infertile and 3 billion years old, and our current population is 22.4 million. In a good year we produce a surplus of grains and meat sufficient to provision another 30 – 40 million people. By contrast the neighbouring island of Java covers 1.9 million km2 (1.8 times the size of the state of Victoria), its volcanic soils are young, fertile and well watered, and its current population is 138 million. In a good year, Java is almost self-sufficient in most staple foods.
Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder. Bayer = Yates = Confidor
It has recently been reported that due to the rise of colony collapse disorder in honeybees that within five years this insect will be extinct in England.
Read on…
Agrochemical Farming – A System In Crisis
John Vidal reports that “Fertiliser prices have mostly doubled and in some cases risen by 500% in 15 months as US farmers have rushed to plant more biofuel crop”…
”There have been fertiliser riots or demonstrations in Vietnam, India, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Taiwan in the last few months. Last week one man was killed in a stampede at a government handout of fertiliser in Hyderabad, India”. Continue Reading →
Families Dig For Dinner As Oil Crisis Hits
“Mahaha Mphou and the rest of her family of 10…are now thriving on what have become known as keyhole gardens”.
Here’s a range of news items related to the cascading effects of rising oil prices around the world:
Degraded land, unsustainable agriculture and unaffordable fuel prices are devastating ordinary people in Lesotho, a small, mountainous African nation. How are ordinary families feeding themselves?
Click on this link to read this special BBC News report about keyhole gardens. Continue Reading →
