Researchers at Michigan State University designed some techniques using water retention membrane (a fancy word for plastic sheets, I think) buried under the soil to help retain water where the plants need it, without inhibiting their growth. It worked well, increasing yield to around 150% of normal. We’ll be needing more clever ideas like this in the coming years as global warming increases its impact on our way of life. Read more here.
Watch out, burger flippers of the world…Momentum Machines is looking to put you out of work with their new hamburger-making machine. It slices the toppings on demand, offers custom meat grinds (mixing multiple meats, for example), and can produce around six burgers per minute. This photo here is of an actual burger produced by the machine, and you know what? It looks like the promotional pictures restaurants use for their burgers…you know, the pictures that look NOTHING LIKE the actual burger they serve you. After the horrible experience I had at McDonald’s over the weekend (see the picture below)…I think this is the coolest machine ever made. Read more about it over at Gizmag.
The folks at the Non-GMO project have put together a handy guide to how to prepare a non-GMO Thanksgiving dinner, which you can view by clicking the thumbnail above or downloading a PDF here.
California failed to pass Proposition 37, which would have required labeling of foods that contain genetically modified ingredients. This came as a surprise given the initial public support, though the money raised by the opposition managed to sway voters in the end. For a law that would not have outlawed anything, just required labeling, it’s really sad California couldn’t get this passed.
I feel it’s inevitable that laws like this will come to be…and until then, if this is an issue you care about, shop for organic fruits and vegetables, and check out the Non-GMO Shopping Guide for more shopping advice. In general, unless labeled as being Non-GMO (see label above), avoid corn, soybeans, canola, cottonseed, sugar beets, Hawaiian papaya, and ingredients derived from these (like ‘sugar’, instead of ‘pure cane sugar’, as it is likely to have some GM sugar beets in it).
Check out the Huffington Post for a great, short summary of what you should know about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). I’m quoting the key points below, but read the full article for the explanations, details, and supporting facts:
Voters in California have the opportunity this year to force companies to indicate if the food they produce contains GMOs. If CA votes to implement that, it’s likely to start a nationwide movement not to ban GMOs, but to at least let people know whether or not they’re consuming GMOs so they can make the choice for themselves.
This is one of those stories that’s almost too ridiculous to believe until you remember that China has shown a great lack of concern for health in food products (remember the dog food scare, melamine in baby formula, pesticides in tea, and so on). Now, in an effort to boost profits, some fish farms in China are using pig and goose feces as fish food. Nutritious? Perhaps, but this does increase the risk of bacterial infections like salmonella…and is just plain gross.
The article in Bloomberg also describes shrimp processing facilities in Vietnam, where the shrimp are packed in dirty tubs, covered with ice made from local tap water.
The FDA does inspect imported food, and has rejected a lot of shipments, but the thing is, the FDA only rejects about 2.7% of imported food.
“Made in China” – ok for cheap plastic junk, but not for food! Not until they start taking health and quality seriously.
(via Bloomberg)
Read the marketing literature, and the EarthBox sounds like a revolutionary approach to growing plants. I was skeptical. The truth is, it’s a self-watering planter with a very nice amount of attention to detail. For example, they provide the right amount of fertilizer to use. A plastic cover to reduce evaporation. A nice fill tube and overflow hole. Little stuff like that, but you know what?
It adds up to something great.
I’ve owned two of these. The first, while I was living in California, produced a tomato plant over six feet high. The second, in Colorado, has done a fantastic job of growing peas, beans, and cucumbers in a water-scarce climate. I love it and can always count on the EarthBox to take care of the plants, giving them the right amount of fertilizer and water while I sit back and do nothing. It’s available for about $50 at Amazon, in both organic and non-organic versions. It’s large and heavy once you fill it with dirt and water, but still fits in nicely on a deck or patio, where hopefully you can keep the local wildlife away from it.
Which brings me to the one drawback…animals. A raised bed is easily covered with deer netting to protect your crops, but this standalone planter doesn’t lend itself nearly as well to that. That six foot tomato plant I mentioned? It produced countless tomatoes. I ate ONE, just one measly tomatoe from that whole plant. The rest were enjoyed by squirrels, who were rude enough to eat the tomatoes before they were ripe enough for us to harvest for human consumption. So, when planning a garden, be sure to look around your backyard…the EarthBox will help your plants grow fantastically well, but who’s going to enjoy the fruits of that?
Researchers in France fed rats a lifetime diet of Monsanto’s GM corn (NK603, to be specific), and found that 50% of the males and 70% of the females died prematurely (compared with 30% of the males and 20% of the females in the control group). They suffered from mammary tumors, also severe liver and kidney damage (this is in stark contrast to the carefree life portrayed by French rats in Ratatouille).
What’s most interesting here, to me at least, is the implications. Specifically…NK603 is a type of corn that’s tolerant to the pesticide Roundup…it wasn’t stated specifically, but I’m assuming that when growing NK603, they did so by using Roundup as intended. Thus these deaths are not necessarily due to the genetic modification of the corn plant, but rather the pesticides that that modification allowed the use of. In the end, perhaps it doesn’t matter, the result is dead rats…but I worry that a GM crop could be shown to be perfectly safe by itself, but use of that will result in secondary factors that lead to problems down the line.
I’m also disturbed by the article’s statement that GM crops are approved based upon a 90 day feeding trial. As this study showed, there are lifetime impacts that need to be properly quantified…a mere 90 day test may be insufficient to expose long-term health impacts.
NK603 was approved for food use in the US in 2000.
You can read the full article at Reuters.
If you want to know why I’m worried about genetically modified foods, read this article from New Zealand. Scientists are concerned about GM wheat being tested in NZ and Australian, and more specifically, they claim:
So, do we need to be worried? I think the bottom line is that we don’t know. I think this DOES show, though, that we need to be cautious and thorough in testing GM crops for possible side-effects on people…we must not rush this technology to market, but rather, each and every modification to the genetic code of our food supply needs to be tested. Right now, that’s just not happening, and that’s the scary thing.
We already face growing food demands from a growing population, but researchers looking at the effect that climate change has on severe weather (specifically, severe droughts) are painting an alarming picture. Instead of this being a ‘far off’ problem that we’re dumping on future generations, they found that the increased risk of severe drought to become a reality within only ten years in Asia (China and India especially). We are running out of time to solve these problems! In the US, people can’t even agree that climate change is happening and that humans are the main cause. How can we hope to solve the problems it’s bringing if we deny reality? This makes me frustrated, as I feel we’re a creative, inventive society that can solve great problems when we unite behind it.
(read more here).
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