Organic Pesticide Future In Mali

From the February 2011 issue of The New Agriculturist - encouraging report of the development of organic pesticides in Mali by using indigenous plants known for their pest control properties.

Ensuring the sustainability of organic cotton production in Mali

Mali is one of the largest cotton producers in Africa and about 40 per cent of rural households depend on cotton for their livelihoods. But with world cotton prices having plummeted since the 1970s, and organic Fairtrade cotton selling for up to 50 per cent more than conventional cotton, the Mouvement Biologique Malien (MoBiom), an organic farming cooperative, has been supporting its 8,000 members to produce cotton organically since 2002.

By growing organic cotton, farmers no longer use agrochemicals, which are often expensive and can harm the environment and health of the farmers. But as organic production has increased, so has the exploitation of local plant species used to control pests. Realising that their increasing exploitation of useful pest control species from the wild was becoming unsustainable, farmers from Yanfolila (a MoBiom community) approached the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) to help them domesticate a number of the natural pesticide species they use.

Pesticide plants

Through training and the improvement of local facilities for seed storage and wild plant cultivation, the MSB has been working in Mali since 2003 to conserve useful plants and build the capacity of communities to successfully store and propagate species that are locally important. "Seed banks are depositories of precious genetic diversity of value to agriculture, forestry, horticulture and medicine," explains Moctar Sacandé, MSBP international coordinator. "They play an increasingly important role in helping communities find new ways of conserving and using natural resources sustainably."

The farmers are trained in nursery techniques to raise the pesticide plants
© Moctar Sacandé

In 2008, the MSB helped the 55 Yanfolila farmers establish a useful plants garden. One thousand plants of ten useful pesticide species, including Carapa procera, Lannea microcarpa, and Securidaca longepeduncalata were planted. These wild native species, which produce by-products that repel or kill pests, are spread on plants several times during cultivation to protect them from pests. "We know that these plants are at least as good, if not better, than chemical pesticides because organic production is efficient and does not suffer from pest infestations," Sacandé adds.

The community provided the land and invested their time and effort in planting and raising the seedlings. A number of community members stated that this activity was important so that their children would also be able to collect and utilise the useful species in the future.

By growing plants with pesticide properties, this community is able to produce organic crops which can be sold at a premium, enhancing livelihoods. "Families no longer have to get into debt to buy expensive fertilisers and pesticides," Sacandé says. "Farmers now have enough to live on and no longer expose their skin and lungs to chemical products." The extra funds also allow the villagers to send their children to school, improve their standard of living and re-invest in organic fertiliser and compost storehouses.

News of the model garden has spread quickly and over 70 MoBiom communities (3,500- 4,000 people) from the Sikasso region of Mali have now asked for help to set up their own gardens. To support these additional communities, MSB has requested extra funding from bilateral donors and also the government. MSB is also planning to do further research to determine the optimum dosages and mixture proportions to maximise the potential of these pest repelling plants.

Organic growth

The Yanfolila community provided the land and planted the seedlings
© Moctar Sacandé

With support from the Swiss NGO Helvetas, MoBiom is continuing to offer farmers training, organic certification and a minimum price guarantee to help them increase their incomes. Through Fairtrade labelling, markets for organic cotton are growing, particularly in Europe, and farmers are receiving higher prices for their products. This has resulted in a decrease in rural poverty and increased employment, particularly for women who usually process the cotton ready for sale. The environment has also benefitted from organic production with improved soil management and increased conservation of biodiversity.

Beginning with 174 farmers, MoBiom has grown to include 73 cooperatives with 6,500 members, of which 30 per cent are women. Due to their success with cotton, MoBiom is now moving into other cash crops that are selling well in international export markets, including organic sesame, mangoes, groundnuts, and shea butter.

Due to the fluctuations in the cotton trade and risks associated with climate change, MoBiom is also actively promoting diversification into other markets. MoBiom is also exploring Fairtrade certification for shea butter and fonio and has plans to install sesame oil processing plants and construct a spinning mill, which would add significant value to the farmers' raw products and provide more jobs, particularly for women.

With contributions from: Moctar Sacandé, MSBP international coordinator

Date published: February 2011

http://www.new-ag.info/en/developments/devItem.php?a=1892

Ways To Communicate About Climate Change

How to get the message across on climate change

October 27th, 2011 in Space & Earth / Environment

For many scientists working in the field of climate research, one of the most alarming trends has nothing to do with the climate itself: It’s the poll numbers showing that even as scientific projections of global climate change get ever more certain, public perceptions about climate change are getting ever more skeptical.

Why is there such a huge — and growing — disconnect? John Sterman, the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, says there are specific characteristics of climate change that make it unusually difficult for people to grasp. But the good news, he says, is that there are approaches that can help bridge that gap in understanding.

For example, Sterman’s group has developed climate simulators to help policymakers, business leaders, the media and the public learn about the dynamics of climate change and the consequences of the choices we must make.

“When experimentation is impossible, when the consequences of our decisions unfold over decades and centuries,” Sterman says, “simulation becomes the main — perhaps the only — way we can discover for ourselves how complex systems work, what the impact of different policies might be, and thus integrate science into decision making.”

Sterman’s analysis was published this month in a special issue of the journal Climatic Change devoted to the subject of how to improve the communication of climate science to the public, the media, business leaders and lawmakers.

Scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), among others, have made an ever-clearer case “that climate change is real, that it’s happening now, and that much of it is caused by human activity,” Sterman says. And yet, “in the U.S., at least, more and more people disagree with the science. Despite the enormous efforts and success of the IPCC and scientific community in assessing climate change and the risks it poses, their efforts to communicate those results are not working.”

Sterman says that more research on the scientific specifics of climate change, while important, is “not going to solve the problem.” While some scientists suggest that public resistance to efforts to control emissions has to do with worries over the weak economy, Sterman says that “the poll results show something much more troubling: People increasingly deny that climate change is happening.”

“These are not disagreements about how we should respond to the risks of climate change,” he says. “This is denial of the scientific facts. Political ideology, not science, increasingly determines what people believe to be true about the physical world. If you believe that responding to climate change will hurt your industry or increase government control over your life, one way out is to construct a worldview in which it’s not happening.”

It’s possible for people to cling to such views, he says, partly because “the scientific community has done a poor job of communicating.” Some scientists think the answer is more research to narrow the uncertainties, and more public education on subjects such as how the carbon cycle works. “That just doesn’t work,” Sterman says. “Telling people facts doesn’t change their beliefs.”

Research on risk communication, Sterman says, shows that “you have to start where people are, with how people see the world.” The issue of climate change, by its nature, creates “a perfect storm of public confusion,” he says. That’s because the climate is “a complex system, global in extent, and involves long timeframes compared to what people ordinarily think about. The climate is affected by the actions of every individual and every nation, and what we do now will affect the world we leave to our children.”

In addition, with climate change, “you have very powerful vested interests seeking to confuse the public, for ideological and pecuniary reasons,” he says.

Sterman’s research also delves into specific aspects of climate change that add to public confusion. One common misunderstanding, he says, is the difference between emissions and accumulations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂). “Most people think if we stabilize emissions, we’ll stabilize the climate,” he says. “But that’s wrong. If we stabilize emissions today, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to grow.”

To explain why, Sterman uses the analogy of a bathtub: Greenhouse gas emissions are water flowing into the tub, and natural sinks — forests and oceans, which absorb CO₂ from the air — are the drain. As long as the water pours in faster than it drains out, the water level continues to rise.

But today’s emissions are about twice as large as the flow out, so merely stabilizing emissions means the level of water in the tub will keep rising. In Sterman’s research, more than 80 percent of people surveyed made this error in understanding.

Andrew Hoffman, a professor of sustainable enterprise at the University of Michigan who was not involved in this research, says this study is important because “too much of the attention so far has been on only the scientific part” of climate change. By studying the economic, social and political dimensions as Sterman has done, he says, “we’ll start to understand this a lot better.”

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This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.

Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-message-climate.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Rethinking The Car

Company aims to build viable electric car in Md.

Car on display at University of Maryland, which provided funding

January 26, 2012|By Candus Thomson, The Baltimore Sun

COLLEGE PARK — — Genovation Cars Inc., a Rockville-based company, wants to do what many in the auto industry have failed to do — build a fully electric, battery-powered vehicle that the public embraces.

On Thursday, company executives were at the Glenn L. Martin Wind Tunnel on the University of Maryland, College Park campus to show off the aerodynamic properties of the G2, as the car is called, and talk up their project. Genovation has won a $135,000 product development grant from the Maryland Industrial Partnerships, a university program.

Genovation CEO Andrew Saul has turned to a small Maryland defense contractor to help fine-tune the shape for efficiency. And, he says, a factory capable of turning out 3,000 handcrafted cars annually could be built in Maryland, perhaps Baltimore. He hopes to begin building the vehicles in two years and sell them for $60,000 each.

"Here in the Maryland area, we have a very affluent and aware population that knows we have to get off gasoline and get busy cleaning the air. This is a great place for us to be," Saul said.

Despite $5 billion in federal grants and loans over the last several years, the electric car market remains lukewarm. Neither Nissan nor General Motors is coming close to meeting sales projections.

Energy expert Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, summed up the rocky history of the vehicles at a 2010 forum on sustainable transportation: "Electric cars are the next big thing. And they always will be."

But that hasn't stopped the nation's leaders from including electric cars—and other alternate-fuel vehicles — in their vision of the future. Last year, President Barack Obama set a goal of 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

And it hasn't stopped Saul, the son of Washington real estate magnate and the founder of Chevy Chase Bank, B.F. Saul II.

"There's really nothing like it on the market," said Saul, as he watched a silver mock-up the size of a Radio Flyer wagon take the brunt of a 30-mph head wind. "It's a sporty car that will go 100 miles on a charge and hold four adults."

The G2 is being designed to do zero to 60 mph in under seven seconds and will have a rally-style suspension for performance handling. The car would be made from environmentally friendly materials, such as soybean resins for the body and natural rubber for the tires. A hybrid model also is on the drawing board.

"We think we'll turn some heads," Saul said.

But first, he must get the attention of investors to raise $125 million to get the G2 from model-size to factory-size and into production. Company President Steve Rogers said Genovation is in talks with investors for enough money to build "mules," or stripped-down chassis that can be tested.

However, given their price and record of performance, electric cars are a hard sell, Rogers acknowledged. A Nissan Leaf goes for about $33,000 and a Chevy Volt is about $10,000 more.

"We're a little late to the game of raising money. Companies that were doing it in 2008, many of them have gone out of business and taken investor money with them," he said. "The well has been poisoned a little."

At last year's Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit, Motor Trend magazine met with Saul, reviewed his plans and concluded: "That sounds like a tall order to us."

Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Clean Energy Program, said electric cars are facing the same skepticism as Ford Model T's, but that those hurdles can be overcome.

"As with any new technology, the more the public is familiar with it, the more prices come down, the more technology develops, the more confidence grows," she said. "Manufacturers are betting on them, and frankly the country needs them."

candy.thomson@baltsun.com

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-01-26/business/bs-bz-electric-hybrid-car-20120125_1_electric-car-chevy-volt-nissan-leaf

Medical Marijuana In Israel

• Published 01:01 30.01.12
• Latest update 01:01 30.01.12

Israeli researchers say more doctors should recommend marijuana to cancer patients

Most cancer patients currently being treated with medical marijuana are advised of the option only in the advanced stages of the illness, according to researchers.

By Dan Even

More than two-thirds of cancer patients who were prescribed medical marijuana to combat pain are reportedly satisfied with the treatment, according to a comprehensive study conducted for the first time in Israel.

The study - conducted recently at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, in conjunction with the Israel Cancer Association - involved 264 cancer patients who were treated with medical marijuana for a full year.

Some 61 percent of the respondents reported a significant improvement in their quality of life as a result of the medical marijuana, while 56 percent noted an improvement in their ability to manage pain. In general, 67 percent were in favor of the treatment, while 65 percent said they would recommend it to other patients.

The findings were presented earlier this month at an Israeli Oncologists Union conference in Eilat. The study was led by Dr. Ido Wolf, the director of oncology at the Sheba Cancer Center, with the assistance of researchers Yasmin Leshem, Damien Urbach, Adato Berliz, Tamar Ben Ephraim and Meital Gerty.

According to the study, the most common types of cancer for which medical marijuana is prescribed are lung cancer (21 percent ), breast cancer (12 percent ) and pancreatic cancer (10 percent ).

Researchers found that an average of 325 days passed between the time that patients were diagnosed with cancer and the time that they submitted permit requests to grow or possess medical marijuana. About 81 percent of those requests cited pain resulting from the illness. Some 8 percent of patients requested medical marijuana to combat nausea, while another 8 percent complained of weakness.

Most cancer patients who are currently being treated with medical marijuana are advised of the option only in the advanced stages of the illness, according to researchers. "The treatment should be offered to the patients in earlier stages of cancer," the report notes.

The study shows that 39 percent of respondents were initially advised of the treatment by friends, other patients or the media, rather than by their doctors. According to the study, "The treatment should be offered to patients by trained medical teams because we are dealing with an effective treatment."

Side effects resulting from the regular use of medical marijuana were defined in the study as "moderate." Dizziness was the main side effect documented by the researchers.

According to Miri Ziv, the director of the Israel Cancer Association, "Medical marijuana has become one of the treatments available to cancer patients in Israel in recent years [and therefore] the association believes that the issue should be regulated by the professionals in the field."

In recent years, the number of medical marijuana users in Israel has increased by some 66 percent per year, according to the study. To date, medical marijuana has been approved for use by about 6,000 Israelis suffering from various illnesses, the report states.

While many legal issues related to medical marijuana use remain unresolved, Health Ministry officials believe that once the issue is fully regulated, the number of patients treated with medical marijuana will reach 40,000.

Of the 12 farms authorized to cultivate medical marijuana in Israel, at least seven are currently active, according to the report. Under directives from the Health Ministry, the distribution centers currently in operation are entitled to NIS 360 a month, per patient, to supply medical marijuana. They are entitled to another NIS 24 for rolling cigarettes and NIS 100 for delivery.

Patients who hold medical marijuana permits issued before 2009 are entitled to grow up to 10 plants at home, with a maximum height of 1.5 meters. Permits issued during the past two years only allow patients to possess medical marijuana, in keeping with the quantities prescribed.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-researchers-say-more-doctors-should-recommend-marijuana-to-cancer-patients-1.409918