Aeroponics,Taiwan Chicfarm wmv

                               

Aeroponics to Feed the World 9 billion people in the future?

                                               

Do we need to change our concepts of what people eat to meet the world’s nutrition demands? Insects, lab-made meat, algae and 3D-printed fortied food could be affordable and practical routes to reducing malnutrition. The challenge for the development sector is how these ideas can be put into practice and do we really want to eat them?

In the first half of this century, as the world’s population grows to around 9 billion, global demand for food, feed and fiber will nearly double while, increasingly, crops may also be used for bioenergy and other industrial purposes. New and traditional demand for agricultural produce will thus put growing pressure on already scarce agricultural resources. And while agriculture will be forced to compete for land and water with sprawling urban settlements, it will also be required to serve on other major fronts: adapting to and contributing to the mitigation of climate change, helping preserve natural habitats, protecting endangered species and maintaining a high level of biodiversity. As though this were not challenging enough, in most regions fewer people will be living in rural areas and even fewer will be farmers. They will need new technologies to grow more from less land, with fewer hands.

Then the problems to be resolved:
1.Will we be able to produce enough food at affordable prices or will rising food prices drive more of the world's population into poverty and hunger?

2.How much spare capacity in terms of land and water do we have to feed the world in 2050?

3.What are the new technologies that can help us use scarce resources more efficiently, increase and stabilize crop and livestock yields?

4.Are we investing enough in research and development for breakthroughs to be available in time?

5.Will new technologies be available to the people who will need them most - the farmers?

6.How much do we need to invest in order to help agriculture adapt to climate change, and how much can agriculture contribute to mitigating extreme weather events?

All the questions are leading to the answer of 21st century Aeroponics.
                                 

                                           Large scale integration of aeroponics

                                       

             Aeroponic Graduate Program:Hanoi Agricultural University, Hanoi, Vietnam

In 2006, the Institute of Biotechnology at Hanoi University of Agriculture in joint efforts with Stoner established the postgraduate doctoral program in aeroponics. The university's Agrobiotech Research Center, is using aeroponic laboratories to advance Vietnam's minituber potato production for certified seed potato production.

                                   

            Aeroponic potato explants on day 3 after insertion in the aeroponic system, Hanoi

The historical significance for aeroponics is that it is the first time a nation has specifically called out for aeroponics to further an agricultural sector, stimulate farm economic goals, meet increased demands, improve food quality and increase production."We have shown that aeroponics, more than any other form of agricultural technology, will significantly improve Vietnam's potato production. We have very little tillable land, aeroponics makes complete economic sense to us”, attested Thach.
Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in January 2007. The impact of aeroponics in Vietnam will be felt at the farm level.

Aeroponic integration in Vietnam agriculture will begin by producing a low cost certified disease-free organic minitubers, which in turn will be supplied to local farmers for their field plantings of seed potatoes and commercial potatoes. Potato farmers will benefit from aeroponics because their seed potatoes will be disease-free and grown without pesticides. Most importantly for the Vietnamese farmer, it will lower their cost of operation and increase their yields, says Thach.

                   

Please start eating pesticide free food

                                         

A recent study conducted by researchers from RMIT university, published in the journal Environmental Research found that an organic diet for just one week significantly reduced pesticide (commonly used in conventional food production) exposure in adults.  Thirteen participants were randomly selected to consume a diet consisting of at least 80% organic or conventional food for precisely 7 days, afterwards crossing over to the alternative diet from which they started. Urinary levels were used for analysis. The study found that urinary dialkylphosphates (DAPs) measurements were 89% lower when they ate an organic diet for seven days compared to a conventional diet for the same amount of time. 

                                   

A new groundbreaking  discovery found that the most active ingredient in Monsanto’s best selling herbicide “Roundup” is responsible for fueling breast cancer by increasing the number of breast cancer cells through cell growth and cell division. 

A chronic kidney disease has been affecting poor farming regions all over the world, and a new study that was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health suggests that Roundup, or glyphosate, becomes highly toxic to the kidney once mixed with “hard” water or metals like cadmium and arsenic. These metals often exist naturally in the soil or are added via the fertilizer. Because of this, Sri Lanka has completely banned Monsanto Herbicide citing the deadly link to Kidney disease.

                                                

Taiwan Farmer Spraying Pesticides Caused Himself  Kidney Dialysis

Just two weeks ago I had a friend that did not believe the difference between organic food and non-organic food was big, these studies clearly illustrate that it is, it’s quite significant. So hopeful this encourages you to start eating pesticide free food.

These new studies, and the several others referred to in this article further confirms the evidence relating to the negative health effects of organophosphate pesticides like glyphosate, showing that there is significant pesticide exposure in adults who feel they are on a “normal diet” in contrast with a dramatically reduced exposure when the same individuals switch to an organic diet. There is a reason that multiple countries around the world have banned GMOs and the pesticides that go with them.

A link between pesticides and autism

                                                   

A California study out on June 23 found that pregnant women who lived near farms where pesticides are applied had a two-thirds higher risk of having children with autism.

                                     

The findings in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives examine the association between living near commercial pesticide applications and having offspring with autism, but do not show cause and effect.

                                       

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that ranges in severity and has been on the rise in recent years. Health authorities say it now affects as many as one in 68 children in the US.

                                                 

The latest research was based on data about commercial pesticide applications in California, combined with residential addresses of about 1,000 participants in a study of families with autistic children.

                           

“What we saw were several classes of pesticides more commonly applied near residences of mothers whose children developed autism or had delayed cognitive or other skills,” said principal investigator Irva Hertz-Picciotto, vice chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at University of California, Davis.

Aeroponics for roses and grapes in our greenhouse

Wood tree or vine plants such as roses、 grapes、 Passion fruits、 peach trees… etc., can be carried out by aeroponics cultivation, also a fast-growing, high quality features. Roses, if aeroponics production of flower cutting, forming an industry will not be a problem, for aeroponics method has enhanced the competitiveness of the rose industry, in addition to huge roses, but with a more brilliant colors, much pure, more ornamental value, also greatly improved yields, Japan and the Netherlands are now in developed aeroponics roses as a primary mode of future rose industrialization.

                                           

                                           

Cultivation of grapes usually in the southern region, with a high costs of whole production, due to rainfall and more severe pest, strict management. Through the application of aeroponics agriculture cultivation, a low investment cost, easy management, greatly reducing the cost of production and it has features 、 techniques as below:

                                       

1, By aeroponics, grape plants grown in a clean environment away from the soil, and soil pests (worms base) are able to control the route of pests transmission than soil cultivation.

2, By farming aeroponics, grape roots in an environment of optimize the growth in oxygen, minerals, water of 3 factors for the growth rate greatly accelerated.

3, The traditional soil cultivation includes weeding, fertilizing irrigation management to spend a lot of cost, time and labors, which are also the traditional soil tillage farming’s limitations and obstacles, not to mention the soil is a breeding place for pests, increasing the number of pesticide spraying to reduce insecticide and disease, thus forming a high-cost soil pesticide farming industry, and the worst part would be the serious injury to our mother earth-land. After apply farming aeroponics, no weeding、 fertilizer、pesticides in need and disease prevention and the number of insecticide can be greatly controlled, so that the cost is greatly reduced, and the growth rate can be accelerated.

4, Grape plants prefer aeroponics instead of hydroponics is because its roots’oxygen metabolism has higher requirements, and the use of aeroponics allows oxygen to maximize the volume, not like hydroponics constantly getting mold root fungus, the grapes of entire slot withered or died.

5, Aeroponics grapes are growing 3-5 times faster than cultivated in soil, or even higher. In addition, net bare roots without soil,are also easy to transplant and off-site relocation.

                                         

Cultivation of grapes after 4 months of aeroponics farming, the same growth of soil growing will take 2 or 3 years to achieve.

UK Children Malnutrition due of Food poverty?

                                                         

More people are suffering from malnutrition as a result of worsening food poverty, experts have warned. The Faculty of Public Health said conditions like rickets were becoming more apparent because people could not afford quality food in their diet.It comes after health figures recently revealed a 19% increase in the number of people admitted to hospital with malnutrition over the past year.
                                                         

Ministers say that billions of pounds are available to tackle health issues. The government said the money would help councils cope with public health problems such as malnutrition. UK Vice president of the Faculty of Public Health, John Middleton, said food-related ill health was getting worse "through extreme poverty and the use of food banks". "It's getting worse because people can't afford good quality food. It's getting worse where malnutrition, rickets and other manifestations of extreme poor diet are becoming apparent," he said.
                                 

The faculty recently claimed that UK food prices had risen by 12% since 2007. It also noted that in the same period, UK workers had suffered a 7.6% fall in wages. Separately, numerous schemes have been running throughout the summer holidays to help families feed their children.

"Families were finding it difficult to find affordable activities and to provide extra meals." Muna Choudhury from Ashram said

Manchester GP Aisha Awan said healthy food did not have to be expensive, suggesting tinned food - as long as it was not high in sugar or salt. She added: "If you buy them [tins] they keep for longer - they're often a cheaper option for people who might be on a budget."

Taiwan Engineer turns to deer for a better life

                                             

Seven years ago, a young engineer took stock of the quality of his life and decided he wanted to escape from his stressful job and the fast-paced modern life in technologically advanced cities. This led him to resign from his job and take up his father’s business of raising Formosan sambar, and he unexpectedly discovered a whole new kind of life as well as an interesting hobby.

Mr. Chang, 35, said his previous job at a renowned electronics company, where he had worked for three years, was extremely stressful, as the job required him to be on call at all times, meaning that he could never relax and have quality time with his friends or family.

                                       

“Even after leaving the company’s premises at the end of the work day we had to keep our cellphones on, so we could be contacted at any time to return to work,” Chang said, adding that he had become fed-up with a life of toil and having no time for himself.

Chang decided to quit his job to pursue a life where he could be in control. He returned to his hometown as he wanted to learn how to take care of the deer his father had raised for the past four decades and to prevent his family’s deer farm from being sold.

When asked how he feels using the same hands that used to dance across computer keyboards to feed deer, Chang said that while neither job is easy, caring for his family’s deer has given him a new understanding of life.
                                     

“Every morning we have to check the deer’s condition and give them fresh food and water,” he said. He added that because he is breeding and raising deer, his job does not stop at feeding the animals, but includes the correct preparation of their food.“The job is physically taxing and there is always something that needs doing,” Chang said, adding that in the end all his different daily activities boil down to concentrating on caring for his deer.

“The deer can recognize their owners and usually stare at a person whom they are familiar with,” Chang said. He added that his job is hard, but being looked at so warmly by his deer with their docile eyes is all the thanks and inspiration a person needs to carry on.

Aside from just raising deer, Chang said his family also spends time doing research on how to be better farmers, and improve their techniques and productivity. Pointing to sambar bucks he started to care for recently, Chang said that their velvet antlers are seeing better growth than ever. One particular buck had grown a rack weighing 11kg several years ago, but this year produced velvet antlers weighing almost 20kg, he said. “It is very satisfactory, just like raising your own children,” Chang said, adding that the better the deer under their care perform, the happier he is.

Chicfarm Aero Doric

                                                             

An aeroponic growing system and method is disclosed- Chicfarm Aero Doric. In a particular Doric embodiment, the system includes at least one vertical column of interconnected growing pots and an overhead support to suspend the vertical column of interconnected growing pots. The system also includes a supply conduit that is in fluid communication with a top of the vertical column of interconnected growing pots and a return conduit in fluid communication with a bottom of the vertical column of interconnected growing pots. In addition, the system includes a reservoir in fluid communication with the supply conduit and the return conduit. A turning mechanism may also be used for rotating the column to achieve uniformity of illumination.

Chicfarm Aero Doric System has applied a number of technologies to support aeroponics. These include pumps, valves, fluid filters, piping systems, fluid level sensors, moisture sensors, artificial lighting, timers and electronic controllers, relays and other electrically-controlled actuators, nutrient mixing injectors, and horticultural enclosures.

                                              

The advantages of Chicfarm Aero Doric are:

1.    Limited water Consumption.

2.    Agricultural success independent of land and soil quality.

3.    Intensive food production on l limited land surface area.

4.    It can be constructed in a greenhouse, net house or home balcony.

                            

                                

5.    Yields are independent from cold, hot, winter or dry weather.

6.    Non-stop production cycles.

7.    Automation of most agricultural operations with a limited labor and investments.

8.    Higher organic qualities of the products.

9.    Aero Doric system follows an industrial model: daily fixed working hours, no more unsuitable back-breaking work in the farm but sheltered from the   the weather, no more seasonal or occasional work but uninterrupted activity during the whole year.

                              

Is organic farming sustainable?

                                           

   
“Sustainable” has become one of the buzzwords of the 21st century. Increasing numbers of universities offer courses or even programs in “sustainability,” and many large companies boast substantial departments devoted to the subject. 

However, as with many vague, feel-good concepts, “sustainability” contains more than a little sophistry. For example, sustainability in agriculture is often linked to organic farming, whose advocates tout it as a “sustainable” way to feed the planet’s rapidly expanding population. But what does “sustainable” really mean, and how does it relate to organic methods of food production?
                                    

The organic movement’s claims about the sustainability of its methods are dubious. For example, a recent study found that the potential for groundwater contamination can be dramatically reduced if fertilizers are distributed through the irrigation system according to plant demand during the growing season; organic farming, however, depends on compost, the release of which is not matched to plant demand. 

Though composting receives good press as a “green” practice, it generates a significant amount of greenhouse gases (and is often a source of pathogenic bacteria in crops).

The study also found that “intensive organic agriculture relying on solid organic matter, such as composted manure that is mixed in to the soil prior to planting, resulted in significant down-leaching of nitrate” into groundwater. Increasing the nitrate levels in groundwater is hardly a hallmark of sustainability, especially with many of the world’s most fertile farming regions in the throes of drought.
                             

Moreover, the current injection or feeding livestock antibiotics, eventually will come out of their manures which be used to make compost to contaminate our sustainable land and endanger our health.

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Corporate megafarms grow everything but food

                                                           

The world’s food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, a study has found. The UN says that small farmers grow 70 percent of the world’s food, but a new analysis of government data suggests that the land which they control is shrinking every year, as megafarms and plantations squeeze them onto less than 25 percent of the world’s available farmland, according to international land use group Grain. These megafarms are less efficient in terms of the amount of food they produce per area of land, the report says.

“Small farms have less than a quarter of the world’s agricultural land, or less than 20 percent excluding China and India. Such farms are getting smaller all the time and if this trend persists they might not be able to continue to feed the world,” said the report, which draws on government statistics and calls for a stop on land grabs by corporations.

                                                       

The report suggests that the single most important factor in the drive to push small farmers onto ever smaller parcels of land is the worldwide expansion of industrial commodity-crop farms.“The powerful demands of food and energy industries are shifting farmland and water away from direct local food production to the production of commodities for industrial processing,” it says.

The land area occupied by soybean, oil palm, rapeseed and sugar cane has quadrupled over the past 50 years, with more than 140 million hectares of fields and forests taken over by plantations of these four crops since the 1960s — approximately the same area as all the farmland in the EU.

                                           

“What we found was shocking,” Grain’s Henk Hobbelink said. “If small farmers continue to lose the very basis of their existence, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself. We need to urgently put land back in the hands of small farmers and make the struggle for agrarian reform central to the fight for better food systems.”
Big farms have been getting bigger nearly everywhere, with rising numbers of small and medium-sized farmers going out of business in the past 20 years, the report’s authors write. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany and Norway have each lost about 70 percent of their farms since the 1970s, while Bulgaria, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have each lost more than 40 percent of their farms from 2003 to 2010. Poland alone lost almost 1 million farmers between 2005 and 2010.

                                                             

“Within the EU as a whole, over 6 million farms disappeared between 2003 and 2010, bringing the total number of farms down to almost the same level as in 2000, before the inclusion of 12 new member states with their 8.7 million new farmers,” according to the report.

The concentration of land ownership is not occurring just in Europe, it can be seen on every continent. Argentina lost more than one-third of its farms in the two decades from 1988 to 2008. Between 1997 and 2007, Chile lost 15 percent of its farms, with the biggest ones doubling their average size, from 7,000 to 14,000 hectares per farm, while the US has lost 30 percent of its farms in the past 50 years. Across the pond in the UK, the number of very small farms has almost tripled, while the number of very large farms has more than quintupled.


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Pesticides not only kill bees but also eagles

                                               

A study of bald eagle nestlings found pesticides and flame retardants in their blood. The chemicals are suspected in slowing the eagles' post-DDT recovery in Michigan. There are lots of new flame retardants in use, the health effects of which we know little or nothing.Ever since the banning of the pesticide DDT, which weakened eggshells, bald eagles have been making a comeback in the Great Lakes region.

                                                   

In Michigan, however, that recovery has been lackluster, and researchers have found one potential reason why: flame retardants and pesticides in the blood of eagle nestlings." They have recovered mostly, but not to what was expected," said Marta Venier of Indiana University. Venier is the lead author of a paper in the August issue of the journal Chemosphere, which describes a "snapshot" of what is in eagle nestlings' blood in near lakes around Michigan.

Venier and her colleagues were able to collect blood samples of bald eagle nestlings in the Great Lakes region by arduously climbing trees, bagging the large nestlings and carrying them carefully to the ground to draw a small sample of blood. The birds were then returned to their nests angry, but unharmed.

                                                     

Tests on the blood show that the national symbol of the United States is ingesting flame retardants and pesticides via its food. The chemicals are originally from pesticides or foam padding for furniture and mattresses, which contain a variety of flame retardants.

"Eagles are very vulnerable to chlorinated compounds," said Ronald Hites, also of Indiana University and a co-author of the study. Flame retardants can make up 10 percent of the weight of foam padding, Hites told Discovery News. Because the chemicals spew out every time we sit or lie down on the padding, the same chemicals are also found abundantly in humans, he said.

Discarded furniture in landfills moves the flame retardants into runoff, soil and the air, Hites said. These sources last for decades and make their way to such animals as bald eagles. It's not known if the chemicals are having health effects on the eagles. But they are a suspect, as is habitat loss, in the slowed eagle recovery.

The eagle nestling discovery has broader implications about the way chemicals are produced and used in the United States, said Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

"We shouldn't be making chemicals that don't go away for a long time," Birnbaum told Discovery News. And we should not replace newly banned chemicals with potentially even more dangerous untested chemicals, she said. "There is very little information on their toxicity. It's a problem with our regulatory system.

Some of the substitutes for polyurethane foam, for instance, are now found in human blood and urine. Are they a health threat? Nobody knows. There is legislation in Congress which would change this, said Birnbaum, if it ever becomes law. In the meantime the bald eagle nestlings should be a matter of concern.

"Just because you don't know anything (about a chemical) doesn't mean you're safe," Birnbaum said.

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Fair trade ‘not doing any favor to the poor’: London

                                                    

Sales of Fairtrade-certified products from Uganda and Ethiopia are not benefiting poor farm workers as profits fail to trickle down to much of the workforce, a groundbreaking study says. The Fairtrade Foundation is committed to “better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world.”

                                                       

However, a UK government-sponsored study, which investigated the production of flowers, coffee and tea in Ethiopia and Uganda, found that “where Fairtrade flowers were grown, and where there were farmers’ groups selling coffee and tea into Fairtrade certified markets, wages were very low.”
“Wages in other comparable areas and among comparable employers producing the same crops, but where there was no certification, were usually higher and working conditions better,” said University of London economics professor Christopher Cramer, one of the report’s authors. “In our research sites, Fairtrade has not been an effective mechanism for improving the lives of wage workers, the poorest rural people.”

Researchers who collected detailed information on more than 1,500 people said they also found evidence of the widespread use of children being paid to work on farms growing produce for Britain’s leading ethical label.

                                                       

Fairtrade, started in Britain 25 years ago by development and consumer groups, including Oxfam and the Women’s Institute, has grown into one of the world’s most trusted ethical schemes, with 1.24 million farmers and workers around the world. Fairtrade products contribute to the funding of schools, health clinics, sanitation and other “social projects” in rural areas. In Britain it is a ￡1.78 billion (US$3 billion) enterprise backed by government, Comic Relief, churches and supermarkets.
Fairtrade tea and coffee from Ethiopia and Uganda are popular with millions of British consumers. Starbucks, the British House of Commons and Virgin Atlantic are among many organizations advertising that they serve Fairtrade products from these countries.

Generally, the study found, wages were higher on farms that were larger, commercial and not Fairtrade-certified. Even among smallholder sites, wages were generally lower in the areas dominated by Fairtrade producers.



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