More Bill Gates produce affordable healthy food

                                                  

                                                             
A team of San Francisco chemists is turning to technology to solve a global problem: producing affordable and healthy food without pillaging the land.

Hampton Creek’s first product, Just Mayo, does this by displacing the egg with plant-based proteins. It currently costs $4.49 a jar at Whole Foods and will debut at other national chains starting in April. Another product, Eat the Dough, is an egg-less cookie dough. That will launch next month for an undisclosed price. Eventually, the aim is to make products versatile enough to appeal to foodies or budget-conscious shoppers. But at nearly $5 a pop, that sounds more like a goal for the moment.
Still, the opportunity to do good and be pioneers in this greenfield had top-shelf VCs salivating at the chance to invest.

                                                                 

This morning, Hampton Creek announced it has raised $23 million in a second round from a wide range of investors. Leading the charge was Li Ka-shing, who is known as the wealthiest man in Asia. He contributed the vast majority — $15.5 million. Also participating were Ali and Hadi Partovi, the twin brothers bankrolling Code.org; Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang; Bill Gates via Khosla Ventures; AME Cloud Ventures, Jessica Powell of Google; Scott Banister; Ash Patel; Collaborative Fund; and Kat Taylor and Tom Steyers of Eagle Cliff. To date, Hampton Creek has received $30 million.

                                            
“We live in a time where the unhealthy choice is dirt cheap and convenient. And the healthy choice is pricey and inconvenient,” said CEO and founder Josh Tetrick, in a statement. “Our goal has always been to build a company that brings healthier and affordable food to everyone, everywhere. Solving a problem means actually solving the problem for most people – not just the folks that can afford to pay $5.99 for organic eggs.”

Tetrick co-founded Hampton Creek in 2011 after spending seven years working in Sub-Saharan Africa with the President of Liberia and the United Nations. He’s also a Fulbright Scholar and former college football player.


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LOST BEES: Taiwan Greenpeace pushes for tighter pesticide rules

Greenpeace Taiwan yesterday urged the government to ban the use of certain pesticides after it released a report that showed more than two-thirds of pollen samples collected from beehives in 12 European countries were contaminated by more than one kind of pesticide, posing a threat to bee survival.

On April 21st , National Taiwan University researchers said they discovered that even low levels of a commonly used pesticide — imidacloprid — can harm bees, causing them to lose their way back to their hives, which might be one of the main reasons the bee population has declined in recent years.

                                     

On Tuesday, the Council of Agriculture said that the European Food Safety Authority only enforced a temporary precautionary measure on the use of imidacloprid — banning the pesticide from use on seeds, leaves and soil — but further review is needed to determine whether the policy is adequate.

The council also said that a recent EU study showed the reason for the large decline in the European bee population is climate change.

                                       

Greenpeace Taiwan said yesterday that the organization collected pollen from beehives that showed traces of 53 pesticides in 100 samples destined to be food for bee larvae, and more than two-thirds of the samples contained more than one pesticide, including one with 17.The organization said the report also detected DDE, a derivative of DDT, a pesticide banned decades ago, and frequent detection of the insect nerve-poison thiacloprid, a neonicotinoid, in many samples from Germany.

“This study on contaminated pollen reveals the unbearable burden of bees and other vital pollinators,” Greenpeace said. “Bees are exposed to a cocktail of toxic pesticides.”
The council should set a schedule for banning certain pesticides that kill bees, which would be a more effective measure to support the bee population, rather than denying the relationship between the use of pesticides and the declining bee population.


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Imidacloprid exposure is confirmed deadly to bees

COlONY COLLAPSE:Researchers at National Taiwan University observed that low-level exposure — about 10ppb — to imidacloprid can cause harm to bee larvae.

Exposure even to low levels of imidacloprid, a widely used pesticide, can harm the central nervous system of bees and may be a reason behind the global bee colony collapse, a National Taiwan University research team said yesterday in Taipei.

                                                 

Reports from around the world in recent years have shown that the population of wild bees has rapidly declined in many parts of the world. As bees contribute to the pollination of many crop species, ensuring production of seeds in many flowering plants and playing an important role in the ecosystem, many scientists are concerned about the rapid decline in bee colonies.

The university formed an interdisciplinary research team in 2008 to study whether the collapse was caused by the prevalent use of pesticides. A special method that the team developed — putting a tattoo on experimental bees — was applied to track the bees and observe the effects of insecticides on them.
                                 

National Taiwan University entomology professor Yang En-cheng said researchers discovered that imidacloprid — an insecticide belonging to a class of chemicals called the neonicotinoids — can cause worker bees to lose their way back to their hives. “Normally, worker bees fly back to their hives when they have suck enough nectar, but when they consume up to about 50ppb [parts per billion] of imidacloprid, they stay on the flower, rubbing their eyes. We can see that they are uncomfortable, and they don’t fly back immediately,” Yang said.

Moreover, the team observed that even exposure to low levels — or just 10ppb — of imidacloprid can cause harm to bee larvae, depriving them of their ability to form and retain memories as they grow, thus contributing to the decline of the bee population. The use of imidacloprid on certain crops was banned by the EU last year, but it is still widely used in Taiwan, Yang said. While Taiwan earns about NT$2.3 billion (US$76 million) from honey each year, the government should evaluate whether it should limit the use of imidacloprid and other neonicotinoids, he said.



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Breakfast foods sometimes are tricky for diabetics, kidney patients

                                                   

Breakfast options for people with diabetes and kidney disease are often limited, with a study finding that congee, clay oven rolls and fried bread sticks are not a good choice, but while oatmeal with milk and salad help regulate blood sugar, they are not good for the kidneys.

The study conducted by the Taiwan Society of Nephrology found that 80 percent of people who have both diabetes and kidney disease are not able to keep the diseases under control, primarily because they find it difficult to take into account various diet restrictions, such as low protein, low potassium, limited sodium and limited phosphorus, especially when they eat out.

                                     

Some may try to limit themselves to so-called healthy meals, but these could be harmful as well. Taiwanese Association of Diabetes Educators president Mr. Yu said that breakfast is the meal with which diabetics and kidney disease patients are most likely to go overboard on, as congee, clay oven rolls and fried bread sticks are all high-glycemic-index foods, which make blood sugar levels surge if too much is consumed.

However, oatmeal is high in phosphorus, while salad is high in potassium, both of which increase the risk of developing complications for those with moderate and severe kidney disease, including the need for dialysis, he said.

A man,  who had diabetic nephropathy, which means kidney disease or kidney damage caused by diabetes, had to eat breakfast out every morning, Yu said. His choices included Taiwanese, Western and convenience store foods, but he could not control the amount of nutrients he consumed and his chronic kidney disease deteriorated from stage three (moderate) to stage five (end) within five years, Yu said.
Chang did not keep his blood pressure, blood sugar level and blood lipid level in check, and had to have dialysis in the end, Yu added.

                                                 

Taiwan Dietitian Association president Ms. Tsai suggested that people with diabetic nephropathy try to control their food intake by following four principles: food with low protein, low glycemic index, dietary fiber and an appropriate amount of unsaturated fat.

Diabetics are at high risk for chronic kidney disease, since elevated blood glucose levels put them at risk of blood vessel damage, which reduces the blood flow to the kidneys and harms renal function.The society and the two associations have collaborated on a guide to breakfast options for people with diabetic nephropathy.

Your Cheap & Quality Hydroponics Growing System from http://www.chicfarm.net
                                         

Urban farmer Ms. Green said: 'If I do not farm, I’ll get sick.'

                                               

The evening Haylene Green, an urban farmer in Atlanta, Georgia, rain mercilessly poured on midtown Atlanta. Ms. Green opened a thick photo album with pages of fruits and vegetables from her West End community garden a small room in the basement. We know that when you ask a Southerner like Mr. Green to answer a question, they will tell a story. And embedded in that story is the information that they feel is the answer to the question.

Garden Queen: I was given that name by people who found out about my garden. I have a tropical garden in the West End of Atlanta. It’s not acres. I would say a good half-acre, maybe a little more. I was born in Port Antonio, on the island of Jamaica. My mom is Cuban and my father is Jamaican, a Maroon. The Maroons were a group of people brought over from Africa like all the other slaves who were brought over, but they never became slaves because they would not have it. They did not listen to slave masters and so they were thrown off the boat and left to die or survive. And survive they did.

They went up in the hills and on the water coasts and they fished, and they farmed, and they hunted. They’re entrepreneurs. They don’t care if it’s just bananas or mangoes or some other fruit, they just believe in growing and reaping their crops and selling them and eating from the land and being independent. They like to be free to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, at whatever time they want to do it. And I sure do have the DNA very strong, because that’s what I am.

My father and grandfather, they would get up way before the family got up and bring back provisions that my mom would prepare for our breakfast before we went to school. Don’t know how they did it, because it’s dark. I think they just farmed by the moon and the sun and the stars. We didn’t know we were rich, but we ended up being richer than we thought, healthy-wise.

There are so many mango trees in Jamaica. They just grow. It’s just a thing. You walk along the side of the road and you’re going to and from school, and you just pick a mango—or just go in someone’s yard and ask them, could you pick a mango? They’re all over the ground. Oh, we got mangoes. We got mangoes. We have avocados. We have coconuts. We have bananas.

I am what you would call a fifth-generation farmer. If I do not farm, I’ll get sick. If I have to rent, borrow, beg a piece of property somewhere, I have got to put something on the land because I can’t live otherwise.
As a child, I came to New York. I used to plant in pots. Whatever could grow in pots, I would plant it. I came to Atlanta for a family reunion, for a first visit to the South. We were fortunate to see a lot of trees. So I said, “Oh my goodness, we need to move here, because look at all these fruit trees.” We all packed up and moved down to Atlanta in 1975. I watched these trees grow green, then brown, and then all different kind of colors—and I’m waiting for the fruits. Unfortunately, they were not fruit trees. They were just trees.
                                                               

So I said, “My goodness. I did not know you could have so many trees without them bearing a fruit or nut or something,” because in Jamaica just about every tree that we grow is edible in some way or the other, whether it’s the leaf, the fruit, the nut, whatever—they’re edible. I said to myself, “Well I’m going to change that.” And so I set out to try and plant trees that are edible. And I’m in the process. I am growing bananas just like I would in Jamaica. I’m growing apples. I’m growing peach. I’m growing plum. I’m growing every berry that you could think of. I’m growing herbs and spices and eucalyptus and flowers and tropical pumpkin vines. I’m just growing.

Everything is grown in natural soil. I do have problems with worms sometimes, but when all else fails, if I have to have some worm holes in some of my vegetables, let it be. All they did was eat some before I got to it, so, you know, I have to eat the rest. I grow a lot of supplies that other farmers don’t grow. One big one is the tropical pumpkin. They have so many different names for my big tropical pumpkin. You see, I wear it over my shoulder. I call it my baby. It weighs fifty, sixty pounds. “What on earth is this she has? Is that a big gourd? Is that a watermelon?” I am known for my famous tropical pumpkin soup, and I sell it at the farmers’ market and I am always sold out. People love it. It is made up with the pumpkin and potatoes and carrots and not tiny little pieces—it’s filling. When you have a bowl of tropical pumpkin soup with all the goodies that I put in there, it’s a meal.

There are not many black farmers in Atlanta at the moment, especially where we’re farming in the West End, because there’s not a lot of farmland. It’s not huge. We would more or less call it a garden. There are more black farmers, and female, out in the rural areas. But I found out that one of the reasons that you don’t find as many black females farming is because they grew up thinking farming is not a pleasant thing. But it’s coming back around again.

I have 5 children, and I spent more money on bread than on doctor bills for the past forty-seven years. My mom is eighty-six and she runs rings around me. My aim right now is to teach others for the future to eat nutritious, healthy food, and sustain themselves. That’s what I’m doing here in Atlanta, so that’s my plan: to teach the neighborhood how to survive.

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Bananas might disappear on the earth

WHEN bananas started to be widely exported in the 1870s, they were an exotic treat. But by the 1950s the fruit (botanically, a herb, but never mind) was a favorite of millions far from the tropics. Then Panama disease struck. The soil fungus swept through Central and South America, killing banana plants in its path. By the 1960s Gros Michel (Big Mike), the variety accounting for virtually all exports, was close to extinction. The export industry approached collapse.

Bananas are now the world’s most valuable fruit. Exports rose from 11.9m tonnes in 2001 to 16.5m in 2012. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges together. But once more the export industry is fighting to survive—and this time, on two fronts.

First, Black Sigatoka, a disease which blackens leaves and can halve yields, is showing resistance to the fungicide used to combat it. It is normally controlled by spraying almost weekly, which increases growers’ costs considerably. Now growers in some places are having to increase dosage substantially, suggesting that spraying could soon become not just pricey, but ineffective. Second, Foc Tropical Race 4, a strain of Panama disease that attacks the Cavendish, has struck in several countries. Central and South America, which produce four-fifths of exports, have so far escaped. But “it’s not a question of whether it will occur there,” says Gert Kema, a plant pathologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “It’s a question of when.”

                                       

The race is now on to find a banana that is both resistant to the two diseases and commercially viable. Consumers might turn their noses up at pungent varieties. Thin-skinned ones would not survive weeks in a ship’s hold. A candidate may be hidden in the Laboratory of Tropical Crop Improvement in Leuven, Belgium, which houses a big collection of specimens of bananas and plantains (close relatives that must be cooked before eating).

Modifying the Cavendish is another, perhaps quicker, approach. Scientists at the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency have bombarded plants with gamma rays; three of the resulting mutants have shown resistance in the laboratory to Black Sigatoka. And Musa acuminata malaccensis, a wild Asian fruit that is the precursor of edible bananas, is thought to be resistant to Panama disease. A hybrid Cavendish containing some of its genes has grown well in infected ground. But in both cases, field tests are needed.

Cavendish, like other cultivated banana varieties, is seedless and propagated by cuttings. That produces clones, which is efficient for exporters, since the fruit are all similar in shape and size. But it also means a single disease can threaten the entire crop—and the non-tropical world’s banana supply. If the export industry is to have a long-term future, it needs to diversify.

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Chicfarm TotalGro Nutrient

                                                     

Chicfarm TotalGro Nutrient has all the trace elements needed by plants:

NO. 1. Calcium nitrate, Fe-EDTA iron.
NO. 2. Potassium nitrate, Magnesium sulfate, Monoammonium phosphate.
NO. 3. Probiotics to purify water and activate crops to grow nice and big.
NO. 4. Boric acid, Manganese sulfate, Zinc sulfate, Copper sulfate, Ammonium molybdate.

                                           

                                                       

* EC and pH value for different crops:

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Nothing poses a bigger threat to our water, our livelihood and our quality of life than a warming climate.

                                          

                                

The just-released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a collection of more than 800 leading climate scientists, reaffirms that climate impacts are already occurring and having a dramatic impact on society. Climate change is driven by our dependence on fossil fuels and is expected to get worse. In order to shift directions, we need nothing less than to rethink how we power our country.

Here's what we know:The climate science is settled. The IPCC report is the latest addition to a staggering body of scientific research connecting our energy choices to costly climate disruption. The report is consistent with several other authorities -- such as the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- that bring stronger language and greater certainty about climate change and its risks. Just as we know that smoking causes cancer, we understand that human activity causes climate change.

                                           

Climate change is happening now and we are all feeling the effects. Earlier this month, the American Association of Advancement of Science reminded us that "climate change is happening here and now.

We are now witnessing how it is changing our world: The past winter was the eighth-warmest on record. For 348 consecutive months -- 29 years -- global temperatures have been above average.
The latest IPCC report finds that impacts from climate change are "widespread and consequential" and they are being felt on every continent and in our oceans. The world last year experienced 41 weather-related disasters that caused damages totaling at least $1 billion. Over the past decade, the western United States experienced seven times more large-scale wildfires than it did in the 1970s. Climate change has made it much more likely that we will suffer severe droughts like the one that recently swept across Texas and my home state of New Mexico.

                                           
Finally, without action, things will get a lot worse. As climate impacts mount, they will bring more damage to our economy and communities. Even 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of global temperature rise could cut yields of crops like wheat, rice and corn, driving up food prices. So what can we do in the face of a changing climate?

Fortunately, local leaders, including mayors and governors, are responding to climate impacts and building more resilient communities. For example, city officials from Chicago to Miami are taking steps to reduce urban flooding with permeable pavement, dampen extreme heat with green roofs, and redesign levies to withstand stronger storm surges.

At the federal level, the Obama administration has called for additional funding for climate resilience and just unveiled a climate data initiative to arm communities with better information about climate change. Opinion: Climate change could cost more than $100 billion a year. But, it's clear that we need to do more. According to the IPCC, by significantly reducing emissions we can avoid the worst consequences of climate change and cut economic damages by half.

We're making progress already. Americans are embracing clean energy, buying solar panels at a record pace as the price has plummeted by 80% in just four years. Many large companies, like Apple, Google and Walmart, are investing heavily in renewable energy. Even ExxonMobil is among dozens of U.S. businesses now operating with an internal price on carbon.

And important new emissions standards are coming. Under the U.S. Climate Action Plan the president announced last year, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead with standards to reduce carbon pollution from existing coal-fired power plants -- the largest source of U.S. emissions. These rules are the most significant opportunity to cut U.S. emissions in the near term and will help the country play a leadership role in the run-up to a universal climate agreement in 2015.
The science tells us that much deeper reductions are needed in the decades ahead. Ultimately, a national price on carbon would be the most effective way to expedite a transition to a safer, low-carbon future.

The evidence is overwhelming: Further inaction guarantees disaster. Alternately, we can re-balance our energy mix and rise to the challenge of the 21st century. Let's hope that a decade from now we will look back with confidence that we stood up to the global climate crisis.

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Taiwan 7-Eleven Tea Eggs were found drug residues

                                                                

An inspection of eggs conducted by the Council of Agriculture (COA) and Ministry of Health and Welfare starting in February showed that 2 among 54 sample items were found to contain veterinary drug residues, including one from a source that provides eggs to 7-Eleven for hard-boiled tea eggs.

The 2 samples with animal drug residues contained florfenicol, doxycycline and nicarbazin, which are legal for general veterinary use, but are prohibited for use in egg-producing hens, the COA’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said yesterday.

Egg samples from a farm in Chiayi County were found to contain florfenicol and doxycycline. The ranch was fined US$1,000 by the COA for violating the Veterinary Drugs Control Act. The other site, in Changhua County, was fined US$20,000 by the Ministry of Health and Welfare for violating the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation.

                                                    

The Chiayi- farm (also belongs to 7-Eleven group) provides eggs to 7-Eleven, the nation’s largest convenience store chain, for hard-boiled tea eggs. The contaminated samples came from a batch of about 24,000 eggs that were supplied to 7-Eleven in February.

A ranch spokesperson said that the ranch followed drug-use rules on when to stop the drug, but it was possible that the egg-producing hens had slower metabolisms at the time, so the drugs remained in their systems longer than usual.

                                            

The inspection bureau said that although the drugs have maximum residue levels established for hens that are not producing eggs, there is no maximum residue limit set for eggs. Therefore, any amount found in eggs is prohibited. In other hens, the maximum residue limit is 0.1 parts per million (ppm) for florfenicol and doxycycline, and 0.2ppm for nicarbazin.

The bureau said it has discussed the issue with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and will set a maximum residue limit for eggs, so that egg farmers will have a standard to follow when using veterinary drugs.

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