Thursday 27 December 2012

Agriculture for food:missing link


Agriculture production surpasses current demand as much as twice the population can be feed,ie current world's population is 7 billion but can meet the food demand of 14 billion population.The greatest irony is that 1 billion population (100 crore) are going hungry because of various reasons.
Some stats on food security:

1.Currently they are 150 crore obese people in world.
2.industrial agriculture system use 10 kilo calories to produce 1 kilo calories of food.
3.industrial agriculture emptied rural population leads to urban population explosion.
4.india produces excess in food yet it has the largest number of hungry in the world.

Industrial Agriculture which uses fertilizers ,pesticides and machinaries in excess destroys  soil fertility,water quality ,less nutritious food as well as unhealthy .





Myth One: Industrial Agriculture Will Feed the World
World hunger is not created by a lack of food but by poverty and landlessness, which deny people access to food. Industrial agriculture actually increases hunger by raising the cost of farming, by forcing tens of millions of farmers off the land, and by growing primarily high-profit export and luxury crops.
Myth Two: Industrial Food is Safe, Healthy, Nutritious
Industial agriculture contaminates our vegetables and fruit with pesticides, slips dangerous bacteria into our lettuce, and puts genetically engineered growth hormones into our milk. It is not surprising that cancer, food-borne illnesses, and obesity are at an all-time high.
Myth Three: Industrial Food is Cheap
If you added the real cost of industrial food - it's health, environmental, and social costs - to the current supermarket price, not even our wealthiest citizens could afford to buy it.
Myth Four: Industrial Agriculture is Efficient
Small farms produce more agricultural output per area than large farms. Moreover, larger, less diverse farms require far more mechanical and chemical inputs. These ever increasing inputs are devastating to the environment and make these farms far less efficient than smaller, more sustainable farms.
Myth Five: Industrial Food Offers More Choice
What the consumer actually gets in the supermarket is an illusion of choice. Food labelling does not even tell us what pesticides are on our food or what products have been genetically engineered. Most importantly, the myth of choice masks the tragic loss of tens of thousands of crop varieties caused by industrial agriculture.
Myth Six: Industrial Agriculture Benefits the Environment and Wildlife
Industrial agriculture is the largest single threat to the earth's biodiversity. Fence-to-fence ploughing, planting and harvesting techniques decimate wildlife habitats, while massive chemical use poisons the soil and water, and kills off countless plant and animal communities.
Myth Seven: Biotechnology Will Solve the Problems of Industrial Agriculture
New biotech crops will not solve industrial agriculture's problems, but will compound them and consolidate control of the world's food supply in the hands of a few large corporations. Biotechnology will destroy biodiversity and food security, and drive self-sufficient farmers off their land.

Thursday 13 December 2012

Glass buildings:Not for India




Construction  of buildings using the glass is fantasy rather than the ease of construction or efficiency associated with it.There is a wide spread  notion that glass is energy efficient ,reduces the construction materials but apart from the cosmetic look to the building it does less behalf of efficiency or material.For the cold countries its suit on the front of climate scenario.The very nature of the glass is trapping of the heat there by  reduces the electricity bill for warming up of building in cold countries.Countries like India which are in tropics gets maximum amount of sunlight in a year are not suitable for glass used structures as it traps the sunlight and heats up the interior structure as well as electricity bill go up for the cooling the building.Delhi for example receives 2668 hours of sunlight against London that receives only 1480 hours of sunlight in a year.


Glass companies often argues that they are using double glazing with air gap in between to insulate but still far from the required standards.single glazing material allows 90% of heat ,double glazing glass 80% of the heat where as costly triple glazing glass allows 50 % of heat.Glass  is not a environmental friendly material as it consumes average 20 MJ per Kg where as brick consumes 1Mj per kg.

Recycling is also a wary  and huge transportation cost unlike bricks which can be procured locally .Glass is expensive compare to other building material, A square meter of glass cost 1200 to 7000 depending on technology whereas a good quality brick per square meter costs less than 1000rs.


Glass used construction also has serious security issue in the incidents of  fire(Easily melting phenomenon) and  very prone in the case of explosions .
A lay man expects security,comfortable environment ,cost effectiveness from a building but glass fails in all these fronts .Might be rich ,technocrat and intellectual people are not expecting this as  they have high affinity towards glass used buildings .

Thursday 6 December 2012

Bilingual field guide on dryland trees published


Have you ever wonder by seeing a tree and inquired about name ,its characteristics  .If yes a book has been released on various trees in karnataka which you come across day to day life.

The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment  has published a bilingual field guide  on trees in the State. 
The pictorial field guide, written in both Kannada and English, costs Rs 500 and helps laypersons identify common tree species growing in farmlands in the semi-arid regions of Karnataka. Students can purchase the book for Rs 250.
Book requests can be sent to ramesh@atree.org.

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Car Sharing:New path to conserve fuel


For many cities, car sharing has presented a compelling solution to public transit crowding and traffic snarls (see related story: “Car Sharing Widens the Lanes of Access for City Drivers“). Services such as Zipcar and Car2go offer the opportunity to cut the number of cars on city streets, but a price for hosting those services’ fleets is paid in the loss of precious, centrally located parking spots.
The potential impact of car-sharing fleets on parking availability for car owners was enough to make the community of Manhattan Beach, California, pause this week before approving a deal with the Daimler-owned Car2go. City council members said that a parking study was needed before they could support Car2go’s proposal to bring the service into nine cities in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.
Ironically, taking curbside parking spots out of the general pool and dedicating them to shared vehicles is seen as part of the solution to the parking and congestion problem. It’s an idea that has met some success—as well as some complaints from residents—in Hoboken, New Jersey, one of the most densely populated areas in the United States.
Located just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, Hoboken has dedicated more than 40 of its 9,000 on-street parking spaces to a car-share program known as Corner Cars. Hertz operates the program and pays the city $100 per spot each month, while charging members $5 to $16 an hour for the cars. Bright green paint marks off pairs of spots reserved for Corner Cars every few blocks.
Two years after the program’s launch, about a quarter of Corner Cars’ 3,000 members have reportedly given up their own cars or put off buying a new one because of access to the shared wheels. (See related story: “To Curb Driving, Cities Cut Down on Car Parking“)
Of course, some residents complain that they would gladly pay $100 to rent a prime parking spot—never mind the city’s argument that one spot can provide convenience to many more residents if it is occupied by a shared vehicle instead of a private car.
Some cities, on the other hand, are capitalizing on the high value of convenient city parking. Washington, D.C. has opted to auction off dozens of spots formerly awarded for free to Zipcar. Last year, the District set a minimum bid price of $3,600 per space, and drew offers from three car sharing companies. Zipcar went from having 86 parking spots to only 12 spots in the slightly smaller pool of 84 spots now dedicated to shared cars.
In San Francisco, meanwhile, securing on-street parking and charging locations remains one of the challenges for BMW DriveNow electric fleet, which launched in the city this past August. For now, says DriveNow CEO Richard Steinberg, the solution is to seek private parking locations.
On the other side of the globe, in a country with one of the highest car ownership rates of all the advanced nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Sydney, Australia, is now home to more than 9,000 car-sharing members. That’s up from 4,000 members two years ago, and by 2016 the city aims to boost car-sharing among its residents to 10 percent of all households for an estimated 15,000 members in all.
Among other forms of support for the shift, the city provides parking at curbside and in city car parks while integrating car sharing into urban renewal areas. Viewing car sharing as a “crucial complement to a sustainable transport system,” the city writes that “The availability of shared cars provides the peace-of-mind and flexibility needed for residents who have chosen to base their travel predominantly on public transport, walking and cycling.”