All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Miracle Crop: Can a New Revolution Take Root? – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Shiva, dressed in a flowing robe and with a large bindi on her forehead, is an impressive figure, steeled by her tough, decades-long battle with the establishment. The civil rights activist never tires of castigating seed companies. “A globally operating industry is pushing hard to make the world dependent on their products,” she says. Farmers who have made the switch, she explains, give up their traditional seed and are then forced to buy the commercial varieties, which often come with license fees, in perpetuity.

“This type of agriculture has taken the lives of 25,000 farmers in India, who committed suicide because they couldn’t pay back their debts,” says Shiva. She doesn’t think much of biofortified varieties, either. “Harvest Plus is focused on one nutrient,” she says critically. “But a single nutrient is not a solution to multidimensional malnutrition crisis; the body needs all the micronutrients.”

Instead of these “monocultures,” Shiva is calling for a return to diversity in fields. “Most of our traditional crops are full of nutrients,” she explains. Why create Golden Rice with lots of vitamin A when carrots and pumpkins contain plenty of it already? Why develop genetically modified bananas with high iron content when horseradish and amaranth contain so much iron?

Shiva recommends field crop-rotation, and the fostering of vegetable and fruit gardens and small family farms primarily geared toward nutrition instead of maximized profit. Because Shiva believes organic farming is the only viable approach to defeating hunger, her organization has trained 75,000 farmers in organic farming methods since the late 1980s.

‘There Isn’t Enough Arable Land’

Harvest Plus Director Bouis believes that Shiva’s approach is naïve. “We have the fundamental problem that there isn’t enough arable land for a constantly growing population,” he says. {Bogus argument – raised bed gardens, alone, can double output – Harvest Plus is biased for industrialized agriculture – period.}

A UN Environment Programme report predicts that by 2050, agriculture will have to produce 70 percent more calories than today to feed an expected global population of 9.6 billion people. This “food gap” can only be closed, says Bouis, if we “make agriculture even more productive.”

But in Maharashtra, it’s clear that new varieties of super grains are not always the entire answer. A third farmer from the town of Vadgaon Kashimbe, Santosh Pingle, 38, and his family are visibly better off than their neighbors. They live in a plastered house, they have cows and goats for milk, and they enjoy the occasional luxury of a chicken from the market. Pingle’s recipe for success is that he has done more with his land than other farmers.

The farmer grows iron-rich Dhanshakti millet to satisfy the iron needs of his family of five. On the other half of their field, the Pingles grow tomatoes and high-yield hybrid millet, which they sell in the market. They also grow protein-rich pulses and other vegetables in their house garden, and his wife Jayashree and her daughters harvest lemons, coconuts and mangoes several times

via Miracle Crop: Can a New Revolution Take Root? – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Estonia remembers the Soviet deportations – Estonian World

In the summer of 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as a result of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August 1939. In the aftermath of World War II, Estonia lost approximately 17.5% of its population.

via Estonia remembers the Soviet deportations – Estonian World.

The Link Brigade –

This is such a hard video to watch.

“Strangers step in when a man physically assaults a woman. Watch them laugh when it’s reversed”.

“The statistics in this video are for the UK. According to the CDC, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men in the U.S. “have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner.” In Spain, out of the total cases denounced in 2013, 5 in 7 victims were women, and 3 in 7 victims were men. People think the percentages of abused men are much lower, but reality would surprise them.

Video made by Mankind Initiative. The vid is highly edited, ergo not “real”, but the point is that it is intented to illustrate an issue, not to prove a specific scenario.

✫ Ralph talks about Silly habits that harm our relationships. Every time he addresses “the coca-cola relationship” I piss myself ahahaha! How did he come up with that concept?!

✫ 7 guidelines for writing emails people actually want to read. Brilliant!

✫ 6 vegan habits everyone should adopt without giving up meat. Agree!

✫ Habits of highly authentic people.

✫ How to tell you’re reading a gothic novel – In pictures.

✫ DIY tutorial: modelling clay gemstone necklace.

✫ Jackson Katz on Reshaping Masculinity: text or video.

✫ There’s very few things in life that I love more than watching men belly dance.

✫ 10 choices you will regret in ten years.

✫ My husband Jack White was on Conan 😉

via The Link Brigade –.