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Back to School/Back to Frantic? Here’s help in the kitchen… Six Ways to Get Kids to Try New Food

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:00:32 -0500

For most parents, finding ways to encourage their picky eaters to try and enjoy new foods is a top priority. In fact, a recent survey showed more than 68 percent of registered dietitians who counsel new parents frequently receive questions about getting finicky eaters to eat at mealtime. And now, faced with a new school year, busy parents need more help than ever to ensure a nutritious, fast and convenient solution.

To help parents conquer mealtime battles, Tyson Foods and Robin Miller, author and Food Network host of Quick Fix Meals, offer the following “nuggets” of mealtime wisdom and finger food suggestions to help provide balanced nutrition and please even the pickiest of eaters:

1.    Hands-on Food: Let’s face it -- kids prefer to eat with their hands. Finger foods make ideal meals for kids since you can combine a variety of small portions on one plate. Try partnering protein-packed Tyson® 100% All Natural Chicken Nuggets with vitamin-rich green beans and complex carbohydrate-rich pasta for a mouth-watering, nutritious meal that’s easy to eat with little hands. What looks like fun to your child is a well-balanced meal that you can feel good about serving.

2.    Name Games: Giving fun, creative names to everyday nutritious foods may have kids asking for more! According to a 2009 Cornell University study, when kids were offered “X-ray vision carrots” instead of plain carrots, they ate 62 percent more carrots . Try adopting this approach in your own house by giving silly names to a variety of foods, such as “cloud fluff” for mashed potatoes or “cheese in the trees” for broccoli florets topped with cheese.

3.    Muffin Tin Meals: Set up a “finger food buffet” and have your kids pick the items they’d like eat. Start with a muffin tin (or any small container with compartments) and customize the meal by filling the sections with bite-size portions of colorful, nutritious foods. Some great food ideas include: cubed cheese, whole grain cereals, grapes, sugar snap peas, baby carrots, and cherry tomatoes. Once you’ve filled the compartments, let them pick their items, allowing them to be hands-on with their meal.

In addition to Robin Miller’s tips, other moms have shared these creative strategies for building a foundation of balanced nutrition:

4.    The Dipping Trick: “At mealtime, I have little metal bowls that I fill with dipping sauces and put them in the middle of the table for them to share. Whatever we are having, I always give them dipping sauces, such as ketchup, mustard or honey. As long as they can dip their food into one of these, they will eat anything. Sounds really simple, but works for my kids.”

5.    Nutrition School: “I love to make it fun and educational for my kids to learn about nutrition. I ask them to figure out how many pieces of fruit or veggies make a serving. They read the label to figure out how many baby carrots, celery sticks, apple slices, strawberries, etc. they need to eat.”

6.    Garden Fun: “Our children love chicken nuggets, but it's often hard to get them to eat healthy side dishes. So, we started growing a vegetable garden. Now, they love running outside to see what healthy food is growing. For the first time ever, they are eating broccoli, beets, spinach, bell peppers and other yummy home-grown food.”

To learn more “nuggets” of mealtime wisdom from moms and Robin Miller, visit www.yourlittlenugget.com.

Setting an Example

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:57:54 -0500

Like many people, I have been closely following the events of the past few weeks, surrounding the debate over the more-controversial-than-it-should-be Cordoba House/Park51 community center. My interest in the matter has grown to borderline obsession, as I observed this issue swell from community disagreement to national divisor. The religious freedom points have been exchanged ad nauseum. I’m tired of hearing both sides use it as a crutch while they try to find better words to suit their arguments. It’s time to put that part of the debate to bed.

I’m 24 years old. I mention this because I have yet to hear any voices of America’s youth speaking up about their feelings regarding this matter, at least not beyond the frenzy of Facebook status updates and “tweets”. I have yet to see or hear anyone asking how my generation feels about this project. Of course, I imagine my generation’s age is the primary reason for this, but it’s also why I bring it up.

I’m not insensitive to those who lost loved ones on 9/11, but since I didn’t experience personal loss that day, it puts me in an awkward position when I express my views on this matter. I was 15 when the attacks occurred. The dust clouds I viewed from the Hudson River, enshrouding what would be a forever changed skyline, is an image that still haunts me. However, personal losses aside, my generation experienced another loss that day. We lost our innocence, because we knew this was going to be our fight in the years to come. We knew that this war would be carried on our backs. The politicians and pundits could wax poetic about their respective views, but the young adults of America would be doing the real heavy lifting. These are the young adults who are now getting ready to start families of their own, and to raise the next generation of Americans. That generation will inherit the consequences of this war. What kind of America are we making for them?

The 9/11 attacks were a gut-wrenching reminder of the hatred that exists in the world—hatred that has caused us great pain. But how long must we allow our pain to manifest itself in socially destructive ways? Across the country, protests are springing up against mosques being planned in other communities, spurred on by the protests surrounding Park51. The opponents of Park51 base their objections on the “insensitivity” of the location, but what’s the excuse for people wanting to stop a mosque in Temecula, California? Or Sheboygan, Wisconsin? Or Murfreesboro, Tennessee? If you read Laurie Goodstein’s August 7 New York Times article, you’ll see that some members of the opposition are quite clear in stating that their problem is with Islam itself. Despite the vast range of Islamic sects, it’s not uncommon for members of these movements to toss all Muslims into the same pot. Perhaps that’s why so many of Park51’s supporters feel there are undertones of bigotry in this case, despite the opposition’s denials. They need to do some honest soul-searching, and ask if their objections would really be this severe if a synagogue or church were to be built there.

What worries me is the state of mosques beyond Ground Zero, such as the embattled ones mentioned above. If Park51 were to crumble under the tide of mob pressure, what comes next? How would that empower the other anti-mosque movements in the country? Will it grant them a greater sense of legitimacy to say, “Of course you’re free to practice your religion…but we don’t want you to do it here.” If that were to happen, then by the same right should the Muslims of Dearborn, Michigan have the privilege to protest and try to stop the construction of a church or synagogue, and say that they shouldn’t be building there? Would Jews in Great Neck be right to try to stop a church or a mosque from being built there? What comes after that? What cycles of reciprocity could be spawned from this, and what kind of example does this set? Things have gotten to the point where the Tennessee center’s construction site was been subjected to arson. So what comes next?

Naïveté comes with youth, but sometimes it can allow us to be the best of bridge-builders. I was in Israel a month ago, with young Jews like myself. One night, we stayed at a youth hostel in the city of Arad. Also staying there was a group of Muslim teenagers, participating in a religious camp program. At first, our two groups stayed separate from one another, but when some of us went over to introduce ourselves, the atmosphere changed from one of distant observation to one of warmth and friendship. We kicked a soccer ball back and forth. We shared laughs over cell phone videos of these kids performing acts of teenage silliness, even in religious school. We may not have understood everything about each other’s backgrounds or religions, but we still built bridges and connected with one another. That’s what we need here: to be a nation of people who can make a concerted effort to connect with those different from us for the sake of truly peaceful coexistence, not who lash out against that which we don’t understand.

When I start a family, that’s what I’m going to teach my children. That’s the America I want them to grow up in.

Indian Outsourcing Body Criticizes U.S. Law Hiking Visa Fees

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:26:31 -0500

Following the passage of a new U.S. law that raised fees for work visas to the U.S., top outsourcing countries have expressed their discontent at the legislation. India is a major player in the outsourcing arena and U.S. firms routinely outsource their IT work to Indian outsourcing giants like Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, and Infosys.

In essence, the controversial legislation was enacted to tighten security at the Mexican border in the wake of an immigration crisis in the U.S. However, it will also impact outsourcing countries like the U.S. in a negative fashion since costs for visa fees will hamper the transfer of Indian employees to the U.S. under the work visa.

President Barack Obama signed the law, which stipulates that visa fees will go up twice as much for IT employees entering the U.S. for work purposes. This accounts to a 600-million dollar bill and is largely due to the backlash emanating from outsourcing American jobs overseas in post-recessionary conditions. With the unemployment rate at very high levels in the U.S., skeptics of outsourcing have been calling for an end to the shipping of jobs abroad. Since so many Americans have lost their jobs due to the recession of 2008, and companies are looking for a competitive edge from outsourcing, the term outsourcing has evolved into a double-edged sword. While it means savings for companies that normally to not invest heavily in IT, it also means that a significant number of computer science personnel and engineers in the U.S. have to undertake contract jobs that pay by the project.

NASSCOM, (National Association of Software and Services Companies) President Som Mittal said in a statement that the U.S. policy in question is sending a signal that is loud and clear that foreign persons are not welcome to the country. And this is a kind of discrimination, he told the AFP .

The Confederation of Indian Industry chief, Chandrajit Banerjee, was quoted as saying in an online report that strong security on the Mexico-U.S. border is a significant concern. However, these kinds of illegal immigration problems are not associated with temporary work assignments taken up by skilled professionals,” he said.

According to analysts, the U.S. and India have been working together for a partnership in several areas of technology including nuclear technology and this law will dampen some of the progress that has already been made in the last administration. Moreover, protectionist measures taken in the Obama administration are likely to cause tensions between the two countries that are relying on each other for sharing of technology in a variety of industries.

Specifically, the new law is likely to harm skilled workers coming into the U.S. because they are exported from India to American firms that have foreigners occupying more than 50% of their jobs. Since many U.S. firms outsource to India, this is likely to hit the IT outsourcing industry in a negative manner.

'We Lost Our Gold 'is a real treasure hunt worth $10,000.

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:43:13 -0500

We Lost Our Gold is a $10,000 treasure hunt that started August first and takes place in NYC. The first episode of 8 videos to be released has already hit the net. You can participate for free by going to 'We Lost Our Gold'.

So far the Captain has released an extra clue stating that the parrot says '48 armies".

Open clues tell us where to begin and some hidden clues lead you deeper into the hunt. This starts in Central Park, but the gold is not burried there. It is burried somehwere in the five boroughs of NY.

Man Gets Charged in Club Shooting

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:39:49 -0500

Police charged a 38-year-old Oneida, Tenn., man with shooting at a couple during a wedding reception Sunday.

Phi Nguyen was charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault and felony vandalism, according to Knoxville Police Department spokesman Darrell DeBusk.

Knoxville Police Department Officer Caleb Crothers arrested Nguyen as the man tried to flee from the Valarium, 940 Blackstock Ave., in a vehicle, DeBusk said.

Nguyen is accused of the nightime shooting at the club that left one person with a non-life threatening bullet wound. He also allegedly struck a person with a pole, but the victim that was struck with the pole was not in need of medical treatment.

Police said Nguyen shot several times into a vehicle driven by Tuan Le, 25, of Alcoa as he left the reception. Le drove himself to St. Mary's Medical Center where he was treated and released for gunshot wounds.

Hoai Tu Nguyen, 20, Was also in the vehicle with Le at the time of the shooting, the passenger were not injured in the incident.

DeBusk said An Le, 40, of Maryville was struck with a pole during the incident.

Foodie and Stern TV’s Becky Wunder Flashes Vernon Jordan For His 75th Bday…(PHOTO SLIDESHOW)

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:01:52 -0500

Becky Wunder Flashes Vernon Jordan For His 75th Birthday

HuffingtonPost.Com
07-23-10 09:30

Bet Bill Clinton was sad to miss this birthday.

Powerbroker and presidential advisor during the Clinton years Vernon Jordan got an unexpected treat during his meal at the Four Seasons restaurant yesterday.

According to Page Six, Jordan, who was celebrating his 75th year with Blackstone Group co-founder Pete Peterson, was serenaded at his table by a “buxom blonde.” Following a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday,” the chanteuse reportedly flashed him.

Foodie and Stern TV’s Becky Wunder Flashes Vernon Jordan For His 75th Bday…Click for...(PHOTO SLIDESHOW)

Fighting for Farmworkers’ Rights for More Than 40 Years

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:47:58 -0500

By Ronit Ridberg

This is the first of three parts of an interview with Baldemar Velasquez, President and Founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. In Part One, Mr. Velasquez describes the biggest challenges and abuses farm workers face in the U.S., and what it was like for his family to work in America's agricultural sector. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.

Name: Baldemar Velasquez

Affiliation: President and Founder, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, FLOC, AFL-CIO

Location: Toledo, Ohio

Bio: Incensed by the injustices suffered by his family and other farm workers, Baldemar Velasquez founded the union of migrant farm workers, Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in 1967. FLOC works tirelessly to give voice to migrant farm workers across the country and include them in decision-making processes on conditions that affect their lives. Mr. Velasquez is a highly respected national and international leader, not only in the farm labor movement, but also in the Latino and immigrant rights movements.

What is your background, and how did you come to found FLOC?

My family was recruited into the migrant worker stream back in the early 50s from South Texas to harvest tomatoes, sugar beets and other hand-harvest crops in Ohio, Michigan and the Midwest. That began my long odyssey to this work, getting stranded in Ohio and not making enough money to get back to Texas. In those early years we didn't even have our own transportation and we got so in debt one fall, we had to stay the winter and borrow more money from the local farmers just to stay alive. Then we worked off the winter debt the next summer- working for free in the fields. We then stayed another winter and were in debt again, we sort of became like indentured workers for about seven years.

Just to get out of debt we traveled the summers around the mid-west to find the back-to-back-to-back crops. In Michigan with the cherries and the strawberries, and trimming Christmas trees then back to Ohio for the sugar beets and the tomato and cucumber harvest, right into the fall and picking potatoes for the local farmers. So that's how we just tried to keep out of debt and try and survive the winter so we could survive the following summer.

The silver lining in all of this was that I was able to learn English and stay in school - it was cold at home and warm in the schoolhouse so I kept going back to school. I ended up going to college - almost by accident! I didn't think that college was for Mexican kids, I thought it was for white kids, and my senior literature teacher said, "Why not?" My grades were good enough. During college vacations I would go back to the fields to work and by my senior year I was already organizing my dad and his friends, and my mom and her comadres in the fields.

Can you describe some of the biggest challenges and most common abuses faced by farm workers in the United States?

Well there's the outward abuses, like stealing your wages, getting cheated in your pay, employers cooking the books and falsely reporting the wages of workers. And a lot of times they hide it - like in our family, our whole family worked together but only my dad and my mom would get a paycheck. So they reported it as individual earnings, but it was really the collective earnings of all of us who worked on piece-rate crops. We were regularly cheated out of minimum wages. And as long as people were working piece-rates, getting paid by the bucket, by the acre, by the lug, by the crate, by whatever container or unit we were working and getting paid for, the record keeping of hours was very sporadic and very distorted.

Then there's the disregard for the health environment of the workers, the labor camps where many times the legislation was so lax that you could house people in chicken coops and barns, and still qualify to have registered labor camps. And even then, whatever laws were in the books were never enforced anyway. So we grew up in very bad labor camp conditions. So there's that environmental factor.

And then the human abuse, the tongue lashings that workers would get, that women would get from unscrupulous labor contractors, crew leaders, field men, and even some farmers. One of the things that would really shock me and anger me was the way they would talk to my mom, in ear shot of my little sisters who were all smaller. Well, it makes a young man very angry, and you want to do something but you don't know what to do.

So those are the kinds of abuses that we grew up with. By the time I was old enough to think about this seriously, I thought well, when I grow up, if I can do something about this, I'm going to do something!

How common is child labor is in agricultural production today and do you think labor policies can address the problem?

You know, we've had child labor laws on the books for a long time. And the problem with any kind of laws governing the agriculture sector is the lax enforcement, or no enforcement at all. I started working the fields when I was six. By the time I was eight or nine, I was already carrying an adult load in terms of ability to harvest the number of lugs or crates or baskets or hampers or whatever.

And as far as putting more inspectors in the fields to enforce child labor laws, it's a two-edged sword. The reason parents have their kids in the field is not because they like child labor, but really in our family, the alternative to that was not eating. And that's what it boils down to. And it's very easy to say, "yeah let's pass some laws and get really tough enforcement and big fines for those who have kids in the fields," but if you get the kids out of the fields - okay, so then what? You let them languish in the labor camps all by themselves? They have nothing to do. Or you take away an adult wage-earner to stay home and baby-sit him? Take away that income from the family?

You cannot talk about eliminating child labor without dealing with the other family impacts - for instance family income. The kids may not create as much income as an adult worker, but it is income. And we used to pool our income as a whole family to make ends meet, to stay alive. And so you've got to deal with the wage issue. You've got to make the job where adults can earn a living so the kids don't have to be in the fields and you can still provide for them, you can still give them food. All of these have to be answered together - you can't just say, let's eliminate child labor. All these advocates in Washington talking about child labor laws and so on, well-intentioned as it is, they're not addressing the other issues.

What are some of the health hazards that farm workers face?

Every crop has different foliage and its own chemical make-up, and sometimes people have allergies and react to them. Not to mention the residue that might be on some of those crops - the fungicides, the pesticides that they spray on them, and the lack of enforcement on reentry time in the field. You can have all the regulations you want - if you don't have a way in which workers can police that and be able to decisively do something without fear of retaliation, then the laws aren't going to do you a lot of good.

I've watched over the years well-intentioned efforts like the Environmental Protection Agency's Worker Protection Standards, and the required training of workers around pesticides and so on. And they have put millions into funding organizations to train workers about pesticide safety. Well, here's my question: a worker gets out of bed in the morning, and he sees a farmer who just finished spraying a field, and the crew leader takes him out there and says, "Okay - time to go to work". And he's educated about the reentry time, and knows it is too early to go back in. (The more toxic ones have longer reentry periods - two, three-day reentry period). And sitting on the edge of the field - the difference between a trained worker and an untrained worker, is either that you're knowingly going to go in and get poisoned, or you're not knowingly going to get poisoned. The guy that knowingly goes in and gets poisoned, what's his choice? What are his options? Not go and maybe get fired? And get retaliated against? What do you have on the books to protect him from being retaliated against, and how is he going to process that - file a complaint with the Department of Labor, who might respond in two weeks? And then you have to pack up and go make a living with your family somewhere else. Where is the follow-up on that particular incident? What good does it do you that day? That's the problem.

So there's the problem in terms of the chemicals, the residues on the plants. There's also the climate issue. We have had nine deaths in the fields of North Carolina in recent years, and seven of them from heat stroke. This summer already, among our membership, we've had two heat stroke cases: One guy is still in a coma, and the other fellow just came out of a coma. We have him in a hospitality place down where we're working on his workers' compensation case and in the past those workers who didn't have an organization, well they were out of luck. They were forgotten, put on the bus and sent back to Mexico, or just left to languish wherever they are.

So a lot of that is just due to pure neglect. The farmers can be held accountable, but workers have to have a right to make decisions about when they can walk out of a field, when they can file a complaint or a grievance with the employer. Already this summer we've probably processed a couple of hundred complaints from workers.

Stayed tuned to parts two and three of this series, which will focus on how FLOC helps farmworkers gain a seat at the negotiating table, and ways consumers can get involved. To read more about workers in our food system, see In a Global Food System: Breaking Down Barriers and Improving Livelihoods for Food Workers and Making Sure the Food Industry Works for its Employees.

Ronit Ridberg is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty. She has already traveled to over 18 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Benin next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates. Please don't hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

International Labor Organization: Outsoucing Offers Model For Quality Service Sector Jobs

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:49:06 -0500

Although there is some debate regarding the validity of offshoring to top outsourcing locations, outsourcing, a new study has found that the practice is not to be associated with the conventional notion of taking advantage of emerging economies. In fact, these jobs might be better than the jobs available in the home country.

According to the International Labor Organization, outsourced jobs are of good quality when measured in terms of local standards in underdeveloped countries like China, India, the Philippines, or Vietnam.

Most of these outsourcing jobs account for data processing, call center services and back operations that support financial departments of companies. This segment is a fast growing industry and is a $90 billion market.

Head-quartered in Geneva, ILO conducted studies on outsourcing in India, South America, and the Philippines. Overall, the average employee assessed in the study was well educated, young and female. Incidentally, Filipinos who work in outsourcing make nearly 50% more than their counterparts holding domestic positions. Meanwhile, in India the salary for outsourcing employees is twice the pay that local workers makes.

However, some of the drawbacks defined by the ILO were night shifts to enable productivity in various time zones, taxing workload that are often stressful for the overseas employee due to differences in culture and communication styles. Naturally, the turnover is high for employees in outsourcing.

The ILO was quoted by U.S. Global Investors as saying, “the bottom line is that this is an industry with the potential to offer a model for a future of good quality service sector jobs and high-performing companies in the global economy.”

According to consulting firm KPMG, China has the biggest market share in Asia and the Pacific Rim while India retains supremacy as the leading location for outsourcing from Europe and North America.

According to a poll of companies throughout Asia, about 40 percent has a contact center in China, while 40 percent had deals with vendors in the mainland. In comparison, Singapore and India came in 2^nd and 3^rd in the survey.

KPMG says the outsourcing market is expected to double by 2014 after skyrocketing from $7.5 billion in 2007 to a whopping $20 billion in 2009.

A Conversation About Organic Agriculture with Chuck Benbrook

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:40:53 -0500

In this regular series we profile advisors of the Nourishing the Planet project. This week, we feature Chuck Benbrook, Chief Scientist at the Organic Center.

Name: Chuck Benbrook

Affiliation: The Organic Center

Location: Enterprise, Oregon

Bio: Dr. Charles Benbrook is Chief Scientist at the Organic Center. He worked in Washington, D.C. on agricultural policy, science and regulatory issues from 1979 through 1997. He served for 1.5 years as the agricultural staff expert on the Council for Environmental Quality at the end of the Carter Administration. Following the election of Ronald Reagan, he moved to Capitol Hill in early 1981 and was the Executive Director of the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture with jurisdiction over pesticide regulation, research, trade and foreign agricultural issues. In 1984 Benbrook was recruited to the job of Executive Director, Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, a position he held for seven years. In late 1990 he formed Benbrook Consulting Services.

On Nourishing the Planet: Promoting agricultural and economic development in Africa requires intimate understanding of the resources people have to work with, and the factors shaping the decisions farmers make about what to grow and how. Such understanding is a prerequisite to cost-effectively relax multiple constraints in unison. The "Nourishing the Planet" project excels at gathering and sharing this sort of key information and, for this reason, has much to contribute in shaping development assistant programs that produce meaningful, sustained results.

Can you describe the possible ways that organic agriculture methods can help improve farmers' income, increase food security, and decrease world hunger?

If you dispassionately look at what is needed to promote productivity and food security in chronically food short regions, core organic farming principles and practices have much to contribute, and certainly far more than the GMO and chemical-intensive corn-soybean production system in the U.S. corn belt. This is particularly true in restoring soil fertility and reversing the steady decline in soil organic matter.

Six core principles and objectives of organic farming must form the foundation of sustainable food systems, and hence food security in Africa -

* Build the quality of the soil by increasing soil organic matter;
* Promote above and below-ground biodiversity for its inherent, multiple benefits (biological control, more diverse diet, lessening risk of catastrophic crop loss, etc);
* Integrate crop and livestock operations to exploit synergies between the two;
* Use crop rotations, cover crops, multi-cropping systems, and agro-foresty to utilize available sunlight and moisture more fully, especially in the spring and fall months;
* Avoid the use of toxic chemicals and hot fertilizers because of their potential to burn up organic matter, kill or reduce populations of non-target organisms that play valuable roles in food chains ultimately helping to feed people, and pose risks to people living in close proximity to treated areas; and
* Produce high-quality, nutrient dense products that will hopefully command a premium price in the market place, reflecting their true value.

What are some specific innovations, policies and techniques that could be implemented to promote organic agriculture while also improving livelihoods?

Obviously, the combination of new practices, inputs, and technologies needed will vary tremendously based on local conditions. Nearly everywhere, soil quality must be restored, a process that will require a number of years and a proper sequence of changes in management systems and inputs. What a farmer does in the first three years of this journey will differ considerably from common practices ten years down the road.

Early steps will be dependent to a greater degree on fertilizer and organic soil amendments from outside the farm, and will often need to be shipped hundreds of miles into the region, while in later years, much more of the organic materials needed to sustain soil quality will be generated on the farm or locally.

Unfortunately, many projects and policy initiatives have delivered uneven, unsustainable results because they stopped at just subsidizing fertilizer, and failed to support the farmer's evolution toward more biologically-based methods to sustain soil fertility.

It is critical to support this incremental evolution, because the real and sustainable economic benefits to farm families kick in only after the transition is well along toward systems that have a high level of internal self-sufficiency, stability, and resilience.

It would be helpful for researchers and development organizations to provide recommendations for cost-effective trajectories of change in soil quality, including recommendations for the most cost-effective steps, and investments that will promote sustainable progress during each stage of the process.

More efficient capture and use of water, especially through micro-irrigation schemes, will also deliver significant benefits in many areas. Diversifying rotations to include small plots of several short season vegetable crops in various combinations will also deliver multiple benefits. Diversifying livestock enterprises to include more small livestock like chickens and rabbits is also a promising addition to the development assistance tool kit.

The lack of safe storage and markets for new crops, or difficulties in storing and utilizing new foods, often emerges as a major constraint to positive changes on the farm, and in terms of the diversity and quality of diets. It seems to me that this is an obvious area for development assistance programs to target resources.

Why should wealthy consumers care about hunger in other parts of the world?

For the same reason that everyone should - helping assure everyone has enough to eat is a universal moral imperative. There is no chance for peace and stability in a world where chronic poverty and hunger afflicts one-sixth of mankind. Hungry people are desperate people, and the actions they sometimes take, or embrace, to feed themselves and their families erode the fabric of civilization, just as erosion saps soil quality.

In your chapter, "Biotechnology: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem-or Both?" you make the point that developed nations should use biotechnology to better understand "the linkages between indigenous resources and knowledge and agricultural production and farm family well being." Can you elaborate on this statement?

Some people are convinced that breakthroughs in plant breeding in Africa depend on access to, and use of a set of genes, markers and molecular technologies discovered and now used in the U.S. and Europe by plant biotech companies. I doubt it. I just don't see Roundup Ready or Bt GE crops making much of a difference on most of the African continent.

Instead, I think that the modern tools of molecular biology should be deployed to understand and better utilize the genetic diversity that exists on the African continent. These tools are also extremely valuable in rooting out the subtle interactions between soil microbes, plants, pests, and the environment that can make or break a crop, and turn a nutritionally deficient diet into one that is both rich in nutrients and robust across seasons and circumstances.

There are many ways to work toward this goal that fully exploit cutting-edge science and technology. We need to find the pathways that will deliver tangible results more quickly and cost-effectively than creating a new food like Golden rice, which remains after many years and millions of dollars an intriguing technical challenge, but not a sound investment if the goal is to promote food security where it is currently lacking.

Can biotechnology be used to improve sustainable agriculture and farming in the developing world?

Sure, but the biotechnology applications will be very different than the GE crops now planted around the world.

In the publication, "The Impacts of Yield on Nutritional Quality: Lessons from Organic Farming," you conclude that organic foods are more nutritious than conventionally produced fruits and vegetables. Can you give a few examples of why organic produce is more nutritious and how this knowledge can help farmers in the United States and Europe, as well as the developing world?

In the U.S. and Europe, there has been a steady decline over 40-plus years in the nutrient density of conventionally grown foods, driven largely by incrementally higher nitrogen fertilizer levels and crop yields. Agronomists call this essentially unavoidable relationship between yields and nutrient density the "dilution effect." Organic farmers do not have access to the cheap sources of readily available nitrogen that serve as the fuel driving the dilution effect.

On average across most plant-based foods, organically managed crops mature a bit more slowly and produce fruit and vegetables that are somewhat smaller. But in terms of nutrient content per ounce or gram of apple, lettuce, carrot, or grapes, smaller is better.

There is also convincing evidence supporting the conclusion that in some years for some organic crops, a higher level of pest pressure, coupled with the lack of conventional pesticide applications, forces plants to divert energy from growth to defense mechanisms, which typically entail increased biosynthesis of plant secondary metabolites. Many of these are potent antioxidants and account for a significant slice of the unique health-promoting benefits - and flavors - of fruits and vegetables.

Supporters of biotechnology often make the argument GE crops are necessary to fight food insecurity as climate change and population growth put increased pressure on the food system. Can you give your thoughts on why or why not biotechnology can feed the world?

Today's commercially significant GE crops are herbicide-tolerant corn, soybeans, and cotton, and Bt corn and cotton. These crops are designed to simplify weed and insect pest management and are planted, for the most part, in specialized, chemical-intensive systems. Alternative technology exists to produce the same amount of crops per acre, and likely a bit more at lower cost to the farmer. Based on these realities, I conclude that today's commercial GE crops are making no unique contribution to world food security needs.

An argument could be made, in addition, that today's GE crop technology has actually undermined progress toward increasing production and meeting global food security needs. The discovery and commercialization of today's GE crops have totally dominated public and private plant breeding investments for nearly 30 years in three major crops, slowing the pace of progress in other areas of plant genetic improvement that would likely be of more direct benefit to a wider range of farmers around the world.

No one technology or farming system will emerge as universally optimal. Progress toward global food security will be accelerated by systemic efforts to promote diversity in farming systems and technologies. A healthy measure of experimentation is desirable in searching for optimal cropping patterns and production practices in a given region.

We must resist the enticing prospect that science and technology will deliver a magic bullet, or even a magic arsenal, that will miraculously optimize yields, stop pests in their tracks, always build soil quality, and thrive despite climate change. A sober reading of history suggests strongly that this is a pipedream.

Those arguing that global food security will be assured if we just unleash the powers of biotechnology are doing the world's poor a grave disservice. I know that many biotech promoters feel the same way about people like me who feel just as strongly that the most rapid and sustained progress will come from agricultural development programs and investments grounded in the principles of organic farming and agroecology.

One would hope and expect that the World Bank, FAO, CGIAR, foundations, and development assistance programs will insist that fair and unbiased assessments are made of the net returns to alternative paths to development in the years to come, but thus far I see little evidence of this happening on the ground. The "Nourishing the Planet" project should do all it can to encourage the major funders and development organizations to sponsor credible, independent assessments. May the best approach emerge, and let's hope that funders have the courage and political freedom to put the dollars behind the best system, in the hope of accelerating progress toward a goal shared by all.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty. She has already traveled to over 18 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Togo next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.

More Anna Chapman Topless PHOTOS: ‘Spy’ Vixen’s Kinky Sex Photos by Ex Husband…

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:36:04 -0500

‘Spy’ vixen Anna Chapman’s kinky sex secrets exposed by Ex Husband

NY Post
By TODD VENEZIA
July 5, 2010

Ravishing redhead “spy” Anna Chapman is a sizzling Russian undressing in stunning topless photos shot by her ex-hubby.

Alex Chapman, who was married to the undercover — and uncovered — spy for four years, says she loved to pose nude and had a libido worthy of a James Bond femme fatal.

The pair orchestrated mile-high airplane bathroom sex romps, used toys for S&M sessions and held love-making marathons he called “incredible.”

More Anna Chapman Topless PHOTOS: ‘Spy’ Vixen’s Kinky Sex Photos by Ex Husband...SLIDESHOW