Cuba, the Compost King

I first learned about composting and vermicomposting (worms) from Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee. Composting is the foundation of the Commercial Urban Agriculture that can transform the current 'food deserts' of the inner cities across America into verdant gardens of abundance and prosperity. The following article shows that Cuba knows all about composting and vermicomposting and is using it on a massive scale to improve the food self sufficiency of the revolutionary island nation just 90 miles off the US coast. A lot of valuable information is contained in the following piece for those who want to know more.

Enjoy. Learn. Share.

Cuba's Composting!

Caught in a vice of economic sanctions, political pressures and faltering production, Cuba is faced with no alternative but to find alternatives to its past dependency on imports of fossil fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, animal feed and the like. Agricultural imports have been cut by as much as 80%.
Consequently, the Cuban government has established programs designed for sound and effective soil management and have made earthworms one of the key agents intheir drive for agricultural sustainability. By using selected earthworm species, Cuban scientists have developed a full technological package for the production of humus from earthworms, a process known as vermicomposting or vermiculture, and generally recommend an application rate of 4 tons/ha of earthworm humus to most crops.Compost productionCuba's verimcomposting program started in 1986 with two small boxes of red worms, Eisenia foetida and Lumbricus rubellus.. Today there are 172 vermicompost centers that in 1992 produced 93,000 tons of worm humus. Several different institutions and companies are involved in vermiculture operations, but research is conducted primarily by the Institute of Soils and Fertilizers and the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences. The production of vermicompost requires a mixture of worm castings, organic material and bedding in various stages of decomposition. First, manure is composted for approximately 30 days aerobically, and then transferred to open vermicompost beds. At some sites like the Pinar del Rio vermiculture center, these beds are located in the shade of large mango trees which benefit from nutrients leached from the piles. The beds are approximately 1.5 meters wide and of varying length. The compost is mixed with soil and "seeded" with
earthworms. Most vermicomposting operations in Cuba use cow manure as the primary source of organic material. Other sources include pig and sheep manure,filter press cake from sugarcane, coffee pulp, plantains and municipal garbage.Vermicompost beds are sprinkled with water to maintain optimum moisture and temperature requirements. The worms feed on the freshly applied compost at the top of the beds and deposit their castings in the lower levels. Compost is continually applied until the beds reach a height of approximately 0.9 meters after about 90 days. The worms are concentrated in the top 10 cm of the pile and scraped off or separated from the vermicompost in a screening process. The humus is either dried and bagged or used on-site as a soil amendment and fertilizer.Beneficial CastingsThe humus produced in vermicomposting improves soil nutrient content and permeability, helps control diseases that attack plants and stimulates plant growth. Cuban researchers have found that nitrogen concentrations are higher invermicomposting than in static compost piles. For instance, four tons of vermicompost per hectare can replace forty tons of cow manure per hectare of tobacco, resulting in as much as a 36% improvement in yield. Earthworm castingscontain 1.5 - 2.2% Nitrogen, 1.8 - 2.2% Phosphorous, 1.0 - 1.5% potassium and 65-70% organic matter, lasting up to five years in the soil.Jorge Ramon Cuevas, the earthworm man of Cuba, states that scientists have experimented with several earthworm species for vermiculture, including E. foetida and L. rubellus and a Pheretima species brought from the Philippinesto begin the national initiative. Work now focuses on two species thought to bemost useful under Cuban conditions: Eisenia andrei, which can tolerate the humid, subtropical Cuban climate better than E. foetida , and Eudrilus eugeniae, the African Red Worm. E. eugeniae is less tolerant and prone to
escaping when conditions are not quite right as compared to E. andrei . However, it produces more protein than E. andrei and is useful as a supplemental animal feed.Other Uses for the EarthwormWorm populations under vermiculture can double in 60-90 days. Worms not used to seed new compost piles are dried and used as a supplemental protein for animals. Earthworms are useful as animal feed because they are high in protein and contain the amino acid methionine (4%), which is absent from feed grains. Cuban scientists have determined the correct balance of earthworm proteins in various animal feeds (10-40% in fish meal, 4% in shrimp feed and 6% in chicken feed). They also discovered that chopping up earthworms releases enzymes whichquickly degrade the quality of the feed. Cuba's future plans include productionof earthworm excrement to be used as substrate for bacteria, which in turn willbe used as biofertilizer.Extension and ExpansionFive experimental stations located in different parts of the country have responsibility for training new worm growers in their regions. Information is exchanged among these growers at an annual national conference on vermicomposting. National television programs and newspaper articles are used to help educate farmers, school children and the general public about vermiculture.At the Soil Institute, plans exist for a vermiculture research facility, but construction has not started. The Institute is presently spearheading efforts to market and sell worm humus in 40 kg, 1 kg and 1/2 kg bags under the trade name Midas. A 40 kg bag of Cuban worm humus can sell for as much as $80-100 (US) on the international market, though humus production has not reached levels that permit significant exports. Income generating schemes have focused on joint production ventures and the sale of technical assistance for start-up vermiculture programs outside Cuba. Altogether, it looks as though Cuban
vermiculture is proving to be a promising means of import substitution as well as profitable.Gersper et al., Agriculture and Human Values, Vol. X, number 3, Summer 1993, pp.16-23.Werner, Matthew, Cuban Agriculture Looks to Vermiculture, The Cultivar, Vol. 12, No. 2, Summer 1994Contact: Paul L. Gersper, Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management, University of California at BerkeleyFax: (510) 642-0535
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The World is Catching On
Because of the benefits of worm composting, farmers and governments around the world are beginning to vermicompost like never before, especially in the warmer climates. India and Cuba are leading the way.
Vermicomposting centers are numerous in Cuba. When the Soviet Union fell, it became impossible for them to import commercial fertilizer. Vermicompost has been the largest single replacement for commercial fertilizer by Cuba.In 2004, an estimated 1 million tons of vermicompost were produced on the island.
In India, and estimated 200,000 farmers practice vermicomposting and one network of 10,000 farmers produce 50,000 metric tons of vermicompost every month.
Farmers in Australia and the West Coast of the U.S. are starting to use vermicompost in greater quantities, fuelling the development of
vermicomposting industries there.
Scientists at several Universities in the U.S., Canada, India, Australia, and South Africa are documenting the benefits of vermicompost, providing facts and figures that support the observations of those who have used it.
Best Vermicompost Worm: The Red Worm
Redworms (red wigglers) are the most commonly used type of earthworm for composting in worm bins. Click here for some interesting facts, history and information about earthworms.
Now, let's get started with your worm compost bin so you can begin producing your very own vermicompost.
Go next to setting up your Vermicomposting Bin.

The Future of Food -video

Below is the 3 part video series "The Future of Food" presented by a world famous 'food activist scientist', Vandana Shiva, who really knows her stuff and is on the right side of the most important issue to all of us, our food.

For when you think about it -

Isn't the future of food, the future of us?

Enjoy. Learn. Share.

It's the Soil, Stupid

If Man is formed of the dust of the Earth as the Bible and the Qur'an say, then soil or humus is needed to support human life. Without soil human life vanishes. It is my view that one of the great judgements of America that signaled an end to her ability to rule over the nations was the lost productivity in food as a result of the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930's. During those years the rich top-soil of America was blown away and she lost her ability to produce good nutrition for her population. That brought on the age of chemical based agriculture to make up the difference in soil capacity. Only thing is - Man was not formed of the 'chemicals' of the Earth. It's the soil, stupid. With no soil there can be no real food. With no food the power of government to rule vanishes. That makes the science of soil making the most vital science of all for those who wish to survive. That's Growing Power's Will Allen atop a compost heap (above) and (below) Will with his favorite 'livestock' - red wriggler worms!

Enjoy. Learn. Share.
Britain facing food crisis as world's soil 'vanishes in 60 years'
British farming soil could run out within 60 years, leading to a catastrophic food crisis and drastically higher prices for consumers, scientists warn.
Last year Sydney was blanketed by thousands of tonnes of soil during its worst dust storm in 70 years. Photo: RYAN LAHIFF
Fertile soil is being lost faster than it can be replenished and will eventually lead to the “topsoil bank” becoming empty, an Australian conference heard.
Chronic soil mismanagement and over farming causing erosion, climate change and increasing populations were to blame for the dramatic global decline in suitable farming soil, scientists said.

An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per cent of the world's farming land "moderately or severely eroded", the Carbon Farming conference heard.
A University of Sydney study, presented to the conference, found soil is being lost in China 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes.
In Europe that figure is 17 times, in America 10 times while five times as much soil is being lost in Australia.
Soil is also a valuable store of carbon and can release the greenhouse gas if it is ploughed or dug up.
The conference heard world soil, including European and British soils, could vanish within about 60 years if drastic action was not taken.
This will lead to a global food crisis, chronic food shortages and higher prices, the conference heard.
Despite better than average farming practices, European soil might last for 100 years if no further damage occurs worldwide, scientists said.
In reality, however, increased land pressures aimed at compensating global production losses would likely mean it will run out faster, they added.
Last September the government launched new plans to protect the nation's soil which included farmers being asked to use less fertiliser.
Britain imports about 40 per cent of all its food it consumes, a figure that has steadily risen over the past few years.
Almost £32 billion of food was imported into the UK in 2008 up from more than £27.7 billion the year before.
John Crawford, professor of Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Sydney, who presented the study, said it was unknown how long soil will last.
“It could be as little as 60 years and that is a scary figure because it is not obvious that we have time to reverse decline and still meet future demands for food,” he said.
"It is not an exaggeration to say that soil is the most precious resource we have got, and... (we) are not up to the task of securing it for our children never mind our grand children."
Prof Crawford, the former chair of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s Agri-Food Committee, said restoring soil required several factors.
These factors include minimum ploughing, improved management and "resting" soil by covering crops which helps replace carbon in soil.
It can however, take decades to significantly increase the amount of useful carbon in soil, which helps make it fertile.
While organic farming could be part of the answer, he said there was "no clear evidence that we can feed the current population using organic approaches, never mind meeting demands in time".
Latest forecasts predict the world's population will grow from 6.8 billion to more than 9 billion by 2050, placing even further pressure on food production and farming.
The world last year faced a cereal crisis as wheat stocks dropped to a 30-year low after demand for wheat and rice outstripped supply for the past six out of the previous seven years.
This resulted in grain prices rocketing, which sparked civil unrest in many countries.
Extreme evidence of how soil is being eroded was seen in September when Sydney was blanketed by its worst dust storm in 70 years.

WHERE THE FOOD IS

People need to know a lot in order to survive. But of all the things a person needs to know -

WHERE THE FOOD IS

is perhaps the most important.

The right answer is not -the supermarket.

Below is a listing of different sources of REAL food to feed your REAL body and mind. Check through the list and make contact with the food source best for you.

Don't be lazy when it comes to food. Put out some effort and spend the time - and money (real food costs more than factory food).

Enjoy. Learn. Share.

Promoting Sustainable Agriculture
Consumers are paying a high cost for substandard, cheap factory food. The following links are working on different areas but all have the same goal - to support sustainable agriculture. There are far too many groups to mention here (apologies to those we missed). Be sure to find local sustainable agricultural groups in your area as many of them hold extremely informative annual meetings where you can meet local farmers. Depending upon your area of interest, familiarize yourself with any or all of the following links.
If you are concerned about the quality of the food you are buying at the grocery store, some of the following links will help guide to healthier more humane choices through local farms.
If you are interested in stopping factory farming, some of the following links will help show you how to get involved.
If you are a farmer who is interested in producing food for consumers, there are links below that will help show you how.
Some of the following links will also be able to provide scientific literature supporting the benefits of sustainable agriculture.
It is important to understand the impact you have when you spend your money on factory food. Changing your shopping patterns by supporting local agriculture will not only help improve your health, it will also help improve the environment and bring back our rural communities. Price-Pottenger FoundationThe Price-Pottenger Foundation has supported sustainable agriculture for over 50 years. They have preserved a collection of over 10,000 books and publications, spanning over 200 years of research from most of the great nutrition pioneers of our time, including that of William A. Albrecht, MS, PhD. The foundation is currently working on posting their archives online, and deveoping an education program available for people world-wide.
Weston A. Price FoundationThe Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism. It supports accurate nutrition instruction, organic and biodynamic farming, pasture-feeding of livestock, community-supported farms, honest and informative labeling, prepared parenting and nurturing therapies.
Slow FoodThe association's activities seek to defend biodiversity in our food supply, spread the education of taste, and link producers of excellent foods to consumers through events and initiatives.
Farm and Ranch Freedom AllianceThe Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance is an advocate for the many thousands of independent farmers, ranchers, livestock owners, and homesteaders in this country.
Eat WildEatwild.com is an excellent source for safe, healthy, natural and nutritious grass-fed beef, lamb, goats, bison, poultry, pork and dairy products.
The MeatrixAn excellent flash presentation about factory farming and links about what you can do about it.
Food RoutesThe FoodRoutes Find Good Food map can help you connect with local farmers and start eating the freshest, tastiest food around. Find your local food on their interactive map, listing farmers, CSAs, and local markets near you.
Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE)
Grace Factory Farm ProjectThe GRACE Factory Farm Project (GFFP) works to create a sustainable food production system that is healthful and humane, economically viable, and environmentally sound.
Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy AnimalsThe Eat Well Guide is a free, online directory of sustainably-raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns and hotels, and online outlets in the US and Canada.
Sustainable TableHelping consumers make healthy food choices to create a sustainable system.
Sustainable Food In SchoolsIf you don't like the food being served in your or your child's cafeteria, do something to change it! Includes guidelines on what to do, how to do it, and examples of successful initiatives underway around the country.
Local HarvestThis website will help you find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably-grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
Farmers MarketsNational listing of farmers markets.
Kerr Center for Sustainable AgricultureThe Kerr Center was established to provide farmers and ranchers in the area with free technical assistance and information on how to improve their operations. Wise stewardship was emphasized.
National Farm to SchoolFarm to School programs are popping up all over the U.S. These programs connect schools with local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving student nutrition, providing health and nutrition education opportunities that will last a lifetime, and supporting local small farmers.
Farm to CollegeThis site presents information about farm-to-college programs in the U.S. and Canada collected by the Community Food Security Coalition.

Center for Food and Justice: Farm to HospitalThe CFJ has a program Farm to Hospital: Promoting Health and Supporting Local Agriculture.
Farm to Cafeteria: Community Food Security CoalitionPutting Local Food on the Table: Farms and Food Service in PartnershipFarm to school programs have been addressing the dual issues of improving children's health and providing new marketing options for family farmers.
Food Security CoalitionThe Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) is a North American organization dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times
The True Food NetworkThe goal of the True Food Network Working is to create a socially just, democratic and sustainable food system.
Acres USAAcres U.S.A. is the only national magazine that offers a comprehensive guide to sustainable agriculture. Drawing on knowledge accumulated in more than 35 years of continuous publication, we bring our readers the latest techniques for growing bountiful, nutritious crops and healthy, vibrant livestock. Acres U.S.A. has helped thousands of farmers feed the nation's growing appetite for clean, delicious food.
Ecological Farming AssociationEco-Farm supports a vision for our food system where strengthening soils, protecting air and water, encouraging diverse ecosystems and economies, and honoring rural life are all part of producing healthful food.
National Family Farm CoalitionThe National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) provides a voice for grassroots groups on farm, food, trade and rural economic issues to ensure fair prices for family farmers, safe and healthy food, and vibrant, environmentally sound rural communities here and around the world.
Rural CoalitionThe Rural Coalition is an alliance of regionally and culturally diverse organizations working to build a more just and sustainable food system which: brings fair returns to minority and other small farmers and rural communities, ensures just and fair working conditions for farm workers, protects the environment, delivers safe and healthy food to consumers
Institute for Agriculture and Trade PolicyThe Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy promotes resilient family farms, rural communities and ecosystems around the world through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy.
GrainGRAIN is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.
Leopold Center for Sustainable AgricultureThe Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture explores and cultivates alternatives that secure healthier people and landscapes in Iowa and the nation.
Rodale Institute The Rodale Institute works with people worldwide to achieve a regenerative food system that renews environmental and human health working with the philosophy that "Healthy Soil = Healthy Food = Healthy People ®
New Farm (Rodale Institute)Helping consumers, brokers, restaurateurs and other farmers find the farm services they're looking for.
Sustainable Agriculture Research and EducationThe Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program has helped advance farming systems that are profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities through a nationwide research and education grants program.
National Campaign for Sustainable AgricultureThe National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture is a diverse nationwide partnership of individuals and organizations cultivating grass roots efforts to engage in policy development processes that result in food and agricultural systems and rural communities that are healthy, environmentally sound, profitable, humane and just.
National Sustainable Agriculture Information ServiceATTRA provides information and other technical assistance to farmers, ranchers, Extension agents, educators, and others involved in sustainable agriculture in the United States.
Family Farm DefendersThe FFD mission is to create a farmer-controlled and consumer-oriented food and fiber system, based upon democratically controlled institutions that empower farmers to speak for and respect themselves in their quest for social and economic justice.
The Center for Food SafetyThe Center for Food Safety (CFS) is an interest and environmental advocacy membership organization established in 1997 by its sister organization, International Center for Technology Assessment, for the purpose of challenging harmful food production technologies and promoting sustainable alternatives.
ETC GroupETC group is dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights.
Environmental Working GroupEWG specializes in environmental investigations. They have a team of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers who pore over government data, legal documents, scientific studies and our own laboratory tests to expose threats to your health and the environment, and to find solutions.
WorldWatch InstituteWorldWatch is an independent research group working for an environmentally sustainable and socially just society. An excellent book published by WorldWatch institute is by Brian Halweil, Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket, 2004.
Union of Concerned ScientistsUCS is an independent nonprofit alliance of more than 100,000 concerned citizens and scientists. We augment rigorous scientific analysis with innovative thinking and committed citizen advocacy to build a cleaner, healthier environment and a safer world.
Institute of Science in SocietyISIS promotes science responsible to civil society and the public good, independent of commercial and other special interests, or of government control and a science that can help make the world sustainable, equitable and life-enhancing for all its inhabitants.
Organic Consumers AssociationOCA is building a national network of consumers promoting food safety, organic agriculture, fair trade and sustainability.
Organic Center for Education and PromotionOCEP generates credible, peer reviewed scientific information and communicate the verifiable benefits of organic farming and products to society.
Food and Water WatchFWW is working on issues such as food and water safety, mad cow, sustainable agriculture, irradiation. Also has a factory farm campaign which aims to change government policies that promote factory farms, fight corporate control that forces farmers "to get big or get out," and encourage sustainably raised meat.
United Poultry Concerns, Inc UPC is dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.
Sierra Club(Including a toolkit for Factory Farm Pollution Activists)The Sierra Club's mission is to explore, enjoy and protect the wild places of the earth. Practice and promote the responsible us of the earth's ecosystems and resources. Educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment. Use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.
Beyond Factory FarmingBeyond Factory Farming is a coalition of citizen's organizations from all across Canada that share a vision of livestock production for health and social justice. Their mission is to promote livestock production that supports food sovereignty, ecological, human and animal health, as well as sustainability and community viability and informed citizen/consumer choice.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
Wegmans Cruelty Video showing what goes on inside a factory chicken farm. Includes news and events.
Humane Society of the USThe Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has worked since 1954 to promote the protection of all animals.
Humane Farming AssociationHFA is an animal protection organization. Campaigns against factory farming and slaughterhouse abuse. Also home to the world's largest farm animal refuge.
Compassionate ConsumersCompassionate Consumers was founded in 2003 by a small group of people concerned about animal welfare in the food industry.

Chicago's Green City Market
Chicago's only sustainable market with the highest quality locally farmed products.

Industrial Farms Trigger Epidemics

Below is an interview with researcher Michael Greger MD who shows the relationship between the threat of global pandemics such as the current Swine Flu pandemic and industrial farming -especially meat production. It has been well known that influenza is the result of pigs, birds and humans living in close proximity producing a 'natural' hybrid virus that we now call 'the flu bug'. The appearance of H1N1 and H5N1 viruses on industrial meat farms poses a grave threat to humanity. Increasing meat consumption is dangerous for the health of everybody. Industrial farming is a bad idea. Better ways of food production have to be found now. It is the major part of human survival into the future. See the other posts on this blog about Growing Power, Will Allen and hoop house agriculture. This is probably the most important topic for out attention at the present time. More to come.

Enjoy. Learn. Think. Share.

Factory Farmed Meat Can Trigger a Global Pandemic

That Wipes Out Sixty Percent of Those Infected
09 January 2010
by: Kathy Freston
The chicken and pork industries have wrought unprecedented changes in bird and swine flu. Billions could die in a deadly flu pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen.
I was intrigued (and disturbed) by a book I just read online by Michael Greger, M.D. about the potential of a deadly flu pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen. Greger very clearly delineates how a virus begins, mutates, and becomes dangerous. As with so many problems we are seeing lately -- environmental or health -- factory farmed meat seems to be a big part of the cause. A graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine, Michael Greger, M.D., serves as Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States. An internationally recognized lecturer, he has presented at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird Flu Summit, testified before Congress, and was an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous "meat defamation" trial. His recent scientific publications in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, Critical Reviews in Microbiology, and the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition, and Public Health explore the public health implications of industrialized animal agriculture.
Kathy Freston: How likely are we to have a bird or swine flu that turns into something really deadly and widespread?
Michael Greger: Unfortunately we don't know enough about the biology of these viruses to make accurate predictions, but influenza is definitely the disease to keep an eye on. AIDS has killed millions but is only fluid-borne. Malaria has killed millions but is relatively restricted to equatorial regions. Flu viruses are the only known pathogen capable of infecting literally billions of people in a matter of months. Right now we are in the midst of a flu pandemic caused by the swine-origin influenza virus H1N1. Millions of people have become infected and thousands have died, but H1N1 is not particularly virulent. There are other flu viruses that have emerged in recent decades such as the highly "pathogenic" (disease-causing) bird flu H5N1 that may have the potential to cause much greater human harm.
KF: What kind of damage could it do in terms of population mortality?
MG: Currently H5N1 kills approximately 60% of those it infects, so you don't even get a coin toss chance of survival. That's a mortality rate on par with some strains of Ebola. Thankfully, only a few hundred people have become infected. Should a virus like H5N1 trigger a pandemic, though, the results could be catastrophic. During a pandemic as many as 2 or 3 billion people can become infected. A 60% mortality rate is simply unimaginable. Unfortunately, it's not as far-fetched as it sounds. Both China and Indonesia have reported sporadic outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu in pigs and sporadic outbreaks of the new pandemic virus H1N1 in pigs as well. Should a pig become co-infected with both strains, a hybrid mutant could theoretically arise with human transmissibility of swine flu and the human lethality of bird flu. That's the kind of nightmare scenario that keeps virologists up at night.
KF: How does a virus like that kill? What does it do to the body?
MG: Most often it starts with standard flu-like symptoms--fever, cough, and muscle aches. Instead of just infecting the respiratory tract, though, H5N1 may spread throughout the body and infect the brain, for example, leaving victims in a coma. Other early symptoms atypical of regular seasonal flu include vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, chest pain, and bleeding from the nose and gums. Death is usually from acute fulminant respiratory distress, in which one basically drowns in one's own blood-tinted respiratory secretions.
Most of the damage is actually done by one's own immune system. H5N1 seems to trigger a "cytokine storm," an overexuberant immune reaction to the virus. These cytokine chemical messengers set off such a massive inflammatory reaction that on autopsy the lungs of victims may be virus-free, meaning that your body wins, but in burning down the village in order to save it you may not live through the process. In fact the reason why young people may be so vulnerable is because they have the strongest immune systems, and it's one's immune system that may kill you.
KF: How easy is it to contract the virus once it's in full swing?
MG: Catching a pandemic flu virus is essentially as easy as catching the regular seasonal flu. During a flu pandemic about 1 in 5 people may fall ill, but there are certainly ways to minimize one's risk via hand-washing and social distancing techniques. In a really severe pandemic, though, the advice would be to "shelter-in-place," isolating oneself and one's family in one's home until the danger passes. During such a pandemic the Department of Homeland Security uses as a key planning assumption that the American population would be asked to self-quarantine for up to 90 days per wave of the pandemic.
KF: Why do we have this potential disaster on our hands?
MG: The industrialization of the chicken and pork industries is thought to have wrought these unprecedented changes in avian and swine influenza. No one even got sick from bird flu for eight decades before a new strain, H5N1, started killing children in 1997. Likewise, in pigs here in the U.S. swine flu was totally stable for 8 decades before a pig-bird-human hybrid mutant virus appeared in commercial pig populations in 1998. It was that strain that combined with a Eurasian swine flu virus ten years later to spawn the flu pandemic of 2009, sickening millions of young people around the world.
The first hybrid mutant swine flu virus discovered in the United States was at a factory farm in North Carolina in which thousands of pregnant sows were confined in "gestation crates," veal crate-like metal stalls barely larger than their bodies. These kind of stressful, filthy, overcrowded conditions can provide a breeding ground for the emergence and spread of new diseases.
So far, only thousands of people have died from swine flu. Unless we radically change the way chickens and pigs are raised for food, though, it may only be a matter of time before a catastrophic pandemic arises.
KF: If factory farms are to blame, why have there been plagues and flu's throughout time, when factory farms were not around?
MG: Before the domestication of birds about 2,500 years ago, human influenza likely didn't even exist. Similarly, before the domestication of livestock there was no measles, small pox, and many other diseases that have plagued humanity since they were born in the barnyard about 10,000 years ago. Once diseases jump the species barrier from the animal kingdom, they can spread independently throughout human populations with often tragic consequences.
The worst plague in human history was the 1918 flu pandemic triggered by a bird flu virus that went on to kill upwards of 50 million people. The crowded, stressful, unhygienic trench warfare conditions during World War I that led to the emergence of the 1918 virus are replicated today in nearly every industrial chicken shed and egg operation. Instead of millions of vulnerable hosts to evolve within back then, we now have billions of chickens intensively confined in factory farms, arguably the Perfect Storm environment for the emergence and spread of hypervirulent, so-called "predator-type" viruses like H5N1. The 1918 virus killed about 2.5% of the people it infected, 20 times deadlier than the seasonal flu. H5N1 is now killing 60% of infected people, 20 times deadlier than the 1918 virus. So if a virus like 1918 gained easy human transmissibility, it could make the 1918 pandemic--the deadliest plague ever--look like the regular flu.
KF: Does handling or eating chicken or pork increase the chances of contracting the virus?
MG: There are certainly lots of viruses people can pick up from handling fresh meat, such as those that cause unpleasant conditions like contagious pustular dermatitis and a well-defined medical condition known as "butcher's warts." Even the wives of butchers appear to be at higher risk for cervical cancer, a cancer definitively associated with wart virus exposure. Cooking can destroy the flu virus, but the same can be said for all the bugs that sicken 76 million Americans a year. The problem is that people can cross-contaminate kitchen surfaces with fresh or frozen meat before pathogens have been cooked to death. There have been a number of cases of human influenza linked to the consumption of poultry products, but it's not clear whether swine flu viruses get into the meat. Regardless, the primary risk is not in the meat, but how meat is produced. Once a new disease is spawned from factory farm conditions it may be able spread person to person, and at that point animals--live or dead--may be out of the picture.
KF: How do we stave off this viral apocalypse?
MG: We need to give these animals more breathing room. The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which included a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, concluded that industrialized animal agriculture posed "unacceptable" public health risks and called for gestation crates for pigs to be banned as they're already doing in Europe, noting that "[p]ractices that restrict natural motion, such as sow gestation crates, induce high levels of stress in the animals and threaten their health, which in turn may threaten human health."
Studies have shown that measures as simple as providing straw for pigs so they don't have the immune-crippling stress of living on bare concrete their whole lives can significantly cut down on swine flu transmission rates. Such a minimal act--providing straw--yet we often deny these animals even this modicum of mercy, both to their detriment and, potentially, to ours as well.
The American Public Health Association, the largest organization of public health professionals in the world, has called for a moratorium on factory farms. In fact the APHA journal, the American Journal of Public Health, published an editorial going beyond just calling for an end to factory farms. It questioned the prudence of raising so many animals in the first place: "It is curious...that changing the way humans treat animals--most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least, radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten--is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure. Such a change, if sufficiently adopted or imposed, could still reduce the chances of the much-feared influenza epidemic. It would be even more likely to prevent unknown future diseases that, in the absence of this change, may result from farming animals intensively and from killing them for food. Yet humanity does not consider this option....Those who consume animals not only harm those animals and endanger themselves, but they also threaten the well-being of other humans who currently or will later inhabit the planet....[I]t is time for humans to remove their heads from the sand and recognize the risk to themselves that can arise from their maltreatment of other species."
KF: That is a pretty stunning statement! I know people will wonder...."If we give up animal protein, will our immune system be compromised... or will it be enhanced?"
MG: We've known for 20 years that the immune function of those eating vegetarian may be superior to those eating meat. First published in 1989, researchers at the German Cancer Research Center found that although vegetarians had the same number of disease-fighting white blood cells compared to meat eaters, the immune cells of vegetarians were twice as effective in destroying their targets--not only cancer cells, but virus-infected cells as well. So a more plant-based diet may protect both now and in the future against animal-borne diseases like pandemic influenza.
KF: This has been a real awakening. For more information on how to move toward a plant-based, vegan diet, check out my guide to conscious eating on HuffPost.
Kathy Freston is a health and wellness expert and a New York Times best-selling author. Her latest book is The Quantum Wellness Cleanse: A 21 Day Essential Guide to Healing Your Body, Mind and Spirit. Freston promotes a body/mind/spirit approach to health and happiness that includes a concentration on healthy diet, emotional introspection, spiritual practice, and loving relationships. Kathy’s recent television appearances include The Oprah Winfrey Show, Ellen, The View and Good Morning America. www.kathyfreston.com

Down on the Farm, In Detroit!

OK, check this out. This is the HOOP HOUSE on steroids! Could this be the wave of the future? What role do we play?
Enjoy. Learn. Think. Do. Share.

Can farming save Detroit?


By David Whitford, editor at largeDecember 29, 2009
DETROIT (Fortune) -- John Hantz is a wealthy money manager who lives in an older enclave of Detroit where all the houses are grand and not all of them are falling apart. Once a star stockbroker at American Express, he left 13 years ago to found his own firm. Today Hantz Financial Services has 20 offices in Michigan, Ohio, and Georgia, more than 500 employees, and $1.3 billion in assets under management.
Twice divorced, Hantz, 48, lives alone in clubby, paneled splendor, surrounded by early-American landscapes on the walls, an autograph collection that veers from Detroit icons such as Ty Cobb and Henry Ford to Baron von Richthofen and Mussolini, and a set of Ayn Rand first editions.
Fortune asked artist Bryan Christie to imagine how Detroit's thousands of abandoned residential acres might be transformed into cutting-edge, city-style farms (see illustration above): Solar panels and windmills power vertical growing systems that are efficient, attractive, and tourist-friendly. Greenhouses allow crops to grow year-round. And new development sprouts on the periphery.
Stockbroker John Hantz is scouting empty acres in Detroit and says he'll start planting in the spring.
With a net worth of more than $100 million, he's one of the richest men left in Detroit -- one of the very few in his demographic who stayed put when others were fleeing to Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills. Not long ago, while commuting, he stumbled on a big idea that might help save his dying city.
Every weekday Hantz pulls his Volvo SUV out of the gated driveway of his compound and drives half an hour to his office in Southfield, a northern suburb on the far side of Eight Mile Road. His route takes him through a desolate, postindustrial cityscape -- the kind of scene that is shockingly common in Detroit.
Along the way he passes vacant buildings, abandoned homes, and a whole lot of empty land. In some stretches he sees more pheasants than people. "Every year I tell myself it's going to get better," says Hantz, bright-eyed, with smooth cheeks and a little boy's carefully combed haircut, "and every year it doesn't."
Then one day about a year and a half ago, Hantz had a revelation. "We need scarcity," he thought to himself as he drove past block after unoccupied block. "We can't create opportunities, but we can create scarcity." And that, he says one afternoon in his living room between puffs on an expensive cigar, "is how I got onto this idea of the farm."

Yes, a farm. A large-scale, for-profit agricultural enterprise, wholly contained within the city limits of Detroit. Hantz thinks farming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and -- most important of all -- stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in. Hantz is willing to commit $30 million to the project. He'll start with a pilot program this spring involving up to 50 acres on Detroit's east side. "Out of the gates," he says, "it'll be the largest urban farm in the world."
This is possibly not as crazy as it sounds. Granted, the notion of devoting valuable city land to agriculture would be unfathomable in New York, London, or Tokyo. But Detroit is a special case. The city that was once the fourth largest in the country and served as a symbol of America's industrial might has lately assumed a new role: North American poster child for the global phenomenon of shrinking postindustrial cities.
Nearly 2 million people used to live in Detroit. Fewer than 900,000 remain. Even if, unlikely as it seems, the auto industry were to rebound dramatically and the U.S. economy were to come roaring back tomorrow, no one -- not even the proudest civic boosters -- imagines that the worst is over. "Detroit will probably be a city of 700,000 people when it's all said and done," says Doug Rothwell, CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan. "The big challenge is, What do you do with a population of 700,000 in a geography that can accommodate three times that much?"
0:00 /2:56What Detroit start-ups need
Whatever the answer is, whenever it comes, it won't be predicated on a return to past glory. "We have to be realistic," says George Jackson, CEO of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. (DEGC). "This is not about trying to re-create something. We're not a world-class city."

If not world class, then what? A regional financial center? That's already Chicago, and to a lesser extent Minneapolis. A biotech hub? Boston and San Diego are way out in front. Some think Detroit has a future in TV and movies, but Hollywood is skeptical. ("Best incentives in the country," one producer says. "Worst crew.") How about high tech and green manufacturing? Possibly, given the engineering and manufacturing talent that remains.
But still there's the problem of what to do with the city's enormous amount of abandoned land, conservatively estimated at 40 square miles in a sprawling metropolis whose 139-square-mile footprint is easily bigger than San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan combined. If you let it revert to nature, you abandon all hope of productive use. If you turn it over to parks and recreation, you add costs to an overburdened city government that can't afford to teach its children, police its streets, or maintain the infrastructure it already has.
Faced with those facts, a growing number of policymakers and urban planners have begun to endorse farming as a solution. Former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, now chairman of CityView, a private equity firm that invests in urban development, is familiar with Detroit's land problem. He says he's in favor of "other uses that engage human beings in their maintenance, such as urban agriculture." After studying the city's options at the request of civic leaders, the American Institute of Architects came to this conclusion in a recent report: "Detroit is particularly well suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale."
In that sense, Detroit might actually be ahead of the curve. When Alex Krieger, chairman of the department of urban planning and design at Harvard, imagines what the settled world might look like half a century from now, he sees "a checkerboard pattern" with "more densely urbanized areas, and areas preserved for various purposes such as farming.

The notion of a walled city, a contained city -- that's an 18th-century idea." And where will the new ideas for the 21st century emerge? From older, decaying cities, Krieger believes, such as New Orleans, St. Louis, Cleveland, Newark, and especially Detroit -- cities that have become, at least in part, "kind of empty containers."
This is a lot to hang on Hantz. Most of what he knows about agriculture he's picked up over the past 18 months from the experts he's consulting at Michigan State and the Kellogg Foundation. Then there's the fact that many of his fellow citizens are openly rooting against him. Since word leaked of his scheme last spring, he has been criticized by community activists, who call the plan a land grab. Opponents have also raised questions about the run-ins he's had with regulators at Hantz Financial.
But Detroit is nothing if not desperate for new ideas, and Hantz has had no trouble getting his heard. "It all sounds very exciting," says the DEGC's Jackson, whose agency is working on assembling a package of incentives for Hantz, including free city land. "We hope it works."
Detroit's civic history is notable for repeated failed attempts to revitalize its core. Over the past three decades leaders have embraced a series of downtown redevelopment plans that promised to save the city.
The massive Renaissance Center office and retail complex, built in the 1970s, mostly served to suck tenants out of other downtown buildings. (Today 48 of those buildings stand empty.) Three new casinos (one already bankrupt) and two new sports arenas (one for the NFL's dreadful Lions, the other for MLB's Tigers) have restored, on some nights, a little spark to downtown Detroit but have inspired little in the way of peripheral development. Downtown is still eerily underpopulated, the tax base is still crumbling, and people are still leaving. The jobless rate in the city is 27%.
Nothing yet tried in Detroit even begins to address the fundamental issue of emptiness -- empty factories, empty office buildings, empty houses, and above all, empty lots. Rampant arson, culminating in the annual frenzy of Devil's Night, is partly to blame. But there has also been a lot of officially sanctioned demolition in Detroit. As white residents fled to the suburbs over the decades, houses in the decaying neighborhoods they left behind were often bulldozed.

Abandonment is an infrastructure problem, when you consider the cost of maintaining far-flung roads and sewer systems; it's a city services problem, when you think about the inefficiencies of collecting trash and fighting crime in sparsely populated neighborhoods; and it's a real estate problem. Houses in Detroit are selling for an average of $15,000.
That sounds like a buying opportunity, and in fact Detroit looks pretty good right now to a young artist or entrepreneur who can't afford anyplace else -- but not yet to an investor. The smart money sees no point in buying as long as fresh inventory keeps flooding the market. "In the target sites we have," says Hantz, "we [reevaluate] every two weeks."
As Hantz began thinking about ways to absorb some of that inventory, what he imagined, he says, was a glacier: one broad, continuous swath of farmland, growing acre by acre, year by year, until it had overrun enough territory to raise the scarcity alarm and impel other investors to act. Rick Foster, an executive at the Kellogg Foundation whom Hantz sought out for advice, nudged him gently in a different direction.
"I think you should make pods," Foster said, meaning not one farm but many. Hantz was taken right away with the concept of creating several pods -- or lakes, as he came to think of them -- each as large as 300 acres, and each surrounded by its own valuable frontage. "What if we had seven lakes in the city?" he wondered. "Would people develop around those lakes?"
To increase the odds that they will, Hantz plans on making his farms both visually stunning and technologically cutting edge. Where there are row crops, Hantz says, they'll be neatly organized, planted in "dead-straight lines -- they may even be in a design." But the plan isn't to make Detroit look like Iowa. "Don't think a farm with tractors," says Hantz. "That's old."
In fact, Hantz's operation will bear little resemblance to a traditional farm. Mike Score, who recently left Michigan State's agricultural extension program to join Hantz Farms as president, has written a business plan that calls for the deployment of the latest in farm technology, from compost-heated greenhouses to hydroponic (water only, no soil) and aeroponic (air only) growing systems designed to maximize productivity in cramped settings.

He's really excited about apples. Hantz Farms will use a trellised system that's compact, highly efficient, and tourist-friendly. It won't be like apple picking in Massachusetts, and that's the point. Score wants visitors to Hantz Farms to see that agriculture is not just something that takes place in the countryside. They will be able to "walk down the row pushing a baby stroller," he promises.
Crop selection will depend on the soil conditions of the plots that Hantz acquires. Experts insist that most of the land is not irretrievably toxic. The majority of the lots now vacant in Detroit were residential, not industrial; the biggest problem is how compacted the soil is. For the most part the farms will focus on high-margin edibles: peaches, berries, plums, nectarines, and exotic greens. Score says that the first crops are likely to be lettuce and heirloom tomatoes.
Hantz says he's willing to put up the entire $30 million investment himself -- all cash, no debt -- and immediately begin hiring locally for full-time positions. But he wants two things first from Jackson at the DEGC: free tax-delinquent land, which he'll combine with his own purchases, he says (he's aiming for an average cost of $3,000 per acre, in line with rural farmland in southern Michigan), and a zoning adjustment that would create a new, lower tax rate for agriculture. There's no deal yet, but neither request strikes Jackson as unattainable. "If we have reasonable due diligence," he says, "I think we'll give it a shot."
Detroit mayor Dave Bing is watching closely. The Pistons Hall of Fame guard turned entrepreneur has had what his spokesman describes as "productive discussions" with Hantz. In a statement to Fortune, Bing says he's "encouraged by the proposals to bring commercial farming back to Detroit. As we look to diversify our economy, commercial farming has some real potential for job growth and rebuilding our tax base."
Hantz, for his part, says he's got three or four locations all picked out ("one of them will pop") and is confident he'll have seeds in the ground "in some sort of demonstration capacity" this spring. "Some things you've got to see in order to believe," he says, waving his cigar. "This is a thing you've got to believe in order to see."
Many have a hard time making that leap. When news of Hantz's ambitious plan broke in the Detroit papers last spring, few people even knew who he was. A little digging turned up a less-than-spotless record at Hantz Financial Services. The firm has paid fines totaling more than $1 million in the past five years, including $675,000 in 2005, without admitting or denying guilt, "for fraud and misrepresentations relating to undisclosed revenue-sharing arrangements, as well as other violations," according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. (Hantz responds, "If we find something that isn't in compliance, we take immediate steps to correct the problem.")
Hantz Farms' first hire, VP Matt Allen, did have an established reputation in Detroit, but it wasn't a good one. Two years ago, while he was press secretary for former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Allen pleaded guilty to domestic violence and obstructing police after his wife called 911. He was sentenced to a year's probation. Hantz says he has known Allen for many years and values his deep knowledge of the city. "He has earned a second chance, and I'm willing to give it to him," he says.
Some of Hantz's biggest skeptics, ironically, are the same people who've been working to transform Detroit into a laboratory for urban farming for years, albeit on a much smaller scale. The nonprofit Detroit Agriculture Network counts nearly 900 urban gardens within the city limits. That's a twofold increase in two years, and it places Detroit at the forefront of a vibrant national movement to grow more food locally and lessen the nation's dependence on Big Ag.

None of those gardens is very big (average size: 0.25 acre), and they don't generate a lot of cash (most don't even try), but otherwise they're great: as antidotes to urban blight; sources of healthy, affordable food in a city that, incredibly, has no chain supermarkets; providers of meaningful, if generally unpaid, work to the chronically unemployed; and beacons around which disintegrating communities can begin to regather themselves.
That actually sounds a lot like what Hantz envisions his farms to be in the for-profit arena. But he doesn't have many fans among the community gardeners, who feel that Hantz is using his money and connections to capitalize on their pioneering work. "I'm concerned about the corporate takeover of the urban agriculture movement in Detroit," says Malik Yakini, a charter school principal and founder of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, which operates D-Town Farm on Detroit's west side. "At this point the key players with him seem to be all white men in a city that's at least 82% black."
Hantz, meanwhile, has no patience for what he calls "fear-based" criticism. He has a hard time concealing his contempt for the nonprofit sector generally. ("Someone must pay taxes," he sniffs.) He also flatly rejects the idea that he's orchestrating some kind of underhanded land grab. In fact, Hantz says that he welcomes others who might want to start their own farms in the city. "Viability and sustainability to me are all that matters," he says.
And yet Hantz is fully aware of the potentially historic scope of what he is proposing. After all, he's talking about accumulating hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of acres inside a major American city. And it's clear that he views Hantz Farms as his legacy. Already he's told his 21-year-old daughter, Lauren, his only heir, that if she wants to own the land one day, she has to promise him she'll never sell it. "This is like buying a penthouse in New York in 1940," Hantz says. "No one should be able to afford to do this ever again."

That might seem like an overly optimistic view of Detroit's future. But allow Hantz to dream a little. Twenty years from now, when people come to the city and have a drink at the bar at the top of the Renaissance Center, what will they see? Maybe that's not the right vantage point. Maybe they'll actually be on the farm, picking apples, looking up at the RenCen. "That's the beauty of being down and out," says Hantz. "You can actually open your mind to ideas that you would never otherwise embrace." At this point, Detroit doesn't have much left to lose.