Author Archive
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
by U.S. Green Building Council
What is LEED®?
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED gives building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.
LEED provides a roadmap for measuring and documenting success for every building type and phase of a building lifecycle. Specific LEED programs include:
New Commercial Construction and Major Renovation projects
Existing Building Operations and Maintenance
Commercial Interiors projects
Core and Shell Development projects
Homes
Neighborhood Development
Guidelines for Multiple Buildings and On-Campus Building Projects
LEED for Schools
LEED for Retail
USGBC is also developing LEED for Healthcare, and LEED for Labs.
We also have the LEED Resources page which has informative PowerPoint presentations, brochures, and case studies, as well as LEED News and LEED-Online sample credit templates.
How is LEED Developed?
The LEED Rating System was created to transform the built environment to sustainability by providing the building industry with consistent, credible standards for what constitutes a green building. The rating system is developed and continuously refined via an open, consensus-based process that has made LEED the green building standard of choice for Federal agencies and state and local governments nationwide. Click here for more information on the LEED Development Process.
What is LEED Certification?
The first step to LEED certification is to Register your project. A project is a viable candidate for LEED certification if it can meet all prerequisites and achieve the minimum number of points to earn the Certified level of LEED project certification. To earn certification, a building project must meet certain prerequisites and performance benchmarks (”credits”) within each category. Projects are awarded Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum certification depending on the number of credits they achieve. This comprehensive approach is the reason LEED-certified buildings have reduced operating costs, healthier and more productive occupants, and conserve our natural resources.
Note for Product Manufacturers and Service Providers:
Although USGBC does not certify, promote, or endorse products and services of individual companies, products and services do play a role and can help projects with credit achievement. (Note that products and services do not earn projects points.) Learn more here about how you and your company can help advance green building, while also achieving your own environmental and economic goals.
Who Can Use LEED?
Everyone: Architects, real estate professionals, facility managers, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, construction managers, lenders, government officials…
The LEED program also includes a full suite of training workshops and a Professional Accreditation program to develop and encourage green building expertise across the entire building industry.
Questions?
Visit the LEED Help section of our website.
No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
Organic Farming Could Feed the World
Article from Organic Consumers Association
Along with reporting on fertilizers, biotech, ethanol, corporate consolidation and the agrofuels vs food debate comes an increased science reporting of the real world of organic-ecological-diversified agriculture that actually feeds the world.
The biotech industry used to regard speed as one of the defining characteristics of genetic engineering. To prove the point, it rushed new products to market with little regard for the consequences. Speed, however, is a characteristic of neither good science nor sustain-able agriculture. Now the ’slow’ reports of scientific findings on nutritious food and sustainable agriculture are beginning to surface. It will be interesting to see how the biotech bullies deal with these. The authors of a new study* claim that a switch to organic farming would not reduce the world’s food supply but could actually increase food security in developing countries. They claim their findings lay to rest the debate over whether organic farming could sustainably feed the world. The team of researchers has compiled research from 293 different comparisons into a single study to assess the overall efficiency of the two agricultural systems.
They found that in ‘developed’ countries organic systems produce, on average, 92% of the yield produced by conventional agriculture. In ‘developing’ countries, however, organic systems produce 80% more than conventional farms. Then, using data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the team estimated what would happen if farms world-wide were to switch to organic methods today.
The researchers found that under an organic-only regime, farms could produce between 2641 and 4381 calories per person per day compared to the current world equivalent of 2786 calories per person per day. Members of the team believe the calculations they carried out to arrive at the upper number are the most realistic. These took into account the higher yields that would be obtained in developing countries, and the details of which crops are grown where. Nutritionists recommend that people consume between 2100 and 2500 calories a day.
The researchers found that small farms tend to produce more per hectare of land. They also note that although organic production tends to require more labour, this labour is often spread out more evenly over the growing season, making it easier to manage. They also point out that once you incorporate the environmental costs, then organic agriculture is a much superior system.
In this era of climate change and unpredicted disasters (droughts, floods, heat waves, etc.) organic/ecological agriculture has another important virtue. Relying on locally-sourced and adapted species and varieties as well as labour, knowledge, and skills, it is much more resilient than a system which is dependent on manufactured and imported inputs.The issue of speed is also crucial. As George Monbiot has persuasively argued, air travel may be the single most intractable cause of carbon emissions. But fast boats, trains, and cars are also problematic. The fact is that when you take the whole system into account, speed is simply not efficient. Slower modes of transport would, of course, limit the perishable food and other products which are now shipped around the globe, and make us all more dependent on what we can produce ourselves. Not a bad idea.
* Organic agriculture and the global food supply: Catherine Badgley, Jeremy Moghtader, Eileen Quintero, Emily Zakem, M. Jahi Chappell, Katia Avilés-Vázquez, Andrea Samulon and Ivette Perfecto, Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 2007, Cambridge University Press
No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
Is local the new organic?
Article found in Gristmill
Last week, The New York Times ran a feature by Marian Burros on New Seasons Markets, a grocery store chain in Portland that’s banking on consumer interest in local, sustainable food — as opposed to simply organic.
The chain recently completed an inventory of the origins of its stock and has labeled everything grown in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California “Homegrown.” They’ve already got six stores and three more on the way, but remain adamantly opposed to expanding beyond the Portland suburbs — a testament to their commitment to being grounded in the local food economy.
People concerned about health, taste, and the environment have long sought out organic products. Once a cutting-edge concept for gourmets and health-food junkies, organic is now mainstream, with many familiar major food brands launching organic product lines. I bought organic milk at a Seattle Safeway the other day that was packaged under Safeway’s own new “O” label. Organics are the fastest growing segment of the food industry, with sales increasing by some 20 percent per year.
But, as the NYT piece notes, organic alone is not the answer to the question of the fundamental role food plays in our local economy, environment, food security, community vitality, or even health and enjoyment. I don’t know where that organic milk I bought from Safeway came from. I like the idea of sticking with my delivery from Smith Brothers dairy each week. Even though it’s not organic, there’s no growth hormone used and I am supporting the last of the independent dairy farms in my state, Washington.
We won’t be seeing New Seasons outside the Portland area any time soon — but other areas are making progress on the local food front.
In the Seattle area, for example, cutting-edge projects are exploring food as a driver in the local economy and as a focal point for public policies ranging from health and nutrition to urban planning and even transportation.
Sustainable Seattle is launching a first-of-its-kind research project looking at how dollars spent on locally produced food affect the local economy, as a counterpoint to the dollar spent on the average grocery item that has traveled 1500 miles to reach the consumer.
Washington State University’s King County Extension office is leading an effort to establish a food policy council for Seattle and King County that would bring together a broad spectrum of food system participants — from farmers to hunger activists to grocery executives to land use experts — to work jointly on solutions to current challenges like childhood obesity, disappearing farmland, and alarmingly high levels of hunger in our community.
I have always believed in the power of coming to the table together to hash out issues, find common ground, and be reminded of one another’s humanity, but I have most often thought about it in the very personal context of family and friends. In these times of bitter division, can coming to the table in celebration of delicious local-grown bounty help remind us of our many shared values and experiences?
No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Saturday, August 18th, 2007
Does Krishna Like Milk From Unprotected Cows?
By Radhe Radhe devi dasi
I just read this article on Dandavats and it encouraged me to hurry up and write an article that I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. Most of the information in this article is from Peta, the vegan society, and http://www.milksucks.com/ (I know, not a nice name, but they have some good info).
One of the first things I heard when I met the devotees was “you can’t be a vegan devotee.” This is because Krishna loves milk and milk products and devotees love to offer them to him.
The problem is that the milk we (in the cities) are offering to Krishna is not pure. As Jahnava mataji said last Saturday, actually all foods in Kali Yuga are considered to be impure.
Krishna doesn’t just love milk, Krishna loves cows. So how does he feel if we are offering him grocery store milk that is laden with antibiotics and growth hormones—milk that comes from cows that are abused and mistreated and finally sent to the slaughterhouse?
To give milk the cow must be pregnant and then have a calf. On both organic and non-organic farms, cows are kept continuously pregnant. On non-organic farms mother cows are treated like machines, chained by their necks in concrete stalls for months at a time, their udders are swollen so large that they sometimes drag on the ground. Cows give milk for the same reasons humans do—to feed their babies. To keep milk production high, cows are kept pregnant by artificial insemination and their male calves are taken away at 1-2 days old and chained inside cramped dark crates to be killed for veal. The milk meant for them is what we buy on the grocery shelves. They are not even given a chance to drink their mother’s milk.
It is too easy to turn a blind eye to what goes on behind the grocery store shelves. After all, how can we not offer milk sweets to Krishna? How will the Sunday feast go on without sweet rice?
But how can we offer milk sweets to Krishna using milk that (unless organic) contains hormones, antibiotics, disease, blood, fish and who knows what else? Cows are so dear to Lord Krishna that I just cannot imagine he would want to taste milk from cows so horribly abused, or even if not abused (organic cows), nevertheless sent to the slaughterhouse.
The ideal is, as Sivarama Swami says, to support the Iskcon farms in their efforts to protect the cows and offer pure milk to Krishna. But for those of us who live far from farms and must buy milk from the store, it seems that abstaining from milk products is the only choice. A vegan diet is the only option for cow protection living in the city.
Find the full article at http://namahatta.org/nh2/en/node/5535
No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Saturday, August 11th, 2007
Thoughts on Shambo the Bull and Other Sacred Animals.
Article from The Vaishnava Voice
It seems like everyone wants to read about Shambo the bull. My blog visitor numbers have never been so high. Even at the London Rathayatra festival on Sunday, people were asking us: “Is this a protest march for Shambo?”
The story of Shambo the bull is of course a sad tale. Despite last minute sea changes in the legal decisions, and despite much public sympathy, 20,000 signatures and a hundred sitting in protest at the temple in Wales, Shambo was ultimately taken away to be killed.
His plight, and the plight of those trying to save his life, was not really sympathised with by certain journalists. Reading the situation as being one of sentimental monks fretting about their pet bull, they castigated them for not seeing the relative importance of a ‘pet animal’ when compared to the health of other cows or indeed of humans who might catch TB.
Other writers, catching the fundamentalist fatigue in the British public, noted that here was another case where one groups eccentric religious laws were meant to be pandered to at the expense of us all. Other farmers have had their herds culled due to TB infection, and many other farmers lost their entire herd to foot and mouth disease within recent years. They were also troubled by their loss but ultimately had to do the decent thing and surrender them for slaughter. Why so much fuss about one “sacred” bull?
They’re missing the point. Shambo was sacred not because he was a bull living in a temple. And he was not sacred because some Hindu monks had designated him as such. And he was not sacred because he was a Hindu bull. As bulls go, Shambo was no more or less sacred than any other bull happily grazing in any field.
All bulls, cows, and indeed all life, is worthy of our reverence and protection. The world’s oldest scripture calls upon us to see a spark of the Divine in all beings, and especially in those animals which have been designated by God to provide for our existence in some way. Through them, we come to see our connection to the Divine and how we are cared for. The Skanda Vale temple just happened to be one of the few places in the country where this approach to the sanctity of life was honoured and practised. And Shambo - for a few brief years - just happened to be on the receiving end of such vision and generosity.
Perhaps we have all participated in bringing about the natural catastrophes that now threaten farmers everywhere. Incessant demand for meat and increased milk yield have turned our four-legged mothers and fathers into walking bags of hormones and antibiotics. Who knows what natural bovine immunities become extinct after generations of this treatment?
Ultimately the Vedas explain that ahimsa or non-violence is the path that human beings are meant to tread if they wish to make progress on the upward path. The repercussions of this choice will restore nobility to our increasingly violent society and safeguard us all. And non-violence begins with our tongue; not hurting others with our words, and not hurting others with our choice of food.
This was written a few centuries ago by Thiruvalluvar, an Indian poet, in his book Thirukural or Sacred Couplets :
How can he practice true compassion
who eats the flesh of an animal to fatten his own flesh?
Riches cannot be found in the hands of the thriftless,
nor can compassion be found in the hearts of those who eat meat.
He who feasts on a creature’s flesh is like he who wields a weapon. Goodness is never one with the minds of these two.
If you ask, “What is kindness and what is unkindness?”
It is not-killing and killing. Thus, eating flesh is never virtuous.
Life is perpetuated by not eating meat.
The jaws of Hell close on those who do.
If the world did not purchase and consume meat,
no one would slaughter and offer meat for sale.
When a man realizes that meat is the butchered flesh
of another creature, he will abstain from eating it.
Insightful souls who have abandoned the passion to hurt others will not feed on flesh that life has abandoned.
Greater than a thousand ghee offerings consumed in sacrificial fires is to not sacrifice and consume any living creature.
All life will press palms together in prayerful adoration
of those who refuse to slaughter or savour meat.
No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
What Are You Doing for Cow Protection?
By HH Sivarama Swami
Krsi goraksya vanijya. Krsi means ploughing or agriculture and goraksya, cow protection. These are the staples of society, this is what people live on. All living entities subsist on grains. So the ksatriyas may direct and instruct people, the brahmanas may perform their yajnas, but if they don’t eat then giving shelter or instruction is not going to work.
That eating is therefore the most essential aspect of life and this is why the vaisyas and their assistants, the sudras, are so integral that the other castes think that they are the most important people, because it is actually they who are feeding. Of course the vaisyas think that the brahmanas are the most important because they are taking the result of their work and offering it back to the Lord.
Srila Prabhupada said that this very common type of exchange was there but the responsibility of this goraksya, is it the duty of just some people? Some very very exclusive people? Is it the responsibility of all vaisyas, or is it for all grhastas or all devotees?
My proposition is that it is everyone’s responsibility. Just like everyone’s responsibility is chanting Hare Krishna, watering Tulasi devi, reading Bhagavatam. Similarly part of our common dharma is to protect cows. This is something that you see ingrained in communities like Bhaktivedanta Manor, where they have to limit the amount of cows they receive as gifts, and be very careful about the type of food that is offered to the cows, because to a greater or lesser degree all the devotees see the protection of cows as their dharma.
It is everyone’s dharma: the cow is our mother, she gives us milk while all over the rest of the world cows are being butchered, slaughtered, abused, and taken advantage of. Vaisnavas must take it as their responsibility to protect cows. Now, how do you protect cows? Does that mean that you have a cow on your balcony in downtown Singapore? No, that type of cow protection is actually cow abuse. You cannot just keep your own cow.
Cows only give milk if they have calves, which means you have to constantly have calves, which means you have to have a herd, and that is a full time business. So how is it that individuals should protect cows? They should in some way or another be connected to ISKCON’s herds. Srila Prabhupada established cow protection for instance in New Vrindavan, Gita Nagari, or as we have done here in Hungary at New Vraja-dhama. These herds are not the sole responsibility or duty of the local devotees in those places, they are the responsibility of the devotees and congregation of the local country. It is their responsibility to contribute to the cow protection, to donate towards the maintenance of the cow, to come and do some cow seva, and when they come to the temple they should bring some bhoga for the cows, to find out what items are needed by the cowherds. And the cow herds.
Cow protection is everyone’s business, it is everyone’s responsibility. This is being written down as varnasrama dharma. If one does not contribute or participate directly in cow protection then he should know that he is neglecting his dharma, he is neglecting his dharma. In other words he is adharmic.
This is in my view the greater picture of what varnasrama means. Varnasrama doesn’t mean that we simply philosophise about a way of life, but what are the duties of varnas and asramas, what are the duties that are common for all Vaisnavas, for all humans. And one of them is the protection of cows, just like chanting Hare Krsna is a common responsibility as mentioned earlier.
So, similairly, cow protection is a common responsibility for everyone. It doesn’t necessarily always occur to us, and even when it does, it’s difficult to get devotees interested. More difficult than getting devotees to do sankirtan, more difficult than getting someone to cook in the kitchen or be temple president, is to get devotees to be cowherds. To make devotees work with the cows, bulls, and oxen and to make that their life, it is very difficult for devotees to do this. “I am an educated person, I have this diploma and you want me to take care of cows? You want me to do that thing that God does? You want me to do that activity that is going on in the spiritual world?”
And that is what is going on the spiritual world. That is what is going on where we are going–at least where I want to go is where there is only gopas and gopis. The whole social identity is based on go, on cows. There are milkmaids and there are cowherd men. And if we are not willing to be milkmaids and cowherd men here in the material world, if this service is beyond us and we cannot forsee how we are going to dedicate our lives to working with the cows, then were are we going? Then you had better look for somewhere other than Braja. Then you had better go to Dwaraka or Vaikuntha, where that is not a compulsory, integral part of life.
Because in the spiritual world, in Goloka Vrindavan, Krishna goes out every day to tend cows. And yet it is so difficult to get devotees to be cowherders, to see that this is a respectable future, and to stick with that service. Because once again, cow protection is something that we talk about as being against the principles of slaughtering the animals. We don’t believe in slaughtering the cow, we don’t believe in eating the meat of the cow, cows should be properly protected. But, when it comes to properly protecting the cows, are we willing to do it? Are we actually willing to dedicate our lives to taking care of cows? Or are we willing to participate and support the protection of cows?
Therefore, we should ask: “What am I doing for protecting my mother? What am I doing to sustain cow protection in my zone? It is my responsibility, my duty as a Vaisnava. Am I performing my dharmic duty?”
No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
Ox Power
Excerpt from the Working Villages International website
The price of gasoline in Congo is now $8-$10 per gallon, and the average yearly income in Congo is $99 - enough to buy at most 12 gallons of gasoline per year. So the question arises: How can traditional, petroleum-dependent models of economic development benefit the people under such circumstances? What are the alternatives? Working Villages believes that much hope is to be found in the models advocated by Gandhi and E.F Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful), which explain the benefits of village self-reliance in the form of localized economics and wide-spread small scale ownership, relying on local resources and skills.
By Brij Khandelwal. Uttar Pradesh, India The much-hyped and long-awaited campaign to remove stray animals from urban “Does a highly spiritual tradition like Krishna consciousness concern itself with concrete problems of this world? Do the teachings have a significant environmental impact? “Divine Nature is a clear, even eloquent ‘yes’ answer to both questions. The chapter on ‘Meat and the Environment’ is the best succinct statement I have read on the environmental impact of meat consumption. But Divine Nature deftly weaves this concrete factual material into a worldview which includes history, scientific theory, and the metaphysics of karma. The implications of diet are far-reaching. Divine Nature is a must for professors of religion like myself and for students like mine. It shows us that the apparently abstract and ethereal realm of spirituality bears upon the environment in a quite positive and practical way.” From the back cover: “Divine Nature leads the human spirit upward. The authors lucidly explore the dimensions of a genuine solution to the world’s environmental crisis. They suggest that the most important changes must come first within each of us—in the way we see ourselves and the universe, the way we eat, and the way we live.” George Harrison, singer, UK “A book of hope and transformation, conviction, and dedication, and I urge all who care to read and share.” Dr. Michael Fox, Vice PresidentThe Humane Society of the United States “In view of the crying need for excellent literature concerning the interface of spirituality and the environment, Divine Nature is a Godsend.” Gene Sager, Professor of Religious Studies and PhilosophyPalomar College, California “Divine Nature reminds us we must learn again to live within the laws of nature …aware and grateful that we are at the mercy of sacred forces larger than ourselves.” From the Foreword by William McDonougharchitect, author of The Hannover Principles.No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Saturday, July 21st, 2007
Drive to remove stray animals in Agra, India hits roadblock
areas in Agra has been stalled by complaints from animal activist Maneka
Gandhi.
In a series of complaints to the Uttar Pradesh chief secretary, Agra
divisional commissioner and other officials, Gandhi has accused Agra
Municipal Commissioner Shyam Singh Yadav of ordering ‘the mass killing of
dogs’, a charge vehemently denied by Yadav.Gandhi has also accused the
municipal commissioner of ‘planning to kill all monkeys, donkeys and cows to
make Agra completely animal-free’.
‘The experiment to relocate monkeys had not succeeded anywhere in India. In
Vrindavan they had tried this experiment and all the monkeys perished. Delhi
also tried to relocate the monkeys in the Bhatti mines; more than 600 died.
‘If the authorities in Agra want to kill them let them say so. Before
transporting the monkeys, a proper survey of the area and the forest should
be done to make sure they had enough to eat there and the facilities
available could sustain them,’ Gandhi told IANS.
Ravindra Choudhary, head of the Animal Husbandry Department of the Agra
Municipal Corporation, said: ‘People are being bitten by monkeys daily.
Unfortunately, there are no medical facilities available for treatment and
no anti-rabbies vaccines. And how can the poor afford treatment?’
According to Choudhary, there are more than 10,000 monkeys in Agra but an
animal welfare NGO estimates that there are close to 50,000 monkeys and they
seem to be multiplying at a fast rate.
In 1996, the Supreme Court had ordered that dairies should be shifted
outside the city and several directives were subsequently issued on the same
order. The Uttar Pradesh government had also issued a gazette notification
in 2002 to control animal population and capture stray animals.
Yadav said that the registration of all pet animals has now been made
mandatory. ‘I am also looking for a suitable design to prevent littering on
the roads by horses deployed to haul carriages. The excreta of horses would
be collected in a leather bag and then disposed of,’ he added.
Although Maneka’s initiative has for the moment halted all projects to rid
the city of stray animals, Mukesh Jain, the private financer of the ‘Catch
the Monkeys’ campaign, said that he would go ahead with the drive in the
last week of July.
‘We are following the rule book and there is nothing illegal about it. The
charge of killing the animals is baseless. The animal lovers are free to
feed the monkeys in the jungle. But why allow the monkeys to bite human
beings?’ he asked.
In her letter to the Agra divisional commissioner, Gandhi said, ‘Street dogs
and cattle forage in the garbage, cleaning it of all organic waste. In their
absence uncollected garbage will rot and smell.
‘India has a long tradition of peaceful coexistence with animals. What makes
our cities special is that we share them freely with animals. To remove
animals from a city leaving only the sterility of cars and buildings in a
foolish aping of the west is to destroy the city’s character and soul.
‘The Agra-Vrindavan-Mathura area holds a special sentiment for all Indians
as the place of the cowherd god Krishna. Would we rid his place of cows or
any other creatures?’
Locals want all stray animals, including dogs and cattle rounded up, and the
monkeys killed or transported to some other location.
‘Due to the fear of monkeys we have not had the courage to sleep on our
terraces in this hot weather. Women can’t go to the roof tops and spend some
time there in the cold winter months as these monkeys target children and
young women,’ said Bankey Lal, a shopkeeper.
‘It’s not a happy situation to be in,’ said Mukesh Jain. He has already
spent quite a lot of money on catching monkeys and is willing to finance the
drive till the last monkey has been dispatched to the forest.
The municipal corporation wants a drastic reduction in the number of
animals. Gandhi has suggested sterilisation of dogs by her organisation
People for Animals (PFA) as she thinks this would be a more humane approach
to the problem.
Vasudha Mehta of the NGO Wildlife SOS, which runs a rescue centre for sloth
bears in Agra, suggests a rescue centre for monkeys. ‘Let’s work on some
netted enclosure with electric fencing on the river bank. Put all the
monkeys there and feed them at one point.
‘Obviously, it is a very tricky problem, all the more because of people’s
religious sentiments. So we must work on some innovative ideas and
technologies in the interest of the human race,’ she said.No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Thursday, June 21st, 2007
Divine Nature
by Michael A. Cremo & Mukunda Goswami
What are the root causes of the environmental crisis? What can we do about them?
According to Divine Nature, the real cause of the global environmental crisis is an underlying lack of spiritual understanding. The authors systematically demonstrate that most proposed solutions are only palliative and that humankind must undergo a profound change in consciousness to live in an environmentally sound way.
No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Thursday, June 14th, 2007
Modern Technology- no fuel, no electricity, & pollution free
No Comments » - Posted in Contributors by AR
Friday, June 1st, 2007
From Rooftop to Restaurant - A University Cafe Fed by a Rooftop Garden
Co-written by Aimee Blyth and Leslie Menagh, Urban Agriculture Notes
Visible from either side of the Otonabee River, a mere five-minute stroll across the Trent University campus bridge, a rooftop garden and little café are working toward social and environmental change, specifically a shift in food culture.
For about a decade now, Professor Tom Hutchinson, a local farmer and ecologist, has been supervising an intensive vegetable garden on the roof of the Environmental Sciences building at Trent University. The reasons for the garden are many. Historically, it has provided a site for monitoring the effects of air pollution and smog on agricultural crops. More recently, it has served as learning space for students in the Food and Agriculture Emphasis Program at the school. And in Toms’ own words, “it demonstrates our ability to use unused space for productive purposes. Since most people live in cities it behooves us to maximize the ecological aspects of the urban environment. Rooftop gardens clean up pollution and create esthetically pleasing, calming places to be.”
Today, the garden grows organic food for local groups interested in food security and sustainable agriculture. Among these is The Seasoned Spoon Café. “The Spoon” as the restaurant is affectionately called, has a mandate to source its ingredients locally thereby reducing the energy it takes to transport healthy food to consumers. It is the only restaurant of its kind at the university as it is a student-run, independent co-operative that stands as a politically driven alternative to Aramark. The American food catering giant which predominantly provides food on campus contracts other corporations such as Tim Hortons and Pizza Pizza. So, like Tom’s rooftop, The Spoon also provides unique opportunities for practical learning, from studies in small business operation to bioregionalism.
While most students are away for the summer, the rooftop and the restaurant have hired us: a gardener and a summer cook. With a shared love for all things gastronomic and growing, staff, volunteers, and Spoon customers are increasingly aware of the varied components of local food culture, and their interdependence. Spoon cooks can often be found weeding, sifting compost, or harvesting food, in turn deepening their appreciation for seasonality.
Whereas fast food may have been an attractive novelty some decades ago, we have seen a significant shift in the desires of eaters at the university and beyond, toward food that is ethically produced. It tastes better because the flavours are as fresh and varied as local farmers’ produce. Furthermore, the price is as easy to swallow as any other food served at the school, and is often less costly. In fact, what we’re seeing is that taste is determined by much more than what generically-produced, hyper-packaged products could ever offer - the ingredients of which have travelled farther than any human is likely to travel in their lifetime, chocked full of unpronounceable preservatives that enable it to do so. People like to feel good about what they’re eating. It feels - and therefore tastes - better “to know that the means of production are ecologically and socially sound”, says TimWilson, customer and member of The Spoon. And at the rooftop garden, we are committed to doing just that.
The Gardener’s Story
“What is it?”, Scott, my fellow rooftop gardener asked.
I wasn’t sure. I’d never seen this striking, green-black striped caterpillar before. We decided to leave it where we found it on the plant, and I went home to look it up; parsleyworm is its name. It eats the foliage of members of the umbelliferae family, including the parsley plant where we’d seen it. Like so many other gardeners, we were charmed by the beauty of this bug. One of my gardening textbooks - a rather dry book that I had thought contained no adjectives - describes the parsleyworm as “stunning”. This little caterpillar, seems to have escaped the scorn that other garden pests command, such as the cabbageworm (which I, like most other gardeners, pick off whenever I see one). This distinction may not be without justification, however, as the parsleyworm, in the end, did little damage to our parsley crop. The trade-off was the later arrival of a another butterfly to the garden - a black swallowtail.
Working in the treetops among the butterflies, birds, bees and squirrels we cultivate vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers, including many heirloom varieties. Having never taken care of a rooftop garden before, I was surprised by the ways it differs from a traditional garden. The main differences can be summed up in two words: sun and wind. The resulting growing conditions tend to be more extreme. Even after a good rain, it takes very little time for the beds to dry out; our solution is mulch, mulch and more mulch. Even so, not everything grows well on the roof. In particular, we have difficulty with spinach, peas and beans. Other heat-loving plants, however, do very well including tomatoes, peppers and basil.
Another significant limitation on the roof is soil fertility. In the spring we recruit unsuspecting (or very generous) volunteers to help us haul compost from The Spoon. We further amend the soil with sheep manure from Tom’s farm, green manure and compost tea. In particular using green manures or compost tea is labour-saving, because it precludes the need to bring more materials up to the roof through the Environmental Sciences Boardroom (the only access to the roof).
Despite these challenges, rooftop gardening provides a number of incentives. We need not worry about pests such as deer. Furthermore, what is a challenge in the summer - namely the warmer, dryer conditions - is an advantage in the spring when we’re able to start gardening a few weeks earlier than the surrounding area. Thus the rooftop climate acts as a season extension.
Fortunately for us, the rooftop garden was a part of the initial building design. Thus, not only is there proper irrigation and drainage, but the building has sufficient load-bearing capabilities to support eighteen inches of saturated soil. To prevent water and roots from compromising the roof there is an impermeable membrane beneath the soil. The garden acts as a temperature moderator for the building below, cooling it down in the summer and insulating it in the winter.
On a larger scale rooftop gardens and sod roofs can do the same in a city. A recent study prepared by Ryerson University for the City of Toronto, found that green roofs significantly reduce stormwater runoff, reduce energy consumption and the reduce the heat island effect. Furthermore, they help to beautify the city and create more natural green spaces in urban areas - for everyone, including the black swallowtails.
Article continued at: http://www.cityfarmer.org/TrentRoof.html
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Thursday, May 31st, 2007
Urban Agriculture and Green Roofs
Posted at Food for Thought
I am currently in the midst of creating an online documentary about a group called the Urban Orchard, a community-based urban agriculture project in Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs.
The Urban Orchard was initially formed to allow people with backyard fruit trees to get together with others in their local area and swap surplus produce that would otherwise go to waste. So someone with a plum tree, for example, could swap their excess plums for some other fruit that they didn’t have – apricots, say, or lemons or figs. Quickly, though, the project expanded to include vegetables, herbs, seeds and plants, and even home-made jams. Members now meet once a week at the CERES market in Brunswick East, where they swap produce, as well as gardening advice, recipes and general neighbourly chit-chat.
As well as the simple pleasures of being able to grow and share one’s own food, the program has a myriad of beneficial outcomes: it reduces food miles and environmental impacts associated with food production and transportation; it supports biodiversity through seed saving and sharing; it encourages the consumption of healthy, seasonal produce; and it strengthens local community networks.
It has been a fascinating process to visit and interview members of the group. Their gardens range from the modest to the awe inspiring - it’s amazing to see how productive a small urban backyard can actually be.
But it is inevitable that as cities grow, the space for gardening will shrink. Like most Australian cities, Melbourne’s long-term urban planning vision involves increased subdivision and the development of higher density housing in existing suburbs, to counter the negative environmental and social impacts of urban sprawl.
Will this trend towards increased densification reduce the ability to produce food in the city? Take a look at the satellite-view of Melbourne on Google Maps and you’ll soon see a vast under-utilised area that could be turned into productive green space – the city’s rooftops.
Check out the Green Roofs for Healthy Australian Cities blog to learn more about green roofs and urban rooftop ‘micro-farming’. The benefits and possibilities seem endless, and extend far beyond urban agriculture:
“Green roofs can provide a wide range of public and private benefits, including significantly reduced fossil energy use, reduced peak runoff of roofwater, aesthetically pleasing cityscapes, longer roof life, and reduce ‘heat island effects’ of cities.â€
- Green Roofs for Healthy Australian Cities
There is some innovative research and development in this area going on in Queensland at the moment, including a CQU study looking at the production of ‘roof-food’ using urban organic waste. Read about it at the Urban Agriculture Network blog.
Also, have a look at this post on Dwellblog for some awesome photos of green roofs in the US and Europe. And more inspiring pics here, at Urban Agriculture online.
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
Water, Water Everywhere…
By Bhakta Chris, Life Comes From Life
Last Tuesday night, at a jam-packed program at the Astanga Yoga Studio and Sri Ganesh Temple in Manhattan, His Holiness Radhanath Swami spoke about the need to clean the pollution from the ecology of our hearts,so that we will be able to clean the pollution from the ecology of our surrounding natural environment.
Maharaja gave a startling, personal example, in which he related that during a recent visit to the Himalayan Mountains, the same mountains he had wandered through thirty-five years ago in search of the Truth, he noticed that the formerly pure-white snow-capped peaks had become stained gray and black from the immense air pollution spewing from India’s major cities.
He then related a very sobering bit of news he had heard from one of his scientist associates, in which because of this pollution and its resultant climatic alterations, there is every chance that two of India’s biggest and most sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Yamuna, may dry up by 2050.
The fact is that the body of this planet and our own physical and emotional bodies are on the verge of chaotic collapse. Who can chant Hare Krsna in the streets of Manhattan when the streets of Manhattan have been swallowed up by the Atlantic Ocean?
My first reaction, being a prideful rascal, was one of dare I say pleasure to hear one of the most spiritual personalities alive on this planet using the plight of our earthly environment to forcibly get across his point of the drastic need for a immediate re-spiritualization of the planet.
As I try to become more absorbed on this path of devotion to Krsna, to rid myself of my lusty attachment to all that is material, I cannot shake the plain truth that unless we as devotees move more towards the forefront of the worldwide movement for sustainability, we will be losing a grand portion of our ability to spread the rays of the benediction moon that is this sankirtana movement.
What must we do within our institution of ISKCON to make these environmental issues a priority in our outreach? What can we do as individual devotees and as individual temples to help make these issues a priority? At New Vrindaban, even though we live in a vegetarian community and are trying to systematically protect a number of cows, we struggle to convince the majority of the community to not use wasteful styrofoam, and previous composting and recycling programs have been lost in a haze of inefficiency and indifference. It is a very uphill battle.
Radhanath Swami said that the waters of the Ganges are always completely pure, but when mixed with polluted elements, the waters appear to be unclean. We must remember that the Ganga water, like the nature of the soul, is never contaminated.
Like the filtering of this water, we must begin by filtering out all polluted elements within our selves so that we can face the challenges of this world with positive, forward-thinking consciousness. True action begins within ourselves, but we must begin now, and move quickly, because it may already be too late.
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Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007
Hey Bigfoot…
What is your ecological footprint? Take the quiz.
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Sunday, May 20th, 2007
Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross, The Independent
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: “There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.”
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.
No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.
German research has long shown that bees’ behaviour changes near power lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: “I am convinced the possibility is real.”
The case against handsets
Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.
Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today’s teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.
Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of “text thumb”, a form of RSI from constant texting.
Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.
See Video: Bumble Bees & Killer Cell Phones