Discovery Ramblings - May 7, 2021
Discovery Ramblings - May 7, 2021
Randy Hooper - Discovery Organics
For decades there has been an argument, over-played by the media, of the inherent benefits of organic food – with opinion and study on both sides – is it really better? Is it really worth the money? Finally a very large and very long study has come out that pretty much settles this.
3 Surprising Lessons From the World’s Largest Nutrition Study
Beginning in 2009, the on-going NutriNet-Santé study has collected data on nearly 200,000 participants, leading researchers to important conclusions about our diets.
Here’s an excerpt from an article about the study, not the study itself, which you can access here:
Association of Frequency of Organic Food Consumption With Cancer Risk
….. published in JAMA Internal Medicine, took data on 68, 946 NutriNet-Santé participants and found that 1,340 of them had some form of cancer. After looking at the amount of organic food consumed, they determined that “high organic food scores were inversely associated with the overall risk of cancer.” In other words, the more organic food they ate, the lower the rate of cancer. The researchers suspect this is the case due to the lack of pesticides present in organic food. In particular, they believe the pesticides malathion, diazinon, tetrachlorvinphos, and parathion are the culprits.
Another study echoes this conclusion, as the researchers found lower pesticide concentrations in the urine of NutriNet-Santé participants that ate more organic food. They claim that “Our findings confirm that exposure to certain organophosphate and pyrethroïd pesticides in adults may be lowered by switching from conventional to organic foods.” They also say that switching to organic fruits and vegetables seems to have the highest impact, as these tend to have the least pesticide residues.
Furthermore, a study from the British Journal of Nutrition found a strong connection between organic food and body mass index (BMI). The researchers took data from 62,224 NutriNet-Santé study participants and found that the higher percentage of organic food in their diets, the less BMI they were likely to have. They suggested that this could be because organic farming practices lead to higher nutritional content: “these results may contribute to fine-tune nutritional guidelines by accounting for farming practices in food production.”
So there is that. Here’s a few more things worth discussing today:
SEEDS – I want to delve into the seed world in a future ramble, because no seeds = no vegetables, as you know. We got this tweet from High Mowing Seeds in the U.S. who are likely the largest “all organic” seed company in the world. They are the go-to for most of our growers in Mexico, and a major organic broccoli seed producer for the US and Mexico, and when your major seed producer for a major commodity is for all intents and purposes completely hooped, it really brings this situation home.
The drought in southern Oregon has been going on for some time.
Here’s a bit of an article on this situation found here – the last paragraph is the moist poignant:
Epic drought means water crisis on Oregon-California border
Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of several tribes.
Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is working with congressional delegates, the White House and federal agencies to find relief for those affected.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation briefed irrigators, tribes and environmental groups early Wednesday after delaying the decision a month. The federally owned irrigation project will draw 33,000 acre-feet of water from Upper Klamath Lake, which farmers said was roughly 8 percent of what they need in such a dry year. Water deliveries will also start June 1, two months later than usual, for the 1,400 irrigators who farm the 225,000 acres (91,000 hectares).
“The simple fact is it just hasn’t rained or snowed this year. We all know how dry our fields are, and the rest of the watersheds are in the same boat. ... There is no easy way to say this,” Ben DuVal, president of the Klamath Water Users Association, told several dozen irrigators who gathered in Klamath Falls on Wednesday morning to hear the news.
Here’s another drought related article, from Taiwan, an island nation no one would expect to experience drought:
Why the world should pay attention to Taiwan's drought
Taiwan is supposed to be one of the rainiest places in the world - its climate is subtropical in the northern and central regions, and tropical in the south. Typhoons are common in summer and autumn, and it also gets monsoons. It rains so often here that umbrellas are placed at subway stations and businesses for anyone to borrow.
But something unusual happened last year - no typhoon hit the island. And there has been little rain in the past year.
That has plunged Taiwan into its worst drought in 56 years. Many of its reservoirs are at less than 20% capacity, with water levels at some falling below 10%.
Tourists visit the depleted Baoshan No. 2 Reservoir in Hsinchu - Reuters
At the Baoshan No. 2 Reservoir in Hsinchu County, one of the primary water sources for Taiwan's $100bn semiconductor industry, the water level is at the lowest it's ever been - only 7% full.
If this and other reservoirs in Taiwan dry up, it could be detrimental for the global electronics sector, because so many of the products people use are powered by semiconductors - computer chips - made by Taiwanese companies. The sector is a big contributor to the island's overall economy, but it requires a lot of water to clean the wafers that go into many tech devices. Struggling to ensure supplies, the government stopped irrigating more than 74,000 hectares of farmland last year.
It has also turned off the tap for residents and businesses in three cities and counties, including one of its biggest municipalities, Taichung, two days a week.
In dry areas, high-volume industrial users including semiconductor manufacturers have been asked to reduce water usage by 13%, and non-industrial users, such as hair salons and car wash businesses, by 20%.
Farmers have been the hardest hit.
Farmer Chuang Cheng-deng's former rice field lies cracked and fallow - BBC
Like thousands of crop planters cross Taiwan, Chuang Cheng-deng, a fourth generation rice farmer in Hsinchu, has been forced to leave his seven hectares of land fallow.
"We also think about our country's economy, but they shouldn't completely stop providing water. You can give us water for two days a week or one day. Farmers will find a way. But now they've completely cut our water, farmers can't find a way out. You're focusing entirely on semiconductors," Mr Chuang says.
"Taiwan has been suffering from a significant decrease in the number of rainy days each year since the 1960s," says Hsu Huang-hsiung, a climate change expert at government-funded think tank Academia Sinica.
In parts of the island, the number of rainy days each year has fallen by about 50.
"Climate change has never been a centre of discussion in our government or society. Although everybody talks about being afraid of climate change, it tends to be lip service. They express care, but don't take any action," Mr Hsu says.
A new de-salinization facility has been built in Hsinchu to deal with the current drought, but it can only treat 13,000 tons of water daily, a drop in the bucket compared to the 170,000 tons used each day just by Hsinchu Science Park, where many semiconductor makers are based.
Rainy season cannot come soon enough in central Mexico. Every year Mexico deals with more and more wildfires, and this year is no different. “The article is about limes, not lemons, by the way. In Mexico lemons are what we call limes - green traditional and Persian limes.”
Mexico: Forest fires, potential strike threaten lemon harvests
City below, forests and lime plantations burning above.
Mexican lemon production is being threatened by drought and forest fires, which have destroyed almost 1,000 hectares of the crop, according to a Mexican newspaper El Sol de Acapulco.
There has been a considerable increase in reports compared to last year with 129 fires and an average of 29,700 hectares affected. There has been a considerable increase in reports compared to last year with 129 fires and an average of 29,700 hectares affected, according to the Secretary of State Civil Protection, Marco César Mayares Salvador.
"Ninety to ninety-five percent of these forest fires have to do with human involvement and we have detected many with purposes to clear land in order to sell it, so we urge the city councils to comply with the law and its regulations for construction and urban development," he was reported as saying. Mayares Salvador pointed out that the forest fire situation has become more critical this season and said that last year up until this date there were 98 fires with 10,900 hectares damaged. This shows an additional 27 forest fires and six thousand hectares damaged.