drip irrigation and drip irrigation
drip irrigation
drip irrigation
drip irrigation
All of them are drip irrigation systems.
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The one thing depleting faster than oil is the credibility of those measuring it | George Monbiot
According to farm scientists at Cornell University, cultivating one hectare of maize in the United States requires 40 litres of petrol and 75 litres of diesel. The amazing productivity of modern farm labour has been purchased at the cost of a dependency on oil. Unless farmers can change the way it's grown, a permanent oil shock would price food out of the mouths of many of the world's people. Any responsible government would be asking urgent questions about how long we have got.
via guardian.co.uk
Monbiot on oil and food security - again, the question on everyone's lips is "why is the government not taking action to address this urgent issue now?" Oh well, if we really are nine meals from anarchy at some point soon, maybe the government will have the decision made for them...
Hungry for change - Red Pepper
If we’re going to feed the nine billion people projected to be alive by 2050 ethically and sustainably, we all need to eat less meat and dairy produce (both major sources of greenhouse gas emissions and also unhealthy fat in western diets). And when we do eat it, it should have been raised to higher environmental and welfare standards... We could be supporting an army of artisan food producers to take back control of the food system, use sustainable ingredients and open local shops and markets. How better to cut transport fuel than re-creating the ability for people to be able to buy their food a short walk away – and have pleasurable interactions with their community in the process?
via redpepper.org.uk
Another excellent article from Red Pepper. One fifth of the UK's emissions are from food and farming, but the Government's approach to tackling this problem and increasing "food security" is fragmented, ineffective and often relies on individual businesses and suppliers to "do the right thing". Surely the Government should be taking a strategic lead on this issue.
Abandoned grain elevator in corn field, Iowa, USA
This is an abandoned grain elevator in a corn field in Iowa that I ran across one morning on a photo-shoot. I really liked the symmetry, so I chose to place the building in the middle. The road I was on was an access road created for constructing the wind turbines. I saw the same image photographed by a different Omaha photographer, but now this scene is totally changed with the finished wind turbines in the background. Progress on one hand, but I'm not so sure they do anything to beautify the Iowa countryside. I guess the only way to recreate this image would be to use photoshop to remove the turbines, but that just doesn't seem right somehow.
You can License this stock photo at Getty Images from the Image bank collection.
Facts: Grain elevators are buildings or complexes of buildings for storage and shipment of grain. Older grain elevators and bins often were constructed of framed or cribbed wood and were prone to fire. This one sits abandoned.
Keywords: Built Structure, Freshness, Growth, Contrasts, Past, Decline, Abundance, Agriculture, Food And Drink, Horizontal, Outdoors, Rural Scene, Harvesting, USA, Lush Foliage, Corn Crop, Field, Day, Iowa, Change, Abandoned, Obsolete, Organic, Grain Elevator, No People, Building Exterior, Photography, Single Object
Exactly
From a page on the website of photographer Jason Fulford and a book called Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin.
Happy Cows are from....AUCKLAND !!??
Filming of state milk ads is heading abroad to save moola
Unions are sour on The California Milk Advisory Board's plan to shoot "Happy Cow" commercials in New Zealand.
By Richard Verrier
November 13, 2009
The California Milk Advisory Board may have shot itself in the hoof.
The board, which promotes the state's dairy farmers and is overseen by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, is again preparing to film commercials touting California milk from California cows -- in New Zealand.
In January, it plans to shoot part of its new series of 10 California "Happy Cows" TV commercials in Auckland, taking advantage of that country's low production costs.
It comes just after California began offering film tax incentives this summer to reverse so-called runaway production that has caused the loss of thousands of jobs in the Los Angeles area as other states and countries have siphoned off film and TV crews with lucrative financial incentives.
Under the state's first film tax credit program, which took effect in July, California is offering $100 million in credits for about 50 film and TV projects. Commercials, however, were excluded from the program.
"Obviously, the governor prefers that everyone produce their film, television and other projects in California," said Camille Anderson, spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who strongly backed the measure.
Local union officials were cheesed off to learn that the state milk board was farming out TV work to foreign locales.
"It's totally out of line," said Ed Duffy, business agent for Teamsters Local 399, which represents location managers, studio drivers and casting directors. "If they're promoting California products, they should be shooting in California."
Milk board officials said the New Zealand shoot represented a "minor portion of production" and was a matter of simple economics. The board solicited bids from around the world, and the New Zealand site was the lowest, said Michael Freeman, the board's vice president of advertising.
"It was a no-brainer," he said. "The dairy industry is facing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. We have a fiduciary responsibility to spend their hard-earned dollars as efficiently as we can. In this particular case, we found significant cost savings by shooting a portion of this product overseas."
The board, which receives funding from dairy farmers, has been running TV ads promoting California's "Happy Cows" for nearly a decade. The latest series, which began last year, features New Zealand cows representing bovines from around the world auditioning to be the next California Happy Cow. Like "American Idol," TV viewers can then go on the board's website and vote for their favorite cow.
Although Los Angeles remains the bread-and-butter capital for commercial shoots, it faces growing competition from foreign locales, including countries such as Argentina and New Zealand that offer substantial financial incentives.
The New Zealand shoot will be filmed over three days on the same sound stage the board used for last year's TV campaign.
Freeman stressed that all post-production work will be done in California, where it will take six to eight weeks to finish each commercial.
Santa Monica-based Bob Industries is a producer, while the creative side is handled by ad agency Deutsche.
Freeman declined to reveal the budget for the commercial shoot or how much the board is saving by filming in New Zealand. He added that any scenes involving California cows will be filmed in state.
"We would never misrepresent California cows by shooting them elsewhere," he said.
richard.verrier@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
From the Guardian archive: Outrages in Kent (1830)
The fact is, that the labouring classes have been long borne down, oppressed in every way by their superiors, and by the political system upheld by their superiors. They have been gradually thrust down, and trampled on, despised, driven to starvation, misery, and despair. The tendency of the whole social arrangement in England for many years has been to foster and protect the great properties at the expense of the poor and industrious. The labourer has been literally ground down to the very dust. Every law, every tax, every consequent change in manners, has been prejudicial to him. Consolidation of estates, destruction of small farms, enclosure of common lands, heavy impositions on the necessaries of life, the accursed game laws, the vexatious tyranny exercised by the rural magistracy, the canting, hypocritic interference with his few remaining pleasures under the pretence of teaching him religion and morality, form part of the list of those "unfavourable circumstances" which have made him what he is.
via guardian.co.uk
A timely reminder from this day in 1830 about the devastation the agricultural revolution caused to ordinary people (and the land). Ah, how times have changed...
