China 2035 Bigger Than USA

Farmers Are Being Pushed to Increase in Size Or Get Out! How to NOT Be One of Them

It doesn’t matter what size it is, your farm is an ever increasing asset, even more so if you can provide chemical free, clean food.

Australian conventional food prices are forecast to quadruple in price over the next five years. The reason is Asia. We are in the middle of a global revolution in the way we think, eat and live.

This week I received this news from Craig Sobey who has recently toured China with representatives from five city councils, Austrade and Regional Development Victoria and reports that there is a real opportunity for all to take a significant market share in this period.

Basically, if it is Australian and premium quality there is a ready market. Australia is seen as a source of safe food regardless of whether it is organic or conventional. At this stage price does not appear in the conversation, just consistent supply and traceability. The interest in all products represented included convenience food packages (pre-cooked), meats, dairy, wines etc.

Did you know:

• This co-op now owns China’s fifth biggest supermarket chain with over 500,000 stores.
• There is a farmer’s co-op representative with over five million members?
•  6,000 of them over 30,000 sq metres. The supermarket turned over 18 billion dollars in 2007 with revenues growing by 150 % per annum on average.
•  They have offered an entire Australian Pavilion for Aussie produce including organics in their premiere stores in Beijing and Shanghai. Organic Wines were the big attraction.,
•  China creates 80,000 millionaires each year.
•  There are over 350 million middle class and a niche market of super wealthy Chinese? (Craig told me that French wine is selling as much as $600 a bottle and even one watermelon cost $40!).

However there is real interest in China for organics (which they refer to as Green Food) and particularly food safety/ traceability which is the paramount concern for all serious buyers they met. A new Australian wide network (not for profit) company is being formed for all sections of the organic market. This is so that a pool of members can tackle the export markets together. Its goal is to give you an export premium to help make membership very appealing.

The time is ripe for all growers to stop and think about the future of their farming. What choice will you make? Your future will depend on it. Even if all of Australia’s certified organic farmers, processors etc. were to unite they could not supply the market in China alone and therefore there is untapped potential over the next ten to twenty years to be further developed.

Farming Secrets is a club for farmers who want to farm healthier and more profitably. Farming Secrets reconnects them with the experts through supporting them with one to one help and constant support from experts in order to fast track their farming goals that much quicker.

Hugo Disler

For More information about Natural and Organic Farming visit http://www.farmingsecretsblog.com

To discover the secrets of natural and profitable farming, visit http://www.farmingsecrets.com

Water Used in Generating US Electricity

In my four-article series on water use (The Resource Matrix), I took you on a journey to reveal the layers of The Resource Matrix in order to help you understand how water will be a highly contested commodity tomorrow, possibly as much as oil is fought over today.

You learned about your water footprint and a website where you can calculate it, virtual water and virtual water transfers, whereby choices here affect water availability elsewhere, to the point of some people not having enough water to drink in order to produce inexpensive dyed cotton, along with insane choices such as growing crops in the desert.

You learned that on average it takes 1854 to 3000 gallons to produce one pound of beef.

Yep, it’s it’s been a great journey through the sidetrip city of the Resource Matrix.

Today, we’ve found the on-ramp to the Green Lighting Interstate and are driving to take a look at water use in generating electricity.

For a simple reason. It takes a lot of water to produce electricity.

How much? 5% of all US water? 10%? Can’t be as high as 25%?

Electricity and water?

I thought the issue was fossil fuels and greenhouse gases

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated water use in the United States in 2000.

Their grand total: 408 billion gallons per day withdrawn for all uses.

The number 1 spot, weighing in at 48%, was thermoelectric power.

Irrigation earned the runner-up prize at 34%.

The 195 billion gallons need to come from somewhere, and actions have consequences. Environmental ones, as in 40 million fish in the Great Lakes killed each year due to being trapped against water intake devices. That’s a lot of Friday night fish dinners.

How much water is used in generating electricity?

Large fossil fuel and nuclear plants require incredible quantities of water for cooling and ongoing maintenance.

Water for thermoelectric power is used in generating electricity with steam-driven turbine generators. It uses 48% of all water in the US.

According to the Pace Energy and Climate Center, the amount of water used for power plant cooling varies by each specific power plant’s electricity generating technology and size. Nuclear reactors require the most water for cooling, and baseload fossil fuel power plants come in second.

The Salem Nuclear Generating Station alone takes 3 billion gallons a day from the Delaware Bay, according to the Pace Energy and Climate Center.

Nationally:

• Steam electric generating plants across the nation draw in more than 200 billion gallons per day.
• Nuclear and fossil fuel power plants drink over 185 billion gallons of water per day.
• Geothermal power plants add another 2 billion or so gallons a day.
• Most renewable energy technologies require little or no water for cooling.

These numbers are starting to sound like the same ones the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank use.

Imagine watching your favorite science program where astronomers explain that the universe is 78 billion light-years wide (78 billion units of 5,878,630,000,000 miles). There is absolutely nothing in our experience to help us wrap our mind around it.

How much is 3 billion gallons per day?

The Delaware Bay feeds Salem Nuclear Generating Station 3 billion gallons a day.

Imagine this rectangle: a football field with end zones (360 feet long x 160 feet wide). Then add to it walls on each side of the rectangle to create a container to hold the 3 billion gallons you pour into it.

How high do you need to make those walls to contain 3 billion gallons? 6915 feet high. Or 1.3 miles.

Maybe 6915 feet high is still hard to imagine. So how deep do you cover the field in order to feed the Salem plant every minute? Answer: 5 feet deep. Every minute.

48% of all water use: We’re Number One!

How much is 195 billion gallons per day?

Using the USGS figure for 2000, thermoelectric power nationwide used 195 billion gallons a day, or 48% of all water used in the US. My guess is the water use has grown since then.

How high are the walls on our football field now? 449,475 feet or 85 miles high. We’re back to US Treasury and astronomy numbers again.

So, let’s get a higher-level view to help us.

Lake Erie holds 116 cubic miles of water.

Nationally, thermoelectric power uses 195 billion gallons a day - or 64.2 cubic miles a year.

We drain Lake Erie every 22 months.

But the water used is returned to its source.

So what’s the issue about water use?

Power generation returns 98% of the water back to its source (bay, lake, river, ocean).

It’s the environmental consequences.

The Pace Energy and Climate Center explains it neatly:

Withdrawal of large volumes of surface water for either power plant cooling or hydropower generation can kill fish, larvae and other organisms trapped against intake structures (impinged), or swept up (entrained) in the flow through the different sections of a power plant.

Examples include:

• The Salem Nuclear Generating Station is responsible for an annual 11 percent reduction in weakfish and 31 percent reduction in bay anchovy.
• At the Indian Point 2 and 3 reactors on the Hudson River, the number of fish impinged totaled over 1.5 million fish in 1987.
• The 90 power plants using once-through-cooling on the Great Lakes kill in excess of 40 million fish per year due to impingement. (Once-through cooling needs a continual flow of new water, and uses 30 to 50 times that of a closed cycle system. Closed cycles cool down water from steam then reuse it.)

The diversion of water out of the river removes water for healthy in-stream ecosystems:

• Stretches below dams are often completely de-watered.
• Fluctuations in water flow from peaking operations create a “tidal effect,” disrupting the downstream riparian community that supports its unique ecosystem.
• A dam’s impoundment slows water flows, which hinders natural downstream migration of many fish species.
• By slowing river flows, dams also allow silt to collect on river and reservoir bottoms and bury fish spawning habitat. Silt trapped above dams accumulates heavy metals and other pollutants. Disrupting the natural flow of sediments in rivers also leads to erosion of riverbeds downstream of the dam and increases risks of floods.
• The impoundment of water by hydropower facilities fundamentally reshapes the physical habitat from a riverine to an artificial pond community.
• This often eliminates native populations of fish and other wildlife.
• Dams also impede the upstream and downstream movement of fish and other wildlife, and prevent the flow of plants and nutrients. This impact is most significant on migratory fish, which are born in the river and must migrate downstream early in life to the ocean and then migrate upstream again to lay their eggs (or “spawn”).
• As mentioned above, withdrawal of water into turbines can also impinge or entrain significant numbers of fish.

The cleanest kilowatt is the one never used:

Back to those compact fluorescent lamps and LEDs

PowerScorecard.org explains the solution:

By re-directing electricity dollars to support environmentally benign energy resources, consumers are empowered, in states that offer supply choice, to influence the existing generating resources that are deployed to meet demand.

They can also support the construction of new and cleaner electricity resources that will be built to meet overall growth in demand in the future. By supporting these power options, consumers can minimize many water use and consumption impacts. Still, directing your dollars to cleaner power products in no way helps remediate damages that already have occurred. Consumers can stop the construction of new hydropower facilities or alter conditions of siting and operation, but they cannot undo previous environmental degradation that occurred at existing hydropower facilities.

In short, reduce your use of electricity.

More Info:

We used several sources for this article, including the PowerScorecard.org website, which is produced by the Pace Energy and Climate Center, which is part of the Pace University School of Law’s Center for Environmental Legal Studies, Pace University, White Plains, New York.

On PowerScorecard, you can get:

• Ratings of Electric Power Choices for some service areas.
• More info on electricity and the environment:
  • Technologies
  • Climate change
  • Acid rain
  • Ozone depletion
  • Water use (our article today)
  • Water quality
  • Land: on-site and off-site impacts

Thanks for letting us keep you updated . . .

To your green, brighter future,

Cinnamon Alvarez,

A19

And now I would like to offer you free access to powerful info on energy efficiency that’s easy to read and cuts through all this “green” information clutter — so you can literally start making positive changes today.

You can access it now by going to: http://www.a19.com/pub/articles/

From Cinnamon Alvarez: Founder, A19 — woman-owned green manufacturer of hand-made ceramic lighting fixtures

Blogging Sustainability Pt.1

solar power roof ventilation | Protecting Our Environment

Practical Tips For Environmental And Wildlife Conservation.

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The World Energy Crisis

The world has some decisions about sources for future energy. The increase in population and increasing demand present a problem. The cost of conventional non-renewable energy sources is on the rise. Oil, gas, water, coal, and other natural resources have a limit to their supply.

Gas, Oil and petroleum products are more expensive than ever, and the supply is running thin. Many may think that the planet may never run out of these however it seems that drilling these supplies is becoming ever more difficult. There have been three major energy crises thus far.

Due to the shortage of resources and decreased output, the cost of these energy sources has increased rapidly over the years.

How long will it take before all of these resources are exhausted? The truth is that we really do not know. Experts say that 50% of the world’s supply of available oil has been exhausted. Every day the demand is increasing and it could take mere decades to exhaust the supply of crude petroleum.

What could possibly be done about this situation? How can we as a society cope with the energy crisis at hand? What can we consumers do about this? We can all start by understanding the importance and impact that energy has in our lives. These supplies of energy should not be taken for granted. Additionally we should avoid wasting energy.

There are simple things that we could do to conserve such as getting involved with a car pool, check our car tires for proper inflation, and using fuel efficient vehicles. If we can cut down on our use of fuel and oil in everyday activities we can be further prepared for the impending energy crisis.

Another way that we can cope with the energy situation is by utilizing renewable energy sources. Solar and wind power systems are becoming ever more available. These power solutions are feasible, cost effective and environmentally friendly. In addition, you save on your power bill and help contribute towards a better future for our world.

Make power at home with solar and wind energy to eliminate your power bill. Get our complete guide at EnergySolutionsDIY.com.

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Journalism For Development

The impression created by the media over years has been held with mixed feelings. Whereas some media corporate world are known to have positively helped transform societies politically, economically, culturally and technologically; some other have only torn the world apart through negative reporting that supports aggressive confrontation, glorifying terror activities to make eye-catching headlines with selfishly money motive.

Similarly, the aggressive, corrupt and oppressive groups and individuals (religiously, politically or economically) have been glorified in the way that sustains situation that steadily extinct some societies.

Their content hardly provided or suggested solutions to alarm-triggering headlines. And much of the media activities have lacked an element of social responsibility that is tangible to give a voice to the voiceless and direct transformative opportunities to the poor, disabled and other disadvantaged groups

Journaling is a key communication tool. All organisms by nature communicate either verbally or non-verbally, yet attempting to make sense of whatever cues that are exchanged or evaluated.

True, we tend to be evaluative of one another whilst trying to figure out what intentions the other party could have towards you. The aim can be to help measure up the relationship that possibly could be developed, whether health or not.

Of course, in certain encounters some people could be threatened, suspicious, lack confidence, defensively withdraw or get on well in a healthy and rewarding relationship. This, indeed, is how communities can influence attitudes and behavior towards one another. That way, we could manage, control and direct directs and behavior. What a powerful tool a pen can be!

But success through journaling it self needs a period of training and practical experience, such that we can communicate to effectively make or unmake relationships or evolve life through the aspects of observing, reading and listening to words and actions of others and things.

The primary motivators to writing is the element of having an opinion yet unique. As part of research steps, one would be required to publish a final report or summarized article from the investigations, results and analyses carried out. Other researchers or students would want to review literature about statements pending investigation. From their successes, investigators either get awards or promotion.

Through practical experience, some people make careers out of their abilities and skills to communicate effectively as writers, as advertising agents, as interpreters and, as counselors or therapists.

Secondary employment too could be provided by journalism like driving, distribution, sale or retailing, legal advising et cetera. Eventually, those associated to it could become social icons or global media giants.

On the other hand, journaling could have important health benefits as stress reliever. By writing about one’s traumatic experience, sufferer could drop so much mental toxins off him or her.

And, at the same time it would help improve on analytical and problem-solving skills crucial in successful dealing with the ever emerging challenges encountered in day-to-day life.

From the natural or ecological sense, journaling or communication significantly help to connect different elements of the eco-system -through the principles of interconnectivity and interdependence.

And through media, we can help improve the dangerous global situations as nuclear conflicts, to make the world a better place for everyone to live in. But this would only be so if we formed a common objective in solidarity to it (non-violence) under the principle of conscious non-violence through tolerance and respect for divergent views.

Green technology

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