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Eco info and links
Let us pledge to build a healthy organic future of peace, justice, sustainability, and participatory democracy. Let us promise one another today that we will rescue and re-stabilize our climate, clean up our air and water, rebuild our soils, and protect our precious biodiversity from the ravages of "profit-at-any-cost" corporations and indentured politicians and scientists.

Here you'll find links and information on conservation, recycling and sustainability issues, which may be of use to you in your quest for knowledge on how to make a difference in this world.
For example: Sustainable fishing information - Southern Africa: SASSI.
Permaculture - click on this link: http://naturalfreechoice.com/
  
Permaculture: If you are planning to be food sustainable a permaculture garden is an excellent idea. A permaculture garden can be built in a rural or urban area. In permaculture practices the place chosen to built the garden is often referred as “site” and the process is called “site design”.    

Efficiency is a key in these designs; we should observe the conditions and patterns in the area so that with the minimum effort and resources we can obtain the best results or what is called “higher yields” -  high outputs with the minimum inputs, and to protect the earth at the same time. You can start with a small area then expand. Also you can work it with a group of friends or family. Check out this site:


Click on the link below to read about Monsanto and the Frankenfood revolution they offer...........if you dare! Be scared - be VERY scared. The BioDonk took one look at this company's plans and was last seen heading off at a pretty fair imitation of a gallop to buy seeds for everything he could, before they are all GMO'd out of existence.............

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19331.cfm .
http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

There are five solid reasons that genetic engineering is not right for agriculture:
One: it's bad science. It was developed on the basis of flawed assumptions, which have since been discredited by the scientific community.
Two: it's bad biology. It was deployed without regard for its potential for genetic contamination and its risks to human health.
Three: it's bad social policy. It puts control over seeds and the fundamentals of our food and farms into the hands of a few corporations who have their own, not our, best interests in mind.
Four: it's bad economics. After billions of dollars and thirty years, only a few products have been commercialized, and they offer nothing new. No one asked for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and given a choice, consumers would reject them.
Five: it's bad farming. GMOs don't address the real issues plaguing agriculture; they're designed to substitute for or increase the use of proprietary weed and pest control chemicals. Patented and genetically altered seeds perpetuate the very worst problems of the industrial food system, and they are undermining the autonomy of the farmers who use them.

Factory farming

A small part of the outrageous cruelty inherent in factory farming has seeped into the public consciousness lately.  Mercy for Animals filmed the gruesome deaths of thousands of male chicks at a single facility, ground up alive because the egg industry has no use for them. All over the Internet and the news, the video shocked millions of people who had no idea that this is standard practice.

In a sense, these chicks are the lucky ones. Their sisters face lives that will be hell on earth. Their beaks cut off without anesthetic and crammed six or more to a cage, each will have less than a square foot of wire mesh on which to spend her life. Pigs, cows, turkeys and broiler chickens endure similar fates on 'modern' factory farms. Gross overcrowding and anesthetic-free castration, tail-docking, and ear-cutting are all standard practice on the modern farm. In the hypercompetitive world of industrial agriculture, the comfort of the animals is not a consideration.

Monsanto and the Deadly Threat of GMO Biofuels, Geoengineering, and Climate Change Frankencrops

One of the most deadly threats to our already destabilized climate is the Monsanto corporation. Not only do Monsanto's GMO and hybrid seeds demand massive amounts of petroleum-based pesticides and chemical fertilizers; not only are millions of acres of Monsanto's crops being planted on clear-cut rainforests and denuded prairie lands and savannahs; not only are Monsanto's corn and soy beans the feedstocks for the multi-billion dollar industrial biofuels sector that uses up far more fossil fuels than it saves; not only are Monsanto's Frankenfeeds the grub of choice for factory farm livestock; but, in addition, Monsanto's propaganda machine is working 24/7 to mislead the public and tell us not to worry about climate change. One of the most crazed solutions to climate change is the so-called technology of Geoengineering. The message of the Geoengineering elite is simple: Don't worry. Trust us. Companies like Monsanto will give us fast-growing genetically engineered trees to replace the ones we've already whacked down. GE fish farms will replace the fish and marine life in the dying oceans. Genetically engineered livestock won't belch and fart so much methane gas. And hell, even if the climate and growing season never get back to normal, Monsanto et al. will deliver us drought and flood-resistant seed Frankencrops so we won't all starve. OCA's advice: don't hold your breath for Monsanto and the other Geoengineers to save us.

For an overview on Geoengineering as a false solution to the climate crisis see:

handsoffmotherearth.org
The Organic Answer to Hunger: "We reaffirm that our ecological food provision actually feeds the large majority of people all over the world in both rural and urban areas (more than 75%). Our practices focus on food for people, not profit for corporations. It is healthy, diverse, localized, and cools the planet."

"... Our practices, because they prioritise feeding people locally, minimize waste and losses of food and do not create the damage caused by industrial production systems. Peasant agriculture is resilient and can adapt to and mitigate climate change..."

"We call for a reframing of research, using participatory methods, that will support our ecological model of food provision. We are the innovators building on our knowledge and skills. We rehabilitate local seeds systems and livestock breeds and fish/aquatic species for a changing climate..."

"... We commit to shorten distances between food provider and consumer. We will strengthen urban food movements and advance urban and peri-urban agriculture. We will reclaim the language of food emphasising nutrition and diversity in diets that exclude meat provided from industrial systems."   - From the People's Food Sovereignty Now! Declaration, November 2009"   

Change the World: Go Organic

"If you do just one thing to change the world, go organic."

"Going organic is the single most critical (and most DOABLE) action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis. Every acre of ground that's farmed organically has the potential to pull thousands of pounds of warming greenhouse gases out of our air."

"Organic farming is a real, attainable solution to our current global climate crisis! Organic farming can actually remove greenhouse gases from the air - helping to reverse the climate crisis!"

"Organic living can stop the climate crisis. When you combine the impact of protecting the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil (which absorb and neutralize carbon) and eliminating all the toxic chemicals (and their packaging and the energy spent producing them), the carbon problem in our atmosphere is practically solved. We still need more renewable energy, but restoring the earth's ability to sequester carbon is a good place to start. And you'll do it while eating."

-Maria Rodale, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe

As you look around at the environmental crisis enveloping our planet, do you ever stop and think, "What can I do?" In Organic Manifesto, Maria Rodale, CEO of Rodale and granddaughter of the man who started the modern-day organic food movement, answers that question firmly: Buy organic food.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20969.cfm
Ontario, Canada farmers planted 2.4 million acres of soybeans and just over 2 million acres of corn. That's nearly half of all cropland in the province, a near-colonization of Ontario farms by the soy and corn industry.
It has provided an abundance of cheap calories for a food system that operates by Doritos economics. A bushel of corn produces some 440 two-ounce bags of 99-cent chips.

Farmer grosses $3.70 for the bushel of corn, Doritos more than $440.

Interested? read the full article here:  http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19353.cfm
This is an article on the world's excessive use of nitrogen fertilisers:

 http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2207

Lots of eco-stuff here: http://www.twilightearth.com/ and here:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/.

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