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Australians of the future will look back on [opposition leader Tony] Abbott’s campaign with pity and shame. The pity and shame posterity reserves for leaders who miss the wave of history and misjudge the big calls.
I have posted a number of blogs and documents over the past two years that address some of the common myths about Organic farming. From that, one might conclude that I am “anti-Organic,” which I am not. There are many things about Organic that I have appreciated ever since my grandfather first taught me about it in his Organic garden in the 1960s. I appreciate them more as an agricultural scientist. I would like to address five positive features in this post, and then tomorrow I will talk about the 5 things that I see as most limiting for Organic. 1. Focus on Building Soil Quality One often hears the argument that the world was always fed by Organic until the early 20 th century. That is not at all true. Pre-industrial agriculture in the US and elsewhere was degrading the soil through tillage and depleting its nutrient stores. It only “worked” because the population was small, and there was new, “virgin land” to exploit. The greatest contribution of the Organic movement of the early 20th century was its recognition of the importance of building soil quality in terms of organic matter content and the complex aggregate structure and biological activity that come with that. Neither pre-industrial farming or early industrial farming had that soil health focus. The importance of soil health is much more widely appreciated today, but it started with Organic. 2. The Use of Cover-Cropping and Biological Nitrogen Fixation Cover cropping is the practice of planting a single or mixed stand to grow after an annual crop is harvested so that it grows until winter sets in and then again in the early spring before planting of the next crop. This cover crop is not harvested and serves instead as a way to “feed” the soil ecosystem and build up organic matter. The cover crop can include legumes which have the ability to “fix” nitrogen from the air ( with the help of a bacterial symbionts ) and reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer that is needed for the following crop. This practice in not unique to Organic but is more common on Organic farms. Annual crops followed by cover crops are a reasonable imitation of the perennial prairie biome that created such fertile soils prior to cultivation
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The Five Best Things About Organic Farming
Clean-tech: a decade of explosive growth with more to come What a difference a decade makes. Once shunned as an industry only a tree-hugger could love, clean-tech has blossomed into an economic heavyweight, according to a report from research firm Clean Edge Inc. Companies working on green construction and the smart grid are proliferating, the study said. From less than 10,000 hybrid electric vehicles in 2000, now more than 1.4 million are speeding around U.S. roads. The solar photovoltaics market grew an average of 40% each year over the past decade to $71.2 billion in 2010 from $2.5 billion in 2000
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March 16 News: Clean tech’s decade of explosive growth; DOE aims for $1 a watt solar by 2017; NOAA data shows warming world
HP this week outlined its vision for the future of information technology: to provide seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for the connected world. The convergence of cloud computing and connectivity is fundamentally changing how IT is delivered and how information is consumed. Powerful trends like consumerisation, cloud computing and connectivity are redefining the way people live, businesses operate and the world works. Traditional on-premise, proprietary computing resources are gradually being complemented and even replaced by the massive, agile and open computing resources of the cloud. Meanwhile, the cloud is combining with mobility to create ubiquitous connectivity. In HP’s view, a hybrid environment that combines the best of traditional environments with private and public clouds will be the prevailing model for many large enterprises for a long time. HP Chief Executive Officer Léo Apotheker has committed to continue enhancing HP’s offerings across its broad hardware, software and services portfolio to meet evolving customer demands while also leveraging its core strengths to develop the cloud- and connectivity-based solutions of the future to meet the needs of consumers, small and midsize companies and large enterprises
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HP aims for connected future in the cloud
A Go Car car sharing lot in San Francisco It wasn’t that long ago that an industry trade show in Vegas would be the last place you’d expect to hear about environmentalism and sustainability. That’s changed dramatically… CES is just the largest example of an industry event that’s incorporated green elements in a big way. Last week, Enterprise Holding’s director of corporate sustainability Lee Broughton brought the concept to a very different Vegas-based event: the Car Rental Show
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Could Car Rental become the New Normal?