Nom nom nom!
Courtesy Alaina B. (Flickr)
Cheeseburgers. Watermelon. Grilled corn-on-the-cob. As the promise of warmer weather inches increasingly closer, I’m already dreaming of my favorite summer foods. (I mean, really, aren’t you?? Bet you are now…)

The world’s population is reaching 9 BILLION people, and we all have to eat! (I know, “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”) In the United States, almost everyone eats incredibly well by world standards. Globally, many families are lucky to share a bowl of rice for dinner. Meanwhile, crop yields aren’t keep up with increasing demand, so world food prices are rising everyday. The developing world already experiences a food shortage, but even in the developed West, we are not completely insulated against the effects of an escalating population on global food supply. Science confirms what our guts and pocket books are already telling us – we can’t keep biggering our population without seriously thinking about how we grow and eat our food.

So what are we going to do?? Don’t despair. Thankfully, great minds are thinking about the global food crisis and considering how to ensure food security throughout the world. Many of these ideas are published in Science magazine’s recent food security issue. Scientists play an important role in boosting crop yields by researching crops and farming methods that: 1) use little water, 2) don’t deplete the soil of nutrients, and 3) increase how much food is grown per seed. Engineers and technicians are also aiding the process: plant breeders are now using robots to streamline breeding programs, which allows researchers to introduce cool new traits that allow crops to fight fungi, weeds, and viruses that threaten to wipe out entire crops (in honor of St. Patrick’s Day 2010, remember the Irish Potato Famine?).

Fertilizer: Good or Bad?: Turns out the answer is neither all good or all bad! Plants need some nutrients, but humans often overdose crops, causing soil quality (and agriculture production) to degrade.
Courtesy FreeFoto.com

Caution! Myth-busting ahead: Fertilizer is the often-suggested solution to the global food crisis, but scientists say we only need to look as far as China to see why that’s not a solution, but rather part of the problem. China consumes 36% of the world’s manmade fertilizer, making it the world’s largest user. Nitrogen is a major component of fertilizer. Nitrogen is what scientists call a “limiting nutrient” meaning “the nutrient is rare, but plants need a minimum amount to live.” Research in China has shown that sometimes there is too much of a good thing; too much fertilizer actually causes healthy soil to get sick from a nitrogen overdose.

Ensuring the world’s food security poses cultural, economic, and psychological challenges as well as scientific ones. Solutions discussed in Science’s special issue include promoting traditional mixed crop-livestock systems, local development of relevant technologies, and eating less meat. One alternative suggested that’s going to (literally) be hard to swallow: substituting African caterpillars instead of steak and other meaty favorites. (I think that’s going to be a tough sell…)

You don’t have to go too far to find people tackling the problem of food security. Right here in Minnesota, at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, the Global Landscape Initiative (GLI) program has a focus on agriculture and food systems. By studying how people use land for farming and other practices, GLI is seeking to understand how we might make better use of land to create a brighter future for humankind and the environment. Recently they made a sweet YouTube video to pose the BIG Question: Feast or Famine? I highly recommend you check it out.

Tags : agriculture, farming, food security, food crisis, population, IonE, Earth Buzz, Science magazine, fertilizer

read more... | add a comment | share

Note: original title using the term fertilizer was corrected to read atrazine

Leopard frog
Courtesy Heather Dietz

What is happening to our frogs?

A recent study showed that atrazine in pond water could lead to a higher population of snails, which harbor parasites that also infect frogs. For the study, Lucinda Johnson and her colleagues at UMD collected leopard frogs from 18 wetlands near St. Cloud, Minnesota. The researchers found a positive correlation between the amount of atrazine in a wetland and the number of parasites in that wetland's frogs. The parasite in question is a tiny worm called a trematode. They can have a negative effect on frog populations.

How atrazine effects frogs

More fertilizer = more pond scum (periphyton)
More periphyton (snail food) = more snails
More snails = more snail parasites (trematodes)
More trematodes = more trematode larva attacking tadpoles
Larva infested tadpoles and frogs have lower survival rates when atrazine is present

The trematode worm that infects the frogs gets passed to frog-eating birds like herons and egrets. Inside the birds, the worms develop to adulthood. The adults produce eggs that are released into water with the birds' feces. The eggs hatch, develop into larvae, and burrow into snails. After further development, they burrow their way out again and swim in search of tadpoles. They infect them, the tadpoles turn into frogs, and the cycle continues.

Learn more about atrazine and frogs

Source articleUMNews: The tadpoles tale .
Article in Nature: Agrochemicals increase trematode infections in a declining amphibian species

Tags : Lucinda Johnson, leopard frogs, frogs, freaky frogs, fertilizer, ecosystems, deformities, atrazine, water, environment

read more... | add a comment | share

The deadly cycle: Farming > River > Dead Zone > SHARKS!Did you know that the food we grow up here in the Midwest might cause shark attacks down in the Gulf of Mexico? Okay, I might be getting a little sensational but here is my train of thought.

• We do a ton of farming up here in the central states. This requires lots of fertilizer which in many cases eventually runs into the Mississippi River.
• The nutrients in this fertilizer flow down to the Gulf of Mexico where they cause a huge area of low oxygen in the water causing fish who can't swim long distances to die.
• Other fish that can migrate, like sharks, get the heck outta dodge and end up swimming around in larger numbers in beach areas where people swim.

It gets worse. Just today, the BBC is reporting that scientists think that this year's dead zone could grow to 8,500 sq miles, the biggest ever!

I wonder what the "tipping point" is for this issue? I'm not seriously too worried about the shark attacks. But the environmental impacts of the dead zone are huge. How bad will this have to get before people start talking about the issue of fertilizer run-off around the water cooler? Then again, maybe we can get some positive public action during the upcoming shark week, but I am guessing agricultural practices won't exactly be their focus...alas.

Related link

Dead Zone - Great resource on the science behind the Dead Zone from none other than...us, the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Tags : mississippi river, Gulf of Mexico, dead zone, fertilizer, nutrients

read more... | add a comment | share