More Brisbane forums on food and the future
I’ve written here before about forums I’ve been involved in on food and climate change. There are a couple more public forums in Brisbane over the next week for people interested in further exploring practical ways for positive change in this area.
One is on tomorrow night (Thurs 20th) at the Southbank campus of Griffith Uni, organised by local group Food Connect, which encourages and supports local farmers. The topic is “Sorting out local food for a sustainable future” and features Professor John Whitelegg, the editor of the journal World Transport Policy and Practice, plus guest panellists Robert Pekin from Food Connect; & Dr Kristen Lyons and Dr Jago Dodson from Griffith University. Click here for more details.
Currently we eat oil. We use it to grow food, move food around the world, process food and go to the supermarket to buy food. In an oil constrained world struggling with climate change and seeking to switch land to feed cars and not people, this is not very intelligent. The presentation will explore the issue and build a practical sustainable alternative based on international experience in celebrating and facilitating high quality local food.
The other forum is at noon on Friday 28th November at QUT’s Garden’s Point campus. It is organised by the Institute for Sustainable Resources and is on the topic of Zero Waste and climate change. It features Gerry Gillespie, the President of Zero Waste Australia.
The handling of the waste stream is an investment which all communities make, if this investment is correctly made it can change the entire economic base of many small communities. The opportunity to change lies in the ability to reach back to our past to empower the link between the community and its food supply and to change the perceptions we have of waste.
This one is free and is at Room V714 Level 7, V Block, QUT Gardens Point Campus.
ELSEWHERE: An article worth reading by Geoff Russell at Online Opinion on the topic of food and greenhouse.
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
philip travers
Geoff Russell is a smart-arse,as much as anyone else who he implies as such by suggestion.There is ample reason to believe cattle do well in forested areas,but the problem remains,that if it is private land,the trees or the land,at times could be put to better use,including letting all the native botanics recover.Trees and other plant species do not have to be harmed by cattle behaviour at all,if intelligence is applied.To set one self up as a critic of all things government,I do regularly,and Shamefully sometimes,I recognise government bodies are on the ball.I dont think Russell has much of an urgent creative need to prove he is absolutely right about every implication of what he states.Rather hide behind seemingly intelligent observations,when cattle farmers etcetera have to be the enemy,because they produce the initial goods of consumption.Truly,as a vegetarian,I do not want to see cattle and dairy farmers run down in this matter.He can also take his chances by the side of the road,as road kill.I have noted even the prisoners who end up in our prisons are humans,so why have the animal producers been given the Bad Daddy treatment!?As for artificial fertilisers,good argument,but not good enough,there needs to continuous research on what is soil,there may well be,one day,a happy and constant medium,that artificial fertilisers are apt with the biological basis of soil and plant crop.Let that day speed ,because,I dont want to be part of divisions that maybe unnecessary!? There are choices and alternatives on the horizon..lets get there!?
Nov 19th, 2008
LORIKEET
Here are a few new ideas I’ve seen or heard recently.
Bamboo is now available in the shops as a knitting yarn, and it isn’t at all prickly.
I thought we were told that bamboo forests were being cut down to grow palm oil. To my knowledge, palm oil is a trans fat, very bad for our health. I mostly bake my own cakes to avoid its consumption.
They should leave the bamboo forests alone, so the pandas can eat and the forests themselves can sequester carbon stones in the soil. They could harvest a bit for knitting purposes and furniture making only.
If you sprout barley grains and feed them to cattle, they put on 1 kg more per day than they do eating dry grain. Consequently the grain goes much further. A woman on TV said it only cost her $1.00 a day to feed her horse barley sprouts.
Now the government wants to import bananas from The Philippines, even though our farmers generally produce a plentiful supply. I guess they must want to break our farmers financially, while bringing in bananas which could potentially spread 3 or 4 unwanted viruses through the crops grown here.
We all need to eat some oils, otherwise we won’t produce any of the hormones which make our bodies function. I think we should avoid genetically modified foods that are resistant to herbicides, for fear of dying of starvation or toxicity in the longer term.
I’ve also heard that the additives in pre-packaged foods increase appetite so manufacturers can sell us more. Supermarket shelves are filled with expensive easy to prepare rubbish.
If people want to save money and lose weight, they could buy food that’s fresh and cook it themselves. If they don’t have much time, they could quickly prepare a salad – but not from those EXPENSIVE little bags of salad leaves containing frogs. You have to wash them anyway.
Nov 21st, 2008
LORIKEET
Phil:
I really appreciate your broad perspective on this issue.
On the issue of Zero Waste, our local council has been talking about increasing pickups of recyclables to weekly instead of fortnightly.
I don’t really think it would help, because it seems to me that more rubbish will be generated.
I could easily survive with a monthly or even 6-weekly pickup, even with more people living in the house. I use very few bottles and cans, and cardboard packaging can be easily folded down.
Perhaps the idea is a good excuse to increase council rates???
Nov 21st, 2008
red crab
if humans only need clean air water and food
then why do we polute the air and water then distroy our food buy building housing estates on market gardens
i think we should support our local food growers for they are very important ppl.
we should be building our communitys around our market gardens and supporting them not building housing estates over them.
Nov 23rd, 2008
ABClex
It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness.
Contemporary medicine applies health science, biomedical research, and medical technology to diagnose and treat injury and disease, typically through medication, surgery, or some other form of therapy.
The word medicine is derived from the Latin ars medicina, meaning the art of healing.
Though medical technology and clinical expertise are pivotal to contemporary medicine, successful face-to-face relief of actual suffering continues to require the application of ordinary human feeling and compassion, known in English as bedside manner.
As science and technology developed, medicine became more reliant upon medications. Pharmacology developed from herbalism and many drugs are still derived from plants (atropine, ephedrine, warfarin, aspirin, digoxin, vinca alkaloids, taxol, hyoscine, etc). The first of these was arsphenamine / Salvarsan discovered by Paul Ehrlich in 1908 after he observed that bacteria took up toxic dyes that human cells did not. Vaccines were discovered by Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur. The first major class of antibiotics was the sulfa drugs, derived by French chemists originally from azo dyes. This has become increasingly sophisticated; modern biotechnology allows drugs targeted towards specific physiological processes to be developed, sometimes designed for compatibility with the body to reduce side-effects. Genomics and knowledge of human genetics is having some influence on medicine, as the causative genes of most monogenic genetic disorders have now been identified, and the development of techniques in molecular biology and genetics are influencing medical technology, practice and decision-making.
AddonS^
Sahachiro Hata discovered the anti-syphilitic activity of this compound in 1908 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich, during a survey of hundreds of newly synthesized organic arsenical compounds. Ehrlich had theorized that by screening many compounds a drug could be discovered with anti-microbial activity. Ehrlich’s team began their search for such a “magic bullet” among chemical derivatives of the dangerously toxic drug atoxyl. This was the first organized team effort to optimize the biological activity of a lead compound through systematic chemical modifications, the basis for nearly all modern pharmaceutical research.
Arsphenamine was marketed under the trade name Salvarsan in 1910. It was also called 606, because it was the 606th compound synthesized for testing [In Germany it was the practice to designate compounds by their development number. Another compound known commonly in Germany by its number is Parathion, which was the 605th compound to be developed in search for insecticide. It is commonly known as E605 (E stands for Entwicklungsnummer (German for "development number")]. Salvarsan was the first organic anti-syphillitic, and a great improvement over the inorganic mercury compounds that had been used previously. A more soluble (but slightly less effective) arsenical compound, Neosalvarsan, (neoarsphenamine), became available in 1912. These arsenical compounds came with considerable risk of side effects, and they were supplanted as treatments for syphilis in the 1940s by penicillin.
Nov 28th, 2008
Foexepefabjeabs
Hi. I repeatedly announce this forum. This is the oldest together unqualified to ask a topic.
How multifarious in this forum are references progressive behind, knavish users?
Can I depute all the advice that there is?
Dec 1st, 2008
LORIKEET
Could the person with the indecipherable name please run that past us again in English?
I’m not sure if it computes.
Dec 1st, 2008