Nadine Touzet's List: Agriculture

• land rush in rural Russia
• As a result, the business of buying and reforming collective farms is suddenly and improbably very profitable, attracting hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs, Swedish portfolio investors and even a descendant of White Russian émigré nobility
• Russia is very often perceived throughout the world as a major military power,” he told a food summit in Rome early in his tenure. “At the same time, and perhaps above and beyond anything else, Russia is a major agrarian power.”
• a significant expansion of farming capacity could add to Russia’s heft as a world power, much as its prowess in oil and natural gas aided its resurgence in recent years.

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• As Thomas Jefferson said, "Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands."
• stewards of the land
• cultivators of the earth
• We have the technology and know-how to shift our agricultural practices toward sustainable production and a focus on food security that will help see this country through tough times.
  
  

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• Each sugar beet flower contains thousands of pollen granules, and researchers have found the windblown pollen miles in the air and miles away from its home field. 
  
• transgenic sugar beet pollen
• Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

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• Science Council Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an alliance of agricultural bodies worldwide.

• But in developing countries with poor infrastructure, as much as half of harvested fruits and vegetables rot in transit before they can be eaten, says food scientist Henry Boerrigter.

   

   

• la forêt européenne se porte bien. Sa superficie (plus d'un milliard d'hectares, Russie comprise) s'est même accrue de 13 millions d'hectares - l'équivalent de la Grèce - au cours des quinze dernières années, du fait de l'extension des plantations et de son expansion naturelle sur d'anciens territoires agricoles.
• piège naturel pour cet élément chimique
• Groupe intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat (GIEC)
• puits de carbone
• émissions de carbone fossile
• groupement d'intérêt public Ecofor
• productivité primaire brute
• puits forestier
• coupes d'arbres dans un peuplement
• croissance forestière
• rôle des formations boisées sur le cycle du carbone
• association France Forêts
• sites forestiers pilotes
• améliorer le bilan carbone et d'optimiser l'utilisation du bois

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• Arid aquaculture
• drylands
• International Centre on Agricultural Research in Dryland Areas (ICARDA),
• UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program
• briny water
• brackish water
• dryland soaps
• sustainable drylands ecotourism
• People in Marginal Drylands: Managing Natural Resources to Improve Human Well-being
• Sustainable Management of Marginal Drylands (SUMAMAD) project
• dryland dwellers
• UNU's International Network on Water, Environment and Health
• They are home to nearly a third of the global population, about 2 billion in all, over 90% of whom live in developing countries.
• Drylands constitute more than 40% of the global land area
• Drylands degradation results from a combination of local drivers (droughts, inappropriate irrigation systems, deforestation, overgrazing, and poor land use practices), and global drivers (demography, agricultural policies or global climate change).
• Conservative estimates of the extent of desertified drylands range from 10 to 20 percent while a much larger area is at risk
• Management practices that build on the right mix of traditional knowledge, contemporary technology and innovative scientific research yield optimum results
• rainwater, floodwaters and groundwater resources
• water storage cisterns and ponds
• well water
• new desalination technologies using solar energy were successfully introduced
• the grassland ecosystem
• Dryland Science for Development (DSD) Consortium
• UN Convention to Combat Desertification
• the doom and gloom scenarios

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• Food policy
• commodity crops
• After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent
• chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food
• Spending on health care has risen from 5 percent of national income in 1960 to 16 percent today
• Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer.
• surfeit of cheap calories
• at a steep cost to public health
• precipitous embrace
• food sovereignty
• It is one of the larger paradoxes of our time that
• at the mercy of global commodity markets
• twinned crises in food and energy
• healthfulness
• pasture-based
• a political constituency for change is building
• The American Conservative magazine editorialized
• we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine
• resolarized
• Before setting out an agenda for reforming the food system
• in the long sweep of history
• a shift from solar (and human) energy on the farm to fossil-fuel energy
• pastures and hayfields for animals, cover crops, perhaps a block of fruit trees.
• This did not occur by happenstance
• After World War II, the government encouraged the conversion of the munitions industry to fertilizer — ammonium nitrate being the main ingredient of both bombs and chemical fertilizer — and the conversion of nerve-gas research to pesticides.
• fence row to fence row
• get big or get out
• factory farms
• fatten animals
• from farm to feedlot
• Herman Daly
• a healthful diet
• policies need to reconceive agriculture as part of the solution to environmental problems like climate change.
• Resolarizing the American Farm
• 830 million acres of American crop and pasture land
• government farm and food programs
• food-assistance programs like WIC and school lunch
• a new solar-food economy
• farmers receiving crop subsidies are prohibited from growing “specialty crops” — farm-bill speak for fruits and vegetables
• rice-and-fish farmers in China
• giant-scale operations (up to 15,000 acres) in places like Argentina
• eight-year rotation of perennial pasture and annual crops
• row crops
• an environmental disaster in the making
• fossil-fuel-based fertility
• Americans throw out 14 percent of the food they buy
• municipal composting of food and yard waste
• garbage heap
• zero-sum principle
• carbon sequestration
• soil health
• Conservation Stewardship Program
• Land Institute in Kansas
• perennialize
• Confined Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFO
• a pound of feedlot beef also takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce
• ruminant animals
• carbon hoof prints
• sun-food agriculture
• world epidemic of diet-related chronic disease
• 40 percent of the world’s grain output today is fed to animals; 11 percent of the world’s corn and soybean crop is fed to cars and trucks
• driving and spraying
• farmland is being lost to development at the rate of 2,880 acres a day
• Post-oil agriculture
• The sun-food agenda
• land-grant colleges
• to reverse course
• we erected high bars to their development
• food-system impact statements
• tax and zoning incentives for developers to incorporate farmland (as they now do “open space”) in their subdivision plans
• skilled solar farming
• post-fossil-fuel economy
• Reregionalizing the Food System

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• anthropocène
• paléoclimatologue
• gaz à effet de serre - dioxyde de carbone (CO₂) et méthane (CH₄)
• carottes glaciaires
• insolation
• oscillations cycliques de ses paramètres orbitaux (forme de l'ellipse, inclinaison sur le plan de rotation

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• grain lands
• gullies
• rills and sheets of erosion
• denuded cropland
• continuous soil-exposure
• monocultures
• soil loss
• minimum tillage
• food supply
• perennialization
• Carbon sequestration
• the husbandry of water and soil nutrients

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• higher-albedo crops
• the biofuel minefield
• you could not displace any food production
• To encourage them to grow these reflective crops, farmers could be rewarded with carbon credits
• farmers could earn 23 euros per hectare for the CO2 they prevent from reaching the air
• waxier leaves
• leaves arranged to reflect more sunlight
• geo-engineering schemes

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• Cropland
• grasslands, and permanent grazing and   pasturelands
• The value of agricultural commodities (food and fiber) exceeds $165   billion at the farm level and over $500 billion, 10% of GDP, after   processing and marketing
• Agricultural productivity has   improved at over 1% per year since 1950, resulting in a decline in both   production costs and prices
• off-site consequences of soil erosion
• livestock wastes
• crop agriculture
• climate change, as defined by the scenarios examined   in this Assessment, will not imperil the ability of the US to feed its   population and to export foodstuffs
• Crops   showing generally positive results include cotton, corn for grain and   silage, soybeans, sorghum, barley, sugar beets, and citrus fruits.   Pastures also show positive results.
• CO2   fertilization effect
• Greater concentrations of CO2   generally result in higher photosynthesis rates and may also reduce   water losses from plants
• on-farm adaptation options
• changes in planting dates and changes in   varieties
• dryland   crops
• Two scenarios of future climate, the Canadian and Hadley
• Economically, consumers benefit from lower prices while producers'   profits decline
• The estimated $4-5 billion reduction in producers'   profits represents a 13-17% loss of income, while the savings of $3-6   billion to consumers represent less than a 1% reduction in the consumers'   food and fiber expenditures. This large difference exists because much of   the final cost of agricultural goods to consumers reflects processing,   transportation, and retailing costs that the models used here assume are   not affected by climate.
• Economic Impacts of climate change under the Canadian and Hadley   climates.
• The smaller producer losses in the Hadley scenario, despite   greater productivity gains and price changes, reflect the fact that the US   farmers' advantage over foreign competitors grows and they are thus able   to significantly increase export volume.

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• Yvon le Maho
• clause de sauvegarde
• la Haute Autorité provisoire sur les organismes génétiquement modifiés
• Autorité européenne de sécurité alimentaire (EFSA)
• Jean-François Le Grand, sénateur UMP

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• Crop Scientists
• Biotechnology Seed Companies
• rootworms
• corn-insect specialists
• genetically engineered seeds
• growers honor company patent rights and environmental regulations
• land-grant universities with big agricultural programs
• the industry’s chokehold on research
• Pioneer Hi-Bred
• genetically engineered sugar beet seeds
• An E.P.A. scientific advisory panel plans to hold two meetings next week.
• One will consider a request from Pioneer Hi-Bred for a new method that would reduce how much of a farmer’s field must be set aside as a refuge aimed at preventing insects from becoming resistant to its insect-resistant corn.

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• « C'est injuste, lance le président de la Chambre régionale de commerce. Nous avons une croissance de 4 à 6 %, une inflation de 2 à 3 %, nos pays ont fini d'assainir leurs finances publiques, et nous sommes jugés comme des « pays à risques », avec des taux d'intérêt de 12 %, alors que l'incurie, ailleurs, est totale ! »
• Placez votre argent en Islande ', disait-on ! En fait, la bourse a chuté là-bas de 94 %, alors que celle du Ghana a progressé de 27 %.
• UEMOA, l'Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine

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• food enthusiasts
• magic cure
• caloric intake
• plant kingdom
• highly processed foods
• the food would not necessarily have to be organic, which, under the United States Department of Agriculture’s definition, means it is generally free of synthetic substances;
• contains no antibiotics and hormones; has not been irradiated or fertilized with sewage sludge; was raised without the use of most conventional pesticides; and contains no genetically modified ingredients.
• returning natural nutrients and substance to the soil in the same proportion used by the growing process
• The government’s organic program, says Joan Shaffer, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, “is a marketing program that sets standards for what can be certified as organic. Neither the enabling legislation nor the regulations address food safety or nutrition.”
• Today, most farmers who practice truly sustainable farming, or what you might call “organic in spirit,” operate on small scale, some so small they can’t afford the requirements to be certified organic by the government. Others say that certification isn’t meaningful enough to bother. These farmers argue that, “When you buy organic you don’t just buy a product, you buy a way of life that is committed to not exploiting the planet,” says Ed Maltby, executive director of the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance.
• Professor Howard estimates that major corporations now are responsible for at least 25 percent of all organic manufacturing and marketing (40 percent if you count only processed organic foods).

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