Month: June 2011

June 27, 2011 Gardening, General Ag News and Notes, Ginger Root Post a Comment

Eat, grow, heal – Hawaii Features – Staradvertiser.com

For botanist Laura Shiels, herbs in the garden are not only a source of spice and flavor, but of healing.

Lemongrass adds zest to a soup but also helps relieve insomnia, while ginger is good for nausea. Chili peppers add spice but also stimulate circulation.

Basil can help relieve indigestion or nerves. Rosemary is said to enhance memory.

Shiels, a doctoral student in ethnobotany and former lecturer at the University of Hawaii, has been teaching workshops on how to grow and cultivate herbs for several years, with a focus on healing.

“Let food be your medicine,” says Shiels, who cultivates gardens everywhere she goes.

Many culinary herbs make aromatic compounds to protect themselves from being attacked by viruses and fungi, as well as to attract pollinators, she said. Those same compounds have antioxidant or antimicrobial properties.

So you can add flavor and health at the same time, she said, and address specific ailments with herbs.

Basil, for instance, popular in salads and the main ingredient for pesto, alleviates gas. Its leaves can be used for many dishes, while the flowers can be brewed into a tea, good for treating coughs.

Garlic is good for lowering blood pressure and relieving colds and flu.

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June 27, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Water shortages threaten renewable energy production, experts warn

The development of new renewable energy technologies and other expanding sources of energy such as shale gas will be limited by the availability of water in some regions of the world, according to research by a US thinktank.

The study shows the reliance on large amounts of water to create biofuels and run solar thermal energy and hydraulic fracturing – a technique for extracting gas from unconventional geological formations underground – means droughts could hamper their deployment.

“Water consumption is going up dramatically. We are introducing all kinds of technology to reduce the carbon impact of energy, without doing anything to reduce its impact on water,” Michele Wucker, co-author of the report, told a seminar at the New America Foundation, a thinktank in Washington.

The study, estimating the water consumption of conventional and renewable energy, found even so-called clean energy solutions use vast amounts of water.

Hydroelectricity far outstrips other forms of energy in its use of water, requiring 4,500 gallons to produce a single megawatt hour of electricity – or about the amount needed to run a flat-screen TV for a year. Geothermal energy uses 1,400 gallons per MW/h.

Corn-based ethanol uses a lot of water to irrigate crops, as do nuclear plants which rely on water for cooling systems. Even some renewable energy sources – such as solar farms – are water hogs because they rely on water for cooling.

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June 26, 2011 General Ag News and Notes, Vegtables Post a Comment

British seed firm ‘linked to French E. coli outbreak’

Officials are investigating a possible link between seeds sold by a UK firm and an E. coli outbreak in France.

News agency AFP said 10 people have been affected by E. coli in Bordeaux.

It is thought a number of them had eaten rocket and mustard vegetable sprouts, believed to have been grown from seeds sold by Thompson and Morgan.

The Ipswich-based company told the BBC it had no evidence of a link. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said no E. coli cases had been reported in the UK.

However, it has revised its guidance and is advising people not to eat raw sprouted seeds, including alfalfa, mung beans (or beansprouts) and fenugreek.

The agency said these should only be eaten if cooked until steaming hot throughout.

A spokeswoman for Thompson and Morgan said the company sold “hundreds of thousands of packets of these seeds” throughout France, the UK and other parts of Europe every year.

“We are very confident the problem is not with our seeds. People can still grow these seeds and use these seeds with absolute confidence,” she said.

“For such a small number of people to have been affected, it does suggest that the problem is perhaps in the local area, how the seeds have been handled or how they have been grown, rather than the actual seeds themselves.”

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June 26, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Endangered nene geese pose hazards at Kauai airport

The Hawaii state bird is an endangered species, constantly threatened by mongoose, dogs, rats and other introduced animals even as they cope with the loss of grasslands and forests to development.

But nene geese have found a safe home among the green golf course fairways and ponds of a Kauai resort, and they are thriving — exploding from just 18 birds in 1999 to some 400 today.

In fact, the population at Kauai Lagoons has grown so fast and large the geese are now considered the threat. They pose a public safety hazard to the commercial airliners taking off and landing at the airport next door, forcing the state to scramble to devise a plan to move them somewhere else.

“With the numbers that are nesting, it’s just like, boy there are going to be more and more birds there,” said Paul Conry, administrator of the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife. “If we don’t take action now, they will even get higher and higher in the future.”

The dangers geese present to airplanes became well known after a flock of Canada geese crossed paths with a US Airways plane over New York City in 2009, knocking out both engines and forcing the pilot to bring the aircraft down in the Hudson River.

Similar incidents have caused deaths: 24 airmen in Alaska were killed when a flock of Canada geese got sucked into the left side engine of an Air Force plane in 1995. The jet crashed 43 seconds after takeoff.

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June 25, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Hawaii laws target sex and labor trafficking

Hawaii is cracking down on prostitution and worker exploitation by passing new laws amid the nation’s largest-ever human trafficking case.

Hawaii was one of only four states lacking a labor trafficking law or a sex trafficking law before Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed the measures this week, according to the Polaris Project, a Washington-based advocacy group against human trafficking.

The new laws are being enacted as the federal government is already prosecuting labor recruiting company Global Horizons on accusations of oppressing hundreds of Thai laborers by bringing them to farms in the U.S., failing to pay them for work performed, putting them into debt, confiscating their passports and threatening to deport them. A separate federal case involves similar allegations against Hawaii’s second-largest farm, Aloun Farms.

The laws also empower police to more strongly combat prostitution when world leaders from 21 countries meet in Honolulu in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

After years of opposing a human trafficking law, law enforcement joined forces with advocates to get a proposal approved by the Legislature and governor.

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June 25, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Britain’s moths enjoy their moment in the spotlight

Small brown hairy things that thrive after dark cannot expect to be loved. And when some of them nibble your best cashmere and munch through the allotment’s crops, their reputation might seem hopelessly lost.

Yet the moths of the United Kingdom are savouring their first real experience of public interest, and even approval, after years playing Cinderella to their dainty and brightly coloured daytime relatives, butterflies.

National Moth Night is now so popular, after just over a decade, that its organisers have had to take a year out to relaunch systems capable of managing thousands of eager recorders, including droves of easily disappointed children. The moth trap at Buckingham Palace, whose records include at least one exotic insect imported in the baggage of an African state visit, has been joined by counterparts at the Royal Courts of Justice, the House of Commons and a ring of coastal monitoring stations.

“People are beginning to talk seriously about mothing as the new birdwatching,” says Mark Parsons, head of moth conservation at Butterfly Conservation, a lively bunch with an increasing interest in the methods – and million-plus membership – of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. “Television, the internet and the huge appetite for natural history and green living are helping to expose myths about moths,”

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June 21, 2011 Aquaculture, General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

New catch quota established for bottomfish

HONOLULU – Hawaii fish lovers may be able to enjoy fresh local catch of opakapaka, onaga and other favored bottomfish for a longer period during the next fishing season because federal regulators are expanding the fishery’s annual catch quota.

Hawaii fishermen have been adhering to a catch limit on bottomfish for several years after studies showed the species were overfished in the islands in 2005. For the past two years, the limit was 254,000 pounds.

The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council on Friday decided to expand the quota by 28 percent to 325,000 pounds after taking into account a recently completed scientific study that offers a better and more thorough understanding of Hawaii’s bottomfish population.

Fishermen hit this year’s limit in March – only six-and-a-half months into the season that began Sept. 1. The expanded quota may allow fishermen to fish – and deliver fish to markets and restaurants – for more months next season.

”The larger number this year may hopefully result in a longer fishing year, so there will be a shorter close during the summertime,” Mark Mitsuyasu, the council’s bottomfish coordinator, said Monday.

The weather will likely dictate how fast fishermen hit the new quota. If there are relatively more clear days, fishermen will have more opportunities to fish and the limit may be reached sooner rather than later.

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June 20, 2011 Aquaculture, General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

‘Shocking’ state of seas threatens mass extinction, say marine experts

Fish, sharks, whales and other marine species are in imminent danger of an “unprecedented” and catastrophic extinction event at the hands of humankind, and are disappearing at a far faster rate than anyone had predicted, a study of the world’s oceans has found.

Mass extinction of species will be “inevitable” if current trends continue, researchers said.

Overfishing, pollution, run-off of fertilisers from farming and the acidification of the seas caused by increasing carbon dioxide emissions are combining to put marine creatures in extreme danger, according to the report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (Ipso), prepared at the first international workshop to consider all of the cumulative stresses affecting the oceans at Oxford University.

The international panel of marine experts said there was a “high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”. They said the challenges facing the oceans created “the conditions associated with every previous major extinction of species in Earth’s history”.

“The findings are shocking,” said Alex Rogers, scientific director of Ipso. “As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the ocean, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.

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June 20, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Aloun Farms owners hit with more accusations

Federal prosecutors want to introduce new allegations during the trial for the owners of Aloun Farms that they had a history of subjecting impoverished Thai agricultural laborers to oppressive working and living conditions.

The government says in court documents that Aloun Farms owners Alec and Mike Sou, awaiting trial in federal court on forced labor and related charges, had abused impoverished Thai workers before.

The Sou brothers are scheduled to stand trial next month on charges in connection with the importation of 44 farm laborers from Thailand to work on their farm in 2004. They are accused of importing the workers under false pretenses, having their passports confiscated when they arrived, underpaying them, restricting their movements and forcing them to live in crowded or substandard housing.

The federal prosecutor says in court documents the Sous subjected other Thai farm laborers to the same conditions in 2003 when they hired the workers from Los Angeles-based labor contracting company Global Horizons Manpower Inc.

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