Ensuring our future food supply
Climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties of seeds we depend on for food. Luckily, we still have many of the seeds used in the past-but we must take steps to save them.
Six miles outside the town of Decorah, Iowa in the USA, an 890-acre stretch of rolling fields and woods called Heritage Farm is letting its crops go to seed. Everything about Heritage Farm is in stark contrast to the surrounding acres of intensively farmed fields of corn and soybean that are typical of modern agriculture. Heritage Farm is devoted to collecting rather than growing seeds. It is home to the Seed Savers Exchange, one of the largest non-government-owned seed banks in the United States.
In 1975 Diane Ott Whealy was given the seedlings of two plant varieties that her great grandfather had brought to America from Bavaria in 1870: Grandpa Ott’s morning glory and his German Pink tomato. Wanting to preserve similar traditional varieties, known as heirloom plants, Diane and her husband, Kent, decided to establish a place where the seeds of the past could be kept and traded. The exchange now has more than 13,000 members, and the many thousands of heirloom varieties they have donated are kept in its walk-in coolers, freezers, and root cellars the seeds of many thousands of heirloom varieties and, as you walk around an old red barn that is covered in Grandpa Ott’s beautiful morning glory blossoms, you come across the different vegetables, herbs, and flowers they have planted there.
“Each year our members list their seeds in this," Diane Ott Whealy says, handing over a copy of the Seed Savers Exchange 2010 Yearbook. It is as thick as a big-city telephone directory, with page after page of exotic beans, garlic, potatoes, peppers, apples, pears, and plums-each with its own name and personal history. For example, there’s an Estonian Yellow Cherry tomato, which was brought to the seed bank by “an elderly Russian lady” who lived in Tallinn, and a Persian Star garlic from “a bazaar in Samarkand.” There’s also a bean donated by archaeologists searching for pygmy elephant fossils in New Mexico.
Heirloom vegetables have become fashionable in the United States and Europe over the past decade, prized by a food movement that emphasizes eating locally and preserving the flavor and uniqueness of heirloom varieties. Found mostly in farmers’ markets and boutique groceries, heirloom varieties have been squeezed out of supermarkets in favor of modern single-variety fruits and vegetables bred to ship well and have a uniform appearance, not to enhance flavor. But the movement to preserve heirloom varieties goes way beyond the current interest in North America and Europe in tasty, locally grown food. It’s also a campaign to protect the world’s future food supply. Most people in the well-fed world give little thought to where their food comes from or how it’s grown. They wander through well-stocked supermarkets without realizing that there may be problem ahead. We’ve been hearing for some time about the loss of flora and fauna in our rainforests. Very little by contrast is being said or done about the parallel decline in the diversity of the foods we eat.
Food variety extinction is happening all over the world – and it’s happening fast. In the United States an estimated 90 percent of historic fruit and vegetable varieties are no longer grown. Of the 7,000 different apple varieties that were grown in the 1800s, fewer than a hundred remain. In the Philippines thousands of varieties of rice once thrived; now only about a hundred are grown there. In China 90 percent of the wheat varieties cultivated just a hundred years ago have disappeared. Experts estimate that in total we have lost more than 50 percent of the world’s food varieties over the past century.
Why is this a problem? Because if disease or future climate change affects one of the handful of plants we’ve come to depend on to feed our growing planet, we might desperately need one of those varieties we’ve let become extinct. The loss of the world’s cereal diversity is a particular cause for concern. A fungus called Ug99, which was first identified in Uganda in 1999, is spreading across the world’s wheat crops. From Uganda it moved to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen. By 2007 it had jumped the Persian Gulf into Iran. Scientists predict that the fungus will soon make its way into India and Pakistan, then spread to Russia and China, and eventually the USA.
Roughly 90 percent of the world’s wheat has no defense against this particular fungus. If it reached the USA, an estimated one billion dollars’ worth of crops would be at risk. Scientists believe that in Asia and Africa alone, the portion currently in danger could leave one billion people without their primary food source. A famine with significant humanitarian consequences could follow, according to Rick Ward of Cornell University.
The population of the world is expected to reach nine billion by 2045. Some experts say we’ll need to double our food production to keep up with this growth. Given the added challenge of climate change and disease, it is becoming ever more urgent to find ways to increase food yield. The world has become increasingly dependent upon a technology-driven, one-size-fits-all approach to food supply. Yet the best hope for securing our food’s future may depend on our ability to preserve the locally cultivated foods of the past.
Tele-working
A Teleworking – working remotely from an office- is said to have many benefits for organisations, the environment and society. It provokes mixed reactions from its acolytes and those that experience it first-hand. Whether you like it or not, it is true to say that work is no longer dependent on geography and this opens up a range of opportunities for working in new ways and environments.
B The surveys show “that the productivity increase is not primarily because of longer working hours (as is sometimes suggested). Although prevalent, working more is just one of a number of influencing factors, and not the most important.” An unusual comparison of the performance of teleworkers with a closely matched control group of non-teleworkers found that not only was productivity higher but also that absenteeism and error rates were lower.
C Two other areas where SUSTEL has added to the economic impact knowledge base is its effect on absenteeism and space utilisation. In the case of absenteeism, over 60 per cent of those surveyed stated that telework had enabled them to work when they were prevented from reaching a work location (usually through illness or transport problems). Around half the cases also identified substantial reductions in space requirements – to the point where one organisation had completely done away with a central office. Changes in non-commuting travel on weekends: home-bases workers, which includes a substantial population of people who are not telecommuters, spend more time shopping out of the home than traditional workers.
D Half-time telecommuting could reduce carbon emissions by over 51 million metric tons a year—the equivalent of taking all of New York’s commuters off the road. Additional carbon footprint savings will come from reduced: office energy, roadway repairs, urban heating, office construction, business travel, paper usage (as electronic documents replace paper). Although energy utilization will continue to grow as we expand our industry and improve our standard of living, efficient use of energy will always be of prime importance. By telecommuting to work instead of using more conventional methods, there is a great potential to save energy. The three major areas where energy can be conserved are Vehicle-related materials and resources; Highway-related materials and resources; and work-related materials and resources.
E A tremendous amount of energy is required to produce transportation equipment such as automobiles, buses, trains and jet aircraft. If telecommuting is promoted, there will be less use of this equipment and less energy will be required for production, maintenance and repair of this equipment. Fuel resources and gases needed to operate this equipment will be reduced, as well the building and repair of highways and maintenance requires a large consumption of energy, not only in the operation of the highway construction and repair equipment but also in the manufacture and transportation of the required materials An increase in the percentage of people telecommuting to work will decrease the need for expanded highways and associated road maintenance. The first two areas related to getting to work.
F Socially, the SUSTEL research found that most survey respondents felt that teleworking gave them a better quality of life and work-life balance. Many also reported health benefits. A significant number also stated that they were using local services more and becoming more involved in their local communities. The loss of teamwork and team spirit within teleworking populations was tackled through ideas such as Oracle’s ‘FUNCTIONAL’ offices. Designed to increase communication and interaction when people are at the office, they are bright and focused around a central cafe to stimulate ideas and face-to-face contact.
G The finding that many teleworkers report both longer working hours and a better quality of life is paradoxical. More time working is usually associated with increased stress, domestic tension and other factors that reduce the quality of life. One possible explanation is that, for many individuals, their increased working hours will be less than the time they have saved in commuting. Hence, they still have more time available for family and other activities. For some, the stress associated with commuting (especially for long distances) may be less than that arising from additional working time. Perhaps most significantly, teleworking can in effect create time through opportunities for multi-tasking or greater control of activities. As one survey respondent noted. “Although the amount of time has not changed it has made the weekends freer, as domestic activities can be fitted in during lunchtimes or early morning.”
H When you work in an office or a cubicle and something goes wrong with any hardware or software you have the option of calling in the IT man. In fact, all of the equipment that you use at the office is supported by technical staff. That means regular updates and maintenance for various and sundry office tools like land-line phones, computers, internet connections, laptops, cell phones, printers, and other office equipment is all up to you when you work from home, you’ll surely encounter technical problems and when you do, where do you get the support and help you need? If your computer hard drive crashed today, would you have the funds to replace it?
What Are Dreams?
A Thousands of years ago, dreams were seen as messages from the gods, and in many cultures, they are still considered prophetic. In ancient Greece, sick people slept at the temples of Asclepius, the god of medicine, in order to receive dreams that would heal them. Modern dream science really begins at the end of the 19th century with Sigmund Freud, who theorized that dreams were the expression of unconscious desires often stemming from childhood. He believed that exploring these hidden emotions through analysis could help cure mental illness. The Freudian model of psychoanalysis dominated until the 1970s when new research into the chemistry of the brain showed that emotional problems could have biological or chemical roots, as well as environmental ones. In other words, we weren’t sick just because of something our mothers did (or didn’t do), but because of some imbalance that might be cured with medication.
B After Freud, the most important event in dream science was the discovery in the early 1950s of a phase of sleep characterized by intense brain activity and rapid eye movement (REM). People awakened in the midst of REM sleep reported vivid dreams, which led researchers to conclude that most dreaming took place during REM. Using the electroencephalograph (EEG), researchers could see that brain activity during REM resembled that of the waking brain. That old them that a lot more was going on at night than anyone had suspected. But what, exactly?
C Scientists still don’t know for sure, although they have lots of theories. On one side are scientists like Harvard’s Allan Hobson, who believes that dreams are essentially random. In the 1970s, Hobson and his colleague Robert McCarley proposed what they called the “activation-synthesis hypothesis’” which describes how dreams are formed by nerve signals sent out during REM sleep from a small area at the base of the brain called the pons. These signals, the researchers said, activate the images that we call dreams. That put a crimp in dream research; if dreams were meaningless nocturnal firings, what was the point of studying them?
D Adult humans spend about a quarter of their sleep time in REM, much of it dreaming. During that time, the body is essentially paralyzed but the brain is buzzing. Scientists using PET and fMRI technology to watch the dreaming brain have found that one of the most active areas during REM is the limbic system, which controls our emotions. Much less active is the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with logical thinking. That could explain why dreams in REM sleep often lack a coherent storyline (some researchers have also found that people dream in non-REM sleep as well, although those dreams generally are less vivid.) Another active part of the brain in REM sleep is the anterior cingulate cortex, which detects discrepancies. Eric Nofzinger, director of the Sleep Neuroimaging Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, thinks that could be why people often figure out thorny problems in their dreams. “As if the brain surveys the internal milieu and tries to figure out what it should be doing, and whether our actions conflict with who we are,” he says.
E These may seem like vital mental functions, but no one has yet been able to say that REM sleep or dreaming is essential to life or even sanity. MAO inhibitors, an older class of antidepressants, essentially block REM sleep without any detectable effects, although people do get a “REM rebound” – extra REM – if they stop the medication. That’s also true of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac, which reduce dreaming by a third to a half. Even permanently losing the ability to dream doesn’t have to be disabling. Israeli researcher Peretz Lavie has been observing a patient named Yuval Chamtzani, who was injured by a fragment of shrapnel that penetrated his brain when he was 19. As a result, he gets no REM sleep and doesn’t remember any dreams. But Lavie says that Chamtzani, now 55, “is probably the most normal person I know and one of the most successful ones.” He’s a lawyer, a painter and the editor of a puzzle column in a popular Israeli newspaper.
F The mystery of REM sleep is that even though it may not be essential, it is ubiquitous – at least in mammals and birds. But that doesn’t mean all mammals and birds dream (or if they do, they’re certainly not – talking about it). Some researchers think REM may have evolved for physiological reasons. “One thing that’s unique about mammals and birds is that they regulate body temperature”, says neuroscientist Jerry Siegel, director of UCLA’s Center for Sleep Research. “There’s no good evidence that any coldblooded animal has REM sleep.” REM sleep heats up the brain and non-REM cools it off, Siegel says, and that could mean that the changing sleep cycles allow the brain to repair itself. “It seems likely that REM sleep is filling a basic physiological function and that dreams are a kind of epiphenomenon,” Siegel says – an extraneous byproduct; like foam on beer.
G Whatever the function of dreams at night, they clearly can play a role in therapy during the day. The University of Maryland’s Clara Hill, who has studied the use of dreams in therapy, says that dreams are a ‘backdoor’, into a patient’s thinking. “Dreams reveal stuff about you that you didn’t know was there,” she says. The therapists she trains to work with patients’ dreams are, in essence, heirs to Freud, using dream imagery to uncover hidden emotions and feelings. Dreams provide clues to the nature of the more serious mental illness. Schizophrenics, for example, have poor-quality dreams, usually about objects rather than people. “If you’re going to understand human behavior,” says Rosalind Cartwright, a chairman of psychology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, “here’s a big piece of it. Dreaming is our own storytelling time – to help us know who we are, where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.” Cartwright has been studying depression in divorced men and women, and she is finding that “good dreamers,” people who have vivid dreams with strong storylines, are less likely to remain depressed. She thinks that dreaming helps diffuse strong emotions. “Dreaming is a mental-health activity,” she says.
