A bumblebee visits a flower, drawn in by the bright colours, the patterns on the petals, and the aromatic promise of sweet nectar. But there’s more to pollination than sight and smell. There is also electricity in the air.

Dominic Clarke and Heather Whitney from the University of Bristol have shown that bumblebees can sense the electric field that surrounds a flower. They can even learn to distinguish between fields produced by different floral shapes, or use them to work out whether a flower has been recently visited by other bees. Flowers aren’t just visual spectacles and smelly beacons. They’re also electric billboards.

“This is a big finding,” says Daniel Robert, who led the study. “Nobody had postulated the idea that bees could be sensitive to the electric field of a flower.”

Scientists have, however, known about the electric side of pollination since the 1960s, although it is rarely discussed. As bees fly through the air, they bump into charged particles from dust to small molecules. The friction of these microscopic collisions strips electrons from the bee’s surface, and they typically end up with a positive charge.

Flowers, on the other hand, tend to have a negative charge, at least on clear days. The flowers themselves are electrically earthed, but the air around them carries a voltage of around 100 volts for every metre above the ground. The positive charge that accumulates around the flower induces a negative charge in its petals.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/21/bees-can-sense-the-electric-fields-of-flowers/

Now that I have your attention, I will say simply here that nitrogen, like carbon, is necessary for life's building blocks... We know that. Nitrogen is a gas that is about 3/4 of the air we breathe and is inert, but its alkaline and acidic compounds are necessary to complicate and grow the basic carbon molecules... Without nitrogen, methane and other simple hydrocarbons would be no more than that...

Rain water is far superior to tap water or tank water...

It sounds ridiculous, but there is one major difference. Rain water, as it pours down becomes loaded with nitrogen from the air — nitrogen that goes into the soil... With modern technology and transport has nearly gone the rhythms of seasons in some areas, especially with our addition of water on our crops at most times — as well as our addition of nitrogen through fertilisers.

When water is lacking, this leads to dramatic failure of crops. The 1931 dust bowl of the midlands in the US, the central region from canada to below Oklahoma, was a warning of nature after two great seasons that had already unfortunately seen prices of wheat fall through the floor due to the 1929 financial crash. These years in a row were a disaster and nearly became ten. Of course there were a few other factors that compounded the problem, such as the way the earth was ploughed. A monocultured wheat has shallow roots compared to native grasses that have gone through rain and drought over millions of years. The decimation of natural grasses to grow wheat led to massive dust storms in the dry, in which the top soil was simply blown away — not being held back by roots... This is a common occurence in this country. I have gone through about 10 major dust storms in Australia, since the early 1970s. When the top soil goes, so goes a lot of nutrients as well. I have posted an article about it on this site. 

Last year saw a drought in the same region of the USA. Corn crops took a beating. Who knows what will happen next with global warming, as incidence of floods and drought will increase dramatically.

A few years ago, the price of rice around the world jumped through the roof as the Australian supply of this staple was affected by a major drought in southern Queensland.

As well as the weather, we are at the mercy of profiteers who either bet on the price of commodities or hoard the commodities until desperately needed. We are also at gun point of discount wars between the major retailers of food who will only buy produce at prices that send farmers broke... 

-----------------------

What we know is that intensive agriculture has been amazingly successful in providing better quality food, at lower cost, year on year. However, this has come at a price. We are losing soil structure and soil carbon, and these are associated with reduced yield. In addition, food production is a net energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter. However, we must find ways to reduce the net energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions, and restore soil health if we are to produce enough food for everyone over many generations.

The solution pushed most fervently is to move to organic agriculture. There is certainly evidence this can improve soil carbon, but when lower yield and the associated greenhouse gas emissions of manure are taken into account it often has a higher carbon footprint.

We need much more informed discussion – rather than mere dogma – on output, energy use and environmental impact and whether technology can satisfy these needs best. This has proven difficult, as there is no satisfactory mechanism of global governance of agriculture, but there are some promising initiatives, including the World Economic Forum’s “New Vision for Agriculture” and the Keystone Alliance “field to market”.

Unhelpful polarization is also visible in the debate on biofuels, industrial biotechnology and the non-food uses of agriculture. It is not as if it is a new phenomenon. Over millennia people have used plant fibres as a source of clothing, burned plant material for cooking and heating, and used plants as building materials. The oldest example of industrial biotechnology must surely be brewing, using yeast to convert plant sugars.

http://forumblog.org/2013/03/will-biotechnology-provide-food-security/

----------------------------

Very noteworthy thoughts, though I smell a rat... I am dumb at most times and forgive me if I get things wrong. But I cannot let this one go the the keeper, though I could be totally loopy on this... 

"... but when lower yield and the associated greenhouse gas emissions of manure are taken into account it often has a higher carbon footprint." 

That is a lot of codswallop.

When considering the higher yields producing industrial methods laced with fertilisers and poisons, the cost of harvesting-machinery and its fuel (often subsidised), one cannot escape as well the manufacture of fertilisers, the insecticides and the herbicides which are high carbon dioxide producing agents in manufacture — then followed by the problems of run-off often leading to pollution, reef and river degradation. 

The same goes with patented seeds and the poisons used to kill other plants. Eventually, the poison, like DDT did, will come and bite us in the bum if it has not done so already... while the patent pollens compromise natural plants.

The elegant solution of double cropping and that of bio-dynamic planting are a midway point between a fully industrialised cultivation that needs poisons like never before and organic farming that can provide smaller yields but without the use of poisons, and that can be managed in a natural environment. 

The carbon dioxide from manure is part of a semi-accelerated "natural carbon cycle" — using the carbon that has already been on the surface of the planet for the last million years — while the carbon dioxide from fertilisers and high yield "poison-surviving" monoculture is in a big part made of the "extra carbon cycle" added-to by fossil-fuel usage... The REAL problem is that 2050 is ONLY 37 years from now... Planning for 9 billions by then is already reasonably challenging... but what do we do after that? Put a bow on our procreative dicks for ten years after that?

We have to think beyond 2100 till about 2150 to really understand what we are doing to the planet, including the destruction of "natural seeds" (even if they have been modified by 10,000 years of farming) by using "patented" GM seeds in conjunction with poisons. We have to think how global warming is going to affect our crops, as temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius won't be uncommon.

We need to think outside the growth at any cost equation which states that as there is a problem, we fix it by creating a new problem we'll fix later and so on... as long as we grow profits

We need brighter smarter ideas in tune with nature rather than that of satisfying our wants at a faster rate.

My view...

And this is what humanity's ethics should be about.

Gus Leonisky

• From the Sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties 
• Bangkok (Thailand), 3-14 March 2013
• Provisional agenda and working documents
• [Note from Gus: I tried to post this with links but this was very messy]

See also: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2013/02/201322810388315373.html

mamaotis • 18 hours ago

Illegal trading is unquestionably one cause of the dwindling numbers of some animal species and fauna. But the bigger cause is their habitats being destroyed by mining, oil drilling, forests and open-areas converted to vast swathes of mono-crops, and other transnational corporate-induced destruction of the eco system....all 'legal' depending on which gov't officials are in which corporation's pocket. In good ole' USA there has been a plague of cross-pollution between government and corporations and in many thousands of places the ecological damage is apparent. (Not to mention aquifers and other water resources being poisoned by runoff toxins, which often isn't so apparent.)

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2013/02/201322810388315373.html

http://www.avaaz.org/en/

BAKERSFIELD, California. - A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables.

A conclusive explanation so far has escaped scientists studying the ailment, colony collapse disorder, since it first surfaced around 2005. But beekeepers and some researchers say there is growing evidence that a powerful new class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, incorporated into the plants themselves, could be an important factor.

Soaring Bee Deaths In 2012 Sound Alarm On Malady

Environmentalists hailed a "victory for bees" today after the European Union voted for a ban on the nerve-agent pesticides blamed for the dramatic decline global bee populations.

Despite fierce lobbying by the chemicals industry and opposition by countries including Britain, 15 of the 27 member states voted for a two-year restriction on neonicotinoid insecticides. That gave the European Commission the support it needed to push through an EU-wide ban on using three neonicotinoids on crops attractive to bees.

Tonio Borg, the EC's top health official, said they planned to implement the landmark ban from December. "I pledge to do my utmost to ensure that our bees, which are so vital to our ecosystem and contribute over €22bn annually to European agriculture, are protected," he said.

Britain was among eight nations which voted against the motion, despite a petition signed by 300,000 people presented to Downing Street last week by fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Katharine Hamnett. The Independent has also campaigned to save Britain's bee population

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/victory-for-bees-as-europe-bans-neonicotinoid-pesticides-blamed-for-destroying-global-bee-populations-8595408.html