It is International Compost Awareness Week this week...........with functions around the globe. The USA, Canada, UK and Australia are examples.
The message below is focussed on the East Coast of Australia, but relevant all over Australia.
Composting, the ‘intelligent’ alternative
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
That’s the message from the Centre for Organic & Resource Enterprises (CORE) at the launch of the sixth International Composting Awareness Week (ICAW). Organised in conjunction with Compost Australia (a division of the Waste Management Association of Australia), the week of events from May 1-7 will promote the benefits afforded to us all when our business communities and households get involved in composting.
“Composting is the responsible and sustainable thing to do for our planet,” according to CORE.
The major objectives of ICAW are to increase the diversion of organics from the main waste collection program through increasing awareness and participation in centralised composting, kerbside collections, home composting and community composting.“Each year over half the household garbage we produce is made up of food and garden organics. Most of this organic waste can be recycled by composting it”, said Eric Love, chairman of CORE.“If all this organic material was diverted from landfills and properly composted, it could be used to reverse the affects of climate change.
By applying this compost to gardens, farms and other land uses, millions of tonnes of carbon will be stored in the soil. This acts to lower the atmospheric temperatures that lead to changes in our climate.”
ICAW also aims to increase awareness and knowledge about the correct use of "soil-improving composts"; help reduce and recover food waste; and highlight the environmental and social benefits of composting including the opportunities to reduce our carbon emissions.
“Composting is not new. Compost has been used in crop production for over 4,000 years. Artificial fertilisers only became widely available a century ago. Australia is an old and eroded continent that is suffering from land degradation,” said Love.
Emissions from landfills are part of the Australian Federal Government’s carbon abatement initiative. If everyone composted, the total waste going to landfill could decrease by up to one third and emissions and disposal costs will drop, according to CORE.
Peter Wadewitz, chairman of Compost Australia said, “Compost produced by the recycled organics industry is already providing Australian landscape, horticulture and agricultural industries with affordable solutions to improve productivity and environmental outcomes.“Recycled carbon based products are also being effectively used to treat contaminated stormwater runoff and enabling the water to be reused, or more safely released into our waterways.”
Kimbriki Resource Recovery Centre is getting into the action of ICAW by offering talks, demonstrations and tours at its Ingleside/Terrey Hills site on May 3, 4 & 5 (at 10am and 2pm).
It will also give away 500 bags of Kimbriki Compost each day. Peter Rutherford, Kimbriki’s senior ecologist, will demonstrate simple ways to make great compost at home, and explain how this relates to healthy plants and healthy people. Australian Native Landscapes’ soil expert, Rob Niccol, will discuss composting and soil health; explain about the value of compost in larger projects and how it is being used to supplement Australia’s dwindling soil resources. He will also demonstrate the latest in mulch blowing technology and conduct a guided tour of the large-scale compost making operation at Kimbriki.
For more information visit: www.compostweek.com.au
Showing posts with label salinity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salinity. Show all posts
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Friday, May 07, 2010
Salth Tolerant Durum Wheat for Australia
While some research teams have gone all high tech eg Mark Tester and team in Adelaide at the Plant Genomics Centre on the same general problem of salt tolerance in cereals, this CSIRO group has used conventional breeding approaches, with success.
Salt land is a serious problem in many lower rainfall cereal growing areas, and with durum wheat commanding higher values, getting a better yield on these areas is important.
And it does go to show that there is still a lot of life left in conventional breeding approaches to crop development!
Read more here:
http://qcl.farmonline.com.au/news/state/grains-and-cropping/general/salt-tolerant-wheat-breakthrough/1815278.aspx?src=enews
Salt land is a serious problem in many lower rainfall cereal growing areas, and with durum wheat commanding higher values, getting a better yield on these areas is important.
And it does go to show that there is still a lot of life left in conventional breeding approaches to crop development!
Read more here:
http://qcl.farmonline.com.au/news/state/grains-and-cropping/general/salt-tolerant-wheat-breakthrough/1815278.aspx?src=enews
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Can GM Crops Feed the World?
This was the title of a recent documentary on SBS television in Australia. It covered the "adventures" of a young university agriculturally trained farmer, who was farming in a very traditional way in the UK, across several continents to examine for himself the issues around GM technology in modern agriculture.
Definitely worth watching or seeing on a DVD if you are interested.
From GM Roundup Ready soybeans in Argentina to the use or otherwise and its labelling of GM oils in food stuffs, in both Europe and North America to Uganda where GM technology was being used to develop black sigatoka resistant bananas.
GM technology is now quite common in plant genetics, of some use in animal production and likely to be more widely used. For example, GM technology has been used in cotton to reduce pesticide use in growing the crop, very successfully.
He really does not come up with a single answer..........but it does seem that big steps can be taken to enhance food security in many lesser developed areas through insect and disease resistance especially in the vegetatively propagated crops, with bananas a great example.
While not discussed on the tv program, Panama disease of bananas in the Asian region [which can be devastating] is also seen as a very suitable candidate for control via GM developed new banana varieties, and this issue is being researched already.
Maybe there is no single answer to the use of GM technology. But remember, similar heated debate also occurred about 70 - 80 years ago when hybrid corn and sorghum was developed. It was unnatural, the ruination of the world was imminent! But hybridisation of plants is now very much mainstream.
Will GM technology eventually go the same way??? To be well accepted as another tool in developing higher yielding and disease resistant crops and plants of all sorts.........it is even now being used on turfgrass.
Definitely worth watching or seeing on a DVD if you are interested.
From GM Roundup Ready soybeans in Argentina to the use or otherwise and its labelling of GM oils in food stuffs, in both Europe and North America to Uganda where GM technology was being used to develop black sigatoka resistant bananas.
GM technology is now quite common in plant genetics, of some use in animal production and likely to be more widely used. For example, GM technology has been used in cotton to reduce pesticide use in growing the crop, very successfully.
He really does not come up with a single answer..........but it does seem that big steps can be taken to enhance food security in many lesser developed areas through insect and disease resistance especially in the vegetatively propagated crops, with bananas a great example.
While not discussed on the tv program, Panama disease of bananas in the Asian region [which can be devastating] is also seen as a very suitable candidate for control via GM developed new banana varieties, and this issue is being researched already.
Maybe there is no single answer to the use of GM technology. But remember, similar heated debate also occurred about 70 - 80 years ago when hybrid corn and sorghum was developed. It was unnatural, the ruination of the world was imminent! But hybridisation of plants is now very much mainstream.
Will GM technology eventually go the same way??? To be well accepted as another tool in developing higher yielding and disease resistant crops and plants of all sorts.........it is even now being used on turfgrass.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Salt Tolerant Cereals Getting Closer
The efforts to develop salt tolerance in the world's major cereal crops has been one of the great needs in modern agriculture. Many areas of the world's farmlands are salt affected, and there are alos many millions of hectares that are naturally unusable because of salt issues. Mark Testor and his now quite large team in Adelaide have been carefully working through some of these processes for a few years now, and are now starting to capitalise on the work with a few positive announcements. Professor Testor is a very well renowned academic, and is impressive to meet or hear speak at conferences. Good luck to them as they push forward with the work. The following is a media release from the University.
And yes...........it uses GM approaches to achieve the results.
An international team of scientists has developed salt-tolerant plants using a new type of genetic modification (GM), bringing salt-tolerant cereal crops a step closer to reality.
The research team - based at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus - has used a new GM technique to contain salt in parts of the plant where it does less damage.
Salinity affects agriculture worldwide, which means the results of this research could impact on world food production and security.
The work has been led by researchers from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the University of Adelaide's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, in collaboration with scientists from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK. The results of their work are published today in the top international plant science journal, The Plant Cell. "Salinity affects the growth of plants worldwide, particularly in irrigated land where one third of the world's food is produced. And it is a problem that is only going to get worse, as pressure to use less water increases and quality of water decreases," says the team's leader, Professor Mark Tester, from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide and the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG).
"Helping plants to withstand this salty onslaught will have a significant impact on world food production."
Professor Tester says his team used the technique to keep salt - as sodium ions (Na+) - out of the leaves of a model plant species. The researchers modified genes specifically around the plant's water conducting pipes (xylem) so that salt is removed from the transpiration stream before it gets to the shoot. "This reduces the amount of toxic Na+ building up in the shoot and so increases the plant's tolerance to salinity," Professor Tester says. "In doing this, we've enhanced a process used naturally by plants to minimise the movement of Na+ to the shoot. We've used genetic modification to amplify the process, helping plants to do what they already do - but to do it much better."
The team is now in the process of transferring this technology to crops such as rice, wheat and barley. "Our results in rice already look very promising," Professor Tester says.
And yes...........it uses GM approaches to achieve the results.
An international team of scientists has developed salt-tolerant plants using a new type of genetic modification (GM), bringing salt-tolerant cereal crops a step closer to reality.
The research team - based at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus - has used a new GM technique to contain salt in parts of the plant where it does less damage.
Salinity affects agriculture worldwide, which means the results of this research could impact on world food production and security.
The work has been led by researchers from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the University of Adelaide's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, in collaboration with scientists from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK. The results of their work are published today in the top international plant science journal, The Plant Cell. "Salinity affects the growth of plants worldwide, particularly in irrigated land where one third of the world's food is produced. And it is a problem that is only going to get worse, as pressure to use less water increases and quality of water decreases," says the team's leader, Professor Mark Tester, from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide and the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG).
"Helping plants to withstand this salty onslaught will have a significant impact on world food production."
Professor Tester says his team used the technique to keep salt - as sodium ions (Na+) - out of the leaves of a model plant species. The researchers modified genes specifically around the plant's water conducting pipes (xylem) so that salt is removed from the transpiration stream before it gets to the shoot. "This reduces the amount of toxic Na+ building up in the shoot and so increases the plant's tolerance to salinity," Professor Tester says. "In doing this, we've enhanced a process used naturally by plants to minimise the movement of Na+ to the shoot. We've used genetic modification to amplify the process, helping plants to do what they already do - but to do it much better."
The team is now in the process of transferring this technology to crops such as rice, wheat and barley. "Our results in rice already look very promising," Professor Tester says.
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