Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?

A comment by Joanne Blythman in the Guardian (UK): Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods".

Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as a credibly nutritious substitute for meat. Unusual among grains, quinoa has a high protein content (between 14%-18%), and it contains all those pesky, yet essential, amino acids needed for good health that can prove so elusive to vegetarians who prefer not to pop food supplements.

Sales took off. Quinoa was, in marketing speak, the "miracle grain of the Andes", a healthy, right-on, ethical addition to the meat avoider's larder (no dead animals, just a crop that doesn't feel pain). Consequently, the price shot up – it has tripled since 2006 – with more rarified black, red and "royal" types commanding particularly handsome premiums.

But there is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder. The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it. Imported junk food is cheaper. In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken. Outside the cities, and fuelled by overseas demand, the pressure is on to turn land that once produced a portfolio of diverse crops into quinoa monoculture.

In fact, the quinoa trade is yet another troubling example of a damaging north-south exchange, with well-intentioned health and ethics-led consumers here unwittingly driving poverty there. It's beginning to look like a cautionary tale of how a focus on exporting premium foods can damage the producer country's food security....

Photo of quinoa by Vi..Cult..., Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Climate change will force Australian farmers to adapt

Sarah Clarke in ABC News: Australia's farmers will need to adapt to cope with a potentially hotter and drier continent as the effects of climate change take hold, scientists say. As the UN's chief science body meets in Hobart today to update the latest climate modelling, the CSIRO says forecasts show Australia will have to cope with less rainfall, longer dry periods and crops struggling to grow in changing conditions.

CSIRO climate applications scientist Steve Crimp says the nation's agricultural sector will likely feel the heat of a hotter climate. "Certainly across most of southern Australia, the projections of the future are for warmer and drier conditions, so when we experience warm and dry conditions, growing those crops, canola, wheat, barley etc will be more challenging in the future," he said.

A CSIRO report warns climate change will threaten Australia's farming productivity and says grazing livestock, particularly cattle, will be stressed as a result and less likely to breed. Central Australia is predicted to experience the greatest warming.

Modelling shows irrigated cropping may also be challenged, especially in the south east where water is drawn from upstream in the Murray-Darling Basin. The CSIRO forecasts all cropping could be hit by less rainfall....

Drought in the Wheatlands, Western Australia, shot by Phillip Capper, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Impact of climate change hitting US, congressional report finds

The New York Daily News via Reuters: The consequences of climate change are now hitting the United States on several fronts, including health, infrastructure, water supply, agriculture and especially more frequent severe weather, a congressionally mandated study has concluded.

A draft of the U.S. National Climate Assessment, released on Friday, said observable change to the climate in the past half-century "is due primarily to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuel," and that no areas of the United States were immune to change. "Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont have observed changes in their local climate that are outside of their experience," the report said.

Months after Superstorm Sandy hurtled into the U.S. East Coast, causing billions of dollars in damage, the report concluded that severe weather was the new normal. "Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense, including heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts," the report said, days after scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared 2012 the hottest year ever in the United States.

Some environmentalists looked for the report to energize climate efforts by the White House or Congress, although many Republican lawmakers are wary of declaring a definitive link between human activity and evidence of a changing climate....

Removing debris from the Joplin, Missouri, tornado, US Army Corps of Engineers photo

Lower nitrogen losses with perennial biofuel crops

Debra Levey Larson in the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences News: Perennial biofuel crops such as miscanthus, whose high yields have led them to be considered an eventual alternative to corn in producing ethanol, are now shown to have another beneficial characteristic–the ability to reduce the escape of nitrogen in the environment. In a 4-year University of Illinois study that compared miscanthus, switchgrass, and mixed prairie species to typical corn-corn-soybean rotations, each of the perennial crops were highly efficient at reducing nitrogen losses, with miscanthus having the greatest yield.

“Our results clearly demonstrate that environmental nitrogen fluxes from row-crop agriculture can be greatly reduced after the establishment of perennial biofuel crops,” said U of I postdoctoral research associate Candice Smith.  “Because of the establishment variability, we were able to compare annual row crops with perennial crops. Although in the first two years, nitrate leaching remained high in the non-established miscanthus crop, once a dense, productive crop was established in the second year of growth, nitrate leaching in tile drainage quickly decreased.”

Smith said that this ability to reduce the loss of nitrogen into the environment will prove to be greatly beneficial.

 “Intensive corn production with large fertilizer inputs leads to large losses of nitrogen into the environment, both through gas emissions of nitrous oxide and leaching of nitrate to surface waters through tile drainage systems,” added Mark David, U of I biogeochemist. “Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas, and nitrate can contaminate drinking water supplies and leads to coastal ocean problems. The hypoxic zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico is a result of nitrate leaching from the tile-drained Corn Belt of the midwestern United States – a likely location for biofuel production,” he said....

An aerial view of the bioenergy farm near South First Street in Champaign, Illinois, photo from the university's website

Drainage ditches can help clean up field runoff

Ann Perry in USDA News: Vegetated drainage ditches can help capture pesticide and nutrient loads in field runoff, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists report. These ditches—as common in the country as the fields they drain—give farmers a low-cost alternative for managing agricultural pollutants and protecting natural resources.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) ecologist Matt Moore at the agency's National Sedimentation Laboratory in Oxford, Miss., and his colleagues conducted the research. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency.

Until recently, the primary function of many edge-of-field ditches was to provide a passage for channeling excess water from crop fields. Many farmers controlled ditch vegetation with trimming or dredging to eliminate plant barriers that could impede the flow of runoff.

But in one of Moore's first studies, he evaluated the transport and capture of the herbicide atrazine and the insecticide lambda-cyhalothrin for 28 days in a 160-foot section of a vegetated agricultural drainage ditch in Mississippi. One hour after he started a simulated runoff event, 61 percent of the atrazine and 87 percent of the lambda-cyhalothrin had transferred from the water to the ditch vegetation. At the end of the ditch, runoff pesticide concentrations had decreased to levels that were generally non-toxic to downstream aquatic fauna....

USDA photo: ARS ecologist Matt Moore has found that vegetated drainage ditches can be a low cost way for farmers to capture pesticides and excess nutrients in runoff from fields.

Climate change threatens French wine

Marie Doezema in CNBC: From rising shorelines to devastating hurricanes, the visible effects scientists say climate change is wreaking on daily life no longer surprise many people around the world. The French have their own take on just how radically life may change.

"In 20 years, the English will be making Grenache from Chateauneuf-du-Pape," says Herve Lethielleux, co-owner of L'Etiquette, a wine boutique in central Paris, about a wine variety from subtropical southeastern France.

That's because the changing climate is affecting the delicate balance of weather, soil and other factors that are central to the production one of their main commodities, something that's already had a visible effect elsewhere around the globe.

"If you look at Tasmania, it was too cool to grow grapes 25 to 40 years ago," says Gregory Jones, a research climatologist at Southern Oregon University, about the wine-producing region of Australia. "Today, it's clearly much more suitable."

For French winemakers already keenly feeling the effects of growing competition from other countries, higher temperatures in recent years have meant grapes with lower acidity and higher sugar content. That makes for higher alcohol and fruitier — some say cloying — wines....

Image by PRA, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Bumblebees do best where there is less pavement and more floral diversity

Seed Daily via SPX: Landscapes with large amounts of paved roads and impervious construction have lower numbers of ground-nesting bumblebees, which are important native pollinators, a study from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley shows.

The study suggests that management strategies that reduce the local use of pavement and increase natural habitat within the landscape could improve nesting opportunities for wild bees and help protect food supplies around the word.

The study also suggests that increasing the number of species-rich flowering patches in suburban and urban gardens, farms and restored habitats could provide pathways for bees to forage and improve pollination services over larger areas.

The findings have major implications for global pollinator conservation on a rapidly urbanizing planet. "We are potentially in a pollinator crisis," said Shalene Jha, lead author and assistant professor of biology at The University of Texas at Austin. "Honey bees are declining precipitously, and wild bees have also been exhibiting population declines across the globe. Native bees provide critical pollination services for fruit, nut, fiber and forage crops. Understanding how bees move around the landscape can help us both preserve biodiversity and improve crop yields."

Animal pollination is estimated to be worth over $200 billion in global crop yields....

Tacuina sanitatis (XIV century). Public domain

Zimbabwe ill-prepared for rainfall extremes, farmers say

Madalitso Mwando in the Zimbabwe Mail: Thumeliso Matshobana knows what the devastation of too much water looks like. A smallholder farmer in Zimbabwe’s Midlands, he watched helplessly last year as floods destroyed crops, livestock, homes and schools. The heavy rains, he says, came as “a total surprise.”

The floods left a trail of destruction in traditionally dry and impoverished rural areas of the Midlands and Matebeleland, and rebuilding has been a slow and painful process. “We want rain but not the kind that kills us and destroys our livelihoods. But no one ever seems to know exactly the kind of rains we will have,” Matshobana lamented.

That “makes it hard for us villagers to make necessary preparations,” he said, expressing what has become a common sentiment about unpredictable rain patterns that seem to vex even the country’s meteorological services department.

The Met office, as it is known in Zimbabwe, issued a flood advisory in late November, predicting heavy downpours. But because the Met office has been off the mark many times in the past with its weather predictions, which are now questioned by farmers and disaster preparedness organizations, farmers such as Matshobana find themselves with little idea what to expect or what to do to prepare for floods.

Japhet Hadebe, a climate change researcher working with the Zimbabwe Environment Research Organisation (ZERO) says climate change monitoring remains “a complicated issue in Zimbabwe.”...

Supporting climate-friendly food production

Seed Daily via SPX: This summer, record temperatures and limited rainfall parched vast areas of U.S. cropland, and with Earth's surface air temperature projected to rise 0.69 degrees Celsius by 2030, global food production will be even more unpredictable, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute.

Although agriculture is a major driver of human-caused climate change, contributing an estimated 25 to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, when done sustainably it can be an important key to mitigating climate change, write report authors Danielle Nierenberg and Laura Reynolds.

Because of its reliance on healthy soil, adequate water, and a delicate balance of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, farming is the human endeavor most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

But agriculture's strong interrelationships with both climatic and environmental variables also make it a significant player in reducing climate-altering emissions as well as helping the world adapt to the realities of a warming planet.

"The good news is that agriculture can hold an important key to mitigating climate change," said Reynolds, Worldwatch's Food and Agriculture Research Associate.

"Practices such as using animal manure rather than artificial fertilizer, planting trees on farms to reduce soil erosion and sequester carbon, and growing food in cities all hold huge potential for reducing agriculture's environmental footprint."...

The Green Revolution is wilting

Seed Daily via SPX: The Green Revolution has stagnated for key food crops in many regions of the world, according to a study published in the Nature Communications by scientists with the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Led by IonE research fellow Deepak Ray, the study team developed geographically detailed maps of annual crop harvested areas and yields of maize (corn), rice, wheat and soybeans from 1961 to 2008.

It found that although virtually all regions showed a yield increase sometime during that period, in 24 to 39 percent of the harvested areas (depending on the crop) yield plateaued or outright declined in recent years.

Among the top crop-producing nations, vast areas of two of the most populous - China and India - are witnessing especially concerning stagnation or decline in yield. "This study clearly delineates areas where yields for important food crops are stagnating, declining, or never improved, as well areas where yields are still rapidly improving," Ray says.

"As a result, it both sounds the alert for where we must shift our course if we are to feed a growing population in the decades to come, and points to positive examples to emulate."

Interestingly, the researchers found that yields of wheat and rice - two crops that are largely used as food crops, and which supply roughly half of the world's dietary calories - are declining across a higher percentage of cropland than those of corn and soybean, which are used largely to produce meat or biofuels....

A rice field in Indonesia, shot by Mark Veeraart, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Soil determines fate of phosphorus

Brown University News: Just 20 years ago, the soils of the Amazon basin were thought unsuitable for large-scale agriculture, but then industrial agriculture — and the ability to fertilize on a massive scale — came to the Amazon. What were once the poorest soils in the world now produce crops at a rate that rivals that of global breadbaskets. Soils no longer seem to be the driver — or the limiter — of agricultural productivity. But a new Brown University-led study of three soybean growing regions, including Brazil, finds that soils have taken on a new role: mediating the environmental consequences of modern farming.

The study focuses on the relationship between soils and phosphorus, a key agricultural nutrient. Typically in short supply, particularly in tropical soils, phosphorus is unique among fertilizer requirements. It is finite, irreplaceable and mined in just a few places around the world.

“If that suggests scarcity, which is a concern, the overuse of phosphorus can also pose another problem, causing harmful algal blooms in waterways,” said Stephen Porder, assistant professor of biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and co-author of the study in the January 2013 edition of BioScience, posted early online. “It’s a bit of a Goldilocks problem — too much and our waterways are choked with algae, too little and we cannot produce enough food.”

...The new study compares the production of a single crop, soybeans, in the three places they are grown most — Iowa in the United States, Mato Grosso in Brazil, and Buenos Aires in Argentina. What the authors found was an example that illustrates how the combination of management and soil type frames the phosphorus-related concerns associated with these massive agricultural enterprises.

“Here are three regions where the crop that comes off the farm field is the same, but the fertilizer that goes in and the effects of this fertilizer on the environment are very different,” said lead author Shelby Riskin of Brown University and the Marine Biological Laboratory.

 “Having a one-size-fits-all approach to our understanding of interaction between people and their environment via agriculture is going to lead us to some erroneous concerns and conclusions if we don’t take the regional biophysical setting into account,” Porder said. “If you are concerned about the global phosphorus supply, Brazil is your problem — they are using a ton of it. If you are concerned about lakes and rivers being filled with algae, then Iowa is your problem, and learning how to mitigate even very small amounts of loss after decades of overfertilization is a real challenge.”...

Harvesting cotton in Brazil, shot by João Felipe C.S, public domain

Farmers need to grow climate smart

Busani Bafana in IPS: Farmers cannot wait much longer for negotiators to reach an agreement on including a work programme on agriculture in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And until one is approved, “it will continue to be difficult for farmers to produce the food needed, and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

This is according to Anette Friis from the Danish Food and Agriculture Council and spokesperson for Farming First, a global coalition calling on world leaders to increase agricultural output in a sustainable and socially responsible manner.

“Countries failed to get an agreement on agriculture at this year’s (Conference of the Parties) COP18 in Doha, which means that discussions will not move to the next level and a work programme on agriculture is not foreseen for the near future,” Friis told IPS. A work programme is a blueprint for action.

Friis said that agricultural organisations needed to pressure leaders to ensure that a future COP deal would include agriculture. She said that discussions on including an agricultural work programme would continue at the next COP in Bonn in June 2013. But this, Friis said, would be without further submissions from parties, which could have informed and moved the process forward.

Farming First is one of 18 leading agricultural organisations that have called for a work programme on agriculture under the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), an advisory body established under the UNFCCC....

No-till farming in Switzerland, outside Bern, shot by Volker Prasuhn, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Agricultural research 'key to easing climate-change impacts'

Rasha Dewedar in SciDev.net:  Agricultural research should be a strategic priority of the UN's efforts to lessen the impacts of climate change, according to a report launched at a UN climate change conference in Doha, Qatar.

The report, released by a group of leading international experts in climate change and agriculture last month (30 November), is intended to inform policymakers and agricultural planners about the risks climate change poses to dry areas. It offers practical solutions to reduce these threats and boost the productivity of this type of land.

'Strategies for Combating Climate Change in Drylands Agriculture' was produced by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) with two CGIAR research programmes — on Dryland Systems and on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) — and the Qatar National Food Security Programme.

Drylands constitute more than 40 per cent of the world's land surface and are home to 2.5 billion people, says the report. Those lands have less than eight per cent of the world's renewable water sources and are vulnerable to temperature extremes, frequent drought, land degradation and desertification, it adds....

A dry field in Chandeni, India, shot by Nitin.i.azam, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Agriculture takes a backseat again

IRIN: Discussions about much-needed support for agriculture - which is seen both as a victim and a cause of climate change - at the UN’s climate change conference in Doha have been postponed until next year.

Agriculture is a contentious and emotionally fraught issue. It results in the emission of major greenhouses gases, such as nitrous oxide and methane; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates agriculture accounts for 13.5 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

But climate change also threatens agriculture, which most developing countries’ populations rely on for income. The impact of climate change also threatens global food security; projections show that yields from food crops could decline by five percent for each degree Celsius increase in global warming. Many poor farmers are already experiencing the impact of increasingly variable rainfall.

Because of sharp divisions over the kind of support agriculture needs, little progress has been made in addressing these issues in the new climate deal being negotiated under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Some at the UN talks - known as the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP18) - see agricultural issues playing a more dominant role in reducing global warming. These participants emphasize the need to reduce agriculture-related emissions.  At the same time, developing countries are arguing they need more money and better technology to help farmers adapt to the impact of climate change, including frequent droughts, flooding and increased soil salinity....

Abraham Janssens, "Scaldis and Antwerpia," 1609

Global irrigated area at record levels, but expansion slowing

KTIC Radio: In 2009, the most recent year for which global data are available from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 311 million hectares in the world was equipped for irrigation but only 84 percent of that area was actually being irrigated, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute for its Vital Signs Online service (www.worldwatch.org). As of 2010, the countries with the largest irrigated areas were India (39 million hectares), China (19 million), and the United States (17 million), writes report author Judith Renner.

...The increasing availability of inexpensive individual pumps and well construction methods has led to a shift from public to private investment in irrigation, and from larger to smaller-scale systems. The takeoff in individual groundwater irrigation has been concentrated in India, China, and much of Southeast Asia. The idea of affordable and effective irrigation is attractive to poor farmers worldwide, with rewards of higher outputs and incomes and better diets.

"The option is often made even more appealing with offers of government subsidies for energy costs of running groundwater pumps and support prices of irrigated products," said Renner, a senior at Fordham University in New York. "In India's Gujarat state, for example, energy subsidies are structured so that farmers pay a flat rate, no matter how much electricity they use. But with rising numbers of farmers tapping groundwater resources, more and more aquifers are in danger of overuse."

If groundwater resources are overexploited, aquifers will be unable to recharge fast enough to keep pace with water withdrawals. It should be noted that not all aquifers are being pumped at unsustainable levels----in fact, 80 percent of aquifers worldwide could handle additional water withdrawals. One troubling aspect of groundwater withdrawals is that the world's major agricultural producers (particularly India, China, and the United States) are also the ones responsible for the highest levels of depletion....

A floating pumping station on the Nile River, shot by Rémih, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Rise in diabetes and non-communicable diseases linked to climate change

Tim Smedley in the Guardian (UK): "Epidemic" is an over-used word. But when the the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) uses it, it's worth listening. Rapidly increasing instances of a disease is afterall the very definition of the word. And that is exactly what's happening, says Ann Keeling, IDF's chief executive and chair of the NCD Alliance – comprising the IDF, the World Heart Federation, International Union For Cancer Control, and voluntary scientific organisation The Union (TB and lung disease).

"Type 2 diabetes is driven by both over nutrition and malnutrition", says Keeling. "These are global risks and global threats. We're seeing, particularly in middle income countries, type 2 diabetes related to maternal malnutrition. The dysfunctional food system is very much connected to what's happening in global agriculture changes and ... it is leading to both huge numbers of people who are malnourished and huge numbers of people that are obese."

The numbers are overwhelming: 366 million people have diabetes worldwide, expected to rise to half a billion – one in 10 adults – by 2030. The reason for the rise, along with a growing population, is climate change.

Given that diabetes already causes 4.6m deaths and costs more than £300bn ($465bn) globally every year in direct health care costs, the situation is not sustainable. The vast majority – 80% – of people with diabetes live in low-to-middle-income countries, which are due to be the worst effected by extreme weather and crop failures caused by climate change. At the same time urbanisation is leading to increasingly sedentary lifestyles, with obesity and diabetes as a result....

Photo by ParentingPatch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Sustainable land-use concept for South America

Seed Daily via SPX: In the world of agriculture, climate protection and intensive farming are generally assumed to be a contradiction in terms. At Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM), however, scientists have come up with a new land development concept that could change this view. The new model is tailored to medium-sized farms in South America and sees farmers transitioning from large-scale monoculture to more diverse crop mixtures spread over smaller plots interspersed with wooded areas - a switch that can bring significant financial benefits.

Each year, huge carbon stores are lost as a result of deforestation. In South America, around four million hectares of forest are cut down every year. As a result, international climate protection programs are planning to financially compensate farmers who preserve forests or plant new trees. Demand for land is rising, however. And growing need for food and energy crops will inevitably lead to conflicts of interest over fertile land in countries such as Brazil and Ecuador.

Thomas Knoke and Michael Weber at Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) firmly believe that intensive, high-yield agricultural practices can go hand-in-hand with climate and environmental protection.

The two scientists and their colleagues have developed a "diversified land-use" concept for medium-sized holdings in South America based on an idea originally developed by retired TUM professor, Wolfgang Haber.

The new concept encourages farmers to move away from large-scale monocropping and plant a mix of field crops on smaller plots, while at the same time setting aside part of their land for forests and hedges. Any unused land will be reforested. The smaller plots of farmland will still be large enough for intensive farming practices using fertilizers, planting machines and harvesters. The interspersed wooded areas and hedges will protect the soil from erosion and serve as long-term carbon stores....

Burning sugar-cane fields in Ecuador, shot by Martin Zeise, Berlin, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Italy floods prompt fears for future of farming

Tom Kington in the Guardian (UK): The floods that have devastated Italy over the past week could become even more severe in the future, threatening food production and destroying the country's natural beauty, experts warn. Storms have battered ancient towns and left large swaths of farmland in Tuscany under water, prompting a warning from the region's governor, Enrico Rossi, that "climate change is making us get used to ever more violent flooding".

Three people were found dead on Tuesday after their car fell from a collapsed bridge near Grosseto, while the town of Albinia was under two metres of water. As army units were called in to help locals evacuate, towns in neighbouring Umbria were also put on alert and sections of the main road linking north and south Italy were blocked by water. On Monday a 73-year-old man was drowned in his car by rising floodwaters near the walled town of Capalbio, with residents evacuated near Cortona, the setting for the novel Under the Tuscan Sun. Much of the rich farmland of the Maremma had become a lake of mud.

In Venice water levels were receding after the city's sixth-worst flooding since records began in 1872.

Leading Italian meteorologist Mario Giuliacci said: "The Mediterranean has warmed up by 1C to 1.5C in the last 20 years, meaning that Atlantic weather fronts passing over it absorb more vapour and more heat, which means more energy. And that means ever more violent storms and more rain when the fronts hit Italy. "An average of 80mm of rain should fall in Italy in November. In the last 40 years it has gone over 100mm 11 times, seven of which are since 1999," he added....

The Tiber in flood in 2004, shot by Lalupa, public domain

Carbon buried in the soil rises again

University of California-Davis News: A research team that includes a University of California, Davis, plant scientist has identified a source of carbon emissions that could play a role in understanding past and future global change. While earlier studies have found that erosion can bury carbon in the soil, acting as a carbon sink, or storage, the new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that part of that sink is only temporary.

“It’s all part of figuring out the global carbon cycle,” said co-author Johan Six, professor of plant sciences at UC Davis. “Where are the sources, and where are the sinks? Erosion is in some ways a sink, but, as we found out, it can also become a source.” The researchers estimated that roughly half of the carbon buried in soil by erosion will be re-released into the atmosphere within about 500 years, and possibly faster due to climate change. Climate change can speed the rate of decomposition, aiding the release of the buried carbon.

As a case study, the researchers used radiocarbon and optical dating to calculate the amount of carbon emissions captured in soils and released to the atmosphere during the past 6,000 years along the Dijle River in Belgium.

The study’s long time scope — from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 2000 — allowed the researchers to notice the gradual reintroduction of buried carbon to the atmosphere. Significant agricultural land conversion — historically the largest source of global erosion — began primarily in the past 150 years, well under the researchers’ time frame of 500 years. Therefore, most carbon sequestered in the soil during the past 150 years of agricultural history has not been released yet but may become a significant carbon source in the future, with implications for soil management, the study said.

“Our results showed that half of the carbon initially present in the soil and vegetation was lost to the atmosphere as a result of agricultural conversion,” said study co-author Gert Verstraeten, a professor at KU Leaven, Belgium. Six noted that erosion could be minimized by no-till and low-till agricultural methods, as well as by cover cropping, which can ensure that soil is not left bare.... 

Long furrows, shot by Duncan Grey, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license