| Previously, I discussed articles citing research that linked hotter water in the North Pacific in 2013-14 to declines in biomass near the bottom. It was suggested that a full recovery of fish stocks could take years. Then the period extended to 2016 and 2019, when unusually high ocean temperatures were followed by steep declines in productivity and a 79% decline in stocks. Now in 2024, the North Pacific heat wave is speeding up hatching by two to three weeks, which is leading to higher mortality and fewer juvenile fish in the Gulf of Alaska. Heat waves can have long-lasting effects. Additional research suggests that early hatching, which started a decade ago, continued even in years without heat waves. The heat has been a trigger for change, and it is not clear what the new norm is, or even if there is one. The researchers suggest that as a result of the accelerated hatching and mortality rates, the research tools and methods, as well as timing, need to be changed to get more accurate data. Also, when survival rates are low and barely meet the minimum threshold for research, they are less reliable. For me, the takeaway is that if this fishery is experiencing such impacts already from climate change, every other fisheries management system needs to be tightened up. At the very least, they need to have more conservative measures. However, as fisheries spread out and survival and recruitment decline, every fishery management scheme will cost more per unit of catch. It might be time to think about adding a percent or two to the catch value to cover the costs. – Jason |
| How to Harvest Moisture from the Atmosphere — The Economist Engineers are increasingly looking to the atmosphere for water. They have good reason to do so. Even in the depths of Chile’s Atacama Desert, often called the driest place on Earth, estimates suggest that fog and dew can generate some 200ml of water per square meter. JC: Civilizations long ago found ways to harvest moisture from the air. I have seen it done in fields along the coast of Peru and other places. As a gardener for three summers in Martha’s Vineyard, I worked at a house built in the first quarter of the 18th century that still had its original garden. It was originally owned by a wealthy merchant in Boston — well, Watertown, actually. He built the first bridge across the Charles River and controlled the trade to the north with northern Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Competing merchants in Boston complained to the King, and he traded Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Prince Edward Island to the Mayhew family for Watertown and opened the bridge to all of Boston. The Mayhew family and its descendants carried a trait for deafness, and as a result of that and a small gene pool, Martha’s Vineyard had a large percentage of people who were deaf or hard of hearing. Not coincidentally, one of the first sign languages was developed there and most people on the island could sign. But I digress. Today there is plenty of water on the Vineyard. For the first couple centuries of European settlement, before inhabitants tapped into the freshwater lens below ground, gardens were created by digging square pits, two-to-three meters deep with sloping walls. Any rain would pool on the bottom, and all the fog and mist would collect on the plants and be taken in that way. The garden was quite productive and needed far less manual watering than those planted on the flat surface. My concern is this: If new methods of water collection are implemented on a grand scale and destroy natural habitat, we will just create more agricultural sprawl. And moisture isn’t infinite. At some point, if we harvest enough to be sufficient for food production, what will that do to weather patterns elsewhere? With Organic Fields Next Door, Conventional Farms Dial Up the Pesticide Use, Study Finds – Associated Press Champions of organic farming have long portrayed it as friendlier to humans and the earth. But a new study in a California county found a surprising effect as their acreage grew: Nearby conventional farms applied more pesticides, likely to stay on top of an increased insect threat to their crops. JC: Interesting — I hadn’t heard this before. Generally, it is the organic growers that are concerned about the drift of herbicides and pesticides from conventional growers that end up in their fields, which can threaten not only their organic crops but also their organic certification. Generally, any lawsuits are settled by having distances of separation between the crops, but the spraying can still drift. As a child, I remember when a neighbor across the road applied pesticide that drifted and settled on our Concord grapes; they lost their leaves and fruit. We thought they were dead, but they came back the next year. Common sense (and being a good neighbor) is generally all it takes to avoid chemical drift from wind, but insects, some weed seeds, pollen, and microscopic pests and fungus are another matter entirely. The agrochemicals of today weren’t designed for polyculture or even strip farming. Agri-Environmental Policies from 1960 to 2022 — Nature Researchers have found a strong link between economic development and implemented agri-environmental policies. Their work reveals that 43% of all global border discontinuities in soil erosion between countries can be explained by differences in their policies. JC: This is an insightful piece of work. Now that the correlation has been documented, I wonder if anyone will actually take note and pursue this more strategically, so that others can learn from it. It might be good to explore how tightly ring-fenced the policies are — e.g., in terms of just agriculture, or availability of inputs, knowledge about how to do better, export and pricing policies that align better or worse, etc. The question for me is how mutually reinforcing these policies may be even if they are not about farming per se. In short, are they mutually reinforcing or are they only for agriculture? How culturally linked are the policies and what would the barriers be for other countries to adopt them? And if there are none, why is that? Were borders not open? If so, how has that been affected by trade agreements and the WTO? There are likely trade-offs involved, and I wonder how many of the differences actually represent contrasting values expressed through policy. A word of caution, though: We need to use metrics to monitor policies, not policies to predict metrics. It’s best not to fall into the same trap of using practices as proxies for results. Researchers Use an Edible Blue-Green Algae to Protect Honeybees Against Viruses – Phys.org Scientists at the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service have developed an edible antiviral treatment that can be used to protect honeybees against deformed wing virus and other ailments. JC: When we bring wild animals into the sphere of human influence for millennia in “unnatural” population densities and then maintain them using a substitute for their natural food source, they will be weakened in various ways, whether we technically domesticate them or not. The populations also interact with all manner of everything else that people have put into the planet. Bees, and other insects, are supposedly simple organisms. There are far more of them in captivity than any fish or livestock produced for food or otherwise. Even for insects, they stand out from all other domesticated species due to their global spread. Silkworms had their day, but mostly in Asia, then Europe and a bit in the US. But honeybees are produced everywhere. And now we are beginning to see some of the consequences of how they have been raised, handled, and used. Rather than assuming that the algae is a permanent source of protection against viruses, perhaps we should use it in rotation with other treatments and better handling, feeding, and use practices. Or, if we don’t really care about pollination, we can just leave the viruses to become resistant as so many other treatments have from overuse. Think about it. Snake Steak Could Be a Climate-Friendly Source of Protein – Scientific American Pythons turn their food into meat pretty efficiently, a study finds, making them an intriguing alternative to climate-unfriendly cows. Some snake scientists think eating these reptiles — already customary in parts of the world — might help lessen the damage our food choices have on the environment. JC: I must admit, I was skeptical after reading just a few sentences of this piece. Beef was eliminated from serious contention because we all know about its impacts, including that it is responsible for 10% of global GHG emissions. Pork has problems with manure, and poultry has problems too. Before anyone gets too excited about rushing out and investing in python farms, however, there is no data in the piece to back up the claims. There is no mention of feed conversion, time to market, dress-out weight, mortality rates, enclosure requirements, and of course no mention of environmental impacts. There is a suggestion that it would take a lot more research to figure it all out — or maybe even to write a more convincing article. The most noteworthy issue raised was that pythons could go without eating for months without significant impact on their health or weight. There is no indication of where or how they are raised — do they need to be in (fresh) water, can they be raised freely with other pythons, or do they need to be separated? And how do they compare with aquaculture products, which can be amazingly efficient in terms of feed conversion and time to market? There was also no mention of what they would need for feed — but they are carnivores, and that means we must take into account the environmental impact of producing them in captivity. Whatever they eat would come with an environmental price. Is the goal to find different ways to produce meat with fewer impacts, or just to eat less meat? Seven Billion Newly Hatched Chicks are Killed Every Year — But a Ban is Not the Solution – Phys.Org Annually, the global egg industry kills seven billion day-old male chicks because they don’t lay eggs and aren’t worth raising for meat. While several countries have banned the practice, neither bans nor other current solutions are sustainable, researchers say. JC: The dairy industry has found a way to separate the semen from bulls to produce many more females, which are needed to replace dairy cows as they are rotated out of the herd every three years. Now, dairy farmers are producing valuable male calves from meat-bull crosses two years in a row. These grade out at USDA choice, which is much more valuable than the dairy males or unwanted females. Generally, though, breeding of dairy calves is quite intentional with little left to chance. It would seem that there must be a way to do something similar for poultry, as well. That would probably be the most humane way to address this issue at scale. However, in the meantime, we might find that skinnier roosters may be similar to all birds in some countries and may actually be preferred as being more flavorful or natural. In short, it may be a question of finding the right markets. Many animal products that were thrown away in the past now have quite high value as exports. Even the value for different types of meat may have markets that make trades viable, e.g., our dark meat for your white meat. A startup in the US, Kipster, has been growing out the roosters from their breeding of layers, but it is having a hard time finding markets. It has even had a hard time finding slaughterhouses that can handle skinny animals. It seems that every time they solve one problem, another one pops up. |
| Jason Clay, Ph.D., is Executive Director of The Markets Institute at WWF and Senior Vice President of WWF’s Markets Team. Before joining WWF in 1999, Jason ran a family farm, taught at Harvard and Yale, worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and spent more than 25 years working with human rights and environmental organizations. |
