The Scherer coal-fired power plant near Macon, Ga.,is labelled as the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the United states. In 2010,
said Angel Garcia Lidon, the director of the Spanish Agro-Food industry and Agricultural Training. It is also to promote communication and sharing of experiences among the farms.
but are still popular foods here. In regions such as Madrid, barely a drop of rain has fallen in months,
as the Spanish swear that the seeds provide much richer flavor for both table and wine grapes.
Most wineries also seem to be producing the wrong type of wine,(like) cheap table wine,
higher quality terroir-driven wines, said Fabio Bartolomei, co-owner of the small organic bodega Vinos Ambiz.
don't fix it, in the world's third largest wine producer. He thinks the trick is advocating more traditional techniques that have less of an environmental impact
and don't make wine at all. In the future I may take on more vineyards and grow the grapes myself, Bartomolei continued.
I recently spoke with Chief Environmental Officer Rich Shank. Prior to his role at Scotts Miracle-Gro
Shank served as executive director of the Ohio Chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He is a board member of the Ohio Environmental Council and the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.
It is a basic nutrient for all plants and is used widely in agriculture. You can t grow plants without phosphorus. It s a major component for animal life also.
It s a basic nutrient, but it becomes a problem when you get too much of it in a waterway.
One thing unique about Scotts fertilizer is that we re the only company that has combined all the nutrients in each particle.
The Edgeguard prevents material from being spread where you don t want it like on the driveway or sidewalk,
The implied increase in the shelf price of a pound of Smokehouse Almonds is 2. 8 cents.
The EERC is working withã Â Vermont-basedã Â Wynntryst to develop a gasification power system to use the waste from the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters processing plant to produce energy.
It also distributes other coffee products including Starbucks and Mcdonald's. The project will use a mostly renewable
Food cooperative improves safety, productivity with IBM analyticsanalytics technology that has enabled a Michigan agricultural cooperative better account for the source of fruits
and vegetables has helped reduce paper associated with ensuring food safety, improving productivity by 50 percent. The technology has allowed also the cooperative to better analyze its supply chain processes,
collects, stores and analyzes data about the food being handled by Cherry Central Cooperative from the time it is harvested and processed,
to its journey through distribution warehouses, to its ultimate retail destination in grocery stores. From a compliance standpoint, that is mandated.
-based Cherry Central's supply chain business partners as the food makes its way to grocery or market shelves.
Steve Eiseler, vice president of operations at Cherry Central Cooperative, said the IBM-based technology has allowed his organization to significantly reduce the amount of paperwork necessary to remain in compliance with government food traceability requirements
We take our responsibility in the food supply chain seriously, Eiseler said. We wanted to feel more comfortable in
when there is a food safety concern. It turned to its longtime IT services partner, N2n Global,
The cooperative is using a custom IBM System x application from N2n Global called the Quality & Food safety Manager.
We though it would help advance the food industry by offering these components together, said Randy Odom, director of sales and marketing for N2n Global.
This collaboration is helping us create a well-connected and visible food supply chain to make it easier and faster to track the food items we market
This visibility is enabling is to take proactive measures to ensure food safety and ultimately protecting the consumer
Food fight: White Castle vs biofuelstaking a bite out of biofuels. White Castle and other chains say that corn-based biofuels are driving up food prices.
--U s. chain restaurants and a group of congressmen are launching an assault against biofuels on the grounds that fuel produced from crops like corn are pushing up food prices.
At a press conference on Capitol hill this Thursday, the president of burger chain White Castle will join the owner of a Wendy's franchise and other meat movers to demand theã Â repeal of the federal Renewable
Fuel Standard (RFS. The RFS requires transportation fuels to contain a minimum complement of renewables.
a crop that has fed long the cattle that the food industry turns into burgers and steaks that groups like White Castle and Wendy's sell.
the National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR) said: The federal RFS mandate drastically manipulates the corn marketplace and increases commodity and food costs across the supply chain ââ oe from farmers and chain restaurants to consumers and diners.
NCCR, along with other coalition partners and Members of Congress, will hold a press conference to launch'Feed Food Fairness:
Take RFS Off the Menu.''Speakers will include Lisa Ingram, president of White Castle; Mark Behm, who operates some 61 Wendy's outlet in Michigan;
Steve Foglesong, a cattle producer and the former chair of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association;
White Castle confounds someã Â meat eaters and thrills others by offering square-shaped burgers rather than round ones.
White Castle and its fellow meat marketers are hoping to take a bite out of the renewable fuel forces that they say are pushing up prices.
Food of the future: can'Frankenfish'survive politics? Sometime this summer or soon after, the federal Food and Drug Administration may finally approve the first-ever genetically modified animal for human consumption--a fast-growing Atlantic salmon that has taken 17 years to reach the threshold of American consensus. The man to thank
--or blame, depending on how you feel about these things--is a former Soviet biologist who is bankrolling the endeavor with an eye on becoming a U s. salmon farmer.
More than 33,000 fishermen, environmentalists and food safety advocates have written to the FDA to oppose the approval.
Aquabounty is the only animal biotechnology company in the United states trying to gain approval for a gene-altered animal to enter the human food chain.
considering applying for permission to produce other GM foods. Already in China researchers are working on the same type of fast-growth salmon,
has said one factor in moving the study was that it took the FDA a decade just to decide how to regulate bioengineered food and dairy animals.
Creating the Frankenfish The Aquadvantage salmon is a voracious over-eater like a cow with fins.
what are known as triploid eggs, an abnormality in the chromosomes that stop female fish from reproducing. plans to sterilize embryos in Canada before shipping them to Panama,
whose San diego lab scientists are genetically engineering zebra fish to try out other alterations in commercial seafood,
since the company plans to grow 15 million Aquadvantage eggs, that 1 to 5 percent could amount to 750,000 fertile fish.
The company's investor background material note that their fish eat five times the food as wild salmon do
says Patty Lovera, assistant director of the consumer watchdog group Food and Water Watch, just one of the 300 groups that oppose the fish.
where farmers hope to buy the company's fish eggs and cultivate them themselves for sale. The market for heart-healthy salmon,
Last November, salmon overtook shrimp as the second most consumed seafood in the United states, just behind tuna.
Some 91 percent of all seafood eaten in this country is imported and nearly half of that is from aquaculture.
and boost productivity in the $100 billion commercial aquaculture industry, the fastest growing segment of the worldwide food industry.
Itã¢â â¢s like selective breeding in cattle to increase milk production or produce more beef per pound.
How should food be labeled? Even if the FDA approves the fish, as many expect it will, there's a secondary battle looming:
Such a label would actually bestow a premium on wild salmon for consumers who look for natural food items
The political call for labeling genetically engineered foods, also known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOS, is picking up steam in statehouses across the United states. This year alone,
28 states have introduced legislation for mandatory labeling of such foods. In June, the Maine legislature became the second state after Connecticut to pass such a bill.
But food movement designees like Michael Pollen continue to press for change. And the tide in this country indeed seems to be turning.
A June ABC News poll found that 52 percent of the respondents felt GMO food was unsafe to eat
and slightly more said theyã¢â â¢d be less likely to buy foods labeled as genetically modified or bioengineered.
if people want to eat grass-fed beef and only what's grown within 100 miles of their homes.
Or eat beef that's been bred selectively to grow fast? It's the whole premise of global trade.
For business, food waste a ripe opportunity for savingsi feel like a character in a movie, said Holly Elmore, a 53-year-old former caterer from Atlanta.
It's against America's rising tide of food waste, which bloats its landfills and costs it the equivalent of $165 billion a year in wasted food.
Elmore is helping food companies and communities reclaim those losses, while also helping give rise to new industries, from compost haulers to app makers.
In February 2009, Elmore's nonprofit group, Elemental Impact, convinced Atlanta officials and its biggest food-service outfits to launch the nation's first-ever Zero Waste Zone around its downtown hotels
, restaurants, convention and sports centers. The goal is to eliminate every scrap of food waste. Spent grease is turning into biofuel.
Excess food is donated now to shelters and soup kitchens. Used food is diverted to feedstock. And food deemed inedible is turned now to compost for new urban gardens around the city.
Atlanta food companies are managing to save thousands of dollars a month in hauling and disposal fees
all while creating new revenue streams--from selling compost and used grease to drawing in new customers who favor their social responsibility.
The effort has stimulated also a micro-economy of biofuel makers, compost haulers, urban farmers and recycling outfits.
Food companies understand, and we make this our primary pitch to them, that this is not just about the environment,
Elmore said. This is about money. Each year, Americans throw away 40 percent of our food, much of it perfectly edible.
It's lost in every part of the food chain, from farms, where a surplus crop gets plowed under,
to grocery chains that overstock and then throw out perfectly good food because it doesn't meet standards of perfect shape
and colors that customers have come to expect. Supermarkets throw out $15 billion in fruits and vegetables each year, according to U s. Department of agriculture estimates.
Whether it's last week's home-cooked leftovers, forgotten fruit turning brown in a refrigerator or those end-of-shift fast food burgers and fries,
it all winds up burdening our landfills. In fact, the Environmental protection agency says food waste accounts for 13 percent of total trash nationally.
In 1980, food waste by weight made up 9. 5 percent of local landfills. Two years ago, that total had grown to 20.5 percent.
The EPA puts the total amount at 33 million tons a year. For a luxury catering outfit like Atlanta's Affairs to Remember
which plates 700-person weddings and corporate banquets, food waste has always been a cost of doing business.
The $10 million outfit, among the largest in the United states, now trains its 250 workers to hold back good food until guests need it or ask for it;
to cut produce and meat so that every usable piece of it goes onto a plate;
and to separate out food scraps from other refuse for composting, which is sent no longer to a landfill but to a local composter.
Since we started this with Holly in 2009, we've diverted 250 tons out of the landfill,
said Patrick Cuccaro, the company's general manager. In addition to trimming 10 percent off its bottom line, Cuccaro said the company has taken in $250, 000 in additional revenue.
In a city dominated by industries with huge recycling efforts (soft drink giant Coca-cola, paper-maker Georgia pacific and the world's largest aluminum maker and recycler, Novelis), it's a great business-to-business model.
A growth opportunity Food waste happens along every part of our industrial food chain. In surplus years, farmers plow under perfectly edible crops
which put out a comprehensive issue paper on food waste in August, said there are many opportunities for new business to spring up along the food waste system.
Gunders pointed to one farmer who realized 70 percent of his carrots went to waste
saved itself $100 million a year in food loss partly by realizing its approach of piling produce deep and high was leading to spoilage
for real enterprising folks to scoop up surplus food occurring all along the food chain out there. An estimated $47 billion annually year is lost at the retail
and consumer levels each each year, according to researchers at the Dutch journal Food Policy. A big problem
is the amount of food being tossed by supermarkets out before its sell-by date, which is regulated not by law.
300 per store every day in food that is still edible but has no channel to find consumers.
Noting that household food waste is often the result of bad meal planning, poor sight lines in the refrigerator that lets food rot unseen
and refrigerators running too cold, or not cold enough, she said there are numerous technological fixes:
from apps that help with meal planning and keeping track of groceries to smart refrigerators that do this as well
since we seem to waste as much as 25 percent of the food and drinks we bring home--the equivalent of $2, 275 annually for the average family of four, according to researcher Jonathan Bloom in his 2010 book on the topic, American Wasteland.
Leaving nothing to waste Of course, some food has to be wasted from scraps left on our plates to the inedible bits and pieces of meat and produce remaining from meal preparation.
And that should head into composting pile. But less than three percent of food waste is composted, according to the EPA.
Some of that has to do with regulatory hurdles that composters face to open new facilities.
They are regulated as landfills, which are harder to open, or they get closed once neighbors complain about food-rot odor.
The industry, including some 3, 500 independent composters, as well as haulers and equipment makers, is ripe for consolidation.
and for using food waste in methane gas capture. In Atlanta, the zero-waste zone downtown has brought new players into the market,
that is moving up the food chain and the age chain. The younger you are and the wealthier you are,
Instead of promoting healthy, sustainable food, it makes our system depend on a few crops that is used for animal feed and in processed food.
We have the technology and the science right now to grow food in sustainable ways,
but we lack the policies and markets to make it happen, WSU John Reganold said in a statement.
U s. agriculture has had an impressive history of productivity that has resulted in relatively affordable food, feed,
Fewer farmers are producing more food and fiber on about the same acreage, while input and energy use per unit output has decreased over the last 50 years.
Despite these tremendous advances, U s. farmers are facing the daunting challenges of meeting the food, feed,
However, as customers shop at stores like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and farmer's markets, we see there is a demand for this type of sustainable agriculture.
and change the market structure to promote more eco-friendly ways of growing food, instead of perpetuating the modern agricultural practices that take a toll on the environment and the quality of our food.
You can read the full report online here. UC Davis and WSU Photo: Maureen Mo Reilly/flickr
For this entrepreneur's success, liquor is quickerat around 4 p m. on a Wednesday, the interior of the New york city bar Employees Only lives up to its name.
In the dim speakeasy style space, a barback slices limes and a waiter wipes down glasses.
Head bartender Dev Johnson, in a pork pie hat and waxed mustache, considers a new whiskey for his shelves.
So this is Brenne, says Allison Patel, motioning toward a bottle on the bar. Patel is petite,
with tall wedge ankle boots, fitted black pants, a draped black leather jacket and long thick brown hair.
This is a whiskey that I produce, she tells Johnson. We just launched October 1. It's a single malt whiskey from Cognac, France.
She continues, diving into details on the farm distillery, fermentation methods, yeast strands, and how she finishes the stuff in cognac barrels.
Johnson swirls the whiskey in his glass. He sniffs the pale gold liquid and his eyes move upward in contemplation.
He takes a sip, washes it in his mouth for a few moments, nods, and spits into a bucket behind the counter.
Tons of fruit he tells her. Lots of orange. Lots of fruit in there. It's interesting.
Patel begins to suggest the addition of orange zest, but Johnson interrupts. You get lots of vanilla, caramel in there too...
it's definitely different, he says, drawing his eyebrows together. There's a lot of heat though, a lot of burn on the tongue.
Johnson's reaction to her whiskey is a first. After spending 25 days offering samples of Brenne at upscale bars and liquor stores around Manhattan,
Patel's one-woman startup has received already orders from 39 different establishments. To most buyers her whisky's appeal lies in its palatability.
In reviews, a bottle of Brenne was described as silky, rich and sweet. But not this time.
which is a Japanese whiskey brand, she said. I had their Yamazaki 18 year. I'll never forget the moment,
I loved whiskey from that moment on. And I read everything I could about it.
Whiskey Woman When Patel's husband traveled abroad for work, he'd bring back more whiskeys for her to try.
She discovered that many of her favorite brands were unavailable in the U s . So she decided to import them herself.
The young company imports whiskey to the U s. from nontraditional places--generally nations that aren't named Scotland or Ireland--and exports American craft whiskey.
In her new role, Patel looks all over the world for quality whiskey, importing from unlikely places such as Tasmania.
I was really looking for a specific profile of whiskey, she explains. I wanted something that was different.
and brings a new profile to the whiskey scene. That's when a friend suggested she visit a small cognac distillery in Cognac, France.
A third-generation cognac maker was also distilling single malt whiskey for his own personal consumption,
making it by using the same techniques as for cognac, but with organic barley instead of grapes.
I said,'Look, I think it's beautiful, this is exactly what I've been looking for.
'It would be the first single malt French whiskey to be imported to the U s. Before she gave the whiskey the Brenne label it now holds,
At the time, the whiskey finished aging in Limousin oak barrels. Patel suggested an additional step.
He was producing all this cognac, and I said, 'Why don't we transfer the whiskey to the casks that had the cognac in them?'
'she said. And it just put the finish on the whiskey that we were really looking for.
It was good enough, in fact, to introduce to the New york city market this year--with other large cities planned in 2013.
Sniff Test Back at Employees Only, Patel and bartender Dev Johnson have begun discussing their mutual acquaintances in the whiskey industry.
He takes his glass of whiskey and adds a splash of water. Swirl, sniff, sip.
looking for a non-food feedstock to produce fuel for jets and automobiles. In the Pacific Northwest, forest biofuel has been touted as a potential job creator,
Last week, the Wall street journal reported on how a growing number of coffee-lovers are bypassing specialty coffee shops
and opting instead to roast, grind and brew the beans themselves, a process that involves precise timing, temperature and often thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
the $11, 000 Blossom One Limited features the kind of high-tech precision that's sure to appease the taste buds of even the most discriminate of coffee snobs.
The company has stated that they've already received inquiries from restaurant owners and high-end establishments and are currently taking pre-orders for about 10 machines.
and deforestation, push up food prices, and make climate change worse. He issued his statement prior to the scheduled 11:15 a m. take off of Lufthansa flight LH013 from Hamburg-to-Frankfurt.
but so do the processes of relocating food crops and producing biofuels. Plowing, fertilizing and harvesting emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases,
and rob people of food and water as companies use land for biofuel feedstocks rather than for food crops,
it notes. Last month ten international organisations, including the World bank, WTO, UN and OECD called on G20 governments to scrap biofuel subsidies and mandates because of their impact on world poverty and food prices,
Foe said today. With partial funding from the German government, Lufthansa has purchased 800 tons of blend from Finland s Neste Oil for the 6-month, â 6. 6 million biofuel program.
and in some cases on poor soil that would not sustain food crops. Fuel producer Honeywell UOP says that camelina grows on fallow wheat fields
low yields mean that producers are more likely to grow it on healthy soil where it would compete against food,
where it would not compete against food. Photo: Friends of the Earth Note: This version updates an earlier version with information on Energem,
as if they enjoy making lemonade out of lemons, giving the hiccups a positive spin. But Jack Wadsworth, vice president of the Asia Society headquarters in New york city who oversaw the project
and that it was magical and also a mess. When asked about his thoughts on having to keep the fruit bats happy,
Dole food Company donating salad bars to schools Fenugreen Freshpaper keeps produce fresh for longer Ripeness sensor developed to monitor produce
Fungus threatens the gin and tonicif they remake Casablanca, Rick's lament could be that there are NO gin joints in all the world.
--It's the first day of summer, and devotees of the gin and tonic are staring down a disease that threatens to obliterate their classic hot weather elixir.
Yes, mother nature is playing party pooper again. This time, she's spreading a fungus that is attacking juniper trees,
which yield the berries that give gin its flavor. No juniper, no gin. Juniper is in serious trouble,
said Plantlife Scotland, a Scottish charity supported by Prince Charles that has asked the public to help monitor the decline of juniper trees in Britain.
Although juniper used in most commercial gins is largely from Eastern europe nowadays, The british population is key to survival of the whole species,
Shudder at the thought of a world with no gin. Tennessee williams, The Great Gatsby, Somerset Maugham and Raymond Chandler could not have done without.
James bond would lose his signature refreshment, as his martinis feature gin and vodka. Gin gave Dutch courage to 17th century soldiers before battle-the word gin comes from
among other sources, the Dutch jenever for juniper. In a life bereft of junipers, there never would have been a gin joint for Humphrey Bogart's Rick to lament inã Â Casablanca.
Gin drinkers of the world unite! Fight back against Phytophthora! As a side benefit, the sooner you stamp it out,
the sooner you won't have to pronounce it. Photos: Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca from Filmfoodie. Juniper berries from MPF via Wikimedia.
Fight fire with fire. Send Puya chilensis against Phytophthora austrocedrae: Ten-foot plant eats sheep Links to more drinks on Smartplanet:
At last, a cork that screws in an out of the wine bottle A shift among the world's biggest drinkers Getting crafty:
small batch distillers push the alcohol industry envelope Will fracking ruin the German beer industry?
Germans thirsting for U s. beer The Democratic Republic of Beer
Gadget Guilt: If you're reading this, you're warming the planetenvironmentalists would gather with torch
and pitchfork if industry were to declare it was intentionally overshooting government greenhouse gas reduction targets by a wide margin.
Yet tacitly, consumers are thumbing their collective noses at CO2 goals through the addictive use of home gadgets and gizmos that feeds their infotainment habit.
That s what the UK-based Energy Saving Trust concludes in its freshly minted report, The Elephant in the Living room:
and cram plastic buds in their ears would still put domestic greenhouse gas emissions at 2 percent above the government s target.
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