Bread for the World Advocacy Outcomes for 2014

Members of Congress rely on their constituents to keep them informed of issues and concerns in their districts. By writing your members of Congress, you’ve made yourself a valuable source of information. Congressional aides figure you represent others, so your voice becomes amplified. Writing letters gives you voice and power. Taking the time to write tells your members of Congress that you’re serious and that they’re accountable to you.  Exerpt from "Why Write to Congress", in Bread for the Worlds Take Action page.

Have you ever wondered what impact those letters to Congress, those meetings with congressional aides, those phone calls to Washington and the district office, those tweets, those letters to the editor are having?

The communications staff at Bread for the World put together these illustrations to show the progress against hunger since 1990 and the outcome of the advocacy efforts of grassroots members and staff during 2014 (illustrated in the five graphics below)

Remember those letters you wrote in 2014 urging Congress to reform food-aid programs? Legislators approved a set of reforms, and as a result, 1.5 million more people around the world have been fed.

These results, of course, did not occur in a vacuum. Bread for the World works in a number of coalitions (like the Modernizing Foreign Asissistance Network), and many other organizations and their members contributed to the outcome of the legislative initiatives.

This year, Bread for the World members (in partnership with other nutrition advocates) urged Congress to reauthorize child nutrition programs in our country, through our Feed Our Children campaign. In New Mexico, members of 18 congregations wrote more than 2,000 letters to Congress around this issue. Stay tuned for legislative updates.

Here are the graphics for the advocacy outcomes for 2014.

Food Aid Reform:

Circle of Protection:

Poverty-Focused Development Assistance

Immigration Reform

New USAID Strategy 

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Veggie Diets For Salmon

Things are progressing in finding solutions to developing more environmentally friendly feeds for use in Aquaculture. Feeds with more vegetable based ingredients, leading to further reductions in fish meal and fish oil requirements.

Just found this interesting story by Megan Ogilvie, Special to The Star.

(April 14, 2006) - A browse through the seafood section of your local grocery store may soon reveal a new dinner choice: vegetarian salmon.

A team of Canadian scientists have found that farm-raised salmon can be fed a diet high in vegetable oil without suffering any ill effects. This is good news for fish farmers since it will cost less to feed their stocks. But the consumer may reap the biggest benefit because the fish will have lower levels of contaminants.

The results, presented last week at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting in Canterbury, England, were met with excitement by people in the aquaculture industry, says Colin Brauner, one of the lead authors of the study and a professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia.

"There is some concern that farmed fish have high levels of some contaminants," says Brauner.

Farm-raised salmon are currently fed pellets made primarily of fishmeal and oil derived from processing wild marine fish such as anchovies, which can be tainted with contaminants, including PCBs and dioxins.

Scientists are eager to find out whether farm-raised fish will thrive on alternative diets that are lower in fishmeal and fish oil and higher in vegetable oils, says Brauner.

The Canadian research may help answer that question. The study found that up to 75 per cent of the dietary fat in a farm-raised salmons diet can come from canola oil — the other 25 per cent comes from fishmeal or fish oil — without the fish suffering any negative health effects. The seven-month feeding trial on more than 7,000 spring Chinook salmon investigated four different diets, with the canola oil diet providing optimal results.

See the entire article at: This Link

This is the type of research that we need more of. Good research in nutrition and feed formulation can go a long way into finding methods to reduce costs and increase safety.

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Northern Aqua Farms

NorthernAquaFarms.Com is a source for informative content and resources concerning Aquaculture, Aqua Farming, the environment, fish and seafood. We feature general information pages, fresh daily news items, special industry articles, a book store, a resource directory and other resources.

The goal of this website is to provide useful online resources to industry visitors and the general public. Many of our visitors are interested in cottage industry farm initiatives, urban agriculture, family run farms and/or practical integration of Aquaculture with other agriculture activities. Other readers have a general interest in the industry or seek information concerning fish farming, seafood products and related topics. Whatever your reason for visiting we hope that you find this website helpful.

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Aquaculture and Sustainability Making Sense

A topic of considerable discussions and opinions, not all of which are based on facts, indeed some appear to be based largely on junk science. This is my starting post in a future series of posts presenting reference studies, articles and good science publications relating to Aquaculture.

From Experience: Fish Farmers are necessitated to become good stewards of the environment, the nature of their industry and businesses dictate that they do. Aquaculture requires clean growing waters to maintain a good level of production. Therefore, the industry must encourage environmentally friendly practices and has indeed taken many practical steps to protect local environments. In fact without ensuring protection of the environment, itself, the industry would suffer.

Exerts from George W Chamberlain in an article titled “FARMED SEAFOOD AND THE ENVIRONMENT: RESPONDING TO OUR CRITICS” published in the Global Aquaculture Advocate, December 1999, vol. 2, #6

…..Is it environmentally responsible to buy and sell farmed seafood? This is the question increasingly being asked of consumers and food retailers alike.
Consumers do need to know more about the seafood products they buy and the impact of their purchases. Unfortunately, only one side of the story is being told. As aquaculturists, often more focused on fish farming than public relations, we need to respond clearly with the facts.

Lets start with the most important fact: Aquaculture is the only sustainable mechanism to increase seafood production…..

….From the beginning, mankind turned to the seas for food, and the seas were plentiful. In the past 20 years, however, the oceans have reached their limit. World landings of edible seafood gradually have leveled off around 60 million metric tons per year. Additional fishing pressure only depletes wild stocks.

The solution to this crisis is farming - the same solution mankind developed ages ago when wild game became scarce. Aquaculture, the farming of aquatic organisms, relieves pressure on wild fishery stocks and raises food production in a sustainable way. It is a young industry, with a bright future.

In a recent New York Times interview, management guru Peter Drucker predicted that one of the new centurys most exciting industries was not the Internet, but fish farming. Yet, just as our ancestors could scarcely imagine that the vast oceans would one day be fished to their limit, our own generation struggles to grasp the tremendous potential of aquaculture…..


Full article can be found at this ChefTalk.com Link

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And so it began

I first learned about aquaponics during the 2009 Cape Land and Sea Harvest local food festival on Cape Cod, MA. In celebration of all things local and delicious, the weekend includes tours of farms, and I was intrigued to see the unique description of an aquaponic farm in the event listings. Their description of the closed-loop growing system sounded astoundingly logical, and it immediately appealed to my interest in sustainability and food production.

As a recent college grad, I hadn’t yet decided in which part of the broad field of environmentalism I would like to specialize. After a tour of E&T Farms, however, I was inspired and I came away with a desire to pursue aquaponics as a career. Now, I never envisioned myself a traditional farmer - the economics are brutal - but many aspects of it did appeal to me, like working with plants, being outside, and managing a small business. Aquaponics suddenly offered a more attractive, viable method for me to farm, and its environmental benefits sweetened the deal.

When I think about a commercial aquaponics operation, I see it as an opportunity for me to produce enough food to have a measurable positive impact on my local environment and food system; to do challenging, hands-on work that utilizes my creativity; and to farm close to markets without a need for expensive tracts of land and food transport.

Of course, to make any of this a reality, I need capital and experience. So that’s what I’ve set out to do, with a solid job in the energy efficiency industry and a hobby level aquaponics setup. As I gain experience and learn more about the opportunities and challenges of commercial operations, Im mindful to re-evaluate whether it is still right for me.

So I invite you to join me on my journey and to share your thoughts and ideas. By documenting my work, I hope to provide valuable insights to readers and to learn from you as well.

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Knotty Spruce

When we said back in February that we wanted to learn new knots, the knot we had in mind (although we didnt know it then) was the truckers hitch.  Its one of the best knots for tying stuff, such as a canoe, pile of lumber, or Christmas tree, onto the top of a car.  Of course, the advent of ratchet straps has made knot tying on cargo a dying art, but we had a chance this weekend to, well, practice a dying art.  Actually, as long as were at it, why dont we try to see how many knots we can use in this exercise?

The first step is to head out in -9 °F weather to find a tree.  Tying knots with frozen fingers builds character!  Looks like this lovely specimen is an Engelman Spruce, Picea engelmannii, with crowded growing conditions and a buck rub on the trunk.  Yup, this must be our tree!

When we got it back to the car, we laced it up in a tarp to keep the branches from flapping in the wind and/or scratching our car too much.  (Some of these pictures might seem out of order since we forgot to bring the camera on the trip.  Or, yes, the national forest does look a lot like our driveway!)

We took one end of the rope and fed it through the first corner grommet, then tied a bunch of overhand knots in the same place so it wouldnt slip out.

We did the same thing on the last corner grommet, except with a loop of rope since there was a lot of extra.

With the extra we kind of mangled it together, but its sort of a clove hitch around the loops of rope.  We tossed the excess rope inside the tarp by the tree and put the tree on top of the car.  As a side note, the site linked there is one of the best knot-tying resources we could find.  The animations are super easy to follow (like, way easier than trying to figure out what we did by looking at these pictures).

Now to affix the tarped tree to the car.  On the back side, we started with a simple noose knot, plus a half-hitch for extra security.

We threw the rope over the top of the tree to a loop at the front of the car, and finally we get to practice our truckers hitch!  Whatever trucker invented that hitch was a pretty bright guy.  Note that making the tag end a loop instead of pulling the thing all the way through will make it easier to untie later on and work better if there is a lot of extra.  The tradeoff is that if we tie another knot with the extra, we risk pulling out this knot.

We threw the extra back over the top of the tree and tied another truckers hitch to the inside of the car on the opposite side. (Practice makes perfect!)

There!  Secure atop the car. (Actually, this picture was taken before we tied the second truckers hitch.  So, dont worry!  We didnt leave the rope in the wheel well like that.)

Also, since we brought along the ratchet straps to be safe, we might as well use em...

And we made it home with a 100% survival rate!  What a nicely shaped but sparsely packed tree.  Thanks for helping us get it home, knots!

What are your favorite knots?  Do you know of another knot-tying resource with cool animations like netknots?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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Homestead Happiness and Progress for February Week 3

Twas an eventful time this week on the homestead, bolstered by some nice weather and a couple snowy days. Check out what happened this week at THL!

A seven-egg day!  That means all of our hens are definitely laying.  (We were pretty sure thats been the case since mid-January, but this was the first time we got a horizontal bingo on our egg-tracking chalkboard table.  Vertical bingo has been achieved by our Red Star and New Hampshire Red, who have laid eggs on 21 and 15 consecutive days, respectively (also 25 out of 26 days for Red Star and 23 out of 26 days for New Hampshire).

Monday was a snow day, which we used to make a picnic table.  Happy belated valentines day Katie!

But by Friday, things had thawed out enough that we could see the feral poppies pushing through the leaves with new growth.  Everything is now covered in snow again, but thats ok!  We know whats underneath.

First try at isolating potato starch.  It works!  It turned out ok, but we want to tweak a few things before we turn it into a full blog post.

A liver-and-onion strata (with kale)!  Delicious, packed full of vitamins, and appearing in our upcoming strata cookbook.

Seed catalogs!  Wherefore lyeth such a slippery slope of inspiration upon our kitchen table?

What fun stuff happened on your homestead this week?

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