Organic [Food] Industry Structure (aka Pac Man)

Click on each picture to enlarge for easier reading.  These are not new charts.  I've had them on my hard drive for a couple of years, and rediscovered them today.  Online source: "Phil Howard, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies, Michigan State University."


1st = "Major Independents and Their Brands"

2nd = "Top 30 Food Processors in North America"

3rd = "Acquisitions by the Top 25 Processors in North America"

Last, "private Label Brands"

NH Coverts Program!

I've been accepted into this year's line-up of participants - yay!!  Nothing like a solid refresher of conservation studies of yore!  :~)  My most recent focus: grasslands.

Visit the Extension's website for more info on this great training project (link is below).

From the Coverts website:

"Each fall, 25 enthusiastic landowners and other conservation-minded folks along with a team of natural resource professionals gather at a rustic camp in southern New Hampshire.  For 3-1/2 days participants learn about the latest concepts and issues in wildlife and forest ecology, habitat management, land conservation, community conservation planning, and effective outreach.  By the end of the weekend, a new group of Coverts volunteers emerge, trained and ready to share their new knowledge in their community."

Understanding Massive Statistical Info Using Art

First off, if you are not familiar with Chris Jordan's work, take time now to check him out.  Don't be turned off by the dead albatross on his homepage; it's a story that needs to be heard and told.  Jordan and his crew visited the Midway Atoll (Northern Pacific--exactly half way between the U.S. and Japan) last year and documented the tragic tale of what our plastic waste is doing to these birds.  Thousands upon thousands of albatross chicks are dying every year because of the plastic "food" their parents feed them - all caught from the giant sea of plastic just miles from their breeding grounds.  The adult birds mistake the floating sea of plankton-like plastic for food, fill their gullets with it, fly back to their chick and regurgitate it the way many bird species do.  The chicks eagerly take their fill, only to die a slow and painful death (their stomachs eventually rupture from the mass of plastic).  Chris and his crew watched in sorrow as desperate parents, in a frantic measure to help their dying chicks, fed more and more plastic to them right until their last breath. With only one egg laid each year per breeding pair, and with more than 2 million pounds of plastic waste entering our world's oceans EVERY HOUR, it is only a matter of time before the numbers of living vs. dead are reversed.  Please help; reduce the amount of plastic in your life as much as you can.  Together, we can make a difference.

So, what is the picture about on this BMS program for Chris' show?  It's a glimpse of his piece called 'Plastic Cups'.  In this country alone...

...more than one million plastic cups are used on airline flights...

...every six hours.  

To depict what you've seen above, Chris took a picture of one cup. He then copied the rim of the cup and used his photoshop program to copy and paste the rim lots of times until a certain look was achieved, making all those bends and formations you see in the picture. Then he photostitched blocks of that particular work, stiching here and there to make for seamless pipelines, until one million cups were depicted.  Six hours of U.S. flights alone.

9th Annual 'Saving Special Places' Conference, Weare, NH

 New Hampshire's largest conservation event was a huge success with more than 240 participants and 16 exhibitors.  More than 35 workshops covered topics such as 'Basic Conservation Options and Tax Benefits'; 'Lobbying, Publicity and Advocacy for Land Conservation'; 'Impact of Commercial Development on Property Taxes'; and, 'Making the Most of Your Town’s Conservation Dollars'.

Participants at the 2010 Saving Special Places event break for lunch and networking

Lew Feldstein, the 24-year President of the NH Charitable Foundation, was this year's keynote speaker.  His message: as successful as we are, as much land as we have saved from development, we need to "do more - saving land alone is not enough."  What is before us, he said, as he stared into a crowd of virtually entirely caucasian faces, "is about more than saving land, it's about saving people."  I believe his point, specifically, was that there is a critical need for a major paradigm shift in the way society values its own, and thus the land that feeds us, clothes us, and shelters us.  We can save all the open space we want, but if we don't take care of the people as well, it won't matter how much land we save.

58 Seconds With Lester - Worth Your Time

What is wrong with bottled water?

NY City tap water vs. leading brands of bottled water

Are you being fooled?

What's "2,000,000" and "every five minutes" got in common?

A New Coalition Is In Town!

Clothesline Heaven

Here in New Hampshire we awoke this morning to really chilly temps (it was 28 overnight, but soon into the 30's by morning).  BUT, the sun was shining and the air was dry, so all I could think of was getting my laundry on the line!

Upon seeing me head for the door with my laundry basket in hand, my husband too quickly murmured something about "it's too cold out; they'll freeze."  Well, not true.  Remember learning about the process of diffusion in high school biology class?  No?  Diffusion is simply the movement, er, distribution, of a gas or liquid (among other types) from one place where it is in abundance to another place where it is not.  Think 'concentration'.  Now, that's a pretty basic explanation, but you catch my point, I'm sure.

The moisture in the sheets is more abundant than the moisture in the air.  So automatic wicking of the moisture in the sheets, outward to the air, will occur.  Doesn't matter if it's cold out.  Even if it were freezing cold out, laundry will dry provided there's less moisture in the surrounding air.  Yes, your sheets will be stiff, and it might be a little more difficult to ascertain whether they are truly dry or not, but they will dry if left long enough.  'Nuff said?

:~)

Book I Can't Stop Looking At

Here's one guy who knows how to deliver. Look closely; you won't believe your eyes.

From his website:

"Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity.

The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.

As an American consumer myself, I am in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake."

Got Links?

The following tried and true list is the first in a series of collected websites that I suggest you peruse in your quest for green resources (by all means, a partial list!)

Personal & Home:

Find out how consequential YOUR consumerism is:
http://sustainability.publicradio.org/consumerconsequences/

Eat right! (aka, your dollar counts!): http://www.seacoasteatlocal.org/resources.html and http://www.slowfoodseacoast.org/ and http://gimmetheknife.blogspot.com/

Co-Op America’s (now known as Green America's) Responsible Shopper link: http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/

Ever heard of freecycling? http://www.freecycle.org/ Or Craigslist? http://www.craigslist.org/

To stop receiving all those ValPak coupons, fill out their removal form online at: www.coxtarget.com/mailsuppression/s/DisplayMailSuppressionForm and for specific removal of all unsolicited mail, go to: https://www.dmachoice.org/MPS/mailpref1.php?consumerid=35499&status=

Reusable cloth tote bags made from Ecospun® (post-consumer, recycled plastic soda bottles) or unbleached, 100 percent cotton canvas can be purchased at http://www.clothbag.com/ All of their bags are made in the USA!

Use a water filter to reduce plastic water bottles. This is an excellent reference for comparing prices and features of water filters: http://www.waterfiltercomparisons.net/

How to Choose Sustainable Fish and Shellfish

A few months ago I completed a comprehensive interactive on-line course in sustainable seafood choices designed by Blue Ocean Institute and Chef's Collaborative for chefs in the restaurant and other large culinary worlds. It never hurts to get refreshed on certain principles!  Keep reading and you'll get some great tips on what to look for and when to look for it!