Gates' Education in Africa

Melinda Gates' charity work has made her rethink some of her Catholic beliefs, said Alice Thomson in The Times (U.K.). The philanthropist has traveled the world with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, trying to eradicate polio, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases. But in doing so, she discovered that for many women in Africa and the developing world, the greatest fear is yet another pregnancy. "I would go to these dusty villages or slums. When I stayed long enough, and the men had faded away, the women would finally ask me questions, and they would always bring up contraceptives."

Distributing condoms, she found, wasn't a solution, because men objected to them. "Women would tell me, 'I can't negotiate a condom in my marriage. It would look like either I had AIDS or my partner had it.' They needed more covert methods and were prepared to walk 100 miles for them."

The foundation is now developing injectable contraceptives — and Melinda, who attended a convent school, refuses to feel guilty. "Without contraceptives, I wouldn't have been able to do what I do. I went to graduate school, I had a nine-year career at Microsoft; I could plan my life.... In the U.S., 96 percent of married Catholic women use contraceptives. It shouldn't just be a rich Catholic privilege."

- From The Week Magazine

Grasslands cover 45 percent of land worldwide

Grasslands cover 45 percent of land worldwide, says Gretel Ehrlich in her Forward in the book, Cows Save the Planet.

Depleted Soil Means Food Isn't As Nutritious

Our food may look the same as it used to. It may even look better. But it doesn't have as many minerals in it as it used to. Why? Soil depletion. This is causing nutritional deficiencies. For example, the amount of calcium in a typical modern apple is only half of what it was eighty years ago. It also has less iron and phosphorus, and only about 20 percent of the magnesium.

What's the problem? The living things in soil — the worms, insects, bacteria and fungi — help make minerals accessible to the plants growing in that soil. If the soil isn't healthy because of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, etc., then the plants can't absorb as many minerals, so you don't get them in your diet.

Soil health is important for many reasons. When you buy organically grown food and holistically grazed grassfed meat, you are directly financially supporting the growth of healthy soil, and you will benefit personally because your food will be more nutritious.

Holistic Solutions Fight Desertification

Allan Savory used decades of research to create a holistic method to manage land to fight desertification — something which has been proven to work on every continent except the Arctic and Antarctic. In this very personal interview Savory explains the results and the way to manage in a holistic way, which he says is a crucial understanding to battle effects from a climate change.

This interview below was recorded during the Tipping Points seminar in Stockholm on November 13, 2013.



This is the presentation Allan Savory gave at the event:

How Bare Soil Causes Erosion

Plowing a field exposes the soil to erosion. Bare earth is rare in nature at elevations below timberline. Think about the grasslands and forests you may have walked in your life. How much bare soil do you see? Not much, if any. Outside of arid environments, plants typically blanket the ground surface, their leaves intercepting rainfall and their roots binding the soil. Now think about the brown color of the water running off a freshly plowed field or the exposed soil of a construction site during a sudden downpour. Leaving the soil bare for some part of the year makes it vulnerable to erosion, whether by wind or rain, resulting in a rate of soil loss tens to hundreds of times faster than nature makes it.

The above is quoted from the book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, a book that traces the fall of almost every civilization to its root cause: Soil erosion.

Soil Restoration Can Begin Anywhere

Soil has been depleted, exhausted and eroded throughout history, and has been the ultimate cause of the collapse of almost every civilization that has come before us, as documented in David Montgomery's fascinating book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. But one of the beautiful and hopeful things about this depressing history is that soil restoration can take place anywhere. It can be done one abandoned field at a time.

An example comes from Judith Schwartz's book, Cows Save the Planet And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth. The Loess Plateau in China, an area the size of Belgium on the Yellow River, was restored in only ten years. It was an almost barren desert swept frequently with dust storms, and considered by many to be the "most eroded place on earth."

Now the place is a "thriving agricultural region with the poverty rate lowered by half," writes Schwartz. The local farmers "built terraces, reforested sloping land (where a good deal of erosion tends to happen) and shifted to perennial crops that have deeper roots."

Somewhere along the way, the Chinese government figured out that it would cost them less money in the long run to restore the soil than it was already costing them to deal with the constant problems from all the area's topsoil eroding into the river. But of course, when they restored the soil, other problems were naturally solved too, like the poverty level of the inhabitants.

As Montgomery points out, the most fundamental resource of all terrestrial life is soil. Ignore it and we suffer. Take care of it and we all benefit.

Would you like to see large areas of the earth's soil restored? There is something you can do to help make it happen. Read more about it here: How to Stop Grasslands From Turning Into Deserts.

Brush is Good Forage Too

Most of the cows I’ve trained to eat weeds have become pretty open-minded about trying a little bit of everything in pasture. These particular cows were trained to eat distaff and Italian thistle, and they decided on their own to eat coyote bush, a species known to invade grasslands in the area. I videoed the cows grazing the bushes off at head-level, breaking large branches off with their heavy bodies in an effort to get at the best parts. It looked just like it would have had my herd of goats visited for the day. As my rancher, Peggy Rathmann said,“This is forage!”

Read the rest: Overcoming Our Brush Prejudice.