On a warm September day, farmers from all over the state gather around the enormous machines. Combines, balers, rippers, cultivators, diskers, tractors of every variety—all can be found at the annual Wisconsin Farm Technology Days show. But the stars of the show are the great harvesters, looming over the crowd. They have names like hot rods—the Claas Jaguar 970, the Krone BiG X 1000—and are painted with colors bright as fireworks. The machines weigh 15 tons apiece and have tires tall as a tall man. When I visited Wisconsin Farm Technology Days last year, John Deere was letting visitors test its 8530 tractor, an electromechanical marvel so sophisticated that I had no idea how to operate it. Not to worry: The tractor drove itself, navigating by satellite. I sat high and happy in the air-conditioned bridge, while beneath my feet vast wheels rolled over the earth.

The farmers grin as they watch the machines thunder through the cornfields. In the long run, though, they may be destroying their livelihoods. Midwestern topsoil, some of the finest cropland in the world, is made up of loose, heterogeneous clumps with plenty of air pockets between them. Big, heavy machines like the harvesters mash wet soil into an undifferentiated, nigh impenetrable slab—a process called compaction. Roots can't penetrate compacted ground; water can't drain into the earth and instead runs off, causing erosion. And because compaction can occur deep in the ground, it can take decades to reverse. Farm-equipment companies, aware of the problem, put huge tires on their machines to spread out the impact. And farmers are using satellite navigation to confine vehicles to specific paths, leaving the rest of the soil untouched. Nonetheless, this kind of compaction remains a serious issue—at least in nations where farmers can afford $400,000 harvesters.

Unfortunately, compaction is just one, relatively small piece in a mosaic of interrelated problems afflicting soils all over the planet. In the developing world, far more arable land is being lost to human-induced erosion and desertification, directly affecting the lives of 250 million people. In the first—and still the most comprehensive—study of global soil misuse, scientists at the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) in the Netherlands estimated in 1991 that humankind has degraded more than 7.5 million square miles of land. Our species, in other words, is rapidly trashing an area the size of the United States and Canada combined.
Read more http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text

Practical Permaculture in Britain documentary by Malcolm Baldwin. For more information about permaculture visit http://www.permacultureplanet.com

Satellite imagery from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder reveals that a 13,680 square kilometer (5,282 square mile) ice shelf has begun to collapse because of rapid climate change in a fast-warming region of Antarctica. British Antarctic Survey has captured dramatic satellite and video images of an Antarctic ice shelf that looks set to be the latest to break out from the Antarctic Peninsula. A large part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is now supported only by a thin strip of ice hanging between two islands. It is another identifiable impact of climate change on the Antarctic environment.

Scientists monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf spotted that a huge (41 by 2.5 km) km2 berg the size of the Isle of Man appears to have broken away in recent days -- it is still on the move. Glaciologist Ted Scambos from the University of Colorado alerted colleagues Professor David Vaughan and Andrew Fleming of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that the ice shelf looked at risk. After checking daily satellite pictures, BAS sent a Twin Otter aircraft on a reconnaissance mission to check out the extent of the breakout.

Jim Elliott was onboard the BAS Twin Otter to capture video of the breakout for Vaughan and colleagues. He says, "I've never seen anything like this before -- it was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble -- it's like an explosion."

Die RWE-Tochter Innogy ist bei dem niederländischen Start-Up-Unternehmen Topell eingestiegen. Deren Spezialität: Ein spezielles Verfahren für die Umwandlung von Biomasse in Kohle-Pellets. Jetzt plant RWE den nächsten Schritt.

http://www.handelsblatt.com/technologie/umwelt-news/rwe-steigt-in-geschaeft-fuer-biokohle-pellets-ein;1437778

Biomass stoves save schools money and carbon: This video gives an introduction to a project promoting the use of biomass burning stoves in India. Traditionally, crop wastes in the Punjab are burnt following a harvest. Now, farmers are encouraged to gather the waste and sell it to biomass briquette producing factories. These briquettes are then used in stoves for large-scale catering as a carbon neutral fuel alternative to the expensive liquid petroleum gas, leading to more money for the farmers and biomass factories, savings for the stove owners, and less carbon in the atmosphere! Each stove saves an estimated 39 tonnes of carbon. This project won an Ashden award for sustainable energy in 2005 and is supported by ClimateCare, a world-leading carbon offsetting company (Video credit: Ashden Awards).

Path to Freedom presents 'A Homegrown Revolution' A collaboration of selective media clips which feature their urban homestead and farm which focus on the need of radical action -- growing food in the city. Urban Homestead

Locking carbon up in soil makes more sense than storing it in plants and trees that eventually decompose, argues Johannes Lehmann. Can this idea work on a large scale?

To meet the challenges of global climate change, greenhouse-gas emissions must be reduced. Emissions from fossil fuels are the largest contributor to the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, so a reduction in fossil-energy use is a clear priority.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v447/n7141/full/447143a.html