Think of truffles, a gourmet wild food. The European tuber commands astronomical prices because of its inimitable flavor, rarity, and difficult harvesting. Oregano-like za’atar herb and thorny akub (Gundelia tournefortii) are desired in the Middle East in the same way. Read our post on the delicious truffles that grow in the desert.

Akoub and za’atar grow wild in the arid hills of Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt), Syria, and Turkey. In Israel both za’atar and akoub are protected species. Both can be cultivated. Both may be collected from the wild for personal use, in moderate amounts. We even have a recipe for za’atar pesto from chef Moshe Basson.

But traders illegally picking them for sale collect them by hundreds of kilos. Often they uproot the whole za’atar plant. With akoub, taking the edible flower head means no seed left for the next year. As a result, wild za’atar and akub are on the brink of extinction.

I myself grow za’atar in a container on my balcony; it’s a hardy Mediterranean herb that flourishes from year to year in the same spot. I bought the seedling from a plant nursery. I’ve also seen contraband sacks of the herb in Arab open-air markets.

But admittedly you need to be a farmer to grow akoub, because propagation is tricky, the season is short, and the sharp thorns surrounding the delicious leaves and flowers make harvesting hard.

When living in northern Israel, I’d buy fresh akoub from a Beduin vendor in the local open-air market. It was expensive because of the labor involved in harvesting – I’ve seen robed Beduin slowly walking over the hills, stooping to pry the akoub away from the earth with a knife, then stripping the thorns off the edible stems.

I cooked both the flower and the stem. And yes, it was delicious, with its artichoke-like flavor. But now I wonder where that delicious akoub came from, and if I’d contributed to its overharvesting.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority in the Golan have confiscated hundreds of kilos of za’atar and akoub. Some were meant to be sold in local markets, but much of this illegal produce makes its way across the border to Jordan.

Yaron Maderchi, head of the Investigations Department at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, states that the fight against the illegal picking of wild plants is first and foremost a struggle to preserve them for future generations.

“We focus on strict enforcement against traders, not on picking for personal use,” said Maderchi. “There’s room for tradition and for responsible use of natural resources, but when picking is carried out on a commercial scale and without oversight, it leads to severe damage and even local extinction of species.”

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority noted that overpicking is driven mostly by financial incentives.

“Akoub is a highly sought-after product in the market, and illegal harvesting can generate profits of thousands of shekels per day,” said Oriya Vazana, a regional inspector in the central Golan for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

“Economic pressure leads people to enter these areas in large numbers,” said Vazana. “The entire market operates in cash, without oversight. Beyond the damage to the plant itself, we are also seeing collateral harm: cutting fences, opening gates, damage to grazing lands, and safety risks on roads. This is a complex issue that requires significant resources, manpower, and targeted enforcement throughout the short harvesting season.”

The plant has significant ecological importance, serving as a food source for pollinators and insects and contributing to biodiversity. Left unharvested, the flower head dries up and tumbles on the ground, dispersing seed.

About 240 kilos of akoub and 25 kilos of za’atar were seized by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority in the Golan, working with border police.

The post Saving Gourmet Wild Plants For The Future appeared first on Green Prophet.

In 2019, an underwater robot camera exploring the seabed in part of the Antarctica’s Southern Ocean brought up footage of something no one suspected:a huge breeding ground of yellowfin rockcod fish.

You wouldn’t think that the freezing Arctic waters can sustain much life. One startling phenomenon is the greening of Antarctica due to climate change.The icy continent’s dim light, ever-present ice and extreme cold forbid human habitation and make research challenging.

The discovery occurred when the Larsen C ice shelf in the Wedell Sea calved; that is, an iceberg broke off the body of the ice shelf. Ice shelves play a large role in the rise and fall of global sea levels and contribute significantly to global ocean circulation and climate.

The research article published in 2020 states:

“The Weddell Sea, located within the Southern Ocean, is significant for its biological richness and its contribution to global ocean circulation and climate. It plays a critical role in forming water mass interactions that drive large-scale ocean currents, regulate global gas exchanges, and influence climate patterns. These interactions make the area a hotspot for biological productivity, activity, and abundance .”

The splitting off of the iceberg revealed part of the seabed that had been unaccessible until then. The opportunity to explore was there. A research team formed: the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019 onboard the SA Agulhas II.

In addition to studying conditions on the seabed, the research team hoped to locate the remains of the Endurance, a ship on an British exploration mission that sank in 1915 (the Endurance was found in 2020).  Researchers dropped a camera robot dubbed “Lassie” into the sea.

The footage showed thousands of circular or oval shapes on the sea floor, arranged in a pattern covering hundreds of kilometers. They are fish egg nests, shallow forms scooped out of the sea bed, each with a protective raised edge of sediment packed around it. Parent fish keep guard, hovering over the eggs and fluttering their fins to keep them oxygenated.

The colonies are geometrically formed so that larger fish nest on the farther edges, while weaker, smaller fish, more vulnerable to predators, lay their eggs inside the pattern, preferably close to the shelter of rocks. When the eggs hatch, leaving empty nests, some fish even return and clear out debris that currents bring, to prepare for the next generation.

At first these shapes were a mystery. No one expected to find a vastfish colony thriving in one of Earth’s most extreme environments. Marine biologist Russ Connelly, of the University of Essex, England, said, “We weren’t actually sure what the videos were showing us at the time. We thought maybe it was a Weddell seal snout that was going down and bonking down into the seabed. Or that it was pockmarks from stones dropping from the ice and making craters.”

We already knew about diverse life form thriving in Antarctica. Penguins, seals, whales, seabirds, sponges, fish and squid are some, without even considering krill, the tiny crustaceans that almost everything else eats. The huge rockfish nurseries are a link in the wildlife food chain that came to light only after the Eclipse/Weddell Sea Expedition.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources has proposed designating the Weddell Sea as a protected area. This would prevent international businesses with an eye on this huge fish nursery from mining the seabed and endangering the entire wildlife chain.

Thomas Desvignes, a fish biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham says, “A lot of Antarctic ecosystems are under pressure from different countries to be released for mining, fishing and basically exploitation of the environment. The new research offers one more reason why we should protect the Weddell Sea.”

Connelly adds, ““In general, we need to explore more of the oceans, because … we’re so surprised at every single time that we see life exists at these depths. We need to see what’s out there before species that we didn’t even know existed have been lost.”

The post Huge Fish Nursery Discovered Under Freezing Arctic Seas appeared first on Green Prophet.

What’s that sinking feeling?

In Iran, the very ground under your feet may drop away.

The issue here isn’t war. The issue is land subsidence, a human-caused phenomenon that’s been ignored and mismanaged In Iran for decades. Over-pumping of groundwater is causing Iranian land to subside; that is, to sink.

Land subsidence causes damage like water pipes bursting, roads collapsing, and sewer and gas lines breaking. Houses and buildings crack as their foundations weaken. Iran is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. With this land deformation, even a minor quake could cause catastrophic disaster.

The GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam used satellite data to reveal the extent of the subsidence. A tool known as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, which spots even the most minute difference in ground deformation, revealed that land around Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA) was sinking at around 5 centimeters per year. This is considered a “moderate” rate of land subsidence. According to Iran’s National Cartographic Center, other areas are sinking at the rate of 31 cm per year.

Land sinks slowly, almost invisibly. But now the effects of land subsidence are plain to see; especially when a hole in the earth opens up and swallows a whole car under your eyes. At risk are cities, historical sites, and crucial structures like Iran’s airport. In Tehran, Isfahan and Rafsajan, land has dropped by over 12 inches (30 cm) per year. It can’t be ignored anymore.

90% of Iranian groundwater is used for farming. Much is wasted through inefficient management, such as unmonitored drilling of deep wells to make up for reduced rainfall. 14.5 cubic meters of groundwater are pumped every second, an unsustainable rate of use. One way to reduce waste and water theft is to implement water metering.

One might think that innovative farming methods such as Saudi Arabia’s proposed hydroponic greenhouses might penetrate Iranian thought.

As for the largest urban center, 70% of Tehran’s water needs are supplied by five nearby dams. Now, according to current state media reports, the reservoirs are only 13 percent full.

Better management of water resources is needed, such as projects to reduce waste and recycle water; but corruption and plain official indifference impede it.

Discussing water scarcity and air pollution in Tehran, the best that President Masoud Pezeshkian had to offer was a proposal to move Iran’s governmental hubs away.

“We have no choice but to move the country’s political and economic center closer to the sea,” he said.

In other words, no plan to manage water where the majority of people live: just moving government structures on to a better place.

Climate change and air pollution have roles in this sorry story too. Droughts plague Iran. In 2024, precipitation was 60% below average. Ice formed on mountains, which as snowmelt helps fill wells and aquifers, could help, except that it’s contaminated with pollution that rises from urban air.

Human population growth also strains water resources and distribution: the population of Tehran, for example, has exploded from 2 million to over 15 million in the last five decades. With a population of 90+ million, ignoring land subsidence and the reasons it happens could eventually lead to widespread disaster.

Photos via Tehran Times

The post Iran is sinking in sinkholes from overwatering appeared first on Green Prophet.

Nullker: Who We Are and Why Us?

We won’t brag. We did NOT invent a revolutionary way to save the planet – we simply discovered it! It was hidden in plain sight, in everything that surrounds us, in nature per se.

Nature has been managing itself for millennia, making everything work and stay balanced. Human activity has disturbed this balance. Yet, knowing nature’s ways, we can easily restore equilibrium by synchronizing with it.

In the natural world, everything exists in the form of networks and closed cycles, where all the elements engage in multiple beneficial connections. Think of ecosystems. Everything is at its best. And nothing is ever wasted – it just gets redistributed, reformatted, and reused. The same should be done with the resources people consume and the effort we put in to preserve those resources. 

Translated into the language of economy, the revolutionary way lies through uniting the already existing environmental effort and channeling it in a manner that would enrich all the parties involved: business, communities, and nature.

On “Natural” Economy. 

We believe that the economy should become more… natural (pun unintended)! People should stop fighting against consumption, for it is now an integral part of the modern economic and social reality. What we can and should do instead is change the format of consumption to make it less wasteful and more inclusively beneficial. If you take from the environment – give back in any form convenient. It is already a win-win situation. However, Nullker knows best!..

Our Win-Win-Win Strategy. 

Many of you have heard of the non-zero-sum game – a theory where one participant’s gain does not necessarily mean the other one’s loss. This theory is applicable to economy, as well as ecology. When we consume, nature should not necessarily lose. When we invest into the environmental effort, the economy should not automatically lose. It’s as simple as that. It is the “eco Nash equilibrium” of sorts, where “eco” stands for both ecology and economy.

Nullker went even further and took the standard win-win scenario to a whole new level. The resulting “win-win-win” approach presupposes that people take from nature, give back, and still receive more – from other people and businesses who also value nature and with whom they can create more joint initiatives mediated by Nullker. We bring sporadic eco effort together in a self-perpetuating cooperation on a single platform, making economic and cultural growth easier and more integrated. 

In essence, the key to saving the planet is in working together to unify and multiply the efforts. And this key is held by every single member of the growing Nullker community. The more of us – the bigger the impact.

Same Money – Different Outcome. 

Nullker’s philosophy is the money spent for connecting people and businesses, for popularizing green ideas and brands, for growing the community of people who care – about each other, about the economy, and about the planet.

For us, donation is not a matter of “how much” but more a matter of “how”.

Same money can make a different impact. Here is an example:

#1 A direct donation to an account of an animal shelter is what it is – a good act with a proportional, converted value. The donor’s money converts into a certain amount of food, vaccines, rehab, etc.

#2 A donation via the Nullker platform splits and restructures charity to convert it into a direct monetary input PLUS an investment into bonding with the like minded people and brands, immediately returning to the donator in the form of new contacts, discount points (NULLs), and information.

In the first case, animals get help and donors get moral satisfaction. That’s good, but could be better.

In the second scenario, animals get help, donors get moral satisfaction and NULLs that they can further use to their benefit, for example, by choosing among our partner brands to discover more eco products and services, more stories of people who care. In response, the partner brands are expected to invest more in the ecological initiatives. The bigger the donor base – the bigger the brands, their quantity, and their interest.

All in all, money is the same, but the impact is of tremendously different proportions and reach.

Would you like to join the green new world in the making? Join now https://nullker.com/ Let’s unite our natural and economic resources for a greater and more balanced future!

The post Nullker: A Sustainable Global Community where “ECO” stands for Ecology as much as Economy  appeared first on Green Prophet.

In the beautiful streets of Jaffa near the Flea Market, Ada Hanina Cafe is a marvellous cafe must-try, an exquisite and artistic coffee shop offering the highest quality coffee. As a coffee guru who enjoys trying different coffee shops, Ada Hanina Cafe is unlike any other.

Owner Tomer Adam Lenzinger has been running this cafe for four years now and hasn’t disappointed. With his well-crafted blends featuring both dark and light roasts from the best coffee bean destinations in the world, you are guaranteed a fabulous cup of coffee.

What makes Ada Hanina stand out like any other cafe is how Tomer integrated his love of music into the design of the cafe. An element that stands out once you walk into Ada Hanina is the large stereo speaker and sound system. Either Tomer himself will play music or he will bring in others to play.

Tomer told me he plays music as often as he can, and he will play vinyl. For him, it’s all about the experience of a cafe, and for that reason, he designed the shop with two doors, so you can go in and go out. “It’s all about the vibe,” Tomer said, “a cafe is about talking, exchanging, taking a break, falling in love, or writing a book.” Coffee brings people together, he said and that was what was important in the designing and planning of the cafe, blending all these aspects into one.

Sourcing his own beans, applying fair trade

The source of Tomer’s coffee beans comes from far and wide: including Africa, Brazil, Columbia, Guatemala, and more. The farmers they work with are the best, specifically the ones in Africa, the beans are wild and are picked by hand, never purified, and no use of chemicals or salts. You can watch videos of the farmers in action on their Instagram. The whole idea, says Tomer, is having fewer hands between us and the farmer. In addition, whatever is not used in the selection process gets composted.

The farmers in Ethiopia are being taught how to harvest and package more sustainably. It is important to Tomer that the farmers in Ethiopia are receiving at least 70% of the profits. Over in Brazil, the terra farmers in Brazil are the first and best rainforest alliance coffee farm. Overall, Tomer strives to have the best connections between him and his farmers to ensure quality coffee is delivered to his customers.

Sustainable water

Like I previously wrote about in my article on Tel Aviv’s Vegan Fest vegan festival, Ada Hanina cafe also has vegan options. The most common milk option they use is Oatly oat milk, (you can make your own at home) which is used 70% of the time in the cafe.

According to Tomer, almond milk takes away from the flavor of the coffee and just turns the coffee into an almond flavor. He also is not a fan of the popular trend in America of flavor additives, which are sugary and are used to disguise the taste of bad coffee. In addition, Ada Hanina only sells water in boxes to take away from the plastic waste issue.

The straws are from the Upper Galilee and are made of real straw. Tomer believes the biggest environmental issue in Israel right now is the issue of plastic, and wishes there were to-go cups for the cafe that were made of sustainable material. He also thinks there should be more green electricity and says we are moving way too slowly in our efforts to make energy all renewable.

His favorite thing about his job is having customers come up to him and tell him that this is the best coffee they’ve ever had. He enjoys guiding his customers through the coffee selection process and finding the perfect coffee for them. The inspiration behind the cafe is all about having “a very, very good coffee with very, very good music around,” Tomer said emphasizing the very. He’s met people all around the world at coffee conferences who tried their coffee and asked him why he doesn’t bag it and sell it all over the world.

I had a coffee with oat milk, which Tomer said was made with about 20 hand-picked cherries, each having two seeds inside. I also had one of their best sellers and one of Tomer’s favorites, the Worka Wuri blend from Ethiopia, made wild and in an anaerobic process, meaning it was made fermented without oxygen.

It was delicious and had notes of flowers and fruit. Tomer most importantly wants to share with people the beauty of coffee and have access to taste the high-quality coffee beans that are offered inside his cafe in Jaffa. I highly recommend checking out Ada Hanina and asking Tomer all about his coffee. Check out our Green Guide to Jaffa for more sustainable travel ideas.

The post Jaffa’s home-roasted coffee and music curated at Ada Hanina Cafe appeared first on Green Prophet.

If there’s one person to thank for the phrase “urban forager,” it’s Leda Meredith. The words encompass her passion for the wild edible plants that grow in natural settings like parks and forests, but also between cracks in the sidewalk, in empty lots, and unrecognized, in your own garden. Leda dedicated years to teaching how to identify and eat these plants, with the goal of helping people to reduce their carbon footprint by consuming locally grown foods.

Here is our interview with Leda, where she defined herself as a locavore:

Interview With Locavore Expert Leda Meredith

Leda’s first career was as a brilliant professional dancer, a teacher of dance, and choreographer. She chose ethnobotany, the science of plants’ uses, as her second career, and earned certification in the field from the New York Botanical Garden. She had an honorary doctorate in fine arts for writing from La Universidad Leonardo da Vinci in El Salvador, and was granted Adelphi University’s Teaching Excellence Award.

In 2007, she decided to eat only food grown within a 250-mile radius from her home in Brooklyn, NY. The completed year of this experiment led to her first book, Botany, Ballet, & Dinner From Scratch: A Memoir With Recipes.

She led foraging tours and held food preservation workshops all over the world. Owing to her influence, thousands of people now consciously choose to protect the environment by buying and preserving locally sourced foods, or growing them. 

Then there was Leda’s personal beauty and charm; her engaging enthusiasm for life and life’s good things; her wide-ranging intelligence and curiosity; her courage and sense of adventure.

She identified as a pagan. This is the grace she said over food:

“The energy you give me, I will turn into the actions of an honorable life. You will have no cause to be ashamed of being part of my bones. May your spirit travel in joy.”

Leda fought colonic cancer for a year. She died at home in San Juanillo, Costa Rica, where she and her husband, Richard Orbach, built a house. She is survived by Richard, and her mother, Penelope Colby. And by those many who deeply mourn her loss as a teacher and friend. I am one.

May her spirit travel in joy.

Leda Meredith wrote five important books:

• Northeast Foraging: 120 Wild and Flavorful Edibles From Beach Plums to Wineberries
• Preserving Everything: Can, Culture, Pickle, Freeze, Ferment, Dehydrate, Salt, Smoke, and Store Fruits, Vegetables, Meat, Milk, and More
• Botany, Ballet & Dinner From Scratch: A Memoir With Recipes
• The Forager’s Feast: How to Identify, Gather, and Prepare Wild Edibles
• The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

They are available on her author’s profile on Amazon.com. 

The post Leda Meredith, Foraging Pioneer: August 6, 1962 – May 24, 2023 appeared first on Green Prophet.

Pellet stoves take condensed biological matter –– wood or biomass pellets –– to create a source of heat for residential and industrial spaces. They burn slower, for more time and can lower the heating bills. Environmentalists see pellet stoves as a “green” solution.

A group of disadvantaged youths in Israel are taking this concept but are applying it to ordinary wood stoves. They are creating compressed logs of olive tree waste to supply biofuel from olive waste. They are not the first group of Israelis to recycle olive waste, but the social aspect of the project makes it much more than the usual environmental solution.

Here’s Olivebar’s story:

A group of youngsters — many of whom were homeless until they were gathered together by a man named Yossi Sadeh, first in Beit Shemesh, then at the Sde Bar farm, a kibbutz-like framework that’s turned their lives around — are changing the face of energy production.

Their work is to help create Olivebar’s rolls to heat homes in wood-burning stoves which general manager Eli Karniel describes as “ecologically perfect.”

The rolls are made from the waste produced after olives are pressed at Israeli olive presses, known in Hebrew as gefet. The material is rich in oil and superb for heating, but if left behind at the presses to seep into the soil, will destroy ground water and render the soil infertile.

The simple act of collecting it is the product’s first ecological benefit.

But the huge piles of gefet trucked to the factory aren’t enough. While two Tel Aviv entrepreneurs patented the idea of using the material for the stoves, it was entrepreneur Avi Lerber who recognized the potential, bought the patent, and after experimenting with more than 100 substances, found the right one to allow the material to solidify.

From there, he developed a method to make the resulting product into convenient rolls, which have many advantages over wood for heating purposes.

2.5 Times the Energy of Wood

Chief among them is the energy component, with a cube of the Olivebar rolls producing almost 2.5 times energy as a cube of wood. No mice or worms come with the rolls, which are aesthetically wrapped in paper that is recyclable and can be used to light the oven. The smoke released has no negative impact on neighbors or the environment, and the ash left in the stove can be used for fertilizing gardens and plants.

Using the rolls will also fit into recent moves both here and abroad to avoid cutting down trees for energy use. “It’s a totally green product, all natural, without any glues or chemicals,” Karniel says.

“Whereas once it was more economical to buy heating oil, today people are looking for all kinds of alternatives,” Karniel explains. “People went over to wood, but now governments don’t want people to cut down forests, so they’re turning to natural alternatives like ours.”

Once the material is mixed, it’s pressed into rolls at the factory, then taken out to the warm climate of the area around Herodion, southeast of Jerusalem, where it’s easily dried before being packed for shipping.

Karniel is particularly proud of the project’s Biblical roots, with the idea of heating with olive waste mentioned in the Talmud. “We’re going forward to our sources, instead of backwards,” he notes. “It’s a great feeling; you can really feel these ancient writings come alive.”

Arabs and Bedouin were also known to make use of the olive waste for heating.

Heat for the whole family

The product is also most effective in one or two-story homes that can best make use of wood-burning stoves

The piles of drying rolls look a bit odd on the semi-desert landscape, but the boys of Sde Bar love working there, aware that the stuff is at the cutting edge of an energy revolution, Karniel explains. “They’re proud to work in the factory because it helps support their activities, and they definitely compete for the chance to work there,” says Karniel

“It’s also important to note that the olive tree, which is one of the seven species of the Land of Israel, is what’s leading this progress, even in the field of ecology,” he says. “It definitely spurs us on, and we see a great deal of importance in the fact that, thanks to us, we are contributing to our environment both here and around the world.”

The post Can you power wood stoves with olive wood pellets? appeared first on Green Prophet.

The gluten intolerance and celiac disease epidemic that’s spreading worldwide is related to herbicide residues on foods we eat, according to a study published published in the Interdisciplinary Toxicology journal in 2013.

The researchers are Anthony Samsel,an independent scientist who has worked as a consultant to the EPA on arsenic pollution and to the U.S. Coast Guard on chemical hazard response, and Stephanie Seneff, senior research scientist at MIT. They analyzed close to 300 studies on the relationship between glysophate, the active ingredient in the widely-used herbicide Roundup, and gluten intolerance/celiac disease. The scientists conclude that glyphosate residues in our food are responsible for this epidemic, which already affects 5% of the USA population.

In the 1980s, Scottish farmers discovered that spraying Roundup on their wheat and barley crops 7-14 days before harvest guaranteed their crops would dry evenly before starting the harvesting operation. This is known as dessicating the grain. The practice spread to major grain-growing areas in the US and Canada where a damp climate may hinder harvest. Now the list of common foods dessicated with Roundup includes wheat, oats, barley, many kinds of beans, lentils, corn, rye, flax, triticale, buckwheat, peas, sunflower seeds, canola, sugar beets, millet and potatoes. Drenched with the herbicide, those foods inevitably have dry Roundup residues on them. Most of our food is contaminated – yes, even animals and poultry, since the Roundup residues in their feed pass on to us.

No one paid attention to Samsel and Seneff’s study at the time it was published except for Mother Earth News and The Healthy Home Economist. But in 2015, glyphosate was recognized as “probably carcinogenic” by the World Health Organization. And in August 2018, Monsanto, Roundup’s manufacturer, was ordered to pay $289 million to a California groundsworker who was diagnosed with terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma after having mixed and sprayed hundreds of gallons of the weed killer as part of his duties. Suddenly, glyphosate is on everyone’s lips.

But glyphosate has literally been on our lips since the 1990s, when spraying Roundup on crops became almost universal. The authors of the study note that the numbers of patients diagnosed with gluten intolerance/celiac disease has risen together with the agricultural use of glyphosate.

Comparing gluten antibodies in frozen immune serum obtained between 1948-1954 to those of the modern population, researchers found that celiac disease has quadrupled.

According to the Samsel and Seneff the symptoms of glyphosate exposure closely resemble the symptoms of gluten intolerance/celiac.

“Celiac disease is associated with imbalances in gut bacteria that can be fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria,” they write. Also, deficiencies in enzymes, metals, and amino acids that characterize celiac disease are proved to appear with exposure to glyphosate.

“Celiac disease patients also have a known increased risk for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which has also been implicated in glyphosate exposure,” they warn. “The incidence of non-Hodgkins lymphoma has increased rapidly in most Western countries over the last few decades. Statistics from the American Cancer Society show an 80% increase since the early 1970’s, when glyphosate was first introduced on the market.”

They wind up with a dire warning about the effect of Roundup residues on our families.

“Reproductive issues associated with celiac disease, such as infertility, miscarriages, and birth defects, can also be explained by glyphosate.”

So it doesn’t seem that gluten is the big culprit for celiac symptoms; it’s Roundup. Some farmers admit to feeling uneasy about spraying crops with Roundup, but it doesn’t look like agro-business is going to mandate stopping its use any time soon. Apart from dessicating the crops for an easier, ample harvest, Roundup kills weeds off. Without it, farmers will have to go back to plowing the land and digging weeds out by hand, which is they fear will set agriculture back by decades. Many also fear losing part of their crops to damp. Roundup is also widely used in managing fruit orchards and grape vines; even in managing forestry.

The solution: go organic. It’s the only way, these days.

The post Blame Roundup For Celiac And Gluten Intolerance Symptoms appeared first on Green Prophet.

Energy from food scraps and other biomass? A lot has been written about converting biomass into fuel, including using poultry poop as an energy source.  The idea of using food scraps as a biofuel for cars has even been touted as a futuristic idea in such Hollywood movies as Back to the Future, when Marty McFly’s professor friend throws banana peels and other food scraps into the fuel intake of his futuristic Delorean DMC-12 flying car. 

In reality, the above sci-fi prediction,  as shown in the movie, has yet to take place. Even with this in mind, creating bio-fuel in the form of cooking gas is now possible using food scraps, animal wastes and even human poop. A portable device which does this conversion  is now being marketed by an Israel based company HOMEBIOGAS 

HOMEBIOGAS displayed its portable biomass converter at a recent Cleantech exposition and seminar in Tel Aviv. The device converts food waste like fruit and veggie scraps meat scraps and other organic material into safe and usable bio-gas in a process similar to producing compost fertilizer for your garden. The device, called the BioGas, simply breaks down the composition of food and other organic waste products in 4 easy steps:

1. Food waste is fed into the device’s “fuel” intake tube (shades of the professor’s Delorean).
2. Biomass consuming bacteria placed in the device, or appliance, breaks down the organic waste in an internal “digester”.
3. The biomass breakdown process creates methane bio-gas that is stored in a special gas holding bag on top of the appliance.
4. The created bio-gas then flows into a gas stove or burner for home use.

A “spinoff” by-product of this procedure is a high quality liquid fertilizer that has a variety of uses in home gardens, lawns and the like.

The portable Biogas appliance sells for around $500 and is now being marketed in more than 92 countries. The device’s “digester tank” holds up; to 1,200 liters of organic material and the bio-gas holding tank holds up to 700 liters of converted bio fuel.

The model on display even had a portable toilet attached to it, similar to one used in boats and campers. “It is possible to use human waste, including toilet paper, for making biogas” says one of the company’s marketing representatives, Oriya Barkai, Regional sales Manager (see photo}. who was present at the Cleantech fair.

Barkai says that a safety feature of the appliance is that the pressure of the bio-gas in the holding tank is much less than accumulated gas a conventional propane or LP gas tank. Being made almost entirely out of PVC type plastic materials and perhaps subject to leakage or rupture could be a possible fire hazard, however.

Read more on biomass composting and biomass energy:

Poultry poop could be a remarkable energy source

The Urban Death Project will turn your dead body into beetroot

Algae returns as fuel for our future

The post Make biogas in your backyard from food and poop appeared first on Green Prophet.

Molotov cocktails and chemical bombs tied to kites and helium-filled balloons have been launched from inside Gaza for the past 78 days. The fire bombs ignite when they land on the Israeli side of the border. Low-tech tactics, but they work. As of this writing, 412 fires have blazed in Israeli farm fields and conservation areas. Over 17,500 dunams (4,300 acres) lie scorched to the ground, at least 10,000 dunams (2,471 acres) of which are parks and nature reserves.

At least one-third of Israel’s land along the Gaza periphery has suffered extensive damage. Financial damage to Israel’s agriculture already stands at $1.4 million. Food crops that could have fed thousands; irrigation equipment, and farmers’ livelihoods, have gone up in smoke. In the past 24 hours alone, 17 fires have broken out in the Gaza envelope. Hundreds of turkeys in Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha have choked to death, filling the air with the stench of burnt flesh.

But eco-terrorism isn’t limited to burnt turkey runs, wheat fields, and avocado groves. The pasture that Beduin communities depend on to feed their freely roaming flocks now offers nothing to hungry sheep and goats but ashes.

Eucalyptus, pine, and mesquite forests, each tree planted by hand fifty years ago in the Gaza periphery, are now but blackened stumps. Slow-moving reptiles and mammals trapped in the fires die horribly.

Over 40 beehives have perished in flames near Tel Gama. That means 40 fewer bee colonies to pollinate crops on both sides.

Tens of thousands of tires are set on fire to create a smoke screen along the border fence for the arsonists to hide behind. With every breath, hundreds of children and adults on both sides of the Gaza border inhale air heavily polluted from burning tires, ash particles, and tear gas.

The helium that keeps fire-carrying balloons floating far into Israeli land has been siphoned off Gazan hospital supplies, depriving the struggling medical system there of yet another precious resource. What will be the toll on human health?

Scenes of billowing smoke, flames licking farm fields and trees, and dying wildlife, are still happening as of this writing. Arson fires have threatened a college in Sderot and come perilously close to houses. It’s been happening since March 30th. But the international press is indifferent.

Green Prophet interviewed Adele Raemer of Kibbutz Nirim in the northwestern Negev, near the border with the Gaza Strip. Nirim farmers work almost up to the rim of the Gaza Strip barrier. Raemer is a teacher and teacher trainer working in the regional high school.

“We’ve been lucky in Nirim,” she says. “We’ve had only three fires, all of which were put out quickly. The crops we raise by the border grow underground, such as sweet potatoes, so they survived the fires; and we managed to harvest our wheat in time.

“But it’s the same as during the previous war, when we were getting all these bombs and rockets. These aren’t just little kids’ kites, they’re weapons. As for the other side, how can people who claim to love the land do this to it? I can understand the frustration in Gaza, where life is unlivable. But this isn’t going to solve anything.”

There are other, yet-unacknowledged ecological disasters happening in the Gaza strip.

“The sewage system in Gaza is falling apart because they don’t have electricity to run the pumps,” Raemer notes. “The sewage runs in the streets there. It goes into the Mediterranean and into the underground aquifers, and it will eventually pollute water and land all around.”

Kibbutz Mefalsim, with 2,718 acres located four kilomers from the Gaza strip, has suffered greater agricultural losses from the fire-bearing kites and balloons.

“It’s horrible,” says Mefalsim resident Helen Zilser. “The fields catch fire and burn up incredibly quickly. You could be walking around and suddenly something burning will fall near you. We’re always breathing in smoke and tear gas that the IDF uses to break up violent demonstrations on the border. We have to close our windows so as not to breathe it in.

“The biggest frustration is not seeing a solution to this situation. I feel that the other side suffers, and we suffer. People in Gaza are slaves to Hamas. People are people, but Hamas are terrorists.

“I live in the Negev, where 98% of the residents are farmers. We have enough damage from natural causes, and now we have this. We live with fear; fear that our livelihoods will disappear, fear for personal security. On the other hand, I can’t not think that on the other side, people wake up in the morning with no bread on the table, no hope. They have nothing to lose, so they do what they’re told.

“I don’t take a political stance, neither left, right, or in the middle,” Zilser concludes. “I simply believe that people can live together in peace, without having to be like each other. But how?”

Israeli authorities struggle to bring the ongoing eco-disaster to international attention.

“It is inconceivable that the international community would allow Hamas not to be held accountable and pay for its criminal acts — not only against the citizens of the state of Israel, but also against the environment, which has been severely hurt by this criminal environmental terrorism,” said KKL-JNF world chairman Daniel Atar.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Major General Yoav Mordechai, sent a letter to the head of the World Health Organization.

“The Hamas terrorist organization, which controls the Gaza Strip, has issued an order to burn about 10,000 tires this Friday along the border with Israel,” he wrote. “The burning of tires in such a huge quantity will cause severe damage to the ecosystem in the area, will severely harm the life, the flora and health of the residents, and will add to the severe damage to the aquifer and lead to unprecedented air pollution.

“I call upon you, as the head of an international organization whose goal is to promote health and protect natural and environmental resources, to do everything in your power to publicly warn against this ecological catastrophe and to protest Hamas’ irresponsible behavior.”

The WHO hasn’t responded.

Yesterday, June 17, was World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought; a day established by the UN. Israel is the only country in the world who succeeds in making the desert recede into green productivity. The same UN who recognized Israel’s leading environmental role is doing nothing to condemn Hamas for the ecological and humanitarian catastrophe in the area.

No one has.

This is the least-reported ecological and humanitarian disaster in the media.

The post The Eco-Disaster from Gaza that Nobody’s Talking About appeared first on Green Prophet.