#increase plant yields

[puroxipurewater]

In a healthy greenhouse, you can increase plant yields, lengthen the growing season, care for delicate seedlings, and even grow plants that aren't usually compatible with your climate zone and humidity levels.  Here are some simplest ways to increase productivity if you're a greenhouse gardener looking for quick fixes to improve your greenhouse.  These pointers will help you get ahead of the curve and ease your life later on if you are just starting your greenhouse.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A proposal to stop labelling carbon dioxide as a pollutant and instead celebrate it as a "foundational nutrient for all life on Earth" will be up for debate at the United Conservative Party's (UCP) annual general meeting(opens in a new tab) in November. The resolution, which includes abandoning Alberta’s net-zero targets, flies in the face of the scientific consensus(opens in a new tab) that carbon dioxide emissions created by humans burning fossil fuels is one of the primary drivers of global warming.  The increased temperatures, in turn, cause more frequent and extreme weather(opens in a new tab) like wildfires, floods, heat waves, storms and droughts.  A study published in Nature (opens in a new tab)found the deadly 2021 heat dome in BC that killed more than 619 people was amplified by climate change, and that other events like the fires that tore through Jasper this summer are made more likely and exacerbated by climate change.  The policy resolution put forward by the Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock and Red Deer South constituency associations says the carbon cycle is a biological necessity and "The earth needs more CO2 to support life and to increase plant yields, both of which will contribute to the health and prosperity of all Albertans."

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland @abpoli

[headspace-hotel]

An attempt at summarizing the controversies that embroil mycorrhizal network research:

a bunch of scientists are miffed at how the media has taken "plants communicate and distribute nutrients through the mycorrhizal network" and run with it, finding the "mother tree" thing too anthropomorphizing and too presumptive about something very poorly understood

unfortunately all of the major models for understanding the mycorrhizal network are anthropomorphizing, even the more competition-centered ones...to the point that papers discuss whether the network is a "capitalist" or a "socialist" system

other researchers, screaming STOP USING LOADED TERMS THAT PROMOTE AN ANTHROPOCENTRIC INTERPRETATION

But, setting aside the question of whether trees can "intentionally" do something or be altruistic...how do we know the plant is the one in control? Are the trees "sending" nutrients or is the fungus taking the nutrients and sending them to other trees? Wait, how do we assign agency in a system like this at all? Isn't it unscientific to assume that any part of the system, fungus or plant, is consciously acting? Wait...are they actually separate organisms with their own interests, or is it more accurate to view all the members of a mycorrhizal network as one big super-organism? (Wait, is it anthropomorphizing to consider organisms as having interests? If yes, how do we describe what's happening using language?)

Basically, yes we have demonstrated and established that nutrients move from one plant to another plant in the mycorrhizal network, including from fully grown trees to saplings, plants in sunlight to shaded plants, and other things that are definitely fun to interpret as one plant "helping" the weaker plant. However, we don't actually know the intentions of plants, so for all we know, the fungus could be doing everything. Or it could be completely stupid to describe any of it as "one individual organism in the network Intentionally Does A Thing."

Big Problem: Although a shit ton of research is being done, most research in the mycorrhizal network is done on very simple networks of 1 or 2 plant species with a handful of selected fungal inoculants in otherwise sterile laboratory settings. These conditions do not reflect the natural world at all.

in fact, experimental conditions used to study mycorrhizal networks are mostly completely unlike anything that would ever exist...you know, Outside,

most of the research pertains to agriculture and there are many demonstrated benefits, and many farmers are ALREADY using methods to promote mycorrhizal networks, but my guess is that it's not as simple as matching crops up to fungal inoculants that help them for instant 20% yield increase, at least in Real Outdoor Soil with an existing microbiome and seed bank.

Roughly speaking, 50% of mycorrhizal associations benefit seedling establishment, and the remaining 50% are themselves split halfway between "no effect" and "negative effect." Doesn't this mean that the mycorrhizal network is not always chill and altruistic?

Well, those findings might mean absolutely nothing either way, since in a field-setting plant community, there are dozens if not hundreds of fungi species (the diversity and number of specialists increases in later-successional communities) that are part of the mycorrhizal network, and through them any given seedling might be linked to a thousand different plants.

Some researchers find it puzzling how so many mycorrhizal partnerships seem to have no effect. Maybe the effect only comes online in certain conditions?

Parasitism, mutualism and commensalism aren't fixed types of relationship, and two partners in the mycorrhizal network can and do switch between the three constantly. This is another problem: the experiments don't usually follow both partners in a plant-fungal pairing to the end of their natural lives, and it's been shown that a fungus can be mutualistic early in a plant's life and later on become more parasitic (for example). Or that a fungus can be beneficial in poor soil conditions and become parasitic in rich soil conditions.

But...is this really best understood as a situational switch between types of symbiosis, or can we judge it by the net effect on both partners throughout their life spans, or...my brain is breaking

Like, a fungus that mostly decreases the fitness of the host plant, BUT becomes very helpful in the presence of extreme drought...is it a parasite or mutualistic partner?

Some researchers lean toward a source-sink model where nutrients tend to flow toward plants that are most lacking and away from plants with most abundance. This is a rough approximation of something ridiculously complicated

Plants can and do select fungal partners to pair with and reject fungi that contribute fewer benefits.

Fungi also appear capable of selectively distributing resources based on the fitness of the host, or at least they did this one experiment where the fungus was connected to two different trees and researchers ripped all the leaves off one of the trees. This caused the fungus to divert its nutrient flow to the undamaged tree (throwing in its lot with the tree most likely to survive). However, we're not sure if this would happen in a forest or other natural plant community, since in the lab, the fungus was totally dependent on the two trees for survival and there were no other participants in the network. So basically, it's kinda like those behavior studies on captive wolves?

[southislandwren]

today i pretty much begged my professor to put the ice cream question on the exam, fully knowing that no one else in my class can do the ice cream. something something you are coming down with me hand in unlovable hand

[reasonsforhope]

"Marginal improvements to agricultural soils around the world would store enough carbon to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating, new research suggests.

Farming techniques that improve long-term fertility and yields can also help to store more carbon in soils but are often ignored in favor of intensive techniques using large amounts of artificial fertilizer, much of it wasted, that can increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Using better farming techniques to store 1 percent more carbon in about half of the world’s agricultural soils would be enough to absorb about 31 gigatons of carbon dioxide a year, according to new data. That amount is not far off the 32 gigaton gap between current planned emissions reduction globally per year and the amount of carbon that must be cut by 2030 to stay within 1.5C.

The estimates were carried out by Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the UN environment program and former executive director of the European Environment Agency. She found that storing more carbon in the top 30 centimeters of agricultural soils would be feasible in many regions where soils are currently degraded.

McGlade now leads a commercial organization that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images, and lidar to assess in detail how much carbon is stored in soils, which can now be done down to the level of individual fields.

“Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate,” said McGlade. “Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”

She said farmers could face a short-term cost while they changed their methods, away from the overuse of artificial fertilizer, but after a transition period of two to three years their yields would improve and their soils would be much healthier...

Arable farmers could sequester more carbon within their soils by changing their crop rotation, planting cover crops such as clover, or using direct drilling, which allows crops to be planted without the need for ploughing. Livestock farmers could improve their soils by growing more native grasses.

Hedgerows also help to sequester carbon in the soil, because they have large underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi and microbes that can extend meters into the field. Farmers have spent decades removing hedgerows to make intensive farming easier, but restoring them, and maintaining existing hedgerows, would improve biodiversity, reduce the erosion of topsoil, and help to stop harmful agricultural runoff, which is a key polluter of rivers."

-via The Grist, July 8, 2023

[beguines]

Today, strawberries have replaced much of the citrus and olive trees in the strip, and despite the relatively small area of farmland used for this sector, it enjoys high economic and social value. In all of the ways that citrus cultivation has been targeted, strawberries seem designed to survive Israel's eco-colonial practices. Strawberries are able to survive on partially saline water, they have faster production cycles, are easier to cultivate and replant after destruction and uprooting, are more mobile after moments of displacement, require less space and distance between each planted crop, and enable farmers in Gaza's northern peripheries and along the buffer zones to remain visible to the observing Israeli occupation forces. As a crop with limited historical roots in the country, it adapts well and is highly versatile. The use of compost for the cultivation of strawberries enables significant increase in fruit productivity, saving Gazan farmers the use of precious water supplies and decreasing its need for the use of fertilizers.

Despite this, the conditions of Gaza's ongoing colonial isolation and erasure make it increasingly impossible for farmers to sustain their livelihoods off of the land, even with strawberry production. In today's Gaza, as the agricultural export industry is fully reliant on the Israeli permit system, strawberries are slowly being replaced with other low-growing, fast-yielding, cost-effective and high-demand fruits and vegetables. Indeed, as a colleague at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the largest agricultural development institution in Palestine, told me during my time in Gaza, the most recent crop to slowly begin its replacement of strawberries in this line of forced colonial transition is pineapple—with the first pineapple farm planted in Khan Younes in 2017.

Examining the conditions that make strawberry production more practical and fuel the transition from citrus production requires examining the ongoing Israeli colonization of natural resources that supplant and suppress traditional modes of relating to nature. Witnesses of Israeli neo-colonial violence, the disappearing orchards in Gaza mark its new disconnected reality. The transition from the orange to the strawberry—and perhaps later to pineapple—is more than a shift in markets and produce. They affect the history and identity of Palestinians in Gaza. The links between cultivation and national or communal identity are well-known and documented in other contexts, including their intersection with colonial nation-branding. But in the context of aggressive climate change the instabilities, tensions, and erasures that come with transitions in vegetation are growing increasingly stark. For example, in the case of the Swiss canton of Valais, global heating has resulted in the growth of cacti, Opuntia, that are proliferating on the mountainsides of the canton, encroaching on natural reserves and causing a biodiversity threat. Used to "seeing their mountainsides covered with snow in winter and edelweiss flowers in summer" warmer and drier temperatures have given way to what is named in media coverage as an "invasive species colonizing the slopes." Launching an uprooting campaign in 2022, the press release stressed that "this invasive and non-native plant is not welcome in the perimeter of prairies and dry pastures of national importance." Evidently the discourse mobilized is dominated by aggressive language of aliens and invasion, which contributes to the use of violent and war-like metaphors to push for pre-emptive and combative control. In the Gazan case, the transition, as well as local responses to it, are less pronounced and weeded through long-term colonial policies imposed by the occupation. That said, the transition to strawberry cultivation nevertheless carries a similar ecological, cultural, and socio-political impact. In place of the orange, the strawberry is surfacing as the symbol of Gaza, redrawing the boundaries of the identity of its besieged inhabitants. Whereas in the past the orange was a continuous link between Gaza and the rest of historic Palestine, with deep generational roots and a symbol of steadfast and continuous presence, the abrupt transition from oranges to strawberries distances Gaza from the constructed identity and vegetal knowledge production of Palestinian farmers elsewhere. Put differently, this symbolic and political transition at the level of fruit production can be seen as another mechanism through which Israeli neo-colonial violence reifies Gaza as an enclave: divided and partitioned from the rest of Palestine.

Shourideh C. Molavi, Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance

[probablyasocialecologist]

Although the benefits of diverse forest systems are well known, many countries' restoration commitments are focused on establishing monoculture plantations. Given this practice, an international team of scientists has compared carbon stocks in mixed planted forests to carbon stocks in commercial and best-performing monocultures, as well as the average of monocultures.

Their work is published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

"Diverse planted forests store more carbon than monocultures—upwards of 70%," said Dr. Emily Warner, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and biodiversity science at the Department of Biology, University of Oxford, and first author of the study. "We also found the greatest increase in carbon storage relative to monocultures in four-species mixtures."

[...]

Accordingly, the researchers were able to show that diversification of forests enhances carbon storage. Altogether, above-ground carbon stocks in mixed forests were 70% higher than in the average monoculture. The researchers also found that mixed forests had 77% higher carbon stocks than commercial monocultures, made up of species bred to be particularly high yielding.

"As momentum for tree planting grows, our study highlights that mixed species plantations would increase carbon storage alongside other benefits of diversifying planted forests," said Dr. Susan Cook-Patton, a senior forest restoration scientist at The Nature Conservancy and collaborator on the study. The results are particularly relevant to forest managers, showing that there is a productivity incentive for diversifying new planted forests, the researchers pointed out.

[fatehbaz]

Despite its green image, Ireland has surprisingly little forest. [...] [M]ore than 80% of the island of Ireland was [once] covered in trees. [...] [O]f that 11% of the Republic of Ireland that is [now] forested, the vast majority (9% of the country) is planted with [non-native] spruces like the Sitka spruce [in commercial plantations], a fast growing conifer originally from Alaska which can be harvested after just 15 years. Just 2% of Ireland is covered with native broadleaf trees.

Text by: Martha O’Hagan Luff. “Ireland has lost almost all of its native forests - here’s how to bring them back.” The Conversation. 24 February 2023. [Emphasis added.]

---

[I]ndustrial [...] oil palm plantations [...] have proliferated in tropical regions in many parts of the world, often built at the expense of mangrove and humid forest lands, with the aim to transform them from 'worthless swamp' to agro-industrial complexes [...]. Another clear case [...] comes from the southernmost area in the Colombian Pacific [...]. Here, since the early 1980s, the forest has been destroyed and communities displaced to give way to oil palm plantations. Inexistent in the 1970s, by the mid-1990s they had expanded to over 30,000 hectares. The monotony of the plantation - row after row of palm as far as you can see, a green desert of sorts - replaced the diverse, heterogenous and entangled world of forest and communities.

Text by: Arturo Escobar. "Thinking-Feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South." Revista de Antropologia Iberoamericana Volume 11 Issue 1. 2016. [Emphasis added.]

---

But efforts to increase global tree cover to limit climate change have skewed towards erecting plantations of fast-growing trees [...] [because] planting trees can demonstrate results a lot quicker than natural forest restoration. [...] [But] ill-advised tree planting can unleash invasive species [...]. [In India] [t]o maximize how much timber these forests yielded, British foresters planted pines from Europe and North America in extensive plantations in the Himalayan region [...] and introduced acacia trees from Australia [...]. One of these species, wattle (Acacia mearnsii) [...] was planted in [...] the Western Ghats. This area is what scientists all a biodiversity hotspot – a globally rare ecosystem replete with species. Wattle has since become invasive and taken over much of the region’s mountainous grasslands. Similarly, pine has spread over much of the Himalayas and displaced native oak trees while teak has replaced sal, a native hardwood, in central India. Both oak and sal are valued for [...] fertiliser, medicine and oil. Their loss [...] impoverished many [local and Indigenous people]. [...]

India’s national forest policy [...] aims for trees on 33% of the country’s area. Schemes under this policy include plantations consisting of a single species such as eucalyptus or bamboo which grow fast and can increase tree cover quickly, demonstrating success according to this dubious measure. Sometimes these trees are planted in grasslands and other ecosystems where tree cover is naturally low. [...] The success of forest restoration efforts cannot be measured by tree cover alone. The Indian government’s definition of “forest” still encompasses plantations of a single tree species, orchards and even bamboo, which actually belongs to the grass family. This means that biennial forest surveys cannot quantify how much natural forest has been restored, or convey the consequences of displacing native trees with competitive plantation species or identify if these exotic trees have invaded natural grasslands which have then been falsely recorded as restored forests. [...] Planting trees does not necessarily mean a forest is being restored. And reviving ecosystems in which trees are scarce is important too.

Text by: Dhanapal Govindarajulu. "India was a tree planting laboratory for 200 years - here are the results." The Conversation. 10 August 2023. [Emphasis added.]

---

Nations and companies are competing to appropriate the last piece of available “untapped” forest that can provide the most amount of “environmental services.” [...] When British Empire forestry was first established as a disciplinary practice in India, [...] it proscribed private interests and initiated a new system of forest management based on a logic of utilitarian [extraction] [...]. Rather than the actual survival of plants or animals, the goal of this forestry was focused on preventing the exhaustion of resource extraction. [...]

Text by: Daniel Fernandez and Alon Schwabe. "The Offsetted." e-flux Architecture (Positions). November 2013. [Emphasis added.]

---

At first glance, the statistics tell a hopeful story: Chile’s forests are expanding. […] On the ground, however, a different scene plays out: monocultures have replaced diverse natural forests [...]. At the crux of these [...] narratives is the definition of a single word: “forest.” [...] Pinochet’s wave of [...] [laws] included Forest Ordinance 701, passed in 1974, which subsidized the expansion of tree plantations [...] and gave the National Forestry Corporation control of Mapuche lands. This law set in motion an enormous expansion in fiber-farms, which are vast expanses of monoculture plantations Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus species grown for paper manufacturing and timber. [T]hese new plantations replaced native forests […]. According to a recent study in Landscape and Urban Planning, timber plantations expanded by a factor of ten from 1975 to 2007, and now occupy 43 percent of the South-central Chilean landscape. [...] While the confusion surrounding the definition of “forest” may appear to be an issue of semantics, Dr. Francis Putz [...] warns otherwise in a recent review published in Biotropica. […] Monoculture plantations are optimized for a single product, whereas native forests offer [...] water regulation, hosting biodiversity, and building soil fertility. [...][A]ccording to Putz, the distinction between plantations and native forests needs to be made clear. “[...] [A]nd the point that plantations are NOT forests needs to be made repeatedly [...]."

Text by: Julian Moll-Rocek. “When forests aren’t really forests: the high cost of Chile’s tree plantations.” Mongabay. 18 August 2014. [Emphasis added.]

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - November 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles! (sorry it's slightly late, the links didn't wanna work and I couldn't figure it out all day)

1. Wyoming's abortion ban has been overturned, including its ban on abortion medication

“Wyoming is the second state to have its near-total abortion ban overturned this month[…. Seven other states] also approved amendments protecting the right to an abortion. A lawsuit seeking to challenge the [FDA]’s approval of abortion medication recently failed when the Supreme Court refused to hear it[….]”

2. Patches of wildflowers in cities can be just as good for insects as natural meadows – study

“This study confirmed that small areas of urban wildflowers have a high concentration of pollinating insects, and are as valuable to many pollinators as larger areas of natural meadow that you would typically find rurally.”

3. Paris could offer new parents anti-pollution baby 'gift bags' to combat 'forever chemicals'

“The bag includes a stainless steel baby cup, a wooden toy, reusable cotton wipes, and non-toxic cleaning supplies as part of a "green prescription". […] The city will also have 44 centres for protecting mothers and infants that will be without any pollutants[….]”

4. Indigenous guardians embark on a sacred pact to protect the lowland tapir in Colombia

“The tapir is now the focus of an Indigenous-led conservation project[… A proposed “biocultural corridor”] will protect not only the populations and movements of wildlife such as tapirs, but also the cultural traditions and spirituality of the Inga and other neighboring Indigenous peoples[….]”

5. Denmark will plant 1 billion trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

“[…] 43 billion kroner ($6.1 billion) have been earmarked to acquire land from farmers over the next two decades[.… In addition,] livestock farmers will be taxed for the greenhouse gases emitted by their cows, sheep and pigs from 2030, the first country to do so[….]”

6. The biggest grid storage project using old batteries is online in Texas

“[Element operates “used EV battery packs” with software that can] fine-tune commands at the cell level, instead of treating all the batteries as a monolithic whole. This enables the system to get more use out of each cell without stressing any so much that they break down[….]””

7. Durable supramolecular plastic is fully ocean-degradable and doesn't generate microplastics

“The new material is as strong as conventional plastics and biodegradable, [… and] is therefore expected to help reduce harmful microplastic pollution that accumulates in oceans and soil and eventually enters the food chain.”

8. Big Oil Tax Could Boost Global Loss and Damage Fund by 2000%

“[… A] tax on fossil fuel extraction, which would increase each year, combined with additional taxes on excess profits would […] generate hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the decade to assist poor and vulnerable communities with the impact of the climate crisis[….]”

9. Rooftop solar meets 107.5 pct of South Australia’s demand, no emergency measures needed

“[T]he state was able to export around 658 MW of capacity to Victoria at the time[….] The export capacity is expected to increase significantly as the new transmission link to NSW[…] should be able to allow an extra 150 MW to be transferred in either direction by Christmas.”

10. Light-altering paint for greenhouses could help lengthen the fruit growing season in less sunny countries

“[Scientists] have developed a spray coating for greenhouses that could help UK farmers to produce more crops in the future using the same or less energy[… by optimising] the wavelength of light shining onto the plants, improving their growth and yield.”

November 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[lucarionite9364]

titan havik…titan havik and his silly stupid ridiculous arrogant attitude being a TEASE !!!

Chat, lemme cook for a second-- (this idea is great and so are you!)

Magnificent Maelstrom

Titan Havik x fem! reader

WC: 2,645

CW: SMUT! Mentions of violence, blood, bodily harm. Oral (M & F receiving), bitingg, scratching, creampie :3, uhhhh Havik is the warning tbh.

AN: Thank you Tan for the request,, I had fun writing this. <3

“VICTORY IS MINE!” You hear crowds cheering out as you roar your triumph in the pit. You throw your arms up as you circle around your dead opponent. Many of the Havik clones are throwing their arms at you in applause. Only one Havik catches your eye in particular though.

Lord Havik, the man he is. You hold his gaze on you. That crazed look he has on his face just looking at you covered in your foes blood is wild. It’s like lightning shooting through your veins. He knows exactly what drives you crazy for him. 

With a final show of glory, you turn to your deceased enemy and plant your foot firmly on his back, yanking your greatsword out from his side. You throw your sword into the air and watch as it lands mere inches away from your Lord. He doesn’t flinch. You know whether you strike him or not, he is never afraid. 

Climbing the wall of the arena, you take your spot next to Lord Havik. Takeda comes up to slap you on the back. “Nice job in the ring! I knew you’d win.” He laughs to himself as Kenshi comes up. “He bet on the other guy.” Takeda looks offended that his father would rat him out so easily. You elbow him in the side. Maybe a little harsher than expected, but he deserved it. 

“Oh please, as if I’d lose to the nobodies they give us in the ring.” This might have turned into petty squabbles had Havik not interrupted. He lightly traced his hand around your neck making you shiver. “You did well, my little hurricane.” 

He growled that last part in your ear, making your knees grow weak. Totally not the fact you just kicked ass in the ring. “Perhaps I should reward you.” The rasp in his voice never ceases to send heat straight to your core. Your mind couldn’t wander very far before you heard your telepathic friends stifle a cough. You glare at him, “How many times have I told you not to read my mind Takahashi.” 

You could punish him, but he’s already being punished enough by Takeda’s insistent pestering about what he heard in your mind.

You roll your eyes and turn your attention back to the ring where a significant increase in severed limbs has occurred. Everyone’s focus was on the ring as the next fight was to begin. You’d like to think Lord Havik knew that you want to keep your relationship on the down low. So why did you feel his fingernails creep up your back? Trying to keep your composure while he massages your neck slowly is more difficult than it sounds. 

You swiftly move to catch his wrist, in doing so he lets out a low huff of amusement. You lean over toward him so you can keep your voice quiet. “I’m starting to think you do this on purpose to test me.” Your mind clouds once more as you feel his breath creep down your face. 

“Your reactions fuel me, my dear.” You don’t even have to look to know he has that arrogant smile on his face. Not that he can make any other face. It’s the intention that counts you suppose. 

“The chaos in the ring should intrigue you more, shouldn’t it, My Lord?” “Oh yes, but the madness you yield has far more interest to me.” You feel him gently squeeze your ass from behind. You can only stifle your groan and hope neither of the other two heard you. 

You feel a presence prod at your mind. Since you can feel that it’s there, it must be Takeda. “That’s it.” You break free from Havik’s grasp and yank your greatsword from the stone ground. “Takeda, you’re a deadman!” 

You hear him laughing hysterically as he runs, and you chase after him. 

Kenshi and Lord Havik can only watch in amusement as Takeda uses his ropes to swing away from you. You tried throwing your sword at him only to narrowly miss. 

. . . . . 

Later, you enter the Citadel. The room with seemingly no beginning or end. There were fragments of cobblestone pathways everywhere. In the sky, or down below, there were walkways and obstacles in every part of the room. Is it even a room? A dimension? That doesn’t matter as you approach the man you’ve been looking for.

Titan Havik is observing a reverse waterfall with great interest. He always does, it seems to calm him, even if ‘calm’ is the opposite of his whole being. He held his mace on his shoulder. He was rarely seen without the sharp object in hand, you thought. His attention diverted as he heard your approach. He gazed upon you with pure arrogance, like he knew you would come crawling to him eventually. 

His bludgeon dissipated into the air as he made his way toward you. He reached out an arm to touch your face, but you swerved under his hand going behind him. His expression dropped slightly. “My Lord, you have been such a tease today,” you keep walking backward. “Do you really think I’d give you what you want after that performance?” Your smirk rivals that of which he wore earlier.

“Would you really deny me? Your ruler?” His voice is almost husky enough to make you give up then and there. You remained strong. His words, however, did bring a smile to your lips. “If you want me, come and get me.” At that, you took your last step off the edge of the walkway. 

Falling, you can’t see the nigh primal look in his eyes as he licks his teeth in anticipation for the chase. You quickly grab a floating stone to break your fall. You land on the path underneath just in time to see Havik break through the path above to get to you. 

“My hurricane, you can’t run from me in here.” You feign a pout, “Oh? But it makes my day that much more fun.” Expecting you to run away from him, you surprise him by heading straight for him. You slide between the gap in his legs and spring off the edge of the platform and leap on the larger floating rocks to move upward. 

Due to your many games of cat and mouse, you knew it was only a matter of time before he played dirty. As you jumped to the next stone, you didn’t see that he threw his arm at your leg until you tripped. Now in free fall, you see Havik follow you stone path to catch you in the air. He firmly lands on the next platform, but not without a sickening crunch indicating he broke his leg. 

You hear the limb snap back into place and his skin sealing itself together. As you're in his broad arms, you start nibbling on his exposed neck. He openly groans into your touch. “Now who’s being a tease?” He tilts his head toward you and leans to start licking your face. 

His unusually long tongue makes its way to your lips and parts them with ease. As your tongues dance around each other, he sets you back on your feet, roughly grabbing onto your chest. You moan into the sloppy makeout session. As he exits your mouth to give you air, saliva covers your lower face. 

You smirk and wipe your face on your unsleeved arm. You let your hands roam across his broad chest as you kiss your way down his torso. He looks down on you as you get on your knees before him. His hand makes its way to your hair to caress the soft strands as you start undoing the cloth surrounding his pants. His hand balls up into a fist, pulling deliciously on your hair. 

“Now will you serve me?” He asks, already knowing the answer. “Yes, My Lord.” You purr as you pull down his pants. You’ve seen him before, but his size still marvels you everytime. 

You grab the base with one hand and slowly lick a stripe up his shaft. The fist in your hair tightens as he groans. Wanting to tease him one last time, you swirl your tongue around his tip, occasionally dipping into the slit. “Your cruelty knows no limits, you maelstrom.” He grits his teeth as you lower your mouth on him.

You suction your mouth on him as you bob your head up and down. Just for added measure, you cup his balls and gently squeeze. You look up to see his dazed expression as his tongue lolls out from his mouth. 

You know you’re doing good when he plants his feet and thrusts all the way down your throat. You gag around him which makes him want to thrust harder. He grabs the back of your head with both hands and sets his own pace, using your face as his fucktoy. He knows you love it though. 

As much as you can’t breathe, you want to pleasure him. You hollow out your throat to allow for more room to take in air between the onslaught. You roughly grab onto his thighs and drag your nails down his leg in desperation. Clawing at anything to keep you grounded. 

You can feel his pace grow erratic as his hips stutter. He roughly pulls out and you heave in a large breath. As you regain your focus, you see blood creeping down his chiseled thigh from where you grabbed onto him.

You could feel yourself soaking through your pants from how wet you were. He pushed you to your back on the ground, laughing lightly as he could see your arousal. He knelt down over you, rubbing the spot between your legs that felt oh so good. But the little friction you got from that is nowhere near enough. 

You squirm as you undo the top of your pants, allowing him to pull them off of you with a harsh tug. You kept wiggling as you saw him stroking himself. You only wanted him inside you at that moment, but he had other plans. It seems like being a tease would bite you in the ass. Literally.

He dips his lead lower and puts a bite mark right on the inside of your thigh. You yelp in surprise. He has to pin your hips down, but not before ripping your panties off you. You shiver as the oddly cold air of the Citadel hits your lips. 

“Look at me, my dear,” He glares into your eyes as he says one more word. “Payback.” His tongue dives straight to like a thick line up your slit. Being the worst tease he is, he harshly sucks on your clit.

You can’t help but moan out as his teeth hit your sensitive bundle of nerves too. “Ahh, Havik!” You barely whimper his name, but to your surprise he stops. His gaze soured into a stern expression as he brought two fingers to gather your slick. “That is not my title.” You realize your mistake and quickly correct yourself. 

“I’m sorry My Lord! Please, don’t stop.” You have a pleading tone in your voice. He seems to like your answer as he pries you open with his two digits. Moving them in and out, scissoring them open to loosen you up. 

Your breathing increases in intensity. You feel the knot in your stomach tighten as he continues to suck your clit and finger you. You tangle your fingers in his hair, surprisingly soft, and tug on it. He growls out into your pussy as he keeps up the pace. 

“Lord Havik, I’m. . . I’m gonna–” “Let it out.” He commands, and you do as you're told. You yank his hair tighter as you shove your pussy into his face. Feeling your slick and release mix with his saliva as he continues to lick every last inch of you. You let go of his hair, but he doesn’t stop licking you, helping you ride out your orgasm. 

After he is done, he leans up to give you a sloppy kiss. You can taste yourself on his mouth as you bring your hands to wrap around his neck. You feel his still hard cock bumping your leg. Even after that strong orgasm, you still can’t help but want more. Want him. Need him.

He pulls away from the kiss and looks down on your disheveled form as he positions himself at your entrance. He pushes into you only to miss and slide up your soaked cunt. The tip nudged your clit sending a bolt of pleasure up your spine. 

Growing frustrated, he repositions himself and pushes all the way into you in one thrust. You can feel the breath being knocked out of you. You moan out at the intrusion, never being fully ready to take him. The stretch was a little painful, but the pleasure overtook that feeling as he pulled out and pushed back in with force. 

He started with a harsh pace, not giving you any time to adjust to his large size. You can feel yourself squeezing his shaft and you get impossibly wetter as he abuses your sopping cunt. He takes one of your nipples in his calloused fingers and pinches it while teething on the other. 

The thought that someone can find you splayed open underneath your Lord never crossed your mind as you moan every time he thrusts into you. He brings his unoccupied hand down to rub circles into your clit. His thrusts falter for a moment as you rake your sharp nails down his muscular back. Leaving bloody trails in its wake.

He loved the scars you left on his body. He wore them just as proudly as his battle scars. Letting people see the things you do to him, whether they knew it was from you or not. His thrusts lost their pattern and became erratic. He was close, and you were too. However, he was dead set on making you go first. 

He bit into the sweet spot on your neck. That coupled with his endless thrusts and toying with your clit cause you to let go for a second time. Your juices came gushing out all over his lower abdomen. He stopped playing with your clit, but his thrusts picked up till he finally threw himself over the edge. 

You locked your legs around his back to make sure he couldn’t leave. Your body heat rose three times as his hot cum was shot into your womb. He lost control of his groans as the bite on your neck drew blood. He had his hands holding your hips in such a grip you thought it might bruise as he finished spilling into you. 

You almost blanked as the please was too much. Were it not for the fact he’s holding you up, you would have slumped over already. He stayed inside you for a little longer. Growling out into your ear, “You drive me mad. You are the anarchy I crave.” You feel warm tears well up in your eyes. You can’t tell if it’s because you’re overstimulated or his words meant more than he realized. 

You breathlessly confess, “You are the disorder to my disarray. Nothing is better than the great turmoil you bring to my life.” You plant one more kiss on his exposed teeth before you groan as he pulls out of you. You shudder as you feel his cum drip out of your spent cunt. An idea, good or bad, sparks your hand into motion. You make a show of scooping his cum from between your legs and bringing your fingers to your mouth. 

You made sure we watched every second of your display. His voice drops to a growl as he speaks, “We have time before the next battle in the arena.”

[datapacks]

So here's the idea for how to utilize the portals in the Ancient City without making them just lead to another dimension. I've had this idea for a while, but only just started to seriously think about how it would work, but make it so that when the player crosses the portal, they gain a new ability of sorts- they can see the secret machinations of the world, a spirit world.

When a mob attempts to spawn, it will first check to see if there are any spirits nearby. To the average player, these spirits will be intangible and invisible; placing a block over one will simply prompt it to move to a different location. For players who have been through the ancient city portal, though, they could intentionally move (or remove) these spirits, making a way to reasonably stop mob spawns in total darkness, or even intentionally boost mob spawns in certain locations. This would apply to hostile, neutral, and even passive mobs.

When a block attempts to age (oxidization, crops growing, trees sprouting, grass spreading, etc), as it stands right now, this uses the RandomTick system. RandomTick could be set locally though, again using these spirits. To the average player, this would rarely have any impact on the game, aside from certain areas seeming to grow crops slightly faster- to players who have been through the portal, they would have the option to move these spirits around to increase their farm yields, or even to stop crop growth altogether.

These spirit entities, for the most part, would effectively be particle spawner entities, rather than individual entities; while the individual spirits move freely from the source, that would make the source entity itself much easier to pin down and move. Otherwise, there could even be entire new hostile mobs that only appear to (and only attack) players who have been through the portal.

There could reasonably be entire structures that the player cannot see nor interact with unless they've been through the portal, but players who have can break these blocks, placing them wherever they would like. To players who haven't been through the portal, it could seem like players who have are simply walking across air. There could be entire swathes of decorative blocks & plants that could be crafted with echo shards to make them visible to the naked eye, or to otherwise make it so that an unassuming location becomes beautiful to those able to see it.

One final addition I would want to add is Solar Eclipses; during a solar eclipse, some of these spirits would be visible (though still not necessarily tangible) to the naked eye. This would be a way to ensure that players at least know about their existence, if they haven't been through the portal.

Removing the effect could be as simple as dying, like any other status effect in the game. To regain it, players would simply have to go through the portal once again.

We already have multiple instances of blocks specifically that only certain players can see under certain circumstances (barriers, light blocks), as well as the particle system allowing particles to be per-player, so if this tech was expanded to support block collision and entities, it would work out pretty well I think. This would add an insane amount of customization to the mechanics of minecraft, & I think any one of these features would be a really fun addition to play with. Imagine going through the gateway and seeing an entire city's worth of spectral villagers that have been in the ancient city this whole time.

[najia-cooks]

[ID: A circle of overlapping semi-circular bright pink pickles arranged on a plate, viewed from a low angle. End ID]

مخلل اللفت / Mukhallal al-lifit (Pickled turnips)

The word "مُخَلَّل" ("mukhallal") is derived from the verb "خَلَّلَ"‎ ("khallala"), meaning "to preserve in vinegar." "Lifit" (with diacritics, Levantine pronunciation: "لِفِتْ"), "turnip," comes from the root "ل ف ت‎", which produces words relating to being crooked, turning aside, and twisting (such as "لَفَتَ" "lafata," "to twist, to wring"). This root was being used to produce a word meaning "turnip" ("لِفْتْ" "lift") by the 1000s AD, perhaps because turnips must be twisted or wrung out of the ground.

Pickling as a method of preserving produce so that it can be eaten out of season is of ancient origin. In the modern-day Levant, pickles (called "طَرَاشِيّ‎" "ṭarāshiyy"; singular "طُرْشِيّ" "ṭurshiyy") make up an important culinary category: peppers, carrot, olives, eggplant, cucumber, cabbage, cauliflower, and lemons are preserved with vinegar or brine for later consumption.

Pickled turnips are perhaps the most commonly consumed pickles in the Levant. They are traditionally prepared during the turnip harvest in the winter; in the early spring, once they have finished their slow fermentation, they may be added to appetizer spreads, served as a side with breakfast, lunch, or dinner, eaten on their own as a snack, or used to add pungency to salads, sandwiches, and wraps (such as shawarma or falafel). Tarashiyy are especially popular among Muslim Palestinians during the holy month of رَمَضَان (Ramaḍān), when they are considered a must-have on the إِفْطَار ("ʔifṭār"; fast-breaking meal) table. Pickle vendors and factories will often hire additional workers in the time leading up to Ramadan in order to keep up with increased demand.

In its simplest instantiation, mukhallal al-lifit combines turnips, beetroot (for color), water, salt, and time: a process of anaerobic lacto-fermentation produces a deep transformation in flavor and a sour, earthy, tender-crisp pickle. Some recipes instead pickle the turnips in vinegar, which produces a sharp, acidic taste. A pink dye (صِبْغَة مُخَلَّل زَهْرِي‎; "ṣibgha mukhallal zahri") may be added to improve the color. Palestinian recipes in particular sometimes call for garlic and green chili peppers. This recipe is for a "slow pickle" made with brine: thick slices of turnip are fermented at room temperature for about three weeks to produce a tangy, slightly bitter pickle with astringency and zest reminiscent of horseradish.

Turnips are a widely cultivated crop in Palestine, but, though they make a very popular pickle, they are seldom consumed fresh. One Palestinian dish, mostly prepared in Hebron, that does not call for their fermentation is مُحَشّي لِفِتْ ("muḥashshi lifit")—turnips that are cored, fried, and stuffed with a filling made from ground meat, rice, tomato, and sumac or tamarind. In Nablus, tahina and lemon juice may be added to the meat and rice. A similar dish exists in Jordan.

Turnips produced in the West Bank are typically planted in open fields (as opposed to in or under structures such as plastic tunnels) in November and harvested in February, making them a fall/winter crop. Because most of them are irrigated (rather than rain-fed), their yield is severely limited by the Israeli military's siphoning off of water from Palestine's natural aquifers to settlers and their farms.

Israeli military order 92, issued on August 15th, 1967 (just two months after the order by which Israel had claimed full military, legislative, executive, and judicial control of the West Bank on June 7th), placed all authority over water resources in the hands of an Israeli official. Military order 158, issued on November 19th of the same year, declared that no one could establish, own, or administer any water extraction or processing construction (such as wells, water purification plants, or rainwater collecting cisterns) without a new permit. Water infrastructure could be searched for, confiscated, or destroyed at will of the Israeli military. This order de facto forbid Palestinians from owning or constructing any new water infrastructure, since anyone could be denied a permit without reason; to date, no West Bank Palestinian has ever been granted a permit to construct a well to collect water from an aquifer.

Nearly 30 years later, the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (also called the Oslo II Accord or the Taba Agreement), signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1995, officially granted Israel the full control over water resources in occupied Palestine that it had earlier claimed. The Argreement divided the West Bank into regions of three types—A, B, and C—with Israel given control of Area C, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) supposedly having full administrative power over Area A (about 3% of the West Bank at the time).

In fact, per article 40 of Annex 3, the PA was only allowed to administer water distribution in Area A, so long as their water usage did not exceed what had been allocated to them in the 1993 Oslo Accord, a mere 15% of the total water supply: they had no administrative control over water resources, all of which were owned and administered by Israel. This interim agreement was to be returned to in permanent status negotiations which never occurred.

The cumulative effect of these resolutions is that Palestinians have no independent access to water: they are forbidden to collect water from underground aquifers, the Jordan River, freshwater springs, or rainfall. They are, by law and by design, fully reliant on Israel's grid, which distributes water very unevenly; a 2023 report estimated that Israeli settlers (in "Israel" and in the occupied West Bank) used 3 times as much water as Palestinians. Oslo II estimations of Palestinians' water needs were set at a static number of million cubic meters (mcm), rather than an amount of water per person, and this number has been adhered to despite subsequent growth in the Palestinian population.

Palestinians who are connected to the Israeli grid may open their taps only to find them dry (for as long as a month at a time, in بَيْت لَحْم "bayt laḥm"; Bethlehem, and الخَلِيل "al-khalīl"; Hebron). Families rush to complete chores that require water the moment they discover the taps are running. Those in rural areas rely on cisterns and wells that they are forbidden to deepen; new wells and reservoirs that they build are demolished in the hundreds by the Israeli military. Water deficits must be made up by paying steep prices for additional tankards of water, both through clandestine networks and from Israel itself. As climate change makes summers hotter and longer, the crisis worsens.

By contrast, Israeli settlers use water at will. Israel, as the sole authority over water resources, has the power to transfer water between aquifers; in practice, it uses this authority to divert water from the Jordan River basin, subterranean aquifers, and بُحَيْرَة طَبَرِيَّا ("buḥayrat ṭabariyyā"; Lake Tiberias) into its national water carrier (built in 1964), and from there to other regions, including the Negev Desert (south of the West Bank) and settlements within the West Bank.

Whenever Israel annexes new land, settlers there are rapidly given access to water; the PA, however, is forbidden to transport water from one area of the West Bank to another. Israel's control over water resources is an important part of the settler colonial project, as access to water greatly influences the desirability of land and the expected profit to be gained through its agricultural exports.

The result of the diversion of water is to increase the salinity of the Eastern Aquifer (in the West Bank, on the east bank of the Jordan River) and the remainder of the Jordan that flows into the West Bank, reducing the water's suitability for drinking and irrigation; in addition, natural springs and wells in Palestine have run dry. In this environment, water for drinking and watering crops and livestock is given priority, and many Palestinians struggle to access enough water to shower or wash clothing regularly. In extreme circumstances, crops may be left for dead, as Palestinian farmers instead seek out jobs tending Israeli fields.

Some areas in Palestine are worse off in this regard than others. Though water can be produced more easily in the قَلْقِيلية (Qalqilya), طُولْكَرْم (Tulkarm) and أَرِيحَا ("ʔarīḥā"; Jericho) Districts than in others, the PA is not permitted to transfer water from these areas to areas where water is scarcer, such as the Bethlehem and Al-Khalil Districts. In Al-Khalil, where almost a third of Palestinian acreage devoted to turnips is located [1], and where farming families such as the Jabars cultivate them for market, water usage averaged just 51 liters per person per day in 2020—compare this to the West Bank Palestinian average of 82.4 liters, the WHO recommended daily minimum of 100 liters, and the Israeli average of 247 liters per person per day.

As Israeli settlement גִּבְעַת חַרְסִינָה (Givat Harsina) encroached on Al-Khalil in 2001, with a subdivision being built over the bulldozed Jabar orchard, the Jabars reported settlers breaking their windows, destroying their garden, throwing rocks, and holding rallies on the road leading to their house. In 2010, with the growth of the קִרְיַת־אַרְבַּע (Kiryat Arba) settlement (officially the parent settlement of Givat Harsina), the Jabars' entire irrigation system was repeatedly torn out, with the justification that they were stealing water from the Israeli water authority; the destruction continued into 2014. Efforts at connecting and expanding Israeli settlements in the Bethlehem area continue to this day.

Thus we can see that water deprivation is one tool among many used to drive Palestinians from their land; and that it is connected to a strategy of rendering agriculture impossible or unprofitable for them, forcing them into a state of dependence on the Israeli economy.

Turnips, as well as cabbage and chili peppers, are also grown in the village of وَادِي فُوقِين (Wadi Fuqin), west of Bethlehem. In 2014, Israel annexed about 1,250 acres of land in Wadi Fuqin, or a third of the village's land, "effectively [ruling] out development of the village and its use of this land for agriculture." Most of this land lies immediately to the west of a group of settlements Israel calls גּוּשׁ עֶצְיוֹן ("Gush Etzion"; Etzion Bloc). Building here would link several non-contiguous Israeli settlements with each other and with القدس (Al-Quds; "Jerusalem"), hemming Palestinians of the region in on all sides (many main roads through Israeli settlements cannot be used by anyone with a Palestinian ID). [2] PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi said that the annexation, which was carried out "[u]nder the cover of [Israel's] latest campaign of aggression in Gaza," "represent[ed] Israel’s deliberate intent to wipe out any Palestinian presence on the land".

This, of course, was not the beginning of this strategy: untreated sewage from Gush Etzion settlements had been contaminating crops, springs, and groundwater in Wadi Fuqin since 2006, which also saw nearly 100 acres of Palestinian land annexed to allow for expansion of the Etzion Bloc.

All of this has obviously had an effect on Palestinian agriculture. A 1945–6 British survey of vegetable production in Palestine found that 992 dunums were devoted to Arab turnip production (954 irrigated and 38 rain-fed; no turnip production was attributed to Jewish settlers). A March 1948 UN report claimed that "[i]n most districts the markets are well-supplied with all the common winter vegetables—cabbages, cauliflowers, lettuce and spinach; carrots, turnips and and beets; beans and peas; green onions, eggplants, marrows and tomatoes." By 2009, however, the area given to turnips in Palestine had fallen to 918 dunums. Of these, 864 dunums were irrigated and 54 rain-fed. This represents an increase in unirrigated turnips (5.8%, up from 3.9%) that is perhaps related to difficulty in obtaining sufficient water.

Meanwhile, Israel profits from its restriction of Palestinian agriculture; it is the largest exporter of turnips in West Asia (I found no data for turnip exports from Palestine after 1922, suggesting that the produce is all for local consumption).

The pattern that Ashrawi called out in 2014 continued in 2023, as Israel's genocide in Gaza occurs alongside the continued and escalating killing and expulsion of West Bank Palestinians. The 2014 annexations, which represented the largest land grab for over 30 years and which appeared to institute a new era of state policy, have been followed up in subsequent years with more land claims and settlement-building.

Israeli military and settler raids and massacres in the West Bank, which had already killed 248 in 2023 before the حَمَاس (Hamas) October 7 offensive had taken place, accelerated after the attack, with forced expulsions of Palestinians (including Bedouin Arabs), and harassment, raids, kidnappings, and torture of Palestinians by a military armed with rifles, tanks, and drones. This violence has been opposed by armed resistance groups, who defend refugee camps from military raids with strategies including the use of improvised explosives.

Support Palestinian resistance by buying an e-sim for distribution in Gaza; donating to help two Gazans receive medical care; or donating to help a family leave Gaza.

[1] 918 dunums were devoted to turnips according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) report for 2009; the 2008 PCBS report attributes 253 dunums of turnip cultivation to Al-Khalil ("Hebron") for 2006–7.

[2] Today, Gush Etzion is connected to Al-Quds by an underground road that runs beneath the Palestinian Christian town of بَيتْ جَالَا (Bayt Jala).

Ingredients:

Makes 2 1-liter mason jars.

500g (4 medium) turnips

1 beetroot

1 medium green chili pepper (فلفل حار خضرة), halved

2 small cloves garlic, peeled

1 liter (4 cups) distilled or filtered water

25g coarse sea salt (or substitute an equivalent weight of any salt without iodine)

Some brining recipes for lifit call for the addition of a spoonful of sugar. This will increase the activity of lactic-acid-producing bacteria at the beginning of the fermentation, producing a quicker fermentation and a different, sourer flavor profile.

Instructions:

1. Clean two large mason jars thoroughly in hot water (there is no need to sterilize them).

2. Scrub vegetables thoroughly. Cut the top (root) and bottom off of each turnip. Cut each turnip in half (from root end to bottom), and then in 1 cm (1/2") slices (perpendicular to the last cut). Prepare the beetroot the same way.

If you need your pickles to be finished sooner, cut the turnips into thinner slices, or into thick (1/2") baton shapes; these will need to be fermented for about a week.

3. Arrange turnip and beet slices so that they lie flat in your jars. Add garlic and peppers.

4. Whisk salt into water until dissolved and pour over the turnips until they are fully submerged. Seal with the jar's lid and leave in a cool place, or the refrigerator, for 20–24 days.

The amount of brine that you will need to cover the top of the vegetables will depend on the shape of your jar. If you add more water, make sure that you add more salt in the same ratio.

[anarchywoofwoof]

Full Article Text:

The United Kingdom is facing dire food shortages, forcing prices to skyrocket, and experts predict this is only the beginning.

What's happening?

According to a report by The Guardian, extreme weather is wreaking havoc on crops across the region. England experienced more rainfall during the past 18 months than it has over any 18-month period since record-keeping began in 1836.

Because the rain hasn't stopped, many farmers have been unable to get crops such as potatoes, carrots, and wheat into the ground. "Usually, you get rain but there will be pockets of dry weather for two or three weeks at a time to do the planting. That simply hasn't happened," farmer Tom Allen-Stevens told The Guardian.

Farmers have also planted fewer potatoes, opting for less weather-dependent and financially secure crops. At the same time, many of the potatoes that have been planted are rotting in the ground.

"There is a concern that we won't ever have the volumes [of potatoes] we had in the past in the future," British Growers Association CEO Jack Ward told The Guardian. "We are not in a good position and it is 100% not sustainable," Ward added.

Why is it important?

English farmers aren't alone — people are struggling to grow crops worldwide because of extreme weather.

Dry weather in Brazil and heavy rain in Vietnam have farmers concerned about pepper production. Severe drought in Spain and record-breaking rain and snowfall in California have made it difficult for farmers to cultivate olives for olive oil. El Niño and rising temperatures cut Peru's blueberry yield in half last year. Everyone's favorite drinks — coffee, beer, and wine — have all been impacted by extreme weather.

According to an ABC News report, the strain on the agriculture industry will likely continue to cause food prices to soar.

If these were just isolated events, farmers could more easily adapt — bad growing seasons are nothing new. The problem is that rising temperatures are directly linked to the increasing amount of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have burned dirty energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas, which release a significant amount of those gases. Our climate is changing so drastically that the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the last decade.

"As climate change worsens, the threat to our food supply chains — both at home and overseas — will grow," Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit analyst Amber Sawyer told The Guardian.

What can we do about it?

"Fortunately, we know many ways we can make the food system more resilient while reducing food emissions. The biggest opportunity in high-income nations is a reduction in meat consumption and exploration of more plants in our diets," said Dr. Paul Behrens, an associate professor of environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

If we replace a quarter of our meat consumption with vegetables, we could cut around 100 million tons of air pollution yearly. It may seem strange to suggest eating more vegetables with the decline in crop production. However, reducing the land and water used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply.

Growing our own food is also a great way to reduce our reliance on store-bought produce, and it can save you hundreds of dollars a year at the grocery store.

[headspace-hotel]

Many people, especially USAmericans, are very resistant to knowing the plants and living according to the ways of the plants. They lash out with a mix of arrogance and fear: "Don't you know what bad things would happen if we lived a different way? There is a REASON for living this way. Would you have us go Back—backward to the time without vaccines or antibiotics????"

Ah, yes, the two immutable categories that all proposals for change fit into: Backward Change and Forward Change! Either we must invent a a futuristic, entirely new solution with SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY that further industrializes and increases the productivity of our world, or we must give up vaccines and antibiotics and become starving illiterate medieval peasants.

Every human practice anywhere on Earth that has declined, stopped, or become displaced by another practice, was clearly objectively worse than whatever replaced it. You see, the only possible reason a way of life could decline or disappear is that it sucked and had it coming anyway!!! Pre-industrial human history is worthless except as a cautionary tale about how miserable we would all be without *checks notes* factories, fossil fuels and colonialism. Obviously!

Anyway, who do you think benefits from the idea that pesticide-dependent, corporate-controlled industrialized monoculture farming liberates us all from spending our short, painful lives as filthy, miserable peasants toiling in the fields?

First of all, I think it's silly to act like farming is a uniquely awful way to live. I can't believe I have to say this, but the awful part of being a medieval peasant was the oppression and poverty, not the fact that harvesting wheat is a lot of work and cows are stinky. Same goes for farm labor in the modern USA: the bad part is that most people working farms are undocumented migrant workers that are getting treated like garbage and who can't complain about it because their boss will rat them out to ICE.

Work is just work. Any work has dignity when the people doing it are paid properly and not being abused. Abuse and human trafficking is rampant in agriculture, but industrialization and consolidation of small farms into gigantic corporate owned farms sure as hell isn't making it better.

Is working on a farm somehow more miserable than working in a factory, a fast food restaurant, or a retail store? Give me a break. "At least I'm not doing physical labor in the sun," you say, at your job where you're forced to stand on concrete for 8 hours and develop chronic pain by age 24.

When you read about small farmers going out of business because of huge corporations, none of them are going "Yay! Now that Giant Corporation has swallowed up all the farms in the area, we can all enjoy the luxurious privileges of the industrial era, like working RETAIL!" What you do see a lot of is farmers bitterly grieving the loss of their way of life.

And also, the fact is, sustainable forms of polyculture farming that create a functional ecosystem made up of many different useful and edible plants are actually way MORE efficient at producing food than a monoculture. The reason we don't do it as much, is that it can't be industrialized where everything is harvested with machines.

Some places folks are starting to get the idea and planting two crops together in alternating rows, letting the mutualistic relationship between plants boost the yields of both, but indigenous people in many parts of the world have been doing this stuff basically forever. I read about a style of agroforestry from Central America that has TWENTY crops all together on the same field.

Our modern system of farming is necessary for feeding the world? Bullshit! Our technology is very powerful and useful, but our harmful monocultures, dangerous pesticides, and wasteful usage of land and resources are making the system very inefficient and severely degrading nature's ability to provide for us.

What is needed, is a SYNTHESIS of the power and insights of technology and science, with the ancient wisdom and knowledge gained by closely and carefully observing Nature. We do not need to reject one, to embrace the other! They should be friends!

Our system thinks land is only used for one thing at a time. Even our science often thinks this way. A corn field has the purpose of producing corn, and no other purpose, so all other plants in the corn must be killed, and it must be a monoculture of only corn.

But this means that the symbiosis between different plants that help each other is destroyed, so we must pollute the earth with fertilizers that wash into bodies of water and cause eutrophication, where algae explode in number and turn the water to green goo. Nature always has variety and diversity with many plants sharing the same space. It supports much more animal life (we are animals!) this way. The Three Sisters" are the perfect example of mutualism between plants being used in an agricultural environment. The planting of corn, beans, and squash together has been traditionally used clear across the North American continent.

And in North America, the weeds we have here are mostly edible plants too. Some of them were even domesticated themselves! Imagine a garden where every weed that pops up is also an edible or otherwise useful crop, and therefore a welcomed friend! So when weeds like Amaranth and Sunflower pop up in your field, that should not be a cause for alarm, but rather the system of symbiosis working as it should.

A field of one single crop is limited in how much it can produce, because one crop fits into a single niche in what should be a whole ecosystem, and worse, it requires artificial inputs to make up for what the rest of the plant community would normally provide. The field with twenty crops does not produce the same amount as the monoculture field divided in twenty ways, but instead produces much more while being a habitat for wild animals, because each plant has its own niche.

[unatkozorobotok]

“Koalas are fucking horrible animals. They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal, additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. They are too thick to adapt their feeding behaviour to cope with change. In a room full of potential food, they can literally starve to death. This is not the token of an animal that is winning at life. Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can't afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives. When they are awake all they do is eat, shit and occasionally scream like fucking satan. Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal. Many herbivorous mammals have adaptations to cope with harsh plant life taking its toll on their teeth, rodents for instance have teeth that never stop growing, some animals only have teeth on their lower jaw, grinding plant matter on bony plates in the tops of their mouths, others have enlarged molars that distribute the wear and break down plant matter more efficiently... Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death, because they're fucking terrible animals. Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio... There's a trend here). When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn't want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother's anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system. Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher. This statistic isn't helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree, which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury... should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet.”

[portraitoftheoddity]

Beginner Hikers: Trail Etiquette

@somesuchnonsense added some EXCELLENT info in the tags on my beginner gear post about Hiking Etiquette, and frankly, it deserves its own post:

While you might be going out hiking to get away from other people, odds are good you're still going to encounter a few other folks doing the same, and some basic politeness and understanding of trail etiquette can keep you from being that guy.

So!

How to Not Be An Asshole Hiker:

Acknowledge Other Hikers. You don't have to have a whole conversation -- most people don't want you to -- but making eye contact with a brief nod or 'hello' as you cross paths is considered polite.

Respect the Right of Way. While you're going one way on the trail, someone else may be coming the other way. If the trail is narrow, one of you is going to have to step to the side. The general rule is that hikers going uphill have the right of way, and hikers going downhill should yield. That being said, if you have the right of way but notice that you have a better spot to step off to the side of the trail safely than the other person or party, it's polite to do so. Also, if you are hiking solo and there's a large group coming through the other way, it's polite to let them pass since it's easier for one person to move aside than a whole troupe. It's also polite to acknowledge people going the same way as you at a slower pace that you may be passing, and give them a chance to step aside before you pass them.

Stay On The Trail. Apart from stepping aside to the edge of the trail to let others pass, you should stick to the blazed trail and avoid bushwhacking. This is important for your safety so you don't get lost, and also for the ecosystem -- you could be damaging protected plant life or increasing erosion by trying to make your own shortcut. (Reasonable excuses to leave the trail are if you need to relieve yourself, or if there is a tree down or rock slide across the trail that you need to circumvent for safety)

Leave No Trace. On the topic of not damaging the ecosystem -- If you're gonna have a picnic, bring a bag for your garbage (or any toilet paper if you had to use some), and be sure to clean up after yourself, and erase any signs you were there. Everyone else wants to enjoy the scenic beauty of nature too, so leave it as pristine as you found it. [Side note: Leave the rocks alone, do not stack them into cairns, but also do not mess with existing cairns by adding or removing rocks if you see any -- these are often built by trail maintainers as trail markers in places above tree line where blazes may be obscured by snow and are important to keep folks from getting lost]

No One Wants to Hear Your Music. So you have a cool little Bluetooth speaker so you can blast your favorite tunes with your friends? Cool! Keep it at home! If you want to listen to music when you hike, wear headphones. Don't make your noise everyone else's problem. Enjoy the sounds of nature, and respect that other hikers may be out here for the serenity of the wild, and not your spotify playlist.

Look Out For Other Hikers. If you see another hiker in distress, see if they need help. If there's a problem on the trail up ahead or conditions they should be aware of for safety, give other hikers a heads up. Step up to be a good samaritan where one is needed if you are able. Some of the kindest strangers I've had the honor of meeting, I've encountered on a trail. It can be a really wonderful community!!!