Stuff and doodad for development

          Principle:

          CSA are partnership between farmers, who have organic, biodynamic or sustainable systems of production, and consumers. The “supporters” share the production’s costs (seeds, water, equipment, etc) that are expected during the year and the farmer provides them various produces throughout the seasons. This way, the consumers know exactly how is produced their food, while sharing the producer’s risks (as an under-productive year).

        The objectives of this mutual commitment are varied. From the one hand, it guarantees the consumers healthy products and a wide diversity of crops. From the other hand, farmers have their incomes assured and can invest without important risks. Moreover, it permits the development of a regional and sustainable agriculture and the dialogue between producers and consumers.

Picture from olharfeliz.typepad.com

         History:

         The principle of “CSA” was born in Japan during the sixties. A group of women wondered about the quality of the food in the conventional agriculture, afraid by the use of chemicals. Furthermore, they had environnemental concerns. They decided to have a commitment with farmers: they purchased food directly from them, who guaranteed not using chemicals. This system was called “teikei”, that means “food with the farmer’s face on it”. At the same time the “food guilds” were developed in Switzerland.

          In 1985, an American farmer, coming back from Switzerland, created the first CSA in the USA. Then, in 2000, a couple of French vegetables producers created the first AMAP (Association pour le Maintien d’une Agriculture paysanne), after they had discovered it in the USA.

         Nowadays, teikei has become the Seikatsu Club, with more than 290,000 members (99, 9% of women!) and has extended its activities on the social and political areas. We can count 1500 CSA farms across the USA and Canada and over 750 AMAP in France.

Picture from www.reunion.chambagri.fr

About CSA: http://www.localharvest.org/csa.jsp         

About teikei: http://www.joaa.net/English/teikei.htm      

Seikatsu club website: http://www.seikatsuclub.coop/english/index.html   

Article of Yvon Poirier (which is unfortunately in French):

http://base.d-p-h.info/fr/fiches/dph/fiche-dph-7047.html   

Charlotte

In 1988, Takao Furuno tried to find a way to cultivate rice with biologic process.

He discovered that in olden times, ducks-farming and rice growing were combined.

Indeed, ducks are best friend of rice.

They eat weeds and parasite insects. But they don’t eat the rice.

And when they wade in the rice field, they oxygen the water.

And for the best, their faeces are a good fertilizer for the soil.

For more informations : http://www.80hommes.com/80portraits/fiche39.htm (in french)

Laure lynn

     Fossil fuels are polluting our planet whereas the oceans are clean and huge energy reservoirs. The submerged windmills use ocean tidal flow, which active the rotor and, thanks to a generator, produce electricity.

    This way presents several advantages. First, the environnemental impact is reduced and there is no polluting waste. Then, the electricity production is expectable because tides follow a predictable timetable. At last, this resource is unlimited, contrary to the ones currently used.

     However, some problems are not resolved. The submerged windmills may represent a danger for boats and fishes. Furthermore, we don’t really know the turbines’ real resistance against watersalinity.

picture from marineturbines                                                                                                       

     The first firm to install submerged turbines was the British company Marine Current Turbine™ Ltd (http://www.marineturbines.com).

For more informations :
_ http://i-eclectica.org/2007/09/08/tidal-power-testad-off-the-coast-of-oregon/
_ www.geotimes.org/aug05/feature_renewables.html (not just about submerged windmills)
_ www.e-tidevannsenergi.com

                                                                                                                                       Charlotte

How to cook something when you don’t have no gaz and no wood? The solution is simple, and very easy, with the sun! And how use sun to cook? With a solar cooker.

A solar cooker is a device which uses only sunlight to cook. There are three basics principles of solar cookers: concentrate sunlight (by dint of a concave mirror), convert light to heat (with a black paint) and trapping heat (with a closed system).

You want more information ? look at: http://solarcookers.org/ , http://solarcooking.org/ , www.cookwiththesun.com/ 

Ben

       For some people they look really disgusting but they are really useful. they could be called soil engineers. Their activity make them one of the major actors of the soil. They air, fertilize and structure it, therefore they are a utility for agriculture.
   
        An experience has been made to show that they could purify dirty water. It's because potentially they can eat their own weight in impurities daily, we are waiting test validation to confirm that. But it could be an interesting idea.

        Unfortunately these worms are sensitive to some agricultural techniques such as ploughhing or phytosanitary products utilisation. These techniques lead to a decrease in the diversity of species and could have consequences in the soil performance.

For more informations : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm
                                           http://opentutorial.com/index.php?title=Make_a_worm_farm

Camille

This animal is cute, useful, it doesn’t bite and doesn’t buzz.

But take care, because it’s a big predator for aphids.

The mass murder begin with the ladybird babies, they can consume until 200 aphids per day. And if there is a lack of food, they become cannibal. When they are adult, they can ingest 100 aphids per day.

Ladybirds are used in agriculture, such as a bio pesticide. They protect cultures from aphids, respect the environment with any toxic substance for human.

The ladybird most used, is the Asian one. This biological battle, begin in USA, in 1916, and since the 20^th century, all the north hemisphere use them.

NB : little description of the tasting method:

With its hooked legs, the ladybird snatch its prey, then inject saliva. The aphid is softened, then crushed or the lady can suck the aphid’s content, like this, the aphid is deflate as a ball.

For more informations : www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/bird.html
                                    www.earthlife.net/insects/coccinel.html

Laure Lynn

Team: We are four students from Istom, which is a French school of international agronomical development.

Our English teacher want us to publish a blog in relation to development

Thanks to our studies we strongly think that there is not just A way of development. We are convinced that every single innovation could help for the development.

That is why we have chosen to present you some innovations which could be applied on a larger scale.