Food Inc.

This movie really helped open my eyes to how the food industry is handled and what are the inner workings of it. Immediately I learned that there are only about four major companies that deal with all of our food. I knew that a lot of our food had corn in it but I did not realize that most of it had something to do with corn. After watching the movie, I realized that both cows and humans are being fed corn to gain weight at a staggering pace. This film has definitely given me a new perspective on food and how to go about picking what to eat.

It was really hard to watch what the animals had to go through in the factories. They weren't treated as if they were alive, they were treated as if they were an object with absolutely no feelings. The difference between the animals raised on the farm and the animals that were butchered in the factories is huge. It looked as though the animals on the farm had respect while they were alive, they had a happy little life. The animals in the factories weren't even treated as if they were animals.

I enjoyed how much politics there were in this movie as well. I enjoyed learning about Kevin's Law and what's being done to help prevent things like salmonella and e.coli.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie thoroughly and think we should watch it again!

Peer Readings

Alliance., The Resilience. "Conservation Ecology: Biodiversity, urban areas, and agriculture: locating priority ecoregions for conservation." Ecology and Society. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol8/iss2/art1/inline.html (accessed February 25, 2010).
This peer review was about the effect urban sprawl has biodiversity. There was a map showing the different ecoregions. There were a lot of maps showing the different effects that urban sprawl can have. Human influence is increasing and for that reason, biodiversity is decreasing.

http://www.foodwebs.org/Sala2000Science.pdf
The above PDF shows the different scenarios that could happen with biodiversity by the year 2100. I thought this article was very useful because it gives scenarios for the future and that's what our senior project is about.

Nathan Lewis Reflection

At first I didn't understand Dr. Lewis' presentation. There was a lot of talk about power units and different complex things that I have yet to understand. Dr. Nathan Lewis also spoke about our use of coal and our dependency on other fossil fuels. I learned that coal was very abundant and very inexpensive so if we want a change to be made, it's going to be hard. Another thing that I found interesting was that even though China and India's populations are going up exponentially, the reason why their CO2 emissions are going up is because they're taking up our kind of energy lifestyle.
Dr. Lewis said a lot of things that actually made me wonder how lucky people feel. There are so many signs directly showing that we have an impact on the environment. We can see that Coral's are bleaching, that glaciers are retreating, sea levels are rising, wildfires are increasing, and so many other signs.
There are three carbon free powers that we could explore, nuclear, carbon sequestration - CO2 burial and renewables. He said that we need cheap solar fuel, and with the information that he gave, I agree. It seems as if it would be a big initial investment but it would pay for itself in the long run.

Three More Annotated Sources

Abdulla, Ameer. "Ecosystem Marketplace - ." Ecosystem Marketplace - . http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=7443&section=news_articles&eod=1 (accessed February 10, 2010).

This article is mostly about improving marine biodiversity. It gives information on how to keep marine biodiversity high. "Designing an offset entails understanding which of the habitats at the development location have been impacted, and whether that impact is partial, significant or total, then quantifying this per unit area (square meter or square kilometre, for example) while weighting its “biodiversity significance” with a score." This article also talks a lot about biodiversity offsets, “measurable conservation outcomes that are the result of activities designed to compensate for significant and unavoidable impacts on biodiversity”.

Ford, Matt. "Costing the Earth: Investing in protecting the planet - CNN.com." CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/11/01/value.nature.conservation/index.html?iref=allsearch (accessed February 10, 2010).

"These ecosystems are on the point of collapse," said Sukhdev at the conference in South Africa. "Unless we can get the right deal at the [UN Climate Talks in December] in Copenhagen, things look very bleak.

This article mostly talks about how the downfall of biodiversity is making us all lose a lot of money. It is putting business in with the environment. I believe that this article did a really good job at explaining how we need to do something now about biodiversity because if we don't do something now, it will cost us more in the long run. "Apart from a moral obligation to look after our environment, Sukdev believes that even in simple cost benefit terms conservation is good sense and investing $45 billion could secure "nature-based services" worth $4.5 trillion to $5.2 trillion annually." We need to do more than throw money at the problem of biodiversity, ""If you start throwing more money into that context it's like throwing petrol on a fire."

"UN opens Biodiversity Year with plea to save world's ecosystems." Welcome to the United Nations: It's Your World. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33393&Cr=envirionment&Cr1= (accessed February 10, 2010).

"In a bid to curb the unprecedented loss of the world's species due to human activity – at a rate some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression." This article is mostly about what the UN plans to do about biodiversity and raising awareness. This article lacks a lot of facts but has a lot of good quotes about what biodiversity does. It helps put things into perspective.“Biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth, is essential to sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services our lives depend on. Human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate. These losses are irreversible, impoverish us all and damage the life support systems we rely on every day. But we can prevent them.”

Initial Plant Research

1.What sort of plant is it? Vegetable, Fruit, Root crop, tree, bush etc.
I plan on growing a Sugar Baby Watermelon

2.What is the growing season for this plant…remember San Diego has a unique growing climate and some of the information on the internet might say that something won’t grow in the winter but that might not be true for here
The growing season for sugar baby watermelons is anytime when it is sunny. Watermelon need a lot of sun, so it is preferable to plant them when it is sunny. It is hard to determine exactly what season would be good to plant watermelon, as long as it isn't cold, it's a good time to plant watermelon.

3.Should it be grown from seed? If so how long does it take to germinate? Does it require any special preparation? (ex. some seeds need to be frozen before they will germinate?
If there is a long growing season, it is better to directly sow the seeds into the soil.

4.How long does this plant take to go from seed to harvest? Does it make sense for the time scale of this semester?…does it matter? Maybe you would still like to think about how it might benefit the garden in the long term.
Sugar Baby Watermelon generally takes 75-85 days to harvest. I believe that is enough time for it to grow this semester and it can continually be grown because of our beautiful San Diego weather.

5.Does the plant grow best from cuttings, division, grafts or clones? Where can we get these materials?
This plant needs a lot of space to grow.

6.How much space does it require to grow and harvest a reasonable amount?
There should be at least three feet of space between each plant. The hole for the plant should be two feet wide and a food deep.

7.What are the soil requirements for this plant?
Sugar Baby's grow best in sandy loam soil. I wasn't able to find the exact NPK ratio.

8.Water are the watering requirements?
Watering requirements are pretty normal/average for sugar babies. Not too much water but since they are 95% water, they do require regular watering.

9.Can you find any information about good companion plants that should grow along with it?
I would think that any other kinds of melons would grow well with sugar babies.

10. Something unique about my plant.
I think that the plant I'm going to choose is very unique because it is a hybrid and it's edible.

write up

All of the information I collected made the decision harder for me. If I were to pick biodiversity I’m not sure what I would do for my senior project, I think that I would try to go and do something about the international year of biodiversity and try to raise awareness. I thought that the first article and the second article were very interesting. They both gave me information I could use and both had very strong points. To raise awareness for biodiversity I would want to do something for Margaret’s class so that I could make some sort of digital art. I would not want to do a documentary; I would want to do something that shows the drastic affect humans have on biodiversity. I would want to take the side of the animals and explain how humans have an extreme affect on different habitats. I’m not exactly sure that I want to do biodiversity, I want to explore more and make sure that there isn’t something that I’m more interested in.

Initial Research and Write Up

Annotations:

Article 1.)

J. Emmette, Duffy. "Biodiversity - Encyclopedia of Earth." Encyclopedia of Earth. N.p., 28 Dec. 2009. Web. 21 Jan. 2010. http://www.eoearth.org/article/biodiversity#The_magnitude_of_biodiversity>

“Biological diversity is of fundamental importance to the functioning of all natural and human-engineered ecosystems, and by extension to the ecosystem services that nature provides free of charge to human society.” This essay was mostly about how biodiversity is a fundamental and vital part of our existence. A huge reason why biodiversity is decreasing is because of the lack of varied habitat. This article explained what biodiversity was and how it affects us. This article also explains the distribution of biodiversity as well as the human disturbance factors. I found this article very interesting and very helpful. I enjoyed how it explained everything in an easy to understand scientific matter.” Human intervention in ecosystem function have been expressed through habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, and pollution.” I found this article very reliable and I do not believe that it has a bias.

Article 2.)

Samper, Cristián. "Planetary boundaries: Rethinking biodiversity : article : Nature Reports Climate Change."Nature Publishing Group : science journals, jobs, and information. N.p., 23 Sept. 2009. Web. 22 Jan. 2010. http://www.nature.com/climate/2009.99.html>

This article was mostly about the different theories about biodiversity. It didn’t have many concrete facts, but it did have a lot of interesting theories. One theory that I found really interesting was “extinction of species should not exceed ten species per million per year. If this is exceeded, they argue, we risk irreversible environmental change.” I didn’t find this article very interesting, I do not believe that it was very reliable and it ended up being slightly biased. It did not provide the kind of information that I wanted, and for that reason I say that it wasn’t very helpful.

Article 3.)

"Biodiversity loss a crisis forgotten | Manila Bulletin."mb.com.ph | Manila Bulletin. N.p., 20 Jan. 2010. Web. 22 Jan. 2010. .

This article was interesting because it talked about what we can do about the decreasing biodiversity. It talked about International Year of Biodiversity and how a lot of countries are going to do something to raise awareness about the decreasing biodiversity. It also included information about how every animal matters, “from the smallest insect to the biggest whale. Biodiversity is the web of life that includes the full-range of ecosystems, species living within such ecosystems, and the genetic variety of those species produced by nature or shaped by humans.” I found this article very interesting as well as full of information. I didn’t think that it was very biased and it gave me new information.