PLANET IN PERIL

Onanole, MB.  by Larry Powell - Green Party of Canada. “It’s time to end ‘top-down’ politics in this country,” Storey declared, as a group of dedicated supporters voted unanimously to again endorse her this weekend as their party’s choice in the federal election later this year. " Vote Green and give your MPs the ability to actually represent the people for a change,” she declared. If elected, Storey promised to dedicate herself to fight against the scourges of climate change, and for the principles of social justice and democracy. Kate Storey, candidate, Green Party of Canada. Dauphin - Swan River - Marquette. She and her husband, Doug have been operating an organic farm near Grandview for years. They’ve become living examples of how sustainable agriculture can succeed in a sea of industrial farms, where genetic modification, pesticides and monoculture are increasingly compromising the quality of our food and the very survival of precious pollinators, such as h

UN News Climate change and increasing competition for natural resources have essentially rendered the agriculture model of the past 40 years unsustainable, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization ( FAO ) has stressed, calling for a ‘paradigm shift’ in food production. Story here. Combining wheat in Manitoba.  Larry Powell - PinP photo.

Common Dreams New Oxfam report shows the scale of global inequality is "simply staggering." Story here.

SumOfUs The government of the Netherlands just took a huge step to protect its citizens and banned Monsanto’s super-toxic pesticide Roundup – and it's time more countries did the same. Sign here. PinP photo.

Center for Food Safety President Obama will be meeting with the Indian  Prime Minister on January 25 and 26. In response, activist, author and physicist, Dr. Vandana Shiva has written an open letter to the President and the Prime Minister on seed freedom and food democracy. She urges the two leaders to renounce the patenting of life and to stop pursuing “harmonization” of seed patenting laws which would further extend corporate control of our seeds and food.  Click here to sign. Organic fava beans. Will they be next?  PinP photo.

PinP - This video is 12 years old. I guess the deniers would have us believe this kind of shit never happens, or at least hasn't happened since?

Manitoba Co-Operator A combination of multiple computer models of weather’s impact on wheat warns of a six per cent dent in world wheat production for every degree Celsius in temperature increase. Story here. Wheatfield.  Larry Powell - PinP photo.

by Larry Powell Tim Wendell, above, his wife Isabel and a seasonal staff of about 30 tend to over 3,000 hives in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, south of the Town of Roblin. A PinP photo. A veteran Canadian beekeeper whose operations produce almost half-a-million kilograms of honey per year, Tim Wendell, has learned the hard way, just how big a threat "neonicotinoids" pose to operations like his. "Neonics" are now the most widely used group of insecticides in the world. They are either sprayed on crops such as corn, soybeans and canola, or used to treat their seeds.  On a recent speaking engagement, he told audiences in Neepawa, MB, he lost one "bee yard" himself in 2012. It was next to a field which had been planted 4 or 5 years straight to corn treated with "neonics."  He estimates, of the 40 thousand bees in that colony, perhaps only 5 thousand were left. And they were "very disorganized - no longer a community."  He says governm

CBC News Despite that, the country was 0.1 C warmer than 'average.' Story here.

True Activist As the price of oil continues to drop, oil companies are having less of an incentive to spend their resources extracting oil from new and difficult places. Story here. 

the guardian Humans are ‘eating away at our own life support systems’ at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years, two new research papers say. Story here.