Farming – Paul Noël

Cashew nuts, very good for you but …..

Cashew nuts are very good for us unless you are unfortunate to have an allergy. But like many things that we in first world countries take for granted and pick up every day, only stopping probably to reflect on the price, is what and who is involved in getting the cashews to us.

Looking at the side of the packet which I have never done before tells me that they were grown in Vietnam. So the cashews have covered a lot of food miles probably by burning fossil fuels so there’s the aspect of climate change to consider as well.

We should but few do, ask ourselves what sort of life the farmers or the people working in the growing and packaging of these cashew nuts lead. Are they well paid, well housed and do they have clean running water? Do they go on holiday and do their kids go to school? All normal things that the people buying the packet of cashews take for granted and would complain if they had to live without them. We all need to think about our impact on the planet but also the many invisible people that supply us with food.

Then of course there’s that plastic packaging. Where’s that going to end up? Incinerated, polluting the air we breathe or as nano sized plastic particles that may carry toxins or pathogens into our bodies and possibly end up giving us a serious health issue?

A lot to think about as we are going to have to change whether we like it or not.

Below are a few more photos of food miles and plastic pollution to think about.

Inside the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria, La Rambla, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Spain

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To the tune of Wham’s Last Christmas

OK, so it’s cringe worthy but here goes, “Dead Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day I was in the dust cart”.

Photo from the 2nd of January. There we have it, dying trees, destroyed eco systems, monocultures, pesticides, fossil fuel usage, climate change. What’s not to like? Lots actually. Time to celebrate growing and living trees in our communities not this unsustainable Capitalistismas destruction of the planet.

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Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

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It’s Veganuary – have you made any changes at all?

First posted in January 2021 and it’s here again. Time to do your bit for the planet in any way that you can.

We are rushing away from the start of the New Year. Are any of your New Year’s resolutions intact? Do you know about Veganuary? Perhaps it’s time that you took a small step to improve your health, save the lives of some animals and protect the environment with special reference to the Amazon rainforest. So thing about reducing your meat intake, try vegetarian and vegan options as there are plenty of good ones.

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Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

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The Christmas tree and climate change

First posted in January 2021. We still need to make the change away from this way of celebrating Christmas to planting living trees in our communities that can be celebrated each year as they grow.

I have written about this before but since most people will have forgotten all about the Christmas trees they bought and disposed of without much thought here’s a timely reminder. The tree in the photograph and countless others are now releasing CO2 into the atmosphere adding to the already very high levels not seen since before the last series of ice ages began 2.58 million years ago. That’s natural right? Well no, if the trees hadn’t been cut down they would still have been soaking up CO2 rather than releasing it. Apart from that these trees are grown as monocultures. They have replaced natural ecosystems displacing the plants and all sorts of creatures when they were planted. When they were cut down all the wildlife that had re-established itself was again disturbed and in some cases driven off. Then there are all the pesticides that were used and you brought into your home. They are not good for you or wildlife. So make a note for yourself for December 2021 to find a more environmentally way of celebrating Christmas. If you have time try to get your local authority to do the same too.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

If only bees could tell their tale – and they have

First posted in January 2021 and suffice to say that our pollinators are still very much in danger.

We are changing this world in so many ways and in some cases we haven’t got so much historical data to go by to see how much change is taking place. Thankfully, due to a PhD study on the feeding habits of bees in 1952 it was possible to repeat the survey in 2017 during another PhD research study to see what had changed. The data extracted shows how the landscape of the UK has changed in those short few decades, https://phys.org/news/2021-01-honeybees-reveal-floral-landscape-years.html, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55662985. Bees along with many other pollinators are suffering because of intensive farming and the increasing use of pesticides. Something that we should all be worried about.

I became interested in bees due to my wider interest in environmental change to human activity. So far I have written two stories for the 8-12 year old reader on the adventures of bees that face similar problems to real bees. In the first story, Busy Bee and the Endangered Meadow (two versions), https://www.amazon.co.uk/Busy-Endangered-Meadow-Paul-No%C3%ABl/dp/198320384X/, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Busy-Endangered-Meadow-Paul-No%C3%ABl/dp/B08BW5Y3CS/, the bees need to stop some greedy farmers building on their meadow. In the UK we have lost 97% of our meadows since the middle of the 20th century. Then in the follow up, Busy Bee and the Silent Spring, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Busy-Silent-Spring-Paul-No%C3%ABl/dp/B088JFN1ZV/, the bees have to solve the problem of a nearby farmer using banned pesticides. Although for younger readers a few adults have said that they enjoyed reading them too.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

Britain is again going to start using a pollinator unfriendly pesticide

First posted in January 2021. Our pollinators are still in grave danger.

Seems like we can’t think of anything else to do but use pesticides, https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-55566438.You have to ask why we need to grow the sugar beet in the first place. Couldn’t the farmers grow something else for a couple of seasons? Is it because food corporations want to stuff processed foods with sugar adding to the obesity crisis of the country?

Hopefully the next generation will put health before profits. In the meantime here’s a cautionary tale for those younger readers. A group of clever bees take on a farmer using banned pesticides in my story Busy Bee and the Silent Spring available from Amazon, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Busy-Silent-Spring-Paul-No%C3%ABl/dp/B088JFN1ZV/.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

Eat less meat – it will be good for you and so much better for the planet

First posted on the 11th of January 2021. For your health and the health of the planet not to mention all the creatures eaten make 2023 the year to change your diet.

It’s Veganuary and if you haven’t thought about it already then consider eating one or more meals with no meat products. This photo that I took in Paris was of some apt graffiti on an aptly named street sign, The passage of the small butcher. There are so many things wrong with the fast food and intensive animal farming industries and they contribute massively to environmental destruction and climate change. This includes fossil fuel subsidies so fish can be caught to feed to herbivores and the tearing down of rain forests and other environments to either graze animals or raise crops to feed to animals. None of this is sustainable and there really is no such thing as cheap eats fast food. There is also the human health aspect and for this additional reason all fast food outlets should be taxed in lieu of the damage they are causing to the planet to serve a convenient lifestyle. So every meal should carry a damage to the environment tax of at least one dollar, one pound, one euro and any other local currency to make people pay the real cost of this style of eating.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

Insectageddon – The potential loss of our bugs

First posted in the middle of 2018. The situation is much worse now.

We are so used to thinking of species loss as something that only happens to larger creatures but the loss of a lot our bugs could prove even more disastrous for the Earth and ourselves in the future.

Insectageddon

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

It’s no time for risky strategies

We are running out of time and unless we start thinking and acting globally and across all physical systems we are going to fail. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-countries-risky-forests-soils-net.html

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

When will the Amazon reach a tipping point?

I posted this in January 2021. Since then we have had almost two years of further destruction. Will Lula be able to make a difference? We, in the rest of the world can only hope and wait.

The poster child if you like for trees is the Amazon rainforest. It’s the one that everyone remembers and roughly knows where it is but it is being decimated effectively so that the burgeoning global human population and their waistlines can eat cheap beef burgers. Like many countries in South America, Brazil’s population continues to grow. The Brazilians are mostly descendants of Europeans that have only been there for five or so centuries yet the numbers today are so many that they are destroying the country like locusts in a field of crops. Studies have shown that once enough of the forest has been cut down precipitation will change and the forest will stop producing enough rain to sustain itself. How long before this happens is as usual open to debate and many think that it will be in the 2030s to 2040s. In 2019, an economist called Monica de Bolle, suggested that this might happen early on in the 2020s, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/23/amazon-rainforest-close-to-irreversible-tipping-point. What is known is that the Amazon, a forest of 16,000 different tree species is drying out, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00508-4. It is thought that in the last 100 years that the temperature in the forest has increased between 1 and 1.5^oC and that in parts the dry season has increased from 4 to almost 5 months in the last 50 years. In addition there has been three severe droughts between 2005 and 2020 and it is thought that some species of trees are thriving at the expense of those that are dying due to the less moist conditions. At the time of writing even the pandemic appeared not to be able to slow the rate of deforestation in the Amazon.