Response to Rainforest Alliance Regarding Labor Standards

The International Labor Rights Forum and the Organic Consumers Association jointly filed this letter with the Rainforest Alliance because of concerns over labor standards in the organization’s organic certification program. Main concerns include: freedom of association, wages, complaint mechanisms, and labeling requirements

ISOFAR-Newsletter No. 2, May 2004

The second newsletter of the International Society of Organic Agriculture Researhch ISOFAR contains the following information: Announcement of 1st call for papers International Scientific Conference on Organic Agriculture ISOFAR’s worldwide activities How to become an ISOFAR member ISOFAR’s structure: Sections and working groups News from the Working Groups Organic Research News from around the World Events Positions Books and Resources Contact address International Society of Organic Agriculture Research (ISOFAR) c/o Institute for Organic Agriculture IOL Prof. Dr. Ulrich Köpke (President) Ms. Anke Dunsche (Secretary) Katzenburgweg 3 D-53115 Bonn Tel. +49 228 735616 Fax +49 228 735617 E-Mail [email protected] Homepage http://www.isofar.or

ISOFAR Newsletter

The Newsletters of ISOFAR are published twice per year

The Farm Newsletter

School has officially started with fall semester classes. At this time of year several changes take place. Along with time changes in CSA pickups, now is the time when we begin the transition from the current to the new farm production manager. Joe (the current manager) is still with us, and he will continue to provide support and instruction. However many of our fall activities will be overseen by the production manager for next year. Ayla has been one of our support interns this summer and has been hoping and working to obtain this position. She is excited by what she has learned this summer and eagerly anticipates working on the farm again next year

Your Organic Farm: Community Supported Agriculture

First off, we want to thank you for your support this season. Without it this farm and our internships would not be possible. As students, we are just beginning to break the surface of our passions and with your support we have opportunity to grow. We would like you to know that we appreciate and feel fortunate for what we have here at the farm. This season you will see all five of your student farmers have a true passion for buying local, growing organic produce, and connecting the community. We pledge to give our best this season and provide the best of our ability. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions, tour the farm, or even come volunteer and work with us

Your Organic Farm: Community Supported Agriculture

First off, we want to thank you for your support this season. Without it this farm and our internships would not be possible. As students, we are just beginning to break the surface of our passions and with your support we have opportunity to grow. We would like you to know that we appreciate and feel fortunate for what we have here at the farm. This season you will see all five of your student farmers have a true passion for buying local, growing organic produce, and connecting the community. We pledge to give our best this season and provide the best of our ability. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions, tour the farm, or even come volunteer and work with us

Biomolecular Evidence of Early Human Occupation of a High-Altitude Site in Western Central Asia During the Holocene

Reconstructions of early human occupation of high-altitude sites in Central Asia and possible migration routes during the Holocene are limited due to restricted archeological sample material. Consequently, there is a growing interest in alternative approaches to investigate past anthropogenic activity in this area. In this study, fecal biomarkers preserved in lake sediments from Lake Chatyr Kol (Tian Shan, Kyrgyzstan) were analyzed to reconstruct the local presence of humans and pastoral animals in this low-human-impact area in the past. Spanning the last ∼11,700 years, this high-altitude site (∼3,500 m above sea level) provides a continuous record of human occupancy in Western Central Asia. An early increase of human presence in the area during the mid-Holocene is marked by a sharp peak of the human fecal sterol coprostanol and its epimer epicoprostanol in the sediments. An associated increase in 5β-stigmastanol, a fecal biomarker deriving from herbivores indicates a human occupancy that most probably largely depended upon livestock. However, sterol profiles show that grazing animals had already occupied the catchment area of Lake Chatyr Kol before and also after a significant presence of humans. The biomarker evidence in this study demonstrates an early presence of humans in a high-altitude site in Central Asia at ∼5,900–4,000 a BP. Dry environmental conditions during this period likely made high altitude regions more accessible. Moreover, our results help to understand human migration in Western Central Asia during the early and mid-Holocene as part of a prehistoric Silk Road territory

Organic Arable Farming: Information for farmers considering conversion to organic production

Is organic farming for you? Is it sufficiently profitable? What are the markets? Are livestock essential? Can weeds be controlled adequately in the long term? How do I go about conversion? This leaflet sets out to answer these questions, explain the options when converting a farm to organic production, and highlights the opportunities and the challenges of meeting the unprecedented demand for organic arable crops

Anthropics and Myopics: Conditional Probabilities and the Cosmological Constant

We re-examine claims that anthropic arguments provide an explanation for the observed smallness of the cosmological constant, and argue that correlations between the cosmological constant value and the existence of life can be demonstrated only under restrictive assumptions. Causal effects are more subtle to uncover.Comment: revised to PRL format, additional references and discussion to related work revise

Human-induced fire regime shifts during 19th century industrialization: A robust fire regime reconstruction using northern Polish lake sediments

Fire regime shifts are driven by climate and natural vegetation changes, but can be strongly affected by human land management. Yet, it is poorly known how humans have influenced fire regimes prior to active wildfire suppression. Among the last 250 years, the human contribution to the global increase in fire occurrence during the mid-19th century is especially unclear, as data sources are limited. Here, we test the extent to which forest management has driven fire regime shifts in a temperate forest landscape. We combine multiple fire proxies (macroscopic charcoal and fire-related biomarkers) derived from highly resolved lake sediments (i.e., 3–5 years per sample), and apply a new statistical approach to classify source area- and temperature-specific fire regimes (biomass burnt, fire episodes). We compare these records with independent climate and vegetation reconstructions. We find two prominent fire regime shifts during the 19th and 20th centuries, driven by an adaptive socio-ecological cycle in human forest management. Although individual fire episodes were triggered mainly by arson (as described in historical documents) during dry summers, the biomass burnt increased unintentionally during the mid-19th century due to the plantation of flammable, fast-growing pine tree monocultures needed for industrialization. State forest management reacted with active fire management and suppression during the 20th century. However, pine cover has been increasing since the 1990s and climate projections predict increasingly dry conditions, suggesting a renewed need for adaptations to reduce the increasing fire risk. © 2019 Dietze et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited