Climate change will cost Andes US$30 billion’

May 29th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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Andean region

via SciDev.Net
The study also highlights the key role in the region played by the Andes, which provides ten per cent of global water sources through to its glaciers. Experts say that the melting of glaciers in central Andes has accelerated over the last 25 years.

The researchers say that the Andean countries provide a clear indication of the impact of climate change worldwide in the future, making it the ideal place to try technologies and scientific methods to prevent, reduce and adapt infrastructure to a range of challenges.

The study also predicts that 70 per cent of Andean people will have severe difficulties in accessing clean water sources by 2025. By 2020, about 40 million people will be at risk of losing their water supplies as well as some crops, due to the melting of the glaciers and greater desertification of the Andean mountains.

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Peru, Chile fight over potato’s origin

May 29th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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One cannot imagine Indian cuisine without aloo (potato in Hindi) chholey, aloo mutter, aloo bonda, aloo chaat. Hard to believe that all this came about in the recent ~450 years(sometime after Pizarro showed up in Peru in 1532) of India’s more than 7000 year history.

via USATODAY.com
The origin of the potato has become, well, a “hot potato” between neighbors Peru and Chile.

The spud dispute began Monday, when Chilean Agriculture Minister Marigen Hornkohl said 99% of the world’s potatoes derive from spuds native to Chile.

Peru, where the potato is a source of national pride, bristled at the claim and said the comes from a part of the Andes near Lake Titicaca, most of which is located in modern-day Peru. The country claims to have some 3,000 varieties of potato.

The spud dispute is just the latest flare-up between the testy neighbors.

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Farming Systems looks beyond Uruguay

May 29th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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A model that Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd could consider replicating.

via NZ Herald:
Dairy farm operator NZ Farming Systems Uruguay continues to buy up land in the South American country, while eyeing opportunities across the border.

NZ Farming Systems was set up by PGG Wrightson to develop dairy farm operations in Uruguay and was floated on the stock exchange in December.

The company has bought another 4400ha of farmland in Uruguay during the current half-year, taking its total holding to 36,300ha.

Chairman Keith Smith said the cost of land was rising but the entry price was still low and the economics of development attractive.

The land purchased came at an average price of US$3700 (4692) a hectare.

PGG Wrightson group general manager financial services Michael Thomas said comparable land in New Zealand could cost between US$45,000 and US$50,0000 a hectare.

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Uruguay drought creates energy crisis

May 29th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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18 de Julio - Main street in Montevideo

I stayed at the Central Palace hotel on 18 de Julio, in Montevideo last month. When I arrived on 20th April, late at night, I was wondering why there were no street lights. In the following days, I was told of the energy crisis. Wind energy projects need to be installed and brought online in double-quick time.

via MiamiHerald.com
First, the escalators stopped. Then shadows crept across the city in what appeared to be an epidemic of dead light bulbs.

As winter approaches, Uruguay has found itself in the grips of an intensifying energy crisis, brought about by a three-month drought that has crippled the country’s hydroelectric power generators. The scarcity — at a time of record high prices for imported oil — is prompting strict conservation measures.

For a while, the drought had little impact in Uruguay’s capital, where nearly half of all Uruguayans live and there is ample drinking water. But after the third unusually dry month in a row, President Tabaré Vázquez has initiated Phase 2 of the national ”Plan to Save Energy,” ordering businesses and homeowners to cut their energy use deeply.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Big Power Goes Local

May 26th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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via Newsweek.com
In the late 1990s, the town of Freiamt in Germany’s Black Forest decided to take the fight against global warming into its own hands. Three hundred of the town’s 4,300 residents chipped in to buy the four 80-meter-tall Enercon wind turbines that now top the surrounding hills, generating 1.8 megawatts each. An additional 270 families put solar collectors on their roofs to heat water and power their homes. Three businesses—two sawmills and a bakery—whose land abuts a gurgling stream have installed old-fashioned water wheels, each providing an additional 15 kilowatts.

To make up for shortfalls when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, one of the local farmers invested in a “biogas” fermenter, which uses enzymes to turn grain and agricultural waste such as manure and chaff into methane. The gas, in turn, fires up an electricity generator. And rather than simply release heat given off in the process into the air, as conventional power plants do, the generator pumps the waste heat into nearby homes, where it’s used for water and space heating, through pipes laid by volunteers. But the prize for Freiamt’s most creative source of energy surely goes to Walter Schneider, a local dairy farmer. To harness the energy set free when the milk from his 50 cows is chilled before transport, Schneider installed a heat exchanger that uses the heat from the cow’s milk to warm the water he needs for cleaning and showering. Today, the Freiamters are proudly self-sufficient. What’s more, in 2007 they generated an extra 2.3 million kilowatt-hours beyond the 12 million they consumed. They sold the surplus, enough for an additional 200 homes, back to the national grid.

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Big oil to big wind: Texas veteran sets up $10bn clean energy project | Environment | The Guardian

May 26th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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How a wind turbine works

Uruguay has huge potential for replicating these wind farms on a smaller scale.

via The Guardian
T Boone Pickens is famous for thinking big. He founded his Texan oil company, Mesa Petroleum, in 1956 with just $2,500 (£1,200) in the bank. After a string of audacious takeovers he turned it into an independent empire that challenged the big oil companies, and today he is worth $3bn.

Now this straight-talking Southerner is launching the biggest and most audacious project of his career. This month he will make the first down payment on 500 wind turbines at a cost of $2m each. The order is the first material step towards his goal of building the world’s largest wind farm.

Over the next four years he intends to erect 2,700 turbines across 200,000 acres of the Texan panhandle. The scheme is five times bigger than the world’s current record-holding wind farm and when finished will supply 4,000 megawatts of electricity – enough to power about one million homes.

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Better farming outlook

May 26th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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Uruguay struck me as the New Zealand of South America – small population(3.5 million), more cattle(12 million) and sheep(10 million) than people, strong component of agriculture and forestry in GDP. New Zealand’s example would serve the country well.

via Stuff.co.nz
New Zealand’s lamb and beef production will be down this year and next, due to widespread drought, and dairy, while currently booming, could soon face environmental curbs.

The escalating cost of energy, fuel and fertiliser means our farmers need higher-than-ever prices for their lamb, beef, milk, vegetables and fruit to make sufficient profit to be able to reinvest in their businesses. Lately, only the dairy farmers have been able to do that.

In the meat industry, factionalism is an additional handicap. The exporters’ primary task is to find a way to out-manoeuvre the British and European supermarkets who till now have played them off against each other. One way was a meat company mega-merger. That doesn’t appear to be an option.

The lamb shortage means farmers will probably not have to worry too much about the supermarkets this year or next they can expect supermarkets to be glad to see them but that doesn’t mean the problem won’t re-emerge in a few years.

Clark, who has the best advice to call on, has a few words of warning. She thinks the gains will be limited, that our rivals in the low-cost, high-volume countries of Latin America and South Africa will also seek to exploit Asia’s worries over food supply.

However, she notes Fonterra is Chile’s biggest dairy exporter.

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Wine and song

May 26th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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The Hindu Business Line
Aman Dhall, Executive Director of Brindco Ltd, the exclusive distributor of Frescobaldi wines in India, said that in retail, and after paying the stiff import duties, a bottle of this wine would cost Rs 1,800 in Mumbai, Rs 1,400 in Delhi and Rs 1,200 in Bangalore. Needless to say, one cannot buy good wines in retail in Chennai, except for the domestic duty-free shops at the airport, thanks to the strange liquor policy of successive Tamil Nadu governments.
High cost of imported wine

Brindco is the largest importer of wines in India, bringing in wines from 11 countries. “We have over 600 labels from California and Washington, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, Italy and Hungary,” said Dhall. He ascribed the high cost of wines in India to steep import duty (160 per cent) and stiff State taxes. “So 85 per cent of the price you pay for a bottle in retail in India goes towards these taxes.” While Maharashtra has the stiffest State tax — 200 per cent — on imported wine, obviously to protect the domestic wine industry, “Karnataka is one of the most wine-friendly regions in India”, he added.

For him it’s an exciting time to be in the wine import business, as the “Indian urban elite is shifting to wine”. He finds Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to be “far-advanced wine markets of India, as people from these cities do a lot of international travel. A lot of people also want to move away from hard liquor to wine because if you consume good wine, you don’t get a hangover the next day.”
India vs China

Pariani is extremely bullish on the Indian wine market and thinks there is much more potential in India compared to China. For one thing, “wine is more integrated into the culture of India. Also, in India there is an important and growing middle-class with disposable income.”

Another limitation in China for wine marketers like him is the local custom where “people first eat and then go out drinking”, something that is not amenable to wine, which normally accompanies food.

But even though Pariani, as well as international wine producers like him, see India as one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, one made the mistake of asking Dhall about the per capita consumption of wine in India and got this depressing reply. “Oh, it is less than a teaspoon, about 0.4 ml per person!”

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South America nations found union

May 24th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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Simon Bolivar before his death in 1830 remarked that uniting the nations of Latin America was like ploughing the sea. It is too early to tell whether Unasur is a step towards proving him wrong.

BBC NEWS
The leaders of 12 South American nations have formed a regional body aimed at boosting economic and political integration in the region.

At a summit in Brazil, they signed a treaty which created the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).

The Unasur members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

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40 Million Acres of Rain Forest for the Greenest Bidder

May 24th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
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According to Lester Brown, communism failed because it did not take economics into account, capitalism will fail if it does not take the environment into account. Any move to penalize introduction of negative externalities into the environment (like congestion pricing), while rewarding positive externalities (like planting trees or preserving rain forests) is welcome

via NYTimes.com

Mr. Jagdeo caused a stir last year when he offered to cede the management of his country’s entire rain forest — 40-plus million acres, covering 80 percent of Guyana’s land mass — to a British government agency in return for British economic assistance.

Though the British have yet to take him up on the deal, Mr. Jagdeo continues to press the case for protecting not only his rain forest, but all of them.

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