Beyond Organics®
Growing The
Healthiest Food On The Planet
For the first time, thanks to our ability to conduct highly efficient and low cost genetic sequencing, we now have a map of the normal microbial make-up of a healthy human. A collection of bacteria, fungi, one-celled archaea, and viruses. Collectively they weigh about three pounds -- the same as our brain.
Now that we have this map of what microorganisms are vital to our health, many believe that the future of healthcare will focus less on traditional illnesses and more on treating disorders of the human microbiome by introducing targeted microbial species (a "probiotic") and therapeutic foods (a "prebiotic" -- food for microbes) into the gut "community."
Scientists in the Human Microbiome Project set as a core outcome the development of "a twenty-first century pharmacopoeia that includes members of the human microbiota and the chemical messengers they produce."
We have now come to a point where we can effectively and at relatively low cost, identify and grow key bacteria and the right species of fungi and apply them in larger-scale balanced eco-system agriculture. We can produce these "bio fertilizers" and add them to the Soil to grow with and nourish the herbs, vegetables and other crops. We can sow the "seeds" of microorganisms with our crop seeds and, as hundreds of independent studies confirm, increase our crop yields and eliminate the need for biocides, herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc.
The same technological advances that allow us to map the human microbiome now enable us to understand, isolate, and reintroduce microbial species into the soil to repair the damage and restore healthy microbial communities that sustain our crops and provide nutrient dense food and feed. It is now much easier for us to understand soil microorganisms, what they actually do and how to grow them, and reintroduce them back to the soil. Producing very high quality, nutrient dense, tasty, smart for you, foods and beverages.
The Certified Prime+™ and Beyond Organics®appellations represent not just a superior customer value proposition, but proprietary operational knowledge and a set of standards that go well beyond
the clichéd ‘All
Natural/Organic’ moniker. Cutting through the clutter, confusion and
frustration premium product consumers’ experience in pursuit of their value,
quality, health and lifestyle goals.
This is also, in part, the justification behind these customer groups motivation to pay, 50-200% premiums for these product and service attributes. A ‘relatively small premium’ paid in exchange for the assurance of healthy satisfaction with the very limited quality time they have to spend with family and friends.
What Beyond Organics is not, however, is some clever marketing gimmick. It is an authentic restoration of the symbiotic relationship between healthy soil and the vitality of our food, simply put, “life is in the soil, death is in the dirt”. Integrity through a diversified vertical integration, old-school Agra-science and intelligent technologies in synchronicity with mother nature. Restoring the Relationship Between our Food, Health and Vitality. An Authentic and Durable Apex Class Competitive Edge.
MOE Farms’ Beyond Organics
continuous harvest grow-house concept
A Closed Loop Eco-Sphere Design: Soil, Water,
Photosynthesis & Climate Restores the Relationship Between our Food, Health
and Vitality.
This will be a Continuous Harvest Cycle operation. MOE Farms
will grow approximately 75 varieties of vegetables and produce, 35 varieties of
herbs and premium specialty ingredients. Providing Prime+ and Beyond
Organics customers with the highest quality, fresh, healthy, nutrient dense
vegetables, produce, herbs, beef, pork, poultry, dairy and specialty
ingredients. On demand with in-season taste, year-round at Beyond Organics
quality standards.
Eco-science breakthroughs in combination with Proprietary methodologies and technologies enable MOE Farms to provide in-season taste in private label, retail, bulk and hospitality packaging 365 days a year. Add to the mix first mover advantage in a growing and systemic supply demand imbalance, a one stop shop true farm-to-fork vertical integration strategy and you get an authentic, high margin and durable apex class competitive edge. Positioning MOE Farms to pass on to its retail and hospitality customers a measurable and distinctive satisfaction as well. This is what a real, cost efficient and effective customer loyalty program looks and feels like.
Empowered Smart Soil™
Powered on-site by E Q
Power
Continuous Harvest Mgmt.
System
Proprietary Grow Master
Multiplier x 2.2
All produce waste
repurposed to E Q Power plant
CO2 from bio-gas production
recycled into Garden Ecosphere
Below Zero Emissions and
Carbon Negative Closed-Loop Eco-System
Our proprietary Grow Master system is a continuous harvest
design that enables MOE Farms to realize a 2.2 times per square foot production
advantage. In combination with the Beyond Organics garden house design and
Smart Soil formulations, we anticipate a gain of 400 to 500% per square foot in
annual production capacity over conventional greenhouse operations.
Restoring the Relationship Between our Food, Health and Vitality. “Feeding the Soil, feeding the plants, feeding us, our pets, livestock and the healthy fungi and microbial communities cycle of life”.
Image for Illustration Purposes Only
Beyond Organics Cutting through the clutter, confusion and frustration premium product consumers' experience in pursuit of their value, quality, health and lifestyle goals.
It all Starts from the
ground up with Smart Soil
We have been hearing a lot recently about a
revolution in the way we think about human health -- how it is inextricably
linked to the health of microbes in our gut, mouth, nasal passages, and other
"habitats" in and on us. With the release of the results of the
five-year National Institutes of Health's Human Microbiome Project, we are
told we should think of ourselves as a "superorganism," a residence for microbes with whom we have
coevolved, who perform critical functions and provide services to us, and who
outnumber our own human cells ten to one.
For the first time, thanks to our ability to
conduct highly efficient and low cost genetic sequencing, we now have a map of
the normal microbial make-up of a healthy human, a collection of bacteria, fungi,
one-celled archaea, and viruses. Collectively they weigh about three pounds --
the same as our brain.
Now that we have this map of what microorganisms
are vital to our health, many believe that the future of healthcare will focus
less on traditional illnesses and more on treating disorders of the human
microbiome by introducing targeted microbial species (a "probiotic")
and therapeutic foods (a "prebiotic" -- food for microbes) into the
gut "community." Scientists in the Human Microbiome Project set as a
core outcome the development of "a twenty-first century pharmacopoeia that includes
members of the human microbiota and the chemical messengers they produce."
The single greatest leverage point for a sustainable and
healthy future is arguably immediately underfoot: a living soil, where we grow
our food.
Mycorrhizae Hypha
Mycelium Network Increases Active Root Surface for Nutrient Acquisition up to
200 times! (Left and Right)
This is what the Artificial Fertilizers and Biocides are Killing and why we have a crisis of Obesity and Malnourishment in America.
There is another major revolution in human
health also just beginning based on an understanding of tiny organisms. It is
driven by the same technological advances and allows us to understand and
restore our collaborative relationship with microbiota not in the human gut but
in another dark place: the soil.
Just as we have unwittingly destroyed vital
microbes in the human gut through overuse of antibiotics and highly
processed foods, we have recklessly devastated soil microbiota essential to
plant health through overuse of certain chemical fertilizers, fungicides,
herbicides, pesticides, failure to add sufficient organic matter (upon which
they feed), and heavy tillage. These soil microorganisms -- particularly
bacteria and fungi -- cycle nutrients and water to plants, to our crops,
the source of our food, and ultimately our health.
Soil bacteria and fungi serve as the
"stomachs" of plants. They form symbiotic relationships with plant roots
and "digest" nutrients, providing nitrogen, phosphorus, and many
other nutrients in a form that plant cells can assimilate. Reintroducing
the right bacteria and fungi to facilitate the dark fermentation process in
depleted and sterile soils is analogous to eating yogurt (or taking those
targeted probiotic "drugs
of the future") to restore the right microbiota
deep in your digestive tract.
The good news is that the same technological
advances that allow us to map the human microbiome now enable us to understand,
isolate, and reintroduce microbial species into the soil to repair the damage
and restore healthy microbial communities that sustain our crops and provide
nutritious food. It
is now much easier for us to map genetic sequences of soil microorganisms, understand what they actually do and how to grow them, and
reintroduce them back to the soil.
Since the 1970s, there have been soil microbes
for sale in garden shops, but most products were hit-or-miss in terms of actual
effectiveness, were expensive, and were largely limited to horticulture and
hydroponics. New genetic sequencing and production technologies have now come to a point
where we can effectively and at low cost identify and
grow key bacteria and the right species of fungi and apply them in large-scale
agriculture. We can produce these "bio
fertilizers" and add them to herbs, vegetables, or other crop seeds to
grow with and nourish the plant. We can sow the "seeds" of
microorganisms with our crop seeds and, as hundreds of independent studies
confirm, increase quality, yields and reduce the need for irrigation and
chemical fertilizers.
These soil microorganisms do much more than
nourish plants. Just as the microbes in the human body both aid digestion and
maintain our immune system, soil microorganisms both digest nutrients and
protect plants against pathogens and other threats.
For over four hundred million years, plants have
been forming a symbiotic association with fungi that colonize their roots,
creating mycorrhizae (my-cor-rhi-zee), literally "fungus roots," which extend the
reach of plant roots a hundred-fold.
These fungal filaments not only channel
nutrients and water back to the plant cells, they connect plants and actually
enable them to communicate with one another and set up defense systems. As a
recent experiment in the U.K. showed that mycorrhizal filaments act as a
conduit for signaling between plants, strengthening their natural defenses
against pests.
When attacked by aphids, a broad bean plant transmitted
a signal through the mycorrhizal filaments to other bean plants nearby, acting
as an early warning system, enabling those plants to begin to produce their
defensive chemical that repels aphids and attracts wasps, a natural aphid
predator. Another study showed that diseased tomato plants also use the
underground network of mycorrhizal filaments to warn healthy tomato plants,
which then activate their defenses before being attacked themselves.
Thus, the microbial community in the soil, like
in the human biome, provides "invasion resistance" services to its
symbiotic partner. We disturb this association at our peril. As Michael
Pollan recently noted, "Some researchers believe that the alarming
increase in autoimmune diseases in the West may owe to a disruption in the
ancient relationship between our bodies and their 'old friends' -- the
microbial symbionts with whom we coevolved."
Not only do soil microorganisms nourish and
protect plants, they play a crucial role in providing many "ecosystem services" that are
absolutely critical to human survival. By many calculations, the living soil is
the Earth's most valuable ecosystem, providing ecological services such as climate regulation,
mitigation of drought and floods, soil erosion prevention, and water filtration, worth trillions of dollars each year. Those who study the
human microbiome have now begun to borrow the term "ecosystem
services" to describe critical functions played by microorganisms in
human health.
With regard to stabilizing our increasingly
unruly climate, soil microorganisms have been sequestering carbon for hundreds
of millions of years through the mycorrizal filaments, which are coated in a
sticky protein called "glomalin.". As much as 30 to 40 percent of the
glomalin molecule is carbon. Glomalin may account for as much as one-third
of the world's soil carbon -- and the soil contains more carbon than all
plants and the atmosphere combined.
We are now at a point where microbes that
thrive in healthy soil have been largely rendered inactive or eliminated in most
commercial agricultural lands; they are unable to do what they have done for
hundreds of millions of years, to access, conserve, and cycle nutrients and
water for plants and regulate the climate. Half of the earth's habitable lands
are farmed and we are losing soil and organic matter at an alarming rate. Studies show steady global soil depletion
over time, and a serious stagnation in crop yields.
So, not only have we hindered natural processes that
nourish crops and sequester carbon in cultivated land, but modern agriculture
has become one of the biggest causes of ecosystem instability. Our current
global food system, from clearing forests to growing food, to fertilizer
manufacturing, to food storage and packaging, is responsible for up to one-third
of all human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions. This is more than all the cars
and trucks in the transportation sector, which accounts for about one-fifth
of all greenhouse gases globally.
The single greatest leverage point for a
sustainable and healthy future for the seven billion people on the planet is
thus arguably immediately underfoot: the living soil, where we grow our food.
Overall soil ecology still holds many mysteries. What Leonardo Da Vinci said
five hundred years ago is probably still true today: "We know more about
the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot." Though
you never see them, ninety percent of all organisms on the seven continents
live underground.
In addition to bacteria and fungi, the soil is
also filled with protozoa, nematodes, mites, and microarthropods. There can be 10,000
to 50,000 species in less than a teaspoon of soil. In that same teaspoon of soil, there are more
microbes than there are people on the earth. In a handful of healthy soil, there is more
biodiversity in just the bacterial community than you will find in all the
animals of the Amazon basin.
We hear about many endangered animals in the
Amazon and now all around the world. We all know about the chainsaw-wielding
workers cutting trees in the rainforest. But we hear relatively little about
the destruction of the habitat of kingdoms of life beyond plant and animal --
that of bacteria and fungi.
We are making good progress in mapping the
soil microbiome, hopefully in time to identify those species vital to soil
and plant health, so they can be reintroduced as necessary. The Earth Microbiome Project is analyzing
and mapping microbial communities in soils and waters across the globe. We do
not want to find ourselves in the position we have been with regard to many
animal species that have gone extinct.
We have already decimated or eliminated known
vital soil microorganisms in certain soils and now need to reintroduce them.
But it is very different from an effort, let us say, to reintroduce the once
massive herds of buffalo to the American plains. We need these tiny partners
to help build a sustainable agricultural system, to stabilize our climate in an
era of increasing drought and severe weather, and to maintain our very health
and well-being.
The mass destruction of soil microorganisms
began with technological advances in the early twentieth century. The number of
tractors in the U.S. went from zero to three million by 1950. Farmers increased
the size of their fields and made cropping more specialized. Advances in the
manufacture of nitrogen fertilizers made them abundant and affordable. Ammonium
nitrate produced in WWII for munitions was then used for agriculture (we
recently saw the explosive power contained in one such fertilizer factory in
the town of West Texas).
The "Green Revolution" was driven by a
fear of how to feed massive population growth. It did produce more food, but it was at the cost
of the long-term health of the soil. And many would argue that the food
it did produce was progressively less nutritious as the soil became depleted of
organic matter, minerals, and microorganisms. Evidenced by the AMAs recent findings that over 50% of all preventable
disease is nutritionally related, producing an epidemic of ‘Obese yet
Malnourished’ populations. Arden Andersen, a soil scientist and agricultural
consultant turned physician, has long argued that human health is directly
correlated to soil health. Perhaps the single greatest point of
leverage in terms of costs, quality and availability of health care.
During this same period, we saw the rise of the
"biological agriculture" movement, largely in reaction to these
technological developments and the mechanization of agriculture. Scientific
advances now allow us to take soil organisms from an eco-farming niche to
mainstream agribusiness.
Many field tests, including a recent one at the
University of North Dakota, show that application of a commercial mycorrhizal
fungi product to the soybean root or seeds increased soybean yields from 5 to
15 percent. The value of increased yields is three to five times greater than
the cost of application at current prices.
Studies show that there will also be major
savings from reduced need for chemical fertilizers and irrigation due to more
efficient up-take of minerals and water. This also means fewer toxins and
pollutants, particularly nitrogen fertilizers, leaching from agricultural lands
into our public water system and rivers, which has contributed to massive "dead
zones" like that in the Mississippi Delta.
For all these reasons, bio fertility products
are now a $500 million industry and growing fast. The major agricultural chemical
companies, like Bayer, BASF, Novozymes, Pioneer, and Syngenta are now actively selling,
acquiring or developing these products.
Reintroducing microorganisms into the soil, together
with the organic matter they feed upon, has the potential to be a key
part of the next big revolution in human health -- the development of
sustainable agriculture and food security based on restored soil health. Just as in the case of the human
microbiome, the soil drugs of the future are ones full of friendly germs, and
the foods they like to eat.
Mike
Amaranthus is the chief scientist at Mycorrhizal Applications, Inc.
Bruce
J. Allyn is the former director of the Harvard-Soviet Joint Study on Crisis
Prevention and the author of The Edge of Armageddon: Lessons from the Brink.
SOIL - The ‘Heart’ of the Planet
There is a
widely-used aphorism among soil scientists “never treat soils like dirt”, which
is in part a lament, that for many if not most people, soil is both a mystery
and something of little or no value. This is exceptionally worrying because
soil is probably the most valuable asset humanity controls, as our entire
civilization is dependent on it. Soil is often likened to the skin of the
planet, but this does soil a serious injustice as it has a far more important
and extensive role than skin does for a person. The soil is right at the
center, the ‘heart’, of the planet’s natural systems.
These systems are
categorized into different ‘spheres’ and include the atmosphere, the
hydrosphere (water bodies including rivers and other land based waters as well
as the oceans and seas) the geosphere (the rocky interior of the planet), the
biosphere (all living things) and the pedosphere (the soil). Matter, i.e. the
chemical elements, constantly cycle through these different spheres, for
example carbon, which is at the center of global warming, constantly flows
between the atmosphere, the biosphere and the soil (pedosphere) through the
world’s two most important physiochemical reactions; photosynthesis and
respiration (Figure 1).
Soil is the
‘heart’ of the planet because it is the soil that is the interface for all the
other cycles. Soil is the main environment for the land biosphere, i.e. as a
rule of thumb, soil contains ten times more life, (measured by weight or
diversity), than all of the life growing above it. It is also literally and
metaphorically the root of all above-ground life as soil is half of the medium
in which plants grow, the other half being the atmosphere. Plants are the
bridge that links the soil and sky. Soil is also the interface between the
atmosphere and the geosphere and the filter through which the hydrosphere
flows.
It is therefore
impossible to overstate the importance of soil as it is the meeting place of
all the planetary spheres, and matter cycles. Soil is the foundation of human civilization,
as it was the activity of soil management, as part of agriculture, that allowed
early humans to move away from hunting and gathering to form the first
societies, and without productive soil civilization would simply perish.
Therefore, considering the absolute importance of soil to humanity’s continued
survival and its critical role in the planetary cycles, including climate
management, the treatment soil has received in an agricultural context over the
last 50 years, can be described as wholly negligent, measurably damaging and
potentially catastrophic.
Indeed, the
damage done to the world’s soils is probably the next most important threat to
maintaining society’s current levels of prosperity. The protection of soil is
the issue upon which organic agriculture was founded and it continues to be a
fundamental aspect of its management practice and a key factor in its
productive out-performance.
The message is
simple: soil is at the heart of planetary systems and its correct management is
vital in combating climate change as well as a wide range of other ecological
damage. The fundamental objective of organic agriculture is optimal soil
management; for industrial agriculture soil is just another resource. It is
conspicuously clear that it is ecological/organic management that has the
capability and praxis to maintain productive agriculture over an indefinite
time scale. The alternative ‘consumes’ soil, eroding the very basis of its
existence, meaning its time is limited, particularly in the face of global
climate change.
The
“narrowly-focused ‘seed and fertilizer’ revolution” [26] that proponents of
industrial scale agriculture continue to push is not only the wrong answer, it
is a key part of the problem. The increases in agricultural production over the
last half century are mainly due to the increased use of synthetic nitrogen
fertilizers, new crop cultivars (‘seeds’) that can make better use of the
synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and irrigation. The farming system this mixture
promotes is monoculture, which is ecologically unstable and therefore requires
continual propping up by biocides, i.e. pesticides, insecticides, herbicides
and fungicides.
This approach has
undoubtedly resulted in considerable increases in crop yields over this time.
It is however a classic example of flawed reductionism in that the overwhelming
aim has been yield increase regardless of the other effects that using
synthetic nitrogen, irrigation and biocides cause, such as:
· the
degradation, erosion and loss of soil,
· lower nutrient
contents of crops,
· evolutionary
biocide arms races against pests and diseases,
· pollution of
waterways and Ocean dead zones,
· farmer
indebtedness,
· loss of
biodiversity, and
· biocides in
food, etc., etc. .
The narrow focus
on yield from nitrogen and water ignores the consequent negative downstream
effects and also fails to consider the long term sustainability of the whole
system, i.e. no questions are asked about upstream issues, e.g. where the
nitrogen and water come from and how long they can continue to be obtained.
If these are not
sufficient reasons to support investment in organic/ecological farming systems
over industrial, then further support is provided by industrial agriculture’s
significant contribution to climate change, a threat to civilization of such
enormity that business (and investment) as usual is absolutely no longer an
option.
Agriculture
directly contributes 13.5% of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for
global warming and climate change (Figure 2 and Box 1). However, this analysis
excludes many of the up and down stream components of agriculture, e.g. the
production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, and when these are taken into
account using lifecycle assessment, agriculture contributes between 25-30% of
all GHG emissions .
The 13.5% of
direct net GHG emissions by agriculture is estimated at between 5.1 and 6.1
gigatons (Gt) CO2eq, in 2005. This is composed of 3.3 Gt CO2eq methane, 2.8 Gt
CO2eq nitrous oxide and 0.04 Gt CO2. The CO2 figure is small because these are
net figures and while there are very large flows of carbon between agriculture
and the atmosphere they are mostly cyclical and in balance. However, land
clearance for agriculture and soil degradation which do result in substantial
CO2 and other GHG emissions are not counted under agricultural emissions by the
International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In comparison agriculture is
considered to be the main emitter of nitrous oxides and methane, which is
additionally problematic as these have approx. 300 and 20 times respectively
the global warming potential of CO2 see Box 1.
Nitrous oxide
emissions mostly originate from:
· high
levels of soluble forms of nitrogen in the soil mostly from synthetic nitrogen
fertilizers; and
· animal
housing and manure management.
Methane emissions
mostly originate from:
· the
digestive processes (enteric fermentation) of ruminants (e.g. cows, sheep,
goats) (see Box 2);
· anaerobic
rice paddies;
· manure
management; and
· compaction
of soils due to the use of heavy machinery.
The burning of
biomass, e.g. from slash-and-burn agriculture, and clearing land for agriculture
emits both methane and nitrous oxide. Manure, 7% Soil emissions, 38% Enteric
fermentation, 32% Biomass burning, 12% Rice production, 11%
Climate Change
and Investment in Ecological Agriculture Outperformance and Opportunity
Soil in Earth’s Critical Zone
Earth’s Critical Zone is the thin surface layer of our planet that extends from
the top of the vegetation to the bottom of drinking water aquifers. Soil is at
the heart of the Critical Zone and delivers many soil functions that provide
important environmental goods and services that are essential for humanity. We
cannot survive without soil.
Earth’s Critical Zone is the thin surface layer that provides most of our
life-sustaining resources. Essential soil functions within the Critical Zone
include:
- Biomass production
- Storage and transmission of water
- Storage of carbon and reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
- Nutrient transformations
- Pollutant transformations
- Providing biological habitat
- Maintaining Earth’s gene pool
Soil forms when rock breaks up and
dissolves at Earth’s surface, from the action of water with the help of plants
and soil organisms. The mineral particles that form, bind together with living
organisms and decaying organic matter to create larger aggregates of soil material.
Fertile soil is rich in aggregates. As a rough guide, fertile soil has more
than 60% of its weight contained in the form of aggregates that are greater
than 0.25 mm in size.
Human Impact on Soil and the Critical Zone
The Critical Zone and soils are under huge pressure from growth in human
population and wealth. By 2050 it is projected that Earth’s population will
exceed 9.5 billion people with a predicted quadrupling in the global economy,
doubling in demand for food, doubling in demand for energy and biofuel crops
and more than 50% increase in demand for clean water
These pressures have already led to extensive soil degradation worldwide.
· Since the 19th century, around 60% of soil carbon in
organic matter has been lost.
· In the past 25 years one-quarter of global land area shows
declining soil functions.
· Soil erosion from conventional agriculture is up to 100
times faster than soil formation.
· Draining peatlands worldwide causes peat loss 20 times
faster than the peat formation.
Flows and transformations of material, energy and genetic
biodiversity contribute to soil functions. The flows connect the different
parts of the Critical Zone (left) and transmit the impacts of human activity
through the Critical Zone. Good soil management reduces bad impacts.
Soil Threats
Increasing resource demands are causing soil degradation worldwide. Soil
functions are lost due to erosion when bare soil is swept from the land surface
by wind and water; desertification that occurs when loss of soil organic matter
is so severe that soils no longer retain nutrients and support vegetation;
degradation from pollution and from salts that are left behind when irrigation
water evaporates; compaction from machinery and tillage that destroys larger
soil aggregates; and sealing over by expansion of cities, buildings and roads.
The Critical Zone Chain of Impact
Soil is everything and soil health is the keystone of our
environmental ecosystems, from which their delicate balance evolves. Good soil
is teeming with organisms; it is literally alive. Poor soil doesn't have this,
or has it in such greatly reduced quantities that it is negligible, and the
richness of microbial life, just as with humans, has a lot to do with health
and fertility. We've been mistreating soils on an industrial level for many
decades now and the damage done is emerging in the catalogue of environmental
woes facing the Earth in the 21st century. Soil is under siege.
It's disappearing at an alarming rate. Topsoil is being depleted
faster than it can be replenished and something like 83 billion tons of it is
lost every year. On top of that over 70% of it is degraded. The term 'peak
soil' has recently entered our lexicon. It's a quiet crisis brewing across the
globe.