Community Development
Why The Government Needs Changing
Published April 27, 2009 @ 09:12AM PT
Because as much as changing your lifestyle might help you, personally, it only props up the same greenwashing edifice of consumerism and government by aristocracy that is in fact the real problem.
Because as much as changing your lifestyle might help you, personally, it can't stop increases in serious birth defects corresponding to conception during the spraying season (April-July), when farming and downstream communities are subjected to elevated levels of pesticides in their water supplies.
Because as much as changing your lifestyle might help you, personally, it can't make the government monitor pesticide levels in fruits and vegetables or report nationwide pesticide use figures.
I know that I do talk quite often here about consumer-oriented actions people can take to push the system. But I do so while knowing very well that back when I had a good paying job, I would have made much more of a difference by sending letters to Congress or helping organize activism around the environmental issues that I responded to almost entirely by changing my shopping habits.
Oh, hindsight.
As unprofitable as regret is, I like to think that I would have done things a little differently if I'd known then what I know now. But every food contamination outbreak, every factory farm-mediated disease outbreak, every discovery that agricultural pollution is worse than we thought or contributes more than we thought to global warming, each of those things is proof that the system itself must change.
For me, the path of lifestyle adjustments, ones that I've tried to stick to even as my income has steadily dwindled from its 2001 peak, did eventually lead to more active participation on my part. Taking even small actions steadily over time reinforced the importance of the issues, so that it gradually became more internally meaningful when I said these things matter to me. So when I suggest taking consumer-oriented action, I suppose I hope that it will lead to the realization that it isn't enough.
Because look, Monsanto and Smithfield don't give a flying f* about me or you or what we think. They do care what the congressional agriculture committees and executive branch bureaucracies think. There isn't really a serious question about where we could most effectively be focusing any leverage we have.
If all food was raised without toxic chemicals, if all the meat we ate was pasture raised, if all the transportation options were non-polluting, if our houses were all designed with local materials according to LEED standards ... we wouldn't be constantly having these conversations, which somewhat miss the target of where our society's ills are coming from.
It isn't the fault of people who are trying to be thrifty food shoppers that chemical dreck is sold to us as though it were wholesome and nutritious. The refusal of those who can afford to make a different choice at the grocery store won't stop that chemical dreck being sold.
So as Al Gore has said many times, go ahead and change that light bulb, but then make sure and change your leadership.
(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)
Heifer International on Colbert
Published April 24, 2009 @ 03:12PM PT
Last night, The Colbert Report hosted an interview with Elizabeth Bintliff of Heifer International to talk about their efforts to provide healthy livestock and veterinary support to impoverished communities around the world.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
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As Bintliff alluded to, the reproductive capacity of the natural world is the basis of subsistence rural economies that have little access to cash.
Though to extend the point, it would do better to remember that the reproductive capacity of the world's plants and animals is the foundation of every economy or economic system. As biological beings, our life support needs are intimately tied to the health and abundance of living ecosystems, with their wealth of plant, animal and microbial lifeforms. And as we strengthen the web of life that the world's communities in need depend on, we make it easier to solve the global environmental problems we all face.
Consider helping this good work by donating livestock, useful insects or beneficial plants to a rural community through Heifer International and you can be part of the solution on almost any budget.
Past Performance and Future Rural Health
Published April 24, 2009 @ 01:12PM PT
Historians tell us that if we don't learn about history, we're bound to repeat it. So lately I've been delving into old research papers here at the Center for Rural Affairs, hoping past research will inform our current research on health care. What I've found so far is astounding.
My colleagues frequently talk about the profound and prophetic report on vertical integration of hog production, called, Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow? Written in 1975, the title is a play on the act of "sitting up with a sow" if she is having a hard time birthing her piglets, but in this case refers to holding corporations accountable when it comes to unethical business practices that force out family farmers. The report accurately predicted the most onerous impacts that consolidation and vertical integration would have on family farm hog producers over the last 30 years.
Here is a short excerpt:
Overall, the emerging breeding stock industry is a hustle which confinement has made possible. It is significant that a number of confinement units identified here are well outside of traditional hog producing areas. This partly reflects the potential of confinement for accommodating livestock production to environmentally harsh areas...
The combination of breeding stock specialization, large scale production and movement into new areas all point to more loss of producer independence.
Translation - as farmers become more specialized, are further away from truly competitive markets, and expensive technology allows more animals to be crammed into tighter quarters, we will see fewer skilled producers, more investors, and a loss of independence for those producers. While this seems evident to us now in hindsight, it was not at all clear in 1975 that this would be the case.
In the same vein as Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow?, came Wheels of Fortune in 1976. The report examined the impact of center pivot irrigation development on the ownership and control of farmland and water rights.
It found center pivot irrigation to be a more capital intensive form of irrigation, and the popularity of the method was driving concentration of land by non-farm investors. Again, spot on conclusions about what has happened to agriculture in the last 30 years - fewer farmers, larger land holdings, more absentee and corporate control (if not outright ownership) of farming operations.
Then there was the Small Farm Energy Primer, written in 1980 as farmers were struggling to pay the high cost of energy amidst expanding use of energy-intensive farming technology. The complexity and expense of energy-intensive farming make intimidating barriers to young couples trying to get a start in farming.
Thus small family farmers are directly threatened by large-scale mechanization developed in an era of cheap energy. In response, the small family farmer can make use of renewable energy resources, demonstrating that skills and resourcefulness - the human factor - is once again at a premium in agriculture. Again, all obvious conclusions now that were anything but obvious at the time.
Our research lately has been about the dynamics of our current health care system and how reform will effect rural people and communities. We have released two papers so far, with more on the way in the coming months.
In Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity in Rural America, we review the trends indicating that overall obesity is more prevalent for rural adults than urban adults. This is a particular concern since obesity leads to other preventable diseases and is the second leading cause of death in the United States.
Implied in the research is that if we don't take some of the actions this paper discusses to control rural obesity within the upcoming health reform, rural Americans will die more frequently and be sicker as a result.
In our second paper, The Top 10 Rural Issues for Health Care Reform, we investigate the numerous unique health care issues facing rural people and rural places. Any health reform must consider the needs of rural communities and how they differ from our urban counterparts, and this paper explores how these differences necessitate special solutions. This paper is also condensed into a fact sheet.
Is this research as on target as it has been in the past? Not only is our track record good, but we rely on the same principles of research as we always have.
We are committed to rigorous analysis and our research is not guided by the winds of politics. And because we live and work the rural topics we research, we have the experiences of our families, friends and neighbors to corroborate our analysis. As the health care debate grows, you can judge for yourself whether we hit our mark.
A Sustainable Food Supply, Pt 2
Published April 22, 2009 @ 01:49PM PT
When the G8 agriculture ministers are complaining about protectionism, the irony just floors me. Could there be less reliable critics?
Though while they may be enormous hypocrites, they aren't stupid. No one really wants their local farming to completely go away. As Italy's agriculture minister noted at the recent G8 summit, countries should be self-sufficient in food, and every country with the power to do so tries to ensure that they grow enough to feed themselves.
What if there's a war? What if there's a falling out with a trading partner? What if your nation is landlocked and your supply routes are unstable? What if fuel prices go up and long distance transportation becomes prohibitive?
No matter how unlikely, it would be stupid not to think of these things when you have a whole nation to worry about.
And wealthy nations do worry about these things. It's obvious from their actions, even as they encourage poorer countries to focus solely on exports destined for wealthy consumer markets. Indeed, those who can afford it are buying up farmland in poorer countries as a hedge against future food shortages:
... Food supply scare after last year's food riots has pushed several countries, such as China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, to buy or lease farmland overseas to feed their own people.
Quickly nicknamed "land-grabbing," this phenomenon has drawn sharp criticism for ignoring interests of local population. A leader of major international farmer group, IFAP, has said there was a risk of "second-generation colonialism" in such deals. ...
Though what else is encouraging one country to get on the treadmill of export-dependent agriculture besides to secure food for another consuming country? While export agriculture isn't inherently bad, as it's been practiced, it's often been highly exploitive.
So when Emily Gertz points out that eating local isn't necessarily the most direct way to cut your carbon footprint, she's right. Though as she also touches on, it keeps local farms in business, where their sustainability practices can be influenced more easily by those immediately affected and seasonality can return to our dietary expectations.
And while that might seem like a luxury in some US communities (seems, that is, because buying local food is a great way to boost local economies in the US [pdf],) supporting the development of local food security is vital to poorer nations who are more vulnerable to global supply chain and price disruptions. Instead of growing biotech foods for export, they need to be supported through appropriate research and locality specific soil management advice:
Earth Only Gets The One Day?
Published April 21, 2009 @ 10:29PM PT
Via Meteorblades, an excellent rant from the folks at Grist about making Earth Day the appropriately sanctioned box for 'green' sometimes seems to trivialize it.
Sure, it's a great excuse for people everywhere to make awareness-raising papier mache demonstrations, of which I am quite fond, but do those efforts just end up preaching to the choir?
We've talked here before about the urgency of climate change induced droughts, flooding, and seasonal fluctuations to the food system. Not to mention that it threatens the existence of maple syrup, as fellow Change.org blogger Emily Gertz points out on the Global Warming blog. When I talk about it like that, it sounds serious.
Then you walk away from your computer and go outside. You walk downtown and see trashcans overflowing with non-recyclable containers. If you wanted to recycle a beverage container or similar item when you were out walking around, you'd probably have to take it home with you and put it out on your curb on recycling day. That's if your city or town has a recycling program.
You go to a restaurant, where you will routinely be offered more food than any one person should really eat in a sitting, unless that person is Andre the Giant or Michael Phelps. If you can't or don't want to take it home, that food won't be composted and returned to the soil. It will end up in a landfill mixed with old batteries, thrashed appliances, the contents of foreclosed homes, torn clothing, used diapers, expired pharmaceuticals and all manner of thing.
Your digital camera wears out and the manufacturer tells you it'd be cheaper to get a new one than to fix the old one. Which is nothing special to digital cameras. Nothing gets fixed anymore except used cars.
All the rest of the year, nearly everywhere except special events or demonstration projects, we live in a grinding clockwork of unfathomable waste. It's easier to waste. It's cheaper to waste. It's more normal to waste. It makes more sense to waste as we go about our daily lives.
This is not a society that's been paying attention to the last 38 Earth Days, nor anticipates any future time when the flow of raw resources might be restricted.
So while I'm very glad that there are people who spent a lot of time and effort arranging Earth Day demonstrations, I feel confident that if they're that committed, they'd agree that the state of our only home needs more sustained attention.
Supporting, Undermining Global Food Security
Published April 16, 2009 @ 09:16AM PT
It's the case in the world of federal legislation that many people have their hands in any given legislative pie. A large bill has numerous parents, and the process is difficult and time-consuming enough that in general, if you get a thing or two that you want in the final product, you take your win and go home.
I get that. It's the way business is done.
Indeed, when you can get a strong Senate coalition to approve a measure that will ease global hunger, an aim that's strongly supported by the president, hey, celebrate.
Though somebody, somewhere, needs to keep an eye on the bigger picture.
The Global Food Security Act of 2009, S. 384, will mandate the acceptance of genetically modified crops as part of US foreign assistance. Which unfortunately means that what it gives to Africa and S. Asia with one hand, it likely takes away with the other.
That part of the bill needs to come out.
Now it must be admitted that traditional farming, while it's had notable achievements and fed all the people we descended from for many generations, had the occasional total collapse. Old school crossbreeding gave us many wonderful foods, but mobility and information sharing weren't what they are now and they were far more at the mercy of the weather.
Though the Green Revolution, where high-yield hybrids were added to new well-drilling, irrigation and synthetic fertilizer technology has in many cases tossed the baby out with the bath water.
Consider that India's current elections in Punjab, where the Green Revolution was embraced wholeheartedly, have as a major campaign issue the ongoing farmer suicides in the region. It's being reported that 4 kill themselves every day, with the toll having reached 1,600 in 2007.
They can't get proper loans for capital intensive farming, for the new seeds, new chemicals, and new wells that need to be dug as the water table drops ever lower, so they have to go to loan sharks. Green Revolution crops are good producers, though only if they're pampered. Then if anything goes wrong, like the rains aren't great or prices collapse, they end up deep in debt with no way out.
Farmers who don't commit suicide may lose their land to developers or government fiat. They move to some slum in a city where there's little hope of work for them and have to buy what they might once have grown. One way or another, small farmers stop farming and their expertise is lost along with any unique crop breeds they once cared for.
Every indication is that genetically modified seeds are an advantage over Green Revolution hybrids only in that they make a lot more money for their producers.
Now countries that have tried to keep genetically modified organisms out of their borders may be blackmailed into giving up. Even if you approve of genetically engineered crops, is it really the US' business to make that decision for other countries? I don't think so.
Which is why I'd appreciate it if you'd read up on this bill and contact your representatives to ask them to remove the biotechnology section from S. 384, even if you've already written them in support of it. There's no good argument for forcing this on the unwilling.
(Photo credit: visualpanic on Flickr.)
