Here in the U.S., our grocery bills are rising faster than they have since Gerald Ford bumbled about the Oval Office. Across the globe, the recent surge in crop prices is putting sufficient food out of reach of millions of people.
The dismal human dimension of the food crisis has been amply (if sporadically) covered by the media. But its budding ecological component has gotten short shrift.
The price surge has inspired a virtual tsunami of agrichemicals to be spilled onto farmland globally, not least the U.S. heartland, as farmers scramble to take advantage of high prices by boosting yields. It's also pushing farmers to plow into marginal, environmentally sensitive land to expand plantings.
For me, the obvious answer is to move away from highly concentrated, input-heavy industrial agriculture and rebuild local and regional food production globally.Oh yeah, and stop using government policy to ensure that huge amounts of corn be turned into car fuel.
But I'm not a senator from an ag-heavy state. Responding to crop damage from floods in Iowa, Sen. Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa) recently floated the following idea, The New York Times reports:
Senator Charles Grassley, ... one of Capitol Hill's main voices on farm policy, on Friday urged the Agriculture Department to release tens of thousands of farmers from contracts under which they had promised to set aside huge tracts as natural habitat.
Now, the Times is being a bit gentle here with the bit about "natural habitat." What Grassley is proposing here is gutting the Conservation Reserve Program, probably the USDA's most effective conservation effort. The CRP pays farmers to take ecologically fragile land out of production -- an act which benefits society but would otherwise not benefit farm owners, since idle land brings in no money. The program does much more than protect habitat. Here's how the USDA itself describes it:
The Conservation Reserve Program reduces soil erosion, protects the Nation's ability to produce food and fiber, reduces sedimentation in streams and lakes, improves water quality, establishes wildlife habitat, and enhances forest and wetland resources. It encourages farmers to convert highly erodible cropland or other environmentally sensitive acreage to vegetative cover, such as tame or native grasses, wildlife plantings, trees, filterstrips, or riparian buffers.
In that context, Grassley's plea is particularly grotesque. Skulking around Iowa's flood regions in search of photo ops, Grassley fretted about the gravity of his proposal. "This is an extraordinary request," he told The Times. "I would not make it if the situation in the Midwest were not so dire."
Of course, as an excellent recent article by Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post shows, Grassley's proposal amounts to a dubious cure for Iowa's troubles. University of Northern Iowa ecologist Kamyar Enshayan explains to Achenbach how heavy rains turned into floods:
[Enshayan] points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed. "We've done numerous things to the landscape that took away these water-absorbing functions," he said. "Agriculture must respect the limits of nature."
Thus if you thought the floods of 2008 were bad, imagine how awful they would have been if land idled under the CRP had been plowed. Yet rather than reject Grassley's reckless proposal, the USDA is taking it quite seriously, The Times reports:
An Agriculture Department spokesman said Friday that the Grassley proposal would be considered. This week, the agriculture secretary, Ed Schafer, said his department would consider "everything possible" to aid farmers.
While Grassley eyes sensitive land and dreams of seeing it go under the plow, he "rejects" any suggestion that the government's ethanol mandate be cut this year.
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Comments
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:30 am
02 Jul 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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javaearth Posted 6:23 am
02 Jul 2008
2)Stop feeding crops to animals. Fading out overly and unnaturally breed animals, and eating them will save so many resources.
I only have this one life, so I am going to try my very best to make a positive change.
--- The Happy & Healthy Vegan ---
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Whiskerfish Posted 12:47 pm
02 Jul 2008
He's spending a lot of time spinning in favour of industry.
Whiskerfish
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Wolverine Posted 3:24 pm
02 Jul 2008
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Jeremy Cherfas Posted 7:13 pm
02 Jul 2008
The big problem for strictly local growing, though, is calories. Good nutrition is probably better supplied locally in almost all cases. But the calories needed to do the heavy lifting of nutrition may be better grown further away. and even after internalising all the external costs of transport and the like, on a level playing field it may still make economic sense for people (and countries) to buy major cereal grains from elsewhere while supplementing that with local products for healthy nutrition.
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John former Marine Posted 9:52 pm
02 Jul 2008
Shu pas a vende.
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Jonas Posted 10:47 pm
02 Jul 2008
So I would be careful to step into this logic all too blindly.
But allright, if localism is part of a broader move to make people more conscious about the effects of their consumer behavior, then good.
The most important thing to me, however, seems to be the total collapse of sanity in the U.S. food culture. Americans don't "eat" "food". Both words - eating and food - have become meaningless in American culture. Americans "swallow" "poison" - that's the truth.
What we need most is a forced re-education effort teaching all mothers and fathers how to "cook" "healthy" "food" (thus introducing 3 new words in the American dictionary).
I am for UN or EU-run concentration camps set up to get Americans out of their cultural hallucinations and to get them back to reality, which consists of eating healthy food, prepared by a person in a kitchen, for the entire family (or the extended family).
All Americans should also be forced to spend two months in a European family, to learn about cooking.
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Wolverine Posted 3:12 am
03 Jul 2008
But the subject of this thread is the destruction of natural land by agribusiness, not which type of food is healthy. I agree that most Americans seem to be clueless about food and cooking -- though raw food is healthier than cooked -- but that's not the issue here. Also, there are far better uses for concentration camps, if you advocate for those things, than food education, such as educating people about proper respect for the Earth and all life on it.
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Jonas Posted 11:45 pm
03 Jul 2008
About localism: the question is whether you are willing to survive on a diet solely composed of nuts, beets and potatos, when you're living in some Northeastern U.S. state. I think most Americans are not willing to do this. They will want to have fresh vegetables and fruits at all times. And this obviously means food will be traded and transported over long distances.
Our best bet is to mix efficient localism (the potential of which is limited), and to science-up agriculture in other places so that it becomes more sustainable. Use wind and biofuels to transport the food.
In any case, Wolverine, I just don't believe in your call urging us all to become cave-men again. As I have told you earlier, there are not enough caves for your scheme. You go ahead, though, find a cave with a good internet connection, so we can keep in touch.
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Wolverine Posted 4:50 am
04 Jul 2008
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MAD MAC Posted 3:17 pm
05 Jul 2008
Yes, population is an issue. The decrease won't be done humanely, and any moron can see that. The population will be culled through famine. No getting around it.
So if you think that humans are going to plan to radically change their socio-economic systems so that we live primitive lives of hunter - gatherers, I have one suggestion for you. Get off the crack.
Victory in Pattani
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amazingdrx Posted 4:06 pm
05 Jul 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution
Several hundred thousand years?
So 150 years of industrial civilization, less that one tenth of 1% of that, assures some people that this industrial age will last forever?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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MAD MAC Posted 4:13 pm
05 Jul 2008
Now, there is no question that some resources are being depleted, and that will require innovation to make adjustments when some resources are depleted (like oil). But necessity is certainly the engine of innovation.
Unlike many of the people on this list, I am not filled with pessimism and negative attitudes towards anything and everything modern. I believe that mankind will end up moving into space, getting off the planet, and expanding outward. To do otherwise is to consign the species to death - since eventually, sooner or latter - the planet will be gone.
If we regress, then at some point an asteroid strike will destroy the species (and most of the rest as well).
So, we move foreward, or we regress and die. Those are the choices in front of us. I choose the former and I also see a world of possibilities. Not a world of open wounds and crisis.
Victory in Pattani
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caniscandida Posted 8:25 pm
05 Jul 2008
If all we are talking about as an extreme limit of health and viability is 150 years, within which dumb limit we use that dumbifying green-washing word "sustainability," then: Are not we environmentalists also horrible liars, telling everyone to "Be hopeful!, be confident!," when in fact we understand that everything is withering, everything is dying?
"Hope" is indeed a virtue, but of a higher kind: i.e., that which stengthens us, and that by which our inward strength is displayed.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 8:43 pm
05 Jul 2008
The Vexin has traditionally grown rotations of wheat, oilseed rape (colza), barley, and sugarbeets. Maize is often planted as a second crop (for sileage) after the harvest of winter wheat. This early-planted maize is, I assume, for grain. (I'll report back in September.)
What worries me is that the soil is much more exposed to the summer rains than when it is planted to wheat or barley.
In any case, it shows that events (policies and weather) in the United States have knock-on effects across the world.
These are only my personal opinions.
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MAD MAC Posted 9:06 pm
05 Jul 2008
You staying out of trouble?
Victory in Pattani
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caniscandida Posted 11:21 pm
05 Jul 2008
It is bad enough that ancient, balanced, stable farmlands, some of the richest in Europe, have been set to perform some unusual tasks. We await Ron's later report; his report now is not encouraging.
Nor is any of this evading "the subject of Tom's post." If the subject of Tom's post wants to do nothing with philosophical matters, then Tom's post fait le jeu de l'autriche, et se cache la tete.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 2:28 am
06 Jul 2008
Yes, perhaps, if we confuse sustainablitiy with eternity. Yes if we think that 'sostenuto' on a score suggests we should pack a toothbrush and a cot when we attend the symphony. But do we really imply with this word that we expect our human endeavors will last for ever? Are we 'horrible liars' when we suggest that our systems can be designed to endure at least a generation or two? And is that attitude in conflict with our religious feelings - should we, like the Ottoman architects, build intentional flaws into our plans lest we seem to challenge the deity?
I'd prefer not. We can seek out ways of living on the earth which will leave it in decent shape for our grandkids' grandkids, or we can just let it all go to hell. Sustainability is simply the measure that keeps our ostrich head out of the sand. I'd agree that 150 years is too small a hope for human culture as a whole - but it's a long enough time for many of the system components which would sustain that culture.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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spaceshaper Posted 2:49 am
06 Jul 2008
The Darkling Thrush.
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted night
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:21 am
06 Jul 2008
Renewable energy and ag blends the human back into the natural, sybiotically. Our activities once again become part of our surroundings.
Symbiotic summer (all season green powered) camps for adults are going to be needed to aclimatize to this new paradigm. Get thee to camp! But don't chop trees like Henry Ford and Tom Edison did. Maybe plant a few even.
It's the northern wisconsin future tourism wave? hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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caniscandida Posted 6:06 am
06 Jul 2008
DR of course does not remember (Men!, they are like that, utterly anti-elephantine, with hearts of blowing sand; time and time again, they commit themselves to the preferential option for oblivion; Men!) that he recommended Kathy Mattea's album "Coal" once upon a time.
Regarding Harlan, in eastern Kentucky:
<<
where the sun comes up
about ten in the morning
and the sun goes down
about three in the day
you fill your cup
with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
and you spend your life just thinking
how to get away ...
you spend your life digging coal
from the bottom of your grave
>>
Cf. also:
<<
Oh the green rolling hills of West Virginia
Are the nearest thing to heaven that I know.
Though the times are sad and drear
And I cannot linger here,
They'll keep me
And never let me go.
My daddy said, "Don't ever be a miner,
For a miner's grave is all you'll ever own."
There's hard times everywhere,
I can't find a dime to spare,
These are the hardest times that I've known.
>>
"So I'll move away to some northern crowded city ... "
Clearly the song is a Gnostic parable.
Thanks so much, SpaSh, for the Hardy poem. I had to look up "bine." Japanese aesthetes and critics would shake their tea-stained fingers at you and tell you that you should never ever tell poems out of season; but what the hell.
The thing about the "s" word is, I most certainly trust good-hearted sincere people such as yourself to employ it wisely, but there are not many like you, are there. (And for that matter, how do I know you are not a Cylon imposter? -- all sorts of the cutest and most trustworthy ones turn out like that, after all.)
Continuing, the thing about "sustainability" is that the concept, as you present it, is excellent and admirable and noble, which is fine. But:
the term is too easily co-opted by commercial interests, meaning we are all lied to by them, and more subtly, we are all complicit in those lies;
the term encourages a consumerist mentality -- "You can buy all this stuff, and it is all sustainable! Good for you! You are true planet-heroes!";
most important by far, the term discourages true thinking.
We ALL need seriously to think about our mortality, and the mortality of all the living creatures around us. Philosophy is the native call of each of us.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 6:14 am
06 Jul 2008
"Symbiotic" is terrific, Amazing, and indeed a good challenging heroic effort, so long as everyone involves know what we are talking about: the fundamental environmental value, that every Earthly creature fare well, and that we all "live together" well, walking in harmony, and beauty.
Thanks to the frequently quoted Navajo traditional prayer.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 7:38 am
06 Jul 2008
Any word can be misused, any good impulse coopted and misrepresented, and unfortunately we have no control over who uses these particular icons of language. This is no reason to give up on them. On the contrary we must be vigilant, and applaud good use as we condemn the bad, misleading and inappropriate.
And here's a very practical problem. I have a daily need to communicate with clients, contractors and suppliers in very specific language regarding the environmental implications of particular products. What should I use in place of this useful if exploited workhorse of a word to convey the notion that I will not be depleting an irreplaceable and critical resource if I specify a particular material or process? And what word should Tom Philpott use to indicate an agricultural activity that will not deplete the soil, drain the aquifers and pollute the waterways in a mere generation or two? Amazing suggests symbiotic, which has its own and rather different particular import. Other previous offerings have been made, none of which have been any more satisfactory. And then if we do indeed find a bright shiny new word to replace our poor downtrodden sustainability, how do we protect it from the same degradation?
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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caniscandida Posted 4:50 pm
06 Jul 2008
By all means, dear SpaSh, you should use "sustainable" and "sustainability" with your business contacts. The ideal is in place, and it is an excellent one (much better than any 150-year limit, I might add).
But I would urge you to consider that you have an ethical responsibility to advise your contacts that those words are OF COURSE used provisionally. They may not be used for any kind of green-washing, nor may they be used once the respective situation has become UNsustainable, as may very easily happen.
Ditto for dear Tom Philpott.
"Symbiotic" and "symbiosis" represent another great ideal, for which we should strive; but they are not quite interchangeable with "sustainable" and "sustainability." I think Amazing understands that.
It is actually when "sustainable" is used of a fishery that my liar-alert alarm goes off. There is plenty on that sort of thing in the relevant threads.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 9:29 pm
06 Jul 2008
Thanks for your your gracious permission. Am I also instructed to offer such disclaimers when I use other words such as 'green', 'ethical', 'horizontal', 'immediate' and the like which are similarly subject to such variability in achievement?
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:07 pm
06 Jul 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6PLwOt0Bls
Oh there's your crisis and opportunity in the farm belt! Wear your seat belt, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Wolverine Posted 4:09 am
07 Jul 2008
Aiming for mere sustainability is setting to low of a bar. The attitude created by that term boils down to one of "how much can we damage and pollute ecosystems, and kill other species aside from food, without doing so much harm to the systems we need for survival that they will no longer support us?"
"Symbiotic" was a major step in the right direction. I would like to see the standard be one of love and respect for everything in the natural world. Veggies like Canis will disagree about killing animals to eat, but the resulting behavior of that standard would be that you don't kill anything except to eat it.
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MAD MAC Posted 4:58 am
13 Jul 2008
Victory in Pattani
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caniscandida Posted 5:29 pm
13 Jul 2008
Thank you for your concern, dear Wolverine. Deo volente, I am strong enough to get through another day.
You are certainly right about how we should not "set the bar too low," regarding "sustainability." The ideal, so far as eating or otherwise exploiting animals goes, is that the great majority of human beings will learn to live on vegetarian diets. Meanwhile, and more practically, we who think more deeply about these things must help our contemporaries begin to think as well, in this first age of our history in which we confront the limits and frailties of the biosphere.
"Symbiosis" is indeed a lovely concept. How pretty, those pictures of clownfish swimming safely amidst the waving arms of anemones! How thrilling, when the brave and dedicated spur-winged plover does its serious dental work in the gaping mouth of the tranquil Nile crocodile! (A paleo-sci-fi writer speculated a while ago that certain Late-Cretaceous pterosaurs had the same arrangement with T. rex.) I only fear that certain human beings will inevitably want to think in economic terms, and whine selfishly, "I want what's coming to me!"
Amazing,
I look forward to seeing your video, in a few hours, when it is civilly acceptable to turn on my speakers.
Mad Mac,
of course it is justifiable to kill in self-defense. But that is not the only option. There may be cases in which allowing oneself to be killed by an assailant is morally finer, if supererogatory.
We are not entitled to anything, including our own lives. We are naturally inclined to act for our self-preservation; and doing so is in principle justifiable. But that does not mean we are simply entitled to take the lives of animals, in order to eat their flesh, say, or to perform medical experiments on their bodies, for the sake of our self-preservation. Whether or not such activities are justified, they are certainly more complicated than what can be reduced to simple human entitlement.
SpaSh,
God forbid that I should tell you what to say or what not to say! I only meant to remind you that in our contracts, it is ethical that every single word be clearly understood by all parties, in the same way. It strikes me that "sustainability" and "sustainable" are slippery words, which sound soothing, hopeful and admirable, but cannot always be pinned down as meaning something definite -- hence, prime candidates for abuse for the purpose of deception, whether of another or of oneself.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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MAD MAC Posted 8:35 pm
13 Jul 2008
Victory in Pattani
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John former Marine Posted 10:15 pm
13 Jul 2008
Exxon tastes guuudddd.
Walmart tastes guuuuudddd.
So for Mad Mac, as long as we can make pork chops, steak, Exxon, and Walmart "sustainable"...problem solved!
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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spaceshaper Posted 12:13 am
14 Jul 2008
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on sustainability. I will continue to believe that this is a useful and currently irreplaceable term which is fully definable (and has been so defined) both in general and for the specifics of any given situation, and that we have ample opportunity to challenge those who would bend and distort it for whatever nefarious or ignorant purpose. Only our lack of attention is to blame if it is allowed to descend the 'slippery slope' to which all words, of any kind, are truly vulnerable. As in, what the meaning of 'is' is.
As to symbiosis, I have been giving it some thought. First of course the word has no apparent applicability to our relationship with non-biotic elements of our world - you know, land, water, air etc. - and so misses a key attribute of the range of values that we currently assign to 'sustainability'. Secondly, it occurs to me that its general use is in the mutually advantageous non-harmful relationship of just two species, as in the examples you cite. Perhaps there are three-way or larger group symbioses also, I do not know. The usage seems in any case way too restricted (not to mention way too high a bar) to act as a model for a general ethic of relationship of ALL species. Lion to lamb: so what have you done for me lately?
I will add that some of the arguments that have made in this very forum on behalf of carnivory seem dangerously close to a claim of symbiosis - you know, I feed and take care of the pig, enable its existence in fact - then the pig feeds me.... Slippery slope, oh yes.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:45 am
14 Jul 2008
Without algae, humans couldn't breath, it's that sort of vital interdependence.
Without atmospheric balance humans can't build or occupy structures above ground with any expectation of safety. 300 mph tornadic winds can only be tolerated by human civilization in small, ocasional doses.
Likewise for drought related fire storms, crop failure, and water intensive energy systems.
Is the planet and the atmosphere and the ocean a sort of transcendant life form in itself? Who knows?
The concept of aligning ourselves to interdependent symbiosis, instead of fighting forces that can wipe us out in the blink of an eyewall, is probably indicated if we do not want to collectively and personally test the theories about humans made in God's image real soon.
Fundamentalists long to meet their respective gods, they are trying to take us all with them. I say the rest of us ought to get together and tell them where to get off.
But are there enough of us left? The whole world maybe scared into fundamentalism if this trend continues.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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