Comments Stephanie Ogburn has made

Looks like there will be an offsets market for ag, regulated by USDA, if this article is correct. Basically, this is pure politics. It's a great lesson in how science and good practice is trumped by special interests, and how the Senate gives inordinate power to individual senators who represent tiny special interest groups.

Umm, the transit systems in SF and the Bay Area are not all stars. They are expensive, infrequent, difficult to navigate, uncoordinated and unwieldy. BART, the train, only takes you to a very limited range of places. It's not a public transit system - it's a commuter shuttle that regular people can't even afford. You can't even take bikes on BART in rush hour - a major minus for using bike/transit to get to work. Buses in SF and the Bay Area don't run very often to any place that is not a main commuter locale, and they require exact change (annoying and difficult.) There's also not a good system of having a card or discount if you transfer from one transit system to the next or use transit frequently. This is in direct contrast to MTA in NYC, which incentivizes frequent users and lets you use the same card for bus and subway travel. Amtrak in the Bay Area doesn't even run through SF and it is also extremely expensive and infrequent. It's really, really difficult to get to a lot of places here and almost always easier and cheaper to drive. I would not hold SF up as a paragon of good transit in any way. The only thing BART is good for is shuttling commuters into the city for high prices.

Another beet battle in Oregon, too, Tom

Tom, I wrote a piece for High Country News that covered the emerging market for carbon payments to farmers and ranchers last year. It's an interesting topic. One thing that I noted while reporting the piece is that in order for senators from ag states to get behind a climate bill, there might have to be concessions, like carbon sequestration dollars paid to farmers, in order for it to pass. I'm not saying it won't be a boondoggle, but these things have been known to happen. Just something to note about our political system.

Asking the right questions

The New York Times Magazine had an article a while back that addressed some concerns with the Gates Foundation's approach to agriculture in developing nations.

The problem (a common one) seems to be that the basic research question asked by groups such as the Gates Foundation: How can we move farmers into the production agriculture model? This question takes as an essential premise that entering the realm of production agriculture is unequivocally good for farmers.

Yet anyone who has paid attention to the plight of farmers and farmlands in both the developed and developing world could find abundant evidence that production agriculture leads to an overall decline of the number people making a good living on the land. And that's not even taking into account ecological costs resulting from the transition to Green Revolution-style agriculture.

If influential organizations like the Gates Foundation would take a fair look at the sorts of farmers who are thriving in today's environment (smallish, local, organic, innovative, ecological)  and ask the question: "How can we get farmers in developing nations to have the success that these farmers are having?" I bet they would come up with a vastly different development model.

Stephanie

Four Corners Power Plant

A clarification on the above comment: The Four Corners Power Plant does not burn Black Mesa coal. Black Mesa is on the Hopi/Navajo reservation intersection in Arizona. (there's a twisted story behind the Hopi rez being surrounded by Navajo land, but we won't go into that.) The coal from the Black Mesa mine was going to go to feed the Mohave Generating Station before it got shut down. It now just feeds the Navajo Generating Station, I believe.
The Four Corners Power Plant is at a different place in the Navajo reservation, in New Mexico near the Four Corners. It produces a lot of smog, as does its fellow plant, the San Juan Generating station, located just a few miles away. The controversial Desert Rock proposed power plant would also be located in this region. This coal is a different coal from the Black Mesa coal, but still on Navajo land and still very controversial. There are many ways and places on the rez where energy and pollution are issues. Black Mesa is one; the Four Corners are another. I believe Raul Grijalva would be a progressive leader on both Black Mesa and Four Corners environmental issues.

Stephanie

Summers

Summers is rather infamous in academia for being the Harvard prez who suggested women were possibly genetically less fit than men to excel in the math and science professions -- the hue and cry over that one, among other issues, basically caused him to lose his Harvard presidential post, although he remained at the college as a prof. The World Bank pollution memo referenced in the above post is infamous in international environmental circles. Since I've got friends in both these spheres, when I hear mention of Larry Summers I immediately think: "Oh, the pollute-in-third-world-countries guy who caused that big Harvard stink about women in science." (Well, I don't think quite that crudely, but those incidents certainly come to mind.) I'm unsure how important these past events are in terms of what he's going to be doing for the new President, but I hope Obama thought seriously about them when making his choice. Stanley Fish at NYTimes has a good commentary.

Stephanie

Kashi is yummy

On the rare occasions when I eat cereal, usually dry, on backpacking trips, I think Kashi in various varieties is the best cereal I have had. Now if it would only go organic...On Eleven organic breakfast cereals get put to the spoon posted 1 year, 2 months ago 11 Responses

And one more...

As the above questions indicate, I have what I think is a healthy skepticism of Slow Food USA, although I laud the organization's intent. I'd love to be convinced, through your observations, Tom, that Slow Food USA is reaching critical mass in becoming a strong movement with a wide-ranging appeal...so I'd love for you to collect and share evidence that will show Slow Food is moving toward this, if that is in fact what you see.

Stephanie

Questions

Ask them:

• How can the alt-food movement diversify outside of the upper class echelons where it is now entrenched and appeal to a broader audience?
  
• How does the "just" part of the Slow Food play into what Slow Food has in store for the future?
  
• Is a movement based purely on "taste," which is a subjective sense, inherently limited?
  
• Do the organizers of Slow Food Nation think it's weird that something frequently referred to as a "movement" is so un-movementlike in its organization -- I mean, you have to buy TICKETS to most Slow Food Nation events. To me, that makes it seem not like a movement, but kind of like a concert or a conference, appealing to those already interested but not quite with the momentum or appeal to draw in those passing by. As opposed to many other movement-type things that have happened in the Bay Area.

Stephanie

I've never heard of this book

Thanks for pointing it out! I just ordered it on ILL and it should be a fascinating read!

Stephanie

Ancestral Puebloan trade

I don't claim to be even close to an archaeologist, but according to what I've learned since living in archaeology central (aka the Southwest), Ancestral Puebloans did have trade with far off cultures -- items such as parrot feathers from southern Mexico and seashells from the Pacific Coast have been found in the remnants of their dwellings.

Tom encapsulated my point quite well with his comment. That is, I feel that regional production built on the ecological strengths of the area, coupled with vibrant (and fair, hopefully) trade, makes a lot of sense. A little hunting/gathering is a nice accompaniment to this, and I won't dispute the point that hunting/gathering cultures are probably more efficient per unit of effort for food gathered, but I think I'm sort of wedded to a primarily agrarian society -- it's produced a lot of things I'm rather attached to, despite its shortcomings.

Stephanie

Farmworker Pay

Hi Tom,

Good column. This labor problem was the major topic of my graduate thesis; I interviewed farmers in Western Colo. about labor. Most of them, no matter how socially conscious, would not pay more than $7 or $8/hr for their workers. A lot of these (either certified organic or uncertified but growing organically) farmers relied on interns or family members for free labor, or Mexican farm laborers that they paid very little. And for those Mexican laborers, the work was seasonal, so many of them were either mobile or based in a central town about an hour drive from where they worked. They would drive up to our valley to pick cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums, apples, as the season went on and then back home most every day. Some did live in employer-provided housing, but only seasonally. This population of workers were almost an invisible population in the area where I did my research, and they even seemed invisible to the otherwise progressively-minded farmers who employed them.

What I found was that since farmers can't pay high enough wages, they either discount their own labor or the labor of someone else. And even then they barely make ends meet. I can't see a clear way around this problem, other than farmers being able to charge a lot more for produce or being subsidized in some way.

This summer, I am working part time on a farm, mostly weeding, harvesting, and selling at the market. I'm doing this because I believe in it and like the work. I might be a "green collar" farm worker. However, I can't work full time for any farmer here because I need a better-paying job in order to make ends meet. In the area I live now, the going rate for farmworkers is about $8/hr. It's just impossible to be a full time farm worker if you want to have a place-based life, since the work isn't year round and pays so poorly. You have to be able to cut corners by living in crowded circumstances and move around so you have work almost year round.

And it isn't like my area is a local/organic food desert; we have three thriving farmers' markets where farmers often sell out, but they just can't raise prices for produce high enough to compensate their laborers at a liveable wage.

And when considering the Teach For America model, let's think about a few things:

1. Is Teach For America is actually changing the system within which it's working?
   
2. How many people work for TFA and then leave the system burnt out and wanting to move on to something better?
   
3. Does TFA challenge the overarching paradigm of public schools, which, in my opinion, isn't a viable model for this century?

(disclosure: I was a TFA corps member; in an interesting twist, most of my fourth-graders were the kids of migrant farm workers)

Well, that's my 99 cents.On To create a truly sustainable food system, we'll have to confront the farm-labor crisis posted 1 year, 5 months ago 14 Responses

Sweet corn: unsubsidized vegetable

Sweet corn is considered a "vegetable" by the USDA.  It is not considered "corn" for subsidy purposes.  Yet another reason to eat away when it is corn season in your region! See questions one and five of this ERS/USDA web site for details.On On the peculiar American habit of demonizing food posted 2 years, 6 months ago 22 Responses

BioD's points

BioD,

I agree with you in a lot of ways.  Especially when you write this:

Germany and England appear to be in a state of resource and environmental equilibrium only because they are drawing many of their resources (meat, grain, wood, whatever) from places like the ocean, Amazonian soy fields, and Indonesia (in an unsustainable manner). If you did an experiment and closed their borders to all free trade and immigration, what do you suppose would happen?

And this is precisely why I feel such a strong focus on population is misguided.  When you mention the sixth extinction event and global warming, I don't draw the connection that you (and others) seem to draw between those happenings and overpopulation.  If I were to draw a simplistic connection (which I am somewhat loathe to do) I would draw it between U.S./developed world consumption which creates resource scarcity in developing nations, leading to the possible existence of what you and others might call overpopulation in some of these countries.


But I do not think the root cause of this is overpopulation.  If overpopulation is a scarcity of resources for a group of people per given land area, it would seem as if this "overpopulation" is created by developed world extraction patterns, not simply by people having too many babies. (although that construction, too, is overly simplistic)  Of course, now that the problem's been created, it seems to make sense to help women with contraceptives that work, and education that empowers them.


Of course "war, poverty, hunger, and biodiversity loss" are major problems.  I am interested in thinking and learning about what causes these problems, and "overpopulation" almost never seems to be the cause.  I think what I am arguing against is the decontextualization of overpopulation. If a place becomes overpopulated, or resource scarce for the number of people who live there, is that because the women just started having babies like crazy since they are uneducated?  If so, have they always been having babies like crazy and have they now reached a tipping point? Or have their livelihoods and base of resources changed so significantly that it now appears that they are overpopulated?


I find the tipping point explanation generally less persuasive than the latter one, which can often be connected in some way to extraction or some form of colonialism.  I guess I feel like overpopulation is too simplistic of an explanation, and that it doesn't merit a necessary listing as one of the top problems because focusing simply on overpopulation makes it far too easy to ignore the developed world's role in all of this, just like the Millenium Development Goals you listed do.  It is notable that only in MDG 7 are we mentioned, and then only in one sentence.  It's so easy to focus on poor, overpopulated Africa and Asia.  Let's fix them!  I feel that first we need to work on ourselves.  Which is not to stay international development must cease--it is happening, and it can do good--but it seems a bit of a cop-out to talk about overpopulation without thinking about why a place might become resource scarce for its population burden and how the developed world social structure.  I think that stronger connections need to be made between the developed and the developing world.  Too often there is a simplistic divide, and the connections are hidden.  These connections need to be made more transparent, and focusing so strongly on developing world overpopulation obscures the connections.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Carrying Capacity

Most certainly does exist. I'm not trying to tackle the foundations of the science of ecology by any stretch of the imagination.


The myth I am referring to is the one that seems to attribute resource/environmental problems in places like Africa, or even in the world as a whole, to the nearing of population carrying capacity in either that region or the earth.  We produce twice as much food as people eat. There is a whole lot of water to go around, although water pollution is a major problem.  But I do not think that resource/environmental problems are CAUSED by population growth/density.  The bathroom analogy, the theoretical constructions of carrying capacity--none of these are based in any empirically grounded studies that prove that, when population gets to "x" density at or "x" number, resource problems happen. No. Where is the evidence?


Resource problems happen in areas of high population density and low population density. I do think that our planet has a carrying capacity. But I do not think our environmental problems are a result of us nearing that capacity. And unless someone can give evidence that this is the case, I will remain unconvinced.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

To add to that

Yes, thanks Emily.  The question is also whether external inspection is intrinsically better, as Ted notes in giving the example of the external certifier who was essentially willing to be paid to deliver certification.  In developing nations (where corruption is often high) it might be be better to have internal, true believers.

 
An added note: certifiers in the US also sometimes think the USDA's tendency to force this separation (that is, the tendency to say you can't be a certifier if you're also a farmer in the grower group) is overkill and highly inconvenient. One farmer I interviewed who also spun off his own certification business had a heck of a time getting his business accredited because he was a grower in the area where he'd be certifying. After jumping through a lot of hoops, he did it--but perhaps separation of interests (which is the traditional approach to addressing corruption) is not the best way to deal with potential corruption. One fix does not all problems solve.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

In the name of...

Ron,
I completely agree.  Anna Tsing and other researchers make it very clear that logging came first, then oil palm.  It was originally all about the logs.  The oil palm was a bit of a spin.  Now it is there.  So it is also something to deal with.  How? It is interesting to see people trying to do neat things, like "sustainable" plantations. (is that an oxymoron?) Yet even if it is, knowing that people are trying to do some things better is heartening.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Glad you had fun

It sounds amazing.  But let's not pit Manahattan v. Brooklyn v. Seattle.  All places have their charms. :-) Brooklyn is diverse, energized, and has great food, among other things. But if one lives in Seattle both the Cascades and Canada are only a few short hours away. Manhattan also has its wonders. And honestly, if I moved back to NY, I'd even consider Queens or the Bronx--also nice places, and more affordable. Isn't it great that we live in such a diverse and fascinating country and that people make interesting and beautiful lives all over the place?  Even in Texas!

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Thanks, Tom

Thanks for the tip, Tom.

What you say falls in line with what I know. As I mentioned before, two of my colleagues are doing fascinating research on Slow Food in the Basque country of Spain.  And based on their preliminary findings, the movement's focus on taste has been problematic because it is elitist and also rather alienating and dogmatic--that is, growers are told what to grow because certain things are Slow Food approved, therefore "taste" dictates what is grown, to an almost ridiculous extent. (this is probably a huge bastardization of the research, but is the general gist). This, obviously, is problematic and can also be incredibly elitist.


However, I heard a different tone in Lesser's talk, one that seemed more inclusive and democratic.  This is what I found interesting, and why I wrote about it.  My impression of Slow Food had been less favorable before hearing her speak.  And though I'll still reserve judgement, if Slow Food is taking root on college campuses (and not just Yale), and in small towns across America--then this would be a trend deserving of exploration.  

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Awkward! Awkward!

Boo.  Signing off for the night.  Sleep is important and, I understand, highly recommended, so now I shall go get some.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Hmm

...[T]he mind of those who refuse to give up their rampant consumerism, who believe that if they cannot live beyond their means (and that of the Earth) then they are being unfairly deprived.

Does this comment not seem to you to be kind of, I don't know,  the kind of judgmental and perhaps divisive thing I was talking about in my post?  But, to move on, I think in some ways we are talking past each other.  There is much connectivity and inclusiveness to be found in aspects of environmentalism, but it is also seen as having many of the negative aspects I mentioned above.  I may have had a different environmental experience than some of you, but I have certainly seen these tendencies in the movement, and also seen it try to address and move past many of them, which I think is good.  A common example might be the wholesale blaming of "evil corporations" and "stupid American consumers," neither of which I think actually exist if one actually takes it down to the human level and talks to the heads of those corporations or interacts with those Wal-Mart shoppers (I mean, my Mom is a Wal-Mart shopper).


So I saw Slow Food as trying to incorporate the good and leave out the bad.  The brightest point of the Slow Food presentation, I was trying to say, is its "Big Tent" environmentalism. So that, once a person has been brought inside the tent on the basis of pleasure and taste, it is much easier to talk to that person about curbing consumption and the ethical treatment of animals, because once you have a common human connection with them, they can't categorize you as someone extreme or puritanical, you can't categorize them as stupid or evil, and the dialogue has begun.  

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Sam,

Nice to know that I understood your book.  I enjoyed reading it. :-)

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Psychology of Social Change

So, "fun" may be a simplistic way of putting it.  But I maintain the distinction between a culture of denial and a culture of, put more broadly, participation.


Slow Food is about coming together.  This is generally over a good meal, but it can also be in a common cause (their Terra Madre event) or in a larger-scale celebration of good food (their future Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco in 2008).  From what Lesser said, the movement seems to be about positive reinforcement and inclusivity and coming together. This is importantly different from what I see as the individualistic, isolationist, and puritanical tendencies of the eco-culture of denial.


Lets think about how social change happens.  There are always a few true believers, but then the movement must widen and deepen to both include more and attain more far-reaching goals. One good way of doing this is to create a culture of inclusivity that brings people in around pleasure and gets them engaged and talking.  Slow Food does this. Eco-denial does not.  


Think about it: When is the last time not doing things brought people together? Not going shopping does not include others in a new culture of less consumption. Not driving a car is also often an isolationist, not a collaborative act. (With the exception of monthly Critical Masses, which are great, of course). While I generally think that people should buy less and drive less, simply telling them to do this does not engage them. And social change is partly about engaging people in alternative visions. So, based on what I know of it, I see Slow Food as a positive and practical endeavor because it offers a highly sociable alternative, crafting a culture of enjoyment that can be the gateway to bigger conversations about things like overconsumption and car culture. I like to think of environmentalists as teachers, but it seems as though they often see themselves as priests.  Good teachers produce results by positive reinforcement. (Any good psychologist will tell you that.) Priests have some true believers who follow the commandments but a lot of people who are constantly falling off the bandwagon.  See the difference?

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

The Cloisters are GREAT!

Yes.  I agree with everything caniscandida has said. And Park Slope.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Shade Grown

GE, here's a good article that might answer some of your q's on shade grown coffee.  As you see if you read the article, it depends on the shade.  An older article in Fresh Cup explained this better, but I can't find it now.  A key point: as in organic, a shade grown farmer can take a sort of band-aid (in organic we'd call it input-substitution) approach, or can be more holistic in her thinking and farm management.  It also can depends a good deal on local ecology, of course, as to what is best for the farm and the soil.  Leaving a few shade trees in doesn't necessarily do anything great, but many coffee farmers do a great job and go far beyond that.


I do agree that "untrustworthy imported organics" could/can be problematic (ask Bob Scowcroft of the Organic Farming Research Foundation about this), but dis-allowing these particular commodities is a ridiculous step.  Why not take away certification rights for apples from China, or pears from Chile?  Based on my knowledge of growing organic pears and apples, both of those crops require a lot of organic pesticides, and therefore seem as though they'd be more problematic than coffee. That is, since even organic orchard growers use (organically-allowed) pesticides anyway, it'd be easy for foreign, less-regulated growers to use non-organic ones.


Its as if USDA is trying to replicate its wholesale screwing of international farmers in the organic realm. This kind of thing drives me bonkers.


Interestingly, Fair Trade often does not go hand-in-hand with organic, but increasingly it does, I think, and ought to.  Although, unfortunately, recent research on Fair Trade indicates that even Fair Trade Certification does not go far enough in terms of raising prices high enough to pay farmers a wage that takes care of all their livelihood needs.  And that research is one of the many data sets upon which I base my belief that purely market-based solutions will not solve the world's farming (or other, for that matter) problems.  But that's another soapbox.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Amazing

So much happens in a day!  This is amazing.  Standing, standing, standing!  This really opens up the door for a lot of stuff.  So many enviro cases have been dismissed on standing grounds, green laywers have continued to try to push that limit, and now..this!  I have nothing more to contribute other than my hoorah!

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

On broaching capitalism

This is a great post and discussion.  As someone who hails from the Bible Belt, I can definitely see how opposition to free market capitalism solutions works poorly there.  And it is continually fascinating to me how frightened Americans are of anything that could seem like Communism.  McCarthy and Reagan really did a number on us!  

But I'd like to suggest that even Southern Baptists can be spoken to about non-market based solutions and the dangers inherent in over-reliance on self-interested individualistic solutions.  They, too, live within a moral framework--one they explicitly reference in many political situations.  And I think that the time is coming when, even in America, we'll be able to start talking about capitalism and market-based solutions as what they are--social constructions that serve some interests above others, and that are good at solving some problems and bad at handling others.  

I'd love to have a public (America-wide) discussion on the question "can market capitalism be reformed?"  I think that this discussion can be had on a variety of fronts, not just within the environmental realm.  And that is, perhaps, how we draw Southerners and conservatives into the mix.  Free market capitalism also causes them problems, right?  It seems we can all agree on that, and start a conversation there.  And if folks like us are willing to clearly explain what we mean when we say that, in some situations and contexts, capitalism is a problematic aspect of our social ordering, then maybe we can move away from the capitalist/communist dichotomy.  

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Why Greenwashing happens

Great post, Tom.  I think most wonky enviros are in the camp that corn-based ethanol is a total greenwash.  But the fact that this happens--that politicians and businesses and powerful individuals and citizens, when confronted with a problem (global climate change and an energy crisis)--turn to a solution that is, we all agree, simply a different way of doing things the wrong way, is something that, I think, merits a good discussion.

Why is it that corn ethanol has become so popular?  Well, for one, the U.S. grows a lot of corn.  So, since energy independence is part of the nationalist rhetoric of many advocating for the decrease of the use of foreign oil, corn plays neatly into that ideology.  Additionally, as demonstrated so clearly by Michael Pollan among others, our system is set up for corn.   And I could go on, but others above and in other posts have covered this very well.

But to move even beyond that and into more systemic issues, it seems that changing the way we do energy, or food, or anything in this country, is often easily co-opted by the path of least resistance, and our tendency to craft systems and markets that continue to ignore many of the externalities that we were already ignoring, while internalizing just a few of these externalities.  So in the case of ethanol, we're theoretically internalizing the externality of CO2 emissions, but we still miss all these other externalities, such as the subsidizing of corn, the fertilizers and pesticides that go into its production, or the dead zone in the Gulf.  And in the end it is zero-sum, or perhaps even worse.

In the case of organic, which is the case I'm most familiar with, we've internalized some ecological externalities such as fertilizers and pesticides, but been incredibly poor at taking into account the way that labor is completely exploited in the modern agricultural system, and we've also been poor at examining and taking on the problems associated with modern food distribution systems.  

This is all related.  We tend to follow familiar pathways, and perhaps deviate slightly to, say, reduce emissions at the tailpipe, or reduce ecological harm at the farm level, but in following these pathways, we still ignore so much.  And this is not to say that politicians aren't aware of what they are ignoring, or that even organic farmers using energy-dependent distribution systems and migrant labor aren't aware of what they are ignoring, but somehow, they are able to ignore it, because the one thing they've focused on--less CO2 coming out of cars, or less nitrogen in the nation's waters--they've succeeded in changing.

I don't know where all this leads, but I believe it's all connected.  Our ability to craft a new type of world and a new social system always seems to run into our lack of ability to deviate too far from the familiar.  Of course, hope always lies in the small steps we are always taking toward a different world, but on the larger, policy level, I wonder how this tendency can be addressed?

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Giant Cane Toads are taking over the world

The size of a small dog!!

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

How about an economist?

Bill Nordhaus, Yale economist, recently attended a review of the Stern Report, held at Yale.  So did a bunch of other Yale and other hot-shot economists.  The review lasted the entire day, and basically consisted of economists who all agreed that global warming is a serious problem arguing endlessly about discount rates.  Since their arguments will probably be used to decide how we set carbon taxes or cap and trade systems, they are important.

Nordhaus published a document of his quibbles with the Stern Report as a pdf, here.  I'm not an economist and it is pretty heavy on the econ-babble, but one can wade through and get a sense.

Robert Mendelsohn, another Yale economist, also wrote something (pdf) , published by the relatively conservative Cato Institute.

I suppose they are the centrists...

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Style etc.

Re: Dave Foreman's background -- he is best known as the founder Earth First!, an organization best known for pounding stakes into trees about to be logged and pouring sand into bulldozer gas tanks, etc, in protest of the logging of forests in the U.S.  He's actually mellowed over the years, and I posted his essay because I found it interesting and provocative, and wanted to hear what people had to say about it.  And while I think the positions he takes on many things are extreme, I also highly respect him for being so outspoken about his beliefs.  I do not think he is a hypocrite in any sense of the word.

Re: style -- if it's coming across as less-than-readable, I'll work on it.  I'm kinda new at this blogging thing, at least for a wide audience.   I'll continue to improve with practice, I'm sure.  But as noted above, I'm very interested in discussion, which is why I posted the Foreman piece in the first place.  

Re: my position -- A lot of my fellow student friends, and I debate sustainable development ad infinitum.  We talk incessantly about growth, and capitalism, and their inherent problems.  I lament unfettered capitalism on a daily basis, as I see it beginning to undermine movements who buy into its worldview to gain credence (i.e. organic), and watch market forces co-opt the original visions of people who sought to craft something truly different and world changing.  My research is with small scale agriculturalists, and my prior work experience is with the students of migrant farmworkers, so I've certainly seen how industrial culture tends to negatively impact those who it views merely as sources of labor or capital.  And it is heartbreaking, truly.

But, while we can work on changing the system, we also need to work with the growth that is happening to influence how it happens.  It is unfortunate but true that the dominant paradigm of the modern world is an economic paradigm founded upon a growth mentality. And I think one needs to learn to speak the language of the dominant group in order to effect change, because revolutions hardly ever work, but gradual shifts and social movements seem to be both more effective and, in the end, less despotic.

So I try to hold onto both my idealistic and my pragmatic selves, but I think my pragmatic self is more apparent in this posting and perhaps in more of my writing here, possibly because I feel that being practical is something not that many enviros do all that well, at least rhetorically.  And I do love glacier lilies, and columbines in the summer, and being alive at the perfect time of afternoon to see a herd of elks gather in the valley below.  But I also love a conversation with a friend in a coffeeshop, watching one of my ELL students work incredibly hard just to get up to grade level in reading, and watching all the silly/beautiful people collectively sun themselves in Central Park on a sunny day in late February.  Both the human and the natural are important, and, to me, less separate than we make them.  

And, to close, thank you all so much for having such a good discussion.  Citizenship is alive and well on grist.org, and I find this totally inspiring.  A civilized debate on issues that matter to all of us--how rare and refreshing!  I just spent two hours of my life getting droned to about the shocking lack of healthcare in America, and then I get to read all these passionate and engaged posts--what a thrill.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Well taken

Good points above.  I agree Grist has done a marvelous job connecting environment to social issues with the special themes on both poverty and religion published recently, but it seems one of the few publications to do so.  I would say that Orion magazine is the best current environmental publication that always shows the human side of environmental issues.

To clarify my point above, it just seems to me that much global warming rhetoric focuses on crafting global warming as a technical/scientific problem, and then expressing scientific solutions.  This makes it less compelling (but not less important), I think, because it leaves out its human impacts as well as important human stories.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Polls on Global Warming

A prof at my school does global warming polls from time to time through his center, the Yale Center for Environment and Public Policy.  They just released the results of their poll, which are similar to the ones discussed above.

http://www.yale.edu/envirocenter/environmentalpoll.htm
OR
http://environment.yale.edu/4467/sea_change_in_public_att ... (press release)

I, too, think many of these questions are weirdly worded, like comparing climate change with terrorism is kind of an odd thing to do.  And, notably, if you pass over the center's (and my school's) spin on the whole thing and look at the real questions and answers, particularly on p. 4 of the pdf of the actual survey report, (http://www.yale.edu/envirocenter/yale_epoll2007_topline.p ...) you'll note that: 1. They ask some really odd questions; 2. almost no one supports actual taxes on gasoline or inefficient cars.  

Yet 81% also say that "it is my responsibility to help reduce the impacts of global warming."

What to make of this? One take: the American public is good at being concerned, but even better at hating taxes--at the expense of the globe.

Polls continue to mystify me, and I'm not sure if they'll ever actually mean anything.

Stephanie www.stephaniepaigeogburn.com

Research

"research," that is.On If organic food is so popular, why are so few farms transitioning their land? posted 2 years, 8 months ago 21 Responses

Labor in the US

Thank you, thank you, thank you Tom Philpott for writing about this.  When I saw the article about this in the NY Times I couldn't believe it.  I do think it is important to take a historical perspective when thinking about food laborers in the U.S.  We've pretty much always exploited someone to make our food cheap--whether it was slaves, sharecroppers, Chinese immigrants, or Mexican or Central American undocumented migrants. The prison scheme simply takes this to an obvious extreme, as Philpott so nicely points out.

In recent research, I've been thinking and writing about why the organic movement was so successful--and I think part of it has to do with the fact that it pretty deliberately chose not to address the labor issue.  Now that organic's gone large, that decision has become more obvious, as Grist pointed out in the article last summer about migrant workers in Oregon's organic fields.  (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/08/02/mark/index. ...)

This is important.  If we paid laborers what they were really worth, food would be a lot more expensive.  And this includes migrant workers, but also the hard-working farmer on a 2-acre organic plot working seven days but barely breaking even without paying herself.  This is a common scenario, and an unfortunate one.  And since organic requires, usually, even more labor per unit of yield than industrial farming, then organic may rely even more on the exploitation of labor--prices would have to rise astronomically for that small scale farmer to actually pay herself a fair wage.

Which is why small scale farms, although perhaps now more popular in their organic incarnation, are not, I would argue, actually that much more financially sustainable than they were when they were growing conventionally.  Either the price of food needs to go up or we need to decide to compensate farmers in a different way (conservation payments, e.g.) for the service they provide.  No one can make a good living selling lettuce at $4/head without exploiting someone.  On Colorado's inmates-as-farmworkers plan says plenty about our food culture posted 2 years, 8 months ago 12 Responses

Opinion v. News

While I admire Tom Philpott's work at Grist in general (love Victual Reality), reading a 2800 word opinion piece on the evil giant that is Archer Daniels Midland was not what I expected when I set out to read the article.  

I'd love to think ADM was a corporate evildoer--I basically already think that--but this story didn't expand my horizons on that front, because I'm not sure I can trust it. As a journalist, Philpott's job is to conduct interviews, get multiple angles on the story, and craft a narrative out of that.  This story read as though he spent a long time reading leftist books on corporate scandals and then wrote a piece on ADM and ethanol.  I don't doubt most of it is true, but I'd like to see the opinions of historians, policy analysts, and of course, the company itself--then I could actually trust the story, rather than thinking to myself, "oh, I just read a nice long piece of opinion journalism by Philpott, but how I am really supposed to know that this is the most complete synthesis of the story, since he cites hardly no one and hasn't conducted any interviews with experts, let alone the company itself."

I'd love to see good quality muckraking journalism on ADM--but this isn't it.
On The what, where, and why of E85 ethanol posted 2 years, 11 months ago 5 Responses

Thanks!

Great.  Yeah THOMAS isn't the easiest system in the world to navigate...On Senators threaten to impose industrial-strength rules on small vegetable farms posted 3 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

Yay column, and diversified farms

Hi, I love that there's a column on sustainable ag.

I do research with small farmers in Western Colorado, and even the diversified ones that are more than hobby garden's aren't making a go of it economically.  They just can't make enough money selling their produce, even the ones that sell at high end markets like Aspen and Telluride.  The ones that are doing well, in my opinion, have invested significanly in value-added products such as wine, jams/jellies, or organic cut flowers that they can get high profit margins on.  In terms of selling produce, if small growers actually charged enough to make back their inputs, lettuce or tomatoes would rise to what Americans would consider to be an extraodinary price. And, of course, since organic/sustainable farming is more labor intensive, labor cost will always be an issue, and you'll have a small farmer working 70-hour weeks with no help, just to keep the weeds at bay and harvest the crops; paying someone $7/hr to help just won't cut it.  Lots of farms get help from WWOOFERS and interns, but economic sustainability is a far-off dream for most of the small farmers I interview.  

What will change that?  Some ideas:

1. Widespread acceptance that you get what you pay for, and maybe a $4 (as opposed to $2) tomato is not only healthier but supporting an America you are proud of.  

2. Acknowledgement by Americans that maybe spending 25-30% of one's income on food (as opposed to current low percentages) is worthwhile and necessary since, after water, it is the most important thing keeping one alive.  

3. A willingness by farmers to be business-people as well and move beyond the passionate approach that led them to farming.  Farmers need to think about diversifying not simply in terms of crops grown but in products sold; people will pay for herbal lotions, wine and soap at a level they won't currently pay for produce.  It may be unfortunate, but it is true.  Almost every farmer I know has an off-farm job or a spouse with one; if economic self-sufficiency is a goal, somthing has to change.

4. And finally; a political revolution - Down with Bush!  :-)