Comments Forrest has made

Your addendum

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my post, Tom.  There is a piece I read in this month's Orion on the power of farmer co-operatives in North Dakota.  You can find it at http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-3om/Nace.html  I think one of the major solutions to the scale and distribution problems you have referred to in some of your posts is the formation of such farmer co-operatives.  Farmers can't wait for the government to help them - I have to admit that I think the USDA is no more a friend of small farmers than Cargill or Monsanto - but they can take action on their own to buy co-operatively owned processing and transport facilities.

On the point about packaged salad greens, I again want to point out a different perspective.  My parents, who are very "green conscious" vegetarians, love pre-packaged salad greens.  Fifteen years ago, when they travelled outside of the leftie belts of the USA (and they travel quite a bit), it was almost impossible to buy any salad green other than pesticide soaked, dehydrated iceberg lettuce.  Today, every supermarket in the entire country sells bags of pre-washed greens.  While they may not be as high quality as the greens they grow in their own garden in the spring and summer, they are an enormous step up from what used to be accessible to most of middle America.  In other words, while a small organic farmer like yourself might view Earthbound salads as a pitiful substitute for the real thing, for the vast majority of Americans, Earthbound lettuce may be much better than anything they've ever had access to.  I don't think this is cause for despair - but rather I think it is an awareness that we should cultivate in our planning for local food systems.  Local food systems that require people to entirely rework their lifestyles will be a failure.  So will ones that are preachy.  Food systems that find ways to market improved products in ways that fit into people's existing patterns (i.e. pre-packaged food in supermarkets in the Earthbound example) will be succesful.

I tend to think that the reason Wal-mart is threatening is not so much because Wal-mart is evil, or big, but that Wal-mart has traditionally sold cheaper merchandise through buying huge lots at reduced prices - and this may limit their interest in buying into these local markets.  But what if you approached the produce manager at your local Earth Fare (or Wal Mart) and offered to sell him local organic greens? On Wal-mart's organic bomb posted 3 years, 6 months ago 40 Responses

Another way of asking

Does industrial farming feed the world?
Did pre-industrial farming feed the world?
Did forest gardens feed the world?
Did hunter-gathering feed the world?

I do not know of a single human society in history or pre-history where hunger - and death by starvation - were absent.  In many, they were (and still are) commonplace.  The problem is not production of food, so much as it is distribution.  In hunter-gatherer and early agricultural societies, with limited ability to store and transport food, the distribution problems were seasonal, or related to occasional extreme weather events.  In modern societies, the distribution problems are generally more closely related to what welfare economists call "entitlements" - i.e. the ability of people to purchase food (or purchase the inputs necessary to grow their own - such as land, seed, fertilizer, labor).

If our goal is to feed the world, our focus ought to be on wealth distribution more than on agricultural technology.  I have seen no credible evidence that hypothetical utopian organic farming would create fewer calories than current industrial agriculture.  But I have also yet to see any evidence that organic farming solves hunger problems.  

Since many of the hungriest and poorest people in the world are rural people (laborers, and yes, even small landowners), primarily in Africa and South Asia, one of the most helpful things we could do to "feed the world" would be to raise farm incomes in those regions.  Cutting first world agricultural subsidies and increasing imports of high value (and value-added) crops from those regions to the wealthy countries might be viable strategies, as would be investing in agricultural technology R & D specific to those regions (instead of breeding more Round-up Ready okra or whatever).  Political stability would be a key prerequisite.  Global warming is expected to have a disproportionately negative impact on sub-saharan Africa.  Thus, we might go so far as to say that a society that is changing its climate cannot feed the world.On A food-politics writer expresses angst at the obscurity of his topic posted 3 years, 8 months ago 24 Responses

Crazy Horse, ecosystem people, and equity

Several years ago, I read a book titled Ecology & Equity, by Ram Guha, an Indian sociologist, and Madhav Gadgil, an Indian ecologist.  I don't remember all the details of their argument, but the big picture was that ecology and equity were two sides of the same coin.  In India, where their examples were taken from, destroying the environment was the same thing as destroying the livelyhood of the poor.  They described these poor people as ecosystem people  - i.e. people who depended on the ecosystem for their subsistence - as subsistence farmers or migrant pastoralists, or at least with some major component of their livelyhood dependent on products provisioned from the ecosystem.  When the government "developed" those resources, it basically redistributed those resources from the ecosystem people to the industrial or global capital people - for example, damming the Narmada River destroyed the livelihoods of people who depended on the river for subsistence in order to provide irrigation water to commercial farmers and electricity to urban areas.  Another example - the British took control of the Indian forests in order to put them to "productive use" - providing commercial lumber - and prohibited harvests by local people providing products for their own subsistence.

Here in the US, we are fortunate in that we don't have the widespread, grinding poverty that continues to affect so many hundreds of millions of people in India.  The question that I was left wondering after reading Gadgil and Guha was - where are our ecosystem people?  How does equity relate to environmental protection in the US?  Klingle & Taylor point out, correctly, I think, the elitist roots of the environmental movement, but I think they miss alot of the story.  In the environmental world where I work currently, National Forests, environmentalists are frequently accused of destroying jobs and denying access to the common people.  These people whose livelihoods we effect are not ecosystem people - they don't depend on the forest for subsistence - instead they seem more like a rural proletariat - dependent on industrial extraction from the forest for their incomes.  Similarly, recreationists who wish to drive ATVs or snowmobiles in wilderness areas are people who wish to recreate in vehicles that cost more than 10 times the annual income of an Indian subsistence farmer.  Federal land ranchers are by and large far wealthier than the average American.  

It seems to me that all of us in federal land battles, "elitist" environmentalists and "poor" loggers, ranchers, and motorized recreationists, are a part of the powerful industrial class that drove the ecosystem people off the land years ago.  What ecosystem people?  Well - Crazy Horse, who someone else used, is a great example - but it was not only American Indians - it was also white and black subsistence farmers driven off their land by USDA subsidies, rising land prices, and competition from mechanized mega-farms during the first several decades of the 20th century.  

The early environmental movement, it is true, largely ignored (and sometimes even aided the wrong side, as the authors point out in their quotes from Muir) in these struggles - but the environmental movement has a long history, dating back at least as far as Aldo Leopold's early attempts at ecological restoration, of aiding the poor and displaced as well.  Klingle & Taylor mention some interesting examples, but urban, non-white poverty is not the be-all and end-all of poverty.   The Back-to-the-land movement of the 60s and 70s is frequently portrayed as a movement of hippie elites, but at the same time it deeply revitalized many impoverished rural communities - notably those in Northern Vermont and New York that Bill Mckibben, in his new book that I haven't read yet, describes as "the most hopeful place in America."  The back-to-the-land movement also provided the genesis for the organic farming movement, which has helped many rural farmers stay on their land, and here in the Northwest, nearly every rural grassroots environmentalist that I've met was a part of that movement.

I'm not exactly sure how to end this post - but I would be very interested in seeing other responses.  I think Klingle & Taylor (and Grist) are correct to raise these issues - but I think we need to think more seriously about their ideas and not just assume that Environmentalist = John Muir toting Wilderness fanatic.  The story is far more complex (and interesting!)On Environmentalism's elitist tinge has roots in the movement's history posted 3 years, 8 months ago 17 Responses

Nitrogen Fixation ?

Greenstork - what is your source for nitrogen-fixation in mustard and rapeseed?  I never heard this before, and the only articles I can find that discuss nitrogen needs of these closely related plants describe them as heavy nitrogen users - not fixers.  On It's biofuel realities that matter, not airy scenarios posted 3 years, 10 months ago 15 Responses

Hurray for Fedco!

I've been reading through my Fedco catalog, and I am excited to see the rise of new open-pollinated varieties in their catalog.  Between the heirlooms and the modern public breeders, there is much potential.  FEDCO is providing markets for these innovative breeders - let's hope that other small seed companies will follow suit.On Cheers and jeers for the GM seed giant. posted 3 years, 11 months ago 3 Responses

Good Point

If I could respond to Tom's perspective with a slightly different view:

If you look at the history of any federal subsidy program, I think you will find that it is eventually diverted to benefit the wealthy and powerful.  The original New Deal era farm subsidy program was aimed at least in part, at helping small farmers (although it also aimed to decrease their number based on the assumption that trouble on the farm was due to an excess of farmers).  Well... now it all goes to large commodity operations - most of which would probably go out of business without government support, or have to change dramatically (perhaps by adopting organic certification?).

Increasing subsidies for local organic agriculture sounds tempting - but I fear it would eventually all get channeled to a few big farming operations - i.e. the eventual ConAgras or Monsantos of the organic world.  Whole Foods maybe?  Is this a good thing?  I hardly think so.  Eliminating 14.7 billion in subsidies will drive up prices - helping all the farmers who don't get the subsidies.  That would be a big help to most of my farmer friends.  The people who would be hurt, I think, would be the poor food consumer.  I'd rather see the money coming out of big ag subsidies go to support increases in foodstamps.

ps. I am glad to see that Grist has started offering thoughtful, quality coverage of agricultural issues.  It is hard to find (and I admit even to being disappointed with some of Grist's historical coverage of these issues).  I look forward to Tom's next post.On Why the Bush Administration looks set to jettison the farm-subsidy program, beloved of industry and posted 4 years, 1 month ago 5 Responses

combatting hunger

I'm sure, given the readership of this blog, that you will get some comments about how GM foods are not currently labeled (so it is in fact difficult to make a choice to not consume them), and about how they can spread into fields where people don't want them, especially in wind pollinated crops (like wheat & corn).  So Instead, I want to respond to your hope that GM foods can help reduce hunger.

Most of the chronically hungry people in the world live in poor countries.  People in poor countries live predominantly in rural areas.  People in rural areas are largely dependent on agriculture for their income.  So most of the world's hungry people depend on agriculture for their income.  If food becomes cheaper, the urban poor who work in industry have an easier time buying it, but the rural poor have a harder time selling it.  That's right, I am saying that lower food prices will often increase hunger among the most vulnerable populations.  So if GM foods reduce food prices, it will increase hunger.

Does that mean GM foods have no role in alleviating hunger and deprivation?  Possibly, but not necessarily.  There are two important lines of arguement that your comment misses.  

First, farm income is the difference between profits and expenditures.  Since profits for many poor farmers are largely out of their control - determined by the vagaries of global markets and weather - the best way to increase income may be by reducing costs.  If GM crops can reduce costs - say by decreasing losses to pests, or by growing more effectively under drought conditions, or by decreasing the amount of purchased inputs in any way, then they might help the agricultural poor

But, if GM crops make farmers more dependent on purchased inputs, even while they raise outputs, the effect on the agricultural poor will be negative.  An interesting historical example of this happened in the American Midwest, when hybrid corn, which must be grown from purchased seed, fertilized and pesticided heavily, and supported by tractors, took over.  Output increased - but farm profitability decreased.  If farmers in Africa switched to Monsanto marketed Round-up Ready crops, their costs might go up dramatically because 1. they have to buy seeds from Monsanto instead of saving their own seeds from last year 2. they have to buy Round-up from Monsanto.  Meanwhile, increased production will probably lead to a reduction in market price.  uh-oh!

If GM crops are going to make a big difference in world hunger, it probably won't be because they increase corn productivity... for more details on this, from the folks who taught me all of my agricultural economics, read This paper which argues that the benefits from GM towards hunger will have to come from the crops that the poor grow and eat - which are often tubers or other locally important crops, which receive little public or private investment.

So in short, there are alot of other big problems with GM crops aside from the biodiversity concerns you mention.On News from the GM front. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 10 Responses

forest biomass and logging

One of the basic facts I learned in my ecosystem ecology and soil science classes is that carbon in terrestrial ecosystems is generally stored in the soil, not in the green and brown stuff (plants) sticking out of the soil.  The percentages vary, and I don't have a soil science textbook in my office today (if you are interested, most soil science and ecosystem ecology texts would have this data), but at the extreme end of low carbon storage in the soil are tropical rainforests.  I imagine most folks reading this have heard how rainforests are almost entirely above ground ecosystems - i.e. that they cycle nutrients very efficiently and don't have much nutrient content in their soils.  Well, about 50% of the organic matter in the rainforest is in the soil.  Most other forested ecosystems have signficantly higher percentages of their total biomass in the soil - the extreme is the boreal forests, where as much as 90% of the carbon storage is below ground.  Grasslands also have very high percentages of their carbon in the soil.

So if you are talking about the CO2 benefits/costs of burning biomass, you need to pay attention to what is happening in the soil.  Conventional logging tears up the soil quite a bit - which leads to a substantial release of CO2, although I'm not aware of any quantititave studies.  Of course, helicopter logging doesn't tear up the soil, but I imagine running those big helicopters releases even more CO2.  

Mark Harmon, a prominent forest ecologist at Oregon State University, has looked fairly closely at carbon storage in old vs. young forests, and in forest products.  He has several technical papers out on the question, a good start that you could find in a local library would be the 1990 paper in Science (coauthored with Bill Farrell and Jerry Franklin - Feb. 9th issue, Vol 247, No 4943, p. 699-702).  The basic conclusion is this: a very small percentage of harvested wood enters any kind of long-term storage - a high percentage of the total harvested is left behind as slash or as defective wood, a somewhat smaller percentage is lost in the mill (i.e. sawdust), and a high percentage of wood products have short lifetimes (only structural lumber used to make buildings, a small percentage of the total wood products, has any decent chance of not rotting or being incinerated in the first 20 years.  And while a tree might live 150 or 300 years, most buildings have significantly shorter lifespans).

The Forest Service and the wood products industry is putting alot of money into developing these biomass plants throughout the west (and other forested regions) to burn stuff that isn't commercially viable for other wood products production.  There are alot of unanswered questions about this approach.  One I have is how the emissions of non-carbon pollutants from these biomass plants compares to other emissions.  I know that regular wood burning (for heat) is a major source of really nasty stuff like particulates.  Perhaps they use more efficient boilers?

A final note - these stories tend to paint the biomass burned during wildland fires as a "waste," but wildland fires play an essential role in maintaining the ecological integrity of many ecosystems, including nearly all forested ecosystems in the western U.S.  The government spends billions of dollars (and kills and injures many firefighters) annually suppressing wildland fires  that are largely beneficial to fire dependent ecosystems.   Major initiatives are going on in much of the West to reintroduce wildland fire - but the timber and fire supression industries would prefer it if the federal land management agencies continued to subsidize supression and logging - and perhaps they will get some of their subsidized biomass power plants built in response to higher oil prices.On Is using trees for biomass a good idea? posted 4 years, 5 months ago 5 Responses

Not so hot veggie oil

The problem with all commercial biofuels is agriculture.  According to Richard Manning, the average calorie of food contains 10 calories of fossil fuel energy.  So if we take food (such as soy oil) and burn it in our cars, we ought to divide our MPGs by 10.  Not to mention that agriculture is a major source of NOx emissions even without all those fossil fuels.  And the only reason soy can compete with gasoline is the massive government subsidies used to grow it.  If we reverted to animal or human powered agriculture, the embodied energy would drop, but the horses and people would eat all those surplus calories.  A friend of mine at Stanford did his undergraduate thesis comparing the net emissions of biodiesel and gas as auto fuel, and found that biodiesel was much better at the tailpipe, but that it was worse when the full production costs were calculated.  Unfortunately, I lost track of said friend, and I don't have a copy of the paper, nor do I know whether he published it.

Of course, recycling restaurant oil is using a waste product, and looks much better, but again, it seems problematic.  Do we really want to be dependent on restaurants that serve people really really unhealthy food (i.e. food that is deep fried)?  And how much waste restaurant oil is out there?  Today, there is plenty for all the hippies and eco-freaks doing veggie oil conversion - but if this catches on I'm sure it won't last long.

I don't mean to suggest we shouldn't try out alternative fuels, but we need to be cautious about these seeming technological magic tricks with biomass fuels.  Humans already appropriate a huge percentage of the earths primary productivity, and that is without major investments in biomass energy from the industrialized world.  If it seems too good to be true, its probably because it is.On Umbra on hybrids vs. veggie-oil cars posted 4 years, 8 months ago 11 Responses