Financial finagling in food and sustainability

Week three of the Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems class proceeded on in fascinating detail. We've been talking about sustainability and the design of food and farm systems. Sustainability can be thought of as the interactions of cultural, economic, social, institutional, and energy components in a system that have positive effects on the present, without compromising the future. The design of such a system has an end of healthy ecosystems and healthy communities, creating wellbeing for people and their environment in both the short and long term. Cultural are distinguished from social components in that the former have to do with identity (traditions, value systems, language), while the latter have to do institutions and systems of organization (political structure, systems of control and distribution).

One of the topics that came up during the course of discussion was the food price spikes we're seeing lately and the resultant riots around the world. The professor handed out an article on this from the January 15 New Zealand Herald:

The food riots began in Algeria more than a week ago, and they are going to spread. During the last global food shortage, in 2008, there was serious rioting in Mexico, Indonesia and Egypt. We may expect to see that again, only more widespread.

The article talks about poverty, climate change, world population, global consumption patterns, floods, drought, imports, local crop failures. Interestingly, it does not talk about commodity speculation in grains and other foodstuffs. I recalled a story written for Harper's Magazine by Frederick Kaufman about the food riots of 2008 and what led up to them: he specifically focused on the role of companies like Goldman Sachs and the issue of commodities futures in wheat and corn in the food crisis. The title says it succinctly: "The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it." (PDF)

Investors were delighted to see the value of their venture increase, but the rising price of breakfast, lunch, and dinner did not align with the interests of those of us who eat.

I did a little searching on the web and found the letter from Steve Strongin on behalf of Goldman Sachs in response to the article, Kaufman's reply to that, and an interview with Kaufman by Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now!

The economics of sustainability has to do with full costing: what's known as the triple bottom line or the related integrated bottom line. We talked about economy of scale (Mike Emers of Rosie Creek Farm is helping to teach the class, and he spoke about this): maximizing your inputs (money, equipment, time, labor, etc.) for the most efficient and best levels of use for what you have—a balancing of costs and benefits. Each size of operation has an economy of scale that best suits it. Craig Gerlach brought up "neighboring," a term I hadn't heard before. This is a practice where neighbor farmers will work in common to help each other. For example, community harvesting: farmers in a particular local showing up at one farm to help harvest that farmer's fields, then moving on to the next farm in a given area, and so on, until all of their fields are harvested. Bringing in the harvest is an old tradition, as is barn-raising. Farmers may also share equipment.

in a food system, how do the local, regional, and global food systems link and interact? How do the scales of agriculture affect diversity in ecology, society, culture? We talked about the size of a farm affecting its ecological diversity: monoculture tends to be the rule on the extremely large farm. Gerlach hastened to point out that the modern industrial standard of monoculture and resource exploitation could be replaced with a restorative system, using organic and rotational methods, on the very large as well as the small farm, and that diversification of crops can be done over time as well as land area.

"Nature is the model."

This led us to talking about the plains vs. the prairie, and the idea of place-based development of breeds and farming methods. Gerlach mentioned the work of Wes Jackson, who became concerned about erosion of topsoil in the US (famously in the Dust Bowl of the thirties, but still continuing), and ended up founding an organization called The Land Institute. Most grains we use are annuals; we till the land, sow the seed, harvest the crop, and then plow under the stubble. The institute describes the situation and their mission this way:

No method for perpetuating agricultural productivity exists. Our goal is to improve the security of our food and fiber source by reducing soil erosion, decreasing dependency upon petroleum and natural gas, and relieving the agriculture-related chemical contamination of our land and water. Our specific research is an innovation for agriculture, using "nature as the measure" to develop mixed perennial grain crops as food for humans where farmers use nature as a standard or measure in making their agronomic decisions. Over 75 percent of human calories worldwide come from grains such as wheat and corn, but the production of these grains erodes ecological capital. Our research is directed toward the goal of having conservation as a consequence of agricultural production.

The classic documentary, The Plow that Broke the Plains, brought the problem of tilling and erosion to public attention in 1936. The sound is pretty bad on this, but it's an interesting piece.



"A healthy, well-integrated community needs to be integrated with its food," said Gerlach, and I agree. That means the consequences of agricultural economics has to be connected to the consequences of agriculture. Food, economics, human happiness: you can't rip off one sector without hurting the others.

Previous posts in this series:

Food systems, policy, and foodsheds
Food systems and shizen
Sustainable food systems class

Cross posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Another video on a similar theme

Not one for the Banana Girls, though--a bit complicated for ukeleles, I think.

This is one song I'm going to learn how to play!

Aren't we just.

Still in Anchorage, still

Went to the conference this morning (after staying up way too late watching TV -- bad horror flicks with a gothic ghost twist and Knocked Up). Really excellent events this year. David Cohn of SpotUs was the presenter for two sessions, one on internet tools to enable journalists to do all kinds of exciting things, the other on models for community-funded journalism. There was also a panel on transparency and openess in government. Absolutely wonderful. I learned some amazing things today...

Anyway, called the airport to check on the flight. Everything was a go. Got there, blue skies, etc. And then, ta da, on weather hold. We didn't get to find out what that meant until 5:30, when they announced that all flights for the day were canceled. Why? well, the stuff that started falling out of the sky around then was ash. It looked like snow, it was so thick. Couldn't see the sun. Had to wait another hour to catch the bus back to town and check back into the hotel...read a lot of The Ecology of Commerce, however. (Really interesting book. More on this one later.)

So now I'm stuck here in Anchorage again, blogging away on the hotel's business computer, and, unless some miracle happens, I'll have no way home. Hans will be coming to get me. The library meeting will have to go on without me, which is probably good for the library, but which I would really have liked to have been at.

Plague o' Crud

I have been home sick for the last week. It's a cold that's going round, nothing much, just a laryngitic throat and a runny nose. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Except, of course, until yesterday I was in need of one or two lengthy (oh, four to eight hours) naps per day, and every time I woke up I coughed and hacked and spit up horrible green boogers. Drank a LOT of tea. A couple of times I thought I was getting better and went to the Eagle, briefly, to hand out papers (Hans fetched 'em from the printer), check out some movies from the library next door, or just see SOMEBODY other than felines and my Noble Spouse. (Nothing wrong with seeing the Noble Spouse, of course, but after a bit one craves a game of cribbage.) I did this twice, I think, and both times it was a Big Mistake. Nothing like an hour out to require at least six of recovery time. Gads. For "just a cold" it's been the nastiest, sneakiest, snottiest, underhanded little green virus it's been my misfortune to harbor in a long time.

I've been watching a ton of movies: The Fall, The Darjeeling Limited, Looney Tunes, X-Men 1 & 2, Men in Black, The Water Horse, Bridge to Tarabithia, Star Wars II: the Clones, the Californians, Die Another Day. There were a few others, too, but I forget now what they were. Mind fluff, mostly. Comedies that didn't take much thought. And I've been reading a lot of Piers Anthony.

I was hoping to go in to work tomorrow, but after the horrible hacking I endured today, I don't think the folks at the office will want to see me. I'm going to try working from home instead.

Icky, icky, icky.

Transvesterites

Well, our party was a huge success, if not as huge in numbers of people or movies we got to see. We ended up watching only one, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar. What a wonderful film. I love campy films, but this, while full of good old drag-queen silliness, was a serious drama as well as a good-natured comedy. Very different than, say, the science fiction musical Rocky Horror Picture Show, and much more like Priscilla Queen of the Desert.Patrick Swazey is great.

We had two men, one woman, and two girls cross-dressing. No genuine drag queens or transvestites showed up, alas. Nor any of my gay/lesbian/musical friends (and Leah FORGOT, the fink!). One cartoonist, one gem-cutter, a political activist (Republican turned Democrat), a geologist in a fez, a couple of boys of the cootie-worrying age, one teenager, lots of really excellent cooks, a few artists, a postal worker, and a gallery owner were among those who showed, though. Good eats, good company, and our fire didn't escape the fire pit. We had shrimp, chewy sourdough bread with salted olive oil, borscht, sauteed mushrooms, grilled chicken, grilled salmon, salad, melomel, wine, beer, mead, orange juice in a glass bowl glowing with light, cranberry juice, tea, roast beast. Lots of fun, and those of you who didn't show up MISSED OUT. Tough tuckus for you.

Pre-party cleanup

Hans and I have learned that, aside from keeping the dishes under control because we need something to eat off of, really the only way that we get motivated to clean the house is to have a party. So that is what we are doing this Saturday. This is ostensibly my (very) belated birthday party, but since my birthday was a month and a half ago, that's just a token excuse. We just want to have a clean house.

So yesterday I laid down sawdust next to the raised beds and on the path in the garden. The grass from the lawn is invading the herb bed with a vengeance, and making some serious inroads into the lettuce bed. It was amazing how much sunnier the beds became when I stomped down the grass and weighed it down with a pile of wood shavings. We'll see if this keeps the weedery down next year, too.

I cleaned up the greenhouse and the atrium, and Hans hauled away a carload of trash. I picked a handful of berries, and tidied the plastic bag avalanche (no pictures for the public of that monstrosity, alas. Then I cooked an absolutely fabulous dinner featuring roast slab pork and orangey-pink borscht-like lentil soup (with local vegetables, except for the lentils and leftover chicken bits). The Noble Spousal Unit did the dishes!

I've put a paper plate up in the bar ("Transvesterites Welcome") but people don't seem to realize it's happening. So, for those of our friends and relations who may be interested, it starts at 4 pm and goes on until the cows come home. Potluck, with games and music and movies all night: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and Kinky Boots. Ought to be a lineup to frighten the local homophobes away, I hope.

Today we'll continue the Grand Cleanup. Mopping is on the horizon. In the meantime, I'm going back to bed, as it's still really way too early in the morning, especially since I woke up at 4:30 am (too much rum last night--gives me insomnia).

Tuesday's Big Events: raft race movies & voting

Yes, indeedy, an action-packed, emotion-filled day!

First, there's voting:

behind Door #1, we get to decide if we want a gaming (read: gambling) commission established. Sooo, do we want pull tabs, etc. to continue to be operated as they are now? or do we want a commission which might later someday open us up to other gambling ventures? Or is that a commission that would offer us some clarity and help protect nonprofits? Hm. Well, neither the Anchorage Daily News nor the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner like this one.

Door #2: shoot, no shoot wolves, bears, or wolverines from airplanes. And what the heck is a biological emergency?

Door #3 (my favorite): publicly financed campaigns! I hadn't realized that anybody thought there was a down side to this one, but (natch) the News-Miner doesn't like it. Twerps. Nor does the guy who posted a negative cartoon and diatribe about it down at the Golden Eagle--he thinks that it will lead to a heavily left-wing slant to Big Gummint (apparently he doesn't realize that any political viewpoint can use this method--and he sure hasn't been paying attention if he thinks our current government is left-wing).

Door #4: the Big Money Glossy Advertising Spree initiative. Er, mining/clean water initiative. I've gotten more crap in the mail about this one than any other kind of advertising combined.

So, after you've made up your mind about these and voted (oh, yeah, and there's primaries, too), there's some nice relaxing watery silliness at the Blue Loon: Great Tanana Raft Classic movies from 1969, 70, and 71, starting at 6:30. And then, at 8:00 pm, there's more silliness of the zombie adventure variety (complete with Harrison Ford).

Hoo!

Surveillance state

From the abstract of Jack Balkin's recent paper published in Minnesota Law Review, "The Constitution in the National Surveillance State":

The question is not whether we will have a surveillance state in the years to come, but what sort of state we will have. The National Surveillance State poses three major dangers for our freedom. The first danger is that government will create a parallel track of preventative law enforcement that routes around the traditional guarantees of the Bill of Rights. The second danger is that traditional law enforcement and social services will increasingly resemble the parallel track. Once governments have access to powerful surveillance and data mining technologies, there will be enormous political pressure to use them in everyday law enforcement and for delivery of government services. Private power and public-private cooperation pose a third danger. Because the Constitution does not reach private parties, government has increasing incentives to rely on private enterprise to collect and generate information for it, thus circumventing constitutional guarantees. Corporate business models, in turn, lead companies to amass and analyze more and more information about individuals in order to target new customers and reject undesirable ones.

There's been some interesting discussions on Balkinization recently on surveillance and FISA. For those of you wondering about voting for McCain, he's right there with ol' George on invasive powers undreamed of by kings of yore: the guy voted to give the telecom giants immunity from prosecution for flouting the law and now says he'd do exactly what George did. Bush III, anybody?

Yet another reason for Truth Through Action (although I'm not a Democrat, this is a damn funny site). Check out their premier film, Blue Balled:

Book signing for the latest book

Esterite Jean Lester and Holger Jorgensen will be at Gulliver's today from 1 to 4, signing their new book. I'll be there with a few extra boxes, just in case we have hordes of aviation buffs who clean out the supplies Maria's already ordered.

And, I hope, I'll be having lunch with an old friend who is in town this week, Brian Wescott. Brian's an actor and movie producer, and has been living in California for a long time, but he grew up here, on Ester Dome. I haven't seen him in years. It'll be good to hang out and catch up.

Project Status Report and a few miscellaneous musings

For those of you interested in publishery doings, here's a little status report on the various book etc. projects:

Like a Tree to the Soil: paperback published, book signing accomplished, now working on the hardback!

Haines CD: I received the final list of readings and now need to make the final adjustments to the layout, then send it to Pat Fitzgerald and Susan Todd for checking. I'm looking forward to hearing this--I've never heard John Haines read his work.

Jamie Smith cartoon collections: I'll be sending out the revised RFQ to the printer this week (probably tonight); have to get a signature loan to cover the print cost, etc. I've got one galley each and now just need the sell sheets to send to potential distributors. Jamie came over yesterday and showed me oodles of cool posters he's done. He just gets better and better. Gangly Moose has been the recipient of much of his talent.

Mired in the Health Care Morass: blog in full swing (author on vacation for the nonce), advances received and going out to reviewers, main shipment expected before the end of the month, working on the sell sheet, and expecting the brochures next week. Gulliver's has scheduled a book signing for February 28, although in part that will depend on whether the books get here in time. Might be one week later.

Jorgy: This one's in layout, a slow slog. I'm still working on the graphics, as is Jean Lester, and the design, although pleasing, is a bit complicated, and so it's going slowly--and I hope to god there's no major layout changes, as I'll have to redo substantial portions of the book if so. I'm almost at the point where I have a page count and so can give the printer a final request for quote--and then a price! It's a very interesting history both of Alaska from the 1920s through the end of the century, and a personal tale of aviation in Alaska as experienced by a damn good Native pilot who flew with Northern Air Cargo, Wien, Munz, and a ton of other little airlines and air cargo services. I love books like this: I learn a lot of Alaska history. Jorgensen talks about segregation in Nome, hunting and trapping and mining in Haycock, flying the DEW line, mail runs, tricky airports, the kinds of planes he flew, being in the Alaska Territorial Guard and the Alaska Scouts, lots of interesting stuff. There's a bunch of nifty pictures, too.

Ann Chandonnet's poetry manuscript: I just received this, although Ann and I have been discussing it for a while. I'll be looking it over to make sure it's something that will fit the ERP.

Frank Keim's poetry manuscript: Frank and I are still discussing this, and we'll be meeting soon.

I have a few other manuscripts in the works, too, mostly concerned with local history.

And of course, that mainstay of my publishing career, the Republic (v. 10 n. 2, issue #107, Feb. 2008) is in the works as always. I've got a ton of submissions, mostly from men this month, not very many Esteroids. I still need a movie reviewer.

Did I want to sleep? I didn't want to sleep. I've had plenty of dreams and snoring in my youth, lots o' nap time. I can do this for a while. Sure.

Devine pillow fight

and no, that's not a typo. Hans and I watched Waking Ned Devine last night. I've seen it before, but it was delightful to see it again. I laughed so hard my sides hurt. For those of you who don't know this movie, it's about a tiny village (52 residents) on an Irish island. One of the residents wins the Irish lotto, and dies from the shock of it. His buddies find him dead with the winning ticket in his hand, and (after a beatific vision) realize that Ned wanted them to have some of his "chicken dinner". So now the trick is to get the whole village in on the scam...

Among the scenes that live in my memory is of the old farts riding a motorcycle at top speed, in the nude, through the countryside...

Anyway, after recovering from laughter, Hans and I had a marvelous pillow fight. He knows some tricky martial pillow art moves, though, complete with sound effects and "Haieeeee!" exclamations. Very good sideways feints. But I got him pretty good, until he trapped both my pillows (we were double-fisting it). Of course, then it was a draw, because he couldn't whap me without letting go of my weapons of down-filled might, whereupon I'd whap him upside the head good. (He had to take off his glasses.)