All the Infrastructure, Trucks and Fuel You Can Shake a Stick At

Infrastructure

Moving food needs infrastructure. Growing that food needs infrastructure. Producing and storing just the right food to satisfy tastes and demands needs infrastructure. This kind of infrastructure needs resources in intensity.

We are running out of resources.

Trucks

Trucks move the majority of the food in this country to its final destination. Trucks need roads and bridges that can handle vast tonnage going over them over and over again, for years. Trucks need parts. Trucks need to be manufactured. Trucks need fuel. Fuel must be found, drilled for or grown, transported, refined, trucked to a fill station and finally sold. Those are the simple parts of the infrastructure. Break these simple parts down into the infinitum of their own infrastructures. These parts are contributing to the degradation of the land we all live on and the water we all drink. All this so we can continue as we are, without change and without modifying our habits.

Fuel

Fuel is best thought of as something to eliminate or minimize from our society and not something to produce in alternate ways so that current levels of consumption can be maintained.

Because

they can't.

That is part of the problem industrial society faces today. Current consumption levels of everything need to go down not stay the same or increase.

A good example of improper thinking in this matter is the idea that we can grow our fuel. Using food crops such as corn for biofuel is not something that could be sustained. Food is best used as food and fed directly to people. Corn is best as a food grain grown in companionship with other food crops, not mono-cropped as the majority of it is in this country.

Systems within nature interrelate, overlap and interact in ways that are not always noticeable until there is a grave problem. Growing fuel is not an interrelation. It is a profit maker for industrial agriculture which is contributing to the destruction of the whole world.

Do we need more energy? Do we need more power plants? More nuclear plants? Can’t we live within our limits? Can’t we find ways to change our habits so we can use less energy than is currently made? Can’t we live without the newest technological devices and gadgets? If so, maybe we can actually shut down power plants and not replace them.

Seeking alternative fuel sources to maintain current consumption sounds great and seems very “green”, but it is not sustainable. If consumption of fuel were to go down substantially and shift into renewable sources that do not deplete the land-base they are from, then maybe the fuel use could approach sustainability. But, this would mean more of an emphasis on changing people’s habits, awareness and consciousness,

not just technology.

Choices & When We Want It

I'm posting chapters early as I am able to do so. I will always be able to post on Wednesday nights late, but not always earlier in the week. There's some good food for chewing over coming up and I want to get several chapters posted and get some good discussions flowing.

The next two chapters begin to get at the center of what ails our culture and Industrial society as a whole.

Things to think about when reading these chapters are, how did our culture become what it is? Why did this happen? Why is it maintained in this way? Who benefits from this? Who does not benefit? Do you personally truly benefit? Is this helping our planet?

Choices

The fact that we in the U.S. can choose the food we buy, different foods for different meals, is a thing taken for granted by our society.

The fact that we can choose so much of what we buy means we have a responsibility tied to those choices. We are responsible for the consequences created by those choices. We are ultimately responsible for the actions of a company our dollars are supporting. It is too easy to say, “ I don’t run that company. I’m not responsible.” If our money goes to a company, then our money is funding its activities. We have a choice and a say as to where our money goes. The problem is that in this heavily corporate society, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to spend our money where it can actually do good. Sometimes, our choices are so restricted that we have no choice. The idea that if a corporation provides your food you have more choices

is a myth.

What drives your choices? We need to research what we buy, becoming our own experts. If we find something really good, we need to talk to people about it. Talk to people about what is made nearby and spread the word. Clue people into what isn’t made nearby. What things are made by the most egregious companies and to not buy those things. If small businesses such as manufacturers, food producers and food distributors don’t get support they will close. It takes a lot of work to reinvent those small businesses once they’re gone. Corporate run business would love to fill those voids and take your money for the benefit of their share holders.

The choice is yours.

When We Want It

We in the United States of America are a comfortable people. We are not used to lines, inconvenience or hardship. The vast majority of us have not lived through a depression, war rationing or poverty.

Doing without.

The vast majority of us have grown up having choices as to what to eat for each meal. Our diets are varied and full of foods that normally would not be available to us. We burn jet fuel to have foods that are completely out of season to us. We have stopped waiting and started moving food from long distances just to have it

when we want it.

By the time Europeans first came in contact with the Americas, there had been people living here for thousands of years. Most living within the rhythms of their environment, some not. Only several hundred years later this land is reduced to a former shell of its old self due to the philosophies, systems of power and world view brought here by the conquerors. These ideals still guide our system of governance, our corporations and other institutions within our culture. Now, the land cannot sustain the population without great intervention. This is the legacy we must wipe away.

Here Begins the Project

“Empowered, aware and engaged human beings will make sustainable decisions.”

Andy Gaertner

Sustainable Humans: Sustaining Ourselves

by Chris Koszalka

Begun August 2008, appreciating the beauty of many late night skies.

Finished January 2010, under a stunning full moon.

The natural world is where reality is.

The world where everything begins and will end.

Change

Every day at work I like nothing better than to create a lush, living canvass of beautiful produce. Tweak it and fuss over it until it’s just right. Every day, with every fruit and vegetable that I touch, I am very conscious of where it has come from, how far it has travelled, how it was raised and who else has also touched it on its long journey here, to us. Every day I think of ways that our entire food system can be modified, overhauled and made to be sustainable. Every day I come to the same conclusion.

Everything has to change.

Change is hard. Or not. It depends on the individual. Change in nature just is. It would be easier for most people if change could just be change. But it’s not.

Truth

A sub-atomic particle can be in two places at once. Two sub-atomic particles can be interconnected even though they are not inhabiting the same space or in the line of sight with each other. If one of these particles reacts to stimulus, so does the other one. These two seeming impossibilities are proven quantum phenomena.

Truth is a hard nut to swallow. It usually goes down with rough edges and gets stuck in our throats, having to be coughed out and beaten down with a mallet in order to get it soft enough to go down. Sometimes it has to be masticated by an expert in order for us to consider it palatable for swallowing. Such is our fate if we abdicate being an expert on a subject so someone else can tell us what is true.

Western industrial culture looks with derision at other cultures who believe the supposed impossible. Out of body travel, healing with plant spirits, communicating through dreams. Industrial Western culture calls these beliefs primitive and superstitious. Is the seemingly impossible, possible?

The truth is not universal.

Sustainability is Perpetual Motion

The Earth keeps on spinning. The various species on the planet keep on living. They are all governed by their environments, both extended and immediate. Within the last 10,000 years or so, humans have modified their environments so as to have a greater control over their personal existences. This is inexplicably linked to spiritual beliefs as well as culture. It is linked to systems of power such as governments and religions. At some point industrialized people lost sight of their actual role on this perpetually spinning earth. They have forgotten that it will continue to spin with or without them.

People’s actions directly affect their immediate environments. Industrialized people understand this because they modify their environments constantly. But, what they tend not to see are the far reaching effects of what they do right outside their homes. Everything we do affects something else and travels along a chain of consequences until the energy of our action dissipates. The more intense the action, the farther reaching are the consequences.

Dropping a Pebble Into a Pond VS Building a Nuclear Reactor

A pebble will create ripples on the surface of a pond and land on the bottom. Stirring up silt, it will disturb the critters that live there. Eventually the ripples subside, the silt settles, the pebble is buried in the silt and the critters go about their daily lives. A nuclear reactor will produce waste that could potentially poison the land for up to fifty thousand years. The benefit of -  mining uranium, producing radioactive pollution through the mining process, constructing the reactor, maintaining it for a potential 40 year life span while it constantly produces radioactive waste so it can heat water to produce steam to turn a generator turbine -  needs to be rethought. 

Footprints

Some prints may be deeper than others but ultimately are worn away by the earth without too much effort. Others may be made of concrete but the earth can make short work of that in its own time. Can you leave no lasting footprint after you have walked? Can you put back what you take from the land base where you live? The only way for anything to be sustainable is for this to happen.

What will end up happening in the future will not be easy. It will be easier to live, however, if we change ourselves now.

Yesterday.

Twenty years ago.

Fifty years ago.

Questions and Postulations

The Question

So, what is sustainable? There is no one and only definition. There are attempts at definitions. There are definite personal interpretations.

A Personal Postulation About Our Culture

In order to approach sustainability, our society and culture would have to be radically different.

We would have to be radically different. 

What it is

This Project

This project is the culmination of almost a year and a half of work and interviews. It deals with issues of sustainable food production and ultimately the sustainability of the human species on this planet. Touching on the parts of these issues seldom discussed, this project attempts to open new dialogue and new ways of approaching the topic. Showing that food is inextricably linked to other critical systems in our society such as energy production, environment, economy, health, and the fabric of industrialized society as a whole, this project attempts to tear through the media buzz words and get at the actual issues. Issues that are crucial in environmental stability and in human society as a planetary whole.

The Project and the People

This project is a conversation. It is a conversation about food, sustainability and all the issues, obvious or not, that connect with food production, distribution and ultimately consumption within industrial society. All the people I talked with are passionate about what they do. Their ages differ by as much as 68 years. Their life experiences vary as greatly as their views on sustainability. I have interwoven our ideas, thoughts and experiences to create this written work.

The Interviewees

Don Roberts - Local Grower - conversation contributed to - Water, societal vibrations, Infrastructure, Yes, No

book recommendation - Post-Petroleum Survival Guide Cookbook: Recipes For Changing Times

by Albert Bates, New Society Publishers, Canada 2006

Andy Gaertner - Local CSA Farmer, Montasory Instructor

conversation contributed to - Cuba, Education, Farming

book recommendation - As The World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial

by Derrick Jensen

Erin Altemus & Matt Schmidt - Local CSA Farmers

conversation contributed to - Farming

book recommendation - Animal Vegetable Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver

Crystal Halvorsen - General Manager, Menomonie Market Coop

conversation contributed to - Choices, Juneau Alaska, Food as Manufactured Goods, subsistence living

media to view - The Story of Stuff, by Anne Leonard  www.storyofstuff.com

Peter Kilde - Executive Director, West Central Wisconsin Community Action Agency

conversation contributed to - Collapse, peak oil

blog recommendations - Arch Druid Report - by John Michael Greer and ClubOrlov - by Dmitry Orlov

The Menomonie Homeschool Group  pre-teens and teens. A great group of young people - discussion group on Food Systems and Sustainability

discussions contributed to - Young People

movie to see - Idiocracy