Farming

Farming

One example of sustainable farming is an Indigenous tradition from the Oneida. It is called The Three sisters. The Three Sisters is an integrated agriculture system of growing corn, beans and squash together in a mutually supporting way. Industrial culture calls this method, intertillage.

Corn, beans and squash are grown together in the same mound. The corn provides a tall structure for the beans to grow on, the beans return and fix nitrogen into the soil for the corn, squash spreads out between the mounds to provide ground cover and limit weeds. These are complementary foods, meaning that when they are eaten together, or when two are eaten together, they work in unison to provide complete protein, minerals, amino acids and vitamins. The crop yield is more than enough to sustain large populations of humans. 

The traditional Oneida farm is called Tsyunhehkwa (Joon hey-kwa), meaning literally, “It provides life for us”.

Today, the Oneida food system has three parts - 

The Production Division - Shakoh^ta?slu.ni’he?, meaning, “He prepares the fields for them”.

The Processing division - Tsi?tkutekhuwa.y^he’, meaning, “Where they put the food away”.

And, the Distribution Division - Lutunhetsla?nikulale?, meaning, “They look after all living things”.

They look after all living things.

How many retail food outlets take this up as their mission? How about food distributors or wholesalers? What a different world it would be if this was the view of all entities associated with food production. 

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms are a bridge between the sustainable and unsustainable. People in many cities seek out CSA farms. Most CSA farms need little marketing effort, as they find there is no lack of people wanting shares. But how do city customers view the  CSA entity as a food source? Are they simply buying a box of groceries, or are they seeing this as an alternative to a faulty system of food distribution? Or, somewhere in between?

Many CSA farms require that their members work on the farm itself. These workers help the farmers offset the enormous amounts of labor that it takes to run the farm and get the crops to harvest. The CSAs that have a working membership also have the highest retention rate of members. People get connected to the farm if they work there. They see where their food comes from first hand. They help grow and mature it. They help harvest and prepare it. They also help deliver it. They participate directly in their food source. They see the effort and love it takes to produce food for themselves and for other people.

In industrial society, and especially in cities, there is a profound disconnect from the source of people’s food. Food is purchased in stores and how it got to the store is almost never witnessed. Possibly, the delivery trucks are seen, and that is all. But, by working the land to produce their own food, people who live in cities regain the connections they have lost. They become part of the real world again.

Many CSA farms are attempting to be more sustainable. In the context of CSA farms, sustainability is choosing what works in their area. Besides trying to live in equilibrium with the land - taking from the land as much as the farm gives back to the land - farmers are using techniques adapted to their climates. Hoop houses, green houses, cover crops and crop rotation can help. But, in cold climates the green houses have to be heated above 32 degrees in order to produce food in the winter. To do this by burning fuel is counterproductive, expensive and not sustainable. Using passive heating techniques to offset or eliminate the use of fuel is a much more sound approach.

If done correctly, farming puts back into the soil potentially everything it takes. However, this is a very difficult goal to achieve. It requires careful planning and knowledge from the farmer. It requires a society willing to support the farmer’s efforts and to do without when conditions dictate it. Labor, knowledge, commitment, community and a love of the earth are what is needed for a more sustainable farming future.

Farming is very difficult. In today’s society many farmers purchase some form of labor saving input for their farm, like sprays, compost or machinery. The machines have to be built, parts have to be made, fuel to manufacture the machines has to be drilled for, transported, refined, transported again and finally used. Sprays and compost have to be manufactured, trucked to the stores so they can be bought, and so on.

A family farm or independent farm has a very difficult time making a living solely from farming. The farmers often have jobs outside of the farm in order to maintain a steady and consistent cash flow. Some farmers cannot make ends meet and quit, moving back into the cities. Those who continue cite the amount of labor and how hard it is to produce food for others. But they also cite how enjoyable farming is. They believe in the system of food production they are participating in. They are passionate. They are in touch with the Earth.

However, as farms get larger, the work load increases to the point where a farmer must use more machinery to farm, thus making the farm less and less sustainable. A large, fully mechanized corporate run farm cannot be sustained without vast amounts of infrastructure behind it, nor can a small family farm using machinery and goods that are factory made. The factories that manufacture all these things do not put back.

One model for an alternate farming structure is the Old Order Amish style of farming. In this style of farming, few machines are used. Transportation is not motorized. Agriculture is done by human and animal power. Fertilizing is done by composting and using the manure produced by animals. Yields are substantial enough to produce surplus. This surplus is sometimes sold or traded using a communally owned truck. Community structure is mutually supporting. Homes and out buildings are built by hand and by members of the community.

Resources are shared

not sold.

The future of local agriculture, and quite possibly all food distribution, is that farmers must ultimately unify in small, localized organizations to pool resources and to strengthen themselves as individual farmers. This can be extended to the surrounding populations who could pool with the farmers, sharing their labor and their resources in a mutual relationship and creating an interdependent community.

There was a time in human history when the entire surrounding population would come out and harvest the crops that they all planted together on land that they all shared. They all lived and worked in accordance with the seasons. Everyone grew their own food together for the whole community. The community worked together. Today, the seasons are heralded by retail merchandise changes. Only a few people are farmers. Most everyone else buys their food from a store. 

In this country all people can be fed with organic based agriculture, especially if people change their eating habits and expectations. But this takes labor and knowledge not machines, chemicals and manipulated genes. To do this there need to be more farmers, not necessarily more land under tillage. The corporate and mono-crop operations need to be broken up into smaller farms owned by more farmers. Less plants need to be grown to feed animals for slaughter or to provide ingredients for processed foods or to manufacture fuel. More plants need to be grown to be fed directly to people. The land needs to grow different plants and not all the same plant. There needs to be diversity. There needs to be companion growing, intertillage and the mindset of The Three Sisters. There needs to be a greater attachment of those who live in cities to their food supply.

There needs to be a greater awareness of the rhythms of the Earth.

There need to be more gardeners.

There need to be more gardens

everywhere.

“If we’re not sustainable or living a sustainable life the Earth will figure it out, and that will be OK.”

Erin Altemus

Develop Devolve Sustainable Development

Develop.

Devolve.

Devolution.

Development.

devolve - de=down, volvere=to roll, to pass to another, 

develop - de’=apart, voloper=to wrap, to make fuller, bigger, better, etc., to come into being or activity,

Land is in a state of high evolution. The topsoil is in itself like our skin. It is a living thing that serves a vital function. It teams with interrelating organisms that provide a fertile base from which other living organisms can grow or gather their food. Wetlands filter surface water so it can find its way back into the water systems to support life. Forests and prairies provide vital ecosystems that support more interrelating life. And yet, we say that land such as this is “sitting around doing nothing”. We say we need to develop it even though the land has reached the highest possible state of development. To develop land is to devolve it. To bury the land under homes, shopping malls, business districts is considered by our society to be useful. Now the land is making someone money. It is actually ruined. Even turning a prairie into a producing farm field is also a form of devolution. Ironically, farm land is considered worthy of development. It isn’t making enough money. It’s only feeding people.

As long as the development perspective is kept, we can be assured that our choices of what can be done with our land-base can certainly evolve to a much higher state.

Sustainable Development

There is no such thing. Sustainable development is a term used to market a way of thought. The way of thought which says that someone can continue to profit from the land at the expense of the land and the whole earth, forever.

Land cannot continually be strip mined and clear cut. Homes cannot continually be built. The economy cannot continue to grow. Land is finite. The environment is finite. The world is finite. To think that we can continue to take without putting back and to think that this situation will go on forever, is ludicrous.

We are full of human hubris. We are not special. We are an integral part of what is, no more or less than the tiniest life form. We don’t like to think this because if it is true, we would then have to be accountable for our actions.

Power

Power

Power needs to be shared. And, those in power seldom share it willingly. Those with resources seldom give them up unless forced. Which is how our society came to be - by taking resources by force, violence and deceit. Which is why our culture and society is faced with troubles now. It does not know how to give back as much as it takes. And, it is used to taking what is not given.

It gets what it wants when it wants it.

Our culture and our society is out of kilter. Like a wobbly potter’s wheel or an unbalanced tire of a car, our society is not centered. It has been wobbling severely for some time. This continued vibration causes problems. Eventually shaking something loose and jamming the system or critically breaking it.

There are symptoms of the wobble. Symptoms unique to industrialized cultures and societies with manipulated populations. Cancer, depression, schizophrenia and suicide being the worst. Restlessness, not being able to focus and dissatisfaction are the lower end of symptoms. These are things that come from our environment. An environment we as a culture and society are allowing to happen.

If our society and culture is damaging, then we need to change it. The problem for us is that the existing societally acceptable means of change are set up to not work. The true means of change are not going to be acceptable to the society that needs to change. The transition will be difficult. The only true and lasting way societies and cultures have ever changed is over long periods of time and with difficulty, coupled with a total collapse of the existing system of power. The key to lasting change that will actually benefit the planet is to not go back to a similar system of power.

Scope, Profit & Greed

Scope

Any city, with the right climate, in the vicinity of a farming population can do what Havana and Belo Horizonte did. But the problem comes with distance. With 2.8 million people, Chicago is about the same size. The climate is not tropical but will yield spring, summer, early fall crops and with the right equipment and plants, and some winter crops as well. Farmers would have to traverse Chicago’s suburban sprawl. In order to get to the central city it could take over three hours for some in bad traffic. Chicago has lost its direct access to food. The sprawl has eaten up those very farms that could have supported the city. That’s considered development.

However, much of the land in the suburbs could be made into communal or public gardens that could produce surplus. Large private lawns could be converted to garden space. But, when the suburbs were built the topsoil was stripped and sold to farms. The soil there now would be marginal at best and take years to build up to past levels of fertility. It would be smart to start the process of soil recovery sooner rather than later. Without a crisis it takes the will of the people to make things happen. With a crisis, the government mandates it.

Havana and Belo Horizonte are not typical. They are models for all the worlds urban centers as to what is possible. The situation in Cuba could become a reality for any industrialized country with a sudden cut off of fuel. It shows that if faced with a crisis, industrialized cities and farms can survive without the industry. People can make do with less. People will have less land to grow grass on and more gardens to cultivate. People will drive less and walk more. But, they are fed and they are healthier. Belo Horizonte shows that if the people want to, they can end their own food supply problems before there is a crisis. Belo also shows people that they have rights beyond what the ruling classes say they have. Belo’s model shows that no one should be allowed to take those rights away in order to make a profit.

Profit

Corporate sustainability is rooted in profit. From a corporate point of view to be sustainable is to survive as a corporation. And, the CEO is bound by law to take advantage of any situation that will increase profit for the investors and the share holders. If being green is profitable then the corporation will be green. They don’t become green because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes them money and gives them power and control. That is the same reason corporate behavior destroys the planet’s ecosystems:

For money, power and control.

Corporate profit is different than independently owned, small business profit. It is different than an independent farmer’s profit. Corporate profit is extra. After all expenses are paid, after payroll is met, After taxes have been paid, after donations to charities have been made, after the buildings have been taken care of, after money has been set aside for business improvements, what is left over is the profit. The extra. The more than necessary. This extra does not go to feed people who need it. It does not go to house people who need housing. It does not go to increase benefits or pay the workers more. It certainly does not go to permanently fix the damage to the environment done by the corporation. It goes into the pockets of the investors. And this amount of profit must stay the same or increase. Nothing may stand in the way of profit.

Nothing.

Greed

Everyone can get paid well and have benefits if a business is non-profit or not for profit. So why do we have for profit hospitals now? Why do we have for profit food businesses? Why do we have for profit anything when all can be provided if businesses were run as non or not for profits? Because the investors would not make money. And, it’s the investors who put up the money to start new businesses so they can make more money and control more businesses.

What if the money came from somewhere else?

In a highly evolved society, profit cannot even be a factor. Food needs to be made available to all people regardless, with no strings attached. All the food necessary to maintain a complete, healthy human being connected to the food and the Earth. Basic needs such as healthy whole food, clean and safe water, clean air, whole body healthcare and healing services, safe and healthy housing, education systems that nourish and develop the whole person, these things need to be available to all people. If profit is eliminated from the equation then the above becomes possible.

A non-profit hospital? A non-profit grocery store? Free water from municipalities? Non-profit housing? Free heat? People’s basic and fundamental needs should not be for profit. No one should be exploiting another human’s need to feel secure and safe and healthy. No one should be exploiting someone’s need to eat and feed their family. No one should stand in the way of someone being able to be educated to a point where they can reach their personal full potential. No one should be allowed to exploit and profit from the destruction of the Earth, its environment or ecosystem. No one. These exploitations in industrial society have lead us, as a planet, to a pivotal and critical time. These exploitations need to end

now.

Brazil

Apologies for the late posting.

The following chapter covers another example of urban successes dealing with food and sustainability of cities. Brazil has implemented nation policies to reallocate distribution of food so as to end hunger, giving impoverished city people access to quality, locally grown food at a price even they can afford. What started as a local undertaking in the city of Belo Horizonte, has become national policy. And this happened without a crisis. What would need to happen in the US to implement such policies here?

A change in our society. A change in our perception of how our society works. And most of all, a change within ourselves.

Brazil

Belo Horizonte, a city of 2.5 million people has ended hunger without a major crisis to spur its government into action. The government did it on its own.

In 1993, a new mayor, Patrus Ananias, declared food as a right of the citizenship. His administration went further and said that if you, the citizen, are too poor to buy food in the market you are no less a citizen and that they, the government officials, are still accountable to you. Where in our culture and country do public officials say these things or make such pronouncements and then actually act on them?

Belo’s population already participated directly in government by being part of a “participatory budgeting” process. By directly overseeing how the officials spent the city’s money, the involved populace was a check and balance that made the new food policies possible. Within the first six years Belo’s food-as-a-right policies were enacted, more than 31,000 people began participating in the budgeting process. A doubling from before the policies were enacted. People were interested.

Under the new policies, farmers gained choice spots within the city to sell their produce directly to the population. The farmers were not exploited by a for-profit system of food distribution.  The producers of the city’s food benefited directly from their labor.

The new city policies created ABC markets. ABC is a Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices”. The market owners could set up shop in the best spots in the city and sell produce at market prices, but they had to sell about twenty healthy items at only two thirds the going rate. Another thing the government had the market owners do to give back to the community from which they made their profits, was to drive produce trucks every weekend to poorer areas of the city which did not get the benefit of affordable markets.

The mayor’s policies also benefited the children in the schools. Federal money that was once used to buy corporate, processed food went to buy local, whole food for school lunches. The policies created extensive community and school gardens. The policies also created three large and several small restaurants called “Restaurante Popular” or, “People’s Restaurants”. They serve mostly locally grown food at around fifty cents per meal. Eighty five percent of the People’s Restaurant’s patrons are low income but no one has to prove they are poor to eat there. There are no strings attached. People have retained their dignity.

Another way that the government is working for the people is to have transparent pricing in the marketplace. In cooperation with a local university a price survey of forty five basic foods and household items is done at dozens of shops. This survey is posted online, at bus stops, on television, on radio shows and in newspapers. In this way the market is kept honest and people know where the cheapest prices are for the things they need most.

Belo Horizonte’s hunger ending initiatives cost the city two percent of its budget. The government in Belo fought to show that the state is not a terrible and incompetent administrator. They are showing that the state does not have to provide everything, only to facilitate. Now, the initiatives of the Patrus Ananias administration have evolved into a federal program that is helping to end hunger in Brazil as a whole. Given time, this may succeed.

In the U.S. watchdog groups uncover price fixing and manipulation. Watchdog groups uncover questionable food practices and ingredient use.  These watchdog groups are an outgrowth from a system that refuses to be held accountable to the general public it is supposed to serve. What if Belo Horizonte’s system was adopted for ingredient sourcing? For farm practices? What if mandatory labeling of GMO, GEO, irradiated, cloned, nano-modified or enhanced food and products existed? Corporations say changing their labels is too expensive. However, label changes are routine. A new look, a new ingredient added, a special run of a product during a holiday, are types of changes that occur throughout the year. Not being able to place some kind of a designation on their labels due to expense is a flimsy excuse at best, but an excuse that was considered good enough to stifle resistance. We need to not be so accepting of excuses.

To end hunger in our cities is easy. It takes the will of the governed as well as the government. It takes time. It takes knowledge and work. But it does not take as much money as people think. Relative to the cost of a military weapons system

it takes very little money

indeed.

Cuba

This next chapter is primarily sourced from my talks with Andy Gaertner, who visited Cuba while in the Peace Corps. The numerical statistics were gleaned from numerous sources. These numbers would vary widely from source to source. Based on the bias of the sources and the varying contexts from which they were presenting the numbers, I gave them a best guess. Connected to what Andy was saying in our talks I believe the numbers I present here are accurate.

Cuba

After the big Soviet pull out of 1989 and U.S. embargo, Cuba found itself not able to internally support the mechanized system of farming it had become dependent on. There was immediate shortage and hunger. There was no fuel to transport the food.  Nor was there fuel to refrigerate the food in order to store and transport it. Havana, the capital of Cuba, a city of 2 million people at the time, had no way to feed its populace.  

For three years the people of Havana had hardship. During this time they started to figure out their own problems. People concentrated on producing for themselves what they needed. The government set up a system of extension workers to help urban gardeners get the knowledge and supplies they needed. The government also made decisions that had to be followed. All vacant land was appropriated and made available for food production. Scientists were tasked to devise systems for urban agriculture that would maximize efficiency and yield. Within five years after the Soviet pull out the crisis had abated.

Currently, the population of Havana is roughly 2.2 million people. They are fed but they have less food than before. Their diet is limited to what is available at the time. There is less space to live as the land is necessary for food production. Thirty percent of Havana’s available land is under cultivation and is made up of two hundred gardens. These gardens produce seven crops a year and up to ninety percent of Havana’s fruits and vegetables, all from within the city’s borders. Sixty percent of Havana’s total food is produced inside the city. Forty percent, mostly animal products, comes from the countryside. Imagine a city the size of Houston, Texas (2.2 million), and a slightly larger Chicago (2.8 million), doing the same.

However, Cuba is a tropical country. In the upper Midwest, winters make the seven crops per year an improbable goal. Midwest farming can produce crops year round with the right techniques, technologies and plants that are adapted or indigenous to the area. But, the people would have to make a radical diet change. It would also take an intensive amount of infrastructure to make this kind of system happen, a sustainability problem in and of itself. Can this work here if it had to? Why can’t this process begin before a crisis does happen? Before the infrastructure to build the gardens is difficult to come by? Can the food system change now and not when it is forced to?

Of course. All that needs to happen is for the people to want it to and be willing to do the work.

In Havana, it was theorized that when the crisis of shortage abated, the people in the cities would become less interested in food production. The opposite happened. Interest grew. Since there were no for profit corporate systems controlling food production in Cuba, the people who worked the gardens got to experience the direct benefit of their labor. What this kind of agriculture did was to connect people to their food source - the land. They ate more fresh foods. And, coupled with the physical nature of gardening, walking more and riding bikes because there was no fuel, people became healthier. The use of plants for medicine grew as there weren’t as many pharmaceuticals available. Hospitals practiced less interventions. Currently, the infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than the United States. All this with much less industry, importation and infrastructure.

Why can’t this be our reality?

Cities

I'm posting early today as the Fall Equinox is approaching. Below is the chapter entitled Cities, with a supporting comment. Please read thoughtfully and share your views.

Cities

The population of the U.S. is growing. In 2001, the U.S. Census Bureau concluded that in 50 years, by birth or immigration, the population of this country could increase by 120 million. Currently, there are about 285 million people in the United States. By the year 2050 that totals 405 million people; roughly a 40% increase over today’s population. All these people will need food, housing, energy and, if our current system is still in place, employment. The land does not increase. The resources do not increase. The majority of this population will live in cities. The cities in the United States do not produce their own food. The vast majority of everything a city resident eats must come from outside of the city.

Agriculture allowed for the creation of cities.

The town where I used to live has three large grocery stores and a co-op. There is on average three full days of food within the stores themselves. Three meals a day for a population approaching 15,000 people. Just three days. The people who live there are dependent on a steady supply of food that is trucked in. The city, however, is not isolated. There is ready access to the farms that surround it, to the woods and water. It is easy to leave the city itself and access the natural world.

Compare this to the Chicago metropolitan area, with a population around 8.15 million, with 2.8 million people residing in the city proper. The suburbs stretch for sixty miles in various directions. A city that, especially for the people who live deep within it, is very difficult if not impossible to leave. The city is isolated from the natural world of forests and water. Lake Michigan is accessible for the coastal dwellers. There are the patches of woods called Forest Preserves which actually have deer populations. There are community gardens in places. But, for the most part the food is very very far away.

Cities of any size have one thing in common: They must constantly take from the land. For the most part, they give nothing back. Municipal sludge does not count as it contains the toxins of the city’s organic wastes. Leaf composting is a bit helpful. 

Cities are useful, though. They are useful to the system of power. People are concentrated and made dependent on the infrastructure that the system of power provides - electricity, water, food, etc. The inhabitants of the cities will profess the system’s value. They will fight to keep this system because to not keep it means their lives must radically change, quickly. They would have to change their habits. They would have to change their way of being within the world. They would have to change the way they relate to the world. This is a hard nut to crack.

If the cities of the world vanished and the people who live in them had to live in the surrounding land, the Earth could not support them all. There simply is not enough habitable land to support the people who live on the planet at this time. The existing land must be used for food production and not for living on.

Unless there is a massive die off of people in the United States, which is a possibility, we here are stuck with the cities as dwelling areas for the majority of people. So, how are the cities to be made more sustainable? How can the existing city populations exist in greater harmony with the Earth? How can they support themselves instead of having to rely on trucked in foods and non-renewable energy?

Feeding Cattle Grain

In the last section I included a critique of the dairy industry and their add campaign of "Got Milk?".  I want to be clear that I am not against dairy farmers, cattle ranchers or any farmers, for that matter. I am, however very critical of their "industries".  A small dairy farmer is not the dairy industry. The dairy industry is factory farms, international food corporations, marketing departments and multi million dollar add campaigns. The small dairy farmer is held captive by the prices set by the dairy industry's control of the market. In my memory I have many instances where small dairy farmers dumped their milk in protest of low prices. If small family farms were the dairy industry would they not be sharing in the profits of that industry?

Currently the dairy industry imports dairy products from countries as far away as China so as to have a less expensive base of dairy ingredients for processed foods like flavored chips and cheese poofs. This increases the dairy industry's profits. This, even though there is a surplus of milk produced domestically. This process further undercuts the small dairy farmer. Do we have milk yet? 

In this next section I critique the meat producing industry, not the farmers involved. An industry that has, like the dairy industry, successfully convinced us that we have to eat more of their products than necessary. This is how all food industries operate. This is how business operates. They must get the population to eat or buy as much of their product as possible. This makes them money. This makes the investors profit.

To stay healthy, do we really have to eat meat with every meal? Do we have to have a meat ingredient in every dish we cook? Where does that shrink-wrapped-on-styrofoam steak come from? It's now just another product to buy. Where does that dollar burger come from? It's a convenient meal on the go. What about those eggs? Do all eggs have paper thin shells? That crispy bacon, is it always so uniform in its fat content? How do they get it to be low fat?

The First People ate meat. They had what we now call a traditional diet. The difference is they hunted their meat. The animals lived a life that was their own. The animals were free to roam and live in the world. There was a balance of hunter and prey. The hunters revered their quarry and viewed the animals as sacred because they were a life giving food source, as well as a source for tools, clothing and shelter. The animals were integral to The People. Through its factory farms our society breeds, confines, abuses and slaughters the animals it eats. Our process completely devalues the relationship between people and animals. Our process creates disconnection from the Earth and all that lives on it, even ourselves.

We can domesticate animals and still have a connection to them. We can raise animals for our food without devaluing the fact they are alive. We do not eat products. We eat living things as all else in nature does. But we insist on separating ourselves from nature, from the Earth, from our food as much as possible. We create a barrier from the visceral act of killing our food. The majority of us do not kill to eat. We pay someone to do it for us.

Here is the next chapter.

Feeding Cattle Grain

To make a more sustainable food production future for ourselves as a population, we need to change our habits and assumptions about food. We need to eat less animal products. We need to eat less milk, eggs, cheese and especially less meat.

To raise animals for slaughter in a modern, mechanized way to feed as many people as currently consume meat is a very resource intensive and wasteful method of producing food. Grain must first be grown. The ground turned and plowed. The seeds planted. The fertilizers made. In the case of conventional agriculture, fertilizers are made out of extremely toxic petrochemicals using energy intensive processes within factories. The fertilizers are then applied. The plants harvested. The grain separated then processed into feed. Trucked to a warehouse. Trucked to a feed store. Bought by the farmer and finally fed to their cattle. Just so someone can eat the meat of a cow. Only ten percent of the grain fed to a cow becomes edible body mass. It is more beneficial and more efficient to feed people the grain directly rather than to feed grain to animals who are then slaughtered and fed to people.

Pasturing cattle is more efficient than grain feeding the cattle for slaughter. It would be better and simpler to eat the grain directly and eat less of pasture raised meat, or none at all. Changing our habits could have a direct impact on how food is produced and allocated.

If cheap, easily accessed energy is not available to the agricultural industry, grain feeding of cattle will become cost prohibitive. Rather than eating more meat because there is more of it available due to grain feeding, we would then be eating less because there is less produced, or it would become too expensive to afford as a staple food. Or, our meat production industry would pasture feed their cattle and produce less beef for consumption, driving demand down. Or, we could just eat less beef demanding it be pasture raised because it’s one way to help the planet survive, sustain ourselves as a population and feed more people.

We have a choice.

Factory Food

Food as Manufactured Goods

Factory food has been completely filled with unnecessary extra ingredients. Some of these ingredients are toxic to our health. To manufacture food takes more water than to grow it. Factory food pollutes our bodies as well as our water. In many cases, factory food costs less to buy than whole, fresh food. How come food that has more ingredients, has had more research and development, is trucked around the country, has hardly any real nutrition, pollutes our environment and our bodies costs less than whole, unprocessed foods coming from local farms?

Economy of scale. More is produced in faster ways whether we need it or not. Then, instead of rotting, it can be stored in a giant 60,000 square foot warehouse that has been turned into a freezer. A freezer the size of a city block.

Marketing. Got Milk? We don’t really need to drink so much milk. Do cows really need to be injected with hormones to produce more of what we don’t really need?

Consider the organic TV dinner your local co-op carries. The 4 oz frozen macaroni and cheese dinner has many ingredients in it from all over the world, shipped refrigerated from their sources, manufactured into the dinner, kept frozen while warehoused, shipped to the store in a card stock box which has been covered with ink, shrink wrapped, palleted, wrapped and trucked in a freezer truck.

All this takes an enormous amount of energy.

When the store receives the dinner, there must be a back stock freezer, floor freezers and power 24/7. You, as a customer, have to have a freezer which has to have been manufactured, shipped and powered 24/7 in your home to store this future meal. And, you bought that dinner for $3.29 on sale. Yet, if the exact same product was to be manufactured locally by an independent maker of 4 oz macaroni and cheese dinners, you can be rest assured the cost would be so high that no one would buy them. Even though that dinner would have come from within fifty miles, had less energy and materials used in its manufacture, had its ingredients sourced from farms in the area and been delivered fresher to the store. Why? Economy of scale. Marketing. And, the simple fact that people cannot afford the real cost of processed food. $3.29 is a cost that has much hidden, indeed.

If we eat a diet focused on whole food we eat less food because our bodies use more of the food. Processed food has less nutritional value causing our bodies to want more. Marketing causes our minds to think we want more. More, larger, bigger portions that we can’t easily finish. The Humongous Meal. If we as individuals and as a culture can consciously change the way we eat and think about food, then this will lead us as a population to much healthier lives.

Our food system is now a chemical laden, genetically altered, cloned, nano technology laden, mechanized and industrialized system which produces excess. There is usually more supply than demand, driving down the price. Instead of working on farms people are working in food factories. Raw, whole foods are processed down into things like frozen dinners and cheese poofs instead of being fed directly to people.

This will change when the cost of fuel goes up dramatically. Processed food will begin to cost more because the profit margins for share holders must stay the same. Anything that cuts the profits will be passed to the consumer. This will drive down the demand. Prices of processed foods will rise further until there is even less demand. This is an over-simplification of the systems involved in the retail pricing of processed foods, but the end result is that factory made food will cease to be a choice for the majority of people in this country.

Habits will then have to change.

Water & Industrial Water Market Value

Water

“Know where your water comes from and where it goes when it leaves you.”

From Taj Mahal - given to me by Don Roberts

In the western U.S. water is subsidized for agriculture. Certified Organic as well as commercial agriculture crops are grown in deserts and irrigated with surface water. This water is diverted from sources up north in California and from the Colorado River. The Colorado river is a polluted river, like most in this country. This water is not processed to remove the contaminants. This water becomes part of the food we eat. There has been so much diversion of the Colorado river that it no longer reaches the ocean. It can then be argued that there is that much less pollution entering the oceans of the world.

Industrial Water Market Value

Without a healthy water-base life cannot be healthy. If life does exist with an unhealthy water-base it will mirror that water-base.

Through the existing industrial infrastructure comes the pollution and the toxicity that destroys our water; hence, sealing the infrastructure’s, the culture’s and the society’s own doom.

There are corporations buying water rights from municipalities to provide water for the populace at a market value. There are corporations around the world succeeding at getting control of water rights so they can sell the water at market value. Water can never be reduced to market value, because it is a life giving right

not a product.

The argument goes that if companies had to pay more for the water they use in their manufacturing processes then they wouldn’t pollute it. Really? 

Assigning a market value for water only makes water more expensive and consequently only gives the biggest companies access to the water-base. This means that those companies get to exercise more control over the water and the population that depends upon it. This means that the population ultimately pays for cleaning up their drinking water. When water has a market value, poor, marginalized populations are going to lose access to water they can drink, pollution is going to happen anyway and corporations are going to make a lot more money. This means that the populace loses. The corporations win. In exchange, the population gets to keep buying cheap stuff when they want it. Business as usual keeps going. Are we willing to have this kind of trade off?

Instead of charging companies more for water thinking that they won’t pollute something they paid a lot of money for, we need to hold them accountable for the pollution they cause and make them clean the water they pollute. Be it ground water or surface water, corporations can still have cheep water. But then, if they pollute this water it won’t matter what the cost is to clean it up. They would have to clean it. The polluters must fix the problems they caused. Not the government, not the people who live there

but the polluters.