The class has moved on to a new unit discussing stuff, and our obsession with it or Affluenza.
To start off I will give the definition for Affluenza: "A painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more." (Wiktionary, 2009)
The basic idea and emergence of Affluenza was spawned from the ideals that surround Western living as well as the footprint:
o Seek fulfilment in consumer goods
o Always want more, conformity required
o Deep dissatisfaction, emptiness, anxiety
o Work, rush, overtime
o Stress, disease, social effects
o Values individualism not relationships, family, community
There is evidence for Affluenza in the forms of the larger homes being built and bought, increasing material expectations of youth and declining rates of happiness. What contributes to this social disease? Well the giving and receiving of gifts for one (however I personally fell this is a reference to more expensive and outlandish gifts rather than a book or CD as items like that are simple and have a long time enjoyable guarantee) more and more time and focus being spent on careers rather than family and living in the moment without looking ahead or planning for the future.
We also watched a video from a series that explains Affluenza and how it affects the world in a humorous yet intellectual manner:
http://www.storyofstuff.com/
Now we come to the Blog Reflection:
- Consider the affects of Affluenza that you see around you
- Do you see it in yourself, your friends, family, North American Society
- Can you take action to combat Affluenza?
Do I see Affluenza in my family? Yes, over the years my family has given each other gifts and bought ourselves numerous items and trinkets. One section of our basement is a little cluttered as we have begun to sort through items and clothes etc that we feel or know we have no need for and donate the to Diabetes or Salvation Army. We've begun to cut back on our spending a bit and as a result of said clutter because we are taking said clutter and its effects more seriously. We want to free up space in our home and focus more on items we need as well, and for items we want we try to make sure we buy less of them and that we are sure we will put the item to use for a long time rather than5 minutes then throw it into a corner.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities
Here is the brief description and link to the video I shall review in this post:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/carolyn_steel_how_food_shapes_our_cities.html
Cities have lead to mankind distancing itself from nature. As more people move into cities more land is turned to grain fields. Feeding the 6 billion people in the world has lead to 19 million hectares of rain forest being destroyed to make way for farming. even then we do not spread the food around properly. About 1 billion people are obese while about 1 billion starve. Not a good ratio. About half the food in the U.S. gets thrown out rather than eaten.
How did this come about? Well according to Carolyn Steel about 10,000 years ago in a far eastern area called the fertile crescent (due to the areas shape). Here two world changing inventions cam about; Agriculture and urbanism. The discovery of grain as a high yield and stable food source lead to the establishment of permanent settlements possible. These settlements revolved around grain and the harvest. An example of how large settlements in ancient times were able to feed themselves is Rome. Access to water allowed for food to be transported over vast distances quickly so that food would not spoil.
17th century London was built around food routes. The area of the city by the river Thames was all docks and grain and fish markets. Once food routes are established in cities they rarely ever move. Meat is the exception as in pre-industrial time animals literally walked into the city. In any pre-industrial city plan you can see how they were built around food routes by streets named after food an so forth.
ironically some of the first passengers on when trains came about were pigs, sheep and poultry as railways allowed for food to be transported across land very quickly. This allowed for cities to be built almost anywhere and grow to any size. The picture at 9:00 shows how with the coming of the railway between 1840 and 1929 London grew to three times its original size (fires not withstanding).
The final emancipation of man cities from any relationship with nature came with the advent of the car. Now people didn't need to live near markets or near any smell associated with food. they could drive to market and back home again. This has lead to mankind alienating ourselves from nature and losing respect for food. We no longer smell or examine food to see if its fresh, we look at the label. if it does not look or seem right to use we simply throw it away. We are now dependent on system run by companies to access food, so while they promise easier access to food, it has actually become more difficult via the systems we have to go through. Ironic.
An author 500 years ago named Thomas Moore wondered what we could do about mankind separating itself from nature. In his book Utopia he gives and example of a series of semi-independent city-states that were within walking distance of each other. Everyone grew food in their backyard and hand community dinners. The problem with this example and others is that they are Utopian, a Greek word meaning either "good place" or "no place". These examples are not real, only imaginary and only in concepts. Carolyn Steel has come up with an alternative: Sitopia or "food place" (from the Greek word for food sitos, and place topos). This is because she believes (and I agree) that we live in a world shaped by food and we can use food as a powerful concept and design tool for shaping our cities.
One project mentioned is a greenhouse in Toronto where kids are taught about food and how to grow it. This helps reconnect people with nature. Once we start doing this on alarger scale we can turn cities from crowded unproductive areas into a balance of metropolis and nature. A main concept behind this is If the City looks after the Country, thr Country looks after the City.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/carolyn_steel_how_food_shapes_our_cities.html
Cities have lead to mankind distancing itself from nature. As more people move into cities more land is turned to grain fields. Feeding the 6 billion people in the world has lead to 19 million hectares of rain forest being destroyed to make way for farming. even then we do not spread the food around properly. About 1 billion people are obese while about 1 billion starve. Not a good ratio. About half the food in the U.S. gets thrown out rather than eaten.
How did this come about? Well according to Carolyn Steel about 10,000 years ago in a far eastern area called the fertile crescent (due to the areas shape). Here two world changing inventions cam about; Agriculture and urbanism. The discovery of grain as a high yield and stable food source lead to the establishment of permanent settlements possible. These settlements revolved around grain and the harvest. An example of how large settlements in ancient times were able to feed themselves is Rome. Access to water allowed for food to be transported over vast distances quickly so that food would not spoil.
17th century London was built around food routes. The area of the city by the river Thames was all docks and grain and fish markets. Once food routes are established in cities they rarely ever move. Meat is the exception as in pre-industrial time animals literally walked into the city. In any pre-industrial city plan you can see how they were built around food routes by streets named after food an so forth.
ironically some of the first passengers on when trains came about were pigs, sheep and poultry as railways allowed for food to be transported across land very quickly. This allowed for cities to be built almost anywhere and grow to any size. The picture at 9:00 shows how with the coming of the railway between 1840 and 1929 London grew to three times its original size (fires not withstanding).
The final emancipation of man cities from any relationship with nature came with the advent of the car. Now people didn't need to live near markets or near any smell associated with food. they could drive to market and back home again. This has lead to mankind alienating ourselves from nature and losing respect for food. We no longer smell or examine food to see if its fresh, we look at the label. if it does not look or seem right to use we simply throw it away. We are now dependent on system run by companies to access food, so while they promise easier access to food, it has actually become more difficult via the systems we have to go through. Ironic.
An author 500 years ago named Thomas Moore wondered what we could do about mankind separating itself from nature. In his book Utopia he gives and example of a series of semi-independent city-states that were within walking distance of each other. Everyone grew food in their backyard and hand community dinners. The problem with this example and others is that they are Utopian, a Greek word meaning either "good place" or "no place". These examples are not real, only imaginary and only in concepts. Carolyn Steel has come up with an alternative: Sitopia or "food place" (from the Greek word for food sitos, and place topos). This is because she believes (and I agree) that we live in a world shaped by food and we can use food as a powerful concept and design tool for shaping our cities.
One project mentioned is a greenhouse in Toronto where kids are taught about food and how to grow it. This helps reconnect people with nature. Once we start doing this on alarger scale we can turn cities from crowded unproductive areas into a balance of metropolis and nature. A main concept behind this is If the City looks after the Country, thr Country looks after the City.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Chapter 27: The Agriculture Crisis as a Crisis of Culture
Wow my last post felt long. Thankfully this is a shorter chapter so I won't ramble too much. This author of this chapter in Wendell Berry
Windell Beery is an author, poet, essayist, farmer and professor as well as one of America's profound ecological thinkers. From his Kentucky farm he states that that humans abuse of nature stems from the fact we no longer live with the land as we once did. This chapter is from a section of The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (Sierra Club Books, 1997). In it Berry analyzes the numerous economic and ecological problems to do with modern American agriculture and that "their roots are in the substitution of mindless technology and "bigness" for the culturally complex, thought full communities that thrived in the era of the family farm." Berry argues that in order to have economic stability and environmentally sustainable practices we need farming that promotes interdependence and responsible cooperation rather than a system based on the narrow profit-based definition of efficiency.
The Key Concept of this chapter is: the cultural dimensions of sustainable agriculture.
This chapter is not divided into multiple sections, merely a single one. It is written from author Berry's point of view giving is more "feel" in my opinion. I enjoy articles withe first person perspective sometimes because it feels more real to me (this is opinion though). Berry says in his boyhood his family lived in real farming country with small farms and the people lived within and from the farms, not on them. The farmer grew a wide variety of crops, raised animals and there were some dairy farms as well. Back i the day farms could also make a profit off minor products such as surplus creams, eggs and old chickens. Thrift was also a forceful social idea. The author admits that's this worlds was by no means perfect and people would be violent and wasteful in the use of the land and of each other. The general idea he is trying to get across is that people were more intimate with farming and more involved and knowledgeable.
Wendell states that in the decades following WWII farming became much more mechanized. He then points out that more and more land is coming under the control of profession people from cities who, despite the technology to produce agricultural miracles are still farm richer than farmers. Farmers are more worried about money and moire overworked than ever before (arguable if you think of the days of the single horse drawn plow over a few acres of field) but to an extent very true, I feel.
Minor produce markets no longer exist for items such as a bucket of cream, a few dozen eggs or a single hen. Numerous small markets have been removed by larger corporations for "sanitation reasons" "for which there is apparently no small or cheap technology." Economics and "free market" where "the freest are the richest" is the reason for the displacement of many traditional farms and farming methods, Wendell feels. Those who didn't follow with "Get big or get out" have gotten out. And those who are big are being forced out by those who are even bigger. In 1973 over 1000 Kentucky dairy producer were shut down and a agriculture expert at the Kentucky University, a Dr. John Nicolai said this was because they were inefficient producers and had to be eliminated. That's a lot of farms to shut down and how were they inefficient? Was it because they were small operations producing only small amounts of product? If so, would they not be equal all together vs a large corporation? And would it not be safer to have numerous small operations so if something went wrong at one there would be others to make up for product loss rather than an industry crippled by a single corporation shutdown? It is not discussed in the chapter but the last few sentences were my thoughts on the matter.
One main point Wendell tries to get across is that "food is a cultural product; it cannot be produced by technology alone." Agriculture has become fragmented from other disciplines which has roots in the compartmentalized structure of universities. Foe example, reading is handled by the English Department and morality is handled by the Philosophy Department. We have to deal with food as a community, not let a sing person or organization handle its production. Wendell states that: "A healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, work, conviviality, reverence, aspiration..... A healthy farm culture can be based only upon familiarity, and can grow only among a people soundly established upon the land;" .
Wendel states that the best farming requires a farmer who is also a husbandman and a nurturer (same can be said of a woman farmer as well). A good farm is a cultural product made by his experience and also the experience of past generations. A good agricultural system can be defined the same as ins Creation where everything is related to and depend son everything else.
Windell Beery is an author, poet, essayist, farmer and professor as well as one of America's profound ecological thinkers. From his Kentucky farm he states that that humans abuse of nature stems from the fact we no longer live with the land as we once did. This chapter is from a section of The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (Sierra Club Books, 1997). In it Berry analyzes the numerous economic and ecological problems to do with modern American agriculture and that "their roots are in the substitution of mindless technology and "bigness" for the culturally complex, thought full communities that thrived in the era of the family farm." Berry argues that in order to have economic stability and environmentally sustainable practices we need farming that promotes interdependence and responsible cooperation rather than a system based on the narrow profit-based definition of efficiency.
The Key Concept of this chapter is: the cultural dimensions of sustainable agriculture.
This chapter is not divided into multiple sections, merely a single one. It is written from author Berry's point of view giving is more "feel" in my opinion. I enjoy articles withe first person perspective sometimes because it feels more real to me (this is opinion though). Berry says in his boyhood his family lived in real farming country with small farms and the people lived within and from the farms, not on them. The farmer grew a wide variety of crops, raised animals and there were some dairy farms as well. Back i the day farms could also make a profit off minor products such as surplus creams, eggs and old chickens. Thrift was also a forceful social idea. The author admits that's this worlds was by no means perfect and people would be violent and wasteful in the use of the land and of each other. The general idea he is trying to get across is that people were more intimate with farming and more involved and knowledgeable.
Wendell states that in the decades following WWII farming became much more mechanized. He then points out that more and more land is coming under the control of profession people from cities who, despite the technology to produce agricultural miracles are still farm richer than farmers. Farmers are more worried about money and moire overworked than ever before (arguable if you think of the days of the single horse drawn plow over a few acres of field) but to an extent very true, I feel.
Minor produce markets no longer exist for items such as a bucket of cream, a few dozen eggs or a single hen. Numerous small markets have been removed by larger corporations for "sanitation reasons" "for which there is apparently no small or cheap technology." Economics and "free market" where "the freest are the richest" is the reason for the displacement of many traditional farms and farming methods, Wendell feels. Those who didn't follow with "Get big or get out" have gotten out. And those who are big are being forced out by those who are even bigger. In 1973 over 1000 Kentucky dairy producer were shut down and a agriculture expert at the Kentucky University, a Dr. John Nicolai said this was because they were inefficient producers and had to be eliminated. That's a lot of farms to shut down and how were they inefficient? Was it because they were small operations producing only small amounts of product? If so, would they not be equal all together vs a large corporation? And would it not be safer to have numerous small operations so if something went wrong at one there would be others to make up for product loss rather than an industry crippled by a single corporation shutdown? It is not discussed in the chapter but the last few sentences were my thoughts on the matter.
One main point Wendell tries to get across is that "food is a cultural product; it cannot be produced by technology alone." Agriculture has become fragmented from other disciplines which has roots in the compartmentalized structure of universities. Foe example, reading is handled by the English Department and morality is handled by the Philosophy Department. We have to deal with food as a community, not let a sing person or organization handle its production. Wendell states that: "A healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, work, conviviality, reverence, aspiration..... A healthy farm culture can be based only upon familiarity, and can grow only among a people soundly established upon the land;" .
Wendel states that the best farming requires a farmer who is also a husbandman and a nurturer (same can be said of a woman farmer as well). A good farm is a cultural product made by his experience and also the experience of past generations. A good agricultural system can be defined the same as ins Creation where everything is related to and depend son everything else.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Chapter 29: Environmental, Energetic, and Economic Comparisons of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems
As you can guess from the sections title this chapter compares conventional farming practices with organic ones. The author behind the material for this chapter is a David Pimentel, who will be "introduced" in the ever present opening paragraph of the chapter.
As well all know farming was once only organic, all natural. Yet as population and demand for food grew we turned to chemical to produce higher yields of crops yet this bonus comes with pollution, resistance to pesticides in insects and toxins that can harm and kill animal populations. While the argument that organic farming is healthier and better for the environment is true, it is debatable as to whether organic farming can support the needs of a world of 6 billion people. David Pimentel is a professor in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and long interested in the issue of sustainable agriculture. In the chapter he and his colleagues explain their conclusions that organic farming techniques have clear benefits and crop yields per hectare and the farmer's profit can be as great or greater than those of conventional agriculture". They also claim that while organic farming may not be able to replace conventional farming its techniques can make conventional methods "more sustainable and ecologically sound".
the key concept of this chapter is: the sustainability of organic farming techniques.
The first section bears no title and give an overview of conventional farming practices. One fact is that "more than 90% of US corn farmers rely on herbicides for weed control, and one of the most widely used of those herbicides, atrazine, is also one of the most commonly found pesticides in streams and groundwater." It is estimated that $12 billion is the environmental health care cost for using pesticides as recommended levels in the US. Runoff has also been associated with the deterioration of large fisheries in North America as well as nitrogen fertilizer from the Corn Belt contributing to the "dead zone" in the Gulf Of Mexico. Reports from the National Research Council (NRC) state that "the cost of excessive fertilizer use - that is, fertilizer inputs that exceed the amount crops can use - is $2.5 billion per year." Annual costs for public and environmental health losses due to soil erosion were estimated to exceed $45 billion.
One suggested solution to this in Integrated pest and nutrient management systems along with certified agriculture. These two combined can "reduce reliance on agrochemical inputs as well as as make agriculture environmentally and economically sound." Various government programs in Canada, Sweden and Indonesia have shown that it is possible to meet a 50-65% reduction i pesticide use without crop yields and quality.
Organic agriculture is aimed at augmenting ecological processes to foster plant nutrition while conserving soil and water resources. This system eliminates the need and use of agrochemicals as well as reduce other external inputs, thus improving the environment and farm economics. The National Organic Program "codifies organic production methods that are based on certified practices that are verified by independent third party viewers." This is to help give consumers assurance on the methods involved in the making of their food and allow them to choose foods based off production methods. Essentially, it educates the masses and gives them freedom of choice, not bad at all.
Organic culture is growing fast in the agricultural section of the United States. Dimitri and Greene have reported the doubling of organic production area from 1992 to 1997 and is currently more than 500,000 hectares. Organic food also has annual sales of of more than $7 billion and are growing at double digit rates.
The next section titled The Rodale Institute Farming System Trial (FST) describes a comparison by the FST of several types of farming methods over a 22 year study. The study covered sustainability, environmental impacts and other performance criteria. The first method was Conventional cropping which was based upon synthetic fertilizer and and herbicide use and used a simple 5 year crop rotation between corn, corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. All fertilizer and herbicide use followed Pennsylvania State University Cooperative Extension recommendations. Crop residue was left on the surface to conserve soil and water resources. This system had no more exposed soil then the organic method but did not have cover crops during the non-growing season. Second was Organic Animal-Based cropping. Grain crops were grown to for animal feed, not sale. the rotation was more complex and included corn, soybeans, corn silage, wheat and red clover-alfalfa hay and a rye cover crop before corn silage and soybeans. Manure from cattle was applied at a rate of 5.6 metric tons per day, 2 years out of every 5, before plowing for corn. Extra Nitrogen was added through legume-hay crops and the total nitrogen was 40 kilograms per year. No herbicides or weed control were used. mechanical cultivation, weed suppressing crop rotations and relay cropping were instead used, in which one crop was a living mulch for another. Awesome recycling. The third method was Organic Legume based cropping and represented a cash grain operation without livestock. Nitrogen-fixing green manure crops provided nitrogen rather than chemicals. Final crop rotation included hairy vetch (a winter cover crop used as green manure), corn, rye (winter cover crop), soybeans and winter wheat. The initial five year system was modified twice to improve rotation. Total nitrogen added was 49 kg per ha per year.
The results showed that (from 1981 to 1985) under normal rainfall soy bean yields were similar for all three methods, corn yield were significantly higher than the organic systems to begin with but the organic systems caught up after 1985. Under drought conditions (1988 to 1998 with 5 years being drought years) with less than 350mm of rain compared to the regular 500mm, average corn yields were 28-34% higher in the two organic systems while the conventional system yielded less. Even soy bean yield was higher in the organic systems as compared to the conventional one. This was brought about by the higher amounts of water in the soils of the organic fields and the lower amounts in the conventional field.
In the Discussion section states that the management of the soil in the animal, legume, and conventional systems lead to nitrogen increases of 27.9%, 15.1% and 8.6% respectively. 41% other the volume of organic matter in the organic systems was water as compared to the 35% in the organic matter of the conventional system. Increased soil biodiversity was higher in the organic systems which is why they had better yields, to put it shortly. As the organic methods used far less fossil fuel energy to produce crops they were all around better for the environment as less CO2 was being pumped inti the atmosphere.
Crop Yields and Economics is a huge section and since this post is very long I will cut to the chase. In most cases when compared to the rest of the world, the experiment say a more even yield of crop between the organic and conventional methods yet the real world comparison showed the organic methods trail by 30-50% in yield (in Europe) to conventional methods. Organic crops also cost more in the store than conventional. Some challenges for organic agriculture are nitrogen deficiency and weed competition. While in the experiment they are able to overcome this with legume crops others have found it more difficult. This can be due to geographical variances between farming regions. Mechanical weed control is also mostly effective under dry conditions, so wetter areas will have trouble. Pest control is the largest threat as nothing really compare to pesticides for effectiveness.
There are four organic technologies that if adopted, would most likely be beneficial: 1. employing off-season cover crops (why not have your soil ready to be used immediately next growing season?) 2. use more extended crop rotations to help conserve water, educe insects, and weeds (geographical situation not withstanding) 3. increase level of soil organic matter which helps conserve water and mitigates drought effects. 4. employing natural biodiversity to reduce or eliminate use of chemicals (Mother nature knows best so work with her, not against).
Conclusions is just as it sounds, the end summary. Here are listed some benefits of organic technology identified in the experiment:
- Soil organic matter and nitrogen were higher in organic systems providing benefits to the sustainability of organic agriculture.
- Higher levels of organic matter helped conserve soil and water resources which was useful during droughts.
- Since organic crops bring higher market prices the net economic return is often equal to or higher than conventional crops.
- Recycling of livestock waste reduces pollution whilst benefiting the organic culture.
All in all I see why organic farming is still seen as viable today despite the success of conventional methods. Natural methods in the long run are better as they do not alter the state of the land and crops and reduces pollution and contamination via chemicals. I hope we can find a balance between organic and conventional methods so as to ease the burden on farmers to supply our expanding population with much needed food.
As well all know farming was once only organic, all natural. Yet as population and demand for food grew we turned to chemical to produce higher yields of crops yet this bonus comes with pollution, resistance to pesticides in insects and toxins that can harm and kill animal populations. While the argument that organic farming is healthier and better for the environment is true, it is debatable as to whether organic farming can support the needs of a world of 6 billion people. David Pimentel is a professor in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and long interested in the issue of sustainable agriculture. In the chapter he and his colleagues explain their conclusions that organic farming techniques have clear benefits and crop yields per hectare and the farmer's profit can be as great or greater than those of conventional agriculture". They also claim that while organic farming may not be able to replace conventional farming its techniques can make conventional methods "more sustainable and ecologically sound".
the key concept of this chapter is: the sustainability of organic farming techniques.
The first section bears no title and give an overview of conventional farming practices. One fact is that "more than 90% of US corn farmers rely on herbicides for weed control, and one of the most widely used of those herbicides, atrazine, is also one of the most commonly found pesticides in streams and groundwater." It is estimated that $12 billion is the environmental health care cost for using pesticides as recommended levels in the US. Runoff has also been associated with the deterioration of large fisheries in North America as well as nitrogen fertilizer from the Corn Belt contributing to the "dead zone" in the Gulf Of Mexico. Reports from the National Research Council (NRC) state that "the cost of excessive fertilizer use - that is, fertilizer inputs that exceed the amount crops can use - is $2.5 billion per year." Annual costs for public and environmental health losses due to soil erosion were estimated to exceed $45 billion.
One suggested solution to this in Integrated pest and nutrient management systems along with certified agriculture. These two combined can "reduce reliance on agrochemical inputs as well as as make agriculture environmentally and economically sound." Various government programs in Canada, Sweden and Indonesia have shown that it is possible to meet a 50-65% reduction i pesticide use without crop yields and quality.
Organic agriculture is aimed at augmenting ecological processes to foster plant nutrition while conserving soil and water resources. This system eliminates the need and use of agrochemicals as well as reduce other external inputs, thus improving the environment and farm economics. The National Organic Program "codifies organic production methods that are based on certified practices that are verified by independent third party viewers." This is to help give consumers assurance on the methods involved in the making of their food and allow them to choose foods based off production methods. Essentially, it educates the masses and gives them freedom of choice, not bad at all.
Organic culture is growing fast in the agricultural section of the United States. Dimitri and Greene have reported the doubling of organic production area from 1992 to 1997 and is currently more than 500,000 hectares. Organic food also has annual sales of of more than $7 billion and are growing at double digit rates.
The next section titled The Rodale Institute Farming System Trial (FST) describes a comparison by the FST of several types of farming methods over a 22 year study. The study covered sustainability, environmental impacts and other performance criteria. The first method was Conventional cropping which was based upon synthetic fertilizer and and herbicide use and used a simple 5 year crop rotation between corn, corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. All fertilizer and herbicide use followed Pennsylvania State University Cooperative Extension recommendations. Crop residue was left on the surface to conserve soil and water resources. This system had no more exposed soil then the organic method but did not have cover crops during the non-growing season. Second was Organic Animal-Based cropping. Grain crops were grown to for animal feed, not sale. the rotation was more complex and included corn, soybeans, corn silage, wheat and red clover-alfalfa hay and a rye cover crop before corn silage and soybeans. Manure from cattle was applied at a rate of 5.6 metric tons per day, 2 years out of every 5, before plowing for corn. Extra Nitrogen was added through legume-hay crops and the total nitrogen was 40 kilograms per year. No herbicides or weed control were used. mechanical cultivation, weed suppressing crop rotations and relay cropping were instead used, in which one crop was a living mulch for another. Awesome recycling. The third method was Organic Legume based cropping and represented a cash grain operation without livestock. Nitrogen-fixing green manure crops provided nitrogen rather than chemicals. Final crop rotation included hairy vetch (a winter cover crop used as green manure), corn, rye (winter cover crop), soybeans and winter wheat. The initial five year system was modified twice to improve rotation. Total nitrogen added was 49 kg per ha per year.
The results showed that (from 1981 to 1985) under normal rainfall soy bean yields were similar for all three methods, corn yield were significantly higher than the organic systems to begin with but the organic systems caught up after 1985. Under drought conditions (1988 to 1998 with 5 years being drought years) with less than 350mm of rain compared to the regular 500mm, average corn yields were 28-34% higher in the two organic systems while the conventional system yielded less. Even soy bean yield was higher in the organic systems as compared to the conventional one. This was brought about by the higher amounts of water in the soils of the organic fields and the lower amounts in the conventional field.
In the Discussion section states that the management of the soil in the animal, legume, and conventional systems lead to nitrogen increases of 27.9%, 15.1% and 8.6% respectively. 41% other the volume of organic matter in the organic systems was water as compared to the 35% in the organic matter of the conventional system. Increased soil biodiversity was higher in the organic systems which is why they had better yields, to put it shortly. As the organic methods used far less fossil fuel energy to produce crops they were all around better for the environment as less CO2 was being pumped inti the atmosphere.
Crop Yields and Economics is a huge section and since this post is very long I will cut to the chase. In most cases when compared to the rest of the world, the experiment say a more even yield of crop between the organic and conventional methods yet the real world comparison showed the organic methods trail by 30-50% in yield (in Europe) to conventional methods. Organic crops also cost more in the store than conventional. Some challenges for organic agriculture are nitrogen deficiency and weed competition. While in the experiment they are able to overcome this with legume crops others have found it more difficult. This can be due to geographical variances between farming regions. Mechanical weed control is also mostly effective under dry conditions, so wetter areas will have trouble. Pest control is the largest threat as nothing really compare to pesticides for effectiveness.
There are four organic technologies that if adopted, would most likely be beneficial: 1. employing off-season cover crops (why not have your soil ready to be used immediately next growing season?) 2. use more extended crop rotations to help conserve water, educe insects, and weeds (geographical situation not withstanding) 3. increase level of soil organic matter which helps conserve water and mitigates drought effects. 4. employing natural biodiversity to reduce or eliminate use of chemicals (Mother nature knows best so work with her, not against).
Conclusions is just as it sounds, the end summary. Here are listed some benefits of organic technology identified in the experiment:
- Soil organic matter and nitrogen were higher in organic systems providing benefits to the sustainability of organic agriculture.
- Higher levels of organic matter helped conserve soil and water resources which was useful during droughts.
- Since organic crops bring higher market prices the net economic return is often equal to or higher than conventional crops.
- Recycling of livestock waste reduces pollution whilst benefiting the organic culture.
All in all I see why organic farming is still seen as viable today despite the success of conventional methods. Natural methods in the long run are better as they do not alter the state of the land and crops and reduces pollution and contamination via chemicals. I hope we can find a balance between organic and conventional methods so as to ease the burden on farmers to supply our expanding population with much needed food.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Chapter 28: Food Scarcity: An Environmental Wakeup Call
As always I will begin this post by summarizing the opening paragraph of the chapter.
Lester Brown started out as a tomato farmer in Southern New Jersey and in 1974 founded the World Watch Institute in Washington D.C. and the Earth Policy Institute in 2001 which he currently serves as president and senior researcher of. He is refereed to by the Washington Post as "one of the World's most influential thinkers" and called the "guru of the global environmental movement" by the Telegraph of Calcutta, India. He has authored and co-authored some highly regarded books and some of the most recent being: Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures in 2005 and Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization in 2008. This chapter is made up of sections taken from one of Brown's books The Futurist (1998) in which Brown warns of economic and social collapse due to food scarcity. He also predicts that deforestation, soil erosion, coupled with greenhouse gas emission will lead to an economic decline of the global food system.
The Key concept of this chapter is: environmental degradation coupled with population growth as causes of food scarcity.
The first section is brief yet puts the ideas of Lester Brown into perspective. For the most part environmental damage has been local, for example affecting only a few fisheries and not the industry as a whole. However the scale of environmental damage is increasing and becoming more clear. "We cannot continue to deforest the earth without experiencing more rainfall runoff, accelerated soil erosion and more destructive flooding. If we continue to discharge excessive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, we will eventually face economically disruptive climate change. If we continue to over pump the earth's aquifers, we will only one day face acute water scarcity." Essentially the more we do to damage the Earth the more damaging the consequences are.
The next section titled : Agriculture: The Missing Link, states that the food sector is likely to be where environmental degradation turns into economic decline. Some example provided are the water logging of and salting of the land that lead to the decline of the Mesopotamian civilization and how soil erosion turned the once fertile African wheat lands that fed the Roman Empire into desert. Rising grain prices will be an early indicator that something is wrong and should grain prices rise out of the reach of more and more people, political instability will appear. The doubling of grain prices in 1996 did not affect most people as their food expenses are mostly in the area of processing costs than commodity prices. However, the almost 1.3 billion people who live on a dollar a day or less can be caught in a life-threatening situation should high grain prices persist. People unable to provide food for the families would turn to riot against the government and should it continue long enough the entire economic machine that the world holds dear would be affected in a very negative way. The problems of the poor would become the problems of the rich.
Some present consequences include:
1) The European Union has reduced the allowable fish catch to be lowered by 20% to avert the collapse of the region's fisheries.
2) Saudi Arabia has seen an over reliance on a fossil aquifer to expand grain production has contributed to an abrupt 62% drop in grain harvest between 1994-1996.
3) Brazil is now the largest grain importer in the Western Hemisphere due to soil degradation that follows the burning off of the Amazon rain forest for agriculture.
The Section: In Search of Land, is short yet contain many facts mostly concerned with the world's roughly 5.8 billion people. To combat this farmer have for centuries used techniques such as terracing, drainage irrigation and the Dutch have even reclaimed land from the sea! Between 1950 and 1981 the area reserved for grain production grew almost 25% (587-732 million hectares). It then declined to 683 million hectares in 1993. This is in part due to population growth which is (pardon the pun) "eating up" far land. by 2030 it is expected that grain production will shrink from 0.23 hectares per person to 0.08 hectares per person.
In Search of Water deals with, well, water. The world's farmers face a water scarcity along with crop related problems.Aquifers are being pushed beyond their sustainable needs by water demand. Grain harvest is a major factor in this as its production has nearly tripled between 1950 and 1990 and extended into dry and low-rainfall areas which have a heavy demand for irrigation. However, irrigation area per person has dropped by about 7% since 1979. Competition between cities and the countryside have intensified and the city usually wins, and water is diverted from crops forcing a country to import more grain. Importing one ton of grain is like importing thousands of tons of water. The bottom line of this section is that as irrigation water per person and cropland becomes more scarce prices of grain will be pushed upwards.
Onset of Food Scarcity, deals with evidence of degradation leading to food scarcity. Oceanic fish catch which has been plague by overfishing and pollution has had little growth since its increase from 19 million in 1950 tons to 89 million tons in 1989. Or how Grainland productivity increased by 2% between 1950 and 1990 but dropped to about 1% a year from 1990 to 1995. In the 1990s the U.S. tried devoting more land to cropland handle the slow rise in land productivity yet world carry-over stocks on 1996 dropped to the low level of 52 days of consumption and after 1996 only rose to 57 days, well below the 70 days of consumption required as a minimal buffer against a poor harvest. The late spring and early summer of 1996 saw the doubling of the price of grain and corn due to a heat wave along the U.S Corn Belt and China's emergence as the second-largest grain importer. During the summer of 96' Jordan (the country) was forced to remove the bread subsidy as the country suffered from the rising costs of imported wheat. This lead to several day long riots and threats to bring down the government.
The next section, titled An Unprecedented Challenge, is very long so I will mostly gloss over it and highlight the topics I think best describe the chapters intentions. The main idea behind this chapter is that ensuring future generations have enough food is not longer just an agricultural matter. This will depend on decisions made by family planners, farmers and ministries of energy. In order to attain a sustainable economy and secure future food supplies two components must be dealt with: stabilizing population size and climate. The first can be dealt with by radical changes in reproductive behavior while the latter relies upon restructuring the global energy economy.
Some governments facing lower fish catches and grain harvest declining may be forced to ask couple if they are morally justified in having more than two children which is in the number needed to replace themselves. Some good news on this subject is that some 32 countries (all in Europe except for Jordan) containing about 14% of the world's people have managed to stabilize their populations. This shows that it is possible.
As for stabilizing the climate, people have to lower the amount of fossil fuel burnt which is no small task as 85% of all commercial energy comes from said fuels. Some good news in this area is that wind energy is expanding by ore than 20% a year, and solar cells are following at a similar rate. solar/hydrogen economy is also beginning to emerge and gain momentum to.
Lester Brown started out as a tomato farmer in Southern New Jersey and in 1974 founded the World Watch Institute in Washington D.C. and the Earth Policy Institute in 2001 which he currently serves as president and senior researcher of. He is refereed to by the Washington Post as "one of the World's most influential thinkers" and called the "guru of the global environmental movement" by the Telegraph of Calcutta, India. He has authored and co-authored some highly regarded books and some of the most recent being: Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures in 2005 and Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization in 2008. This chapter is made up of sections taken from one of Brown's books The Futurist (1998) in which Brown warns of economic and social collapse due to food scarcity. He also predicts that deforestation, soil erosion, coupled with greenhouse gas emission will lead to an economic decline of the global food system.
The Key concept of this chapter is: environmental degradation coupled with population growth as causes of food scarcity.
The first section is brief yet puts the ideas of Lester Brown into perspective. For the most part environmental damage has been local, for example affecting only a few fisheries and not the industry as a whole. However the scale of environmental damage is increasing and becoming more clear. "We cannot continue to deforest the earth without experiencing more rainfall runoff, accelerated soil erosion and more destructive flooding. If we continue to discharge excessive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, we will eventually face economically disruptive climate change. If we continue to over pump the earth's aquifers, we will only one day face acute water scarcity." Essentially the more we do to damage the Earth the more damaging the consequences are.
The next section titled : Agriculture: The Missing Link, states that the food sector is likely to be where environmental degradation turns into economic decline. Some example provided are the water logging of and salting of the land that lead to the decline of the Mesopotamian civilization and how soil erosion turned the once fertile African wheat lands that fed the Roman Empire into desert. Rising grain prices will be an early indicator that something is wrong and should grain prices rise out of the reach of more and more people, political instability will appear. The doubling of grain prices in 1996 did not affect most people as their food expenses are mostly in the area of processing costs than commodity prices. However, the almost 1.3 billion people who live on a dollar a day or less can be caught in a life-threatening situation should high grain prices persist. People unable to provide food for the families would turn to riot against the government and should it continue long enough the entire economic machine that the world holds dear would be affected in a very negative way. The problems of the poor would become the problems of the rich.
Some present consequences include:
1) The European Union has reduced the allowable fish catch to be lowered by 20% to avert the collapse of the region's fisheries.
2) Saudi Arabia has seen an over reliance on a fossil aquifer to expand grain production has contributed to an abrupt 62% drop in grain harvest between 1994-1996.
3) Brazil is now the largest grain importer in the Western Hemisphere due to soil degradation that follows the burning off of the Amazon rain forest for agriculture.
The Section: In Search of Land, is short yet contain many facts mostly concerned with the world's roughly 5.8 billion people. To combat this farmer have for centuries used techniques such as terracing, drainage irrigation and the Dutch have even reclaimed land from the sea! Between 1950 and 1981 the area reserved for grain production grew almost 25% (587-732 million hectares). It then declined to 683 million hectares in 1993. This is in part due to population growth which is (pardon the pun) "eating up" far land. by 2030 it is expected that grain production will shrink from 0.23 hectares per person to 0.08 hectares per person.
In Search of Water deals with, well, water. The world's farmers face a water scarcity along with crop related problems.Aquifers are being pushed beyond their sustainable needs by water demand. Grain harvest is a major factor in this as its production has nearly tripled between 1950 and 1990 and extended into dry and low-rainfall areas which have a heavy demand for irrigation. However, irrigation area per person has dropped by about 7% since 1979. Competition between cities and the countryside have intensified and the city usually wins, and water is diverted from crops forcing a country to import more grain. Importing one ton of grain is like importing thousands of tons of water. The bottom line of this section is that as irrigation water per person and cropland becomes more scarce prices of grain will be pushed upwards.
Onset of Food Scarcity, deals with evidence of degradation leading to food scarcity. Oceanic fish catch which has been plague by overfishing and pollution has had little growth since its increase from 19 million in 1950 tons to 89 million tons in 1989. Or how Grainland productivity increased by 2% between 1950 and 1990 but dropped to about 1% a year from 1990 to 1995. In the 1990s the U.S. tried devoting more land to cropland handle the slow rise in land productivity yet world carry-over stocks on 1996 dropped to the low level of 52 days of consumption and after 1996 only rose to 57 days, well below the 70 days of consumption required as a minimal buffer against a poor harvest. The late spring and early summer of 1996 saw the doubling of the price of grain and corn due to a heat wave along the U.S Corn Belt and China's emergence as the second-largest grain importer. During the summer of 96' Jordan (the country) was forced to remove the bread subsidy as the country suffered from the rising costs of imported wheat. This lead to several day long riots and threats to bring down the government.
The next section, titled An Unprecedented Challenge, is very long so I will mostly gloss over it and highlight the topics I think best describe the chapters intentions. The main idea behind this chapter is that ensuring future generations have enough food is not longer just an agricultural matter. This will depend on decisions made by family planners, farmers and ministries of energy. In order to attain a sustainable economy and secure future food supplies two components must be dealt with: stabilizing population size and climate. The first can be dealt with by radical changes in reproductive behavior while the latter relies upon restructuring the global energy economy.
Some governments facing lower fish catches and grain harvest declining may be forced to ask couple if they are morally justified in having more than two children which is in the number needed to replace themselves. Some good news on this subject is that some 32 countries (all in Europe except for Jordan) containing about 14% of the world's people have managed to stabilize their populations. This shows that it is possible.
As for stabilizing the climate, people have to lower the amount of fossil fuel burnt which is no small task as 85% of all commercial energy comes from said fuels. Some good news in this area is that wind energy is expanding by ore than 20% a year, and solar cells are following at a similar rate. solar/hydrogen economy is also beginning to emerge and gain momentum to.
As this post has no become longer than Noah's flood I'm going to quickly summarize the finals section title Feeding the Future". The world used to have three reserves to fall back on in the event of a poor harvest. Idle cropland under farm programs, surplus grain stocks and the one-third of the world grain harvest fed to livestock, poultry and fish yet by 1997 the first two have disappeared. The cost of such grain would turn many consumers to cheaper less grain-intensive livestock products but such prices would also mean big trouble for low-income consumers around the world. A way to handle this scenario is proposed in this chapter and that is to tax the consumption of livestock products and offsetting it with reduction in income taxes. Such a tax would be unpopular yet aid in political and economic stability. To sum it all up, the only way to ensure there are food stores for ourselves and the next generation is to is by moving the world economy off "the path environmental deterioration and eventual economic disruption and onto an economic and demographic path that is environmentally sustainable."
Blog Reflection: 48 Hours of Eating
The out line of this blog reflection is to:
1) Write down your food intake over the last 48 hours.
2) Identify what foods I eat regularly?
3) What environmental concerns relate to my diet?
1) For the past two days breakfast has involved a mix of Vector cereal with Rice Krispies and two piece of buttered toast coupled with a glass of orange juice. Mid way through each day for lunch I had a 4 inch-ish pre-made turkey sandwich from Superstore (they were on sale so I treated myself). On Saturday I also toasted a bagel and applied cream cheese. Both days I sampled from a tub of neon sour gummy worms I have (5 or so worms a day). Supper for Saturday wasn't very healthy as I went with a friend to see a movie and binged on popcorn and soda. Sunday however included chicken fingers (the coating etc was home made) along with potatoes cut into small pieces and seasoned (once again, home made). Fried rice with cabbage and a glass of milk rounded dinner off. Dessert on both days involved a chocolate donut (of which I had another one earlier in the day both Saturday and Sunday).
2) Foods I eat regularly are toasted bagels with cream cheese, a cookie or two, some potato product for supper (its potatoes, you can do anything with them!), pork and chicken. Milke and orange juice and water.
3) Well if you read my previous post you can imagine the issues involving meat that occur. For the turkey sanwhiches there is also the added issue of how far the item had to be shipped as well as the process of making it.
1) Write down your food intake over the last 48 hours.
2) Identify what foods I eat regularly?
3) What environmental concerns relate to my diet?
1) For the past two days breakfast has involved a mix of Vector cereal with Rice Krispies and two piece of buttered toast coupled with a glass of orange juice. Mid way through each day for lunch I had a 4 inch-ish pre-made turkey sandwich from Superstore (they were on sale so I treated myself). On Saturday I also toasted a bagel and applied cream cheese. Both days I sampled from a tub of neon sour gummy worms I have (5 or so worms a day). Supper for Saturday wasn't very healthy as I went with a friend to see a movie and binged on popcorn and soda. Sunday however included chicken fingers (the coating etc was home made) along with potatoes cut into small pieces and seasoned (once again, home made). Fried rice with cabbage and a glass of milk rounded dinner off. Dessert on both days involved a chocolate donut (of which I had another one earlier in the day both Saturday and Sunday).
2) Foods I eat regularly are toasted bagels with cream cheese, a cookie or two, some potato product for supper (its potatoes, you can do anything with them!), pork and chicken. Milke and orange juice and water.
3) Well if you read my previous post you can imagine the issues involving meat that occur. For the turkey sanwhiches there is also the added issue of how far the item had to be shipped as well as the process of making it.
Food
A glorious food, the "Staff of Life", how could we live without it?
Let me start off this post with some facts about certain foods that were given in class.
Meat is a major food group with about 258 million tonnes consumed globally which averages to about 40kg/person and is currently a record high. Some major staples are pork (China), poultry, chicken, beef, mutton and goat. In U.S. poultry makes up about 32kg, beef roughly 29kg and pork 21kg adding up to a total of 82kg per person.
Now what is the input of meat? What goes into it? Well there is about 11-17 calories of feed / calorie beef, pork, poultry. Roughly 80% soy bean use for livestock so you have some of those in there and Up to 25,000L water / 8oz beef. Why such bizarre ingredients and ratios? You have to feed the animal your going to eat you know. Microbial are a major part of the diet of cattle (U.S. not Canada) up to 70% of all antimicrobial in U.S. are used on cows, pigs and chicken. One interesting tidbit of info is 1 calorie beef takes 33% more fossil fuel energy to produce than 1 calorie potatoes.
We saw a video at the end of class titled "The Meatrix" Yes, it was corny, but a nice breather from the serious and apocalyptic tone most videos involving major issues have. http://www.themeatrix.com/ click on the link to find out more.
Now what are some outputs associated with meat production?
Manure, obvious and can pollute surface and groundwater along with being a source of methane (16% of world production). Disease. Examples include saturated fats, cholesterol, pathogens (E.coli, Salmonella), Mad-cow (CJD). People who live near hog plants complain about the smell and this alone is a major issue in meat production.
One idea put before the class was the Ethical Gourmet. The idea behind it is to lessen the emphasis on meat as a main course among other ideals for being a better consumer (literally and purchase wise) listed below:
- Meat as a side dish
- Local over imported organic
- Organic over conventional
- Responsible GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) development
- Ethical fish (Blue Ocean Institute)
- Tap water
- Moral menu restaurants
- Socially responsible purchasing / investing
- Vote / lobby
- Cook wholesome foods at home more often
The class also had an intro lecture of hog production in Manitoba. We learned about the Clean Envrionment Comission and some of its goals suchthe research into and methods of handling liquid wastefrom livestock including higher dikes around manure storage facilities as well as requiring all new and expanding hog operation to file manure management plans and provide the livestock producers with financial assistance or incentives to assist them in coming into compliance with the LMMMR.
Let me start off this post with some facts about certain foods that were given in class.
Meat is a major food group with about 258 million tonnes consumed globally which averages to about 40kg/person and is currently a record high. Some major staples are pork (China), poultry, chicken, beef, mutton and goat. In U.S. poultry makes up about 32kg, beef roughly 29kg and pork 21kg adding up to a total of 82kg per person.
Now what is the input of meat? What goes into it? Well there is about 11-17 calories of feed / calorie beef, pork, poultry. Roughly 80% soy bean use for livestock so you have some of those in there and Up to 25,000L water / 8oz beef. Why such bizarre ingredients and ratios? You have to feed the animal your going to eat you know. Microbial are a major part of the diet of cattle (U.S. not Canada) up to 70% of all antimicrobial in U.S. are used on cows, pigs and chicken. One interesting tidbit of info is 1 calorie beef takes 33% more fossil fuel energy to produce than 1 calorie potatoes.
We saw a video at the end of class titled "The Meatrix" Yes, it was corny, but a nice breather from the serious and apocalyptic tone most videos involving major issues have. http://www.themeatrix.com/ click on the link to find out more.
Now what are some outputs associated with meat production?
Manure, obvious and can pollute surface and groundwater along with being a source of methane (16% of world production). Disease. Examples include saturated fats, cholesterol, pathogens (E.coli, Salmonella), Mad-cow (CJD). People who live near hog plants complain about the smell and this alone is a major issue in meat production.
One idea put before the class was the Ethical Gourmet. The idea behind it is to lessen the emphasis on meat as a main course among other ideals for being a better consumer (literally and purchase wise) listed below:
- Meat as a side dish
- Local over imported organic
- Organic over conventional
- Responsible GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) development
- Ethical fish (Blue Ocean Institute)
- Tap water
- Moral menu restaurants
- Socially responsible purchasing / investing
- Vote / lobby
- Cook wholesome foods at home more often
The class also had an intro lecture of hog production in Manitoba. We learned about the Clean Envrionment Comission and some of its goals suchthe research into and methods of handling liquid wastefrom livestock including higher dikes around manure storage facilities as well as requiring all new and expanding hog operation to file manure management plans and provide the livestock producers with financial assistance or incentives to assist them in coming into compliance with the LMMMR.
The Manitoba Food Charter was covered also. Their vision is A just sustainable food system in Manitoba is rooted in healthy communities, where no one is hungry and everyone has access to nutritious food.
A just sustainable food system in Manitoba means:
- Farmers, fishers, processors, distributors etc use ecologically sustainable practices
- Respect traditional hunting gathering, trapping etc of First Nations Peoples.
- Other...
Essentially the main idea behind this class was to enlighten us (students) to the fact that our food (in this case meat) has a dark side to it and isn't produced on a scenic looking family farm. A lot happens to hogs, chickens and cattle that is unethical and profit oriented.
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