The Solar Solution
Recently Al Gore made news with his assertion that addressing the climate crisis and the economic crisis could easily amount to the same thing. (Not an original idea, mind you... he's just the guy who got media attention for it!) Recent announcements by President-elect Obama indicate that he's thinking along the same lines with his suggestions that repairing the nation's woeful infrastructure and doing more to develop clean energy can create over two million jobs by 2011. One might say that our government is finally realizing we can heal our economy by solarizing it.
What I hope our government comes to understand, and quickly, is that solarizing our food supply is also critical to our national survival. In an October New York Times op-ed piece, Michael Pollan explains what this means and how it can be accomplished. In the piece, he points out that modern American agriculture requires ten calories of fossil-fuel energy in order to produce one calorie of food, while seventy years ago 2.3 calories of food could be produced by one calorie of fossil-fuel energy. Careless farming practices and the heavy use of fossil-fuel-based pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers contribute to the problem right along with all the fuel used by farm machinery, unsustainable food processing plants, and food transport companies. The answers Mr. Pollan suggest include a return to more local-food economies and the broader adoption of organic farming methods.
All of these changes, though, will require radical alterations of our national food policies. Pollan has his critics, but I think his ideas in this piece are right on target and the President-elect would do well to heed his advice. In my thinking, Obama's pick for agriculture secretary is as important (if not more so) than any other post he'll fill over the next several weeks. The agriculture secretary post ought to be viewed as one that will dovetail with that of the director of the National Economic Council (Obama has picked Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary under Bill Clinton) in terms of forming policy that will address the climate crisis AND invigorate the economy at the same time. A 2005 study conducted by the University of Northern Iowa demonstrated how farmers can significantly increase their profit margins by marketing local (the study focused on meat production, but it's suggestive of other produce) and Mr. Pollan points out in his article how new food policies could create an enormous demand for new farmers, not to mention new regional (sustainable) local food processors. The truth is, clean energy technologies aren't the only ones that have been waiting in the wings for their chance to claim the spotlight and save our skins. Organic technologies have quietly developed over the past few decades and conventional-to-organic transition plans are already practically perfected.
It's important to note here that the benefits of these new policies would not be domestic only. The agricultural economies that were decimated by imprudent World Bank policies a few decades ago could benefit from our considerable knowledge of sustainable farming. Also, Brazil has become an agricultural powerhouse, but it's done so by employing the same unsustainable practices that currently dominate the American Midwest. If we wish to save the Amazon basin from the same dismal fate that the extremely polluted Mississippi and Missouri basins suffer from today, we could assist Brazil in transitioning to organic as well. Imagine the good will the US could generate by helping "developing" nations back on their feet and/or helping these nations prevent the destruction of their natural resources. In this way the agendas of the treasury and agricultural departments might dovetail with those of the department of state and maybe even those of the department of defense.
It's a logical progression, really. Solarizing our agricultural practices leads to solarizing our economy leads to solarizing our foreign relations which, ultimately, leads to sustainable practices in all of these realms. Indeed, if, as Mr. Pollan suggests, Obama makes himself "Farmer in Chief", he may find the solutions to "the food problem" lead to solutions for all of America's most pressing challenges.
This would hardly be surprising, of course. Haven't politics always been about food?
delicious
diggFood Politics and the corporations that thrive
Almost every article I came across mentions the World Bank, economics, or national "food" security. This food issue (and how it's raised) does touch so many of the issues our nations is struggling with today.
2007 Article about Dead Zones explains one cost of industrializing agriculture.
"The relatively high nitrate loading may be due to more intensive farming of more land, including crops used for biofuels, unique weather patterns, or changing farming practices."
The nitrate load is so high that the dead zone may attain a size of 8,500 sq miles (22,015 sq km), almost double the average since 1990.
The United Nations warns that dead zones are becoming more common globally as intensive agriculture spreads.
Unfortunately it looks like Brazil is making the same mistakes. Even in 2005 they were destroying the smaller farm infrastructure in favor of the commodity crops.
At the expense of devouring the rainforest, Brazil has now become the world’s leading producer of soy, sugar-cane, with 65% of the market monopolized by multinationals such as Bunge, Cargill and ADM.
In just under three years, land is rendered barren; logging or slash and burn agri-techniques torch the land and ready it for the crops; rice is grown for one year followed by soy for a period of three years. The plantations yield high density monocultures, much of it genetically modified and sprayed with intensive pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals. Hydro-dams, diverting water from the tributaries and rivers, are channelled towards the ‘plantations’, manned by the displaced.
When the land is dead, the multinationals move on.
Side note that in (2001 article) FDA tests only 2% of imports for pesticide residues...
Want an extreme example of the hazards of pesticides?
Kamukhaan: A Village Poisoned
...and I wish I could find the article I read a couple years ago about "dead land" in Brazil, due to the monocrops and pesticide/herbacide spraying.
It all keeps coming back to industrialization and the power that corporations hold in relation to the daily lives of every person on this planet. 4 Companies control the majority of food distribution in the world market. Four. Quattro. That's just disturbing to me.
Here's a site...
Tom Vilsack
Disappointed with the Ag Secretary pick and not just because it's not Pollan. I know Vilsack is associated with renewable energy--but it's the ethanol-agribusiness renewable energy which has all kinds of problems. What do other folks think?
Pollan for ag secretary
Pollan for ag secretary
Got an email from the Pollan for ag secretary people asking to call my senators and rep, speak to the Agricultural Aide and put in a plug for Pollan. If anyone's interested, here's the website:
PBS video and transcript of Pollan discussing U.S. food policy
Bill Moyers sits down with Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley, to discuss what direction the U.S. should pursue in the often-overlooked question of food policy. Pollan is author of IN DEFENSE OF FOOD: AN EATER'S MANIFESTO.
Sustainable food strategy & the Obama Administration
Interesting editorial on the politics of food today looking at the way in which Obama seems open to many of Pollan's idea--a long quotation from an interview with Obama by Time magazine shows that he's very conversant with those ideas--but is seeming to waffle under pressure by agribusiness (including the Sec. of Ag. pick).
Is a sustainable food strategy on Obama's menu?