Saturday, January 09, 2010

Getting to Know the Neighbors

By that I do not mean my human neighbors. Two of the three houses next to ours are empty, which leaves a certain impediment in that quest. Our own property claims always overlap with the homes and territories defined across different lengths and dimensions by the animals who share our space. Our birdfeeders have given us the most rewarding opportunity to discover some of the winged community members whose daily living mingles alongside ours.

I have always been something of a fan of the Northern Cardinal. The bright red plumage of the male is always lovely to behold and looks especially impressive against a snowy background such as we have experienced on a couple of occasions this winter. Cardinals also tend to form bonded pairs. So two of our neighbors are a male and female Cardinal couple who never stray too far from one another. One may venture away about hundred feet or so but it often isn't long before the other arrives on the scene as well. And when they are separated they seem insistent on keeping contact. Just the other day when I was leaving the house after lunch I saw the female repeating short, single chirps from a tree at the house next to our driveway. The male echoed each chirp from an evergreen tree at the abandoned house across the street. But more often than not I see them hiding together in the ample bush near our seed feeder.

Our other known neighbor is a male Red-Bellied Woodpecker, which is kind of a dumb name since the distinctive red mark is on their heads. He's a much bigger, noisier fellow with a loner personality and a territorial zeal. Whether by intent or sheer frightening size he scares the other birds away from the feeders in a hurry. He comes to both feeders but prefers the suet hanging from the oak tree out front. I feel like he deserves a name but I haven't decided on a fitting one for him yet. Any suggestions?


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Saturday, January 02, 2010

Avatar and the Agrarian Vision

So yesterday I went to a movie theater to watch Avatar, the consummation of filmmaker James Cameron's 15-year effort. I have to say that I really enjoyed it and I was spectacularly entertained. The visuals were indeed stunning, the 3D worked wonderfully, and the the story, however "simple," warmed this heart, at least.

What reviews I have read online are very divided. Some accuse the movie of racism, sexism and misanthropy. Others contend that its message is sublime and of paramount importance. I do think that the former tend to misunderstand the movie or are sadly unaware of the multitude of historical precedents for the tragedy that unfolds in the film. The former might take the movie a bit too seriously, but that is largely because it is a rehash of, well, a LOT of other movies, including at least the following: Dances with Wolves, FernGully, The Last Samurai, The New World, and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. I also have to say that there is one bit of Hollywood in Avatar that keeps me from making too much of it. In the end, Cameron gives us a happy ending, making the film improbable even by science fiction standards. And that's because the kind of story being told here, one that has been repeated throughout history, has sadly enjoyed few happy endings.

Let's see what I can sum up without ruining the plot. The story is set in 2154 and humans are traveling to the stars, although slower than the speed of light. A life-filled moon named Pandora, orbiting a gas giant planet, contains a highly valuable mineral useful for the energy needs of a dying Earth. However, mining for this mineral puts human interests at odds with the needs and desires of a sentient, humanoid population living a clan-based, hunter-gatherer existence - the Na'vi. The corporation that collects the mineral entertains multiple options for getting what it wants: scientists who study the native Na'vi and seek to earn their trust and military mercenaries who will gladly blow some junk up to git r' dun. A paraplegic ex-Marine arrives to participate in the scientists' avatar program, in which his mind directs a genetically-engineered Na'vi body. When the Marine, Jake, gains entrance into one of the clans, he must decide between helping the people whose ways he is learning or feeding tactical information to his fellow soldiers.

The Na'vi are referred to as the "indigenous population" or sometimes as the "savages." The parallels to the real-life experiences of indigenous peoples, and Native Americans in particular, should be too obvious to miss. What the mercenaries of the corporation intend to do is what has been done in Central America, on Manhattan Island, at Wounded Knee, and countless other places. The tall, blue Na'vi even oddly look like Native Americans, at least in their faces, I thought.

I thought the connection was particularly strong when it came to the profound sense of place held by the Na'vi clan that welcomes Jake. The entire group inhabits a gigantic tree known simply as "home tree." They have lived there for generations and could accept no material inducement to abandon it. Not far away there is another tree which is a sacred landmark. Its destruction would traumatize the Na'vi for generations to come.

This strong sense of place, of trees that cannot be bought and sold, commodified and packaged, is very strange to us, but not to American Indians. The Cherokee of western North Carolina believed that their ancestors emerged from the Smoky Mountains and it was their sacred trust to preserve forever. The Lakota Sioux of the plains, meanwhile, saw the Black Hills as holy ground. Most Americans don't realize that Mt. Rushmore is a horrendous blasphemy to them. Of course, I think it's a horrendous blasphemy as well, although for other reasons...

In other words, the land is intrinsically valuable and it holds a claim on the people more than they hold a claim on it. The land cannot be purchased or traded because it is invaluable. It is more than "resources" or capital. It is life itself. It is blessing and gift. I don't imagine most Christians in the West think of the land where they dwell this way. We've wandered a great deal from the land ethic of the Old Testament, in which adam comes from adamah, or, as the pun describes it, "human from humus." We do not share the sense that the land is nahalah, a gifted inheritance made possible by the relationship between the people and God. If we Christians look at Avatar and the first thought is "pagan tree-hugging nonsense," then perhaps we have forgotten the land ethic to which our Scripture calls us. This ethic is not alien to what the Native Americans traditionally felt or what the fictional Na'vi see in their trees. But it is alien to us now. Or, rather, as in the movie, we ourselves are now the aliens.

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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Some genetically-engineered crops require more herbicide

Go figure...

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Saturday, December 26, 2009

The so-called "Climategate" in a nutshell



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Friday, December 18, 2009

Is the Bible Agrarian or Primitivist? Part II

Primitivists continuously target "civilization" as, if not the mother of most ills, then at least the great facilitator of them. Blogger and author Keith Farnish writes that a better world awaits us if we "stop believing that the answers lie within the most destructive thing that humanity ever had the misfortune to create." The rub, of course, lies in the definition of civilization, which can be a somewhat slippery thing. Richard Heinberg, an outside sympathizer of primitivism, notes that civilization may imply such characteristics as social stratification, organized warfare, and writing, but that the historical evidence does complicate matters. Jason Godesky, a primitivist trained in anthropology, lists five primary traits widely accepted in the field:

1. Settlement of cities of 5,000 or more people.

2. Full-time labor specialization.

3. Concentration of surplus

4. Class structure

5. State-level political organization

Meanwhile, the characteristics headlined in the Wikipedia entry are agriculture, long-distance trade (a secondary characteristic in Godesky's list), state-form of government, specialization, urbanism, and class structure.

Primitivists tend to conclude that one characteristic naturally and inevitably follows from the other. As a result, agriculture, as opposed to foraging, is inherently negative because it results in food surplus that are (always?) exploited by elites for the suppression of others. In his reference entry on anarcho-primitivism and the Bible, Ched Myers writes, "Agriculture inexorably gave rise to concentrated populations and increasingly centralized and and hierarchical societies in built urban environments. These in turn developed into oppressive city-states, an aggressively colonizing civilization that exerted a powerful centripetal force on the hinterlands."

The problem, as Heinberg points out, is that these elegant lists are naturally descriptive instead of prescriptive. Exceptions are to be found and it is not clear why certain essentialist visions must be accepted. Heinberg specifically cites archaeological research of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Maskan-shapir. The data suggests at least one example of urban culture without class divisions. Moreover, I am struck by the question of how exactly early Israel is supposed to be classified. Israel was clearly an agricultural society (or, perhaps, "horticultural" according to certain definitions - see Godesky's article in which horticulture is deemed acceptable). Israel continued the practice of growing domesticated plants and keeping domesticated animals. For some primitivists, domestication is a big no-no; the first step down the slippery slope to domesticating other human beings, as Myers writes. And yet, Israel's earliest known laws, the Covenant Code in Exodus, command kindness for the alien and stranger. Israel did not seek empire; not at first, not until external political pressures (instead of, say, some kind of subconscious logical leap from farming to enslaving) led to a monarchy that then chose self-aggrandizement through conquest. So yes, Israel aped the majority tradition of civilization eventually, but not at first. At first, Israel was settled, but not "civilized" according to the criteria above. She did not consist of nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers, but nor did she build a stratified society on crop surpluses. So was Israel civilized, or wild?

I ask that question because the primitivist material I have read suggests a certain tendency toward dualist thinking. Even Godesky acknowledges a "cultivation continuum" between "horticulture" and "agriculture" only to rob it of significance in the end. Perhaps some dualisms have their merits, but I don't see this one in Scripture. There is room enough for John the Baptist to preach in the wilderness and Jeremiah to preach in Jerusalem. An agrarian vision is more hopeful that this is not schizophrenia. We can learn to honor wilderness while managing and domesticating. We can overturn oppression and see the dawning day as New Jerusalem the golden city. In other words, there is a hope for redemption of perhaps even the most tarnished of human projects. Perhaps even something like "civilization," whatever that means, can be saved. But it will have to learn its place in a wild world in which, as God says to Job, the rain is made to fall in the desert where no human lives.

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Keeping it Simple: Unprecedented AGW in Pictures

Skeptics of anthropogenic global warming, the overwhelming consensus position of climate science, do not tend to publish original research. They simply cherry-pick data from published material, take it out of context, and make simplistic, conspiratorial arguments out of it. Detailed rebuttals of this charade have been made at Skeptical Science, Real Climate, and Climate Progress, among other places [Side note: I acknowledge Joe Romm at CP is unabashedly biased towards the Democratic Party. If that offends you, get over it, because that bias does not impact the science. If anything, it is the stubborn anti-science position of many Republicans that probably reinforces his partisanship. If it will make you feel better, visit Republicans for Environmental Protection to help prove that climate change isn't a progressivist conspiracy].

I could not think to reproduce the detailed arguments of climate scientists. Instead, I'd like to offer a fairly simple, graphically-rendered rebuttal of a simple, graphically-rendered skeptical argument.

Critics of the scientific consensus (which, by the way, is increasingly based on empirical evidence and not just "modeling") argue that current warming reflects natural variability and is not out of step with climatic history. In fact, they say, some periods were significantly warmer than today. The "Medieval Warm Period" of the 10th-14th centuries is a frequently-touted example. Note this graph provided by the denier site Watts Up With That:



In this graph, you can see the highest average temperature peak around 1000 AD. In context, the so-called "hockey stick" of the modern instrumental record for the last century is dwarfed in comparison. The world was warmer while Christendom and Islam were fighting the Crusades, and we managed to survive alright. Ergo, conspiracy.

Problem: the data set for this graph is not worldwide but reflects temperature variability only in Central Greenland. As everyone knows climate varies considerably by region and region-specific trends themselves are distinct from overall trends. The total accumulated data reveals that, during the Medieval Warming Period, the upward departure from average occurred only in specific areas, not worldwide. Much of the world actually experienced downward temperature trends. And where did the greatest increases in average temperature across the largest area occur? Who'd have thought it? Right around Greenland!


Meanwhile, the so-called Medieval Warming Period looks very, very mild when compared to a global picture of temperature pattern for the past decade set to the same color scheme...


All this correlates with a a tremendous increase in emissions of CO2, which is indisputably-proven to be a greenhouse gas.


What I cannot present in a graph is the evidence that climate change in the past has meant massive disruption of the Earth's ecosystem, including major extinction events. Climate change was likely a factor in the extinction of the Neanderthals, for example. Critics are right about one thing: life will go on and it will adapt. But that's a slow process not measured in human time scales. Nor is this adaptation easy, simple, and universal. Once-dominant forms of life may diminish or vanish as others rise. And successful adaptation for humans will not take place without great suffering along the way.

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Home

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, publisher of the Earth From Above series of photography books, has put out a new documentary film version of the books that narrates the huge extent of the human impact on landscapes and ecosystems. You can watch the whole 93 minute film for free on Youtube. You can also download many of his aerial pictures here.

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Friday, December 11, 2009

Is the Bible Agrarian or Primitivist? Part I

When I first read The Essential Agrarian Reader I devoured it very quickly with a strong voice in my mind telling me, "This makes sense." I had the same reaction when I read Ellen Davis drawing out the agrarian tones of the Bible in Scripture, Culture and Agriculture. But when I read Ched Myers' entry on "Anarcho-Primitivism in the Bible" from the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, my attitude took a decidedly less sanguine turn. And that was because I couldn't simply add Myers to Davis like putting milk in my tea.

Primitivism, in its more radical and systematic forms, holds one of three developments as the beginning of human disconnection from nature and emergence of patterns of dominance: a) the birth of agriculture and the resultant concentration and increase in populations, leading to social divisions, resource hoarding, increased warfare and disease, etc; b) domestication of plants and animals, which opened the conceptual door to "domesticate" nearby human beings; or even c) the rise of symbolic mediation (language) as the dominant form of communication. Most primitivists I have come across tend to stick to a) or perhaps b) - the third option is extreme for most. In all three cases, however, agriculture is indicted as a lamentable mistake, perhaps even unredeemable, and (it seems) automatically oppressive.

But the experience of Israel runs counter to these assumptions. God may lead Israel into the wild land of Sinai to instruct her, as Ched Myers points out, but Israel does not remain a wanderer. She is invited to settle, to build and to plant. And yet she is not called to a vision of hierarchy and dominance. Thus the land is understood as a priceless inheritance, as a space that instantiates God's limits for his creatures, and as a gift that is not to be squandered or taken for granted. Through the giving of manna and the laws about kindness to the stranger, gleaning, and Jubilee restitution of land, Israel is instructed to do what many primitivists say is impossible: practice agriculture in a manner that respects the land, maintains humility, and honors the neighbor as an equal to whom one is responsible. And the textual data of Judges-1 Samuel, alongside the archaeological evidence of early Israel, do point toward a society stubbornly egalitarian and resistant to the pressure of kingship and the hierarchy it generates.

I admit that agriculture has been practiced un-ecologically and made to support oppressive structures of power for much of history. May the primitivists tell us it was not simply "improvement." But the testimony of Israel points to agriculture as a practice of humility and sharing as well. God didn't call his people to be nomads and hunter-gatherers. If "civilization" is one of the powers at work in our world today, then perhaps it, too, may be redeemed.

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Why attack the science when you can attack Al Gore?

From the blog Wit's End...

Every denier point has to include Al Gore, usually mentioning his weight and/or his house. They NEVER mention how much money he has spent to green his house, how he gives everything he makes from the movie and investments in green technology to a green foundation to educate morons, and how, the theory (theory, like evolution, gravity, and plate tectonics, not a wild proposition) of global warming is grounded in scientific research, not Al Gore.

I know some people are just going to assume Al Gore is evil. He may in fact be evil, for all I care. But global warming wasn't invented by the former vice-president; nor is the consensus that it is already happening, human-caused, and dangerous a product of his movie. "Al Gore" is a useful shibboleth - if you hear someone utter that name, then you may safely conclude that he or she doesn't care about science, evidence, rational thought, or facts.

In the meantime, three senators made a bipartisan announcement yesterday about forthcoming climate change legislation...

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Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Garden update

Today I had the good pleasure of plucking 47 cherry tomatoes from my four plants. All together, I've pulled off nearly 100 tomatoes so far with a good chance I can double that amount before the plants are shot. I also pulled off the second and final round of bush beans (a much smaller crop) and the last of the peas, yanking those plants off the trellis and piling them for compost. Right now, I have some surprisingly resilient lettuce that hasn't been killed off by the heat. Some strawberries are appearing at a strangely late time of the year. My onions continue to sit there and I keep wondering whether I'm doing a good job with them or not. The single eggplant apparently refuses to grow past the sprout stage, with my pepper plant as a comrade in stubbornness. Chives, mint, leeks, and basil continue to do fine. I wonder when my okra will start significant growth....

Kelly and I also successfully planted shrubs in our new sheet-mulched beds around the edges of the house. Significant members include a juniper bush, butterfly bush, and a camellia. Two quince plants will provide fruit that, while bitter raw, makes great preserves. And it finally RAINED so our rain barrels are recharged again. We will get two more in the near future, though.

I need to order some seeds and plan for my fall crop. I hope to grow kale and pumpkins as new crops. I'm also going to order Gene Logsdon's Small-Scale Grain Raising. Imagine growing your own grain crops in your backyard!! I personally find that quite exciting...

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Friday, June 26, 2009

Global Warming Legislation in the House

Believe it or not, it's been kind of entertaining to watch the debate about the American Clean Energy and Security Act. The House of Representatives is about to close debate on the bill and vote and I've been watching on C-SPAN online. I sure hope this moves forward, whatever the merits of all the bill's specifics. While I am pretty much disdainful of both political parties, the Republicans are really looking like the Flat Earth Society in their denial of global warming and their refusal to consider doing anything about it at all.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Is farming evil?

Or, to put it another way, was agriculture the "worst mistake in history"?

This article from the Telegraph notes the problems that arose when humanity transitioned from being hunter-gatherers.

Cf. Richard Manning's "Against the Grain" and his podcast interview with Agroinnovations.

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Monday, April 20, 2009

NYTimes: Natural Happiness

An interesting piece in the New York Times Magazine about how humans are wired to benefit from nature:

You might think that technology could provide a simulacrum of nature with all the bad parts scrubbed out. But attempts to do so have turned out to be interesting failures. There is a fortune to be made, for instance, by building a robot that children would respond to as if it were an animal. There have been many attempts, but they don’t evoke anywhere near the same responses as puppies, kittens or even hamsters. They are toys, not companions. Or consider a recent study by the University of Washington psychologist Peter H. Kahn Jr. and his colleagues. They put 50-inch high-definition televisions in the windowless offices of faculty and staff members to provide a live view of a natural scene. People liked this, but in another study that measured heart-rate recovery from stress, the HDTVs were shown to be worthless, no better than staring at a blank wall. What did help with stress was giving people an actual plate-glass window looking out upon actual greenery.

All of this provides a different sort of argument for the preservation of nature. Put aside for the moment practical considerations like the need for clean air and water, and ignore as well spiritual worries about the sanctity of Mother Earth or religious claims that we are the stewards of creation. Look at it from the coldblooded standpoint of the enhancement of the happiness of our everyday lives. Real natural habitats provide significant sources of pleasure for modern humans. We intuitively grasp this, and this knowledge underlies the anxiety that we feel about nature’s loss. It might be that one day we will be able to replace the experience of nature with “Star Trek” holodecks and robotic animals. But until then, this basic fact about human pleasure is an excellent argument for keeping the real thing.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

"The old fields are dying...save, save, save"

In current discussions about energy use, of which the great majority of Americans remain ignorant, the pessimists of peak oil theory are arguing that oil production may have already peaked (2005 and 2008 are the two years most frequently identified) or will peak shortly (2010, 2012). On the other end, most energy analysts and corporations insist that oil production will continue to rise and will meet demand long enough to enable a steady transition to a post-hydrocarbon, renewable energy future. However, estimates concerning that future have been revised downward recently by typically optimistic groups such as the International Energy Agency and Cambridge Energy Research Associates. See, for example, George Monbiot's report in the Guardian about the difference between the IEA 2007 and 2008 reports as well as IEA economist Fatih Birol's expectation of a plateau in oil production around 2020.

Somewhere in the middle between the optimists and pessimists has been the French oil company Total. CEO Christophe de Marguerite has stated that he believes oil production will never rise above approximately 90 million barrels per day. To put that in perspective, the most recent peak in July of last year was close to 87 mb/d, and after production cuts the current rate is 83. The German magazine Der Spiegel posted an interview yesterday with Michel Mallet, the manager of Total's German operations. While Mallet expects a higher peak figure than Marguerite, he does think that the cheap, accessible oil has already been found and that intensive conservation needs to begin now. Some snippets from the interview:

Mallet: There are hardly any readily accessible oil fields anymore. The fields on the floor of the North Sea, for example, are practically empty. New reserves are only being found deep in the ocean, in remote regions like Kazakhstan or in the form of oil sands. None of this is cheap to produce.

[...]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is it even possible to increase oil production anymore?

Mallet: About 87 million barrels a day are produced worldwide. In the past, it was believed that this number could be increased to 130 million. I consider that an illusion. Realistically, the capacity is less than 105 million barrels.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: It sounds like the peak oil theory, which isn't very popular among your competitors. It holds that maximum production will be reached soon.

Mallet: The old oil fields are dying. In the future, we will have to invest more and more just to maintain existing production.

[...]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So how much longer will the oil last?

Mallet: We won't have any problems for the next 20 years. If we handle demand responsibly, it could even last another 40 or 50 years.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But what if demand increases, particularly in Asia?

Mallet: That's why we have a clear message: We have to save, save, save.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Total is the only oil company that is predicting stagnating production. Are the others ignoring the truth?

Mallet: I don't know. But I do know that anyone who encourages people to buy big cars to increase his oil sales is making a big mistake. I myself walk to work.


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Thursday, April 02, 2009

Interview with Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva, the Indian environmental activist and agrarian researcher, has done a recent interview with the Baltimore Sun's Urbanite magazine. It is reproduced for you below.

[original article]

Vandana Shiva, India’s leading environmental activist, says that the industrialized West is literally consuming the developing world. We eat cinnamon that comes out of Thailand, bananas from Central America. To feed our ever-growing appetites, we push industrial agriculture methods on once-traditional agrarian societies, and now we want these faraway lands to produce a different kind of food: biofuel, to feed the West’s automobiles. At some point, Shiva argues, we’re going to have to choose between sacred cow and sacred car.

Shiva founded an organization called Navdanya to promote research in organic agriculture and saving heirloom seeds. In her 2008 book Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis, she argues that the rebirth of sustainable, traditional agriculture offers the best way forward, in both India and in the West.

“There is a myth that there are agricultural societies, and then there are industrial societies and service societies, as if when you become an industrial or service society you don’t need food,” she says. “As we hit climate chaos, as we hit peak oil, assuming that you can get your food from far away and use fossil-fuel-intensive systems to produce food is totally not sustainable. Bringing food security close to home will have to be the project of the future.”


Q Soil Not Oil seems to be about the tension between traditional agriculture and industrial agriculture. How is this playing out in India?

A It is playing out in a very tragic way. An imposed, fossil-fuel-driven industrial agriculture, which has been globalized through the World Trade Organization rules, has pushed hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers to suicide.

The suicides as an epidemic started in 1998. That is the year that the new seeds were brought into India in a large scale—the genetically engineered seeds. That is the year that the World Trade Organization was used by the United States to remove import restrictions. The combination of high-cost, nonrenewable seeds [that produce sterile fruit]—under the monopoly control of one company, Monsanto—and the falling price of cotton with the subsidies that the United States gives its cotton growers is really the squeeze that forced Indian cotton farmers into debt. And that unpayable debt is what has pushed farmers to suicide.


Q But if you have to feed more than a billion people, as farmers in India do, isn’t it impractical to hang on to traditional farming methods?

A Here, they want to connect all of India with superhighways, and 90 percent of the roads haven’t been built. They won’t be built because of the financial collapse. So this huge dream of a totally motorized world and tractorized agriculture is already failing in front of our eyes. It failed in Cuba under very tragic circumstances—under [the U.S.-imposed] trade embargo. But they rebuilt their agriculture [based on] principles that ancient cultures practiced. Now I don’t call that being locked into tradition. It’s highly innovative.

I see fossil-fuel-free farming as a future of agriculture—not because of nostalgia, not because of romanticism, but because of a very hard-nosed realism. If your fertilizer prices have tripled in the past year, there is no way to carry on depending on chemical fertilizers. If your phosphate requirements in chemical agriculture are going to run out in the next twenty years, you’d better get ecological, organic sources. To depend on an agriculture that requires oil inputs at every step would be developing a system at this point that has no future.


Q Beyond the farm, how has the push for an industrialized culture affected the developing world?

A Third-world cultures are very culturally diverse, and India is really the home of diversity. It is our strength, as long as there is peace, justice, and sustainability. But when the stresses of the globalized war economy start to impinge on a diverse culture, we see more of the Mumbai kind of phenomenon. [The terrorist attacks in] Mumbai ended up being world news, but there have been a hundred Mumbais in the past decade in India. They didn’t become big news because they weren’t at hotels where Westerners stay; they were on trains and buses where ordinary Indians travel.

Just like a field cracks up when it is dry, our societies are cracking up because they are being dried up economically. I can see that if we don’t have a major shift toward equality and justice, we will not be able to hold our societies together. This cracking up shows up as ethnic conflicts or regional conflicts, but at the root of it are two issues everywhere: access to resources and access to livelihood. As that access shrinks because of a globalized economy and a limitless appetite for growth, people start looking at their neighbors as a problem.


Q Tell me about your agricultural organization, Navdanya.

A “Navdanya” means both “a new gift” as well as “nine seeds.” I started it in 1987 when I first realized what the agenda of the chemical and agribusiness companies was, in terms of controlling the seed through genetic engineering and patenting. Their vision was one of dictatorship over life, not just dictatorship over people or one country. I wanted seeds and life forms to evolve freely and not be forced into genetic engineering or into patenting. The original idea was to create seed banks that farmers could access, get seeds from, and continue to grow crops in diversity. Of course, this led very quickly to an organic movement.

The fascinating thing about saving seeds and biodiversity that I have learned is that you conserve biodiversity by eating it. Now that sounds paradoxical, but it is true. If you continue to eat amaranth, you will grow amaranth. If you eat two hundred kinds of rice, you will grow two hundred kinds of rice. So eating is literally shaping the landscape and ecology of our planet.


Q Practically speaking, how do you get back to a soil-based, rather than oil-based, society, culture, and economy?

A I wouldn’t say “get back to.” I would say “go forward to.” Going forward to a soil-based society means building economies of place, and economies of place means recognizing the ecological limits of the place where you are. It means grounded economies. The financial collapse is going to compel us to look for livelihoods beyond the false speculations and the credit spending, where you spend more than you earn.

I feel that the combination of climate change, peak oil, and the financial collapse provides an opportunity for us to build economies of place that will shift not just from oil to soil, but it will shift from financial capital to people as the real wealth—people as both the generators of wealth as well as wealth of communities. If we can get there, we will have a future. If we can’t get there, we will see more and more conflicts emerge around the world in conditions of new scarcity.

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Saturday, March 28, 2009

I did get something done...

Although we couldn't mix the soil for the veggie garden, (my #1 priority!), we did go to the garden center and get some ideas for ornamentals and fruit trees. We also went to Lowes and picked up two tan, 48-gallon rain barrels. I managed to set one up before the rain started. I couldn't believe how quickly the run-off from just a portion of the roof filled it up! Light rain started about 3:30 and when I checked the barrel at 8:00 it was about two-thirds full. I did some Google research (what a scholar I am..) and found out that a 1,000 sq. ft. roof could run off 600 gallons of water during a one-inch rainfall! I think we're going to need some more barrels! All I need now is a garden big enough to get just the water from one of these barrels...


This is the barrel...well, not our barrel...you get the drift.
Visit Rain-Barrel.com to learn about it.


Stephen and Rebekah Hren have this to say about rainwater collection in The Carbon-Free Home:

Letting water fall on your roof and run off your yard into the storm drain, and then pumping an equivalent amount of water from miles away for use inside your home doesn't make a lot of sense. Like other wasteful and inefficient modern city systems, the failure to harvest and use the water that rains down on our houses results in wasted energy, almost invariably fossil energy, with the concomitant carbon emissions.

Much urban and rural water arrives at taps after being pumped (using fossil energy) from underground aquifers. Some of these aquifers are now stranded, meaning they are not being recharged. Water from these aquifers is often referred to as fossil water, because it accumulated over thousands if not millions of years and will not be replenished in a humanly relevant time frame once depleted. Aquifers that are capable of being recharged do so faster when water is released slowly over a long period of time so that less is lost to runoff.

It's a shame we don't have the money or time to make the advanced system they have that collects rainwater from their metal roof, treats its, and pumps it through the house! Baby steps, my friends...



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Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, March 28, 2009 | | Comments

Friday, March 27, 2009

Culture of the Land: A Series on New Agrarianism


I was very pleased yesterday to discover a series of books on the new agrarianism that has been published by the University of Kentucky Press over the past three years. Entitled "Culture of the Land," this series is edited by the Christian philosopher and agrarian (and a Baptist, to boot!) Norman Wirzba, who began this academic year his tenure as Professor of Theology, Ecology and Rural Life at Duke Divinity School. You can read Divinity Magazine's article on Wirzba's work here. The advisory board for the series includes another Dukie - Ellen Davis, Old Testament professor and author of Scripture, Culture and Agriculture. The members of the board have a range of experience and education in the physical sciences, agriculture, and law and policy. Among their ranks one will find Bill McKibben, Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, Wes Jackson, and Vandana Shiva.

According to the series web page, its purpose is the following:

This series is devoted to the exploration and articulation of a new agrarianism that considers the health of habitats and human communities together. Far from being a naïve call to return to the land, and thus merely a reverse exodus to the country, the books in the series Culture of the Land show how agrarian insights and responsibilities can be worked out in diverse fields of learning and living: history, politics, economics, literature, philosophy, urban planning, education, and public policy. Agrarianism is a comprehensive worldview that, unlike other forms of environmentalism that often presuppose an antagonistic or exclusive relation between wilderness and civilization, appreciates the intimate and practical connections that exist between humans and the earth. It stands as our most promising alternative to the unsustainable and destructive ways of current global, consumer culture.
Books in the series include and Ents, Elves and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien and Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering. I have ordered Eric Freyfogle's Agrarianism and the Good Society, for which used copies in good condition are available for eight bucks at Amazon. You can get the complete list of advisors and books at this page.


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Posted by Chris Schelin at Friday, March 27, 2009 | | Comments

Monday, March 09, 2009

The Inflection/Disruption Consumption

One thing I don't like about the time change is getting up while night is still with us.

One thing I do like, however, is watching the Sun emerge behind a stand of trees at this moment.

Contradiction? You bet.
Wanna watch me turn this into a metaphor?
It will either be really lame or totally awesome...take your pick. No middle ground.

When crisis appears to be looming in the future, "waking up" to it early, before others do, means that one will feel surrounded by utter darkness. It's coming - there's no hope. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

But this awakening also gives one the privilege of seeing the opportunity hidden behind the crisis, of perceiving how a new dawn could be possible.

Commence the rolling of the eyes!

I wouldn't be so bold to claim any real prescience. Environmentalists, climate scientists, Catholic economists and social thinkers, and neo-agrarians have sounded alarm bells for years. Nature and economy are interconnected and we manhandle both in consequential, unsustainable malpractice. I think I'm only "early" in the sense that the large majority of Americans still believe we can get back to "business as usual" in a year or so, climate change is a relatively low priority that we can push to the back burner for now, and we can go on living pretty much the way we supposedly "always" have. And I'm "early" because of a steady stream of braver and more thoughtful voices than my timid, wavering self.

The Australian environmental business adviser Paul Gilding calls it The Great Disruption. Thomas Friedman has just written an op-ed in the New York Times calling it The (near?) Inflection. Physicist Joe Romm at climateprogress.org calls it a global Ponzi scheme. Maybe we could go back to the old use of the word "consumption" for tuberculosis, because our situation looks something TB did - the body eating itself up.

All three express what I would say is my own guarded optimism. I think our future will be better, although our scales of measurement may look different. And there will probably be plenty of rough turns on the road in the near future.

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Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, March 09, 2009 | | Comments

Thursday, March 05, 2009

This Agrarian Wife

In our life together my wife and I are earnestly striving, however haltingly and bumbling, to make life choices and engender habits that I would call "agrarian," following Ellen Davis' definition:

"Agrarianism is a way of thinking and ordering life in community that is based on the health of the land and of living creatures." - Scripture, Culture and Agriculture

Others may wish to call this "going green" or being environmentally sensitive, but I think that the goal is more sophisticated and holistic than the mere avoidance of harm to the natural order we inhabit. Rather, I hope we are reaching for the kind of creaturely disposition that exhibits both humility before God and wise stewardship/dominion among all other created things.

I have tended to be the more outspoken cheerleader of the two of us, but my wife certainly put me to shame this week. A couple of days ago she studied our More-with-Less cookbook more carefully and quickly set about making a number of staples from relatively raw materials. I came home from an evening meeting to find she had experimented with making our very own corn chips and "wheat thins" from scratch and she had also mixed together a hearty and tasty cereal (her most successful result). Yesterday she made some delicious balled honey snacks and tonight she experimented with homemade granola bars.

If we get these recipes down pat, they will certainly be a help to the pocketbook. But they will also lessen our dependence on questionably-nutritious processed foods, the majority of which are grown by environmentally and socially destructive agribusinesses. Not to mention that we would cut out some of our domestic waste because we would no longer be getting cereal, granola bars, etc, in plastic and paperboard packaging.

I guess it's time for me to step up my work on the garden. Spring's almost here anyways.

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Posted by Chris Schelin at Thursday, March 05, 2009 | | Comments

Friday, February 13, 2009

Here comes peak soil...

Early in Ellen Davis' book Scripture, Culture and Agriculture I came across what was, for me, the most startling set of statistics in a book filled with alarming figures. Davis writes,

Since the Priestly writer [in Genesis 1] calls our attention to plant growth and other events on the dry land, I begin with the plain observation of a team of Stanford terrestrial ecologists that "between one-third and one-half of the [earth's] land surface has been transformed by human action." The earth's total primary plant growth (the annual output as it would be sustained by natural ecosystems) is reduced by 40% through human activity, both direct consumption (for food, building, etc.) and activities that inhibit plant growth (such as paving of roads and parking lots). Worldwide, about the same proportion of arable soils - a resource renewable only in geological time - are degraded to some degree..."We have high-graded the planet, taking the best bits." (53f.)

I guess our world is getting smaller, and not just in the fashion championed by globalization. Our infrastructure places permanent lids on what could be productive soil (cities and farms both sit well on well-watered plains, after all). Meanwhile, industrial agriculture's mechanized disruption of soil accelerates erosion and the depletion of organic nutrients. Elsewhere in Davis' book, on a page I could not locate for this post, she presents the statistic that one-third of America's topsoil is gone.

But agricultural degradation goes back even to the very beginning of civilization. In August of last year, the Agroinnovations Podcast featured Richard Manning, a contributor to publications of The Land Institute and author of the book Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization. During the interview, Manning notes how irrigation of annual grains gradually depleted Mesopotamian soil, such that one could generally trace a northward movement of the centers of power as the first cities along the Persian Gulf degraded their soil, and then the next cities up, and so on.

So it was no surprise to me to come across an article raising the possibility of, well, peak soil. The demands of a feeding a growing population on industrial agriculture meet the challenges of a shrinking land base. The author, geomorphology professor David Montgomery, writes:

Over the past century, the effects of long-term soil erosion were masked by bringing new land under cultivation and by developing fertilizers, pesticides and crop varieties to compensate for declining soil productivity. However, such ‘agrotech’ fixes become progressively more difficult to maintain because crop yields decline exponentially as soil thins. While fertilizers can temporarily offset the effects of soil erosion, the long-term productivity of the land cannot be maintained in the face of the reduced organic matter and thinning of soil that characterize industrial agriculture. Replacing soil fertility with chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered crops can boost productivity in the short run, but a world stripped of its soil cannot, in the end, feed itself.

There is only so much land left into which we may expand cultivation. The Amazon forest and Sahel grassland are largest tracts available, but their soil will become degraded much more quickly.

Montgomery's solution is positively agrarian: we must "better adapt what we do to where we do it." He encourages the shift of agriculture subsidies to small-scale farms, the promotion of soil-friendly methods such as no-till agriculture (which can also be done in the garden, btw, in SFG and other intensive, raised-bed methods), and the development of urban agriculture (this is where I think community gardens and urban homesteading comes in).

Montgomery defuses the agribusiness myth that organic, small-scale farming is less productive. Numerous studies over the years, he says, have shown comparable yields. Ellen Davis cites even more positive figures: "In every country for which data is available, smaller farms are shown to br 200 to 1,000 percent more productive per unit per area...small farming is more productive because the quality and even the quantity of labor and land care is higher when workers invest themselves in their own farm and community" (104). See also the assessment of small-scale farming in an Indian context by Vandana Shiva, "Globalization and the War against Farmers and the Land" in The Essential Agrarian Reader. She notes that the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology (located in New Delhi) "has shown that farm incomes can increase threefold by giving up chemicals and using internal inputs produced by on-farm biodiversity, including straw, animal manure, and other by-products" (134).

Once again, I am guardedly optimistic. The resources and the knowledge are out there. The impetus and inspiration are given in the agrarian vision of Scripture itself. And the grace needed to move forward is supplied by the Holy Spirit.

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Posted by Chris Schelin at Friday, February 13, 2009 | | Comments

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Make an easy start to gardening

Given the comments friends have made to recent posts, I thought I would share from my own experience of getting started in gardening. Living into a biblical agrarian practice doesn't require 40 acres and a mule. It might not require leaving a developed area at all. In fact, from the theological end of things, Ellen Davis intends in her final chapter, "The Faithful City," to tease out an Old Testament view of city-country mutuality. From the practical end of things, one may consider perusing Path to Freedom, the online account of one urban household (in Pasadena, of all places), that produces up to 6,000 pounds of food each year from a 1/5 acre lot. That certainly got me wondering about my comparatively extensive .42 acre property!

I account this coming spring as Garden 4.0. My first attempt, in Spring 2007, sprang out of a zeal not according to knowledge. Having read hardly anything about gardening, I simply worked in some Miracle Grow into a patch of soil in a fenced-off area of the back yard (to protect it from my roommates' dogs) and planted herbs. Several sprang up...but then the dogs made their way into that space and trampled pretty much everything. What was left died a slow, hot death under drought conditions while I worked at Koinonia Farm. In Spring 2008, the dogs were gone, and I used cinder blocks for miniature raised beds in which I planted lettuce. Again, I used a soil-Miracle Grow mix. Some of the lettuce endured my neglect as I turned to finishing school and getting married, and even lasted into the summer. Very little was harvested, however.

Finally, with space and relatively free weekends, I established my first bed in the summer and planted onion, parsley, chives, okra, corn, pepper, mint, and a tomato plant. The garden started strong but several varieties succumbed to disease or pests. I got the strongest showing from the herbs and green onion tops. I currently have some lettuce that I have a faint hope will overwinter, but otherwise the garden is bare.

Both I and Craig, my generally silent partner on this blog (grin), garden according to the very easy, perfect-for-beginners "Square Foot" method. You don't have to know much anything about gardening and you don't need a lot of tools to get started this way. I can tell you that SFG is one form of a family of intensive-raised bed gardening methods, but you don't even need to know that, either! You do want to know its advantages:

  • You can locate the bed pretty much wherever you want as long as it gets enough sun.
  • No digging or tilling of soil required (in the updated version).
  • You get about the same yield for 1/5 the space, which conserves a lot of water.
  • Weeding is much reduced and nearly nonexistent.
  • The book helps you figure out how to plant for a relatively continuous harvest of food.
SFG was started by a retired civil engineer, Mel Bartholomew, a few decades ago. The basic premise: build a frame of whatever size suits you and your needs, measured out by square feet (Mel prefers 4x4 boxes). Tack weed cloth on the underside. Create "Mel's Mix" for your soil (1/3 mixed compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, all available at Lowe's or Home Depot) and fill the box. Plant your seeds and off you go. After you harvest a plant, just spade in a little compost in its place before planting again.


And there are variations on this. You can go to the GardenWeb forum and learn about how different people modify the method and the mix. If you have pretty good soil at your house already, you might just dig it up and mix it with Miracle Grow or compost instead of buying bags of peat moss and vermiculite that will end up being more expensive.

There are two disadvantages I can see to starting with SFG. They don't outweigh its ease of use that can welcome anyone into gardening, but they should be kept in mind for the future. First, Mel's book doesn't have any real insight about organic responses to pests and disease. You'll need to get your hand on other resources for that. Second, giving your bed a "floor" such as weed cloth (or even wood for portable beds that Mel mentions) prevents your garden's full participation in the ecology of its place. SFG is organic and environmentally-friendly...with the one great exception that your garden will not contribute to the building up of a rich, healthy soil structure. Consider learning about other raised bed methods (see here and here) and applying that information in the future. Also, invest in a couple of other gardening books. Here are the ones I currently own and read:

Four Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from your Home Garden All Year Long

Gardening When it Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

My plan this spring is to continue SFG essentially as is with perhaps four 4x4 beds in the yard, to be supplemented with some trellis crops along the south-facing wall of the house and some shade-friendly plants in a small, soil-bound bed along the north wall.

Oh, and you can teach yourself some of the broad context for sustainable food production with the Internet program Agroinnovations. No digging required for this one, either.

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Posted by Chris Schelin at Thursday, January 29, 2009 | | Comments

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Does the city hurt the brain?

Continuing the conversation with my wannabe-agrarian friends...

A recent article in the Boston Globe points to some studies that suggest that the city, long heralded as wellspring of innovation and intelligence, may also have some deleterious effects on mental functioning:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/

You have been warned.

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Posted by Chris Schelin at Sunday, January 25, 2009 | | Comments

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Can I make my home carbon-free?




I wouldn't be so sure about it, except a new book tells me that it's possible. Recently on the local NPR station's daily show The State of Things, host Frank Stasio interviewed Durham couple Stephen and Rebekah Hren. Possessing a precocious desire to live an alternative lifestyle back in their high school sweetheart days, the Hrens spent 10 years remodeling their first house (which is right here in Person County) into a successful, self-sufficient villa that they removed from the energy grid. Several years ago they moved into a 1930s-era house in Old North Durham and repeated their success - only now they remain connected to the grid to sell excess power back. The Hrens have written a how-to book for those who wish to emulate them: The Carbon-Free Home. I must admit - I ordered the book before I even finished listening to the interview. I doubt I'll go quite so far as they have, but I would certainly like to take on at least a few of the 36 projects they list in the book for making an ordinary (even rather old) home into a "greener" and more efficient place to live.

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Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, January 17, 2009 | | Comments