9 Billion Mouths to Feed: The Future of Farming

The University of California in Davis has created a series of 4 short video documentaries highlighting scientific, technical and health aspects of feeding our growing world population. The webpage of the series is here  at "The Future of Farming". The entire series is on YouTube as a playlist. It is quite basic, but for starters it is giving a reasonable overview of the issues. While watching keep in mind the influence of Monsanto on the research topics and results of UC Davis. Especially episode 4 seems skewed towards agrobusiness. The solutions proposed in these videos are too much dependent on gene-engineering. In summary, good for starters, but lacking depth and too optimistic about gene-manipulation. Watch and form your own opinion.

Sugar

A long time ago I watched the 40-min "Chocolate, Cheese, Meat, and Sugar -- Physically Addictive Foods" by Dr. Neal Barnard. Even though years have passed by since I watched it, I still remember the part of the documentary where he explains how recently born babies are made addicted to sugar. He even gives an example of hypnotizing a baby with sugar that you can try out yourself on your new-born baby.

Along the lines of sugar and its immediate impact on our health I received links to the following series that is currently in production with the first two episodes available and at least five more coming: "The Skinny on Obesity" by Dr. Robert Lustig. He explains the differences between glucose and fructose and how fructose gets converted into fat by our body. Anyone with an interest in a healthy life style should have a look at these documentaries to form his own opinion and adjust his eating habits if necessary. The videos can be found here: Sugar: The Bitter Truth (90-min, very technical), Suger: Bitter Truth Short Version (10min), and the UCTV site for Skinny on Obesity. There is also a YouTube channel for these videos.

PS: New episodes were released. Have a look at this one. It gives 4 steps to healthier living: For the context and a deeper explanation of these 4 rules you will have to watch the other episodes.

• Remove all sugar drinks including fruit juices from your house.
• Eat carbohydrates with fiber (look at the labeling and chose items with 3+g/100g).
• Wait 20 minutes before giving a second serving.
• Buy TV/laptop/console time with sport/activity, i.e. for each minutes spent sedentary in front of the TV/laptop spend one minute exercising (walking, biking, outdoor playing, ...).

Our Daily Poison

The autor Marie Monique Robin of the highly acclaimed full-length documental "The World according to Monsanto" has released a new work, again a full-length documental entitled "Notre Poison quotidien" ("Our Daily Poison"). The English trailer is available here. The full version is available in French (Notre Poison quotidien), in German (Unser täglich Gift - Wenn Essen krank macht) and with Spanish subtitles (Nuestro Veneno Cotidiano). Since "The World according to Monsanto" was such an excellent piece of work and investigation, I am very much looking forward to this new documentary released in January 2011. It will be another must-see documental!

GMO losing Effect

Monsanto's genetically modified corn no longer protects against pests. The corn bug has become resistant against the GMO plant. This is one of the first proven cases that biotech GMOs lead to superbugs and superweeds.

Instead of rethinking the issue Monsanto and other companies only take it a step further. Monsanto and Syngenta are now researching how to use a medical breakthrough called RNA interference to, among other things, make crops deadly for insects to eat. If this works, a bug munching on such a plant could ingest genetic code that turns off one of its essential genes. I guess they are creating super GMO leading to a super-super bug in the following phase.

Read the Wall Street Journal article here or here.

Doomsday Preppers

Preparing for the uncertain future might become popular. There is already a small percentage of people doing it today to one degree or another. My personal guess would be that some 5% of the population have consciously done some thinking and performed some actions in order to prepare for a period without electricity, scarce water sources, food shortages, civil unrest, and so forth.

Today I stumbled across a National Geographic TV show that might make "prepping" into a fashionable, socially accepted and respected activity. This is an exaggeration, but it will remove some ill stigma from preppers. The TV series is an easy-viewing show called "Doomsday Preppers". Some episodes or snippets from Doomsday Preppers can be found here. They give some ideas and examples of what can be achieved such as a wood-powered car or an old swimming pool converted into a sustainable ecosystem with a thousand fish.

Food Safety

A friend emailed me this link to an article on Mises.org entitled "Restoring the Honor of the Spanish Cucumber". It is a fascinating article how things tend to spiral out of control. It is the story of how a single farmer influenced the food supply of several hundred millions of people, how the situation created by the farmer was misused by the politicians to create new policies in a matter of days, how it allowed politicians to break the rules with nobody complaining, how one country created a special food police in a matter of days, how thousands of people lost their job due to the hype, and how in the end -- as always -- the action of the politicians created a burden of several hundred millions of Euros to the (mostly) European taxpayers. This story shows how everything is intertwined, food, politics, and finance. It is a story of how fast things can collapse in a crisis and how out of proportion "news" can be reported in our times. Nationalistic behavior and propaganda was shown clearly in this incident. Sadly there are real losers in this story as well: the people who died eating contaminated food, their relatives and friends who lost a loved one, the farmers and pickers in many European countries who lost their job, and all the tax payers who have to pay the price to clean up the mess. This case shows the dark side of globalization and centralization.

It seems to be a lot safer and better to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program and buy a weekly food basket from the local farmer that you know and trust.

Food Prices

About 2 years ago I realized that food has to take a more central role in our life. Certainly I placed food close to the center of my thoughts. Very slowly - at the pace of a turtle - I am taking mini-steps to deal with this. The key reasons for putting more focus and emphasis on food is the continuing erosion of quality of food in the market. Every year, food products are more industrial, more artificial, more polluted, more genetically modified, less transparent in respect to their ingredient list, and so forth. That boils down that we need higher quality food with better nutrition for a better health. Secondly, food has to move more into our focus due to quantitative problems and distribution problems that are foreshadowed. That means we need more local food and more self-grown food. Peak oil will let food production cost rise drastically. Last year food cost has risen 30%. Imagine in a year with little official inflation, food prices have soared. See this article entitled "Will increasing food prices lead to more revolution?". Rich people like us in the "developed" world spend a small percentage on food, and we did not notice the 30% increase. But poor people that spend 50% of the income on food have painfully and instantly noticed.

Peak oil will not only cause food production (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides) to become more expensive, but also transport costs will increase drastically. Add to that issues like peak phosphorus, peak water, peak arable land, etc. The good way out or at least a form of insurance policy to this upcoming storm is to engage in a more local food economy. In short, it seems to be a good idea to make friends with local farmers, know where to buy fruits or eggs. Join a local food basket service. And lastly, we must grow a little bit of our own food. I took some courses on gardening and food conservation. I always sharpen my ears when I meet people who grow their own food. This year I will also start with a tiny 2 square yard vegetable garden. These are all tiny baby steps. With a 2 square yard garden I will not be able to produce any noticeable amount of food for my family. It will literally be a drop in the bucket. It might be 1% of our family food consumption. Still, 1% is 1%. I also have to look into the future. I will learn a skill, i.e. farming. Maybe next year I can do 2%. Anyhow, it is crystal clear to me that local food supply and home grown food are essential to a sane life style. I recommend container gardening and square foot gardening to everyone. I hope to see green roof tops and back yards that replace lawns with veggie beds in the near future. I would not mind seeing a certain amount of the Cuba-approach around here.

Not everyone will agree with me. Have a look at this OilDrum articles entitled "The Fallacy of Reversibility" that argues that in the future due to peak oil there will be even more industrial, even larger-scale agrobusiness. One can join this opinion or not, but even if we follow this argument, it is clear that the final cost of this even more industrial, even larger agro-business will be carried by the consumer. In short, even in this scenario, or better said, especially in this scenario, the food prices will go up.

Food is so close to the human heart and soul, there are many things we can live without, but food is not one of them. Instead of outsourcing it to others (agro-business, big chain supermarkets) we should keep this core skill within our family or at least within our community. And on top of that we should mentally prepare for further price hikes,

Solar Cooking

This 2-min video on the world's largest solar cooking system is inspiring.

Food and Energy

This video is worth watching, because it gets the key message about the relationship between food and energy consumption across in only 3 minutes. It is entitled "Watch your (Fo)odometer". Approximately 20% of all the energy used in the US is spent on food production, food packaging, and food transportation.

43 Million

According to the latest data (Nov 2010) more than 43 million Americans received food stamps. In other words, more than 14% of the US population draws food stamps. Mind boggling. This is just one more piece in the puzzle showing that the political and social system of the richest nation has failed. It is time to rethink.

War and Food

This video entitled "The End of Farming in the Fertile Crescent" outlines in 5 minutes the relationship between the Iraqi war and the Iraqi food independence. Now that the US has placed a person from the US agro-business as chief of the Iraqi agriculture, subsidized imported US food (wheat, rice, soy, etc) undermine the local market, local seeds have been destroyed through the war, and saving any left over local seeds has been made illegal. Imported seeds and fertilizers have increased 100s of percent making the local farming cost higher than prices of imported US grains. As a result Iraqi farmers are unable to work the land and the idle land erodes and converts itself into salt flats and desert. A few US corporations gain while Iraqis lose their jobs, income and land fertility. With food dependency achieved, the Iraqis are enslaved not only militarily but also in the food dimension.

Agroinnovations

Yesterday I stumbled across the www.agroinnovations.com site. Frank Aragona runs both a blog and a podcast. Podcasts are mostly 30-minutes episodes and the corresponding blog entries provide additional textual information as well as videos related to the individual podcast episodes. The podcasts are of extremely high quality. The Agroinnovations podcast is now in its 5th year with more than a 115 episodes published. His interviews include the who-is-who of thinkers in the permaculture, transition, and eco-agriculture movements and related fields. I urge you to browse through his podcast list. You will find interviews with Bill Mollison, Larry Korn, P.A. Yeomans, Rob Hopkins, Paul Stamets, and many more.

The One Straw Revolution

Mr. Masanobu Fukuoka is one of the key names in the creation of the permaculture movement. He himself would not see it that way. Several countries had a figure stand out in this field. They were visionaries that were decades ahead of their time. In Australia there is Bill Mollisson, in Austria Sepp Holzer and in Japan it was Masanobu Fukuoka. They are legends, rightfully so.

Already in 1975 he wrote the classic book "The One Straw Revolution" sometimes nicknamed "Zen and the Art of Farming". This book is an easy read, just some 100 pages. I had heard and read a lot about him and his techniques. I had some preconceived notion what the book would be about. But it harbored a few surprises for me. His point of view is that we cannot and will not know or understand nature. "When [we] think [we] are beginning to understand nature, [we] can be sure that [we] are on the wrong track." Basically his beliefs are that we cannot truly understand anything. Another key opinion is that he sees nature as something highly connected. Nothing can be seen in isolation. However, our world and society are too complex. He experienced that many scientists came to study his fields but each looked at it only from one very specific angle according to his research speciality. He knew that such a narrow-sighted approach would not lead to insights or results. According to his thoughts it would require scientists, researchers, politicians, artists, poets, philosophers, men of religion, and farmers to gather jointly to talk things over together.

He was on a search of effective farming that is simple. He always asked himself what can I remove from typical agriculture while still keeping it effective. Slowly and with many tries and failures he reduced agriculture to the bare minimum input while not losing and even increasing health and output. In his way of farming external energetic input is at a minimum. He says that putting "doing nothing" into practice is the one thing the farmer should strive to accomplish. The farmer is freed from useless or even countrproductive chores and free to take a midday nap or write poetry.

His method, he calls it no-method, is based on four principles.

• no cultivation: no plowing or turning of the soil
• no chemical fertilizers or prepared compost: For fertilizer Mr. Fukuoka grows a leguminous cover of white clover, returns the threshed straw to the fields, and adds a little poultry manure
• no weeding, no herbicides: Straw mulch, a ground cover of white clover interplanted with the crops, and temporary flooding provide effective weed control in his fields.
• no pesticides, no chemicals: The sensible approach to disease and insect control is to grow sturdy crops in a healthy environment (rather than weak - often laboratory made - crops optimized for size or color).

I liked this phrase a lot: "Before researchers become researchers, they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is." He certainly views farmers as philosophers. "The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings." As you can see "The One Straw Revolution" is not only a book on agriculture or permaculture, it is a book on life. "In nature, there is life and death, and nature is joyful. In human society, there is life and death, and people live in sorrow." Isn't it time we change our objectives?

PS: Just found this video "The One Straw Revolution" that brings the book in context with Larry Korn , translator of the book, who worked for the old master for a total of 2.5 years. Here I also found the reference to the web site www.onestrawrevolution.net. More videos and links are to be found there.

Monsanto and the US State Department

WikiLeaks reported that the US Ambassador to France planned pain-causing "retaliation" against France over the ban on Monsanto's GMO corn. Need I say more? Who are your friends? Big business? Governments? Nah, there is no difference between these two anymore.

Vive la France.

New Start

Today, 1-1-11, is another opportunity for a new start. A TV-like internet channel was opened today that promises to cover these topics with a daily link to a short video:

• local food production
• permaculture
• energy
• transportation
• community response
• co-housing
• enlightened simplicity
• and positive transition initiatives of all kinds

Sounds interesting, today in its first "episode" the link was to a 5-min video with Geoff Lawton on a permaculture food forest in Vietnam. The TV-like channel is called "Next World TV". If you subscribe you get one email daily with a link to a relevant video or video segment.

Germany upholds Restrictions on GMO

This week a German court voted in favor on keeping current restrictions on planting and growing GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) plants. Overall there is good news and there is worrisome news. The good news:

• Existing restrictions on distance and liability of genetically polluting neighboring fields are kept in place. [Proving pollution and the source of pollution however seems dauntingly difficult.] 
• In April 2009, Germany's government banned commercial production of GMO maize type MON 810 GMO from U.S. biotech giant Monsanto on health concerns despite European Union safety approval.
  

The worrisome news:

• In 2010 Germany accepted an EU decision to approve commercial cultivation of the GMO potato Amflora developed by German group BASF for industrial starches, not human food.
• The EU is responsible for GMO approvals in the bloc, but is considering new rules to permit individual member states to decide whether biotech crops are cultivated in their countries.

Slowly the rules and laws safeguarding us from GM pollution in the EU are eroding. It seems that the industry (Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, etc.) is partially successfully working on a divide and conquer strategy.

Oil and Corexit

Susan Shaw has dedicated a great part of her life to the damages caused by oil disasters such as the Exxon Valdez and the BP crime in the Mexican Gulf. She is an expert on marine toxins and her brief talk "The oil spill's toxic trade-off" is an excellent summary of the dangers of Corexit and the political and big-business attitude in which it is used.

We Feed the World 2

I re-watched the "We Feed the World" video. This 96-minute documentary produced by Austrian Erwin Wagenhofer in 2005 shows the relations between small farmers and fishers and big agro-industry and the effects the global food trade has on individuals, at a personal level. Even the second viewing was interesting. It is the little details that will get stuck in your mind: Austrian farmers today have to work 6 times the size of land to produce the same living standard as their farming parents. ... Every day the largest city of Austria Vienna throws away the amount of bread from overproduction that the second largest city of Austria Granz consumes. ... In the largest vegetable and fruit market in Dakar, Africa, one can find subsidized Spanish vegetables. Subsidized vegetables from European agro-business sell for one third less than local products causing the irreversive death of African farms. ... European governments pay large amounts of subsidies to European farmers to produce wheat and corn. Europe then burns subsidized wheat and corn to fire electric power plant, i.e. wheat and corn are used to produce electricity. Europe then imports soy for feeding its animals, mostly from Brasil. The world's biggest soy exporter is Brasil. Despite being the world's largest soy exporter and one of the world's largest food producing nation people starve in Brasil. ... The global web of interconnections becomes clear. What we eat and how we produce food not only affects us but many people around the world.

Food Secrets

"Food - The Ultimate Secret Exposed" is a 15-minute video by Alex Jones. In his typical style this video is exaggerated and dramatized. Nonetheless, filtering out some of the theatrical allegations, there is an essence of truth in this video. It is a rapid run through the dangers in today's processed food: Aspartame, GM corn, GM soy, GM cotton seed oil, growth hormone meats and milk, fluoride in water and toothpaste, dimethylpolysiloxane (a type of silicon) in TV dinners, GM salmon, MSG, mercury tainted fertilizers, viral meat spraying, ... For those who do not have time to spend on viewing 1-hour documentaries with more facts on each item of this list, this might be an appropriate summary warning us of the many items to watch out for in the food shopping aisle. Think before you shop.

Plastic

If you don't have time to watch "Plastic Planet" or "Addicted to Plastic" watch this different video on the same topic that is a good summary in just 7 minutes. It is entitled "World biggest garbage dump - plastic in the Ocean".