Selling Big Ag

Selling Big Ag or: False Dichotomies Are Fun!
By Douglas Barnes


I just had the misfortune of reading Robert Paarlberg’s article Attention Whole Foods Shoppers in Foreign Policy in which he pooh-poohs what he thinks is “sustainable” agriculture. What is the prescription from this political scientist who sits on the Biotechnology Advisory Council to the CEO of Monsanto? Why, more industrial agriculture, of course! While I find many faults and outright falsehoods in the story, I shall reserve my critique to only the most egregious of errors in the piece to avoid making a book out of this.

First off, I suppose that I should praise Paarlberg for having the courage to so publicly demonstrate that he has no clue as to the meaning of sustainable. He makes the claim that

“[S]ustainable food” in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn’t work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic.

For the benefit of the reader, I shall give that definition in a manner that is clear and concise and has a useable metric behind it: A system is sustainable if it can capture and store more energy over its lifetime than it consumes in its creation and maintenance. A system can be organic and still be unsustainable, and many are, especially when externalised costs are properly included in the calculations. As far as the modern farming he advocates goes, it is virtually always, if not always unsustainable.

Why is that important? It is important to realise that the word “sustainable” can also be traded for the word “survivable.” Modern conventional agriculture is wholly dependent on fossil fuels to exist. In fact, ten kilocalories of exosomatic energy – energy outside of human labour – are needed to provide a U.S. consumer with one kilocalorie of uncooked food energy.

Now, I fully admit that I am not an accountant, so take the following with a grain of salt. It seems to me that if a system relies on consuming over ten energy units of a finite energy resource to produce one energy unit of an item, that system is neither sustainable nor survivable in the long term. I say “over ten times” because when losses from cooking, soil and water degradation and the documented adverse health effects of the modern food system are factored in, the costs increase.

I have trouble with Paarlberg's the assertion that we have two choices for our future: The energy-intensive approach to farming in the so-called developed world, or traditional agricultural approaches. It is worth pointing out that many of these “traditional” approaches are the not-quite sustainable approaches developed in the temperate world and exported inappropriately to tropical, sub-tropical, arid and semi-arid regions of the world via colonialism.

While this does make arguing the case easier, it is a logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy. A false dichotomy is an argument that reduces an argument to just two options, ignoring all other options. In this case, it offers only labour-intensive approaches to farming or energy-intensive approaches. Totally ignored is a design-intensive approach to farming. More on this later.

Paarlberg writes of “bringing improved seeds and fertilizers to traditional farmers,” but what are these “improved seeds”? Many of them are genetically modified seeds that he has advocated elsewhere. These crops have never been tested for long term health effects on humans, although the amount of research finding harm to animals fed GMOs is increasing. This is to say nothing about the hubris of randomly jamming transgenes into crop DNA when the science of genetics is just reaching the point where we understand that we don’t really understand what a gene is. In other cases, it means promoting the spread genetically homogeneous seeds. Luckily, this project is not complete. If it were, we would not have the 100 or so varieties of wheat resistant to the strain of Puccinia graminis tritici that popped up in Uganda in 1999, more commonly known as Ug99 - a fungus that threatens world wheat supplies.

And then there are the synthetic fertilisers he wants to bring to “traditional farmers.” I’ve written about this before, so the question is, why does he want to destroy soil organic carbon content, particularly when that is so vital to soil fertility and the ability of soil to hold water?

Image from AATF 

Coming back to design-intensive approaches, let's look at Africa, since Striga hermonthica. S. hermonthica is a fascinating genus of plant that actually parasitizes other plants, tapping into their roots for nutrients and water. Now, the folks Paarlberg work for propose a solution: genetically modify your crop so that it resists herbicides that would kill Striga. But Striga is actually a useful plant, in that it is an indicator plant. When it starts to appear, it is saying, “Hey Bozo, stop farming the wrong way!” You see, Striga only survives in conditions with very low available nitrogen. So, if you are repeatedly farming corn, a nitrogen-demanding crop, and are in a region such as East Africa that is prone to Striga, you will have a problem if you don’t take soil health seriously.
Paarlberg is so intent on focusing on it. No, agriculture there isn’t sustainable. There systems are bleeding energy on the whole. Consider the case of

So, the solution could be spend millions on research to develop a proprietary technology (i.e. GM crop) allowing plants to survive dousing with expensive and dangerous herbicides, ignoring the problem (neglect of soil health). Or the solution could be the one that has actually been put into practice: Treat soil fertility seriously by inter-cropping corn in an alley-cropping regime such as the Taungya system, inter-planting with nitrogen-fixing trees such as Leucaena that can also provide fodder, wood and fuel. The use of nitrogen-fixing plants, green manure and mulching are an effective way to address fertility without relying heavily or solely on animal manure, which Paarlberg asserts organic agriculture is dependent upon. Additionally, human wastes can be composted and returned to the land. This closes the fertility loop while tackling the water-borne disease problem so prevalent in Africa. Unfortunately, the latter, sustainable approach does not make money for industrial agribusiness.

Paarlberg also writes of “learning to appreciate the modern, science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural systems we’ve developed in the West.” Well, no one who knows me or has read my articles in this blog would accuse me of being unappreciative of science, but it is true that I do not appreciate Western agriculture. Why would I appreciate a system that has ruined more soil more quickly than at any time in history, reduced nutrition (more on this later), contaminated groundwater and riparian systems, ruined farming as a way of life, while subjecting an unwilling population to ongoing experimentation that may be making them infertile, among other things (i.e. GM crops)? All for a system that is so inefficient that it requires 10 units of external energy (not counting human labour) to produce one unit of food energy and cannot survive without massive public subsidy? No thanks. You can keep that system.

He also asserts that organic has been found to be no more nutritious than conventionally grown produce and provides two sources to back him. I’ll provide two of my own. The first is a study by chemist Donald R. Davis published last year in HortScience in which it was found that

Recent studies of historical nutrient content data for fruits and vegetables spanning 50 to 70 years show apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in minerals, vitamins, and protein in groups of foods, especially in vegetables.

The second study was also released last year by the UK’s Food Standards Agency. The study omitted numerous studies showing higher nutrition in organically grown food and made the claim that there are “no important differences in the nutrition content , or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food.” So, why am I citing this as support for my argument? Because despite the FSA’s characterisation of the study, the study found that organic produce had 53.6% more beta-carotene, 38.4% flavonoids, 13.2% more phenolic compounds, 12.7% more protein, 11.3% more zinc, 10.5% more sulphur, 8.7% more sodium, 8.3% more copper, 7.1% more magnesium, 6% more phosphorus, and 2.5% more potassium. It sure would help us to form a reasonable opinion about the issue, if the people presenting the evidence were even remotely honest. But I digress.

Without a shred of evidence, he makes the claim that "Organic field crops also have lower yields per acre." Well, the Rodale trials don't square with that claim very wall. They found that

After a transition period of about four years, crops grown under organic systems yield as well as and sometimes better than crops grown under the conventional system. Moreover, organic systems can out-produce the conventional system in years of less-than-optimal growing conditions such as drought. [The Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial: The First 15 Years, The Rodale Institute, Kutztown, 1999]

As mentioned, Paarlberg assumes that the only way to address soil fertility is through animal manure, which would require more forests to be cut down in order to provide for the animals, saying “Mass deforestation probably isn’t what organic advocates intend.” Actually, increased trees cover through agroforestry is what I intend, though I don’t speak for organic agriculture.

Our simple monoculture approach to production is a product of simple thinking. It’s time to stop burning those calories on either back-breaking labour or on producing synthetics and the machines to spread them around, and start spending it on brain power as outlined in the approach to Striga above.

The Winter That Was

The Winter That Was
By Douglas Barnes

We had been bizarre winter here in Ontario, Canada. For most of Canada, the winter was rather anemic. While it did ease the home construction I did over the winter, it also threw us for a loop. So, imagine my surprise when renowned scholars such as real estate magnate Donald Trump made comments like this one: ""With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore."

The coldest winter ever recorded? Really? Well, the popular myth goes that the very wealthy are very wealthy because they are very intelligent and very knowledgeable. But let's have a look at what happened this winter nonetheless.

The combined global average of land and sea temperatures for December, 2009 made it the eight warmest winter on record; and the month came in 0.49°C above the average for the 20th century. The following image shows the temperature anomalies for December. The more an area was below the average, the larger a blue dot it has. The higher above the normal, the larger the red dot it has. The map is very red.What was really bizarre was the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic taking a detour and heading towards Western Greenland instead of Europe. I would suspect that this under-reported phenomenon contributed to the cooling from the arctic oscillation that kept Europe and the eastern seaboard of the U.S. so chilly this year.


This phenomenon continued more or less right through the winter as can be seen in the Mercator reports over the winter.

The story for January was a little different. Whereas 2009 had the eighth warmest December on record, 2010 had the fourth warmest January on record with temperatures 0.60°C above the 20th century average for combined land and sea temperatures. The picture for January looks like this:
Yes, yes. But what about February when it was so cold in the eastern U.S. and when Trump made his comments?

Well, I have to admit, there is a gotcha. It was only the sixth warmest February on record with the combined land and sea temperatures 0.60°C above the 20th century average. Incidentally, the sea temperatures for December, 2009 through February, 2010 were the second warmest on record at 0.54°C above the 20th century average. The picture for February looks like this:

As for March, this year was the 34th year in a row where March was above the 20th century average. The combined average of land and sea temperatures were 0.77°C above normal making it the warmest March on record ever. March looked like this:

So what happened? Donald Trump and too many pundits were wrong? How can that be? Simply put, they made the shockingly common error of assuming that where they happened to live was the entire world when, in fact, it is only a tiny corner of the world.

The figures for April aren't out yet, though I know that the region I live in is a full month ahead of where it was last year and will be showing up as a large red dot on the map when it is released. Stay tuned...





References

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2009&month=12&submitted=Get+Report

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=1&submitted=Get+Report

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=2&submitted=Get+Report

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=3&submitted=Get+Report

Please see my recent article in Interesting Times Magazine, page 8.

Cheers all!

When was the last time you stopped and asked,

“What are we doing here? What is our goal as a

society?” By just looking at the outcomes, we

are pursuing neither happiness nor trying to

maximize human potential – that is assuming we

aren’t grossly ignorant and incompetent.

Paradigm Shifts and Permaculture

Paradigm Shifts and Permaculture

by Douglas Barnes

Not long after I started this website, I came to the shocking discovery that there are those who express an almost violent hatred of permaculture. At the time, I could not understand why anyone would object to a system that simply seeks to provide us with the tools to make our lives sustainable. What could possibly set someone off against a system that treats long-term sustainability as a serious endeavor and works to develop simple, affordable systems that lead us in that direction, I wondered. I had thought that even if one is set on continuing their life within the model of the status quo, surely they would be happy that we permaculturists are there in the background working out solutions to current and future problems.

I was wrong. There is something in permaculture so inherently threatening to some that I occasionally receive very irrational attacks, extending on one occasion to what basically amounted to a death threat. What could it be that causes some people to react so irrationally?

One clue is the origin of the attacks. They are always coming from individuals in wealthy nations. The comments I have received from people living in economically poorer nations have always been ones of appreciation and support. For one group, the need for inexpensive, sustainable solutions that really work is readily apparent. For the other group, people can currently afford to ignore reality, and the suggestion that change is needed is threatening.

An example of the first group expressing appreciation is my relationship with the Green Tree Foundation in Andhra Pradesh, India. Though formerly a tropical region, Andhra Pradesh is now a semi-arid zone receiving as little as 500 mm of rainfall after very long and hard dry seasons. Rainfall is the source of water; and there are tense times waiting for the rains. (Last year they even tried cloud seeding to get rainfall, and when the rain finally fell, I felt relief from 10,000 km away.) The need for sustainable solutions is not a matter of debate there; the solutions are literally needed if they are to survive the short term. Food is produced locally, and drinking water is sourced locally as well.

That can be contrasted with a First World equivalent. Consider an average ¼ acre lot in Tucson, Arizona, which receives 253,621 litres of water a year via rainfall, but the average 3-person family there consumes 454,248 litres (almost twice that nature provides them with). Additionally, the 253,621 litres it receives in rainfall is largely shunted away quickly by storm drains.¹ Water supplies come from expensive outside sources. Food is trucked in from other parts of the U.S. and from other nations. Only monetary wealth makes such waste possible.

For the Third World, there are few illusions regarding their future. They know they are in trouble and the trouble will only increase without serious changes being made regarding the capture and storage of energy and resources. The Third World not only comes from poverty, they remain in poverty. The First World, however, has come out of poverty into a spurt of opulence. Once one acquires a taste of opulence, though, it is like a drug – hard to let go. And any suggestion that living high is no longer possible is met with lashing out similar to the confronted junkie.

Rereading the ideas of science historian Thomas Kuhn recently, I came to realise that what I was seeing in the attacks was a clash of paradigms.² The old paradigm of progress driven by monetary wealth has a science fiction version of the future with fantastic technologies addressing every issue of material need and opening us up to a world of constant leisure time where human beings are freed from labour, able to pursue whatever endeavor their hearts desire. (Ironically, the monetary paradigm is giving us less and less free time to go along with the ever increasing amounts of technology it gives us.)³

This paradigm is so enticing that real answers to serious questions are glossed over. The appeal to technology as savior is the “sweeping under the rug,” in the late physicist Richard Feynman’s words⁴, of pressing problems humanity now faces. The appeal of seeking technology as an answer is understandable. As historian Ronald Wright pointed out in the 2004 Massey Lectures:

Our technological culture measures human progress by technology: the club is better than the fist, the arrow better than the club, the bullet better than the arrow. We came to this belief for empirical reasons.

Wright also points out, however, that “[o]ur practical faith in progress has ramified and hardened into an ideology – a secular religion which… is blind to certain flaws in its credentials.”⁵

Technology, it is said, is neutral – it is neither harmful nor beneficial. Only its uses determine helpful or harmful outcomes. I think it is rather the case that technology normally creates new problems that require ever more technology to solve the problems that technology creates.⁶ For instance, the creation of the modern steam engine led to the increased mining of coal, increasing the volume of machinery making coal inadequate to meet energy needs, necessitating the internal combustion engine, creating a car culture, necessitating highway systems, leading to the increased use of oil, leading to the current problems of peak oil and climate change, both very pressing problems we now face. The worst possible outcome I can imagine for the problem of peak oil is a technological fix providing the replacement of oil with some form of abundant, cheap energy. Energy on the scale we use today is only needed to continue us on our current path of ever more growth. At current world growth rates, we would see a doubling in economic output in a little more than 20 years time. However, each doubling of the world economy requires an equivalent to all the resource inputs for all of human history prior to the last doubling.⁷ In other words, to double the economy from where it is today, we will need to use up as many resources as we ever did in the past. Clearly, this would be disaster. Under the current paradigm, a technological fix to the problem of peak oil would lead to ecological collapse.

None of this is controversial, but if you are committed to the current paradigm, any reminders of such facts are threatening. If your way of life ends, so too do the dreams of the bright, shiny technological future. By seeking workable solutions only by currently existing technology and only by technologies that have either a chance of being sustainable or putting us on a sustainable path, permaculturists are indirectly shining light on the threats to the current paradigm. Permaculture then becomes an unwanted reminder that the days of the current paradigm are numbered. If one is emotionally invested in that paradigm, one may lash out against it.

Choosing to practice permaculture, on the other hand, means shifting paradigms. As Kuhn points out, one can only fully understand the perspectives of a given paradigm if one is in that paradigm itself. Permaculture causes a shift in perception of the world.

Traveling through a new subdivision, for instance, I do not see nice new modern homes that I would like to live in. Rather I see homes built without consideration for the energy needed to heat or cool them – homes that need tremendous energy inputs to make them livable. Looking inside, I see internal room layouts that do not facilitate either work or movement within the home, and little or no understanding of what patterns in architecture actually make people feel comfortable within a home.⁸ I see urban development without any consideration of community or energy. I see land dedicated only to conspicuous displays of opulence rather than the production of healthy food.

Walking into the forest, I don’t see trees and dirt. Rather I see complex, symbiotic networks of fungi, microbes, plant and animal. I see parasitic organisms not destroying, but carrying out vital roles in keeping the overall system healthy and even increasing diversity .⁹ I don’t see “problem” organisms, I see organisms whose importance I do not yet recognise. Looking at a field, I see potentials for the capture and storage of water and the possibilities for a vibrant and dynamic diversity of organisms that can be placed to create an ecosystemic system to meet not only the needs of the individual organisms, but also the people living on the site.

Under the old paradigm, an infestation of corn borers means you need to spray pesticides, or spend millions of dollars to genetically engineer a variety of corn to produce a toxin (then still need to spray anyway). Under the new paradigm, you first of all see an over-abundant food source for parasitoids. Secondly, you see evidence of some sort of imbalance: soil infertility perhaps, lack of predator habitat, over concentration of borer food, etc. The costs of the old paradigm are ecological destruction and risks to human health both known and unknown. Additionally, there is a rather substantial monetary cost in the form of chemical and genetic research (funded in large part by tax payers), externalized health costs and clean up costs, and costs to the farmer for seed and chemicals. The costs of the new paradigm are investments in learning the functional ecology of your system and an acceptance of temporary losses while balancing the system.

What are you talking about?

Coming from a completely different paradigm, communication with those in the old paradigm becomes difficult, as Kuhn points out. Were Claudius Ptolemy to jump through time to today and teach a first-year physics class, he would tell his students,

The Earth does not rotate; otherwise objects will fling off its surface like mud from a spinning wheel. It remains at the centre of things because this is its natural place – it has no tendency to go either one way or the other. Around it and in successively larger spheres revolve the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, all of them deriving their motion from the immense and outermost spheres of fixed stars.¹⁰

The students would either think it was a joke, or an argument would ensue with each side wondering why the other could not understand what was clearly the nature of the universe as evidenced by observation.

In my own experience, pointing out the potential dangers in biotechnology as an approach to pest problems¹¹, for example, I am always met with stunned silence when I ask why there is a pest problem in the first place. One rarely encounters devastating pest outbreaks in natural systems, and there is a reason for that.¹² That reason, however, is only visible from within the new paradigm. The new paradigm lets us see that the problem is not one of pests attacking corn or cotton or brinjal, or weeds choking out soybeans. The problem is approaching a piece of land as a factory. The “pests” are only doing what organisms do: finding a niche and filling it. Create a niche conductive to early-stage pioneers (what people commonly call “weeds”) and you will see a lot of those pioneers. Create vast monoculture smorgasbords of pest food with little or no reserves for pest predators (or kill the predators by spraying insecticide on them) and you should know what to expect.

Point this out to people dedicated to the old paradigm and at best they will just ignore you. More likely they will dismiss your approach a priori as impossible or unworkable. Or worse, they will lash out at you.

To give another example, this one less extreme but still important, a colleague of mine recently did a large design and implementation job for a farm in Australia in which I participated by providing graphics for swale designs. Not only is Australia dry, they have not been receiving normal amounts of rainfall over the past few years, so the swales where really the cornerstone of the design. Without the capture and storage of water, there is no guarantee that the trees planted on site will survive and the site would definitely not do as well without them. Unfortunately, the client did not operate from the same paradigm as my colleague and decided that the swales were unnecessary and would not put them in. As a result, our expectations for the site are not high. If nothing else, this can serve as a practical warning to designers of cross-paradigm communication. Clients need to understand fully what you are doing and why.

Shifting gears

For the permaculturist him or herself, the paradigm shift has its own challenges. The greatest obstacle to overcome is fear. Permaculturists in the First World must step out of the material culture that they grew up with. This is a huge challenge, even if they identify that paradigm as the source of many of the hardships they face in their lives. Questions arise as to whether or not they should just keep doing what they've always done: Can you really heat and cool a home passively? What happens if I attempt to grow my own food and the entire crop fails? Do I know enough about animal husbandry? Gardening? Building? Will I be adopting a way of life that leaves me alone and isolated? Will I miss the old life I had? How will I get land? Where should I get land? Can I use the site I’m on now? How can I pay for the initial expenses of setting up my system? Will this stuff really work? Really?

Studying permaculture is a bit like going to a swimming pool: you are there because you want to jump in. The pattern most follow is dipping their feet in the permaculture pool as it were. You know that after jumping in, you will quickly adjust and enjoy it. It’s just that initial jolt you fear. People generally step in and step out, staying in longer each time until finally they just jump right in.

Once in, you don’t want to come out again. Personally, I am on the verge of selling off vacation property to purchase acreage on which to build a home of my own design and set up systems on a scale that I have only had the opportunity to do on others’ land. The choice between that and returning to my old life in the suburbs of Tokyo is clear. I will be happy to give a requiem for the nightlife, the hustle, the gleaming technology, the grocery bills, the water bills, the path that I know is not sustainable. It had its moments, but the perspective gained from the new paradigm makes living the old life impossible for me. As the physicist cannot go back to the Ptolemaic model of the universe revolving around the Earth, the permaculturist cannot look at the status quo conceptual framework of industrial society as even remotely sensible. Change becomes a necessity, even if that threatens some.

1. Lancaster, Brad. Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands. Volume 1: Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape. Tucson: Rainsource Press, 2006, p. 18 .

2. Bird, Alexander. "Thomas Samuel Kuhn" Dictionary of Literary Biography (2003), draft version available at http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~plajb/research/papers/Kuhn_for_DLB.pdf; Okasha, Samir. Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Strohman, Richard. Epigenesis and Complexity: The Coming Kuhnian Revolution in Biology. Nature Biotechnology, March, 1997, pp. 194-200.

3.3 The San of the Kalahari work about 750 hours a year living in one of the harshest environments on Earth. By contrast, most North Americans work close to 3000 hours a year, more if you count housework. The best I have personally heard a permaculture system to achieve is around 620 hours a year. The is on a par with hunter-gatherer societies, which, counter-intuitively, require much less work to sustain themselves than “civilized” societies.

4. Strohman (1997).

5. Wright, Ronald. A Short History of Progress. Toronto: House of Asansi Press, 2004, p. 4.

6. This is not to say that some otherwise destructive technologies – the bulldozer for instance – cannot be put to very productive uses such as the creation of water catchment earthworks. However, I think a lot of the “green” technology is going to turn out to be subject to the Jevons Paradox, allowing increased and accelerated resource depletion because of increased efficiency.

7. Smith, Rod. Lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering, Carpe Diem: The Dangers of Risk Aversion. Civil Engineering Surveyor, October 2007 cited in Monbiot, George. What is Progress? December 4, 2007 available at http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/04/what-is-progress/

8. For a guide to good design, see Alexander, Christopher et al. A Pattern Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

9. For example, Armillaria mushrooms (honey mushrooms) kill off trees, but in doing so, they can create open pasture in forest. This creates new habitat for a variety of species that otherwise would not exist. It also sets up a rich edge ecology on the forest/pasture border. See Stamets, Paul. Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Berkley: Ten Speed Press, 2005.

10. Verma, Surendra. The Little Book of Scientific Principles, Theories & Things. Sydney: New Holland Publishers, 2005, p. 16.

11. Problems include but are not limited to unknown and unpredictable effects from gene order disruption, gene scrambling in or around the insertion points of transgenes, genome-wide disruptions, deletions of genes, currently marketed GMOs with anti-biotic marker genes, possible undesirable gene activation due to promoter genes, recombination hotspots within the CaMV 35S promoter gene, unpredicted allergenicity or toxicity, unintended environmental consequences from toxin expression in insecticidal GMOs, problems from increased use with herbicide-tolerant GMOs, etc.

12. Pest plagues in nature are almost always temporary whereas in conventional agriculture, they are systematic.

"Sustainable" defined

By Scott A. Meister and Douglas J. E. Barnes

As environmental awareness has increased, marketers have seen the importance of including the word “sustainable” in their pitches, particularly if what they are selling is not sustainable. It’s almost as if the definition has been twisted into meaning “beneficial” or “profitable.” In Japan, the word “LOHAS,” an acronym meaning “Lifestyles Of Health and Sustainability,” is being used to produce TV programs that promote the purchase and consumption of supposedly “green” goods such as re-useable shopping bags, and fair-trade goods, produced and packaged in layers of plastic and shipped from various corners of the underdeveloped world. The sustainability part of the word has been virtually all but ignored. An important part of sustainability is to reduce consumption, but the word LOHAS is being used to promote it. There have been dozens of “LOHAS” programs produced that simply reviewed vacations to remote areas to meditate and practice “shodo” (Japanese calligraphy), and the making of disposable Hawaiian leis made from Japanese wild-flowers (hardly a necessity, and hardly sustainable). By these TV programs’ definitions, virtually anything from old Japanese culture is sustainable, such as target practice with a blowgun, or growing “organic” monocultures of “edamame” (soy beans). Simply because they are grown organically, they assume they are grown sustainably. In short, the word sustainable has been twisted to mean “hippy or traditional vogue.” It is being used to sell a fashionable lifestyle, and the various consumer goods that go with it, but not a sustainable lifestyle. It is being used to promote consumption, not the reduction of it.

We hear of sustainable agriculture, sustainable consumption, sustainable development, sustainable forestry and sustainable energy. However, it is not often made clear what sustainability actually is. Merriam-Webster defines it as “capable of being sustained” and “of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged…” One environmental science textbook says that “Sustainability implies that we cannot turn our resources into waste faster than nature can recycle and replenish the supplies on which we depend.” (William P. Cunningham, Mary Ann Cunningham, Barbara Woodworth Saigo, Environmental Science: A Global Concern, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2005.)

While this gives a sort of vague impression, it still leaves one unable to know what sustainable is or isn’t. If we rely on this vague definition, there can only be one definite answer: a negative one in which a resource use is unsustainable. With this fuzzy definition, it is like asking “Am I immortal?” Only your death can provide a definite answer. Using this unclear definition, if a set rate of resource use is found to be sustainable over time, there might arguably be a higher rate that is still sustainable. The only way to know resource use is unsustainable this way is wait until the negative answer is reached and that resource is depleted. This approach has been taken by civilisations such as the Sumers, the Anasazi, the Pitcairns, the Mayans and others. If we are to avoid repeating their mistakes, a more precise definition of sustainability is needed.

Let’s define sustainable more carefully. A system is sustainable if, over its lifetime, it produces more energy than it consumes. From this, it becomes much easier to see what is sustainable and what is not.

Looking at resource use from an energy audit perspective, we can attempt to determine whether a proposed action or system is sustainable or not. For example, concrete has an embodied energy of 5.6 mega joules per kilogram or 1.5 kWh per kilogram according to data cited by Australia’s Department of the Environment and Heritage. So, used as a construction material in a conventional building such as an apartment block, it is not likely to be sustainable. However, if the concrete is used as part of a thermal mass to absorb and reradiate heat and buffer temperature changes within the home as part of a passive solar strategy that greatly reduces the need for heating, there is a chance that, over the lifetime of the home, the concrete will store more heat than was used in its creation.

Additionally, areas full of high-density apartment buildings are not sustainable, because there is not enough land to support the harvesting of clean water for drinking (let alone washing and practice of flushing toxins to the sea). Nor is there is enough land for soil and trees to provide food, and there are not enough energy resources within immediate access to provide heating and cooling for large complexes. These high-density living areas must import virtually everything, and in the process of their construction, have often taken large portions of highly productive soil, out of production.

A sustainable community is one that is able to provide for most (if not all, ideally) of its own energy needs. If it is not able to provide for itself, it is able to trade with a bioregional neighbor to avoid the need of spending massive amounts of energy for the sake of importing. A sustainable settlement is able to provide most of their own water, shelter, food, heating and cooling and will have a renewable source of energy.

Being sustainable, does not mean that we wish to go back to the dark ages, live individually self-sufficient lives isolated from the rest of the world, while praying to this or that spirit or goddess for salvation. Being sustainable, does mean reducing our inputs and costs, while at the same time, increasing our productivity, health, sanity and leisure time so we can spend what we do have on more essential needs such as genuine happiness.

Seed balls.

Seed balls are a method of propagation widely promoted by Natural Farming innovator Masanobu Fukuoka.

Seed balls are simply seeds mixed with equal proportions of dried compost and clay, formed into small balls, and dried for later sowing.

To make them, simply select the seeds to be used - thick-skinned seeds will need to be scarified, and some seeds need heat or cold to bring them out of dormancy. Legumes will require inoculant if they are to fix nitrogen. Also, for species that can benefit from mycorrhizal relationships, adding the spores of mycorrhizal fungi such as the genus Glomus and/or Rhizopogon, species Gigaspora margarita, and/or Pisolithus tinctorus would be beneficial, though not necessary. [This list is not exhaustive, but these are readily available through Fungi Perfecti.]

Mix one part seeds with one part dry compost.

Next, add one part dry clay and mix.

Then spray in water a little at a time and mix it together until you have just enough water to hold everything together without crumbling.

After that, form the mixture into balls 2~3 cm in diameter.

Finally, dry the balls for later use.

Once dried, the balls are ready to be spread over land that you want to plant. When the rains come, the seeds will germinate.

Using this method along with other Natural Farming techniques, Fukuoka san was able to produce 590kg (1300lbs) of winter grain (barley or wheat) and 22 bushels of rice per quarter acre of land. Moreover, these techniques require the labour of just two people working a few weeks a year to attain the crop. There is no plowing, no weeding, no application of biocides in any form, and no fertilising.

Seed balls may be obscure in North America, but in parts of the world already badly damaged by human activity, their use is easily recognised. The BCIL Alt.Tech Foundation of India uses seed balls to regreen Bangalore. And as most of the planets deserts are the creation of mankind, we can follow their lead to undo the damage we have done.

Imagine tanks used, not for warfare, but to pull land imprinters to give seedballs an advantage. Imaging cluster bombs, not killing, but being used to distribute seed balls over deserts creating green explosions. While some of these ideas may seem unrealistic, they are within the realm of possibility... if we only act.





If you liked our article, you might like our free newsletter. Sign up and you get:

Additional articles

Announcements

How-to tips

Course info

Newsletter Sign up >>

Patterns: The Language of Nature

Nature presents itself in patterns and patterns are the natural way for human beings to interpret the world. Facts and figures are difficult to grasp and more so to remember. We may not remember that Christopher Columbus was born in 1451, but we remember that in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It is not the number we remember, it is the singsong rhyme. How many feet are in a mile? I would never remember that there are 5280 feet, but I can remember “Five to eight! Oh I’ll be late!”

“Art” was traditionally used to encode information. A modern day Westerner transported back in time to a Polynesian ship might mistakenly think that the men are really jolly sorts because they are always singing. In fact, their “singing” is really pattern-encoded navigation data.

Long before western science ever figured it out, the Anasazi developed a spiral calendar that described the wobble in the Earth’s axis of 18.6 years, which is important for understanding flood-drought cycles. Having majored in physics, I can say unequivocally that the Anasazi system is far simpler. The Anasazi system could be learnt by almost anyone, but the Newtonian description of the same thing can only be understood by a tiny number of people.

Another example of art as information is the “song map” of the Pitjantjatjara women. Today the “Aboriginal art” that is produced mostly does not encode much meaningful information, if any. The traditional pictures, however, encoded geographical information. The pictures had accompanying songs that others could use to navigate with even if unfamiliar with the terrain. (Songs have a tempo that remains highly accurate over time. This can be used to time out travel distances, and the songs themselves can encode information about the surrounding environment.)




















We can group together many physical patterns under one unified pattern referred to in permaculture as the “general model.” This model resembles a tree and can differentiate into waves, streamlines, spirals, cloud forms, toroids, branches, scatters and nets. When a two-dimensional representation of the model is tessellated, or put together to make a grid, it can reveal many other patterns.


Tesselation:

Also revealed in the general model is the Overbeck jet – a pattern that is ubiquitous in nature.





















Overbeck jet evident in an embryo and placenta:



















If a flow is interrupted by an object in it’s path, alternating Overbeck jets appear creating a Von Karman trail. As a flag flaps in the wind, it is mapping out the Von Karman trail created by the flagpole.

































Similar to Von Karman trails are Ekman spirals, which have a significant effect on weather. They occur when wind encounters an obstacle such as trees along an edge. The wind is thrust up but cannot oscillate to create Von Karman trails. Instead, spiralling waves are created. The upward flow of air can reach 20 to 40 times the height of the trees compressing the air. This can create rain bands under the right conditions.











Patterns in flow over time are regulated by “pulsers.” Pulsers control growth – prescribing when a function is to begin and end. The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, which creates a non-linear chemical oscillator, is an example. In it, the Overbeck jet often occurs.







Pulses in the human body control heart beat, peristalsis, circadian rhythms, menstruation, etc. Pulses out of balance are evident in fibrillation, seizure, etc.

In a system, elements have their own order. Order defines relative size and placement of elements in a system. Our bodies’ organs demonstrate order. Consider the lungs. They start with trachea which branch into the primary bronchi to the secondary then tertiary bronchi to bronchioles to terminal bronchiole to respiratory bronchiole to alveolus. It is the same with the spleen, liver, kidneys, etc. Everything has its place in the order, and the system will function poorly with elements out of their order. Catchment dams are beneficial to the environment; large valley dams are destructive. In systems containing different orders, certain species will fit in a certain order; others will not. Rainbow Darters (Etheostoma caeruleum) do just fine in a fast stream – not so well in a pond. Landscape comes in orders. Headwaters have rough, rocky soils with shrubs and hardy vegetation. Estuaries have deep sand and sediment and have a richer variety of life.















Knowing flow effects like Von Karman trails, Ekman spirals and Overbeck jets not only inspire design ideas, they offer us a way to manipulate flow with minimal effort.



















The following flowforms are used to oxygenate water:

Why bother? Nothing's wrong.

Why bother? There’s nothing wrong with the environment, right? The late Julian Simon has suggested that we have "the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years." No. Wrong. At the 2000 growth rate of 1.4 percent, that would be 6 billion x 1.014^{7,000,000,000} . I have yet to come across a calculator capable of calculating this, but it would mean that the mass of the population of the human race would far exceed the mass of the universe, which is estimated at 3 x 10⁵⁵ g. At the 2000 growth rate, the number of people would exceed the number of atoms in the universe after 11,500 years. This is an example of R.A.S. (Rigorously Applied Stupidity). We shouldn’t be too hard on Dr. Simon. He worked for the Cato Institute, so it was his job to say silly things.

In fact, there are a number of serious threats to the environment, several of which have a very real potential to be a significant threat to the human race. The following list, while not totally exhaustive, does contain what I believe to the greatest threats to the human race.

Something totally off the radar of the media, mainstream or otherwise, is the threat of erosion and salinisation. While erosion is more of a concern in tropical and arid regions, and salinisation on prairies and in arid regions, people in temperate areas are not immune to its effects. Erosion in some regions it is so great that a tonne of produce comes at a cost of 20 tonnes of topsoil.² In Canada, 38% of farmland in the prairies has areas significantly affected by salinisation.³ This is a relationship that cannot continue. The food we eat needs healthy topsoil to grow. Animals and animal products we rely on graze on land. The plants the animals graze on need topsoil. We cannot rely forever on artificial fertilisers, which compound the problem as well as introduce many more.

Deforestation is a problem that is often missed and its implications are almost always missed. The easiest way to create a desert is to cut down trees. Condensation drip from trees can account for as much as 80 to 86% of precipitation on upland slopes of coastlines. That’s precipitation that never registers on any rain gauges. Moving a few hundred kilometres in from the coast, 100% of the precipitation may be coming from trees. How do we know this? Most of the evaporation off of the ocean is H₂O¹⁶. At the coast, 40% of the water in rain is H₂O¹⁶. Trees, however, transpire H₂O¹⁸. A few hundred km in from the coast, the rain is 100% H₂O¹⁸. Cut the trees and you risk making a desert.

Additionally, there is the very general problem of pollution. According to the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria “Public health experts estimate that air pollution is responsible for 16,000 premature deaths in this country each year; at this rate, forty Canadians die from air pollution-related causes each and every day.” And according to the World Health Organization, there are no safe levels for human exposure to ground-level ozone.⁴ Small particulate matter has been liked to many illnesses including ischemic stroke and other cardiovascular diseases⁵ and lung cancer.⁶ Auto exhaust has been linked to childhood cancers.⁷ This is to say nothing of dioxins and furans.

Acid rain is still with us and there are no places on the Earth left that are immune to rain acidic enough to kill trees. There are an estimated 142,000 lakes in Canada that have been damaged by acid rain.⁸

The vital Antarctic krill population has plummeted by 80% since the 1970s.⁹ Krill are not only a source of food for much of the Arctic and Antarctic life, they are also an important carbon sink.¹⁰ One result of carbon emissions is that the ocean is acidifying and much of the ocean life cannot tolerate this rapid change in pH, particularly life that incorporates calcium carbonate to make shells. We are well on our way towards making the oceans more acidic than they have been in 65 million years.¹¹

Levels of carbon dioxide have spiked since 2002 above the alarming rates of increase in the late 1990s.¹² Also disturbing have been predictions of an ice-free arctic ocean within the next 100 years¹³; melting of Greenland at rates 2 to 3 times the rate in 1996 that could see sea level rise by 7m¹⁴, the melting of Antarctica which could see ocean levels rise much more than that; and the news that peat bogs in Siberia are thawing and have the potential to release billions of tonnes of methane.¹⁵ (Methane is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.)

Modern industrial agriculture depends on petroleum. Without cheap energy, farmers aren’t able to grow – a problem currently seen in the United States.¹⁶ The future of fossil fuels looks rather grim. It seems as though we are very close to a peak in the global production of oil. Discovery of oil reserves has already peaked with the last huge discoveries made in the 1960s.










We won’t be switching to natural gas. It has already peaked in North America and overseas transport is a risky proposition not only for the chance of accident but from the standard 2% or so that regularly leaks out. The global climate has enough methane in it as it is. Coal won’t do it. The U.S. coal reserves are estimated to last about 40 years if consumption rates are increased to just 8%.¹⁷ Nuclear won’t do it. At current rates of usage, there are 50 years left of cheap uranium reserves left in the world.¹⁸ Increase the rates of nuclear power generation and the depletion rate increases. Furthermore, uranium is mined using oil-powered machinery.

This is most important because, as Dr. Albert Bartlett says, “Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food.” The United States uses 10.25 quadrillion Btu of total energy in the food industry, 2.20 quadrillion Btu of which go into agricultural production.¹⁹ This is a practice that cannot and will not continue. It is the textbook meaning of unsustainable.

Also of concern is the rush to distribute as many genetically modified organisms into the environment as possible. Perhaps the most alarming of these has been pseudomonas syringae. It’s thought that pseudomonas syringae could play a role in up to 80% of the world’s rain formation. The genetically modified version is incapable of serving as a condensation point for rain droplets and is currently used to spray fruit crops to protect them from frost. So, we get to protect monoculture farmers and threaten life on the planet at the same time.

Ultimately, the bad news is that homo sapiens have reached a point where they are the single most influential species on the planet and that influence exerted is mostly negative. Don’t panic. This need not be the case. We have the practical knowledge to exert our influence an environment-enhancing way. Instead of wiping out species, we could be contributing to speciation. Instead of creating deserts, we could be reversing them and creating forests in their place. If you kick nature, nature kicks back harder. If you benefit nature with good design, you almost always get back more benefit than you designed for.

References

1. http://www.greatchange.org/ov-catton,denial.html

2. http://www.botany.uwc.ac.za/Envfacts/facts/erosion.htm

3. http://res2.agr.ca/publications/hs/chap08_e.htm

4. http://www.cleanair.ca/science_facts.html

5. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-10/bidm-sel102805.php

6. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-03/nyum-mds022702.php

7. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/bsj-ccs080905.php

8. http://www.cleanair.ca/science_facts.html

9. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-11/bas-fst110104.php

10. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/bas-akp020606.php

11. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/ci-oms021706.php

12. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0115-04.htm

13. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/uoa-aoc082205.php

14. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4720536.stm

15. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0811-03.htm

16. http://www.txfb.org/TexasAgriculture/2005/102105/102105opinions.htm

17. http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/645

18. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.htm Nuclear power also leaves a toxic legacy for millenia.

19. http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update48_data.htm

Debunking Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

Reading about Bush's White House chat with Michael Crichton regarding his book State of Fear and having heard more and more from people about the book, I feel I must do something to address the errors and outright falsehoods in his book. With much help from Gavin Schmidt from RealClimate.org and others, let's look at the central claims of Crichton's work and see how it holds up to scrutiny.

One claim is that while carbon emissions were rising, temperatures from the 40s to the 70s were falling. This argument completely leaves out other climatic forcings. Those of you old enough (or well read enough) will know that in many industrialised the 1970 ushered in a new era of environmental regulation. Many countries saw the enacting of clean air laws which saw an immediate and significant drop in atmospheric aerosol levels. This is very significant because aerosols “dim” or cut down on solar radiation causing a cooling effect. And there are other forcings that need to be full considered before a definitive answer can be given. For example, changes in land usage, long-term oceanic cycles, changes in solar output, and volcanic aerosols could all have an effect. When we consider the current warming, however, no model has been able to explain it without including CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases.[1]

Next, Crichton makes much ado about his selective use of weather station data. Considering the long-term cooling trend at Punta Arenas in southern Chile, one of the heroes in Crichton’s book exclaims “There’s your global warming.” I honestly cannot understand how Michael Crichton, a well-educated man, can mistake one city for an entire globe. Cooling at Punta Arenas you say? Yes, ok. But warming at Harrow, Canada, warming at Mito, Japan, warming at Swindon England, etc. Global warming means an increase in the mean global temperature, not an increase in the mean temperature of Punta Arenas (or not) and Punta Arenas only. What he did was take (very) selective data that fit his hypothesis and ignored most of the planet to do so. Had Crichton looked at the airport in Santa Cruz, Chile, he would have found a long-term cooling effect. [2] But I should not be too harsh because his book is fiction pretending to be science, not science.

Another stop on Crichton’s local equals global tour is Antarctica. On problem with Antarctica is the lack of long-term data. The Larson-B ice shelf “has warmed substantially,” but data on the entire continent is scarce, so any long term claim is just guesswork.[3] Furthermore, Antarctica is, as many know, not the entire globe. It is one region. There is no way around it, mean global temperatures have risen.

Crichton, showing ignorance of the global warming debate, attacks Dr. James Hansen’s 1988 testimony to Congress saying that it was “overstated by 300 percent.” We can ask a simple question: Did Dr. Hansen do this? And we get a simple answer: No. What did Dr. Hansen do? After he testified, he and several colleagues published a paper that offered three scenarios. Scenario A has CO2 rising exponentially. Scenario B has an increase following historic trends with a large volcanic event occurring as well. And Scenario C arrests CO2 increases at the year 2000 with a large volcanic event occurring. Readers will recall the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. In the end, Scenario B was the closest to the unfolding record. In other words, Dr. Hansen’s predictions were quite good and his testimony to Congress showed only the predictions in Scenario B. [4]

Where did Crichton go wrong? He relies on Patrick Michael’s 1998 testimony to Congress in which he conveniently deleted Scenarios B and C from Dr. Hansen’s work. In other words, willful deception on Michael's part. [5]

Crichton tries to make the claim that the perception of global warming is due to climatologists worldwide being to stupid to know about the thermal island effect of cities. No. Wrong. Climatologist David E. Parker published a piece in Nature in 2004 showing that this is not the case. [6] And perhaps the reader will have heard of a region called the Arctic which has no urban areas yet has undergone startling warming. [7]

Crichton raises the urban myth that "in the 1970's all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming". Again, no. Wrong. If you have the inclination, you can read through the debunking of this claim by climate modeler William Connolley. [8]

Crichton pooh-poohs sea level rise in his book. That’s an odd thing to do with melting icecaps and glaciers. [9] No, sea level is increasing, though it is not perceived to be everywhere. Much of the northern hemisphere is still literally rebounding from the last ice age. Some other areas are subject to tectonic forces that cause the land to rise. Interestingly, the data Crichton offers in his footnotes is evidence of a rise in sea level. [10]

In yet another case, Crichton cites a paper saying that it claims Kilimanjaro is melting because of deforestation, not global warming. The problem is that his source does not say this at all. [11] Douglas Hardy, who Crichton cites says Crichton “the denialists always to do” which is to take things out of context, or take elements of reality and twist them a little bit, or combine them with other elements of reality to support their desired outcome.'' [12]

In a sane world, Crichton's work would be seem for what it is: a work of fiction and nothing more. Unfortunately, however, we live in a world where false ideas are not only influencing the media, but also Congress and the White House as well. If there is any solace, it is that the deniers must turn to a work of fiction to try to support their claims. Unfortunately, important ears are listening to those claims.

1. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

2. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

3. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=18

4. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/01/schmidt-fear/index.html

5. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/01/schmidt-fear/index.html

6. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7015/abs/432290a.html

7. http://www.pewclimate.org/state_of_fear.cfm

8. http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

9. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-science/

10. http://www.pewclimate.org/state_of_fear.cfm http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

11. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=129

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/02/06/checking_crichtons_footnotes/

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/02/06/checking_crichtons_footnotes?pg=2

12. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/02/06/checking_crichtons_footnotes?pg=2