Musings – Page 4

boxed in by a dubious premise

Georgia is the center of the poultry industry. At a local luncheon the former president of the largest poultry operation in the state recently (October 2012) said the industry grew tremendously since 1970 from 1.5 billion to 7.5 billions pounds of chicken a year. He added that by 2050 the world’s population will be 9.1 billion up 34 percent from the current 6.8 billion and meat production must increase by 74 percent.

His comments and others like his, operate at two levels – the explicit and the implicit. Explicitly there is huge growing demand (not only from the population increase but from increased demand for meat as people around the world earn more) and this is a selling opportunity so long as the infrastructure is in place, otherwise production will move to Latin America, etc. But there is also an implicit assertion – that there is a moral imperative to provide food for the growing population of the world.

And once you accept the implicit assertion you are boxed in. Because only conventional agriculture (Green Revolution now enhanced by GMO’s) can demonstrably supply the quantity of food required by the growing masses. I remember discussing organic growing with an intelligent younger person who accepted all the virtues of safer more nutritious food produced sustainably while caring for the environment, but concluded by saying that the big drawback, if organic production was the norm, was there wouldn’t be enough food for everyone. And that is the box I find myself in.

A big reason for the increase in world populations has been the availability of cheap food as a consequence of the Green Revolution, you can trace the correlation. But these production practices are not sustainable, using the definition of sustainable development as “…development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” How do you brake a runaway train charging down a hill? No one wants wars or famine nor environmental collapse. No easy answers, but at least escape the box and say it would be no bad thing if food prices began to gradually rise as we transition to more sustainable growing methods with better quality food and it would be no bad thing either if the world population gradually fell to sustainable levels. Or do I have it wrong?

loss of bearings and prop 37

A good friend had a Hatteras 58 ft long range cruiser. I loved the boat. It had a big engine room and, as it had been outfitted over the years with new electronics and other necessities, it had different DC voltages for different circuits and a spaghetti of wires in all directions. When components failed, and they often did, I would haul out the wiring diagrams and try trace the fault. The diagrams enabled me to understand the function of the wires. When we left harbor I found my bearings from the buoys and the rule was simple – as you exit the harbor keep the red buoys on the left and the green buoys on the right – the rule was reversed when you entered the harbor “red, right, return”. And in the open seas where we had no discourse with civilization, nature provided our bearings – the magnetic compass, or the arc of the sun. Although gps via satellites was an easier alternative.

This past Saturday as my running/walking group munched at the bagel house, religion surfaced (a welcome change from presidential politics). And I wondered why, in an age of greatly enhanced electronic communication of news and knowledge, the three religions still build such fervor among their followers. A bemused silence followed. And then on Sunday I was discussing prop 37 (proposes labeling of genetically engineered foods) with one of my sons in California and I said it was hard to understand why anyone would vote against it and yet it is looking as though it won’t pass. And he said he still had to read up but if passed it would increase his grocery bill by $400 pa. He suggested I visit the “noprop37.” website Which I have done. It is a persuasive website. It hammers on so many touch points and in doing so it provides bearings for the undecided to navigate their ship.

I prize integrity, which is holding fast to your moral and ethical principles, but to do so we need bearings. Without bearings how would you progress in a dark churning sea? So we take our bearings from those we have elevated to role models (the noprop37 website included farmers, small business owners, scientists, medical practitioners, nobel prize winners etc). But then we find that our role models are flawed or also adrift or (worst) have a dog in the fight. And so perhaps this is why religions attract some – a safe harbor where the rules are clear and you don’t have the responsibility to decide, you just have to abide.

benefits of organic milk – kefir

We have started making our own kefir fermented milk products. Kefir originated when shepherds discovered that milk carried in leather pouches would ferment and produce a fermented beverage which has a pleasing taste, once your are accustomed to it.

We were given a starter culture and the procedure is you add milk to the kefir grains and allow it to ferment for 24 hours at room temperature. A tablespoon of the kefir grains is adequate for 8 ozs of milk. After 24 hours the grains have converted the lactose in the milk to lactic acid. You strain off the product and it contains probiotic bacteria and fungi which are great for GI health. You return to your jar the residue in the strainer and top it up with fresh milk and 24 hours later you have more kefir. You can blend the kefir with frozen blueberries or strawberries and add some honey to produce a smoothie.

Initially we added the kefir starter grains to 1% conventional milk and they were unhappy and refused to do their magic dance. We do not have easy access to raw milk and besides we (currently) have little use for the fat/cream which comes with the milk. We do not usually use organic milk. but on an inspiration we switched to 1% organic milk and the kefir is thriving.

So when studies are done on the benefits of organic produce and focus only on nutritional content, they are overlooking possible components such as anti-biotics in conventional milk. The question is whether these overlooked components affect not only the bacteria in kefir but the bacteria in our GI tract and therefore our health.

the precautionary principle and GMO’s

Two techniques used in this week’s presidential debate resonated with my internet Sustainability study on this week’s topic – GMO’s.

There seems to be three areas of concern on Genetically Modified Organisms (“GMO’s). Their effect on our health, on our environment and on our wallet. I will not dwell on environmental issues (such as genetic drift or loss of diversity) or wallet issues (will the seeds which produce our food be owned by corporations?).

But as for our health, there are studies which say GMO’s are safe and others which say they are harmful. This past Wednesday one presidential contender said he had a non-partisan study which said the other contender was wrong, to which the response was essentially “and I have 6 studies which say you are wrong”. So with studies nothing is conclusive until there has been a long lapse of time – consider how long it took for most everyone to agree that the climate is indeed getting warmer, notwithstanding that the timing of migratory flights and blooming of flowers changed several years ago and neither birds nor plants had a dog in the fight. And with studies you can become very cynical when you look at who did the funding.

A familiar legal concept is “burden of proof” or “onus” and in criminal cases the accused is presumed innocent, so the onus is on the prosecutor to prove guilt. When new drugs or procedures are introduced, which can impact our health or the environment, where rests the onus? The precautionary principle, in one version, states that “if an action or policy has suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.”

There is a strong version of the principle, which does not weigh costs and benefits, and a weak version which does. The strong version of the precautionary principle will require those advocating GMO’s to prove that they are safe.

This is where the exceptions and prevarications get interesting. We use, and have come to depend on, electricity and the internet. They were new technologies that were not proven safe at the time of their introduction and even today have not been proven safe – can cell phone radiation damage our brains? Application of the strong form of the precautionary principle would have prevented or delayed their introduction.

And now for the second technique used in the presidential debate, which was also used in my internet lecture this week. In the presidential debate one contender said it was “immoral” to continue to create government debt. “Immoral” is such a strong word, it gets your attention. In my GMO lecture it was argued that applying the strong form of the precautionary principle is paralyzing, prevents development and can be “immoral” if it prevents the development of countries.

The strong form of the precautionary principle does not weigh costs and benefits. But in our own lives we do take risks and we weigh them against the benefits. Crossing a road can be dangerous, but for most of us the benefit of getting to the other side outweighs the risk of being struck by a car. Applying the principle strongly leads to delays, such as delays in introducing new drugs, which can cause harm. And so the argument goes, we should not stall progress and we should apply the weak form of the precautionary principle and consider costs and benefits.

And this apparently is where we are today with the application of the “substantial equivalence” rule which lightens the onus on those introducing GMO’s.

And two additional consolation arguments for the unconvinced – with world population growth and change in consumption patterns resulting from increasing affluence, we have to find a substitute for the green revolution and GMO’s can be the answer. (There is nothing like having your arm twisted to compel your concurrence or at least, silence). And finally, are GMO’s really all that novel? After all how about the wizardry of early inhabitants of America who used selective breeding to accomplish the miraculous transformation of grass/teosinte into modern corn/maize.

teaser-if world population increases 1% pa, why must food prod. increase 1.5%pa?

I am learning from and enjoying the Coursera course on Sustainability. The above question is interesting. Why should an increase in world population by x % require a much greater % increase in food production? The answer, I suppose, shows why being a vegetarian helps the world in dealing with sustainability issues. What “sustainability issues” you may ask. Well, water supply is becoming problematic – witness our recent drought in the mid-West and problems in India and other countries where they are rapidly depleting their ground water and having to drill deeper for less water. Also, the Green Revolution, which increased crop yields tremendously through the use of fertilizers and various ‘cides, which created their own problems, seems to have peaked in terms of crop yields, so to produce more food we will have to find more land. Unless we buy into GMO’s as the flag bearer for a new green revolution.

But to return to the question – why do we need so much more food. As the world’s population becomes wealthier through globalization the previously poor are now eating less rice, wheat, sorghum and potatoes and eating more chicken, pork and meat. To produce a chicken we need two calories of cereal for every calorie of chicken produced. For pork the ratio is 5 calories of cereal for one calorie of pork and for beef the ratio is 8 calories of cereal for every calorie of beef produced. So we have to produce a lot more food to cater for the changing consumption patters of the world’s population.

the largest yet least considered interaction

We interact with the world through our senses. The five traditional senses are sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. We have other senses as well such as balance, perception of time, pain etc. If our senses warn us that our environment is unfriendly we respond – too much sun we cover ourselves, use an umbrella or sun screen or withdraw to the shade. To much glare we put on sunglasses, close our eyes or squint and look the other way. Too bitter a taste then we stop eating. Too loud a noise we put on ear muffs or withdraw to a safer distance. So we modify our behavior according to our sense perception of the interaction with our environment.

But there is one interaction with our environment where most of us proceed whilly nilly. Our gastrointestinal tract, often referred to as the “GI tract” digests the food we eat. It is immensely complicated. It also covers a huge area – according to Wiki: “The surface area of the digestive tract is estimated to be the surface area of a football field”. So in terms of size this is the largest interaction we have with the world around us. Many of our ailments derive from GI problems. It seems to me, using the analogy of a factory, that the problem can be stress, the functioning of the processing equipment or the raw materials used.

I know when I was under stress I would resort to antacids, a quick fix of the symptom but not the cause. But leave aside stress induced problems and think only of the effect of bad raw materials entering the processing facility. The sophisticated equipment will struggle to process inferior input. There will be delays, break downs, protests and a degradation of the whole plant. And what do we do – we are aware things aren’t right so we suffer and then head for the aisle with cures for digestive ailments, and then later take prescribed medicines or are compelled to more drastic intrusive measures. And our assessment often is there is not much to be done about it – just grin and bear it.

A bit like staying uncovered in the bright sun and then taking pain relievers to alleviate the sunscreen. Surely time to take more interest in what we eat in the first place?

trees and Oregon visit

My interest is moving from annual vegetable crops to tree crops and perennials. Perhaps the bonanza of pears from my Kieffer, Warren and Giant Korean, plus lots of figs from an old established tree have spurred me on.

With the summer heat deterring outdoor activity for much of the day, I have been reading extensively. Now that “Farmers of Forty Centuries” by F.H King (published 1911) is behind me, I moved on to “Tree Crops a Permanent Agriculture” by JR Smith published 1929 (freely downloadable) and enjoyed part one (titled “The Philosophy”) and read extracts on selected trees, all of which was very informative and relevant since the examples were taken from the southeast.

My knowledge and interest in trees was further expanded by a visit last week to Oregon including drives through large state forests and a 3 hour visit to the World Forestry Center. Located in Washington Park in Portland, the center’s mission is to “educate and inform people about the world’s forests and trees, and their importance to all life, in order to promote a balanced and sustainablefuture.” There is a wealth of information and I enjoyed the exhibits on different forests of the world and logging practices. Much emphasis was made of sustainable practices and yet it appeared to me that the practices they were promoting were not as sustainable as they could have been. It seems they monocrop i.e. after harvesting timber the new plantings are all of the same species. I wonder if this is truly sustainable? You don’t get diversity of plantings or of associated wildlife or other life forms, and, with no diversity it is much easier for a disease or insect attack to spread across the whole forest. A more diversified planting will produce a more varied canopy, encourage more diversity, with species perhaps supplementing each other and making better use of resources, and should be more resilient. Granted, when it comes to harvesting it is much easier to process similarly sized and similar tree species but in the long term is this the best practice?

I am now reading a very well written, insightful magnus opus – Edible Forest Gardens by Jacke and Toensmeier. Although I am familiar with a number of the concepts and there is some repetition, it is really a good read. I am also working on converting my fruit orchard to an edible forest garden by introducing lower canopy trees, shrubs, herbs and edible roots, and the book is a good reference. I just joined the Atlanta Fruits Yahoo group and there is a wealth of information in posts made over the past 10 years of what works and doesn’t work in the Atlanta area, which is proximate to my growing area.

Oh, I forgot to mention – I signed up for and am participating in a Coursera online course with 26,000 other students. The topic is “Introduction to Sustainability”. A 600 page textbook (current – published May 2012) is provided and each week for the 8 week duration there is required reading, lecture videos to watch and articles to read, plus quizzes to complete. And we are encouraged to participate in the forums where students from across the world (young and old) exchange information and views. And it is interesting, challenging and free!

Lessons of life

I was asked recently what lessons I had learned from my life. When I said I had no idea, the inquirer got impatient with me, so I said I would think about it. And some have now come to mind:

Life has ups and downs and don’t celebrate and indulge in hubris when you are up because surely those you have bested will have their day too and will not easily forget your self-satisfaction. Similarly, when you are down don’t give up, keep at it, and you will be rewarded.
Material status possessions don’t provide lasting satisfaction.
Someone recently told me I was “very lucky” that my boys were doing well and my first thought was that life has its ups and downs (see above) and the second was how much was luck and how much was hard work, very hard work on their part and their parents. The comment attributed to a former landsman comes to mind – when asked how much of his golfing prowess was attributable to luck, Gary Player said he had found that the harder he practised (worked), the luckier he got.
Be careful what you say for once the words have left your mouth (your internet media delivery system) you cannot get them back. As a wise man once said, gossip is like taking a pillow filled with feathers outside on a windy day. Once you slit it open you will never be able to recover all the feathers.
If you skate on thin ice, eventually you will fall through. Success breeds hubris and a conviction that you are smarter than the rest and can cut corners with impunity. This does not mean being risk averse, but you must assess and calibrate the risk with the knowledge that one day the odds will turn against you.
Stay clean (ethics) and maintain your integrity since this is the right way to live. This is about ethics, the one above is about pragmatism.
Help the underdog – it makes for a better society and social security.

And no doubt a few more will come to mind.

DIY and its virtues

I just read a good essay in the New York Times – “A Nation that’s losing its Toolbox” by Louis Uchitelle (July 21, 2012). He laments the loss, not only of factories and good manufacturing jobs, but also “mastering tools and working with one’s hands is receding in America as a hobby, as a valued skill, as a cultural influence that shaped thinking and behavior in vast sections of the country. ” He says that manufacturing is important, not just to create jobs and reduce the trade deficit and help us out of the recession, but “a growing manufacturing sector encourages craftsmanship and that craftsmanship is, if not a birthright, then a vital ingredient of the American self-image as a can-do, inventive, we-can-make-anything people.”

Maybe the shift from manufacturing jobs to the service sector was because of higher pay, higher status or less physical exertion. Or is it a cultural thing. In an earlier post I referred to German technology and competitiveness which is unbruised by Asian competition. The author quotes Richard Sennett, a NYU sociologist “Corporations in Germany realized that there was an interest to be served economically and patriotically in building up a skilled labor force at home; we never had that ethos.”

Some books resonate with me. I enjoyed “Shop Class as Soulcraft” by Matthew Crawford and now, at long last, I am reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. Lots of delightful quotes – here the author (at page 44) comments on how different two motorcycles of the same make, model and year can turn out years later “Each machine has its own, unique personality ….This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance. The new ones start out as good-looking strangers and, depending on how they are treated, degenerate rapidly into bad-acting grouches or even cripples, or else turn into healthy, good-natured, long-lasting friends.”

It is probably the case that now we have progressed beyond the intricacies and quirks of carburettors and manually actuated devices to computer controlled fuel injected vehicles and other digital devices, that the personality of machines has been buried and they all act much the same, except where grossly abused. And with this transition we have lost some of the connectedness we once had to the world around us.

I remember some 30 years back I had a large tube tv, long on its legs, which regularly began to flicker erratically after 10 minutes use. I concluded there must be some failing part which malfunctioned when it got hot. I bought a can of compressed cold spray, opened the rear, switched on the tv, waited 10 minutes and, taking good care not to come in contact with any high voltage wires, sprayed each component, largest first. To my delight when I sprayed one particular tubular device, the flicker on the tv disappeared. I waited, the component warmed up, I sprayed it again and the flicker disappeared. It was then a simple matter to remove the component, go to the electronics store, order a replacement and solder the substitute in place. Presto – easy fix. I will not try this on modern tv’s and even replacing the spark plugs on my truck (manifolds and various devices have to be first removed) fills me with apprehension.

So maybe also, the advent of new technologies has reduced our ability and wish to tinker, as we did in the past and, because they cost relatively so much less than did products of the past, our incentive as well.

the upending of the West?

My focus on organic growing has recently been distracted by intrusions from reality – the fox raid on the chicken, a robbery while I was away from the house and, now, by unusual summer heat and the question of the economy.

I have always lived in the West – South Africa, the UK, and the USA and accepted the notion that the West led the way. But not anymore. For me it was the Olympics in Beijing, that signaled the rising ascendency of Asia.

In the 90’s and beginning of this decade we in the West lamented the industrial work camps of Asia where fellow humans toiled in (to our eyes) sub-human conditions producing clothing and footwear for our use. We did not appreciate that these cheap imports represented the export of our jobs. And the press, which guides or maybe reflects conventional thinking, didn’t help either. The view was that we, as an advanced country, shouldn’t worry about losing simple manufacturing processes (clothing and footwear), we would focus on the more complicated products and, of course, services. And then quite suddenly we were not manufacturing tv sets or other electronic products and a whole raft of other manufacturing skills had departed as well.

Conventional warfare where you fire bullets and lob shells and drop bombs has been superseded by economic warfare where the bullets are the consumer goods and the bombs are the vehicles we import. This is not fanciful thinking. A bomb destroys lives and infrastructure. An imported product displaces jobs that used to manufacture it, as well as the factories, technology and experience that produced it, and then disrupts communities and lives. Global competition is good, good for the consumer and for keeping our processes lean and vigorous, but when manufactured imports so greatly engulf our manufactured exports and over such a long period, the result is attrition and decline.

It has taken a long time to get there but we are now lamenting the lost jobs and trying to figure how to get them back and this topic may dominate our politics in coming months.

Perhaps, for starters, we should try figure why we lost the jobs in the first place. Or why do civilizations and nations which were triumphant, decline?

We could consider the decline of ancient Greece, or Rome or other great civilizations. Or look at more familiar topics – the business started by the founder, continued by his son and driven into the ground by the grandson. A familiar recurring theme. Does success go to our heads and hubris lead us to unsafe choices, or do we grow soft, fat and happy with good fortune and have the bread taken from our plate by desperate, wily competitors?

I read an excellent book some years ago (I cannot locate it now) about the decline of British steel manufacturing in the late 1800’s. How was it that Britain, the cradle of the industrial revolution in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, had by the late 1800’s been overtaken by Germany in steel technology and production? The author’s contention was that priorities changed – that having accumulated great wealth from manufacturing, the tough ruthless industrialists were happy for their children to study the humanities (ancient Greek, Latin, the fine arts) at Oxbridge while in Germany the focus was on technical colleges and manufacturing. This seemed to make sense to me – Maslow’s hierarchy etc. And then, while googling for the above mentioned book, I came across another explanation for German superiority in steelmaking in the late 19th century– tariffs and cartels. With steelmaking the bigger the plant the greater the efficiencies but, with recurring cycles of prosperity and decline, it is more sensible to construct smaller plants with less fixed overhead to burden you during down cycles, than a big plant. However, steel tariffs (import duties and restrictions) and cartels (pricing agreements) provided stability in steel production and pricing and therefore encouraged German manufacturers to commit to large productive plants. I am sure there are several explanations for why German steel production escalated. But interesting isn’t it that controlling the market (Government intervention) may have been a big driver?

So is this relevant? Well Germany is doing very well today and, if Europe does recover, it will probably be due to Germany, and there is precedent for a European recovery – just consider how Germany absorbed East Germany and how powerful the combined entity is today. Although Australia and Canada, which are part of the West, are doing well (in Australia’s case, very well) today, we can attribute much of that success to large deposits of natural resources. Germany is doing very well without natural resources – just sheer competitiveness. And to compound the answer, Germany has strong trade unions – so don’t blame the unions. And German labor is not cheap and German’s lead a good lifestyle so we don’t have to live in dormitories on low wages to compete.

My conclusion is we have to get smart and make tough adjustments to enable us to compete – but we can do it.