ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

What if we could achieve all of the following:

• A more humane livestock system
• Healthier and tastier meat and dairy products
• Less E. coli food poisoning
• Elimination of feedlots
• Better manure management
• Increased groundwater recharge
• More fertile soil and more nutritious forages
• More diverse and healthier ecosystems
• Enormous savings in energy
• Reduced use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides
• Reduced flooding and soil erosion

And, to top it off:

• A dramatic reduction in global warming gases.

Richard Manning in an article in Mother Earth News titled The Amazing Benefits of Grass-fed Meat argues that we can have all this. And not just for niche markets – we can scale it up. We can convert half of the 150 million acres used to grow corn and soy to permanent pasture and not lose one ounce of meat production.

Tastier, more humane meat – and less global warming. Industrial farming relies on huge amounts of chemical fertilizers that produce emissions contributing to global warming. Nitrogen fertilizer reacts with oxygen to form nitrous oxide (N₂O), which has become the third most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane.  N₂O has a global warming potential 296 times larger than an equal mass of carbon dioxide and also contributes to stratospheric ozone depletion.  In corn and soy production, tilling adds oxygen which promotes oxidation. Tillage also releases carbon dioxide, along with methane and nitrous oxide. While a growing corn field sucks up a lot of carbon dioxide, the carbon is soon released as the disced down stalks and leaves decay. All tillage systems have been found to be net contributors to global warming, with the worst offenders being the annual crops corn, soybeans and wheat farmed with conventional methods. Conversely, fields of perennial crops pull both methane and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil. Manning points to evidence that perennial grasslands can, under certain conditions,  be even better at sequestering carbon than forests.

Manning calculates that if we converted half the U.S. corn and soy acres to pasture, we might cut carbon emissions by roughly 144 trillion pounds. That’s not even counting the reduced use of fossil fuels that would also result.

An additional benefit from the reduction of industrial corn and soybean farming not mentioned by Manning would be a reduction of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the use of chemical fertilizers upstream in the Mississippi basin.

So what’s stopping us? Redesigning our food system would require shifting, slashing, or eliminating massive federal subsidies for corn and soybean production – subsidies that end up in the pockets of the agribusiness conglomerates or the wealthy. The “health care” debate, which resulted in further entrenching the parasitic insurance industry, shows how likely that is to happen. Brian Riedl, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, calls farm subsidies “America’s largest corporate welfare program.”

Congress justifies agribusiness subsidies as keeping America’s food supply cheap and abundant. No matter that the food’s killing us while bankrupting the health care system and destroying global ecosystems.

A few years ago, downtown Lebanon received its final deathblow when the city council approved the new Super Wal-Mart at the south end of town.

But some Lebanonistas still refuse to surrender. This spring, a group of enthusiastic folk (labeling themselves with the unfortunate moniker “partners for progress”) under the motto” working together for a brighter future” started a Thursday afternoon farmers market – right in the heart of downtown Lebanon.

I was a skeptic, doubting that any effort to bring something new to downtown or to revitalize this misbegotten town would succeed. But from the first Thursday on, I was hooked.

I soon began to plan my entire week around Thursday afternoons. I compiled my shopping list all week long with Thursday afternoons in mind – but I would revise it on the spot should any fresh, new produce surprise me, to take advantage of the bounty of quality, home grown food and home made products. I no longer had to pine for big city markets such as the Pike Place Market I frequented when we lived in Seattle. I no longer had to drive to other farmers markets in Corvallis, Albany, or Sweet Home to get fresh, home grown food.

And what a draw! Vendors came from Jefferson, Harrisburg, Sweet Home, Lebanon and many places in between. There were no junk or antique dealers – just real, fresh, local foods and quality hand-made products.

I was intrigued by the idea that I could buy everything for my entire dinner right here, on a half-block stretch . . . and so I did. I bought pizza dough; bread; dessert cookies; all the veggies imaginable to prepare a week’s-worth of suppers and then more for canning or freezing; fruits for desserts, cakes and pies. I found salad stuff; herbs of all sorts; mushrooms locally grown or picked by hand, varieties I had never before heard of: lobster, pink & Phoenix oyster, chicken, ashy coral, fried chicken, hedgehog. There was organic goat cheese, made right here but usually available only in Portland or Eugene. There were flowers, cut and potted, soaps, lotions and potpourris; hand spun and knitted bags, hats and caps, handcrafted gifts and homemade preserves. And when the egg lady discovered there were only 11 eggs in her carton, she stuck a lemon cucumber in the 12th spot. “There, now it’s full”. I laughed and of course bought the mélange. And from the Worm Lady, I gleaned new insights into composting my kitchen scraps.

But Thursday afternoons in Lebanon were about more than buying great food and other things. It was a chance to chat with the vendors, to learn about their business, to share their experiences, successes, and failures. It was a chance to visit with other customers, to share recipes and ideas. It made for a perfect opportunity to meet your friends for a joint shopping spree. It was personal, direct, communal – and very lively.

The market ran from May 28 to September 24. For 18 weeks, once a week, a dozen dedicated farmers and producers spent four hours sitting in pouring rain, freezing cold, scorching heat, and all kinds of weather in between. They brought what they had grown, harvested, made or produced. I learned about crop failures, about the virtues of greenhouse tomatoes (available much earlier than mine!), about the rarity of some mushrooms, and the reason cheese wasn’t always available (you can’t milk a nursing goat!). I began to understand more about natural processes, about farmers’ problems as well as their successes – and I enjoyed what I discovered.

There was life in the street of downtown Lebanon, a real sense of community and camaraderie. I’ll miss those Thursday afternoons, and fervently hope the organizers will continue their efforts next year.

I will be there, shopping list in hand, ready to abandon it should a great find or a new variety appear to whet my proverbial appetite for fresh, local food, goods and services, with a dose of friendship thrown in gratis.

In the 1960s, faced with ideological competition from the USSR and China and the prospect of starving millions, a loose coalition of scientists, government officials and philanthropists launched a “Green Revolution” in India.

Back then, “green” didn’t mean organic – far from it. It meant growing crops the modern, American way. It meant abandoning traditional food crops such as grains, beans and vegetables in favor of cash crops from high-yield hybrid seeds rather than heritage seeds saved from the farmers’ last harvest. It meant abandoning traditional methods and using tractors instead of oxen and chemical fertilizers instead of cow dung. It meant abandoning reliance on rainwater – the new crops were thirsty, and that thirst was satisfied by tapping virgin aquifers with electric irrigation pumps. The “green revolution” was intended to turn farmers’ fields lush green with crops and farmers’ pockets green with cash.

Today, the Green Revolution is collapsing. The water that supports the “modern” system of agriculture is disappearing as the water table is dropping dramatically, as much as three feet each year. Farmers have had to deepen their wells every few years, first from 10 feet to 20 feet, then to 40 feet, now to more than 200 feet — and water table keeps dropping below their reach. G. S. Kalkat, Director of the Punjab State Farmers Commission, warns the heartland of India’s agriculture could be barren in 10 to 15 years.

As the farmers dig deeper to find groundwater, they have to install ever more powerful – and more expensive – pumps. Farmers are often already deeply in debt and can’t get loans for the pumps from banks, so are forced to turn to borrow money from “unofficial” lenders at usurious rates.

The intensive farming methods are also destroying the soil. The high-yield crops suck up nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous, iron and manganese, exhausting the soil. Farmers now must use three times as much fertilizer as before, to produce the same amount of crops.

And then there’s the salt. The irrigation waters leave a salt residue, and the accumulating salt is now poisoning the crops.

The “green revolution” that seemed to work miracles is now proving to lead to financial disaster for area farmers. The old style of farming didn’t need cash. The modern system relies on cash at every stage: cash for seeds, cash for fertilizers, cash for tractors and tractor fuel & maintenance, cash for well drilling & irrigation pumps, cash for the electricity to power the pumps. And cash for all of the material things that have made farmers appear prosperous. A study by the Punjab State Council for Science and Technology calls it a “vicious cycle of debt.”

Kalkat says Punjab’s farmers are committing ecological and economic suicide – suicide that has been prompted through national and international policies that encourage farmers to destroy the environment and trap themselves in debt.

UPDATE: 1,500 FARMERS IN INDIA COMMIT SUICIDE

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today. The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels. ”The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago,” Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine.

“Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well.” Mr. Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

This piece by Gristmill’s Tom Philpott, reporting on a presentation by Vandana Shiva at an international “slow food” conference in Terra Madre, Italy, shouldn’t be missed.

Shiva’s message was that the “solutions” to global warming put forth so far are nothing but desperate attempts to rejigger industrial economies, to make them “carbon-free.”

Philpott reports:

“She said climate treaties and discussions take place in the stratosphere – in congressional committees, exclusive global confabs peopled by CEOs of vast business empires, etc. She said these people operate under an industrial paradigm, and the solutions they concoct to climate change – cap-and-trade mechanisms, GMO seeds, etc. – mimic and don’t challenge that paradigm. But in the end, these attempts get nowhere. Real reform, Shiva insisted, will happen when discussions move from the stratosphere to the soil, and when we find new, non-industrial ways of thinking.”

Philpott contrasts Shiva’s position with that of our most “progressive” thinkers:

“Where Gore dreams of a “low-carbon” or even “carbon-free” world, Shiva pines for a “carbon-rich” future — one in which agriculture systematically builds organic matter into the soil, capturing it from the atmosphere.”

Shiva pointed out that small-scale agriculture is actually more productive than industrial agriculture.

“Shiva forcefully made the point that mixed-crop agriculture that relies on compost is actually many times more productive on a per-acre basis than industrial monoculture. She also noted that locally adapted agriculture is not a fixed, static thing – it evolves and responds to changes in the land and climate.”

Philpott adds that only by blithely ignoring agriculture’s role in climate change can people present abominable ideas like government-mandated ethanol and biodiesel as “solutions” to the climate crisis.

The industrial paradigm is the cause of both our energy and climate problems. More of the same cannot be the solution.

Globalization is rooted in the economic idea of specialization. Economists preach that wealth is maximized when everyone, including countries, specializes in what they do best and then trades their products for the other things they need. The more specialization, the more connectivity among specialists, and the more trade along those connections, the better.

Even ignoring the realities of wealth distribution – we have seen wealth become ever more concentrated in this era of globalization -there are problems with this model. Thomas Homer-Dixon and Sarah Wolfe point out in an article at the globeandmail.com that as we specialize, we become more dependent on other people, industries and regions in the global economy – and that this is dangerous when it comes to essentials like food.

“Specialization at the global level tends to reduce the diversity of producers and products – a small number of large, highly efficient producers often comes to dominate the market for specific goods. In complex systems from economies to ecologies, however, lower diversity usually means lower ability to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. And, finally, all that connectivity among specialized producers around the world makes everyone more vulnerable to cascading system failures: a shock or failure in one part of the global system can propagate through the rest of the system in the blink of an eye, like a row of falling dominoes.

“Taken to an extreme, the dominant economic model of specialization, connectivity and trade reduces the resilience of our communities and societies – our ability to take care of ourselves in volatile times.”

But rising energy prices mean the era of globalization is over.

“Shipping food from the other side of the planet, or even from the other side of the continent, will become steadily more expensive, while locally and regionally produced food becomes steadily more competitive, even with higher local labor and processing costs.”

Last week The Guardian reported that a confidential World Bank report concluded that crop-derived fuels have been the ultimate cause of food riots, starvation and high prices around the world.

It wasn’t an anti-biofuels campaigner who arrived at that conclusion. It was Donald Mitchell, an internationally respected World Bank economist with three decades’ experience in tracking commodity markets.

The report argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

The Guardian now has a follow-up article that contains a link to the report.

At a time when food prices and shortages are already leading to unrest and riots around the world, further disaster is threatening.

With supplies of most of the key commodities at their lowest levels in decades, there is little room for error this year. Yet American corn and soybean farmers are suffering from too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought. China also faces trouble: the agriculture ministry issued an urgent notice to wheat and rice farmers in southern China on Sunday, telling them to harvest as much of their crop as possible immediately in the face of unseasonable torrential rains expected to rake the region for the next 10 days.

And the U.S. has no remaining grain reserves, nothing in our emergency food pantry. No cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. All that’s left in the CCC larder is 2.7 million bushels of wheat – about enough wheat to make ½ of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.

The USDA Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) was created to stabilize, support, and protect farm income and prices, to maintain balanced and adequate supplies of agricultural commodities, and to aid in their orderly distribution. The 1996 farm bill eliminated the government’s grain reserves as well as the Farmer Owned Reserve (FOR).

Metro Vancouver – like Oregon – has a planning model of suburban communities linked by gas-guzzling highways.  But sky-high fuel and food prices will eventually make this model economically obsolete.

The Vancouver Sun has a story about Vancouver architect Richard Balfour, who argues for a different vision – one resembling Switzerland rather than Los Angeles.

“Balfour argues that Metro Vancouver should begin creating Swiss-style hill villages linked by rail rather than towns on flood plains and valleys connected by pavement.”

Balfour says a radical revisioning is required:

“What is suggested here is the need for a radical rethink of all we take for granted. The recommendation in this rethinking is not based on wishful thinking but on the need to carry out strategic sustainable planning to achieve a new workable pattern of community for a post-oil age.”

Balfour’s vision of rail networks and eco-towns on hillsides is set forth in a new book, Strategic Sustainable Planning: A Civil Defense Manual for Cultural Survival. [Note: I couldn't find the book on either Powell's or Amazon].

Balfour also argues that rising oil prices will make it uneconomic to import food, meaning we’ll have to rely more on locally produced food.  Currently, Metro Vancouver produces about 48% of the food it consumes. The policy implications are that southwest B.C.’s low-lying farmland needs to be protected and turned into a “green commons” for food production to serve nearby urban areas. Land lost in the past two decades to urban development or industry must be reclaimed for food production.

Balfour says the time to act – and to abandon the automobile – is now:

“The move to the hill towns has to start now, not another generation from now, as we do not have the time to delay. This means not following the current oil-age planning criteria or automobile engineering standards.”

The world’s farms are straining to meet world food and fuel demand, pushing prices for potash and sulfur to record highs.

Sinofert Holdings Ltd., the largest distributor of fertilizer products in China, last week agreed to pay $576 U.S. per tonne FOB Vancouver for Saskatchewan potash this year, $400 more per tonne of than in 2007. Distributors in India will pay $625 US per delivered tonne this year, an increase of $355 US per tonne over 2007. Still, due to demand from other world markets, China will get less potash from Canadian suppliers this year than last.

In March 2007, a tonne of pure sulfur shipped from Vancouver was less than $50 US. Now, it’s about $650 – a 13-fold increase in just 13 months.

Both potash and sulfur are principally used in the making of fertilizer. Most sulfur around the world is derived from oil and gas sources that are experiencing only nominal growth- if any.

Potash (or carbonate of potash) is an impure form of potassium carbonate (K₂CO₃). Found in the water soluble part of wood ash, it has long been used
in the manufacture of glass and soap as well as a fertilizer. The term has become somewhat ambiguous due to the substitution in fertilizers of cheaper potassium salts such as potassium chloride (KCl) or potassium oxide (K₂O), to which the same common name is sometimes also applied.

Natural potash deposits can also be mined. The Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan is the world’s largest potash producer.

Sunday’s New York Times has an article about how rising food prices and food shortages are causing unrest and even riots around the globe, threatening the stability of governments.

According to the World Bank, world food prices have risen 80% over the last three years and that at least thirty-three countries face social unrest as a result. In recent weeks, food riots have erupted in Haiti, Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. Protests have erupted in Morocco, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Mexico and Yemen. In most of West Africa, the price of food has risen by 50% – in Sierra Leone, 300%.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, has an interview with Raj Patel, a writer and activist who has worked for the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the interview he says there are two kinds of causes of the food crisis. One is economic – a perfect storm of poor harvests and a demand for meat in developing countries, which is diverting grain; the high price of oil, which is driving up farm inputs; and at the same time the biofuels boom, growing food to burn rather than eat.

But there are political causes as well. Organizations like the World Bank, the WTO, and the IMF – which have pretty much iron control over the economies of most of the poorest countries in the world – have coerced them into an international food economy. These countries have been forced to abandon their support for farmers, to abandon things like grain supplies and grain stores. As a consequence, when the price of food goes up, these economies have very little recourse and very little possibility of defending themselves economically.

The global, corporate industrial food system has systematically driving local farmers out of business, around the world. It used to be that the people who were overweight were rich and the people who were hungry were poor. Today, hunger and obesity are both signs that people are unable to control their diets. Poor people are unable to access fresh fruits and vegetables, access food that is healthy – all they can get are highly processed industrial foods. And more and more, they are unable to access food at all.

From Bloomberg.com:

“Crude oil rose to a record above $113 a barrel in New York on supply disruptions in Nigeria and Mexico and rising fuel demand in China.”

And, from CNN one consequence of diverting farm land to biofuels production:

“Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world’s attention . . . There are riots all over the world in the poor countries … and, of course, our own poor are feeling it in the United States . . . While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs.”

The United Nations is warning that, as food prices continue to escalate worldwide, some of the poorest nations in the developing world are set to explode. In many of the world’s poorest countries, families already spend 50 to 60% of their income on food.

High food prices are one result of high oil prices. Price increases are caused in large part by rising fuel and fertilizer costs and the conversion of food crops to biofuels. Climate change is also a factor, as many countries have suffered from floods, droughts, and other weather conditions that have hurt crops.

“Liberalization” of agriculture over the last few decades, encouraged by international financial institutions backed by rich countries like the U.S. and by the E.U., has resulted in developing countries specializing in exportable cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, cotton, and even flowers. Removal of tariff barriers has allowed a handful of Northern countries to capture Third World markets by dumping heavily subsidized commodities while undermining local food production. As a result, developing countries have turned from net exporters to large importers of food.

The situation has been worsened by the dismantling of institutions such as marketing boards that kept a reserve of commodities to hedge against bad harvests and to protect both producers and consumers against price volatility.

The world has seen an increased demand for food as a result of both increased population and increased income. As incomes increase, people tend to consume more meats than before. Consequently, some food stocks are diverted for animal feed.