In Defense of Food

Okay, so I can’t claim the title, I did in fact steal it from Michael Pollan.

My seedlings sprouting up in my Southern-facing window of my apartment.

In addition to all the other enlightening luxuries of my classes this quarter, I was afforded the educational experience of our first workshop of the quarter: Urban Agriculture. After a disheartening introduction to current industrial agriculture and all its pernicious effects on humans (as Pollan says, we are sicker, fatter and poorer), the workshop turned its focus to an emerging alternative sweeping its way across the world – developed and developing countries: Permaculture.

More than half of the world’s people now lives in cities and the urbanizing population is only set to increase in the coming years. An average of 1500 miles is traversed by the apple, broccoli or bread on your table before its consumed by you, and it takes about 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce just one calorie of food. We are separated by many miles and many milieus from our food production; a bag of cheetos could grow out of the ground for all that the general public is concerned. With population overflow nearing 7 billion, more and more people piling on top of each other in concrete-laden metropolises, unsustainable extraction of natural resources, and greenhouse gas emissions destroying our life-giving ecosystem, a recreation of the way we think about our food is needed.

Often beginning with a fruit tree in the center, Permaculture mimcs natural ecosystems, aping the symbiotic relationships in nature between nitrogen fixers and worm decomposers and pollinators and pest controllers. Permaculture embraces the idea that problems can in fact be solutions, and that “waste” is actually a resource. A serene and artful intercropping of fruit trees, shrubs, herbs, and veggies represent a pleasant alternative to the mono-cropped, nutrient depleting monocroppings of corn in Iowa; and they offer a backyard portal to natural beauty and sustenance, reminding you that you are in fact part of that large natural ecosystem that is the Earth. Permaculture speaks not only to agriculture and food production, but to a greater ideal of societal change. As Garrett Hardin stated so eloquently in 1995, we used to bowl in leagues and now we bowl alone (Bowling Alone, 1995). Maybe a community permaculture garden can remind us that sharing is the way of survival.

We didn’t just spend our workshop days sitting indoors staring at powerpoints. Quite to the contrary, in MDP style, we got our hands dirty, literally. A permaculture garden was started out the front door of our Korbel building on DU campus last year, and Spring time beckons the planting of new fruit trees and several nitrogen-fixing shrubs. We dug the holes, immersed the plants, watered the roots, and mulched the soil with organic compost of leaves saved from last fall. It felt natural and it felt good to see progress in action out my front door.

If you want to be sustainable, consume less. If you want to consume less, share. If you want to share, you have to be part of a community, a community somewhat like the symbiotically related system of our permaculture garden. Wendell Berry, an agrarian poet, said, “We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of our time: How much is enough?”

Whose Responsibility is it anyway?

Only when one signs up for an interdisciplinary degree program such as the MDP does one get to participate in a course on Climate Change co-taught by a professor of law, professor of business and a professor of ecology, only then do you get the intriguing discourse of the validity of corporate social responsibility practices done by your local mining monster, Newmont Mining Company.

Newmont, one of the world’s largest producers of gold, owns and operates one of the most productive and profitable mines in the world, the Yanacocha Mine in Peru. Newmont’s operations at the Yanacocha mine have been rebuked time and again not only for shady interactions with embezzling, ousted minister Montesinos, of Peru, but also for its environmental destruction of the land and nearby community of Cajamarca, including a seriously damaging mercury spill in 2000. In attempts to mitigate the affects of these pernicious stories being spread like wildfire with new social media tactics, disrupting consumer commitment to the industry, Newmont has tried to clean up its act a bit in Peru. The “new and improved Newmont portfolio includes the commencement of social health programs, education programs, the construction of roads and other infrastructure, all within the auspices of a a greater public participation with the local community. Sounds great, or sounds like a serious case of green washing?

A long discussion ensued in class last night with the typical players: recalcitrant, impassioned, justice-seeking graduate students relentlessly revealing the ‘skeletons in the closet’ if you will, and a well-read, well-experienced professor of business arguing against the idea of a Utopia where every great big multinational giant truly alters their objectives to that of altruism.

How good is good enough? Newmont meets with local village leaders, incorporating their authority, wisdom and opinion into new operation decisions. That local government may be infested with corruption, inefficiency or marked by dsitrust by a number of the local villagers, but, hey, a lot of tea-party members must feel the same way about Obama but Ahmedinijad still has a direct line to the Obama White House when he needs to talk business. “This is the journey businesses are on,” says Professor Bruce Hutton, “Their job is to make profit and try to do that in a way that gives people what they want/need, and in a way that doesn’t damage the environment. They are not god. There is no Nirvana out there that says that some people or some things don’t get hurt.”

Bottom line, we buy gold. Maybe not stocks of gold bars to put on display atop the mantle, but gold is a component of many devices and products we use daily. Somebody has to mine the gold until consumer demand changes; and mining gold is just never going to be a pretty process. Many local inhabitants of Cajamarca, despite the international headlines of rampant Newmont destruction, are in fact pleased with the presence of a job-producing, economy-boosting company such as Newmont in their community. They have new roads, schools and health programs, and more importantly they have money in their pockets. Consequently, they have pollutants in their air and water, perhaps mercury in their soil, and perhaps pneumonia in their lungs.

Is there consolation between these two ends? Can we truly alter the game of capitalist economics to make Newmont’s “bottom line” alter its appearance to one that represents social equity, environmental stewardship … <em>and</em> economic benefit? These are the challenges of our generation, and I personally believe we are forging ahead, slowly but surely, to a world more saturated with just and sustainable development. Washington D.C. imposed a mandatory tax on plastic bags used at the grocery store in 2008. The federal government, tea-party naysayers aside, wants to require the use of LED light bulbs in all lighting sources, equaling the carbon savings of 11 nuclear power plants if used by everyone. There are steps we are taking forward and for a company like Newmont to engage with local communities to allow participatory development in decision-making, greenwashing or not, is a sign of improvement in my eyes.

Springtime!... makes school difficult

Blooming Cherry Blossoms, hints of green sprouting out of every corner, and a Crayola crayon box of tulips giving their gratitude of salutation to the sun. Its spring time in Colorado which means a couple things: crazy 80 degree weather on Saturday and 21 degree flurries on Sunday; It means planting my carrots and broccoli; and it means (mostly) sunny days that beckon graduate students daily, through the creaks and cracks of windows and skylights, peering into the temperature-controlled and fluorescent-lit boxes they reside in all day, saying ‘come, adventure, enjoy! Forget your responsibilities!’

Alas, it’s already week three of a ten-week quarter and there is much work to be done.

 I’m catching up on some reading this morning on new innovations in sanitation efforts around the world, you know, composting toilets and methane gas generators from human excrement – pretty sexy stuff. If all goes well I will have my first assignment of the quarter turned in by Friday, an analysis of a solar electrification farm out in the Sonoran Desert of California. Solar? Renewable Energy? A cure-all to our carbon-emitting woes, you say? Well, as I’m only now learning, there are all kinds of trade-offs for powering our world with “clean” solar technology. Its a water-intensive project that is located in a place where there is not much water to retrieve, the components are made of some rare earth minerals that are only found in China (thwarting any effort to solve that “energy independence” issue) and the 1800 acres of photovoltaic cells would displace some seriously cute (and threatened) wildlife. I guess my assignment might not be as easy as I thought.