Weather Forecast: Mid-80s, partly cloudy to sunny.
Last week we talked a little bit about how climate change is affecting farmers through irregular weather patterns. The problem goes both ways, though, since agricultural activities contribute significantly to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. According to EPA estimates, 9% of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector came from agriculture in 2015. Of course, use of fossil-fuel based fuels and fertilizers are a part of these emissions, but the agricultural practices that contribute the most to climate change are actually soil-management practices. According to an article by Iowa State University's Extension and Outreach, 61% of agricultural emissions and 5% of the U.S.'s total greenhouse gas emissions are due to the ways that farmers are handling their soil.
This short video, "Soil Solutions" from the Center for Food Safety, narrated by Michael Pollan, gives a very brief, simple overview of how damaged soil contributes to climate change and how healthy plants and soils can actually pull carbon out of the air and trap it in the soil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxqBzrx9yIE.
What if, through changing agricultural practices, farmers could not only stop contributing to climate change, but could actually be slowing its progression while growing delicious, healthy food? In fact, we already know how to do it. This "Modern Farmer" article includes examples of farming practices that sequester carbon: http://modernfarmer.com/2016/03/carbon-farming/.
"Modern Farmer" describes "five tenets" of carbon sequestration. Many of these practices are encouraged in organic farming and so you might think that organic farms are more "climate friendly" than conventional farms. And maybe you'd be right. Or maybe not. This "The Guardian" article describes the economic conundrum that pushes some organic farmers to use practices that are allowable under organic certification standards but aren't better for our climate than conventional practices: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/21/organic-farms-carbon-footprint-climate-change
For us, carbon-farming practices just make sense. They increase our soil health (and thus plant health) and reduce the amount of expensive organic fertilizers we have to buy. They can be labor-intensive, though, and so one of our goals this year as we "lean" our farm is to make our soil-building and carbon-sequestering practices more efficient (which means they are more likely to get done!). One project that I'm working on is creating compost piles near each of our garden areas in order to reduce the time and energy I spend moving compost around the farm. This week we'll have you help us work on those compost piles and teach you about a few different types of composting methods.
Finally, I really like this pdf from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which gives advice to home gardeners (and community gardeners too!) about how small-scale gardening can be one of the solutions to slowing climate change. Imagine if the green lawns and parks in Kalamazoo were converted to carbon-sequestering edible landscapes! http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/climate-friendly-gardener.pdf
TUESDAY FARMERS: We may have the opportunity for you to look inside the beehive for those of you who would like to do that. If this is something you'd like to do, bring closed-toed shoes and long pants and shirts with you. Light colors, smooth fabrics, and loose-fitting styles are best. Also, go easy on the perfume and don't eat bananas right before class!
Question for this week:
We've talked about a lot of different aspects of food/farming systems and explored consequences and complications. What I'm curious about at this point is what each of you want from your food and the farmers who grow it. What values are most important to you in making your food choices? Fair wages for farmworkers? Protection of biodiversity? Reduction of carcinogens and other toxins in our environment? Climate change? Nutrition? Flavor? Convenience? Kindness to animals? Food access and sovereignty for all?
In an ideal world in which you could ask for anything you wanted, what would you ask of the farmers who grow your food? What values would you want them to uphold in their farming practices?
Oh boy, what a tricky set of questions this we have this week! In thinking through what we’re being asked here, I see a major divide between (a) my own current practices when it comes to making food decisions and (b) what I would actually want from those growing my food in an ideal world. I guess I want to spend a little bit of time with each of these aspects, as I think that they are both important issues to think through.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to my actual practices, I admit that I have a bit of a defeatist attitude. As horrible as it is, I find it easy to get into the mindset that because there are all these major issues and there are no “perfect” foods and growers, I might as well not think about these issues at all. If I’m being honest, my own food choices are based primarily around convenience and taste. I eat the foods that I like and that are easiest for me to obtain. When possible, I try to eat things that are locally sourced, organic, etc. (But, I admit, not when it is an inconvenience to me to do so.) However, as we’ve discussed in class, just because something is labeled in these ways doesn’t mean that it was actually produced in an ethical and healthful way. As a whole, I don’t think I’m particularly conscious about my consumption, and I think that this is something that I need to work on changing. Sometimes, I find it easier to just “shut off” the part of my brain that knows that there are difficult systems and practices behind these foods.
Although my own consumption practices often don’t line up with these ideas, there are a lot of issues that I think matter, and I would like to see considered in my ideal world. Mariah and Amy’s comments from last week made me think more critically about who it is that produces the food that I eat. Any ideal world, I think, needs to include a system that accounts for the people working in it. This means both better working conditions (more frequent breaks, shorter hours, a system that does not rely on people working as quickly as they physically can, etc.) and better incentives for working within the industry (higher wages, better benefits like good quality housing, etc.) I would argue that this requires not just a change in our farming practices, but in our understandings of work in general. I would, of course, like to see farmworkers have access to quality healthcare, hire wages, etc; everyone should have these things. I would also like to see a system that does not devalue the labor of farmworkers. How terrible is it that producing food – something we all need to live – is seen not as an important and vital job, but rather as “unskilled” work!
An ideal food system would also require a greater sense of care for our planet. It never ceases to amaze me how many people there are who are unwilling to do even the bare minimum for our earth. I know people who refuse to recycle, who throw out old clothes instead of donating them, and who “forget” to turn off the air conditioning when nobody is home. It would take almost no effort to just choose to do the more responsible thing and take care of our planet, and yet so many people won’t even do that. Even if we only consider purely selfish reasons, it’s in humanity’s best interest to take care of the Earth. It’s unhealthy to live on a damaged planet! It’s expensive! I don’t think that we can imagine a future that doesn’t require a stronger investment in our planet. This includes eliminating unsafe pesticides, increasing biodiversity, and, as the links this weeks all point to, thinking about carbon sequestration and carbon farming.
I am curious about the exact definition for the ideal world, since the question said I could ask for anything you wanted, I would assume that I have unlimited budget and the market is perfect. Unfortunately, I usually do not concern too much about the budget while shopping food, which make my preference to be the same in both perfect and imperfect worlds. So my answer for this question is, in both worlds, I would buy the food that could achieve all the values as long as I realize them, because they are all important values and they do not conflict with each other, the only thing these values are conflict with is budget.
ReplyDeleteHowever, we can not ignore other people's choice. According to economic assumption, consumers (the majority) would take different action then I (or we) do. In the current world, which is imperfect, with the constraint of limited budget, people would like to buy the food with the lowest price that could meet the following standard: healthy and delicious. Why only these two standard, the reason is they are directly related to the buyer, while other standard like environmental, animal and farmer friendly is ‘not directly’ related a particular single person (even though they are truly related to the entire human being). In other words, one person with the limited budget might only consider about welfare of his own, while amusing all the other people might consider about those externalities. As a result, most of the consumer think in the same way, which creates a coordination failure that only few people really care about the externalities, like environment, farmer’s profit, and etc. Even though these problems could be reduced by education and government policies, it would be hard to get eliminated as long as the constraint of limited budget exist in the imperfect world.
These are really big questions to throw out there! An ideal world? What I want from my food and the farmers who grow it? This is really interesting to me because while we have been talking about all of these things in class, I haven’t taken the time to really think back and look at it big picture. Each week we focus on one topic, on one big problem, but this question is asking us to take all of these problems into consideration. Like I said, this is really hard. But, while everything we have talked about is important, there are several topics in particular that have really stuck out to me personally. I think the biggest problems that we have discussed, in my opinion, are the disconnect between these large farms and the people who consume the food, and also the fact that while running the system in this way, everyone is failing to look or care about the long term consequences. Looking at the first thing, I feel as though the “few large farms” versus “many small farms” is the root of so many other issues, like too many toxins use for pest control over an immense area or limited bio diversity, to name a few. Reaching past food, this set up also puts the money and power in the hands of a select few which creates wealth inequality which ultimately creates many other issues like food insecurity. This links to the second problem I mentioned which is the long term consequences of our system. This system we are using right now is causing all of these direct problems that we can see (like food insecurity and limited biodiversity— these are visible things), but it is also leading the way for long term issues that not enough people are thinking about. By long term consequences I am basically talking about climate change, obviously. But the key thing here is that these things —these issues— they are all related. They are all connected to an inherent flaw in our system. Its hard to imagine an ideal world because that world would need to be so shockingly different and other from the world we live in today. It would need to popularize farming methods such as permaculture which create biodiversity and a self-efficient system. It would need to actively distribute wealth. It would need to develop and withstand a corroborative community. It would also need to upkeep an educated and aware community that would protect this “ideal” system. Like I said, this “ideal” world is hard to conceptualize because I don’t even know where to start imagining it; it also seems like in order for this to happen someone would have to completely eradicate the emotion of greed from everyone is society. I don’t know how well this answered the initial question, and I kind of went off on a tangent. I’m sorry about that. But either way it was interesting to think about! Thanks for posing this question Amy!!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI want my food to be wholesome and nutritious for my body, rather than being highly processed. I want farmers and the food industry to tell me, as a consumer, what is in the food that is sold, as well as the chemicals used to treat the plants. Transparency is a key value to me. I am relying on a group of people, an industry, to not only feed me and the 7 billion other people on the planet but also take care of the land resources they use and their workers and animals. I want to know whether a farm is paying fair wages to farmworkers, working to protect biodiversity, joining movements like carbon farming to lower their impact on the land, and to invest in research for and to use pesticides and fertilizers that are organic. I want the food produced by the farmers to be real and to be traditional, meaning that the crop hasn’t gone significant change to accommodate something like longer storage life. I want animals to be free to roam in the grass. I want to know what a farmer is doing to make this world a better place and to treat the land, people, and animals with respect as I eat their food to have enough energy to do the same in a different employment sector. I want nutritious wholesome food to be accessible for every single person.
While at this point it is a hard decision for me to choose an issue I value it is most important, because we already talked a lot in the seminar. Here I want to talk more about an issue that I concern more than before, to maintain the biodiversity in the ecology system. It plays significant meaning for food system sustainability and also an important part of the environment. If we consume one kinds of food a lot, it will break the balance of biodiversity. Based on it, my food choice will be more diverse.
ReplyDeleteIn an ideal world I would ask the farmers first get rid of benefits temptation. Grow the crops in a balanced and free of toxins environment. The speed and efficiency of growing crops does not matter. At the same time I will try my best to make sure myself can give them enough pay. Working together with them of biodiversity issue and maintain the daily nutrition. I want farmers not only treat it as a job for living, but also a spiritual activity. Tell them you are not just responsible for yourself, you have duty for everyone who will potentially eat the food you grow. In the farm, I will confirm that farmers get access to safe and healthy food at first. I'm not a business person in this farm. Outside the farm, the education session for farmers is important an meaningful.
In a idealistic world I would shift farming back to local famers. I do not think large corporations have their consumers as their best interest, they are only trying to make more money. I would want farmers to not mistreat their workers and give them a livable wage. I would want our food to be grown in a system where it is both good for the crops as well as the environment. This means that the use of heavy toxic chemicals would be banned. With small farming it should be required that a portion of the food goes towards people in their community who live in areas where there is not an option for fresh food. I also think that food should be sold in a farmers market type of style so there can be a connection between the consumer and the farmers who grow the food. I also thin this will reduce food waste because people can buy what they need and not have to buy things in bulk. I also think that we can use machinery that does not require gasoline but is run on renewable and recycles sources. I also think that there should be local butcher shops and not factories. This way the animals will be treated less cruel. Other animals such a bees should also be protected and cared for.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, I most value the convenience of food and the price. That is how I shop for my food every couple of weeks. Food is an essential part of our lives and I am shocked just how little attention I pay to it. Unfortunately, I know that I am not the only person who does this. It is a problem with our society. We place productivity above everything else. I was speaking to my mom the other day, she was sick and was unable to work. She told me that she wanted to get better so that she could get back to work. At that moment, my heart dropped as I felt extremely sad. My mother like many other immigrants have been taught by society that the only way to be valuable is by sacrificing their bodies. I would really like for agricultural workers to be respected more and fully compensated for their hard work.
ReplyDeleteIf I could afford to spend more time and money on the quality and origins of my food, I would gladly do so. Ideally, I would want to buy food that was grown by farmworkers who were paid a livable wage and who were treated with respect. This would be on top of the list as I have family who have been used solely for their bodies in terms of labor. I would also like for the food to be grown using sustainable and low environmental impact methods and products. Carbon farming would be a great practice and I would gladly purchase some of the food grown by farmers who utilize this technique.
What values are most important to me? All of the above and more is the answer I would like to give, but that is naïve in so many ways. If anything, these discussions (and college as a whole to be honest) has made me more cynical I’m afraid. As several people have pointed out, there’s a huge gap between my actual practices vs. what I would like. Currently, I’m relying on our school’s cafeteria food because I don’t have the time to cook for myself, as sad as that is. I eat what is offered, and although Creative Dining claims to be using locally sourced and organic produces, I have to take their word for it; there is no way for me to check it myself. Furthermore, we also covered in class that labels don’t necessarily mean what we think they mean. There’s monetary restrictions to my decisions, and sometimes (or mostly these days) I’m not a position where I can make a decision on what I eat.
ReplyDeleteNow, to change the gears slightly, what would I like to ask the farmers in an ideal world? Thankfully, because all these problems are so interconnected, so are the solutions! For the farmworkers to be treated fairly, we’ll definitely have to reduce the use of pesticide which in my mind automatically links to protection of biodiversity and kindness to animals, not to mention the fact that farm labor will be treated as a legitimate work as opposed to unskilled labor. Food access and sovereignty for all, reducing carbon, all of that jazz involves decentralizing our system in such a manner that it is actually sustainable. We’ll be far more considerate towards our planet, the one planet that we live on (we don’t have a back up). So I guess ultimately… I would ask our farmers (if I’m not one of them myself in the ideal world), to be considerate to everyone involved, those who are eating the food (ie accessibility and sovereignty), those who are producing to food (ie the farmworkers and the farm owners), the food itself, and the planet.