The Yoga of Ecology

Small Farm Training Center 2011 Harvest and Performance Report

2012-01-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: This blog began in 2008 as a chronicle of the sustainable farming efforts, led by Terry Sheldon, at the Small Farm Training Center at the New Vrindaban Spiritual Community in West Virginia.

We return to that original spirit with a report from the Small Farm Training Center on its 2011 harvest and year-in-review.

"The Small Farm Training Center (SFTC) is a land based educational center and a hands-on working organic farm. Our purpose is to create community—a web of supportive relationships—by making locally grown organic foods readily available and affordable with the use of simple technology."

Click here to learn more.

Contents

1). Overview
2). Review of Annual Crop Production.
3). How Much Was Harvested? What’s the Wholesale Value?
4). Status of Student Apprentice Training Program.
5). Three Recommendations to Boost New Vrindaban Sustainable Development.
6). Networking, Local Community Outreach and Plans for 2012.

Overview

The Small Farm Training Center’s (SFTC) is an educational center and a hands-on working organic farm. Our mission is to address the looming issue of food insecurity by creating a land based green economic model that functions in both the city and rural environs. With the help of small scale technology, we make organically grown food affordable and available.

Review of Annual Crop Production

The 2011 agricultural cycle was shaped by extremes in weather. Excessive Spring rains, a period of searing summer heat and eighty days of Fall rain showers (typically 3-4 rainy days in a week from August 20th until Nov.15th), all combined to negatively impact crop production. Here are the highlights:

–First Spring planting date, March 16th.
First crops planted: spinach, lettuce, parsnip, radish, carrot, beet, chard, fava bean,
–Second planting May 16th –May 26th. Transplants grown and donated by West
Virginia State Univ. included: tomato, okra, brussel sprouts, cabbage, peppers,
kale, cucumber, basil and stevia.
–Third major planting July 17th-August 1st. Direct seeding of winter squash,
pumpkins, green beans, late beets and summer squash.
–Successes: lettuce, spinach, winter squash, pumpkins, okra, green beans,
cucumber, kale, summer squash, bitter melon and fava bean.
–Failures: cabbage, peppers, beets carrot, parsnip,
–Mixed results: tomato, chard, brussel sprouts.

*notes: Tomatoes did not begin setting red fruit until Sept. 1st. Good yield but late harvest. Six hundred cabbages were destroyed by ground hogs. 1000 pepper plants performed poorly due to wet soil conditions Chard yielded heavily until July when the plants succumbed to an invasion of leaf hoppers. Brussel sprouts did well in the Garden of Seven Gates but were attacked by aphids in the Teaching Garden. Carrots and parsnips plantings were destroyed by groundhogs in the Teaching Garden. Three attempts to grow winter storage beets all failed due to weed pressure The beet beds were too wet to allow either hand or mechanical cultivation.

How Much Was Harvested? What’s The Wholesale Value?

*note: The wholesale value chart below is determined by price comparisons to Jebia’s Market. The quantities are calculated according to standard weights and head counts for a specific vegetable. For example, a waxed box of chard weights approximately 25lbs and contains 20-25 individual chard bundles (tied with a twisty or rubber band). Jebia’s wholesale price for non-organic chard is $23.00 per box. Organic produce is typically 30% more.

ITEM QTY HARVESSTED WHOLESALE VALUE COMMENTS

Tomato 120 boxes $18/box $2160
Cucumber 45 boxes $26/box $1170
Lettuce 20 boxes $27/box $540
Chard 51 boxes $23/box $1173
Bnut Squash 40 bushels $20/bu $800
Pumpkin 70 pcs $3.@ $210
Kale 6 boxes $20/box $120
Spinach 6 boxes $28/box $168
Spaghetti Squash 13 bushels $20/bu $260.
Summer Squash 16 boxes $24/box $384
Okra 14 boxes $27/box $378
Green Beans 9 boxes $22/box $198
Fava Beans 75 lbs $2/lb $150
Red Bell Pepper 8 boxes $30/box $240
Jalapeno Pepper 6 boxes $29/box $174
Red Chile Pepper 3 boxes $29/box $87
Radish and Greens 9 boxes $21/box $189

Total……………..$8401
Total if paying organic wholesale prices………….…..$10,921

Status of Student Apprentice Training Program
–Number of inquires via email and phone……………………17
–Number of apprentice participating…………………………….7
(Brandon, Brian, John, Laslo, Yogadeva, Tracy and Ben)

Needs: The most urgent need for boosting apprentice participation is website development—specifically, a dedicated person to handle content management and recruiting. In short, we’re under-communicating what we have to offer. Target audiences include ISKCON social media outlets, animal rights organizations such as PETA and Farm Sanctuary, food activist organizations, universities and colleges, gardening clubs etc. For a comprehensive view of SFTC’s apprentice opportunity see www.farmeducation.org. Look for ‘training” in the top menu bar of the home page.
The apprentice program has mentored 30 plus full time participants and dozens of weekend helpers over the past five years.

Three Recommendations to Boost New Vrindaban Sustainable Development

a). Follow the lead of New Vraja Dhama (Hungary).
At New Vraja Dham, all devotees supported by the temple—from temple president to pot washer, yes even pujaris!—are available for 3 hours of farm related service per week. Devotees often fulfill their obligation by dividing the 3 hr. time slot into two days of 1.5 hours. The farm manager arranges work assignments knowing that each day he can expect a team of helpers. By sharing the chores in the garden, barn and fields, the whole community gains insight into the value of the cows, the land and the joy of shared sacrifice for Lord Krishna’s pleasure.

b). Restore brahminical standards in Krishna’s kitchen.
Our farming and gardening should be guided by the purity of the offering to Sri Sri Radha Vrindaban Chanda. Foods planted, nurtured, and harvested by devotee hands are, in the words of Srila Prabhupada, “One hundred times better” than bhoga purchased from the outside. Implementing that standard of purity should be expected in the place Srila Prabhupada anointed as a holy tirtha and ISKCON’s first farm community.

Adopting a higher standard begins with connecting the dots between the garden, the kitchen and the Lord’s altar.

c). Incentivize farming, farm culture and farm related occupations
Not only are New Vrindaban’s original settlers aging, but the ones who are experienced farmers—who can successfully grow food in large quantities—can be counted on one hand. Farming is not just ”another” manual trade. Organic farming, in particular, demands a diverse set of skills, the most important of which is the ability to accurately read and quickly adjust to the rhythms and mood swings of mother nature.

How does New Vrindaban attract the next wave of agrarians? How do we convincingly present the case for “plain living and high thinking” when the only occupations that offer a living wage revolve around Hindu fund raising, guest facility maintenance and internet administration? In the past seventeen years—that’s the number of consecutive years the Teaching Garden has been productive—we’ve purchased over one million dollars worth of outside bhoga. Imagine if that money had stayed within the community to create a local food economy.

Networking, Local Community Outreach and Plans for 2012

What began six years ago as a genuine effort to share surplus produce with area food pantries and soup kitchens has blossomed into a burgeoning grass roots movement called the Green Wheeling Initiative. The Small Farm Training Center has played a leading role in local networking efforts to bring about a unique collaboration of academia, social service agencies, city government and urban gardeners.

SFTC is currently pursuing the following initiatives outside of New Vrindaban

-A grant funded study to explore how Wheeling spends its food dollar.
-A grant funded mandate to form a business plan to shift food production
and consumption by 10% over a three year period.
-The expansion of a Community Garden Network, now comprised of fourteen urban
gardens as well as New Vrindaban’s ‘Teaching Garden’ and ‘Garden of Seven Gates.’
-The creation of a downtown Wheeling ‘Green Zone’ in partnership with West
Virginia Northern Community College.
-Regular interaction with seven local colleges and universities to stimulate dialogue
and debate about a local food economy.

Within New Vrindaban, SFTC’s 2012 plans include:
-Completion of the artisan bakery.
-Renovation of the Small Farm Training Center Guest House facility.
- Opening the Center for Preventative Medicine (inside SFTC Guest House).
-Construction of the Children’s Learning and Play Center (the Teaching Garden).
-Enhanced Student Apprentice Program, including a written curriculum.
-Irrigation and drainage for the Garden of Seven Gates (ECO-V grant funded).

Environmental Imagination: The Food Movement and Climate Change

2012-01-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Jebediah Purdy at the Huffington Post

The two most visible environmental issues today, climate change and agriculture, are about as different as they could be. Taken together, though, they give some reminders. Environmental consciousness is very young. Its challenge to some of the ways we live is deep. And it can be a great source of cultural and political creativity and renewal.

Climate change is huge and diffuse. It works on a literally planetary scale. No one can say for sure that it is the cause behind any particular event, like a drought or storm. Part of the challenge to doing anything about it is that it is hard to imagine, easy to ignore, impossible to touch. Even as the scientific warnings around climate change grow clearer and louder, fewer Americans believe in or care about it, and national action on it is dead for now.

Food has been on everyone's mind for most of a decade -- where it comes from, what it does to us, how it affects the rest of the natural world. It doesn't require global vision or national action. Where I live, in central North Carolina, and all over the country, a new generation of kids is scrounging farmland and experimenting in making a living from the land. What they're after is as local and concrete as it gets. By sticking their hands in the dirt, eating what they or a neighbor planted, they are turning a network of ignorance -- the anonymous, placeless food of industrial agriculture, with all its invisible polluting side-effects -- into a circuit of knowledge: here I planted it, here it grew, and here it will turn back into soil when it's done.

That is the purest version, to be sure, and not all that much food comes from these purists, but I'd argue that the tens of millions of eaters with a new interest in the environmental, ethical, and health quality of their food are after versions of the same thing: taming an opaque tangle of simple calories and complicated harm by drawing some clearer lines from the field to the table.

Personal action, even ordinary collective action, is frustratingly ineffective against climate change. Greenhouse gases emitted in one place are equally diffused through the global atmosphere a year later. Self-restraint, even by fair-sized countries, gets swamped by everyone else's self-indulgence.

By contrast, a person can draw the circuit of eating close enough to make a real difference in her own health and, if she coordinates with growers, in the health of a piece of land. Community springs up naturally around growing, selling, preparing, and eating food, where every step of the process makes a difference. There isn't much community around climate change because it so thoroughly frustrates the personal and shared acts that form a community practice.

This comparison raises a distressing thought. It's often said about eating disorders that people who feel their lives are out of their control focus great acts of will on the small area they can control, their own eating. A cynic could see the food-conscious United States as frantically engaged in a symbolic environmental micro-practice that we can understand and control, while an all-pervading macro-problem broods and prepares to wreck large parts of the world we know. Maybe there is something to this.

But there's another way of looking at the two issues that is more hopeful. For all their practical differences, climate and food are both cardinal examples of the ecological insight that made environmentalism possible: everything is connected, so what we drop into rivers, winds, or soil ends up in our bloodstreams. Flashes of this thought appeared in the nineteenth century and much earlier, but as a guiding principle it really dates from after World War Two. Widespread appreciation of it goes back no further than Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published fifty years ago, which detailed the silent, terrible, invisible journey of pesticides through the capillaries of a poisoned world.

In big ways, the modern food movement goes back to an eccentric, powerful, and often beautiful book by Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America. Writing in 1977, as the first popular wave of environmental awareness and activism crested, Berry tied ecological destruction to the American food economy. In the move from diversified, small-scale agricultural to industrial production, he saw a larger decline in miniature: from integrated organic fertility to systems that import artificial fertilizer to the farm and discard rich manure as a pollutant, breaking (in Berry's phrase) one solution into two problems; from intimate knowledge of a piece of land and its species to the tunnel-vision ignorance of the industrially enabled, public subsidized ignorance of someone who produces of one thing, whether corn, wheat, or pork, in a radically simplified system; from respect for the hard but sometimes good work of farming to dislike, even contempt, of labor, which came with a willingness to make agricultural labor, in industrial poultry plants and slaughterhouses, as degrading as it has ever been.

Berry argued that the two approaches to food had different ethics at their core. One was oriented to caretaking, sustainability, and good work: qualitative values that set limits to the willingness to exploit a place for present convenience. The other turned its face to maximization: maximum calorie production as government policy, maximum profit for agribusiness, and the same industrial ideal for the small farmer caught between the two. These quantitative values would set no limit to human actions as long as production and profit continued. In fact, they would tend to overrun any limits on profitable production. And, because complex and long-distance systems tended to hide from eaters all the harm their food had done along the way, this system involved us all in damaging nature and our own bodies and made that damage hard to see and harder to trace.

So the food system, viewed in 1977, had a certain amount in common with climate change today. It was -- and still is, in good part -- a scheme of ignorance, convenience, and destruction that turned our everyday activity into a small weapon against environmental health and, ultimately, our own well-being.

There were technical reasons to doubt that it could get better, but it wasn't only a technical problem. It was also a cultural problem. Then two-plus generations of idealists and eccentrics got busy on the cultural problem. Journalists like Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) made the environmental and human harms of industrial agriculture indelibly visible. Farmers rediscovered and pioneered integrated techniques, but they also rediscovered, and drew others into, the idea that responsible, productive, knowledgeable work is good work, and that getting to do that work is a gift, not (just) a burden. The young people starting farms, and lining up to work on other people's, aren't doing it for the profit margins, the hourly wage, or the vacation. And those who like to buy from these farms, or from responsible larger producers, have realized that knowledge of your food is a gain, ignorance a loss, and are trying to make up some of our huge cultural loss.

The new farming movement turns the ecological perspective from a way of diagnosing problems to a way of imagining a good life: taking part in ecological processes with as little harm, as much knowledge, and as much pleasure as possible. That people are making this happen, even as a series of experiments, strikes me as powerful evidence that a culture can heal some of its self-inflicted wounds. Wendell Berry's book, which was a jeremiad, now looks like a friendlier kind of prophecy, thanks to its readers.

Maybe our next question is whether climate change is also a cultural problem as well as a technical one, and, if so, what a cultural response would look like. There's no doubt that climate change arises directly from how we live: like people who treasure convenience, power, and speed, who disperse around the world as we collapse distance and time, and who have learned to treat waiting -- for anything -- as an affront. All of that takes power, that is, energy. Energy-wise, we are the most powerful generation of the most powerful species this planet has carried on its groaning back. For this to change, either our energy will have to become much less environmentally damaging, or our lives will have to do the same. Considering that energy efficiency and total greenhouse-gas emissions have skyrocketed together for centuries now, these are probably false alternatives. The real question is whether both changes together could be enough.

The cultural experiments so far are nibbling around the edges. A few individuals and organizations buy carbon offsets. A few more, genuinely hard-core, live with zero or near-zero net carbon emissions in their own lives. Communities commit to reducing their emissions, regardless of what the rest of the country or the world is doing, and start planning together for major climate change -- a prudent thing to do, for sure, but also a community-building exercise of imagination.

What more, if anything, can we do? The history of environmental politics shows that people act most effectively when they have something to fear, but, while averting the threat, also find something to love. Americans saved their national forests and parks because they were afraid of running out of timber and healthy open spaces, but also because they had learned to find joy in wild lands that had once frightened them. They passed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act because Rachel Carson and others had taught them to fear industrial poison, but also because they were coming to revere the idea of ecological harmony and prize swimmable streams and clear, visible air. (That's not to say we have enough of these, but the ideals, as well as the threats, helped to motivate these laws.)

Maybe climate change will prove too diffuse and global to get our minds around, and show once and for all that we are too selfish and parochial to be running a whole planet. Maybe the food movement will turn out to be what some have always called it, an elitist fad.

But maybe we learn something about climate from the last forty years of food culture. We could use ways of imagining, and caring for, the planet's atmospheric system as acutely as we do national parks and our own neighborhoods. We need ways to find beauty in its balances, take awe from its power, and feel what it means when the whole planet's metabolism changes. And we would be awfully indebted to anyone who could help us to live in more knowledgeable ways that did less harm, and be more fulfilled with that.

It sounds utopian, for sure. But we don't live only on the energy reserves of the planet's history. We also live on the unacknowledged utopian imagination of our ancestors, who envisioned seemingly impossible forms of freedom and satisfaction that we treat as if they were natural.

We should unlock our own utopian imagination to think about living well for the future on the planet we have made, and are remaking faster every year. The cultural change around food is a modest but important reminder that we can.

Meatless in The Midwest: A Tale Of Survival

2012-01-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

Steve Hebert for The New York Times

Some patrons, unlike the reporter, line up for brisket at Arthur Bryant’s barbecue, in Kansas City, Mo.

Click here to read the full article from A.J Sulzberger at the New York Times

IN an ideal world, vegetarians would be built like camels. Not humpbacked, of course, but able to sustain themselves through long stretches by tapping stored energy reserves, like previously consumed soy products.

But after the first three dinners in my new hometown, where I moved from New York to cover the Midwest for this newspaper, even this veteran vegetarian was flagging.

This city, after all, is celebrated as a Mecca of meat. And any newcomer should expect to start with a tour of the most venerable purveyors of cows, pigs and chickens in what I’ve been told are their most delicious forms.

So, yes, I’ve “eaten” at some of these famous restaurants. There was the meal at the Golden Ox steakhouse (baked potato), Stroud’s fried chicken (rolls) and Arthur Bryant’s barbecue, where, searching for vegetarian options on the menu, skipping over the lard-bathed French fries, pausing to consider the coleslaw, I ordered the safest option (a mug of Budweiser).

After three days of this, starving, I went alone to the nearest Chinese restaurant I could find, where I feasted on a steaming plate of meatless mapo tofu.

It should be stated right up front that the Midwest, with its rich culture, stark natural beauty and superlative decency, quickly defies stereotypes. Living in the middle of the country is very different from living in the middle of nowhere.

But make no mistake: meat-loving is one stereotype that the region wears with pride. Lard still plays a starring role in many kitchens, bacon comes standard in salads, and perhaps the most important event on Kansas City social calendars is a barbecue contest.

Even though the region boasts some of the finest farmland in the world, there is a startling lack of fresh produce here. This is a part of the country — and there’s no polite way to put this — where the most common vegetable you’ll see on dinner plates is iceberg lettuce.

“The mentality of the Midwest is, green is garnish,” explained Heidi Van Pelt-Belle, who runs Füd, a vegetarian restaurant in Kansas City.

As a result, many heartland vegetarians say that eating, that most essential activity, can be a constant struggle. Longtime members of the club recall the days when doctors and family members alike warned that forgoing meat would result in serious malnutrition. This was not hyperbole to those who, lacking other options, subsisted on pizza.

Over the years, many have learned tricks, like calling ahead to a restaurant to negotiate a special entree. Dinner party? Best to eat first, knowing that side dishes might be the only options. Some say they have learned to cook for themselves more, to avoid the inevitable barrage of questions, if not outright mockery, that comes with eating in public.

Just outside Iowa City, Sparti’s Gyros taunts vegetarians even as it caters to them. The menu includes the Greek Veggie Wheat Pita, but adds a punch line: “For people who just don’t like eating. Put some meat on it!”

In Nebraska, a place where cattle outnumber people, vegetarians are sometimes accused of undermining the state economy. The owner of what was billed as the lone vegetarian restaurant in Omaha said it had several pounds of ground beef thrown at its doors shortly after opening. After a short run, it closed last year.

“Being a vegetarian in Nebraska is like being a Republican in Brooklyn — less of an outcast than a novelty,” said David Rosen, who became a vegetarian as a teenager in Omaha and is now a writer in Brooklyn. “Except that you don’t have to prepare special meals for Republicans.”

With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times

Vassilis Ballas and his wife, Roula Boura, extracted the gum from a mastic tree on their 400-tree farm in Chios, Greece.

Click here to read the full article from Rachel Donadio in the New York Times

CHIOS, Greece — Nikos Gavalas and Alexandra Tricha, both 31 and trained as agriculturalists, were frustrated working on poorly paying, short-term contracts in Athens, where jobs are scarce and the cost of living is high. So last year, they decided to start a new project: growing edible snails for export.

As Greece’s blighted economy plunges further into the abyss, the couple are joining with an exodus of Greeks who are fleeing to the countryside and looking to the nation’s rich rural past as a guide to the future. They acknowledge that it is a peculiar undertaking, with more manual labor than they, as college graduates, ever imagined doing. But in a country starved by austerity even as it teeters on the brink of default, it seemed as good a gamble as any.

Mr. Gavalas and Ms. Tricha chose to move back to his native Chios, an Aegean island closer to Izmir, Turkey, than to Athens. They set up their boutique farm using $50,000 from their families’ life savings. That investment has yet to pay off; they will have their first harvest later this year. But the couple are confident about their decision.

“When I call my friends and relatives in Athens, they tell me there’s no hope, everything is going from bad to worse,” Ms. Tricha said on a recent afternoon, as she walked through her greenhouse, where thousands of snails lumbered along on rows of damp wooden boards. “So I think our choice was good.”

Unemployment in Greece is now 18 percent, rising to 35 percent for young people between the ages of 15 and 29 — up from 12 percent and 24 percent, respectively, in late 2010. But the agricultural sector has been one of the few to show gains since the crisis hit, adding 32,000 jobs between 2008 and 2010 — most of them taken by Greeks, not migrant workers from abroad, according to a study released this fall by the Pan-Hellenic Confederation of Agricultural Associations.

“The biggest increase is in middle-aged people between 45 and 65 years old,” said Yannis Tsiforos, the director of the confederation. “This shows us that they had a different sort of employment in the past.”

In Greece, as elsewhere in the Mediterranean, most families have traditionally invested heavily in real estate and land, which are seen as far more stable than financial investments, and it is common for even low-income Greeks to have inherited family property. Increasingly, as the hard times bite deeper, many Greeks are deciding or being forced to fall back on that last line of defense.

Enrollment in agricultural schools is also on the rise. Panos Kanellis, the president of the American Farm School in Salonika, which was founded in 1904 and offers kindergarten through high school as well as continuing education in sustainable agriculture, said applications tripled in the past two years and enrollment in classes like cheesemaking and winemaking has been rising.

Mr. Kanellis says that young people frequently come to him and say: “I have two acres from my grandfather in such-and-such a place. Can I do something with it?”

A growing number of Greeks are asking themselves that question, and some are deciding they can. “I think a lot of people will do this,” Ms. Tricha said. “In big cities, there’s no future for them. For young people, the only choice is for them to go to the countryside or to go abroad.”

Storehouses for Solar Energy Can Step In When the Sun Goes Down

2012-01-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

SolarReserve

A completed solar power tower at the SolarReserve Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant, Tonopah, Nev., expected to be in service in 2013.

Click here to read the full article from Matthew Wald at the New York Times

If solar energy is eventually going to matter — that is, generate a significant portion of the nation’s electricity — the industry must overcome a major stumbling block, experts say: finding a way to store it for use when the sun isn’t shining.

An artist's rendering of the SolarReserve plant, which will absorb heat directed at it by mirrors and store it in molten salt.

That challenge seems to be creating an opening for a different form of power, solar thermal, which makes electricity by using the sun’s heat to boil water. The water can be used to heat salt that stores the energy until later, when the sun dips and households power up their appliances and air-conditioning at peak demand hours in the summer.

Two California companies are planning to deploy the storage technology: SolarReserve, which is building a plant in the Nevada desert scheduled to start up next year, and BrightSource, which plans three plants in California that would begin operating in 2016 and 2017. Together, the four projects will be capable of powering tens of thousand of households throughout a summer evening.

Whether the technology will be widely adopted remains to be seen, but companies like Google, Chevron and Good Energies are investing in it, and the utilities NV Energy and Southern California Edison have signed long-term contracts to buy power from these radically different new power plants.

One crucial role of the plants will be complementing solar panels, which produce electricity directly from sunlight. When the panels ramp down at dusk or on cloudy days, the plants will crank up, drawing on the stored thermal energy.

That job will become more important if photovoltaic panels, which have plunged in price lately, become even cheaper and sprout on millions of rooftops. As the grid starts depending more heavily on solar panels or wind turbines, it will need other energy sources that can step in quickly to balance the system — preferably ones classified as renewable.

Most utilities are trying to generate as many kilowatt-hours of renewable energy as they can to meet stiffer state requirements on incorporating more alternative energy, said Kevin B. Smith, the chief executive of SolarReserve.

“As we move forward, we’ll get more and more traction with the fact we can provide more capacity,” Mr. Smith said, referring to his company’s storage technology.

The Energy Department seems to agree: in September it gave SolarReserve a $737 million loan guarantee for its project in Nevada. The plant will generate 110 megawatts at peak and store enough heat to run for eight to 10 hours when the sun is not shining.

The public’s view on loan guarantees for solar projects has soured somewhat since the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a California company that received a $535 million loan guarantee to build a factory to make solar panels — only to see the market for the modules crash.

But the outlook has always been clearer for companies that make electricity, which, unlike solar modules, is generally presold by contract.

Technical details of the SolarReserve and BrightSource plants vary slightly, but both will use thousands of computer-operated poster-size mirrors aiming sunlight at a tower that absorbs it as heat.
SolarReserve absorbs the heat in molten salt, which can be used immediately to boil water, generating steam that turns a conventional turbine and generator. Hot salt can also be used to retain the heat for many hours for later use. BrightSource heats water that can be used immediately as steam or to heat salt for storage.

The plants rely on salt because it can store far more heat than water can. But once molten, it must be kept that way or it will freeze to a solid in part of the plant where it will be difficult to melt again. “You’ve made a commitment to those salt molecules,” said John Woolard, the chief executive of BrightSource.

The technology is not complicated, but the economics are.

Radhanath Swami Inaugurates Eco-Village

2012-01-11T12:37:00.001-05:00

From Radhanath Swami.com

On December 24th Radhanath Swami presided over the official opening of the Govardhan Eco-village and Farm Community (GEV) spread over a scenic landscape of 60 acres near the Sahyadri mountain range, a two hour drive from the city of Mumbai in Maharashtra, India. The inauguration ceremony was marked with the presence of Mr. Nana Saheb Patil, the Ex-secretary of the Agricultural Ministry for the Government of Maharashtra, and 150 senior members of the Radha Gopinath temple congregation.

Under the inspiration and guidance of Radhanath Swami a dedicated community began the development of the GEV in 2003 with the aim of demonstrating the principles of self-sufficiency and localized economy and highlighting the importance of living in harmony with nature by presenting a sustainable living model. Gradually they have developed fundamental aspects of the eco-village including organic farming, cow protection, education, rural development, alternative energy, eco-friendly constructions and sustainable living.

The inauguration marked the opening of the eco-village as a retreat center with green design cottages, auditorium, seminar and conference rooms, an Ayurvedic wellness center, and a yoga center. With these latest developments the GEV will serve as a place of education in the fields of the traditional sciences of Yoga and spirituality.

The opening ceremony began in the morning with a small parade of bullock carts and guests who were led by Radhanath Swami, accompanied by kirtan, from the main entrance of the village to its centrally located new auditorium. There, Radhanath Swami shared the vision and dream behind the creation of Govardhan Eco-village. He mentioned that it was the desire of his guru A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada to develop such projects away from cities to serve as a place for people to find relief from stress using spiritual practices. ”Simple living, high thinking is the principle that is the basis of this rural community”. Radhanath Swami added “though we all have individual mothers, Mother Earth is the mother of all life on the planet. Thus Mother Earth is common to all of us and we are heavily dependent on her. Living in harmony with Mother Earth is a big responsibility. This is a most important sacred principle we must remember.”

While thanking those involved in the project he spoke of the mood in which they worked saying that the whole project is conceived in the spirit of devotion and keeping God as the center. “We can build structures but if we don’t cultivate non-envious, egoless camaraderie inside then the structure is as good as empty.”

The eco-village has been built for the modern lifestyle needs of both individuals and corporate groups. GEV hopes to serve as a model of how spirituality can integrate the needs of a modern society with traditional answers. All we need to remember is, as Radhanath Swami says, “In the quest for technology we keep taking from mother earth, but as we grow we should reciprocate.”

The structures of the eco-village are made of natural materials such as cob, rammed earth and Compressed Stabilized Earth Blocks which are made by compressing a combination of earthen materials with added stabilizers without the use of furnaces to heat the bricks. The natural property of earth changes when it is heated. The use of raw mud for building houses has many advantages – its local availability and ease of processing makes it the most energy efficient building material. Houses made of earth give warmth in cold atmospheres and provide a cooling effect in hotter climates.

Some other ways the eco-village strives to live in harmony with Mother Earth:.

In consultation with organic farming experts, all inputs and outputs are natural
Only indigenous varieties of grain are grown
Instead of chemical fertilizers, cow dung and natural compost are employed
Cow urine and neem oil serve as organic pesticides
Bulls are favored over machinery for plowing
Solid waste management and waste water treatment center minimize its carbon footprint
For alternative energy a bio-gas plant has been established to generate electricity for uses such as water pumping and irrigation
Solar energy provides energy for street lights and water heaters
Cottage industry manufactures various cow-based products
20 different types of vegetables, 10 varies of fruit, 9 varieties of flowers and 4 kinds of grains are grown on the farm

Organic Produce May Be Outgrowing Its Ideals

2012-01-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Planting the Beach: American demand for year-round organic fruits and vegetables has incited a farming boom in the arid deserts of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico.

From Elisabeth Rosenthal at the New York Times

TODOS SANTOS, Mexico — Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’ — that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies.

Many growers and even environmental groups in Mexico defend the export-driven organic farming, even as they acknowledge that more than a third of the aquifers in southern Baja are categorized as overexploited by the Mexican water authority. With sophisticated irrigation systems and shade houses, they say, farmers are becoming more skilled at conserving water. They are focusing new farms in “microclimates” near underexploited aquifers, such as in the shadow of a mountain, said Fernando Frías, a water specialist with the environmental group Pronatura Noroeste.

They also point out that the organic business has transformed what was once a poor area of subsistence farms and where even the low-paying jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants in nearby Cabo San Lucas have become scarcer during the recession.

To carry the Agriculture Department’s organic label on their produce, farms in the United States and abroad must comply with a long list of standards that prohibit the use of synthetic fertilizers, hormones and pesticides, for example. But the checklist makes few specific demands for what would broadly be called environmental sustainability, even though the 1990 law that created the standards was intended to promote ecological balance and biodiversity as well as soil and water health.

Experts agree that in general organic farms tend to be less damaging to the environment than conventional farms. In the past, however, “organic agriculture used to be sustainable agriculture, but now that is not always the case,” said Michael Bomford, a scientist at Kentucky State University who specializes in sustainable agriculture. He added that intense organic agriculture had also put stress on aquifers in California.

Some organic standard setters are beginning to refine their criteria so that organic products better match their natural ideals. Krav, a major Swedish organic certification program, allows produce grown in greenhouses to carry its “organic” label only if the buildings use at least 80 percent renewable fuel, for example. And last year the Agriculture Department’s National Organic Standards Board revised its rules to require that for an “organic milk” label, cows had to be at least partly fed by grazing in open pastures rather than standing full time in feedlots.

But each decision to narrow the definition of “organic” involves an inevitable tug-of-war among farmers, food producers, supermarkets and environmentalists. While the United States’ regulations for organic certification require that growers use practices that protect water resources, it is hard to define a specific sustainable level of water use for a single farm “because aquifer depletion is the result of many farmers’ overutilizing the resource,” said Miles McEvoy, head of the National Organic Program at the Agriculture Department.

While the original organic ideal was to eat only local, seasonal produce, shoppers who buy their organics at supermarkets, from Whole Foods to Walmart, expect to find tomatoes in December and are very sensitive to price. Both factors stoke the demand for imports. Few areas in the United States can farm organic produce in the winter without resorting to energy-guzzling hothouses. In addition, American labor costs are high. Day laborers who come to pick tomatoes in this part of Baja make about $10 a day, nearly twice the local minimum wage. Tomato pickers in Florida may earn $80 a day in high season.

Manuel Verdugo, 42, began organic tomato farming on desert land in San José del Cabo five years ago and now owns 30 acres in several locations. Each week he sends two and a half tons of cherry, plum and beefsteak tomatoes to the United States under the brand name Tiky Cabo.

He has invested in irrigation systems that drip water directly onto plants’ roots rather than channeling it through open canals. He is building large shade houses that cover his crops to keep out pests and minimize evaporation. Even so, he cannot farm 10 acres in the nearby hamlet of La Cuenca because the wells there are dry.

At another five-year-old organic farm, Rosario Castillo says he can cultivate only 19 acres of the 100 he has earmarked for organic production, although he dug a well seven months ago to gain better access to the aquifer. The authorities ration pumping and have not granted him permission to clear native cactuses. “We have very little water here, and you have to go through a lot of bureaucracy to get it,” Mr. Castillo said.

Many growers blame tourist development — hotels and golf courses — for the water scarcity, and this has been a major problem in coastal areas. But farming can also be a significant drain. According to one study in an area of northern Baja called Ojos Negros, a boom in the planting of green onions for export a decade ago lowered the water table by about 16 inches a year. “They were pumping a lot of groundwater, and that was making some people rich on both sides of the border at the expense of the environment,” said Victor Miguel Ponce, a professor of hydrology at San Diego State University.

The logistics of getting water and transporting large volumes of perishable produce favors bigger producers. Some of the largest are American-owned, like Sueño Tropical, a vast farm with rows of shade houses lined up in the desert that caters exclusively to the American market.

While traditional organic farmers saw a blemish or odd shape simply as nature’s variations, workers at Sueño Tropical are instructed to cull tomatoes that do not meet the uniform shape, size and cosmetic requirement of clients like Whole Foods. Those “seconds” are sold locally.

Yet the connection to the United States has brought other kinds of benefits. Del Cabo Cooperative, which serves as a broker for hundreds of local farmers, provides seeds for its Mexican growers and hires roving agronomists and entomologists to assist them in tending their crops without chemicals.

As the American market expands, said John Graham, a coordinator of operations at Del Cabo, he is always looking to bring new growers into his network — especially those whose farms draw on distant aquifers where water is still abundant.

David Agren contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 31, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Organic Agriculture May Be Outgrowing Ideals.

In Solar Power, India Begis Living Up To Its Own Ambitions

2012-01-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

Every five days or so, workers wipe down each of the 36,000 solar panels at the Azure Solar Plant in Khadoda, India.

Click here to read the full article from Vikas Bajaj at the New York Times

KHADODA, India — Solar power is a clean energy source. But in this arid part of northwest India it can also be a dusty one.

Every five days or so, in a marriage of low and high tech, field hands with long-handled dust mops wipe down each of the 36,000 solar panels at a 63-acre installation operated by Azure Power. The site is one of the biggest examples of India’s ambitious plan to use solar energy to help modernize its notoriously underpowered national electricity grid, and reduce its dependence on coal-fired power plants.

Azure Power has a contract to provide solar-generated electricity to a state-government electric utility. Inderpreet Wadhwa, Azure’s chief executive, predicted that within a few years solar power would be competitive in price with India’s conventionally generated electricity.

“The efficiency of solar technology will continue to increase, and with the increasing demand in solar energy, cost will continue to decrease,” Mr. Wadhwa said.

Two years ago, Indian policy makers said that by the year 2020 they would drastically increase the nation’s use of solar power from virtually nothing to 20,000 megawatts — enough electricity to power the equivalent of up to 15 million modern American homes during daylight hours when the panels are at their most productive. Many analysts said it could not be done. But, now the doubters are taking back their words.

Dozens of developers like Azure, because of aggressive government subsidies and a large drop in the global price of solar panels, are covering India’s northwestern plains — including this village of 2,000 people — with gleaming solar panels. So far, India uses only about 140 megawatts, including 10 megawatts used by the Azure installation, which can provide enough power to serve a town of 50,000 people, according to the company. But analysts say that the national 20,000 megawatt goal is achievable and that India could reach those numbers even a few years before 2020.

“Prices came down and suddenly things were possible that didn’t seem possible,” said Tobias Engelmeier, managing director of Bridge to India, a research and consulting firm based in New Delhi. Chinese manufacturers like Suntech Power and Yingli Green Energy helped drive the drop in solar panel costs. The firms increased production of the panels and cut costs this year by about 30 percent to 40 percent, to less than $1 a watt.

Developers of solar farms in India, however, have shown a preference for the more advanced, so-called thin-film solar cells offered by suppliers in the United States, Taiwan and Europe. The leading American provider to India is First Solar, based in Tempe, Ariz.

India does not have a large solar manufacturing industry, but is trying to develop one and China is showing a new interest in India’s growing demand. China’s Suntech Power sold the panels used at the Azure installation, which opened in June.

Industry executives credit government policies with India’s solar boom, unusual praise because businesses usually deride Indian regulations as Kafkaesque.

Over the last decade, India has opened the state-dominated power-generating industry to private players, while leaving distribution and rate-setting largely in government hands. European countries heavily subsidize solar power by agreeing to buy it for decades at a time, but the subsidies in India are lower and solar operators are forced into to greater competition, helping push down costs.

This month, the government held its second auction to determine the price at which its state-owned power trading company — NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam — would buy solar-generated electricity for the national grid. The average winning bid was 8.77 rupees (16.5 cents) per kilowatt hour.

That is about twice the price of coal-generated power, but it was about 27 percent lower than the winning bids at the auction held a year ago. Germany, the world’s biggest solar-power user, pays about 17.94 euro cents (23 American cents) per kilowatt hour.

India still significantly lags behind European countries in the use of solar. Germany, for example, had 17,000 megawatts of solar power capacity at the end of 2010. But India, which gets more than 300 days of sunlight a year, is a more suitable place to generate solar power. And being behind is now benefiting India, as panel prices plummet, enabling it to spend far less to set up solar farms than countries that pioneered the technology.

Fast-Food Outlet Stirs Concerns In A Mecca Of Healthy Living

2012-01-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Ellsworth Wareham, 97, in Loma Linda, Calif. Mr. Wareham was a heart surgeon who stopped working only two years ago. He is a vegan, but says choice is part of the “great American system.”

From Jennifer Medina in the New York Times

When researchers descended on this affluent city east of Los Angeles several years ago to determine why, the theories piled up: Perhaps it was the vegetarian diet kept by many Adventists? Maybe it was their close communal ties? Or the frequent use of sprawling trails in the parks here?

But one thing seemed certain to researchers: residents were not living into the next century by eating fast food.

So last week, when the City Council approved Loma Linda’s first McDonald’s restaurant, many residents bemoaned the decision, worrying that the officials were jeopardizing the city’s reputation as a paragon of healthy lifestyles.

Wayne Dysinger, a physician and public health professor in the preventive medicine department at Loma Linda University’s School of Medicine, grew up in the city and remembers a time when there were no such restaurants. A generation ago, it was nearly impossible to even find meat within city limits. Now, he worries about his children.

“We know from research that if a school is near a fast-food restaurant, the kids there are more likely to be obese,” he said. “We will never eliminate unhealthy choices, and pretty much everyone has an unhealthy treat once in a while. I am going to drive by that intersection every day and it’s fairly likely that they will say ‘Oh Daddy, can we stop there’ more often. Why do we need to encourage that?”

The new McDonald’s restaurant would hardly be the first fast-food joint around — there are already a handful of places offering assembly-line burgers and fries within the eight square miles of the city.

And the area has deep roots to the icon that so many residents detest: the site of the original McDonald’s restaurant is less than five miles away, in San Bernardino.

Still, in one sign of Loma Linda’s historical distaste for fast food, restaurants are required to go through a special approval process for drive-through windows. Once, when business proved slightly sluggish, a local chain crafted a special vegetarian menu dubbed “Loma Linda specials.”

A generation ago, nearly 80 percent of the city was Seventh-day Adventist; by most estimates, Adventists now make up about half of the city’s population of 23,000. But the influence of the religion on the town remains clear. Many businesses shut down early on Friday, in observance of Saturday as the Sabbath. One of the largest supermarkets in town is owned by the church-run university, and there are no meat products to be found. (Canned soy alternatives are available in abundance, including some under a Loma Linda brand.) Only large businesses and restaurants are authorized to sell alcohol, and there is a total ban on smoking.

“You have to realize how easy it is to be healthy there, you don’t even have to think about it and it’s the default choice,” said Dan Buettner, an author and healthy living advocate who identified Loma Linda as one of four places in the world with a high concentration of people living healthy lives past the age of 100. “Your social network is all concerned about the same thing. They are really trying to preserve the culture that has been established for a really long time.”

Adventist or not, it is difficult to speak to anyone here without hearing about Mr. Buettner’s special designation of the town, identified in his book “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest,” published by National Geographic in 2008.

It is not just Mr. Buettner’s book that feeds the sense of civic pride in health here. Nearly every resident has a connection with the sprawling Loma Linda University Medical Center, which serves as both the physical and cultural center of town.

About 10 years ago, when the city denied plans for another fast-food restaurant, the developer responded with a lawsuit and the city eventually capitulated, said Mayor Rhodes Rigsby, who is also the assistant dean of the Loma Linda University School of Medicine.

“I don’t think we should be getting into the business of legislating vegetarianism,” Dr. Rigsby said, adding that he would support having a citywide vote on whether fast-food outlets should be banned entirely from the city. “If this is something that people are really opposed to, that’s how we should deal with it.”

What would happen during such a vote is anyone’s guess. Ellsworth Wareham, who stopped working as a heart surgeon only two years ago, at 95, is often used as an example of someone with more energy than someone half his age. Dr. Wareham attributes his health at least partly to the fact that he has been a vegan for the last 30 or 40 years (he does not remember precisely).

Eating at home, he said, is the best way to ensure that one is eating healthy food. He is certainly not about to let the impending arrival of McDonald’s raise his blood pressure.

“I don’t subscribe to the menu that these dear people put out, but let’s face it, the average eating place serves food that is, let us say, a little bit of a higher quality, but the end result is the same — it’s unhealthy,” he said.

“They can put it right next to the church as far as I am concerned,” Dr. Wareham added. “If they choose to eat that way, I’m not going to stop them. That’s the great American system.”

Milk-Superfood or Hyper-Allergen?

2011-12-31T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Adam Heifer

In my time as a health professional I don’t think there is any other food i've come across that has more controversy and conjures up such a polarity of opinions as Milk. Although an ongoing source of confusion for years, a client’s recent inquiry over milk gave me the impetus to write this article. I will state that my purpose is not to convince anyone to drink milk or not. This is intended to give a brief, but thorough understanding and accurate depiction as to why such polarities of opinions exist. Are both statements right? Well read on and find out…

Milk - super food or hyper allergen?

Now milk goes way back as a Superfood- According to Ayurveda (the “science of life”- A 5000 year old healing system with roots in India) milk has special and unique nutrition unlike any other food- It is said to balance emotions and help balance all the “doshas." Acclaimed Indian Swami Srila Prabhupada stated that milk helps to form and maintain our “finer brain tissues,” which is a boon in the quest of self realization- Now that’s quite a statement if you ask me... On the other side of things, (occurring in the more recent years) milk has been branded a health risk- linked to cancer, diabetes, allergies, and digestibility issues.

The main issue to understand when deciphering information about dairy is that the negative statistics about milk are being compiled from a product that really isn’t milk in its true form. Pasteurized, homogenized corn, soy and/or grain fed milk is not really milk anymore. It falls into the category that Michael Pollan (Omnivores Dilemma) describes as “edible food like substances.” The entire structure of the product becomes changed and compromised- This leads to the digestibility issues and health concerns. The digestibility issue is usually blamed on the pasteurization (heating of the milk at high temperatures to potentially kill off any “pathogens”), thus destroying vital enzymes during the process that would allow proper assimilation of the milk. The greater issue is that during the heating/pasteurization process the fragile milk proteins are drastically changed, which leads to deeper digestibility issues. The “milk” becomes a foreign substance and our body mounts an immune response to it.

Homogenization breaks the fat molecules down to such a micro level that they can’t be properly assimilated by our body- It alters the enzymes and fats so that they enter the bloodstream and can “scar” the arteries, leading to cholesterol buildups. If that’s not enough, there is the antibiotics and growth hormone issue that also accompany conventional supermarket milk. Organic milk may be antibiotic and growth hormone free, but still runs into the same issues when it’s pasteurized and homogenized. Also, the nutritional and health value of the milk changes when the cows are grain, soy, and corn fed (which much of the organic milk is). This is not their natural diet and it shows up in the quality of the milk.

This is the crux of the issue in regard to conventional, pasteurized milk. Emphasis on the words conventional and pasteurized. Where the misinformation occurs with milk is when people start making blanket statements: “Milk is linked to allergies, cancer, contains antibiotics etc..” This is true for conventional, pasteurized milk, but doesn’t have anything to do with real milk- I just want to make this distinction clear...

Now for the other side of things: pure, grass/pasture-fed cows milk is a whole other story- It is a raw, living, vital food. For as damning as conventional milk can be for our health, raw milk is equally as healthy. Many consider it the “wonder tonic” that the Ayurveda deems it, and the results are there to back it up. Raw milk has been known to reverse chronic disease and maladies from asthma and eczema to irritable bowel syndrome. Ingesting in its pure, natural state ensures that crucial enzymes and beneficial bacteria (such as lactobacillus) are intact which aids in proper digestion. In fact most people who have digestibility issues with conventional milk do just fine with grass-fed raw, real dairy. People all over the world have sworn by raw milk and dairy for helping them to regain their overall health and vitality back. Some indigenous people/cultures (who tend to be the healthiest people in the world) revere raw whole milk and dairy products as a “sacred food” as they know it to be a cornerstone to their robust mental and physical health, well being, and good fortune.

The formula for proper raw milk has to be that the cows are grass fed, and of course the farmers are conscientious and clean. Raw, grass-fed milk in its pure state has natural enzymes (its own “defense system”) to protect it from pathogens. There is no need to process it to protect us from any contaniments (Pasteurization also kills the pathogen fighting enzymes). Now there is a reason why other dairy products are pasteurized- Even organic, grain-fed milk could have contamination issues-It is processed for your protection.

Sale of raw dairy products are now illegal in most states (but interesting how you can buy Twinkies and an artificially sweetened mega energy drink). If you decide to try to go the raw route, there are buying clubs you could get involved with. Just look online, ask around, and do the research. There are also some grass-fed (but pasteurized) milk options at health food stores that some do fine with.

I personally avoided most dairy products for many years- Though the benefits of milk were tied into my Yoga culture/lineage and I heard from top health professionals about the deep health advantages of real dairy for quite some time. For these facts, when I finally had the ability to have access to them, I gave them a try.

In my training, I have noticed a distinct difference while starting on a raw heavy cream (a fairly recent addition). Raw cream is dense in fat soluble vitamins (which regulate hormones, metabolism, and assist in a healthy immune system), healthy fats for proper metabolism, Congelated Lineolic Acid/CLA and CoQ10. I treat it more like a “supplement” than a food (as consumption consists just of a couple spoonfuls a day), but it has made it into my routine and I feel great.

*Bonus Section:
Again, this article isn’t written to dissuade you from, or sway you into consuming dairy products- We respect all stances, but it isn’t a forum to get into personal, ethical, or moral issues on dairy consumption. Its purpose is solely to distinguish the very distinct differences between conventional milk and raw real milk- We hope you understand the facts a little better now, and the choice is yours.
Now for those who choose not to drink milk, there is a whole “milk alternative” industry vying for your business for what you’re going to put on your cereal or in your coffee. Some products try to tout as a “healthy alternative” (from conventional), but realize that none of them have any real health value.

Once something is put in a carton or can and on a shelf, it’s been pasteurized and has had the “life” sucked out of it. I would advise to stay away from any soy alternatives for the myriad of issues associated with conventional soy in general. I am not crazy on the rice milks either (for the general “dead” reason) along with the sweeteners and oils they put in with them. If I had to choose any, I would say go with an unsweetened almond milk- Best choice yet, learn to make your own live, raw almond milk with soaked almonds. It takes a little time and energy, but a wonderful and delicious healthy choice.

Adam is a Reiki Master, certified Health and Lifestyle counselor, Licensed Massage Therapist, 20 year practicing bramana initiated Bhakti Yogi, Spiritual advisor, visionary, jock and veteran of the “hardcore punk scene” all rolled into one. Adam is the founder of Omkara World and produced the mind/body fitness DVD “Intelligent Fitness."
Click here for Adams past article archive.
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Keeping The Water Flowing In Rural Villages

2011-12-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Tina Rosenberg at the Opinionator from the New York Times

Keeping projects in business for the long term has been a constant theme of the Fixes column, and if sustainability has a poster child, it would be a water pump.   Travel anywhere in Africa or South Asia or Central America, and you will find a landscape dotted with the rusting skeletons of dead water pumps or wells..

In most developing countries, these water points are installed with great fanfare by the government or a charitable group. They greatly improve the lives of villagers.   Having a water point in or near the village means that women don’t have to spend 6,8, even 12 hours a day on perilous journeys to fetch water from rivers or lakes. The pumps allow girls to go to school instead of staying home to help their mothers fetch water or take care of siblings. They allow villagers to drink reasonably clean water instead of risking their health with every sip.

Then something breaks on the pump — a huge catastrophe like an underground pipe bursting, or a small one, like the loss of a bolt or a washer. And it never works again.

Early death is shockingly widespread for water pumps. Perhaps the biggest study of this ever was carried out in 21 African countries by an organization called Sustainable Water Services at Scale. It found that 36 percent of pumps were not working.  “This level of failure represents a waste of between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion in investments in 20 years,” said the organization.

In Tanzania, mapping of water points showed that nationally, less than half the existing rural water points were working. Of water points that were less than two years old, a quarter had already stopped functioning.

Why, when communities benefit so obviously from water, do so many water points fall out of use?   The short answer is that keeping the pumps running usually falls to the community or local government. But it requires specialized skills, spare parts, tools and funds.   None of these are found in rural villages.

One group taking a hard look at how to solve the problem is the British-based charity WaterAid.   When the organization analyzed why water points failed in Tanzania, it found something interesting: the most sustainable were those maintained by private contractors.   This is not a ready-made solution; it won’t work everywhere — really poor areas won’t be able to pay. And in some regions, problems like price gouging were associated with private operators. But WaterAid felt it might be able to solve these problems. So in the north of India, it came up with an ingenious way to do just that.

Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India — it is also one of the poorest and most drought-prone. The government has been aggressively installing new water pumps, but they quickly fall into disuse.   In the Mahoba district, south of the state capital of Lucknow, there are about 12,500 community water pumps, said. K.J. Rajeev, WaterAid’s general manager for the northern region of India. “But 40 percent of them are usually down, especially in summer,” he said.   And when they break, they stay broken — three-quarters of the repairs take at least a month, and many are never repaired at all.

WaterAid/Marco BettiShanti Devi and Ram Sakhi fixing a handpump in the Mahoba district of Uttar Pradesh, India. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Now things are different in Mahoba. In May, Lisa Millman, WaterAid America’s director of development and communications, was visiting a town called Charkhari. She was sitting in a small storefront office, a shop lined with shelves of hand pump parts, when a cellphone rang. The call was from the village of Kotedar, where the main hand pump had broken.   A master mechanic took the call and asked some questions.   This was apparently going to be a big job — five mechanics piled onto two motorbikes, along with the 10-year-old son of one of the men. They reached the village 20 minutes later.   As a throng of villagers watched, they took out huge wrenches. They disassembled the pump and began pulling up heavy segments of pipe. At the tenth segment they found a hole and patched it. Two and a half hours after they arrived, the pump was reassembled and working.   They got on their bikes and rode off into the sunset.

Millman, who had followed in a car, had asked the 10-year-old if he wanted to be a mechanic like his dad. “He was smirking and laughing,” she said.   “But after he watched his dad repair the pump, he was in awe.”

WaterAid and its local partners have set up four workshops, called Community Participation Centers, in the Mahoba district, and the project is now expanding into the neighboring state of Bihar. A call to the workshop reaches a master mechanic. He or she can choose the appropriate mechanics in the group, depending on location and skills, to send to address the problem. Each is is equipped with a cellphone, tool kit and a bike, moped or motorbike. Including mechanics-in-training and several who work part time, the centers have 27 female mechanics.

Many of the women were landless agricultural laborers before they learned hand pump repair, and many were members of the Dalit, or Untouchable, caste — the most downtrodden in Indian society.   In a very traditional region, where women cover their faces and do not speak in public, it was at first hard to find women who wanted the job. Even some who completed the training didn’t want to go out to villages and work in public, said Rajeev. Now, however, wherever they go, village men accept them and women embrace them. Seeing a mechanic in yellow hardhat and sari has opened up the spectrum of possibilities for village women.

In 14 months of work, the center mechanics have repaired more than 1,100 pumps in Mahoba. Ninety-three percent of the repairs were made within 24 hours of the phone call, and only 3 percent took more than two days.   A simple repair costs a village 100 rupees — roughly $2.00 — with more complex repairs costing up to $6. Water quality testing costs $1.20. The mechanics guarantee all work.

Rajeev said that the four Mahoba workshops cost WaterAid about $40,000 to set up — to train mechanics, buy parts and tools, provide bikes and cellphones and visit village councils to promote the new service.   But now WaterAid is tapering off financial support to the workshops, which are all operating sustainably and on the verge of meeting their profitability goals. “We will be providing only technical assistance and hand-holding,” he said.   To keep the workshops running, the mechanic keeps 70 to 90 percent of the repair fee and deposits the rest in the workshop’s account.

This isn’t the first time WaterAid tried to train mechanics in the area. In 2004, its local partner recruited men and women and trained them to do preventive maintenance and minor repairs in their own villages. It didn’t last. The trainees learned only the most basic repairs and often had to leave work incomplete. They also earned very little money. So WaterAid then decided it needed to create a real business, using high standards of training, aggressive outreach to village governments and attractive practices like guaranteed work.

Why couldn’t the market take care of this problem? There are hand pump mechanics in Mahoba, after all. But they tend to live in major market cities. Rajeev said they demanded very high fees to go out to remote villages — often too high for villages to pay. There are also information disconnects – they do no outreach to villages, so some village councils don’t know about these mechanics or how to call them.

The market also can’t finance major repairs — most villagers are too poor. The center program can work because the government has a fund that village councils can use to pay for hand pump maintenance. The fund can take 45 days to pay — too long for most traditional mechanics. Center mechanics, however, don’t mind. (Very minor repairs can usually be paid on the spot.) And now four villages have signed maintenance contracts with center workshops, paying directly from the government’s fund.

What’s happening in Mahoba is promising. But the key to this process is that the Indian government pays the bills. In the places where this problem is most serious, government is AWOL. On Wednesday I’ll look at why it has been so difficult to keep water points running, mistakes that water groups have made and what poor villages might do to keep the water flowing.
Join Fixes on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/nytimesfixes.

Tina Rosenberg won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism.” She is a former editorial writer for The Times and now a contributing writer for the paper’s Sunday magazine. Her new book is “Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World.”

ISCOWP (International Society For Cow Protection) Update December 2011

2011-12-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

Click here to check out the latest update from our friends at the International Society For Cow Protection (ISCOWP)

As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study The Risks

2011-12-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

Click here to read the full article from Justin Gillis at the New York Times

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — A bubble rose through a hole in the surface of a frozen lake. It popped, followed by another, and another, as if a pot were somehow boiling in the icy depths.

Every bursting bubble sent up a puff of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas generated beneath the lake from the decay of plant debris. These plants last saw the light of day 30,000 years ago and have been locked in a deep freeze — until now.

“That’s a hot spot,” declared Katey M. Walter Anthony, a leading scientist in studying the escape of methane. A few minutes later, she leaned perilously over the edge of the ice, plunging a bottle into the water to grab a gas sample.

It was another small clue for scientists struggling to understand one of the biggest looming mysteries about the future of the earth.

Experts have long known that northern lands were a storehouse of frozen carbon, locked up in the form of leaves, roots and other organic matter trapped in icy soil — a mix that, when thawed, can produce methane and carbon dioxide, gases that trap heat and warm the planet. But they have been stunned in recent years to realize just how much organic debris is there.

A recent estimate suggests that the perennially frozen ground known as permafrost, which underlies nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere.

Temperatures are warming across much of that region, primarily, scientists believe, because of the rapid human release of greenhouse gases. Permafrost is warming, too. Some has already thawed, and other signs are emerging that the frozen carbon may be becoming unstable.

“It’s like broccoli in your freezer,” said Kevin Schaefer, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. “As long as the broccoli stays in the freezer, it’s going to be O.K. But once you take it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge, it will thaw out and eventually decay.”

If a substantial amount of the carbon should enter the atmosphere, it would intensify the planetary warming. An especially worrisome possibility is that a significant proportion will emerge not as carbon dioxide, the gas that usually forms when organic material breaks down, but as methane, produced when the breakdown occurs in lakes or wetlands. Methane is especially potent at trapping the sun’s heat, and the potential for large new methane emissions in the Arctic is one of the biggest wild cards in climate science.

Scientists have declared that understanding the problem is a major priority. The United States Department of Energy and the European Union recently committed to new projects aimed at doing so, and NASA is considering a similar plan. But researchers say the money and people devoted to the issue are still minimal compared with the risk.

For now, scientists have many more questions than answers. Preliminary computer analyses, made only recently, suggest that the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions could eventually become an annual source of carbon equal to 15 percent or so of today’s yearly emissions from human activities.

But those calculations were deliberately cautious. A recent survey drew on the expertise of 41 permafrost scientists to offer more informal projections. They estimated that if human fossil-fuel burning remained high and the planet warmed sharply, the gases from permafrost could eventually equal 35 percent of today’s annual human emissions.

The experts also said that if humanity began getting its own emissions under control soon, the greenhouse gases emerging from permafrost could be kept to a much lower level, perhaps equivalent to 10 percent of today’s human emissions.

Even at the low end, these numbers mean that the long-running international negotiations over greenhouse gases are likely to become more difficult, with less room for countries to continue burning large amounts of fossil fuels.

In the minds of most experts, the chief worry is not that the carbon in the permafrost will break down quickly — typical estimates say that will take more than a century, perhaps several — but that once the decomposition starts, it will be impossible to stop.

Hungary Destroys All Monsanto GMO Corn Fields

2011-12-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

Hungary has taken a bold stand against biotech giant Monsanto and genetic modification by destroying 1000 acres of maize found to have been grown with genetically modified seeds, according to Hungary deputy state secretary of the Minstry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar. Unlike many European Union countries, Hungary is a nation where genetically modified (GM) seeds are banned. In a similar stance against GM ingredients, Peru has also passed a 10 year ban on GM foods.
Special report: GMOs continually banned around the world as concerns grow — find out where.

Planetsave reports:

Almost 1000 acres of maize found to have been ground with genetically modified seeds have been destroyed throughout Hungary, deputy state secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar said. The GMO maize has been ploughed under, said Lajos Bognar, but pollen has not spread from the maize, he added.

Unlike several EU members, GMO seeds are banned in Hungary. The checks will continue despite the fact that seek traders are obliged to make sure that their products are GMO free, Bognar said.

During the invesigation, controllers have found Pioneer Monsanto products among the seeds planted.

The free movement of goods within the EU means that authorities will not investigate how the seeds arrived in Hungary, but they will check where the goods can be found, Bognar said. Regional public radio reported that the two biggest international seed producing companies are affected in the matter and GMO seeds could have been sown on up to the thousands of hectares in the country. Most of the local farmers have complained since they just discovered they were using GMO seeds.

With season already under way, it is too late to sow new seeds, so this years harvest has been lost.

And to make things even worse for the farmers, the company that distributed the seeds in Baranya county is under liquidation. Therefore, if any compensation is paid by the international seed producers, the money will be paid primarily to that company’s creditors, rather than the farmers.

NaturalSociety Note: This article is from July 26, 2011, but had to be re-added.
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With Students' Help, Schools Going Green

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

By SOPHIA HOLLANDER at the Wall Street Journal

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in 2008 that he wanted city buildings to lower their energy consumption by 30% within a decade, one area seemed ripe for reductions: the city's 1,700 schools, spread across 1,200 buildings.

As part of New York City's goal to reduce energy consumption by 30% in its buildings, officials are turning to an unusual resource: city students. WSJ's Sophia Hollander visits a Bronx classroom to find out how.

Studded with new technology like smartboards and energy-gobbling appliances such as boilers, schools accounted for about a quarter of the city's overall energy use.

So John Shea, the head of school facilities for the Department of Education, decided to enlist an unlikely ally to shave energy costs: students.

On Friday, officials were scheduled to announce a competition for 30 schools participating in a pilot program that is run in conjunction with Solar One, a nonprofit environmental education organization.

The contest will award a total of $30,000 to the schools that reduce their energy use the most.
"It is unusual to have a curriculum issue come out of the department of the people who mop the floors and stock the toilet paper," Mr. Shea acknowledged with a smile during a recent interview. But it was a perfect fit, he said. "The fact is we've got school buildings all over the city that are their own learning laboratories," he said.

Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal

Anna Bakis leads sixth-graders at P.S. 86 in the Bronx through an energy audit.

The Green Design Lab—a pilot project that started in 10 schools last year and has expanded to 30—brings Solar One teachers into the schools for up to 24 weeks. Through lessons, labs, and projects such as installing green roofs and gardens, Solar One instructors spend one or two classroom periods a week teaching five different units, including energy, air, water, materials and food. The group hopes to expand to 150 schools in the next three years.

The Green Design Lab is not the only sustainability initiative being embraced by New York City schools. On Thursday, the New York State Education Department announced that it was joining the federal Green Ribbon Schools program, which honors the most environmentally progressive schools.

The same day, the New York City Council approved construction of the city's first "energy neutral" school.

But the Solar One program may be the most ambitious, bringing together custodians, principals and teachers.

It is largely privately funded: Organizers said they expected the program to cost $900,000 this academic year, with 10% coming from the Department of Education and the City Council.

Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal

Edwin Marte was among the students participating in the audit.

"The basic premise of the program has kind of a triple bottom line impact," said Executive Director Chris Collins. "Reduce energy use, reduce CO2 emissions, and save the school money and increase student knowledge."

Public School 187 in upper Manhattan reduced its energy use by 13%, saving about $3,700.
"We had squads of children in various grades responsible for turning off the lights," said Principal Cynthia Chory, whose school won $5,000 for reducing its energy the most. "The students just kind of absorbed it."

Not every school has incorporated the program seamlessly.
"It's a really hard thing to sell, because today, teachers are asked so much. Our education system has gone in the direction of accountability; you know, more technology, high-stake tests," said Gladys Hechavarria, a teacher who brought the program to her school, P.S. 86 in the Bronx, this year. "Who am I to tell them to turn off the lights?"

Solar One teachers described their own challenges.
"It's funny, working with kids is just a breeze. It's when you actually try to push for these little minor changes that we're trying to make at the school it's the adults who kind of stand in the way," said Anna Bakis, a 25-year-old Solar One instructor who is working at two schools this year.

Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal

Some visual aids.

She was also surprised at the learning curve among her students. "I assumed they would know about global warming," she said. "When I ask who's heard of climate change or global warming, they're like, 'Oh it's when the seasons change.'"

On a recent afternoon, Ms. Bakis commanded the attention of a classroom in P.S. 86. Students clustered at tables, enthusiastically debating how much energy was consumed by common objects around the classroom, from computers to overhead projectors. Then Ms. Bakis armed each group with a watt reader to find out the answers themselves.

Dalvin Lopez, 12, raised his hand to ask where he could purchase his own kilowatt reader.
"I just want to go the closest store when I get out of school and buy myself one," he said after class, saying the program had "inspired me in a big way."
As a result of the program he now wanted to become "a scientist," he said.
But his friend had an even more intriguing idea, he added. "She wants to be a mad scientist."

Beware These Organic Brands

2011-12-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

By Dr. Mercola from Mercola.com

Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, has a long history as a marketing- and political consultant, and as a lobbyist (working for family farmers).
While he didn't grow up on a farm, he ended up taking a summer job during his youth with the International Harvester Company.
That was his first farm experience.
Later, he was recruited by JI Case, another large agricultural equipment manufacturer.
"I worked in corporate agribusiness," he explains.
"Then I had a health crisis in the late 70s; I was acutely exposed to pesticides and it injured my immune system…
I was lucky enough to see the preeminent environmental allergist… Theron Randolph… who recommended that, among other things, I go on an all organic diet; that there weren't many things we could do to relieve the strain on my immune system while I was healing, but controlling your food and your water intake is something you can take control of."
The rest, as they say, is history.
At the time, he was operating his own farm implement business, which was in a region dominated by the industrial, chemically-intensive farming model. He switched gears and began gardening and farming organically.
"It caused a major professional shift in my life. I ended up doing consulting work for years, for what are now some of the leading organic companies," he says.
"[T]here wasn't really a readily available source for organic food until the early to mid-1980s when it started. It kicked into high gear in the 1990s when genetic engineering became an issue; when people became more synthesized to chemicals in their food.
… I helped launch the Organic Valley brand when they began in the late 80s or early 90s... Then I helped found the Cornucopia Institute eight years ago, when it looked like the wheels would fall off of this movement; when the giant corporate agri-businesses that has squeezed family farmers out of conventional farming, and that were responsible for the deterioration in the nutrient level and the safety of our food, were buying out, on a wholesale basis, all the brands that had launched the organic commercial movement."

The Cornucopia Institute

The Cornucopia Institute is an organic industry watch dog. Their core constituencies are the family farmers across the U.S. Currently, Cornucopia has more organic farmers as members than any other group in the country, and what they lack in financial resources and political influence, they make up for with a coalition of dedicated farmers and passionate consumers and providers of organic foods.
"The secret weapon we have is building bridges between the organic farming community and the consumers… millions of people who passionately give a damn; who really care about the authenticity of the food and respect the people who are doing it," Kastel says.
"Our goal is to—from a research and educational perspective—empower consumers and wholesale buyers so that they can make good and discerning choices in the market place."

Organics have Never Been Under Such Dire Threats!

As you will soon learn, organics are now being profoundly threatened by a number of potentially devastating votes that will take place by the USDA's National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which I will summarize at the end of this article.
We're in dire need of your involvement, so I urge you to please print out the hyperlinked proxy letter and mail it to Cornucopia for hand delivery at the rapidly approaching NOSB meeting. Corporate lobbyists will be present, and so will the Cornucopia Institute, to counter their obnoxious claims and make sure your voice, in support of organic integrity, is heard. For more details on this meeting, please continue to the end. You'll no doubt be shocked, and hopefully resolved to help stop this impending madness.
Signed proxy letters should be mailed to:
The Cornucopia Institute
PO Box 126
Cornucopia, Wisconsin 54827

Can You Really Afford NOT to Eat Organic?

As Kastel says, we're now at the point where we really cannot afford NOT to buy organic food, even if it is more expensive. The U.S. is forecasted to soon be spending close to 20 percent of our gross national product on healthcare, and the failing health of the American people is a direct result of poor nutrition and toxic foods. Healthcare costs are also the number one cause of individual bankruptcy.
We simply MUST take organic agriculture seriously if we want good health.
"[I]t's a matter of prioritizing where we put our money. You know that classic adage, "Pay now or pay later," Kastel says. " I'd rather pay now and have a better quality of life, especially when it comes to the developing fetuses, lactating mothers, young developing children. Not only are we exposing them to the soup of neurotoxic chemicals during development, but, we're depriving them of a lot of essential nutrition.
The USDA did a study in 1999 comparing essential nutrient content in our food… They found that about half of the essential nutrients on our food had been reduced by as much as 38 percent [compared to the 1950's].
If [nutrients are] not in the soil; if we're depleting the soil through industrial processes, and it's not in the plants, it's not in our milk, in our meat, it's not in us. Many of the immune enhancing compounds that make life wonderful, make our food taste wonderful, and also protect us from cancers and a lot of chronic disease. The attributes to organic food are not just the avoidance of toxins. It's also about what it does have in there, and that's the superior nutrients."
I couldn't agree more. Reprioritizing your budget to spend more where it really counts is imperative if you want to optimize your health. This may mean cutting something else out of your budget, but surely in the long run it will be worth it.
"If families reprioritize, they can have the most wonderful food, and the gift of health, which is… priceless."

Weeding Out the "Greenwashers"

The Cornucopia Institute has been on the forefront of the movement to keep the organic movement truly organic. As many of you are now aware, there's plenty of "greenwashing" going on as large corporations try to get a piece of the organic market share.
The very first campaign the Cornucopia Institute launched was on factory dairy farming posing as all organic. Dean Foods, the largest, milk bottler in the U.S. (a $ 12 billion company; the size of Monsanto) had just bought Horizon, which was (and still is) the number one organic dairy brand.
"When we started… they were buying from a 10,000-cow farm in California with no pasture. We don't think that size is the determinant. It's not about corporate scale. It's about corporate ethics. There are some corporations that have invested in organics and have done it right—but not Dean Foods."
The Cornucopia Institute filed a number of legal complaints, which eventually, after much delay, resulted in sanctions against a select number of dairies that failed to conform to organic practices. The Institute has also helped push through stricter organic standards and regulations. The problem now is that despite the fact that the laws exist, large factory farms are not being re-inspected to ensure that they're conforming to the new, stricter organic standards. All is not lost however…
"We say that there is a higher authority in the United States than the USDA at organics, and that is the organic consumers," Kastel says. "So we published our first in-depth research study on this issue, organic dairy, and a score card that lists every organic dairy brand in the country: butter, milk, cheese, ice cream—both the name brands and the private label store brands.
The good news is that 90 percent of all organic dairy brands are done with high integrity. They're really conforming to the expectation of the consumers. They're grazing their cattle, which increases the nutritional value of the milk or Omega-3s, antioxidants, and CLA. These are really beneficial compounds for human health, but, they are also beneficial to the cow. They live long, healthy, happy lives, as opposed to the animals that are confined in industrial environments.
So consumers get to vote.
Now the gold standard for organic retailing is the 300 or so consumer-owned cooperatives around the country—the natural food cooperative groceries. Almost all of them dropped the Horizon label."
They've replicated that process for organic soy foods and organic eggs, and they're currently lobbying the USDA to tighten the organic egg standards and enforcement. In this interview, Kastel also discusses The Authentic Almond Project; an effort to overturn the USDA's new regulation calling for all raw almonds to be pasteurized for safety—a ruling that has devastated the businesses of raw almond growers in California. For more information, please listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript.
You can click on this link to view a nice graphic or how many products are disguised and "Green Washed"

Many "Natural" Breakfast Cereals and Snack Bars Contain GMO's

Another report recently published by the Cornucopia Institute investigated "all natural" and organic cereal brands. Shockingly, their independent third-party testing revealed that many trusted natural brands contain genetically modified (GM) corn and soybeans—including brands enrolled in the Non-GMO Project.
This is information you simply cannot get anywhere else, and reason alone to support the Institute's efforts. Natural products that contained, unimaginably, as high as 100 percent genetically modified grains included:

Kashi®	Mother's®	Nutritious Living®	General Mills Kix®
GoLean®	Bumpers®	Hi-Lo®

Two breakfast cereal products that are currently enrolled in the Non-GMO Project, Barbara's Bakery's Puffins and Whole Foods' 365® Corn Flakes, contained more than 50 percent GM corn... Meanwhile, the research control Cornucopia used, Nature's Path® USDA certified organic corn flakes, contained only trace amounts of GM contamination (less than 0.5 percent).
Cornucopia writes:
"These test results underscore the importance of the organic label, which ensures consumers that the manufacturer uses only non-genetically engineered ingredients. More extensive testing is necessary to draw conclusions regarding the truthfulness of "non-GMO" claims, but these preliminary results point to several problems. First, manufacturers can claim that they avoid purchasing genetically engineered ingredients, but these claims may be meaningless unless they are verified by a third party, such as an organic certifying agent.
In addition, many of the most reputable organic companies have developed their own testing protocols to ensure the purity of their products. Furthermore, the Non-GMO Project, which "enrolls" products before it verifies them as being non-GMO, may give consumers a false sense of security. Our test results reveal that several "enrolled" products were in fact made with GE ingredients."

The "All Natural" Label is Frequently Misused on Conventional Products

The report also reveals that "natural" products—using conventional ingredients—are frequently priced higher than equivalent organic products, suggesting that some companies are taking advantage of consumer confusion and trust in the "all natural" label... According to the Cornucopia report:
"Since breakfast cereals are popular with children, it is especially important for parents to be aware of the differences between "natural" products, with conventional ingredients, and certified organic ones. Children are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of synthetic pesticides and other inputs that are commonly used in "natural" products but prohibited in organics."
In the featured interview, Kastel further expounds on this issue, and why it's so important to expose these practices and demand honest labeling:
"Kashi, which is a big name in natural cereals, has a big market share. Not only can you find them in natural food stores, you can find them in Walmart. Kashi is owned by Kellogg's and highly contaminated with GMOs. It's very expensive; it's more expensive than the organic brand. Somebody's making some money here at the expense of consumers, at the expense of organic farmers who are truly stewarding the land.
Our job is to educate consumers so they can make those marketplace decisions," Kastel says.
The Cornucopia report clearly shows that the terms "natural" and "organic" are not interchangeable, and as a concerned shopper, you need to beware of the differences between the two, or risk paying more for what amounts to little more than a conventional product. According to the report:
"On August 31, 2011, a class action lawsuit was filed against Kellogg/Kashi® for allegedly misleading consumers with its "natural" claims. One Kashi® product in particular, GoLean® Shakes, is composed almost entirely of synthetic and unnaturally processed ingredients, according to the plaintiff."

The Power of Marketplace Activism

The goal of the Cornucopia Institute is to "shift the market share to the true heroes of this industry, the farmers and their marketing partners, and send a really strong message to the "bad actors," Kastel explains.
"In this whole world, there are only two kinds of power; money and people. We have the people… The most powerful thing is the marketplace activism, I think, because these corporations listen to money. We have been able to change some of their practices, because [once] they are losing their business, they need to respond…That's the first leg of the three–legged stool for Cornucopia.
The second would be regulatory, and we are working really hard now… to rein in abuses at the USDA. The Congress has set up the National Organics Standard Board to advise the USDA, and every material used in organics has to be screened by them. Unfortunately, during the Bush administration, they stacked it with corporate players, so we have people like General Mills making the decision for the organic industry…or Dean Foods [Kastel says that despite the fact that the Obama administration is doing better, there's still a way to go in terms of transparency and respecting the will of Congress and the organic community in terms of appointments].
… The third tactical approach here is the courts, and that's always our last approach because it's expensive and it takes a lot of time. So, we try to win the easier fights."
There's no doubt that the Cornucopia Institute has rich and powerful adversaries. Some of these may appear to be from within the organic movement itself, but don't be fooled! Giant conventional food manufacturers have quietly purchased a large number of small organic brands. One example he gives is that of Cascadian Farms, a large producer of organic foods that began as a small farm in the Pacific Northwest, in the shadow of the Cascade Mountains. Today, the brand belongs to General Mills, but you won't find any indication of this ownership on their packaging!
Ditto for Horizon organic milk or Silk soymilk. Nowhere on those cartons will you find any indication that Dean Foods owns these brands.
"When they bought Silk, it was an all organic company," Kastel says. "Now, it's almost all conventional. In that case, you'll see on the Horizon and Silk cartons: "White Wave." That was one of the original tofu companies. They create this façade."
If you go to the Cornucopia website, there is a chart titled, "Who Owns Organics?" where you can find out who really owns your favorite organic brand. The primary question is, if it's owned by a large conglomerate, are they acting ethically and truly conforming to organic standards, which includes sustainable farming methods?

How You Can Support the Movement for Authentic Organics

In terms of funding, the Cornucopia Institute gets its money from:
Individual members, most of which are organic farmers
"Urban allies"—concerned consumers who want to support the organic movement
Foundations that want to support human health and ecological farming
Organic industry (organic food co-ops making up the greatest number of cornucopia's commercial members)
I would urge anyone concerned about the state of our food supply to support the work of The Cornucopia Institute by making a tax-deductible donation.
You can also sign up for their newsletter, which will empower you with the knowledge of which brands are authentically organic and respect organic values, and which are not. The Cornucopia Institute will also alert you to important legislation, and how you can make a difference.
So please, do consider making a donation to The Cornucopia Institute.

URGENT Action Items!

The Cornucopia Institute is now in URGENT need of your help, and joining the Institute and/or signing up for their newsletter will assure you get timely updates on these important issues.
At the end of November, the USDA's National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) will vote on a number of important issues with regards to organics, including:
The approval of an organic egg regulation that would require organic chicken farmers to provide a mere two square feet per bird of outdoor space. This is a huge favor to industrial producers allowing their factory farmed eggs to fall under the designation of "organic." Meanwhile, it will handicap family farms that are truly letting their birds out to pasture.
A vote will take place to decide whether to allow a food additive produced by Martek Biosciences in organic foods. The product is an omega 3/omega-6 oil synthesized from fermented algae and soil fungus. The oil is extracted from this biomass using hexane, a neurotoxic byproduct of gasoline refinement that is specifically banned in organics.

Cornucopia investigated Martek’s patent and safety filings at the FDA, and discovered that the product also contains synthetic chemicals, stabilizers, carriers, and some of the ingredients are also genetically modified. (As it turns out, some of their products were developed by Monsanto before Martek bought the technical rights.)

“They’ve already added this to almost all infant formula in the United States,” Kastel warns. “Algae and fungus have never been a part of the human diet, let alone children’s. And now we see it in organic infant formula, and companies like Dean Foods are adding it to organic milk… it’s in every single formula available on the market… except for one organic brand [Babies Only brand, which contains DHA from eggs. All other organic brands appear to contain Martek’s omega oil].
The NOSB is also considering approving the addition of sulfites (artificial preservatives) to organic wine. This would be the first time artificial preservatives are allowed in organics
Organics has never been under such dire threats, so I urge you to please take a moment right now to print out, sign, and mail the proxy letter provided by Cornucopia back to them ASAP for hand delivery at the rapidly approaching NOSB meeting.
Corporate lobbyists will be present, and so will the Cornucopia Institute, to counter their claims and make sure your voice, in support of organic integrity, is heard.
So, please, print out this proxy letter right now. Sign it, and mail it, as soon as possible, to:
The Cornucopia Institute
PO Box 126
Cornucopia, Wisconsin 54827
Also consider including a donation check with your letter, to support the invaluable work the Cornucopia Institute performs to protect your and your family's right to clean, wholesome, truly organic food.
As of right now, there does not appear to be any additional benefit to contacting your congressman, but if the need arises, Cornucopia will notify all their members and subscribers with the information.
I can't encourage you enough to participate in this process. It's important to recognize that you CAN make a difference! Always remember that collectively, we have the most effective power in the marketplace that can exceed the power of these multibillion dollar, multinational corporations. We can vote with our pocket books. But we also need to make our voices heard; we have to let these agencies know that we are watching, we're paying attention, and we're not going to allow this immoral, if not downright illegal, industrial favoritism to continue.

Source: Video Transcript

Help Save Krishna Valley Eco-Village in Hungary

2011-12-04T18:43:00.001-05:00

Also from our friend Madhava Ghosh at View From a New Vrindaban Ridge

From Krishna Valley in Hungary:
Dear Members (Gosh’s note: and Well Wishers)
Please accept my humble obeisances, all glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Please find below the explanation and link to an on-line petition on behalf of the Hungarian yatra. It is self explanatory.
We are planning a protest outside parliament December 13th–cows and all–to hand over this petition.
If you could forward the text below to your temple leaders with a few encouraging words and ask your leaders to send the text out to their data bases with their own few words of support, we could well collect our target of 100,000 plus names. Thank you for your help.
The picture below says to the speaker of parliament: “Sir! Where can we graze here?” (No need to send the picture with the petition. It was for your interest.)
Your servant
Sivarama Swami

Our Petition!
http://www.peticiok.com/krisna
Dear Devotees. The new “Church Law” in Hungary will take away ISKCON Hungary’s church status as of January 1st requiring us to reapply for the same next year.
However the government has not provided any legal stipulation for the society’s continued ownership of Krsna Valley’s lands in the interim period until we are again re-registered.
In short we risk losing Krsna Valley with no pasture for our cows or land to grow our food. I therefore request that you sign the online Petition —link below— and forward this message to as many people as possible, who
would also petition against this injustice.
Thank you.
Sivarama Swami.
http://www.peticiok.com/krisna
Eco village news from Hungary

ISCOWP (International Society For Cow Protection) Update Nov 2011

2011-11-30T08:00:00.001-05:00

Click here for the latest from our friends at the International Society For Cow Protection (ISCOWP)

The Bhakti Way Of Investing In The Ecology of The Heart

2011-11-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Radhanath Swami at the Huffington Post

A crippled economy and a polluted environment plague our social body. Both largely stem from the same core disease -- pollution of hearts. Blinded by distractions one can forget how to invest in what awards a meaningful, fulfilling life.

Parallel to our vast strides in technology, there is a dangerous rise in unemployment, foreclosures and degrading education. Millions of people are stricken with hopelessness and strife. Sadly, in the name of progress we have polluted the air, water, soil and the food we eat. What can we do? The following is a story about an encounter I had with someone who cared.

It was winter in New Delhi when the days are mild and the nights are biting cold. New Delhi's wide roads are lined with massive government buildings, the older ones built by the British perhaps a century back with stone pillars, ornate statues and vast lawns. Others built after independence in 1947 are adorned with Indian style arches and domes. I rode toward the airport. Monkeys appeared everywhere, scampering along the boundary walls.

At the crossroads on the way to the airport we passed circular islands of grass and trees surrounding memorials for the country's freedom fighters. The streets were congested with cars, trucks and motorcycle rickshaws spewing out trails of exhaust fumes. Overhead a murky cloud of smog hung in the sky and reduced the sun to a gray lifeless ball. The fumes were thick, the smells toxic, and they sat on our tongues like sour lozenges. On the roadside an elderly man squatted cross-legged with back erect performing pranayama, a yogic breathing exercise. He vigorously inhaled and exhaled. I wondered if it did him more harm than good.

We crossed a bridge over the Yamuna River. I looked down and remembered 30 years before, when I had first come to India, that under the same bridge the Yamuna flowed in her full glory. Now, she looked plundered and crippled. What was once a pristine river had now become a thick blackish liquid, foaming bubbles, and a current so lame she barely flowed.

When I reached the airport and was waiting at the gate for my flight, a lady informed me that sitting close by was the Union Minister for Environment and Forests. She wanted to talk to me. I obliged.

The minister stood up and greeted me, "Namaste Swamiji." After a pleasant exchange she suddenly challenged me with a passion.

"What are you spiritual leaders doing about the ecology?" She was very serious.

"Every second the air is being saturated with cancerous smog," she said. "Tons of raw sewage and toxic waste are dumped hourly into rivers where millions of people bathe and drink. The earth is being stripped of its forest and has become a dumping ground for deadly waste. The world is on the brink of ecological disaster while all of you spiritualists are praying, meditating or chanting. What is all your devotion doing to save the ecology?"

Her concern was real and impassioned. It was exciting to see that depth of concern from a powerful leader over an issue that affects us all.

"Yes, the environment is everyone's responsibility," I responded, "and I sincerely admire your tireless commitment. The spiritual leaders I know believe that along with passing laws and doing the cleaning work we need to address the root cause of the problem. If a person is covered with boils, the symptoms must be treated, but unless the cause of the problem is addressed, the boils will recur. In the case of boils, the cause may be a disease in the blood. The root of cause of pollution in the world is pollution in the heart.

"Toxic greed has contaminated the minds of human society. The environment is simply an external manifestation of the ecology of the mind. Greed is an obsession, an addiction. It can never be quenched. The more it gets, the more it needs. Greed hardens the heart and fools us into rationalizing cruelty and justifying crime. Greed induces envy, divides families, provokes wars and blinds us to our real self-interest. Greed for money, power, fame, sex -- the world is ravaged by greed. It is practically an exercise in futility to attempt to clean the environment when politicians are corrupted by bribes, industrialists pollute rivers to maximize profits and scientists put aside their ethics for funding.

"The Bhagavad Gita states that greed is a symptom of avidya or ignorance that covers the natural virtues of the true self within us. I'm sure you would agree with me that most people are not bad spirited, but due to a lack of awareness they may be destroying the environment, not understanding that what may seem convenient, like dumping industrial waste into a river, is actually killing fish, animals and people. So along with the pollution of our rivers, we must give attention to the pollution in our hearts. If you successfully clean the air, the sky, every river and every ocean, it is for certain that people will pollute them again unless they reform the ecology of their hearts.

"Spiritual life is the science of cleansing the heart and tasting the joy of living in harmony with God, each other and nature. It begins with cultivating good character, the willingness to make personal sacrifices for a higher cause, to make the right choices even in the face of temptation and fear, and put concern for the well being of others as a priority.

"How to do that? All of these virtues can spring from Bhakti or spiritual love. The Bible teaches that 'the first and great commandment is to love God with all one's heart, mind and soul.' And the natural result of that is, 'to love your neighbor as yourself.' Nature is also our neighbor, she is alive with rights like everyone else, but too many people don't see nature that way. The Vedic scriptures tell that the most simple and powerful method of cleansing the ecology of the heart and awakening this dormant love within us is to chant God's names. In my tradition we chant the names of Krishna."

"God has empowered all of us in different ways and if we agree on what the real problem is, then we can all contribute our part of the solution. The well being of Mother Earth is everyone's problem. It is crucial for leaders in all fields to serve cooperatively."

At that point the minister was called to board her flight. She thought for a moment, then stood up and smiled saying, "Yes Swamiji, What you say is true. We all need to work together."

She was right to take me to task. Religious and spiritual leaders should be held accountable for environmental activism, not only because they have access to large communities and can influence votes but because service is integral to religious and spiritual life. Reducing carbon emissions is important, but it is shortsighted if not coupled with reducing the toxic emissions from our heart; and that is something spiritual leaders are supposed to teach and something all thinking people, regardless of their beliefs, should practice.

We should honor Mother Earth with gratitude; otherwise our spirituality may become hypocritical.

The earth nourishes us with every necessity for a prosperous life. When, on a massive worldwide scale we plunder her oil, destroy her forests, pollute her resources, torture and kill her animals, soak her with the blood of her children, exploit one another and trample her with immorality, there will naturally be devastating consequences.

We should honor our mother and respect all of her children as our brothers and sisters. Otherwise, we may force her to react. Humanity has reached a critical crossroads. We have made monumental progress in technology, medicine, science, academics and globalization but if we do not use them with compassion what will be our fate? The dire need is at hand to take responsibility as caretakers of the helpless and live as dedicated instruments of God's love.

The Dark Side of the Green City

2011-11-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Andrew Ross at the New York Times

THE struggle to slow global warming will be won or lost in cities, which emit 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. So “greening” the city is all the rage now. But if policy makers end up focusing only on those who can afford the low-carbon technologies associated with the new environmental conscientiousness, the movement for sustainability may end up exacerbating climate change rather than ameliorating it.

While cities like Portland, Seattle and San Francisco are lauded for sustainability, the challenges faced by Phoenix, a poster child of Sunbelt sprawl, are more typical and more revealing. In 2009, Mayor Phil Gordon announced plans to make Phoenix the “greenest city” in the United States. Eyebrows were raised, and rightly so. According to the state’s leading climatologist, central Arizona is in the “bull’s eye” of climate change, warming up and drying out faster than any other region in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southwest has been on a drought watch 12 years and counting, despite outsized runoff last winter to the upper Colorado River, a major water supply for the subdivisions of the Valley of the Sun.

Across that valley lies 1,000 square miles of low-density tract housing, where few signs of greening are evident. That’s no surprise, given the economic free fall of a region that had been wholly dependent on the homebuilding industry. Property values in parts of metro Phoenix have dropped by 80 percent, and some neighborhoods are close to being declared “beyond recovery.”

In the Arizona Legislature, talk of global warming is verboten and Republican lawmakers can be heard arguing for the positive qualities of greenhouse gases. Most politicians are still praying for another housing boom on the urban fringe; they have no Plan B, least of all a low-carbon one. Mr. Gordon, a Democrat who took office in 2004, has risen to the challenge. But the vast inequalities of the metro area could blunt the impact of his sustainability plans.

Those looking for ecotopia can find pockets of it in the prosperous upland enclaves of Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and North Phoenix. Hybrid vehicles, LEED-certified custom homes with solar roofs and xeriscaped yards, which do not require irrigation, are popular here, and voter support for the preservation of open space runs high. By contrast, South Phoenix is home to 40 percent of the city’s hazardous industrial emissions and America’s dirtiest ZIP code, while the inner-ring Phoenix suburbs, as a legacy of cold-war era industries, suffer from some of the worst groundwater contamination in the nation.

Whereas uptown populations are increasingly sequestered in green showpiece zones, residents in low-lying areas who cannot afford the low-carbon lifestyle are struggling to breathe fresh air or are even trapped in cancer clusters. You can find this pattern in many American cities. The problem is that the carbon savings to be gotten out of this upscale demographic — which represents one in five American adults and is known as Lohas, an acronym for “lifestyles of health and sustainability” — can’t outweigh the commercial neglect of the other 80 percent. If we are to moderate climate change, the green wave has to lift all vessels.

Solar chargers and energy-efficient appliances are fine, but unless technological fixes take into account the needs of low-income residents, they will end up as lifestyle add-ons for the affluent. Phoenix’s fledgling light-rail system should be expanded to serve more diverse neighborhoods, and green jobs should be created in the central city, not the sprawling suburbs. Arizona has some of the best solar exposure in the world, but it allows monopolistic utilities to impose a regressive surcharge on all customers to subsidize roof-panel installation by the well-heeled ones. Instead of green modifications to master-planned communities at the urban fringe, there should be concerted “infill” investment in central city areas now dotted with vacant lots.

In a desert metropolis, the choice between hoarding and sharing has consequences for all residents. Their predecessors — the Hohokam people, irrigation farmers who subsisted for over a thousand years around a vast canal network in the Phoenix Basin — faced a similar test, and ultimately failed. The remnants of Hohokam canals and pit houses are a potent reminder of ecological collapse; no other American city sits atop such an eloquent allegory.

Andrew Ross is a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and author of “Bird on Fire: Lessons From the World’s Least Sustainable City.”

Safe Water and a Toilet -- Is That Too Much to Ask... for 2.5 Billion People?

2011-11-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Matt Damon and Gary White at the Huffington Post

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, one more child will have died from something that's been preventable for over a century. Nearly 40 percent of the world's population is still unable to secure a safe glass of water or access a basic toilet. While we continue to rally around the goal of ensuring safe water and sanitation for all, the real question we are left asking ourselves: how do we truly confront this in a way that results in realizing our vision within our lifetime?

Even today, as solutions are known and available, lack of access to safe water and sanitation continues to claim more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

This painful reality has driven philanthropic efforts to help stop the suffering. There are conferences, master plans, frameworks, legislation, new institutions, and even more resolved resolutions. Money is raised, wells are dug, ribbons are cut. But even after decades of charity, subsidies, multilateral aid, and investments on the part of governments and outside non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the system remains inefficient and largely misses the goal of providing relief for those at the base of the economic pyramid (BOP) in their daily need to secure water. The intentions are good, but the relief is not trickling down.

On average, those living in slums pay 7-15 times more per liter of water than owners of nearby five-star hotels. This is because subsidies are largely delivered through unrealistically low water tariffs -- if you are too poor to afford a water connection, you can't capture the subsidy. Similarly, if you are a poor day laborer in Port-au-Prince and you want a drink of safe water to quench your thirst, you will pay 250 times more than the cost of New York City tap water. Those who lack cash pay with their time -- hours each day spent scavenging for water from public taps that frequently run dry, rivers, or even drainage ditches. There are nearly a billion people in this trap of water insecurity and about 2.5 billion lack a sanitary toilet.

Instead of viewing this as an ocean of people with their hands out waiting for charity-driven solutions, what if we see many of them, or even most of them, as potential customers. In the past decade we have seen a paradigm shift in how we understand the BOP -- a shift that holds much promise for tackling the water and sanitation crisis. Microfinance has been a catalyst in this, democratizing access to capital. Water.org has tapped into the power of microfinance to demonstrate that its principles can spill over into meeting the water and sanitation needs of the poor.

Through WaterCredit, we have explored the application of microfinance to water and sanitation needs. With the support of the Pepsico Foundation, we have reached more than 250,000 people with loans that allow them to pay connection fees for house taps and to construct toilets. This was done at an average philanthropic cost of $24/person, which, in turn, leveraged more than three times that amount in the form of commercial capital to complete the finance package for each household. We are now taking this to scale with an $8 million grant from the Pepsico Foundation announced last Thursday and a $3.8 million grant from the MasterCard Foundation. We project that this philanthropic capital will leverage an additional $36 million in commercial capital, reaching about one million people. In the case of India, we will drive the philanthropic cost per person served down even further, to $10 by the end of the grant.

Access to capital -- philanthropic, social and commercial -- is certainly a choke point in achieving universal access to water and sanitation. But neck and neck is lack of accountability to those living in poverty on the part of their governments and water utilities. Unfortunately, about half of investments that do find their way to water and sanitation infrastructure misses the mark due to corruption, incompetence, inadequate maintenance, and subsidies captured by those who could pay for services.

The potential of microfinance to democratize access to capital is paralleled by the potential of technology and social media to democratize access to information. In the same way that social media and mobile devices allowed those driving the Arab Spring to find their voice in holding their leaders accountable for principles of democracy, we believe they can be used to allow the poor -- citizens in their own right -- to hold their leaders accountable for investments made into basic services such as water and sanitation. More people now have access to a cell phone than a toilet. What if a cell phone became a tool for the poor to better hold their elected officials accountable for fulfilling their mandate to provide sanitation?

Approaching this crisis in a way that truly yields lasting and scalable solutions requires that we tap into orthogonal forces -- trends that are swirling around us that, at first, seem unrelated to the business of addressing the water and sanitation needs of the poor. New tools have been placed in our toolbox -- often, when we in the water sector were looking the other way, drilling another well. Microfinance and social media are just two examples of these tools.

While the issues surrounding water poverty are complex, at a fundamental level they need to be addressed from the bottom up. Philanthropic capital should be used catalytically to jump-start markets for the hundreds of millions who can afford to meet their own needs if only given the right tools. It should be used to help drive transparency and accountability around public funds already targeting this crisis. It should seek to back those initiatives that can continue to democratize those forces and tools that we in the United States take for granted, whether poor or affluent, in leveling the playing field.

We call on ourselves and other NGOs, governments, utilities, philanthropists, and influencers to recommit to approaching this crisis from the perspective of the poor. This call includes directing more resources towards experimentation and discovery, and doing so in a way that taps into and channels the intrinsic power of the poor as customers and citizens. It also includes raising the stakes by putting the global water and sanitation crisis on the map in a way that it truly deserves. This is a challenge worthy of the next global movement, similar to what was needed to sound the alarm around the fight against HIV/AIDS.

This is that next movement and we are honored to have the opportunity to work with Arianna Huffington, who pledged herself and her team to give this movement an incredible kick-start with the launch of a new section of Huffington Post -- a section that will be dedicated to giving coverage to this cause, the doers, the solutions, and the discourse that is needed to change the world. In the end we know that we cannot fund-raise our way out of this crisis. Ultimately, it will be creativity, innovation, and collective action that will allow us to achieve universal access to water and sanitation, and do so in our lifetime.
Gary White and Matt Damon are the co-founders of Water.org.

A Gold Rush of Subsidies In Clean Energy Research

2011-11-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The California Valley Solar Ranch under construction near Santa Margarita.

Click here for the full article from the New York Times

WASHINGTON — Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on a former cattle ranch and gypsum mine, NRG Energy is building an engineering marvel: a compound of nearly a million solar panels that will produce enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes.

The project is also a marvel in another, less obvious way: Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of the project. Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009.

The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google.

A great deal of attention has been focused on Solyndra, a start-up that received $528 million in federal loans to develop cutting-edge solar technology before it went bankrupt, but nearly 90 percent of the $16 billion in clean-energy loans guaranteed by the federal government since 2009 went to subsidize these lower-risk power plants, which in many cases were backed by big companies with vast resources.

When the Obama administration and Congress expanded the clean-energy incentives in 2009, a gold-rush mentality took over.

As NRG’s chief executive, David W. Crane, put it to Wall Street analysts early this year, the government’s largess was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and “we intend to do as much of this business as we can get our hands on.” NRG, along with partners, ultimately secured $5.2 billion in federal loan guarantees plus hundreds of millions in other subsidies for four large solar projects.

“I have never seen anything that I have had to do in my 20 years in the power industry that involved less risk than these projects,” he said in a recent interview. “It is just filling the desert with panels.”

From 2007 to 2010, federal subsidies jumped to $14.7 billion from $5.1 billion, according to a recent study.

Most of the surge came from the economic stimulus bill, which was passed in 2009 and financed an Energy Department loan guarantee program and a separate Treasury Department grant program that were promoted as important in creating green jobs.

States like California sweetened the pot by offering their own tax breaks and by approving long-term power-purchase contracts that, while promoting clean energy, will also require ratepayers to pay billions of dollars more for electricity for as long as two decades. The federal loan guarantee program expired on Sept. 30. The Treasury grant program is scheduled to expire at the end of December, although the energy industry is lobbying Congress to extend it. But other subsidies will remain.

The windfall for the industry over the last three years raises questions of whether the Obama administration and state governments went too far in their support of solar and wind power projects, some of which would have been built anyway, according to the companies involved.

Obama administration officials argue that the incentives, which began on a large scale late in the Bush administration but were expanded by the stimulus legislation, make economic and environmental sense. Beyond the short-term increase in construction hiring, they say, the cleaner air and lower carbon emissions will benefit the country for decades.

“Subsidies and government support have been part of many key industries in U.S. history — railroads, oil, gas and coal, aviation,” said Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman.

Voluntary Creative Simplicity

2011-11-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

How we went from $42,000 to $6,500 andlived to tell about it!

By L. Kevin & DonnaPhilippe-Johnson

As a middle class American, it's beendifficult for me to understand how we are

supposed to make a living when thereare so many things working against us. How

can we go on day after day with therising cost of food, fuel, utilities, car

insurance, taxes and health care, whiledealing with the insecurity of

unemployment?

In the past, whenever I consideredthese things, I felt a hopeless

sense of impending doom in the pit ofmy stomach. There is so much talk about

how to solve these issues, but nothingever seems to stop the downward spiral of

struggle and stress that millions offolks are experiencing.

Like many working people, my life wentalong fine during the 1980s. I had a good

paying job ($42,000 a year) and thoughI didn't enjoy the kind of work I was

doing as an industrial draftsman,receiving a steady paycheck every week kept me

going without much complaint.

But then came the Gulf War in the 1990sand after

that point I faced nine layoffs overthe span of 10 years. By the time September

11 happened, I hadn't been able tomaintain steady employment in the

petrochemical industry for over adecade. I would work about three or four

months, then back again to theunemployment line.

It was at this point that I realizedthat something was wrong. The life strategy

I had grown up to believe in was nolonger working and there didn't seem to be

any answers. Obviously no one was goingto get me out of this, so I decided I

needed to take matters into my ownhands and figure out a way to redefine my

basic approach to living.

Lucky for me, I have an adventurouswife. She was on the same page with me and

was willing to make some drasticchanges in our lifestyle. As a committed team,

we decided to figure out another way tosurvive despite these uncertain, hard

economic times. Since we didn't have alot of money and because it was getting

harder to find steady employment, wedecided to rethink our basic values in

order to create a life for ourselveswhere we could be independent and free of

needing a career or a full-time job.

And for us, that meant first andforemost, moving to the country. If we were

going to be poor, we thought, at leastit would be better to be poor in the

country. That way we could grow our ownfood and reduce our expenses. Eventually

we discovered that there were otherswho felt the same way we did. Today there

is a small, but growing movement inthis country towards a lifestyle we call

"Voluntary Creative Simplicity."

We decided to start over, to shakeloose from all the things holding us down. We

got rid of all the stuff we didn't needand worked on paying off debt. Then

canceling our credit cards and usingcash, we followed an efficient financial

plan that taught how to track everypenny. By doing this we were able eventually

to save a little bit of money. (See thebook entitled, Your Money or Your Life,

by Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin.)

Also, we wanted to be strong andhealthy to do the work required for this basic

lifestyle so we changed our eatinghabits. We broke away from the standard

American fast food, pre-packagedsupermarket diet in favor of organically grown

whole grains, raw fruits andvegetables, fermented dairy, nuts, seeds and

sprouts and eliminated all junk foodsand prescription drugs. We started

exercising regularly by walking,practicing yoga, and gardening.

Since we no longer wanted to pay healthinsurance premiums, we decided to start a special

savings account ($1,000) just foremergency first-aid treatment. And of course

we got rid of the cell phone, cabletelevision and Internet bills and greatly

minimized our use of air conditioning.The beginning of the path to the simple

life was a process of elimination inevery aspect of our lives.

Eventually we found 2-1/2 acres ofland, 35 miles out of the city. Inspired by

our new vision, one summer we saidgoodbye to the city, permanently moved out to

our new place and set up a dome tent tolive in. We happily lived in our tent

that summer while clearing the land andconstructing a rustic 10' by 12' room

with a sleeping loft. We did this on a"pay-as-you-go" plan, hauling all the

materials in the back of our old pickuptruck. Never having built anything

before, we worked hard and gained theskill of building our own shelter.

As the tiny outbuilding took shape,next came the installation of an underground

cistern for collecting rainwater, andfinally, the construction of our

three-room (500 square foot) cabin.Since we had to borrow $9,000 to purchase

the property, I continued to takewhatever jobs I could find (drafting, clerk

work, courier, dishwasher, bakeryassistant, etc.) while Donna stayed busy

working on our organic garden, plantingfruit trees and composting. She enjoys

learning about native plants andhealing herbs that she can grow.

Over the next few years, while workingtoward our goals of self-reliance and

independence, we became stronger,healthier and more confident in our ability to

rely on our own skills. It was quite anempowering experience. We learned how to

build things, grow our own food, takeresponsibility for our own health, and

best of all, we learned how to laughand have fun again.

The simple joys and true pleasures offresh, home-grown food, watching everything grow and prosper

in harmony, working with our own handsand spending quality time together

replaced all of the costly false valuesthat had occupied our time before.

Gradually we paid off the land,finished the cabin and succeeded in minimizing

our basic utility costs. We began tonotice that our expenses were decreasing as

the quality of our life was increasing.As long as we stayed home and didn't

travel to a steady job we really didn'tneed very much money. The lifestyle of

voluntary creative simplicity wasresulting in compounding efficiency and

improvement in every area of our lives.Soon, we saw the proof of the

inefficiency of working a full-timejob.

After figuring in the work-relatedexpenses of one job, I realized that my take home pay was only $3 anhour! Atthat point I was convinced that it was far more costeffective to stay home,

grow our own food, split our ownfirewood and bake our own bread than it was to

travel to a job day after day. Yet westill needed some form of income.

Though we had reduced the amount weneeded to around $540 a month (way below the

poverty level in America), we still hadto find a way to generate that income

without relying on full-timeemployment. Once we had succeeded in drastically

reducing the amount of money we needed,I knew it would be easy to earn this

income by working odd jobs such asbuilding rustic furniture, playing guitar for

tips, simple carpentry, part-timedrafting, office work, plumbing, etc. However,

there was one thing I really loved todo...bake handmade whole-grain sourdough

bread in an outdoor wood-fired clayoven! I had always shared my bread with

friends and family, but it never reallyoccurred to me to do it as a way to earn

extra money.

We soon discovered that there was noauthentic, handmade sourdough bread being

produced in our area, and little bylittle, people began asking if they could

trade or buy from us. Within a year wehad enough bread customers to generate

the supplemental income needed to meetour modest expenses. And now there is

even more demand and a waiting list ofneighbors and friends who want our bread

regularly.

They know our bread is special becausethe organic wheat is freshly

hand milled, the loaves are lovinglymade entirely by hand and baked in our

outdoor clay oven. (See our article, "AHomemade Clay Oven and Naturally

Fermented Sourdough Bread," in theJuly/August 2005 issue of COUNTRYSIDE.)

We want to let others know there is awide open market for this kind of

specialty bread, even in very smalltowns like ours, because so many people, for

various reasons, are unable orunwilling to make it for themselves. In fact,

there is such a demand for this uniqueartisan bread that many people are

perfectly willing to pay us $4.50 aloaf! Anyone who wants to earn a little

extra cash, say $50-$100 a week ormore, should consider learning this valuable

skill, then educating and sharing intheir local community.

We continuously hand out educationalmaterial about the health benefits of sourdough bread, offer

informative presentations in our localcommunity and give out free bread

samples.

Our system of distribution is arrangedlike a "bread co-op." There are regular

customers who buy a batch of six loavesat a time, which we deliver fresh to

them once a month. An added bonus oflearning this skill is the inexpensive,

incredibly delicious, wholesome breadthat we make for ourselves, which helps

reduce our food bill. This is just anexample of how a valuable skill such as

this can be financially supportive whenyou are living and thinking small.

While the key to the lifestyle ofvoluntary simplicity, is "thinking small,"

many people still believe the oppositeis true-"bigger is better." For example,

people often tell us we should investin a commercial bakery and produce more

sourdough bread. But in order to expandand make a career out of baking and

selling bread, we would have to go intodebt to purchase commercial mixers,

freezers and large ovens, work longerhours and face the mountain of

bureaucratic permits, codes, fees andrestrictions. As a result, the simple,

authentic handmade artisan bread thatour customers love would have to be

sacrificed in favor of expanding volumeand making more money.

Everybody loses but the bankers and thebureaucrats. We would fall right back in the same old

trap, getting into debt and sacrificingour freedom and quality of life for a

job. This is an example of compoundinginefficiency.

The downfall of many people who wouldlike to break the bonds of stress and

financial enslavement to the system istheir tendency to think too big. But we

must realize that this has beenprogrammed into us by the industrial society and

loan institutions, all attempting toexcite and feed our insatiable desires.

Friends, it takes a lot of mindfulawareness to break free of all these traps.

It also requires an ability toimprovise and adapt towards an alternative model.

The lifestyle of voluntary simplicityis one option and the resulting benefits

are transformational.

The point I'm making is this: many ofus can no longer think in terms of having

a lifetime career anymore. For whateverreason, things are changing in this

country. Outsourcing and cheaper laborcosts in other countries will continue to

eliminate jobs in the United States.And though the opportunity still exists to

work, we must understand that it may beonly temporary. While continuing to work

at a job or career one should be wiseand set up a plan to survive without

steady employment for certain periodsof time if necessary.

This could mean storing some supplies,purchasing a piece of property where a

small shelter, tent or tipi can beerected if necessary, or getting out of the

city and into the country where one canprovide food for themselves. My old

Grandpa used to say, "all thetroubles in this country began when people stopped

growing their own food." And hewas right. The younglings of this modern age

don't even know what real food is, muchless how to grow or prepare it! This has

to change. (That's another reason wepromote sourdough bread baking. It is time

to start a "slow-food"movement).

Thinking small is one of the mostintelligent and powerful things one can do.

Consciously reducing one's life down tothe simple basics is the secret to

happiness. And it is so easy. What isthe solution? This is our advice,

especially to young people:

"Don't get in debt, don't think interms of a career (work at a job for one

reason only, to get paid so you can buya place to live and grow some food),

live in a small shelter, unloadunnecessary stuff, reduce monthly expenses,

extract yourself from the enslavementof modern technological materialism, stay

healthy by exercising, eat a simple,wholesome diet, develop some practical

skills, practice your art or trade andserve your local community. Teach your

children to value true pleasures. Realwealth is perishable: food, health,

trees, flowers, herbs, healthy soil,clean water, fresh air, friends and art.

Learn to value and appreciate theseabove all else."

Of course we realize that everyone hasto creatively work out their own unique

plan according to their particularcircumstances, especially if there are

children to raise. (We have six grownchildren.) But with "small thinking," so

many opportunities open up and the moreone can release, the more freedom there

is to experience with each passingyear.

If someone would have suggested to usten years ago that there was a way for the

two of us to live on much less, buildour own little hut, buy our freedom, give

up steady employment, work fewer hours,become happy, healthy, debt free,

self-reliant, and live fearlesslywithout health insurance, I would have told

them they were crazy.

This has been an incredible, radicaljourney for us, but now we know from first hand experience that withvision, patience, self-discipline and courage, it is possible tocreate such a reality.

Creative voluntary simplicity expandsfaster than inflation. For those who can

do it, instead of thinking too big andchasing after more money to find

happiness and security, the answer cantruly be summed up in the words of the

Greek philosopher, Diogenes: "Truefreedom is in the minimum of needs."

Kevin and Donna have an instructionalvideo (VHS format only) on baking

naturally fermented sourdough bread for$30. This includes the video, a set of

written instructions, a packet ofstarter culture and shipping costs. Send check

or money order to L. Kevin Johnson,4402 Gilead Rd., Clinton, LA 70722.

Taming Unruly Wind Power

2011-11-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

Click here to read the full article from Matthew L. Wald at the New York Times

For decades, electric companies have swung into emergency mode when demand soars on blistering hot days, appealing to households to use less power. But with the rise of wind energy, utilities in the Pacific Northwest are sometimes dealing with the opposite: moments when there is too much electricity for the grid to soak up.

So in a novel pilot project, they have recruited consumers to draw in excess electricity when that happens, storing it in a basement water heater or a space heater outfitted by the utility. The effort is rooted in some brushes with danger.

In June 2010, for example, a violent storm in the Northwest caused a simultaneous surge in wind power and in traditional hydropower, creating an oversupply that threatened to overwhelm the grid and cause a blackout.

As a result, the Bonneville Power Administration, the wholesale supplier to a broad swath of the region, turned this year to a strategy common to regions with hot summers: adjusting volunteers’ home appliances by remote control to balance supply and demand.

When excess supply threatens Bonneville’s grid, an operator in a control room hundreds of miles away will now dial up a volunteer’s water heater, raising the thermostat by 60 more degrees. Ceramic bricks in a nearby electric space heater can be warmed to hundreds of degrees.The devices then function as thermal batteries, capable of giving back the energy when it is needed.

Microchips run both systems, ensuring that tap-water and room temperatures in the home hardly vary.
“It’s a little bit of that Big Brother control, almost,” said Theresa Rothweiler, a teacher’s aide in the Port Angeles, Wash., school system who nonetheless signed up for the program with her husband, Bruce, a teacher.

She said she had been intrigued by an ad that Bonneville placed in the local paper that asked consumers to help enable the grid to absorb more renewable energy, especially wind.

“We’re always looking at ways to save energy, or be more efficient or green, however you want to put it,” said Ms. Rothweiler, who worries about leaving the planet a livable place for her 21-year-old daughter, Gretchen. Bonneville paid for the special technology, which runs around $1,000 per home.

The initial goal of Bonneville’s pilot program is to gain experience in charging and “discharging” the water heaters and space heaters to see how much response operators can count on as the use of these thermal batteries expands.

Mark K. Lauby, director of reliability assessment at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which enforces standards on the grid, said that such storage innovations would be “the holy grail” as the nation shifts to greater reliance on renewable energy.

New Vrindaban Organic Gardening Inspires Local Sustainability

2011-11-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

By Madhava Smullen for ISKCON News on 5 Nov 2011

Tapahpunja Dasa teaches students at the Small Farm Training Center garden in New Vrindaban

A New Vrindaban devotee’s efforts at organic gardening have inspired the general public, educational institutions, and leaders in the local town of Wheeling, West Virginia to support sustainability, eat local produce and consider spiritual motives for it.
Raised on a farm in Northern Michigan, Tapahpunja Dasa was attracted to ISKCON’s “simple-living, high-thinking” message and joined in 1974 in New Vrindaban, where he began growing organic produce. After some side projects over the years, such as missionary work overseas and starting North America’s first Food For Life program in 1982, he restarted his organic growing in 1996, and has been “focused on creating a connection between spirituality and sustainability” for the past thirteen years.
“I believe that if we want the rural, Krishna conscious lifestyle that Srila Prabhupada desired for New Vrindaban—not just generic cow protection or hobby gardening—it must be a centrally located, highly visible part of our outreach,” he says. “When I presented these thoughts to the New Vrindaban management, they kindly granted me a piece of property right in the center of the community, directly across from the temple, to turn my ambition into reality.”
To make the project more accessible to the general public and to secular organizations, Tapahpunja created his own 501 C3 charity organization called The
Small Farm Training Center, which names New Vrindaban as its “host community.”

Tourists visit New Vrindaban's garden's regularly
Over the past six years, he has developed a vibrant apprentice farming program, which draws between eight and fourteen college students every season (from March till November), enthusiastic about getting their hands dirty and learning sustainability. They go through three levels of training: backyard gardening, market gardening—learning how to trade, barter and sell one’s produce at a farmer’s market—and mini-farming, which is performed on a six-and-a-half acre site called The Garden of Seven Gates.
“Rather than just grunt work, I want to give them a rich, well-rounded experience,” Tapahpunja says. “I’d like them to leave with a very solid foundation of why we should be sustainable, so that they can be articulate spokespersons on the issue.”
In return for their work, the students receive room and board, staying at the project’s Small Farm Guesthouse and eating prasadam. Many comment that they feel comfortable and cared for.
There is no pressure to go any further than learning the ABCs of organic gardening, but Tapahpunja does explain to the students that his Training Center’s host is a spiritual community with a beautiful temple, delicious vegetarian meals, philosophical classes, and the renowned tourist attraction Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold, which they are welcome to check out.

Harvesting Potatoes
Those who are more spiritually-inclined do, and, like Tapahpunja in the 1970s, they are astounded at the rich culture and philosophy integrated with the natural lifestyle.
“We have a lot to offer to the worldwide dialogue on sustainability,” Tapahpunja says. “At the heart of it all is the fact that there is really no such thing as sustainability in this world—everything is subject to devastating time. The only true sustainability is our relationship with God. And it’s important to understand that as we attempt to live a simple lifestyle.”
Tapahpunja shows himself to be aligned with this understanding by growing a garden that is specific to the needs of New Vrindaban’s presiding Deities Sri-Sri Radha-Vrindabanchandra, and to the needs of Their devotees.
Providing for the community is a challenge, however. “Right now only about ten per cent of the produce used by the temple is grown in our own garden,” he says. “It’s difficult because New Vrindaban is a major pilgrimage destination, with 600 to 800 people visiting on festival weekends, making it hard to match field production with consumption patterns. On top of that, most of the devotees here are from urban backgrounds, and they want seasonal vegetables all year around, which is impossible. So a big part of my job is convincing the temple management that to support a farm culture we have to get used to eating seasonally.”

Teaching schoolchildren about gardening
Still, Tapahpunja tries to grow a wide variety of vegetables. He’s helped by grant money from West Virginia State University, which is offered in return for data on his yield.
There’s even surplus, which he began delivering to Wheeling soup kitchens as a charitable donation five years ago. Today, he has developed a good relationship with cooks, administration and clientele, and delivers to six different kitchens over thirty times a year—unheard of by any other farmer or agrarian-based community.
“They don’t have a lot of funding, and most of the food they serve people are corporate donations of sugary foods and heavy starches—cheap calories that are going bad in large scale grocery stores and get donated for a tax write-off by large corporations,” Tapahpunja says. “So they are very grateful for our freshly-grown donations. They especially love Swiss Chard, a kind of large beet green, which I grow a quarter acre of each year, and lettuce, which I’ve developed a technique for growing even in the hot weather.”
The soup kitchens, as well as the city of Wheeling, are very appreciative because they can see that this effort is not a cynical photo-op, but a genuine concern for the quality of peoples’ diets.

A group of Hare Krishna youth help out in the gardens
This charitable work and networking is not only excellent public relations for ISKCON New Vrindaban, but it has yielded yet another exciting project.
“It got me in touch with some local Wheeling gardeners, and about a year ago we decided to team up and share resources, creating the ‘Green Wheeling Initiative,’” Tapahpunja says. “Our byline is ‘A Green Bridge Over Troubled Waters,’ and we regularly meet at the local community college to discuss how to increase our charitable distribution of produce, as well as new gardening initiatives.”
The most exciting of these is an urban renewal project in which members of the GWI install gardens in vacant lots and former industrial deadzones throughout the city. They have installed seven so far, including one on the front lawn of the West Virginia Northern Community College, the biggest community college in the State.
“Working with their culinary arts department, we made a nice garden for them with lots of vegatables and culinary herbs, so that the students could get acquainted with growing their own produce, and realize how much better it makes food taste,” says Tapahpunja.

A class at the Small Farm Training Center
In return, the Community College arranged for Tapahpunja to meet with representatives of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and the Hess Family Foundation, who were impressed with the GWI’s vision to turn Wheeling’s vacant lots into economic and health opportunities for its people.
“They also liked our mood of collaboration and inclusiveness, and our goal of empowering people to become food independent and build community at the same time,” Tapahpunja says. “As a result, they suggested that I write two grants, which I did. They then funded both of them—the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation gave $55,000, while the Hess Family Foundation gave $15,000.”
Tapahpunja says that the GWI’s work is making the citizens of Wheeling more aware of both the health and sociological reasons for becoming food independent. This naturally ties in with cow protection, since cow dung is essential to fertile soil for growing food; and with spiritual communities, where people support each other in a lifestyle closer to the land and the one who sustains us all: God.

One of seven gardens Tapahpunja and the Green Wheeling Initiative have built in vacant urban lots in the city
In the future, Tapahpunja hopes to continue networking and reaching out to organizations such as PETA and Farm Sanctuary, and people such as young Indian couples, who, despite working in the technological field, are often not far removed from their village roots. He also hopes to launch a new initiative, VARA, which means “best” in Sanskrit and is an acronym for Vedic Academy for Rural Arts. Its mission will be to train brahminically-inclined devotees who can articulate a message of sustainability based on the Krishna conscious perspective.
“Once, while walking with his disciples on the outskirts of Atlanta, Srila Prabhupada took his cane and traced the outline of all the downtown skyscrapers,” Tapahpunja says. “Then he said, ‘Do you see this city? This city and all like it will be finished very soon. Do you know why?’ The devotees were at a loss, groping for all kinds of metaphysical answers. Finally Tamal Krishna Maharaja said, ‘Because they can’t grow their own food?’ ‘Yes,’ Srila Prabhupada replied. ‘Because they can’t grow their own food.’”
“Therefore,” Tapahpunja concludes, “I see food independence as one of our ISKCON movement’s most important missions,

The Food and Farm Bill: Why New York City Cares

2011-11-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

For organizations, clergy, and chefs: please consider signing on to the NYC Food and Farm Bill Principles and Why We Care document! Go to
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/692712/Sign-on-to-NYC-Food-and-Farm-Bill-Principles

We will have a sign-on opportunity for individuals shortly.

Text versions of the two above PDFs are below, followed by a black and white version of the PDFs:

TheFOOD and FARM BILL:
Why New York City Cares

The Food and Farm Bill is the single greatest influence on what we eat. It determines how billions are spent shaping our food system, from producer to consumer. We, in New York City (NYC), have an enormous stake in the Food and Farm Bill. Eight million of us spend $30 billion annually on food.[i]
Yet, hunger persists in NYC. An all-time high of 1.84 million NYC residents rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as Food Stamps, and 1.4 million of us rely on emergency food.[ii] One in six of us, including more than 400,000 of our children live in households facing food insecurity.[iii]Many of us find unhealthy food far more accessible than healthy food. The nutrition safety net does not meet the needs of our hungry neighbors.
Past Food and Farm Bills inadequately promote healthy food choices, like fruits and vegetables. America needs 13 million more acres in fruit and vegetable production for each of us to meet USDA healthful dietary guidelines.[iv] Yet, the Food and Farm Bill provides incentives for the production of processed foods that are high in added sugars (from federally subsidized corn) and added fats (from federally subsidized soy). The least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest, in part, because of federal financing.
Past bills perpetuate the paradox of chronic hunger and widespread overweight and obesity. Overweight and obesity are significant risk factors for adult diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions. Nearly 25 percent of our children and 67 percent of our adults are overweight or obese.[v] In New York State, $6.1 billion is spent annually fighting diet-related diseases.[vi]
Food is also connected to the health of our environment and our economy. Our current food system is unsustainable. It accounts for about 20 percent of our national energy consumption and relies heavily on inputs including chemicals, fossil fuels, and a staggering amount of water.[vii]Unchecked, such practices can degrade our natural resources, eroding our soil and polluting our air and water.
While we are dependent on national and international food production, the relationship between NYC and our regional food shed, particularly in New York State, is significant. New York State is home to more than 36,000 farms - most of which are small, family farms ranging from one to 99-acres - that generate $5 billion in annual revenue.[viii] However, this valuable resource is threatened as we lose farmland to development, especially near cities, and it is difficult to find new farmers to replace retiring farmers.
A relatively small number of corporations increasingly control food production, availability, and cost. Unsound public policies have resulted in corporate consolidation of the food chain, making it increasingly difficult for small and mid-sized farms to continue operation.
Our federal policies put national food sovereignty at risk: we are losing farmland and our farmers are fewer and older; our system of production and distribution is unsustainable; our fruits and vegetables are grown on land in danger of development; and we import almost as many agricultural products as we export, all this while our population is growing. Not only is our own food sovereignty at risk, our policies risk the food sovereignty of other nations. Around the world, particularly in the global south, family farmers and local food self-sufficiency are disappearing, in part, because of their inability to compete with our subsidized commodity crops.
With the 2012 Food and Farm Bill, there is an opportunity to re-evaluate our farm and food policies, maintaining the most beneficial and, when it makes good sense, changing others. As a matter of social justice and our core values, a decided majority of Americans believe that we must provide an equitable food safety net.[ix] Despite this, our food safety net is unraveling. While we consider the role of our federal government, including its relationship to our farms and our food, we must determine what in the Food and Farm Bill can best serve the common good.
To these ends, the New York City Food and Farm Bill Working Group has developed five Principles that we hold must be embodied in our nation’s next Food and Farm Bill: A Health-Focused Food System; An End to Hunger and Access to Healthy Food; A Level “Plowing” Field; Good Environmental Stewardship; and Vibrant Regional Farm and Food Economies.

[i] Chittenden, Jessica. “ Survey Says Wholesale Market Good for Farmers, Consumers.” Department of Agriculture& Markets News. Feb. 9. 2005. <http://www.agmkt.state.ny.us/AD/release.asp?ReleaseID=1403>
[ii] New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. “Temporary and Disability Assistance Statistic. Table 16. July 2011. <http://otda.ny.gov/resources/caseload/2011/2011-07-stats.pdf>
[iii] New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “NYC Hunger Catastrophe Avoided (For Now).” November 2009. <http://www.nyccah.org/files/AnnualHungerSurveyReport_Nov09.pdf>
[iv] American Farmland Trust. “American Farmland Trust Says—The United States Needs 13 Million More Acres of Fruits and Vegetables to Meet the RDA”. 2010. <http://www.farmland.org/news/pressreleases/13-Million-More-Acres.asp>
[v] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overweight and Obesity/New York. <http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/stateprograms/fundedstates/new_york.html>
[vi] New York State Department of Health. “Prevention of Childhood Overweight and Obesity - Activ8Kids!”. Request for Applications Number 0601261256:4. 2006. <http://www.health.state.ny.us/funding/rfa/0601261256/0601261256.pdf>
[vii] Center for Sustainable Systems: University of Michigan. “Life Cycle-Based Sustainability Indicators for Assessment of the U.S. Food System”. Report No. CSS00-04. December 2006 <http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS00-04.pdf>
[viii] United States Department of Agriculture. Agriculture in the Classroom, “A Look at New York Agriculture”. July 2010 <http://www.agclassroom.org/kids/stats/newyork.pdf>
[ix] Food Research and Action Center. "FRAC Releases New Polling Data Showing Overwhelming Support for Federal Efforts to End Hunger." Press Release. December 2010. <http://frac.org/2010/12/frac-releases-new-polling-data-showing-overwhelming-support-for-federal-efforts-to-end-hunger/>

New York CityFOOD and FARM BILL Principles

1 A Health-Focused Food System

Obesity and diet-related diseases have reached epidemic proportions. A food system that focuses on increasing the production and distribution of healthy foods - including fruits, vegetables, and whole grains - for consumption in our communities, homes, schools, and institutions will support the health and well being of us all.

2 An End to Hunger and Access to Healthy Food

While hunger is a large and growing problem in our communities, our food system also contributes to a national obesity epidemic. In accord with our core American values and our principles of social justice, we must provide food security for all, including our most vulnerable, the disadvantaged, the young, and the aged. Ending food insecurity and hunger by protecting our nation’s nutrition programs and ensuring equitable access to healthful, sustainably produced food is of paramount importance. Also of great importance are consumers’ abilities to make informed, healthy food choices and to access healthy food.

3 A Level “Plowing” Field

The face of farming in our nation is changing. Small- and mid-scale family farms are increasingly struggling against anti-competitive practices, industry consolidation, and subsidies that tilt the playing field. Meanwhile, extensive outbreaks of food-borne illnesses are becoming increasingly common. While the productive capacity of large-scale agriculture is considerable, so is its capacity to negatively impact our health, our environment, and the diversity and competitiveness of agricultural enterprise. Conservation, risk management, access to credit, and food safety programs often are calibrated to the scales of “production” agriculture. Restoring competition, promoting fairness, encouraging decentralization, and developing scale-appropriate programs will contribute to the future vitality of small- and mid–scale regional, rural, and urban farm and food enterprises.

4 GoodEnvironmental Stewardship

Our present agricultural system, which relies heavily on chemicals, fossil fuels, and a staggering amount of water, is damaging our environment and our ability to feed ourselves in the future. Conservation priorities must align with our best interests. To ensure a secure food system today and well into the future, we must preserve our vital agricultural soil and water resources, reduce farm and other food-system energy consumption, and practice sustainable agricultural production methods that minimize air and water pollution.

5 Vibrant Regional Farm and Food Economies

High unemployment and a sluggish economy compound challenges facing those who labor in the food system, including small- and mid-scale farmers. Opportunities that create fair wage jobs are key to a strong economy. We must look to innovative methods to strengthen our regional food systems as a means to regain economic vitality. We must provide entrepreneurial opportunities and foster business growth and job creation in rural and urban production, processing, and distribution. Farm and food strategies must support beginning and disadvantaged urban and rural farmers, as well as established farmers facing the challenges of feeding America. By doing so, we will increase the amount of regionally produced, healthy food that is available in our communities while we strengthen our economy.

Food and Farm Bill - Why NYC Cares & NYC Principles_B&W.pdf

New Farmers Find Their Footing

2011-11-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Mark Bittman's blog at the New York Times

NorthHaven, Me.

WhenBrenna Chase was farming in Connecticut a few years back, new farmersweren’t always welcome by oldsters. The pie, she says, just wasn’tbig enough. “But now,” she said to me here, where she now farms,“the feeling is that the pie is getting bigger and that the morepeople that get into this the better it will be for everyone.”

By“this,” she means sustainable farming (here I use the terminterchangeably with “organic” because many ethical farmers can’tafford organic certification), and the poised 33-year-old, who beganfarming in high school, is representative of young people I’ve metall over the country.

These are people whose concern for theenvironment led to a desire to grow — and eat — better food. Andalthough chefs still get more attention, the new farmers deserverecognition for their bold and often creative directions.

RuralMaine, it would seem to almost all of us from “away” as they saydown east, is as unlikely a place to find new farmers as exists inthe lower 48: it boasts harsh, dark winters; a short, cool growingseason; acidic soil; and a transportation “system” that makesshipping both in and out of state a challenge. (Even people havetrouble getting out, as I discovered Monday. And Tuesday.)

There’sonly a quarter as much land in farming in Maine as there was 100years ago, but that’s changing. There are more farms today (uparound 50 percent since 1992), more acres in farms and more moneygenerated by farming than there were 20 years ago. This is, at leastin part, thanks to people like Ms. Chase, who follow in the footsteps(foodsteps?) of one of the granddaddies of can-do, intensive organicfarming, Eliot Coleman.

Mr.Coleman runs FourSeason Farm inHarborside with his wife, the gardening writer Barbara Damrosch, andhas squarely faced nearly every challenge a new farmer can since hestarted in 1968. Now, the 1.5 acres he cultivates, mostly invegetables, are not only almost unimaginably lush (Ms.Damrosch’s gorgeousflowers don’thurt), but they’re so productive that, in his cheerful, wise way,Mr. Coleman almost gloats: “You couldn’t be in a less likely spotthan here to do what we’re doing,” he says, “and yet we’vetransformed a poor, wooded area into a place where there’s nothingwe can’t grow.” I marvel at his artichokes; he responds: “Igrow them just to make the Californians nervous.”

Now71, Mr. Coleman maintains his long-range view. (He delights intelling the story about unloading a truckload of free clamshells whena county agent came by. “The agent,” says Mr. Coleman, “wasincredulous: ‘Those aren’t going to break down for 100 years!’But I was thinking, ‘I have 100 years of free fertilizer here!’”) And he clearly loves the work. (“If work is what you do whenyou’re not doing what you want,” he quips, “I haven’t workeda day in my life.”)

Hesells his output locally for about $125,000 a year; most of that paysfor labor. If he scaled up, he reckons, the net income would begreater. This, of course, is the concern of many new farmers: How doyou afford to buy land, hire labor and still make a living?

ForMr. Coleman, this isn’t so much of an issue. In some circles he’sa hero for his innovative approaches to fertilizing, greenhouses,tool-making, teaching and more. He’s probably inspired as manyfarmers as anyone in the Northeast, and his books, especially “TheWinter Harvest Handbook,” have taught the art of season-extensionto thousands of gardeners, including me. (His place isn’t calledFour Season Farm for nothing, and, remember, this isn’t San Diego.)So book sales, speaking engagements and other money-generators forboth him and Ms. Damrosch help out with the income. (This isn’tunusual. Most conventional farmers, even those of commodity crops, dononfarm work to help pay the bills.That’s the current state of farming in America.)

Fornewcomers, though, this is precisely the issue because, as Ms. Chasesays, “If you could make a good living farming, people would gointo it and stay in it.”

Thesimple answer, of course, is to charge more for food. But can anincreasing number of sustainable farms find markets forhigher-quality, higher-priced produce?

Here,the answers become complicated: “If the cost of food reflected thecost of production,” says Ms. Chase, “that would changeeverything.” And this is undoubtedly true. But though sustainablyproduced food is too expensive for some, conventional food doesn’treflect either the subsidies required to grow it or the hugeenvironmental or health care costs it incurs. Once it does,sustainable food would appear far more competitive.

Thenwe’d see more farmers growing it, not only in Maine but everywhereelse. Which would, indeed, be better for everyone.

Oil And Gas Had Help. Why Not Renewables?

2011-11-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Robert Semple Jr at the Sunday Review of the New York Times

REPRINTS

The bankruptcy of a single solar-panel company, Solyndra, has catapulted the question of federal energy policies into the news. It has also led many people to draw exactly the wrong conclusions about federal support for energy innovation and where the policies should be headed.

Multimedia

Graphic

Shifting Energy Tax Breaks

Times Topic: Solyndra

Solyndra was clearly a bad bet for the government, which now stands to lose all or part of about $500 million in loan guarantees. But one case hardly discredits the whole idea of government support for energy innovation. The federal government has always been in the energy business, and with good reason. Private capital may be good at identifying and incubating new technologies, but bringing those technologies to commercial scale often requires significant public capital.

Land grants, for instance, helped build the coal industry, Depression-era spending created hydroelectric dams, and the Defense Department helped develop the first nuclear reactors. The oil and gas business benefited hugely from tax breaks like the oil depletion allowances that go back to the 1920s and were intended to encourage production in what was then a risky game.

Subsidies for newer technologies follow in that tradition. As priorities have changed and many politicians have come to realize that fossil fuels exact big social costs, federal subsidies have swung slowly toward projects that produce wind and solar power and biofuels from crops and plant matter.

The chart — which focuses on tax breaks and credits to promote development of various types of fuel — shows the trend. (The nuclear industry is not included; its subsidies are largely direct grants and loan guarantees, not tax credits.)

Tax incentives for fossil fuels surpassed $12 billion during the price spikes of the late 1970s and early ’80s, then plunged — partly because tax subsidies tied to the price of oil declined when prices did.

As the chart suggests, Congressional interest in renewables like wind and solar rises and falls with the price of oil. The oil shocks of the 1970s and President Jimmy Carter’s personal commitment to alternative fuels inspired a burst of enthusiasm that tapered off along with oil prices.

Then, in 2005, with prices rising, Congress passed a comprehensive energy bill loaded with incentives for renewables. That bill, plus President Obama’s stimulus package, have propelled tax credits for renewable energy, principally wind and solar, from virtually nothing 10 years ago to more than $7 billion today. (This includes $4.2 billion in direct grants provided in 2009 to companies that could not take advantage of the tax credit because of the financial crisis.) The same impulses inspired a renewed interest in energy-efficient buildings; largely because of the Obama stimulus, tax incentives for efficiency jumped to $2 billion in 2010. Corn ethanol continues to get a tax subsidy of about $6 billion annually, even though its production almost certainly contributes to rising food prices and is of dubious environmental value.

Subsidies for non-fossil fuels now dominate the picture. The Congressional Research Service estimates that benefits for wind, solar, ethanol and energy efficiency account for three-quarters of the $20 billion total of annual federal tax support.

The chart also illustrates that Congress, for political reasons, can also get things wildly wrong. The spike for fossil fuel subsidies in 2007 was caused almost entirely by a short-lived credit for synthetic fuel produced from coal. The fuel proved to be immensely unprofitable, and all 59 plants producing it closed. The 2009 spike in incentives for renewables was created by another short-lived tax break, for “black liquor,” a diesel-like substance produced from pulpwood that created a one-time bonanza for paper companies.

Renewables and efficiency are finally getting the attention they deserve but are still playing catch-up. At a time when oil is vulnerable to international disruption and fossil fuels are identified as the main culprit in global warming, robust federal efforts to help develop cleaner — and ultimately cost-competitive — energy make perfect sense. ROBERT B. SEMPLE JR.

People-Powered

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

Click here for more from the New York Times Design Magazine

Can’t get there from here? “Transport: A Survival Guide,” the summer 2011 issue ofColors, the magazine published by Benetton, asks us to imagine the day when the planet’s oil supply finally runs out. Vividly photographed and accented with fact-rich footnotes, it offers alternatives that are largely grass-roots and low tech: a boat made of Styrofoam and plastic bottles or tricked-out bicycle taxis (complete with radios) from Kenya, or the profusely decorated, three-wheeled motorcycle carts called chakdas (complete with instructions on how to make them) from Gujarat, India, that can carry up to 15 passengers. But there are also rickshaw-pulling robots made by a farmer who lives in a village outside Beijing and a solar-powered car designed by an inventor in Jiangjiang, China. The car may look like a tin can covered with solar panels, but when the inventor took it out for its first test drive in 2008, he passed a line over a mile long of drivers waiting to get into a gas station.

Can Farming Make It In The Big City?

2011-10-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Monika Vosough for Wall Street Journal Online on 15 Jul 2011

Image: cwyjaguar.blogspot.com

From ISKCON News

Entrepreneurs are looking to urban farms and rooftop gardens as an alternative to traditional farms. While start-up costs are higher, these efforts could pay off with long-term environmental benefits and better tasting veggies. Wall Street Journal's Monika Vosough reports.

To watch video klick here:http://online.wsj.com/video/can-farming-make-it-in-the-...

Climate Change And The End of Austraila

2011-10-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

Click here to read the full article from Jeff Goodell from Rolling Stone

It's near midnight, and I'm holed up in a rickety hotel in Proserpine, a whistle-stop town on the northeast coast of Australia. Yasi, a Category 5 hurricane with 200-mile-per-hour winds that's already been dubbed "The Mother of All Catastrophes" by excitable Aussie tabloids, is just a few hundred miles offshore. When the eye of the storm hits, forecasters predict, it will be the worst ever to batter the east coast of Australia.

I have come to Australia to see what a global-warming future holds for this most vulnerable of nations, and Mother Nature has been happy to oblige: Over the course of just a few weeks, the continent has been hit by a record heat wave, a crippling drought, bush fires, floods that swamped an area the size of France and Germany combined, even a plague of locusts. "In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions," Andrew Fraser, the Queensland state treasurer, told reporters. He was talking about the floods in his region, but the sense that Australia – which maintains one of the highest per-capita carbon footprints on the planet – has summoned up the wrath of the climate gods is everywhere. "Australia is the canary in the coal mine," says David Karoly, a top climate researcher at the University of Melbourne. "What is happening in Australia now is similar to what we can expect to see in other places in the future."

As Yasi bears down on the coast, the massive storm seems to embody the not-quite-conscious fears of Australians that their country may be doomed by global warming. This year's disasters, in fact, are only the latest installment in an ongoing series of climate-related crises. In 2009, wildfires in Australia torched more than a million acres and killed 173 people. The Murray-Darling Basin, which serves as the country's breadbasket, has suffered a decades-long drought, and what water is left is becoming increasingly salty and unusable, raising the question of whether Australia, long a major food exporter, will be able to feed itself in the coming decades. The oceans are getting warmer and more acidic, leading to the all-but-certain death of the Great Barrier Reef within 40 years. Homes along the Gold Coast are being swept away, koala bears face extinction in the wild, and farmers, their crops shriveled by drought, are shooting themselves in despair.

With Yasi approaching fast, disaster preparations are fully under way. At the airport, the Australian Defense Force is racing to load emergency supplies into Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters. Entire cities have shut down, their streets nearly empty as I drive north, toward the center of the storm, through sugar plantations and ranch land. Dead kangaroos sprawl by the side of the road, the victims of motorists fleeing the storm.

With the winds hitting 80 miles per hour, I'm forced to stop in Proserpine, where the windows are taped and sandbags are piled in front of doors. Palm trees are bent horizontal in the wind, and the shingles of a nearby roof blow off and shoot into the darkness. It's as if civilization is being dismantled one shingle at a time.

"Welcome to Australia, the petri dish of climate change," an Aussie friend e-mailed me the day before. "Stay safe."

In the past year – one of the hottest on record – extreme weather has battered almost every corner of the planet. There have been devastating droughts in China and India, unprecedented floods and wildfires in the United States, and near-record ice melts in the Arctic. Yet the prosperous nations of the world have failed to take action to reduce the risk of climate change, in part because people in prosperous nations think they're invulnerable. They're under the misapprehension that, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Tom Schelling puts it, "Global warming is a problem that is going to primarily affect future generations of poor people." To see how foolish this reasoning is, one need only look at Australia, a prosperous nation that also happens to be right in the cross hairs of global warming. "Sadly, it's probably too late to save much of it," says Joe Romm, a leading climate advocate who served as assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration.

This is not to say that the entire continent will sink beneath the waves anytime soon. What is likely to vanish – or be transformed beyond recognition – are many of the things we think of when we think of Australia: the barrier reef, the koalas, the sense of the country as a land of almost limitless natural resources. Instead, Australia is likely to become hotter, drier and poorer, fractured by increasing tensions over access to water, food and energy as its major cities are engulfed by the rising seas.

To climate scientists, it's no surprise that Australia would feel the effects of climate change so strongly, in part because it has one of the world's most variable climates. "One effect of increasing greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere is to amplify existing climate signals," says Karoly. "Regions that are dry get drier, and regions that are wet get wetter. If you have a place like Australia that is already extreme, those extremes just get more pronounced." Adding to Australia's vulnerability is its close connection with the sea. Australia is the only island continent on the planet, which means that changes caused by planet-warming pollution – warmer seas, which can drive stronger storms, and more acidic oceans, which wreak havoc on the food chain – are even more deadly here.

How bad could it get? A recent study by MIT projects that without "rapid and massive action" to cut carbon pollution, the Earth's temperature could soar by nine degrees this century. "There are no analogies in human history for a temperature jump of that size in such a short time period," says Tony McMichael, an epidemiologist at Australian National University. The few times in human history when temperatures fell by seven degrees, he points out, the sudden shift likely triggered a bubonic plague in Europe, caused the abrupt collapse of the Moche civilization in Peru and reduced the entire human race to as few as 1,000 breeding pairs after a volcanic eruption blocked out the sun some 73,000 years ago. "We think that because we are a technologically sophisticated society, we are less vulnerable to these kinds of dramatic shifts in climate," McMichael says. "But in some ways, because of the interconnectedness of our world, we are more vulnerable."

The Seeds of Deception

2011-10-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

Click here to check out more from Jeffrey M. Smith and his his book "Seeds of Deception"

International bestselling author Jeffrey M. Smith is the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). He documents how the world’s most powerful Ag biotech companies bluff and mislead critics, and put the health of society at risk.

His first book Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating became the world’s best-selling and # 1 rated book on GMOs. His second book, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, is the authoritative work that presents irrefutable evidence that GMOs are harmful. It includes 65 health dangers, linking GMOs to toxic and allergic reactions, thousands of sick, sterile, and dead livestock, and damage to virtually every organ studied in lab animals. The book expertly summarizes why the safety assessments conducted by the FDA and regulators worldwide are built on a foundation of outdated science and false assumptions, and why GM foods must become the top food safety priority. Former UK environment minister Michael Meacher says the revelations in Genetic Roulette may “change the global course of events this century.”

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Will Transform Our Society

2011-10-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

A fascinating and hopeful piece from Jeremy Rifkin at the Huffington Post

Excerpted from Jeremy Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, Palgrave Macmillan 2011.

Energy regimes shape the nature of civilizations... how they are organized, how the fruits of commerce and trade are distributed, how political power is exercised, and how social relations are conducted. The locus of control over energy production and distribution is beginning to tilt from giant fossil fuel based centralized energy companies to millions of small producers, who are generating their own renewable energies in their dwellings and trading surpluses in info-energy commons.

Distributed Capitalism

The new era will bring with it a reorganization of power relationships across every level of society. While the fossil fuel-based First and Second Industrial Revolutions scaled vertically and favored centralized, top-down organizational structures operating in markets, the Third Industrial Revolution is organized nodally, scales laterally, and favors distributed and collaborative business practices that work most effectively in networks. The "democratization of energy" has profound implications for how we orchestrate the entirety of human life in the coming century. We are entering the era of "Distributed Capitalism."

The partial shift from markets to networks establishes a different business orientation. The adversarial relationship between sellers and buyers is replaced by a collaborative relationship between suppliers and users. Self-interest is subsumed by shared interest. Proprietary information is eclipsed by a new emphasis on openness and collective trust. The new focus on transparency over secrecy is based on the premise that adding value to the network doesn't depreciate ones own stock, but, rather, appreciates everyone's holdings as equal nodes in a common endeavor.

In industry after industry, cross-sector networks are competing with autonomous transaction-based business models, and peer-to-peer business practices conducted in commercial commons are challenging competitive business operations in siloed markets.

Distributed capitalism ushers in new business models, including 3D printing in the manufacturing of durable goods and performance contracting and shared savings ventures in the service and experiential sectors, which greatly reduces capital, energy and labor costs, and increases productivity. In the new lateral economy, the exchange of property in markets is increasingly subsumed by just-in-time access to goods and services in networks, purchased in the form of leases, rentals, timeshares, retainer agreements, and other kinds of time allotments.

When thousands of businesses -- large companies, SMES, and cooperatives -- connect with one another in vast networks, the distributed power often exceeds the power of standalone giant companies that characterized the First and Second Industrial Revolutions.

Beyond Right and Left

The emerging Third Industrial Revolution is not only changing the way we do business, but also the way we think about politics. The struggle between the older hierarchical power interests of the Second Industrial Revolution and the nascent lateral power interests of the Third Industrial Revolution is giving rise to a new political dichotomy, reflective of the competing forces vying for dominance in the commercial arena. A new political script is being written, recasting the very way people will view politics as we move deeper into the new era.

When was the last time you heard anyone under the age of twenty-five rant about his or her ideological beliefs? Something very strange is happening out there. Ideology is disappearing. Young people aren't much interested in debating the fine points of capitalist or socialist ideology or the nuances of geopolitical theory. Their political leanings are configured in an entirely different way.

Our global policy team began picking up on this phenomenon as we became more engaged in the political process in Europe, the United States and other countries. We have come to discover what we suspect is a new political mindset emerging among a younger generation of political leaders socialized on Internet communications. Their politics is less about right versus left and more about centralized and authoritarian versus distributed and collaborative. This makes sense.

The two generations whose sociability has been formed, in large part, by Internet communications, are far more likely to divide the world into people and institutions that use top-down, enclosed, and proprietary thinking, and those that use lateral, transparent, and open thinking. As they come of age, they are affecting a shift in political thinking--one that will fundamentally alter the political process in the twenty-first century.

Continentalization

While the First and Second Industrial Revolutions were accompanied by national economies and nation-state governance, The Third Industrial Revolution, because it is distributed and collaborative by nature, scales laterally along contiguous landmasses, and favors continental economies and continental governing unions. Continentalization is becoming the new path to globalization.

Sharing renewable energy laterally, in power, communications and transport networks that stretch across continents, like we now share information virtually in social networks across the internet, is going to radically transform the political world. The new energy relationships will require governing jurisdictions that are similarly lateral and networked and that encompass the outer limits of the TIR's geographical reach, which are the edges of continents. If not inevitable, it is at least highly likely that continental unions will become the new governing jurisdictions to regulate emerging continental markets around the world in the 21st Century.

The European Union is the first continental economy and political union to begin transitioning into a Third Industrial Revolution. Continental unions have recently been formed in Asia (The ASEAN Union), Africa (The African Union) and South America (The Union of South American Nations). In North America, the fledgling political associations forged between the northern states and Canadian provinces are a precursor to a potential continental union.

Although localities, regions, and national governments will not disappear in the coming century -- they will actually be strengthened -- continental unions provide an expansive political framework for overseeing integrated continental markets.

From Geopolitics to Biosphere Politics

The intercontinental era will slowly transform international relations from geopolitics to biosphere politics. A new approach to political life on the planet is just beginning to emerge, based on operating principles and assumptions that are more compatible with the dynamics of a Third Industrial Revolution economic model, and the ecological constraints imposed by the Earth's biosphere.

In the geopolitical world of the fossil fuel-based First and Second Industrial Revolutions, the Earth was conceived in a mechanical and utilitarian fashion. The planet was viewed as a container -- a storehouse -- full of useful resources ready to be appropriated for economic ends. Nation states were formed to compete with one another in the market and on the battlefield, to seize, secure, and control elite fossil fuel energies and rare earth resources.

The shift in energy regimes from elite fossil fuels to distributed renewable energies will redefine the very notion of international relations more along the lines of ecological thinking. If the earth functions more like a living organism made up of layer upon layer of interdependent ecological relationships, then our very survival depends on mutually safeguarding the well-being of the global ecosystems of which we are all a part. Because the renewable energies of the Third Industrial Revolution are ample, found everywhere, and easily shared, but require collective stewardship of the earth's ecosystems, there is less likelihood of hostility and war over access and a greater likelihood of global cooperation. In the new era, survival is less about competition than cooperation, and less about the search for autonomy than the quest for embeddedness.

The old geopolitics was accompanied by a scientific paradigm that viewed nature as objects; the new biosphere science, by contrast, views nature as relationships. The old science is characterized by detachment, expropriation, dissection, and reduction; the new science is characterized by engagement, replenishment, integration, and holism. The old science is committed to making nature productive; the new science is committed to making nature sustainable. The old science seeks power over nature; the new science seeks partnership with nature. The old science puts a premium on autonomy from nature; the new science, on re-participation with nature.

The new biosphere science takes us from a colonial vision of nature as an enemy to pillage and enslave, to a new vision of nature as a community to nurture. The right to exploit, harness, and own nature in the form of property is tempered by the obligation to steward nature and treat it with dignity and respect. The utility value of nature is slowly giving way to the intrinsic value of nature. This is the deep meaning of sustainable development, and the very essence of biosphere politics.

Biosphere politics facilitates a tectonic shift in the political landscape; we begin to enlarge our vision and think as global citizens in a shared biosphere. Global human rights networks, global health networks, global disaster relief networks, global germ plasm storage, global food banks, global information networks, global environmental networks, and global species protection networks, are a powerful sign of the historic shift from conventional geopolitics to fledgling biosphere politics.

Retiring Adam Smith

It's been nearly fifty years since I took my introductory class in classical economic theory at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. I have watched a transformation take place in the workings of the economy over the ensuing half century--most of which has never been integrated into the standard economics textbooks. The once-unquestioned value of unlimited economic growth has given way to the idea of sustainable economic development. The conventional, top-down, centralized approach to organizing economic activity that characterized the fossil fuel-based First and Second Industrial Revolutions, is being challenged by the new distributed and collaborative organizing models that go with a Third Industrial Revolution. The hallowed nature of property exchange in markets has been partially upended by shared access to commercial services in open-source social networks. National markets and nation-state governance, once the spatial milieu for all economic activity, are giving way to continental markets and continental governments. The result is that much of economics, as it is taught today, is increasingly irrelevant in explaining the past, understanding the present, and forecasting the future.

Although the term paradigm shift has been grossly overused in recent years, I think it's safe to say that when it comes to economic theory, the term is apt. Our children's understanding of economic theory and the governing assumptions of economic practice will be as radically different from ours as the market theorists' ideas are from the "just price" philosophy that governed late medieval commerce and trade.

Whether it's rethinking GDP and how to measure the economic well-being of society, revising our ideas about productivity, understanding the notion of debt and how best to balance our production and consumption budgets with nature's own, reexamining our notions about property relations, reevaluating the importance of finance capital versus social capital, reassessing the economic value of markets versus networks, or reconsidering how the Earth's biosphere functions, standard economic theory comes up woefully short.

On these and other accounts, the changes taking place in the way we understand human nature and the meaning of the human journey are so profoundly disruptive to the way we have thought over the past two hundred years that spawned the first two industrial revolutions, that it is likely that much of classical and neoclassical economic theory that accompanied and legitimized these two earlier industrial eras will not survive the newly emerging economic paradigm.

What is likely to happen is that the still-valuable insights and content of standard economic theory will be rethought and reworked within the context of the thermodynamic laws that govern the flow of energy and ecosystem dynamics. Using the laws of energy as a common language will allow economists to enter into a deep conversation with engineers, chemists, ecologists, biologists, architects, and urban planners, among others, whose disciplines are grounded in the laws of energy. Since these other fields are the ones that actually produce economic activity, a serious interdisciplinary discussion over time could potentially lead to a new synthesis between economic theory and commercial practice and the emergence of a new, explanatory economic model to accompany the Third Industrial Revolution paradigm.

A Classroom Makeover

Preparing the workforce and citizenry for the new society will require rethinking the traditional educational model, with its emphasis on rigid instruction, memorization of facts, reductionist thinking and autonomous learning.

In the new globally connected Third Industrial Revolution era, the primary mission of education is to prepare students to think and act as part of a shared biosphere.

In schools all over the world, teachers are instructing students, from the earliest ages, that they are an intimate part of the workings of the biosphere and that every activity they engage in --the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the car their family drives, the electricity they use -- leaves an ecological footprint that affects the well-being of other human beings and other creatures on earth.

A new generation of educators is beginning to deconstruct the classroom learning processes that accompanied the First and Second Industrial Revolutions and reconstitute the educational experience along lines designed to encourage an extended ecological self, imbued with biosphere consciousness. The dominant top-down approach to teaching, the aim of which is to create a competitive, autonomous being, is beginning to give away to a "distributed and collaborative" educational experience with an eye to instilling a sense of the shared nature of knowledge. Intelligence, in the new way of thinking, is not something one inherits or a resource one accumulates but, rather, a shared experience distributed among people.

New lateral learning environments, including virtual global classrooms and service learning in the community, break through the conventional classroom walls, making education a more expansive and inclusive experience. Peer-to-peer learning compliments the traditional, authoritarian model of teaching, by emphasizing students' responsibility to also learn from and teach each other in structured cohort groups.

Interdisciplinary learning, multicultural studies, empathic scientific experimentation, and a systems approach to integrating knowledge, are among the cutting-edge teaching practices that are forcing a fundamental change in the educational process and preparing students to live in a complex, multidimensional, global society.

The new distributed and collaborative approach to learning mirrors the way a younger generation learns and shares information, ideas, and experiences on the Internet in "open source" learning spaces and social media sites. Distributed and collaborative learning also prepares the workforce of the 21st Century for a Third Industrial Revolution economy that operates on the same set of principles.

The Dream of Quality of Life

The Third Industrial Revolution changes our sense of relationship to and responsibility for our fellow human beings. We come to see our common lot. Sharing the renewable energies of the earth in collaborative commons that span entire continents can't help but create a new sense of species identity. This dawning awareness of interconnectivity and biosphere embeddedness is already giving birth to a new dream of "quality of life," especially among the youth of the world.

The American dream, long held as the gold standard for aspiring people everywhere, is squarely in the Enlightenment tradition, with its emphasis on the pursuit of material self-interest, autonomy and independence. Quality of life, however, speaks to a new vision of the future -- one based on collaborative interest, connectivity and interdependence. We come to realize that true freedom is not found in being unbeholden to others and an island to oneself but, rather, in deep participation with others. If freedom is the optimization of one's life, it is measured in the richness and diversity of one's experiences and the strength of one's social bonds. A life less lived is an impoverished existence.

The dream of quality of life can only be experienced collectively. It is impossible to enjoy a quality of life in isolation by excluding others. Achieving a quality of life requires active participation by everyone in the life of the community and a deep sense of responsibility by every member to ensure that no one is left behind.

While Enlightenment economists were convinced that happiness and "the good life" was tautological with the accumulation of personal wealth, a younger generation, at the cusp of the Third Industrial Revolution, is just as likely to believe that, while economic comfort is essential, it is not sufficient to ensure a full life, and that one's happiness is equally proportional to the accumulation of social capital.

The change in thinking about the meaning of happiness is beginning to affect one of the key indices for measuring economic prosperity. The Gross Domestic product (GDP) was created in the 1930s to measure the value of the sum total of economic goods and services generated over a single year. The problem with the index is that it counts negative as well as positive economic activity. If a country invests large sums of money in armaments, builds prisons, expands police security and has to clean up polluted environments and the like, it's included in the GDP.

In recent years, economists have begun to create alternative indexes for measuring economic prosperity based on quality of life indicators, rather than mere gross economic output. These new indices measure the general improvement in the well-being of society and include such things as: infant mortality and longevity of life, the availability of health coverage, the level of educational attainment, average weekly earnings, the eradication of poverty and income equality, affordability of housing, the cleanliness of the environment, biodiversity, the decrease in crime, the amount of leisure time, etc. The governments of France, the UK, and the European Union, as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations are each creating formal quality of life indexes with the expectation of relying increasingly on these new measurements to judge the overall performance of the economy.

If quality of life requires a shared notion of our collective responsibility for the larger community in which we dwell, the question becomes "Where does that community end?" In the new era, our spatial and temporal orientation gravitates beyond political boundaries to encompass the larger community we all inhabit -- the biosphere itself.

ISCOWP Update Sept 2011

2011-10-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

Click here for the latest from our friends at the International Society for Cow Protection (ISCOWP)

With Deaths of Forests, A Loss of Key Climate Protectors

2011-10-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

The Forest for the Trees: In Arizona, trees are cut down to save forests from massive fires and to combat climate change.

Click here to read the full article from Justin Gillis from the New York Times

REPRINTS

WISE RIVER, Mont. — The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn.

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But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening.

Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.

From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.

The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.

Scientists say the future habitability of the Earth might well depend on the answer. For, while a majority of the world’s people now live in cities, they depend more than ever on forests, in a way that few of them understand.

Scientists have figured out — with the precise numbers deduced only recently — that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.

Without that disposal service, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be rising faster. The gas traps heat from the sun, and human emissions are causing the planet to warm.

Yet the forests have only been able to restrain the increase, not halt it. And some scientists are increasingly worried that as the warming accelerates, trees themselves could become climate-change victims on a massive scale.

“At the same time that we’re recognizing the potential great value of trees and forests in helping us deal with the excess carbon we’re generating, we’re starting to lose forests,” saidThomas W. Swetnam, an expert on forest history at the University of Arizona.

While some of the forests that died recently are expected to grow back, scientists say others are not, because of climate change.

If forests were to die on a sufficient scale, they would not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide, they might also start to burn up or decay at such a rate that they would spew huge amounts of the gas back into the air — as is already happening in some regions. That, in turn, could speed the warming of the planet, unlocking yet more carbon stored in once-cold places like the Arctic.

Scientists are not sure how likely this feedback loop is, and they are not eager to find out the hard way.

“It would be a very different world than the world we’re in,” said Christopher B. Field, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

It is clear that the point of no return has not been reached yet — and it may never be. Despite the troubles of recent years, forests continue to take up a large amount of carbon, with some regions, including the Eastern United States, being especially important as global carbon absorbers.

“I think we have a situation where both the ‘forces of growth’ and the ‘forces of death’ are strengthening, and have been for some time,” said Oliver L. Phillips, a prominent tropical forest researcher with the University of Leeds in England. “The latter are more eye-catching, but the former have in fact been more important so far.”

Scientists acknowledge that their attempts to use computers to project the future of forests are still crude. Some of those forecasts warn that climate change could cause potentially widespread forest death in places like the Amazon, while others show forests remaining robust carbon sponges throughout the 21st century.

“We’re not completely blind, but we’re not in good shape,” said William R. L. Anderegg, a researcher at Stanford University.

Many scientists say that ensuring the health of the world’s forests requires slowing human emissions of greenhouse gases. Most nations committed to doing so in a global environmental treaty in 1992, yet two decades of negotiations have yielded scant progress.

The Coming Decline And Fall Of Big Coal

2011-10-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

From Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone

AP ran a great story yesterday about the coming decline of the coal industry in Appalachia that I fear is not going to get nearly the attention it deserves. Because if you think about this story seriously for more than 30 seconds, you will come to see that it has huge implications not only for future U.S. energy policy but also for the coming presidential election.

The AP story captures, in brief, what journalists who cover the Appalachian coal industry (like Ken Ward Jr. of theCharleston Gazette, whose blog, Coal Tattoo, is a must-read), have been saying for a long time: the coal industry as we know it today is a dead man walking. All the high-quality, easy-to-get coal is gone, and what’s left is increasingly expensive and difficult to mine. In the last couple of decades, coal operators have dealt with this by shifting to cheap but highly destructive ways of getting coal out of the ground, such as blasting away the mountains above the coal with explosives (a practice known as mountaintop-removal mining). But now the remaining coal seams are so deeply buried and so thin that even that isn’t working anymore. As the AP story points out, the U.S. Department of Energy projects that in a little more than three years, the amount of coal mined in Appalachia will be just half of what it was in 2008. After that, the downward spiral will continue. There is no magic remedy, no quick fix: when the coal is gone, it’s gone.

The implications of this are profound and far reaching – and not only for the people who live and work in the coal fields. As the AP story points out, there were about 37,000 coal industry employees in Central Appalachia in 2008, accounting for anywhere from 1 to 40 percent of the labor force in individual counties. "We are going to see declines in labor and jobs, and it's going to happen rapidly" in West Virginia, said Rory McIlmoil, who helped draft a recent report (PDF) on the future of coal in Appalachia. West Virginia is also expected to see a decline of over $100 million in the taxes coal operators pay to mine in the state, which means dramatic cuts in social services and education that people in the region can ill afford.

The end of coal in Appalachia doesn't mean that America is running out of coal (there’s plenty left in Wyoming). But it should end the fantasy that coal can be an engine of job creation – the big open pit mines in Wyoming employ a tiny fraction of the number of people in an underground mine in Appalachia. And for a variety of reasons – railroad congestion among them – Wyoming coal is never going to ramp up production enough to have a meaningful impact on job creation. For better or worse, the bulk of coal industry jobs are in Appalachia – and when that coal is gone, so are the jobs.

More important, the decline of Appalachian coal means it’s time for every political candidate with national aspirations to stop kissing the industry’s ass in important swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The future of these states depends on their ability to re-invent their economies, not preserving a relic of the past. The relevant questions now are: How do we move beyond coal? How do we bring new jobs to the coal fields and retrain coal miners for other work? How do we inspire entrepreneurialism and self-reliance in people whose lives have been dependent on the paternalistic coal industry?

It also means it’s time to stop letting Big Coal spike every conversation about climate and energy policy. For decades, climate and energy policy has been held hostage by bullshit arguments from the coal industry that any attempts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution or shift to renewable energy will bring economic ruin to America.

Well, the decline and fall of the coal industry shows that just the opposite is true: Our future is not dependent on burning more coal, but on getting off it as quickly as possible and creating a new economy based on clean, renewable energy. It may be too late for West Virginia to save itself from the ravages of Big Coal. But it’s not too late for America

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The Coming Decline And Fall Of Big Coal