Upon further reflection, the readings from the Torah during the Aufruf were focused on the Laws governing who the priest's son could marry, and who is allowed to do what. The most interesting thing is that the book we were reading from wasn't an old archaic text - there was a modern English translation & discussion of sorts beneath the English translation of the laws in Hebrew. There was some mention of disabled people being unable to do certain things, but the English discussion section indicated that in today's societies, "we" do not discriminate based on physical appearances or abilities. It was really good to read - and I like the idea that "they" were willing to write in their prayer book that things are different now. It seems like such a little thing - but the last time I cracked open a bible in a church, I saw no such disclaimers, footnotes, explanations or summaries.
The Rabbi also called attention to readings further beyond the Aufruf readings - the laws that govern certain holidays, and how they tied in with traditional agriculture (he actually said "if you read ahead..."). The laws ensured that the planting would be done on time, the harvesting would be done on time, and that God was properly thanked for these miracles (or something along these lines - I didn't have time to read very much of it). It struck me how very suddenly people have become disassociated with these natural patterns of life. We now have all of these holidays (regardless of which religion may claim you, if any) that have their roots firmly in our agricultural history. Until very recently, we were a subsistence economy. Those laws are in the Torah simply for human survival, to remind people that they need to do certain things at certain times - these rules are important enough to follow that they formed a portion of our very spiritual study, so that we would not forget them.
And currently, these laws seem irrelevant in day to day life to the average person. Very few people know the actual origins of holidays in our society - they are seen merely as a day off of work (or school), or an occasion to go out drinking on a 3-day weekend or an excuse to exchange gifts. We now live in a world where people don't know the very traditions that have allowed numerous generations to survive, to create us in our current form. We all have a very long history that extends back to a very few people - but very few people know how we got to where we are today.
As I am now just finishing up Wendell Berry's "The Gift of Good Land" (a collection of essays), I found this part of the Aufruf service particularly interesting. The final essay, #24 (titled "The Gift of Good Land"), is discussing God, community, and how good Judeo-Christian people are required by their faith to be stewards of their land. Berry discusses how the Amish are so successful at agriculture while the average farmer is not (in the early 1980s, anyway) because they do not rule over the land, but nearly watch over it and take care of it as stewards. The Amish view the land as a gift from God; they don't "own" it, but they are merely borrowing it. The Amish also are very focused on their community and the welfare of all of those in it; they give freely of what they have so that their neighbor may succeed, and they recognize the yet unborn next generation as their neighbors and part of their community as well. And so they treat the land carefully; it's God land, and it is not only for their use, but for the use of their neighbors and the next generation. Which, naturally, leads to very sustainable farming practices.
Berry also frequently brings up "right livelihood' ("right work") from the Noble Eightfold Path, which means that you should choose a job that does not harm others. Berry insists that "others" includes everyone and everything - there is no "right work" in strip mining, and there is no "good christian strip mine". He allows that there is no way we can live without harming anything else - we live on the deaths of other creatures - but we can do our best to have the smallest impact as possible by applying the technologies we have in a responsible manner, individually suited to each individual application.
Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts
Monday, May 12, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
All the good dirt
Yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to find an article titled "The Future of Dirt" on the front page of the Ideas section of the Boston Sunday Globe. Yet another sign that the rest of the world is starting to wake up. I can't remember the last time I looked at the Sunday paper and got that really happy feeling just because they are paying attention to something so fundamentally important.
For far too long has our society looked at dirt as something BAD, not something vital. All those vitamins & minerals that we need to live on come from dirt. Think about it. All your veggies contain what you need to survive because it draws them up from the soil. Unless, of course, we're talking about meat - but where do the cows get their nutrients which they then pass up to us? From the grass they graze (if they are so lucky) or from the grain that comes from, yes, yet more soil. A little thing called the food web - perhaps this is bringing back memories of a teacher & a chalkboard? It's a pretty basic concept, and we can't engineer our way out of it.
When we talk about something being "bad" we call it "dirty". When we talked about something messy (like my house), we call it "dirty." Makes it hard to realize consciously how very important good "dirt" is when we are giving it bad connotations all the time. But we can't live without. Cannot.
So what's going on with our soil? It's eroding. We are breaking down its natural structure and it's getting blown away, eroded by heavy rain, or rendered useless via poisoning. How? Heavy tilling, for one, breaks down the physical structure of soil, exposes more of the soil to the air (thereby releasing from the soil carbon dioxide & nitrous oxide - greenhouse gasses - into the atmosphere), and dries it out. Then it rains, or it gets windy, and it blows away. We over plant it, and we plant the same damn crops on it year after year (as in a factory farm growing corn for feed or biofuels), which sucks all the nutrients out of the soil, and leaves the soil prone to a pest infestation for that particular crop. So what then? We fertilize the soil heavily, and over time, the soil becomes salty and laden with petrochemicals. We heavily apply pesticides, which also accumulate in the soil, and prevent the soil critters (the good ones) from doing their job, and the soil further looses its structure. Over time, we might as well be trying to grow that corn in a sandbox for all the nutritional value left in it. (Surprise - you can't grow much in a sandbox).
Have you SEEN the pictures of how muddy the Mississippi River is (or perhaps with your own eyes)? Where do you think all that mud comes from? It's from our farm lands, our suburban areas, our urban run off. It's filling up the Gulf of Mexico and is creating "dead zones" where fish and other sea life cannot live.
The article mentioned above touched on the Farm Bill (which appears to be completely broken and tailored specifically to the needs of the factory farm and big agri-business, yet the masses don't care & couldn't be bothered), which while giving subsidies to large scale farms growing commodities like wheat and corn, but does not do a damn thing for farms practicing good soil conservation - like rotating their crops with alfalfa or soybeans or beans, which fix nitrogen INTO the soil as they grow.
How big of a problem is this? Even I was unaware of how BIG of an issue this is (or perhaps I had merely forgotten). It is estimated (in the globe article) that by 2050, people will have to survive (on average) on less than 1/10th of an acre per person of agricultural land. That is a downright scary picture, and should be keeping you up at night. We've already destroyed so much of our soil. In the northeast, we are lucky enough to live in a "stable" soil region (but our growing seasons is relatively short, and thus not well suited to large scale production agriculture). But most of the US, and most of the inhabited world live in areas that are defined as "degraded" or "very degraded". The deserts are spreading.
According to the wiki, an area of fertile soil the size of Ukraine is lost every year because of drought, deforestation, and climate change. In Africa, by 2025, they will only be able to feed 25% of it's population. The starvation, increased food costs, and rioting that we are seeing now are likely only just beginning.
This isn't a new idea or a new issue. But soil erosion is a long-term issue, not easily dealt with through temporary legislation or in just a few years of farming practice, and in general, humans have really short attention spans. It takes a great many many years to build up good soil. You can't hurry perfection.
We've all heard the current rumblings about the recession, and even perhaps a large scale depression. Remember the last major US depression? What was also occurring at that time? The dust bowl. Here's a great old-time informational video like you would have seen in the fourth grade, complete with warbly music. The wiki, as usual, has a lot of information spelled out for you.
During Roosevelt's 100 first days of his presidency, he started a major campaign to restore ecological balance in the U.S. It would be lovely to have a new president capable of such sweeping reform, but I am not holding my breath, and I think it is likely our very survival is going to be left up to individual citizens who are well informed. Which is why I write this blog (even though I'm pretty sure no one reads it) - just on the off chance that someone, somewhere, runs across it (possibly while looking for something else) and goes off to figure things out for themselves.
For far too long has our society looked at dirt as something BAD, not something vital. All those vitamins & minerals that we need to live on come from dirt. Think about it. All your veggies contain what you need to survive because it draws them up from the soil. Unless, of course, we're talking about meat - but where do the cows get their nutrients which they then pass up to us? From the grass they graze (if they are so lucky) or from the grain that comes from, yes, yet more soil. A little thing called the food web - perhaps this is bringing back memories of a teacher & a chalkboard? It's a pretty basic concept, and we can't engineer our way out of it.
When we talk about something being "bad" we call it "dirty". When we talked about something messy (like my house), we call it "dirty." Makes it hard to realize consciously how very important good "dirt" is when we are giving it bad connotations all the time. But we can't live without. Cannot.
So what's going on with our soil? It's eroding. We are breaking down its natural structure and it's getting blown away, eroded by heavy rain, or rendered useless via poisoning. How? Heavy tilling, for one, breaks down the physical structure of soil, exposes more of the soil to the air (thereby releasing from the soil carbon dioxide & nitrous oxide - greenhouse gasses - into the atmosphere), and dries it out. Then it rains, or it gets windy, and it blows away. We over plant it, and we plant the same damn crops on it year after year (as in a factory farm growing corn for feed or biofuels), which sucks all the nutrients out of the soil, and leaves the soil prone to a pest infestation for that particular crop. So what then? We fertilize the soil heavily, and over time, the soil becomes salty and laden with petrochemicals. We heavily apply pesticides, which also accumulate in the soil, and prevent the soil critters (the good ones) from doing their job, and the soil further looses its structure. Over time, we might as well be trying to grow that corn in a sandbox for all the nutritional value left in it. (Surprise - you can't grow much in a sandbox).
Have you SEEN the pictures of how muddy the Mississippi River is (or perhaps with your own eyes)? Where do you think all that mud comes from? It's from our farm lands, our suburban areas, our urban run off. It's filling up the Gulf of Mexico and is creating "dead zones" where fish and other sea life cannot live.
The article mentioned above touched on the Farm Bill (which appears to be completely broken and tailored specifically to the needs of the factory farm and big agri-business, yet the masses don't care & couldn't be bothered), which while giving subsidies to large scale farms growing commodities like wheat and corn, but does not do a damn thing for farms practicing good soil conservation - like rotating their crops with alfalfa or soybeans or beans, which fix nitrogen INTO the soil as they grow.
How big of a problem is this? Even I was unaware of how BIG of an issue this is (or perhaps I had merely forgotten). It is estimated (in the globe article) that by 2050, people will have to survive (on average) on less than 1/10th of an acre per person of agricultural land. That is a downright scary picture, and should be keeping you up at night. We've already destroyed so much of our soil. In the northeast, we are lucky enough to live in a "stable" soil region (but our growing seasons is relatively short, and thus not well suited to large scale production agriculture). But most of the US, and most of the inhabited world live in areas that are defined as "degraded" or "very degraded". The deserts are spreading.
According to the wiki, an area of fertile soil the size of Ukraine is lost every year because of drought, deforestation, and climate change. In Africa, by 2025, they will only be able to feed 25% of it's population. The starvation, increased food costs, and rioting that we are seeing now are likely only just beginning.
This isn't a new idea or a new issue. But soil erosion is a long-term issue, not easily dealt with through temporary legislation or in just a few years of farming practice, and in general, humans have really short attention spans. It takes a great many many years to build up good soil. You can't hurry perfection.
We've all heard the current rumblings about the recession, and even perhaps a large scale depression. Remember the last major US depression? What was also occurring at that time? The dust bowl. Here's a great old-time informational video like you would have seen in the fourth grade, complete with warbly music. The wiki, as usual, has a lot of information spelled out for you.
During Roosevelt's 100 first days of his presidency, he started a major campaign to restore ecological balance in the U.S. It would be lovely to have a new president capable of such sweeping reform, but I am not holding my breath, and I think it is likely our very survival is going to be left up to individual citizens who are well informed. Which is why I write this blog (even though I'm pretty sure no one reads it) - just on the off chance that someone, somewhere, runs across it (possibly while looking for something else) and goes off to figure things out for themselves.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Stem Rust... good news keeps coming :-)
Stem rust. I've been hearing more and more mutterings about this recently. I have heard that Iran currently has it, and it would make a great biological weapon on our food security.
Here's the deal. Apparently a wheat stem rust (fungus) epidemic (Ug99) is poised to break out, and is already spreading across Africa, Asia & the Middle East. It started in Uganda in 1999 (hence the name) - not that long ago. It's not a theory - it's already happening. Ug99 is spread via the wind - the wiki page has a more in depth discussion of the life cycle of Ug99, but basically the fungus attacks the above-ground sections of the wheat plant, which decreases the ability of the wheat plant to reproduce.
In the past, stem rust has been a major cause of famines, according to this facisinating opinion piece in the New York Times by Norman E. Borlaug (Nobel Peace Prize winner 1970) titled "Stem Rust Never Sleeps." In the U.S. it caused major crop losses from 1903 to 1905 and from 1950 to 1954. Ug99 is poised to create a global wheat crop loss at a time when wheat stores are at their lowest since the 1940s, and during a time where not only has the world's population increased greatly, but a larger percentage of that population is relying on wheat & grains than they ever have in the past.
So how did "they" stop it from completely killing all of the wheat everywhere? Scientists developed a new kind of wheat - one that was resistant to the fungus and that produced a greater number of seeds. It worked for 50 years. But now, we need to develop a new kind of wheat, and we need the cooperation of the global science community to do it.
Here in lies the rub. As Americans, we have more or less alienated most of the global community (thanks, bush). If we came up with a new & better kind of wheat resistant to stem rust, what do you bet it would be met with skepticism? Let's say, for instance, we came up with the magical wheat and offered it to Iran in order to keep it's children from starving (in exchange for something, I am sure). Do you think they'd actually trust us? I'm not sure I trust us, so I don't really think I can expect a "foe" to trust us.
But that's beside the point. According to Borlaug, while the U.S. was at first very gung-ho on this issue, and provided funding for research & development, we have very suddenly made a 180 and have cut most of the funding. Thanks bush - way to go, man. This guy is AMAZING... in all the wrong ways. I can't wait to see what the history books have to say about him - if we survive that long.
Here's the deal. Apparently a wheat stem rust (fungus) epidemic (Ug99) is poised to break out, and is already spreading across Africa, Asia & the Middle East. It started in Uganda in 1999 (hence the name) - not that long ago. It's not a theory - it's already happening. Ug99 is spread via the wind - the wiki page has a more in depth discussion of the life cycle of Ug99, but basically the fungus attacks the above-ground sections of the wheat plant, which decreases the ability of the wheat plant to reproduce.
In the past, stem rust has been a major cause of famines, according to this facisinating opinion piece in the New York Times by Norman E. Borlaug (Nobel Peace Prize winner 1970) titled "Stem Rust Never Sleeps." In the U.S. it caused major crop losses from 1903 to 1905 and from 1950 to 1954. Ug99 is poised to create a global wheat crop loss at a time when wheat stores are at their lowest since the 1940s, and during a time where not only has the world's population increased greatly, but a larger percentage of that population is relying on wheat & grains than they ever have in the past.
So how did "they" stop it from completely killing all of the wheat everywhere? Scientists developed a new kind of wheat - one that was resistant to the fungus and that produced a greater number of seeds. It worked for 50 years. But now, we need to develop a new kind of wheat, and we need the cooperation of the global science community to do it.
Here in lies the rub. As Americans, we have more or less alienated most of the global community (thanks, bush). If we came up with a new & better kind of wheat resistant to stem rust, what do you bet it would be met with skepticism? Let's say, for instance, we came up with the magical wheat and offered it to Iran in order to keep it's children from starving (in exchange for something, I am sure). Do you think they'd actually trust us? I'm not sure I trust us, so I don't really think I can expect a "foe" to trust us.
But that's beside the point. According to Borlaug, while the U.S. was at first very gung-ho on this issue, and provided funding for research & development, we have very suddenly made a 180 and have cut most of the funding. Thanks bush - way to go, man. This guy is AMAZING... in all the wrong ways. I can't wait to see what the history books have to say about him - if we survive that long.
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