Reposted from The New Farm.

The Evolution of Natural Agriculture

Reposted from The Orion Magazine.

As the energy emergency unfolds, is the blackout of 2003 a preview of things to come?

Photograph ¦ Edward Burtynsky, Oil Fields #1, Belridge, California 2002
Courtesy of Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco

The Joseph Strategy 

David Ehrenfeld

WHEN PEOPLE THINK OF THE DRAMATIC STORY of Joseph and his brothers, told in the Book of Genesis, they think first of the Canaanite family drama — of a brother abused and brought low by his siblings — ending in one of the most moving family reconciliations in all literature. Less often considered is the subplot of the story: Joseph’s accurate prediction of impending environmental catastrophe — drought and famine — and his masterful strategy for avoiding disaster by taking steps while resources were still abundant.

Sold into slavery, Joseph becomes known as a skilled interpreter of dreams, a talent that comes to the ears of Pharaoh, who has been troubled by two dreams that his advisors cannot explain. The dreams are similar: in one, seven fat cows emerge from the Nile to graze, followed by seven emaciated cows which swallow them up; in the other, seven full, healthy heads of grain are eaten up by seven thin, shriveled ones. The repetition of the theme in two dreams was believed a sign that God was about to bring these events to pass. Pharaoh sends for Joseph.

Joseph’s interpretation of the dreams is that there will be seven years of abundant harvest, followed by seven years of famine.

Therefore, he suggests to Pharaoh with breathtaking boldness, you should appoint a wise and discreet man who will oversee Egypt, and who will organize the collecting of one-fifth of the grain during the years of plenty, to be stored in granaries in the cities and doled out during the years of famine.

AT THE HEART OF JOSEPH’S STRATEGY was a simple lesson: In a world of changing fortunes, long-term survival of an individual or a country can often be achieved by saving during the good years. This is a profoundly conservative strategy, one that must have evolved along with the development of agriculture, which from the early days was largely based on the planting of annual grain crops.

This lesson has been ignored in more recent history. In the 1920s, times were good; during the postwar boom many people believed prosperity would last forever, and they spent lavishly on every kind of luxury. Then, in 1929, came the crash, followed by the Great Depression, a shattering experience for millions. Personal and corporate bankruptcies were legion, and survivors lived the rest of their lives obsessed by the need for savings and insurance.

In 2003, a new generation is repeating the mistakes of the ’20s. We have an administration that calls itself conservative, yet countenances with equanimity a rising tide of bankruptcies and unemployment, and a deficit of more than six trillion dollars. We are allowing our state and federal legislators to borrow against pension plans and Social Security funds as if tomorrow will never come. This fiscal nonchalance shows how little we remember the Depression and its grim teaching: All parties sooner or later come to an end, as many who put their life savings into high-tech stocks have realized.

Our party, like the revels of the carefree summer of 1929, is ending, too. Grave troubles concerning the environment, health, security, food, and water have already begun to arrive. But the mother of them all is the dwindling global supply of cheap energy, upon which modern civilization and global commerce utterly depend. Here is a fundamental problem that will not go away. All of the oil in Iraq, all of the oil in the Caspian region, all of the oil in Russia, all of the oil that may be under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and all of the potential supplies that have yet to be discovered and developed anywhere will not be enough to meet the increasingly ravenous demand of industry, transportation, agribusiness, consumerism, and other modern sinkholes for cheap energy, even in the short term.

And it doesn’t help much to add in other fossil fuel sources: Venezuela’s very heavy oil, the Athabasca oil sands of northern Alberta, the gas hydrates or clathrates off the coast of North Carolina, coal deposits everywhere, and the oil shales of western Colorado and eastern Utah. For example, the petroleum geologist Walter Youngquist pointed out that for oil shale the net energy costs of mining, transporting, refining, and disposing of waste are probably greater than the energy recovered. Similar objections apply to every other source of non-petroleum hydrocarbon energy, including biomass energy from corn and garbage. It is true that we will not soon run out of fossil fuels, but the cheap, oil-based energy upon which global industrialization is based is going fast.

Our party, like the revels of the carefree summer of 1929, is ending. The signs are clear for those who care to observe them.

As we in America are using more and more energy, the rest of the world is making do with less. The energy expert Richard Duncan has pointed out that global energy production per capita reached its peak in 1979 and has been falling at an average rate of 0.33 percent per year ever since. There is now less energy available for each person on Earth than there was in 1979. Duncan has predicted that world oil production will peak in 2006, and then begin to fall rapidly, even as much of the less developed world is industrializing, and its population growing. This prediction is roughly in accord with those of other prominent oil geologists. If it is correct, Duncan claims, “energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 [level] by 2030.”

This is industrial civilization as we know it, a fast-driving, heavily consuming, self-indulgent civilization that lacks inherent braking mechanisms. If Duncan and other energy analysts are right (they seem fairly conservative), we can expect widespread electricity blackouts in a decade or so, followed by the rapid unraveling of our highly complex, highly interlinked, highly unstable, and highly unpredictable globalized system.

At some point, as the price of energy goes up and the net assets and purchasing power of most Americans continue to wane, it will no longer be feasible to ship large quantities of green peppers from Mexico to Boston in January, or send steel for heavy construction from China to Atlanta. Economists will then wonder how we could have squandered our energy resources with such abandon. As industrial civilization starts to come apart, social and economic failure will lower energy consumption, but not in a way that most of us would find tolerable.

There are elements of industrial civilization that few would want to lose — advances in understanding and treating human diseases, research on conservation and habitat restoration, improved ways of communicating over great distances and of processing information, among others. Can we save these elements by changing the system now before it disintegrates? This is, I think, a possibility, unless it turns out that for social as well as economic reasons the system is so dependent on consumption and waste, on sheer volume of buying and selling, that it cannot survive moderation. But assuming the worst case will only cause paralysis of action. And we have a moral obligation to act, because we in the First World have created this system, which includes not ourselves alone, but those people in Third World nations who have toiled and have polluted and depleted their own resources to feed our consumption.

We are well into the unfolding energy emergency — our dependence on oil from the Middle East, where we have imposed our military and political presence and culture, has spawned increasing terrorism and tumultuous unrest. As we dangle from an oil-soaked lifeline, thousands of people in the Islamic world are struggling to apply a lighted match. Terrorism against a vast, complex, interlinked industrial society such as ours is very cheap and relatively easy to accomplish; defense against terrorism is fabulously expensive, compromises our civil liberties, and is not very effective. The best way to minimize the threat of terrorism is to eliminate our most vulnerable and provocative activities, the first of which is our heavy use of imported oil.

One thing is certain: If we are to reduce energy consumption in a way that preserves the best parts of industrial civilization, we have to start now. Now, while we are still sufficiently energy-rich and material-rich to afford the high costs of technological development and to buy time for the changes we need in public attitudes toward energy use. In other words, the Joseph Strategy.

Americans seem to regard our unrealistically low gasoline prices as an entitlement, rather than the heavy social, military, and environmental burden that they really are.

THERE ARE THREE QUITE DIFFERENT COURSES of action that might be taken, each with its advantages and drawbacks.

The first approach is a combination of stockpiling and rationing, a “top-down” tactic that is roughly similar to the one that Joseph used. The energy stockpile most directly analogous to Joseph’s huge granaries in the cities is the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in existence since 1977. The capacity of the petroleum reserve is seven hundred million barrels of oil; it is not yet filled completely.

The U.S. consumption of oil is now approximately twenty million barrels per day, a little more than half of which is provided by foreign oil. Thus the reserve could hold a thirty-five-day supply. If the reserve were used to replace only the foreign oil we consume, it would last a little less than seventy days — the slower the drawdown, the longer the supply would last. By no stretch of the imagination, however, could the reserve make a significant contribution to our energy needs for more than a year or two, so stockpiling is not a factor in any long-term energy strategy.

Rationing is a different matter. Joseph kept strict control of the stockpiled grain that was sold to the hungry Egyptians. A rough counterpart was our government’s rationing of gasoline during the Second World War. When voluntary gas rationing proved ineffective, mandatory gas rationing was put in place throughout the country by December 1942. Cars used for “nonessential driving,” the majority, had yellow A stickers on their windshields, and received three to four gallons of gas per week. The sticker hardest to come by, good for unlimited fuel, was the X sticker, offered to VIPs such as members of Congress. In Washington, twelve percent of the city’s population applied for X stickers. Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, conspicuously applied for an A sticker. Leon Henderson (Joseph’s equivalent), the head of the Office of Price Administration, the notorious OPA which administered rationing, also had an A sticker, and when he made public the names of X sticker holders, several hundred changed their minds and surrendered them.

Gas rationing worked fairly well; people understood that it was necessary, and an exercise in effective patriotism, though cars were far less important in the daily lives of Americans in the 1940s than they are today. It seems likely that some form of mandatory energy rationing will be needed again in twenty-first-century America. But in the absence of a national energy catastrophe, the only politically acceptable forms of rationing are likely to be indirect. Imposing strict gas mileage standards on all new vehicles could be a viable equivalent of rationing. Strict regulation of electricity consumption by outdoor advertising, refrigerators, and lighting fixtures would do the same, as would the mandating of ecological design criteria to reduce energy consumption in new buildings. With such equivalents of rationing in place, we would have the time and money to implement further improvements in our use of energy, and to devote more attention to our many other environmental and social problems.

THE SECOND TACTIC for the precautionary avoidance of energy shortage is technological innovation — like rationing, a top-down approach. Energy-saving technologies are already commercially available and more are being developed.

Obviously it would be ideal to couple the new energy-use and energy-generating technologies: for instance, a hydrogen fuel cell-powered car whose hydrogen is provided by energy from photovoltaic cells or wind generators. But it seems doubtful that truly renewable sources can ever provide even close to enough energy to run all the vehicular and other fuel cells in an industrialized world at the current rate of use. In the foreseeable future, we will still be powered primarily by fossil fuel. For example, in the case of hydrogen-powered fuel cells, pollution and fossil fuel consumption still exist at the original point of hydrogen production.

In times of crisis, people tend to accept strong central authority, (as after the bombing of the Reichstag in 1933, or after September 11), and often find themselves sacrificing their liberty.

Therefore, however much energy we save through our inventiveness, we will sooner or later have to reduce our consumption. But in the meantime, technological innovation that increases the efficiency of energy use and provides more renewable energy is a great improvement over the wastefulness of traditional practices. It is a crime that our government is only paying lip service to most of this technology, when it should be supporting a research and production effort on the scale of the World War II Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb. We should be grateful that a few developments — the compact fluorescent bulb, wind power, and the hybrid car — are moving forward rapidly without much governmental assistance. And perhaps, as profits from energy-saving technologies grow, our government will belatedly join the parade. We can hope so, because technological innovation is the second, necessary part of the Joseph Strategy.

THERE IS ONE SERIOUS PROBLEM with both rationing and the new energy technologies. In this regard, the Joseph story has more to tell us. In chapter 47 of Genesis we learn what happened in Egypt after the famine began:

The famine was very severe…. Joseph gathered in all the money that was to be found in the land of Egypt… and brought the money into Pharaoh’s palace. And when the money gave out… Joseph said, “Bring your livestock and I will sell to you against your livestock, if the money is gone….” And the next year [they] said to him…”With all the money and animal stocks consigned to my lord, nothing is left…. Take us and our land in exchange for bread, and we with our land will be serfs to Pharaoh; provide the seed that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become a waste.” So Joseph gained possession of all the farm land of Egypt for Pharaoh…. And he removed the population [to cities] from one end of Egypt’s border to the other…. Then Joseph said to the people, “… here is seed for you to sow the land. And when harvest comes, you shall give one-fifth to Pharaoh, and four-fifths shall be yours.” And they said, “You have saved our lives! We are grateful to my lord and we shall be serfs to Pharaoh.” (Jewish Publication Society translation)

Joseph averted overwhelming famine and death, but at a price. In some respects, the social consequences — landless economic serfdom — are reminiscent of the changes that took place in Britain at the time of the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in modern Mexico among the Mixtec and Zapotec peoples.

 

	Photograph ¦ Edward Burtynsky, Container Ports #10, Vancouver, British Columbia 2001 Courtesy of Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco

The net results of Joseph’s actions were not only the avoidance of terrible famine but the centralization of power in a country where it had previously been dispersed, as well as the loss of liberty for most of its inhabitants. Paradoxically, he also set the stage for the creation of a powerful regime which eventually enslaved his own descendants.

Both rationing on the one hand and technological change on the other leave us vulnerable to this side effect of the Joseph Strategy. In the case of rationing of energy sources and uses, the danger is obvious. In any rationing scheme, some people get more, others less. There is always a potential for favoritism and manipulation.

Technological innovation, like rationing, also leaves us subject to top-down control. With a few exceptions, such as the solar oven, modern technological innovation in this field requires large amounts of capital and large research establishments; and the kinds of organizations that can carry out this research — the federal government and multinational corporations — are not disposed to give up power. This research and development is not a job for enterprising young beginners. The great majority of people will have little or no opportunity to create any of the modern, energy-saving devices themselves, or to make innovations, improvements, or even repairs to the ones they buy. One has only to think of the sealed components of today’s automobiles and appliances. Some readers of this article may thoroughly understand the physics and engineering of hydrogen fuel cells, but there is probably not one of you who can build a working, useful fuel cell from scratch in your basement workshop and economically and safely generate the hydrogen to run it. Your familiar power company, or its surrogate, will still be selling and servicing your high-tech power generator. You are likely to be connected forever to the company by an umbilical cord that you cannot cut.

Mandatory rationing and technological innovation are critically necessary but we have to remember that these are top-down approaches. In times of crisis, people tend to accept strong central authority (as after the bombing of the Reichstag in 1933, or after September 11), and often find themselves sacrificing their liberty. In the face of a severe energy shortage, how much of our freedom will we be willing to lose to preserve our current lifestyle? Or can that lifestyle change?

THE THIRD PROACTIVE TACTIC for dealing with energy shortage is a largely “bottom-up” approach that does not put us at the mercy of centralized power structures or compromise our freedom. We consume far more than we need to of almost everything: food, space, material goods, and, underlying all other consumption, energy. A popular movement to lower consumption would defuse the energy crisis quickly, at little or no direct cost. Unlike rationing and most technological advances, it would reduce rather than increase centralized control and our indebtedness to energy-giving authority.

Such a movement already exists and is growing, as more and more people take themselves off the consumption treadmill. Consuming less, including much less energy, doesn’t have to mean shutting down. But an energy-sparing life of quality does not come without effort. A thousand economic and cultural obstacles, created by government in league with transnational corporations, make it hard to operate a farm, small business, or a professional practice in a low-consumption way. The spend-and-discard, mall-dwelling lifestyle is easier and more convenient, and requires much less knowledge and commitment. This is why we should not expect a widespread, dramatic conversion until the true costs of our obscene energy (and other) consumption begin to hit home with skyrocketing gasoline prices, scattered blackouts, increasing unemployment, and possibly more terrorist attacks. When this point comes, our hope must be that enough people have pioneered low-consumption ways of living to teach survival skills to the refugees who cannot imagine life without low-priced gas, cheap imports, and the produce of factory farms.

Then we will discover that the ability to reduce our own consumption will give us enormous power that cannot be taken away by higher authority. True, military-related contracts, paid by the taxpayers, can be handed out by the government, but the great bulk of buying is under our control. The power not to spend, at least on nonessential goods and services, has not yet been exploited to pressure our political leaders to look beyond materialism for the public good.

We can only be sold what we want to buy. Europeans have demonstrated this truth with their boycott of “genetically modified” (GM) food, which has in turn spelled deep financial trouble for Monsanto, its largest purveyor. Monsanto has been a major contributor to both Republican and Democratic parties, and few would say that this has not affected national policy. But if Monsanto is weakened by popular lack of demand for its products and by the opposition of other commercial interests damaged by the GM food wars, will this not reduce its political influence as well?

A voluntary lowering of consumption — the end of gross materialism — would bring about many beneficial changes in our society. It would improve our health by breaking the stressful spiral of working more to buy more — and to pay the ever-ballooning interest on credit card debt. It would increase our need and concern for each other as we rediscover that neighbors can share goods and exchange services at great savings and with much joy.

Lowering consumption would also have dramatic effects beyond the industrial world. It would reduce exploitation of children and semi-slave laborers in Third World countries, and would slow depletion of global resources. These countries could then promote a healthy, equitable commerce among themselves by forming regional trading blocs, free of the negative economic and social consequences of depending on Western markets. This in turn would lower the risk of war and international terrorism, and would narrow the now-widening gap between rich and poor everywhere.

Yet ending our consumption habit, both voluntarily and as a result of a growing energy crisis, may also cause widespread and profound commercial failures and economic disruption — possibly economic chaos. This is especially likely if the change is abrupt. A few examples will suffice. The demise of the energy-sponging, automobile-dependent suburbs without adequate provision for the people who live there, and the disappearance of giant malls without replacement of the useful services they provide and the retail jobs they generate, will bring about much suffering. We should also anticipate the loss of the sales-generated surpluses that now pay for the arts, much environmental protection, special education, and many other necessary amenities. Moreover, if local communities revive at the expense of centralized authority, we should be ready to deal with a resurgence of parochialism, prejudice, and intolerance — implementing the transition from excess to moderation will challenge both our ingenuity and our humanity, if the best of modernity is to survive the end of materialism.

THE TIME TO START DEALING with the energy crisis is now, while we still have the resources and wealth that allow us to act. This is the Joseph Strategy. A modern approach will have the three components, each with advantages and drawbacks. A judicious mix of all three — rationing, investment in technological change, and the voluntary reduction of consumption — will serve us best and do the least harm. These components can work well together — for example, in a less materialistic society, wise rationing of energy would not be onerous. And our willingness to jettison gross materialism may well evoke the kind of adroit and farseeing leadership that Joseph provided, but leadership now more by example than by command.

Perhaps our model should not be Joseph in his royal chariot, but Eleanor Roosevelt in her car with the yellow A sticker on the windshield.

 

Copyright 2003 The Orion Society.

 

This article has been abridged for the web. To read the full article, Click Here to receive a Free Trial copy of the current issue of Orion magazine.

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DAVID EHRENFELD is a professor of Biology at Rutgers University. His books include: The Arrogance of Humanism, Beginning Again: People and Nature in the New Millennium, and most recently, Swimming Lessons: Keeping Afloat in the Age of Technology. He lectures widely and has written many magazine articles, including the former Orion column Raritan Letter.

 

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Reposted from The New Farm.

Another period of drastic change came following World War II. During the war, agricultural production had declined by half and the people were left to starve. Imperative in the post-war period was to help the country´s farms back up; beyond feeding the hungry, their food would fuel the rest of the nation to raise the GNP.

Reluctant government leaders began reforming the predominant system of tenant farming, but occupying forces found their changes unsatisfactory. In 1946, the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, enacted a reform bill that forced landlords to sell to their renters all the property they couldn´t farm themselves–anything over approximately 7 acres.

For all its social value, the act did nothing to increase the number of farmers or the acreage in production. The country was still starving. The government tried clearing land and selling it with incentives to encourage new farmers. But with land so dear to begin with, the new cultivation happened in places like far-off Hokkaido and so didn´t entice newcomers. The government encouraged the incorporation of animal power, but still, land was too dear to grow feed or serve as pasture. They fixed rice prices, but because there were still shortages farmers turned and sold their crops on the black market.

What did galvanize farmers to produce more was the new sense of ownership that came with the end of the tenant system. Now that they could make their own decisions, income beyond wages became a possibility. But while the landlords had enough land and money to grow with respect for the future using practices like fallow periods and non-yielding cover cropping, the independent farmers used the land to its full immediate capacity.

Anyone reading NewFarm.org knows the perils of this approach. Further, they know what serendipitous timing this must have been for the introduction of agricultural chemicals. Fertilizers took the place of cover crops, allowing another harvest to come off the ground each year. Herbicides eliminated time-consuming weed control, and pesticides took care of the bugs that flourished in the newly disrupted environment. Thus began the rapid depletion of what little workable soil Japan had to begin with, a catastrophe that today is only beginning to be remedied.

1950 – Present

In the post-War period Japan learned that it is one thing to celebrate austerity behind closed doors, but another entirely when participating in the world market. Becoming part of the international community allowed the country to import what it had once supplied for itself and to export desire for all the world´s offerings.

In 1951, with economy and agriculture still damaged, the nation signed the United States-Japan Security Treaty. The greatest civil objection was over the indefinite presence of American military bases, which would essentially replace Japan´s own self-defense. But the treaty was also significant agriculturally. As part of the exchange Japan agreed to discontinue its campaign to increase farm production and instead import the difference from the Midwest. It would in turn be rewarded with a reliable market for its manufactured goods.

By 1985, Japan was still largely self-sufficient in rice and produce, though it relied almost entirely on the United States for wheat and animal feed. After signing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in 1993, the country lost its final protection against a world whose land is cheaper and more plentiful. It has officially entered into the tricky world of subsidizing grain production and defending their tariffs before world agencies, all just to keep their farmers from drowning in the flood of imported food.

Meanwhile, the move from country to city has beset Japan like so many other developed countries. While farmers in the United States responded to urbanization by pushing farther afield, Japan´s limited land made it a decision of either/or. And farming has largely lost, either by disappearing altogether, moving to the most marginal lands, or filling in the spaces where nothing has been built–yet.

This infatuation with aesthetics not only requires pesticides,
it condones them by default

The country´s agricultural roots are still apparent even within urbanity, whether in the ubiquitous gardens fresh with pea vines in April or in the odd rice fields that pop up inside Osaka city limits. Further, mechanization has allowed for a rise in part-time farming. Now every May, on the biggest holiday weekend of the year, the fields around Kyoto buzz with secretaries and factory workers seizing the break time to plant that year´s rice seedlings.

But the reality is that growing food is a part of fewer and fewer people´s lives. Each new generation loses touch with the origins of what it eats–again, common in many developed countries, but the effect has been profound within Japan´s particular culinary culture. What began as a celebration of nature´s bounty has been abstracted, sometimes to the point of fetish.

Too often now appreciation of food´s beauty has been separated from the reverence it once represented. The new ideal is cosmetic perfection. It is the delicate, hundred-dollar melons wrapped in mesh foam and perched in a locked and softly lit store window as if they were gems. But it is also every piece of fruit in the supermarket, each one polished and laid on a perfect diagonal axis. Today, even rice is priced in part by its appearance. Of course this infatuation with aesthetics not only requires pesticides, it condones them by default. As the abstract sensual experience of food becomes top priority, the process of growing it becomes a means rather than an end.

Organic Farming

And so the farmers pour it on–literally, in some cases. Japan has 3 percent of the world´s farmland, and uses 12 percent of its agricultural chemicals, a grand total six times heavier than in the United States. Because farms are mostly small and operated by their owner´s own hands, the farmers are the ones spraying the average 70 pounds per acre, and dying at a shocking rate of cancer and other pesticide-related illnesses. Looking on the bright side, it is a situation ripe for organic farming.

Actually, the idea of farming without pesticides had germinated before chemical use was rampant in Japan. Innovators such as Mokichi Okada and Masanobu Fukuoka were developing methods in the 1930s and ‘40s. But as in the U.S., organic food didn´t surface as a product until the 1970s. The course it took from there, quite opposite from in America, has handicapped its development.

The hippies in California were cultivating their food movement so far on the fringe that nobody even knew about it, but in Japan organic food appeared on the scene as a popular, even mainstream trend. Though the American way seemed like a curse at the time, those farmers had the slow growth that allowed them to define their mission. Their product was never more powerful than the movement itself. But in Japan ìorganic” was a label before it was a clear-cut method. Wooed by packaging that promised the ever-ambiguous ìnatural” life, consumers bought an abstract idea of health rather than a specific means of production.

Wooed by packaging that promised the ever-ambiguous ìnatural” life, consumers bought an abstract idea of health rather than a
specific means of production.

Popularity and profit naturally garnered influence, but that was seized by the distributors, manufacturers, and their marketing agents–not the farmers who had incubated the vision. The research scientists were predictably swayed to the most powerful side, the one that wanted more ìorganic” products by any means. Before long the definition of organic agriculture had been drastically compromised. Studies showing the achievements of organics were coming from the United States and elsewhere, but the researchers translated them with a twist: California, for instance, is a dry land. They might be able to farm without chemicals there, but in Japan´s wet climate, low levels of pesticides and fertilizers were necessary even for organic farming.

As non-organic farmers saw that they didn´t actually have to give up their chemicals to get the label, they went ìorganic” too. So when the purists made the argument that this method should by definition mean free of chemicals, everyone, including their fellow growers, told them they were flat out wrong.

Salvation came in oddly apocalyptic clothes. There was the Sarin attack in 1995, then the reality behind the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, then the Tokaimura uranium plant accident in 1999. Tokyo, the country´s biggest consumer base, had reality driven home with several local chemical-related disasters, and suddenly environmental health became a major concern throughout the country. After two decades of buying organic products in the supermarket, concerned consumers finally realized the danger of agricultural chemicals.

Japan now has national standards for organic certification, but the system remains plagued by its past. Vestiges of the industry from 20 years ago now promote ìlow-input” food, and many consumers feel safe enough knowing their food has just less and fewer pesticides. Even those who do buy certified organic food can´t be sure of its purity, as the national standards are filled with loopholes that allow for pesticides and the transfer of GE-products and pharmaceuticals into the food stream.

While the paths have been different, even opposite, the forefront of Japan´s organic movement now parallels that in America. Rather than look to large certification agencies to legitimize their practice, farmers and consumers are building relationships of trust that come from personal interaction. The method of choice is the CSA program, and many are not even certified organic–they don´t need to be. After years of ambiguity and deception, consumers are recognizing that the most reliable seal is that of a handshake.

Go to an organic farm in Japan and it will probably be similar to its parallel in the States. Maybe the place will be smaller (and tidier), but they will follow the same methods of cover cropping and composting, and strive for food that looks, tastes, and feels the best it can.

Call a Natural Agriculture farm ìorganic” and you´ll quickly be corrected. To the farmer, it´s as inaccurate as calling his land conventional. They might look similar in using no pesticides or chemical fertilizers, or in promoting the health of the whole farm rather than cranking out a product, but the motivation and the technique are fundamentally different.

©2003 The Rodale Institute 

Reposted from Strike the Root.

Our American Nonage

Craig Russell

The American Heritage Dictionary defines nonage (non-age) as ìthe period during which one is legally underage” or ìa period of immaturity.”  The great philosopher Immanuel Kant, however, offered a slightly different definition of that word in his 1784 essay What is Enlightenment?  ìEnlightenment,” he said, ìis man´s emergence from his self-imposed nonage,” with nonage being ìthe inability to use one´s own understanding without another´s guidance.  This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one´s own mind without another´s guidance.  Dare to know!

Modern State-dominated American society, however, despite its constant protestations to the contrary, strives mightily for the very opposite of enlightenment.  It uses means great and small in its never-ending efforts to keep people in a permanent state of nonage – a permanent state of immaturity and dependence on the guidance, and thus the control, of some officially approved authority.

Take, for just one example, this Labor Day headline from the front page of my local newspaper: Learning can begin at home.  The newspaper apparently wants its readers to think of this idea, of this concept, as ìnews” – as something new, different, not previously known.  It uses its authority to tell us that learning does not need to wait until a child begins his 13-year enforced tenure in the local Government Indoctrination Center , that it can indeed begin at home.  The article then proceeds under the assumption that its readers share this sense of revelation, and that they, further, want to be told how to do this.  A mere parent, after all, probably has no professional training in teaching and will need expert guidance.

A subhead tells us that Daily life is full of ìteachable moments.”  Again, the paper assumes the new-ness of this remark and, in putting it on its front page, expects us to assume its validity, just as, when it runs an article about the American head of state, it expects us to share its belief in the importance and newsworthiness of such an article (it wouldn´t be there if it wasn´t important, right?).  Between these two headings, we see a color photograph of a young girl looking at a book.  The caption informs us that this six-year-old actually ìreads on her own” – a feat so rare and impressive, apparently, that it too, like the article itself, deserves the front page of the paper.  It raises the question of how a mere parent can achieve such success, and it begins to answer it by informing us that ìduring the preschool years” the girl´s mother ìread every day to her and played letter and words games” (the caption added that s at the end of word, not me).  Her goal in ìher efforts to prepare (her daughter) for school” was to ìtry to make it fun for her.”  The caption ended by reassuring us that Mom did the right thing: ìExperts say the . . . family is on the right track to a solid educational foundation.

When we look at the article itself, we learn that Mom ìtransformed baking cookies into a math lesson for her daughter,” and that she ìused everyday situations . . . to teach her daughter and help prepare her for kindergarten.”  But, again, lest we become alarmed at such actions, we learn that she did well because ìearly childhood experts” say that ìparents can prepare their children for kindergarten by using teachable moments from their daily lives, by reading, talking and singing to them, and by being good role models.

Interestingly, while the main headline talks about ìlearning,” the beginning of the article deals instead with ìpreparing.”  The caption to the picture, for instance, talks about Mom´s ìefforts to prepare (her daughter) for school.”  And the article twice in the first three paragraphs talks not about learning, not about education, but instead about preparation for school: Mom used these everyday situations primarily to ìhelp prepare her” daughter for kindergarten, and ìparents can prepare their children for kindergarten by using teachable moments.”  The writer drives this thought home in the next paragraph, when she quotes an expert (who, by the way, is the only male mentioned in this entire article) as saying that ìEverything you do from birth to the start of kindergarten is in one way or the other helping your child to prepare for the start of kindergarten.

Now none of this will probably bother very many people.  Most simply accept the necessity of their children attending kindergarten.  In many cases, they actually look forward to it.  They accept, perhaps without much critical thought, the stated premises of forced government education.

I do not accept those premises.  I see government ìschools” as a prime way in which the State works to keep people as dull and stupid as possible.  What the State insists on calling ìkindergarten” is just the first step in that long daily indoctrination process – a process which will teach reading in such a way that few will ever actually read anything on their own, for their own reasons; a process that will teach history in such a way that few will ever see any value in it for today and tomorrow or look into it and interpret it on their own without expert guidance and interpretation; a process that will teach writing in such a way that almost none of them will ever sit down to focus their thinking onto a page and thus actually find out what they believe and why.  Shouldn´t the idea that ìeverything you do from birth . . . is in one way or another helping your child to prepare” for the takeover of his mind by the authorities scare you, or at least make you wonder its validity?

The article then gives us a rapid fire list of ìtips” from experts: read simple books (as opposed to complex ones?); talk, sing, and play with them (who knew?); read with, not to, a child (parent and child are, after all, equals).

Certainly all these suggestions have positive value.  But why does the newspaper project the idea that we need to have such obvious and common-sense suggestions validated by experts?

The experts tell us, for instance, that the child must see learning as entertainment.  ìTo her,” says Mom about her daughter, ìit was playtime.  It wasn´t learning.  If it´s fun, they´re going to want to do it.”  Our lone male expert, of course, agrees.  Making learning fun, he says, is important for children.

Another expert informs us that we mustn´t neglect the child´s non-academic skills.  We should, she tells us, ìlet your child know he or she is valuable, capable, and lovable.  Help a child learn how to put on his or her coat and tie shoes as soon as possible to develop the child´s independence and self-confidence” because ìif they feel good about themselves, they will feel good about learning other things and will have the confidence that they can do it.  Their self-image is going to impact their ability to succeed the rest of their lives.

They also tell us not to ìpush” your child too hard.  The lone male expert warns us to ìlet your child be your guide for what, how much and when to teach him or her.  If a child becomes frustrated or upset, back off.

At first glance, then, this article offers sage, expert advice about how parents can help their children learn.  But in doing so, it assumes a certain nonage on the part of the parents, who apparently don´t even know enough on their own, without expert guidance, to read ìsimple” books to their children.  After all, what does it mean when an ìexpert” has to tell parents that they should ìlet your child know that he or she is valuable, capable and lovable”?  Don´t they know that already?  And if not, why not?  What has happened in this culture that newspapers see value in printing such obvious ìadvice” from experts?

But more importantly, perhaps, the article assumes a very dangerous stance towards the children themselves, one almost guaranteed to keep them not only ignorant by also forever immature and dependent upon others.

First, these experts imply that the parent has a responsibility to make learning fun for the child.  That a child may instead find satisfaction or accomplishment in learning – that he may, indeed, even learn somehow to (God forbid!) learn on his own, without help from a parent or an expert, without any parent-induced, artificial ìfun” involved – is apparently beyond the approved pale.  What happens to the ìlearning is fun” child when he´s left to his own devices – when no parent or teacher is around to make his learning ìfun” anymore?  Will he continue to learn when the games end?  While certainly learning can have a measure of ìfun” involved, it can also prove difficult, frustrating, even painful.  What repercussions does it have to teach a child from such an early age that learning must always and only entertain him?

Second, they tell us that the child must ìfeel good” about himself – no matter what, apparently.  But does learning always make you ìfeel good”?  Is it ever good to ìfeel bad” about yourself?  Is it possible that something personally constructive could come from such a ìbad” feeling, even when that child is only five years old?  Or are ìfeelings” all that count?  And, again, what repercussions does it have to teach a child this?  No doubt we all want to ìfeel good” about ourselves – but what does that mean?  Are these ìfeelings” objective or subjective, real or imaginary, deserved or undeserved?  And from whence do they come: from within or from without?

Finally, they tell us that the child alone must determine what and when he will learn.  He and not the parent will ìbe the guide for what, how much and when to teach him or her.”  The parent must, when the child becomes frustrated or upset, ìback off,” and any potential learning must end.  The child must have nothing but fun, nothing but entertainment, at all times, and he must feel only good about himself.  If and when these somehow dissipate, if and when he stops having fun and instead becomes frustrated or upset – when this feeling of entertainment ends – the experts say the parent must ìback off” and allow his child to regain his necessary state of bliss.

Can we not assume that such a child, whose parents tell him from his earliest childhood that learning is entertainment, that he must ìfeel good about” himself, and that learning must end on his command when it ceases to be ìfun,” will remain, in some ways, a child for perhaps his entire life – that his nonage will never end, and that he will continue to depend upon others in some sense for his learning and his knowledge forever?  Can we not assume that such a child will rarely if ever make the necessary effort, endure the necessary struggle and frustration, involved in something as seemingly simple, for example, as writing an essay like this?

Even in something as apparently innocuous and seemingly helpful as a front page feature article in a local newspaper, we can see the tentacles of the State trying to reach into our minds and manipulate us for its benefit, trying to keep us dependent upon its wisdom and benevolence – to keep us in our nonage.  Only our individual struggles to learn on our own in our own unique way, only our individual efforts to see the world clearly and objectively, will enable us finally to escape our nonage, to grow up and to become enlightened individuals, intelligent, independent and free.  We must, you and I, do as Kant implores us: we must dare to know.

From the Editior of the RWWNL.

Will We Change?

Terence R. Wilken

Well, I last left you with a thought.  Are we going to have to change our life style in order to allow our economy and the world the ability to gain some breathing space?  I for one think that we need to do that; but we have all become used to the good life.  As an example do you realize that there are now more registered cars in America than there are licensed drivers?  There is certainly something wrong with this picture.  We have turned into a society that has learned to over indulge.

What can we do?  Well the first thing that must be done is to look at ways to save on the need for automobiles and energy.  The first place to start is right here in my home state.  Let me explain.

A study has been done in the Oklahoma City area where Interstate 35 has been under construction for what seems like forever.  They have determined that there are more people that are involved in accidents (some of them fatal) than on other sections of I-35 that are not under construction.  They also determined that the construction also added to drive times and gasoline consumption.  I do not know how much they spent on this survey, but I could have told them that this would be the case without their having to do all that research and analysis.  But then those in California had over 100 candidates for governor.  Go figure!

Another study was conducted on all of Interstate 35 between Oklahoma City and Dallas Texas.  Major construction is currently underway on many miles of this highway system.  It was determined that the busiest weekend of the year for this stretch of Highway occurred during the Oklahoma Texas football game held each year.  The contractor is trying very hard to have all lanes open for this occasion.  In order to insure that this occurs, the state built into the contract a penalty clause.  They will fine the contractor $5,000 per lane mile that is not open by the time that the game is held.  Now for those who think that this is not enough to pay by the money hungry contractor, one must add the final part to the contract agreement.  The fine will be assessed for each hour of the weekend.  Now that is an incentive.

The reason for this analysis is to present my idea of dealing with the energy crisis as well as saving our economy hundreds of millions of dollars and lives as well.  We need to shutdown all football stadiums.  Oh, the games could still be played: but they would just not have to be held in stadiums anymore.  Everyone could watch them on television.  Can you imagine the savings that would be involved?  It would even save all our cities the costs of having to build new stadiums.  The games could be played on any patch of grass that would allow enough room for the TV cameras.  Most of us have to watch it on TV anyway, so this idea would only inconvenience the minority.  That has always been the fair way to do things in our society, and it feels good, so it must be a good idea.

All of this is to show what our country has become.  We had a huge bubble in the 90’s building a technology back bone for all of us to enjoy.  The only problem is that not enough of us bought into it.  Some of us made the decision that the lifestyle that we were used to was OK with us.  We were happy with what we had.  We did not need more.  The bubble broke in our stock portfolio, Companies are having to contract, and now more of us will be in a position of living with what we currently have.  Our lifestyle will remain static.  Is this a bad thing?  I leave it to my readers to answer that question.