Reposted from The Atlantic Monthly Magazine.

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The Scourge of Agriculture

Steve Grove


Richard Manning argues that looking back to what “nature has already imagined” could be the solution for a world ravaged by farming.…..

	Against the Grain

he concept of the noble savage has existed in the nomenclature of Western civilization for some time. In popular culture, the phrase may conjure up images of American Indians from movies like Dances with Wolves, or aborigines from The Gods Must Be Crazy. A roughly clad native runs around the bush with a bow and arrow, living a simple life that is best described as “close to nature.” But where exactly does our conception of tribal peoples as inherently “noble” come from? And is it accurate?

Richard Manning, who has written extensively about culture, agriculture, and the environment, believes that “noble savage” isn’t a particularly satisfying way to describe tribal peoples. “It’s more complicated than that,” he says. However, in his new book, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization, he makes the case that tribes–particularly hunter-gatherer tribes–live in a way that is fundamentally sustainable, whereas the social system that developed with the advent of agriculture has spawned inequality and famine, and has had an immense environmental impact in a period of time (about 10,000 years) that pales in comparison to the history of human life on the planet (about 4 million years).

While arguments against agriculture have gained steam in the past few decades, they have centered mostly on the debate over twentieth-century developments like the Green Revolution or genetically modified crops. Manning’s scope is much broader than that, and extends to the very origin of agricultural societies. He argues that a major change took place among humans when we discovered agriculture–and began to move toward an ethos of dominance based on the practice of domestication.

“Domestication is a human-driven evolution,” Manning writes, “a fundamental shift in which human selection exerts enough pressure on the wild plant that it is visibly and irreversibly changed, its genes altered.” Paradoxically, Manning explains, domestication helped create a society that was even more affected by the vagaries of nature than hunter-gatherer societies. This is because the kind of agriculture we came to practice was tied to a catastrophic relationship with the earth: the clearing of large tracts of land to put a single crop under till. That practice began to destroy diversity–the fundamental strength of all natural systems.

In Against the Grain, Manning looks beyond the environmental effects of agriculture and civilization, which have already been well documented, and explores what these inventions have done to the quality of human life on the planet. Agriculture gave us surplus, surplus gave us wealth, and wealth gave us hierarchies that necessarily created an underclass. “If we are to seek ways in which humans differ from all other species, this dichotomy [between rich and poor] would head the list,” Manning writes. “Evolution does not equip us to deal with abundance.” The industrial agriculture showcased in twentieth-century America–fueled by government subsidy and the “dumping” of surplus grain in foreign markets and characterized by the shift toward processed food–has resulted in the obesity of the developed world and the malnutrition of the developing one.

Readers may find Manning’s proposed solutions to the problems caused by agriculture to be surprising. While one might expect him to encourage civilization to abandon agriculture in favor of something more “noble,” in this interview he suggests that we should embrace it. In fact, the key to combating the problems we’ve created through agriculture lies in utilizing the very environmental manipulations we’ve relied on to domesticate our environment–but in different ways.

Manning is the author of Last Stand, A Good House, Grassland, One Round River, and Food’s Frontier. He lives in Montana.

We spoke by telephone on March 5, 2004.

 

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Richard Manning

I found your subtitle, “How agriculture hijacked civilization,” to be a bit confusing, given that you seem to be saying that agriculture and civilization are basically synonymous. Can you explain what you meant?

Actually, I agree with you. However, there’s an interesting caveat to that: we always think that agriculture allowed sedentism, which gave people time to create civilization and art. But the evidence that’s emerging from the archeological record suggests that sedentism came first, and then agriculture. This occurred near river mouths, where people depended on seafood, especially salmon. These were probably enormously abundant cultures that had an enormous amount of leisure time–they just had to wait for the salmon runs to occur. There are some good records of those communities, and from the skeleton remains we can see that they got up to 95 percent of their nutrients from salmon and ocean-derived sources. Along the way, they developed highly refined art–something we always associate with agriculture.

The discovery of agriculture, you write, led to a shift in the way we interacted with our environment, toward an ethos of “dominance.” It’s hard not to envision agriculture as something that reflects an inherent drive within man to defeat, or at least tame, nature. But you also argue that the development of agriculture was just “opportunism.” Does agriculture come from a desire to dominate, or was it just one big coincidence?

We can approach that from about fifty different angles and not come up with a satisfactory answer. But I think it’s really illuminating to think in these terms. One view is to say that all the damage we see on the planet is the result of our numbers, and of human nature–and that agriculture is the worst symptom of the human condition, because it has the greatest impact on the planet. In this analysis, we don’t blame agriculture–we blame humans.

But I don’t think that’s the full explanation. This gets a lot richer when you look at co-evolution: it’s not just human genes at work here. It’s wheat genes and corn genes–and how they have an influence on us. They took advantage of our ability to travel, our inventiveness, our ability to use tools, to live in a broad number of environments, and our huge need for carbohydrates. Because of our brains’ ability, we were able to spread not only our genes, but wheat’s genes as well. That’s why I make the argument that you have to look at this in terms of wheat domesticating us, too. That co-evolutionary process between humans and our primary food crops is what created the agriculture we see today.

The biggest problem with agriculture–and civilization–seems to be the surplus it creates. You make the point in the book that humans have not developed a way of dealing with surplus yet. Do you think we ever will?

Since civilization began, surplus has been with us. A kind of “blind need for excess” has been driving our culture in exactly the wrong direction. It creates stratified societies. The CEO of a corporation makes a thousand times more than one of his workers. That kind of disparity doesn’t exist in any other type of species. And that would suggest that we haven’t gotten any better at handling surplus–in fact we’ve gotten worse at it.

Dealing with surplus is a difficult task. The problem begins with the fact that, just like the sex drive, the food drive got ramped up in evolution. If you have a deep, yearning need for food, you’re going to get along better than your neighbor, and over the years that gene is going to be passed on. So you get this creature that got fine-tuned to really need food, especially carbohydrates. Which brings us to the more fundamental question: can we ever deal with sugar? By making more concentrated forms of carbohydrates, we’re playing into something that’s quite addictive and powerful. It’s why we’re so blasted obese. We have access to all this sugar, and we simply cannot control our need for it–that’s genetic.

Now, can we gain the ability to overcome that? I’m not sure. You have to add to this the fact that there’s a lot of money to be made by people who know how to concentrate sugar. They have a real interest in seeing that we don’t overcome these kinds of addictions. In fact, that’s how you control societies–you exploit that basic drive for food. That’s how we train dogs–if you want to make a dog behave properly, you deprive him or give him food. Humans aren’t that much different. We just like to think we are. So as an element of political control, food and food imagery are enormously important.

What about religious control? If agriculture creates surplus, which creates social hierarchies, then how has religion affected that?

The control of an enormous supply of food was woven heavily into religious observance. In the early going of agriculture, it was the priest who decided when the planting would occur, and all the religious observances were geared to seasonal changes. It’s all woven into a very rich story–it’s even in our prayers: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

But religion also gets into display behavior. Part of that is the self-denial that goes with religious observance. People fast because it’s the opposite of what normal people would do, so it’s a display of fealty. And though I don’t mean to disparage vegetarians, we’ve all seen that kind of display behavior there, too: the vegetarian who orders very loudly in a restaurant so that everyone knows he is morally superior in some way.

That’s interesting. Do you think vegetarianism isn’t as socially responsible as it’s cracked up to be?

It depends on how it’s done. In the U.S., we use highly processed foods as replacements. You know, rice cream and soy burgers and all that stuff. Once you’re into that kind of process, then the energy gains from vegetarianism are almost immediately removed. But beyond that, you have to look at the way we do agriculture in the U.S. We wipe out enormous areas of habitat. Iowa has something less than 1 percent of its native habitat left. Well, that habitat supported wild animals. So you have a hard time arguing for vegetarianism as some kind of “kindness to animals” when you’re wiping out their entire habitat that way.

If agriculture and civilization have caused so many problems, what about hunter-gatherers? Does their way of life work better?

Let’s consider what happened in America. When European settlers came here, it became a very active policy of the government to try to make Indians start farming. Thomas Jefferson was explicit in that, and he wasn’t alone. But the Indians simply fled–and not only did they leave white agriculture, but they left their own agriculture. Once they had horses, they had the option to hunt a lot more effectively. They put down their hoes, got on their horses, went into the western plains, and became nomadic in places that hadn’t seen anyone for years. They became hunters. Did they “figure something out,” or did they cut a deal with nature that was somehow sustainable? No, it’s more complicated than that, because as soon as market hunting came into the area and allowed them to sell bison robes to the whites, they actually participated in the extinction of the bison–even before white hunters were on the scene.

But even that practice was a result of their contact with civilization.

And ability. So once given the technology, the market, and the ability to exploit that resource in a different way, they simply took advantage of it.

So is there something that civilization can learn from the tribal way of life?

Yes, I think there is something really important that hunter-gatherer cultures learned that we could benefit from. It’s the fundamental idea of insecurity. We trade an enormous amount of freedom in our society for security. That’s always the trade-off. It is our inability to deal with our lack of control over how and when we die that is fundamentally responsible for all of this. So we give up a lot of freedom for the false assurances that we won’t die in this way or that way. I think we can learn from the hunter-gatherers that that’s really an illusion. That kind of security is not obtainable in a natural system–and we are in a natural system and always will be. Therefore, we need to accept a good deal of that instability and threat and danger in our lives.

Seems like a tough sell.

Yes, it is. It’s absolutely a tough sell. I mean, you look at how people sell cars today, it’s, “This car won’t kill you”–they don’t care about anything else. Forget the gas mileage. And look what we’re willing to give up in this country in terms of civil liberties, for instance, just because of the threat of terrorism. You cannot change the reality that the world is a dangerous place. So it is an illusion to think that we can be secure. We would be much better off if we’d simply give up that illusion and say, “I am going to die, I could die at any moment–now I’m going to get on with enjoying life.”

I wonder what it might take to return to that worldview? In nature, when a species adopts an unsustainable practice, nature eventually bites back with a catastrophe, like a population crash. Is that what it will take for humans to change the way we produce food?

People always say, “Well, if there’s some terrible catastrophe, then we’ll learn.” But the catastrophe is already here. Africa is a catastrophe. Asia, Latin AmericaÖ The poorest places in the world are constantly experiencing these very things that we envision as being disastrous.

But not in America.

No, not in America. So far, we’re comfortably able to keep it out of sight. That’s why we don’t read international news in this country, that’s why it doesn’t show up on our TV sets–because we are able to maintain some sort of denial about the fact that one third of humanity lives on less than a dollar a day. We’ve separated ourselves. It’s all around us–we just simply ignore it.

In what ways will the First World “feel the rub” of the problems that stem from industrial agriculture?

I think the effects of global warming are going to ramp up in the next fifteen to twenty years. There’s going to be widespread crop failure because of global warming, that’s pretty clear. And there are going to be huge weather changes and increased wildfires.

Some might claim that free-market capitalism is the best way to create more egalitarian civilizations. It’s tempting to view the free-market as the closest societal reflection of nature’s “survival of the fittest.” What do you think?

Capitalism is a very linear process–we build factories with it. It doesn’t think in terms of complexity, and it certainly doesn’t accept insecurity. This gets us back to the fundamentals of agriculture. It’s a factory system, a linear system. We think of inputs, outputs, and a single crop.

Nature doesn’t work that way. The promise of nature is something called “over-yielding,” the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. That’s why I value natural systems so greatly. They work in combination with a lot of different things, and when those things are together and finely tuned, they tend to produce more than whatever we could replace them with. For example, prairies provide their own fertilizer.

Co-evolution comes up with solutions to problems that are much better than what we could come up with. So in that way it’s unlike how we’ve conceived of capitalism.

You write that solutions to industrial agriculture’s problems aren’t going to come from the government, since the very idea of government sprouted from agricultural civilizations. Are there ways we can apply our understanding of nature to current society?

Well, there are some hopeful things out there. We’re already beginning to accommodate our understanding of nature into information technology. When we start playing around with things like artificial intelligence, for instance, we know that we have to deal with complexity and that we have to design these organic systems that look like nature.

But the big steps come from understanding the genome. That gives us an incredible appreciation of nature, and also the ability to harness the productivity of nature in unique ways.

Like how?

For example, when you go to your local health-food store, you see two kinds of beets–golden and striped. This happened because some people were looking at some wild relatives and natural mutations in beets, and they found that there were two genes that created the red color in beets, and if they switched one off (not using genetic engineering, but a simple “knock-out”), it became striped. It turns out that this variation codes for a chemical called betalin, which is a cancer-fighting agent. So by understanding the manipulation of this gene, and by putting more betalin in the beet, they ramped up that cancer-fighting ability. If we look more into “forgotten” crops, and also wild relatives of crops, there are all these pigments that are coded for in genes. And these genes have many disease-fighting capabilities that we have bred out of our plants. We can bring those back into our crops quite easily and rapidly with the technology we have.

At the same cost to the consumer?

Yes, absolutely the same. The breeder I know who did this in Wisconsin says it’s so easy that he doesn’t have to deal with seed companies. In the “old world” you had to work with seed companies, and the seed company had to recover its investment–therefore things were expensive. But he can do it very quickly, release it to organic farmers, and then go on growing the thing–and it’s a free seed.

That’s interesting. I think my first reaction whenever I hear about manipulations of nature is a negative one. In your book, though, you point out that even something as basic as using fire–something tribal societies did and still do–is a manipulation of nature. And here you seem to be lobbying for more manipulation.

They’re just wiser manipulations. One of the fundamental principles here is that these manipulations are not guided so much by our imaginations as by what existed before–that collective wisdom of nature. So we’re going back and looking at the broader, more complex genes that we ignored before and saying, “What’s in here that we didn’t know?” The principle here is humility. We are not able to imagine the ultimate solutions–we have to see what nature has already imagined and mimic that.

The solutions you speak of seem to have an awful lot to do with organic and alternative farming. That’s fine for the hipster in Manhattan who can afford the whole foods store, or the farmer in Minnesota who can grow organic corn in fertile soil, but what about those who live in poverty? In your book, you chronicle the oppression of the poor by agricultural civilizations. What hope is there for them now?

I know of a project in India which is an interesting case because India, like most other poor countries, is so heavily dependent on rice. But in India, it turns out that the poorest of the poor are dependent on dry-land rice. ”t’s kind of a weird concept; it’s not irrigated. Something like 40 percent of the land area given over to rice in the world is dry-land rice. The poor depend on it for a reason: they can’t afford the best land, they can’t afford irrigation, so they get by on the very marginal stuff, and have for thousands of years.

Of course, science for the last thirty or forty years has been looking intensively at irrigated rice, because such rice offers the most bang for the buck. But there are a couple of researchers in Bangalore, India, who’ve been collecting the local varieties of dry-land rice that people grow in those poor communities. They then compared them against the very best “improved” varieties from the very best of science, and they found out that the local varieties were better. They always yielded–no matter how bad the conditions were–and they had certain nutritional values that the other varieties didn’t have.

So they’re cataloguing the genomes of all these wild varieties, and breeding those varieties with the best characteristics into a variety of rice that, while very close to their local ones, also has some of the disease-resistant and insect-resistant capabilities of the improved varieties. In other words, they’re making a “super local” variety. And then they’re turning it back over to these poor people for free. It’s an interesting case where people are thinking of ways to use technology to intervene for the poor.

But isn’t improving yield just creating more food, which in turn creates more people?

That’s a fascinating question–if you look at population growth in the world, it occurs not only in the most agricultural places on the globe, but also in the poorest places. Population growth is going crazy in places like India, Africa, and Southeast Asia. You have to find ways to ramp up the income of the poorest just slightly, because the record is very clear that if we can improve their income, their birthrate goes down dramatically. I’ve seen it. I was in a village in Mexico where one farmer was making something like 15 percent more than his neighbor, and he had two kids while his neighbor had thirteen. That’s a very common thing in the developing world. Birth rate is most closely related to the income of the family–and that’s true worldwide. The better your income, the fewer kids you tend to have. Education is also important, especially amongst women. If you can educate women, then birth control comes into play a lot more easily, and they have options to exercise. Good agriculture is hugely important in getting this to happen–but not industrial agriculture, which just makes it worse. If we’re able to intervene, we have to understand that if we do agriculture well, we’ll make lives better. But if we do it badly, we’re going to make them worse.

Copyright © 2004 by The Atlantic Monthly Group.

The following article, by the late Professor of Eonomics at Waterloo University in Ontario, was originally published in 1984 in Policy Options Politiques Vol.5 No.2, and reproduced in 1997 in The Social Crediter Vol.76 No.6.

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Doesn’t God Understand Economics?

John Hotson

Interest push is a prime cause of inflation; our policy direction should be towards an interest-free and therefore more equitable world.

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury. (Deuteronomy 23:19)

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. (Proverbs 22:7)

Why is the Bible so down on the charging of interest (usury)? Why did Moses and the prophets of ancient Israel men who felt empowered to write, ìThus saith The Lord” forbid the taking of interest, considering it so great a crime as to be worthy of death? Ö

Why did the Catholic Church for more than 1,000 years forbid interest taking, declaring usurers unworthy of receiving Christian Communion or Christian burial after death? …

Why too has ìmodern” opinion changed? Economists write long books on how bankers create the money they lend us ìout of nothing,” without the slightest hint of tongue clucking or denunciation.

Indeed, most economists could hardly imagine a world without a positive rate of interest. How could we discount future income flows to ìpresent values” without an interest rate?

But how did this great transformation in the opinion come about? Did God change His mind?

As one who is not well versed in theology or moral philosophy, I hesitate to go too far into the questions of the morality of interest taking. However, as an economist … on grounds of practical workability and, yes, morality, I believe I can show why Moses, the prophets and the fathers of the Church were wholly correct to condemn the charging of any interest. I believe I can also show why, with the rise of Protestantism and Capitalism, some relaxation of this condemnation was supportable. I also believe that I can show why in the long run Moses, the prophets and the fathers, are right and the ìmoderns” are wrong.

Interest on loans introduces an exponential element of limitless growth into a finite economic and social system. The result is always increasing injustice and eventual breakdown. There is nothing more powerful than compound interest (exponential growth) if it has lots of time to work.

To illustrate, suppose one cent had been borrowed at 1% compound interest in the year zero (at the birth of Jesus Christ). Picture Mary and Joseph as being able to save one cent from the gift of the Magi if you will. Supposing they could find a bank that could stay in business for 1,991 years and would accept such a longterm deposit, how much would be owed in the year 1991?

We may answer by using the doubling time formula, the so called ìrule of 70”; 2T = 70/i, where 2T is the .number of time periods it takes for anything (T, thus money, population, prices) growing at the percentage rate i, to double. If i is 1% per year, the doubling time is 70 years; if i is 2%, the doubling time is 35 years; if i is 20%, the doubling time is only 3.5 years.

Let us use the ìrule of 70” to calculate the Christ Child´s savings account balance in 1991. At 1% interest, Jesus´ cent doubles 1991 /70 = 28.44 times to $4,016,568, (or about 4 x 106 in scientific notation) and would be increasing $110 a day.

Suppose instead that our hypothetical bank was willing to pay a more attractive 6% interest on the Christ Child´s savings account. How much money would be owed on one cent at 6% in 1991? (Test your intuition here: How much larger do you think the answer will be? Will it be six times larger, or about $24 million? Or will it be larger? About how much larger?)

Using our formula, we have 70/6 = 11.67; 1991/11.67 = 170.61 doublings or $2.2645 x 1048. This is an almost unimaginably huge amount of money, $2 followed by 48 zeros!

The reasons our modern economy of legalized usury works at all have to do with such facts as the following: no one lives long enough to leave money in the bank for many years; lenders spend their interest rather than merely compounding it; banks fail and borrowers repudiate their debts through bankruptcy or by raising the prices of the things they sell (inflation), thus partially repudiating their debts; and finally, in recent centuries per capita real income has also been growing exponentially.

Let us examine this last point carefully. Luigi Pasinetti has recently shown that the only sustainable or ìnatural” rate of interest is the rate of growth of the productivity of labour. If the ìmarket” rate of interest exceeds the natural rate the share of the rentier will grow and the share of labour (and by extension of Pasinetti´s model, the entrepreneur) will shrink.

If, on the other hand, the market rate falls below the natural rate the money lenders´ share of total income falls, at least if we assume that total indebtedness is growing no faster than total income.

Pasinetti demonstrated his conclusion only for a ìmodel” world of a pure labour economy. However, if we extend his argument to a world of money and prices we can see why John Maynard Keynes, unlike his ìKeynesian” disciples, put such great emphasis on the need to drive down the rate of interest if we are to avoid cyclical instability and secular unemployment.

The ìnatural” rate of interest in an economy is the rate of growth in ìtotal factor productivity,” that is, real output per head. Only in recent centuries has this been a significant, though small, positive number. Throughout the long centuries when the Bible was being written and the ìmiddle ages,” productivity gains were virtually zero. Thus the ìnatural” rate was also zero, so the Bible was on this point ìscientifically” correct!

How do we know? By the same arithmetic we used above for the Christ Child´s supposed cent. If per capita income in A.D. 1 was $100 (Which is probably not far wide of the mark) and it grew only one percent a year we would all have a per capita income in 1991 of $40 billion (4 x 1010 ), or far more than the total wealth of the richest human being or indeed of many countries.

No such incomes are available to us, of course, because only in the 19th century had the industrial revolution proceeded far enough in a few countries for per capita real output to rise as much as l´% a year sustainably. Only in the present century did the pace quicken to 2 or more percent per annum, thus doubling real income in 35 years or less. In the 1960s and 1970s, Japan and Singapore have been able to raise ìproductivity” by as much as 7% a year which is thus also the world´s highest ìnatural” rate of interest. However, money lenders have seldom been satisfied with even 7%; much less are they willing to receive only 2% or 1%. Thus the market rate of interest has a chronic tendency to rise above the natural rate.

What happens when the market rate of interest exceeds the natural rate? This depends upon other social arrangements. In the ìgood old days” of metallic money it quickly became impossible for debtors to repay; all they could do was sink deeper into debt as they mortgaged first their land, then their animals, then their wives and children and finally the debtor himself was sold into slavery.

In a world of metal money and zero productivity gains the exaction of any positive market rate of interest had one inevitable result: a society of a few rich moneylending landlords with every one else their serfs and slaves.

Such a result was the downfall of the GraecoRoman, and other ancient civilisations. To avoid this result ancient Israel had the year of Jubilee: every fiftieth year all debts were cancelled, all slaves set free, and all land returned to its original owners. (See Leviticus 5:914)

Ever since World War II, total debts public and private have increased even faster than money GDP and interest rates have increased fourfold. As a result, interest income has increased far faster than any other form of income and has thus been the most inflationary type of income distributed.

By 1988 Canadian money GDP had increased to $598,732 million, from a mere $13,473 million in 1947, or 43.4 times the 1947 level. However, real, or constant dollar, GDP had increased only 4.6 times over the same period.

Inflation is often blamed on ìwage push,” and it is true that total wages in Canada increased to roughly 46 times their 1947 level, or somewhat faster than money GDP. Corporate profits rose 34 times from 1947 to 1988, or too fast for price stability but too slow to maintain the ìcorporate profit share,” which fell from 13.8% of GDP in 1947 to 10.8% in 1988.

Unincorporated business did far more poorly: nonfarm unincorporated business rose only 21.3 times, so that the small business share fell from 11.2% to 5.6% of GDP. Farm income increased only 3.7 times, slower even than the increase in real GDP, so that farm income plummeted from 8.2% of GDP to 0.9% of GDP.

Interest on private debts plus dividends rose from $194 million in 1947 to $45,784 million in 1988, or 235 times; so that interest and miscellaneous income rose from 1.4% of GDP in 1947 to 7.6% in 1988. Another way of putting things is as follows: in 1947 interest and dividend recipients received only 17.6% as much income as did farmers. In 1988 ìrentiers” received almost nine times as much income from the private sector as did farmers.

Moreover it was interest, not dividends, that had increased most rapidly. Thus, from 1972 to 1988, interest increased roughly three times as rapidly as did dividends. In addition to this explosive rise in private debt interest, interest on public debts in Canada grew from $559 million to $50,506 million, or by 90 times.

In light of the above facts it is indeed strange that the government and the Bank of Canada have tried to stop inflation by raising interest rates! Not only is this policy unjust, in that it raises the incomes of the relatively welltodo who lend money (and own banks) faster than it does the incomes of ordinary citizens who borrow money; it is irrational, as it adds to the costs of every business, and it adds greatly to the government´s own interest payments and deficits. Indeed, in recent years the government deficit and interest on the national debt have been of roughly the same magnitude. This is perhaps the greatest irrationality of all, for if the government would take moneycreation back into its own hands, a subject to be explored elsewhere, it could quickly pay off the national debt while greatly lowering taxes.

A government policy and financial system that results in money GDP increasing by twice the square of the increase in real GDP, total debts increasing even faster, and interest income increasing by more than twice the cube of the rate of increase of real GDP can only result in accelerating inflation and eventual breakdown through overindebtedness.

So it was with the prophets of old who knew what they were talking about, not the moderns; or, in summary: exponential growth of interest income at a higher rate than real income can grow, leads to accelerating inflation and economic breakdown. If that´s not sin, what is?

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• This item has comments in the Manila discussion archive.

Once upon a time, a President of the United States addressed the nation. 

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My Fellow Americans

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.

It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.

We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices.

The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation. Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war” — except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.

I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The 1973 gasoline lines are gone, and our homes are warm again. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every day until we act.

The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation’s independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce.

The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue.

We must look back in history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years there has been a transition in the way people use energy.

The first was about 200 years ago, away from wood — which had provided about 90 percent of all fuel — to coal, which was more efficient. This change became the basis of the Industrial Revolution.

The second change took place in this century, with the growing use of oil and natural gas. They were more convenient and cheaper than coal, and the supply seemed to be almost without limit. They made possible the age of automobile and airplane travel. Nearly everyone who is alive today grew up during this age and we have never known anything different.

Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind’s previous history.

World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.

I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are being withheld. You may be right, but suspicions about oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum.

All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope. In a few years when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to two years’ increase in our nation’s energy demand.

Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can’t go up much more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.

But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Gerrmany, Japan and Sweden.

One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years.

Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person — the driver — while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste.

We can continue using scarce oil and natural to generate electricity, and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.

If we do not act, then by 1985 we will be using 33 percent more energy than we do today.

We can’t substantially increase our domestic production, so we would need to import twice as much oil as we do now. Supplies will be uncertain. The cost will keep going up. Six years ago, we paid $3.7 billion for imported oil. Last year we spent $37 billion — nearly ten times as much — and this year we may spend over $45 billion.

Unless we act, we will spend more than $550 billion for imported oil by 1985 — more than $2,500 a year for every man, woman, and child in America. Along with that money we will continue losing American jobs and becoming increasingly vulnerable to supply interruptions.

Now we have a choice. But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs. Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil — from any country, at any acceptable price.

If we wait, and do not act, then our factories will not be able to keep our people on the job with reduced supplies of fuel. Too few of our utilities will have switched to coal, our most abundant energy source.

We will not be ready to keep our transportation system running with smaller, more efficient cars and a better network of buses, trains and public transportation.

We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now. Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs. Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different regions within our own country.

If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions.

But we still have another choice. We can begin to prepare right now. We can decide to act while there is time.

That is the concept of the energy policy we will present on Wednesday. Our national energy plan is based on ten fundamental principles.

The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.

The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems — wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.

The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.

The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can’t continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.

Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.

These are the goals we seek to achieve within eight years:

–Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.

–Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.

–Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.

–Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months’ supply.

–Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.

–Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.

–Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind.

I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.

This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of living, and our future.

Whether this plan truly makes a difference will be decided not here in Washington, but in every town and every factory, in every home an d on every highway and every farm.

I believe this can be a positive challenge. There is something especially American in the kinds of changes we have to make. We have been proud, through our history of being efficient people.

We have been proud of our leadership in the world. Now we have a chance again to give the world a positive example.

And we have been proud of our vision of the future. We have always wanted to give our children and grandchildren a world richer in possibilities than we’ve had. They are the ones we must provide for now. They are the ones who will suffer most if we don’t act.

I’ve given you some of the principles of the plan.

I am sure each of you will find something you don’t like about the specifics of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful — but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater inconveniences for everyone.

But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true production, supplies, reserves, and profits.

The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury.

We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing.

There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country.

Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into an age of peace, independence and freedom.

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The preceding speech was given by President of the United States Jimmy Carter on April 18, 1977. It is reposted from PBS: Jimmy Carter — An American Experience.

Isn’t it about time our current President acknowledged and addressed the fossil fuel depletion crisis?

 

• This item has comments in the Manila discussion archive.

Reposted from the World Resources Institute.

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Time for a Change

Jonathan Lash

Despite two decades of international environmental agreements, and great progress in controlling local pollution in some parts of the world, the data show that the health of the natural systems that sustain us — oceans, the atmosphere, rivers, wetlands — is declining. Failed international commitments to address global environmental problems have engendered growing cynicism and diminished hope.

The threats are real and urgent, but history suggests that the potential for change is real as well.

Imagine it is a hundred years ago: 1904. The first automobiles are being sold; the Wright brothers fly at Kitty Hawk; a wire is laid down across the Atlantic. New technologies are reshaping the world.

But reading an electronically distributed document like this is unimaginable. People and communities are isolated. Most of the world is under the influence of a handful of colonial powers. Racial and cultural segregation is the norm. For the most part, women cannot vote.

The world’s first national parks have recently been created. However, most people believe that nature is inexhaustible, and that wilderness unconquered is wasted. In The United States, there is no national legislation and no national park service to protect newly created Yellowstone and Yosemite parks.

These things changed.

Now imagine it is 50 years later. 1954. Around the world colonial influence is fading. Gandhi has reshaped the globe using non-violent resistance. Women have the right to vote in most countries, but remain largely absent from the political, business, and scientific spheres of life. Across the industrial world, people smoke in meetings, at meals, in planes and trains.

Industrialization and new technologies have more than doubled global GDP, but black soot now coats buildings, streets, and lungs in New York, London, and Tokyo. Cities, factories, and cars release pollution untreated into the air and water. Every coastal city pipes its wastes, untreated, into the oceans.

In the United States, the de facto Apartheid that prevails is at last declared illegal, and in a few years a young black minister will emerge as one of the most powerful voices of moral leadership in the country’s history, enlisting blacks and whites in a peaceful crusade for civil rights. Martin Luther King, his strategy shaped by Gandhi, creates a campaign of demonstrations and civil disobedience that for the first time uses the power of television to conduct moral education from the streets.

A few decades later Earth Day launches another set of extraordinary changes. Aroused by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and by what they can see, taste, and smell, people take to the streets, parks, podiums, and pulpits to demand changes in law and behavior to protect the air, water, and land.

Now here we are in 2004. Women are gaining more parity than ever before. In many countries smoking in public spaces is now uncommon, and no one believes that cigarettes are benign. Environmental stewardship is an accepted, if inconsistently practiced value.

The work of change is around us constantly. And the changes that have come to pass are not accidental. In fact there are a number of common elements driving each of the changes that I described.

Change often requires a catalyzing event, a shift in conditions, or an advance in public understanding. Think of the gains made by women’s suffrage due to the growth of the middle class and the demands of the first World War.

Another key element is the emergence of strong leadership, from both civil society and from political figures like Gandhi, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King.

Finally, systemic change requires years and years of hard work, integration, and alignment. It took decades for legal recognition of civil rights, women’s rights, and the obligation of environmental stewardship to be implemented in any significant way, and ultimately to become predominant values.

The bedrock of consensus builds slowly?or does it? The process of change seems to be getting compressed in the global era. As powerful as the globalization of markets has been, the globalization of information may ultimately have the greater impact on our world. Information and ideas flow frictionlessly around the earth in an increasing torrent overwhelming the significance of borders as barriers and diminishing the capacity of governments to control events.

We have effectively addressed many of the immediate and obvious problems, those that people could see, touch, smell, and understand. What we are left with are the large-scale, long-term threats of essentially irreversible harm — extinction, destruction of ecosystems, climate change. Threats that are the consequences of fundamental alterations human activity are causing in the carbon, nitrogen and hydrologic cycles, and the composition of the Earth’s biota.

One can neither comprehend nor respond to problems on this scale by responding to his immediate place and time. Change requires a shift in perspective and values: A comprehension of systemic rather than anecdotal problems; A sense of responsibility to the future as well as a stake in the present; A commitment to global engagement.

But this kind of change is no more profound than the shift in attitudes towards wilderness that occurred 100 years ago. And just like 100 years ago, this kind of adaptive change of values and understanding is the job of our leaders. It is the job of truth tellers and of open minds. It requires vision, courage and tenacity.

(c) Copyright 2004 World Resouces Institute

Reposted from The New Farm.

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Shooting Star

Laura Sayre

David and Edie Griffiths reflect on nearly two decades in the biodynamic yogurt business.

Seven Stars Farm has been making biodynamic and organic yogurt since 1987. April 4, 2004: Seven Stars Farm is two places, cheek by jowl. On the front of the main building are two doors: one leading into the milking parlor, the other into the yogurt-making facility. You can choose, from the outside, which world to enter; or, once inside–if you sanitize your boots–you can move directly from one place to the other, from the dusty barn with its two long rows of regal cows and the sweet smell of haylage to the clean stainless-steel surfaces and clatter of the yogurt processing line. And that’s the way the people who work here like it. Hay storage, and a few of the 50-gallon drums in which the Griffiths buy certified organic maple syrup for their maple yogurt. “We were in the same world as Stonyfield [Farms, now owned by Danone] at one time,” notes David Griffiths, who manages Seven Stars Farm with his wife Edie (pronounced ‘E-dee’). There is no envy in his voice. Since they started the business in 1987, the Griffiths have expanded slowly but steadily. Today, Seven Stars processes about 1.25 million pounds of milk per year (about three-quarters of which is produced on-farm), makes 175 to 200 quarts of yogurt a day six days a week, and employs 15 people year-round. Those numbers put them in agriculture’s middle ground, in between small-scale growers and processors who can do all their marketing direct and the big companies like Stonyfield who increasingly dominate the wholesale trade. “Do you want to expand the processing side of the business and leave the farm behind?” David asks rhetorically. “That’s just not who we are.” Or, as Edie puts it, “It’s much more fun to have the cows here.” Making milk When you enter the barn, you have to agree with her. Seven Stars is home to an 80-cow herd of mixed Jersey, Guernsey, and Holstein crosses. They all have names as well as numbers, and they all get to keep their horns (except for Cerveza, the bull), which gives them an individuality and even a majesty you don’t realize is missing in de-horned animals. When a Seven Stars cow needs to be culled, instead of sending her to auction they have her slaughtered at a nearby processor and sell the meat directly from the farm. “They’re like part of the family,” says Edie, “I don’t have the heart to send them off to some anonymous place.” “And they make great hamburger,” adds David. Milking takes place twice a day, at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m., two milkers working their way toward each other from opposite ends of the barn. Each cow gets two months off around calving time. “They’re really hard-working, these little Jerseys,” says Edie, who takes her own share of barn shifts; at least two a week. “They’ll milk the fat right off their backs if you ask them to.” Farm at-a-Glance David and Edie Griffiths Seven Stars Farm Phoenixville, PA Established: 1987 Location: Chester County, PA, just west of Philadelphia Size: 350 acres, 80-cow herd Products: biodynamic and certified-organic yogurt The barn itself Edie identifies as a 1950s Jamesway kit-set, rusty and rattling, one among a huddle of low, Quonset-style structures that define the farmyard, a challenge rather than an advantage of the site. “We have an inefficient farm,” Edie explains cheerfully. “We inherited a labor-intensive tie-stall barn,” David later elaborates. In winter, the cows go outside for at least a couple of hours in the morning; when the pastures are green, they’re outside most of the day. Even so, that means a lot of barn cleaning. Over the years the Griffiths have struggled to perfect a feeding system compatible with this infrastructure, moving from small square bales, to big round bales, to big round bale haylage for the roughage portion of their feed supply. Now they are in the process of converting to a TMR (total mixed ration) system based on round bale silage, Sudan grass and hay–a shiny new tub grinder sits waiting out behind the barn. Currently, they buy in organic corn and soymeal, and their hope is that the TMR system will enable them to cut back on this. “The goal is to maximize the quality of the forage and minimize the amount of corn protein,” explains David. One of their two organic vets, Hugh Karreman, has gotten them interested in pre-antibiotic veterinary expertise and the use of rations minutely tailored to the cows’ varying needs; in this regard, TMR may have potential as a blending of old skills and new technologies. The farm as a whole is about 350 acres, with 200 acres arable, 75 acres pasture, and the balance in woods. Although from the beginning of their tenure here the Griffiths have maintained separate arable and pasture rotations, David says that recently the two cycles have been growing more similar, with the arable rotation (organized around small grains and Sudan grass) incorporating two years of hay, and the pasture regularly broken into arable. A simple product line, a delicate product The Seven Stars processing facility is remarkably simple: One room holds the milk tanks, another serves as an incubator, a third is a cooler, a fourth is storage and an informal shop front (you can buy direct here, but only by the case). In between, a large room holds the machine that makes and packages the yogurt: bringing the milk down to the correct temperature after pasteurization, adding the live yogurt cultures, pumping it into the 32-ounce containers and sealing, capping, and date-stamping them. To preserve this simplicity, they have kept their product line strictly minimalist, selling just three flavors of whole milk yogurt (plain, maple, and vanilla) and two of lowfat (plain and maple), all and only in one-quart containers. “If you do cups, you need to have a whole range of flavors to fill out the shelf,” Edie points out. They´re just not interested in that sort of complication. Instead, they’ve established a loyal customer base devoted to their distinctive product. This is pure yogurt, just milk and culture, with no stabilizers, thickeners, or other additives. (The maple yogurt also contains pure organic maple syrup; the vanilla, organic vanilla.) “It makes for a more fragile product,” David admits. “If it gets dropped, or left on a loading dock, it will suffer.” Edie likens it to the difference between a commercial tomato, which can take all the abuse of a cross-country journey, and an heirloom tomato, which can only travel a short distance without risk of getting bruised. If the fan mail is any indication, Seven Stars customers understand and appreciate that difference. A representative letter is pinned to a bulletin board by the door: “Your yogurt is the best food that I know of,” it reads. That kind of following has allowed the Griffiths to expand the business steadily over the past 15 years while relying almost entirely on advertising by word of mouth. They run an occasional ad, Edie says, “more just to support some local publications than anything else.” The Kimberton community Another thing that makes Seven Stars Farm unique is its strong ties to the local anthroposophical community. (Anthroposophy, like biodynamic farming, is based on the teachings of German philosopher Rudolph Steiner.) The land on which Seven Stars operates belongs to the Kimberton Waldorf School just across the road; next door is the Kimberton CSA, another biodynamic farm; while nearby there are three Camphill villages, nonprofit communities where special-needs adults and children live, learn, and work side-by side with able-bodied co-workers. This corner of Chester County, Pennsylvania, is one of a handful of places across the United States where the diverse, interdisciplinary teachings of Rudolf Steiner are put in practice side by side. (In fact, as David points out, “This farm occupies a small footnote in organic history.” Before World War II, a Swedish-born businessman named Alarik Myrin purchased 1,000 acres here and then enlisted the help of Steiner disciple Ehrenfried Pfeiffer–who emigrated from Europe around the same time, eventually establishing a research center at Spring Valley, New York–to start an agricultural school. The Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, now based in Junction City, Oregon, was based here from 1988 to 1997.) In the early 1980s, the farm that is now Seven Stars was managed by the school; but when the Griffiths came they negotiated a 29-year lease. This gives them independence and security of tenure while removing the element of land speculation that can so strongly influence agricultural life, for better or worse. The school has sold the development rights on most of the acreage and retains the option of future expansion on a few fields. Otherwise, says Edie, “They’ve let us do pretty much what we’ve wanted over the years.” But the relationship is clearly stronger than some landlord-tenant links. The school’s sports teams are called the Kimberton Cows, and kids come over to the farm regularly for activities in their third- and ninth-grade years. (Recently the third graders had a sleepover at one of the farm houses and got up for the morning milking.) “I think we do help shape the flavor of the community,” Edie laughs. “I’m always surprised at how the kids really connect to the cows, even if they don’t come over here that much,” she goes on. “And there always seem to be a few kids at high school age who take a real interest in the farm and get more involved.” Marketing on a medium scale The Griffiths say they field at least half a dozen requests a year from farmers interested in emulating Seven Stars. “They fall into two categories,” says David: those who are genuinely interested, and those who are fed up with low returns and are thinking about value-added as a last-ditch effort to make their dairies profitable. Seven Stars makes up to 200 quarts of certified organic yogurt a day, six days a week. To make it work, he says, you have to be in the first category. “We entered the market early,” he cautions, “and so we were able to get into certain retail and distribution channels that are not that easy to get to anymore.” They made a jump in sales, for instance, when they were picked up by the national natural foods distributor Tree of Life. Their restricted product line also gives them somewhat limited flexibility. They’ve discovered that demand for 32-ounce yogurt is seasonal, with slow periods around Christmas and the summer holidays; a schedule that doesn’t mesh particularly well with peak milk production, in May and June. One diversification strategy they have considered is to sell butter, especially since they currently sell their spare cream (from making lowfat yogurt) back to the organic dairy cooperative from which they get their extra milk. On the other hand, when they started buying milk in about eight years ago to meet the rising demand for their yogurt, they had to shift from the Demeter Association’s Stellar biodynamic label (which demands that 95-percent of the end product be raised on-farm) to Demeter’s Aurora certified-organic label, which meets National Organic Program standards. Costs, too, have slowly crept up. In the early years, Edie says, organic vanilla was $25 a gallon; today it’s $200 a gallon, and there are rumors that it may soon climb as high as $250. (One gallon of organic vanilla goes into each 600-gallon batch of Seven Stars vanilla yogurt.) The price they pay for their 32-ounce plastic containers tracks the price of oil, so lately it’s been on the rise as well. A unique perspective on organics Black gold: The compost field at Seven Stars Farm where straw bedding and manure is managed according to biodynamic precepts. Some of their compost goes to the Kimberton CSA next door; the rest gets spread back on their own fields. Balancing these diverse demands is part of what David calls “the unique configuration of management” required to be a successful farmer-processor. It may be that perspective, too, which makes him relatively sympathetic towards the National Organic Program (NOP). “The NOP needs our prayers right now,” he declares. “After 50 years of organic farming and just two years of the NOP, look how far we’ve come. The great thing about the NOP is that [processors] are being forced to source more and more organic product as it becomes available. Before, you had no way of knowing what your options were for, say, vitamin C. Now, if the NOP determines that [an ingredient] is available organic, you have to use it.” Edie and David Griffiths. Life at Seven Stars Farm changed drastically three years ago when David was seriously injured by a big round bale. Today he gets around in a wheelchair and is still actively involved in running the business. Now approaching their early 50s, the Griffiths affectionately class themselves among “the old farts of organic.” Although neither grew up farming, both were drawn to it in their late teens and held fast. David attended the University of California at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, when the legendary Alan Chadwick was developing the student farm and garden there. “I was a better farmer than a student at that stage,” David comments (though he eventually earned an undergraduate degree in soil science). Edie says she knew from a young age that she wanted to be a farmer. At age 19, she went to work at Hawthorne Valley (a biodynamic farm in mid-upstate New York) and stayed almost 10 years, making cheese and selling at the Union Square Greenmarket in the early years. Later, she worked on farms in Norway. The two met on a biodynamic farming course at Emerson College in East Sussex, England, and grew together in their view of biodynamics as the most sophisticated, mature version of organic agriculture. From her first years as an apprentice at Hawthorne Valley, Edie says, biodynamic principles “just felt right.” Pointing to the recent, rapid spread of biodynamic management among winemakers around the world, the Griffiths suggest that “Maybe humans can only perceive the more subtle aspects of farming techniques when they are distilled,” such as into wine. Historically, biodynamics has had an enormous influence on organics, David points out. Moreover, “Biodynamics places an emphasis on the mysteries of life and the mysteries of agriculture; of what we’re doing. That’s something I try to keep alive as a farmer, to savor that awe–to step back and ask, ‘What is the largest picture we can see here?´”

 

©2003 The Rodale Institute^Æ

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Laura Sayre is senior writer for The New Farm.