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Food for Thought
• Are you willing to make that trade?
Agribusiness is betting you will!
• Don’t support pHarming!
• Don’t eat G. R. A. S. !!!
You DO have a choice! Exercise it!
Vote with your $ and friends!
What is the
anthropogenic impact on earth??
By
Dr Jack Paxton
Postmodern metaagriculturalist
Ag is like a bus. But when you ask where you are going and
the reply is “Faster”, it is time to get off !!!!!!!!!!!
obliterates ecosystems with cultivation,
harvesting and/or grazing & Invasive organisms.
impacts many other ecosystems by
withdrawing/adding water, toxins and nutrients!
pollutes ecosystems worldwide with soil & toxic
compounds designed to kill biological
organisms! [ we aren’t all that different from an
insect biochemically!]
depends on huge source of cheap labor, which is
mostly powerless. César E. Chávez
What is Agriculture?
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Production of animals for meat
Storing sun energy: firewood, ethanol, biodiesel
Production of plants for food vegetables,grains & fruits
Management of insects such as bees
Production of Agronomic plants seldom eaten
directly such as cotton, hay or rags
Production of milk, eggs
Production of timber
Production of coffee ,
Companion Animals e.g. Horses, dogs
Fisheries
Last but far from least here: Horticultural crops.
Lawns!
“The classic American lawn is an industrial, shocking-green carpet whose very
survival depends on our polluting the environment and disturbing the peace.
Other kinds of home landscapes can grow pollution-free. A natural-yard
movement is showing that combinations of rugged plants, including grasses, can
be far more interesting than a standard lawn while requiring little mowing, no
spraying or fertilizing, and even no irrigation.
By contrast, the "perfect" lawn is a monotony of color and texture, yields no useful
harvest, and may rarely even be trod upon. But for growing the lawn-care industry
a crop of hard cash, the synthetic grasslands of suburbia are fertile ground
indeed. To replace all of that high-maintenance turf with something more resilient
to stow all that equipment and dispose of all those chemicals would cause a $35
billion industry to wither.” 2006 Stan Cox
Where does your food come from?
How is it made?
It’s your business to know!
A Salt-on Sea 17.8.06 105 degrees
San Marcos market 2500 mile fruit;
Average food item on U.S. plate travels 1500 miles to get there!
Things most important to you!
• Air
to breathe [picture that!]
You would last minutes without it.
• Water to drink [especially in San Diego] See the Salton Seawer! [California Development Company, land and water
speculators, created it in 1905. It is now 25% saltier than the
ocean!] Serves as nesting, feeding, breeding site on Pacific
Flyway after Colorado River delta was destroyed by water
diversions. Now a sump full of fertilizer, pesticides, selenium
and other salts. You might last a few days without water.
Talk about a cash crop! Farmers buy water from Colorado River
for $17.50/acre foot and sell it to San Diego for $275/acre foot!
• Food to eat [good and cheap] You might last weeks without it.
But even that has changed, now obesity is a CA problem.
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Sex, we’ll get to that next!
Human Population
5*10^9
5*10^9
Graph expanded a hundred thousand times
Human Population
5*10^9
10^4
0
What allowed this enormous
in the human population?
Coffee: one who is coughed upon!
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Coffee is the largest agricultural commodity in the world. More coffee is grown and
traded than wheat, rice, corn or livestock. More than fruit, vegetables or any staple of
the diet, COFFEE is number one. In fact, it's the third leading commodity after
petroleum and strategic metals. More than automobiles, steel, and technology. Add
all of those together and it couldn't touch coffee. Why? Because coffee is addictive.
There's another problem. Coffee is also the most heavily sprayed of all agricultural
commodities. It is grown in regions where there are very few restrictions, regulations
or protections regarding pesticide use. The environmental impact is tremendous.
Coffee doesn't grow in Kansas, it grows in and around the rain forest. In fact, rain
forest has been destroyed to plant coffee farms.
The fact is that coffee is a terribly inefficient and incredibly labor-intensive crop.
Coffee is the seed of a cherry from a tree. Coffee cherries ripen at different times, so
they have to be picked by hand. It takes approximately 2,000 Arabica cherries to
produce just one pound of roasted coffee. Since each cherry contains two beans,
your one pound of coffee is derived from 4,000 coffee beans. The average coffee tree
only produces one to two pounds of mastered coffee per year and takes four to five
years to produce its first crop.
Do the math. The world demand is 6 billion kg per year. That's 13 billion pounds. If
the average tree produces one to two pounds of roasted coffee per year, this 13
billion pounds of coffee requires at least 7 billion coffee trees. The average farmer
gets about 100 trees per acre, which means that 70 million acres of the most fertile
land on this planet is devoted entirely to growing a product with no nutritional value;
one that actually has proven and significant anti-nutrient properties, that is addictive
and that contributes to a long list of disease states.
g
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/circ1182/pdf/06SanJoaquinValley.pdf
Liberal, Kansas drawdown
Solutions
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Gardens, Farmer’s Markets
Slow food group
Organic Foods [get off the bus]
CSA Community Supported Agriculture
Hunting & Gathering at places like Trader Joe’s
Use hemp cloth
Eat lower on the food chain.
[By 2012 Governor says Foie gras is out!
Have you tried ortolan?]
• Yours? “Soylent Green”?
A tomato grows in San Marcos [storm sewer]
Things to do
• Read “In defense of Food: An eater’s Manifesto” 2008
Michael Pollan
http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php
and “The Lawn: A history of an American Obsession”
Virginia Scott Jenkins
• Hungry for a change? View “Food, Inc” 2009 movie
http://www.foodincmovie.com/
and “The Price of Bounty” on reserve in Geisel Library
More things to do:
• Read and respond to “ The Omnivore’s
Dilemma” 2006
• http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/maga
zine/12policy-t.html “Farmer in Chief”
• Visit
http://www.sacbee.com/static/live/news/projects/denial/ or
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/cheap-food/bourne-text