Bruce W. Morlan Thinks Out Loud

A headline “Food is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming” raises alarm flags in my sustainability brain.  We already believe that BigAg is much more bottom line oriented than farmers, where I define farming as a calling, not a profession. Given that, my old advice that if you would control something you’d better own it (because governments are only as principled as their polls will let them be) is very much on my mind today.

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The Japanese are having trouble finding enough engineers and scientists … what a surprise. In the 80’s we (the USA) got worried about the choices our youth were making (more arts, less math and science). Now that trend has gone overseas.

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While reading about ICE I  was reminded that some wag once said “the only thing worse than an inefficient government is an efficient government. That’s why we like our Congress to be ruled by one mob while the President is from the Opposition.”

Consider the government’s own “Expect More” program. An interesting diversion if you don’t like the weather outside. Is this graph a sign of hope or a cause for despair?

A recent story in ScienceNews suggests that committees (those oft denigrated collections of people) are actually decision-impaired if they are too large. The US, with its mid-sized cabinet, is an example of a society approaching the “tipping point” of 20 members. Another argument for smaller government?

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NPR, in a break from it’s usual coverage, spent 10 minutes or so interviewing Anh Duong, a women who escaped from Vietnam before the North Vietnamese took over. Her stand on freedom and her desire to ensure that freedom continues to expand was a touching and warm story that left me itching to defend once again, at the top of my e-lungs, why we (the West) need to win this war. It reminded me of the importance of helping people realize the subtle difference between simple colonialism or empire (the old evils) and the world we are trying to build, where enclaves of peaceful idealists can try out their pet schemes without having to build large armies to keep out other idealists with different ideas. Oil may be the proximate reason we fight, but we do, as a civilization, have ideals that we have been fighting for ever since the West led the way in moving humans from capital to freedom at a level almost unseen in modern times.

An offhand comment by Ms. Duong reminded me how we tend to hear lots from artists about how creative they are, precisely because that is what they do, create art. Ms. Duong’s comment that she had to give up her dream of being a writer to become an engineer is saddening to me, as it is my experience that being an engineer (or an imaginary engineer (IE) if full disclosure) allows me to also be a writer, poet and artist. I hope Ms. Duong finds the time to express her creativity in other more accepted modalities.

Reference: 

The Story, Monday, May 5th edition, first story:

You would think that the victims of war would be the last ones to get into the business of inventing new arms.
Ahn Duong was a teenage girl in Saigon when she fled from the invasion of Communist forces. She stuffed everything she owned into a little duffle bag and, along with her family, made her way to the US.
Ahn is now a weapons designer in Washington. She is responsible for engineering America’s first “thermobaric bomb”. This bomb is designed to be extra deadly when it is dropped into caves. Ahn talks with Dick Gordon about what it is like to have seen war from both sides, and her strong connection to freedom.

The creative mathematician. One of my poems,  The Street Singer. Another, more mathematical and philosophical, Soul of Chaos.

Freedom! Peace! Justice! You can’t have just two.

Dave Hvistendahl, in announcing his run for mayor of Northfield, stated:

We do not have an orderly annexation agreement with Waterford Township, so we should annex the township to give us industrial and commercial sites on Highway 3, Dakota Co. 47, and Highway 19.

Whoa! That’s the sort of thinking that made Crazy Horse crazy. Townships are fed up with urban planners thinking that just because land is open and not crammed with shopping malls, industry and houses, it must be of no value and just needs the loving ministrations of the city to make it valuable again. Dundas and Bridgewater have led the way in local cooperative ventures, with both showing great respect for each other’s goals and vision as they forge a new way of doing business. I certainly hope the next mayor of Northfield is a little more sensitive to the needs of the city, which include having a healthy ring of townships that retain their rural character so the city can continue to be contented. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of years ago the movie “Children of Men” showed a world gone mad. Although the madness was caused by despair over the inability to procreate (no child had been born for almost 20 years). Today we are seeing despair around the globe as food is suddenly becoming scarce. From riots to blocks on exporting food, the world is suddenly all too aware of food and the fact that the supply is limited.

“That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.”
Ref: NYTimes (free registration required)

The causes are many, including the usual suspects: Western greed, avarice and gluttony; Western use of food to produce fuel; and Western farming practices (yup, it all the West’s fault).

Not much talk about overpopulation, not much talk about what happens when you pillage the soil without regard to sustainability for a few thousand years. At least there is a little tip of the hat to the concept of the Malthusian catastrophe.

A Malthusian catastrophe is a situation in which a society returns to a subsistence level of existence as a result of overtaxing its available agricultural resources.
Ref: The WiseGeek.

As it happens, we covered this in some detail at a Politics and a Pint (Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed (24 Feb 2008)) at the Contented Cow.

There is some talk that we have neutered the Western male in the name of taming his violent side. Upon hearing that men in one third world country were sitting around with a sense of helplessness I could only think that that emasculation had been exported. But then, I am just a simple country boy who knows how to grow a crop, how to hunt and clean game and so I perhaps have an inflated sense of self-sufficiency.

In the meantime, world leaders are rushing to Cancún to meet to solve these problems …

“This is a perfect storm,” President Elías Antonio Saca of El Salvador said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cancún, Mexico. [emphasis added]
Ref: NYTimes (free registration required)

Gee, maybe if they met in Mexico City instead of Cancún they’d feel closer to the problem and perhaps save enough to actually be helpful. Or maybe they’re into trickle down economics (which works, but not without angst when the consumption is so over-the-top elitist).

References:

• Science Friday story, Economics for a Crowded Planet

It turns out we are neither. Paraphrasing the great president and philosopher, Thomas Whitmore (”Independence Day“):

“We’re like locusts. We move from continent to continent…our whole civilization. After we’ve consumed every natural resource we move on…”

The only difference between us and Bangladesh or North Afrika is time, unless we find a way to do what the Native Americans could not do, which is to change the mindset of the majority so that they strive for a balance and not just for a victory over nature. A recent story in the NYTimes suggests we are not paying attention …

As prices rise, farmers spurn Conservation (free registration and login required)

While few urban dwellers ever heard of Conservation Reserve, it found support among two important constituents: hunters had more land to roam and more wildlife to seek out, with the Agriculture Department estimating that the duck population alone rose by two million; and environmentalists were pleased, too. No one disputes that there are real environmental benefits from the program, especially on land most prone to erosion.
The program peaked late last summer, with more than 400,000 farmers receiving nearly $1.8 billion for idling 36.8 million acres. Put all that land together and it would be bigger than the state of New York.

The group doing the most to undermine this amiable coexistence is the farmers themselves. Last fall, when five million acres in Conservation Reserve came up for renewal, only half of them were re-entered. While the program has gained some high-priority land in the last few months, in part from an initiative to restore bobwhite quail habitats, the net loss is still more than two million acres.

That is just the beginning, warns Ducks Unlimited, a politically potent organization with more than half a million members in the United States. Ducks Unlimited is concerned about the three-quarters of a million acres of grassland that were removed from the program last year in the so-called duck factory in the Upper Midwest.

Last night at the Bridgewater township board meeting I saw why we are probably incapable of saving ourselves. As long as our public “leaders” are in reality followers they will continue to fold when faced with tough decisions. How can someone run for office claiming to be for sustainability, then turn right around and sell out our tribe? Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull must be laughing at our folly, at least between their tears.

This week the township will hear from Ross Hoffmann of the Cannon River Watershed Partnership (CRWP) about a challenge to corn farmers to see if these new-fangled methods can actually pay better (PROFIT) than the tried and true methods many use. He will present on two challenges available to corn farmers that can let them test these methods against their current planned methods without risking the farm! It’s a win-win-win if (1) the farmer makes more per acre, (2) the land is conserved and (3) our rivers are saved. Join us at the next township meeting, Tuesday, 8 Apr 2008. (Details below)

References:

• Agflex - challenges focusing on corn yields.

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Well, those who live by the sword must be ready to die by the sword. If you believe that the material quality of life (living in houses rather than huts, reading good books rather than painting cave walls) is hugely due to Adam Smith’s invisible fist (and I do), then you are probably very nervous about having the government step in and bail out corporations or individuals. If we have raised a generation of greater fools who thought the real estate market would never correct, then it is not the government’s job to prevent their pain.

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