ThinkLady

How to help Oklahoma become more resilient

The daily pounding of sun, drought, and record-setting heat on the Great Plains is a searing reminder of nature’s cycles and of a changing climate. In western Oklahoma grasslands and pastures give way to sand, farm ponds and creeks are dry or going dry, water wells are low, and ranchers -- no longer able to feed cattle on pasture -- are selling them off at auctions that go long into the night. As the drought monitor above shows, in central Oklahoma things are literally only a shade better and all of Oklahoma is now in some level of drought.

Oklahoma has always been a place with weather extremes. Climatologists tell us that not only can we expect this to continue but that we will see even more variability and extremes as the climate continues to change.

This raises questions: Are there ways to better manage increasingly precious resources such as water, to retain soil moisture, to retrofit and redesign human communities that are resilient and perhaps even abundant in the face of all kinds of weather, and to do all these things so that we manage, maintain and preserve the natural systems that give us life in a sustainable way?

Permaculture design offers an approach to designing human settlements modeled on the relationships found in nature. Central to permaculture are three ethics: care for the earth, care for people and fair share. These three ethics, along with 12 principles, form the foundation for permaculture design and are also found in most traditional societies. Many ecologists, scientists and environmental advocates see permaculture as offering one of the most comprehensive and holistic means for addressing the critical state of our planet and its species.

For Oklahomans, learning about permaculture has, up until now, required travelling out of state, and paying hefty tuition fees in addition to traveling and lodging expenses since permaculture courses are not yet routinely offered here. That’s changed this summer with the advent of Oklahoma’s first full-scale, certificate-level Permaculture Design Course organized by Transition OKC and taught by internationally renowned permaculturist, Scott Pittman of the Permaculture Institute, Santa Fe, N.M. The course starts in less than two weeks on August 4, and I admit to being terribly excited about it.

Two of my Oklahoma City colleagues and friends have taken the Permaculture Design Course and are much more articulate than I am about describing permaculture’s promise for Oklahoma and the talents of Pittman as a teacher. Randy Marks, principal, Groundwork: Applied Design says this:

“Scott Pittman is one of the most gifted teachers I have encountered. He has a long history of putting permaculture into practice and he knows how to convey what he has learned. Additionally, he is a great storyteller and has tales of his worldwide travels as a teacher and practitioner. He has a huge heart and is altogether a wonderful human being.

I took the design course with Scott when I was trying to figure out a new direction for my career and life. The course was fun, provocative and challenging. In itself, it didn't change my life, but it gave me a framework to begin changing my life and my understanding of nature and culture. I have thought of that course and what I learned there virtually every day since, and believe now more than ever that permaculture can help us forge a human culture in tune with the natural world.”

Oklahoma’s own practicing permaculturist, Bob Waldrop, founder of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative and Prairie Rose Permaculture, and one of the teachers for the upcoming Oklahoma PDC, sees permaculture as an essential investment in an age of uncertainty.

“Permaculture, with its focus on caring for people, caring for the planet, and having a care for the future, has helped me design adaptations to my house that make it possible for us to be comfortable, at low cost, even as the weather seems to be becoming more extreme – heat and drought in the summer, cold and ice in the winter. The money I am spending on those renovations is certainly the best financial investment I have ever made, since it has reduced my monthly energy bills. 

Like many in the baby boom generation, I am concerned about retirement in an age of great economic uncertainty. A significant component of my retirement plan is a debt-free house with very low operating costs. By spending money now on these permaculture design renovations, while I have a job and income, I am reducing my cost of living, not only in the present, but also later on, when I retire and my income is much lower. Every dollar I don’t have to spend during retirement is probably a hundred dollars I don’t have to save, so the advantages of permaculture design for anyone approaching retirement are very clear and compelling.”

Deadline for enrolling in the course is Tues., Aug. 2. Full details on registering for the course, payment, dates, times, location, syllabus and other pertinent details can be found online here.

Technorati Tags: agriculture,awareness,climate change,ecology,green living,hope,inspiration,nature,permaculture,resilience,social justice,sustainability

When being a greenhorn means hope

Tricia Dameron, a.k.a Oklavore

My friend Tricia Dameron, 30, has been blogging as Okla-vore since 2007. In her blog she passionately explores her interest in all sorts of foodie things: cooking, baking, preserving, eating, shopping, food culture and traditions, endangered food ways, farming, ranching. Tricia brings an adventurous spirit, indefatigable curiosity and plucky, self-deprecating humor to her blogging endeavors, sharing her triumphs and failures so we can all learn from them, and I’ve come to greatly appreciate her careful research and knowledge.

Because of her passion for fresh, healthy local food and farming, Tricia’s organized a very cool event – happening Saturday night, June 25th – the Oklahoma premiere of the film The Greenhorns, at IAO Gallery. The documentary …

“ … explores the lives of America's young farming community - its spirit, practices, and needs. It is the filmmaker's hope that by broadcasting the stories and voices of these young farmers, we can build the case for those considering a career in agriculture - to embolden them, to entice them, and to recruit them into farming.”

According to the film’s website, there are very compelling reasons for the making of Greenhorns:

“The average farmer is 57. America loses two acres of farmland per minute. One third of today's kindergarteners will develop type 2 diabetes. The last 30 years have seen a protracted crisis in American agriculture. We have fewer farmers, less land, a degraded soil base and intensifying corporate control over production, processing and technology.”

So we’ve got plenty of reasons to be concerned about current the state of agriculture, but here, joyfully, energetically, enthusiastically, ebulliently enter The Greenhorns and Tricia. Both give us plenty of reasons to hope. 

Technorati Tags: Film,hope,agriculture,awareness,change,sustainability,local food

Sobering up

Part 3 of Wake-up calls, insurance and having a plan

Here’s a sobering fact: Grocery stores in general seldom have more than a three-day supply of food.

Add to that this little gem: According to the “Kerr Center Centennial Report: Closer to Home: Healthier Food, Farms, and Families in Oklahoma,” Oklahoma imports a large number of basic food items from out-of-state; 90–100 percent for many things that are backbones of a nutritious pantry. Example: We import 100 percent of the lettuce we eat, 99 percent of onions, 98.2 percent of the tomatoes we consume. More detail on Oklahoma’s import/export situation here.

Southern California's Imperial Valley produces about 80 percent of the nation's winter vegetables, and according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the whole state produces nearly half of U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables.

Most of the food we eat is shipped an average of 1,500 miles or more due to globalization. The aggregate share of of food imported from outside the U.S. in 2005 was 15 percent based on volume. Needless to say, the globalized food system we now have makes us vulnerable to all kinds of crises elsewhere in the nation and world.

More sobering. Households in general seldom have more than a one-week supply of food. We tend to think the stores will always be open and fully stocked with just what we need, just in time. Katrina and now Japan show us that just isn’t so.

Another scenario: Oil spikes to $120, $150 or $200 a barrel. Since much of what’s at the grocery store is shipped from around the nation and world, prices tend to escalate quickly. During the 2008 oil price spike, the price of some food items increased by as much as 125 percent in less than year, and the dramatic increase in food prices in 2011 has been much in the news lately. This kind of food inflation can eat a significant hole in your overall household budget.

If you’ve got a resiliency plan and/or emergency planning in place (I think the two go hand-in-hand), you’re much less likely to be vulnerable to these kinds of events. Having a food strategy seems useful. Key points:

• Think of your home as a grocery store and stock it accordingly.
• To get an idea of how much food you need, keep track of what you eat for a week and multiply that by the number of weeks of supplies you want to have on hand.
• Buying in bulk usually means a lower price point.
• Stock what you and your family will eat and what will provide good nutrition. Layton notes there’s nothing wrong with buying dehydrated food stuff, but if you don’t eat that kind of food routinely, eventually you’ll throw it out and that money and food just goes to waste. 
• To make the cost of creating your home grocery store affordable, spread acquisitioning out over several weeks.
• Pay attention to expiration dates. Use older items first and rotate in newer items.
• If all of this feels overwhelming, work on a two-week supply first and then build from there (if you want).
• When you use an item, immediately put it on your grocery list to replenish and maintain your supply.
• Learn how to can, freeze and preserve food yourself.

A significant and overarching way to help yourself and your community is to support the growth of, and transition to, a more localized food system. We will probably always import coffee here in Oklahoma, but there are a wide range of food items that can be grown here that are currently imported from California and elsewhere. Having a vegetable garden, shopping at farmers markets, local food cooperatives, buying directly from farmers, ranchers and local producers, are also good strategies for increasing not only your household food security, but of that of our community.  

And a word or two about water. It’s what we need most for survival. You can survive without food for at least 72 hours. You can’t live long without water.

Two ways to start an emergency water supply:

• Take empty juice or soda bottles (use only food-grade plastic or glass), rinse thoroughly, fill with water, and store away from sunlight. General rule of thumb – plan for one gallon of water per person per day.
• For a longer term water supply consider a rain tank and capture water from your roof. You’ll need to purify it but there are some simple ways to do so (see basic steps of food and water storage below). A rain tank also provides water for your garden and lawn and you’ll save money on the water bill, all at the same time.
• Don’t forget to include your pets and livestock in your planning.

You’ll find a brief synopsis of the basic steps for food and water storage here (taken for the most part from Layton’s book with a bit of personal commentary and info from yours truly). Disclaimer: Please note this is a very rudimentary introduction food and water storage and is not, by any means, comprehensive. It’s primarily a few notes I took in reading Layton’s book and doing a little research and decided to share in hopes it might be useful.

Coming in part 4, learning more and growing community.

Technorati Tags: agriculture,awareness,change,community,fear,food security,food and drink,hope,local food,localization,transition,water,emergency planning

Good news for urban homesteaders

Happily resources for learning how to live a more sustainable and resilient lifestyle seem to multiply daily. Just discovered this one last week while on a vacation jaunt to Santa Fe -- Urban Farm magazine.

With the tagline “sustainable city living at your fingertips” I’m thoroughly enticed. The magazine debuted this year and will publish four issues in 2010 before moving to a bi-monthly in 2011. The fall 2010 issue is on the stands and features scads of interesting info. I haven’t subscribed yet but did sign up for their “Farmer in the City” newsletters to get a better understanding of what they’re all about. 

A sampling of article topics in the most recent issue provides an inkling of the territory they’re plowing into:

• vertical farming
• step-by-step beer brewing
• growing micro greens indoors
• cohousing
• seasonal crop rotation

I applaud the idea of the magazine and hope it will prove to be a useful resource. Beyond that I see it as encouraging that its publishers (who also publish two other Hobby Farms magazines) apparently see urban farming and homesteading as a niche that’s prolific enough to warrant a magazine to serve it. My guess is they have market research and data to back that up.

Other magazines such as Mother Earth News (I’m a long-time fan and subscriber) have partially filled this niche, but Urban Farm appears to be poised to speak directly to the particular set of issues and challenges that billions of city dwellers are facing in transitioning to living more resilient and sustainable lifestyles in their cities.

Urban Farm’s website, www.urbanfarmonline.com has even more useful features organized into six primary categories:

• Urban livestock
• Sustainable living
• Gardening
• Community
• Videos
• Books & magazines

As the City Mayors Society noted in 2007:

In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost five billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth.

So from billions of us urban dwellers, welcome Urban Farm magazine. Your debut couldn’t be more timely.

Food, feces and more

Writing the words food and feces in the same sentence is gross. My apologies. They are, however, two words I believe we should be discussing given the state of our food system.

I knew the processing of meat in the U.S. was a highly industrialized process involving chemicals and gross amounts of fossil fuels, antibiotics, pesticides, growth hormones and herbicides. It's why my family and I modified our diet a few years ago so that we now eat mostly locally raised and processed meat from ranchers and farmers we know and trust. We also eat less of it but that's another topic.

Until a few months ago, when I watched the film "Food, Inc." I didn't understand the full extent of how chemicals are used in industrialized meat processing. I was reminded of all this in the article below, which includes an interview with Joel Salatin, an American farmer who is changing the farming paradigm, and features "Food, Inc.," a film full of info I believe most people don't know. For instance, the food industry's answer to the inevitable fecal contamination of meat that occurs in the highly industrialized slaughtering and butchering process is to dump the meat in ammonia and then tell us, the eating public, to make sure we cook the meat at a high enough temperature to kill the contamination. Yes ... really. 

This, and many other reasons, is why I'm an advocate for changing our food system.

Highlights from the interview in The Observer with Joel Salatin and from Food, Inc., which is premiering in the U.K., and premiered in the U.S. last year, are below. "Food, Inc.," is now available on Netflix DVD and Instant View. Hat tip to Peak Oil Hausfrau for sending the article my way.   

Interview: Joel Salatin

Gaby wood

The Observer, Sun. 31 Jan 2010

Joel Salatin is America's most celebrated pioneer of chemical-free farming – but if you want to taste his beef or chicken you'll have to move to Virginia. He talks to Gaby Wood about why local is best and his role in the documentary “Food, Inc” which attacks the giants of industrialised food production.

Some highlights from a discussion of the film:

· In the 1970s, the top five beef packers controlled 25% of the market; now the top four control more than 80% – meaning that if ever meat is tainted by bacteria or chemicals it has the potential to reach vast numbers of people.

· 1972, 50,000 food safety inspections were conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration, and three decades later that number had gone down to 9,164.

· 70% of all processed foods have some genetically modified ingredient.

· In 2007, E coli from food affected 73,000 Americans – something the film correlates directly with the increase in consumption of processed foods and the scale and cleanliness of the country's huge industrial slaughterhouses

From the interview with Salatin:

"What happens is all these things we're seeing – campylobacter, E coli, mad cow, listeria, salmonella, that weren't even in the lexicon 30 years ago – that is the industrial paradigm exceeding its efficiency. So these Latin squiggly words that we're learning to say – bovine spongiform encephalopathy – are nature's language screaming to us: ENOUGH! And the question then is: what will it take for us to listen? And my contention is that Wall Street is still wearing conquistador mentality and uniforms, and nobody is listening to the pleadings of nature saying: 'Enough.'" – Joel Salatin

Films like Food, Inc, Salatin suggests, are finally "exposing the kind of corruption and evil that is the shortcut. What happens when you don't ask: how do we make pigs happy? Well, you view the pig as just a pile of protoplasmic structure to be manipulated however cleverly human hubris can imagine to manipulate it. And when you view life from that kind of mechanistic, arrogant, disrespectful standpoint, you very soon begin to view all of life from a very disrespectful, arrogant, manipulative standpoint. And the fact is, we aren't machines."

"Can I feed the world? That's a wonderful question, one of my favourites," Salatin smiles, having more or less asked the question himself. "Not only can we feed the world, this is the only system that really can feed the world."

From Erich Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation,” and co-producer of the film, and the director of the film, Robert Kenner:

"We showed the film to the head of the US Department of Agriculture and he seemed very sympathetic to it, but his argument was: 'Make us do it.' There is so much resistance to change that you really need a movement. Of all the sorts of reforms, the one that will be easiest to do in the US is food safety, because there's not a big popular lobby for 'shit in the meat' – Republicans, Democrats, if you ask them: 'Do you want faecal material in your hamburger?', most people say no. – Eric Schlosser

"It was amazing making this film. I had no idea food was such a litigious subject. Kevin's mother is asked how his death changed her eating habits, but she can't answer on film because she fears she could be sued by the food industry. I was dumbfounded. She mentioned Oprah [who was sued by Texas beef producers for saying on her show that she would never eat another burger after a segment on BSE in 1996] and I knew about that, but when you connect the dots it becomes a lot more insidious – and in context it made me really scared! We were certainly attacked on a regular basis – several websites were set up to attack the film. We had every word verified three times. We had to negotiate everything. I spent more on legal fees on Food, Inc than I did on my past 15 films, times three.” – Robert Kenner

Complete article here.