Category Archives: Sustainable

“The Future of Food” movie

My wife and I watched another documentary on the American food chain, The Future of Food. Yes, we did watch on Netflix instant, and no I am not getting paid to promote Netflix; we have just found a lot of great documentary films there.

As the title suggests, it covers topics about where our food production is at, a bit about how it got where it is, and, of course, where it is going. It’s a bit unsettling to think that.

I grew up in San Jose, California (and still live here), I can remember farms and orchards in the Silicon Valley, sparse and spread out, but they were here. I also remember watching them slowly fade away over the years. I always thought it was due to the “progress” of urban/suburban development with all of the new people moving into the area. Now I see that it was only partly the “progress” of development. It seems as though things were going on that, unless you were involved in agriculture, you most likely wouldn’t have noticed. One of these developments was the introduction of patents for genetic modifications, or more importantly, genetic markers in agricultural products.

Since I am not a genetic scientist, and my understanding is somewhat limited to biology classes in school and the documentaries, I think I’ll leave the details to the movie, which I recommend you see. What I will talk about is the farmers and the hell that many have been through, and are going through still.

I am not a farmer, nor have I ever been one. My parents were not farmers, but my grandmother grew up on a farm, as did her parents, and theirs on back. There must be some sort of recessive farming gene that skipped my parents and landed squarely on me because I seem to have that pragmatic farmer mentality. During the movie that recessive gene was stimulated into overdrive. While watching, again, what Monsanto has been doing to farmers and our food supply over the last few decades is appalling, down right criminal in some cases.

If the name Monsanto sounds familiar, you may remember it from the movie Food Inc., another great documentary about the business acquisitions that are centralizing our food supply and some of the criminal actions the Agri-MegaCorps are getting away with.

Centralization is the heart of what I wanted to talk about in this article. Centralization in food production is very much like centralization in the financial industry. We have recently seen what happens when a diversified economy gets bought up and conglomerated into a small number of financial institutions; a small hiccup or a minor disaster in the economy can cascade into a full scale depression turning the local, national, and global economy in turmoil. Our food system in the United States is following the same path that the financial institutions have followed, centralization. Would we be able to weather a Food Crash better than the Financial Crash? I don’t think so.

The problem is compounded in one sense because in a financial crash, the government can jump in with a bail-out. Money problems on the large scale are more a matter of shifting ones and zeros than a physical solution, they eventually tie to something tangible, but it takes a long time for it to manifest in a physical sense. In a Food Crash we aren’t just pushing ones and zeros around, it is about getting food to people, it is a product based problem. The government is just not in a position to provide that kind of help. There are any number of scenarios that could cause a Food Crash and the only solution is taking preventative measures and restructuring the system.

Localization and independence are the only real solutions for these problems. It’s the age-old adage “never put all your eggs in one basket” but that’s exactly what companies like Monsanto, Philip Morris (yup, they own Kraft Foods Inc.), ConAgra Inc., and other Agri-MegaCorps are doing. They keep consolidating and it is estimated that if things continue the way they are, within the next ten years 90% of all US food production will be traced to just six companies, oh, and one of them is Wal-Mart. Did I forget to mention them earlier?

So what do we do? First and foremost as consumers we need to be more knowledgeable about where our food is coming from, and what is in it. Another thing is that as consumers we have to realize that we are the only ones that are really looking out for us. The federal government can only do so much and lobbyists for agri-business have massive resources that we just can’t compete with. Our power is as consumers and voters. When we take the time to read labels and buy local, organic when possible, and in general pay more attention to where our food is coming from we are telling Agri-Business that they can’t sneak things past us.

Rebuilding the small local farm industry is better for the economy, better for the environment, and provides healthier food. It is also a more sustainable food supply chain. The distributed food chain is much harder to break than the the conglomerated one. Its not just a matter of taking control of our food industry, it’s also about national pride and security.

12 Lane Highway of Choices

Deciding to head down the road of sustainability and self-sufficiency is very empowering, but it can get a little muddy. At some point you start looking at all of the areas you want to impact, or decrease your impact in, and realize that what you thought was a bike path is really a 12 lane highway of choices heading off in all directions. It’s a daunting prospect and can scare you back into your old habits. But have faith, it gets better.

It usually starts with a specific area; let’s say, independence from fossil fuels. This is an outstanding place to start, but what can we do to get started? The high gas prices of the late 2000s illustrates one way. When refined gas prices went through the roof, consumers fought back. We, as a consumer base, reduced total fuel consumption by few percentage points for 2008. It doesn’t sound like much, but that is millions of barrels of oil, and it was enough to make the oil companies to pause and decide to take a loss in their profit margin to get people back on the road by reducing prices. Getting a dime out of an oil company is an achievement. A few million dollars? Well, that is downright amazing.

Making changes doesn’t have to be a major impact on your lifestyle. If every American makes one change to reduce their carbon footprint or reduce consumption of natural resources or go a little out of their way to support their local economy, it all adds up into a better environment and economy. It may seem like that step is small, but with enough of us taking those small steps it will have a huge effect overall. Some of the small things that have a big impact are things like choosing reusable bags for shopping, taking a walk or bike ride to run short errands instead of hopping in the car, or shop at the local farmers market. These are small changes in lifestyle that can make a big impact on sustainability.

My wife and I have been using reusable shopping bags for a couple of years now. It was a very small change in our lifestyle but makes a difference and it makes us feel good too. We also started walking more, for health and to run small errands like going to the bank, small trips to the grocery store or out to lunch, getting a hair cut, and any errands to stores that are close by. For us, a round-trip walk to the bank takes about 20 minutes, which is isn’t much longer than taking the car.

Once you start making these little changes you tend to start thinking about other small changes you can make that will further your sustainable and self-sufficiency goals. If you take them one at a time and get used to it, incorporating other small changes is easy. By the time you know it, you are making a big difference. Some hard-core activists take on the “total life makeover;” stop bathing and move into a tree hammock. That’s great for making an impact statement, but it doesn’t work for most of us. Take the time to think about what changes you can make that will have a positive impact but won’t be so difficult to follow through with you’ll just give up.

For my family we started by paying a lot more attention to recycling and reduced our “garbage” volume to about a third. Next we moved on to reusable bags, then walking whenever it was practical. Our latest change is in green waste disposal. Food waste that used to go into the garbage can with a plastic liner we now save in a covered bucket. For the time being, we are still sending it to the dump (although not in a plastic bag so it can’t decompose), but that is just until I figure out how much green waste we generate and how much of our recyclables are compostable.

Yup, compost. Living in an apartment complex in big urban area presents a number of challenges that can limit getting involved in activities like composting. There are considerations like space allotments, local laws, and neighbor and building owner complaints. I have been looking at vermiculture and vermicomposting (raising worms and composting with there help) as a good way to convert our green waste and keep it out of a landfill. Because there are some technical aspects of this, it is a project that requires a little forethought and preparation. I am taking my time and working out the bugs (no pun intended), before I make the commitment to my family, the environment and our potential new partners, the worms.

Some of the things to think about if you are considering urban composting are: how much compostable waste does my family produce? How long will it take to process that volume of compostable waste? What is the best system to use? The first one requires taking the time to figure out realistically how much waste you generate and how much of it is compostable. Compostable waste includes most “green” kitchen waste, pretty much all organic matter fall into this category with a couple of exceptions: fatty and greasy waste and bone. These are not good to add to the mix because they take longer to process and generate unpleasant odors and attract bugs. Most other organic matter can breakdown with little to no offensive smells, especially with the help of our worm friends. We ca also include a lot of our paper and cardboard waste in there too, further reducing the volume of material that needs to be transported away.

As you have probably guessed, this is my current long term project. I will be posting more as things progress, for now I will leave you with this…

Think about what small things you can do to make a difference and give them a try.

A win for Keeping It Local!

Today was a good day. I went to Walmart, not to buy anything, but to pay off the last of our credit account. Actually, this was a double win for us and a win for Keeping It Local (a not yet existing organization / movement.) With out credit account paid off we can now close that account for good.

Why close it? Let’s go down the list. First off we have chosen to not support Walmart anymore. Second, it closes an account with a credit card company that charges outrageous fees, which is good for our budget. Third, it is one more step towards moving away from all of the big corporate companies that have bought, traded, and crushed by any means possible, American small business.

Yes, I know it’s a rant. But I am okay with that. I have been fighting to keep small businesses alive and well for years and it just seems to get harder and harder. Locally, at least here in San Jose, California, the city government seems to have a blood thirsty revenue generating attitude. Unless you are a big player or a non-profit, you just don’t count. Small businesses are swamped with municipal, county, state and federal regulations and fees to the point that some people find it much easier to conduct business illegally and stay off the grid while others do everything they can to stay afloat in the current economy while complying with all of the taxes, fees, and regulations.

What happened to encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit that Silicon Valley was so famous for? Sure, tech and bio-tech companies can still start up, and other companies can find incubators to grow them for acquisition, but what about the neighborhood mom-and-pop stores? It takes some work to find locals to buy from these days. Here in a major metropolitan area some of them have survived, but what about the small towns across the country that were basically shut down? Those company towns that lost it all when the company moved production overseas?

I am having a conversation with a friend online as I am writing this article and what I am getting at is unfolding in that conversation. Her son commented on something I had written on Facebook. He posted a comment about buying bike parts at his local bike shop. This is great and it makes me happy to see that. I asked if he knew about the bike shops supply chain. Do they by form U.S. manufacturers or overseas? I have no idea myself. I have plans to build a bike-truck at some point but I haven’t gotten in to it so I am actually a bit curious.

This is where we can make the difference in our economy. Let’s run with this local bike shop. If I go in to my local shop and ask “Where do the parts come from?” I am opening that supply-line dialog. If I get a response that they sell parts from overseas and some made in the good old USA, I’m going to chose the ones made here, and I am going to tell the owner of the bike shop that I prefer to by local, that’s why I am here in his shop instead of buying online or at some mega-store. I am also going to tell him that if he is willing to stock more U.S. manufactured parts I will go out of my way to promote him and his store.

Now lets take a different track. Lets say that all of the parts are made overseas. This is where we start another supply-line dialog, one that begins with asking: Are there any U.S. suppliers? Why don’t you carry them? I want to support your business because it is a local business but if you buy all of your parts directly from an overseas supplier, that is only keeping a small percentage on my money in the local economy.

We have to take the time to get to know who we buy from and how they operate, and it has to be a dialog. We can’t say, “Oh, you buy overseas, never mind.” We as consumers have to express why we are asking and how important it is to us that we support the local economy.

There are things that will be outside the “buy local” ideal. We are most likely not going to find pharmaceuticals produced in out town and they will have to come from somewhere else, but we can control where and who we buy products from. For me it has become a matter of conscience, a personal decision that I am committing to. Keep It Local is an ideal that I am aspiring to. Won’t you join me?

Credit Card Conundrum

Among my families decisions to green up our lives and become more self sufficient we started making other changes, an ethical stand if you will. In another post I wrote a bit about making the ethical decision to support local business as much as possible and stop supporting the mega corps. In one sense we had already started to take a stand on the mega corps over a year ago. We made the decision to close all of our credit accounts as soon as we could, and that’s what we have been doing ever since. This week I close out, interestingly enough, our Wal-Mart card which will leave us with only one credit account and that one will be closed soon too.

Last night we watched the documentary “Maxed Out.” This one is about the credit crisis taking place in the United States, not that this is a new thing mind you, we have been lead down this road by the financial industry for quite some time. My best guess is that the credit industry turned to the dark-side some time in the early 1980s. A time when excessive spending was some how going to make things better for all of us. Unfortunately for us the opportunistic financial industry swooped in like a hawk on a field mouse sunning itself on a lazy summer day, scooping us up with talons of mock generosity making credit cards available to people who in previous decades would have been laughed at just for applying. With the encouragement of the financial industry, spending beyond our means has become an American pastime.

Jump forward two decades. The mock generosity of the past has now turned into the predatory lending practices of the 21st century. “Maxed Out” takes a good look at the credit card industry and the financial industry as a whole. In my case it has been fairly easy to say “piss off” to a majority of the financial industry, unfortunately it is virtually impossible to get away entirely, the banks have seen to that. Just try and cash a check without paying an unreasonable fee, especially if you don’t have a bank account. Most likely you would have to turn to one of those check cashing places, but look out, most of the check cashing businesses are owned by big banks, even the ones that look like local mom-and-pops stores. Don’t be fooled by that hometown storefront, there is a good chance it’s owned by Wells Fargo, the largest player in the check cashing industry, coincidently the fourth largest bank in the U.S., oh and they are in the money order business too.

For many Americans, getting free from debt is one of our biggest goals, but getting there can be a really tough task. Most of us under 50 folks were not raised thinking about money the way our previous generation was. A penny saved is a penny earned, and other phrases may have been heard around the house, but they didn’t affect us the the same as they affected our grandparents. To the generation that was there in the 1930s, it was an important part of life. And here we are, learning those lessons all over again.

For me, getting rid of credit cards and “financial products” is a matter of self sufficiency and keeping my money tied to the local economy. If I don’t have the money for something, I save for it, or make due without it. Keep in mind that the financial industry is selling you services, just like any other mega corp sells you a product. When you use there services, they take money from you, and move it some where else, far away from your community.

One of the reasons we get into debt is trying to make things “better” for our kids. The best investment we can make for our children’s future is not passing along our debt. Something they really could use is a solid understanding about how the money we spend is circulated through the economy. In short, when be buy from the mega corps, and borrow (using credit) to make those purchases, out of every dollar we spend locally, around 5% stays in the local communities economy, if we are lucky. When we spend at locally owned businesses, with money we have, in our pocket, we can keep 80% or better in our own community, and ultimately pay around the same or even less by not including fees and interest.

Basic economics says that a consumer economy will inevitably fail. For the U.S. as a whole we can see it in our trade deficit and the inexplicably high national debt, for individuals it’s there in our mounting credit deficit, our credit cards, charge cards, car loans, and mortgages. There are a bunch of economists that believe our current recession is the continuation of what is already a second depression. A depression that will have to run it’s course deeper down the economic well before anything will truly stabilize it.

As a problem solver, my experience tells me, that when a problem is complex the best solution is to reduce everything down to the minimum necessities. When things are stable at that basic level then, and only then, a slow and steady growth can occur; in this case, for me and my family at least, it means going back to subsistence, back to a simpler, less complex lifestyle, well within our means. Decision making is a lot easier when you know exactly how much you have to spend, now shifting or wiggling or anticipating options, its ether yes we can or no we can’t. Not always fun, but liberating in many ways.

So where does all of this lead us? For me and mine it is comes down to; keep money as local as possible, while it is yours and when you spend it, don’t use credit, and as always support locally produced goods, services, and merchants. It is the American Middle Class that will save our economy, not the government or big business.

The Social Contract

Last night we watched a couple of documentaries; “No Impact Man: The Documentary” and “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price”.

No Impact Man was a decent film, a bit slow in pacing but it seemed to be a relatively honest effort at showing the Beaven family during there one year experiment. While I respect Colin’s efforts, and certainly the fruits that have come from the experiment, it didn’t seem like a very well thought out “experiment”. The project seems to have been born as a whimsical promotional stunt for a documentary and book. In the end though Colin seems to have taken things in a much more serious light and grown personally from the experience.

For anyone interested in reducing their carbon footprint and making a serious commitment to greening up their life No Impact Man is an interesting look at the extreme commitment of the Beaven’s for one year. The movie is available on Netflix instant view.

A movie we watched a while ago that may help with making up your mind about buying locally produced food is “Food Inc” also available on Netflix instant view. This documentary can be harsh at some points in the film but it is a very good look at the industrialization of the food production in the United States and how that has caused some major damage to the food structure and our economy.

The other film we watched last night, you guessed it… on Netflix instant view, was “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price”. This film was obviously made with an agenda but that doesn’t change the core facts of the movie. Wal-Mart is just the biggest example of how large mega-corps are killing the U.S. economy, there are many others who are not much better and are flagrant violators of their contract with society.

I am all for free enterprise but there is a social responsibility that comes with being a huge corporation and when that responsibility is being ignored it is our duty as consumers to remind the bad citizens of that responsibility. Wal-Mart is a big offender because it breaks its social contract in so many ways. Overseas production, unfair competition practices, poor worker compensation, criminal negligence, flagrant disregard of the law, and more. All of these are offences committed by Wal-Mart on a daily basis; any one of them alone should give us pause as to a companies commitment to their social contract, but all of the at once, it is obvious that they don’t care about there societal obligations.

After some time pondering the subject matter and a growing sense of my own neglect of societal obligation, I to propose another experiment…

Take responsibility for getting to know who you buy from. Find out if they are a socially responsible person or company. Try to buy as much of your goods as possible from local merchants and producers. Try whenever possible to buy products and services made in the U.S. While it is almost impossible today to buy only products stamped Made In The U.S.A., make your best effort, if given the choice between two products chose the one that contributes more to the U.S. economy.

Change can only be made if we commit to using the power we have, the one thing businesses of any size need, customers money. When we chose the mega-corps small businesses die, when we chose local merchants we give power back to the community.

Motivation should be the word lurking in the back of your mind, “What is this guy’s motivation?” Well here it is, I want to see the American economy improve in a sustainable structure and the only way that will happen is if there is a resurgence of an endangered species, The American Small Business. Without small community business the economy will continue to collapse. That is my motivation.

My commitment to you is to take responsibility and do everything I can to buy locally and support the local economy and help regrow American Small Business.

* As of today I am going to stop buying from mega-corps and seek out local merchants to buy goods from.
* As of today I am going to get to know who I do business with and find out if they are keeping to their social contract.

Will you join me and take up the challenge?