How Growers Are Gaming the California Drought

by Gaius Publius

I was going to write about the collapse of the Democratic Party in the Senate (thanks, Harry Reid; you too, Patty Murray), but I think I'll save that. The other news is this — the battle over water in California. This isn't a drought story. It's a story about money, power and the "next oil" — in other words, another "free" market story.

First bottom line — If you live in Los Angeles or San Diego, your governor is giving your water to the growers. Because, capitalism. I'll explain why after the quote. Also, bribery. You'll see why if you read the quote. (That Hayes segment above is a great listen, a perfect intro to this set of thoughts.)

California and the Southwest Have Reached Peak Water

The first part of this story is the squeeze. Peak water has been passed. California — its population and its economy (both) — will be more and more under the pressure of less and less. This will continue, whether we successfully address climate change or not, through the year 2100 at least. (The most we can do to address climate change — James Hansen's "literal stop now" scenario, a mental exercise — returns atmospheric CO2 to 350ppm by 2100, after a mid-century peak. That's the boundary case.)

A description of the "squeeze" from the Daily Beast (my emphasis):

How Growers Gamed California’s Drought

Consuming 80 percent of California’s developed water but accounting for only 2 percent of the state’s GDP, agriculture thrives while everyone else is parched.

“I’ve been smiling all the way to the bank,” said pistachio farmer John Dean at a conference hosted this month by Paramount Farms, the mega-operation owned by Stewart Resnick, a Beverly Hills billionaire known for his sprawling agricultural holdings, controversial water dealings, and millions of dollars in campaign contributions to high-powered California politicians including Governor Jerry Brown, former governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.

The record drought now entering its fourth year in California has alarmed the public, left a number of rural communities without drinking water, and triggered calls for mandatory rationing. ... Nevertheless, some large-scale farmers are enjoying extraordinary profits despite the drought, thanks in part to infusions of what experts call dangerously under-priced water.

We'll deal with that phrase "dangerously under-priced water" in a moment. Danger and disaster indeed lurk in one word in that phrase. It's not "under" and it's not "water." But back to our first story:

Resnick, whose legendary marketing flair included hiring Stephen Colbert to star in a 2014 Super Bowl commercial, told the conference that pistachios generated an average net return of $3,519 per acre in 2014, based on a record wholesale price of $3.53 a pound. Almonds, an even “thirstier” crop, averaged $1,431 per acre. ... At the end of the day, conference attendees filed out to the sounds of Louis Armstrong singing, “It’s a Wonderful World.” ...

Now keep that 80% of the water vs. 2% of the state's GDP ratio in mind:

Although no secret, agriculture’s 80 percent share of state water use is rarely mentioned in media discussions of California’s drought. Instead, news coverage concentrates on the drought’s implications for people in cities and suburbs, which is where most journalists and their audiences live. Thus recent headlines warned that state regulators have ordered restaurants to serve water only if customers explicitly request it and directed homeowners to water lawns no more than twice a week. The San Jose Mercury News pointed out that these restrictions carry no enforcement mechanisms, but what makes them a sideshow is simple math: During a historic drought, surely the sector that’s responsible for 80 percent of water consumption—agriculture—should be the main focus of public attention and policy.

But it isn't. Why?

For years, California was the only state in the arid West that set no limits on how much groundwater a property owner could extract from a private well. Thus nearly everyone and their neighbors in the Central Valley have been drilling deeper and deeper wells in recent years, seeking to offset reductions in state and federal water deliveries. This agricultural version of an arms race not only favors big corporate enterprises over smaller farmers, it threatens to collapse the aquifers whose groundwater is keeping California alive during this drought and will be needed to endure future droughts. (Groundwater supplies about 40 percent of the state’s water in years of normal precipitation but closer to 60 percent in dry years.)

But when it comes to fixing the problem, this happens:

Last fall, the legislature passed and Governor Brown signed a bill to regulate groundwater extraction. But the political touchiness of the issue—agricultural interests lobbied hard against it—resulted in a leisurely implementation timetable. Although communities must complete plans for sustainable water management by 2020, not until 2040 must sustainability actually be achieved. The Central Valley could be a dust bowl by then under current trends.

So that's the problem statement. Not enough water as far into the future as you can look. Now the solutions. Careful; this is even less pretty.

Will the "Free" Market or Government Control Water Allocation?

This is a tricky question, since government always has control. The question really is, will government surrender control to the billionaires and other capitalists — the "free" market — or take control in the name of the people ... actual people? To answer this question, go back through the Daily Beast article and, using your Search In Page function, highlight every instance of the word "price," then read. For example:

[A] modern capitalist economy values a given commodity only as much as the price of that commodity. Current pricing structures enrich a handful of interests, but they are ushering the state as a whole toward a parched and perilous future. The price of water, however, is not determined by inalterable market forces; it is primarily a function of government policies and the social forces that shape them. Elected officials may dodge the question for now, but the price of water seems destined to become an unavoidable issue in California politics. “As our water supply gets more variable and scarce in the future, we’re going to have to look at how we price water so it gets used more efficiently,” said Cooley of the Pacific Institute.

There's more like that in the article. Now consider:

• If "price" is used to allocate water, the rich will have more. This includes billionaire farmers and farming corporations like those named in the first quote in this piece. It also includes the masters of google and the enclaves of their workers ... only.
   
• If "price" is used to allocate water use, the ones who will drink last will be the poor, just like they eat last and get medicine last in our "free" market economy.
   
• The rallying cry of water privatizers, a multi-billion-dollar global industry, is "properly priced water." When you hear that, you know the privatizers are at the door.

About using price as a "given" for water allocation, consider this from Forbes:

Of Course Water Should Be Properly Priced: How Else Should We Ration Things?

Whatever the charges per unit to households (adjusting, of course, to the fact that a household will want water that’s been treated more thoroughly, the costs of the pipeline network to each house and so on) the price of a unit of water should be equal over all uses. Because that’s how we then get the allocation of water to the use of the greatest value. Porter goes on to point out that San Diego is desalinating water at $2,000 per acre foot while not that many miles away farmers are lathering it on fields at an implied force of $920 an acre foot. This is crazed nonsense. Move the farmers’ water to San Diego and the world is a richer place by $1080 per acre foot that is moved. And if it’s moved from the Imperial district then it’s near entirely a pure gain in wealth.

As is always true when we move an asset or resource from a lower to a higher valued use. It’s the very definition of wealth creation. ...

You'll hunt in vain for a Forbes mention of the social good, or the most good for the most people. Yet "properly priced water" is seen as the solution, including in an indirect way, in the Chris Hayes segment above. Relisten now that you've read this and you'll see what I mean.

Did Government Use the "Free" Market to Build Tanks in WWII?

The answer to that question is blindingly obvious. Of course not. The Forbes writer asks, in effect, "How else do we allocate water?" Answer: In the old fashioned way — by government telling people what to do. Yes, this is "picking winners and losers," but government will pick losers anyway if it picks the "free" (billionaire-controlled) market and hands the answer to those who will pick themselves as the only winners. There's a "free" market for labor. Do you feel free? When there's a "free" (properly priced) market for water, will you feel fairly treated, relative to, say, Stewart Resnick, the billionaire grower from the quote at the top?

So the second problem, worse than the drought, is capture of the water supply by the wealthy, because drought, especially drought, is a profit opportunity of the first water (so to speak), and the wolves, those who supply politicians with their jobs and financing, are circling.

World's ten largest privatized-water companies;
click to enlarge (source)

For example, these guys want to help you invest (pdf; and please click through):

Overview: Why Invest in Water?

Examining the Core Drivers of a Compelling Theme

©2007 SUMMIT GLOBAL MANAGEMENT, INC.

… [W]ater is still abusively undervalued relative to its real economic worth, so huge room exists for asset price expansion. Combined with the vigorous market drivers, shown below, that are now becoming globally and undeniably apparent, hydrocommerce presents a very compelling investment theme for the predictable future.

Supply/Demand Imbalances

• Available fresh water is less than ½ of 1% of all the water on earth. 6.5 billion people now compete [my emphasis] for this finite resource, with 8 billion by 2025.

• 80% of the global population relies on groundwater supplies that are dangerously depleted, if not exhausted, as they are mined beyond natural replenishment.

• Pollution and climate change further exacerbate supply shortages, damaging vulnerable resources and causing drought and desertification at an alarming rate.

• Per capita water consumption has roughly doubled in the last century, a rate that will accelerate as more economies industrialize and populations become more urban. ...

And it gets worse. Just read. These people are predators, and they're gaining power. And why wouldn't they? With "free market" ideology a given, a known good, and droughts as far as the next century mark, they're in a perfect position to do well, so long as they keep control of government, including Jerry Brown's government.

Will Californians Let Their Government Give Water To the Wealthy or the People?

So here's your other bottom line. Because until we get a true "national emergency" economy, and that economy is bent to serve the "rest of us" first instead of the rich, we won't have solutions to the first of a cascading list of problems.

But don't lose heart; this isn't over. It's just that it's time for an "Easter Island solution" in which we depose the chief — meaning the masters of the "free" market, as explained here. The longer we wait, the worse the "best case" solution becomes. Government's gotta serve somebody. Is the time for asking politely finally over? We're actually in charge of that, if we want to be.

In solidarity,

GP

Wall Street Banksters Don't Farm-- But They Can Make You Very Sick With Their Agricultural And Trade Policies

I love Mondays-- at least in part because I fast on Sundays and it's so nice to eat again on Monday. Tonight we celebrated Roland's birthday with a wonderful dinner at The Bazaar by José Andrés, one of our favorite molecular gastronomy (or deconstructivist) restaurants. It's not an everyday joint for us-- just for birthdays and other celebrations or excuses for celebrations. Usually we eat raw, vegan food. That's a health thing.

Yesterday I was reading about the rise in food intolerance that has been plaguing more and more people lately. Cyndi O'Meara, an expert nutritionist and author of Changing Habits, Changing Lives Cookbook, says it's increased 10-fold in the U.K. in the last 25 years.

O’Meara, along with scientific researchers, points to the large quantities of chemicals and processed foods and major changes in food preparation. Ingredients like artificial sweeteners and modified milk can lead to a hyper-vigilant immune system that reacts painfully to more and more foods. As otherwise healthy people have delved into why they often feel unwell, “food intolerance” has emerged as a 21st-century health concern. The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network and the National Institutes for Health find that as many as 30 million people in the United States suffer from food intolerance--  four to five times the number with food allergies. Skin rashes, abdominal pains and even headaches can be symptoms of the body's struggle with certain ingredients.

Food intolerances can be extremely complicated. I went through years of embarrassing situations and extreme pain before I was finally able to realize that the source of my discomfort was the food I was eating. It has taken me another three years to figure out which foods are my friends and which are my enemies.

Aside from eliminating the really deadly stuff-- processed food and sugar first and foremost-- one of the first places to start on a healthier diet is to eat as many organic foods as you can. There's an informative one question Q-and-A with nutritionist Mike Roussell in the new issue of Shape. "The question: Should I really try to eat organic foods? How much better are they for you than non-organic foods?" A "yes" would be the correct answer but Dr. Mike goes on and on-- and it's all valuable information.

A: The question of eating food that is organic vs. regular is very common. The piece that confuses people the most is that there is no clear-cut answer. This is compounded by the fact that "organic" is now becoming big business, making it harder to determine scientific fact from sales pitch.

Does Organic = More Nutritious?

One of the major draws for people to eat organic food is that they feel like it is more nutritious than conventional foods, but that's not necessarily true. A 2009 research paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found no real difference between the vitamin and mineral content of organic vs. non-organic foods. But, more recently researchers from the University of Sidney found that organic vegetables did in fact have more vitamins and minerals than their conventional counterpart. Another study found that organic strawberries contained more vitamin C than conventional strawberries (a personal observation is that organic strawberries also consistently taste much better than conventional strawberries). Lastly, a 2-year study looking at tomato quality and nutrition found no difference between organic and conventional tomatoes.
 
From a nutrient standpoint, organic isn't yet the clear-cut winner. Soil fertility and crop nutrient management are areas that are examined as part of the organic certification, but you have to wonder if regulations in this area will become gray with big business moving into the organic space, thus resulting in "certified organic" foods that don’t contain the nutrients you’d expect.

Organic vs. Local

This past summer I had a lengthy lunch with John Marsh, the chef and co-owner of the Green Square Tavern in New York City. We spoke about food, food quality, and preparation. The Green Square Tavern prides itself on bringing food from the "farm to the table," and the food there is amazing.

You might be surprised to know that being labeled "organic" isn't the litmus test for John when he's picking out foods for his restaurant. He instead told me that several of the farmers he deals with run small mom and pop operations, and that paying the fees and jumping through all the hoops required to be certified by the USDA as Organic is prohibitively expensive (from a financial and time standpoint). So while these farmers may not produce "certified organic" food, they are producing food of an extremely high quality. This further validated something that I have been telling clients for years-- go local over organic.

Pesky Pesticides

A major distinguishing factor between organic and non-organic foods is the use of pesticides, the former being grown without them. A non-profit organization called The Environmental Working Group (EWG) collects data on pesticide testing in foods. They have looked at and compiled data on 51,000 pesticide tests for 52 different fruits and vegetables. Two lists from the EWG are below: The first contains 12 foods with the highest levels of pesticides (the Dirty Dozen), and the second contains the 15 foods that tests revealed had the lowest levels of pesticides (Clean 15).

Dirty Dozen

1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Strawberries
4. Peaches
5. Spinach
6. Imported Nectarines
7. Imported Grapes
8. Sweet Bell Peppers
9. Potatoes
10. Blueberries
11. Lettuce
12. Kale & Collard Greens

Clean 15

1. Onions
2. Sweet corn
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet Peas
7. Mangos
8. Eggplant
9. Cantaloupe
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet Potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms

Four Key Points to Remember

1. The limiting factor for most people eating organic is cost; organic fruits and vegetables are significantly more expensive. Don’t limit your intake of fruits and vegetables because you can’t afford organic. Start by purchasing organic versions of the Dirty Dozen and don’t concern yourself with purchasing organic versions of the foods found on the Clean 15.

2. The evidence for the universal consumption of organic food by all means necessary is still greatly lacking. Organic foods will have fewer pesticides, but there are conventional vegetables that also have extremely low levels of pesticides. Just because a food is organic doesn’t mean it will contain more nutrients.

3. An organic label on a food doesn't automatically mean it's good for you. You don’t get bonus nutrition points for eating organic cookies over regular cookies. Cookies are cookies.

4. Buy locally grown fruits and vegetables when possible, even if they aren’t certified organic. Locally grown and in-season foods are often your best bet at getting the most nutritious foods.

And as long as we're talking about organic food being too expensive, there was a good post at The Daily Meal on that last week. Even without all the chemicals, synthetic pesticides, and antibiotics, organic food can cost as much as twice as much as conventionally grown food. Here their top 10 factors contributing to the high price of organic food:

1. No chemicals = more labor

Conventional farmers use all of those chemicals and synthetic pesticides because they end up reducing the cost of production by getting the job done faster and more efficiently. Without them, organic farmers have to hire more workers for tasks like hand-weeding, cleanup of polluted water, and the remediation of pesticide contamination.
The Organic Farming Research Foundation explained it well: "The organic price tag more closely reflects the true cost of growing the food: substituting labor and intensive management for chemicals, the health and environmental costs of which are borne by society."

2. Demand overwhelms supply

Retail sales of organic food rose from $3.6 billion in 1997 to $21.1 billion in 2008, according to the USDA, and 58 percent of Americans claim they prefer to eat organic over non-organic food. However, organic farmland only accounts for 0.9 percent of total worldwide farmland, and organic farms tend to produce less than conventional farms. Conventional farms have the farmland and the supply to keep costs down since manufacturers are able to reduce costs when producing a product in larger quantities.

3. Higher cost of fertilizer for organic crops

Sewage sludge and chemical fertilizers might not be something you want in your food, but conventional farmers use them because they don’t cost much and are cheap to transport. Organic farmers eschew these inexpensive solutions in order to keep their crops natural and instead use compost and animal manure, which is more expensive to ship.

4. Crop rotation

Instead of using chemical weed-killers, organic farmers conduct sophisticated crop rotations to keep their soil healthy and prevent weed growth. After harvesting a crop, an organic farmer may use that area to grow "cover crops," which add nitrogen to the soil to benefit succeeding crops.

Conventional farmers, on the other hand, can use every acre to grow the most profitable crops. Because crop rotation reduces the frequency in which organic farmers can grow profitable crops, they’re unable to produce the larger quantities that are most cost-effective for conventional farmers.

5. Post-harvest handling cost

In order to avoid cross-contamination, organic produce must be separated from conventional produce after being harvested. Conventional crops are shipped in larger quantities since conventional farms are able to produce more. Organic crops, however, are handled and shipped in smaller quantities since organic farms tend to produce less, and this results in higher costs. Additionally, organic farms are usually located farther from major cities, increasing the shipping cost.

6. Organic certification

Acquiring USDA organic certification is no easy-- or cheap-- task. In addition to the usual farming operations, farm facilities and production methods must comply with certain standards, which may require the modification of facilities. Employees must be hired to maintain strict daily record-keeping that must be available for inspection at any time. And organic farms must pay an annual inspection/certification fee, which starts at $400 to $2,000 a year, depending on the agency and the size of the operation.

7. Cost of covering higher loss

Conventional farmers use certain chemicals to reduce their loss of crops. For example, synthetic pesticides repel insects and antibiotics maintain the health of the livestock. Since organic farmers don’t use these, their losses are higher, which costs the farmer more and increases the cost to the consumer. Additionally, without all the chemical preservatives added to conventional foods, organic foods face a shorter storage time and shelf life.

8. Better living conditions for livestock

Higher standards for animal welfare also means more costs for organic farms. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, organic feed for cattle and other livestock can cost twice as much as conventional feed.

9. Organic food grows more slowly

Time is money. Not only are organic farms typically smaller than conventional ones, but they also, on average, take more time to produce crops because they refrain from using the chemicals and growth hormones used by conventional farmers.

10. Subsidies

Production-oriented government subsidies reduce the overall cost of crops. In 2008, mandatory spending on farm subsidies was $7.5 billion while programs for organic and local foods only received $15 million, according to the House Appropriations Committee.

And that brings us to the overtly progressive politics you may have been waiting for-- which takes us to David Korten's book, Agenda For A New Economy, and a sub-chapter, "Why Wall Street Globalized The Economy."

The elimination of national borders as barriers to the expansion of corporate control of world markets and resources didn't happen as a result of some inexorable law of nature. It came about over a period of some thirty years through the relentless effort of Wall Street interests using every political tool at their disposal to remove legal barriers to their expansion.

Wall Street did not expend all this effort to improve the health of people and the biosphere. It figured out that its ability to generate profits would be best served by a system that maximized each locality's dependence on distant resources and markets.

Take the system by which we produce, process, transport, and market our food. A farmers' market where local producers and consumers gather to engage in direct exchange offers many benefits from a community perspective. The food is fresh, the energy costs of transport are minimal, the personal exchanges enhance community ties, farmers can adapt rapidly to changing local preferences and conditions, and the local economy is cushioned from food shocks elsewhere in the world.

Wall Street has a different perspective. It observes this scene and says in effect:

What's the profit here? We need a global food system in which producers in Chile depend on customers in New York and vice versa. Then both are dependent on us to serve as middlemen. We can monopolize global markets, set prices for both producers and consumers, and force producers either to buy our seeds, fertilizers, and insecticides at whatever price we choose or to lose their market access. The greater our success in convincing local producers that they will have greater selection at lower prices when everything is traded globally, the more they will depend on us as intermediaries, the greater will be our hold on people's lives everywhere, and the more profit we can extract.

When the world's agricultural land is organized on the model of industrialized monocropping, both producers and consumers depend on the global agricultural conglomerates for their survival. Until a crisis strikes, few notice that the resulting increase in global food interdependence increases the real costs of food production and reduces food security for everyone. This in turn creates lucrative opportunities for Wall Street speculators who profit from volatile commodity prices as a weather disruption on one side of the world creates food shortages on the other.

Poisoning America Is A Fulltime Job-- Only Concerned Citizens And Uncorrupted Government Can Successfully Fight Back

Last week we contrasted Willie Nelson's efforts to save the American food supply to the selfish and sociopathic behavior of dangerous Republican profiteers and their enablers-- from Rep. Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-NY) and rabid Romney billionaire (and Melaleuca CEO) Frank VanderSloot to, worst of the worst, Monsanto, all of whom would just as soon see us all poisoned if they could make a nickel out of selling the poison. Turns out Willie and Anna Lappé, author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork, wrote his own post Friday that nails the point home.

Our food is under threat. It is felt by every family farmer who has lost their land and livelihood, every parent who can't find affordable or healthy ingredients in their neighborhood, every person worried about foodborne illnesses thanks to lobbyist-weakened food safety laws, every farmworker who faces toxic pesticides in the fields as part of a day's work.

When our food is at risk we are all at risk.

Over the last thirty years, we have witnessed a massive consolidation of our food system. Never have so few corporations been responsible for more of our food chain. Of the 40,000 food items in a typical U.S. grocery store, more than half are now brought to us by just 10 corporations. Today, three companies process more than 70 percent of all U.S. beef, Tyson, Cargill and JBS. More than 90 percent of soybean seeds and 80 percent of corn seeds used in the United States are sold by just one company: Monsanto. Four companies are responsible for up to 90 percent of the global trade in grain. And one in four food dollars is spent at Walmart.

What does this matter for those of us who eat? Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, the destruction of soil fertility, the pollution of our water, and health epidemics including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even certain forms of cancer. More and more, the choices that determine the food on our shelves are made by corporations concerned less with protecting our health, our environment, or our jobs than with profit margins and executive bonuses.

This consolidation also fuels the influence of concentrated economic power in politics: Last year alone, the biggest food companies spent tens of millions lobbying on Capitol Hill with more than $37 million used in the fight against junk food marketing guidelines for kids.

On a global scale, the consolidation of our food system has meant devastation for farmers, forests and the climate. Take the controversial food additive palm oil. In the past decade, palm oil has become the most widely traded vegetable oil in the world and is now found in half of all packaged goods on U.S. grocery store shelves. But the large-scale production of palm oil-- driven by agribusiness demand for the relatively cheap ingredient-- has come at a cost: palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia are razing rainforests, releasing massive quantities of greenhouse gases and displacing Indigenous communities.

From the global to the local, nothing is more personal than this threat to our food. And nothing more inspiring than the movement that is fighting back. On Monday February 27, tens of thousands of people-- including farmers and food workers, parents and students, urban gardeners and chefs-- will participate in a Global Day of Action to Occupy our Food Supply.

Occupy our Food Supply is a day to both resist Big Food and highlight sustainable solutions that work for all of us. On February 27, more than 60 Occupy groups as well as environmental and corporate accountability organizations are joining together. From Brazil, Hungary, Ireland, Argentina, the United States and beyond, people will be reclaiming unused bank-owned lots to create community gardens; hosting seed exchanges in front of stock exchanges; labeling products on grocery store shelves that contain genetically engineered ingredients; building community alliances to support locally owned grocery stores and resist Walmart megastores; and fighting back against industrial giants Monsanto and Cargill.

And it's not just Anna, Willie, and me sounding the alarm. From the Food Network to President Obama's wife, Michelle, people are doing great jobs with this on a level above the political fray. Last week poet and journalist Richard Schiffman turned his attention in this direction as well. He looking at Dow and Monsanto working together to cover America with a new weed poison-- basically Agent Orange! He warns that if they're allowed to proceed with their plans, it "would go a long way toward a predicted doubling of harmful herbicide use in America's corn belt during the next decade."

The problem for corn farmers is that "superweeds" have been developing resistance to America's best-selling herbicide Roundup, which is being sprayed on millions of acres in the Midwest and elsewhere. Dow Agrosciences has developed a strain of corn that it says will solve the problem. The new genetically modified variety can tolerate 2,4-D, which will kill off the Roundup-resistant weeds, but leave the corn standing. Farmers who opt into this system will be required to double-dose their fields with a deadly cocktail of Roundup plus 2,4-D, both of which are manufactured by Monsanto.

But this plan has alarmed environmentalists and also many farmers, who are reluctant to reintroduce a chemical whose toxicity has been well established. The use of 2,4-D is banned in several European countries and provinces of Canada. The substance is a suspected carcinogen, which has been shown to double the incidence of birth defects in the children of pesticide applicators in a study conducted by University of Minnesota pathologist Vincent Garry.

Researchers say that the effect of 2,4-D on human health is still not fully understood. But it may be a risk factor for conditions like Hodgkin's lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and certain leukemias, which were often found in Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated that the chemical could have "endocrine disruption potential" and interfere with the human hormonal system. It may prove toxic to honeybees, birds and fish, according to research conducted by the US Forest Service and others. In 2004, a coalition of groups spearheaded by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pesticide Action Network, wrote a letter to the EPA taking it to task for underestimating the health and environmental impacts of 2,4-D.

Large-scale industrial farming has grown dependent on ever-increasing applications of agrochemicals. Some have compared this to a drug addict who requires larger and larger fixes to stay high. Herbicide use has increased steadily over time as weeds develop resistance and need to be doused with more and deadlier chemicals to kill them. This, in turn. requires more aggressive genetic engineering of crops that can withstand the escalating chemical assault.

Many agricultural scientists warn that this growing addiction to agrochemicals is unsustainable in the long run. The fertility of the soil decreases as earthworms and vital microorganisms are killed off by pesticides and herbicides. They also pollute the groundwater and compromise the health of farm animals that are fed with the chemical-infused grain.

...Until recently, herbicide-resistant crops were popular with farmers who benefited from higher yields and nearly effortless management of weeds. But now that the weed problem is coming back with a vengeance, some are reconsidering the wisdom of this chemical-intensive mode of farming. Dow biotech corn costs nearly three times more than conventional seed. And the projected doubling of pesticide use in the years ahead will be expensive, as well as destructive to farmland and ecosystems.

There are viable alternatives to chemical-intensive farming, time-tested methods like crop rotation, use of cover crops, and other practices which allow farmers to compete naturally with weeds. The time has come for farmers to revive the knowledge of their ancestors in this regard.

Some agricultural scientists advocate developing a system of integrated weed management to replace the unsustainable use of chemicals. But the big agrochemical companies have no interest in supporting the sustainable agriculture that would put them out of business. So long as there are billions of dollars to be made in selling herbicide and herbicide-resistant genetically modified seed, there won't be much research money available to explore the natural alternatives to the destruction of our nation's heartland.

Iowa, Oil and Agriculture-- Meet Francis Thicke, Candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture

by 2laneIA

Who is the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture?  The answer to that question is, and has always been:  whichever faithful servant of Big Agriculture was keeping the chair warm and keeping Monsanto, Koch and Cargill happy, Democrat or Republican. (Currently, it's a guy who loves chicken factories.) An urban dweller, I didn't think that the Ag Secretary had anything to do with me. 

A few months ago, I met Francis Thicke, an organic dairy farmer who is running for Secretary of Agriculture, and he changed my mind about that. I have begun to grasp how this official affects the food I eat and the quality of the air and rivers where I live and of waters far downstream from Iowa. I have even begun to hope for change in the way we produce food and use energy in Iowa, where we often set the example for farming practices across the country.

Francis Thicke (pronounced "tickee") has an organic dairy farm near Fairfield, Iowa, a small community best known as the home of Maharishi University. Francis and his wife, Susan, make milk, yogurt and cheese with the milk from his 80 cows and sell all of it locally. Although he grew up on a farm, Francis wanted to be a musician.  He studied music and philosophy in college, and plays a mean trumpet. But eventually he got a doctorate in agronomy instead, worked at the USDA, then came back to Iowa to start a dairy farm. 

Radiance Dairy is no ordinary farm. Livestock and landscape nourish each other. Everything the cows eat is grown on land they fertilize, and as Francis says, they enjoy their work. He uses solar panels to power pumps for water, to electrify fences and to heat water for his dairy processing plant. A wind turbine is in the works. His operation is so innovative that he attracts visitors who come to learn, from local schoolchildren to the World Bank, and he travels frequently to teach and give lectures. He has received awards from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club, which recognized him as a "Steward of the Land," among other awards. People who know him regard him as a national treasure.



Iowa has the most prime farmland of any state and produces the most corn and soybeans and the most hogs and chickens. As a result, it has a disproportionate influence on federal agricultural policy.  It is no coincidence that Tom Vilsack is Secretary of Agriculture in D.C., or that Tom Harkin chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee for years. In Iowa, ethanol is a sacrament, and the farm bill affects thousands of people statewide.The Iowa Secretary of Agriculture is an influential office, and not just for farming. The secretary also participates in the Iowa Power Fund Board, a board that includes the governor, and that sets policy for energy in the state through grants for innovation. The Secretary of Agriculture influences policy for both energy and agriculture.

What difference would it make if the Secretary was committed to sustainable agriculture and renewable energy? Maybe a lot.

Francis believes that if Iowa can help its farmers generate their own power and farm in a way that washes less silt and fertilizers into our watersheds, it will have an impact on federal policy and on other states'. He is committed to sustainable agriculture, and wants to give local communities more control over the hideous warehouses for hogs and chickens, called CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), that blight the Iowa landscape.  He has testified before Congress and the Department of Justice on corporate monopolies in agriculture and wants to do more to oppose them from within government. He wants to make locally grown produce more accessible to consumers. In Iowa, we eat produce shipped in from California at the height of summer, while the fields of corn and soybeans stretch as far as you can see in every direction. 

Francis has real expertise in renewable energy and innovative ideas for generating power on farms with wind turbines and biofuels. As a member of the Iowa Power Fund Board, he could really influence getting beyond corn-based ethanol and toward more renewable sources. Every time I hear some pundit saying that we are going to have to live with Gulf oil spills because we have to have oil, I think of Francis talking about distributed energy, where every farmstead has a wind turbine, instead of being completely vulnerable to increases in fuel prices. 

In Francis' vision, the wind turbine powers the farm with wind that blows over the farm and is a profit center for the farmer, who can sell excess power to the local utility. With distributed power, giant transmission lines are unnecessary. To help pay for the initial cost of erecting the turbine, Francis would advocate feed-in tariffs. These require utilities to buy local wind power at higher rates for a period of time sufficient to help the farmer pay off the cost of the turbine; then the rates drop to a level that is attractive to utilities because wind power is inherently cheaper than fossil fuels or coal. There is a lot of support for wind in the state, which gets 20 percent of its power from wind now. 

If a farmer is using wind power to make electricity, ammonia and hydrogen, and perennial crops to make biofuels, and is running his machinery and backup generator with these fuels, he will be part of transforming agriculture from an oil-gobbling enterprise to a sustainable one. He will be insulated from the shock of $147/barrel oil, which caused chaos in farming two years ago, and which Francis wrote about in Threats to Food-- Peak Oil and Agriculture. The expenses of agriculture as it is practiced now are generally more than the income from it, and subsidies are what keep a lot of farms afloat. In Francis' vision, that would change. He talked about it recently on an Iowa radio program:

If we can find ways we can put more money in the pockets of farmers, instead of farmers being squeezed by the concentrated markets they sell into, like beef and hogs and corn, and also being squeezed by the concentrated markets they buy from, their seeds and their fertilizers... we can make agriculture more self-sufficient, and the value added can be closer to the farm, and stay on the farm...

What Francis understands is that we cannot keep doing what we are doing, in agriculture or otherwise.  Climate change and peak oil are realities that we will have to deal with whether we want to or not. If he is elected, I expect Iowa to set an example that the rest of the country will be unable to ignore. We can cut our use of fossil fuels sooner and more dramatically than we think we can by adopting technologies that are available now or are being developed for use in the near future, such as ammonia and hydrogen made with wind power. (Engines that can run on these fuels are being made in Iowa today.) Or we can pretend that agriculture and transportation systems based on cheap oil are sustainable until we face a crisis too big to ignore. 

Maybe we are seeing that crisis now in the Gulf of Mexico. Or maybe the price of oil will soar so far past the 2008 highs that farm combines will stand idle, too costly to run for planting and harvest. We need leaders like Francis, with innovative solutions, and we need to get started on implementing them. That is why I spend my spare time volunteering for his campaign, and donate what I can spare.

We Are What We Eat-- And So Is Our Society, Of Course

yum yum?

My friend Phil asked me to join him and Go Vegan radio host Bob Linden for dinner last night. I never get out so, of course, I jumped at the chance. We decided on a suitable vegan-ish restaurant in the area, Cafe Alf on Sunset Blvd in Echo Park. As I was leaving my home, a blogger buddy, Hekebolos, called and told me another blogger friend, OrangeClouds, was visiting L.A. and why don't we go for dinner. I explained that I was walking out the door to meet some other friends and why not join us. So we all got together and it turns out OrangeClouds is the foremost food policy blogger I know and Bob Linden can take any problem-- the mortgage crisis, a passing fire engine, the high cost of energy, the problems with the Bible-- and explain it in terms of the propensity of society's toleration of meat and dairy consumption. It was a lovely evening.

My friend Phil promised to write a post for DWT and he even finished a few fabulous sentences: "Medieval Christians killed off the entire wolf population in Europe. The same mentality exists here in a remote 15th century part of America today. Why? Because of a brain defect passed down through generations of witchburners, animal slaughterers and ... because the bible has a scary story about wolves."

Meanwhile I did get a thought provoking e-mail from OrangeClouds-- let's call her Jill-- that included a link to her blog, La Vida Locavore, on which I found a question far more important, in every way, than what the margin of victory Obama is likely to have in North Carolina: Can Organics Save Us From Global Warming. She asked me what I knew about the members of the House Agriculture Committee and sent me their names. I was appalled when I went through it.

My first thought was, no wonder we have mucked up the food industry even worse than the banking industry. Then I thought that no one could even find a committee this bad unless they actually set out to do so. There are 25 Democrats and 21 Republicans, most of whom are unspeakably in the pocket of the big-- and destructive-- corporate farming industry. Most of the Democrats on the Committee are in that pocket too. In fact, you couldn't find a worse bunch of Democrats. There is exactly one who I would trust, Wisconsin freshman Steve Kagen. The rest are a bunch of reactionaries, mostly Blue Dogs and worse. I know most people don't know one of these monstrosities from another, but people who pay close attention at DWT are sure to recognize some names of tried and true villains:

- Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN)
- Tim Holden (D-PA)
- Joe Baca (D-CA)
- John Barrow (D-GA)
- Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
- Nancy Boyda (D-KS)
- Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
- Travis Childers (D-MS)
- Jim Costa (D-CA)
- Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
- Joe Donnelly (D-IN)
- Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
- Bob Etheridge (D-NC)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
- Steve Kagen (D-WI)
- Nick Lampson (D-TX)
- Tim Mahoney (D-FL)
- Jim Marshall (D-GA)
- Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
- John Salazar (D-CO)
- Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
- David Scott (D-GA)
- Zachary Space (D-OH)
- Timothy Walz (D-MN)
- Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Charles Boustany, Jr. (R-LA)
- K. Michael Conaway (R-TX)
- Terry Everett (R-AL)
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Sam Graves (R-MO)
- Robin Hayes (R-NC)
- Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
- Steve King (R-IA)
- Randy Kuhl (R-NY)
- Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
- Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
- Mike Rogers (R-AL)
- Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
- Adrian Smith (R-NE)
- Tim Walberg (R-MI)

I guess the best thing a wag might say about this list is that at least it keeps these people and their atrocious instincts and corporatist attitudes off committees where they could do the nation grievous harm. But that wag would be dead wrong. They are on a committee where their atrocious instincts and corporatist attitudes are doing this nation-- all of us-- grievous harm. A feature in today's NY Times (linked above) by Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto gets right to the point of linking the health care crisis, energy independence, climate change and... how we grow, process and eat our food-- is this a coincidence or what?

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy-- 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do-- as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis-- a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.

In addition to the problems of climate change and America’s oil addiction, you have spoken at length on the campaign trail of the health care crisis. Spending on health care has risen from 5 percent of national income in 1960 to 16 percent today, putting a significant drag on the economy. The goal of ensuring the health of all Americans depends on getting those costs under control. There are several reasons health care has gotten so expensive, but one of the biggest, and perhaps most tractable, is the cost to the system of preventable chronic diseases. Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. It is no coincidence that in the years national spending on health care went from 5 percent to 16 percent of national income, spending on food has fallen by a comparable amount-- from 18 percent of household income to less than 10 percent. While the surfeit of cheap calories that the U.S. food system has produced since the late 1970s may have taken food prices off the political agenda, this has come at a steep cost to public health. You cannot expect to reform the health care system, much less expand coverage, without confronting the public-health catastrophe that is the modern American diet.

It's worth reading Pollan's whole feature, which is in the form of an open letter to Barack Obama. After all he wants change, right? And there is no more fundamental change than re-examining our eating habits. And like our financial system and economy, our food policies aren't fundamentally sound, or even sustainable, either.