Poverty Eradication and Population Stabilization

Chapters 7-10 of our glorious book Plan B 4.0 are chock full of equally important problems and solutions, as is the nature of the material. Something I've been passionate about for years is the dire need for a stable population. There is a fantastic passage within the first pages of the book which reads, "The bottom line is that harvest-expanding scientific advances are ever more difficult to come by as crop yields move closer to the inherent limits of photosynthetic efficiency. This limit in turn establishes the upper bounds of the earth's biological productivity, which ultimately will determine is human carrying capacity." We are moving ever closer to said carrying capacity as the human population soars ahead faster than infrastructures can keep up. One major avenue to evolving the overall lifestyle of our planet is by eradicating extreme poverty, or at least a high percentage of it. The United Nations set a commendable goal of reducing the share of the world's population living in extreme poverty by half by 2015, outlined in the U.N. Millennium Development Goal. There are 8 of these goals in total, each accompanied by a array of sub-goals, if you will. Included are these ambitious efforts - ending poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability and global partnership. 

Fighting World Hunger

What varieties of crops and vegetation might you imagine growing in Florida? Palm trees and swamps, grapefruit, coconuts or oranges? We visited the ECHO Global Farm and Research Center last Wednesday and learned first hand, by sight and taste, the amazing varieties of life sustaining plants grown both in Florida and others areas of the globe; valuable plants providing food, medicine, and shelter. Because of the environmental conditions of North Fort Myers, ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization) is able to replicate five different world climates- Tropical Monsoon, Semi-Arid Tropics, Tropical Highlands, Tropical Rain Forest, and Hot Humid Lowlands. They also maintain a fantastic Urban Gardening scenario.

ECHO is not just an experimental farm for local growers benefit but was formed to educate their interns of various climate conditions and experiment with ways of farming them; concentrating on achieving the most efficient and sustainable grows and increasing the yields of crops. Judy, a retired postal worker turned ECHO volunteer, related the Chinese proverb, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." This is a prime example of the mission of ECHO, but should not be misunderstood. They respect the wealth of agricultural knowledge already spread amongst the poor farmers.

Hillside Farming Plot

What they bring is the ability to work with farmers to help them find ways of being more effective at growing food in harsh conditions. Judy told us of their four components: 1. Problem solving. Discovering coping mechanisms. 2. Providing sample size seed packets to international development workers, community leaders and missionaries. 3. Education and training. 4. Networking with other nonprofits and aide foundations.
ECHO's impressive seed bank hosts over 300 varieties of rare food plants, multi-purpose trees, fruit trees and other tropical plants.
Not only does Echo work with simulating environments but also manipulating, recycling, and inventing infrastructures to aide with farming and hygiene. The following is an awesome clip of Judy explaining how they've learned to use Moringa seeds (from the "miracle tree", not to be confused with the "miracle fruit", also grown at ECHO) for water purification.

We also observed a manual well pump and watering system, a drip irrigation system, a duck/algae/tilapia bio-cycle pond, a "tipy tap" hand washing station, and a rather ingenious invention called a biogas digester. While we have seen variations of the irrigation systems in the past, the duck pond and biogas digester systems were particularly intriguing.

Ducks eat the foliage, algae grows from
their waste, the Tilapia eat the algae,
and the people eat the Tilapia (or
the ducks!).

The "tippy tap"! A simple
hand washing station can
greatly reduce child mortality
rates and the spread of
disease.

Hand cranked well and gravity
driven watering system. 

A working example of a simple hut
(made frombamboo harvested on
site) housing the biogas digester.

Not only did we learn a wealth of information about farming practices but also had the opportunity to taste some of their crops! We especially enjoyed the Cranberry Hibiscus, a surprisingly sweet leafy, erm, green? (It's purple in colour.) Also sampled was the Barbados Cherry, a sweet little abundant fruit. Although we should have perhaps tried our first sample after the tour, we also cleaned our teeth with fresh Neem sprigs, readying our pallet for what was to come. Below are some pictures of the plants we sampled and some other varieties we were introduced to along the way. All three of us will be working on farms for our service learning component, so we were pleased to have visited ECHO for a taste of what we might see. Perhaps we'll begin gardens of our own one day!?

Monday, October 11, 2010

            This week we learned about chapter four's presentation, which discussed Brown’s ideas for cutting Co2 wastes up to eighty percent by the year 2020.  The reason was due to rising fossil fuel prices and eventual economic downturn.  Some ways there were to change our lighting sources, which everyone can do. A good alternative to traditional incandescent light bulbs are CFL lighting which is a good upgrade because it uses seventy five percent less electricity and can reduce your bill by thirty dollars.  The CFL light bulb costs twice as much but lasts ten times as long, making it a better value.  There is a light bulb even better for your dollar than that.  LED lighting uses eighty-five percent less electricity and lasts fifty times as long.  I have already replaced ninety percent of the lights in my home with LED lighting and it would be a great if businesses and the government   would lead by example and do so also (and not just in the 88% of American “EXIT” signs).  In the PowerPoint slide, they also said one light bulb if bought at the same time a child is born would last until they graduate.

            Next, they stated in their presentation that Europeans use half the amounts of fossil fuels as Americans do.  This chapter also discussed transportation briefly, including hybrid cars and rail systems.  In addition, that thirty percent of energy used is on recycled materials, and that they are found in everything we use daily.  Last, they mentioned the gridlines and cities trying to even the gridlines out by doing planned power outages in specific areas in California.

Chapter 5 discussed that oil, coal, and natural gasses should be replaced by wind, solar, and water energy sources.  Texas is currently the leading generator of wind energy in the US and ten more states plan to incorporate more solar energy in the near future.  The advantages to wind power include it is abundant, the low cost, and it is widely distributed.  The main disadvantage to wind energy sources is that wind is not very prevalent in some areas and not always constant so places with this in use need some type of supplemental energy source as well.  If 1/5^th of wind is used in replace of other forms of energy it would create seven times the energy.  If proposed in the United States, only one percent of farmland would be used for windmills, and farmers would be paid thousands to have them on their property.  Hydropower is also being used for approximately sixteen percent of world’s energy, obviously a resource that can be used adequately!

Chapter 6 was mainly on the idea of designing cities for people not cars.  Which was a concept discussed thoroughly in the movie we watched video on Curitiba, Brazil.  The movie discussed how their urban transportation has to be completely changed.  Some of the ideas to make this happen were high tolls, effective and cheap transportation system, priority to bicycles and pedestrian at stoplights, cars extremely expensive, etc.  This chapter also discussed many reasons to reduce urban water use including nutrients being lost for agriculture, flush and forget, contributes to 405 dead zones, expensive, also disease and death (2 million children).  Farming in cities is also a key concept in bettering our world.  Gardens in vacant lots, yards, and rooftops make a huge difference.

The last part of the class we watched a movie called, “The Power of Community.”  It was about the crisis in Cuba, also known as “the special period.”  It started in about 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union since so much of normal imported items became scarce.  Due to the political issues, Cuba was found in a situation where they were extremely low on food and oil peaked, creating jobs.  They were forced to start growing their own foods to survive and fulfill basic human needs.  They did not have oil to use machines and started planting and cultivating foods on every empty space.  They used farm animals like oxen to help farm. The average Cuban lost twenty pounds by 1994.  Before the 90’s Cuba exported sugar cane and a couple other abundant crops and then imported oil, lard, rice and many other items. This was not a sustainable system, so in October of 1993.  Some Australians came to help teach the people how to cultivate there foods and use organic materials.  This in turn would create a balanced eco system and more organic compost.  They also taught them about bio pesticides and bio fertilizers, so now Eighty percent of Cuba has organic agriculture.  In the United States we see bugs as the enemy and use strong chemicals to try and get rid of them, which in turn create more problems for the crops.  With a balanced system, this would include manure, bugs, and disease.  There is little need to do anything but pick the foods and maintain the soil.  Farming has also become one of the highest paid professions there is and the entire economic system turned upside down.  Creating many other positive changes like decentralizing universities, free health care and schools, fat consumption reduction, and the exchange of doctors to Venezuela for oil.  In addition, reduced number of cars, scarcity of tools allowed for little developments people live in necessity not abundance, eighty-five percent of Cubans own homes, less cancer/heart disease, use of sugar mill’s wastes for low cost environmentally friendly energy.

It is important to learn from what the Cubans were forced into before it is too late.  Since 2010 is the projected peak point of oil.  The rate at which we are going now will not last.  The population is only rising, and peoples demand are going up, while production of oil is going down. This is an infinite resource and will run out soon. Whatever it is, we need to do something to change our dependence on oil before a social, political, and economic downturn occur! 

www.earth-policy.org

On the 29th and the 6th we'll be taking a break from the field and watching some in class presentations and an ever popular documentary or two. Last week we enjoyed a presentation given by a group covering the first 3 chapters of our course book, Plan B 4.0 by Lester Brown. We thought they did a great job of summarizing the dense material into important highlights. They addressed issues such as our global Ponzi economy -to which Brown relates our current economic system- major land and water conflicts such as falling water tables, food shortages, foreign farm land acquisitions, and water wars, and climate issues including rising temperatures, melting of glaciers and ice caps, and the demise of oil and coal supplies.
One issue in particular was rather unfamiliar to us before reading the material and watching the presentation - the acquisition of foreign land for food and water supplies. Major nations such as Saudi Arabia, China, India, South Korea, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, U.A.E., and Qatar, to name a few, are countries who are scrambling for foreign land acquisitions in an effort to support their populations. Unfortunately the areas sought after for raising crops are often heavily if not entirely reliant on the World Food Programme (WFP) for their food supply. Investors organize private contracts with the people at power of the nation they seek to exploit, usually to the detriment of the host countries general population. This fuels much debate and contempt with locals towards both their leaders and those who invest in the area, sometimes igniting a physical resistance.
These host countries typically do not receive any benefits from the investments, even when forced to relocate their own homes and farms. Many investors even ship in their own pre-fab housing, labor materials, work force, and even security forces. This is just a snippet of the barrage of conflicts taking place globally due to food and water demands, and has lead to an effort by major organizations such as The World Bank, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the IFPRI and the African Union to draft investment codes of conduct that would govern land acquisition agreements, respecting the rights of those living in the countries of land acquisition as well as the rights of investors. Frighteningly, many of these host countries are on the Foreign Policy's annual list of failing states, so we can only speculate what would happen should a host country collapse while harboring an investing countries supply of grain/food.
Now what about our food? In America and a handful of other nations worriment of a food supply is not so commonplace. We can buy meals from the abundance of fast food chains, corporate restaurants, private restaurants, supermarkets, local markets, convenience stores, etc. Many people fail to realize, however, the source of that hamburger or chicken sandwich, although our class became strikingly aware after Wednesdays viewing of Food Inc. Food Inc. is an American documentary directed by Emmy award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner which examines three major controversies - the industrial production of meat (beef, pork and chicken), the industrial production of grains (corn and soy), and the economic and legal power of the major food companies. We learned about feed farms where cattle is forced into excrement laden pens where they

"fatten up" for a month using hormones, grain diets, and antibiotics. We saw thousands of chicks cooped up in windowless metal structures, fighting and sometimes killing each other out of desperation for survival and a little room to move. Farmers complained to the point of tears about the pressure they now receive from leading food companies such as Tyson, Purdue, and Monsanto about their constant debt for contract required equipment upgrades and the potential of patented bio-engineered seeds cross breeding with a neighboring farm, causing lawsuits and copyright infringement. We heard the story of Barbara Kowalcyk who told the story of her 2 year old son who died from E.coli poisoning after eating a hamburger.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million Americans are sickened, 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die each year from food-borne illnesses, contracted from mass produced food with poor quality control. Eventually we went on to learn about the private industry leaders who went on to head the work for the government and it's affiliates such as the FDA and the Department of Agriculture, directly influencing and/or controlling the standards to which the food industry is to be held.
While pages of information can be written, the incredibly dense issue is best understood perhaps by watching the film yourself or visiting the website and exploring it's material and links to other great resources. I challenge you to not consider the implications next time you find yourself in a drive through or wandering through your local supermarket. Just because it's convenient and abundant, doesn't mean it's safe. Don't you want to change that?