A special thanks to farmers

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and it is no secret that most Thanksgiving Day traditions revolve around food. In my large family, it is the cornerstone of the celebration.

This is a time to give thanks for the bountiful selection of food available to the average American. And we, as a society, definitely take for granted where much of that food comes. Although a great deal of our food supply is imported, I'm talking about the American farmer.

America has a long history with farming. Farming is a tradition that has morphed from predominately family run enterprises to vast corporate agricultural machines. Due to the plentiful fields and inventive techniques, America has been able to raise a wide variety of grains, vegetables, fruits, and livestock.

There is still a rising need for a return to local farming and the availability of local, sustainably-grown food supplies. I encourage everyone to check out Local Harvest. They say it best on their website home page:

"The best organic food is what's grown closest to you. Use our website to find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies."

The site is full of helpful information. Here is an interesting fact from Local Harvest:

"There are almost two million farms in the USA. About 80% of those are small farms, and a large percentage are family owned. More and more of these farmers are now selling their products directly to the public. They do this via CSA programs, Farmers' Markets, Food Coops, u-picks, farm stands, and other direct marketing channels. Would you like to support your local farmer? Use our map to find a small farm near you!

Large scale chemical agriculture is poisoning our soils and our water, and weakening our communities. By buying direct from a family farm you can help put a stop to this unfortunate trend. By buying organic produce from your local farmer, you are working to maintain a healthy environment, a vibrant community, and a strong and sustainable local economy for you and your kids to thrive in.

This Thanksgiving remember to thank the farmers responsible for your feast!

Until next time...become the change you imagine.

A special birthday gift

Next month is the third anniversary of charity: water.
Most of us have never really been thirsty. We’ve never had to leave our houses and walk 5 miles to fetch water. We simply turn on the tap, and water comes out. Clean. Yet more than 1.1 billion people on the planet don’t have clean water. It’s hard to imagine what a billion people looks like really, but one in six might be easier. One in six people in our world don’t have access to the most basic of human needs. Something we can’t imagine going 12 hours without.

My birthday is in a couple of days and I am asking all my readers, friends, and family to donate a couple of dollars to this very worthwhile charity.

Until next time...become you change you imagine.

Destroying the earth in the name of food safety

I recently read an article from the San Francisco Chronicle that completely alarmed me. Here is the beginning paragraphs of “Crops, pond destroyed in quest for food safety” written by Carolyn Lochhead:

Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides.

He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind.

"I was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop," he said. "On one field where a deer walked through, didn't eat anything, just walked through and you could see the tracks, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of the tracks and annihilate the crop."

In the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary and one of the world's biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national.

Invisible to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare - spinach, peppers and now cookie dough - ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer - and anything that shelters them - are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.

In pending legislation and in proposed federal regulations, the push for food safety butts up against the movement toward biologically diverse farming methods, while evidence suggests that industrial agriculture may be the bigger culprit.

To those who believe, as Mr. Peixoto does, that food should be free of chemical pesticides this strategy is a huge step backwards! And blaming E.coli for this ridiculous policy is ludicrous. Where was this problem 100 years ago? 200 years ago?

The bigger issue is how corporate agriculture has affected the safety of our food supply.

Seattle trial lawyer Bill Marler, who represented many of the plaintiffs in the 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach, said:

"In 16 years of handling nearly every major food-borne illness outbreak in America, I can tell you I've never had a case where it's been linked to a farmers' market.

Could it happen? Absolutely. But the big problem has been the mass-produced product. What you're seeing is this rub between trying to make it as clean as possible so they don't poison anybody, but still not wanting to come to the reality that it may be the industrialized process that's making it all so risky."

Overuse of antibiotics over the last 30 years has resulted in resistant strains of bacteria in humans. Couldn’t the same reasoning be applied to bacteria in animals? E.coli dwells mainly in the guts of cattle, which are routinely dosed with antibiotics. The first appearance of E.coli, in the early 1980’s, was in hamburger meat and then later found in certain produce – mainly leafy greens.

I see this as another inevitable result of industrial agriculture’s unhealthy, destructive processes.

In a previous post from March of this year sustainable agriculture was discussed. Also discussed was the return of family farms, and smaller scale, regional and local farming as the preferred source of our food supplies. The beneficial effects on population health, local economies, and the environment cannot be emphasized enough.

To find a local farm, or farmer's market in your area visit Local Harvest or contact your local county extension agent. Please support your local farmer!

Until next time...become the change you imagine.

The quest to save the oceans

"The oceans are in jeopardy. At no time in the span of human civilization have we faced such extreme and global threats to our marine ecosystems." So begins Saving Our Oceans-An Urban Challenge written by Major Jeremy Harris, Ret.

Mayor Jeremy Harris served for more than ten years as the Mayor of the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, the 12th largest city in the United States. He retired from politics in January of 2005. Prior to becoming Mayor, Harris was Honolulu’s longest serving Managing Director, a position he held for nine years.

Under Mayor Harris’ leadership Honolulu achieved world wide recognition.

* 1st Place Gold Award for Large Cities-International Award for Livable Cities 2004
* Best City Government Website in the United States, 2003
* Special Achievement Award in Geographic Information System Technology, 2003
* #1 City in U.S. - Use of Technology in Delivering Government Services, 2002
* America’s Best Transit System, American Public Transportation Assoc., 2000 & 1994

During his three terms as Mayor, Honolulu was recognized as one of the best managed cities in the United States. In addition to the hundreds of awards the City received during his tenure, Mayor Harris also earned national and international acclaim. Several of his awards include:

* Keystone Award, American Architectural Foundation, 2005
* Outstanding Achievement Award for Sustainability, U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2004
* Lifetime Achievement Award in GIS Systems, ESRI, 2004
* Lifetime Achievement Award for Support of Information Technology, CDG, 2004
* City Livability Award for Exemplary Leadership, U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2003
* Distinguished Leadership Award in Planning, American Planning Association, 2002

Mayor Harris is the only individual to receive the award of Public Administrator of the Year for two consecutive years from the Hawaii branch of the American Association of Public Administrators. He has served as the Public Director on the National Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects. Mayor Harris is currently a senior visiting faculty member in energy and environment at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, and an advisor on sustainability to the National Academy of Science in Washington D.C.

Mayor Harris holds a Masters of Science degree in Population and Environmental Biology, specializing in urban ecosystems, from the University of California, Irvine, and is the author of a new book, The Renaissance of Honolulu, The Sustainable Rebirth of an American City.

I include the lengthy bio because it is important to recognize Major Harris' credentials as I would encourage you to read the entire paper.

It is Major Harris' assertion that "the single biggest contributor to the destruction of our global marine environment has gone largely unaddressed. That destructive force is unsustainable urban development." Accelerated growth in urban populations along with increased consumption of goods and services are straining available natural resources and generating unprecedented amounts of waste.

Climate change caused by increased greenhouse gas emissions is threatening coral reefs worldwide due to elevated sea temperatures and ocean acidification. Most emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels, primarily in vehicles. Highest concentrations tend to be found in urban areas where the density of vehicles causes extremely high emission levels.

Localized pollution also threatens coral reefs and near shore marine habitats. Poor land use practices increases erosion rates and cause increased sedementation on the reefs. Stormwater runoff carry contaminants and sediment onto coral reefs and into coastal wetlands.

Hydrocarbons, household hazardous wastes, and other toxins are poured down catch-basins each day in urban areas, flushing out into estuaries and reef ecosystems when it rains. The agricultural areas surrounding urban areas burden the marine environment with runoff containing topsoil, herbicides and insecticides.

The aquarium fish industry, overfishing and the use of destructive trawls, dynamite, bleach, and rotenone to poison and stun fish for easy harvesting has a severe impact on marine ecosystems.

Major Harris sums up the challenge for cities:

"While it is clear that building sustainable cities is necessary to halt the deterioration of the oceans, the challenges that cities face in this effort are enormous. The scope of the transformation that is needed in urban infrastructure, land use, transportation, energy policy, and waste management systems for urban sustainability is daunting, but these challenges are well understood and the technology to meet them is largely available. The most critical challenges that cities face in the struggle for sustainability are those of capacity building, leadership development and infrastructure financing. While these efforts are fundamental in the battle to build sustainable cities, they are the most neglected. "

The oceans cover about 71% of the Earth’s surface and have a significant effect on the biosphere. The evaporation of ocean water (as a component of the water cycle) is the source of most rainfall, and ocean temperatures determine climate and wind patterns. It would seem prudent, then, for us to be extremely aggressive in our efforts to halt further destruction and repair existing damage.

Until next time...become the change you imagine.

Reconnecting with our natural heritage.

June 5th is World Environment Day, which was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. The theme for 2009 is 'Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change'. This reflects the immediate need for nations to agree on a new course of action at the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in December, and the links with overcoming poverty and the improved management of forests.

Mexico is the host country, this year, which reflects its growing role in the fight against climate change, including its growing participation in the carbon markets. A leading partner in UNEP's Billion Tree Campaign, Mexico, with the support of its President and people, has spearheaded the pledging and planting of some 25% of the trees in that campaign. Mexico accounts for roughly 1.5 % of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the country is demonstrating its commitment to climate change on several fronts.

While I applaud the numerous global and national "days" dedicated to environmental concerns and awareness, we need to involve ourselves in these issues on a daily basis. We need to have a global "Shift Your Attitude" Day to impress on people the need to change the way we think about our environment and our place in it.

The first step is to stop thinking of ourselves as separate from nature. We ARE nature, we ARE our environment. The only separation is in our own minds. Earth is life and the source of our sustenance. Sustenance can be defined as: the act of sustaining : the state of being sustained :a supplying or being supplied with the necessities of life. Which brings us back to the ongoing issue of sustainability.

For humans to live sustainably, the Earth's resources must be used at a rate at which they can be replenished. Humans, until recently, lived in harmony with their environment, and primitive peoples still respect this basic premise of life. As a materialistic society with unchecked population growth, we have exhausted the earth's ability to replenish itself.

The delicate balance necessary for any natural system to survive has been severely compromised. With this in mind there is an imperative need for humans to understand their connectedness to their world and everything on it. As my friend, Andrew, so eloquently put it:

"There have been moments of grace though. The quiet time first thing in the morning when I’m able to connect with the beauty of nature that surrounds me. The silence punctuated by bird song and the wind through the trees."

"That is the way of nature. There is perfection as we look not only closely at the plants but also at the panoramas of the bigger picture."

In keeping with the "bigger picture" there is a calendar of global environmental events available here. My challenge to you, the reader, is to start making a positive impact NOW, by shifting your attitude and awareness about your place in the environment. Reconnect with your natural human heritage.

Until next time...become the change you imagine.