You hear of one study saying that the energy used washing ceramic coffee cups is as damaging to the environment as the use of disposable plastic cups that won’t biodegrade for thousands of years. You hear of another that says destroying trees to make paper towels is no worse than using hot water and toxic detergent to wash cloth rags.

Everything, if you listen to conventional wisdom, is as bad as everything else. The spin merchants have got us believing that to try to make any difference is futile. You might as well give up. Throw away another plastic coffee [...]]]> Have you heard of Colin Beavan, the No Impact Man? Well, now he’s part of the CSL Blog Posse! Here’s an introduction to his work, written as he and his family were just getting started. Now that their year-long no impact journey has ended, there is a book, a film, and many more exciting  adventures to come.  Make sure to check out the trailer for his documentary film below!

You hear of one study saying that the energy used washing ceramic coffee cups is as damaging to the environment as the use of disposable plastic cups that won’t biodegrade for thousands of years. You hear of another that says destroying trees to make paper towels is no worse than using hot water and toxic detergent to wash cloth rags.

Everything, if you listen to conventional wisdom, is as bad as everything else. The spin merchants have got us believing that to try to make any difference is futile. You might as well give up. Throw away another plastic coffee cup. Don’t bother with the hybrid car. Go on, guzzle.

Meanwhile, I mention to a very liberal friend, a guy who used to be spokesman for a Democratic senator, that I’m trying to figure out how to live no impact here in New York. “Forget it. It’s impossible,” he says. It’s one thing to try it in the countryside, maybe in the woods, like Henry David Thoreau, or on a farm, where you grow your own food. But in New York City? No way.

The fact is that if city dwellers can’t learn to live without reducing their ecological footprint then we’re in deep trouble because most of the world’s population now lives in cities. Saving the world can’t be left to the country bumpkins. It’s an urban problem.

True, a city like New York does have the environmental advantage of economy of scale—people share transport, buildings and resources—but cities are also responsible for the production and concentration of pollutants in massive amounts. Thanks to car and truck exhaust alone, which makes for 90 percent of Manhattan’s air pollution, the island’s residents face the highest risk in the country of developing cancer from chemicals in the air.

Add to that the annual 9 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from New York’s electricity use, our 8 billion pounds of garbage and half a trillion gallons of sewage and you have a supersized serving of world-killing poisons. Energy efficient city though New York might be, we remain an ecological nightmare, which is why—in addition to the feeling that we just have to do something—my wife Michelle and I began talking about going off the grid for a year, unplugging from the matrix.

In specific terms, the challenge is to take a year to develop and live a no impact lifestyle. Our approach will be to research our ecological options and run down our damage in one area at a time—solid waste, transportation, energy, for example. Our aim, over the course of the year, is to do no net harm to the environment. We’ll wind down in stages.

But to cause no net impact is impossible to do merely by restricting consumption and waste output. Just participating in society makes us responsible for the negative environmental impacts of society’s functioning, even if our personal lifestyle does no harm. To offset our societal ecological debt, we also plan to take actions that will have positive environmental impact. For example, we’ll volunteer with the Nature Conservancy to clean up garbage off the beach. To help sop up our share of the year’s CO2, we will take part in a reforestation project to help plant trees.

Meanwhile, I’ll research and answer many of the niggling questions that have had us and everyone we know throwing our hands in the air when trying to do less harm to the environment. Do you do more harm by living in the country or the city? Is it better to drive a thousand miles or take an airplane? Is it really true that the tiniest moped, because of its lack of a catalytic converter, causes more pollution than an SUV? Could we all, by video conferencing, virtual collaboration and tele-commuting, cut down our travel enough to cause a worthwhile reduction in carbon emissions? What, exactly, comprises sufficient individual effort that, if taken by each of us, would save the planet?

During the course of the year, Michelle, Isabella and I will traverse the range of lifestyles from making a limited number of concessions to the environment to becoming eco-extremists. This means that when we’re done, we can reenter the world of normal consumerdom equipped to decide which parts of our no impact lifestyle we’re willing to keep and which ones we’re not. In other words, in addition to the no impact year, we’ll have figured out our way forward.

A slice of Edible Heaven

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nowhere is this truer than on a small organic farm deep in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. On Earth Day last week I craved a reality check, so I called my friends Rusty and Sue Nuffer, who have spent most of the past four decades with their hands deep in the dirt. When I called, Sue picked up the phone out in the packing shed. She was laughing watching Rusty across the field hefting irrigation pipes high against a tree to scare out any sleeping rodents about to be drowned. Sue had been planting rows of tomatoes in a new soil cocktail they’ve cooked up.  Each year they grow an ever-changing and wide variety of exotic gourmet vegetables.  It’s been over ten years since my last visit to their little slice of edible heaven, yet the picture they painted is just as I remembered it. Meanwhile the business of organic farming has changed dramatically over [...]]]>

A slice of Edible Heaven

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nowhere is this truer than on a small organic farm deep in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. On Earth Day last week I craved a reality check, so I called my friends Rusty and Sue Nuffer, who have spent most of the past four decades with their hands deep in the dirt. When I called, Sue picked up the phone out in the packing shed. She was laughing watching Rusty across the field hefting irrigation pipes high against a tree to scare out any sleeping rodents about to be drowned. Sue had been planting rows of tomatoes in a new soil cocktail they’ve cooked up.  Each year they grow an ever-changing and wide variety of exotic gourmet vegetables.  It’s been over ten years since my last visit to their little slice of edible heaven, yet the picture they painted is just as I remembered it. Meanwhile the business of organic farming has changed dramatically over the years, with many of those changes – good and bad – coming recently and rapidly on the wings of technology. Sue and Rusty took some time out from under the spring sun to talk to me about the life of a small organic farmer in 2009.

“When we first started out, our goal was just self-sufficiency,” Rusty said. “We wanted to get out of the cities, live close to the earth.” Like so many others, they were burned-out on the 60’s and wanted to get off the grid, disengage from the system. “We were disgusted trying to do social change.” The back-to-land movement was happening all over the country and Rusty and Sue, from Michigan and Ohio, were part of a group that found cheap land in the remote Ozarks. “I paid ten grand for an old 80-acre hill farm that had been unused for years.” Rusty said.  The beautiful spot is surrounded by State Forest and to this day is still 20 miles from the nearest blacktop. Sue and her family were on another farm a few miles away. “We all became expert in gardening because we were growing our own food. It was instinctual,” said Sue, “we didn’t think to grow to sell. Everything was barter.”

Over the next decade, some of the homesteaders drifted back to the ‘burbs, leaving devoted earthies like Rusty and Sue to hang in for the long haul. Famous back-to-land pioneers Helen and Scott Nearing once told them the two simple rules to succeed: Find good land and find a good partner. You can’t do it alone. Each previously married with kids, Rusty and Sue were a perfect match. “We’re so fortunate we work together so well.” And work they do: for much of the year, it’s sun up to sundown, 6 or 7 days a week. “Bug infestation on the potatoes. No rain. Broken machine. It’s always something and you never get ahead of it.” Sue adds: “It’s like having 10,000 children and they all want attention.”

Making a Living

Their first taste of wide distribution came with Sue’s blueberries. “At that time, if you had an organic product, you could sell it – as long as you could get it shipped,” she said.  It was the early 80’s and organic distribution was still a quaint affair. “We organized 20 farms to sell together so we could get a truck to stop through Arkansas from one of the big national buyers.”

Then sometime in the late 80’s things began to change. The big boys saw mega green in their futures and started moving into organics. These corporate growers pushed for weak certification laws.  In California, for example, a farmer at the time only needed to stop spraying chemicals for a single year in order to be certified organic. “One year we’re getting $18 for a box of green peppers. The next year they’re coming out of California at $6.” Said Rusty. “The box alone cost us a dollar! All the big growers were selling below cost to knock out all us small producers.” The little fish continued to struggle under the price-war tsunami throughout the nineties. Many went belly up. “That’s when we started going to the farmers market.”

By the late nineties, organics had tipped into the mainstream. A feedback loop escalated between public interest and business, with Whole Foods leading the way. The company was on a Pac-Man roll, gobbling up Mom&Pop stores across the country. But many of the most devoted customers missed the intimacy and transparency of the old ways. Farmers Markets sprang up across the country so people could shake their farmer’s hand.  And for growers like Rusty and Sue, Farmers Markets became popular just in time.  Most Saturdays for about ten years they got up at 3am and drove two hours to the River Market in Little Rock. “It was like a rock and roll tour. Except our curtain went up at sunrise,” says Rusty. “We kicked butt down there.”  They hired extra help to deal with the crowds three and four deep at their long tables. “We had colors of things no one had ever seen. Five colors of carrots. People would take pictures” The duo became famous as ‘the potato people’ because of their exotic spuds – one year they grew 28 varieties. Some of the top restaurants in the area became devoted customers. They both speak fondly of their years at the market, and it’s about much more than money. “The people were just fantastic. We met so many good friends there. It was so satisfying to get the personal reaction when people love your food.”

But eventually the brutal schedule took a toll and Rusty and Sue had to fold up the tables and tent for good. “We weren’t much good on sundays, and we can’t afford to be dragging. We started burning out.”

Virtual Farmers Markets

In the handful of years since giving up the Farmer’s Markets, Rusty and Sue have had to innovate once again to reach customers. “We’re at a real disadvantage being so remote,” says Sue, “we’ve never been able to ship directly to customer and we can’t do the CSA thing.” Community Supported Agriculture is a big trend now. Customers are like shareholders. Paying a flat annual fee entitles them to drop by their farm each week and pick up a box of whatever happens to be harvesting. Despite their popularity, they aren’t ideal for consumer choice.

Enter the internet. Until last month, Armstead Mountain Farm was tethered to the brave new world by a raggedy dial-up connection that worked sporadically at best. They used it mostly to email their grown kids scattered across the globe. The Nuffers are not exactly techies anyway. Until a few years ago, Rusty loved plowing with his prized draft horses, even as a tractor sat nearby. They’d rather have the glow of sun on their faces than a flickering screen. But even this down-to-earth duo has found salvation in the web. They splurged on a satellite dish last month and it’s opened up a new world for their business.

Several years ago, a farmer and techno geek in Athens, Georgia put up a community site called locallygrown.net to help farmers and customers connect. In a short time it has grown to over serve 800 growers in 50 networks nationwide, with many more coming online this season. Last year Rusty and Sue gave it a try and helped create their local network. They also joined two other smaller online networks.  “We love it. It’s perfect for us,” says Sue. “On Sunday night we post what we’ll have for the week.  Buyers log on Monday through Wednesday and place orders.” Late in the week, they drive their orders to drop-off points manned by volunteers. “We pay a 10% fee to help maintain the network, but compared to the cost of gas and renting the booth at the real Farmer’s Market, it’s a bargain.” One familiar casualty of this virtual market, however, is the personal touch. “We really do miss the one-on-one connection. We get feedback through the volunteers, but it’s not the same as seeing the smile on their face.” Rusty and Sue feel better knowing that their carbon footprint has been drastically reduced now that they’re not driving all the way to Little Rock.

Staying Alive

I asked if it’s easier or harder to get into this game now compared to when they started.  Rusty said, “It was actually much more possible in the early days because things were cheap. Nowadays about the only way for young people to get started is to inherit some land.” While Rusty and Sue are too busy to follow every detail of the politics and policy of food, they do stay well-informed and activist.  They use the internet more and more to stay up to date. “The upcoming regulations are a little scary. It depends how it’s enforced,” says Rusty, “the most important thing to keep in mind is scalability.”  Indeed, what works for the little guy is not the same as what works for the big guy, and small farmers are carefully watching the legislation for signs of big-business power.

After the USDA took over the organic certification process, many small farmers, including Rusty and Sue, just couldn’t afford to use the label. “You have to keep so many records for every crop. That’s fine for the guy with one crop on two hundred acres. It’s a killer for us with fifty crops on four acres.” Of the dozen or so farmers in their locallygrown.net network, only one carries the USDA Organic seal – even though Rusty and Sue have actually always far surpassed the standards. “It didn’t make a bit of difference at the Farmer’s Market because everyone knew us. Now, with the online thing, it would probably help to get certified again.”

There are other roadblocks. The Whole Foods in Little Rock won’t buy from local farmers unless they have a one million dollar liability insurance policy. “I guess that’s in case somebody chokes on our carrot,” said Sue.  And so, not surprisingly, big trucks with California license plates dominate the store’s loading docks.

But despite the challenges, Rusty and Sue remain optimistic. “It depends which pages of the newspaper you read. There’s plenty of good news in between plenty of bad news.” They’re very encouraged to see so many people interested in their way of life and the role of food in caring about the planet. The Obama’s vegetable garden was something they never thought they’d see, and Sue was delighted that the White House involved local school kids. “Right now the average age for a farmer is 51.” But she’s seeing a whole new wave of enthusiastic, idealistic young people that reminds her of their early days all over again. Rusty’s daughter Rose is following in his footsteps, working on farms across England for an organization called WWOOF, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.

Rusty and Sue have been living sustainably since long before terms like carbon footprint, localvore, and slow food became bandwagon buzzwords. But they’re not the least bit tempted to gloat now that the rest of the world has caught up on the path they’ve blazed by gut intuition for years.  In an era when green-washing threatens to consumerize and water down the movement, the simplicity and beauty of the Nuffer’s daily lives are a rich reality check. “This year we’re excited about a new potato we’re trying. It’s called ‘purple majesty’ and it tests higher than any other food ever for one important anti-oxidant,” says Sue. Their world centers around the soil. They’re forever experimenting with new methods to enrich and re-mineralize mother earth. Lately Rusty’s been exploring an ancient Amazonian technique known as Terra Preta, where high-potency charcoal is carefully introduced over many years.

“We’re just pretty dang lucky, that’s all,” says Rusty. It’s their favorite thing to say when you praise them too much. “The perks are that you work in the freshest restaurant in the world!” Sue said, “and just being close to nature all the time – taking care of the planet is spiritual.”

So before I went back to my keyboard and they to their dirt, I asked what they did for Earth Day. They nearly forgot the date. “Every day is Earth Day,” said Rusty, “Earth Month. Earth Year…. It’s an Earth Life, I guess. That’s what it needs to be. Keep that awareness all the time.”

Further Reading:
Locally Grown.net
WWOOF
Helen and Scott Nearing
Terra Preta
Sue’s recommended gardening book:
John Jeavons’ How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine

A Ponzi scheme is basically when you pay off early investors [...]]]>
I don’t know about you, but I sure enjoyed Bernie Madoff’s ponz-o-matic perp-walk for the cameras yesterday. Who doesn’t love a billionaire on the red carpet in cuffs? Fascinating! How does a greedy geezer get away with such a colossal swindle for so long? But I’m not talking about government’s lack of oversight here (that’s a whole other mess), I mean the quiet checks and balances within a man’s own soul. This is why we stare at pictures of criminals, isn’t it? We hope to find answers written somewhere in the face. We need to sigh with relief that they’re not us… But not so fast. It turns out we do in fact share something in common with Madoff, and his scam offers us a valuable opportunity to understand ourselves in fresh terms. That is: the human race has been running a vast con job on mother earth herself… and the gig is nearly up. Welcome to Planet Ponzi.

A Ponzi scheme is basically when you pay off early investors with money from newer investors. It’s also called a pyramid scheme because it grows in the shape of a triangle – each new tier of victims must be bigger to cover payments to all previous tiers. This is sustainable only so long as you can keep more and more fresh money flowing in. But once that dries up, even a little, the whole thing collapses. They always do, and usually quite quickly. What’s astonishing about Madoff is that it went on for so long and got so big.

But Bernie’s mischief is a sideshow to the main stage. Are you sitting down? The global economy actually works in a similar way, and we’re watching the whole house of cards teeter as voodoo economics collides hard with planet earth.

Capitalism is all about growth. It thrives on the creation of more and more wealth. Follow the money back to its roots and you’ll always find natural resources. Our desire to exploit natural resources is certainly nothing new. But for thousands of years we, like all living things, were part of a food chain that was limited by each year’s sunlight. We understood the circle of life because we lived in it. But through the millennia our pesky penchant for science, mixed with some God-given dominion, slowly pulled us away from the garden. Our dislocation took an abrupt turn off track with the discovery of oil. Suddenly, a million years worth of stored sunlight was available in a moment. The industrial revolution kicked into high gear. Enormous amounts of energy were applied exploiting other resources, which in turn were used to exploit yet more resources, on and on in a vicious cycle of production, consumption and waste that grows like… you guessed it, a Ponzi scheme. Today we have a complex industrial food system that’s 30 times more energy-dependent than just a century ago. Not to mention all that stupid shit they sell on infomercials late night.

Capitalism is a cool party train so long as the oil wells are pumping and there’s somewhere to dump the waste. But over the past decade or so, we’ve been shaken with the realization that Mama Earth has her limits. She’s slamming on the brakes and the boxcars of the Economy Express are piling up in a spectacular derailment. As the dust settles, we’re beginning to think hard about a new way of doing business where the earth gets to vote again.

I’ll never forget my first lesson in ecology: a Native Alaskan ceremonial mask I saw in a museum when I was a kid. A crazy-assed spirit face, and on the sides it had hands with big holes in the palms. I learned the holes represented a guiding rule: for every salmon you catch, you have to let one slip through. When’s the last time you saw them do that on Deadliest Catch? The next big lesson came from the compost pile: in nature, there is no waste. The thing is, there’s nothing romantic or remarkable about this view of life. It IS life. Nature is self-sustaining, ponzi schemes are not. Native people acted on behalf of their unborn’s unborn, corporations act on behalf of the next quarterly report. The earth is round, yet we’ve been jamming it into a pyramid-shaped box.

In court yesterday, Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty. The fallen billionaire will probably die in prison. He hung his head and expressed deep regret for the pain he caused. He explained that when it started, he thought it would end quickly. It just grew out of control. He said, “As the years went by I realized this day, and my arrest, would inevitably come.” Call him the greedy sociopath he certainly is – don’t forget the swine specifically targeted charities! (he also screwed amazing activists like John Robbins of Diet for a New America fame). But let’s also stop and think about the Madoff in all of us. The part of us that knows we must stop, knows our day in court will come, but we lack the courage to do the right thing. Old Bernie’s cooked. But for us there’s still time – although not much. Big Mama’s negotiating for a limited time only.

Our ticket back home is renewable energy. Sun, wind, and waves are forever so they can’t be boxed into a ponzi scheme. Amidst this crisis there’s enormous opportunity and great hope. The days of denial are over. We have a new leader of the free world who embraces science and progressive, holistic, long-view solutions. These first 50 days of Obama’s term have been dizzying in the scope of change. So much legislation and money is being directed to these issues that I can’t keep track. Huge sums for renewable energy. Please share links and details that you may have!

We all have to do our part to fan these winds of change. As my wife Kris says, it’s time to “turn shit into champagne.” Of course, that’s a sustainable, local, organic shit vineyard. 2009 will be a great vintage.

Peace,
Brian

I hear there’s a party going on in here. I’m not sure which bar I should hit first, the wine or the wheatgrass… My globetrotting wife Kris is in South Carolina for the weekend – in the middle of an all day yoga class as we speak – so I thought I’d kick things off with our little book club.

For anyone just dropping by, we’ve begun reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food.

First off, I love Pollan’s writing. He has such a talent for digesting (pardon the pun) our familiar world and reflecting it back to us with a fresh, clear perspective. You see connections where you hadn’t before, and learn that there are deliberate forces, often political, influencing parts of our lives that we assumed were the domain of chance.

We live in a strange time, food-wise. As our world shrinks, our food options grow larger. Consider the produce section at your mega-grocery: it’s brimming with exotic choices our parents and grandparents [...]]]>
Hello All!

I hear there’s a party going on in here. I’m not sure which bar I should hit first, the wine or the wheatgrass… My globetrotting wife Kris is in South Carolina for the weekend – in the middle of an all day yoga class as we speak – so I thought I’d kick things off with our little book club.

For anyone just dropping by, we’ve begun reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food.

First off, I love Pollan’s writing. He has such a talent for digesting (pardon the pun) our familiar world and reflecting it back to us with a fresh, clear perspective. You see connections where you hadn’t before, and learn that there are deliberate forces, often political, influencing parts of our lives that we assumed were the domain of chance.

We live in a strange time, food-wise. As our world shrinks, our food options grow larger. Consider the produce section at your mega-grocery: it’s brimming with exotic choices our parents and grandparents never even heard of, let alone had access to. And this bounty is available season after season, all year around. We take this so for granted that we need a leap of imagination to realize just how novel and unnatural this is. As they say, “it’s always summer somewhere.” This, of course, brings up a variety of related issues: the connection between chow transport and global warming; the reliance on preservatives and GMO for longer shelf-life, to name a few.

Pollan talks about how much our diets have changed over the past few generations – for good and bad. He describes his Grandmother’s diet in the 1940’s, his Mom’s in the 1960’s, and now his. We all know our family stories – who, when, where – but do you know your food story?

My Mom grew up during the 1930’s and 40’s. Her relationship to food was probably typical of an upper-middle class American family at the time. (Hi Mom. I know you’re out there but either too shy to comment or can’t figure out how to sign in. Or both.) When she was a kid, it was a special occasion to have citrus fruit, for example. At Christmas they’d get a bag of oranges – all the way from a place called Florida!!

Back then dinner was a sit-down family affair, and she continued this tradition when I was growing up. We had a big old farm bell in our suburban front yard. You could hear it all the way to the edge of my known world, and when it rang, you’d better haul your ass home to dinner. Of course my brother, sister, and I tended to resent this tribal obligation. While many of our friends were free to wander home whenever they pleased and forage for leftovers or TV dinners, we were stuck in Family Land, talking, laughing, and passing around hot casseroles. In hindsight, from the perspective of nutrition, some of the food was unhealthy. But the meal – the overall experience – was infinitely nourishing.

As Pollan writes in the intro: “We forget that historically, people have eaten for a great many reasons other than biological necessity. Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity.”

We know instinctively that food and community are inseparable, but we struggle so hard in this drive-thru age. Incredible advances have been made in nutrition – not all old habits are good just because they’re old – and I for one am happy for the variety today. But with 1 in 6 Americans eating lunch in the car, how do we change the system and reclaim a holistic definition of EAT?

What was a meal for you growing up? Talk to your families – hopefully you’re lucky enough to have a few generations still hanging around – find out what they ate. And how they ate. And why. What about your distant ancestors? What is your Gastro-Geneology?

Would love to hear your thoughts on In Defense of Food.

Peace,
– Brian
PS – thanks Dhrumil for a great blog!