Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Oregon Small Farms Conference

The 11th Annual OSU Extension Small Farms Conference is coming up this February 26 at the LaSells Stewart Center.  You can find information about the conference and how to register here.  The keynote speaker is Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director of the Center for Rural Affairs with a talk titled: The Next Wave of Change in Agriculture, the Food System & Rural America.  A description of the talk from the conference program:
Small farms are creating a wave of change in the farm and food system that offers rural people and communities the opportunity to retake control of their destiny. Public research and federal policy have driven industrialization of agriculture and undermined family farms and rural communities. Now, American consumers are voting with their dollars for a new approach. Public policies can be changed. Chuck Hassebrook, Center for Rural Affairs.
 The conference is also on facebook here.

Also check out the associated AgrAbility Workshop also taking place February 24-25 at the LaSells Stewart Center.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Tragedy of the commons



Writing in Science magazine in 1966, ecologist Garret Hardin coined the term "Tragedy of the Commons" to describe the difficulties we face in managing a shared resource.  Hardin summed things up in a simple parable:
"The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons.....As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?... the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

The article is one of the most cited in Science, and it sparked a fierce and still somewhat ongoing debate  that is very interesting...although it mostly revolves around a host of social, political, and economic questions and philosophies that are only tangentially related to understanding better resource management.

But all that is just a preamble to saying that the above video is one of the most visceral examples of the tragedy of the commons in real life action that I have ever seen!  Wow!

The Walmartization of sustainability

Michelle Obama recently endorsed  a five-year plan by Walmart  to make thousands of its packaged foods lower in unhealthy salts, fats and sugars, and to drop prices on fruits and vegetables  Read the New York Times article about the announcement here.  On the face of it, Walmart's effort meshes nicely with Mrs. Obama's focus on getting kids to eat healthier food...and what better place to start than the nation's largest grocery chain.  However, distrust of Walmart and its motivations run deep for many. Check out some of the skepticism from the blogosphere here.  Indeed, my wife pointed out the seeming contradiction between Walmart's desire to reduce the cost of fruits and vegetables with another news story that appeared that week:  this one about an agreement between farm workers, local tomato growers and several big-name buyers, including the fast-food giants McDonald’s and Burger King, that will pay the pickers roughly a penny more for every pound of fruit they harvest.  Read it here.  The murmurings around this particular announcement reflect a broader debate about approaches to improving the sustainability and lessening the impact of industry and agriculture.  One broad approach adopted by organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, is to actively engage large corporations in helping them improve their sustainability metrics.  Check out their program in "sustainable markets" here. One big rationale for this approach is that getting Walmart or BP to make even modest  changes in their practices can have a really big overall impact on things.  Other notable folks like ecologist Jared Diamond support this approach as well.  Check out his op-ed piece in the New York Times here.  Others see this as nothing more than greenwashing; seem more commentary from the blogosphere here.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Solar powered streets

Check out an interesting concept for a solar powered street here.  Snowy and icy streets are obviously dangerous, but clearing streets of snow and ice also costs money and uses energy.  Plus there is at least the potential that the use of de-icers like salt have broader environemntal impacts.  So the upfront expense of a fancy solar road might be easily justified.

More squabbles over grain prices

Argentine grain farmers are on strike over the price they can get for their product.  Read a news story about it here.  The Argentine government wants to keep domestic food prices low (this is a country that has been hit by bouts of by crippling hyper inflation a few times in its history).  They are doing this by limiting the ability of grain farmers to export their product (thus increasing the domestic supply).  Understandably this doesn't sit too well with farmers who would like to take full advantage of the rising global price for grain.  This type of dispute is probably as old as there have been farmers, costumers, and governments.  But it is taking place in the context of seemingly increasing concerns about global food prices.  It is also a good example of a classic conundrum.  If you were in charge how would you go about trying to assure that people in your country have access to affordable food?  Make sure your farmers are happy and profitable?

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Water Wars

Humans do four main things with water:  drink it, take baths and wash their dishes with it, make things with it,  and grow food with it.  But it is food production that uses the most water....an estimated 69% of the world's water use goes toward irrigated agriculture.  This makes agriculture a focus of efforts to reduce waste and improve efficiency.  California's watermaster has just released a report calling for a crack down on inefficient agricultural water use.  Read an LA times article about the report here.  But as the article implies (and the reader comments back up!) any talk about water often generates contentious debate...particularly in the arid west.   These debates seem likely to only increase as the human demand for water increases

We will talk a little bit about these issues in class, but if you want to learn more there are many good books that deal (at least in part) with the contentious issue of water, including Cadillac DesertThe King of California, and The Great Thirst.   Also, a nice recent book that we recently read in book club is
Water in the 21st Century West.

Monday, January 10, 2011

You get what you pay for

To an economists everything has a price.  Or rather, a value that reflects how desperately we would work to get that thing or how bitter we would be if we lost it.  Economists can readily describe our collective value for some things, but have a much more difficult time valuing other things.  Many ecosystem services fall into the later category, and because of this they often get undervalued or overlooked altogether when individuals (and society as a whole) make management decisions.  There is a growing movement to develop schemes that better 'internalize" (to use economics jargon) the true value of these services into our land management decisions.

Listen to an interesting story from the BBC program One Planet about efforts to develop payment schemes for ecosystem services here.  It is part of a larger series called 2050: An Earth Odyssey.

Not your father's Oldsmobile

Check out this new environmentally friendly concept car GM demonstrated at the consumer electronics show.  Besides being electric, the car boasts sonar and a GPS guided auto pilot system that will allow you to avoid all the even more environmentally conscious walkers and bicyclists you encounter on your way to work....even if you get distracted tweeting how hip you are!

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Food prices on the rise

Three years ago global food prices spiked dramatically leading to food riots in many poor countries (where lots of folks earn less than $2/day), and causing general concern that our golden age of food production was coming to an end.  Food prices subsequently eased, due in part to the global economic downturn.  However, prices are once again creeping up.  Check out this report in the New York Times.   The details seem to be a bit different than the last spike, but there is growing concern that increasing food costs reflect a global food system that is under strain.  What exactly is causing this strain and how exactly do we assure that the system doesn't break are profound questions that we we will have to deal with in the coming decades.  We will explore some of these issues as the course goes along.

Beautiful destruction?

I mentioned in class that there is a movement to augment the old terrestrial biome classification of the planet with a new system that reflects the profound influence that humans have on the planet.  Check out the anthromes project here.

A more visceral view of the global impact of humans is provided by the photographs of J. Henry Fair.  His photos vividly depict scenes of environmental degradation.  Check out an article about his work in this month's Smithsonian magazine here.  Besides being arresting beautiful, I think the pictures are interesting because they make you think about how much of our landscape is actually at least partly constructed and modified by humans.  The pictures also bring up interesting questions about perspective, scale, and perception.  Each of the pictures presents a very limited snapshot of human interaction with the natural world, almost totally devoid of context.  However, informed management decisions require a deep understanding of context.  We will explore some of these contextual details.....and the complications that arise form them....in this class.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Can we live with 7 billion people?

If current projections hold we better be able to.  National Geographic has an interesting special series that explorers the various implications of a world with 7 billion people (the current estimate for world population by the end of 2011)  Read the story here.

A fundamental (but rarely explicitly discussed) element of resource management is the number of people on the planet scrambling to use the earth's resources.  World population has been growing at a spectacular rate over the last few hundred years, (check out this video associated with the NGS story) and this has put an inevitable strain on resources.  Are these strains manageable or are they the harbingers of global doom?  Check out this vision of an overpopulated world from a classic Star Trek.  But, like most of the things we will discuss in this class, the topic is complex and there are no simple answers (like Captain Kirk's belief in the power of contraception).  For instance, the vast majority of the earth's resources are currently consumed by a small minority of it's human population.  Perhaps the inequitable intensity of resource use (by a privileged few) is more of  a problem than the fact that there will be 7 billion of us?

Monday, January 3, 2011

Bye Bye Bees?

There has been a lot written about the declining health of the domesticated honeybee.  But there is new evidence that other bees are  in peril as well.  Check out this news story on bumble bee declines.

If you are feeling particularly academic, check out the actual research article that the news story is based on here.

We will talk about pollinators and their importance a little bit later in the course.