Random opinions from my student blog…

Preface and Chapter 1 RUNDOWN!!  (woo!)

I forget – are we suppose to sum up each chapter section? I could do that, but I’d rather give my reflections on the readings.

Preface - Ah jeez. I’m two pages in and I already have a lot to say… this is going to be a rough course.

The first thing I tripped over was his listing of trends that have been responsible for the growing food crisis. Ethanol is not responsible for the food crisis, nor has ice melting significantly impacted global agriculture. The sole cause of the food crisis? Terrible Farming Practices. That’s all. The falling water table is a result of this, not the other way around. You can grow food sustainably, using significantly less water AND enriching the soil in the process WHILE using less land than “traditional” monocroping. Using correct farming techniques, more people equals more food and better soil – not the other way around. <— His assertion that family planning may have more to do with eliminating hunger than proper farming is so steeped in ignorance I can hardly go on.

That’s right. An undergrad with no experience just called this globe-trotting powerhouse “vastly ignorant.” Try to contain your shock.

He does, however, grasp a keen point – we’re running out of time, and cannot rely on watered-down multi-national treaties to save us.

Selling Out Future: It seems odd to me that the three examples of civilizations that died out came from poor farming techniques, but then just blithely passes by that idea at the fundamental cause in our current crisis.

Food: The Weak Link - Here again, there seems to be so much mis-placed blame on unnecessary things. Irrigation is unnecessary for all but outright desert environments – and sometimes not even then. Utilizing proper water management techniques starts and ends with proper digging and planting – mini-farming, companion planting, double-digging, composting and the like. Assuming these people could get the irrigation water, it would only server to further leech nutrients out of the soil, further erosion, and increase water loss from aquifers (or where ever they get it from). This guy is just not digging deep enough (ha! get it?).

It’s a fair point, one that is not often stressed enough – the massive amount of resources that go into producing the insane amount of meat people eat these days. Reducing meat consumption is one of the easier ways to ease up on water and land usage – but without fixing the agricultural system at its source, we will continue along the path of the Food Crisis. He as also, so far, failed to distinguish between local sustainable food production and imports/exports, nor has he addressed the issue (again, so far) about people who are starving not because they can’t grow food, but simply because their land has been taken to grow food for export (i.e. profit). This is one of the largest issues behind a number of uprisings in South America.

I don’t really know what he means when he says “It was relatively easy to expand world food production when oil was cheap and abundant.” What kind of expansion are we talking about here? People have been feeding themselves since the beginning of time, so what specifically are we expanding? I think he means less outright food production and more profit. “World Food Production,” I think, is actually World Food Profit - otherwise, we wouldn’t have 1 billion people starving. The two are tied together, even – we still produce more food than the population of the world could eat every day, but distribution of this food profit-driven. It costs money to give food to people who can’t pay for it, and that wouldn’t make any business sense – so the food either rots or is disposed of, and a billion people go hungry tonight.

I’d change his statement to: “It was relatively easy to make a profit by stealing people’s resources when oil was cheap and abundant.” I’m like Neo! I can see the code now! Whoa.

The Emerging Politics of Food Scarcity - The selling of the people’s land to foreign countries is the worst crime perpetuated against citizens since their own government took their land away. Derrick Jensen once asked a member of the revolutionary tupacamaristas [sic] what they wanted for Peru, and he said “We need to produce and distribute our own food. We already know how to do that. We need to be allowed to do so.” (Endgame, page 148)

The point is – people are killing and dying over land usage rights. They have been for decades. So long as food remains profitable, and so long as civilization values profit, they will continue to do so. But people will never stop needing to eat, so… this literal war will only end when we, globally, no longer view food as an resource – but as an individual human right. Viva la revolution!

Our Global Ponzi Economy - argh… 3 hours so far and counting.