As bouts with killer algae rose, Florida gutted its water quality monitoring network
By Jenny Staletovich August 6, 2018
A red tide is destroying wildlife across Florida’s southwest coast
An ongoing red tide is killing wildlife throughout Florida’s southwest coast and has left beaches littered with dead fish, sea turtles, manatees and a whale shark. Additional footage courtesy of Southwest Florida TV via Facebook. By Matias J. Ocner – Jenny Staletovich
When Florida Sea Grant director Karl Havens, who is a well-regarded expert on water and has studied pollution all over the world, began hearing about a deepening algae bloom in his own backyard in Lake Okeechobee this summer, he struggled to find information that could tell him what was going on.
State scientists sample water in the lake, but too infrequently to track rapidly evolving algae blooms. Instead, Havens had to rely on satellite images that were taken on sunny days when clouds don’t get in the way.
“No one is out on the lake collecting water samples of the bloom,” he said last month. “We’re flying blind.”
Over the last decade, as the state fought federal efforts to protect water, shrunk its own environmental and water-management agencies, and cut funding to an algae task force, monitoring for water quality has plummeted. While one crisis after another hit Florida, state and federal funding that paid for a massive coastal network with nearly three decades of information dwindled from about 350 stations to 115, according to Florida International University’s Southeast Environmental Research Center.
That included Pine Island Sound, which is ground zero for the worst of the current red-tide fish kills and is where sampling was halted in October 2007, and shutting down a 49-station network that was across the Florida Shelf and started in 1995. The Florida Shelf is adjacent to Florida Bay, between the Keys to the south and Ten Thousand Islands to the north.
In 2014, the state cut funding to about 30 percent of the stations in Biscayne Bay where half the seagrass has died in the last six years.
The feds also scaled back: In 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency dropped 43 stations in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary where a mysterious coral disease is threatening reefs.
Better monitoring alone wouldn’t have spared the state from a summer-long algae bloom on the lake choking the Caloosahatchee River with blue-green slime and a red tide dumping dead fish, sea turtles, and other marine life on the west coast. Both are fed by too much pollution. But better monitoring could have provided more warning about the lake and critical information for better understanding and fighting red tide and other water woes around the state.
“I am very worried because we are doing a lot of things in the Everglades with all this restoration and some of the changes I don’t feel we are tracing,” said Florida International University geochemist Henry Briceño, who oversees the coastal network and sparred with Miami Beach officials three years ago over stormwater polluting Biscayne Bay. “Right now, when we have something going on in the Florida Keys, we don’t know where that’s coming from.”
Beginning in 1995, a coastal monitoring network covered much of South Florida. The state paid for much of the coastal monitoring, marked in blue, while the Environmental Protection Agency funded stations marked in red.
Between 2008 and 2014, the South Florida Water Management District eliminated monitoring along Southwest Florida and Biscayne Bay. In 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency also ended scaled back monitoring, including a large network on the Florida Shelf.
And that has left officials scrambling and defensive amid the ongoing algae blooms.
Gov. Rick Scott — who ordered budget cuts to water-management agencies for five consecutive years and dismantled the Department of Community Affairs, which regulated growth and agreed to postpone cleaning up the lake — issued a press release saying his administration had spent millions on red-tide research, including $5.5 million awarded to the Mote Marine Laboratory since 2013. Last month, he issued a state of emergency, ordered more sampling, and lifted restrictions for temporary pumps and other measures to avoid polluted discharges from the lake.
Sen. Marco Rubio also introduced legislation last month to give the Environmental Protection Agency $5 million to study algae blooms, while Sen. Bill Nelson has asked the Centers for Disease Control to investigate health risks from exposure to the lake- and coastal-algae blooms.
But playing catch up now doesn’t get to the root of the problem, scientists say. And cuts could impede efforts to protect Florida: Last month, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which tracks environmental enforcement, said the state had the second worst year for enforcement since 1987.
Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
“You have to have a monitoring program in place to understand if there’s a positive response to the money you spend fighting environmental problems,” said FIU marine ecologist Jim Fourqurean, who has been monitoring seagrass in Florida Bay. “Without robust monitoring, we can’t tell.”
Because monitoring is often subcontracted to research universities or divvied up among various government agencies, it’s hard to determine exactly how much has been cut. The Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Health, and the state’s wildlife agency also conduct sampling. But scientists contacted for this story agree that money has dried up.
“The water-management district is not doing as much monitoring as they used to,” said University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science phytoplankton expert Larry Brand. “They have a huge network and used to have a great data set and now it’s no good anymore. Same with [Miami-Dade County]. There’s not as much data around as you used to have.”
Rick Bartleson, a research scientist for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, performs a necropsy on a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle suspected of dying from red tide poisoning last month. Photo by Andrew West/News-Press
The district, which is overseeing the $16 billion Everglades restoration project, maintains a massive database with stations stretching from lakes south of Orlando to the tip of the Florida Bay. But the stations are operated under an annual plan that has resulted in inconsistent sampling and focuses largely on nitrogen and phosphorus.
“When you have an event like the blooms, that is additional sampling that probably isn’t listed in the original plan because you didn’t know whether or not you’d have that,” said spokesman Randy Smith. “A lot of the monitoring we do is related to court cases that list specific GPS locations and the frequency they must be monitored. It’s a combination of things.”
District scientists check 13-14 lake stations monthly for levels of chlorophyll, an indication that a bloom might be forming, and send the results to the state’s environmental regulators, Smith said.
But that’s not enough to understand the life and evolution of a bloom, or when and where it forms, Havens said. It’s also far less than what’s needed to build a forecast model like the kind that Ohio scientists created to provide seasonal bloom forecasts for Lake Erie, where drinking-water supplies are regularly threatened by toxic scum.
“Once a month is a real problem,” said Rick Stumpf, who is an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and helped develop the model. “Data allowed us to work out the models.”
Building a similar model for Lake Okeechobee is do-able, he said, but would need to factor in many variables since the lake not only gets fouled by run-off and stormwater, like Lake Erie, but has years of polluted muck that is sitting on the shallow bottom and is easily stirred up.
“There’s a risk that someone could throw a bunch of data into a statistical blender and out pops something that looks like an answer and it really isn’t,” he said.
Miami-Dade County’s Division of Environmental Resources Management currently monitors 99 stations in Biscayne Bay.
In 2014, the South Florida Water Management District cut funding to pay for stations in Biscayne Bay shown in red.
The water-management district, previously run by Scott’s former general counsel, has also come under fire for selective monitoring that paints a rosier picture of conditions. Last year, when an Everglades canal flushing water from farm fields began polluting Miccosukee tribal land, the district stopped monitoring near the canal. The district said the sampling was part of a project that ended. But the tribe accused the district of trying to cover up the pollution as it prepared to ask a federal judge overseeing Everglades restoration to ease water-quality standards.
In the 1990s, when he worked at the district, Rick Bartleson, who is a research scientist at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation and studies red tide, said he proposed a project to model algae blooms and intentionally left out the lake.
“I knew that would hurt my chances,” he said.
One of the hurdles that scientists face is cost. To maintain a reliable data set, researchers need to follow the same protocols and repeat sampling frequently. Seagrass monitoring, for example, has dropped to once a month in places, not enough to track or understand changes.
“The more water-quality data you have, the better off you’re going to track how those projects are affecting Florida Bay and elsewhere,” said Margaret “Penny” Hall, a seagrass biologist at the state’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. “But it’s really hard when you’re trying to pay for the projects themselves. Everybody’s just doing their very best with less and less money.”
Selling decision-makers on monitoring with no immediate consequences can also be tough, Briceño said
“Doing the same thing over and over again for years is usually boring. I know it is,” he said. “But what happens is that data is used by thousands of people around the world and to understand problems somewhere else, too.”
The data FIU collected, for instance, helped Florida develop Everglades water criteria that were eventually adopted by the EPA.
After another massive red tide in 1996 killed 151 manatees in the midst of a national scare by a different toxic algae that left dead fish pocked with lesions, lawmakers passed a law that created a harmful-algae-bloom task force. The legislation resulted in the state’s Wildlife Research Institute tracking and issuing weekly forecasts for Florida’s seasonal red tides and called for the task force to come up with ways to minimize blooms and respond once they hit. But then lawmakers began cutting money, according to a 2009 report.
When his group lobbied lawmakers this year to reinstate funding in light of the repeated major blooms triggered by lake releases — in 2005, 2013, 2016, and again this summer — Calusa Waterkeeper chief scientist John Cassani, who monitors water quality on the Southwest coast, said he and his colleagues were told there wasn’t money in the budget.
“Why aren’t we effectively monitoring waterways so we can predict when a bloom is occurring? And why is there so much confusion over what state agencies are responsible for issuing public-health advisories and, most importantly, posting signs at the waterways themselves?” he asked. “It’s almost like Florida doesn’t want to know it’s coming.”
From farmworkers and graziers to entrepreneurs and advocates, these women are leading the change for more just and sustainable food.
By Civil Eats – Business, Farming, Food and Farm Labor, Food Justice, Local Eats, Urban Agriculture August 6, 2018
Editor’s note: Civil Eats is taking the week off. To tide you over until we resume our regularly scheduled programming, we are highlighting some our recent coverage of innovative, pioneering women in the food system. These inspiring women are farmers, bakers, ranchers, fast food workers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, farmworkers, and so much more, and their stories reveal the diverse and powerful roles that women play in the food system today.
Walker, a Papa John’s employee for nearly two decades, refused to accept the unlivable wages and unpredictable scheduling that working in fast food often requires, so she decided to try to make a positive change for herself and other workers like her by joining the Fight for $15.
Farms are notoriously unfair and unsafe for women workers; farmworkers in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers have started a movement that empowers women from all walks of life, from farmworkers to fashion models.
Kadri, the 24-year-old queer, immigrant founder of Oakland-based Diaspora Co., is using her business to deconstruct colonial trade practices, champion women and queer people of color, and put money into the hands of farmers in India and queer people of color in California.
Through her organization FARMS, this farmers’ rights advocate helps Black farmers—and all farmers from historically disadvantaged groups—in Southeastern states retain ownership of their land, saving family farms for today’s farmers as well as the next generation.
“I grew up on the urban-rural divide. I live it every day. And I’ve come to see how we collectively suffer when we see it as a debate, rather than an opportunity for growth and understanding.”
For young people who are surrounded by organic grocers, boutique cafés, and fancy restaurants, the dream of opening a vegan café may seem easily within reach. But for Chaney, a native of East New York, Brooklyn, it meant envisioning a business unlike any of the bodegas and corner stores that occupied her community.
In the three decades since Nestle pioneered the country’s first real academic food studies program at NYU, she has had a hand in changing how food is studied, understood, and even—many would argue—produced. And although on paper she has recently retired, there’s no sign that she plans to slow down.
Rojas and Hernandez have forged an alternative path to farm work through their restaurant in Madera, California, which offers the many indigenous Mexicans in this part of the Valley a much-needed taste of home.
Emmer, O’Hare, and Resor constitute the all-female braintrust behind Salt Point Seaweed, which is poised to become the state’s first open-ocean seaweed farm—and a delicious solution to global food insecurity.
Su’s startup helps ranchers raise climate-friendly beef by manage their grazing land and strategically graze their herds in a sustainable way—improving grazing practices while increasing their bottom line.
Ho and Zahir Janmohamed use their groundbreaking podcast to talk with chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and cultural critics to explore the points of tension and passion embedded in every meal, and question how identity, work, and power intersect from the prep line to the farmers’ market.
For two decades, Flack has travelled throughout the United States, teaching farmers how to harness the inherent power of the ecosystem to transform their land by grazing livestock intentionally.
Cooper, the co-founder of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, is redefining the problems in food systems across the country and helping develop community-based solutions to address racial equity, food sovereignty, and land injustice.
“As a grazier and land manager, I’m part of a growing group of people who have committed our lives to restoring the health of environments directly, through exquisitely precise grazing on sensitive land, and who depend on the support of our communities to do this work.”
Penniman and her family founded Soul Fire Farm as a multi-racial, sustainable farming organization that would run food sovereignty programs with the goal of ending racism and injustice in the food system. They are also leading a movement of Black farmers who are calling for reparations for centuries of slavery, systemic racism, and racial inequity in the U.S.
The heavily agricultural states in the middle of the country aren’t actually feeding their people. But the 2018 Farm Bill offers an opportunity to change that.
Karen Perry Stillerman, Food Policy, Local Eats August 3, 2018
If you’ve perused the new 50-State Food System Scorecard from the Union of Concerned Scientists, you’ve probably noticed a seeming contradiction. As shown on the map below, the heavily agricultural states in the middle of the country aren’t exactly knocking it out of the park when it comes to the overall health and sustainability of their food and farming systems. On the contrary, most of the leading farm states of the Midwest reside in the basement of our overall ranking.
OVERALL STATE FOOD SYSTEM RANKINGS
So what’s that about? A couple of reasons stand out to me.
First, much of what the Midwest grows today isn’t really food (much less healthy food).
Funny/not funny
It’s true. While we often hear that the region’s farmers are feeding America and the world, in fact much of the Midwest’s farm output today is comprised of just two crops: corn and soybeans. There are various reasons for that, including some problematic food and farm polices, but that’s the reality.
Take the state of Indiana, for example. When I arrived there in 1992 for graduate school (go Hoosiers!), I bought the postcard at right. That year, Indiana farmers had planted 6.1 million acres of corn, followed by 4.55 million acres of soybeans. Together, the two crops covered more than two-thirds of the state’s total farm acres that year.
The situation remains much the same today, except that the crops have switched places: this year, Indiana farmers planted6.2 million acres of soybeans and “just” 5.1 million acres of corn. Nationwide, soybean acreage will top corn in 2018 for the first time in 35 years.
Regardless of whether corn or soy reigns supreme, the fact is that most of it isn’t destined for our plates. Today, much of the corn goes into our gas tanks. The chart below shows how total U.S. corn production tracked the commodity’s use for ethanol from 1986 to 2016:
The two dominant Midwest crops also feed livestock to produce meat in industrial feedlots, and they become ingredients for heavily processed foods. A 2013 Scientific American essaysummarized the problem with corn:
Although U.S. corn is a highly productive crop, with typical yields between 140 and 160 bushels per acre, the resulting delivery of food by the corn system is far lower. Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens). Much of the rest is exported. Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.
All this is a big part of why, when UCS assessed the extent to which each U.S. state is producing food that can contribute to healthy diets—using measures including percentage of cropland in fruits and vegetables, percentage of cropland in the top three crops (where a higher number means lower diversity), percentage of principal crop acres used for major animal feed and fuel crops, and meat production and large feeding operations per farm acres—we arrived at this map:
RANKINGS BY FOOD PRODUCED
As you can see, the bottom of our scorecard’s “food produced” ranking is dominated by Midwestern states. This includes the nation’s top corn-producing states—Iowa (#50) and Illinois (#48), which together account for about one-third of the entire U.S. crop. It also includes my one-time home, Indiana (#49), where just 0.2 percent of the state’s 14.7 million farm acres was dedicated to vegetables, fruits/nuts, and berries in 2012.
Now let’s switch gears to look at another reason the Midwest performs so poorly overall in our scorecard.
Today’s Midwest agriculture tends to work against nature, not with it.
In addition to the fact that the Midwest currently produces primarily non-food and processed food crops, there’s also a big problem with the way it typically produces those commodities. Again, for a number of reasons—including the shape of federal farm subsidies—the agricultural landscape in states such as Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana is dominated by monoculture (a single crop planted year after year) or a slightly better two-crop rotation (you guessed it, corn and soybeans).
These oversimplified farm ecosystems, combined with the common practice of plowing (AKA tilling) the soil before each planting, degrade the soil and require large applications of fertilizer, much of which runs off farm fields to pollute lakes and streams. Lack of crop diversity also leads to more insect pests, increasing the need for pesticides. Moreover, as corn is increasingly grown in dry pockets of the Midwest such as Kansas and Nebraska, it requires ever-larger quantities of irrigation water. Finally, the whole system relies heavily on fossil fuels to run tilling, planting, spraying, and harvesting equipment.
No wonder that whether we look at resource reliance (including use of commercial fertilizers and chemical pesticides, irrigation, and fuel use) or, conversely, implementation of more sustainable practices (reduced tillage, cover crops, and organic practices, among others), most Midwest states once again lag.
RANKINGS BY RESOURCE RELIANCE
RANKINGS BY USE OF CONSERVATION PRACTICES
But Midwestern farmers want to change the map.
To sum up: In general, the Midwest is using up a variety of limited resources and farming in ways that degrade its soil and water, while falling far short of producing the variety of foods we need for healthy diets. Not a great system. But there are hopeful signs that the region may be starting to change course.
For example, in Iowa, more and more farmers are expanding their crop rotations to add oats or other small grains, which research has shown aids in regenerating soils, improving soil health, and delivering clean water, while also increasing productivity and maintaining profits. Diversifying crops in the field can also help to diversify our food supply and improve nutrition.
Back in my alma mater state of Indiana, farmers planted 970,000 acres of cover crops in 2017—making these soil protectors the third-most planted crop in the state. And in a surprising turn of events just last week, Ohio’s Republican governor signed an executive order that will require farmers in eight Northwest Ohio watersheds to take steps to curb runoff that contributes to a recurring problem of toxic algae in Lake Erie that hurts recreation and poisons Toledo’s drinking water.
A recent UCS poll provides additional evidence that farmers across the region are looking for change. Earlier this year, we asked more than 2,800 farmers across the partisan divide in seven states (Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) about federal farm policies that today incentivize the Midwest agricultural status quo. Nearly three-quarters of respondents indicated they are looking for a farm bill that prioritizes soil and water conservation, while 69 percent supported policies (like farm-to-school supports) that help farmers grow more real food for local consumption. More than 70 percent even said they’d be more likely to back a candidate for public office who favors such priorities.
Speaking of the farm bill, things are coming to a head in Congress this summer over that $1 trillion legislative package that affects all aspects of our food system. As the clock ticks toward a September 30 deadline, the shape of the next farm bill is in question, with drastically different proposals passed by the House and the Senate. Critically important programs—including investments that could help farmers in the Midwest and elsewhere produce more healthy food and farm more sustainably—are at risk.
Brent Preston is Farming Sustainably for the Next Generation
In his book ‘The New Farm,’ Preston shares his experience and wisdom for successful organic farming.
By Lela Nargi, Agroecology, Business Farming August 2, 2018
In 2003, Brent Preston and his wife, Gillian Flies, packed up their two kids and moved to a rural town about 100 miles northwest of Toronto. Their initial aim was to live less chaotically and to raise some of their own food. But this morphed into a plan to make a living farming organically.
The inevitable years of mistakes, false starts, financial hardship, emotional and physical exhaustion, scorn from local conventional farmers, perseverance and—at very long last—success, are documented with candor and humor in Preston’s book, The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution, released in the U.S. earlier this year.
Brent Preston and Gillian Flies
Civil Eats talked to Preston about the lessons he and Flies learned from their first decade of rural experience, advice for other well-intentioned (and sometimes naïve) aspiring farmers, and what it might take to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between conventional and organic farming.
By the time your book ended, you had figured out how to make a decent living growing four crops—salad greens, heirloom potatoes, beets, and Japanese cucumbers. What’s happened since then?
It has been two seasons since the book wrapped up, and two big things have changed. First, we built an on-farm event space and commercial kitchen, and that part of the farm has really taken off. The appetite for people to do things—anything—on a farm just exploded in the last few years, and that means there are more and more people we can tell about our method of farming. Plus, it’s become a decent revenue stream.
And second, our eyes have been opened up to the possibilities of regenerative agriculture. We are in the midst of a farmer-led research project run by an organization called the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario. We’re conducting an on-farm trial this summer comparing the use of silage tarps as a means of killing salad stubble and suppressing weeds, as opposed to [tilling the soil]. It’s a challenge to reduce tillage in growing salad greens; they take three weeks from planting to harvest so there’s a lot of turnover, and they can’t have lot of residue. But we realized how damaging tillage is to the soil, and to the planet and climate on a larger scale.
What has all this taught you about soil science more broadly?
Sustainable farmers learned in the last decade that there’s an incredibly important symbiotic relationship between the plants that grow and the critters that live in the soil. The science [shows] what a massive impact regenerative agriculture at scale could have on atmospheric carbon dioxide, [by] storing it as stable organic matter. On the flip side, Jonathan Lundgren in South Dakota has been doing amazing research showing that the healthier your soil is, and the more soil organic matter you have, the more profitable your farm is going to be.
Soil microbiota excites some conventional farmers, too. Is this a topic of commonality, where the two “sides” can meet?
I’m getting goosebumps as you’re saying it. In the over 12 years we’ve been farming organically, we’ve encountered active hostility from conventional farmers; but the regenerative techniques and science are coming out of both the organic and the conventional sectors. This is a huge opportunity to start bridging that gap. I was at a conference this winter, hearing about some regenerative techniques, and sitting next to a guy who had been a conventional grain farmer his whole life; he was interested in this stuff simply because he can’t afford inputs for conventional farming anymore.
Another area [of commonality] is cover crops. I’ve read articles in The New York Times about conventional farmers using cover crops. There’s a depot down the road that sells [conventional] inputs and treated seeds; last year they put up a sign: “Ask us about cover crop seed.” I couldn’t have imagined that five years ago. There are larger ideas around regenerative agriculture that are rapidly creeping into the conversation, but it’s still early days. It’s going to take a lot of time for Cona [the conventional farmer from whom Preston bought his farm, who features prominently in the book] to come around.
To make agriculture more sustainable, advocates say we have to keep existing farms in business, not just start new ones. Do you see ways to do this?
This is a tough question, because it goes to the really big macro-economic problems with trade. The bottom line is that getting off the commodity bandwagon is important. A lot of farms that are failing are heavily invested in producing one or two commodities and when prices go down, there’s nothing they can do. [There needs to be] assistance for farmers to get out of big commodities and produce for local markets, or more sustainably, or to transition to regenerative techniques.
It’s going to come from individual farmers figuring out that this model of producing commodities and taking whatever the market will give isn’t going to work anymore. You’re not competing against your [farming] neighbors but giant corporations in Argentina and China; you’re not going to win against them.
Also, I talk about this in the book: We need to reduce our sole focus on production, because we produce too much food. There’s still an incredible demand for food with a story behind it, not just a commodity. Every year I think, “This is the year that demand [for my salad] slags off,” and every year, demand increases.
How do we go about making good food more accessible everywhere?
Shortening the supply chain is important; in the traditional supply chain, three or four people are getting paid: farmers, consolidators who pack [the produce], transporters, and brokers. If we sold into that kind of supply chain it would be way too expensive and no one would buy [our stuff].
Additionally, we have 18 acres of gardens, close to half in cover crops, and a certain scale is needed to serve the [five or six independent and medium-size markets] we sell directly to. They buy a lot of stuff, and consistency of supply is incredibly important—you have to have a whole season, no breaks. We deliver cut salads and cucumbers two times a week, get a good price, and because there’s no middleman, the [markets’ owners] can sell at a price that works for them.
Are you seeing an uptick in traditional grocery stores that want local, organic produce?
A lot of the produce in [the supermarkets we sell to] is imported from California or Mexico. It’s not because it’s what their clients want, or that it’s better quality, or cheaper, but it’s all they can get. All the supermarkets we sell to call us in spring to say, “We’re going to cut off California the moment you have salad ready.” These retailers respond to customer needs and demands, so if your local market is not carrying the local or organic food you want to buy, go talk to the produce manager. That makes a difference. Be an advocate for good food in your community.
What’s your advice for new, young farmers who want to avoid some of the pitfalls you encountered when you started?
There’s much more available in terms of formal training—lots of institutions of higher education offering degrees in sustainable agriculture. We also weren’t aware of apprenticeship and internship programs, where you take a season and work on someone else’s farm. It’s also important to recognize that growing food is not the only skill you need as a farmer. Lots of people do three, four, five seasons of unpaid internships because they think they need to learn growing. Then they don’t have the capital to start.
But in farming, everyone is an owner/operator and a lot of the things we went through in the early years are the same as in any entrepreneurial business. I don’t understand why people think farming is different—maybe because traditionally, farms were passed down through generations and a lot of people were taking over established businesses that their parents or grandparents started. As that changes, with more and more new entrants coming from non-farming backgrounds, they must realize this is a business. A lot of people who are just starting to farm are young and idealistic, and think that being focused on money is distasteful. But the fact is, if you don’t make money, you can’t achieve all the other things you want to do.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In the deeply conservative Republican state of Idaho, Paulette Jordan is running for governor. If she wins, she’d become the nation’s first Native American governor. Jordan wants more money for health care and public schools.
In the deeply conservative Republican state of Idaho, Paulette Jordan is running for governor. If she wins, she'd become the nation's first Native American governor. Jordan wants more money for health care and public schools. And she's finding support. https://cnn.it/2vxfzVT
The extreme weather events of the summer of 2018 are not just symptoms of climate breakdown. They are early stage warnings of a protracted process of civilisational collapse as industrial societies face some of the opening symptoms of having already breached the limits of a safe climate. These events are a taste of things to come on a business-as-usual trajectory. They elicit a sense of how industrial civilisational systems are vulnerable to collapse due to escalating climate impacts. And they highlight the urgent necessity of communities everywhere undertaking steps to achieve a systemic civilisational transition toward post-capitalist systems which can survive and prosper after fossil fuels.
Climate ‘doom’ is already here
This summer’s extreme weather has hit home some stark realities.
Climate disaster is not slated to happen in some far-flung theoretical future.
It’s here, and now.
Droughts threatening food supplies, floods in Japan, extreme rainfall in the eastern US, wildfires in California, Sweden and Greece.
In the UK, holiday-makers trying to cross the Channel tunnel to France faced massive queues when air conditioning facilities on trains failed due to the heatwave. Thousands of people were stranded for five hours in the 30C heat without water.
In southern Laos, heavy rains led to a dam collapse, rendering thousands of people homeless and flooding several villages.
Most of the traditional media did not report these incidents as symptoms of an evolving climate crisis.
Some commentators did point out that the events might be linked to climate change.
None at all acknowledged that these extreme weather events might be related to the fact that since 2015, we have essentially inhabited a planet that is already around 1C warmer than the pre-industrial average: and that therefore, we are already, based on the best available science, inhabiting a dangerous climate.
The breaching of the 1C tipping point — which former NASA climate science chief James Hansen pinpointed as the upper limit to retain a safe climate — was followed this March by atmospheric carbon concentrations reaching, for the first time since records began, 400 ppm (parts per million).
Once again, the safe upper limit highlighted by Hansen and colleagues — 350 ppm — has already been breached.
Yet these critical climate milestones have been breached consecutively with barely a murmur from either the traditional and alternative media.
The recent spate of catastrophic events are not mere anomalies. They are the latest signifiers of a climate system that is increasingly out of balance — a system that was already fatally struck off balance through industrial overexploitation of natural resources centuries ago.
But for the most part, the sense-making apparatus by which we understand what is happening in the world — the Global Media-Industrial Complex (a network of media communications portals comprised of both traditional corporate and alternative outlets) — has failed to convey these stark realities to the vast majority of the human population.
We are largely unaware that 19th and early 20th century climate change induced by industrial fossil fuel burning has already had devastating impacts on the regional climate of Sub-Saharan Africa; just as it now continues to have escalating devastating impacts on weather systems all over the world.
The reality which we are not being told is this: these are the grave consequences of inhabiting a planet where global average temperatures are roughly 1C higher than the pre-industrial norm.
Sadly, instead of confronting this fundamentally existential threat to the human species — one which in its fatal potential implications point to the bankruptcy of the prevailing paradigms of social, political and economic organisation (along with the ideology and value-systems associated with them) — the preoccupation of the Global Media-Industrial Complex is at worst to focus human mind and behaviour on consumerist trivialities.
At best, its focus is to pull us into useless, polarising left-right dichotomies and forms of impotent outrage that tend to distract us from taking transformative systemic action, internally (within and through our own selves, behaviour psychologies, beliefs, values, consciousness and spirit) and externally (in our relationships as well as our structural-institutional and socio-cultural contexts).
Collapse happens when the system is overwhelmed
These are the ingredients for the beginning of civilisational collapse processes. In each of these cases, we see how extreme weather events induced by climate change creates unanticipated conditions for which international, national and local institutions are woefully unprepared.
In order to respond, massive new expenditures are involved, including emergency mobilisations as well as new spending to try to build more robust adaptations that might be better prepared ‘next time’.
But the reality is that we are already failing to avert an ongoing trajectory of global temperatures rising to not merely a dangerous 2C (imagine a doubling intensity of the sorts of events we’ve seen this summer happening year on year); but, potentially, as high as 8C (the catastrophic impacts of which would render much of the planet uninhabitable).
In these contexts, we can begin to see how a protracted collapse process might unfold. Such a collapse process does not in itself guarantee the ‘end of the world’, or even simply the disappearance of civilisation.
What it does imply is that specific political, economic, social, military and other institutional systems are likely to become increasingly overwhelmed due to rising costs of responding to unpredictable and unanticipated climate wild cards.
It should be noted that as those costs are rising, we are simultaneously facing diminishing economic returns from our constant overexploitation of planetary resources, in terms of fossil fuels and other natural resourcs.
In other words, in coming decades, business-as-usual implies a future of tepid if not declining economic growth, amidst escalating costs of fossil fuel consumption, compounded by exponentially accelerating costs of intensifying climate impacts as they begin to erode and then pummel and then destroy the habitable infrastructure of industrial civilization as we know it.
Collapse does not arrive in this scenario as a singular point of terminal completion. Rather, collapse occurs as a a series of discrete but consecutive and interconnected amplifying feedback processes by which these dynamics interact and worsen one another.
Earth System Disruption (ESD) — the biophysical processes of climate, energy and ecological breakdown — increasingly lead to Human System Destabilisation (HSD). HSD in turn inhibits our capacity to meaningfully respond and adapt to the conditions of ESD. ESD, meanwhile, simply worsens. This, eventually, leads to further HSD. The cycle continues as a self-reinforcing amplifying feedback loop, and each time round the cycle comprises a process of collapse.
This model, which I developed in my Springer Energy Briefs study Failing States, Collapse Systems, demonstrates that the type of collapse we are likely to see occurring in coming years is a protracted, cyclical process that worsens with each round. It is not a final process, and it is not set-in-stone. At each point, the possibility of intervening at critical points to mitigate, ameliorate, adapt, or subvert still exists. But it gets harder and harder to do so effectively the deeper into the collapse cycle we go.
Insanity
One primary sympton of the collapse process is that as it deepens, the capacity of the prevailing civilisational configuration to understand what is happening becomes increasingly diminished.
Far from waking up and taking action, we see that the human species is becoming increasingly mired in obsessing over geopolitical and economic competition, self-defeating acts of ‘self’-preservation (where the ‘self’ is completely misidentified), and focused entirely on projecting problems onto the ‘Other’.
A key signifier of how insidious this is, is in yourself. Look to see how your critical preoccupations are not with yourself or those with which you identify; but that and those whom you oppose and consider to be ‘wrong.’
At core, the critical precondition for effective action at this point is for each of us to radically subvert and challenge these processes through a combination of internal introspection and outward action.
In ourselves, the task ahead is for each of us to become the seeds of that new, potential civilisational form — ‘another world’ which is waiting to be birthed not through some far-flung ‘revolution’ in the future, but here and now through the transformations we undertake in ourselves and in our contexts.
We first wake up. We wake up to the reality of what is happening in the world. We then wake up to our own complicity in that reality and truly face up to the intricate acts of self-deception we routinely undertake to conceal ourselves from this complicity. We then look to mobilise ourselves anew to undo these threads of complicity where feasible, and to create new patterns of work and play that connect us back with the Earth and the Cosmos. And we work to connect our own re-patterning with the re-patterning work of others, with a view to plant the seed-networks of the next system — a system which is not so much ‘next’, but here and now, emergent in the fresh choices we make everyday.
So… welcome. Welcome to a 1C planet. Welcome to the fight to save ourselves from ourselves.
Anthony Reyes: Building Dignity for the Homeless Through Farming
By Sarah Henry, Food Justice, Urban Agriculture July 27, 2018
The farm manager at the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz, Reyes approaches agricultural systems from a justice lens.
Anthony Reyes found his calling working at the intersection of farming and social justice with organizations such as the Tilth Alliance in Seattle, the youth education program Common Threads Farm in Bellingham, and now with the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz. Reyes credits his college days at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for his passion for sustainable agriculture with a food justice focus. Reyes, a biracial Millennial with Mexican-American roots, always wanted to return to the area, a hub for farming with a mission. In 2017, he returned to the community where he first learned to grow food and view agricultural systems through a justice lens.
In his first year at the Homeless Garden Project, Anthony Reyes says he was asked about every stereotype imaginable when working with this marginalized population. Chief among them: Do homeless people really work? There’s a lot of stigma associated with this population, he says. “For the record, the crews here are some of the most hardworking people I’ve ever met,” says Reyes of the participants in the non-profit’s year-long employment-training program at Natural Bridges Farm.
The project serves people in Santa Cruz County who are homeless or formerly homeless, who have experienced barriers to employment, and who want to maintain a stable productive place in society. “The crew tackles every task seriously with passion and heart.”
Reyes spends his days on the farm bouncing between different posts—whether the field, greenhouse, farm stand, or kitchen—helping crews with their tasks on the 3.5-acre farm, which grows row crops and flowers. He’s also in charge of the organization’s three-pronged Community Supported Agriculture program. CSAs, an alternative marketing model that features a direct relationship between farmer and consumer, accounts for about 10 percent of the 25-year-old institution’s income.
The program includes a traditional CSA, a U-pick version, and a scholarship fund, where people can donate to a CSA program for 10 local organizations serving the needy. Flowers go to a local hospice program and the program includes a value-added enterprise making and selling jams, dried herbs, and floral wreaths, which are sold at their downtown store, in a new shop in nearby Capitola, and online.
Relationships are central to Reyes’s job, he says, and inform every aspect of work on the farm, which is slated to expand to a 9-acre permanent site expected to be fully operational in 2020. The 28-year-old strives to treat each crew member with care, compassion, and respect. He says he learns as much from his 17-member crew as they learn from him. “Every single day they inspire me. The farm itself is such a place of radical inclusivity. Everyone is embraced and welcomed,” he says. “And that is reflected in the pride people take in the work and the collaboration on the farm. It’s really a beautiful thing to witness on a day-to-day basis.”
Reyes has farming in his blood: Wisconsin dairy farmers make up his mother’s side of the family. His father is of Mexican heritage and his paternal grandfather ran a “mow and blow” business in Los Angeles. The smell of grass and a four-stroke engine is embedded in childhood memories, he says, and he looked up to his grandfather, a gentle soul. In college, Reyes says his studies helped him begin to see agriculture and outside work though a social justice lens. A key mentor on campus: a UC Santa Cruz lead groundskeeper whom he worked with, Jose Sanchez.
His “juiciest” days, Reyes says, are whenever he can get his hands in the earth. “I make some of the deepest connections with our crew members simply working alongside them,” he says. “Working the soil creates a safe space for people to be seen and heard for who they are.”
Reyes has seen first-hand what a difference growing food can make in someone’s life. “There’s something very restorative and transformative about planting a seed and watering it and watching it grow into a flourishing plant that can provide sustenance,” he says. “From a little speck in your hand to the harvest for your lunch: That has a calming, therapeutic effect.”
Crew members see the fruits of their labor and the value that it brings. “There are very real, tangible benefits at the end of the day, whether someone has spent it building a bed, weeding, or picking. You can see the difference you’ve made,” says Reyes. “There’s ownership and a sense of accomplishment.”
As Reyes points out, homelessness and joblessness go hand in hand. Lack of job skills, a spotty work history, an absent social support network, and low self-esteem can all make the transition out of homelessness more difficult. The Homeless Garden Project’s program is designed to address these concerns, in addition to the challenges that come with substance abuse, mental health issues, physical or developmental disability, and the unique problems faced by veterans—all obstacles that disproportionately impact the homeless community.
Housing is one of the most immediate problems. Some of the Homeless Garden Project’s clientele live in shelters, while others camp outside or in cars, or reside in tenuous subsidized housing situations. A team of social work interns help garden crew members find stable employment and housing. The interns also help the crew find resources to address other obstacles like transportation, substance abuse, and mental health problems.
“Every single person on the crew has personal challenges they’re trying to work through. We very much meet people where they are,” says Reyes. In a region known for exorbitant rents and real estate, Reyes is well aware that many residents of the greater community—including some farm project volunteers—are just a paycheck or two away from homelessness themselves.
Measuring success comes in multiple ways. More than 90 percent of participants in the program find stable housing and employment at the end of their garden project tenure. There’s also the less quantifiable personal growth that Reyes observes in his crews over time: “I watch people try new things and come out of their shell.”
His own on-the-job goals? “I remind myself constantly to show up, and what it means to be present. I’ve learned so much about myself in this line of work,” he says. “It’s also given me more confidence and allowed me to be okay with, and find strength in, vulnerability. It’s not just me. Every single person who steps onto the farm is changed by it.”