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Planting vegetables with Native American music

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This past week we planted 10,000 sweet potato starts.

It is a ‘one-at-a-time’ hand process….so a number of us spent a lot of time on our hands and knees in the field.

We are done!

Jesse, one of my farmer partners, brings a small speaker into the fields. On an early morning we were planting to Native American music.

We named our property Shewatuck Farm – a name the Narragansett Indians used for the area.

We’ve done a good deal to diversify the landscape…adding bird houses and other conservation improvements.

As we planted there were a variety of birds…..definitely watching our progress! A hawk, plovers (we are reasonably near the sea), and different chirping birds.

It was altogether a lovely experience.

I had a real sense for the early Narragansett Indians.

Hopefully we continue to make the connection between plants, animals, and our preceding human inhabitants.

Issues with creating a sustainable regenerative agriculture in America

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Issues (Not in any particular order of importance)

  • Price Manipulation

The price of vegetables and other specialty crops – even certified organic vegetables and specialty crops – is driven by a cheap (in many cases illegal) farm and food processing labor system. USDA in 2017 estimated that approximately 50 percent of specialty vegetables were grown by illegal immigrant labor.

It is, for all practical purposes, a pirate economy – heavily defended by large agri-business enterprises.

There have been recent efforts in Congress to further manipulate this illegal system by granting undocumented farm workers special immigration status (not as an effective method to reform immigration laws, but as a legislative ‘gimmick’ to allow a manipulated and exploitive economy to continue without political criticism).

Small scale certified organic producers using sustainable practices are at a severe pricing disadvantage. Many resort to various forms of volunteer labor to supplement their production systems and allow them to financially survive.

  • Nutrition and Food Health

A major (and inobvious) contributing factor to declines in global biodiversity has been changes in diet (and demand for food by type) driven by the green revolution. The green revolution globally saved many from starvation and nutrition deficient disease. It also narrowed diets and replaced diverse whole foods with foods derived from grains.

  1. Issues with lack of diversity in agro-ecology.
    1. American agriculture (and the political economy of American agriculture) has become narrowly focused – grains and confined animal operations.
    2. Diverse, specialty farming has lacked significant support from both USDA and congress.
    3. Knowledge of diverse agro-ecology has declined precipitously with the concentration of crops and ownership in agriculture.
    4. Issues with nutrition education.
      1. Nutrition education in the early public education system has been neglected.
      2. A large body of historical and current nutritional knowledge seems to find little educational support.
    5. Issues with medicine’s knowledge of nutrition.
      1. General medicine has, until recently, neglected nutrition as part of general healthcare practice.
      2. Historical knowledge of nutrition and the benefits of various plant based remedies has also been neglected.
  • Land Access…Cost of Land…Real Estate Appraisal of Agricultural Land

A major issue limiting the expansion of sustainable, regenerative farm practice has been the cost of land. This varies regionally, but is generally at the top of local ag advocates’ list:

  1. Midwestern lands and western lands have ‘some’ limited standard real estate appraisal methods to evaluate the agricultural qualities of land as a factor in financial valuation. Even in those highly agricultural areas the ability to evaluate agro-ecological factors is severely limited. In many parts of the country agricultural lands receive standard comparable price analysis. For example, the real estate appraisal for our 91 acre Rhode Island purchase in late 2017 compared the property to other open land with vary dissimilar agro-ecological properties (and no comparison of soils).
  2. Most landowners allow lease periods that are too short for agricultural planning purposes. The interest in potential development of land – and a chance to sell property into development at a high price – drive the interest of landowners to constrain lease periods. Also, many times land trusts and governments also constrain their land use leases (I have never researched the underlying issues.).
  3. Much of the national and regional political interest has been with distribution and food hubs. The needs to increase organic, sustainable production and expand value-added processing related to that expansion has been politically and financially neglected in my opinion. I have seen examples of food hubs that immediately have sourcing issues and react by compromising their initial regional mission. Our local farmer’s market organizer and distribution group, Farm Fresh RI, has needed to reinvent both who they serve and how broadly they serve in order to maintain their political role in the community. They are developing a $16M food hub building …in the end It appears to me it will look like a conventional food distributor and real estate lease agent….a completely different ethic than the original intent of the socially responsible Brown University students that founded the organization.
  • Cultural issues

Twenty-five years of work on environmental issues, agro-ecology, ecological economics, and agriculture have led me to the sense that the major impediments to evolving a more robust sustainable, regenerative agriculture are cultural[KE4] .

  1. We now have acutely deteriorated rural communities and rural community institutions –decline in societal institutions that maintain social cohesion (decline in churches, small business and small business organizations, etc.)
    1. Public educational institutions have focused on ‘measured’ education…at the expense of a deeper understanding of civics, culture, home economics, etc. My older daughter at this point in her life is a third grade teacher in a public school system. She graduated from Skidmore College with a double major in child development and American studies. She did her teacher training in a Waldorf school…then began a community school in a poor area of Providence with four other women. She loves her work at developing young minds and bodies – she tolerates all the ‘measurements’ and finds it harmful in certain cases.
    2. State and local governments have become increasingly materialistic and bureaucratic – utilizing statutes and law to counter profound cultural issues. This becomes sadly troubling and petty in many cases. They are, governmentally, sincere attempts to encourage healthier behaviors – the problem is the ethical dilemma that occurs with legislating personal behavior.
    3. I am a strong advocate of free, just markets – but do not see how we survive long as a society with our current concentrations of politico-economic power.
    4. All of the above has led to a significant number of culturally narrow and poorly educated citizens with little ability to make thoughtful, healthful decisions.
  • Equipment issues

Because of the small scale of organic certified vegetable and specialty crop farming there is limited innovation in equipment (not enough demand for equipment manufacturers to invest).

Needs

  1. A large capital pool for landholding – a partnership between farmers and pool management – structured as some form of quasi-governmental ‘charity’ because it will need for many years to subsidize land costs.
  2. A national effort to reform land grant universities and other technical colleges – to broader their curriculum, reevaluate their applied science education, and expand healthy methods for their experimental/trial farms and nutrition programs. Some have made changes to their trial farms and nutrition education…which is great…but I do not think it broad (this needs a study). As an aside, for two years I have been engaged with my undergraduate engineering and science school to utilize the food program… expanding it to a working farm…as an early stage method to broaden engineering education.
  3. Equitable Compensation Methods…breaking through a pricing structure based upon cheap (and in many cases illegal) labor. This is an extremely complex political issue with much of the agricultural capital invested in maintaining the status quo of concentrated ownership.
  4. Seasonal capital for farms and seasonal value added food production.
  5. A subsidized capital pool to provide incentives to equipment manufacturers and technical colleges to develop a new generation of farm equipment.

A Final Observation

There are two current societal positions I find false:

  1. That the best wealth creation occurs by limiting ownership and driving down costs. I believe broad ownership – and dynamic interaction between owners – creates the best environment for wealth creation.
  2. That an agriculture based upon small scale landowners cannot ‘feed the world’. There are a number of studies that show diverse, distirbuted farm operations can feed an ex0panding population with a more resilient, disease resiilient, disease resistant agriculture.

Should we be reopening…or restructuring?

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I am concerned about ‘reopening’.

Not because of the dangers from Covid-19 (although it is a dangerous virus), but because of the dangers of not looking carefully at ‘getting back to normal’.

We have just gone through a case study on our economy and found it not resilient or durable in the face of dramatic, rational change (we have planned our reactions to the virus…for better or worse).

  1. We have a ‘concentration’ problem. Concentration of people in urban areas. Concentration of wealth in a consumer society. Concentrated ownership of the means of farming and food production. Concentration of ideas about public education. Concentration of great financial power in the Federal government.
  2. Ironically many of these concentration problems occurred with the support and encouragement of our society. How much money can I make…and how to build a larger corporation? How do we ‘preserve’ open space and ‘grow smart’? How can farming and food processing become more ‘efficient’…how much milk can we get from a cow? How can we ensure that ‘experts’ are making our decisions?

I would hope we recover in a manner:

  1. Allowing a careful look at what economic methods will build the most durable, just society. One that cares reasonably for the neediest amongst us at the same time it is ensuring free, equitable enterprise in a truly democratic system of government.
  2. Examining our farming and food production economy to determine how to quit using cheap, undocumented labor to produce and process much of our food – and how to adequately protect those at-risk workers as we transition to a fair food economy.
  3. Realizing ‘experts’ have their limitations… and understanding that respect for all opinions is critical to a free society.
  4. Encouraging every city, town, and state to examine its law and remove the scores of intrusive statutes that attempt to legislate social mores – replacing those misguided laws with guidance systems that aid societal and community cohesion without either financial or penal coercion (Even in the case of the serious dangers of Covid-19 I believe we should give knowledgeable guidance – sternly).
  5. Rethinking our educational systems to make certain civics, home economics, and ethics are critical parts of education – equals to measured reading, writing, and arithmetic.

These are just a few of many issues needing a careful look as we progress through our social recovery. It will not be simple – and the financial costs and need for capital will be great.

Even though most of us were aware of the possibilities of a pandemic I think we are all shocked at the last three months. Enormous amounts of good-hearted actions have taken place. We have adapted on a daily basis – and continue to do so.

Finally, there are two current societal positions I find false:

  1. That the best wealth creation occurs by limiting ownership and driving down costs. I believe broad ownership – and dynamic interaction between owners – creates the best environment for wealth creation.
  2. That an agriculture based upon small scale landowners cannot ‘feed the world’. There are a number of studies that show distributed diverse farm operations can feed an expanding population with a more resilient, disease resistant agriculture.

Can we take time as a community to rethink how we recover as good, caring neighbors?

I think we can.

Afternoon Sun

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I have a comfy leather chair in my home office where I often write and can look out three windows.

Today it is sunny and breezy.

I’ve just been working on some spring clearing, so my view is better.

The garden is dug and prepped for some planting.

I trimmed back some goofy concord grape vines that insist on being productive even though I have given them very erratic care.

The yard abuts my neighbors, John and Amy, and their two daughters. They have two horses in a field ( I can watch them from my chair) – a big black horse and a tiny one called Butterscotch.

The other neighbors, Katy and Nick, also have two children – a bit younger than John and Amy’s.

We’re a good crew. Even in the days of Covid 19 we can be neighborly…yet keep safe practices.

John and Amy also have a trampoline – a nice one with safe walls – a huge hit with the children. It is not unusual to hear children at all hours bouncing and laughing.

We have two fire pits – both of which have seen a workout in the last six weeks.

From what I read of our health crisis we are extremely fortunate. We care about one another, take care of one another, and appreciate one another – in a troubling time.

I’ve been preoccupied over the past two and one half years with developing a farm….and realized in the last month (with forced isolation) that I have neglected a very dear home asset.

So I’m headed in a recovery direction with home, garden, and yard.

It’s a lovely feeling to recover a landscape…at least for me.

We humans are supposed to be stewards. I think many of us take that seriously. At least in my community folks work hard at caring for their homes and property.

The afternoon sun gives perspective.

Wage-for-Hire and the Pandemic

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The Covid-19 pandemic has become a classic case study in the shortcomings of wage-for-hire in America.

One-third of renters did not pay their rent for April.

The unemployment insurance system is deeply stressed.

Many, many companies ‘laid off’ their workforce when the pandemic hit and governments began to take appropriate steps to save lives.

Most of those workers were wage-for-hire employees. The fortunate ones had some benefits – many did not.

Most of those workers do not have any ownership in the companies that employ them – therefore no underlying personal asset attached to their work.

Most of them, because their wages are only adequate for their necessary expenses, do not have any savings.

I read where a majority of American workers cannot afford an $1000 emergency.

Wage-for-hire makes a good part of our economic disaster.

It’s a great system to concentrate wealth.

It’s a great system to specialize work in a manner that demeans vocation.

It promotes some old idea of economic efficiency that arose as a slightly more humane version of slavery.

I am not a fan.

The underpinnings of wage-for-hire and non-equity corporate structures are a gimmick.

If we really want a wealthy America we also want every worker to have a share of wealth.

If we really want to diversify risks in companies, we also want every worker to have a stake in ‘risk sharing’.

We just found out our economy does not adapt to system-wide adjustments for national health and safety emergencies.

I’d like to see us rethink how we financially work together.

True Love

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I was in a conversation the other day and up pops the topic of true love.

It is an odd and awkward topic for me…

Webster’s defines love as an intense feeling of deep affection.

I certainly have felt deep affection for people and animals.

I absolutely love my children and grandchildren…and know those feelings are true.

The oddness is I have not found true love in either of my marriages.

With my first marriage I was young, immature, and did not fully understand what I was feeling….incapable of true love and a bad spouse.

My second marriage was more of a social convenience…enjoyable at times, but not really meaningful. I ended up realizing – in the end – stopping the relationship was no loss for me.

The discussion of true love momentarily left me feeling I was missing out on something in life….never finding a truly loving and loved companion.

I on occasion see couples in love. Generally it is with either a younger couple or an older couple…seldom see loving couples in the middle years.

Are we too busy and preoccupied in our middle years to appreciate one another?

It also occurs to me many folks might have lost their ability to truly love.

We live in a fast food…deliver to your door society.

Love takes time.

Love is complicated and complex.

The biology of love is to a degree known, but also mysterious.

I enjoy my loving relationships…. and do not feel ‘something is missing’ because my marriages did not feel truly loving.

I search for new loving relationships.

A Troubled Economy

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For me, the most dramatic thing in our current ‘coronavirus political economy’ is how troubled we seem to be as a society.

There are a number of factors:

  1. It is a VERY contagious virus….so good reason to curtail activities outside the home.
  2. To curtail activities outside the home is hugely traumatic for our political economy.
  3. Local communities are extremely dependent on global logistics.
  4. Our economy is financially dominated by large corporations that depend on global logistics, cheap labor, and local residents going about purchasing their goods.
  5. The stability of financial markets depends on trust in large corporations. If investors no longer financially trust the corporations they are going to flee the market.
  6. Once investors begin to flee the markets all of the derivative financial instruments become suspect – even the derivative markets meant to protect certain industry segments (commodity futures, for example).

Add to that list:

  1. We have grown much more secular as a society; therefore our basis for faith and trust is now much more material.
  2. Our national government has grown extremely superficial and unable to collaborate on important issues.
  3. Our heroic figures are predominantly athletes…along with some media and film personalities.

All of those items are good reason to be troubled.

I would hope that we become more clearheaded on an economy that is locally sustainable while marketing local surplus.

Announcing my Desire to Run for President of the United States

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I’ve watched for my entire adult life the progressing ‘vanity operation’ that is the American Presidency…and think it time for substance over artificial tanning.

Therefore, I am announcing a desire to run for President of the United States.

First, to aid all the dirt mongers, trollers, and folks of bad character, I list the following as assistance in your investigations of things that might be used to demean:

  1. I was an anxious child, so was not a good hitter in Little League (I was, to my credit, excellent in the field).
  2. I did an extremely bad job as President of my high school honor society.
  3. In the last month of my senior year in college I copied the lab data of one of my friends for an engineering report.
  4. I was a conscientious objector to the military and served three years as a surgical technician rather than as a combatant.
  5. I, during my twenties, had three years of psychoanalysis at the Pritzker Hospital at the University of Chicago.
  6. During the last couple years of my marriage I was an irascible and bad husband.
  7. I was once arrested at an airport when a TSA accused me of ‘throwing’ a bag of cancer medication at them (I tossed it on the conveyor and it slid off and accidentally hit their leg).
  8. I was once accused by a bank of kiting checks (it was in the 80s and as I remember it was a couple checks for $100 ….you would need to talk to the bank…although they, like many banks, are no longer in existence).
  9. I occasionally get angry and curse.
  10. A female companion in 2016/17 asked for a restraining order saying she ‘feared for her life’ (you need to ask her …I have no idea…at the time she did it we had not seen one another in months).

My worst offense, by far, is that I have little interest in accruing money. I believe money is to use responsibly for societal good…so try to minimize what I personally use (and even then think I take too much). My tax filings, therefore, show minimal income.

I feel certain, given the current political atmosphere, you can find something else…although the list is thorough from my memory.

Also, I never saw myself running for President, so would undoubtedly have done a better job as President of my high school honor society.

I am serious about my desire.

I think my character is sterling. At the least, I could return integrity and moral responsibility to the Office of President….and disconnect the Office from the influence of money.

My platform…. transition America from a nation built far to often on slavery and cheap labor to a nation that educates everyone on new forms of free enterprise that are skill based, promote shared ownership, create broad wealth, and respect the earth and the earth’s creatures.

The Relationship between Mental Health, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Engagement with Nature

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Somewhat over two years ago I began a conversation with the administration of my undergraduate school, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, on use of a portion of their new land acquisition for a campus sustainable, organic farm.

My premise was an interest in broadening the psychosocial aspects of the student experience – specifically around the theme of sustainability.

It was very directly driven by my own life and the lives of my family and close business colleagues.

There were a number of underlying hypotheses:

  1. Current uses of personal computers and handheld devices have profoundly changed how we interact as a species – acutely so with young people.
  2. How we eat, what we eat, and how we interact when we eat is critical to human health.
  3. The degree to which we are conscious of our bodies – and physical activity that aids body awareness – greatly enhances human health.
  4. Interaction with biodiverse ecologies in different weather conditions aids human health – particularly regular early morning biodiverse interactions.
  5. The term ‘mental health’ is, for me, too narrow. It rests upon old notions of material differences between mind and body – differences that I find artificial and biologically illogical (physiologically we are complex material beings – not ‘pieces of anatomy’).
  6. The Rose-Hulman campus, although pleasant, limits student interaction with the natural world. This is true of most college campuses.

From my visits to campus there appears to be a great need for mental health services – and I assume a similar need to identify students in need of mental health care.

I fundamentally question whether individual counseling can be effective with young students who have, in many cases, profoundly altered their human and natural interactions through the use of electronic devices –and the resulting changes that occur with family, friends, and interactions with nature.

Unless counseling takes a broad biological and sociological health perspective, I think it has limited value.

I also think solutions to the health problems of current students need to be long term and incremental. Most of the health problems that bring students to mental health clinics have been evolving for much of their lives – and do not lend themselves to easy solutions.

Many of my motivators for proposing a campus farm were based upon an interest to greatly diversify biological experiences for students utilizing both plants and animals. I also believed it would expand student and faculty perspectives on Rose-Hulman’s specialized academic programs.

How we integrate learning and knowledge with compassion, affection, and caring behaviors will be critical to addressing the increasingly acute health problems of young people.

Knowing

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I spent twenty years in publishing – all of it in either academic or scientific fields.

It was a ‘mixed bag’ of everything from shoddy applied science to seminal work with Nobel Laureates.

The most interesting projects were when I was given an enormous and complex amount of information, data, observation, etc. to condense into a printed, published book. They made me sweat (sometimes literally)…but the finished book was always satisfying.

How to arrange a printed page became my rubik’s cube. How to visually ‘weight’ the information…how to order complexity…how to convey meaning/knowledge.

After perhaps ten years of practice I began to ‘know’ new information. I developed an ethic for understanding and conveying knowledge.

I also realized there is something to ‘know’…and something to ‘knowing’.

It was learned through practice, not intuition.

Various disciplines (science, theology, etc.) have distinct methods and ethics for knowing.

Once I understood ‘knowing’ and ‘the processes to know’ I began to evaluate everything differently.

It gave me perspective, belief, and faith in our human condition.

I believe certain physical practice also gives us the same learned knowing…and yoga is the best example from my life.

Animals ‘know’.

Culture is the result of shared knowing.

Truth is also shared knowing.

I was once told a joke (by a person of shallow character who enjoyed making fun of people)…a person was given a thermos container and told it keeps hot liquid hot and cold liquid cold. The person took the container and said ‘How do it know?’

‘How do it know?’ is a critical question.