Why Food Security Matters to You

I believe there are two aspects to food security, both of which should concern all of us. The first and probably less familiar aspect is that of security from contamination. Contamination can take many forms, from E. coli and other biological agents to pesticides to heavy metals to animal hormones to discarded pharmaceuticals. The reason I add this as a factor of food security is because contaminated food is as good as no food at all. The second aspect is simple access to fresh, healthy food. Some inner cities of our large metropolises like Chicago and Detroit contain food deserts where no grocery stores exist for many miles. The only options people in these areas have for sustenance are fast food restaurants and convenience stores that sell highly processed and packaged food products.

For those of use fortunate enough to not live in a food desert we also need to be concerned about the availability of healthy, fresh food. A quick look at how our food is produced and distributed will outline some areas for concern. In the US the average super market travel distance for fresh fruit and vegetables is between 1500 to 2500 miles. Think about this for a moment. That lettuce you are eating in your salad tonight probably traveled farther to get to your refrigerator than you did on your last vacation. So what does this have to do with food security? Since our food network is stretched so long and is so reliant on cheap fuel, the interstate highway system and an enormous fleet of trucks, it is susceptible to many kinds of disruptions.

This is most apparent during natural disasters such as hurricanes. Under normal circumstances the stock in most grocery stores becomes depleted in three days. This means three days without any truck deliveries and your local store has no more food for you to purchase. Fortunately, natural disasters are not normal circumstances. We have all seen footage of empty store shelves hours before a large hurricane is scheduled to make landfall in an area. Luckily, most truck service is restored only hours after a hurricane has passed and the stores can be restocked. Sometimes, however, that is not the case.

As most of us can remember, after hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans descended into anarchy and chaos within a few days without drinkable water, electricity or food supplies from the outside world. Shocked that a city in the US could fail so quickly (and appalled at the apparent lack of federal response), I drove from Chicago down to Baton Rouge, the largest nearby city where a relief effort was being staged, to help. Inside the gymnasium and sports arena at LSU the Red Cross (with no help from FEMA or any other federal agency) was staffing a small city of cots, medical services and a cafeteria to house and feed five to six thousand refugees from the flooded city 50 miles to the south. The biggest impression I took away from my experience is how fragile is our modern lifestyle.

So what does this have to do with food security? Unfortunately, hurricanes are not the only threats to our thin and delicate web of food production and distribution. Drought, spikes in fuel prices, labor disputes and strikes, failing infrastructure, economic panic (e.g. fall of 2008), resource shortages, terrorism and severe weather events can all disrupt our steady supply of fresh, healthy food. But even if none of these calamities occur, we still have to contend with the other aspect of food security, contamination.

I've been considering all of these issues for several years and the simple conclusion I can't escape is the best way to improve one's food security is to grow more of it yourself. And growing your own food has the added benefit of reducing green house gases due to current energy intensive, factory farming practices and long travel distance by truck. And can you get more fresh than eating something five minutes after it is picked from the ground?

Every home owner has some kind of yard with some amount of ornamental vegetation, depending in which area of the country you live. Most of us own a swath of grass, the stereotypical American lawn, upon which we spend an inordinate amount of our summer months to maintain. Wouldn't it be a better use of our time and resources if we replaced some of that grass to grow something we can actually eat? Now that's food for thought.

Private Land Ownership

If you think about if for a second, the concept of private land ownership is a strange one. Each of us is born into this world, one that has existed for billions of years before any of us show up on the scene, and at some point in our lives we draw an arbitrary boundary around an area on the landscape and say, "This is mine." I can't think of a better example of human conceit and self importance. Yet to consider all of the cruelties inflicted, rivers of blood spilled and whole societies destroyed throughout the ages over land disputes simply boggles the mind.

I understand that land ownership is all about control of what can be done on a particular parcel and who can do it. Usually it boils down to the use of resources contained within whatever arbitrary boundary seems relevant to the parties in control. All of our conventions of law and legal transfer of ownership are simply processes we have put in place to reduce the amount of conflict related to determining who gets to decide what happens within what arbitrary boundaries. But over most of human history, the deciding factor has been who has the most lethal weapons and the biggest army.

But the issue always comes back to the use (or in most cases misuse) of natural resources. Our society, and almost all societies in the world today, are based on the concept of land ownership, either private or public. Every square inch of the surface of the earth is owned by someone. Notable exceptions are Antarctica (the only landmass on Earth that has no native human populations and is protected by international treaty) and the world's oceans, twelve nautical miles beyond shore, although there are many international treaties, disagreements and exceptions even to this simple rule.

My main observation is that even within all the rules, regulations and practices imposed on a landowner by local, regional and even international laws, overuse and sometimes outright abuse of natural resources occur across the globe. The problem is that landowners no longer are the only ones to suffer from mismanagement of their land. Most environmental problems, such as deforestation, pollution and resource depletion have regional and sometimes global consequences.

So this post is more food for thought than a recommendation for specific action. How do we raise global awareness for the consequences of resource depletion? Or maybe more to the point, how do each of us become better stewards of the land that we do own? (I touched on this issue in a previous post). No matter if that is a condo in a densely populated urban area, a 1/4 acre in a suburban sub-division or a 50 acre homestead, I'm convinced all of us can do a better job as sustainable land owners.

As a soon-to-be steward of about 5 acres in rural New Mexico, here are a few questions I will be asking myself which I think we should all consider. How can I utilize native, less resource intensive (water, fertilizer, labor) plants? What can I do to encourage more native wildlife on my property? How can I accomplish the same benefit (enjoying a beautiful landscape) with less labor and resources? For example, gas powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers are not only noisy and polluting but very inefficient compared to gas powered cars. Reducing or eliminating their use is a huge step towards sustainability.

In order to accomplish meaningful change we need to throw out old assumptions. For example, why do we assume that every house in America should be landscaped with sod (even in desert regions like Las Vegas)? Break the mold, challenge convention and replace that ocean of bland grass with more interesting and native landscaping that requires less water and maintenance. What else can you do to become a better steward of the land you own?

The Challenge Begins

Since I started this blog last April, I have been living in the Chicago area describing some of the challenges our society is facing and offering some solutions. But until this point, I have not been able to put into practice very many of my own suggestions. I now have the opportunity to move to a rural environment where I will begin the long journey to self-sufficiency and living a completely sustainable life. I have selected a fertile and watered mountain valley in southern New Mexico as the location of my new homestead. As any journey is easier and more fun with a companion than alone, my mother and I have decided to go into this adventure together. Being a partner in crime who shares my philosophy of life and concerns about the "modern" world, I look forward to sharing this exciting journey with her.

We have yet to even purchase a property, although there is one in particular that we have our eye on. So I have decided to dedicate this blog post towards the decision process we went through in finding an appropriate property for us, what we considered necessary and what are bonus criteria.

Water
Reliable access to clean water is the most important criteria for land selection. In order to lessen the impact if a source of water runs dry, a prospective property should have at least two independent water supplies (as independent as possible, since most water sources are tied to rainfall). And in the terms of both sustainability and self-reliance, do not count any municipal water supply (i.e. piped in water). If it exists, this may be a nice backup while it operates, but should be used sparingly. If it is the only water supply on the land, keep looking. This is important not only because you don't want to rely upon failing infrastructure that is out of your control, but because you also have no control over the energy intensive and possibly environmentally damaging practices in use to pump and deliver that water to your prospective property.

Most sites have one water source that you can count on: rain. Either the current weather patterns of the area provide enough rain for seasonal crops or you can build rain collection devices to store rainwater through the dry periods of the year. If your prospective property lies in an area which receives less than 16" of rain a year, you will need both a shallow water table (less than 100 ft. for a low energy use well) and at least a seasonal source of surface water (spring, stream or river). In addition, you will have to research local water rights laws and determine what water rights are associated with the property deed. The last thing you want is to purchase a property on a river or stream and find out you can't draw even a drop of water from it.

Unfortunately, the world we live in is changing due to the increasing levels of CO2 released into the atmosphere primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. As such any consideration of precipitation as a source of water (or precipitation fed sources such as streams and rivers) would be remiss without at least considering the projections for changing precipitation patterns in the area of your property. The EPA has a good description of regional projections for both temperature and precipitation by the end of the century.

Sunlight
It may seem obvious that plants need sunshine to grow. However, some sites can have less than obvious disadvantages regarding how the sun illuminates the landscape. Look for major obstructions like large trees, existing buildings (especially on adjacent property), hills or mountains or other aspects of topology. Also remember, the sun moves not only on the daily cycle from east to west but also on the yearly cycle of the seasons. For North America the angle of the sun varies from a low of 18 degrees from the horizon at noon at the winter solstice in the north (Grand Forks, ND) to a high of 84 degrees at the summer solstice in the south (Miami, FL). Your property location will greatly affect the seasonal amount of sunlight available to you.

A useful website to help you visualize the movement of the sun for your prospective property is Sun Earth Tools. It will superimpose over a Google maps satellite image of the property the daily path of the sun at any date and indicate the furthest extent at the two solstices. Also keep in mind this evaluation does not reflect the local weather which is obviously correlated to the amount of sunshine available at different times of the year (it is colder in Grand Forks, ND than Miami, FL most times of the year due to the amount of sunlight both areas receive).

Geography
It is also important to notice and take into account the regional and local geography and how it affects weather patterns, rainfall and local heating and cooling cycles. For example, in the northern hemisphere a south facing slope, even in a shallow valley, will have more direct sunlight than the north facing slope opposite and will therefore warm up earlier in the morning, suffer less frost damage in the winter and support more sun loving plants.

Also notice how the local geography affects wind direction which in turn can imply heating and cooling characteristics of surrounding buildings, trees and topography such as a stony hillside. Low lying areas, even of only a few feet, can become cold air traps in winter and are likely places for frost to develop first. Walk the property with a notebook and camera and notice and document all of these details.

Soil
The non-organic components of soil are sand, silt and clay. The definitions of each is based on the particle size not their composition, that of silt being somewhere between sand (the coarsest or largest particles) and clay (the smallest and finest). The current (in situ) relative proportions of these components will determine how much or little work will be required to successfully grow crops on your prospective land. In addition to the amount of organic matter present, the most important aspect of soil composition is the relative quantities of these components. Too much clay and you will have poor soil drainage leading to root rot and other problems. Too much sand and the soil will not hold enough water to prevent the roots from drying out between waterings.

A simple way to determine soil composition is to dig a spadeful of soil from a representative spot (on the surface, don't dig deeper than a foot) and half fill a mason jar with the soil. Fill the rest of the way with water and seal tightly. Shake the jar until the soil is completely dispersed in the water. Set the jar on a level surface for a day or two to allow the soil to settle back to the bottom. The sand will settle out first, then the silt and finally the clay particles (the finest ones). Use a ruler to measure the clear bands of each layer to determine the relative quantities. Easy to manage soil should consist of approximately 20% sand, 20% clay and 60% silt, although up to equal quantities of each is manageable. More sand or clay than silt is an indication that this soil will need much remediation to be useful and you should probably consider other properties.

In addition to these components also look for number and size of stones in the soil (many stones makes it harder to till and weed), how compacted the soil is (did you have to jump on the spade to get a shovelful?) and how many worms or worm holes you noticed in that one spadeful. An absence of worms is always a warning sign and can indicate any number of problems that might be difficult to remediate.

Accessibility
How easy was it to drive to your prospective property? Is it remote? Close to the nearest town? Did you have to cross any dry stream beds (which may flood some times of the year), steep hillsides (may ice up during the winter) or other terrain features which may make access difficult during the various seasons? It may be worth while to visit at night to notice how easy it is to find the driveway or negotiate the nearby roads. How easy will it be for someone else to find the property? You most likely will take a delivery of a package or possibly large shipment at some point. Will this be an issue or inconvenience? This is particularly important if you plan on any large construction projects like building a new home, barn or other structures on the property.

Vision
Can you see yourself living there? This sometimes can get lost in the shuffle with viewing multiple properties and checking off the list everything mentioned above. But don't forget why you are buying this property. Notice the neighborhood and surrounding properties. Are they well kept or run down? Are there others in the area homesteading or growing kitchen gardens? Is there a local community of like-minded individuals or will you be forging a new path in this area?

Try visiting just before sunset, setting up a lawn chair and simply sitting to watch the sun set. Notice the noises, traffic, people or whatever else goes on around the property. Is this a view you can live with? What don't you like about it? How does that balance out with all the positive qualities of the property?

Good Enough
Finally, no property is going to meet all of your needs. The real challenge is to decide what is truly important to you and make sure you are selecting the property that is good enough to meet those needs without waiting for that perfect property that may never materialize.

The Problem with Fusion

Although there are many technical challenges that still remain in order to make fusion energy a viable source of electrical power generation, the main reason humans will never harness fusion energy is one of economics. By the very nature of a fusion reaction, pressures and temperatures only experienced within stars, fusion reactors are necessarily the most complex and technologically sophisticated machines built by man (the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is another candidate). As such, fusion reactors are also among the most expensive. No amount of technologic breakthrough will make fusion generation a cheap enterprise. In order to recoup that expense, massive economies of scale have to be achieved in order to make fusion energy a viable source of electrical power generation. But massive economies of scale can only be achieved with massive installations which bring about a whole host of other problems like local environmental impact, vulnerability to local weather and geologic phenomenon (earthquakes, tsunami, etc.) not to mention human caused events such as accidents, sabotage and military action. Finally, massive installations have huge price tags.

First let’s look at the order of magnitude kind of cost we can expect. Nuclear fission technology is about 80 years old and by all standards a fairly mature technology, even considering the latest reactor designs like advanced boiling water reactors (ABWR). The largest nuclear power plant in the world is Japan’s Kashiwazaki–Kariwa NPP which as seven reactors for a total generating capacity of 8 GW (8,000 MW). From ground breaking to first power generation took more than four years. The last reactor did not come online until 12 years after the first one requiring huge capital outlays before revenue could be collected by selling the generated power. The average cost per kW of electricity generated is about $5,000 or a total of $40 billion to build the entire complex.

Here is a list for cost comparison to other relevantly complex machines:

• Trident nuclear missile submarine – $3 billion
• Nimitz class nuclear powered aircraft carrier – $6.2 billion
• Lifetime cost of Space Shuttle program – $200 billion ($1.5 billion / flight)

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the only commercial fusion reactor program currently funded has an estimated price of $18 billion. (The US National Ignition Facility, the only fusion project in the US, is changing priorities after failing to meet the goal of "ignition" when the latest round of funding ended this last September.) It’s designed net power generation is 450 MW. This is only 5% of the power generated by Kashiwazaki–Kariwa NPP for almost half the cost. So even assuming ITER is a complete success, which is doubtful considering the immature state of the technology, it will not be economically viable. But it is a demonstration of the technology, so economics are not the primary objective.
However, the outlook for fusion gets worse. The economies of scale required for a large fusion reactor demand generation on the order of 5 – 10 GW. This falls out of a complex analysis of cost for power generation that ranges from $2000 / kW for state-of-the art pulverized coal plants to $10,000 / kW for the latest ABWR nuclear fission power plants. In order to be economically viable, a fusion power plant has to deliver power within this price band. For maximum economies of scale, at $10,000 / kW for a total of 10 GW power generation, this equates to a total lifetime cost (capital, operating, fuel and financing) of less than $100 billion. For a 20 year lifetime, this would approximate to $80 billion to build and $1 billion annual costs. And this would make the electricity one of the most expensive sources. To come down to the $2000 / kW of coal fired plants, the build cost would have to come down to about $16 billion. That’s already less than the projected ITER cost for only 450 MW of generation.

There are few aspects of the technology required to fuse hydrogen atoms that indicate orders of magnitude cost reduction over time. Compare the costs of the largest partical colliders as they have grown in size over the last 20 years. The closest parallel technology on the electric power generation front is the evolution of nuclear fission power plants. Even at the enormous economies of scale afforded by Kashiwazaki–Kariwa NPP its cost per kW is still in the middle of the cost band for electrical generation sources. Most of the worlds nuclear power plants fall in the upper reaches of this price band. So even under the very best of technological circumstances, fusion power will never be a viable source of electrical power generation purely for economic reasons.

Wasting the Abundance

How much food have you thrown away today? Didn't quite finish that second or third bowl of cereal and dumped it down the garbage disposal? Tossed the last two bites of that sandwich? Scraped the remains of dinner into the kitchen garbage? Did you go shopping today and clean out your refrigerator by throwing away all that food from last week that had gone bad? How about those leftovers from the restaurant three nights ago that you never ate? We all do it. I did all these things in the last week. We usually don't even think about it.

So let's stop for a second and do a little bit of that thinking. My cereal was mostly corn, wheat and sugar. All are grown, harvested and processed many miles from the store in which I purchased the cereal. Taking into account the production of the packaging of all the ingredients before they arrive at the cereal plant and all the packaging to get the cereal to my kitchen, not to mention the production of the cereal itself and we can quickly see that there are many very complicated processes involved. Each of them consumes energy which usually comes from some fossil fuel like diesel for the trucks and coal to generate the electricity.

When I pour that last bowl, eat only half of it and dump the rest, I'm also wasting some of that energy that went into getting that cereal into my bowl. It doesn't seem like much when considering a bowl of cereal. However, recent studies have indicated that in industrialized nations like the US 30 - 50% of all food produced is thrown away before it can be eaten. This means that up to 50% of the carbon emissions related to food production and transportation are causing global climate change for no benefit. I don't know how you feel, but that sounds really stupid to me.

The irony, or perhaps the underlying cause, of all this waste is that we do it because our food supply is so abundant. We grow and produce so much food in the US that we can throw away half of it and still suffer an epidemic of obesity caused mainly by eating too much (or at least too much of the wrong kinds of food). The true tragedy is not the cost of the waste or even the distasteful moral issue of so much waste in the face of so many struggling with food security or even starvation in other parts of the world. No, the tragedy is that while we are wasting this colossal abundance we are lulled into believing it will continue forever.

The belief in never ending abundance causes us as a society to be wasteful of all the limited resources that are consumed daily to produce this amazing bounty which we discard without a second thought. Our modern farming practices are heavily reliant on the consumption of water for irrigation, diesel for production and transportation, petroleum for pesticides, other fossil fuels like natural gas to produce fertilizer and the land on which to grow it all. Supply of all of these resources are beginning to be challenged and will be more so in the near future as world-wide demand for food continues to increase partly due to population increase and partly to the rest of the world wanting to eat what we do.

Before a crisis looms caused by a shortage of any of these resources upon which our farming practices rely, we need to supplement our food supply with crops grown in ways that are not reliant on these limited resources. Many organic farming practices can produce the same yield per acre with no chemical fertilizers or pesticides and a fraction of the petroleum. The problem is that all of these practices are only successful on a small scale so that more people have to practice them to support the same sized population.

We won't get there overnight, but we can each make a small contribution by being more mindful of how much food we buy, eat and throw out. We can also support local farmers who practice organic techniques which have a lower impact on the environment, our bodies and our limited resources. If we don't we may be staring into the first of many crises regarding our food production sooner than we want to admit.

Why Live Without Garbage?

How can we live our lives without creating any garbage? Or why should we want to? Because when we live the way we do, creating so much garbage, we are living unsustainably. The activities we pursue, the products we consume, the food that we eat, are all processes consuming resources faster than those resources are being replenished. This is true of the energy intensive agriculture required to fertilize, plant, harvest, process and tranport our food as well as the energy and resource intense processes to make and ship our consumer goods.

Garbage isn't the main problem (in itself it can be, and in some places is, a major issue) but garbage is a symptom. It is a symptom of the inefficiency of unsustainable processes. Whether we like it or not, the inescapable reality is that we all live on a world with limited resources. With 7 billion of us (and counting) we cannot continue to use resources as if they are unlimited. Besides possibly sunlight (see my post 'Sustainable Means What?') there are no unlimited resources. OK, maybe seawater is vast enough to be considered unlimited, but for what? Turning it into potable water takes enengy, and besides sunlight, we don't have an unlimited source of energy (a discussion of the problems with fusion energy has to wait for a future post).

More to the point, we need to improve the efficiency of all human activities to the point where they will all be sustainable. One way to do this is to minimize waste (i.e. garbage). Sometimes even this is not good enough because some other part of the process is consuming non-renewable resources such as petroleum. In this case we need to find alternative renewable resources.

But petroleum and other fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, etc.) have another strike against them. Not only will we soon (20 years for oil, 150 years for coal) have extracted and burned the easiest to reach reserves, but they contribute to global climate change. We simply cannot keep burning the same amount of fossil fuels for the next 150 years that we do today. The good news is we can't keep burning petroleum at that rate because we will run out of it soon. The bad news is humanity shows no signs of reducing the amount of coal we burn each year. In fact, we burn more coal each year than we did the previous one.

All the more reason to find alternatives. But since there is neither a simple alternative energy source nor an easy way to convert our energy infrastructure, one of the most effective interim solutions is to consume less fossil fuels. But as a whole humanity has been pretty bad at accomplishing this task. That is why I am not very hopeful that the human race will change its behavior enough to ward off environmental disaster.

So what does that mean for those of us who want to make a difference? The best answer I've come up with so far is learning how to live a sustainable, self-sufficient life. Live responsibly, live sustainably but most importantly, learn to live so that you are not dependant on any of the non-sustainable processes which will suffer crisis and ultimately break-down as the resources upon which they depend are consumed to an extent where those processes can no longer function.

My next post will be a preview of what life without garbage might look like and what that has to do with living a self-sufficent life.