Can We Heal the Economy and Enhance Our Own Lives...by Growing More Food???

Huh? Is this a simplistic idea?

Today we have a staggering percentage of Americans on government programs such as Food Stamps and Medicaid. At the same time our government is loaded with debt and facing huge upcoming expenses promised by programs initiated decades ago.

How to cope? Austerity measures? Higher taxes? Neither strategy is likely to be politically acceptable.

Now consider the following progression instead:

Let's tap into "Nature's Money" by turning compostables into fertile soil, harvest rainwater, and reuse gray water in the garden, save our own seed and propagate our own plants, then, with the help of a team of like minded friends...
Together we can become healthier and more self reliant...

So...even if our earnings are low, our expenses can be even lower!

Can this kind of austerity feel more like luxury?
Can a self reliant citizenry be the basis for lower government costs and less need for taxes?

I'm trying this strategy out in my personal life. Please join me!

Farming: Garden of Eden or Hell On Earth?

Many cultures have a prehistoric tradition of origin in a

Garden of Plenty

 Yet modern day agriculture involves daily drudgery for low pay:

a Hell On Earth

 How did this come about?

And why is it called "Progress"???

Michael Pollan writes in Botany of Desire "an American farmer today grows enough food each year to feed a hundred people, Yet that achievement - that power over nature - has come at a price. The modern industrial farmer cannot grow that much food without large quantities chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and fuel. This expensive set of 'inputs,' as they're called, saddles the farmer with debt, jeopardizes his health, erodes his soil and ruins its fertility, pollutes the groundwater, and compromises the safety of the food we eat."  http://www.amazon.com/The-Botany-Desire-Plants-Eye-World/dp/0375760393

The farm workers' lot is far worse than that of farm owners:
Out of 2.5 million workers on America’s farms it is estimated that up to 500,000 are children.
http://afop.org/children-in-the-fields/learn-the-facts/#AFOP_estimates
What are their lives like?
http://theharvestfilm.com/facts
"Farmworker women ‘have it all,’ but not in the good kind of way,” says Levy Schroeder, director of Health & Safety Programs at AFOP. “They work in one of the most dangerous and lowest paid jobs—earning even less than their poorly paid male colleagues. They are also responsible for the care of their families and households, often rising first to prepare breakfasts and lunches, followed by 10- to 12-hour days in the field, and then dinner preparation, laundry, and seeing to any other needs of their families.”
http://afop.org/2013/04/17/the-hidden-faces-of-farmworker-women/

Can we bring farming back to Eden? Bill Mollison tells us we can!
"Mollison developed permaculture after spending decades in the rainforests and deserts of Australia studying ecosystems. He observed that plants naturally group themselves in mutually beneficial communities. He used this idea to develop a different approach to agriculture and community design, one that seeks to place the right elements together so they sustain and support each other."
Mollison: "Catch the water off your roof. Grow your own food. Make your own energy. It’s insanely easy to do all that. It takes you less time to grow your food than to walk down to the supermarket to buy it. Ask any good organic gardener who mulches how much time he spends on his garden and he’ll say, 'Oh, a few minutes every week.'" http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/mollison.html
"if you’re an optimist, you could say (permaculture design) is an attempt to actually create a Garden of Eden." http://www.context.org/iclib/ic28/mollison/

How can we begin to learn to apply permaculture design and get more of our food from a modern day Garden of Eden?
The volunteer opportunities at local community gardens are a start:
https://www.facebook.com/SmilingHogsheadRanch
http://hspsfarm.blogspot.com/p/upcoming-events.html
http://www.nybg.org/green_up/work_event.php

Smiling Hogshead Ranch, Long Island City

Enjoy the Summer and its bounty!

A Disturbing Milestone: 400 ppm CO2

During May 2013, for the first time, NOAA's Mauna Loa observatory recorded an average daily CO2 concentration above 400 parts per million. This is indeed a sobering milestone.

 

 The Keeling Curve:

Scientists almost unanimously agree that human activity is to blame for climate change  

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/130516/unanimity-among-scientists-over-cause-climate-change-study

Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org:

"We're in new territory for human beings--it's been millions of years since there's been this much carbon in the atmosphere. The only question now is whether the relentless rise in carbon can be matched by a relentless rise in the activism necessary to stop it."

Dr. James Hansen, former NASA Climatologist:

"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced ... to at most 350 ppm." 


"We've got work to do, and there's not a moment to lose."

From 400.350.org

Earth Day 2013: How Green Are Our Lifestyles and Habits?

 

The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, was organized by its principal founder, Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, as an environmental teach-in. Teach-ins differ from seminars in that they are meant to be spontaneous, action oriented, and energized from the grassroots.What have we learned and what actions have we taken in our city since 1970?

"The opportunity for a gradual but complete break with our destructive environmental history and a new beginning is at hand…. We can measure up to the challenge if we have the will to do so—that is the only question. I am optimistic that this generation will have the foresight and the will to begin the task of forging a sustainable society."  http://www.nelsonearthday.net/nelson/index.htm

What can we do as individuals to be part of forging a sustainable society? NYC currently provides a cornucopia of opportunities for training in sustainable living! Taking part in programs which help our members gain a broad range of practical green knowledge and experience is like going to Boot Camp.

Some Green New Yorkers Bootcamp Highlights:
GrowNYC recycle volunteer orientation
GrowNYC green market volunteer orientation
NYC Compost Project classes
East River Blueway Tour with LESEC
Tour Greenpoint Sewage Plant and Digester Eggs
Volunteer at an urban farm - BK Farmyards, Eagle St Rooftop Farm, Smiling Hogshead Ranch, etc
Just Food and Green Thumb classes - urban farming, chicken care, CSA organization, canning, pickling
GreenHomeNYC forums, career workshops, and green building tours
* Volunteer at Build It Green
*Volunteer for oyster planting projects
*Solar City Workshops
*Parks or shoreline cleanup

*on our radar for future Meetups

How far along are you in your Green Boot Camp training?




 

Can We Cut Our Budgets and Raise Our Quality of Life at the Same Time?

It's official, the sequester has begun. Federal spending cuts have been ordered, $85 billion "across-the-board", about 10% of the budget. The press has been bombarding us with projections about how disruptive and damaging will this cut may be to the economy and to us.

The question comes to mind: Can anyone cut an already tight budget in ways that improve rather than degrade their quality of life? Fortunately many people are already well on the way to building a lifestyle at the individual level that improves their quality of life while reducing the cost.

Some wealth building cost cutting strategies at the individual and household levels:

Cutting Food Costs
Up to 25% of the food purchased spoils without being eaten. Can we improve our food inventory control to prevent waste? How much of our food can we grow ourselves either at a community garden or on our own land? (http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2013/02/07/what-food-do-we-throw-out-how-to-stop-food-waste-at-home/)

Cutting Health Care Costs
Many of our health problems relate to our diet and lifestyle choices. Can we eat more vegetables and berries and less meat? Can we get more exercise to improve fitness?

Cutting Utility Costs
Do we need our homes to be quite so hot in the Winter? So cold in the Summer? Can we reduce drafts with some DIY caulking? Can we use fans instead of A/C in the Summer? Can we make better use of passive solar benefits the way our pets and wild animals do?

Cutting Education Costs
Can we make better use of the many FREE internet resources such as Khan Academy and Coursera? Let's remember that Abraham Lincoln's formal education consisted of only 12 months of classes with various itinerant teachers.

Some of the organizations that help us to help ourselves:

Green Thumb http://www.greenthumbnyc.org/
Just Food http://www.justfood.org/
NYC Compost Project http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/compost/compostproj.shtml
GreenHomeNYC http://greenhomenyc.org/
Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/

A wealth building low-cost business initiative:

On the drawing board - Greg Todd's proposal to set up bike carting of compostable waste from coffee shops and small food related businesses http://www.nycpermaculture.info/events/105698722/
Let's have more businesses that make use of Nature's Money please!

Can it work?

 A few decades ago an American president turned down the thermostat at the White House and wore warm sweaters. He lost the next election by a landslide (and the Federal debt burden jumped under his successor). Does it seem as if each president after that has avoided calling on us, the American people, to make sacrifices together even for vitally important common causes? Why aren't we being challenged to our full potential?

Imagine a nation of people so capable of taking care of our own needs that there is no longer much demand for Federal or State subsidy programs. From such a position of strength, we can reasonably demand lower tax rates. Increased self sufficiency from the grassroots level on up may be just the kind of start we need towards a better future!

While we work on our end....

How about cutting a 'little off the top'?

 

Cooperating together will get the job done!

To paraphrase Ben Franklin, a "penny saved" is a penny we don't need to earn, and a penny we didn't earn is not taxable. Yay!

How the Most Affordable Food Became the Most Costly

Today, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of the Lenten Season for many Christians. Many other religions and cultures also have seasonal periods of austerity and sacrifice which typically include restricted food choices.

For Lent, sacrifice traditionally means going meat free, eating seafood instead. The "Fish on Friday" tradition likewise is a respectful sacrificial observance. Huh??? But my supermarket circulars show much higher prices for seafood than meat!?!? Yes seafood has become a much more luxurious and costly food since the time when these traditions originated. (Many types of fruits and vegetables are also higher in price than some types of meat - but that's a subject for a future Blog.)

In the time of Jesus and his apostles, the poor ate fish because it was abundant and cheap.
What has happened to our rivers, lakes, estuaries, and oceans and the life in them in the last several decades?

Pollution and Infrastructure



Overfishing


Deep Ocean Trawlers

 
 

Measuring Our Fossil Fuel Use

http://engineering.columbia.edu/model-created-map-energy-use-nyc-buildings

Henry Gifford often points out the we need to measure our energy use if we want to manage it successfully.

January is an excellent month to look over our energy bills for the past year, comparing it with the average use of fellow New Yorkers. We can set goals for the new year and decide on strategies to achieve them.

Here, where many people don't have private cars, our buildings account for two-thirds of the energy used by the city.

 Drilling down to the unit level, take a look at the following table. Note these default values represent a very high rate of energy use. Nevertheless our energy cutting needs to start with measurement, so let's fill in our own table of monthly energy use.

Convert therms to kWh by a factor of 29.3

or use the conversion calculator at http://www.unitconversion.org/energy/therms-to-kilowatt-hours-conversion.html.

Convert Btu to kWh by a factor of 0.000293

or use the calculator at  http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/energy/BTU_to_kWh.htm.

Default Values for Residential Tenant Space Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
Month	Tenant-paid electrical energy use (kWh/unit)	Tenant-paid heating energy use (kWh/unit)
January	420	1454
February	370	1238
March	350	1022
April	340	562
May	360	202
June	430	29
July	530	0
August	570	0
September	440	58
October	360	360
November	350	749
December	380	1209

Source: Values are based on averaged New York State Energy Research and Development Authority data for multi-family residential buildings in New York City from 2006 – 2009 and correspond to the 25th percentile of building energy performance.   http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/downloads/pdf/040111_final_benchmarking_rule.pdf

Some strategies for reducing home energy use - http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/Save-Money-On-Energy.aspx#axzz2MXy3Z1ff

Notice how clever some nonhuman New Yorkers are in energy management:

NYC pigeons know have to make use of  passive solar gain and thermal mass

On the other hand, designing a pigeon roost over a pedestrian walkway...well...

Typical Buildings are energy wasters in their construction and operation.

Resilient Buildings are environmentally friendly and energy efficient to the point where they can maintain livable conditions even in the event of extended loss of power or heating fuel.http://www.resilientdesign.org/resilient-design-strategies/

The Passive House standard for building heating and cooling is met with only 15 kWh per sq meter per year (approximately 4750 Btu per sq foot per year or .0475 therms per sq foot per year).   http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHouse/FAQ.html

Net Zero Buildings have zero net energy consumption and zero net carbon emissions on an annual basis  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_building 
 
Living Buildings are environmentally sound, generate their own energy, capture and treat all of their water, operate efficiently, and are aesthetically pleasing. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=earth-talks-living-building

Where are we in the spectrum of home energy usage? What can we do to improve?

___________________________________________________________________
Typical Energy Use   Resilient Building      Passive House          Net Zero       Living Building