Here's what I'd published in the Examiner a couple of weeks ago on the DEFRA/MBS report:
A recent DEFRA report, conducted by the Manchester Business School, has grabbed some headlines for claiming to prove that organic food isn�t always better for the environment.
A clear headed reading of the report reveals that most organic meats and wheat have lower energy uses, and all organic products have lower or no pesticide uses.
However, most media that have covered this story seem to have latched onto the fact that some of the time, some environmental impacts of some organic foods are considered higher than is the case for some conventional foods.
For example, much has been made of organic milk�s negative environmental contribution. However, if you read the report, it is clear that the energy used to produce 1lt of organic milk is less than half that used in conventional milk.
Where organic milk falls down relates (in an unspecified way) to the type of feed used by organic producers in the UK. In a context where certification means maintaining organic all the way from production to consumption, sometimes products and inputs have to have to be moved long distances. A more local conventional source may sometimes be available, but then the consumer doesn�t get a certified product.
This is always an issue for organics, and does obviously contribute to food miles. However, the question has to be asked � what�s the alternative? It is likely that with the increase in organic consumption, more products, inputs and services will be available in more and more places, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of these organic foods. The alternative to supporting organics and waiting for this to happen is to support conventional, with all its myriad environmental problems.
But in many cases, the research is, in my opinion, limited or flawed in a number of ways.
It is limited in not considering the farm as a place where the environment actually is. It�s as if there are farms, and there is the environment, and both are separate entities. In this flawed methodological construct, the lands used up by organics to produce food makes organic seem more damaging.
However, it is possible to view this construction in an entirely different way. Organic farms have been proven in numerous reports to be higher in biodiversity levels than conventional farms. So there is more nature in, or on, organic farms. There is more biodiversity in terms of farmed products and more in terms of plants in fields, life in hedgerows, birdlife and so on. Conventional farming has done enormous damage to biodiversity levels over the past 60 years.
Despite its stated focus on sustainability, this report does not consider biodiversity, animal welfare, soil condition or (in a comprehensive sense) water usage, so the report cannot be considered all-encompassing.
The UK�s Soil Association also claimed that the model used for the study amplified the amount of nitrous oxide emissions, while also increasing the land area used by organics by half.
Some good points are made, however. Car transport to and from supermarkets has a more negative effect on the environment than much food production. Interestingly, sometimes local production, even of organic, can be more energy intensive. Tomatoes produced in heated UK greenhouses have a greater negative impact than those produced in unheated ones in Spain.
So it all comes back to thinking about what you eat. If the product is out of season, and produced nearby, a lot of energy has probably been used to do this.
For all its flaws, it is clear from this report that the move towards agri-industrialisation in organics has had some inevitable negative impacts: the spirit of organic suggests more natural feeds and less concentrated feeds for animals, more crop rotations and less liquid feeds and so on. If you are lucky enough to know organic producers working in these more natural ways, make the most of them.
Overall, the three amigos � seasonal, local, organic � need to form a holy alliance. And in a choice between giving up because organic certification sometimes results in extra transport, and working toward a food system functioning with an awareness of the benefits of combining local, seasonal and organic, I know which one I�m choosing.
See the report:
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Does what follows represent the beginning of the end of normal politics and the origin of some other way of governing Ireland?
Challanged by John Gormley of the Green Party twice, Noel Dempsey, Fianna Fail government minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources said on RTE�s the week in politics an hour ago that he would indeed join a cross party alliance to develop a strategy on climate change.
Were anything to come of this post-election, then this would be a very rare and significant moment. It would be a moment where the votes of the considerable majority of people who voted actually meant something. Usually, a standardized situation in Irish and indeed in most government formations always accrues. Most of the time, the votes of just-enough-people-to-make-a-government is all that ever counts.
In this new potential situation, this would be a bit like a national emergency climate change grouping. Whether it could behave like say a government department or a more standard all- party committee remains to be seen.
Gormley compared this potential new situation for governing on climate change in Ireland to the one currently in existence in Denmark.
It�s also the kind of thing Israel does for security/war � that�s show the potential for making big decisions that effect people, eh? If most or all parties in the D�il agreed to this, then government policy in a specific area could be made by most or all parties. This would be a mild dose of consensus politics, and it would also be a bit like how things are supposed to work in government in the other jurisdiction on the island.
It would also be an intriguing validation of one of the Green party�s classic clich�s: �neither left nor right but ahead�
The Greens could sort-of be in government without being in government. Here�s a new, less snappy but more substantial motto for the Greens: �Neither with the left nor the right but both at the same time, whichever is in government�. OK more: �In fact it doesn�t even matter, because we�ll always actually be in government now, at least on climate change. So, what else can we make seem so important that we�ll get another bit of that cross party consensus government going? Ah, doesn�t matter, everything is related to climate change these days anyway��
Challanged by John Gormley of the Green Party twice, Noel Dempsey, Fianna Fail government minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources said on RTE�s the week in politics an hour ago that he would indeed join a cross party alliance to develop a strategy on climate change.
Were anything to come of this post-election, then this would be a very rare and significant moment. It would be a moment where the votes of the considerable majority of people who voted actually meant something. Usually, a standardized situation in Irish and indeed in most government formations always accrues. Most of the time, the votes of just-enough-people-to-make-a-government is all that ever counts.
In this new potential situation, this would be a bit like a national emergency climate change grouping. Whether it could behave like say a government department or a more standard all- party committee remains to be seen.
Gormley compared this potential new situation for governing on climate change in Ireland to the one currently in existence in Denmark.
It�s also the kind of thing Israel does for security/war � that�s show the potential for making big decisions that effect people, eh? If most or all parties in the D�il agreed to this, then government policy in a specific area could be made by most or all parties. This would be a mild dose of consensus politics, and it would also be a bit like how things are supposed to work in government in the other jurisdiction on the island.
It would also be an intriguing validation of one of the Green party�s classic clich�s: �neither left nor right but ahead�
The Greens could sort-of be in government without being in government. Here�s a new, less snappy but more substantial motto for the Greens: �Neither with the left nor the right but both at the same time, whichever is in government�. OK more: �In fact it doesn�t even matter, because we�ll always actually be in government now, at least on climate change. So, what else can we make seem so important that we�ll get another bit of that cross party consensus government going? Ah, doesn�t matter, everything is related to climate change these days anyway��
Thursday, March 1, 2007
supermarkets and the food system
Here's a two parter I'd published in the examiner in January. It discussed why some organic producers dislike supermarkets....I'll stick my critique on the DEFRA/MBS report up here soon
You could call the relationship between the organic movement and supermarkets biting the hand that feeds you. Or, depending upon your perspective, you could describe the situation more as the hard hand of economics slapping the impudent nippy little organic pup.
According to the latest (2006) Bord Bia research, 85% of all organic food sold in Ireland is sold through supermarkets. Yet this same research found that some organic producers, �on a point of principle� (to use the specific words used by Lorcan Bourke of Bord Bia at a recent organic conference) refuse to deal with supermarkets. So its not that the producers of the other 15% (who are numerically greater than 15% of producers) can�t get their products in � they have no intention of going next nor near the places. Why is this?
In general, supermarkets have given us a cornucopia of choice, an abundance of options and an array of alternatives. We can have whatever, whenever. Whether its strawberries in winter, or readymade meal, one for every day of the week an (Indian, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican...) have never had it so good. Especially in a Celtic Tiger context where we are more and more busy, with both men and women in the workforce. We spend less and less time and money on cooking, and food is, for the majority of people, nothing more than a thing that gets us through the day. Supermarkets provide cheap and cheerful choice and convenience, the mantras of modern Ireland.
So what�s the problem with these organic producers who don�t like supermarkets then? On the one hand, supermarkets are an obvious growth area for organics, and in Ireland and the UK have pumped a fortune into promoting and developing various organic brands. In other parts of the developed world, notably North American and Australia, this is not the case at all. Walmart in the US have only belatedly joined in on the organic revolution, and have done so to a fanfare of accusations that much of their organic produce isn�t actually organic at all.
Back home in Ireland, some supermarkets have a great reputation within the organic sector � Scally�s Supervalu in Colnakilty being a standout example.
Yet in my own years of research I have come across this same feeling of antipathy amongst organic producers towards supermarkets found in the Bord Bia research.
There are some basic practical things - like not getting paid for months. Sometimes, the standard waiting time for payment can be up to three months.
Putting all your eggs into the one basket is another worry. If you are dropped, or squeezed, you have little power when you have no other avenues for selling your product. Even those whose produce ends up on the supermarket shelves worry about the sheer scale and power of the modern retailer.
Your product might turn out to be the wrong shape, size, colour, texture, but superior in a multitude of ways. Quality depends upon subjective interpretation and perspective. Your product might be leading edge; unwaxed fruit, so long the preserve of artisan and organic producers, is finally socially acceptable in city supermarkets. Five years ago, that would quite simply not have happened. Recently, I encountered an organic grower who claimed to have �ploughed �30,000 (old money) of lettuce into the ground, because they were the wrong size for the supermarket�
Supermarkets� lack of malleability is another related issue. Small, innovative products need a distinct display, and the remote control management techniques of the vast majority of supermarkets isn�t subtle enough to provide this. The two of the products featured last week that are sold through supermarkets - Chill Baby organic babyfood and Blazing Salads� artisan organic bread � have passionate and forward thinking producers who fight for specialist display areas. The products would be lost elsewhere in the supermarket. Where they succeed in getting specialist dislays, their products succeed. Joe and Martin Fitzmaurice of Blazing Salads have waxed lyrical about their preference for small, independent supermarkets over and above the bigger chains for this very reason.
But there is so much more to it that this.
Some of the issues some organic producers have with supermarkets cut a little deeper. Some are stubborn, ideologically driven pioneering producers who hate the thoughts of the massive mark up supermarkets make, or the thoughts of their food going off on the shelves. So they innovate. Organic producers have always been to the forefront of alternative distribution schemes (box schemes, farmers� markets) and will continue to be (direct digital delivery a la Ballybrado here or Riverford in the UK).
But this latter point, the one on personality types, actually goes deeper again. Some see supermarkets as part of the problem. According to the alternative discourse on how food (and to some extent life) should be, some of the problems include concentrations of power; declining food nutritional levels; the evisceration of town centres; the move of power from producers to distributors; the vacuousness of modern life; the tailoring of food supply to suit cars and road expansion schemes; the ignorance in urban consumers of the realities of rural life and food production.
It is also noteworthy that the countries with the strongest food cultures in Europe (e.g. Italy and France, and the general Mediterranean rim) have amongst the lowest supermarket penetration into the food supply system. Where supermarkets do function in the Mediterranean rim, all the processes so familiar to us in Ireland and the UK, such as own brand vertical integration, just-in-time delivery and so on, are completely underdeveloped.
People who study organic farmers for a living (yes, they are out there, and I myself am one of them!) sometimes define organic farmers in fundamentally different ways to other farmers.
Hilary Tovey (TCD) uses three interrelated categories to describe what she calls the knowledge interests of organic farmers. These are cosmological, organisational and technological. Cosmological simply means ideological, or belief-orientated. Organisational means a fundamental desire to change how food is produced, distributed and consumed � organising these things differently. Technological means a belief that farming should happen differently.
Tovey points out that the three are inter-related � as an example, there is an ideological side to organisation; farmers� markets have lots of socio-cultural and environmental benefits, other than just giving local farmers a business incubation service. Whether it�s the opportunity to justify the differences in your products, the chance to see actual humans (farming is a very solitary life at times); a way to fight food miles practically, a way to keep cash circulating locally, or just to take some power over your product back, the list goes on.
Likewise, there is an ideological side to the technical - not using various agri-industrial products and processes, (such as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and so on) is related to a different belief in how food should be produced.
And even if you move on from the farmers� market, there is always another organic producer with these beliefs and practices to replace you. So the movements� knowledge interests get replenished.
The conventional food system (the Department of Ag, the IFA, Teagasc, supermarkets etc), when it deals with organics, tries to foreground the technological, and background, or ridicule, the other two. So scale, and an export and mainstream retail orientation are encouraged in organics by these players, whatever about the historical pitfalls these processes may have thrown up in the past.
But still, stubborn and at the same time innovative organic producers keep on keeping on, while some are replaced in the movement by fresh young blood. Importantly, for those who study organics, a personnel change, or an incorporation of a particular organic producer into the more mainstreamed food supply system does not mean that the movement ends. The ideas and practices, the beliefs and actions just get to live on in different people.
Simply put, there will always be a bit more to organics than the production of a technically different food.
You could call the relationship between the organic movement and supermarkets biting the hand that feeds you. Or, depending upon your perspective, you could describe the situation more as the hard hand of economics slapping the impudent nippy little organic pup.
According to the latest (2006) Bord Bia research, 85% of all organic food sold in Ireland is sold through supermarkets. Yet this same research found that some organic producers, �on a point of principle� (to use the specific words used by Lorcan Bourke of Bord Bia at a recent organic conference) refuse to deal with supermarkets. So its not that the producers of the other 15% (who are numerically greater than 15% of producers) can�t get their products in � they have no intention of going next nor near the places. Why is this?
In general, supermarkets have given us a cornucopia of choice, an abundance of options and an array of alternatives. We can have whatever, whenever. Whether its strawberries in winter, or readymade meal, one for every day of the week an (Indian, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican...) have never had it so good. Especially in a Celtic Tiger context where we are more and more busy, with both men and women in the workforce. We spend less and less time and money on cooking, and food is, for the majority of people, nothing more than a thing that gets us through the day. Supermarkets provide cheap and cheerful choice and convenience, the mantras of modern Ireland.
So what�s the problem with these organic producers who don�t like supermarkets then? On the one hand, supermarkets are an obvious growth area for organics, and in Ireland and the UK have pumped a fortune into promoting and developing various organic brands. In other parts of the developed world, notably North American and Australia, this is not the case at all. Walmart in the US have only belatedly joined in on the organic revolution, and have done so to a fanfare of accusations that much of their organic produce isn�t actually organic at all.
Back home in Ireland, some supermarkets have a great reputation within the organic sector � Scally�s Supervalu in Colnakilty being a standout example.
Yet in my own years of research I have come across this same feeling of antipathy amongst organic producers towards supermarkets found in the Bord Bia research.
There are some basic practical things - like not getting paid for months. Sometimes, the standard waiting time for payment can be up to three months.
Putting all your eggs into the one basket is another worry. If you are dropped, or squeezed, you have little power when you have no other avenues for selling your product. Even those whose produce ends up on the supermarket shelves worry about the sheer scale and power of the modern retailer.
Your product might turn out to be the wrong shape, size, colour, texture, but superior in a multitude of ways. Quality depends upon subjective interpretation and perspective. Your product might be leading edge; unwaxed fruit, so long the preserve of artisan and organic producers, is finally socially acceptable in city supermarkets. Five years ago, that would quite simply not have happened. Recently, I encountered an organic grower who claimed to have �ploughed �30,000 (old money) of lettuce into the ground, because they were the wrong size for the supermarket�
Supermarkets� lack of malleability is another related issue. Small, innovative products need a distinct display, and the remote control management techniques of the vast majority of supermarkets isn�t subtle enough to provide this. The two of the products featured last week that are sold through supermarkets - Chill Baby organic babyfood and Blazing Salads� artisan organic bread � have passionate and forward thinking producers who fight for specialist display areas. The products would be lost elsewhere in the supermarket. Where they succeed in getting specialist dislays, their products succeed. Joe and Martin Fitzmaurice of Blazing Salads have waxed lyrical about their preference for small, independent supermarkets over and above the bigger chains for this very reason.
But there is so much more to it that this.
Some of the issues some organic producers have with supermarkets cut a little deeper. Some are stubborn, ideologically driven pioneering producers who hate the thoughts of the massive mark up supermarkets make, or the thoughts of their food going off on the shelves. So they innovate. Organic producers have always been to the forefront of alternative distribution schemes (box schemes, farmers� markets) and will continue to be (direct digital delivery a la Ballybrado here or Riverford in the UK).
But this latter point, the one on personality types, actually goes deeper again. Some see supermarkets as part of the problem. According to the alternative discourse on how food (and to some extent life) should be, some of the problems include concentrations of power; declining food nutritional levels; the evisceration of town centres; the move of power from producers to distributors; the vacuousness of modern life; the tailoring of food supply to suit cars and road expansion schemes; the ignorance in urban consumers of the realities of rural life and food production.
It is also noteworthy that the countries with the strongest food cultures in Europe (e.g. Italy and France, and the general Mediterranean rim) have amongst the lowest supermarket penetration into the food supply system. Where supermarkets do function in the Mediterranean rim, all the processes so familiar to us in Ireland and the UK, such as own brand vertical integration, just-in-time delivery and so on, are completely underdeveloped.
People who study organic farmers for a living (yes, they are out there, and I myself am one of them!) sometimes define organic farmers in fundamentally different ways to other farmers.
Hilary Tovey (TCD) uses three interrelated categories to describe what she calls the knowledge interests of organic farmers. These are cosmological, organisational and technological. Cosmological simply means ideological, or belief-orientated. Organisational means a fundamental desire to change how food is produced, distributed and consumed � organising these things differently. Technological means a belief that farming should happen differently.
Tovey points out that the three are inter-related � as an example, there is an ideological side to organisation; farmers� markets have lots of socio-cultural and environmental benefits, other than just giving local farmers a business incubation service. Whether it�s the opportunity to justify the differences in your products, the chance to see actual humans (farming is a very solitary life at times); a way to fight food miles practically, a way to keep cash circulating locally, or just to take some power over your product back, the list goes on.
Likewise, there is an ideological side to the technical - not using various agri-industrial products and processes, (such as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and so on) is related to a different belief in how food should be produced.
And even if you move on from the farmers� market, there is always another organic producer with these beliefs and practices to replace you. So the movements� knowledge interests get replenished.
The conventional food system (the Department of Ag, the IFA, Teagasc, supermarkets etc), when it deals with organics, tries to foreground the technological, and background, or ridicule, the other two. So scale, and an export and mainstream retail orientation are encouraged in organics by these players, whatever about the historical pitfalls these processes may have thrown up in the past.
But still, stubborn and at the same time innovative organic producers keep on keeping on, while some are replaced in the movement by fresh young blood. Importantly, for those who study organics, a personnel change, or an incorporation of a particular organic producer into the more mainstreamed food supply system does not mean that the movement ends. The ideas and practices, the beliefs and actions just get to live on in different people.
Simply put, there will always be a bit more to organics than the production of a technically different food.
Arm yourself with the most up to date organic information:
the stats worldwide, downloadable for just 15 quid...(thou you can get 2006 figures for free if you root around....)
a host of presentations on the environmental benefits of organic farming - v handy
the stats worldwide, downloadable for just 15 quid...(thou you can get 2006 figures for free if you root around....)
a host of presentations on the environmental benefits of organic farming - v handy
Monday, February 26, 2007
organic food miles better...
This week in the Examiner, I'll be both highlighting and critiqing aspects of a report commissioned by DEFRA, conducted by the Manchester Business School. The report focuses on sustainability and food provisioning, with a particular focus on energy.
Some good points made, but plenty of errors picked up by various anti-organic truffle hounds....
The article will be more factual than theoretical, pointing to various misreadings out there and mistakes in the research itself. However, there will also be a focus on the salience of combining seasonal, local and organic, otherwise even local organic food can leave a heavy footprint (see also embedded food miles).
Theoretically, one of the main criticisms will be the conceptualisation of nature and the farm as two completely separate things...
The farming supplement of the Examiner is out on thursday....why not prepare for the article?
You can see the featured report here
This week in the Examiner, I'll be both highlighting and critiqing aspects of a report commissioned by DEFRA, conducted by the Manchester Business School. The report focuses on sustainability and food provisioning, with a particular focus on energy.
Some good points made, but plenty of errors picked up by various anti-organic truffle hounds....
The article will be more factual than theoretical, pointing to various misreadings out there and mistakes in the research itself. However, there will also be a focus on the salience of combining seasonal, local and organic, otherwise even local organic food can leave a heavy footprint (see also embedded food miles).
Theoretically, one of the main criticisms will be the conceptualisation of nature and the farm as two completely separate things...
The farming supplement of the Examiner is out on thursday....why not prepare for the article?
You can see the featured report here
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Ahhhh..... Valentine's day
what a time of the year. It's a time you rarely hear people moan about the true spirit being lost, eh? No 'let's get back to the essential meaning of the day' really, is there? Instead, it's one of the most blatantly commercial celebrations there is: it's really just the first real excuse to spend after xmas. And don't they really push a particular type of wine in the supermarkets for V day? All those wines with blurbs on the back about soft tannins, fruity, velvety smoothness....wines that are in fact bland, characterless and at the same time globalised and heavily promoted.
I mentioned commodity fetishism recently, which I'd describe as the masking of important and otherwise objectionable unpleasantness, or occasionally horror, with frivolous aesthetics and surface attractivness. In this context, let's compare the love Valentine flowers are supposed to represent with the production of said flowers. Whether its the environment or the people who work the fields or in particular the green and glass houses, the prettiness of the flowers often mask the reality on the ground....
The thing is, organic has won the battle of language. Whatever about sales levels, whatever about organic being used to display or represent esteem, or status, or distinction, flowers on Valentine's day will never be the same again unless they are organic...and more and more articles seem to pop up each year making this point: Often in the US sometimes even with twee and transparent flash movies
But no one quite does it like PAN, the pesticide action network . (I'm not sure if the whole greek god of nature, and possibly an origin of the devil thing is played on deliberately by them in their choosing of the name PAN....)
Here's a typical one from their yearly offerings...ah go on, it's valentine's day you deserve another one
Just spreadin the love, baby
what a time of the year. It's a time you rarely hear people moan about the true spirit being lost, eh? No 'let's get back to the essential meaning of the day' really, is there? Instead, it's one of the most blatantly commercial celebrations there is: it's really just the first real excuse to spend after xmas. And don't they really push a particular type of wine in the supermarkets for V day? All those wines with blurbs on the back about soft tannins, fruity, velvety smoothness....wines that are in fact bland, characterless and at the same time globalised and heavily promoted.
I mentioned commodity fetishism recently, which I'd describe as the masking of important and otherwise objectionable unpleasantness, or occasionally horror, with frivolous aesthetics and surface attractivness. In this context, let's compare the love Valentine flowers are supposed to represent with the production of said flowers. Whether its the environment or the people who work the fields or in particular the green and glass houses, the prettiness of the flowers often mask the reality on the ground....
The thing is, organic has won the battle of language. Whatever about sales levels, whatever about organic being used to display or represent esteem, or status, or distinction, flowers on Valentine's day will never be the same again unless they are organic...and more and more articles seem to pop up each year making this point: Often in the US sometimes even with twee and transparent flash movies
But no one quite does it like PAN, the pesticide action network . (I'm not sure if the whole greek god of nature, and possibly an origin of the devil thing is played on deliberately by them in their choosing of the name PAN....)
Here's a typical one from their yearly offerings...ah go on, it's valentine's day you deserve another one
Just spreadin the love, baby
Monday, February 5, 2007
Techno-progress: Me, fred and foul farming
At last, I stumble along and make a wee bit of techno progress....
This site as you'll hopefully notice, looks a bit better and has some extra features now. I couldn't even turn on the comments ppl had made til now (!)
So I wasn't being rude, just a bit fred flintstoney (wasn't that car of his the best little eco motor? He still got the whole flash car buzz, probably had a massive loan on it, and didn't cause a negative ozone-depleting emmission...he toned up and only emmitted his own sweat....runnin along pretendin to drive....classic!)
And then to the news....obviously in the UK and Ireland at the mo it's bird flu. First things first: there is one place full of absolute must reads. With all the hysteria, it's worth considering how exactly this deadly strain came about. Are wild birds the victims or the vectors? What role do intensive factory farms and transport routes in various parts of the world play?
And what are the limits to what we as a society are willing to change to stop the spread of the bird flu? On the one hand, various people will be made to jump through life-changing hoops, and mass slaughterings will occur, while on the other, various options are completely off the adgenda.
One of the proposed answers, putting all farmed birds indoors, may be the cause of the problem in the first place. This is deeply troubling on a whole number of fronts. What of organics, and outdoor, backyard foul - keeping outdoor birds feeds feeds hundreds of millions in not billions of people in the majority south?
At times like this, disaster capitalism, and the death of nature spring to mind. Alarmist-sounding terms to be sure, but the ideas behind them are worth developing an understanding of.
But do check out the first link, to get a better picture of just how manipulated, contoured and pre-ordained the limits of the possible can be. It all reminds me of my old 1, 2, and 3 dimensional power days/daze in undergrad politics....
Power is best expressed when some ideas aren't known of as even being an option
At last, I stumble along and make a wee bit of techno progress....
This site as you'll hopefully notice, looks a bit better and has some extra features now. I couldn't even turn on the comments ppl had made til now (!)
So I wasn't being rude, just a bit fred flintstoney (wasn't that car of his the best little eco motor? He still got the whole flash car buzz, probably had a massive loan on it, and didn't cause a negative ozone-depleting emmission...he toned up and only emmitted his own sweat....runnin along pretendin to drive....classic!)
And then to the news....obviously in the UK and Ireland at the mo it's bird flu. First things first: there is one place full of absolute must reads. With all the hysteria, it's worth considering how exactly this deadly strain came about. Are wild birds the victims or the vectors? What role do intensive factory farms and transport routes in various parts of the world play?
And what are the limits to what we as a society are willing to change to stop the spread of the bird flu? On the one hand, various people will be made to jump through life-changing hoops, and mass slaughterings will occur, while on the other, various options are completely off the adgenda.
One of the proposed answers, putting all farmed birds indoors, may be the cause of the problem in the first place. This is deeply troubling on a whole number of fronts. What of organics, and outdoor, backyard foul - keeping outdoor birds feeds feeds hundreds of millions in not billions of people in the majority south?
At times like this, disaster capitalism, and the death of nature spring to mind. Alarmist-sounding terms to be sure, but the ideas behind them are worth developing an understanding of.
But do check out the first link, to get a better picture of just how manipulated, contoured and pre-ordained the limits of the possible can be. It all reminds me of my old 1, 2, and 3 dimensional power days/daze in undergrad politics....
Power is best expressed when some ideas aren't known of as even being an option
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