A Learning Experience -

I haven't talked about this at all on this blog, but a little known fact is that back in January I moved my family out of Pullman to Ebey Island right outside of Everett. We found a place with 35 acres, a house, barn and water rights. The plan: to start a small organic market garden and catering service. I even started a brand new blog to document this process and hopefully provide a resource for other wanna-be farmers/foodies. We paid a lot of money up front for the land, seed, and equipment. About 3 weeks before planting, the landlord shows his true colors. It would appear that giving him a large sum of money up front was a bad thing because he seemed to expect that on a regular basis.

Now, I'm not going to go into every detail, I think everyone I know has heard the story a dozen times. But basically he freaks out that we aren't paying him months in advance. His attitude and actions scared me into second guessing whether we wanted to establish this business here. I mean once you plant, you are vested unless you want to loose everything. It's not like I can dig up a 2 acre vegetable garden and move it!

Despite the anger and resentment over his behavior, I learned a valuable lesson in all this (maybe more than one). The first thing is:

• Follow your gut! While the economics might point you in one direction, that should be tempered with an honest assessment of the person you are doing business with.
• The second lesson is: Do not agree to a month-to-month situation! It might work for some, but legally the landlord can give you 20 days notice, without cause, to vacate the premises. Another reason I got scared...
• The third lesson: I will have to be more persist-ant than ever in order to make this dream a reality.

And finally...

• The fourth lesson: Never let anyone walk all over you, or think they can. To be more specific, don't be so trusting and don't be so accommodating, unless it is reciprocated.

I have a tendency to be too giving, almost to the point of it being a shortcoming. I think people who don't know me take this as a sign of weakness, when in fact it is in my nature and comes from a deep seeded belief that we have to be the change we want to see! But when values and reality collide, it is best to embrace reality!

So, with all that said, we are moving on to another community, probably to move into an apartment till we can start over. The dream isn't dead, and no asshole is going to kill it for me. Because what I lack in intelligence, I make up through perseverance!

First Iteration - a system dynamics model of food vs. biomass

I have been doing a lot of research lately and as a result my blog has been relatively sparse on posts. However, this research has enabled me to develop a very crude model of the impact of biomass production for fuel on food yield within a finite space of land.

This model is by no means close to representing the various dimensions needed to make it worthwhile. However, this is my blog and I wanted to post what I'm working on at this moment.

Keep in mind this model does not account for:

• Demand on food due to growing population
• Demand on biofuel (biodiesel specifically)
• Energy requirements for planting and harvesting
• Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Carbon Taxes (as incentives for adopting biofuel)
• Rate of Land Degradation
• Price Fluctuations in Petrol Markets

Now, these aren't all of the parameters that will be added to the model, but they are some of the most important ones at this stage. The idea is to provide this general model that can be adapted to fit with various farming systems, ie mainstream industrial farming represented as a mono cropping system and alternative multi-cropping systems where there a number of various crops with differing values competing for resources. Each system present different management practices and therefore different energy consumption patterns.

Over the next few months this will represent a central theme on my blog as this is what I'm working on... imagine that!

Anyway, here is the current model structure (I will post the equations in another post but this is hopefully a useful visual):


Here is the output:

Conversations on Research

You may have not noticed but I have made some minor edits to the post on my "new research topic" These edits were the result of some feedback I got from a former professor and thesis advisor.

Here is the conversation, a response to my write-up:

My initial reaction is wow! I think the whole food issue is really important given all the underlying situations that affect it as you mention—environment, fuel costs, production, cultural barriers, conflict, etc. The food riots at the height of the oil price hike this year really went under reported masking a real problem…the failure of the Doha round also indicates large pressure on the area…my sense is that however important… in its present form in your paper, the topic is way too large for a dissertation…the choice of case countries also adds to the expanse.

I sense the choice of cases to be problematic as well…while I don’t know the terrain, the agricultural system in the US is patently different from that of India…so much so that perhaps it may render the comparative advantage moot. In looking at India on this issue, I would make sure you would have access to the data required prior to undertaking the research…I am sure you are also aware that Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze have written extensively (1989, 1990) on Food Security through examinations of famine in India…as a matter of fact, Dreze has moved on to a right to work program during fallow and famine times as a means to insure livelihood…the policy is now an India wide program…

Not to discourage you Justin, but to gently push to a narrower focus, with smaller cases J. You have to finish….

Note: I love the last comment! Yes, I have to finish and sooner than later!

Ok, so here was my LONG response:

Thanks for the response!

Your comments point out to me that there is still a need to better articulate the project so that others understand the actual scope of what I'm trying to do. To clarify, the project is not looking to model national food systems but rather the community interface to the food system, represented as a sub-system. So the primary scale of analysis is the community, anything beyond that is really outside the boundaries. Yet, this is not to say that this project is not overly ambitious. The issue as you say though is getting the data. Building a computer model is not really the hard part, it is getting the data to run the simulation experiments. Some of this data can be acquired through the FAO, State and National govs, NGOs and climate labs around the world. The difficulty is in calculating the fractions of community level inputs, through-puts and outputs related to the larger data sets that are out there.

This is where the case studies come in, to help fill in these gaps and provide ground level information on patterns of consumption and access as well as production and distribution, and how communities adapt to time of uncertainty, etc. The cases also are meant to provide a way to trace food habits and types of foods people use to gain their nutritional requirements back through the production chain. Some of those foods come from personal or community scale food production and some can from more "conventional" or industrial types of food production. The goal is to know what is that ratio between the two at the community level. Along with the ratio is the need to identify origin. The origin will help in calculating the carbon footprint related to distribution and processing. However, if the products are made in say the US and shipped to India and to this particular community (say Ranchi and surrounding areas), the US production system exists outside the scope of the case boundaries. The models will only deal with materials moving into the system, materials used and produced within and for the system, and materials leaving the system. Now, the models will reference resources existing outside the model boundaries and be brought in to the system as fractions of these larger resource pools, energy is just one example, capital inputs might be another. Note: it is not my intent to replicate the World3 model used in Limits to Growth, I may be crazy, but not crazy AND stupid....hahaha!

The reason for the comparison is to better understand how these food system configurations are different. While the differences between say India and the US are obvious to us, there are still efforts to apply uniform frameworks for food production. This scares me and I think that efforts to rationalize production and industrialize these systems as promoted by the World Bank and corporate backers from companies like ADM and Monsanto are potentially problematic, not just on environmental sustainability but on food equity. The rationalization model seems to promote corporate farming and a restructuring of labor. Localists argue that this will actually lead to less security as small-scale farmers will relinquish personal ownership over both their labor and the assets associated with being able to be self-reliant in favor of other forms of work that might put these people in a serious disadvantage considering the potential for further crisis in food prices. So I feel like I need to bludgeon people over the heads and remind them. Of course, maybe such a system could be perfected, but I'm not convinced.

Now, in relation to Dreze's program I would argue that the policy misses the structural problems of the system, it doesn't do anything to really address self-reliant food systems, nor environmental sustainability nor resilience of the system itself in times of hardship. Rather the focus is to offset the problems. I'm not trying to be critical of the work in the sense that I think it is wrong, but from the data that I do have on production systems, environmental decay and the regional climate indicators associated with global warming suggests that such problems will only worsen. This would further suggest that we need to be thinking about additional solutions. Some of the problems might be unavoidable and in those situations mitigation and adaptation is the best we can do, but in other situations the system itself is only exacerbating the problems.

Thanks Bro. Ed! You always have a way of getting me all amped up, thinking more deeply and pointing out the things I miss.

Shanti to Bro. Ed

Brainstorming Food-Systems

So as I said in the previous post that there are some basic assumptions regarding agri-food systems. Based on some of these assumptions I have constructed a visual stock and flow diagram of a generic production system. Now, I do not claim that this is correct or that the connections lead to validated behavior among food production systems, but it does help me in thinking about the variables that exist within just one part of the system that includes dimensions of production, processing, distribution and access or consumption.



But this image of the production system is just on part of a larger system. From the highest level view, the overall agri-food system would be generalized by this simple diagram.




The most basic question may be, "why does there appear to be a closed loop between production and consumption?" The reason for this is that in communities where subsistence based food production is central, there is often no distribution and limited processes except in instances where food preservation is central. Yet, this processing is not the same as what one finds in conventional food systems where the emphasis is on processing to create value-added products through raw food materials, i.e. Doritos corn chips processed in Houston, TX from corn grown in Iowa.

Now, consumption feeds back into production because the food people eat is one of the primary means through which they reproduce their productive capacity, which is their labor power. The other primary means would be ingesting water and sex for child bearing (the means of re-producing labor power over a longer time horizon).

Related to the previous post…

In some ways, I have recognized that rather than taking a cookie-cutter (or biscuit-cutter: for my English friends) conception of the research and in configuring potential solutions to serious problems, what I see is the application of highly contextualized patterns formulated to fit the specific issues of health, environment, labor, political economy, culture and technology.

So even as I have put my work on patterns at rest, I’m confronted with the usability of these little gems of knowledge as well as the range of configurations that patterns enable for constructing complex systems. This would mean in one situation we might implement a biogas farm to help recycle waste, whereas in other situations continued use of fossil fuels might be both economically ideal and the level of usage negligible on climate. It is going to depend on the context and the patterns available.

Anyway, just an interesting insight!

Ignoring the Debate to Generate Real Solutions!

For the context of this post see: Metamorphosis!

In doing an evaluation of the literature on food security and food systems I’m wondering if the actual focus of the questions being asked should be local vs. global, or alternative vs. mainstream. It would appear to me that such reification could seriously constrain the research. And while I’m not going to fault those who have taken this stance in the past, but there is so much overlap that by creating such a dichotomy between these paradigms one runs the risk of presenting an oversimplification. Now, I do agree that there are clear differences, but is this research really about the debate between the mainstream industrial system versus local eco based food system(s) or is it about optimal solutions to support food access, sustainability and stability? I mean, what are we after here?

The real goal is to address food insecurity, and simultaneously identify patterns of sustainable and resilient food systems in the wake of climate change. This means our food systems need to be environmentally sustainable in the sense that they lessen the negative environmental impacts of agricultural production, processing, distribution and consumption. This includes reducing the carbon waste that is generated and pumped into the atmosphere, this means addressing the usage of and over-dependence upon inorganic fertilizers and pesticides that contaminate water ways and strip soils of essential nutrients. This also means addressing the global reach of food distribution and fossil fuels used to ship these products world-wide as well as the energy consumption and creation of waste products associated with the processing and subsequent consumption of these food goods. With these issues in mind it is hoped that we as a society can drastically cut these impacts and thereby minimize the potential for catastrophic climate change.

However, most scientists are in agreement that climate change is upon us and that the damage has been done. Right now, our job is to avert an all out biotic collapse. So if we are constructing food systems to minimize the effects of food production (etc) on our climate, then we will also need to understand how these methods fair when confronted with the types of climatic shifts that most are warning us of. With the types of shifts expected our way in the next 50 to 100 years, it is necessary for us to assess whether the types of solutions we decide to implement within the food systems of the world will be able to withstand the shock of regional adverse weather, soil degradation, rising sea levels and subsequent massive population migrations away from coastal cities. According to most scientists the effects of climate change will be more severe depending upon the region, which would suggest that regional variations in the configuration of food systems would be most appropriate. This means certain regions will be more dependent upon global imports of food and it might be necessary for these regions to begin identifying alternative means for generating the type of capital needed to feed themselves in a volatile world.

Yet, coupled with these issues is the persistent need to maintain our work to eradicate food insecurity and chronic hunger. Forget climate change for a second, we still have nearly 2 billion people who are food insecure at any given time throughout the year and according to the Food and Agricultural Organization we have roughly 10 million people dying annually from hunger. That kind of death toll is more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined! So we have a tripartite problem to address. One, we need to minimize the carbon leak (and other greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere, our practice of food production need to become more ecologically aware, meaning we need a global adoption of agro-ecological principles for food production. Second, we need to construct systems that include practices, trade and networks that support adaptive and flexible systems that can withstand shocks and disturbances brought on by climate shifts (which are already happening). And third, we need a system that is configured in such a way that it provides a level of food equity that ensures that ALL people have their nutritional needs met, in a healthy and just way. This doesn’t mean tons of canned vegetable that processed with massive amounts of sodium and calcium chloride for preservatives, or access to a McDonalds on every street corner, but rather healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate foods.

Now the hypothesis is that a mixture of global and local food system configurations is going to be needed to address these issues in the future, but with an emphasis upon the local eco based system. But what is that ratio for say the Sahel or the Negev, meaning what percentage of food consumption could take place within the region of origin compared to the percentage of food imported from around the world and still minimize the greenhouse gases, ensure food access for all and provide a stable and resilient food system?

To accomplish this task and fully engage this question I still think it will be appropriate to include the discussion on mainstream versus alternative, but this discussion is more of a means to provide a basis for understanding the impacts of climate change on food security, or the environmental impacts of food production (eg the climate) and each opposing side could be assessed in relation to either one’s ability to provide healthy access to food. This would suggest the need to generate two generic models indicative of each of these two paradigms followed by place-based models that allow for mix-up of these different paradigms in order to identify the optimal configuration for each region in the study.

Food crisis looms in East Africa (Article from the BBC)

More than 14 million people in the Horn of Africa need food aid because of drought and rocketing food and fuel prices, the United Nations has warned.

The UN World Food Programme says it urgently needs $400m (£200m) to prevent starvation in the east African region.

Continue on to source...

Metamorphosis!

The past month has been a flurry of activity, revaluation of my research interests in light of stumbling across some new insights, and well honestly I have been undergoing a dramatic cognitive shift for the past year.

While most of my preliminary ideas have focused on issues such as biofuels adoption or water resource allocation linked with participatory practices using patterns and pattern langauges, things have shifted. In some ways DIAC-08 was the final straw pushing me over the edge. This shift in thinking resulted in a rapid redrafting of my PhD topic, a meeting with my committee chair, further refinement and now a newly approved research program.

The new (current) title of the research is:
Reconfiguring the World’s Agri-Food Systems – Food Security and Poverty Reduction in an Era of Climate Change?

The overarching research question(s) driving this work is:
Can a reconfiguration away from the mainstream agri-food system, towards alternative localized food-system(s) increase food security while also promoting poverty reduction and environmental restoration in the face of global climate change? Similarly, by promoting such a shift can an alternative food-system provide insulation from price volatility associated with shifts in production due to climate and conversion of food crops to biofuels?

To answer this question I'm tentatively planning on three case-studies that include a system dynamics approach to material flows modeling and policy analysis. Linked with the analysis phase is the construction of systems based policies to increase the resilience of local alternative food-systems. These policies will be fashioned in structure after patterns (see previous post: Patterns as Policies, and Pattern Languages as Policy Frameworks? ).

Together with quantitative dimensions provided by the system dynamics models and the elements within specific "patterns as policies" it is suggested that a deeper understanding and thereby opportunity for successful interventions for reconfiguring our food systems will be more likely to achieve the benefits cited with local small-scale agriculture with regards to community economic development, reduction of environmental impact from agricultural production, poverty reduction and thereby support food security.

For those interested here is a link to the evolving research overview. However as you might notice this title is different than the one provided in this blog entry. This just means that I'm revising and clarifying the specifics of the research. Once this is complete I will restart the process of identifying case study locations.

Vertical Farming?

What is Vertical Farming (check it out)?

A recent article that was sent by a friend: "Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest"

Ok, so I have been reading about Dr. Despommier for a while. I guess my primary concern with this type of project is that only those with the greatest resources will control the means of production since they are going to be the ones principally equipped to fund and market such large scale projects. Currently, the industrial ag system has had an adverse effect here in the US and such a system could potentially serve as the final blow for massive consolidation and the dissolution of small-scale family owned farms.

However, it is a pretty cool idea and if there was a way to create some equity within this type of production model then it could be a very viable alternative on a number of fronts. It just seems so often that lofty idealistic professors and inventors come up with simple solutions only for those solutions to be appropriated and corrupted by not so idealistically oriented peoples.

Thoughts on DIAC-08

Well, it has been a week since DIAC convened in Berkeley, CA and I have had some time to process a bit of the incredible things I saw. The presentations I attended and almost every paper within the proceedings contained some gem of knowledge and inspiration for me.

Yet, what was perhaps the biggest inspiration was the opportunity to talk with a few of the presenters outside of the conference. Of note Peter Day and Andy Dearden were extremely supportive, gave great feedback, showcased the cool things they are up to, and well, just plain fun to hang out with.

It was also a great opportunity for me to showcase some of my completed research and present what I'm working on presently. While I got a pretty warm reception for my research paper presentation, I think it was my exploratory paper and new research interests related to food systems, system dynamics and patterns (as policies) that got the most questions and excited responses.

Though I have been working heavily with patterns and pattern languages for the past few years now, it was interesting to hear people suggest that I leave patterns to pursue this system dynamics/food-system analysis stuff. Granted I have been thinking about this for a while, but to have several different people mention essentially the same thing causes one to pause and think for a minute.

Now, I'm not going to abandon what I have been working on or the projects I already have in the works, but the feedback I got basically reaffirmed the new direction I have been taking.

The issue I have is the committee that I have put together are perhaps better geared towards enabling me to pursue a research program focused on patterns, and now to change in mid-stream when I have already submitted a proposal of study could rock a boat I don't want to rock.

And yet, I have broached the topic with my chair and he seems pretty interested. So we'll see.

The point is I feel like shifting gears.

Building Networks to Support CSAs

For the past few days I have been reading an interesting book titled, "Civic Agriculture" by Thomas Lyson. It is a plain English overview on the emergence of alternative forms of food production systems. It lays out a quick survey of the mainstream industrial food-system model that permeates most of the US and abroad (among developed nations). This serves as a contrast to what Lyson sees as an alternative paradigm that is taking root here in America.

Yet, just as these alternative forms of food production and distribution take hold and fill the spaces that have been ignored or passed over by the dominant system it seems that the modern, firm based system is actually consolidating power and becoming stronger. So if this assessment is true then what opportunities do communities have to take control of the hegemony (and homogeneity) of food production in America? How can a relatively marginalized movement rise as a truly powerful and viable replacement to the current system?

One of Lyson's answers to these questions came out in regards to the development of networks to support Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). He writes: "

CSAs are an important part of civic agriculture. They strengthen the local food economy and preserve farm land. A web of connected and cooperatively organized CSAs could represent a real and viable alternative to the mass-produced, homogeneous, imported produce found in most supermarkets today.

"
Unfortunately, when one does a simple search on CSAs or CSA networks one finds a relatively small number of connected and cooperatively operated ventures that not only provide alternatives but that work to promote a full fledged food movement. That is not to say that local networks do not exist, but rather they appear to be few and far between. Thus it seems that there needs to be a concerted effort on building up the necessary connections between one another to help foment a "true movement."

This got me thinking and I have spent a couple of hours each evening for the past few days working on building a few applications geared towards building a quasi-social networking system. I have this free Google App Engine account and needed to do something with it. Plus, this gives me an opportunity to learn how to use the webapp framework. For right now it is just a little fun project, but on a serious note there does in fact appear to be a need here.

My hope is to provide a usable and free web space where CSAs, their supporters and unaffiliated advocates can construct mini-sites and link up with one another. The suite of apps include or will include:

• CSA Mini-Site CMS


• CSA Blogs (unless I can get blogger to play nicely)


• Google Map Integration


• Survey Tools


• People Aggregator (this will link users of similar interests/locations/etc)

Now, I'm just building a clunky little prototype, something I can complete in my copious amount of spare time. But I would really like to find some people or group of people that can actually devote the time to this and just take it off of my hands. What would be even more interesting is if WSU Extension sponsored a project like this and actually take this opportunity seriously. My thinking is if you want to be a "world class institution" then promote and fund "world class projects."

One more Iron in the Fire...

Even though I have been ill the past couple of weeks I have had a lot of time to continue thinking about the food crisis. Of course my thinking has led to more questions than answers, but out of these questions I have begun to notice the emergence of another, perhaps even complementary research agenda that is linked to patterns and pattern thinking.

As a result, I have been putting together some thoughts to paper. Of particular interest is the differing impacts that policy orientations regarding global versus regional food systems will have on achieving long-term sustainability. I'm interested in looking at the patterns of failure and success of each and how the range of social, environmental and economic variables will effect or be effected by these patterns. Likewise, I'm interested in the application of agroecological/permaculture principles as pattern based systems thinking in constructing sustainable food systems. This of course would be a huge departure from the compartmentalized approach that appears to dominate traditional ag sciences.

Considering the dynamic nature of these systems it seems apparent that effective information systems are needed in tracking changes in data and thereby shifts in the functioning of systems as elements within the systems will shift over time and across spatial dimensions. Will I build this? No, I will not, but there are tools out there that can be useful in analyzing some of these questions and the work Yishay is doing on the PlaNet software project for patterns could be a great integrator.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can manage yet another area of interest at this time, but in some ways I can see the benefit of pursuing three parallel tracks in that each feeds into the other and in some ways provides an integrated perspective on the application patterns in the realm of system dynamics.