Thoughts on a sustainable food future - Part I

The path towards creating a sustainable food system is not simply about influencing a class of conscious consumers, but lies in transforming those consumers into producers. The path will require a reconnection with place to include the land and people of particular location - that include the limits imposed by the natural rhythm of place.

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In recent years there has been increased concern over the safety and sustainability of our food and farming systems. People are becoming worried about the environmental impacts of how food is grown, where food is grown, how farm labor is treated, and whether the foods we purchase are safe for our families. These sentiments have been reflected throughout the media, through surveys, and in scholarly research. With these concerns, the market for sustainably produced foods has increased dramatically.  More and more, people are looking for alternatives, such as local organic foods that are not a part of the mainstream food system.

Consumers are venturing to farmer's markets, purchasing more produce and preserved foods directly from farmers via roadside stands, community supported agriculture (CSAs), and u-pick farms. According to the USDA Agriculture Marketing Service, there has been a boom in the growth of Farmer's Markets across the country. In fact, according to the Farmer's Market Directory Listing, we have seen an exponential increase in the number of markets over the past 18 years.

Along side these trends, there is also a movement among urban residents to grow more of their own food through backyard and community gardens. In addition to cultivating fresh fruits and vegetables, urban residents are also beginning to raise animals in their backyards for eggs and dairy. This is an interesting trend, indicating that citizens are increasingly moving beyond being consumers to become producers.

According to Bill Mollison, a co-originator or the permaculture movement,

"...the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter." 

Indeed, a true revolution towards a sustainable society is one where people are producers, not simply consuming to satisfy every conceivable need. Together, these efforts are creating new opportunities and alternative forms of relating within communities of place. In essence, small-scale agriculture and home-scale urban farming go against the grain, by asking people to participate more directly in the fulfillment of their living needs. And although not explicit, these new forms of consumption challenge people to think more deeply about the amount of things they consume, as well as the quality.

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Yet, mainstream thinking contends that consumers simply need to make more informed purchasing decisions, and producers will naturally adopt more sustainable production practices. (See - World Economic Forum report "More with less"). This assumes we can modernize by increasing efficiencies, and consume our way to a new and more sustainable society. In this way, a more sustainable agriculture is one that is characterized by precision irrigation, GPS guided farm equipment, and GMOs to reduce the needs for fertilizer and pesticide inputs.This technological intensification is believed to help minimize the resource demands of growing populations, and spreading affluence.

However, studies suggest that increasing rates of consumption tend to offset any gains made through the adoption of more efficient forms of production. Foster, Clark and York (2010), note that such patterns are common - referring to the Jevon's Paradox, named after the economist, William Stanely Jevons (The Coal Question, 1906). The Jevon's Paradox suggests (in the case of coal) for every unit increase in the efficient use of coal, there is a corresponding increase in the consumption of that energy resource. This increase results from the reduced cost of using that resource and the economic expansion that occurs as a consequence. The problem is that aggregate use increases. As in the case of efficiency gains in the U.S. automobile industry. With greater fuel economies for vehicles, it becomes cheaper for consumers to purchase a car or truck. However, with increased purchases, there are greater numbers of vehicles on the road, leading to increased use of petroleum, and CO2 emissions, offsetting efficiency gains.

This phenomena contradicts efforts to promote sustainability, because the system of production and exchange are still bound to the organizing force of capital accumulation. And with each increase of efficiency in a particular technology, we often find greater complexity in the design, manufacture and distribution of that technology. Increasing complexity also appears to require more sources for the material inputs needed in the process of production. The resulting expansion of the economic system is detrimental in a world where definite limits exists.

These patterns suggest that technological advancement does not necessarily lead to more sustainable use of resources; and that economic growth enabled by increasing technological efficiencies creates a sort of Faustian bargain. This occurs in the transition towards more efficient tools, as much as through the expansion of production to meet a newly created need. More resources are required to bootstrap onto existing systems to make them more efficient, or scrap those tools entirely in order to create new ones. Further the emphasis on individual consumption reveal different realities when looking at aggregate consumption.

In the context of recent food trends, and in particular, the "grow-your-own" movement, there is an emphasis on low-tech solutions, that implies a contraction of the social relations required to produce the foods required for one's household. That doesn't necessarily mean that social interaction is lessened, in fact they might be deepened and intensified. However, sustainability through backyard and community gardening represents a conscious reduction of one's dependence upon the larger system of social production that modern consumers rely on to fulfill their needs.

The shift from consumers to producers opens up opportunities for more direct social relations where gardeners exchange knowledge, resources and the fruits of their labor. This is in contrast to the distancing of relations that currently exist within our food system. Today, conventional agri-food systems are characterized by a massive infrastructure of cultivation, processing, storage and distribution. This includes support industries from chemical companies, manufacturing of farm equipment, to agricultural marketing organizations.

In a truly localized agri-food system there would ideally be a mix of full-time and part-time farmers who fulfill the food needs of the community. The members of the community come to fulfill the roles of the larger social system of productions, but on a much smaller scale. This could also include exchanges between different regions as a means to minimize food insecurity and support dietary diversity resulting from differing ecosystem characteristics. However, this doesn't assume that people will be able to live high-consumption lifestyles. Rather, this approach imposes natural limits on the "rate," and "what" of consumption, re-linking food to the people and place of cultivation, and the variance of landscapes.

Overall, an ecologically coherent human society will be one in which each person is reconnected to the landscape of place, bound in part to the limits of place - this not only requires a more conscious form of consumer, but a form of citizenship that recognizes when one's cup is already full. And from time to time, choosing to fill it on one's own.

Yes, I've been in hiding, but for good reason...

Yes, I have been hiding out for some time now. For the past year I have been writing exclusively on the dissertation. And guess what, it is nearly complete! After all this time, I finally have something of substantial quality and relevance to the issues facing the future sustainability of our food systems.

Over the course of the process I have had my share of hiccups and redirects, but with focus and perseverance, I have put together a series of solid research articles. These articles represent the basis of the dissertation; each article is unique, but related, and each one addresses issues related to sustainable consumption, sustainability discourse, and equity in our agri-food systems.

One article in particular looks at people's 'affective connection' with nature as defined in Mayer et al. (2004), and their Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS). Following Aldo Leopold's concept of the 'Land Ethic,' the CNS aims to measure the degree to which people feel a sense of connectedness to nature as part of their broader community. Leopold suggested that this connection was essential to changing human relationships with the land, away from a form of destructive dominance over nature, and towards one of respectful cooperation with nature. 

Using a much abbreviated version of the CNS - 4 items versus 14 items - I looked at the association between peoples sense of nature connectedness and behavior vis-a-vie, ethical consumption. The study looked specifically at sustainable food provisioning in the form of attitudes and behaviors around local food purchasing. Even with the smaller sized scale, the 4 items retained from Mayer et al. original CNS proved to be an important indicator of both interest in ethical consumption and actual behavior through local food provisioning. 

This is very exciting as it further verifies the CNS, while also giving additional evidence to the importance of Leopold's 'Land Ethic' perspective. Of course, more research is needed, and it would be particularly necessary to employ the entire scale in a study of actual behavior. However, the little bit of evidence that this study provides is important. It also has sparked additional thinking about what influences a person's connection to nature. Perhaps the answer is being worked on the University of Virginia, through an exploration of a concept called, The Nature Pyramid. It is argued that humans require a range of interactions with their natural environment. The Pyramid defines various forms of interactions in terms of scale. 

I wonder which forms will prove to have the most impact, if any, on cultivating a person's connection to nature... I wonder if, and how the structure and character of human-built environments will influence this connectedness. Perhaps Christopher Alexander's concept of 'degrees of life' in a place will prove useful in future inquiry.

Anyway, all ideas for future work. In the meantime, I will post some of the research, probably around the end of September. And now that this project is finally coming to an end, I will have more time to start using this blog as a means to "think out loud" again. Plus, I will have time to get this little webcrawler software project ready for public use!

Status Update - Revealing my secret research project - On the Experience of Living More Sustainabily

- On the Experience of Living in a More Sustainable Manner - 

Well, life over the past 6 months has seemed like a whirlwind, not unlike the 6 months before it.

As I come to my senses, and the mental fog clears, I find myself feeling as if my family and I have been abused - sucked dry. In part, the past year or so has been the result of our own choices, and partly the results of external forces outside our immediate control. And no, I have yet to complete the dissertation, and up until the last 4 weeks everything has been pretty much on hold. However, with a little reprieve and some time for personal reflection, I realize how much hardship can teach each one of us.

For one, I think Maslow was correct in his assessment of human fulfillment.  In my case, when one's life is reduced primarily to dealing with the basic necessity of survival, higher level pursuits tend to suffer. The capacity for reflection is not necessarily diminished, but the depth of importance or relevance to one's immediate survival needs seems ancillary.

It is almost embarrassing to publicly admit this, but I know what it means to feel hunger. I know the fear (uncertaintity ) and shame (poor choices) that comes with the threat of homelessness. I know the sense of uncertaintity that comes with poverty, as well as the loss of "freedom" that comes with poverty. Instead of having the ability of choosing between a series of positive pursuits, the experience of poverty is one where the opportunities one has are severely limited in terms of the number of options one has available, as well as the quality of those options. Often times my wife and I would find ourselves having to choose between phones, power and food. Most days, we could only choose one.

(Side note: the connection between choice and the "experience" of poverty seem to resonate with Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's conceptions of justice - where the capabilities one is afforded correspond to the freedom to act, the freedom to enjoy life)

Unfortunately, I am already familiar with the experience of being a young father, and a husband struggling to take care of a new family. At the age of 19, I woke to a foreign reality - Somehow I navigated through teenage homelessness, and all of the things that come with being 16, and living life on the streets. Somehow I was employed, working just above minimum wage, and a roof over my head. Still I was a high school drop out who barely completed the 9th grade, and who was suffering from a deficit of purpose and vision - suffering from a deep existential angst. However, with the reality of fatherhood and the level of responsibility that being a parent entailed, compelled - demanded a cosmic shift. I committed to finding a purpose, that ideal vision - where I could live in line with my passions and beliefs. The trick was finding out what that meant...

Fast forward 13 years, and I find that those earlier years seem like a faded dream of another person, living another life. But whether one is a homeless teen, a nervous parent to be, or a respected scholar - a convergence of events can land anyone in peril, and at any moment the feeling of powerlessness in the storm of life can overwhelm and debilitate.

On the other hand, not all is "negative" and it often seems that through the hardships we encounter in life, are the times when we are challenged and . For one, as someone who pays lip service to the ideals of "voluntary simplicity," it wasn't until I was confronted with "forced simplicity" that I learned how to watch my habitual patterns towards consumption, accumulation and the never-ending pursuit of comfort. Thinking for a moment about the "Fulfillment Curve" articulated in the book, "Your Money or Your Life," I can't help but see the parallels with my own life experience. We sought out a degree of comfort to offset the overwhelming discomfort through coffee, food, alcohol, etc. But the more we sought out these small comforts the more we perpetuated the problems of scaricity, and ultimately the problem of choice. The time, energy and worry that went into balancing the immediate needs, and immediate wants became a greater stresser than the relief we derived from fulfilling those wants. Like a drug addict, I was habituated to the satisficing of my desire for comfort, even when both my apparent obsession and compulsion had become key factors in my mental and material poverty.

Overall, I learned that although I possess the skills and experiences to start and run an organic, sustainable farm - write software, do research, run a non-profit, etc., etc. - my obsession with those more immediate comforts made it impossible to forgo these things -- despite our dreams, and our cause. After all, one of the very basis for the move was my own desire to extend beyond my "objective" research work on sustainable living and agriculture, and delve into the phenomenological dimension of what it means to live in greater ecological balance.

Sure you can read books, and study the science but to immerse oneself in the practice and process reveals a type of knowledge that is hidden through more positivist approaches to developing knowledge and insight. While one might seem to be discursive in nature, the other would seem more heuristic, and born out of immediate experience. I just never anticipated this little detour, and yet it was the act of purposeful struggle that highlighted the material, social and psychological barriers that invariably shape the character and extent of our abilities to live more balanced, or at least more coherently with our ideals.

Unlike a survey, or an in-person interview - the active engagement in attempting to create coherence between one's ideals and one's actions, a disciplined and methodical inquiry into the nature, or experience of sustainability reveals a different dimension. The process of reflection in the wake of all that has transpired highlights to me, one of the missing elements in my research. What has been missing is the personal story - the personal struggles, failures and successes.

While I have spent a great deal of time working on developing a web crawler to support my social network and discourse analysis, I realized that one critical element was missing. For me, it is not enough to merely study a particular phenomenon. In a sense, one must enter into it in order to more fully comprehend the nuanced nature of the phenomenon. This embrace and engagement is in a sense a response to the more starchy, antiseptic research endevours that speaks to a highly academic audience. While this is important in the context of research and policy, our intellectual engagement must delve beyond the specific research question and dig deeper. We must begin to consider more fully what it means to be a human living in modernity and simultaneously seeking to follow a post-modern - ecologically oriented worldview.

So far, the revelation of living (or attempting to) illuminates the contradictions of choice that emerge - contradictions that are made apparent through the limitations of time and space - contradictions that appear in light of scarcity. As I move forward in this line of inquiry, I hope to give more context to the growth in local food systems, and especially the growing movement of people seeking opportunities to grow their own food and reassert more control over their food supply. Yet, just as this project aims to reveal the opportunities and intelligence of human communities (and individuals), it is meant to show the limits that confront us. By seeing both, it is possible to create more intelligent solutions and opportunities for making it easier for people to begin living more consciously, more voluntarily, and ultimately more sustainably...

(More to Come)

Some new directions, some not so new...

Well, it has been months since I have posted anything on this blog and for the most part it would seem completely dead, but no it is not... Truth be told I have been finishing up classes, passing my qualifying exams for candidacy and working to develop my research program for completion of the PhD.

As some of my later posts indicated I have taken an interest in sustainable agri-food systems, but in many ways I was trying to change some of my interests to fit the literature available to me. However, with my background in IT and the social sciences coupled with my new knowledge in environmental systems it seems appropriate to find a way to integrate all of these elements into some sort of coherent program of research.

With that in mind I began looking for references in the literature on agri-food studies that discuss the role of technology and the internet in particular and their respective influences on the rise of alternative agri-food system projects. This fascinating search revealed one single source and only scant hints at the role of new information and communication technologies for informing civic agriculture.

So to complete the PhD I will be doing 3 empirical research papers with the intent of publishing them in some journals. The first two deal directly with the role that ICTs are playing in supporting the emergence and spread of civic agriculture. The third paper has yet to be approved but I intend to do an ecological footprint analysis on a hypothetical scalability of local agriculture on the Palouse.

The key to this eco-footprint analysis will be the focus on spatial variation with respect to landscape. It is my hypothesis that ecological variations across spatial dimensions will invariably lead to different outcomes with respect to the sustainability of local agri-food systems.

For instance, it cannot all be about GHG emissions and food miles. For instance, biodiversity, water consumption for food production and soil quality all relate to sustainability and therefore should be included!

Thinking Out Loud...

It has been way too long since I last posted and one of the reasons behind this blog was to map my own learning and thinking in relation to my dissertation research. But in a funny way I was discouraged because there have been so many changes that I didn't want to look like some wacko... but the truth is, when everyone gets wind of my work as it stands today, I don't think I will be able to get around that.

So anyway, I was told by my PhD committee that I need to get theoretical and stop focusing on just solving problems. So I got theoretical...lol! I'm currently taking a class in Sociology of Agriculture and Food Systems and one of the final projects for the course is to write a full research proposal. Well, tomorrow we are supposed to turn in a short synopsis of the topic we are pursuing and so here is my tentative synopsis... Some of the language might need to change but here it is in its current form.


The Collective Brain of the Global Local Food Movement: Descriptions and Prescriptions for Recursive Intelligent Action

For the final semester project assigned for the Sociology of Agriculture and Food Systems, I propose to develop a thorough research proposal that will form the foundation for my formal dissertation proposal. The topic of focus will be interdisciplinary to the extreme in that I propose to integrate concepts and theories from sociology, cybernetics, cognitive neuroscience, information theory and ecology. The proposal will set forth a theoretical interpretation of social movements as an emergent “collective brain” which exhibits recursive thought and intelligence across a network where information, knowledge and action exist both in physical as well as virtual space.

The conception of social movement as collective brain is embedded in a larger theoretical discussion on society as supraorganism, collective intelligence and global consciousness. We can trace the roots of such conceptions from Herbert Spencer (1969, original publication 1876-96), in his "Principles of Sociology" in which he first proposed the thesis that "society is an organism." In addition to Spencer, James Miller’s Living Systems Theory (1978), Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, and now most recently Francis Heylighen’s work on the 'Global Brain' have all made critical contributions to this growing, yet still contested field of inquiry.

Although there exists a modest number of works on social networks, autopsies and collective intelligence, none of the past, nor present discussions have yet to consider the role of social movements within this supraorganism, nor has their been a thorough discussion on the potential for numerous ‘collective brains’ functioning as constituents within this larger “world-brain.” As a result, this research will attempt to address the absence of an articulate conception on the role of social movements by focusing on the global local food movement as a type of collective or distributive brain, which exhibits intelligence and a form of active-reflective consciousness within the larger world-brain.

In addition to engaging in the debates on social cyborgs, collective intelligence and world-brain, this work will put forth a modified methodology drawn from the foundations of actor-network theory. This will not only serve to help map the networked organization of people-machine-information interactions across geographic physical space and placeless cyberspace, but will also serve to identify the quality of actions, as the distributed collective attempts to remake our world for the better.

Overall, the goals of this research are multifaceted in that it attempts to build both on the theoretical and empirical investigations for the potential of a collective brain(s), distributed intelligence and the larger world-brain as suggested by H.G. Wells (1981), Douglas Schuler (2001) and Francis Heylighen (1997). However, in addition to addressing ‘grand theory’ the research seeks to identify specific ways in which to support ameliorative social and environmental change efforts based upon the conceptions of nerves, neurons, synaptic learning, neural networks, neural memory and higher order consciousness that lead to a recursive process of collective knowledge creation, meaning creation, and intelligent action.


Anyway, I have already had been some pretty heated discussion on this topic and I find them way more receptive than I anticipated... In fact they considered it one of the most coherent ideas I have put forth yet! Scary!

The Question....

What is the question? Well, that is a great question! But, I'm thinking more specifically about the question driving my interest in alternative agricultural systems.

Are alternative agricultural systems truly more sustainable in terms of reducing GHG, promoting economic viability of farms, and producing affordable, safe food, than more industrialized (modern) farming systems?

There is a lot of rhetoric being published from those arguing for a "perfecting" of modern agricultural processes, strategies and technologies, just as there others arguing for the alternative. But, when we move past the rhetoric we are still just as confused as before regarding the sustainable path to present and future food security.

Rather than proponents of each side of the debate continuing to ignore the other, it is perhaps time to engage in some serious comparative analysis that incorporate economic, environment and social dimensions. Understanding the complexity of interdisciplinary research, "most" of these studies are glaringly absent from the dialogue. It appears that one dimension supersedes all the others in current studies. It is usually economics, with environment coming in second and social coming in a distant third.

I think this needs to be changed if we are going to start identifying appropriate policies for a sustainable future, especially one where we can eat!

Interesting Report...

Emerging Challenges for Farming Systems: Lessons from Australian and Dutch agriculture

This report is an interesting little piece of work as it intersects in many ways with what I'm focusing on. Although the specific questions they are addressing are different, the methods and sentiment regarding complex non-linear systems is right on.

I think this will serve as a good foundation for arguing precedence in my area of work and in the application of systems thinking/computer simulation in the assessment of sustainable agricultural systems.

Great Site on Climate Change and Farming

This site provides a whole range of case studies that have been conducted in the Northeastern part of the US. The cases touch on wind-power, biodiesel production and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from farm related processes.

Climateandfarming.org: Energy, Greenhouse Gases, and Farming

Revise, Revise, Revise....

Despite the fact that my last research proposal was accepted by my committee it is looking like I may have to change gears in order to secure the necessary funding to conduct the project.

The problem is that there isn't much research funding for work focused on food systems. There is funding available for work looking into health, sustainable ag and labor related to food security, but nothing on the function of food systems in the context of food security.

But the issue is not all that bad. For the past few months I have been involved in a side project with the BIOAg organic farm here at WSU, which is focused on closed-loop farming systems and the role of such production systems in reducing agricultural related greenhouse gases.

It was kind of a simple idea and I really just thought of the research as an exercise for myself and the farm manager here at WSU. However, the interest in the project has just taken off and people are already wanting to use the models for their farm projects outside of WSU. Plus, there appears to be clear funding opportunities for work like this. The strange thing is I never really pictured myself doing this for a PhD, but it seems that the interest and opportunities for research funding have place this research in position to be drafted into an alternate proposal.

It is just strange how far I have come from I first began this journey.

Anyway, I haven't been posting much because my time has been completely consumed with the elections here in the US and this project. But for all of those interested in what is going on I will post a little blurb shortly...

Reminder to self...

Here is an interesting link related to a very interesting article by Fred Curtis an Ecological Economist (sounds like an oxymoron, but I assure you it is a real sub-discipline in economics).

The link: http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionInitiative

The article: "Eco-localism and Sustainability"

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.

Quick Write-Up for a Pet Project...

Using Community-Change Patterns to Develop a CSA focused Social Network

Project Proposal #1:

Justin Smith

6/16/2008

Introduction and Rationale:

No longer is the web solely comprised of basic web pages made up of text based HTML, nowadays we have streaming video, audio and desktop application you can use through your favorite web browser. Along with the proliferation of these uses and software, a second wave has come along labeled Web 2.0. This marks an era defined by an explosion of social interactions and user generated content. People no longer have to be tech wizards to navigate and harness the power of this technology. These days all it takes is a few mouse click and one can have a full featured web site and be connected to old high school friends or publish an academic journal. These days a certain level of articifical intelligence is embedded within this massive brain we call the Internet. This makes it easy to aggregate content from various places that match and link individuals together based upon shared preferences, interests and activities. As a result of all of this, we can see that new ways of thinking and acting within this virtual environment are changing thinking and acting in the "world-of-the-real."

However, despite the opportunities afforded by Web 2.0 and social networking technologies, many are still left out and have not yet harnessed the possibilities. Of particular interest are the range of groups spread out across the US focused on building community through a reorientation of the production and consumption practices associated with the modern agri-food system. Though these groups have been able to foment a movement based upon ideals of sustainability and community interconnectedness, there is little evidence to suggest that their efforts are anywhere close to replacing the current system. And though these communities have begun to recognize the utility of the web, it seems they have not yet grasped the underlying opportunities for building greater connectivity among food producers, consumers and retailers on not only a local scale, but national, and even international scales. All one has to do to recognize the opportunities is to see how far the "Fair Trade Movement" has come by using information technologies that links producers, sellers, retailers and consumers in a global market place. This suggests opportunities for similar actions among locally focused groups that can both link people together to meet food needs, but also link people through the free-flow exhange of ideas, practices, problems and successes.

According to Thomas Lyson in his book Civic Agriculture, "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 locally-focused global 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."

The question then becomes: How do we build vibrant networks that connect to both local relations, while supporting a global movement towards integrated efforts that enhance the role of local food producers and access to these production systems among local community members? Following developments in the use of systems thinking and the codification of knowledge related to the design, development and strategic use of these social technologies it can be argued that we have potential answers to these questions through the adoption of patterns and pattern languages. Essentially a pattern represents a general solution to a persistent problem and these pattern langauges represent a network of patterns that interact and reinforce one another to construct an effective and sustainable system. Based upon this work it is argued that "Liberating Voices" serve as the model for supporting the advance of the local food movement online.

Overall, "Liberating Voices" represents a pattern language for democratic communication, which proposes a set of social, communicative and design principles specifically geared towards confronting these challenges from both local and global perspectives. Using these sets of patterns it is thought that we as a movement of concerned citizens can effectively define the problems we seek to solve and then map out the technological solutions to address these problems. That is not to say that we will eliminate all problems, but rather it is possible that these efforts can provide a greater support network so that communities can eventually come together to tackle the range of other issues confronting the complex relationships between people and their food.

Vision:

Using the principles behind Web 2.0 thinking and patterns for communicative engagement articulated by "Liberating Voices" this project will work to develop technologies and practices tools that can be easily used by people with varying degrees of technical competence. Along with creating usable systems these technologies will fill in a gap in capacity and action among locally distributed and previously unconnected groups across the country and beyond. Together with these tools and the orientation towards supporting greater levels of interaction, there will be a special emphasis on Community-Supported Agriculture and the presentation of one soltuion to a range of issues that need to be confronted from within and outside the movement for a "civic agriculture."

Methods for Design and Development:

a.) Outline Problem Definition (Interviews, Literature Review, Survey of Potential Stakeholders)

b.) Identify Specific Patterns linked to the Problem Definition

c.) Adapt identified pattern to address specific program goals

d.) Merge with Web 2.0 princinples to guide deciisions on final platform choice and subsequent implmentation

e.) Identify useful patterns for promoting and building user interactions on the final site, i.e viral marketing, mass mailers/e-mails, print media, word of mouth, blogging, etc...

f.) Support an iterative design process that embraces user feedback and continual revision for an up-to-date system

Despite the methods presented above, it is clear that certain peices will fundamentally need to be in place. Such as a system to generate interest or location based groups, individual user pages, whether consumers, producers or unaffilitated supporters of a general movement. There will also need to be a way for users to locate geographically CSAs, as well as tools to help current CSAs who already have website generate more traffic through integrating these systems without complex programming skills. Likewise, there is a need for tools that can interface with current social networking platforms such as Facebook or MySpace as this will support future marketing, visibility and make navigation to and from a user's most popular websites easy and seemless.

Project Deliverables:

One social networking website and an associated research paper of journal quality that presents rationale, methodology, evaluation and conclusions for continual refinement of the technologies and practices of interactions used both on site and in face-to-face interactions. Provide on-going support to the development and maintance of additional services as suggested by users or emegent tools created out the community of Web 2.0 developers.

For more information on the methods, technologies and thinking behind the project please look at these resources:

What is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 as described on wikipedia (This is actually a great and easy to understand conversation)

What is Liberating Voices? A Pattern Language for Social Change

Ideas for yet another direction with my research

Today I was sitting in my little office and thinking about the whole biofuels phenomena and the potential impacts upon local communities. I began thinking about how communities could and are currently defining the trajectory of energy independence and the potential problems that might be coming as global power and corporate interests begin to extend their reach in an attempt to control the flows of exchange and production of biofuels.

Again, I was brought back to my thinking on patterns and the role patterns can play in supporting community planning, but I also began thinking about how pattern thinking can help us evaluate and analyze current practices and potentially support alternative configurations of socio-environmental, socio-political and socio-economic interactions among communities and how they might help communities effectively respond to global and state level corporate pressures.

Strangely, I was reminded of my masters thesis which used pattern thinking as an analytical framework for evaluating effective public participation and networked advocacy. In many ways the issue of community defined development within the context of an emergent biofuel based global economy is not that much different than what I presented in my thesis. In fact in many ways this question is a very interesting opportunity to extend the idea of patterns and pattern languages as not just a design paradigm, but as analytical and evaluative framework that can help us understand effective and ineffective sustainable development projects at the community level.

For instance, in understanding the problems and issues that communities face as interacting patterns that help reinforce entrenched problems, we can also begin to rethink of ways in which alternative patterns and their corresponding configurations could potentially support alternative models of community defined development.

I know I have focused very heavily on the technological apparatus that could support community planning as that was one of the primary issues I asserted in my thesis, yet in the midst of identifying problems with the usage of patterns and pattern thinking I completely missed the genius of my original thesis which was the use of patterns as a systems-thinking approach to problem definition and solution description within a complex social environment of competing interests and thick informational interactions among disparate actors.

Funny thing, my thesis committee had immediately recognized this when reading my work, and yet I was off and running to solve the problems I had ran into when working with patterns. I completely abandoned the fact that I had successfully developed, presented and defended an entirely new paradigm for analyzing social and political phenomena that had originate from Alexander’s work.

I hate to say this, but I feel that if I ignore this I’m missing something very interesting and perhaps useful. I know there is a lot of work to be done in the usability of patterns for design and planning, but in many ways there are a whole lot of people working on this problem. This is not to say I have nothing to offer here, but I think there is a lot of work to do in this other area and work that has potential for high value.

I guess this goes back to my the whole reason I’m so infatuated with the notion of patterns and that is pattern thinking presents a fairly comprehendible model for working with complex systems. Yet, understanding these systems along with the problems and various interactions is just as important as learning how to work with the various elements we use to define and design these systems.

Recognizing this puts me in a strange position that has me thinking about abandoning a large component of my research that has been central to my thinking for the past year and a half or so and that is the technological component of my work. Yet, I think this shift backwards is perhaps necessary otherwise some of these insights will be lost and left in the dark.

(More) Interesting Links on BioFuels

Here they are (note these are for my reference, but anyone can benefit if the emerging biofuel economy and its implications are of interest).

• Biodiesel vs. Bioethanol


• India's BioDiesel Scene


• Biodiesel–A Primer


• Turning crops to ethanol fuel: on the road to energy independence.

Interesting article on BioFuels...

Source, International Herald Tribune....
Here is the link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/10/opinion/edholt.php

Talk about outrage!

Read this: Asbestos is Not Banned in North America.

World Bank Recommits to Environmental Sustainability

Following Wolfowitz's departure as head of the World Bank a new sheriff is in town, Robert B. Zoellick. According to a report I was listening to on NPR this morning there was a discussion on the absence of language affirming the need to address climate change. Instead, the report asserted that World Bank language tended to focus upon clean energy and so on, yet never attributed a rationale for this clean energy need.

Now, with Zoellick in charge there is a renewed appreciation of the climatic issues the planet faces and particular focus has been placed upon addressing the ways in which development can alleviate poverty while simultaneously deal with climate change.

This is an interesting statement. But in reading his speech to the World Bank meetings in DC I take issue with some of his thinking. For one, the statement that, "Poverty breeds instability, disease, devastation of common resources and the environment" is somewhat misleading.

Now, I don't disagree with the observation that poverty and instability are connected, but the idea that poverty some how increases the destruction of natural resources seems a bit off. After all if we take a look at map representing our global footprint we can see that the richest nations all consume the overwhelming majority of resources.



Likewise, if we want to get real specific on the destruction of forests and other natural resources in developing countries, we can find that many of these projects are being funded, supported and driven not by individual users of resources, but of larger corporations that utilize these raw commodities.

Unfortunately, regulating what the affluent do to the planet is not the domain of the World Bank, but perhaps before calling poverty the cause of destruction we should remember that the last 150 years of the Industrial Revolution is what has gotten us where we are today. That is what development has meant.

Yet, I won't fault Zoellick for this misstatement too much, after all the remainder of his address touch on some very critical issues and present the idea that development in the context of the 21st century must find an alternative path to that pursued by the West in the past century and a half. So at least here we are in agreement.

Anyway, interesting statement and definitely worth the read if global poverty and social justice are topics that inspire or infuriate you.

Initial Pattern List: Setting the Stage for a Pattern Language approach to NRM

So in further discussions with Ray Jussaume (my Chair) it has come to my attention that he has been trying to conceptualize in a concrete way the relevance of patterns and pattern languages in the context of Natural Resource Management. Of course I see the relevance, but for him and others associated with my PhD pursuit find themselves grappling with my in-adequate explanations.

Considering this I have thought it necessary to do two things for him and others. First, I will be constructing a list of patterns I feel are relevant to the work, and second, I will construct over the next couple of weeks a visual representation (using a concept map approach) of this list along with other patterns specifically related to Indigenous Forestry Management in the Chota-Nagpur plateau of India.

NRM Pattern Language (one possible list):
1. The Commons
2. The Good Life

3. Collective Decision Making
4. Sustainable Design
5. Earth's Vital Signs
6. Matrifocal Orientation

7. Meaningful Maps
8. Citizen Access to Simulations
9. Conversational Support Across Boundaries
10. Durable Assets

11. Voices of the Unheard
12. Civic Capabilities
13. Sustainability Appraisal - (to be applied in NRM as opposed to ICT)
14. Appreciative Collaboration

15. Self-Designed Development
16. Community Inquiry
17. Power Research

Now, obviously this is just a start, but in drawing from other places such as Alexander's own patterns as well as perhaps those developed by Eco-Trust it is possible to begin ebbing closer to a vision of a NRM centered pattern language. And despite the incompleteness here I think the list begins to serve as an introduction into the notion that these patterns which exist separated within various domains possess useful relationships which can be applied as templates for seemingly unrelated uses.

But perhaps, more importantly for the purpose of this exercise others might be able to navigate the list and begin making connections between NRM, planning, sustainability and the utilization of patterns.

Global Pattern Language and Resource Management for Sustainability

It has been a few days since I have written anything and my head is on overload. Many of the topics swirling around have been surrounding the development or extension of Liberating Voices along with the numerous other pattern languages into a truly global-pattern language.

Though it is my contention as previously stated that pattern languages are going to largely be the work of the communities constructing these languages, the usefulness of higher-order patterns as pointers or templates to help initiate and set the stage for eliciting new or context specific types of knowledge can be extremely useful. In the case of my work this would be in sustainable development, but I could see this heuristic knowledge serving many fields which brings us back to the notion of developing a global-pattern language, a composite of sorts that encompasses a range of fields.

However, with this in mind I’m coming to see how in some cases it might be difficult to capture all, particularly as knowledge shifts in this age of hyper-creativity and information transfer. But on a walk the other night I was considering what a more specific pattern language would look like for community development where economies are largely dependent on natural resources. I began to think of indigenous communities such as the adivasi in Jharkhand and their experience as traditional land-stewards, but not just as conservationists but as people who draw primary sources of livelihoods from the forests.

Following further I was drawn to the political and social conflicts that have emerged over the past 50 years to contest this traditional stewardship and how the adivasi are navigating effects of outside political forces both on their livelihoods and the sustainability of their resources. This brought me to conceptualize further the role of patterns and pattern languages as holistic design or planning concept that can extend in numerous directions as needed. For instance, if we are thinking of developing a pattern-language for natural resource management it is certain there are going to be a predominate number of patterns dealing with the environment, but this is not the only aspect of resource management; we have to be willing and able to conceptualize the socio-political and socio-economic forces at play that can in large part determine the nature of planning and in the case of a pattern language approach determine the types of patterns we use to counter-balance some of these forces.

So what does this mean? To me it begins to highlight the notion that social patterns at a high-level that deal with ideas such as civic intelligence, social dominance attenuation or grass-roots public policy development all potentially have a place within a holistic and sustainable approach to resource management.

Pattern Re-Visited

While I know I said I was going to show case a pattern a day and a different pattern at that I have felt the need to re-visit a pattern as I have come to see it's deeper and more fundamental relationship to my research objective.

The pattern is Alan Borning's "Citizen Access to Simulation" and when I wrote my first response to this pattern I was thinking of community simulation where actors are involved in a sort of mock experiment similar to the one we are conducting in my environmental conflict course. However, in reading some of the material behind this pattern I have come to see this as dynamic simulations as a way to support decision making in community context.

Now, this is exactly what I'm doing in my other class "Systems Dynamic Modeling," and the more I get into this course the more I recognize how this can play a central element in collaborative planning. For instance, in following along with my interest in a planning approach that promotes pattern mapping to develop a cognitive map of sustainable development design, the use of systems modeling could play a central role in helping groups become more informed about their proposed policies or designs for development.

And as a result of this centrality, it represents what I think to be a first order pattern in any planning process that deals with the interaction between natural and built systems. Now, being a pattern person I see that sustainable development is more more complex than what can be modeled, however, there are certain elements that modeling can tell us about our environment that might not be obvious. Things that if overlooked could spell disaster for our proposals. To me this makes sense as we can bring in a quantitative model and apply it in a qualitative way to help people learn about their environment.

The problem is that many seem to confuse these models as predictors or forecasters of dynamic change, but when really they are educational tools that are meant to do just that, educate us. So great care must be taken to ensure that people recognize modeling for what it is. Alexander, talks about this in the 'Nature of Order.'

With that in mind, I wonder how a simulation of this sort might influence a pattern based approach to planning a development program. In fact, this might make a very useful pattern as part of a pattern based planning methodology that seeks to inform the ways patterns are contextualized by communities.