Advocacy at Home – Food (Vegetables)

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The price of vegetables will be higher this year because of the California drought. That was reason enough for the mariner to increase the amount of ground dedicated to home grown vegetables. The great majority of readers have some amount of ground, even as little as a dozen square feet that could support vegetable gardens. Also, check with friends and family; they may be willing to share space. At least one reader belonged to a community garden club. A modern twist on vegetable growing at home is to have a pot farm. Virtually any vegetable from scallions to squash will be happy in a pot or wooden box.

The price of food is one reason to grow one’s own vegetables but the real benefit – guess – is saving water. Most truck crops are grown in irrigated fields because these soft vegetables contain a lot of water and need constantly damp soil. Generally, the source of water for irrigation comes from underground aquifers or rivers. There have been news headlines for years about underground aquifers losing water at rates that threaten many western states with drought and no crop yield. In 2005, the latest year on record, about 410,000 million gallons per day (Mgal/d) of water was withdrawn from aquifers for use in the United States. Processing (washing, etc.) requires additional water.

For readers with little experience in growing anything but grass, growing vegetables is similar in management except one doesn’t mow the vegetables. However, one must remove weeds that will crowd the vegetables and reduce productivity. Open the following link to see how easy it is to grow one’s own bell peppers:

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/much-water-used-grow-green-bell-peppers-41234.html

If the reader has any interest in gardening, it won’t be long before sunny windows and grow light devices will provide whatever the reader wants to grow year round. The mariner has found that fresh herbs add noticeably more flavor to a recipe than dried herbs.

Home advocacy is a matter of degree. However, if everyone grew only one vegetable or herb, that’s one plant that didn’t require water from an aquifer.

Of all the home advocacy recommendations in this series, home grown vegetables provide the largest payoff in water preservation, food quality, and personal selection. Further, readers who want to avoid insecticide toxins or artificial hormone growth, home grown is the way to go.

If the reader grows enough crop that there is too much to eat before the vegetables go bad, one can freeze the excess or can it. Some shrewd shoppers wait until a vegetable is deeply discounted at the market then buy large amounts to freeze or can. This practice protects the buyer from price issues but this practice doesn’t save water.

The mariner hopes this series on home advocacy provides a link between the huge issues of the world and ways that each of us can contribute to resolution. We may not bring the oil industry to its knees but our efforts reduce pollution and natural resource abuse – if only by a tiny bit.

Ancient Mariner

 

Advocacy at Home – Food (Meat)

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Advocacy at Home – Food (Meat)

This advocacy is not about dieting. The mariner mentions dieting up front to be done with it. The United States population eats four times the volume required by Homo sapiens and performs a small fraction of the effort humans were meant to exert; we eat unnatural sugars that must be manufactured to meet our sweetness requirements. On average, we weigh 30% more than we should. Obesity is so common it falls within the standard deviation. Dieting advocacy is the reader’s choice.

Nor is this advocacy about nutrition, though nutrition is the reason food is important. Now, about food:

The mariner became interested in food processing several years ago. What first caught his attention was that people were buying water when they could have it free at home. This did not make sense to him.

Food is an extensive and odd subject. At the center of every food issue is water. In fact, water is at the center of most manufacturing and natural resource issues like fracking but since this advocacy is about food, the mariner will stick to water and food. Food advocacy will be lengthy so there will be more than one post.

First, we must expose the power of suggestion used by food producers. Food producers make food pretty, convenient, and insist that you need to buy their product to be healthy. This is never true. As a sensitivity exercise, the mariner asks that you go to the following website and play the little movie on the right. It is about bottled water.

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/bottled

Does the reader remember the faux pas of the meat companies that produce hamburger? It was commented that “pink slime” was added to improve the taste and texture of the hamburger. Even McDonald’s had to back away from that comment. Many balk at the fact the meat product is sterilized with ammonia. Ammonia was cleared by the FDA forty years ago and is part of everything from cheese to chocolate. If more water is squeezed from pink slime, it becomes 25% of an inexpensive hotdog; ground beef labels can advertise 100% beef with up to 15% pink slime added. There is nothing unhealthy about pink slime in spite of its name – obviously an insider term in the meat industry.

These two examples show how easily we can be influenced when it comes to food. It is likely that evolution made us selective about what we eat, leaving us vulnerable to suggestion. Internet browsers quickly will expose the reader to common ingredients that are much worse in comparison – definitely not a tour for the squeamish.

This post will address home advocacy for meat. The reader likely is aware that meat consumption per person has been rising for decades. From 1951 to 2003, daily meat consumption in the United States rose from 150 grams to 250 grams, a 60% increase. Since 2003, consumption has leveled. It is presumed by the FDA that awareness of a relationship between cancer and red meat, along with an awareness of animal abuse on factory farms, are the primary reasons for lower consumption. Pork is the world’s (and the US) most eaten meat. The mariner posted comments about factory farm abuse in “About Rights” in April. Whether home advocacy includes abstinence because of animal abuse is the reader’s choice. The reader must be prepared to eat fish, shellfish and crickets because all fowl and mammals are abused on factory farms.

See

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/doomsday-preppers/videos/cricket-stir-fry/ 

It is virtually impossible to avoid entirely a given meat source. How can we make it through Thanksgiving without turkey? And spam – that’s a meat, isn’t it? However, combine the intentional reduction of meat as a source of protein, and an increase of protein from fish, nuts, beans and some dairy, and home advocacy against abuse will happen naturally.

Richard Branson, of all people, campaigns against beef as a food product. His reason: it takes 1,800 gallons of water to make one pound of beef. The same argument could apply to every animal to a lesser degree but cattle have a large footprint when it comes to water consumption and processing.

So we have come back to water. Home advocacy for meat encompasses the following:

Reduce red meat to a minimum in the reader’s diet.

Find a butcher who processes his own meat or better, grows it himself. Much less water will be required and the reader will avoid any additives.

Make seafood the primary protein source.

Don’t eat crickets; they are too much trouble. Eat grasshoppers.

Ancient Mariner

Advocacy at Home – Global Ecology

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Ecology is a cousin topic to environment. However, while environment suffers from geologic shifts, climate change and excess carbon in the atmosphere, ecology focuses directly on living creatures and their habitats. Include humans as a living creature. Globally, the United Nations estimates that 200 species go extinct every day. In her book, The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert states that this rate of extinction is far beyond anything since the Cretaceous Extinction when the dinosaurs disappeared.

Kolbert says humans are the cause of the sixth extinction. Daily, millions of acres of habitat and whole seas are destroyed to make way for human activity. We know about oil spills and burning the Amazon rain forest. Does the reader know that humans, along with global warming, carried a frog-killing fungus (chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) to every continent – even the Antarctic! This virus originally existed in one valley in South America.

It is common knowledge that bees are struggling because of many things from viruses to insecticides. The same is true of bats. In the states of New York, Vermont and Indiana, whole colonies are dying. The mariner knows from experience on the farm that a good bat colony keeps the mosquitoes away as well as many insects destructive to crops. One researcher suspects a spelunker who visited caves in the three states is the most likely culprit.

No doubt, the sanctity of other creatures is disregarded as Homo sapiens trashes its way over the surface of the planet.

The news yesterday covered a story about large numbers of turtles and thousands of fish washing up on shore in Peconic Bay on Long Island. Not studied in detail yet, it is suspected that an algae bloom occurred in the bay; excessive amounts of saxitoxin (a byproduct of algae) were found in the dead animals. The cause is presumed to be antiquated sewage systems around the bay. Homes are old in the area and use buried septic tanks instead of modern sewage practices. Sewage, rich in Nitrogen, leached into the bay causing a red bloom of algae. Now, Peconic Bay is off limits to humans but the sewage tanks remain.

The mariner recommends the reader take a slow walk around the house and property followed by an hour’s walk around the neighborhood. Carry a pen and a small notebook. Look for wildlife or evidence of wildlife. List each creature you find. Do not exclude any creature; ants, bees, worms, and “bugs” count, chained dogs count, birds, foxes, squirrels – every creature. Make a note beside each creature telling what is critical to its habitat; does the creature depend on human habitation? Is its habitat under stress or damaged by human activity? Would the creature notice if the human infrastructure weren’t present?

Also, note situations that seem to detract from the creature’s environment – things like streets between feeding grounds, sparse ground cover, broken glass and human rubble that interferes with grazing by birds and other creatures that need to eat on the ground; oil spills and other contaminating chemicals, no open water (not even an old rain puddle), etc.

Without leaving the neighborhood, the walk has sensitized the reader to how every creature has its own habitat. What would improve the relationship between their habitats and the human habitat? What can the reader do to improve the situation? In many cases, because things and space belong to others, nothing can be done – or maybe something.

Wherever the reader lives, there is a conservation/wildlife organization nearby. Participate in projects that improve ecological health and opportunity for all creatures; at least be a subscribing member. As you will see in a later advocacy about species, the names and phone numbers of environment and animal protection organizations are important to have handy.

It has been said many times that ‘nature is pristine.’ That phrase is used only when one is observing nature undisturbed by humans. Undisturbed nature has had eons to integrate and balance the many habitats that co-exist. Nevertheless, humans have now arrived. What can the reader do to integrate with nature?

It may be as simple as a bird feeder in the winter and a birdbath in the summer. Maybe the toad in the garden (a sign of good fortune) would like a cool spot under a broken flower pot. Maybe the dog would like to go somewhere to have a good run – that’s what dogs do best. In that bare spot by the back fence, plant white clover for the bees. Build a small pond engineered to be a genuine habitat for many small creatures. It’s an old saw but plant a tree. The mariner planted milkweed for the Monarchs.

Don’t be deterred by the fact that the reader lives in a condominium or apartment. On the other side of the front door is a whole world of outside.

Ecological advocacy is about sensitivity to life – all life.

Ancient Mariner

Advocacy at Home – Utilities

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The state of the environment around the entire planet is a major crisis and confronts the manner by which all nations govern. The environment shifts slowly but scientists have begun to notice more rapid change. Even fossil fuel corporations are beginning to work on carbon control legislation. Dealing with global warming is not a one-nation issue; it is not a treaty issue; it is a global issue that can wipe out millions of people, species, and permanently change the world as we know it. Global warming is not the only issue affecting the environment. In the name of increased profit, corporations abuse, contaminate and even destroy natural resources. Poisons are spilled, buried, spread, and hidden all over the planet. Many species have surrendered their kind to the abuse of corporations.

Yet, these same catastrophic issues can be affected by advocacy at home.

Many of these activities already are widely known:

  • Recycling. If everything made from Aluminum or glass had to be made from scratch, both would become expensive commodities. Everything not made from recycled plastic clutters the world even more rapidly than the clogging that exists now. Recycled paper products save trees – a rapidly disappearing natural resource that helps with excess carbon dioxide. Tin, iron, copper and other industrial metals are melted and returned to a natural state for reuse. Take them to a recycling center.
  • Do not be seen using plastic grocery bags! Use your own cloth bags over and over again. Plastic bags, quite un-biodegradable – are the most voluminous item in landfills.
  • Set the thermostat back in winter, up in summer; Heat with the Sun through windows in the winter, cool by blocking sunny windows in the summer.
  • Use modern light bulbs that require fewer watts.
  • Unplug electronic devices that continue to glow – particularly those “vampire” boxes called chargers. They are never off unless they are unplugged.
  • Clean gas furnace burners once each year.
  • Replace older windows and doors with modern ones designed to mitigate temperatures and block solar radiation.
  • Upgrade attic insulation.
  • Recently, as prices dropped to what normal budgets can afford, solar panels are growing in presence. Every $1,000 in cost may be amortized in two years through reduction in electric bills.
  • Service the automobile regularly, including tires.
  • Within five miles of work? Use a bicycle. Within two miles of work? Walk.

The effect of these hands-on activities directly reduces consumption of oil byproducts. Further, these activities reduce the use of water necessary to mine and process metals, oil, plastic, and paper manufacturing.

Speaking of water, it takes 1,800 gallons of water to recoup 1 gallon of drinking water; it takes 60 gallons of water to make 1 kilowatt hour, it takes 97 gallons of water to make one gallon of gasoline; it takes 39,090 gallons of water to make a car.

One wonders how many gallons of water it will take to visit a relative 500 miles away. Assume 20 mpg:

500 miles/20 mpg=25 gal/gasoline.

25 gal/gas*97 gal/water=2,425 gal/water to travel 500 miles.

Add in 39,090 gal/water for the car = 41,518 gallons of water was used to make the trip.

Along with global warming, drinkable water rapidly is becoming a political issue all over the world.

By the way, a human requires 2 quarts of drinkable water per day at or near sea level and 2 gallons if you live in Denver, Colorado.

Advocacy at home may be the real battlefront…

Ancient Mariner

Advocacy at Home – Overview

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Sit back for a moment and consider the ways the reader can have direct access to local issues. Focus on personally accessible issues, not guns and violence, not celebrity gossip (unless the reader can rid us of it), not the Middle East, not Putin, not the Mexican border. These news items are not issues that can be altered on your property or even in your neighborhood.

In truth, each of us will have a slightly different list. Some issues will be front page issues; some will be back page. To keep our focus on advocacy at home, the mariner will provide a short but important list:

List

Utilities (water, gas, travel)

Global ecology (air, water, chemicals)

Food (water, quality, chemicals, land use)

Specie ecology (Microsystems, estuaries, wildlife)

Neighborhood gestalt (trash, abandoned housing, loose pets – and your house!)

Local organizations (scouting, youth clubs, nursing homes, PTA, Lions Club)

 Tools

Many newspapers, even if online versions and especially local newspapers

Two or three respected soft cover journals, even if they’re at the library

Neighborhood walks

Discerning eyes

Personal blog and twitter communication

Physical effort (scheduled time, communication, achieve goals)

Goodness, the mariner tried to keep this post short! However, what one can do as an advocate to improve his/her immediate environment is virtually endless.

What one notices about advocacy at home is that issues have a direct relationship to people and other species. Feelings of fairness and, as John Forbes Nash would put it, equilibrium, are important. Reading to a bedridden patient in a nursing home does more for the reader and the patient than winning a debate over voting rights. Advocacy at home can be won by the reader – without the political free-for-all that rocks the world.

Further, it is amazing how little space can have such great accomplishment. Pick up a used soft drink cup in the gutter and the appearance of the street has been changed for blocks in each direction. Planting a small pot of petunias will brighten the day for everyone who sees it.

Many projects will require more effort but the nature of advocacy at home is to make the most of small changes.

The mariner will address the list in ensuing posts.

Ancient Mariner

 

Advanced Advocacy

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Has the reader ever thought about running for office? It may be that the reader will lose. However, as an official candidate, one has access to reporters and journalists, is asked to speak at political gatherings, and may get radio and television interviews.

If the reader thinks this is absurd, 22 republican candidates for US President don’t agree.

Running for office is the fastest way to become influential in politics – even if you lose. The reader has reason to organize and sustain a political organization. This organization expands one’s voice by magnitudes.

In local politics, the fact that one runs may be enough to be elected! Especially in these times when politics grows more volatile in its philosophy of government, upsets are common. The reader’s influence begins at the smallest political level, usually a precinct or a politically oriented club (think Rotary, Lions, Masons, etc.) There are personalities in these organizations and precincts called “king makers.” If they like you, they will spread an influential word in your behalf.

Many readers may not want to step into politics as a candidate. There are many legitimate reasons to deny one’s self such an opportunity. The next best thing is for the reader to attach one’s self to an acceptable candidate. By attach, the mariner means become the candidate’s right-hand person. The reader will have access to policy and campaign meetings, become known as someone to listen to because the reader’s voice is the candidate’s voice, and if one is young enough and in a position to change careers, the candidate will win and take the reader with him/her to a job on staff. This happened to a close friend of the mariner’s daughter, who now is a speech writer in the White House.

The reader could become a member of a local advocacy group that plans marches, gatherings, trips to the offices of elected officials, and forms blockades at the entrance to abusive corporations.

The bottom line is the reader must feel in his/her heart that something must be done for the sake of humankind, for justice, for the wellbeing of the planet, for the health of governance.

Ancient Mariner

 

Definition of Advocacy

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A number of readers have written to the mariner through email to ask a series of related questions.

  • The mariner challenges very large issues that require international authority and millions of dollars. Where is the bridge to action for those of us who are not rich or powerful?
  • While I may agree with the mariner’s concerns generally, they do not fit the fabric of the American Culture today. I have no resources to buy politicians and I must flow with the economy around me.
  • I abhor what the states are doing to block unwanted voters. Do we need another March to Selma?

The mariner shares the readers’ lament. Darrell Issa(R) has been the U.S. House Representative for California’s 49th district since 2001. Issa is considered the richest man in Congress, amassing a net worth between $330 and $600 million. His voting record is conservative, very pro-business and not in favor of entitlements. How does one relatively poor citizen confront Issa’s lock on his influence on our government and what it stands for?

If Issa is not the reader’s representative, Issa will ignore the reader except that the reader may receive a bland response that could be written by anyone. The place to start is with one’s own US Representative and Senators and, if the issue is within the reader’s state, the Governor and the legislature. Do you know your state representatives? Ostensibly, these politicians were elected by the reader and, in principle at least, can be unelected by the reader.

Becoming an advocate for any cause, large or small, is the same as taking up a hobby. The mariner writes to his government representatives whenever there is an issue that is important to the mariner. This could be many times in a month. A prepared letter or petition, often offered by organizations, is accepted but discounted because it is not personally written. A personally written letter, clearly explaining the issue logically and in a cool-minded way will gain you a personally signed response. It will also have more weight. It doesn’t take many letters (or phone calls) to urge a politician to consider his public words on the subject – though this consideration may not change his vote. Nevertheless, persistence and advocacy to others one knows has a way of becoming a campaign issue in the next election.

At the same time that one writes a letter to the government official, one can write a letter to a newspaper of choice to be published on the op-ed page.

Writing to a representative or calling – without losing one’s temper – is one way to expand your influence.

Another way to expand the reader’s influence is to join the appropriate organization that advocates one’s opinion. These special organizations, like Food and Water Watch, an organization to which the mariner subscribes, magnify one’s voice. These organizations have the ability to create news and even television coverage where one individual could not. These organizations usually ask for a modest donation.

In a different vein, one could volunteer for a candidate who advocates the reader’s position. These often are jobs involving phone calls, stuffing envelopes and going door to door. Often, one may be asked to visit the offices of an adversarial politician or make signs for a protest. This is the beginning of grass roots politics and, with the luck of a few important leaders, is quite capable of forcing change. The mariner and his wife had their first campaign job going door to door with brochures for Bobby Kennedy – in a conservative district!

If you are an advocate of voting rights, Hillary Clinton has opened the door for local advocacy in a recent speech. Find those in your precinct who are Clinton voting advocates and help out.

The hard part is one must get away from the television and the easy chair and start using the telephone and going out at night and on weekends. The reader has become a member of the original American democratic process. Don’t let the corporations and big money taunt with funny TV, terrible commercials and false advertising about how good the US is. Become an advocate. It is a more interesting and entertaining hobby than one may think.

Finally, in this post, ALWAYS attend every political party meeting. Be part of the group that shapes policy and may even choose the next candidate. These groups don’t advertise very well on purpose but one can find them and establish rapport. Finally, never, ever miss a chance to vote – even for the judges.

Ancient Mariner

Failing Humanity

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The mariner grows weary of humanity. We are overcome by selfish legislation, abusive parents, uncaring school systems that knowingly disregard the health and stress of children in the name of law and procedure. One asks, “Where is the humanity?” but…. there is no humanity. Only a culture based on something besides humanity. There is something wrong about the role of school Principals. He didn’t like them as a student and he doesn’t like them now. Principles are responsible for children, not procedures.

 http://abcnews.go.com/US/colorado-lunch-lady-fired-giving-students-free-meals/story?id=31497325

 Christians speak of the presence of Jesus in our American Culture. Bullshit. Jesus wants each Christian to set rules in the best interest of each human, that they may be happy, healthy and spiritually whole.

Not in the United States. It’s financially restrictive rules that count and the “budget” constrained by lack of support in the property-based tax system. Whatever the tax system, why aren’t we, unconstrained citizens, mothers, fathers, and family allowed helping feed children when the capitalist bureaucracy fails?

The time is long overdue when we, the common citizen, can’t make our nation a happier nation. We are crushed by inhumane voting laws; crushed by abusive employee treatment gradually becoming indentured slavery; subject to the will of corporations to disregard civility and fair distribution of profits to those who created the wealth.

The solution is up to you and the mariner. We must take control of our society before we become slaves in a mechanistic environment serving the upper classes in our international world.

The least we can do as individuals is to make sure all children are fed – even on holidays and in the summer. The mariner pledges to support feeding children despite the capitalist government that turns its back on humanity. If you are interested, consult your school dietician; Principals will do their best to stop you. Rules, you know.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

Having a Hog for Dinner

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Or maybe a chicken, or leg of lamb or a steak tenderloin. It is the ritual of the farming life. Most of us remember the family farm. It was a good way of life. Farm operation was self-sustained. There was a balance between investment, byproducts (including environmental contamination), and lifestyle.

Those were the good old days. Farmers took pride in their individual efforts and products. The County Fair was big time and winners could boast of best livestock, best crop, and even best harness race horse. Children were encouraged to compete in future farmer contests that required intense engagement with animals, their health and even their happiness.

It isn’t that way anymore. The reader remembers it that way, but that farm is long gone. Even organic farms are run for profit, not for lifestyle. Largely, what exist today are corporate farms. Corporate farms disregard the environmental impact; corporate farms waste water in immense volumes; corporate farms physically torture livestock to increase profit.

And Iowa is the worst state in the United States.

The mariner mentioned once before that he is a member of Food and Water Watch (FWW), which concerns itself with abusive treatment of resources, livestock, pollution, or misrepresentation to the customer. Below is a website that will lead you to a map that shows the concentration of corporate farms in the US. Look at Iowa. The Koch brothers participate in more corporate farms than any other Iowa corporation. They are opposed across the board to humane treatment of livestock and disregard the gross impact of their waste on the environment.

 http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/

 Screw the world, give me my dollars. Does this describe the American dream?

Ancient Mariner

 

Topic: Environment

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Just a day or two ago, the mariner wrote that environmental issues and their solutions will be the largest contributor to new approaches and standards for the economy, jobs, new business opportunities, tax adjustments and infrastructure.

Already the mariner has benefitted from improvement of the environment in his home town. The City Council, as part of funds available from a larger project dealing with soil erosion and pollution in local streams and drainage ditches, eliminated several Ash trees.

In just a year or two, dying Ash trees will be an economic burden on this town and its citizens. The Emerald Ash Borer, a green beetle, kills Ash trees by burying eggs in the cambium layer of the tree. When the eggs hatch, the grubs destroy the cambium layer, eventually girdling the tree. This town has many, many stately old and very large Ash trees.

The mariner had six Ash trees on his property. In front of the house by the street, three Ash trees were within the path of the larger project to upgrade surface drainage ditches. The trees were removed by the City Council. The mariner estimates that each tree would have cost him $1,500 when the time came to remove them. He will attempt to save the three remaining trees with a new root drench product. With luck, maybe the trees can be saved. They may already be infected.

Other homes along the proposed drainage upgrade had Ash trees removed as well.

Of course, the mariner is pleased at the unexpected savings. He also saw the experience as a classic example of how environmental improvement creates unexpected benefits for many people, businesses and ecosystems beyond the specific goal of the improvement.

Taxes can be modified by the many tax rebates available for home improvements designed to reduce energy usage, e.g., improved insulation, renewable energy solutions and weatherized windows. The city will have tangential benefits because road surfaces and shoulders will not erode as quickly – an improvement in infrastructure.

Now on to natural resources and higher standards for their utilization.

Ancient Mariner