The End of Food

The UMNH Book Club will meet to discuss The End of Food by Paul Roberts on Monday, July 13, 2009, at 6:30 p.m. This book was recommended to us by Slow Food Utah, who will be contributing to the Book Club discussion next week.

I'm just getting started on Roberts' book, but immediately realized that the title is more daunting and discouraging than the text. The book is a very interesting read!

As I personally have been exploring our industrialized food supply (starting with Omnivore's Dilemma in this Book Club two years ago), I have continually asked myself, "How did we get here? How did we just hand over our food system to the interests of chemical fertilizers and bottom-line profits?"

The first chapter of this book, "Starving for Progress", lays out "how we got here" over the past three million years, starting with Australopithecus, "a diminutive ancestor who lived in the prehistoric African forest and ate mainly what could be found there -- fruits, leaves, larvae and bugs." Over the next 20 pages or so, the author recaps how the quest for food and survival drove the development of modern humans, civilization and, ultimately, a global society and food supply. The chapter illustrates the intricate relationship between humans being, the ever-changing environments and climates in which they live, and the desire to create predictability in their resources. It is like a speed-read through several anthropology and political science courses in one sitting!

But the reading challenges my organic leanings as being symptomatic of luxury. The fact is, predictability in food and other natural resources is a good thing. It creates opportunity for individuals and civilizations to do more things that hunt for and produce food. Was there a moment in time when this desire for predictability and "enough" went to far? Was it in the mid-twentieth century when we added chemical fertilizers and carbon-based machinery in an attempt to be masters over nature, thereby changing the very thing we call food? Or was in 3500 B.C., when Egyptian wheat farmers were "routinely producing more grain than they could eat themselves, and these surpluses" let to trade and the first accumulate wealth? Agriculture itself is a mastery over nature. Yet, did human society cross a line in 1957, when, according to Roberts, "Ray Goldberg, the Harvard economist, and his colleague, John Davis, proposed that term "agriculture" be replaced with a new, more fitting one: "agribusiness."

Food is the fundamental way in which we as humans -- as living beings -- interact with the natural world. Food, or energy from which to live, creates the "place of humans" within the natural world, referring to the Museum's mission statement. So far, this book and others I've read provide data to the balance between calories produced by the earth and calories needed -- and how that balance changes over time. The questions are popping in my mind. Join the Museum and Slow Food Utah for a discussion of this book, and will raise your own questions and comments here or at the discussion on 7/13/09!

For more information on the meeting, visit us at www.umnh.utah.edu/bookclub.

Onto Chapter 2: "It's So Easy Now"....

It's all Connected

We started out organizing these entries by the title of the book we were discussing. But we've realized, that is not going to work. This discussion, the themes and memes covered in these readings, are to intertwined. Just as in our Book Club meetings, in which we refer back to past discussions to enrich the current book, these conversations sort of weave into a larger tapestry of thought. A larger discussion on the place of humans in the natural world.

For me this year, it all started in early March listening to Terry Tempest-Williams presenting at the Wallace Stegner Center of Land, Resources and the Environment's annual symposium. As this year marks the 100th anniversary of Stegner's birth, the symposium was dedicated to Stegner's life and legacy. Terry reflected on Stegner's advice to her and Charles Wilkinson in their work to protect wilderness lands in Southern Utah. Stegner's advice? Be bold! Saving wilderness is protecting the place in which our humanity has a place to breathe. I asked myself: What in my life is worth fighting to save?

The next week, Thomas Friedman was in town. He discussed the "Americum", the measure of people in the world living the "American lifestyle" in terms of consumption. It struck me that it is our moral responsibility as Americans to redefine the "American Dream" so that it can be protected, so that it can expand and more people in this world can live with basic food security, clean water, healthcare, education, justice, and opportunity; but so that the balance of life on this planet can be sustained -- including places of wilderness, I would guess. And in his discussion, and especially in the reading of his book, it was evident that the market has been heavily changed by the lobbying of oil companies and auto manufacturers who have ensured that carbon fuel was cheap, easy to attain, and guzzled up by large "American Made" automobiles.
what is worth protecting? I want people across the world to have the same basics that I have. Am I willing to give up on the intense excess, recalibrate the American dream, so that more people can live with safety, security, and peace? What portion of "the American lifestyle" is worth fighting for, worth saving?

A couple of weeks later, a group of local community members formed a discussion group on the Northwest Earth Institute's "Menu for the Future". Together, all of us women living in Salt Lake City with school-aged children, we have spent the past six weeks exploring issues of the food supply. Corporate agriculture, fossil fuels in the food supply chain, pesticides and additives in our food supply, explotation and effects from pesticide exposure of agriculture workers. All while Michelle Obama is taking heat for choosing organic growing practices on the White House lawn. And what is our largest concern is as mothers is the time and cost of restoring nature -- faith -- in our families' food. We start to ask ourselves, "we've placed such a value on convenience because we are so busy. Why are we so busy?" What is worth protecting?? Isn't the health of our families, and the time we can spend together growing, sourcing, cooking, sharing food worth protecting??

Then Tyrone Hayes comes to Salt Lake to finish up the Nature of Things 2009. He talks about the effects of the agricultural pesticide Atrazine in frog populations. And there it is again: 80 million pounds of Atrazine used in American agriculture each year, corporate reaction to research indicating that Atrazine is causing hormonal change in frog populations living in waters with agricultural run off, documentation that when the company realized that Atrazine was contributing to hormonal changes that stimulated some cancers, they then established a new division to create a pharmaceutical that can reduce the hormonal changes -- rather than removing the Atrazine from the market, they are now selling the pesticide to the agriculture industry and the cancer-treatment pharmeceutal through the healthcare treatment. Tyrone's final call? Get politically active to call for better testing, integrative evaluation of pesticides so that the real story can be told. The future is in your hands. Is that worth fighting for?

It starts to feel that we are living in a society in which the basics have traded out for convience, profit, predictablity.

Wendell Berry: where we are headed....

Speaking of Poetry

Heard this piece yesterday morning on NPR's Morning Edition program and wanted to pass it on to our discussion group: Can Poetry Save the Earth?

Stanford University professor John Felstiner writes in his new book, Can Poetry Save the Earth?: "If poems touch our full humanness, can they quicken awareness and bolster respect for this ravaged resilient earth we live on?"

Listen to the entire piece on the NPR Website.

Felstiner was asked to pick just one poem that could save the world, if everyone were to read it. He chose:

The Well Rising
by William Stafford

The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through the deep ground
everywhere in the field —

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer —

The swallow heart from wing beat to wing beat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples. I place my feet
with care in such a world.


Hope you get a chance to appreciate "such a world" today.

Wendell Berry: Dramatized Poems

Since Wendell Berry's recent visit to Utah for the Stegner Symposium, I seem to be finding him everywhere! A couple of weeks ago, there was a nice piece on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday about an group in Kentucky who has brought Berry's poems to the stage.

As NPR reporter Elizabeth Kramer explained: "Wendell Berry, the Kentucky-based agrarian philosopher, has been described as our era's heir to Emerson and Thoreau — a writer concerned with the importance of community, and with the lessons we can learn from the natural world. Now, the Actors Theatre of Louisville is putting his ideas on stage."

You can listen to the entire piece at the NPR Website.

Kramer continues: "And though some were published decades ago, the poems feel surprisingly current. One in particular — about a stock market crash — feels particularly timely:

When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, "Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!" I think
an economy should be based on thrift,
on taking care of things, not on theft,
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.
My purpose is a language that can make us whole,
Though mortal, ignorant, and small.
The world is whole beyond human knowing."

The UMNH Community Book Discussion will be delving into Berry's essays in "The Gift of Good Land" later this year. Until then, where are you discovering Berry these days??

Hot, Flat and Crowded #2: Paying Attention

The UMNH Book Club met last week for our discussion of Hot, Flat, and Crowded. About half of the group had been to Thomas Friedman's SLC lecture, some had listened on the radio, a few had just skimmed the book. The group was comprised primarily of retirees, a handful of professionals in their 50's, three "40-something" women, two of us who have children, and our guest facilitator, Young Jonny Spendlove. (Sorry, Jonny, can't help saying your name as a title! It's so catchy!) I go into details of the make-up of the group because of the way the discussion went, but more about that later....

Jonny started the discussion by telling us about his search to find out why Al Gore had made a quiet visit to Salt Lake City the previous week. After some investigation, Jonny discovered that the former vice-president and the unofficial spokesman for climate change came to Utah to meet privately with the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints (LDS). Evidently, Al Gore initiated the meeting and we can only assume that the discussion centered on climate change. The fact that the meeting happened at all had particular significance for those of us living in Utah, regardless of our religious affiliation. What IF the LDS church leaders came out with a call to reduce human impact on climate change? What if?

Jonny asked the group "Where do you 'hook in' on the need for a green revolution?" For one woman in the group it is clean air quality, having raised three children with severe allergies. Many retirees in the group expressed the great sadness of observing a world in which so much that was good (salmon running in the river, growing up on a family farm, the freedom of growing up outdoors) has been lost. Lost for their grandchildren. Another expressed the frustration of having lived a life with great concern for conservation, only to have the world still careening toward breakdown, it seems. For Jonny, it was the importance of not living, working, raising his future children in a world led by petrodictatorships. As Friedman points out, there are many places to jump into the Green Revolution. So many that perhaps an effort to significantly changed our ways of living on our planet will continue to create some new unlikely partnerships. Like Al Gore and the LDS Church.

Our discussion headed toward: What does the "green revolution" look like in Utah? In Salt Lake City? Our discussion covered everything from the green lawns of LDS Ward Houses being converted to community gardens, to lowering our VMT (vehicle miles traveled), to using Solar Dryers (a.k.a. clothes lines). A lively discussion ensued on public utilities. The retirees in the group seemed to have detailed, elaborate tracking of their public utilities usage and bills. Really detailed.

I admit, at one point I had thoughts of, "Wow, these people are really focused on their utility bills!" But then it dawned on me: They are paying attention. And isn't that the whole point? The prosperous American Lifestyle as defined by Friedman, the one that nine "Americums" of people are living today, thrives on not paying attention. Just using more, buying more, burning through cheap oil, cheap energy, more plastic, more cars, more. Prosperity doesn't require having to pay attention to the small details of saving money.

But these folks, they are paying attention. Whether motivated by a fixed income, a life-long practice of conservation, or a desire to use only what is needed (really needed), these folks are paying attention! When can I get over my 1980's perspective of "more prosperity" and start truly paying attention?

Dry Storeroom No. 1....#1

Not to get too many books going at one time, but I have delved into the pages of the Book Club's November selection, Dry Storeroom No.1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum. This book is so enjoyable that I can't stop talking in the hallways about it!

The book is a memory of THE Natural History Museum (as in London, home of Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle collections, once part of the venerable British Museum) written by senior paleontologist Richard Fortey. Evidently, Fortey, who is a "trilobite man", has written other "page turner" natural history books that we will have to check into for future reading lists. He started at "THE" museum in the 70's and the book is his "own storeroom, a personal archive, designed to explain what goes on behind the polished doors in the Natural History Museum." Let us in!!

What I am initially enjoying is the deep appreciation he expresses for collections and the people who work with them. The value of collections to culture and scientific understanding is something that I have come to know only as an employee of the museum. As Fortney expresses:

"I believe profoundly in the importance of museums: I would go as far as to say that you can judge a society by the quality of its museums. But they do not exist as collections alone. In the long term, the lustre of a museum does not depend only on the artefacts or objects it contains -- the people who work out of sight are what keeps a museum alive by contributing research to make the collections active, or by applying learning and scholarship to reveal more than was know before about the stored object. I want to bring those invisible people into the sunlight....Although I describe my particular institution, I dare say it could be a proxy for any other great museum. Perhaps my investigations will even cast a little light on to the museum that makes up our own biography, our character, ourselves." [The British spelling Fortney's]

As the Utah Museum of Natural History is building a new home for the collection, the curatorial staff, and the community, we hope to draw the community into the many stories behind the objects and the many people who have contributed over 40+ years to make our museum a great museum for our region. I hope you'll join me in reading Fortney's memories and stories, and that both make you curious for your own natural history museum!

This book was referred to us by Peter Kraus of the University of Utah's Marriott Library. I currently have the libraries only copy (!) but understand that it will be released in paperback this summer. I'll let you know when it is available at the Museum Store or your local bookseller!

Hot, Flat and Crowded #1

Over 2,500 community members joined the Museum at Abravanel Hall last week to hear Tom Friedman speak about his call for the urgent need for a "green revolution" and how it can renew innovation and the economic climate of America.

The UMNH Book Club will be discussing Friedman's latest book, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" at our next meeting, Monday, April 6, 2009. Details at www.umnh.utah.edu/bookclub

Have you read some or all of this book?? What thoughts and reactions are you having? I'm not quite halfway through myself, but here are some topics of discussion:

Friedman's basic premise in his talk is that there are "too many Americans" in the world today, meaning too many people in a "flattened playing field" living the American Dream, for the planet to sustain the lifestyle. A new definition of what it means to "live like an American" needs to be defined. Friedman believes that it is up to us, the Americans, to redefine and lead the innovation of that dream. There is nothing wrong with the world having the expectations of safety, health, nutrition, education and economic opportunity that has defined the American Dream. It just needs to be reworked in a way that can be sustainable within our planets resources. So what do YOU think about that??

In the opening chapter of the book, Friedman discusses what he means by crowded: he quotes the United Nations Population Division which issued a report (March 13, 2007) stating that "the world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion over the 43 years, passing the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 bilion in 2050. Forty-three years. I could still be alive by then. My children will be nearing their 50's by then. That seems close to me.

Friedman goes on to quote the United Nations Population Fund's executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, stating that "in 2008, more than half of humanity [will be] living in cities, and 'we are not ready for them.'" The Associated Press reported from London that by 2030 the number of city dwellers is expected to climb to five billion. Obaid said smaller cities will absorb the bulk of urban growth: "We're foucsing on the megacities when the data tell us most of the movement will be coming to smaller cities of 500,000 or more," which often lack the water and energy resources and governing institutios to deal with rising migrant populations. [HFC, pp 28-29]

As a resident of a "smaller city" or of a city that is in the midst of "smaller" and rapidly growing metropolitan area, I have taken notice of that. He's talking about Salt Lake Valley. Growth in population, and shifting of population to secondary cities, is us. Are we ready for that? What does that mean for my children when it comes to education, jobs and a place to live?

Joining the UMNH Community Discussion will be Jonny Spendlove, a Senior at the University of Utah and is an assistant at the Hinckley Institute of Politics. He became interested in Tom Friedman by reading his books "Longitudes and Attitudes" and "The World is Flat", and by reading 23 of Mr. Friedman's columns in one night on nytimes.com. (Who says 20 year olds don't read newspapers anymore!) I welcome Jonny into this coversation. He'll be just over 60 in 43 years and, while HE doesn't think that's young, it certainly looks younger and younger to me! Will Jonny be looking at retirement at 65, another pillar of the American Dream?

Okay, Jonny, I need a little of your enthusiasm here! How are you responding to the ideas put forth in Friedman's book and in his visit to Utah last week?