Take down a parking lot, put up a paradise

Now (soy)

Before

Arguments from an email exchange.  

Maybe so, Thom, but there are efficiencies in specialization. To overlook this is to overlook the strength of civilization. Will you make your own cabinets, run your own pipes and plumbing? Cut your own trees? Mill your own lumber? Mine your own iron ore? Smelt it into plowshares? Growing enough food to live on is a lot of fricking work! Joyce should chime in here. They have a serious garden down there in West Virginia, and it consumes a lot of hours, but they still both have to work outside jobs.

 

Specialization-including in food production-is what gives us leisure, isn't it? What are you recommending-a future of subsistence farming like they have in, oh say, sub-Saharan Africa? That sounds attractive. No? Well, once you have specialization in food production, (because it's more efficient), then you have specialization in other areas. Sure, everybody should have some tomato plants in their yard, some potatoes, whatever, but I don't think it will replace the economies of scale-and there are simply economies of scale in specialization-of farms.

My thoughts: 

The underlying reality is that current US food production is intensively fossil fuel dependent.   Harvesters, tractors, food processing, food transportation, refrigeration all depend on our supply of fuel.  In the last hundred years, by using this cheap fuel, we have been able to expand food production and allow the population to grow to its current level of 6.8 billion humans. This is what any organism will do, expand their population to the size of its available food supply.  The UN projects population growth to achieve 9 billion by 2050, a mere 40 years from now.  Got food?  

Now, here is the problem.  We both agree that current agri-biz food production is heavily reliant on diesel and other fossil fuels.  Over the next 40 years that supply of cheap fuel will disappear as we are now beginning the slide down the back side of the depletion curve.  Food will become much more expensive,  at least the industrial food that makes Americans so fat and happy.  And what of availability?  Will the trucks continue to roll into all the towns and cities with the diminishing production from the heartland?  One doesn't need to do the thought experiment too long to see the ramifications of  $300 a barrel oil and its impact on industrial food.  

Yes, gardening is hard work, let alone farming.  But if we roll back 150 years, we see that most households maintained a set of domestic skills and knowledge that allowed them to provide a large % of their own needs, a time when "store bought"  was the exception, not the rule.   This is not sub-saharan Africa, but Altadena 1870, Denver 1850, etc.  My contention is that  the Suburban Ortho-promoted lawn culture, should be replaced by a more self reliant, organic, knowledgable ethic of Home as the basis of all food security. That food production should become localized, and the first and fundamental effort is to provide that security from the bottom up, on suburban homesteads.  And keep in mind, this is 2009, we understand the chemistry and physics and systems behavior much better than the folks there in 1850.  It's not a reversion to primitivism, or a collapse into sub-saharan subsistence, but a change to our ideological belief systems to accord more with ecological realities.  

And of course, specialization comes into play!  My associate Wil has his small machine shop in his garage.  I work with wood. I grow soy, my neighbor grows lentils, up the street he grows cabbages.  The horses here provide compost, the landscape guy specializes in drip systems, the local health food store distributes, and other local specializations come to mind:  miller, sawyer, cannery, brewery, chemist, mill wright,   etc... 

This hardly looks like Sub-Saharan Africa, but more like a local self reliant community that consumes its natural bounty within the limits set by nature.  A local community that establishes a nutrient cycle of (food - compost - food), rather than (salmonella laced crap wrapped in plastic - landfill).  The food-compost-nutrient cycle replenishes the soil, and removes the organic toxins currently used to produce food from the eco-system.  Over time, natural systems can cleanse and rejuvenate the soil, river and air systems on which our very life depends as opposed to our current system for food production which depletes the soil, relies on diminishing non-renewables, and creates dead zones in our oceans. 

I am watching this process in my own garden right now, as I take dirt that was buried beneath a concrete driveway for 30 years, and transform it magically into Soil through adding compost, planting soil enriching legumes, and adding worms and more compost every chance I get.  Within a few years, this area that was once just constuction dirt, will be a rich loam capable of providing me with some seriously luscious veggies. The coolest part is that Life shows up, the bugs, the bees, the birds, the bats, all appear over time.  The fact that I get some delicious peas and edemame from it is almost secondary.  

And of course this lifestyle, which I contend will be forced on our grandchildren, has less leisure than now.  If by leisure you mean sitting on a couch watching American Idol, this is not a bad thing.  The leisure time we will have will be more precious, and more deserved.  Those parasites of society that excessive food production has allowed to exist: the stock brokers, derivative traders, bank executives, etc ...  will most likely no longer be a luxury we can afford to feed.    

As a student of history you can surely see that human life has been thus for hundred of thousands of years, and that this current manner of living was and is only made possible by our discovery of oil, and its attendant energy bonus.  As we proceed down the depletion curve, rolling back to previous methods of living and more useful specializations will be either embraced pro-actively, or forced upon us by the geological realities now apparent.  

And the climate wild card is just that, a very wild card.  It may turn out that the only places able to grow food reliably are northen Canada and Siberia. Too bad for me, I can't eat cactus all year.   

Clippety Clop

Yesterday was a whiff, a tiny sniff of a possible future state.  Celebrating our Equinox I was out in the garden watering the peas and soy (my garden for the garden, the veggies come after this batch of soil enhancing legumes is done) when I heard a sound which was normal 100 years ago, but now  is a rarity. The clip clop of horses hooves.  

Coming down the street was a young man walking his horse.  "I just thought I would stop by and let him eat some of (my neighbor) Joy's grass, its good for him and good for her. "   And here, on this suburban corner, outside of one of the worlds megalopoli , was a magnificent creature,  mowing my neighbors lawn.   I asked Tim (the young horse owner)  if his horse liked carrots, and proceeded to go and pull some of my remaining carrot crop to feed to his horse.   

Tim was amazed that they were "home grown".   I can only imagine that he expected me to go and pull a plastic bag out of the refrigerator, with perfectly shaped and topped off carrots,  consumer perfect products of the industrial food chain.   Instead he received some comparativley mishapened carrots with some brown leaves in the tops, and small roots porcupining off the tap root.  His horse, being more sensible than most consumers, was delighted, and proceeded to relish each carrot that was fed him.  

And so, a small collection of possibilities, random intersections of activity, and I felt the surreal nature of a future state interleaved with the modern petroleum based present - community interaction, neighbors interacting, through the vehicles of horse and garden, made more surreal by the cars going by and the sterile Ortho-Lawns along the suburban street.   

Horses??  Gardens??  We don't have to go back to all that, do we??   I hear this reaction to 1860 with laptops quite a bit,  the sneer barely hidden, and the idea immediately discounted out of hand.   But as the consensus grows that global oil production has peaked and that we are now on the back side of the Hubbert curve, the depletion side,  I would ask do you really expect your car to be a viable transportation mechanism when gasoline is $16usd a gallon?   Is using for transportation a vehicle that produces little CO2, whose waste can replenish the soil , and who provides beauty and power, such a silly idea?   When the fuel needed for it is a non-polluting energy store that can be grow, that requires no supertankers,  no mining,  no armies to defend it, and that when processed through the "engine" can be returned to the ecosystem as a benefit?  

Gardens, now that is an easier transformation to grasp.  Although at the moment  "you must be the only one in the neighborhood growing their own vegetables" says Tim,  this will change much sooner than horses showing up on our streets as a normal mode of transport.   My president is putting in a garden ( how cool is that!) which may do more good for us than any policy decision.   As people begin to realize that large percentages of countries production are coming from small household gardens (80% of Russian potatoes comes to mind) then the concept of the suburbs as the organic grow zone around the city may begin to make much more sense to the current Ortho-Lawn types.   As diesel, the foundation of our industrial food chain, becomes increasingly more expensive over the coming decade, the budgetary impact of the household garden will do more than anything to make this a commonplace of future life.    

The impetus for me, as I explained to my neighbor, is to learn how to garden.   To begin NOW, while I have time for all the mistakes and fumbles, to establish the gardening skills and habits, to make this a part of my daily life BEFORE it becomes a necessity.   It takes time to replenish soil, time to discover the micro-environments of your lawn, time to gain the knowledge of the growing things.  Add the storage and preservation aspect of a personal food supply, and there is much to be done in participating in this great transition.  Gardening is the easiest piece of the future  to put into place. 

 

The horses might take a while longer.  

 

  

Our Cellular Song

There are days when I think - wtf am I doing here, really?  I zoom out from my little corner on Google Earth, and realize what a tiny mote this is,  a meaningless parcel on a meaningless corner of Los Angeles County.   Dust in the wind, in the long term we're all dead, the universe is functioning perfectly, sure sure,  BUT I am alive now, right now, and have a vested interest in the near future!   At times like these I will stumble across an essay that puts this in perspective, or at least affirms my efforts here.  Slow change.  Bottom up.   Garden by garden.  

The healing power of the small. 

As the governor announces a water emergency,  it now appears not only prescient, but mandatory that I continue my studies in water management and  low water growing.  Policy being dictated by ecological truth.   The climate models point to drought for the SouthWest, so drought and water conservation will be our struggle here.  Those living along the coast may deal with rising seas, and those up north may deal with flooding, but we all surely will deal with some manifestation of the ongoing climate change event.  The oil depletion scenarios will just add more excitement to the mix over the coming decades.   We must create 1860 with laptops willingly, or we surely will have some more repressive and chaotic society impressed on us by necessity.     

Learn to grow food.  Not because you will realistically be able to provide all of your sustenance, but so that you can connect again to Life, and the natural processes.  This is my experience.  That the simple act of turning soil, planting a seed - even if only in a small container on an apartment balcony- is a step forward to a surviveable future.  It changes my  awareness, pulls me back from the abyss of shrink wrapped poly carbon consumer slavery, and returns me to the deeper fundamentals of Life, to my place in the web of Life, and allows me the freedom and insight to question the current manifestation of our destruction based culture.   It allows the signal of abundant Nature to get through the marketing noise, get through the talking head screaming pundits, get through the dominant culture noise, and see Life and Nature not as a resource base, not as a product, but as the only true foundation on which we all rest.  

Your garden will not be televised. 

My Seeds of Change are in my garden now.  It is heartening to hear from other sources that they also perceive this path as being an appropriate response, a useful step towards a surviveable future.   And that is why I post my little thoughts here, to support and encourage anyone else out there, anyone striving garden by garden to create the future we need. We are not alone, and we are not wasting our time, we are in fact the cellular engines of our much needed culture change.  

Sing your cellular song!!  See you in the garden!  

From Alexis Zeigler - Silent Armageddon 

We have become focused on “alternative” energy production, in spite of the fact that these technologies are not a real solution. The real solutions are actually fairly easy. They simply involve doing what we will be doing in the future -- using resources cooperatively -- a little sooner than we are compelled to do so. Unwinding the throughput economy cannot and will not be achieved by enlightened social policy. The throughput economy can only be changed by a bottom-up movement that seeks fundamental structural change in our society.

Phrases like “culture change” or “conscious culture” seem to evoke the image that we should all play nice -- liberal utopianism. A real understanding of culture leads us to the conclusion that the ecological and economic foundations of a society have a dominating influence over the social structure and belief system over time. A sustainable future does not mean we teach everyone to be tolerant. Though there is no harm in such lessons here and now, to achieve real “culture change” means rebuilding society from the bottom up, building a truly localized and sustainable society. You might imagine that is unlikely, but that is precisely what is going to happen, either by plan or by default. The latter would be much messier, and lead to a society that is neither equitable nor conscious. By getting ahead of the curve, we could arrive at the same point, but in a society that is conscious of its own process of social evolution. That society will not be a liberal utopia. It will be a sustainable society where power is devolved to the community level so people are empowered to defend themselves, and to create the future they want. It will not happen by policy, nor will it ever be announced on the evening news. It will happen as the minority movement of people who want to see it happen grows through the coming waves of change. See you in the street.