Eat Poi

“This is a systemic problem... farming is only marginally profitable.. If the farmers can not make money, they are not going to farm.”
- Jerry Ornellas
Director of Kaua'i County Farm Bureau

My back is shot.  No, it’s not from paddling.  Or from that propeller a few years ago.  Or from sitting at a desk all day.  This is different.  It feels like someone inserted a molten iron bar along the length of my spine and into my glutes.  Lying down is uncomfortable; walking is painful.  While my breakfast of fried taro dipped in poi was good, I’m not sure if it was worth the pain.
  
A few days ago I helped my friend pick kalo for four hours.  If you’ve never worked in a lo’i before, it’s really hard.  Bend over, grab your ankles, and pull upwards for the rest of the day to get an idea.  Along with a small bag of taro and a temporarily crippled back, I limped away with a valuable appreciation for the failures of our food system.  Farming is hard and the global market suppresses the price of real food.  Twelve man hours of pulling taro (I was only there for the final stage), thirteen months of weeding and fertilization, and generations of cultural connectivity netted the farmer I was helping about $500.  

On Kaua’i, we have lost 7,400 acres of tillable land since 2007 accompanied by a 28% decrease in small (under 9 acre) farms.  On top of a steady decline in small farms and tillable land, there are pesticides in our rivers, oceans, and schools.  And, as an island, we are producing less food than we have in 1000 years.  From a global perspective, the failures of industrial farming are even larger: obesity, deforestation, climate change, increasing cost of federal subsidies, and nearly a billion starving people around the planet.   

Kaua’i farmers can not compete with the efficiency of industrial farming because when you purchase a calorie of processed foods, you’re not paying the full cost of that calorie.  The US health epidemic (largely related to processed foods) leads directly to our bloated (pun intended) health care system, yet isn’t calculated into the price of food.  The pollution and contribution to climate change resulting from the 10 calories of fossil fuel that went into producing and transporting a single calorie of food are also not added to the price.  And the wake of environmental destruction from reef die-off on Kaua’i, ocean deadzones in the gulf of Mexico, to desertification in the midwest goes completely unaccounted for.  

Obviously we have a problem.  And GMOs are an easy culprit as they are the epitome of what is wrong with our food.  In the quest for ever increasing efficiency and profit, GMO crops are a crutch for a failing system.  For example, weeds and pests are continually developing resistance, but instead of traditional polycultures and crop rotation, we continue on the dead-end cycle of developing stronger poisons and then engineering plants that can withstand the poison.  Increased control over nature is the market-based response to our environmental problems.  

So, understandably, Kaua’i is now the epi-center of the nation’s anti-GMO movement. However, as much as GMOs represent the failings of industrial agriculture, they are not the cause. Remove genetic modification from the equation and nothing changes.  Seeds can still be patented, hybrid crops still won’t grow true to their parents (discouraging seed saving), family farms won’t be profitable, pesticides will still be applied, corn will still be king, and processed foods will still make us fat.  However, remove industrial farming from genetic engineering and you open up a world of potential good.  

Genetic modification, even as a tool of industrial agriculture, has resulted in a number of concrete environmental benefits. For example: organophosphate (insecticide) use dropped 55% between 1997 and 2007.  In a rapidly changing climate, crops can be engineered to grow with less water and more readily adapted to local climates.  No till farming (increasing carbon sequestration in the soil) is expanding rapidly.  Any crop can theoretically be engineered to fix nitrogen in the soil, thereby one day eliminating one of the most harmful aspects of modern agriculture (nitrogen fertilizer leads to massive ocean dead spots, and is fossil fuel intensive).  And Golden Rice (produces beta carotene and is the only GM food nearing approval that was funded by an entity other than the large seed companies) has the potential to save millions of people through reversing nutrient deficiencies. 

By focusing entirely on criticizing genetic modification, we are missing the opportunity to find real solutions to our most pressing agricultural issues.  The valid arguments for increasing sustainable local food production and minimizing some of the harmful effects of industrial agriculture are overshadowed by heated argument over a breeding technique.  We need to address the market failure that allows industrial agriculture to displace local food production.  

Globalization and industrial farming have resulted in unprecedented efficiency per acre with a fraction of the labor.  With the loss of one farm every half hour, we have a farming population that used to consist of half the population of the US down to less than 1%.  That growth in overall efficiency has allowed for an explosion of productivity in other realms of the economy.  But, it has also come at a huge and unsustainable cost.  

In a perfect regulatory system, we could accurately account for the externalized costs (discussed above) of our food system.  But, we don't have a perfect regulatory system in place (as the legal challenge to 2491 highlights the potential shortfalls of the county's regulatory powers), yet the market failures of industrial food still need to be accounted for.  So, I applaud council member Tim Bynum for introducing bill 2546, as the county of Kaua'i should use property taxes as a tool to reverse the displacement of local agriculture by industrial agriculture.  

In an out-of-context quote from a Paul Krugman editorial in yesterday's NY Times on the politics of climate change, Krugman unknowingly offers up a perfect argument in defense of bill 2546: 

Readers well versed in economics will recognize that I’m talking about what is technically known as the “theory of the second best.” According to this theory, distortions in one market — in this case, the fact that there are large social costs to carbon emissions, but individuals and firms don’t pay a price for emitting carbon — can justify government intervention in other, related markets. Second-best arguments have a dubious reputation in economics, because the right policy is always to eliminate the primary distortion, if you can. But sometimes you can’t, and this is one of those times.

The point being that the imperfect solution of correcting the market failures of industrial agriculture through increasing property taxes on land used primarily for ag research, may likely result in unintended negative impacts elsewhere.  Such as increased pressure to develop ag land and financial burden on other seed crops.  But, it still may be the best option.  While I strongly support the intent of 2546 and the boldness of council member Bynum in introducing it, I hope that our county council uses the two month deferment to analyze and minimize the potentially negative impacts of the bill.  And, for those who feel the negative ramifications of the bill outweigh the positive, what alternatives do you suggest?  As I'm sure that we can all agree that we can not continue on our current path. 

Conserving nutrients, limiting erosion, getting higher yield per acre, and limiting green-house-gas emissions, while feeding a growing planet is one of the greatest problems that humanity has ever faced, and industrial agriculture controlled by a few corporations is not the solution. For Hawai'i, we need to promote local farms (growing real food), preserve healthy farmland with organic agriculture, limit pesticides, and work to increase our ag workforce.  Let's use biotech as part of the solution. Let's support our county in taking bold moves in support of the above goals.  And, most importantly, let's eat local food.  

Of High School and Politics.

"I don't even like science.  It's not even my sixth favorite class."
- Luke Evslin, 2002

When I was a junior in high school two friends and I did a science fair project titled "Dimples, Hydrodynamic Drag, and the Law of Variable Proportions."  We won the Kaua'i High Science Fair, the Kaua'i District Science Fair, and the Team and Engineering divisions at the State Science Fair.  The project was the culmination of two years of experiments, email correspondence with scientists around the world, hours of help from family and friends, and countless afternoons spent with my science teacher.  I was really proud of the work that we did and optimistic about the potential ramifications of our findings.

Yet, when our high school newspaper did a story on us I lied about all of it.  I was embarrassed to admit that I liked school and loved science.  Nobody could know that I read a lot.  Or that I actually studied for tests and read books on SAT prep.  So, when the interviewer for the school paper asked "what motivated you to do this project," instead of proudly linking my desire to learn with my passion for outrigger canoeing, I dismissed the whole thing by saying that I didn't like science.  As a high school student struggling to fit in, that was the only safe answer.

As I look back in profound disappointment at my sixteen-year-old self, it's hard to not be equally disappointed that the anti-intellectualism inherent in the high school pecking order is even more inherent in today's political pecking order.  While we (on the political left) love to prod conservatives on their egregious climate change and evolution denialism, the left can be equally obtuse.  As Scientific American puts it:

On energy issues... progressive liberals tend to be antinuclear because of the waste-disposal problem, anti–fossil fuels because of global warming, antihydroelectric because dams disrupt river ecosystems, and anti–wind power because of avian fatalities. The underlying current is “everything natural is good” and “everything unnatural is bad.”

Whereas conservatives obsess over the purity and sanctity of sex, the left's sacred values seem fixated on the environment, leading to an almost religious fervor over the purity and sanctity of air, water and especially food. Try having a conversation with a liberal progressive about GMOs—genetically modified organisms—in which the words “Monsanto” and “profit” are not dropped like syllogistic bombs.

This blog exists as my own personal frustration release valve for that type of simplified logic. There is a need for healthy skepticism and science definitely can not answer everything.  For example, a few weeks ago I made the argument that we need to recognize the inherent, unquantifiable value of nature.  And, while I've also made the argument that GMO technology isn't the culprit in our failed food system, I do sympathize with the completely non-scientific argument that genetic modification is an assault on that value.  But, recognition of that argument does not mean that we can throw the entire scientific establishment out the window.  As an editorial in the NY Times reported today: "kneejerk opposition to technologies like G.M.O.s or nuclear power provoke kneejerk defenses of those technologies, and you end up with these two sides, and both are avoiding the true subtleties of the issues.”

If you need a reminder of our infatuation with anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-establishment rhetoric, just scroll through Facebook.  We now receive our news completely in pre-packaged sound bites and memes.  Look at the new batch of candidates we have for political office on Kaua'i; some of them wear their disdain for science as a badge of honor.

All science does is explain the world as it is.  It has the dual power of muting irrational fears that are overblown (i.e. vaccines and chem trails) while amplifying rational fears that aren't being taken seriously enough (i.e. climate change).  The job of politicians and policymakers is to take the objective findings of science and use them to create a better world.

Yet, the constant barrage of emotional appeals at the expense of fact and logic end up shifting the entire political spectrum into fantasy land.  Why don't our Kaua'i politicians do more to call out the growing anti-science rhetoric on Kaua'i? They stay quiet for the same reason that every conservative politician has to deny climate change and evolution, and for the same reason that I pretended to hate science in high school.  Politics and high school are the only two arenas where popularity is everything.  And on Kaua'i, the route to political popularity is by appealing to emotion.

Come November, if you vote for a candidate who is openly anti-science, then you are guilty of perpetuating our shift away from reality and discourse. In a world where the average political sound bite is 7 seconds (or 140 characters) and where our addiction to the internet (yes, I'm guilty) means that we self-select our news sources to what fits our ideological agenda, we need to remain vigilant in rejecting anti-science rhetoric.

Choices

“If you hate violence and don’t believe in politics, the only major remedy remaining is education.”
      
-George Orwell


“Finally, the youth of Kaua’i are standing up.”

     - Random guy on the street 



“With Mayor Bernard Carvalho Making such BAD decisions for the Future of OUR home and Kids. WE are Left with NO other choice but to Take his Chair and BRING IT BACK TO THE PEOPLE OF KAUA’I!!”
    
- Dustin Barca
's FB announcement of his mayoral candidacy


If you’ve been reading my blog for the last few months I'm sure you've noticed that I have a pretty simple theme.  And my once-a-month postings are reflections of Kaua’i-centric issues through the lens of that theme.  Three years of blogging boil down to these six sentences:



The status-quo isn’t working for Kaua’i.  The dual crisis of environmental decline in the face of rising inequality necessitates a structural shift in society. We can’t expect the tools of the open market or politics-as-usual to fix Kaua’i’s problems.  Likewise, rhetoric and blame are ineffective drivers of lasting change. Our problems are complex, and the solutions will be equally complex.  The only path forward is to engage in inclusive solutions based dialogue.  



On that note, I’ve been watching with mixed enthusiasm as this year’s election season heats up.  

There is finally a candidate, Dustin Barca, who is the literal embodiment of change.  His entire campaign is formulated around fighting the status-quo and he is engaging with many of the people who are left behind by our current political establishment.  Most importantly, food production and sustainability are his two biggest talking points.   

However, I am also really worried.  In a recent article Barca said that the anti-GMO movement on Kaua’i was inspired by Gandhi and that he’s “on a mission from God."  Yet, Gandhi's most important lesson is Satyagraha, which is an insistence on finding the truth through non-violent methods.  And violence, as defined by Gandhi, includes aggressive rhetoric and any form of oppression. 

At the same time, Barca defines himself as a warrior.  As an MMA fighter, he literally makes a living through violence.  But, most relevant is the underlying rhetoric of violence in the anti-GMO movement on Kaua’i. While there have been threats of physical violence to some of our policy makers, the real violence comes in the personal attacks (such as this website) and the myriad of offensive memes distributed through Facebook (such as this one) from both sides.  

Even the holy grail of the movement, bill 2491, was passed in an atmosphere of extreme aggression. 

Since I don't know Barca personally, and because his campaign website is lacking on details, I browsed through his public Facebook profile to see where he stands on issues other than GMO.  While nobody should be judged based on an FB profile, it is illuminating into who he is. He denies the evidence behind climate change, yet believes the government is manipulating our weather.  He rails against federal fire arm restrictions and repeatedly appeals for the people to "stand up and fight."  He believes in the far right conspiracy theory popularized by Glen Beck that UN Agenda 21 is a secret government takeover aimed at collectivizing private property.  All while repeating the refrain that he's "on a mission from god."

Gandhi famously wrote that “the pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one’s opponent.”  Barca’s candidacy is currently painted as a protest against Mayor Carvalho.  And there are many who will vote for him solely because of that.  But, in order to have a realistic shot at winning, he needs to do more to separate himself from any threats of violence, aggression, and conspiracy theories.  Most importantly, he needs to make this a campaign about finding real solutions to our gravest systemic issues.

How exactly will he fight the status-quo?  From the important issues that he points out on his website: How do we "reverse our 90% food import with 90% food production"  or solve "our reef pollution crisis"?  Without bio-tech, what happens to the land?  To the workers? Since the county doesn't own any ag land, where would the agricultural drug rehab centers go?  In the process of regaining our water rights, how do we restore water to the south fork of the Wailua River while ensuring that Lihu'e continues to have a source of drinking water?  As mayor, what is the administrative route to achieving these noble aims?

As George Orwell stated, we have three agents of social change: politics, violence, and education.  On Kaua’i, we now have a clear choice between two of those three: politics or violence.  

In the same way that I hope that Barca can move beyond the rhetoric of violence that often defined the anti-GMO movement, I hope that Mayor Carvalho sees the inherent anger and disenfranchisement of the Barca campaign as a wake-up call to move beyond back-room politics.  Barca has identified some of the problems, can Carvalho do any better in identifying solutions? 

It’s time for both candidates to leave behind violence, politics, and rhetoric in pursuit of effective solutions.  This election season could be an unprecedented opportunity for dialogue and engagement on Kaua’i’s deepest issues. Or, we can continue with our current path, driving a deeper rift through the heart of our community because of an insistence on blind rhetoric; leaving us no closer to any solutions for our most pressing issues.