yearofplenty

Law of Mother Earth: Bolivia Set to Pass Law Granting Nature Equal Rights to Humans

Bolivia lawmakers are taking an interesting approach toward environmental protections. They are working to pass what they call the "Law of Mother Earth." There are 11 rights that the legislation will formalize into law. The Guardian UK reports:

They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.
Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities"...

The law, which is part of a complete restructuring of the Bolivian legal system following a change of constitution in 2009, has been heavily influenced by a resurgent indigenous Andean spiritual world view which places the environment and the earth deity known as the Pachamama at the centre of all life. Humans are considered equal to all other entities.

The move toward environmental protections arises out of Bolivia's very real experience with climate change:

Bolivia is struggling to cope with rising temperatures, melting glaciers and more extreme weather events including more frequent floods, droughts, frosts and mudslides.
Research by glaciologist Edson Ramirez of San Andres University in the capital city, La Paz, suggests temperatures have been rising steadily for 60 years and started to accelerate in 1979. They are now on course to rise a further 3.5-4C over the next 100 years. This would turn much of Bolivia into a desert.

Most glaciers below 5,000m are expected to disappear completely within 20 years, leaving Bolivia with a much smaller ice cap. Scientists say this will lead to a crisis in farming and water shortages in cities such as La Paz and El Alto.

Simplicity, Stewardship, and the Kingdom of God Web Conversation - April 12

I'll be part of an online video discussion tomorrow April 12 at noon PST, 3pm EST put on by Del Camino Connection, a vibrant partnership between churches in North and South America. I'm especially looking forward to hearing from Claudio Oliver, a Brazilian pastor and friend of this blog. Claudio and I will be be reflecting together on the theology and practice of holistic, kingdom-embracing approaches to church.

Here's the direct link to join the conversation tomorrow. It's helpeful to pre-register at [email protected] although not required.

United States of the Environment Infographic - How Does Your State Distinguish Itself?

Via Mother Nature Network:

Go to MNN to get thefull  run down.

March 26 Earth Hour Event in Spokane Calls Faith Communities to Care About Environment

I'll be at this event on Saturday signing books and enjoying the conversation. Here are the details:

The Faith and Environment Network’s annual Called to Care event will take place on Earth Hour Day, Saturday, March 26, 2011, beginning at 4 pm at the Cathedral of St.John the Evangelist, 127 E. 12th Avenue, on Spokane’s South Hill. Earth Hour is an event initiated by the World Wildlife Fund in 2007 in Sydney, Australiawhen 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for onehour to take a stand against climate change. At Earth Hour 2010 a record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet. It included the Earth Hour event offered in Spokane by the Faith and Environment Network.

This year’s annual event will feature
• a panel of artists and naturalists discussing our observation, awareness and mindfulness of theenvironment,
• a presentation on the Dark-Sky movement which seeks to preserve and protect the nighttimeenvironment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting,
• a time of music, readings, and meditations from various faith traditions, and
• turning off of lights in the Cathedral at 8:30 pm in observation of Earth Hour.

A light supper will be provided. A donation of $15 is suggested for the event, but all are welcomeregardless of donation. For further information please contact Evita Krislock (220-6532) or Thomas Soeldner (607-7115).

"Superbug" Book - Agricultural Use of Antibiotics Helped Create Drug Resistant MRSA

image: Manure Lagoon at a swine CAFO

In conversations about agriculture and health, I think the issues raised in the book, Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn Mckenna, need to be front and center, especially as it relates to CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and the use of antibiotics as a growth enhancer in animals. The book explains:

Food animals get many drugs for many reasons. They get them for disease treatment. They get them for disease prevention....Food animals also get antibiotics for "growth promotion," a metabolic mysterious process that has made possible the entire high-volume, low-margin business of industrial-scale farming....The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that, of those 29.5 million pounds of antimicrobials given to animals every year, only 2 million of them are actually intended to treat disease. The rest, almost 80% of all antibiotics used in the United States every year, are "non-therapeutic."

The process makes human-medicine experts furious. From their point of view, farmers are routinely practicing antibiotic misuse: giving drugs in the absence of disease, and giving them in such small doses that they kill off only vulnerable bacteria and leave the Darwinian battleground clear for the tough ones. Making it worse, many of the animal drugs are identical, or closely chemically related, to drugs used in humans to combat disease.

Mckenna explains that there has been a great debate through the years as to whether or not these agricultural practices are directly leading to drug-resistant bacteria that endanger humans. The ag. advocates have argued for decades that the direct link had not been demonstrated. Mckenna points out that, technically, this was correct for many years. Scientists had a hard time putting every piece of the puzzle together to prove the link because the chain of events spanned decades and a very complex processes of transmission. In 1976, Dr. Stuart Levy of Tufts U. was able to finally prove the link between drugged chickens and transmission of disease to humans handling the chickens. According to Mckenna, this led the EU to ban the use of a particular drug as an animal growth promoter.

The author makes a strong case that CAFOs have contributed to the spread of MRSA, one of the most problematic, multi-drug-resistant bacteria.

By the time MRSA ST398 arose in Dutch pigs in 2004, though, it seemed that the focus of the argument had shifted. The contention was no longer that the practice was safe for the humans who took care of the animals, or for those who ate their milk, meat, or eggs: instead, it was that it was economically impossible for agriculture to stop. In CAFOs, antibiotics were the only way to keep livestock healthy long enough to efficiently put on weight.

Mckenna outlines the problem with CAFOs and the way they contribute to the spread of MRSA:

From a microbiological standpoint, the problem with CAFOs is not just the drugs given to the animals, or the vast number of animals, which increase the chances of a resistant germ evolving, or the miserable crowding that creates a perfect setting for passing resistant bacteria from one animals to another. It is also what those animals leave behind: more than 300 million tons of manure in a year, twice as much as comes from all the humans in the United States....On a small-scale farm, the manure would be sprayed on cropland, but there isn't a lot of cropland near CAFOs. Instead, there are other CAFOs, clustered in tightly defined areas....With nowhere to spray it, the manure is stored on farms in enormous lagoons. Some gut bacteria survive in manure, and so there are bacteria in lagoons. Some of them may be resistant bacteria, carrying resistance genes that are available for other bacteria to acquire. If any antibiotics are being used on the farm, there will be antibiotic resistance in the manure as well, putting additional evolutionary pressure to develop resistance on whatever bacteria are present.

Two words that should have never been joined together in a sentence - manure and lagoon.

This is another example of the deferred costs to the environment and human health built into the current food system. The more I learn about the industrial animal food chain, the more it seems like a complex house of cards, full of potential weaknesses that could collapse the whole system. If you're looking for a way to respond as a consumer, I recommend eating less meat and sourcing the meat, eggs, & milk you do eat from local, small-scale farms. Getting your own chickens is also a great idea. (Book plug: Year of Plenty has a whole section on how to get started raising chickens.) A good rule of thumb - if the farm that produced this meat, milk, eggs has a manure lagoon than it's a good idea to find another source.

Go here to see a map showing the concentration of factory farms in the US.

Notable Books - Shaking Up the Consumption Status Quo

I look forward to getting back to my series reviewing books that share Christian perspectives on God, Green, and consumption. (See list below) There are some other intriguing titles that have been released recently that I look forward to reading in the coming months. 

Green Mama: The Guilt Free Guide to Helping You and Your Kids Save the Planet by Tracey Bianchi

The Power of Half: One Family's Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen

The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul by Dave Bruno

Here is my original list of books in no particular order. Go here to see the full list on Springpad.

1. Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective, Michael Schut, Editor
2. Farming As a Spiritual Discipline, Ragan Sutterfield
3. The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World, Donald B. Kraybill
4. Living More with Less, Doris Janzen Longacre
5. Global Warming and the Risen LORD: Christian Discipleship and Climate Change, Jim Ball
6. Planetwise: Dare to Care for God's World, Dave Bookless
7. Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues [EARTH WISE 2/E], Calvin B. DeWitt
8. Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for Environmental Stewardship, Fred H. Van Dyke
9. MISSIONARY EARTHKEEPING (Modern Mission Era, 1792-1992: An Appraisal), Calvin Dewitt
10. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care (Engaging Culture), Steven Bouma-Prediger
11. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben
12. The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, Norman Wirzba
13. The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, Wendell Berry
14. Food & Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread, Michael Schut, Editor
15. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, Ellen F. Davis
16. Bread for the World, Arthur Simon
17. Natural Saints: How People of Faith are Working to Save God's Earth, Mallory McDuff
18. Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire with God, Not Food [Paperback], Lysa TerKeurst 
19. Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess, Will Samson
20. Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices, Julie Clawson
21. A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, Katharine Hayhoe
22. Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action, Matthew Sleeth M.D.
23. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity, Ronald J. Sider
24. Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet, Jonathan Merritt
25. The Consuming Passion: Christianity & the Consumer Culture, Rodney Clapp, Editor
26. Saving God's Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church's Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship, Tri Robinson
27. Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God's People, Scott C. Sabin
28. The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting toward God, Leslie Leyland Fields, Editor

 

Ag Community Paranoia in Florida Leads to New Law that Would Criminalize Farm Photos

There is a proposed law working its way through the Florida legislature, that would make it illegal to photograph or film farms without the permission of the farmer. The proposed law, that would take effect in July, reads:

A person who enters onto a farm or other property where legitimate agriculture operations are being conducted without the written consent of the owner, or an authorized representative of the owner, commits a felony of the first degree...

A person who photographs, video records, or otherwise produces images or pictorial records, digital or otherwise, at or of a farm or other property where legitimate agriculture operations are being conducted without the written consent of the owner, or an authorized representative of the owner, commits a felony of the first degree...

This law seeks to curtail the activities of undercover videogarphers posing as farm workers, documenting the horrific treatment of animals as shown in the above Humane Society video. While media law experts have pointed out that such a law is unconstitutional, some local farmers in Florida defend the law as reported in the Florida Tribune:

Wilton Simpson, a farmer who lives in Norman's district, said the bill is needed to protect the property rights of farmers and the "intellectual property" involving farm operations.
Simpson, president of Simpson Farms near Dade City, said the law would prevent people from posing as farmworkers so that they can secretly film agricultural operations.

In a surprising twist to the story, the proposed law has raised the most concern among legitimate photogaphers and stock photo enthusiasts, or "croparazzi," as the New York Times has dubbed them. I count myself as an avid amateur croparazzi, so I share in those concerns, and more generally see this as a big step in the wrong direction for the American farm community.

From what I have seen, there is a persecution complex that has taken hold in some segments of American agriculture that is not serving it well. I hear farmers say they are under attack by extremists and people who are ignorant about real farm practices. I hear passionate resentments expressed by ag leaders that non-farmers, like Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, have unfairly painted American agriculture in a negative light. So on the one hand U.S. consumers are dismissed as ignorant, but then when consumers show interest in the actual practices of U.S. farms, like the use of gestation crates for pigs, the farm community comes up with a law like the one in Florida, that essentially says, "Our farm practices are none of your business." 

If I could sit down with the Florida Farm Bureau I would explain that U.S. consumers are actually very interested in the practices of the farms that bring food to their tables. The local food movement, concerns about the environment, and yes, movies like Food Inc., are rapidly changing the consumer landscape. And this movement is only just beginning to hit the mainstream. The presenting issue is not that consumers are ignorant, the problem is that they are actually very interested, and in some cases they don't like what they are finding. What the Florida Farm Bureau should really be afraid of is not guerilla reporters taking undercover video, but consumers passing up your products at the grocery store because of unacceptable farming practices. Trying to cover-up unacceptable practices is a losing proposition in today's information age.

Instead of reacting defensively, giving consumers and those interested in food production practices a metaphorical middle finger and a threat of 30 years of jail, why not clean up your act and open your doors to let people in. And if there is nothing to clean up, then all the better. Show consumers that the Humane Society video shown above is inaccurate and unfair. Create ways to bring people onto the farms to see what's going on. Follow the lead of the #agchat folks on Twitter who are working hard to get out the real stories of farms and farmers. 

The proposed bill has been so widely panned that the Florida Farm Bureau has stepped in to do damage control. They are supposedly working on revising the legislation to address concerns about roadside or aerial photography, and to ease the potential 30 year jail sentence currently attached to the bill. Unfortunately, they are defending the basic premise of the law, even though no one has cited a single instance of anyone doing malicious undercover filming at Florida farms. 

After the jump you can see some of my favorite "croparazzi" shots from the Inland Northwest.

Did Seattle and Portland Get Their Foodie Inspiration from Eastern Washington?

At least that's what Jeffrey Sanders claims in a recent Op-Ed at the Seattle Times. 

The roots of the contemporary food movement in the Northwest run far deeper than Seattle's hastily tilled parking-strip gardens. The movement is more geographically dispersed and firmly established than most of us realize. Most surprising, despite its coastal image, its birthplace is not Seattle or Portland. This region's food movement pioneers originated in ... Eastern Washington.

He goes on to explain that the 1974 World's Fair in Spokane started a conversation that sparked the proliferation of P-Patch community gardens in Seattle, and the formation of Northwest Tilth, and Oregon Tilth, two pioneering organizations in organic agriculture and whole-earth ecology. Most significantly, Sanders points out, these conversations east of the mountains planted the seeds that eventually led to the Organic Agriculture degree program at Washington State University.

Sanders concludes:

...if we can look beyond the Interstate 5 corridor for a sense of bioregional identity, the contemporary food movement still has the potential to connect east and west, city and country, and hopefully in a way that is more equitable and, one can hope, a little less precious.

There is irony in the fact that the modern food movement tends to be culturally centered in trendy, urban neighborhoods, when it's actually farmers and universities in rural areas that are pioneering sustainable practices in agriculture. Given the urban-centrism of the conversation, it too easily reflects some of the well-worn prejudices against country folks that led to derogatory labels like "redneck." (Until I read Wendell Berry's commentary on this and other labels like it, I never made the connection that these terms originated as ways to socially alienate farmers, especially in the south. Someone has a red neck because they are out in the fields working all day.)

These prejudices play out in more sophisticated ways in today's debates, where crunchy urban centers are painted as the centers of virtue when it comes to sustinability, and rural farmers are painted with a broad brush as Round-Up loving, earth-raping, titans of agriculture. Neither caricature reflects the reality on the ground. I have yet to meet a farmer who doesn't care for the land and the food it produces and our big cities have at least as many vices as they do virtues when it comes to food consumption.

As someone who lives on the east side of the mountains, and writes about food and culture, I share Sanders' sentiments.  There is a need for a more dynamic east-west interchange along I-90 that is at least as vital as the Seattle-Portland alliance that runs north-south along I-5. As he points out, this connection has been a key to past innovations in the Pacific Northwest food landscape, and holds potential to do the same in the future.

h/t Bike to Work Barb

Books on Faith and Green - Book 3 "Farming As a Spiritual Discipline" by Ragan Sutterfield

Ragan Sutterfield's collection of essays, Farming as a Spiritual Discipline, is a call for churches to start gardens and grow food. He introduces the essays by saying:

My hope is that Christians will come to see one of their tasks as staking out claims for God's Kingdom by redeeming land from the margins and using that land to create gardens that offer not only good food but also community development and hope.

True to his comments in the book about the need for patient preparation of soil, he aims with this small book, to prepare the topsoil of the church with amendments of biblical reflection, kingdom theology, and agrarian sensibilities.

He starts out with the assumption that before engaging the practice of farming we must first grapple with our understanding of creation, which is ultimately a question about how we see ourselves in the order of creation. He says:

Farming is essentially the practice of cultivating creation, and how we see farming depends entirely on how we see creation.

Sutterfield grounds his understanding of the human place in creation in a perichoretic, or social understanding of the trinity, with God inviting us into the "eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," and into the task of widening that divine embrace of love. The author lifts up sustainable farming as a generative practice that anchors us in the humus of created order, and ultimately in the triune embrace of the creator God. 

He makes a keen observation about our typical response to the wreckage of rapid industrialization and the burgeoning green movement. He says:

So far, the answer seem to be mostly, keep doing what you are doing, only do it "greener."

Again here, he points to farming as a path to not just tweaking what we're already doing, but shaping an alternative path. He says:

Humility and frugality are both practices born of accepting our creaturely limits. Farming, perhaps better than any other practice, brings us up against the realities of the creaturely life and forces us to live within the limits of our power, knowledge and resources.

The two main essays are followed by a sermon given to Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Sutterfield argues that the church should "seek a foothold for Eden," as a way of looking ahead to the ultimate fulfillment of what God is doing in the world. He says that the best place to start is with places on the margins, on abandoned patches of earth that need resurrecting.

It's getting quite interesting reading all these 28 books in a condensed period of time. I'm learning that perspectives on environmentalism and faith are shaped significantly by the places where people are standing in the world. Scott Saban sees the movement from the missions field among the poor, Tri Robinson sees it from his role as an evangelical pastor and leader in the church, Jonathan Merritt, author of Green Like God, sees through the lens of being a Southern Baptist, and Ragan Sutterfield's perspectives are shaped primarily through his experience as a farmer. All four advocate for the church to embrace the care of creation.

Sutterfield offers a small critique of some of these other approaches. It wasn't a direct critique that he targets at others, but one that I can see in the middle of all of this reading. He says that there are two heresies founded on the idea that we, as humans, are not part of the created order. One of these heresies has been roundly rejected in all of my reading so far, which is a rejection of an extreme environmentalism that sees human impact on the earth in a wholly negative light, as if the creation would be better off without people. That's a bit of a straw man, but I understand what he is saying. The other heresy, he says, envisions "creation entirely in terms of human use and value...," which includes those that warn of global warming because of it's negative impact on humans. 

Tri Robinson lists as one of his foundational assumptions, that the earth exists for human use. Saban's main observation is that caring for the environment is a way to care for people, especially poor people. I have often spoken of care of creation in the context of loving our neighbors as ourselves. Sutterfield's point is that there is something in the story of caring for creation which runs deeper than human use and valuation. I think he's arguing against a modern, reductionist view of the earth, but I'd like to hear more about what he means by this. 

Farming as a Spiritual Discipline is a small book that packs a big punch. It's more like a fresh layer of compost than a flashy quick-release packet of NPK fertilizer. Sort of unassuming at first glance, it is packed full of health and a great contribution to the debates about faith and environment. Personally, it has re-sparked my imagination around my work with the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden and Millwood Farmers' Market and helped me see how those fit into God's unfolding kingdom.

28 Books in 28 Days - Day 1 "Tending to Eden" by Scott Sabin

First up on my list of 28 notable books that offer a Christian perspective on the Environment, Food, and Simple Living is Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God's People by Scott Sabin. Scott is the Executive Director of Plant With Purpose, a San Diego based Christian mission organization. This book is important in the way it makes the compelling case for a holistic approach to Christian mission that includes reforestation and sustainable agricultural practices as expressions of the Kingdom of God.

The book tells the story of how Plant With Purpose started in 1984 out of desire to help the poor in the Dominican Republic, and the organization quickly realized that simply giving food was not enough. They looked upstream and saw that "the people were without food because deforestation made the land too poor to farm. The people themselves had caused much of the deforestation."

He notes that the rural poor make up 80% of the 840 million chronically hungry people around the world. He also points out that the plight of the rural poor leads them to be the largest cause of deforestation in the world. Large scale agriculture (15-20%), logging (10-15%), and cattle ranching (20-25%) are not nearly as destructive as the rural poor who account for 35-45% of deforestation around the world. The book offers a compelling account of the desperate cycles of poverty that lead people to cut down trees, even when they know it will be catastrophic in the long-run. Sabin disrupts simplistic notions of helping the poor, even pointing out that the ubiquitous donations of free clothing and grains, undercut local markets and reinforce patterns of poverty. He offers a wonderful reminder that the best way to help people in need is to empower them to help themselves.

Alongside the story of the organization is Sabin's personal conversion story, not only to acknowledging the complex nature of poverty, but also to an appreciation for the complex nature of God's work of redemption in the world. He says:

Like many evangelicals I was taught to substitute my own name into John 3:16, "For God so loved Scott that he gave his only begotten Son..." While that tells an important truth about God's love, it is less than the whole truth. I was substituting my name for the word kosmos. Kosmos means all that God created; the universe.

In the end, he calls the American church to get over lingering suspicions about science and political agendas, and "Get into the game." He says there is plenty of common ground to be found between environmentalists and the church, and there is much the church has to offer the environmental movement. Tending to Eden helped me understand the challenge of helping the world's poor, and in doing so, it helped me see more clearly the connections between care for the environment and the Kingdom of God. I highly recommend it.

Sustainable Traditions has an interview with Scott and Sustainablog has a review. Scott was kind enough to write an endorsement for Year of Plenty, which includes a chapter about our family's experience in a Thai village that is sponsored by Plant With Purpose. Go here to watch a video about their work in Thailand.