Of Food and Men

Written on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 10:41 pm | by cocoy

The world’s all hoopla about rioting in the streets because of a food shortage. Is there a Global Food Shortage? hmm, i think, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke“, is appropriate. But what does this all mean for the Filipino?

It seems to me, this is an appropriate time for a full court press. We need a holistic approach to seriously challenge the question of Food Security, which I think by definition must include talking about Agriculture and the Environment in general. Some of these initiatives are already being implemented to various degrees though rather slowly and sometimes rather discretely.

What is this holistic approach?

First, we need information. There are already discrete databases scattered across our country, which needs to find focus. PAGASA for instance is one such important point-man in this ever escalating race for Food Security, environmental cat and mouse game. While it is true that they’ve been provided with new equipment— like a new Supercomputer, this is still not enough. This country needs better climate modeling solutions. PAGASA need not only better equipment but these scientists, we need to take care of. We need to know how much and when rainfall will strike at greater accuracy and precision.

That said, we need an even strong coordination and focus from the realm of the academics. We need our environmental scientists from every university in this country to have access to all these discrete databases and be able to correlate that information to practical use. We need realtime correlation of information from our environment— from weather to soil condition to sea to everything. We need our scientists and PAGASA to be talking and working more so today. And we need this information available publicly, in easily accessible and understandable databases, wikis, etc. This information can be used by businesses, by communities, by farmers, by fishermen, by every Filipino to be able to work with the environment.

Second, our government is already building farm to market roads— which is a time tested and effective solution in delivering goods and services. We need to accelerate all those links. Get every thing in this country all linked up and fast and to keep maintaining those. Economically, building farm to market roads is an effective way to get farmers, fishermen to deliver their produce to market.

Third, Science and Technology is a Force Multiplier, if and only if we use such tools wisely. Our Rice Research Institute is a well respected one. We need to accelerate adaption of those technologies with our farmers— that means greater educational campaign, and coordination with the various stakeholders in that business like cooperatives, as well as a better handle on the micro financing side to provide these small to medium enterprises a shot at success. We need to make our farmers, and cooperatives use this infrastructure that’s being built to their advantage. We need them to be able to do more: plant better crops, harvest better crops, fish, and other produce through these existing technologies.

Fourth, This country seriously needs to rethink The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. We need to do what’s right, no matter whose toes we step at, if it means the greater good. After nearly 20 years of it, has it been successful? Has it changed the dynamics of the game for our Farmers or has it made our Agriculture Sector all that worst? 

Lastly, and I think more importantly, we must adapt new thinking in developing our Cities and Provinces. I think, we must be able to adapt The Wisdom of Designing Cradle to Cradle (video), as espoused by William McDonough. What is cradle-to-cradle and what does it mean for us? It means being able to merge design that’s environmentally, as well as economically viable. We need to rethink our country’s city and town design. We need to adapt Buildings Like Trees, Cities Like Forests.

William McDonough and Micahel Braungart wrote in 2002, “A New Geography of Hope/Landscape, Design and the Renewal of Ecological Intelligence:

In the vernacular tradition, good design springs from what fits. In New England, for example, the traditional saltbox house provided shelter from the extremities of the northern winter by responding to what nature allowed and offered. The house was built with a high south wall with many windows to take full advantage of the light of the sun. A steep roof shed driving rain. The hearth was placed in the center of the house so that the warmth radiating from the heated mass of the chimney would not be stolen by bitter winds buffeting the outer walls. On the north side of the house evergreens were planted to further protect it from harsh winter weather. And on the southwest, a maple tree provided shade in the summer and sugar in the spring. The trees became an essential part of the house and the house a part of the landscape. If human artifice is seen as an artifact of nature, they are one.

Working with the educator David Orr at Oberlin College, we designed a new environmental studies center that is not only sensitive to locale, but is itself like a tree: a building enmeshed in local energy flows that accrues solar energy, purifies water, and provides habitat for native species. The energy of the sun is collected with rooftop solar cells and pours through southwest facing windows into a two-story atrium, lighting the public gathering areas. Wastewater is purified by a constructed marsh-like ecosystem that breaks down and digests organic material and releases clean, safe water. An earthen berm protects the north side of the center from harsh weather, as do the young trees in the newly planted forest grove, which has begun the long process of re-establishing the habitat of the building’s northern Ohio location. And even though the interior feels much like an outdoor classroom-it’s lit by the sun and refreshed with fragrant breezes-the students spend much of their time outside tending the garden and orchard. The building offers students and teachers ongoing participation in natural processes.

Perhaps the most moving lesson imparted by the building is that the human presence in the landscape can be regenerative. Not simply benign or less bad, but positive, vital and good. This is not a rhetorical lesson. At Oberlin, habits of mind grow out of daily interactions with wind, water, soil, and trees; they become the skills and knowledge that inform intelligent design. Those skills can be carried many places, allowing an engagement with the living presence of not just the picturesque or the pastoral but a mosaic of extreme landscapes in need of restoration: landfills, crumbling neighborhoods, industrial sites, old cities rent by superhighways. This is the new geography of hope.

We’ve got to encourage our architects, city planners, the imperative of keeping in tune with the environment, not because we want to be tree huggers but it does provide us with an Economic incentive to do so.

By going through a symbiotic relationship with our environment, we maybe able to solve our future power water problems as well.

Did you see McDonough’s The Wisdom of Designing Cradle to Cradle TedTalk? That City they’re building in China, towards the end of his keynote? Where the farm land exist on top of the City’s towers? That’s the kind of innovative thinking we need to incorporate. It is the kind of Permanent Revolution to innovate perpetually, the kind that creates an environmentally sound and effective design that also makes sense, economically speaking.

Action to deal with Food Security doesn’t require full Government participation, but it does need government to encourage some initiatives through laws and policy. For example: Government needs to either support PAGASA through a lot of technology and to take care of our scientists there, or outsource the agency completely.

Why? Information is the cornerstone of any battle for food security, for sustainable agriculture and environment. We need the kind of information PAGASA can produce. It affects too many businesses. It directly determines when and where Government can deploy rescue teams in the event of a storm or typhoon and maximizes our limited resources to saving lives pro-actively. And the second thing is that Government needs to rethink our position on the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

Beyond PAGASA and the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, a lot of things can be accomplished through private enterprise. In fact, since agriculture has been the worst performing sector of our country, we can say that in that space, opportunities exist. The same can be said about designing new communities, new cities or upgrading old communities, towns, provinces, cities.

This problem with food is a global one. There are many intricate facets as to why this is happening. Though we need to be concerned about them, many of those things are either out of our hands or does not concern us directly. It also doesn’t mean that there isn’t a multi-facet approach that we need to take to solve it. Neither does it mean there isn’t any food crisis in our country because for as long as there is one Filipino who goes hungry every night, for whatever reason, that to me is clearly a matter of outmost importance. Is it the same for you as well?

Tags: , , , , ,
Add to del.icio.us | Digg this! | Yahoo MyWeb | Google Bookmark It! | Stumble It!
About The Author: cocoy is a twenty-something neoliberal, Linux & Mac user, technology geek who enjoys a good cup of Coffee and who believes in New Media. He hangs out on twitter as @cocoy and blogs at Big Mango.

Filed Under Politics

Related Entries:

Comments

10 Responses to “Of Food and Men”

  1. mlq3 on April 28th, 2008 2:07 pm

    cocoy, are you in the philippines? if so, please let me know.

  2. benign0 on April 28th, 2008 3:22 pm

    Cocoy, how about population control?

    Which is the greater “sin”? Contraception and abortion OR living with a sizeable chunk of our society living and eating off mounds of garbage? ;)

  3. cocoy on April 28th, 2008 4:06 pm

    mlq3,

    Looking forward to meeting with you when I get back to town.

  4. cocoy on April 28th, 2008 4:11 pm

    benign0,

    DJB had a post on Overpopulation as Obesity

    And this was my comment, which I think answers your question as well:

    “I think that it would be most prudent to advertise all forms of birth control (excluding abortion) and let people decide on what to use.

    i mean, if you belong to the Catholic Church, as a Catholic you should decide (free will and all that) whether your Church is right on this issue or not.

    There should also be a campaign from all sides because, I think, it is also most logical not to have kids when you can’t afford them in the first place: i.e. nothing to feed them with, can’t give them good education, etc. etc. I think that is the most responsible thing we can do.

    IMHO, i don’t think the Church teaches people to be responsible for their actions, preferring the old line, that birth control is “evil”. I’m not very religious though I am Roman Catholic but I’ve never heard my church talk about being responsible in the context of birth control. I think they focus more on the device, rather than appealing to people’s God given ability to discern right from wrong and having faith in that. I think it is a greater crime against God to have kids if 1 can’t afford to give the kid the best education, the best food, the best opportunity that 1 can give him/her.

    Being responsible for your wife and kid— that’s part of love isn’t it? We may even prevent teenage pregnancies if we teach teens to be more responsible. Somehow, IMHO, the Church often loses sight of that.”

    DJB also had a response to my comment, which I agree with. He said, “This to me is most unfair, most unjust and borders on evildoing, not from the general point of view of democracy and free society, but of Christianity’s deepest tenets.

    It is NOT the message of love that Jesus Christ brought as the Good News, but the prerogatives of absolute worldly power disguising itself as God’s will!”

  5. benign0 on April 28th, 2008 6:48 pm

    IMHO, i don’t think the Church teaches people to be responsible for their actions, preferring the old line, that birth control is “evil”.

    Of course the church does not teach people to be personally responsible.

    That’s because when things don’t go right, it is God’s will, and when things go well, it is by God’s graces. Personal influence over future outcomes does not seem to figure in this dysfunctional approach to living painted by the Catholic Church.

  6. cocoy on April 28th, 2008 7:05 pm

    benign0,

    I think it is a bit of our Spanish heritage that comes out of the local Church in that.

    the late pope, John Paul 2 wrote in his book, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope” about the defense of every life. in it he spoke of instead of being pro-choice, people had to be pro-woman. he talked about women in counseling centers, in houses that took in teenage mothers. He said, “It is necessary to recognize that, in this context, we are witnessing true human tragedies. Often the woman is the victim of male selfishness, in the sense that the man, who has contributed to the conception of the new life, does not want to be burdened with it and leaves the responsibility to the woman, as if it were “her fault” alone. So, precisely when the woman most needs the man’s support, he proves to be a cynical egotist, capable of exploiting her affections or weaknesses, yet stubbornly resistant to any sense of responsibility for his own action.”

    I find it remarkable and hopeful that at the top of the Church, they recognize this truth. I just wish most of the local Church would see it that way as well.

  7. » Explainer 88 Rice-a-rama on April 30th, 2008 2:46 pm

    […] of it. A website I’d like to encourage you to check out is filipinovoices.com. One entry, by a blogger named cocoy, says what we need is to spend -yes, spend- on equipment and scientists for PAGASA, so they can […]

  8. Pumpy on May 1st, 2008 8:26 pm

    Although science and technology are force multipliers, they also result in consumption multipliers. For example, the U.S. is one of the most advanced societies in the world, but it has only five percent of the world’s population and must consume up to 25 percent of the world’s oil.

    When we do come up with technology that we think is cheap, it turns out that it is so because the resources it uses (like potash or petro-based chemicals for hybrid crops) are still cheap. But what happens when prices for many of these resources increase, which is what is happening right now?

    Technology can only go so far; one has to look at consumption (especially consumption multipliers, such as the amount of resources needed for mass production; for example, it takes around a thousand tons of water to produce only one ton of wheat and there are costs for processing and distributing food) and other concerns.

    In the long run, the only solutions will be localization (e.g., growing your own food), sustainable development, mass transport systems and other means driven by renewable energy (like wave generators), and ultimately, less consumption not only of food but also of oil and minerals.

  9. cocoy on May 4th, 2008 6:32 am

    Pumpy,

    that is true. we need to use our heads as well in choosing the right technology. it’s all part of thinking things through and designing what we think should be right. Like, is a hybrid car really helping? or is the cost of building and transporting it much more expensive? Is that just now or would that cost be reduced as more people use hybrids?

    What about biofuel? if we use more energy to create biofuel, is it there for practical to use it as well? how about biofuel?

    Doctors prescribe medicine. Medicine always has a side effect but the doctor when he does prescribe medicine knows that the risk outweighs the benefits.

    and yes, in the long run: “In the long run, the only solutions will be localization (e.g., growing your own food), sustainable development, mass transport systems and other means driven by renewable energy (like wave generators), and ultimately, less consumption not only of food but also of oil and minerals.” But i believe in advancing such goal, you’d need Technology as a force multiplier. Technology being the medicine to get things done.

  10. Make Money Business Opportunities on May 27th, 2008 2:20 pm

    Interesting point - but I am not sure that really explains the situation. With gas over $4 a gallon that changes everything.

Leave a Reply