Carbon, Connections and Culture

Toward an ecologically sound, greenhouse-gas reducing and socially just foodshed for New York City. Without factoring in farming systems that work for the land and for farmers, big cities can’t develop healthy or sustainable regional food supplies.

Text and Photos by Greg Bowman

(Editor’s Note: This piece is adapted from the keynote address given at Reaching the New York City Market: A summit on linking the supply chain between western New York state producers and the New York City market, held April 23 at Alfred State College, Alfred, New York.

To show just how much to earth has shifted, I want to start with a question:

Who said recently: “It is absolutely critical that manufacturers take a preventative approach by identifying and evaluating potential hazards, and by building food safety into the manufacturing process from the very beginning.”

Was it…
A. Dick Durbin, the liberal Congressman
B. Michael Taylor, who imposed meat industry regulations after Jack-in-the-Box e. coli outbreak in the Clinton years
C. Ralph Nadar
D. The Grocery Manufacturers of America (which represents companies such as ConAgra, PepsiCo and Kraft), and the Food Marketing Institute (which represents major retailers such as Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee).

If you knew for sure it was D—the groups which have historically opposed clearer nutritional and sourcing information—you also know that we have arrived at a new day in terms of commercial responsibility for health, safety and environmental behavior.

It’s in the air and on the ground, waiting to put “wind in the sales” of businesses that get out front, and ready to scorn sectors that demand a pass from innovating and bootstrapping their way toward serious sustainability.

What I’ll say today revolves around three concepts: Carbon… connections…. and culture.

Everyone who will speak later today knows more than I do about their fields and about how things work in New York—about what they buy, market and all the constraints that conspire to limit their choices to do things better.

They know in painful detail about how those choices have been diminished by our current economic disruption. These impacts ricochet through the complex web of deals, relationships, contracts, efficiencies, logistics and demands that make up the current “food system” that feeds New York City.

But rather than a food “system”—which implies strategic planning to identify top wants and needs, then designing the best plan to deliver them—we have a vast collection buying and selling decisions that have evolved over time from the best individual deal that thousands of buyers and sellers can come up with.

The fact that it works as well as it does is a testimony to the power of market dynamics. The fact that it doesn’t work better—in all the ways that have been exposed in the past year—is why we are here today.

CARBON—I work in a barn on a 300-acre research farm in southeast Pennsylvania. For 30 years, we’ve been experimenting to improve organic farming practices to produce the primary cash crops of our neighbors—corn, soybeans, small grains and hay.

Without pesticides or synthetic fertilizer, we’ve added amazing amounts of carbon (in the form of soil organic matter) to our organic fields, while producing yields comparable to our side-by-side non-organic, conventional plots managed to landgrant standards.

We add to the soil, and keep in the soil, a long-term average of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of carbon per acre per year, year after year, on the non-chemical fields thanks to the basic organic practices of:

• crop rotations (growing a sequence of different crops in a given field)
• cover crops to build and protect soil on all fields
• and occasional use of compost as a soil amendment. We minimize tillage, but plow occasionally in the rotation, and still add about one-tenth of a percent of SOM each year.

Our big deal is in following the carbon flow from plant to soil in this system, particularly in observing the improvements to soil structure, water-holding capacity and micro-biodiversity over those years.

CONNECTIONS—By sharing the dramatic scientific data on soil improvement and carbon sequestration from organically management practices, we’re showing farmers, policy makers, food buyers and families the tremendous impact they can have in moving toward a more ecologically responsible future.

My work puts me at the edge of emerging agricultural markets, where entrepreneurs, farmers, urban foodies, farmer-based organizations, nutrition specialists, food-justice advocates, enlightened environmentalists and animal welfare groups are united in investing in sustainable farming that works for farmers because it works for everybody.

But all of these collaborators, and all of us, have yet to really see the enormity of what lies immediately ahead, as the worlds of food, water, energy, climate, ecology and economy collide in ways none of us have yet experienced.

	I believe the only road worth traveling from here into the unknown food future of the New Normal is very a different road than any of us have traveled to this point.

CULTURE—More than marketing campaigns or legislation, we need a new culture of food that recognizes the limits of what’s humanly possible to do without killing our soil, water, natural systems and climate stability. I believe the only road worth traveling from here into the unknown food future of the New Normal is very a different road than any of us have traveled to this point.

It’s not just about being more careful or more efficient, which we need to be, and it’s specifically not about taking more from our natural systems. It’s about doing what no civilization has been able to do when its leaders were confronted with clear evidence that its economy and food system were headed unalterably toward terminal unsustainability.

That is, to find the national will to reshape our expectation of what is “enough” —enough materially and energetically— enough in terms of what we extract from our natural systems.

Some cultures lived within their ecological means and have survived to tell about it. Faced with the stark limits of our experiment of the past century to try to dominate nature for food and profit, the wisdom of people who had long ago learned to cooperate with their natural systems is suddenly of much more interest.

Culture tuned to ecology

Consider Hawaii, the way it used to be.

Traditionally, Hawaiians had no private land ownership but followed a complex system of land division based on preserving the integrity and biodiversity of their watershed. The geography is specific: think of islands with mountains in the center, with ridges running down their sides toward the Pacific Ocean all around.

“A-hu-pu-a`a” refers to a community way of caring for a the wedge-shaped section of land running from the mountain crest to shore, following the natural boundaries of a watershed. To imagine this, think of a pizza crust laid over a pile of garlic, whole tomatoes and balls of mozzarella.

Traditional chiefs divided their arable land between their own use and tracts for commoners. There was extensive trade between the upland forest dwellers with timber products, the taro farmers of upper valley and flat areas near the beach, and the watermen who raised fish in rock-walled brackish water ponds where the rivers met the ocean. Some taro farmers have been on the same land for 800 years.

These Hawaiians were aware of their respective micro-eco-niches, and their dependence on the others. The watermen knew which types of mountain trees were essential for the health of fish. They also needed timber for building. This tied the good of the shore-dwellers with the behavior of the mountain’s foresters and farmers.

Stream diversions watered upper and lower taro fields as water moved freely toward the ocean. The diets of each of the specialized producers—from fish to salt to the sweet-potato-like taro—depended on the success of the others, and each needed water, flowing pure and unimpeded, to get what they wanted, but also to deliver what was expected of them .

Amidst a belief system that emphasized the interrelationship of elements and beings, the ahupua`a concept contained those connections within the activities of daily and seasonal life. Through sharing resources and constantly working within the rhythms of their natural environment, Hawaiians enjoyed abundance and a high quality of life, with time for recreation during the harvest season of the year.

Each person, from king to overseer to commoner, knew they had to make their district’s food system work. Their logging, farming and aquaculture management decisions were made individually with their impact on the whole district in mind. Their culture powerfully influenced their resource management. How can we deliberately move toward that kind of ecological consensus?

Grasping toward consensus

We have sound science—getting sounder by the day—that tells us the limits, or carrying capacity, of what we can demand of our soil, our water, our climate and our communities without abusing or degrading our soil, our water and our climate, our down-stream neighbors, and those living “down stream in time” in the near decades ahead.

To have a whisper of a hope to reduce climate-changing emissions in the lifetimes of even the youngest person here, we must reboot the food and farm economy to account for the full cost that our food extracts from people and the planet. This demands the best new science and ancient wisdom we can muster. Doing this reboot acknowledges the grim economic limitations of vastly diminished free capital, and reaches beyond our current horizons of what’s necessary and what’s possible to factor in the 3-Cs of the emerging food economy:

Carbon accountability…Connections that last… Culture of restoration.

	“Tracking” carbon is a good measure of whether we are building up a biological system or degrading it.

That’s carbon on good behavior, where more goes into the ground through photosynthesis—and stays there under forests, rangeland, pasture and biologically rich farmland—than we burn or extract from the ground. In carbon terms, what we extract is non-renewable ancient solar energy captured in coal, oil and natural gas.

“Tracking” carbon is a good measure of whether we are building up a biological system or degrading it. Greenhouse gas emissions, formally labeled last week by the EPA as a threat to public health, are another way of measuring net impact on our climate system. “Follow the carbon” will be the new key to deciding what to fix first.

Connections refer to what binds people to land, to keep its capacity and their livelihoods viable… Introducing an awareness of how connections matter is what binds people to other people with food as the mediating element.

Food with a story

Food with more meaning—that eaters appreciate for its true story—ultimately holds more promise for western New York than better logistics or more production of food with no name.

A new culture has to direct food dollars to where our environmental and ecological future lies.

Connections are what give western New York a much richer set of options than becoming a food-colony in direct competition with China as the city’s lowest-cost food supplier.

A new culture has to direct food dollars to where our environmental and ecological future lies. It’s what is already kick-starting a “moral economy” that shifts current investment and purchasing decisions to the ways that buyers believe will secure better prospects for human freedom and common survival, and the common good.

The food system we need will reflect the attributes of the food it delivers.

Nutrient-poor food, produced cheaply by people who can’t afford to care, comes from depleted, dying soil. Commodity foods are made from commodity grains from commodity farms… Commodity means grown to be interchangeable and anonymous, with quality just high enough to get by.

By contrast, nutrient-dense foods come minimally and carefully processed by people who care a lot, from biochemically complex, living soils. Products with “retained identity” start with people who have a sense of their place as well, and who work with as many others as they need to in a value chain that carries that identify forward to the ultimate eaters.

But how does a sector as wildly unruly as agriculture turn a sharp corner in this time to protect its very basis of production, and bring customers along?

Ecological HACCP

How about something we could call “Ecological HACCP”? Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points is a rigorous process examination to identify all the steps that have to work to keep food safe. A plan includes risk assessment, quantifiable threshold levels, preventative measures, monitoring.

Could farm groups and environmental specialists develop checklists to document things to:

1. minimize—the critical control points of energy consumption, embedded energy in products, toxic impacts, and greenhouse gas emission risks;
2. optimize—the relatively much more significant opportunity for carbon sequestration through cover crops, perennial pastures and management-intensive grazing.

What’s measured in this way becomes a marketable public good, priced in part by the cultural demand for food that preserves the essential source of production: land, water and farmers.

Why not begin to formulate a “New York City Preferred Foodshed” as an extensive and expandable region of rural communities who commit to improve and protect the quality of their soil and water resources? These commitments—critical to the food security of New York City—would be just as important as the community’s willingness to efficiently fill produce houses and trailer trucks heading for the “largest environmentally sophisticated food market in the world.”

How about a “NYC foodshed compact” with significant ecological, sustainability and humane treatment foundations, which would qualify farmer groups and businesses for recognition and premium bidding options?

The more westerly producers of western New York could offset greater foodmiles from the city by making greater advances toward carbon sequestration, converting more crop acres to pasture and doing more with renewable energy.

Responsible, accountable food

The food economy is not—yet—under a mandate to count its carbon as carefully as its new product designers count the calories of their latest brand offering. But the mounting evidence of more drastic climate changes happening already is galvanizing popular support—and political pressure—for accountability. There will be closer examination for higher levels of responsibility in managing soil, water, livestock and the people who do the work of moving food from field to focaccia on plates throughout the boroughs.

	Why couldn’t this group of innovative farmers, regional advocates and veteran food retailers and chefs decide to figure out what “restoration agriculture” looks like across the burgeoning NYC foodshed?

The greatest driver at this moment to link ecological restoration with food closer to home is not the EPA—at least not yet—but the common-enough realization that Peak Oil and greenhouse gas excesses demand more rational, if more initially difficult, directions.

Restoration ecology is the study of renewing a degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystem through active human intervention. It’s an “intentional activity that initiates or accelerates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect to its health, integrity and sustainability.”

Why couldn’t this group of innovative farmers, regional advocates and veteran food retailers and chefs decide to figure out what “restoration agriculture” looks like across the burgeoning NYC foodshed?

You have a state full of farmers, academics, activists, urban farmers, entrepreneurs, creative cooks, willing food foragers and millions of eaters—informed and yet to be informed—about how they could all become part of “an intentional activity that initiates or accelerates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect to its health, integrity and sustainability.”

Carbon accountability… Connections that last…. A food culture of restoration

Within those values lies your farming future, and the food future everywhere, worked out in ways that best fit the place of farmers, eaters and the intermediaries that add value between them.

Greg Bowman is communications manager for the Rodale Institute.