Local Food Production another review

National Geographic image of Earth circa 2210

When I reviewed "A Crude Awakening," CTD suggested I watch three other films:

Fuel - watched that, enjoyed it.

I.O.U.S.A. - havent watched it yet.

Collapse - I think I watched it today.

There are two "Collapse" movies on Netflix.

The first one I watched was a National Geographic film that was part history lesson, part current events tour, and part apocalyptic sci fi.

The conceit was that scientists circa 2210 would have no idea how "we" lived and why our great cities collapsed. Pretty fun, actually, as a dramatic device. Except how did these clueless future scientists manage to have 2010-era equipment (Ray-Bans and scuba gear, for crying out loud)?

The show talked about how dwindling water, food, energy, and trust destroyed past civilizations (the Anazasi, the Romans, and the Mayans).

What happens when your water runs out

The second "Collapse" film was 90 minutes of listening to Michael Ruppert talk. Michael Ruppert is a Cassandra - one who [accurately] foretells the future, but who is largely ignored.

It isnt fun to watch Ruppert talk. Hes mostly angry and bitter, and the future vision he paints is dark and painful. But I did garner a few gems:

Ruppert said, "Local Food production is perhaps the most fundamental key to human survival in the collapse of industrialized civilization. [57:00]" He goes on to talk about what happened when two communist dependencies lost access to oil when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The first state was North Korea. Rigid, hierarchical, and cursed with a harsh climate, the people starved. I remember hearing about how people were trying to survive eating grass.

The second state was Cuba. Castro immediately promoted a return to local food production - every square inch that could be exploited for food production was converted to making food. It didnt hurt that Cuba is a tropical country. Anyway, folks in Cuba now eat better than ever.

I also liked Rupperts suggestion that "Community will save us."

At the end of the day, denial, anger, bargaining, and depression wont help as we face a challenging future. Acceptance of lifes reality, with belief-inspired action will allow us to find the way out.

And when we have discovered the way out, we can learn from the parable of the hundredth monkey.

Ruppert tells of the experiments detonating nuclear bombs on the Bikini Atoll in 1946. And yes, the two-piece swimsuit was introduced around that time.

In the 1950s scientists introduces thousands of monkeys to the island, to study the effects of any lingering radiation. Turned out most things were back to normal. But the coconut husks were still slightly radioactive. If the monkeys continued as they had been going, they would all eventually succumb to radiation poisoning. No one wanted to deal with thousands of dead monkey corpses.

Unable or unwilling to train all the monkeys to wash the coconuts in fresh water to remove the radiation, researchers trained 10 of the monkeys to wash their coconuts. Slowly the ten nut washers converted others to their odd practices. 12 nut washers, 20 nut washers, 50 nut washers.

Then the 100th monkey became a nut washer and overnight the other 9,900 started washing their coconuts.

One assumes the monkeys survived, but I cant find any mention of the state of Bikini Atoll monkeys in our times. At least I didnt find mention of mass extinction of the nut-washing primates.
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So, we already knew aquaponics is a great system for producing food in warm, barren deserts, not to mention how awesome it can be in warm, moist climates.

But if we can get "100 monkeys" to demonstrate a robust aquaponics system that works year-round in cold climates, life starts to get sweet, indeed.

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Review of Fat Head

The "Fat Head" trailer

Since weve been on this kick, watching movies about the modern impact on diet, my daughter asked if Id seen "Fat Head," Tom Naughtons 2008 sardonic examination of the claim fast food is evil.

I had seen "Super Size Me" a few years ago, a 2004 documentary showing Morgan Spurlocks 30 day experiment with eating only McDonalds food. Spurlock gained a lot of weight and his cholesterol shot through the roof:


The "Super Size Me" trailer

If youre inclined to watch these movies, you should watch "Super Size Me" first. "Super Size Me" conveys a compelling message: fast food phenomenon isnt healthy. I really liked the experiment where they examine how long it takes fast food to decay - particularly the days, weeks and months where the french fries didnt appear to decay at all.

Spurlock presumes the ideal diet is vegetarian and organic. He consumed 5000+ calories a day of non-vegan food to illustrate the difference. As conveyed in "Super Size Me," Spurlock inferred the fattening part of the fast food diet was the sugar and fat and meat. That plus being so available and cheap and alluring.

In "Fat Head," Tom Naughton sets out to show that a reasonable person eating a fast food diet for a month can be just fine, thank you very much. Naughtons ideal diet is one moderate in calories (~2000 per day) and low in carbohydrates (<100 g per day). So Naughton necessarily avoided the sugary sodas and starchy parts of the McDonalds repetoire. Plus he walked 6 days a week (5 miles per day).

Naughton ends his experiment having lost 12 pounds and improving his cholesterol levels.

Throughout "Fat Head," Naughton mocks Spurlock. Its pretty amusing. Naughton also hits a theme that resonates with the warnings in "Food, Inc." and "The Future of Food:" the business behind corn and soybeans has been twisting science and law and policy to fundamentally change what we eat, and it hasnt been a good thing.

Naughton isnt preaching organics, however. Hes just pointing out that a low-carb diet is healthy and its entirely possible even while eating fast food.

I think both documentaries are worth watching. But Naughtons work reminded me of Woody Allens "Sleeper," where a man put in cryo-suspension in 1973 is revived 200 years later.

"...this morning for breakfast... [the Sleeper] requested something called wheat germ, organic honey, and tigers milk."

[Doctor laughs] "Oh, yes. Those were the charmed substances... that some years ago were felt to contain life-preserving properties."

"You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or hot fudge?

[Doctor again] "Those were thought to be unhealthy, precisely the opposite of what we know now to be true..."

I should call "Fat Head" thought-provoking, because it was. But I was giggling too much to feel as though Id been educated. If you like such things, enjoy.

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Review of Food Inc the movie

From The Official Food, Inc. Movie Website

So my daughter goes to school and tells her teacher about The Future of Food. The teacher tells my daughter she has to watch the movie Food, Inc.

There isnt a free version of Food, Inc., on the internet, but you can watch it on Netflix.

They discuss a variety of issues that have been exacerbated by the industrialization of food:

• Nasty food-borne diseases. Kevin is the poster child for this, a boy who died from contaminated food. Legislation to prevent future occurrences of this tragedy has been batting around for years, now. But the film illustrates a now where the majority of food is processed in a handful of plants. The FDA has been stripped of the power to shut down such plants, presumably because to do so would have massive repercussions.
  
  
• Obesity. One in three individuals is obese. When we talk minorities and poor folks, it grows to one in two. The subsidized foods are cheap and easy, and have been engineered to maximize appeal. So it is cheaper and easier to eat sugary, fattening foods than to eat vegetables. Nuts!
  
  
• Illegal immigration. The highly mechanized, significantly subsidized US grain supply has put many farmers in other nations out of business, particularly once the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) prevented Mexico and Canada from retaining protective tariffs. Food industries, e.g., slaughterhouses, recruit across the border and bring in illegal workers.
  
  
• Indentured servitude for farmers. Since there are so few markets for food, now, those markets can demand conditions. Like making farmers buy the latest equipment ($250,000 per chicken shed, for example). Upgrades (at profit to the industry) become mandatory as a condition of keeping the contract with the buyer. Per the film, a poultry farmer with two chicken sheds would have a debt of $500,000 for the sheds along, and only net $18,000 per year out of which that debt must be paid.

Interests of the food industry are protected by the US government. The movie presents a nice montage of executives who have worked for key food companies (e.g., Monsanto) and for the highest levels of government, under both parties.

But despite the crushing dominance of this mechanized food system, the film offers hope. It shows how customer demand for organics is causing Walmart to start carrying organics. And the film ends with a hopeful note, showing how we can "vote," at least three times a day, to make a difference.

The movie went to wrap before the most recent food crisis, arguably a major contributor to civil unrest in Egypt and other countries (though Twitter and Facebook have no doubt contributed).

With this same civil unrest causing increased risk to petroleum resources, it will be interesting to see what happens in the US to the price of gas and a food industry that is so completely dependent upon petroleum to fertilize, harvest, transport, and process food.

I suggest this movie as a holistic explanation of the 2010+ US food market. Much becomes clear after seeing this.

My daughters teacher will be using Fridays class time to show Food, Inc., to her health students. I project several of those students will commit to an all organic diet, if not become full-out vegans, as a result of Fridays showing.

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DIY Aquaponics Review

Murray Hallams Latest Aquaponics DVD

My birthday was this month, and I hinted and suggested and hinted some more about what I really wanted - Murray Hallams latest DVD, discussing how to make your own CHOP-2 system. The DVD plays in a regular DVD player, which is cool. And it also includes an extra feature, "Aquaponics: The First 12 Months!"

As soon as we got the DVD, I sat down to watch it. There are all kinds of tidbits, like how to actually dispatch ones fish when its time to cook them, and how to avoid dead zones in your grow beds.

Even though I wont be using IBC containers, I learned a lot from watching Murray and his team set up that system. I love to see the little innovations from film to film, and appreciate Murrays putting all that information out in such an accessible format - not just the content, but his delivery of the content.

Tonight I created an emergency mini-growbed for my backyard aquaponics system out of a 2x3 concrete mixing trough. I plumbed it with a small submersible pump from the local pet store (160 gph) and PVC bits from the local hardware store. It was cool to have a chance to incorporate the lessons Id learned from Murrays video. And I also incorporated a feature I saw in Sylvia Bernsteins bell siphon kit, a sliced media guard:

The AquaponicSource Bell Siphon w/ Media Guard

I also incorporated an idea that occurred to me after trying to plant seedlings in gravel. I have 3/4" gravel in the bottom of the grow bed, but I cover the top 2-3 inches in hydroton, aka expanded clay beads. Im hoping this will give me all the benefits of easy planting while retaining the cost benefits of gravel, not to mention the stability gravel gives tall plants that sometimes fall over in hydroton.

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