Filthy Roots

New Jobs and Economic Opportunities

Source: The Global Horticulture Initiative

Horticultural crop production creates jobs. On average it provides twice the amount of employment per hectare of production compared to cereal crop production (Ali et al., 2002). The move from cereal production towards high-value horticulture crops is an important contributor to employment opportunities in developing countries (Joshi et al., 2003). The horticultural commodity chain is also longer and more complex than the cereal crop one and as a result job opportunities are more abundant (Temple, 2001).

Women have the most to benefit from the increasing importance of horticulture in rural economies. Women, in general, play a much more significant role in horticultural crop production compared to starchy staple crops. For example in Bangladesh, women account for 48% of all labor in vegetable production compared to only 11-20% for cereal production (Rahman, 2000). Similar findings were made in Latin America and Africa (Weinberger and Lumpkin, 2005). Throughout the developing countries of Africa, women play a dominant role in the production of horticultural crops and cultivate more than half of the total smallholdings.

Besides creating jobs on the farm, the horticultural sector also generates off-farm employment, especially for women. This is the case for export and value-added processing industries, which are important sectors of the economies of Latin America and Africa. In Mexico, for example, 80-90% of people engaged in packing operations are women, and even higher percentages of women workers are involved in fresh produce field operations. Evidence from Africa reflects a similar trend: women comprise 91 % of horticultural employees in Zimbabwe (Dolan and Sorby, 2003). Since horticultural production is very labor-intensive, landless laborers also benefit from the new employment opportunities created by horticultural crop production. These jobs usually provide more income than jobs obtained by the laborers in most other sectors (Weinberger and Genova, 2005; Weinberger and Lumpkin, 2005).

So it comes as no surprise that First Lady Michelle Obama decided to take the lead on this effort in her own home by introducing Americans to the joys of organic gardening. I only wish that she had have done more research, she might have been able to use it as an opportunity to introduce Americans to a very important issue.

Michelle Obama's organic garden goes to waste thanks to Bill and Hillary. Ewww! The White House "organic" garden isn't because the Clintons tainted it with sewer sludge.

White House organic garden isn't organic because of sewer sludge

July 31, 7:16 PM
by David Kuhns
Source: Seattle Green Living Examiner


Poor First Lady Michelle Obama. How is she ever going to get Malia and Sasha to eat their veggies now? Not to mention Prince Charles and Camilla?

First Lady Obama's noble effort to grow an "organic garden" failed after the National Park Service tested the soil in the veggie patch. They found "highly elevated levels of lead" from sewage used as fertilizer.

A bigger question? In the video below, the First Lady told a bunch of children that veggies from that garden would be served "at State Dinners".

But only to heads of state we don't like?

The culprits? Former President and First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton, who evidently used treated sewer sludge as compost. They didn't learn from Twilight, the movie that shows the benefit of worm tea / compost tea.

King County "GroCo" would help ...maybe?

Dozens of public wastewater facilities around the country take sewer "sludge", dry it, compost it, mix it with other ingredients (King County's "GroCo" BioSolids Recovery program mixes in 3 parts sawdust to 1 part sludge, then composts the mixture), and sell it. GroCo claims the compost is safe to use on gardens. Could it help the White House garden?

Evidently the stuff the Clintons used had too much lead, so Michelle's highly-touted "organic garden" will never "attain organic status." The certification process doesn't allow "the use of sludge as a fertilizer substitute."

White House associate chef Sam Kass said the garden has produced lettuce, snap peas, beans, kale, collards and chard. Yummy. "Here, your majesty. Have some collard greens grown on sewage!"

In certain parts of the world, food is hard enough to come by --ironically caused by conventional agricultural methods and other forms of land degradation. By creating systemic disadvantages, through the development of toxic chemicals, contamination of soil through harmful fertilizers and toxic genetically modified seed, or fixing food prices through the reduction of food surplus or limiting the types of food sold to consumers within specific income brackets, it becomes virtually impossible to end the problem of poverty and food injustice that takes place all over the world. And yet, when it happens in our own back yard, it becomes an issue that we simply overlook and sweep under the rug.



Systemically, we are fighting a very huge battle over what kind of foods we allow to sit on our tables and how the impacts of what is in that food impacts the way that we are feeding our minds. Most people are completely unaware of the issue either because they haven't been given the access to this issue, or even worse, because they choose to live in ignorance of the issue because they'd rather not have the seriousness of something so fundamental to their health --neglecting a very vital component of their lives. It doesn't sound smart, or healthy, which is what leads the rest of the world to question not only our lifestyles, but our sense of ethics and values as well.

Are We Choosing to Be Too Unhealthy To Be Intelligent or Too Ignorant to be Healthy?

Do you find it compelling that as the issue of soil contamination in the organic garden at the White House becomes news worthy gossip for the tabloids that the press continues to turn a blind eye to how this same challenge impacts agriculture in the United States, even as the issue hits the president's own back yard? Not to make a mountain out of --well a mountain; but rather than giving up the initiative to teach America's youth about the benefits of growing and eating healthy, organic foods, it seems as though the president and his wife could have used this opportunity to address a very large and looming issue. There are many soil contamination issues; including sewage contamination, pollution caused by synthetic fertilizers [made from petroleum], and soil erosion that can threaten the amount of nutrients that can be taken in by the food that we grow as well as transmit numerous diseases and dangerous mutations through the soil. While a considerable portion of the food that is grown [mostly corn] to feed cattle and make biodiesel oil for manufacturing and transportation, the small amount that makes it into the food supply is suspected by many researchers to be one of the primary sources of many inherited health defects and illnesses transmitted from organism to organism through the contamination of America's soil. According to the site GoVeg.com,

The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth.19 About 20 percent of the world's population, or 1.4 billion people, could be fed with the grain and soybeans fed to U.S. cattle alone (GoVeg).

Unfortunately what many Americans don't realize is that the problem doesn't just exist with the factory farming used in meat production, but also stems from the production of the food we grow as well. Sustainabletable.com reports, what is assumed to be common knowledge, that:

Although compost contains nutrients, its greatest benefit is in improving soil characteristics. You should consider it as a valuable soil amendment rather than a fertilizer, because additional fertilization may be necessary to obtain acceptable growth and yields.

Healthy soils are essential for the production of crops used to feed humans and livestock. In addition to providing a stable base to support plant roots, soils store water and nutrients required for plant growth.

Unfortunately, industrial agriculture practices continue to damage and deplete this valuable natural resource. While intensive plowing and monocrop agriculture systems have caused nutrient depletion and wide-scale soil erosion, over-application of fertilizers and pesticides have contaminated our soils and polluted our waterways.

Fortunately, many farmers are choosing to use sustainable agricultural techniques such as conservation tillage, crop rotation, and organic fertilization in order to protect our valuable soil resources (Sustainable).

Not that everything has to be a political issue, but I do think that this particular challenge could have brought about an important opportunity for the president to raise awareness of the issue and how it affects all Americans civil rights --and then do something about it. There is all of this money now being allocated toward creating jobs and providing education about alternative forms of energy, and yet part of that education includes learning about where the energy is wasted and how to reduce the consumption of it. Conventional Agriculture, one of the most inefficient uses of petroleum and highest producer of carbon emissions, is also the root of one of the biggest issues to affect domestic and global poverty since corporate greed.

Soil contamination comes from many sources and reduces the amount of available land that can be used for producing safe and healthy food. (click the image to enlarge)

Unfortunately, the issue of soil erosion and contamination caused by development, construction, mining and the current conventional system of agriculture seems to be the root of one of the most major threats that affects food security all over the world. It's a bigger threat to the world's food security than terrorism, and yet there's almost no coverage of it. Why is that?

But if we're asking questions like that, why are surplus crops burned by farmers in order to keep agricultural prices competitive? [Click here to read more about the Agricultural Adustment Act.] Why don't most Americans know who Monsanto is? Why does one company get to hold the monopoly on food seeds in order to genetically modify them to work with ONE fertilizer without having to release an environmental impact statement when their food has been scientifically proven to contaminate the soil? [Read about the federal law suit against Monsanto producer of Round Up Here.] Why are we still so dependent upon using toxic petroleum based fertilizers when it is such an inefficient use of oil and food-- and then wonder why gas prices are so high, why food costs so much? Why has the world become so fixated by climate change but won't take the necessary steps to change the agricultural system, which produces the most carbon and methane emissions and keeps the rest of the world poor? Why don't Americans know what peak oil is? Why haven't we changed our agricultural infrastructure to generate more energy efficient ways to produce safer food? Why don't we know what's in our food? Why do we fight for equal access to health care but not for equal access to safe food? And better yet, why don't we have a better understanding of which foods can make us sicker? Why don't we know which foods we can eat that will make us feel well? Why won't we eat healthier so that we won't have to pay as much for healthcare, making it more accessible to those who need it? Why don't we care about the hunger and poverty of others? --and if we do care, why aren't we doing more to deal with these issues so we can at least eliminate the disparities that exist between the impoverished and those who control our food?


Indian Physicist and Eco-Activist Dr. Vandana Shiva began to ask questions like this after a succession of large scale suicides that took place from farmers in India back in 2006 after their crops failed. Because she did take the time to ask those questions and further investigate the issue, Shiva has become one of the leading activists to challenge the Monsanto and various governmental agencies for not protecting the economic interests of local farmers who have been exploited by these agencies and the safety of the people exposed to their contaminated food.

Shiva has

"consistently and eloquently over her career – warned about the increasing dangers of industrial agriculture, genetically modified crops and seeds, and the burgeoning monopoly of the world’s food system by transnational corporations. “The monopolies are killing diversity, and killing farmers,” she said. “Food is not a commodity for speculation and profit. It is our essential source of nutrition that life may continue.

You can read more about Shiva here:

Vandana Shiva: Seeds of Self-Reliance
By Meenakshi Ganguly/New Delhi

Source: Time Magazine

Vandana Shiva will never forget a lesson she learned at the age of 13. Her parents, who like many educated Indians had supported Mohandas Gandhi's struggle against colonialism, insisted on wearing clothing made only of homespun cotton. One day Vandana, having returned from a boarding school to her home in the Himalayan foothill town of Dehra Dun, demanded a nylon dress, the fashion adopted by her rich friends. Her mother, a teacher turned farmer, agreed. "If that is what you want, of course you shall have it," she said. "But remember, your nylon frock will help a rich man buy a bigger car. And the cotton that you wear will buy a poor family at least one meal."

Now 50, Shiva still chuckles when she tells the story. "Of course, I did not get that frock," she says. "I kept thinking of some poor family starving because of my dress." True to her upbringing, Shiva has made it her mission to fight for social justice in many arenas. With a doctorate in physics from the University of Western Ontario, she has been a teacher, an ecologist, an activist, a feminist and an organic farmer.

Her pet issue these days is preservation of agricultural diversity. It is under assault, she says, from global companies that encourage farmers to grow so-called high-yielding crops that result in a dangerous dependence on bioengineered seeds, chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides. As a result, hundreds of traditional crops are disappearing. Too many farmers, she contends, purchase expensive seeds that cannot adapt to local conditions and require more investment in chemicals and irrigation. Hundreds of debt-ridden Indian farmers, Shiva points out, have committed suicide during the past five years because of failed harvests.

But there is hope. Many farmers are returning to traditional methods promoted by Navdanya (Nine Seeds), an organization based in New Delhi that Shiva helped found 11 years ago. Navdanya encourages farmers to produce hardy native varieties of crops that can be grown organically with natural fertilizer and no artificial chemicals. The group works in an area for three years, helping local farmers form their own self-supporting organization and seed bank. Navdanya has spread to some 80 districts in 12 states and has collected more than 2,000 seed varieties. It has set up a marketing network through which farmers sell their organic harvest. Farmer Darwan Singh Negi, with Navdanya's aid, switched to organic methods five years ago and grows six types of rice on his three-acre farm in the state of Uttaranchal. His farm's productivity is similar to that of his neighbors' nonorganic farms, but he spends almost 70% less for fertilizers, pesticides and seeds.

Shiva's many detractors call her naive, pointing out that chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetic engineering rescued India from its eternal cycles of famine and huge debts from importing food. She responds that high-tech agriculture is a short-term solution that will ultimately destroy the land....

Read more here.

Dr. Shiva said we must move from ‘suicide economies’ to ‘living economies’ She told of how in India some villages have established themselves as safe zones – free of agricultural chemicals and genetically modified seeds and food. “If governments won’t ban this stuff and protect the people,” she said, “then the people and the villages themselves will do it…No law is high enough to override the ethical duty we have to the Earth and to future generations. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is our survival imperative (Call).”

Shiva has been responsible for the development of 54 community seed banks to protect the variety and diversity of plant species that enables us to meet a variety of different nutritional needs. She is responsible for the founding of the organization Navdanya, a network of seed growers and organic producers that have trained over 500,000 farmers in seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture over the past two decades, and helped setup the largest direct marketing, fair trade organic network in the country (Navdanya).


Shiva's organization has also

• established a learning center, Bija Vidyapeeth (School of the Seed) on its biodiversity conservation and organic farm in Doon Valley, Uttranchal, north India.

• Navdanya is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering, defended people's knowledge from biopiracy and food rights in the face of globalisation and climate change.

• Shiva has also worked actively upon fighting for the civil rights and economic self sufficiency of women and small farmers in the third world by fighting to increase access to key inputs; such as safe seeds and organic soil that can be used to provide access to healthy and safe food for their communities.

Rural women constitute the majority of the 1.5 billion people who live in absolute poverty. Even though women head about one fifth of rural households -- and in some regions more than one third -- women only own around 1 percent of all land (FAO).

Shiva believes that it is our responsibility to teach women and small farmers in the third world how to sustainably plant the seeds for change through the farming of biodiverse yields to improve the abundance of nutritional options that can be obtained through permaculture and organic gardening.



In a BBC lecture series given in May of 2000, Shiva states:

the myth of creation presents biotechnologists as the creators of Vitamin A, negating nature's diverse gifts and women's knowledge of how to use this diversity to feed their children and families.

The most efficient means of rendering the destruction of nature, local economies and small autonomous producers is by rendering their production invisible.

Women who produce for their families and communities are treated as `non-productive' and `economically' inactive. The devaluation of women's work, and of work done in sustainable economies, is the natural outcome of a system constructed by capitalist patriarchy. This is how globalisation destroys local economies and destruction itself is counted as growth.

And women themselves are devalued. Because many women in the rural and indigenous communities work co-operatively with nature's processes, their work is often contradictory to the dominant market driven `development' and trade policies. And because work that satisfies needs and ensures sustenance is devalued in general, there is less nurturing of life and life support systems.

The devaluation and invisibility of sustainable, regenerative production is most glaring in the area of food. While patriarchal division of labour has assigned women the role of feeding their families and communities, patriarchal economics and patriarchal views of science and technology magically make women's work in providing food disappear. "Feeding the World" becomes disassociated from the women who actually do it and is projected as dependent on global agribusiness and biotechnology corporations.

However, industrialisation and genetic engineering of food and globalisation of trade in agriculture are recipes for creating hunger, not for feeding the poor.

Everywhere, food production is becoming a negative economy, with farmers spending more to buy costly inputs for industrial production than the price they receive for their produce. The consequence is rising debts and epidemics of suicides in both poor and rich countries.

Economic globalisation is leading to a concentration of the seed industry, increased use of pesticides, and, finally, increased debt. Capital-intensive, corporate controlled agriculture is being spread into regions where peasants are poor but, until now, have been self-sufficient in food. In the regions where industrial agriculture has been introduced through globalisation, higher costs are making it virtually impossible for small farmers to survive.

The globalisation of non-sustainable industrial agriculture is literally evaporating the incomes of Third World farmers through a combination of devaluation of currencies, increase in costs of production and a collapse in commodity prices.

Farmers everywhere are being paid a fraction of what they received for the same commodity a decade ago. The Canadian National Farmers Union put it like this in a report to the senate this year:

"While the farmers growing cereal grains - wheat, oats, corn - earn negative returns and are pushed close to bankruptcy, the companies that make breakfast cereals reap huge profits. In 1998, cereal companies Kellogg's, Quaker Oats, and General Mills enjoyed return on equity rates of 56%, 165% and 222% respectively. While a bushel of corn sold for less than $4, a bushel of corn flakes sold for $133 ... Maybe farmers are making too little because others are taking too much."

And a World Bank report has admitted that "behind the polarisation of domestic consumer prices and world prices is the presence of large trading companies in international commodity markets."

While farmers earn less, consumers pay more. In India, food prices have doubled between 1999 and 2000. The consumption of food grains in rural areas has dropped by 12%. Increased economic growth through global commerce is based on pseudo surpluses. More food is being traded while the poor are consuming less. When growth increases poverty, when real production becomes a negative economy, and speculators are defined as "wealth creators", something has gone wrong with the concepts and categories of wealth and wealth creation. Pushing the real production by nature and people into a negative economy implies that production of real goods and services is declining, creating deeper poverty for the millions who are not part of the dot.com route to instant wealth creation.

Women - as I have said - are the primary food producers and food processors in the world. However, their work in production and processing is now becoming invisible (Shiva).

To read more on this article click here.

According to the United Nations primary food agency, The World Food Programme,

It is estimated that:

• Eight out of 10 people engaged in farming in Africa are women and six out of 10 in Asia.
• In one out of three households around the world, women are the sole breadwinners.

Experience also shows that in the hands of women, food is far more likely to reach the mouths of needy children. So when WFP drafts new operations, both for emergencies and development, women are top of its priority list (WFP).

So it may be reasonable to ask that if these leaders and activists believe that it is imperative that impoverished women and single mothers in the third world to understand the importance of their role in food security toward providing access to food within their communities, then why aren't more efforts like Shiva's being used to ensure that these women have access to safe and affordable agricultural inputs?

I raise this issue to help you stop and think for a moment. Seed modification appears to be at the heart of the issue of why food in the Americas and the Third World has been much more difficult to access in recent years. But there are a whole body of other infrastructural issues that also contribute to the issue of food security such as soil contamination, erosion and the availability of arable land.

The first global survey of soil degradation was carried out by the United nations in 1988-91. This survey, known as GLASOD - for Global Survey of Human-Induced Soil Degradation, has shown significant problems in virtually all parts of the world. The yellow line in each panel shows the global cropland area per person. Obviously, this indicator is a function of two factors: human population and cropland area. It has shown a steady decline in the 30 years from 1961 to 1991, amounting to a decrease of between 20 and 30%. The figure illustrates the regional changes that have accompanied this global change. North and central America and the former USSR are regions with significantly higher cropland areas per capita. However, all regions, including these, have shown decreases. South America croplands have declined at a rate that is slower than the global average, while African per capita croplands have declined at a greater than average rate.

What are the causes of this degradation?

The loss of arable land has been caused by a number of factors, many or most of which are tied to human development. The primary causes are deforestation, overexploitation for fuelwood, overgrazing, agricultural activities and industrialization.

To Read more about land degradation click here.

Click picture to enlarge.

Our food security relies upon the availability of clean water, clean soil and healthy nutrient rich land to provide the natural resources to produce this food. Unfortunately, the way that the current agricultural system is designed, we are losing more and more of this precious resource each and every day. It doesn't do any good to teach women and children in the third world how to continue to farm with expensive and inefficient farming techniques that degrade the soil to the point that they can't even grow contaminated food. In future posts we will be talking about the benefits of indoor urban horticulture, such as the development of the hydroponic window farm in which this based as a means to combat this form of bio terrorism and provide an alternative and revolutionary way to provide access to safe and affordable food.

As African Americans, if we are to aid each other in ending the roots of poverty in our own community and help share this gift with the rest of the world --like our brothers and sisters in Haiti, we are going to have to start educating ourselves on these issues so that we can re-establish our connection back to the earth the way our ancestors have.

Ethically speaking, there are certain aspects of our culture that seem lost, not because of slavery or the painful aspects of our history, but because we continue to make choices that pull us away from the parts of our history that precede this dark period of our lives --before we were slaves. In her work, Women Who Know Things, reknowned educator Dr. Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie writes

From their earliest contact with African people, Europeans posited that the African’s closeness to nature meant distance from God. To tame, domesticate, civilize, de-nature,and de-spirit Africans became the mission of American plantation owners and the process to affect control over an African population, which in many southern states outnumbered their European-Americans enslavers. These attempts at religious acculturation also occurred in the North as well. However, early written records attest to African people’s maintenance of a spiritual connection with the land and the power they derived from these associations (Zauditu).

In fact there are many African folklorists and narratives that have preserved remnants of African's spiritual connection to the land which African Americans, through their suffering have abandoned and discarded in their eagerness to be rid of the historic roots of their oppression. But this is not the Europeans fault --and no one can blame those who live in the stigma of their own suffering for not wanting to remember the horrific atrocities that still affect them even today.

But eventually healing comes, and we have not healed this spiritual connection because we have forgotten about it --for generations. When we look at the land of our origins, a land we now see as full of poverty-stricken and famished people, we see what our pain allows us to see and we bury it. Is it because we feel powerless to do anything about it? Is it because we don't see it as part of our responsibility? Or is it because throughout these stages of our survival we were simply ignorant of the gifts that we squander that our buried within our history? --and better yet, when does this ignorance end?

The Seeds of Change

In the sidebar of this blog site, I posted a story about a young artist by the name of Mikuak Rai who once said something that forced me to really take a look at whether or not I was connected to my own gifts and sense of purpose, and also whether I was using the gifts that I was aware of well. The piece of knowledge and inspiration that Rai gave to me was this,

"We're not here to dwell on the the things that other people are out doing in the world. Anybody can believe and let themselves get discouraged by that. We're here not because of what was written in the Book of Revelations. I'm here, because I believe that there's a book written after the Book of Revelation called the Book of Restoration!!!

And right now, while the rest of the world is falling into darkness, is falling into sleep, we are HERE. We are alive and we are getting ready, because the world needs us now more than ever... and we don't have to wait. We are the future. And we can begin, each and every one of us, to begin the process of healing and restoration right NOW!"

It was the single most important thing that I have heard anyone say to me ever in life. And as naive as it sounds, I feel as if I experienced a very spiritual connection to this individual and to the others who appreciated what it was that he had to say in that room. Because it is something that I HAVE to believe in if I am ever to be able to see the world around the way that it is around me and still find the will and the courage to heal. I don't believe in what Rai told me because I am just grasping around looking for something to believe in. I believe in the process of restoration because I understand that it is necessary for me to believe that a new future is possible if I am ever going to be able to move forward --and this belief, whether it is warranted or not has carried me further than I could ever have progressed living in a poverty ridden, crime stricken neighborhood, settling for the minimum because that's what the system felt I was entitled to have.

Each and every day constitutes a new challenge to my sense of ethics, my understanding of how the world works and I will admit that every day it gets a little easier to make that change. But, I also have learned that healing begins with first learning what is necessary for the process of holistic restoration, and the way to cure the societal ills that generate poverty and hunger is first by beginning to learn the safest and most efficient methods to learning how to repair and restore the land.

The Future of Food --Documentary

Globalization & Taxation: Is This REALLY the Right Representation?

International pop icon, Beyonce Knowles promotes the international launch of her new Samsung B phone

These days, people seem to be more interested in the glamorous lifestyles of celebrities and entertainers than ever before. Ask any college student who Beyonce is and they can probably tell you more about her personal life than they can about who their state representative is, or who some of the top corporations are who influence the purchasing decisions that these celebrities market influencing the spending trends within their country. This is becoming an international phenomenon. Entertainment industry professionals, like Beyonce generate a significant portion of their wealth, not just by possessing a specific talent or skill, but also by being able to commercially brand themselves in order to help corporations market and sell their products. By performing and being able to expanding their influence into the international market base, celebrities are able to define new fashion and spending trends thus controlling consumption patterns even in foreign markets. This contributes to the popular and overwhelming growth of globalization which makes it possible from this Houston based singer to transform into an international superstar.

But is that necessarily a good thing?

Are You Buying into the "Global" phenomenon that is keeping the rest of the world poor?

Most people aren’t really educated to realize is how globalization works. And if you ask most people they wouldn't even really be able to tell you what globalization really means.

Main Entry: glob·al·i·za·tion
Pronunciation: \ˌglō-bə-lə-ˈzā-shən\

Function: noun

Date: 1951

: the act or process of globalizing : the state of being globalized; especially : the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets

Typically, when most people see this definition of globalization, their understanding of the concept becomes very limited to align with their political views on either side of the fence. Some people visualize gleaming, international conference rooms; others envision overworked women and children who work themselves until they are sick from working in sweatshops. Some see the expansion of the information age with ipods, swanky SUVs and designer clothes; others see starving African children filling coke bottles with gasoline, environmental degradation and human rights violations of exploitation.

It's no secret that Tiger Woods is a marketer's dream. No company has capitalized on the appeal of the good looking, clean-cut, articulate, scandal-free golf whiz more than Nike--even when it's not a Nike product that's being promoted (DiCarlo).

Nike is an example of a powerful multi-national corporation under criticism for its globalization model which includes outsourcing jobs overseas, using toxic chemicals in its products and numerous other alleged human rights violations. Arguably, Nike also does a fair share of humanitarian work and their plants boost economic development in areas that otherwise would not have access to jobs or be able to provide for economic necessities [ie food, clean water, hospitals, scholarships, etc].

Investorwords. com, an internet glossary on the web defines globalization as the following:

Name for the process of increasing the connectivity and interdependence of the world's markets and businesses. This process has speeded up dramatically in the last two decades as technological advances make it easier for people to travel, communicate, and do business internationally. Two major recent driving forces are advances in telecommunications infrastructure and the rise of the internet. In general, as economies become more connected to other economies, they have increased opportunity but also increased competition.

Thus, as globalization becomes a more and more common feature of world economics, powerful pro-globalization and anti-globalization lobbies have arisen. The pro-globalization lobby argues that globalization brings about much increased opportunities for almost everyone, and increased competition is a good thing since it makes agents of production more efficient. The two most prominent pro-globalization organizations are the World Trade Organization and the World Economic Forum. The World Trade Organization is a pan-governmental entity (which currently has 144 members) that was set up to formulate a set of rules to govern global trade and capital flows through the process of member consensus, and to supervise their member countries to ensure that the rules are being followed. The World Economic Forum, a private foundation, does not have decision-making power but enjoys a great deal of importance since it has been effective as a powerful networking forum for many of the world's business, government and not-profit leaders.

The anti-globalization group argues that certain groups of people who are deprived in terms of resources are not currently capable of functioning within the increased competitive pressure that will be brought about by allowing their economies to be more connected to the rest of the world. Important anti-globalization organizations include environmental groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace; international aid organizations like Oxfam; third world government organizations like the G77; business organizations and trade unions whose competitiveness is threatened by globalization like the U.S. textiles and European farm lobby, as well as the Australian and U.S. trade union movements (Investorwords.com).

In an economic sense, what globalization is actually a large interwoven system that flows in a linear pattern to produce consumers in order to generate funding for governmental budgets, national wealth and revenue for public service. By allowing foreign entities to outsource their companies to foreign investors, companies are able to expand their market shares; sidestep regulatory issues such as staffing and supplies to keep the machine rolling, and keep money flowing back in and through the monetary system. Where the problem lies is that the global monetary system, by being so interdependent upon external resources; such as raw material inputs, labor and mass produced supplies to enable production creates a dependency[and therefore vulnerability] upon other inputs to continue to work. This linkage when it works well provides great periods of economic growth. But if one aspect of that system fails or collapses it can trigger the disintegration and disruption of the entire system and drag it down as if bound by links within a chain. Globally, countries base the way that they perceive each country’s wealth based upon a monetary system of checks and balances represented by the figures in the GDP, or Gross Domestic Product. Unfortunately, because wealth is measured in dollars those who perform labor for these corporations do not realize that just like the raw material inputs [oil, trees, fibers, soil, metals] that grow naturally in their local communities, these workers are also essential to the wealth of these institutions in a much more significant way than their ability to purchase manufactured goods.

Most people have seen clips of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I've been to the Mountaintop" speech in Memphis where he died, but relatively few know that he was there as part of a sustained campaign to support an AFSCME strike of santitation workers demanding a union (Nathan). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lost his life in Memphis, Tenn., where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers in their fight to get the city to recognize their union, AFSCME Local 1733 (AFSCME).

Any disruption to the infrastructure of this system, whether it is a decrease of materials and supplies, regulation limiting the amount of raw materials that can be removed from foreign entities or even a simple labor strike would disrupt the system. Consequently, this would also limit the flow of money allocated through tax dollars to serve public institutions [schools, hospitals, education, community programming, Military Spending]. To minimize the risk of such disruption, government officials and economic analysts use spending incentives [such as the stimulus packages] in order to keep money circulating within the system. Those who spend more are more likely to see the benefits of the tax spending, but because those who are able to make larger purchases [such as homes, stocks, business investments] are often more educated and organized to influence policy decisions, many of the advantages toward participating in this system of economics are allocated toward those who contribute the most. The rest is then trickled down in the form of wages and invoices for supplies so that they can be taxed in order to generate more revenue for the state and federal economies.



Unfortunately our reliance upon the external inputs [ie, materials, workers, consumers] that are needed to keep this system circulating is facing perhaps the biggest crisis the world has ever seen. And the more inputs that are disrupted, through factors such as job loss; demand fluctuations, change in regulations or inaccessibility of the materials needed to maintain the supply; the more difficult it becomes to remedy problems such as poverty, joblessness and the economic collapses that will inevitably occur by having a system so highly dependent upon outside resources.

But some who might be seeing this may be thinking, “Yeah, that’s pretty messed up. But that’s just the way that the world works. No one person is ever going to be able to change the world. Hey, at least it puts food on the table. “

But does it really? Linear Monetary systems are designed to put control of the world’s resources into the hands of those who can afford higher levels of education or can contribute the most through monetary inputs. The banking and lending industry is the primary example of how the financial sector was designed to reward those who can afford to keep money flowing through the monetary system, thus tilting the economic scale – and not in the menial worker’s favor.

This flow chart shows a brief overview of how the design of the current agricultural system impacts the pricing of food as it travels throughout various economic levels of the food chain.

The food chain is a term to describe the various transformations a food commodity goes through from the point at which seed is planted by the farmer to the last stage when it is acquired by the final consumer. This can be a very simple chain, where grain is grown by the farmer, threshed and milled within the farm household and then cooked and eaten by the family. It can also be very complicated, as when wheat is imported from a major grain exporter such as the USA, milled into flour domestically, sold to a commercial bakery company and then distributed through a supermarket chain. In all cases, the nature of the food chain, the number of stages of processing and transportation through which the commodity passes, the level of efficiency and technical sophistication and capital intensity of the processing, and the degree of competition at different stages of the food chain, all are important in determining the availability of the commodity, in physical terms of amount and geographical distribution, and in economic terms of the price level (FAO). To read more click here.

The Bottom Line

The current economic system has its interests staked upon our ability to circulate money rather than focusing upon meeting basic needs. For those without access to monetary resources, this means that as less money flows into the monetary system, as people save and conserve their expenditures, that there is less money to be taxed thus lowering the amount of money the government can allocate for funding. Such a disruption inevitably would also limit the amount of funding allocated toward public services, which the impoverished and uninsured rely upon. This system, which has the capability to impact the economic welfare of anyone integrated within it, would be vulnerable to any failure or collapse that could disrupt this system leaving the needs of those that do not have the monetary capital or resources to negotiate for those inputs left out.

But is taxation really the solution?

Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%July 29, 2009

by Scott A. Hodge

Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the "rich" are not paying their fair share of taxes.

Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.

We are definitely overdue for some honesty in the debate over the progressivity of the nation's tax burden before lawmakers enact any new taxes to pay for expanded health care.

[Click chart to enlarge.]

For more on this topic, a new Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact includes eight charts of just-released IRS data, and an accompanying dataset breaks the numbers down even further. Read the new Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact or view the data (an Excel sheet is available for download at the bottom of the data page).

While it seems fitting to some that the wealthy show more of an ability to pay, it does not sidestep the issue that even with the nation’s top earners footing a significant portion of the bills that we are still sinking into an economic abyss that won’t seem to be remedied with the application of more taxes.

#1 Angelina Jolie

Jolie's fame, evidenced by magazine covers and TV, radio, newspaper and Web stories, outweighed Winfrey's, giving her the edge as "the most powerful celebrity in the world" based on Forbes' formula, Forbes Senior Editor Matthew Miller said (Duke).

#2 Oprah Winfrey

Winfrey, who was at the top for two years straight, grossed $275 million last year, compared with Jolie's $27 million, Miller said. "We try and measure a celebrity's power, and we look at two metrics to do that," Miller said. "We look at money, and we look at fame (Duke)."

#3 Madonna

A world tour, which helped Madonna pull in $110 million, and a bumper crop of tabloid gossip pushed the Material Girl into the third spot, up from her 21st ranking on last year's list (Duke).

#4 Beyoncé Knowles

Beyonce Knowles held steady in fourth, same as last year, with $87 million in income from her multiplatform empire, Miller said. Forbes leveraged the singer-actresses fame by placing her on this week's cover(Duke).

#5 Tiger Woods

A bad knee kept Tiger Woods off the PGA tour over the past year and lowered him to the fifth spot on the Forbes list. The golfer, still the highest-paid athlete in the world, was second last year (Duke).

But just to put things into a little bit of perspective, let’s look at the reason why 80% of the world’s wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. Titans of industry such as Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey have learned to amass their fortunes not by innovating new products, but more significantly by dictating trends and patterns of consumer behavior that keeps money circulating within the system. This can be seen in the

Forbes List of The World's Most Powerful People

1. Barack Obama




Issues >> Economy

Source: The White House
President Obama’s central focus is on stimulating economic recovery and helping America emerge a stronger and more prosperous nation. The current economic crisis is the result of many years of irresponsibility, both in government and in the private sector. As we look toward the future, we must confront the many dimensions of this crisis while laying the foundation for a new era of responsibility and transparency.

Creating Jobs

President Obama’s first priority in confronting the economic crisis is to put Americans back to work. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan signed by the President will spur job creation while making long-term investments in health care, education, energy, and infrastructure. Among other objectives, the recovery plan will increase production of alternative energy, modernize and weatherize buildings and homes, expand broadband technology across the country, and computerize the health care system. The recovery plan will save or create about 3.5 million jobs while investing in priorities that create sustainable economic growth for the future.

2. Hu Jintao



Innovation tops Hu Jintao's economic agenda

By: Report on The Scientific Outlook on Development
Source: 17th CPC National Congress

2007-10-15 10:14:55

Special Report: 17th CPC National Congress
BEIJING, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Hu Jintao underscored the task of enhancing China's capacity of independent innovation and making it an innovative country in a political report to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Monday morning.

"This (innovation) is the core of our national development strategy and a crucial link in enhancing the overall national strength," said Hu while delivering the report on behalf of the 16th CPC Central Committee.

Hu pledged to increase spending on independent innovation and make breakthroughs in key technologies vital to economic and social development, saying China will speed up forming a national innovation system and support basic research, research in frontier technology and technological research for public welfare.

He said the country will step up efforts to establish a market-oriented system for technological innovation, in which enterprises play the leading role, and encourage formation of internationally competitive conglomerates.

3. Vladimir Putin


Putin wants new economic "architecture"

By Andrew E. Kramer
Published: Sunday, June 10, 2007

Source: The New York Times

ST. PETERSBURG — President Vladimir Putin sought to reassure investors and foreign leaders that Russia remained committed to free trade and investment for businesses that work here, in spite of a chill in political relations with the West.

But Putin said Russia would integrate with the world economy on its own terms - and possibly not by embracing the current rules of the global economic order.
Speaking at a business forum here Sunday, Putin called for a new world economic framework based on regional alliances rather than global institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

The new system, he said, would reflect the rising power of emerging market economies like Russia, China, India and Brazil, and the decline of the old heavyweights of the United States, Japan and many European countries.

4. Ben S. Bernanke



Person of the Year 2009
By Michael Grunwald

Source: Time Magazine

Bernanke is the 56-year-old chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the U.S., the most important and least understood force shaping the American — and global — economy. Those green bills featuring dead Presidents are labeled "Federal Reserve Note" for a reason: the Fed controls the money supply. It is an independent government agency that conducts monetary policy, which means it sets short-term interest rates — which means it has immense influence over inflation, unemployment, the strength of the dollar and the strength of your wallet. And ever since global credit markets began imploding, its mild-mannered chairman has dramatically expanded those powers and reinvented the Fed.

Professor Bernanke of Princeton was a leading scholar of the Great Depression. He knew how the passive Fed of the 1930s helped create the calamity — through its stubborn refusal to expand the money supply and its tragic lack of imagination and experimentation. Chairman Bernanke of Washington was determined not to be the Fed chairman who presided over Depression 2.0. So when turbulence in U.S. housing markets metastasized into the worst global financial crisis in more than 75 years, he conjured up trillions of new dollars and blasted them into the economy; engineered massive public rescues of failing private companies; ratcheted down interest rates to zero; lent to mutual funds, hedge funds, foreign banks, investment banks, manufacturers, insurers and other borrowers who had never dreamed of receiving Fed cash; jump-started stalled credit markets in everything from car loans to corporate paper; revolutionized housing finance with a breathtaking shopping spree for mortgage bonds; blew up the Fed's balance sheet to three times its previous size; and generally transformed the staid arena of central banking into a stage for desperate improvisation. He didn't just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy.

To Read more click here

5. Sergey Brin and Larry Page



DECEMBER 27, 2004

THE GREAT INNOVATORS

Larry Page And Sergey Brin: Information At Warp Speed

Source: Business Week

“…Although the Google founders were sure their technology was a quantum leap forward, they had no clue how to turn it into a business. Initially they scorned the notion of accepting ads. But after a competitor began selling ads around search results for sizable profits, Google followed suit. Its superior technology brought in hordes of users, igniting ad sales. Today, Google is a $2 billion advertising juggernaut, with marketers clamoring to nestle their ads alongside its search results.

With success has come plenty of challenges. Google's stock has doubled, to $170, since its August initial public offering. That price reflects tall expectations, particularly with Yahoo and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ) charging ahead in search. Regardless of how Google fares, however, its founders' innovation is clear. We can find out more, and find it more easily, than ever before.”

To read more click here

Out of Forbes Top 5 Most Powerful people in the world [technically top 6], only 1 out of those 5 were considered as such for a product that they innovated – and even they had to revert to the promotion of advertisements in order to amass their wealth.

The Forbes List of Top 5 Billionaires

1. William Gates III – co-founder and CEO of Microsoft Corporation
2. Warren Buffett – Chairman of the Investment Firm Berkshire Hathaway
3. Carlos Slim Helu & Family – Media & Telecom Tycoon
4. Ingvar Kamprad & Family – Founder of Ikea
5. Karl Albrecht- German supermarket tycoon [Aldi]

Those who make it to the top of Forbes lists are often featured because they are investors who not only gained monopolies producing products in their own fields, but expanded their knowledge of business to form investment opportunities in multi-national conglomerates influencing share holder investment behavior in many of the world’s most profitable stock portfolios.

To take advantage of this uneven hand of the free market, the power to influence consumer behavior has been capitalized upon by industry tycoons or strategically manipulated by CEOs of corporations in order to influence investment holdings in the world’s energy sectors, telecommunications, business models, education, utilities and even pharmaceuticals that are made accessible for public safety, security and public health. By providing access to wealth through investment opportunities in corporations that offer corporate shares, corporations [which legally act as individual taxable entities that generate their own revenue] are able to pump large amounts of money into the economy and disperse wages, private funding and other forms of circulation through the monetary system.

Is shopping really a form of economic development? or just another way to buy our way back into economic slavery?

The only catch is that consumers must continue to invest in these corporations and buy the products that are sold to increase the amount of money provided to the government through taxable wealth. The banking system was established with the help of the treasury and the Federal Reserve to monitor and redistribute some of the nation’s wealth. By keeping money circulating throughout the system the lending industry is able to expand access to its taxable market shares. By offering loans and securing funds to lenders and to organizations through insurance, investors can generate wealth and fund other public resources, while providing jobs and therefore taxable wages – which means more consumers – to increase the profits of the corporations they invest in as well as contribute taxes to public services and increase national wealth. This system it also benefits lenders that provide corporations with funding incentives and grants to companies for filing for an IPO [initial public offering] in order to increase the capital for these corporations that could be used in the expansion of jobs and provide economic development in under-served areas -- as they circulate and redistribute the nation’s wealth.

Unfortunately, the way that the system is designed, as we’ve seen recently, any disruption that reduces the ability of the money to circulate within the system reduces the amount of money that goes into public services; money that could be used to provide education and other basic needs like health care. The role of the federal reserve, and Bernanke did a pretty decent job of keeping up with this -- is to identify and redistribute money in times of economic crisis in order to increase consumer spending through stimulus packages and bailouts to industries that supply the most workers [ie GM] or other contributors that influence consumer spending and the nation’s wealth [ie Wall Street]. This occurs so that this pattern can continue to generate wealth that continues to trickle down and pay for essential public services.

Taxation has always been the glue that has held together the monetary loop. But the monetary system has become far too dependent upon the linear system of consumption, and the more complicated these integrated networks become, the more likely that a crisis becomes inevitable. Once the problem that is disrupting the system derives from an essential source, such as the scarcity of supply [from over-extraction] we are left with fewer raw materials. This means that not only do we have less jobs to process these materials, but we also have less money circulating within the system. This results in less money to help those who really need it. And yet currently we are over processing and over consuming more resources than are made available without triggering such an economic collapse. With the growing demand of these resources and increasingly abundant population [currently over 6.7 billion], we have continuously exhausted the limitations of the earth’s natural resources in a manner that is more focused upon circulating revenue than at preventing the factors that hinder the ability to meet basic human needs, to our own unfortunate demise.

This image of today's most popular celebrities does not inspire much hope
for future generations.

As long celebrities and entertainers continue to promote consumerism as a measure of success, they will continue to enable the black middle and working class to spend their money upon useless items instead of making significant investments in the education and their health. This trend of ghetto fabness [purchasing clothes, jewelry, car accessories, cellphones, etc.] is unfortunately the primary instrument that encourages the impoverished and economically unsaavy to continue to rely upon an obsolete system. This makes them vulnerable to mental and economic enslavement and continues to put those who can least afford it last -- and at the mercy of the whims of charities and philanthropists. It would be more socially responsible for not just celebrities, but for educated African Americans to remember -- that People who do not invest in their own futures will never be able to have their needs met, because the system simply isn't designed to help support and sustain them in the long term.

Rather than encourage spending trends that keep people in debt, it is up to our leaders, activists and educators to take a more interactive approach to eradicating the roots of poverty by planting seeds [yes actual seeds] of progress and teaching the under served more sustainable methods of ensuring that their needs are met. With the advances of perma culture, clean alternative energy [NOT nuclear or bio diesel], and relocalization efforts, communities can begin to make the most significant steps to ensuring their needs are met by instituting these infrastructural and agricultural reforms.

Better yet, the advantages of relieving the economic burden that the working poor often pose to the monetary system could free up revenue to improve other areas besides public services. Those who could afford taxes could then focus their spending upon other services such as technological innovation in security, communications and other scientific research -- with money that is currently being used for public aid for food, housing and healthcare that could be provided cheaper and more effectively to meet the needs of the community by educating and training those with lower incomes to produce these things themselves. Jobs would be created. Literacy would be improved. The impoverished could improve their own capacity for resilience and locally regulate themselves if the inputs were produced locally using sustainable means. Instead of being raised by televisions and video games, America's youth could learn skills that would teach them how to become better contributor's to the monetary system, not through blind consumerism, but by learning how to identify and create items for the market that people in their communities or around the world would really need.

This would also allow those who are looking for opportunities for investment to contribute to the monetary system by funding the training of those who show merit in these areas, rather than just based upon test scores as a measure of aptitude, widening opportunities for applicable and engaged learning and the re-expansion of an educated middle class. Those in the middle tax brackets could use their taxes to fund more research and development projects. They could also begin to focus their interests in learning how to revolutionize the industrial infrastructure to better utilize perma-culture techniques [ideal for carbon sequestration; and happens to be low cost and energy efficient], improve communications and tech or to revolutionize the industrial manufacturing using alternative forms of energy [not nuclear or biodiesel]. By making these innovations available, those within the top brackets could continue to influence consumer and international trading patterns of behavior and while everyone may not be ecstatic with the drastic changes, at least we'd be meeting the basic requirements of supporting the needs of those who could not otherwise afford it.

but is that enough?

To read more about why this important see our next post: Learning the Hard Way…

“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone”
Lnapoli

Sam Levenson

Learning the Hard Way: Why Listening is sooo MUCH Better

This video makes me cringe. Why aren't we making a healthier transition and instituting agricultural reforms to pull us out of this recession. How many people are aware that one of the reasons that the United States, this giant land mass we live on, doesn't have enough food to supply the people who live here the food they need is not because we're not donating enough cans, but because we aren't feeding the food that we produce here to people. Development and destructive conventional farming techniques have compacted the soil, filled the soil and water with toxic chemicals and gives priority for the food that we produce to the production of dirty renewable energy or to feed cattle for food.

Worse yet, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Index

The vast majority of energy used in the U.S. food system (around 80 percent) goes to processing, packaging, transporting, storing, and preparing food.

Produce in the U.S. travels, on average, 1300 - 2000 miles from farm to consumer. Since 1970, truck shipping has dramatically increased, replacing more energy efficient transportation by rail and water.

Local food systems can reduce "food miles" and transportation costs, offering significant energy savings. Consumers also benefit from fresher, better-tasting, and more nutritious food, while more food dollars stay within rural communities (ATTRA).

And yet why are President Obama's advisors encouraging him to tell people to continue to purchase and drop off cans of food to local food banks while they ship off our tax dollars overseas to jeopardize the safety of American citizens to protect and negotiate our arms for foreign oil? There is a reason why many environmental activists and progressives are up in arms about his deplorable contribution to the Copenhagen Summit. Is this social and environmental neglect occurring because President Obama has been simply misinformed? Or does our democratic system simply allow too many shortcomings to allow our leaders to make the appropriate decisions without shielding too much controversy from the masses? So what part of the picture are we missing here?



According to the Foreign Affairs Magazine article,Arms and Oil: U.S. Military Strategy and the Persian Gulf , published by the Council on Foreign Relations and reviewed by Andrew J. Pierre back in 1985,

The appropriate role of military force, arms transfers, and diplomacy are carefully and broadly discussed in this excellent Brookings volume. Although focusing on American military strategy, McNaugher would encourage countries such as Jordan, Pakistan and Great Britain to continue their historical involvement in Gulf security (McNaugher).

Alternatively many of President Obama's critics have attributed President Obama's recent decline in approval ratings due to his failing public agenda. They assert that epidemics such as swine flu, or some future geopolitical crisis must be engineered in order to save President Obama's rating of approval. As Paul Watson notes in his website Prison Planet, "Recall that vice-president Joe Biden “promised” and “guaranteed” that there would be an “international crisis” within six months of Obama’s presidency that would cause him to make unpopular decisions. This crisis is now overdue since it’s just over six months since Obama took office (Watson)."

The problem is the energy and economic crisis has been looming even before Obama took office, but for some reason, Americans seem to prefer to turn a blind eye to a very REAL very simple answer to why today they are facing issues such as poverty and joblessness.

Obama's Stimulus Plan: Failing by Its Own Measure

By Stephen Gandel Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2009

Source: Time Magazine

The $787 billion stimulus plan is turning out to be far less stimulating than its architects expected.

Back in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Last month, the jobless rate in the U.S. hit 9.5%, the highest level it has reached since 1983 (Gandel).

To read more click here

There are many conservatives that criticize peak oil theory, no one can deny that even today there is a direct correlation between the number of dollars we spend on oil and the price that we pay for inflation of food. Approximately 1:02 in this video on peak oil, we see how the chemical inputs that we use for food production in the way of fertilizers, food coatings and to fuel farming machinery leaves us vulnerable not just to fluctuations in gas prices but also increase the cost of production for food, which we see translated into the price tags on the shelves. In 2008 I worked in a major chain grocery store hanging price tags and was completely astounded how items such as 40oz bags of rice and a gallon of peanut oil spiked literally overnight $10 in the price.



The sad thing is, as much as we're spending on oil these days, at this point, over $80 per barrel, [1 barrel = 42 US gallons = 158.76 litres ] and as oil becomes more scarce, it's going to cost us even more in military expenditures to ensure that we can purchase our oil from foreign suppliers and keep up with the competitive rates.

Product by Area	12/28/09	12/29/09	12/30/09	12/31/09	01/04/10	01/05/10	View History
Crude Oil
WTI - Cushing, Oklahoma	78.67	78.87	79.35	79.39	81.52	81.74	1986-2010
Brent - Europe	76.59	76.65	77.62	77.91	79.05	79.27	1987-2010
Conventional Gasoline
New York Harbor, Regular	201.79	201.15	204.47	204.85	209.6	211.38	1986-2010
U.S. Gulf Coast, Regular	197.36	196.26	200.12	203.48	208.7	209.38	1986-2010
Los Angeles, Regular	210.29	208.65	210.72	212.35	215.1	211.88	1986-2010

Notes: Weekly, monthly, and annual prices are calculated by EIA from daily data by taking an unweighted average of the daily closing spot prices for a given product over the specified time period. Reuters Ltd. no longer reports gasoline ARA 50 ppm sulfur; it has been replaced with gasoline ARA 10 ppm sulfur. See Definitions, Sources, and Notes link above for more information on this table.

For more info on oil prices you can click here

Fuelling a Food Crisis: The Impact of Peak Oil on Food Security

Syndicated from Post Carbon Institute on Fri, 2007-01-12

By Caroline Lucas, Andy Jones and Colin Hines

DWINDLING oil stocks and EU trade and energy policies threaten food price hikes – and could cause the UK to be vulnerable to food shortages for the first time since the Second World War, according to a new report by Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas.

The report calls on the Government to establish a Royal Commission on Food Security to examine the issue – and for the UK 's Competition Commission to consider its findings in its ongoing investigation of the supermarkets' dominance of the food retailing sector.

From the introduction to the report:

Introduction

• "When the price of oil climbed above $50/barrel in late 2004, public attention began to focus on the adequacy of world oil supplies – and specifically on when production would peak and begin to decline. Analysts are far from a consensus on this issue, but several prominent ones now believe that the oil peak is imminent." 1 US Department of Energy, 2005

Over recent months, there has been much speculation about the causes of higher oil prices, and over the likelihood of whether or not they will continue. Commentary has focused on the geopolitical instability in the Middle East; increasing dependence on Russia; governments in Latin America retaking control of their oil industries; and supply bottle necks such as refining capacity.

The geological constraints on future energy supply, known as peak oil - the point at which oil production stops rising and begins its inevitable long-term decline – have received much less attention, however. Yet while the majority of constraints on access to oil could potentially be overcome through political or economic means, the geological reality of ever-dwindling fossil-fuel supplies is non-negotiable

While it has taken 145 years to consume half of the 2-2.5 trillion barrels of conventional oil supplies generally regarded as the total available, it is likely that, given the huge increases of demand from China and India in particular, the other half will be largely consumed within the next 40 years. Some 98% of global crude oil comes from 45 nations, over half of which may already have peaked in oil
production, including seven of the 11 OPEC nations. Major oil field discoveries fell to zero for the first time in 2003, while the excess capacity held by OPEC nations has dwindled, from an average of 30% to about 1% of global demand today.2 World oil and gas production is declining at an average of 4-6% a year, while demand is growing at 2-3% a year. The implications of this, for every aspect of our lives today, are overwhelming. Some analysis has begun on the impacts on our transport systems, and on how we heat our homes. Very little has so far focused on the implications for our food systems. This report makes the case that, unless we take urgent action, as oil security deteriorates, so too will food security. It is fast becoming the case that decisions made by government departments of energy, on whether to continue promoting fossil fuels or to shift to renewable energy sources, could have a greater effect on long-term food security than any actions taken by departments of agriculture.

The amount of energy is concentrated in even a small amount of oil or gas is extraordinary. A barrel of oil contains the energy-equivalent of almost 25,000 hours of human labour. A single gallon of petrol contains the energy-equivalent of 500 hours of human labour. And across the world, food production systems make use
of this stored energy from fossil fuels on a massive scale.

The industrialisation of farming accelerated dramatically in industrialised countries after World War Two, and began in many poorer countries as a result of the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. These trends transformed food production around the globe, with world grain harvests increasing by 250%. Yet this reliance on fossil fuels - in the form of fertilisers (which accounts

for around a third of agricultural energy consumption), pesticides, and hydrocarbon-fuelled farm machinery and irrigation systems – means that industrialised farming consumes 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture; in the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more. It has been estimated, for example, that 95% of all of our food products require the use of oil.3 Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires 6 barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. (To read more, click here).

Interestingly enough, after the collapse of the Soviet Union back in 1991, The Republic of Cuba found itself in a similar economic crisis when the Soviet distribution of oil was cut off limiting the petroleum based inputs for transportation, energy and agriculture leaving Cuba in an economically destitute, abandoned and forcing ALL Cubans to live off of rations of half a banana [and a cup of rice] per day. Further sanctions through the U.S. embargo, made it even more difficult for the Cubans to secure access to their imported supplies, which caused the country's economic collapse and brought production to a standstill.

Peak oil preview:

North Korea & Cuba

A tale of two countries: How North Korea and Cuba reacted differently to a suddenly diminished oil supply

by Dale Jiajun Wen

Source: Yes Magazine

That peak oil is coming is no longer a question. It’s only a matter of when. The global food system we are familiar with depends crucially on cheap energy and long-distance transportation—food consumed in the United States travels an average of 1,400 miles. Does peak oil mean inevitable starvation? Two countries provide a preview. Their divergent stories, one of famine, one of sufficiency, stand as a warning and a model. North Korea and Cuba experienced the peak-oil scenario prematurely and abruptly due to the collapse of the former Soviet bloc and the intensified trade embargo against Cuba. The quite different outcomes are partly due to luck: the Cuban climate allows people to survive on food rations that would be fatal in North Korea’s harsh winters. But the more fundamental reason is policy. North Korea tried to carry on business as usual as long as possible, while Cuba implemented a proactive policy to move toward sustainable agriculture and self-sufficiency.

The 1990s famine in North Korea is one of the least-understood disasters in recent years. It is generally attributed to the failure of Kim Il Jung’s regime. The argument is simple: if the government controls everything, it must be responsible for crop failure. But this ideological blame game hides a more fundamental problem: the failure of industrial chemical farming. With the coming of peak oil, many other countries may experience similar disasters.

North Korea developed its agriculture on the Green Revolution model, with its dependence on technology, imported machines, petroleum, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. There were signs of soil compaction and degradation, but the industrial farming model provided enough food for the population. Then came the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989. Supplies of oil, farming equipment, fertilizers, and pesticides dropped significantly, and this greatly contributed to the famine that followed. As a November 1998 report from the joint UN Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program observed:

The highly mechanized DPR [North] Korean agriculture faces a serious constraint as about four-fifths of motorized farm machinery and equipment is out of use due to obsolescence and lack of spare parts and fuel. … In fact, because of non-availability of trucks, harvested paddy has been seen left on the fields in piles for long periods.

North Korea failed to change in response to the crisis. Devotion to the status quo precipitated the food shortages that continue to this day. Cuba faced similar problems. In some respects, the challenge was even bigger in Cuba. Before 1989, North Korea was self-sufficient in grain production, while Cuba imported an estimated 57 percent of its food¹, because its agriculture, especially the state farm sector, was geared towards production of sugar for export.

After the Soviet collapse and the tightening of the U.S. embargo, Cuba lost 85 percent of its trade, and its fossil fuel-based agricultural inputs were reduced by more than 50 percent. At the height of the resulting food crisis, the daily ration was one banana and two slices of bread per person in some places. Cuba responded with a national effort to restructure agriculture.

Cuban agriculture now consists of a diverse combination of organic farming, perma-culture, urban gardens, animal power, and biological fertilizing and pest control. On a national level, Cuba now has probably the most ecological and socially sensitive agriculture in the world. In 1999, the Swedish Parliament awardedthe Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” to Cuba for these advances.

Even before the 1990 crisis, primarily in response to the negative effects of intensive chemical use as well as the 1970s energy crisis, Cuban scientists began to develop bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers to substitute for chemical inputs. They designed a two-phase program based on early experiments with biological agents. The first stage developed small-scale, localized production technologies; the second stage was aimed at developing semi-industrial and industrial technologies. This groundwork allowed Cuba to roll out substitutes for agricultural chemicals rapidly in the wake of the 1990 crisis. Since 1991, 280 centers have been established to produce biological agents using techniques and supplies specific to each locality.²

Though some alternative technologies were initially developed solely to replace chemical inputs, they are now part of a more holistic agroecology. Scientists and farmers recognized the imbalances in high-input monoculture, and are transforming the whole system. In contrast to the one-size-fits-all solution of the Green Revolution, agro-ecology tailors farming to local conditions. It designs complex agro-ecosystems that use mutually beneficial crops and locally adapted seeds, take advantage of topography and soil conditions, and maintain rather than deplete the soil (Wen).³

Where the concern lies, rather than address the consumption model that FDR used in the New Deal, why is the Obama administration continuing to adopt Roosevelt's consumption model when it is clearly the pattern of behavior that is facilitating the food and energy crisis on America's shores.

The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis. But the facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies shortened the Depression, or that similar policies will pull our nation out of its current economic downturn.

Corbis: A man selling apples during the Great Depression.

The goal of the New Deal was to get Americans back to work. But the New Deal didn't restore employment. In fact, there was even less work on average during the New Deal than before FDR took office. Total hours worked per adult, including government employees, were 18% below their 1929 level between 1930-32, but were 23% lower on average during the New Deal (1933-39). Private hours worked were even lower after FDR took office, averaging 27% below their 1929 level, compared to 18% lower between in 1930-32.

Even comparing hours worked at the end of 1930s to those at the beginning of FDR's presidency doesn't paint a picture of recovery. Total hours worked per adult in 1939 remained about 21% below their 1929 level, compared to a decline of 27% in 1933. And it wasn't just work that remained scarce during the New Deal. Per capita consumption did not recover at all, remaining 25% below its trend level throughout the New Deal, and per-capita nonresidential investment averaged about 60% below trend. The Great Depression clearly continued long after FDR took office (Cole).

The primary criticism seems to be that President Obama continues to try to carry out the Bush stimulus plan listening to the same economists that have contributed to the economic collapse instead of charting off toward a more secure frontier and rebuilding our economic infrastructure to ensure that America's basic needs are met. We need to redefine how we picture our notions of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," into a framework that will allow us to reach the realization of equity productivity and the ability to provide essential human needs. Among these goals include quality education, good health and technological prosperity, goals which could be achieved by focusing our priorities in more of the right places (Firey).

While Barack Obama’s economics team hammers out its $800 billion fiscal stimulus plan, the commentariat is battling over the effectiveness of what some consider the prototype stimulus package, the New Deal.* The suppressed (and problematic) conclusion to all this punditry seems to be: Because government spending under the New Deal helped/didn’t help to end the Great Depression, the Obama stimulus plan will/won’t help to end the current recession (Firey).

In his article, How the Government Prolonged the Depression, Harold Cole continues to explain,

The main lesson we have learned from the New Deal is that wholesale government intervention can -- and does -- deliver the most unintended of consequences. This was true in the 1930s, when artificially high wages and prices kept us depressed for more than a decade, it was true in the 1970s when price controls were used to combat inflation but just produced shortages. It is true today, when poorly designed regulation produced a banking system that took on too much risk.

President Barack Obama and Congress have a great opportunity to produce reforms that do return Americans to work, and that provide a foundation for sustained long-run economic growth and the opportunity for all Americans to succeed. These reforms should include very specific plans that update banking regulations and address a manufacturing sector in which several large industries -- including autos and steel -- are no longer internationally competitive. Tax reform that broadens rather than narrows the tax base and that increases incentives to work, save and invest is also needed. We must also confront an educational system that fails many of its constituents. A large fiscal stimulus plan that doesn't directly address the specific impediments that our economy faces is unlikely to achieve either the country's short-term or long-term goals(Cole).

So with that said, what exactly SHOULD we be doing? Well, for starters, take a look at this article:

Young people create new life and lush urban garden in former Kibera waste dump

How youth in Kenya's largest slum created an organic farm: An interview with an organic pioneer, Su Kahumbu

by Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com
December 9, 2008

Source: Mongabay.com


Kibera is one of the world's largest slums, containing over a million people and one third of Nairobi's population. With extremely crowded conditions, little sanitation, and an unemployment rate at 50 percent, residents of Kibera face not only abject poverty but also a large number of social ills, including drugs, alcoholism, rape, AIDS, water-borne diseases, and tensions between various Kenyan tribes.

However, the majority of Kibera's residents are just trying to live as well as possible under daunting circumstances. Proving that optimism and entrepreneurship are very much alive there, in July of this year the slum's only organic farm began selling its first harvest of ripe green spinach and kale, while sunflowers unfurl upward from soil that had once been a garbage dump. The idea of the farm came from boys and girls in Kibera's Youth Reform Program. They had the vision and the ambition, but in order to make their dream a reality they needed help.

Su Kahumbu in front (Paula Kahumbu)

Su Kahumbu, a tireless advocate of organic farming in Kenya, was quickly enlisted. Her participation came with one request: it must be an organic farm. Kahumbu is a true pioneer in Kenya. In 2004 her farm was the first in the nation to receive organic certification. Since then her organization, Green Dreams, Ltd. (greendreams.edublogs.org), has started up several successful organic groceries in Nairobi, and Kahumbu campaigns continually for small farmers and the promise of organic farming in Africa.

But how does anyone turn a garbage dump into an organic farm? "It started with the removal of the garbage," Kahumbu told Mongabay.com. "This was done physically and took three weeks! From there we started the seed beds as we prepared the growing beds on the cleared land. The beds were dug up and levelled before adding farmyard manure... Drip irrigation and a water tank were installed just as the seedlings were ready to be transplanted, after which the transplanting was done. Later we added a vermiculture set- up. And all the while the guys were learning how to tend their future and budding crops. Voila!" Vermiculture refers to producing nutrient-rich organic fertilizer by composting with the help of particular species of earthworm.

Kenya's slum of Kibera as taken by Google Earth. Many of the residents of Kibera have migrated here from rural lands, seeking a better life. Just north of the slum is the Royal Nairobi Golf Course.

Kahumbu sees incredible possibilities in Kibera's small organic plot. "I think it is absolutely vital we take this example of success seriously and recognize the implications if we could cut and paste it in our African slums."

Her optimistic spirit, seemingly boundless energy, and past experiences have given Kahumbu a deep belief in the power of small farmers growing natural produce. She sees in such values a remedy for the food crisis: "The solution to the global food crisis is increased production. We have to ask ourselves why we have problems with production. We rely on the poorest of the poor to feed the world. Something is wrong. It's time farmers gained respect and fair prices for their products. We need to invest in farmer education and support so that they opt to stay in the fields and feed the world. It is a vital job (Hance)." To read more of this article, click here.

This is one of a few models for agricultural production and economic revitalization that has proven to be effective and beneficial for teaching the impoverished the skills that they need in order to empower the community AND themselves.

To read more about the Kibera Initiative or what Cuba has done to train its communities to become more effective and locally productive citizens click the following links:

Organic Farm Blossoms in Kenya's Largest Slum: Former criminals nurture a healthy harvest amid wasteland shacks

&
The Agriculture and Ecology in Cuba Educational Video Series
or begin watching the first video below