Happy Jackson Pollock's Birthday

The film may have glorified him, and his contributions to modern art may be debatable-- but it's still his birthday. Enjoy making your own Jackson here (very cool!)

Organic F$$d

Very enjoyable video about buying organic....

Futility and Hope

"We applied the Industrial Revolution model to the green agricultural revolution and we went a little bit too far in that direction, and now we have to back off a bit and respect the fact that the plants and the soil are biological," he said. "They are not engineering problems. They're more complex." Says Matthew Reynolds, a wheat physiologist at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, in Mexican growers plant seeds for food revolution an article by Julie Watson in the Chronicle Herald.

We are eating the fruit of the simplified problem-solving of the green revolution, where the goal was just to grow MORE. Organic matter in soil decreased because the focus was on inputs-- hybridizing wheat genes and fertilizer (not inherently bad things), but the long-term health of the land and the people (basically, sustainability!) was not at the core of the solutions. It needs to be.

Oil prices, market speculation, bigger appetites in China and other industrializing nations all contributed to that price spike. But experts looking ahead see further trouble globally: the lag in growth of per-hectare farm output, water shortages, shifts in agricultural zones and rainfall patterns because of global warming. (Watson)

These challenges are the realities of food production in the world. They are big, complex problems. I am hopeful about using science in an integrated fashion (agroecology) to improve production and emphasizing LOCAL. Programs using technology (like GeenSeeker (below)) or techniques (Farming God's way from Care of Creation) or thoughts (like Permaculture, which is sort of an urban, small scale agriculture school of thought).

A pilot project using the GeenSeeker, a computerized sensor that scans plants’ leaves to determine how much nitrogen they need, to avoid overfertilizing. It may save him $10,000 on fertilizer for his 100 hectares, and researchers hope it eventually will cut nitrogen run-off by as much as 90 per cent. (Watson)

These ideas show that there is room for innovation, and not just despair! And above all I am thankful to God. It is by God's mercy that the earth even produces anything. We certainly don't deserve it-- the earth is cursed because of us, remember! In the shiny goodness of Christmas I forget about the curse. But then I read the newspaper, or listen to the words coming out of my mouth, and remember... above all I need to remember God's gift of Jesus Christ, BY whom and things were created and hold together, and in whom all things (and people who repent and believe on him) will be fully redeemed. That is a great hope for 2009.