A lot happened today, even more so than usual. So much so that I don’t think I could talk in detail about everything that happened. Today we went to a brief Memorial Day service, read a chapter in Food Politics, gardened, and watched two separate movies, Symphony of  the Soil and Ocean Frontiers.

Memorial Day involved a short ceremony with the three gunshots and a reading of every veteran buried in Radcliffe cemetery. The people performing the ceremony were American Legion members and it was unfortunately clear that they were considerably older men than most of the people observing the ceremony, which constituted of all ages. Everyone seemed to be quiet during the ceremony and paid their respects with silence, but almost as soon as if ended people began chatting and went on with their day as it was. Although I found that aspect a bit odd, I did notice how this also gave the community a chance to gather and to speak easily with our professor, meeting with up to at least 4 friends himself.

The chapter we read for today was called the Politics of Obesity. Similar to the movie Fed Up, it looked at some of the things that have caused he obesity epidemic and which theories have merit. Firstly I noticed, corn syrup is not a cause. It works essentially the same in our bodies as sugar: it’s just a different sugar. Secondly the book quotes a scientific study saying the biggest contributors are processed meat, sugary drinks (Kool aid, all fruit juices, and soda), and potatoes (fries and chips mostly). Lastly a big issue is that nobody cooks or even eats at home anymore. Most people are looking for a quick meal since both parents were working, or a meal on the go so that they can just drive through on the way to work. These fast meals are not as nutritious and are highly processed to make you buy more, and that’s done by adding sweeteners, sodium, and/or fat. It’s not that they’re evil, it’s that this is business and these things make it taste better; if it tasted like garbage, you’d never buy it. Within this issue is how available fast food is. If you have a McDonald’s on every corner and only one supermarket within a mile you’re going to be going to Mcdonalds primarily (not to mention the excessive ads, especially those aimed at kids, which aren’t regulated like in other countries).

Movie number one was Symphony of the Soil, and focused heavily on the benefits of organic agriculture. More than just organic was the point that you had to work with the land to benefit the soil, growing the organic material while using it for food through natural processes. The richest soils are those with a continual birth and death of plant material to cause continual buildup of more soil (prairies are number 1, forests being number 2). We also learned about legumes and other trees that work with bacteria to absorb nitrogen (needed for growth) from the air and nutrients from the soil. It spoke about the benefits of biodynamic farming, which appeared to me to be almost a subset of organic which focused on natural cycles and minimal inputs (instead of organic pesticides and fertilizers). Farmers would compost or have animals produce manure, use leguminous cover crops, work with crop-animal rotations, inter plant (two-plus species in one row), etc to cause soil to improve even while producing food. Surprisingly they found that during drought these farms could out produce conventional one, and this is because these methods considerably improved water retention. I’d definitely recommend the movie for someone interested in these kinds of things, but would also recommend getting a video about the conventional farmers view. This also didn’t seem to be a primarily scientific movie, but more of an opinionated one (although with influential, intelligent, and PhD speakers) with great stories and animation. A great watch, but something to be taken a little cautiously and with the knowledge that there is another side that they don’t show fully that also needs to be addressed. I personally hope to use the practices that they talk about in the movie on my own property, but I also feel there needs to be more research and more definitive research about these benefits to guide large scale change.

Lastly we had the movie Ocean Frontiers along with Denny Friest, who is a neighbor to the Neubauer and Fiscus (Dalona) families. Denny was actually in the movie as a major farmer in the area and someone on the Board of the Iowa Soybean Association. The movie looked at the California coast, Massachusetts coast, Gulf Coast, Florida Keys, and Iowa farm systems and strategies in conservation. Oregon fishermen banded with scientists and researchers to protect their coral fishery and limit fishing voluntarily, even returning the catch of many pregnant fish. In the Keys, after an area was protected from commercial and recreational uses, there was an outcry from the groups that believed the conservation practice would harm their businesses.  But all of the stakeholders (fishermen, tourist industry, conservationists, etc. anyone with a stake in the corals future) met together and decided to portion out different areas of the coral for different activities so that everyone benefited. In the Port of Boston, whale populations were at risk from the sound and physical threat of large ships delivering goods to Boston Harbor. To balance the needs of the whales and the shipping industry, researchers developed a route for ships with fewer whales and a buoy system that listens for whales and warns on-comers to slow down to avoid being too loud or risk hitting one. Iowa farmers are doing research into no-till, lower fertilizer use, and buffer land practices on top of developing wetlands or prairie lands to improve the water leaving their area to head towards the gulf. Lastly, the gulf itself has created an alliance to get the people in the farming states whose water feeds into the Gulf of Mexico in touch with the conservationists, concerned fishermen, and other stakeholders in this big issue of the Gulf Dead Zone to reduce the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Mississippi and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico. I think that all of these show that there are room for improvements and balance the needs of industries affected and still benefit the environment. Most importantly I think that this shows a key tool to improving the environment is to listen and collaborate with those involved! All of these examples involved stakeholders working together to bring their interests to the table without governmental regulation. A huge complication of governmental regulation (especially when done by the federal government) is that it can only apply a single rule, but conservation, fishing, and farming are very different even within states. Developing local solutions with those who are on the ground and work in the industries that are affected are the most successful and should be looked to as models of how to continue this progress!