That yesterday was opening day in Major League Baseball, and day after tomorrow begins the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, were inescapable sports facts on social media.
Spring is about Derby Day for me. It’s a race to get the early garden work done by then so once the risk of frost is minimal the main seedling crops of tomatoes, peppers and the like can go into the ground.
Most years I have been able to take a break from gardening to watch the two-minute Kentucky Derby, taking in just enough of the pageantry to feel a bit queasy. The old saw is horse racing is the sport of kings and who wants or needs it? It’s just there.
Iowa political class member Jerry Crawford asserted last year he had two goals: delivering Iowa for Hillary Clinton and winning the Kentucky Derby. Hillary won the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, just barely, and his team Donegal Racing’s 2015 entry in the Kentucky Derby placed fifth. That’s about as close as my life gets to so-called kingmakers.
I’ve been hobbled in gardening by my hand injury. Yesterday I limited my work to planting seeds in trays and transplanting those grown — celery, broccoli and basil — into larger pots. No digging for me… yet.
It was 71 degrees in Alaska in late March, almost 80 degrees in Iowa yesterday. The Alaska temperature was highest in recorded history and not a good sign for the thawing tundra and its release of long banked methane gas.
While sports distracts many, for those of us listening to a different narrative such distraction puts many more at risk of stopping Earth’s engine of sustainability.
That matters even on this small plot in Iowa removed from much of the turbulence in society.
On Friday, Feb. 5, the benchmark crude palm-oil future contract traded on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives exchange reached its highest level since May 2014, according to NASDAQ.
Traders were feeling bullish as warm, dry weather caused by El Niño in the region receded from the prime palm plantations in Sumatra, Borneo and other parts of Indonesia.
These palm oil producing regions are half a world away, yet they matter to Iowa more than one knows.
The use of palm oil for cooking is in direct competition with soybean oil, including Iowa-grown soybeans traded on international markets. In a recent interview, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey said one out of four rows of Iowa soybeans are bound for international sales.
“India, the world’s largest importer of cooking oils, will buy more soybean and sunflower oil this year (2015) than ever before as a global glut weakens prices and prompts buyers to switch from palm oil,” according to Bloomberg News.
Because of the decline in farm commodity prices, current trends may favor soybeans over palm, but at the expense of soybean farmers. There is a clear case to be made to avoid products like chocolate, ice cream, detergent, soap and cosmetics that contain palm oil and its derivatives as a way to support Iowa farmers.
What matters more is deforestation to expand the cultivation of palm trees. Using a slash and burn methodology to clear equatorial rain forest for palm plantations, the haze covering Indonesia was visible from space. While haze may be viewed as a temporary inconvenience, deforestation has a direct impact on the planet’s capacity to process atmospheric carbon dioxide. That’s not to mention the loss of habitat and biodiversity, as well as release of carbon stored in trees into the atmosphere.
From logging, agricultural production and other economic activities, deforestation adds more atmospheric CO2 than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world’s roads, according to Scientific American.
“The reason that logging is so bad for the climate is that when trees are felled they release the carbon they are storing into the atmosphere, where it mingles with greenhouse gases from other sources and contributes to global warming accordingly,” the article said. “The upshot is that we should be doing as much to prevent deforestation as we are to increase fuel efficiency and reduce automobile usage.”
Most corporate food conglomerates use or have used palm oil and its derivatives as an ingredient. What’s a person to do?
The first recourse in Iowa is the power of the purse. Avoid purchasing products with palm oil because it competes with Iowa-grown soybeans, and is a contributor to climate disruption. There is no such thing as sustainably grown palm oil.
Palm oil and its derivatives go under many names. A list of alternate names for palm oil can be found here along with a handy wallet sized printout.
Here is a list that discusses use of palm oil in various consumer products.
Explore the Rainforest Action Network web site, beginning with this link. There is a lot of information about the issue and actions you can take to address the most pressing aspects of deforestation.
While Indonesia may seem distant, what goes on there and in other equatorial palm plantations matters here in Iowa.
Lettuce and basil germinated in the tray planted last week, reminding me of why I garden.
It is a chance to witness life as cold sets in for one last spell. Soon winter will turn to spring. I can’t wait. For now, suffice it that the seedlings rise to face the sun through a bedroom window.
The emergence of hearty weeds among my seedlings was unexpected and easy to remedy. We all have weeds growing in our garden, even when it is planted a couple of months before last frost. I continue to pluck them out to make room for what I intended.
The death of Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia yesterday was unexpected. It sparked conversations in social media, which for practical purposes includes formal news organizations. Scalia was quail hunting at an exclusive ranch in West Texas — a place where Mick Jagger and the Dixie Chicks have hung out. The event ramped up my understanding of opinions and attitudes regarding the meaning of Scalia’s legacy and the process of choosing a replacement.
By all accounts, Scalia’s was a brilliant if acerbic legal mind.
The Congress is in recess, so President Obama has the option to make a recess appointment. That would be the cleanest way to go, with the selected associate justice serving until the end of the next session. Why would Obama forego the possibility of a lifetime appointment? As he indicated in his remarks on Scalia’s passing, he won’t. However, I pulled a Scalia and began with the text of the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. There is no time limit on gaining the consent of the U.S. Senate. They have given their advice already: “leave the position open until the next president is sworn in.”
When a nominee is presented to and blocked by the Senate, and if the Supreme Court divides evenly by ideology, the situation would contain both good and bad. There is no guarantee justices will divide by ideology. If they do, the powder keg that is the Supreme Court docket this session would sustain lower court decisions. Winners would include labor (Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association) and losers would include the TEA Party (Evenwel v. Abbott; Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting), undocumented immigrants (US v. Texas) and women’s reproductive rights (Women’s Whole Health v. Hellerstedt; Zubik v. Burwell). It seems too early to say all of this will actually happen.
With Scalia deceased, three remaining Supreme Court justices will turn age 80 by the end of the next presidential term. The stakes in the 2016 presidential election could not be higher. Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Anthony Kennedy was appointed in February of Reagan’s last year in office, so there is precedent for Obama. Precedent means little in the toxic political environment in which we live.
Life is never as simple as germinating seeds rising toward the sun on a Sunday morning. There will always be weeds in the garden, and so it is with yesterday’s news as Scalia was plucked out by God’s hand.
Starting a garden is not always easy, especially if one lives in a city.
The main thing is planting the first time and that can be a big step.
The good news is the potential to stumble is more related to attitude than anything else. There is hope. Here are a few bits to get started.
A gardening journey can begin with a trip to the public library to browse the stacks. A lot of gardening books have it all and my current favorites are The Iowa Edition of the Midwest Fruit and Vegetable Book by James A. Fizzell, and MiniFARMING: Self sufficiency on 1/4 acre by Brett L Markham. The former is a comprehensive look at crops that grow well in the Midwest. The latter presents aspects of the growing process with an eye toward sustainability. Because gardening is popular, libraries tend to have a wide selection of research materials and other resources. Remember. Gardening is engaging in a local food system and book learning is only part of it.
Gardening is about changing one’s relationship with the food as much as providing food for the table — process more than produce. A common mistake is inadequate attention to gardening’s social context. I’ve heard stories of people seeking solace in tilling the ground and nurturing plants from seeds to fruit and vegetables — a form of personal retreat. In most cases gardening involves others — family, fellow consumers, merchants, farmers and gardeners. Discussion of gardening issues and their resolution is endemic to the process and represents the broader context in which gardening occurs.
When people think of local food, most have sweet corn and tomatoes in mind. There is a lot more. A way to begin is to think about what fresh veggies and fruit to buy and which to grow. Because of the space it takes, I always buy sweet corn rather than grow it myself. The other way around with tomatoes and green beans. Squash takes a lot of space, and there are lots of great producers of it everywhere… another to buy. Bell peppers require a certain something I haven’t mastered, so I barter for mine, taking seconds from the farm. Why not buy local food when it is abundant, especially if you know the farmer and how the crops are grown?
If you have a small potential garden plot, I recommend picking 8-12 crops and focus on learning how to grow them well. Pick varieties to ripen throughout the season — spring greens and onions, a few herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans and kale are all easy to grow. The idea is to dip into the soil and experiment using available resources. Another part most people dislike is dealing with pests and predators. Use those books you checked out from the library and better yet, develop friendships with other gardeners and growers in your area — ask them questions, visit their farms. You’ll find gardening is one of the most popular activities and there is lots to talk about, especially when it comes to common problems.
With a positive attitude, there is little to lose in planting a garden. Once one turns the first spade of soil, there is a world worth experiencing in the microcosm of a back yard. Before long, you’ll be craving life in society to talk about your garden. It is about more than home grown fruit and vegetables.
Local food may be what’s grown in a backyard garden, herb jar or patio pot. It may be heirloom livestock raised in grass paddocks, supplemented with carefully selected feed, and served in a local restaurant. It is definitely vegetables and fruit, increasingly available at farmers markets and roadside stands, from community supported agriculture operations, and even in chain supermarkets.
The local foods “movement,” is less coordinated than what media make it out to be. However, there is a consistent theme: it is small scale, farmers are interdependent, and the face of the farmer is visible in every apple, tomato and ear of sweet corn.
Many of us notice the increased availability of local choices when stocking our kitchens, a sign the food system is changing. After leaving a corporate job in 2009, I had a chance to work on half a dozen farms and gained a closer view of what local food farmers do. It is hard work made worthwhile by a network of cooperation among producers.
I met Susan Jutz, who operates Local Harvest CSA when two of her children were in 4-H with my daughter. Twenty years into the operation, Jutz has about seven acres in vegetables, pastures rented to local livestock producers, a large field in the Conservation Reserve Program, and a set of paddocks for her flock of ewes and spring lambs. Walking around the farm, you’ll find beehives, a greenhouse and a high tunnel, all adding to the economic structure of a farm using sustainable practices to produce shares for a medium-sized community supported agriculture project.
I began working at Local Harvest in March 2013 when I swapped labor for a share in the CSA. The work was physical, and I enjoyed it enough to return every spring since then. It was the beginning of understanding a local food network.
My first job was soil blocking in the greenhouse — making trays of small, square starter soil blocks where seeds are planted. In March, the ground is usually still frozen, yet I have to take off my coat and shirt in the warm workspace. The labor is physical, and a good opportunity to follow seeds turning to seedlings and then to crops with the season. Susan shared her greenhouse with other farmers with whom she cooperated to produce the contents of her member shares. Over time I worked on most of their farms.
One was Laura Krouse, owner/operator of Abbe Hills Farm near Mount Vernon, Iowa. Laura uses part of Susan’s greenhouse space in the spring and provides potatoes for Susan’s fall shares.
Because Krouse’s potato operation is large, she gains economies of scale. Using a tractor with a potato harvesting attachment, along with shared labor from other CSAs, and a large number of volunteers, she can harvest a field quickly. We harvested potatoes and washed them using a specialized root vegetable cleaner, bringing a load of potato-filled buckets back to Local Harvest for storage and distribution.
This is just one example of the cooperative ventures among farmers which include squash, eggs, carrots sweet corn and other vegetables for CSA shares.
While Susan and Laura have been operating for decades, since the local food movement got started in Iowa, the increased interest in local food is encouraging more farmers to enter the market.
I met Lindsay Boerjan who returned to her family’s century farm in Johnson County in 2011. To supplement family farm income, she used leftover material from a razed barn to construct raised planting beds. With manure from the cattle operation she runs with her husband and aunt and uncle, she planted the beds in vegetables for a CSA she began in 2015 with seven members. She hopes to grow her number of customers. Boerjan said she faced challenges as a female farmer.
“It’s predominantly an older male thing or career,” she said. “Should you want to make a career of it, it’s harder to wrestle in costs now the way they are.”
Boerjan is an example of a minimally financed operation, able to get started because she owns the land and is part of a larger farm operation. That Boerjan’s family owned the land and already farmed helped get her CSA going.
In January, Wilson’s Orchard in rural Iowa City announced it was entering the CSA market with a partnership with Bountiful Harvest Farm near Solon. Dick Schwab’s involvement in Bountiful Harvest is an example of a well-capitalized CSA start up. Schwab is a local entrepreneur who is involved in a variety of financial investments, including a timber business, an auto repair shop and more. He already hosted another CSA, Wild Woods Farm, on his acreage in rural Johnson County. He has experience, owns the land and equipment needed to operate a farm, and has a network of marketing contacts that include Wilson’s Orchard.
Knowing the face of the farmer has been part of the local food movement. Today, people want to know more about where and how food is produced. Getting to know a farmer was important at the beginning of the local foods movement in Iowa, and still resonates. At the local supermarket, buyers stock the produce aisle with locally produced items, along with a daily count of local food items on hand and a life-size photographic cutout of the farmers who produced them.
Driven in part by mass media, consumers are concerned about a wide range of food issues that include contamination with harmful bacteria; dietary concern about consumption of carbohydrates, fat and sugar; the way in which plant genetics are modified to improve them; and more. Partly in response to media campaigns, annual sales of organic food exceed $30 billion in the U.S. (USDA). The increase in organic market share from national advertising campaigns is significant. If you get to know your local food farmer, what you may find is they benefit from this marketing, but their customers come and stay with them because of a personal relationship with the farmer.
Whether you grow herbs on a kitchen window, belong to a CSA or garden a plot in the backyard, it is all part of a local food movement that is just getting started and depends on knowing the face of the farmer.
“Publishers are not accountable to the laws of heaven and earth in any country and regardless of my opinion, editors and publishers will print what they will.”
I wrote this in a letter to the editor of the Quad City Times in 1980 reacting to a popular feature section called Soundoff.
“(It is) little more than a vanity press for many of the writers,” I wrote. “It gets pictures, letters and opinions into print as a final goal; shouldn’t there be more to public voicing of opinion than that?”
This is more applicable today than it was three and a half decades ago.
What I learned in graduate school is the same statement can be applied to almost everything written in public. Reflecting on the Times experiment to make their pages more open to comments and retain readership, chaos reigned. What has changed since then is the emphasis on viewpoint in media — corporate, social or self published — which has been formalized. It’s not all good.
As I turn to the hard yet fun work of writing this year, I plan to journal my experiences in the food system here. Four years from full retirement, there are bills to pay and a life to live. I may pick other topics from time to time. I need to make the best use of every moment.
I’m writing off line as much as I can. While I don’t like to work for free as long as there is less cash than budget, I may occasionally post about those creative endeavors.
Thanks for reading this blog. Check out the tag cloud for your interests. I hope readers will be back often.
With yesterday’s announcement Hamburg Inn No. 2 is being sold by 68 year-old David Panther, another chapter in the long exodus of sixty-somethings from Iowa City’s public stage is closing.
With growth and a burgeoning new population, long time aspects of Iowa City iconography have changed and are changing. Old is giving way to new.
I more miss Hamburg Inn No. 1 on Iowa Avenue than any changes at No. 2 on Linn might bring. Arriving in Iowa City in 1970 to attend college, I had a notion I could experience every business and cultural institution in town and become a part of city social life. Hamburg Inn No. 1 was part of that. Like so many others, I left after graduation from the university, but remember fondly what the city was then.
My recent awareness of the exodus of sixty-somethings began with closure of Murphy Brookfield Books and the retirement of Riverside Theatre co-founders Ron Clark and Jodi Hovland. Hamburg Inn is another among many changes from what Iowa City grew up to be after the 1960s. Some businesses, like The Mill, made a successful transition. Others have not.
Why should we care? After all, change is the only constant in a transient city like Iowa City. It is made so by the University of Iowa: a primary driver of almost everything. It is partly nostalgia driven by personal memories and change in the world which increase in importance as we near the end of life’s span. There’s little reason to cling to the past instead of embracing the new. Opportunity also belongs mostly to the young, so some of us are going home.
I’ve never eaten a pie shake at Hamburg Inn, and until recently wasn’t aware they served such a dessert. It has been breakfast with our daughter or a friend that drew me there of late. The last political event I attended at the Hamburg Inn was with Chet Culver during his last campaign. Culver didn’t appear to have a clue how to get re-elected and the stop did little to enhance his chances.
Life will continue with the best intentions, which is what I’m reading in the news. The operation will continue at Hamburg Inn No. 2 and importantly, people will keep their jobs. I read Panther will be retained by the new owners for a year as a consultant. According to the Warren Buffett playbook for business acquisition retaining current managers is important to a smooth and profitable transition. I wish everyone well.
Details of the sale aren’t quite worked out, according to news reports. We should embrace the change and give the new owners a chance or two as they continue the effort in its new form. If new management focuses on the quality of food and customer service they should be alright. A different, and new chapter in the life of an aging Iowa City scene being reborn.
In the life of a political activist, only occasionally do events transpire that make our efforts seem worthwhile.
It began during the George W. Bush administration with inauspicious red and white signs that simply said, “Talk to Iran.”
On Saturday, Jan. 16, Secretary of State John Kerry announced,
Today, more than four years after I first traveled to Oman at the request of President Obama to discreetly explore whether the kind of nuclear talks that we ultimately entered into with Iran were even possible, after more than two and a half years of intense multilateral negotiations, the International Atomic Energy Agency has now verified that Iran has honored its commitments to alter – and in fact, dismantle – much of its nuclear program in compliance with the agreement that we reached last July.
The United States not only talked to Iran, but convinced them — not only through verbiage, but with tough, international economic sanctions — that they should end their nuclear program. It worked as Secretary Kerry indicated.
It is days like today that give us hope that peace in the world is more than something nice to say to friends and colleagues. Peace has a tangible basis in reality, part of which this president, his administration and the P5+1 nations helped bring about.
Already the voices of extremism criticize the results of the Iran Deal, saying sanctions relief will fund extremism by the powerful Islamic nation. Perhaps what they hate most is the fact this president succeeded where none of them would even take the first step.
There are legitimate concerns about Iran’s future policies, actions and choices in the Middle East. However, this subzero day in Iowa we understand and can take heart in the fact that every so often it is possible to break out of the world of paper promises, social media and itinerant gossip to create a reality that includes the reduced threat of nuclear weapons.
This political cycle there is talk about the United States withdrawing from international engagement: the Iran Deal, the COP21 climate agreement and more. Some presidential candidates talk about building a wall around our country to keep people out. Such actions would be to our detriment.
The world is a scary place, and what is scarier is our lack of action to address the gravest threats of our time. Nuclear abolition and mitigating the causes of global warming are at center stage calling for action. Partly, the solution lies in talking — as we did with Iran — as international partners. Partly it lies in empowering women, world-wide, and educating girls. Solutions to our problems exist or can be developed if we persist.
Saturday’s results provide hope that peace is possible with the international community working together.
If a person blinked, they might have missed what just happened. Hopefully, more of us will be inspired by what happened with Iran and engage in the tough problems facing us before it is too late.
How does one recognize society is in decline? We participants probably can’t.
In 1540 conquistador Hernando de Soto sent a messenger to Quigaltam, supreme leader of a people whose ancestors had built mounds and lived in the Mississippi River basin for 700 years, to say, “the son of the sun” expected his people to obey him and do him service.
“With respect to what he said about being the son of the sun,” Quigaltam responded through the messenger, “let him dry up the great river and he would believe him.” [1]
While neither party knew it at the time, this incident was part of the beginning of the end of a civilization and a 350-year war between cultures. It ended with the more familiar massacre at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Dec. 29, 1890.
If modern society — the one cultured in North America by immigrants — has reached its zenith, and it’s all downhill from here, the methods of knowing it are elusive if not impossible. Life comes into a sharper focus when our perspective spans multiple centuries.
Earth has its troubles. Improvements in public health enabled population growth resulting in 7.4 billion people on earth today. Deforestation to harvest timber, grow crops and build cities is changing a long-standing environmental equilibrium. The rise of industrial society and its reliance on fossil fuels has changed the makeup of the atmosphere and contributed to global warming that in turn is changing climate patterns we have come to rely upon. People are increasingly connected by a world-wide communications network. They both say a lot more and have nothing to say. None of this is new, and the earth will likely be fine — achieving a new equilibrium that considers and incorporates all these changes.
What’s new is the rise of lamentations about how the old values are in decline. Families are not what we believe they were, politicians and religious leaders are corrupt, corporations only out to make a buck, the rich get richer and the rest of us are left on our own. If one buys into this paradigm society may well be perceived to be in decline.
I don’t believe it is and here’s why.
As long as there is clean air and water, a place to live and an opportunity to earn a living, there is hope for society. All of this is under pressure from multiple sources today, but like the polar vortex chilling the atmosphere this morning it’s only temporary.
There will be whiners and complainers, but William Faulkner said best what I would during his 1950 Nobel Prize speech.
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
Is society in decline? The better question is what can we do to contribute to its rise? The age of humans is not over. Despite our problems we must have hope the progress started long ago is far from over. How else can we go on living?
[1]Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History by Paul Schneider. Henry Holt & Company, 2013.
With yesterday’s announcement 
Journey Home 
You must be logged in to post a comment.