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Simpler OneEarth Living Podcast
A co-production of Simple Living Works! and The Common Good Podcast (Jubilee OneEarth Economics)
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SHOW NOTES
CoronaVirus is revealing breakdowns and lack of resilience in our food supply systems. Which links in the chain are broken? Rather than fixing them, what are new and better choices for us in how we bring food from soil to savory, healthy eating?
This is the third successive podcast episode in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic. By the end of May, over 100,000 people have died in the U.S.—a horrific, emotional and spiritual wrenching of lives, hundreds of thousands of people across the nation are hurting, grieving. Surely, this experience of death and suffering—the largest in our lifetimes—is releasing the commitment to new life in enough of us to take leaps in the direction of change—the changes that our planet says we must make in this decade of the 2020s. Not to do so will form calluses on our souls and decay in who we are.
Covid-19 abruptly stopped the fragile food supply system we’ve been depending on. The system that’s broken down is driven by industrial agriculture, global markets, trade breakdowns and corporate control.
Excellent sources that (1) explain the breakdown and (2) help us identify the systems we need going forward.
Richard Heinberg wrote The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. The final chapter is loaded with things people are doing to adopt practices of OneEarth living and economics measured by wellbeing, not growth. He is senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and continues to share the wisdom of that think and action group in his Museletter on his website, https://richardheinberg.com.
I interviewed Richard for this podcast, Ep. 109.
In 4/20 Museletter #326, “Fraying Food System May Be Our Next Crisis” summarizes flaws in the current system.
https://richardheinberg.com/museletter-326-pandemic-response-requires-post-growth-economic-thinking
“Experts who study what makes societies sustainable (or unsustainable) have been warning for decades that our modern food system is packed with ticking bombs. The ways we grow, process, package, and distribute food depend overwhelmingly on finite, depleting, and polluting fossil fuels. Industrial agriculture contributes to climate change, and results in soil erosion and salinization. Ammonia-based fertilizers create “dead zones” near river deltas while petrochemical pesticides and herbicides pollute air and water. Modern agriculture also contributes to deforestation and biodiversity loss. Monocrops—huge fields of genetically uniform corn and soybeans—are especially vulnerable to pests and diseases. Long supply chains make localities increasingly dependent on distant suppliers. The system tends to exploit low-wage workers. And food is often unequally distributed and even unhealthful, contributing to poor nutrition as well as diabetes and other diseases.”
Heinberg: five of the links that are breaking down currently in the food supply chain’s “wicked complexity.”
These five give us a big picture of what corporations and globalization have been creating in recent decades.
1. Vulnerable Food Workers
2. Fragile Distribution Networks
3. Broken Global Supply Chains
4. Bankrupt Farmers
5. Vanishing Affordability
Solutions We Suggest
1. Growing more of our own. — growing more of their own food. // Baker Creek seed company,
2. Rationing. — At the national level, food price controls have an uneven history of success. Stan Cox: Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing // Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program
3. Shorten supply chains. LINKS: capture atmospheric carbon and sequester it in soil, that build healthy and biologically rich topsoil // nutritious and affordable food // fair to farmers and farmworkers.
4. Guides for how Our Choices can reconfigure food supply post-Covid-19 (mid-Covid-19)
From the Reader Supported News website, an article on young adults turning their grief to action: Anna McClurkan
a. Local supply—growers, retailers, markets. Focus in communities instead of corporations.
b. Reduce Meat by at least 50%
c. Organic—no pesticides, herbicides
5. The Land Institute, Salina, KS, — reconfiguring farming (notes from Panel with Stan Cox, 5/23/20)
- Stop thinking that economic growth is good and takes care of everything else. Limits is the replacement word. Generate a community of learning around new thinking. Do it soon.
- Disconnect food from fossil fuel use.
- Value local crops, perennial crops.
- Resettle small farms and small towns. Not because of nostalgia, but because that is how Homo sapiens function better.
Other Links for this episode
Published on Friday, May 22, 2020 by Common Dreams
Fridays for Future Europe Calls for Transforming Agricultural Policy to Tackle the Climate Crisis by Jessica Corbett, staff writer
Fasting From Food Waste in a Season of Hoarding
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement — ICCI — IowaCCI.org
The Food & Farm System We Need and Deserve: A Webinar Series – for farmers, workers, eaters and the land. Our food and farm system belongs in the hands of more diverse base of farmers and workers, not under the control of a small handful of giant corporations. (SLW! Podcast ep. 02/19)
Earlier Episodes
Ep. 0520–Life with Covid-19: Heading Toward a More Ecological World
CoronaVirus is reshaping life and society, moving in the direction of ecological living. We acknowledge the intense resistance to that move as many powers want to get back to normal. But that normal is an illusion of unlimited growth on a planet with great, but limited, resources. The illusion elevated the lives of many in the 20th century. But in the 21st century, it’s failing life on the planet.
It’s nothing we want to go back to. Many people are hearing quite clearly the call of the Creator and all of creation to join her in generating new societies that respect science, integrate spirit, and embrace the economy able to shape life in this decade. The industrialized world has fought against her for far too many decades. As we listen deeply to Earth and her Spirit, let’s frame what we learn around a global worldview and act locally with what we learn to generate local, living communities.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message for International Mother Earth Day, 4/22/20 — six climate-related actions to shape the recovery and the work ahead.
Pandemic side-effects offer glimpse of alternative future on Earth Day 2020: Coronavirus has led to reduced pollution, re-emerging wildlife and plunging oil prices and shown the size of the task facing humanity — by Oliver Milman from The Guardian
COVID-19: Crisis and Call to Humanity for a Better Way Forward By T. Larsen in Green America, 4/16/20
- Move to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030
- Shift to regenerative agriculture.
- Create a pathway to free public college education and address crushing student loan debt and medical debts.
- Shape a story of America that is finally being honest about “the all” words in “liberty and justice for all.”
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Richard Heinberg – Transition Towns: a great unraveling is underway. Transition towns are visionary and focus in community instead of corporations. A sane way as globalization unravels–from MuseLetter 326, 4/20
Episode 109: Richard Heinberg on Choosing to Get Off Fossil Energy—Our Best Local Choices
http://simpleliving.startlogic.com/SLW-PODCAST/?p=1887
Ep. 0420::CoronaVirus: A Devastating Nature Disaster with a Message–Live Differently!
“Perhaps the most important message the coronavirus offers is that the natural world is conspiring to save us from ourselves, to slow our materialistic greed and reign in our aggressive, self-centered, short-term, and xenophobic tendencies.” –John Perkins, co-founder of the Pachamama Alliance
Hear the Letter from Covid-19 to Humans in its original language with art/illustrations at: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/a-letter-from-the-virus-listen/ [from Psychology Today, 3/24/20]
The UN Environmental Chief, Inger Andersen, was reported on Commondreams by Damian Carrington, 3/25/20, entitled, Coronavirus: ‘Nature is sending us a message.’
David Korten, 3/29/20, in Yes! Magazine (also on Commondreams), entitled, “Why Coronavirus Is Humanity’s Wakeup Call.”
“Pandemics: Lessons Looking Back from 2050,” by Fritjof Capra and Hazel Henderson of Ethical Markets Media. Hazel was our guest: Part 1, Episode 91; Part 2, Episode 92.
6 Lessons CoronaVirus Can Teach Us About Climate Change
Margaret Bullitt-Jonas and Leah D. Schade are co-editors of the book Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), an anthology of essays from religious environmental activists on finding the spiritual wisdom for facing the difficult days ahead.
Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, guest on this podcast, Ep.10/19
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Ep. 0329–Dave Gardner on three major efforts he has developed—all designed to bring change from the present: (1) GrowthBusters, (2) World Population Balance and (3) the One Planet/One Child Campaign.
Colleagues: GrowthBusters (Dave Gardner)–film and podcast; World Population Balance // OverPopulation Podcast; Post-Carbon Institute programs + CrazyTown podcast (SLW! Ep. 109–Richard Heinberg); CASSE: Center for the Advancement of the Steady-State Economy (The Common Good Podcast Ep. 46–Brian Czech); Center for Sustainable Economy; and Population Connection (SLW! Ep. Ep. 72: John Seager of Population Connection, Part 1; Ep. 73, Part 2); Bill Ryerson of the Population Institute and Population Media Center (SLW! Ep. 113: Part 1–Population Crises; TCGP #97: Part 2–Reducing Population Using Methods that Work)
ESSAY: Overconsumption and Overpopulation as the primary drivers of the Climate Crisis
All of our Jubilee Circles are keenly aware that the 2020’s is last decade for major climate action to save life in the sacred creation where we live. May we live in the Spirit who is eager to partner with us all.
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