Wink’s Blog

Dear Senator Ken Salazar.

My wife and I are small family farmers, and confirmed Democrats, raising certified organic peaches, apples, and grapes in the North Fork Valley of the Gunnison River. Our friend, Rebecca Elder forwarded us your letter expressing your reservations about the national animal identification program (NAIP). We appreciate that you are trying to protect small farmers from a poorly conceived and implemented program.

We want to know that you understand, however, that the REAL threat to public health comes from the confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) where the diseased animals that NAIP seeks to track originate. The health and environmental damage from CAFOs is incalculable, including surface and ground water pollution and the routine use of growth hormones and sub-therapeutic doses of pharmaceuticals which find there way into public water supplies, contaminating the public at large. The conditions in which these animals are kept are tragic and call into question the very humanity of their keepers and those who would defend CAFOs. We trust you are not one of these, despite the ample funds their lobbyists might offer.

A system to track diseased animals back to the source would do little to protect the public health because, after all, someone (or many) would have to get sick or die before the system could be used. Better to outlaw CAFOs. Better to end the wasteful practice of fattening these animals since we know that animal fat is a contributor to the national obesity epidemic. At the very least, you should add to your list of amendments a provision to exclude from NAIP any animal that has not seen the inside of a CAFO.

On another topic: as a “super delegate” to the Democratic National Convention, we urge you to cast your vote with the clear majority of Colorado Democrats, as expressed at the precinct caucuses. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Philip Winship Davis and Maxine Eisele
http://www.mesawindsfarm.com
wink@mesawindsfarm.com
970-250-4788

The letter that engendered the emial above:

Subject: A message from Senator Ken Salazar
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 21:21:50 +0000

Dear Rebecca:

Thank you for contacting me regarding a national animal identification
program. I appreciate hearing from you.

As you know, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and
industry groups have been working to establish a national animal
identification (ID) program with the goal of improving animal health and
protecting public safety. I am certainly open to being supportive of a
thoughtful animal ID system.

Though the USDA has already implemented pilot animal identification
programs and has articulated a set of principles that will guide a national
animal identification program, there are a number of outstanding issues
that must be resolved before moving forward with a program.

For example, it is essential that producers not bear the burden of
increased cost or overly burdensome regulations. I am also concerned that
a poorly implemented or managed program could unfairly provide some with a
liability scapegoat, negatively affecting small or medium-sized producers.

It is essential that we thoroughly address these issues before a program is
implemented. Please be assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind as I
continue to work with my colleagues and the USDA on this important
legislation.

Again, thank you for contacting me.

Sincerely,

Ken Salazar
United States Senator

In the last year, the major TV networks asked the presidential candidates 2,679 questions. Pop quiz: How many were about global warming?

A) 514—after all, it’s one of the top issues facing the country
B) 165—as many as were asked about illegal immigration
C) 3—the same number asked about UFOs

If you guessed 3, you’re right: Reporters asked as many questions about UFOs as they did about the climate crisis—the biggest threat to our planet.

I signed a petition urging top TV reporters to ask the presidential candidates about global warming. Can you join me at the link below?

http://pol.moveon.org/climatequestions/?r_by=11909-5268052-opw8VA&rc=paste

Thanks!

I strongly recommend you try the new interactive game at: http://sustainability.publicradio.org/consumerconsequences/. It’s an entertaining and simplified spin on the “ecological footprint“  which has been used to evaluate the sustainability of individuals, cities, and nations (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint).

In this “consumer consequences” version we can answer the question: “What would the world look like if everyone lived like me?” Interesting and disturbing. I found that it would take two Earths to support the population of the globe in my lifestyle. This, despite Max and my relatively low-impact lifestyle: small home, no commuting, no airplane flights, significant renewable energy. This, too, not including the impact of our farming activities. The sustainability of the our lives and of the Farm is a major goal for us. But we hope to build a more comfortable, spacious, and energy efficient home some day which will only increase the size of our footprint.

For comparison: According to Wikipedia, “in 2003, the average biologically productive area per person worldwide was approximately 1.8 global hectares (gha) per capita. The U.S. footprint per capita was 9.6 gha, and that of Switzerland was 5.1 gha per person, whilst China’s was 1.6 gha per person.” Which means that, for the global population to live the way the US lives would require 5.3 Earths; and for the world’s capacity to be equally distributed we’d all have to live more or less as the average Chinese does. This is indeed dismal!

But we’re a more advanced, not to mention more powerful, society and therefore we deserve to consume more than an equal share. Right? How ethical is that? Does inequitable consumption necessarily indicate exploitation? How can we know what is fair? What is ethical? (Forget for the purposes of this discussion that China is rapidly buying up our largest financial institutions and financing our war. “The times they are a-changing…”)

But seriously, once we know the extent of the unsustainability of our life-style, how do we feel then? Because we have to know that who’s really paying for our careless luxury is our children and our grandchildren and their children. They will bear the consequences. They will deal with climate changes that mean rising sea levels, more violent weather events, reduced agricultural productivity, and resulting mass migrations of disrupted peoples. They will inheret the violent clashes between civilizations, between the haves and have-nots, between the placed and the dis-placed. They will live with increasing insecurities. It is hard to conjure a positive result from the inequities that we have come to regard as our right. Our right, it turns out, to exploit our own children.

Do we have the curiosity and courage to confront a cold numerical appraisal of the sustainability of our lives? It’s a private undertaking that doesn’t have to be shared with anyone; no one else needs to know. Do we have the courage to begin, with determination, to change the way we live, to begin to live more in harmony with the carrying capacity of our Earth. Let us begin now.

For a year now I have advocated the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. I have writtem my Congressman, joined Impeachbush.org, and signed Congressman Robert Wexler’s petition (wexlerwantshearings.com). My reasons were ably articulated by George McGovern in yesterday’s Washington Post. I couldn’t say it better:
Why I Believe Bush Must Go
Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse.

By George McGovern
The Washington Post
Sunday, January 6, 2008;

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.

Today I have made a different choice.

Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.

But what are the facts?

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team’s assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged — perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion — by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an “imminent threat” to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks — another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson’s observation: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world — more than a billion people.

Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.

Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies — especially the war in Iraq — have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: “I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans.” Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, “it wasn’t until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country’s laws — that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law — and repeatedly violates the law — thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors.”

I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won’t be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I’d like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.

With the upcoming Iowa Caucuses, Morning Edition is asking just-plain-folks to express their top issues. Maybe its that I don’t live along a sun belt interstate but for whatever reason they haven’t asked ME. Those they do ask are concerned about their taxes or the prospects for their auto-industry-dependent businesses. Pretty personal and individual concerns that resonate only marginally for me. This morning, though, the just-plain-folks seemed to agree that we need to break the lock that corporate interests have on our so-called democratic process; I agree.

Just in case anyone cares to ask, I’m ready with my top issues:
> The Iraq War.
> Global Climate Crisis.
> Renewable Energy.
> Food and agriculture policy, organics, sustainable food systems, GMOs.
> Universal, single-payer health care.
> The federal deficit, debt, and the financial burden we’re leaving future generations.
> Foreign policy.
> Tax inequities — the rich and corporations don’t pay their fair share.

Taxes and corporate influence are sub sets of these issues. If, for instance, I agreed with the country’s spending priorities, I’d feel better about paying taxes. But as long as we spend hundreds and hundreds of billions on Bush’s War and even more by reducing the taxes paid by the rich and corporations and subsidize oil companies to rape our pristine places and spend in support of developing a corn-based ethanol industry while failing to renew incentives for renewable energy, failing to adopt a Renewable Energy Standard, and failing to provide health care for all our citizens (and on and on), I can’t conger much support for taxes either.

Our federal spending priorities express corporate priorities. The Bush War is a boon for weapons manufacturers and dealers, Cheney’s friends in the oil patch, and other war profiteers including so-called “contractors” (who we used to disparage as “mercenaries”) — surprise: they’re one and the same: Haliburton’s KBR and the others. Ethanol is a sop to Big Ag (and by extension the ag chemical and GMO producers), and Detroit dinosaur car companies (who won’t have to do any real innovation).

My late grandmother used to say that it’s a privilege to pay taxes. Presumably she was thinking that the duty to pay taxes means that the family had income; a privilege that not everyone enjoyed during the depression. As a New Englander she also appreciated that those with the privilege of income have a duty to share, through taxes, her good fortune with those less advantaged in our society. Furthermore, she understood that a society has shared priorities and infrastructure to which it is a privilege to contribute and help bring to fruition. The knee-jerk anti tax crowd thinks of us not as a society but rather as a collection of individuals bent on each maximizing our individual self interest. I strongly believe they couldn’t be more wrong. We need to understand and pursue our common interests if we are going to successfully address the complex challenges ahead — and the sooner the better.

This first sunrise of 2008 finds the mercury in the negative range for the first time this winter: Fahrenheit minus 3. The clear sky promises a second-in-a-row “Colorado Day.” We were spared the worst of yesterday’s storm in which new snow, drifting, and avalanche hazard closed Front Range passes, including I-70, for 24 hours. This morning’s wind chill at Vail is minus 25.

Hooray once again to Michael Pollan. His new book: “In Defense of Food” is his latest contribution to the campaign for healthy food! He is interviewed on Morning Edition and counsels a wise New Year’s Resolution: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”
> Eat food: Much of what we see on supermarket shelves is not food but edible substitutes. He says: “Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as ‘food’.”
> Not too much: Small portion size, stop before reaching “full”. Having frequently felt over-full at bed time this season, this is advice I can take to heart (figuratively and literally).
> Mostly plants: But not exclusively: eat animals, too, the ones that have eaten mostly leaves and seeds in pastures. Avoid refined foods.
The interviewer asked: “Won’t this cost us more?” Pollan’s closing point echos one I’ve made in this blog:

“We’re at a fork in the road: either we learn to live in the growing epidemic of chronic disease OR we change our priorities, pay attention to what we eat, and expect that this will cost us more in time and/or in money.”

I would add that the personal and societal cost of chronic disease likely exceeds the cost of eating healthy. It’s the classic pay now or pay (more) later. Wouldn’t we prefer to be healthy all our lives?

Wishing everyone a healthy, energetic, and sustainable NEW YEAR!

Another couple of nights with low temps in the single digits. The air has that metalic flavor that suggests deep cold and the snow crunches loudly under foot. Hibernation is the appropriate response. And eating — Max calls it: “Putting on winter fat.” A warm fire in the wood stove, a couple of good books, and there’s no tire tracks out the gate for days at a time.
Finally Maggie and Derek arrived to share our coziness, bring us out of our solitude, and prolong our season of giving. Good conversation, more good books, and more great cooking ensues. Last night’s desert, for instance, was a delicious pumpkin creme broulee by M&D from a recipe Max found on line. It called for melting the sugar crust using a kitchen blow torch. Since we have “bumpkins” in the larder and I have a torch in my plumbing kit, we decided to give it a try. It was a resounding success except it was also considerably more of the winter fat than any of us needs at this point. Today a hike is planned and gathering more firewood.

Last night was magical and conducive to insomnia: winter sky was clear and cold; the moon, at 97%-full, amplified by a dusting of new snow, turned the night to almost-day. The coyotes sure thought it was a good night to report on their adventures; perhaps singing Sun back from his southward migration. About half-an-hour ago (6:28 AM) Earth began her tilt back toward summer; the days are beginning to lengthen even without help from the moon.

Thus it is the first official day of winter; it will be a couple of months before Sun gathers enough intensity to overcome the accumulated chill and snow-reflection to bring Spring. It feels like winter this morning: outside temp is 8 degrees; and colder as I rounded the corner of the cabin into in the down-slope breeze from the high country. Returning with the ash bucket, I emptied last week’s accumulation, and now a cheery fire in the stove is taking off the chill. We have been living in the proximity of the wood stove: Max is finishing a quilt for son Nik and I have moved my desk work to a warm corner and am clearing accumulated piles of the years’ paper work.

Sun rose while I was in the shower. The point on the horizon from which the rays first reach us will now begin to slowly progress northward, describing the crest of the West Elk mountains. The exact time of dawn’s first rays is determined as much by the height of the peak it is scaling as by the lengthening of the calendar day. Today, at the Winter Solstice, it emerges from the southerly end of the range where the ridge trails off toward Black Canyon. Tomorrow it will be incrementally north, climbing the ridge of Land’s End, and, paradoxically, we may experience the sun a little bit later than we did today. And so it will go into Spring. Dawn will slide easily along the saddle between Lands End and Mt Lamborn and then struggle to arise in time to surmount Lamborn. Eventually, at Summer’s first day it will have traversed the entire ridge and show up from behind a low point in the horizon, the more distant, though taller, 14,000-foot peaks of the Elk Range.

Nonetheless, we are grateful for the promise of longer days to come. Happy Solstice to all!

There’s a lovely story about compassion, humor, and group decision-making at the end of this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html.
The article itself discloses how government fertilizer subsidies, together with good rains, have produced bumper harvests of corn in Malawi this year after years of severe famine. Recent starvation was the result of strict World Bank-imposed “free market” policies intended to force farmers to grow food for export and to buy food for their families with the proceeds. The government fertilizer and seed subsidies enable farmers to grow food to feed their families first and export the rest. It is a graphic example of the failure of heartless free market globalization policies that the developed countries seek to impose on poor countries.
I am reminded, as I often am, of John Nichols, New Mexico trilogy (”The Magic Journey”, “Milagro Beanfield War, “Nirvana Blues.” I recommend we reread them for a dissection of the ways the powerful undermine local, self-sufficient, economies; force them to incur debt; and thereby turn proud people into wage slaves — all for the financial advantage of the rich and powerful.

I’ve already asserted in a previous blog that there is a link between food, diet, and health. At Mesa Winds Farm we raise organic food because it’s the only food we would want to eat — and we wouldn’t sell food to our customers that we wouldn’t eat ourselves. Max and I are presently visiting family in St Louis and, having driven across Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri to get here we have had ample opportunities to reflect on the US attitude toward food. A sampling:
1. We hear that the “Farm” Bill is dead until at least next year. Michael Pollan urges us to think of it as a “Food Bill” since it has such an impact on the food choices we are likely to see for at least the next five years. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/opinion/04pollan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) The Bill’s difficulties are an indication that Congress may actually be paying attention to this legislation for a change thanks to agitation by Pollan, the Organic Consumers Association (http://www.organicconsumers.org/), our own VOGA (www.vogaco.org), and others. They, and we, urge that the final legislation allocate an appropriate proportion of support for choices that will be healthy for the American people, for rural communities, and for the earth herself. Please get informed and help keep the pressure on Congress.
2. We are reminded of the comment by our organic potato farmer friend that commercial potato farmers don’t feed their families on potatoes from their fields; they have a kitchen garden for their own consumption. He makes this point to underscore the conclusion that farmers know the potatoes they send to the market aren’t fit to eat. I remember an event, when we lived near Bozeman, MT, when an entire neighborhood was evacuated because a drum of chemical fell off a semi on the highway — a known carcinogen with which commercial potatoes are fumigated to retard sprouting.
3. I’ve been looking for an analogy to putting something as vital as our food system in the hands of commercial interests: health care? legal defense? transportation safety? school systems? Hmmm. Maybe we now think our interests are adequately protected in all these arenas despite, or even because of, low initial cost. But ask practitioners in those fields and they’ll tell you that low cost is a poor way to choose quality. Maybe that’s why we are living through erosion in all those services: we’ve been willing to accept the free-marketeers’ doctrine that low cost is the most important element in choice.
Maybe the analogy works the other way around: cheap food policy is instructive of what’s wrong with reliance on the so-called market system to provide both low cost and quality in essential commodities and services. First, I challenge the notion that there is such a thing as a true market system. As in any unfettered “market” those with the greatest market power use their position to undermine the power of lesser players — thereby violating the essential proposition. A corrupted market is just that: corrupted. If you notice, those who try to hardest to convince us of the sanctity of any market are those who have a market advantage to protect.
Consider the food system: Markets rely on price competition among vendors and buyers. Farmers have few buyers from which to choose (a point ably explicated by Michael Pollan in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”); prices commanded by farmers stay low — hardly enough to cover the cost of production; and a state of affairs perpetuated by the Farm Bill. In the mythical pure system, this would cause producers to reduce supply, thereby driving prices up. Instead, farmers typically increase production in an effort to squeeze enough profit to stay in business out of their acres and equipment. Conventional farmers are encouraged to apply more artificial fertilizers and questionable pesticides and herbicides hoping that yields will off-set the cost of additional inputs. Maybe they hope their neighbor will go bankrupt first and thereby incrementally reduce overall supply. In any event this state of affairs is just fine with the pesticide dealers, the bankers, fuel suppliers, agribusiness buyers (ADM, Cargill, etc). And consumers — as long as they don’t consider whether the cheap food is healthy, nutritious, and delicious. It is not about good food.
The fact that we are organic, family farmers doesn’t relieve us of these pressures. The system that has prevailed for decades on our farm, and those of our neighbors, is the same: one buyer, lowest prices, pressure to over-produce, apple prices held low by competition from China. Our response, though, is different. We seek to connect directly with the people who eat the food we grow: who value the exceptional quality of organic, tree-ripened fruit, who value knowing the farms and farmers from whom their food comes; who value the survival of healthy rural agricultural communities, and who understand that if they want such values to continue (and grow) that their farmers need and deserve to receive a reasonable income. Together we are part of a revolution in agriculture.
4. We are grateful for all those who have joined hands with us in this mission: our Organic Food Club customers, our friends who take advantage of our Farm Stay opportunities to vacation and work on Mesa Winds Farm, and our workers whose labor, generously given despite low wages, helps bring our fruit to market. Thank you all. And, if you would like to know more about these opportunities, visit the web site… and welcome!