A new documentary, simply titled Asparagus!, gives us big reasons to care about this one little green stalk. The film focuses a magnifying glass on Oceana County, Michigan, the asparagus capital of the world. Over the course of 53 minutes, we meet many of the residents, family farmers, and farm workers for whom asparagus defines life.
The film brings to life our country’s local asparagus industry, while pulling in issues from the local food movement to free trade to the U.S. war on drugs to the struggle of family farmers in an increasing globalized world. As many documentaries do, Asparagus! sets up a David/Goliath conflict: Oceana County’s asparagus community finds itself under serious threat from foreboding forces of the U.S. government’s war on drugs.
In the early 1990s, the government started using U.S. tax dollars to pay Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus instead of coca. Since then, hundreds of American farms have gone out of business. Not only is imported asparagus cheaper, but it’s available year-round – because Peru’s agricultural conditions allow for year-round growth.
For Oceana County, the impact has been particularly damaging. Many family farms have been forced to shut down. The ones still holding on for dear life struggle to compete with cheap imported asparagus.
Unsurprisingly, the so-called war on drugs initiative has done nothing to curb cocaine production or distribution. As one farmer in the film says, it’s not like coca farmers stopped their growing and switched over to asparagus. And why would they, when the cocaine industry is such a lucrative one, mainly due to high demand from the U.S.?
The film also takes on free trade, depicting small farmers whose lives and livelihoods are being greatly impacted by U.S. foreign trade policy.
But the real appeal of the film is that it’s got heart. As we get to know Oceana’s residents and farmers, hear their stories, and learn about their idiosyncratic love for asparagus, it’s hard not to fall in love with the town. Which also makes it hard not to get onboard with their cause.
Asparagus!, the award-winning “stalk-umentary,” is part of the Media That Matters film festival, and was released in its full length on DVD last week. Watch the trailer here.
In the United States, getting your drivers' license a rite of passage for many teens, marking your first taste of independence. We're a car-obsessed culture, and the fact that many teens spend hours and hours in drivers' education courses preparing to get behind the wheel reflects that. But what if instead of learning to drive a car, American students learned how to use the full-scope of transportation options? If mobility education advocate David Levinger has his way, that's exactly what teens would be learning rather than placing all the emphasis on automobiles.
"The drivers license has become the American coming of age ritual," says Levinger, a Seattle native and the director of the Mobility Education Foundation. "This is very important transition point. You're increasing the demand for and reliance upon driving at the same time you're teaching kids to drive."
Levinger founded the Mobility Education Foundation in May 2007 to promote the idea that high school students should be taught how to get around safely and efficiently using a variety of transportation options. Under the model he has proposed, students would learn about walking, biking, and using public transportation in these courses as well, and the financial and health benefits of alternative modes of transport.
"By being able to use the full transportation system, you can save a lot of money, and also extend your ability to travel and really increase your mobility," says Levinger.
Americans spend an average $8,000 a year to own and operate a car, a huge financial burden that many young people aren't prepared to take on. Reliance upon the automobile also sets young people up for a lifetime behind the wheel, an unhealthy habit. The average adult spends an hour and a half in the car each day , and according a study conducted by the University of British Columbia, every 30 minutes spent in a car per day is linked with a 3 percent increase in the risk of obesity. Biking or walking also makes you healthier, which means you'll spend less money on medical costs.
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(photo: Clemson University students take action at their campus' coal plant in South Carolina)
We all know the facts, but it's worth a refresher: the world is on a crash course with climate chaos because of our addiction to cheap fossil fuels. The USA is home to the worst addicts — we represent only 4 percent of the world's population, but emit over 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide — and many of the worst dealers, corporations like ExxonMobile, Duke Energy, General Motors, and others have been trying to keep us hooked on their products by spending millions of dollars on lobbyists, misleading advertisements, and campaign contributions to crooked politicians (check out the video at the end of this post).
On April 1, thousands of students in the U.S. and worldwide will be sending a message to the biggest climate culprits: we won't be fooled again.
Fossil Fools Day will shine a spotlight on the real fools, the corporations and politicians who want to keep us hooked on dirty energy. This year's celebration is shaping up to be one of the most international campaigns the youth climate movement has ever run, with over 100 actions planned around the world. In Canada, youth activists are planning national actions to stop oil companies and government officials working to expand tar sands exploration. Down under, in Newcastle, Australia, climate activists will visit a local multinational department store and attempt to swap bucket-loads of coal for imported consumer products. Students have even translated the Fossil Fools Day site into a number of languages, including German, Spanish and Arabic.
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Goin' Green on St. Patrick's Day
There was an interesting piece in the Fashion section of the NYTimes this Sunday that is a little weird but it gets into some pretty fun stuff.
The piece follows a kid from Brooklyn who is hell bent on becoming an organic farmer. Trucker hats, Carhartts, and Pabst were the fashion but now some are putting the heart behind the fashion and finding the funk in farming.
"The Billyburg scene has changed, said Annaliese Griffin, who contributes to a blog called Grocery Guy. “Having a cool cheese in your fridge has taken the place of knowing what the cool band is, or even of playing in that band,” she said. “Our rock stars are ricotta makers.”
The same is true for Sarah Love, an Oklahoma University political science graduate and sometimes young Clay Pope a former DC staffer turn conservation lobbyist who have formed an organization that helps farmers become more environmentally friendly and companies to offset their carbon emissions.
Pope says he doesn't know about New York farmers but in Oklahoma the coolness of farming just brings the same stream of folks. "But stuff like that usually starts on the coasts and works its way inward."
Kidding aside, they hope to increase the interest and financial availability to small farmers and new farmers by providing financial incentives to those who run environmentally friendly operations.
"There are a lot of ways that farms hurt the environment over time," Love tells me. "With someone providing incentives to be more eco-friendly more people are happy to do the right thing for the environment."
Their plan is three fold.
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Golden Agri-Resources Ltd. is Indonesia’s largest palm oil plantation and the second largest in the world. CEO Franky Oesman Widjaja has announced a record year for the company, which would move net-profit to the billion-dollar range.
That’s terrible news for the large indigenous population affected by the environmental degradation brought by palm oil.
60 to 90 million indigenous people are left without land due to plantations’ clearing of forests. That information was released last month in “Losing Ground,” a report by environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth and indigenous rights groups Sawit Watch and Life Mosaic.
The report found 513 conflicts over land between local villages and the palm oil industry. In some cases, seizure of land by the palm oil companies have lead to killings and kidnappings.
Public health problems are also arising because palm oil companies use pesticides and fertilizers found to pollute drinking water in some villages.
The problems don’t stop with the environment. Local economy is disrupted not only by land use issues, but also because palm oil is interfering in a once self-sufficient community.
These human rights issues are only likely to get worse as demand for biofuels increases. Palm oil is also apparently the most consumed edible oil in the world.