Growing Food, not Crops

[Here's the orginal: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/214]

Michael Pollan, the author, gives an extrodinarily insightful TED talk on how much we can gain if we change the perspecive regarding how we view nature.

I must admit, generally prefer the more technical to the philosophical, but at its basis, technical comes from a philosophical outlook, and Pollan’s shift in looking at nature is quite exciting.  Definitely check it out, even though it is longer than the usual internet video.

Playing With Your Food

This amazing production inspired a fan imitation, which I am posting here, because I think it is way cuter.

Economics vs Humanism

[picture from this NY Times article about Haitian scavengers]

I was conversing with a friend the other day about the dramatic rise in food prices and the disruption it is causing to lives worldwide. I mentioned that percentage of income spent on food is nevertheless at its lowest point in history. He shot back at the destructiveness of that thinking–to ignore the human cost of major socio-economic events.

So where is the balance? 100 years ago the working class would spend over half their income on the bare-minimum amount of food (like bread). Certainly we have made great progress since then. There are many many less poor people than there used to be. But that doesn’t mean that the food riots in places like Egypt, India, and Haiti are not real.

It takes a balance of perspectives.  The economists have to take into account the very real feelings and local problems that happen when there are “deviations from the norm”. But it’s of little help when liberal-types blast the “right-wing” economists while ignoring the blistering historical pace of poverty improvement.

8000 years ago everyone farmed/hunted/gathered their own food. 1000 years ago almost everyone farmed their own food. At the height of the gritty industrial revolution only 100 years ago, almost everyone lived on subsistence wages, with little to spare for even the smallest luxuries. Now someone can have a car and a TV and still be considered poor.  And while I don’t dispute the designation, such cases should keep a little bit of perspective as well. But there are still a phenomenal amount of very poor that do not have things like clean drinking water.

So let’s compromise. Statistics are absolutely amazing for analysis, but remember that each number is actually a person. And when viewing all the things still in need of improvement in this huge world, remember how far we’ve come.

Illegals Pick Your Food, Deal With It.

See if you can find the problem….

Here

And Here

And tangentially related…

Here

And Here