Remember all those warm and wonderful Dove commercials with real women? Before you find yourself thinking of Dove as a wonderful example of corporate responsibility, consider that products such as their Gentle Exfoliating Foaming Face Cleanser contain tiny plastic beads that end up in the stomachs of animals like our friend the otter. According to an article in Slate by Hillary Rosner, no one really knows what accumulations of those micro-beads will do to aquatic wildlife over time.

This example reminds us that building sustainable systems means thinking about the long term whenever we introduce new products or services. Our living systems are so intertwined that we must make the shift to anticipating consequences before problems appear. An ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure, especially considering how hard it can be to reverse practices and products once they become entrenched.

Bottom line is that it is perfectly possible for people to live a happy life without products like Olay Body Wash Plus Spa Exfoliating Ribbons (can any product with a name that long really be good for us or the environment?). What is less clear is whether sea creatures like otters can enjoy a happy life if we allow such products to pollute our waterways with microplastics.

The National Wildlife Federation makes it easy to certify your backyard or farmland as wildlife friendly. The easy online form carries you through the process of assessing your current efforts. Checkboxes help you identify the ways that you are providing food and water for wildlife. NWF also asks you to assess the ways that your land offers cover and places for wildlife to rear their young. You must also identify sustainable gardening techniques are you using, from soil and water conservation efforts, to controlling invasive species, to organic practices.

I was particularly happy to see that the process rewards reducing the size of your lawn. I live near a man whose yard emits a constant steady roar from his lawnmower, his leaf trimmer, his edger, his hedgeclippers. If it burns fuel, he owns it — or he will soon head out in his Hummer to buy it.

For $15, you receive a certificate. But how can you resist buying at least one sign for $25? NWF also provides an online form you can use to invite like-minded friends to certify their land. I think I will send an invitation to my neighbor to see if he can take a hint.

Researchers at Michigan State years ago thought they had a great way to fatten up pigs for free - by giving the pigs water laced with their own urine. This video explains how the pigs outsmarted the humans.

This fall, Californians will vote on Prop 2, which would ban the factory farm practice of confining animals in small spaces. As Nick Kristof wrote in the New York Times, “My hunch is that in a century or two, our descendants will look back on our factory farms with uncomprehending revulsion.”

As someone who has wept after visiting a swine confinement facility decades ago, when this trend was just beginning, I appreciate his insights into the conundrum humans face when confronted with the ethics of eating other intelligent beings.

California again has the opportunity to lead the way with this landmark legislation. It will be even bigger battle because food prices have been rising quickly enough to take my breath away, so the argument will be made that the burden will fall disproportionately on the poor. And knowing that the devil is often in the details, it is important to make sure that the law of unintended consequences doesn’t undo the law’s good intentions.

We should also take this as an opportunity to have a national conversation on food. When the poor are relegated to subsisting on potato chips, Twinkies and soda from convenience stores, it is time for a massive re-thinking of how we produce and distribute food. Congratulations to Kristof for raising the issue of how we treat the animals we eat, and now we must continue the conversation in our communities.

My friend Casey (top) shows off a purple dragon carrot. The middle photo shows that these carrots are nicely orange inside. And the bottom image shows what biotechnology could bring us.

My friend Casey sends me great blog fodder. This time, she urged me to read the (long but worth it) interview with Dr. John Navazio on the Seeds of Change Web site. He’s the plant breeder who maintains wonderful varieties like the purple dragon carrot you see here.

The article is a virtual crash course in the science of plant breeding. It also offers Navazio’s views on sustainability.

Navazio comes across as a realist. For example, he understands that you must breed vegetables not just for taste and nutrition but also for their visual appeal. He quotes a fellow plant breeder who reminds us that we all want our vegetables to “smile” back at us. (And unsmiling vegetables fall out of favor and disappear.)

Maybe it’s Navazio’s pragmatism that makes his concerns about biotechnology seem so chilling. He says that classical plant breeding amounts to accelerated evolution, but within relatively narrow bounds. Biotechnology, in contrast, allows for exotic crosses. “There’s a real chance of putting together some combinations of wide crosses outside the realm of natural law that could potentially be harmful in a very big way,” he said.

That quote reminded me of the interview I did decades ago with a scientist who was building a new lab to experiment with recombinant DNA. I asked him what he hoped this new biotechnology could achieve for agriculture. “We are on the brink of being able to take the genes from a corn plant and cross them with genes from a squirrel,” he said. Come again? “A corn-squirrel cross is perfectly within the realm of possibility,” he told me with a straight face.

And I am afraid someone will think that’s a great idea. So I prefer to stick with Dr. Navazio’s vision for the future.

I spent Monday with food personnel from the University of Michigan, as they toured local farms in Michigan from which they buy fresh, local food for 15,000 to 20,000 of the U of M students who live in dorms. As the video shows, this group literally went the extra mile to visit the farmers who supply them. The primary purpose of the in-person visits was to assure themselves (and certify to their superiors) that the growers follow farming practices that promote food safety.

Unit Chef Buzz Cummings talked glowingly about how great it is to provide students fresh, nutritious, local food. However, he also noted that there are times he has to educate students about the benefits of the localvore movement.

Last year, Cummings put out trays of freshly washed strawberries from Felzke Farms in DeWitt, only to find them still untouched the next morning. Cummings said young people today have been raised to think that those “monster berries” from California are the gold standard. So they passed up the sweet and tender berries from Michigan until he turned them into rich, thick smoothies and refreshing strawberry slushies, promoted as a Strawberry Festival featuring local, fresh food.

A new study shows that the food and beverage industry spends $1.6 billion a year targeting kids with their ads. And we also know that many of those ads promote the high-profit, high-calorie, high-fat, sweetened and salty foods that can put kids at risk of health problems such as obesity and diabetes. So congratulations to the University of Michigan for developing a plan to buy local. Now let’s all make sure schools everywhere, from kindergarten through graduate school, provide nourishing locally grown food to their students.

A well-researched article by “Consumer Man” Herb Weisbaum on the MSNBC Web site reports that many shoppers whose budgets are being shredded by higher fuel and food prices are saving money by buying fewer organically grown foods than they did before. From the article:

Before the economy went bad, organics were the wonder child of the food industry. There was double-digit growth and everybody was excited about it,” says Bob Vosburg, an editor at Supermarket News. “Now manufacturers realize that organics are potentially on the outs as this economy gets worse and people are starting to become really wallet-conscious.”

This is worrisome news for organic growers and by extension for the sustainable movement. Though the two aren’t synonymous, the premium that people have been willing to pay for organic food has helped support higher prices charged at farm markets and through CSAs, whether the food is certified organic or not.

Upscale consumers may continue to pay a premium, but there are already concerns that farm markets and CSAs are pricing themselves beyond the reach of many urban consumers. My sister shopped at an urban farmers’ market the other day, one that supposedly caters to the low-income residents who live nearby. “There was nothing there you could buy for $2, even greens or onions,” she said. “The shoppers were almost all upscale people from downtown offices, not locals.”

If people feel forced to shop more for price than for freshness and quality, will this threaten the growth of localvore movement?

Click here to read Jerry Nelson’s account of life at Koinonia today

When Clarence Jordan and his wife Florence founded Koinonia Farm 66 years ago, the United States was a much different place. World War II may have brought us the “greatest generation,” but when these stoic men returned from battle, their silence did not serve them well in dealing with the persistent inequalities in the culture. It was an era when newspapers listed jobs under the headings of “Help Wanted - Men” and “Help Wanted - Women.” It was also a time when it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many states, and segregated schools were the law of the land in the South.

Against that backdrop, Jordan decided that his contribution to changing the moral and ethical landscape of the South lay in creating an example of what life could be like if people truly followed the precepts of Jesus. Never one for marches or protests, Jordan built Koinonia Farm as a place where blacks and whites continue to live together as equals, a beacon of social justice in the heart of the segregated South. Of course, that also made it a magnet for the worst instincts of those who felt threatened that their world was changing.

The farm came under siege so often in this era that the farm’s insurer had canceled their fire policy. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., sent Clarence a letter with suggestions on where to find a company willing to take the risk. The letter also said:

You and the Koinonia Community have been in my prayers continually for the last several months. The injustices and indignities that you are now confronting certainly leave you in trying moments. I hope, however, that you will gain consolation from the fact that in your struggle for freedom and a true Christian community you have cosmic companionship. God grant that this tragic midnight of man’s inhumanity to man will soon pass and the bright daybreak of freedom and brotherhood will come into being.” - - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Well-meaning experiments in agrarian communal living often founder on the rocks of human frailty - ego, insecurity and greed. George Ripley and his band of transcendentalists founded Brook Farm in Massachusetts. “Scarlet Letter” author Nathaniel Hawthorne and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson were part of the movement. According to current entries in the Wikipedia, the farm radically empowered women, but the experiment withered away after a fire in 1846.

At their peak in the era just before the Civil War,The Shakers boasted 19 “intentional communities” or communes. This Protestant offshoot from the Quakers took root in the late 1800s, and they had 6,000 members by 1840. However, their strict adherence to celibacy meant their long-term survival relied exclusively on conversion and adoption, and their numbers have dwindled down to four remaining adherents in today’s new millennium. All that remains are some antiques and the Shaker furniture designs, which are kept alive by today’s Amish artisans.

Among the hundreds of utopian communities in the 1800s were the Amana colonies in Iowa, the Oneida community in New York and the Rappites, also known as the Harmony Society, in Pennsylvania. More than 30 years ago, my colleague Paul Courter at Michigan Farmer magazine discovered that a farmer he was interviewing for a story on raising sheep had grown up on Brook Farm. (I continue to kick myself for not trying to capture the man’s memories before he died.)

At Michigan Farmer in the mid-Seventies, I ventured “up north” to Evart, Michigan, to do a story on how farmers were facing new problems with coyotes. On my way home, I saw a sign for Sunshine Commune and couldn’t resist making an unannounced visit. A happy band of hippies greeted me warmly and told me about their utopian vision, built on growing organic vegetables and homegrown pot to nourish themselves and on candlemaking as their concession to commerce. They cooked together. They ate together. They sang together. They worked the garden together. And they raised their cheerful children together. (And I had run out of film shooting the coyotes so I cannot show you any of this.)

Unfortunately, the Sunshine experiment, like many before them, barely lasted one generation. (I remember one young man proudly showed me the deed to the farm, which listed all of their names, including Suzy Creamcheese. I have always wondered how long it took to untangle that legal knot later.)

So how has Koinonia succeeded in surviving all these years, while most others have failed? Perhaps it was simply the synergy of the individuals involved. Or maybe it had something to do with timing. They had their act together by the time the second wave of communes erupted during the late 60s and early 70s. But maybe it was also the purity of their commitment to serving others. Millard and Linda Fuller of Koinonia launched the initiative to build homes for the poor that evolved into Habitat for Humanity, founded in 1976.

According to the Koinonia history published when the farm won the Community of Christ International Peace Award, the real threat to Koinonia’s continued existence occurred in the mid-90s, when the farm changed its mission to providing local jobs, delegating the decision-making to a paid director. In 2005, Koinonia Partners re-dedicated itself to its spiritual mission and returned to communal decision-making.

Jerry Nelson, author of the article on the farm on our companion website Sustainable Farmer, has his own ideas about why Koinonia survives. “I believe there are three qualities that must be present for a Christian Intentional Community to survive,” he says. “These are: Practical Skills, A Common Vision and The Grace of God.”

Perhaps it is also no accident that the most visionary and utopian experiments take place on sustainable farms. The romantic ideal of agrarian life continues to inspire a passion for progressive social change. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson told George Washington, “Agriculture… is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness.” In that spirit, Koinonia remains a real place where real people live, but it also provides a dream of what could be.

The British newspaper The Guardian has a brief article on this study that shows three-fourths of the rise in food prices around the world comes from growing investments in biofuels, including ethanol in the United States.

Previous reports suggested that biofuels were responsible for only 3% of the rising cost of food.

A friend who is a reporter for a Japanese newspaper recently visited the U.S. heartland where ethanol farmers insisted they were not responsible for any part of the increase in food prices. Their logic was that the field corn would otherwise have been fed to livestock, not people. (This ignores the fact that the field corn fed to animals ends up as animal products we buy to eat. And that meat and milk prices rise when the price of field corn goes up because of the competition from ethanol.)

An article in the New York Times notes that European countries have been rolling back ethanol subsidies. In the United States meanwhile, a staggering 30% of the corn crop this year will be diverted into ethanol production, according to an article in Foreign Affairs. The politics of food in the United States is complicated by the fact that Iowa is the first caucus state in presidential elections every four years. That makes it unlikely that any presidential contender (or president seeking re-election) will risk proposing we reduce support for ethanol when so many Iowa farm families have found it a boon.

It is worth noting that Barack Obama, whose strong win in Iowa this year helped propel him to the Democratic nomination, continues to support ethanol. John McCain’s straight-talk express took a detour last December, when he reversed his opposition to ethanol. Both men prefer to turn the conversation to the seemingly less controversial cellulosic form of ethanol. But there is controversy brewing among conservationists if pressure to release more and more acres from the Farmland Trust for cellulosic ethanol production continues to mount.

Perhaps the dilemma will remind us of the importance of thinking through the possibility of unanticipated consequences, so that we get these decisions right the first time. It will undoubtedly prove much harder to end support for ethanol than it might have been to promote another alternative instead.

Former Vice President Al Gore today outlined an ambitious plan to generate all electricity in the United States carbon-free within a decade. As he explains, “The planet requires it, the economy requires it, and our national security requires it.”

The opportunities for sustainable agriculture to play a role in creating this carbon-free future are enormous. With the right tax incentives, farmers would be quick to produce their own power through wind and solar.

I spent Tuesday morning talking with Mark Seamon, an Extension alternative energy specialist (video coming soon). He has faith that inventive farmers will lead the way in developing products and systems that make their farms energy self-sufficient, while reducing or eliminating emissions of greenhouse gases as well. (A few wisely crafted grant programs for on-farm inventors would surely help.)

A year ago April, yours truly was privileged to be selected as one of the 1,000 people who were personally trained by Al Gore through The Climate Project (TCP) initiative in Nashville. (No, I can’t get you an autograph or get him to speak at your conference.)

A briefing from TCP on the Gore plan received today reminds us that wind and solar are free fuels — which means they are not subject to unexpected price hikes. This would be a boon to farmers who worry about how to price their CSA contracts so that they can take rising fuel prices into account.

At dinner one night with Al and Tipper (OK, so I was about 20 feet from their table), I asked one of Mr. Gore’s assistants whether she thought he would use his enormous leverage to shape the debate on climate change for the presidential election. Her reply was, “That’s your job.” Pressed to explain what she meant, she said, “He can only do so much. It’s people around the country who care about his issues who must make it an issue in the election.”

With the economy and national security looming large as campaign issues, it is great that Al Gore has framed this issue in terms of both. Now it is our job to ensure that the upcoming debates have more questions on the Gore plan than on the “terrorist fist bump” or what Jesse Jackson said.