SW FL ready to lead in biofuel production

As the terrible, ongoing BP Deepwater Horizon spill painfully reminded us, we've played sorcerer's apprentice too long when it comes to fossil fuels. We've based our entire lifestyle around them, starting with coal during the Industrial Revolution, and getting addicted to cheap, plentiful oil in the 20th century.

This addiction has gone out of control. The environmental consequences are nothing short of catastrophic. Geopolitically, we're bogged down in long, costly wars that only the criminally naive believe are motivated by vagaries such as 'bringing democracy to the Arab world'. We are in bed with hostile, backward regimes, such as Saudi Arabia's or Nigeria's, because we need their light sweet crude. And above all, as the reality of Peak Oil becomes more and more apparent, we are realizing that hey, the stuff is running out anyway, and no amount of 'drill, baby, drill' is going to change that.

That's why it makes me so proud to see glimmers of the old American can-do spirit in local entrepreneurs Harold 'Lee' Crews and Susan MacFarlan, who are working hard to make our part of the world a leader in biofuels research and production.

A quick note to explain that biodiesels are different from ethanol in many respects. They are made from dedicated crops - thus, not competing with food crops such as corn or sugar cane - pressed rather than distilled, and their oils used on a wide range of diesel engines.

Lee and Susan, along with Extension Agent Roy Beckford and others, have been researching biofuel crops, including Jatropha Curcus, Pongamia Pinnata, Camelina, Canola, and others, for a long time, and are now moving out of the research phase and getting ready to go into production, as the $3M processing facility behind the State Farmers' Market on Edison proves.

In addition to the machinery and storage tanks there, you'll find rows of experimental crops in different stages of development. Local producers of organic fertilizers, like Bob Donnelly and Billy Sol, have teamed up with Lee and Susan to make the unthinkable happen: growing our own energy in an environmentally friendly fashion, locally, and processing it right here. Many area farmers are starting to dedicate part of their acreage to this project, as Lee Crews manages a difficult act - finding the funding for the facility, making sure the necessary crops will be there when we need them, exploring potential markets, and much more.

Lee Crews and Susan MacFarlane are in tune with the future, and are true visionaries that deserve our support. I encourage everyone who is 'mad as hell' at the BP spill to redirect their energies in a positive way - for example, by getting interested in what's going on with biofuel research right here and supporting Lee and Susan's work in any way you can, by volunteering, by helping them find local farmers to grow the stuff, by promoting them, by putting whatever skills you may have at their disposal.

Susan's website, Agri-Fuel Feedstocks, is here. Florida Department of Agriculture's website is here, or you can email Lee at crewsh@doacs.state.fl.us or call 239-332-6910. There's a few pictures of my visit to the facility here. I must thank these friends for taking the time to show me around, answer my questions, and even giving me some Jatropha plants to grow at my farm.

Sustainable Initiatives

Last Dec. 4th, the usual suspects got together to check out what's being done to improve sustainability locally, and listen to some amazing presentations by very smart people, including Dr. Harold Wanless, University of Miami (Sea level Rise, Changes in Florida’s Coasts), Tom Champeau, Regional Director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (Habitat & Species on the Front Line of Climate Change), and Dr. Heike Lueger, Chief Scientist, Carbon Solutions America (The Future of Carbon Trading & its Impact in Florida Economy), among others.

The speaker I was most interested in, though, was Roy Beckford, UF/IFAS Agriculture & Natural Resources Agent, who talked about "The Prospects of Jatropha curcas & Sustainable Biodiesel". Years ago, I was working on some projects around a farm I owned at the time, and needed help and information. I wrote to Roy, and he wrote right back, sending along a ton of useful info that I was able to put in practice immediately. I've been a big fan ever since. And after meeting a number of local farmers and gardeners, it seems to me that each and every one of them has something good to say about this helpful and good-natured guy. Oh, and of course I also appreciate the work of Martha Avila, his sidekick at IFAS, so I wouldn't have missed his presentation for anything.

Mr Beckford has been on the forefront of groundbreaking research on Jatropha curcas as a biodiesel feedstock in Florida and other tropical environments for a number of years now, and his work is starting to gain momentum, as data accumulates, and plots planted with Jatropha that he's started on several fields and farms reach maturity.

In fact, I had just been planting some potted young Jatrophas of his just a few days prior, in one of the plots he's monitoring, to replace ground-planted plants that had died. This particular experiment of his, at Ken Ryan's farm in North Fort Myers, I believe has to do with the hardiness of the crop, as the plants there are pretty much left alone, not fertilized, watered or helped in any way.

Roy's presentation was very interesting, he gave a packed auditorium an outlook of current research and some insights about where we're headed with biodiesels in general and Jatropha in particular. This is a man whose work has to be followed closely, as he truly is on the cutting edge of a hugely important area of research that is bringing him continued and increasing national and international attention. We are fortunate to have him here in SW FL, and I encourage readers to support him and his work. A good place to start your research if you want to find more about him and his current projects is his IFAS page here.

Besides Mr Beckford and the other speakers, a number of local green entrepreneurs were there, including of course yours truly, there to promote edible gardens and the GreenMarket. Talking about the GreenMarket, our Salvadoran fair trade coffee guy (who also has a thousand other projects), Billy Sol, was in charge of caffeine trafficking at the meeting, and the local household products division of WOW Green of Jonathan Nemath was represented as well. Last but not least, Bob with B&B Organics was there, promoting his worm castings 100% organic fertilizer, and learning about other alternative garden products.

Dan Moser, longtime Lee Co. Bike and Pedestrian coordinator and Florida Weekly columnist, among other things, was there, chatting with commissioner Ray Judah about the Complete Streets Resolution and other issues.

I met Faye Najar of Recycled Plastic Factory LLC of Englewood, who is as enthusiastic as I am about the future of this industry - producing 100% recycled plastic lumber. Maintenance free, heavy duty, doesn't rot or splinter, and above all, environmentally friendly and finds a second life for plastic, a material that while undoubtedly useful, has become a huge problem as it doesn't degrade and is choking everything from waterways to landfills to the ocean.

Event sponsors also included Carbon Solutions America, Waste Management, Empower, the Florida Bicycle Association and Charlotte County's Green Building Program. I uploaded some pictures of the meeting here, and would like to thank IFAS Extension for keeping the discussion open, and constantly providing venues and forums to get together and search for better, greener, more sustainable ways to do things here in SW FL.

The Whole Foods fiasco

The other day, I had the opportunity to visit the famous Whole Foods store, the one located in Naples, for the first time. My impressions on it are mixed, but they tend towards the negative.

While having access to products that are produced in a sustainable way is, I reckon, generally a good thing, the way everything is now branded as "green" would be funny if it wasn't so depressing.

I mean, the first thing you see when you walk into this Wal-Mart sized monster of a store is crates upon crates of bottled water. Drinking water in plastic bottles, which has to be one of the most outrageously unsustainable consumer products available. Oh, but this bottled water is "green", see. I can't figure out how or why, as it uses a plastic bottle, just like the other brands at the other stores.

The BS and the hype were everywhere you looked. I had to laugh at the produce section. How is flying "organic" berries and apples from California and Chile "sustainable"? This "organic" label, by the way... it's gotten out of control. I was talking to local farmer Ken Ryan this morning, and he was telling me how it's all a racket, where you have to kick back a percentage of your profit to the certification agency that gives you the "organic" label, where you can actually use some chemicals as long as you purchase them from their vendors list, and similar stories that show you how shady the whole deal has become, a game with words and perceptions, just like the carbon offsets fiasco, and so many other miracles of branding and marketing, where you are allowed to carry on with the old ways as long as you are fluent in newspeak and can convince the public that "my water in a plastic bottle is better than other waters in plastic bottles because there's an 'authority' somewhere that says so".

Take the development at Babcock Ranch, where they are once again razing some of the few remaining untouched natural habitats in the area to the ground, to make way for sprawl and shopping, and calling it a "green community" because they will be throwing in some solar panels and stuff. Another bulldozed forest, and extra pressure on the water resources, plus adding lanes to a bunch of roads, and the whole litany of what's needed for "growth", to build another cluster of McMansions, with their schools and churches and fast-food joints (and Whole Foods stores, no doubt) in the middle of nowhere, and branding the whole project "green"... give me a break... and still people buy it? If this isn't a lesson learnt from Wall Street's creative accounting, bundling, marketing and advertising, I don't know what is...

And the public is only too eager to go along with it. To pay the premium for the label and the peace of mind. It's easier to pay a little more (or quite a lot more, in fact), especially if you live in Naples, Fl, than to ask some hard questions. Like, "why are all the lights on, even next to the windows, in the middle of the day, in this supposedly 'green' store?". Or, "can I live with the fact that some kinds of produce and fruits cannot be available year-round unless you fly them in from thousands of miles away?". Or, "does my produce really need all this plastic packaging?".

Don't take me wrong here. Like I said before, there's some stuff there that is great. For instance, I was able to find some yerba mate, the South American tea, that I had given up trying to find at local stores. The organic and fair trade kind. Great. Not that it tastes any different from the stuff I grew up drinking, although it sure costs more. But after a long time, I'm drinking mate again, and I'm grateful for that.

There were also some crappy products on sale. My wife insisted on buying some organic brown rice that we discovered was completely infested with weevils when we got home, and had to be discarded right away. With the avocado season in full swing here in Florida, their avocados had to be brought in from somewhere far. And they didn't look good either. Ours are not "organic" enough, I guess.

The bottom line is, in my opinion, "local" beats "organic" any day. Consuming locally grown food does more for sustainability than looking for the USDA organic label. Basically, your diet is based on staples (rice, dry beans, pasta), most of them not local but cheap and sustainable to transport and store because of their long shelf life, complemented with whatever's available seasonally. Historically, populations depended on this kind of diet.

Staple foods can be transported in bulk with very little cost to the environment - think sailboats and trains. You throw in a little meat now and then, and local produce. That's sustainable.

It's only recently that we have grown accustomed to having organic cherry tomatos and bananas available 365 days of the year. It cannot last. We need to go back to a reliable way to distribute staple foods using very little fossil fuels input, and growing the rest ourselves, within a few miles of our towns.

We don't need a fancy, air-conditioned store like Whole Foods to buy a few pounds of rice, some produce from local farmers, and a couple of fish - a warehouse next to the railroad tracks or the port is enough, or better yet, an open air market, like they have in the 3rd world.

I miss open air markets. You walk around, see what's available, ask questions, meet people, stop for a taco al pastor or a falafel or a mote con huesillo from the guy with the cart, walk some more. There's the smell of spices, there's people selling live birds, there's radios blasting rancheras or whatever, there's old comadres that not only sell you the nopalitos or aguacates but also explain to you how to prepare them. A lot of what you see is local and environmentally friendly, and it doesn't even promote itself as such! Zero hype... that's my favorite part.

WF, on the other hand, is all hype. That, I guess, is my problem with it...

Why we will never have universal health care coverage

Last July 9th, I took my bike, put my youngest kid in the back and rode to the old courthouse in downtown Ft. Myers, where some people were going to demonstrate and make their voice heard in support of universal health care. I was of a mind of doing some demonstrating too, supporting something so basic as government provided basic health care for all.

Alas, that wasn't to be. When I got there, I saw, in a nutshell, why universal health care is not going to happen in this country, ever. Which is a damn shame, really. I'm sure the O administration is going to be able to pass some weak-ass, watered down version of health care reform, as long as it doesn't interfere with the obscene profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. But whatever it is, it's not going to be universal health care, like they have in advanced, first world societies like... Argentina.

That's right, Argentina, South America. The Old Country, in my case. Where, when we went for vacation a while ago, the same little one riding the back of my bike had the bad luck of falling ill. As in, seriously ill, with a respiratory infection that wouldn't let her breathe. You can imagine my grief as I took her to the nearest children's hospital (5 blocks from my mom's place, in fact, near Constitucion train station - Hospital Pedro de Elizalde). Well, she was immediately admitted, no questions asked, no requirement to show an insurance card or a credit card or an ID or anything at all. She was given the best care around the clock. Doctors would check on her on the hour, every hour. Very capable nurses would administer medicines and check on IV drips constantly. The room was clean, modern and well-appointed with all the necessary gear. The only difference I could see from Health Park here in Ft. Myers was that there were 2 people per room instead of 1, and no TV. That's it. The rest was the same.

So anyway, she stayed there a few days, got well, they let her go after making sure she'd be OK. When we were leaving, I mentioned that we were visitors, and inquired as to how to pay for her stay. They just looked at me in a funny way. It just doesn't work that way. Nobody's going to make a profit from someone falling ill, period. It's society's responsibility to care of all. You can choose a private insurance plan, with a private clinic, if for whatever reason you prefer to. Maybe 2 people per room is too much for you, and you want to be alone. Or you want cable TV. Whatever. You have that option. There's no big, socialistic government banning private enterprise in medicine. There's many private insurance companies. With many clients (patients?). But society as a whole will guarantee that everyone has their basic health care needs met. There's no ads on TV about new drugs. A doctor will prescribe what he thinks you need, without you "asking him about...".

Maybe I'm making it sound perfect here, and it isn't. The nurse was telling me of planeloads of foreigners coming from Lima and Miami to get sex-change surgery, plastic surgery, that kind of thing, for free. There's many problems and abuses, sure. But the simple fact is, if you have a health problem, a) you're gonna get treatment to matter what, and b), you're not gonna be in debt forever because of it. Actually, you're not going to have to pay anything for treatment, period. You're supposed to get well and get back to work and start paying your taxes again, so that when somebody else has a problem, he's taken care of as well, just like your daughter was.

Oh, taxes. A sore spot, that. Right off the bat, I noticed that there were about a dozen or so people demonstrating FOR health care, and two dozen AGAINST it. Paying higher taxes was a big rationale as to why the government shouldn't guarantee health care for all, according to the demonstrators against. Well, God forbid you'd have to pay a percentage point more on your ATV, or your Jet Ski, or your cigarettes, or your booze, in order to have doctors treat little girls without coverage, or laid off workers who don't have insurance through work anymore and aren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, or old, broke, retired persons. No sir, that's not gonna happen, they kept yelling, right before proclaiming how Christian and holier-than-thou they are. You know the type, the Tea Party people, the ones with the "Don't tread on me" and Confederate flags, that foam in the mouth at the mere mention on Obama or the Democrats.

Well, they should chill out, because Obama and the Democrats, once again, will do nothing. There will be a lot of talk, then some totally meaningless half-measures to save face, then everything will go back to normal. Normal being our current state of affairs, where being uninsured and having an accident pretty much guarantees you'll die destitute in the richest nation on Earth. Heck, even with insurance they'll bleed you dry, these companies employ thousands of people just to look for ways to deny you coverage you already paid for.

Another big point these bozos had was how people from other countries envy our system here, and come to get treatment, how you can't get a hospital bed in Canada and have to come stateside to get treatment, etc. I say, bullshit. That's Faux News and talk radio propaganda, pure and simple. It's just not true. Never mind my little Argentinian example before. I have friends from Canada, Denmark, the UK, Italy, Chile and a bunch of other places, and I know they are quite happy with their system, can get a bed when they need it, and wouldn't dream of coming here to get treatment, unless maybe to see a specific doctor who is the best in his field, in a desperate case, a top doctor that could be here just as well as in Japan or Germany - they would go there to see him too, if the situation was desperate enough. I wonder how many of the guys demonstrating against health care for all know anyone residing in a different country, that could confirm or deny the whole "foreigners envy our system" crap.

Anyway, the reason I say health care reform is never gonna happen, besides the fact of Democrats being just Republicans Light since a long time ago and completely afraid to confront lobbies and interests head-on, despite having a clear mandate to do so, is because anyone who wants to have a rational discussion about the matter is gonna get shouted down by an angry mob, brainwashed by whatever propaganda they listen to in their monster trucks and McMansions, and angry as hell at "liberals" and "minorities" and "entitlements" and "taxes" - when they should be mad as hell at "Goldman Sachs", really, and all the Goldman Sachs insiders in this and every other administration. They are OK with letting someone die for lack of medical treatment, Christians that they are, especially if her points of view differ from their Holy Writ - I mention this because in the camp of those supporting health care the other day, there was some lady with a hat bearing a legend supporting gay marriage. Well, you should see how those counter-demonstrators really went crazy about that. Every time this lady approached them to try and have a conversation and explain her points, they would just shout her down, they wouldn't listen or talk, just ratchet up the decibels. Don't get me wrong, I think gay marriage is a non-issue. I don't care for it. And I think the lady was mudding the waters, mixing one message with another at the demonstration, as if we don't have trouble enough trying to secure some sort of health care coverage for all Americans, without being distracted by other grievances and struggles. But there it is: they are united, they show up in numbers that double ours, and they just scream and yell very loudly, until anyone opposing them, progressives, liberals, whatever, have to back down and retreat. That's the way it is. If big O, fresh from winning a big election, with a clear mandate from the people, can't push effectively enough for the Change he promised, what can we little guys do? It's hopeless. In the end, I didn't even stay there. The kid kept saying, "these guys yell too loud", meaning the anti-demonstration, and "can we go", so we left. No heroic argument, no "let's convince these deluded guys of how wrong they are", no "let's make a stand here". Why expose my kid and myself to some crazy born-again fanatic yelling 4-letter words at us, with a side of spittle, some bozo that has no idea of what's really going on, and doesn't want to learn anything about anything? Besides, even with the 3 dozen people that showed up either for or against, you know, there's what, a million people in greater Lee and Collier counties? I mean, c'mon. No one cares. No one cares.

A piece of advice, if you're uninsured and have a health issue: go to Miami, take a plane to Buenos Aires, and get the treatment you need. Have about a grand or two available, at all times, cash, to cover the ticket and expenses. Try to learn a little Spanish. And forget about the Holy O liberating us from these health care insurance bloodsuckers, because it's not going to happen, not in our lifetimes, not ever. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid I'm not.

A vanishing world

Many things make David Campbell's book, "A land of ghosts", brilliant: the deep knowledge of the author (an ecologist with decades of experience documenting life in the farthermost confines of the Amazon forest) about the cycles of birth and death in this unforgiving land, his captivating style of writing, his dry sense of humor. But what I found most touching is his grasp of the inevitability of the vast changes happening there, and how even the most motivated efforts by individuals and environmental collectives amount to little more than Don Quixote charging the windmills.

The human tide is rising, and no amount of signature-gatherings, fundraisers or fulminations of unsustainable lifestyles and business models will do more than put a temporary stop to the deforestation and massive extinctions going on there and elsewhere. Everybody needs to make a living, he sadly concludes when describing the slash-and-burn techniques used to open fields for cattle grazing and cultivation, fields that quickly become barren and lead to even more terrain being reclaimed by settlers in the same fashion. The issue is not that mankind is inherently evil, although there's quite a bit of that when we read about how the native peoples who were the original inhabitants of the land were hunted to extinction. The issue is that we are not, as a species, prepared to look beyond the very short term. Impoverished laborers have to put food on their families' tables. Corporations have to turn a profit if they are to remain viable. And countries have to be ruthless if they are ever to leave the Third World and join the big players.

The Associated Press reports that Brazilian president Lula da Silva has approved a controversial land tenure law that Greenpeace and others say will lead to even more deforestation and extinctions in the Amazon. And this is Lula, mind you, the darling of Latin America's progressives and moderate lefties, not some ruthless right-wing dictator of years past, a la Stroessner or Somoza. This is a man who grew up poor, who for years fought for the rights of workers as a union leader and community activist before entering politics and winning the presidency. This is a man who went to bed hungry many times, as he has told on several interviews. He's worked hard to get to a position of power, and by all accounts he's doing his best to take his country out of poverty. His are hard choices. Yes, the Amazon is the last big lung of the Earth, home to a mind-boggling diversity of animal and plant species, and it would be wise to leave it alone. On the other hand, its short-term riches are a tempting release valve to demographic pressures and a ticket for Brazil to reclaim its long coveted seat at the world powers' table. Talk about a Faustian bargain.

A bargain that every civilization had to make, when you think of it. Campbell glances over how the Mediterranean looked three millenia ago, rich with marine life, forests and deep topsoil, and how, after many cultures developed and declined around its shores, each making use of its resources with more and more advanced technologies, it now is only a shade of what it used to be, forests gone, topsoil eroded and its waters little more than a toxic cesspool.

Advanced societies in North America and Europe were brutal in their exploitation of natural resources on hand, as well. The U.S. had untold natural riches on its inception; only a small fraction remains today. It is only after two centuries of economic growth, with the resulting rise in standards of living and education, that we have come to understand that our world is a precious resource that needs to be preserved and protected, and have started to take measures towards that end (albeit too little, too late, in the opinion of some). How can we preach our newfound environmental gospel to the BRIC and Third World countries without sounding arrogant or hypocritical? Take China: critics will point to the scale of its environmental degradation, its polluted rivers and smog-choked cities; supporters will point out that this is the price that had to be paid for its masses to escape centuries of serfdom and starvation and rise to the global middle class.

In the end, these complex and apparently unsurmountable problems boil down to overpopulation and economic expectations, the drive of the many to have the comforts and luxuries of the few; what we call a "Western" standard of living. Lula commented, proudly, when offering justification for his approval of the opening of more land in the Amazon for development, on how campesinos and small entrepreneurs now have cars and trucks and air-conditioned homes, after working hard in clearing the forest and raising cattle there, building roads and establishing business ventures and outposts of progress (Joseph Conrad, anyone?). Campbell, who loves this wilderness, who has followed individual trees' growth from seedling to towering giant, who describes the myriad creatures that inhabit the forest with love, wonder and deep understanding, nevertheless cannot raise his voice against the poor caboclos clearing plots with little more than machetes and fire, and escapes the manichean temptation to present the loss of this last sea of green as a clear-cut good vs. evil confrontation. It's a tragedy, in very much the same way as losing those Mediterranean forests was. As a species, we couldn't grasp the consequences of what we were doing back then; we still can't today. In a few decades, we will be trying to restore a small part of what was lost, planting a few trees here, establishing a natural sanctuary there, for the few remaining species, to slow down their disappearance, in what is now the Amazon forest. We can't even begin to imagine what the effects on global climate will be. But we all have to eat. And if some eat meat every day of the week, then why not everybody? And if some have cars and AC units and can take vacations and buy bottled water and live in a rich country, how can they tell others that they can't? The Amazon, as well as the other remaining shreds and bits of our primeval, natural world, is in for big change, pretty soon. A lot will be lost in the long term, so that some is gained today and tomorrow. It's nobody's fault, and everybody's.