There must be a box for that

There must be a craving for organization in our lives. Big box stores have aisles of storage containers, shelving, and closet organizers. Bookstores have shelves and shelves of self-help books on organizing one’s clutter. Type in “organizing ideas” in a search engine and you will be given about 60 million options to check out. Your search will yield optional additional searches which will no doubt turn about millions of more results.

Even though my life seems to be chaos most of the time, I agree. Life is better when our stuff is not scattered helter-skelter around me. I used to be very organized. Then life happened and my stuff took on an existence of its own.

We seem to be happiest when our thinking is organized as well. We like things to be compartmentalized. Life is easier if the issues we face can be put in neat little boxes. Decisions can be made more quickly if we can narrow our focus to the one thing. We don’t want to think about other points of view or possible consequences.

We are told to think about things like climate change, technology, pesticides, medicine from the point of view of “good science.” The Pope has recently been criticized for writing a paper on the church’s obligation to focus on climate change as a moral issue as well as a scientific one. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is quoted as saying the Pope should “leave science to the scientists” and should not comment on issues of climate science (even though the Pope has a masters degree in chemistry and former Senator Santorum is a lawyer). Others accused the Pope of meddling in the politics of climate change.

Often politicians are asked to make decisions based on science and science alone even though their decisions are political and must also consider issues of ethics, economics, the common good. Science doesn’t exist in a vacuum and neither does politics.

Scientists are not isolated from politics.

Scientists delve into politics all the time. Often scientists are asked to present findings which support a political decision. Experts testify for and against all kinds of legislation from the effects of early childhood education to the regulations mandated for riparian buffers along waterways, and the siting of oil pipelines.

Scientists’ work is also influenced by the politics of regulatory agencies which set up rules for various kinds of research, the politics of foundations granting funds for their work, the politics of the institutions of higher education for which they work. They regularly involve themselves in influencing political decisions.

If I have learned anything from nearly forty years of organic farming, it is that all things are connected. If there are weeds in the wheat, it is connected to the health of the soil, the plants that grew there last year, what I spent time doing last year, the rain that fell or didn’t, what machine broke and kept us from doing what needed to be done. If the butterflies disappear, it may be because we did too good a job eradicating all the “weeds” or wild flowers in our pastures. Often our problems occur because we don’t look far enough either backwards or forward. We forget to look at the connections.

What we do in our homes affects the earth as a whole. Our work affects our homes and others’ health and well-being. What seems like a small thing, like a single plastic bag or water bottle thrown in the ditch when multiplied by millions of bags and bottles that seem like small things become really big things.

The Pope is right to call care of the earth a moral issue. It is also a scientific and political issue. There are no storage containers for issues like climate change, same sex marriage, GMOs, student debt, health care. They all fit in many boxes: politics, science, morality, justice, equality.  These are not small issues and there are no simple decisions or organization systems to keep everything neat and tidy. Life is just messy.

Science and more

In 2001, when I served as the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society’s board president, several of us attended a Shared Leadership Workshop sponsored by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology at the Asilomar conference center in California. Also in attendance at this workshop were other sustainable agriculture proponents and a group of soil scientists.

The event’s purpose was to enhance participants’ leadership and communication skills. The workshops were informative and helpful. It was after the formal schedule for the day, however, that the principles of improved communication were practiced. In less formal settings, real conversations between the farmers and scientists took place.

The scientists talked about their research and the positive possibilities of putting science to work with modern technology, i.e., genetics and genetic modification. The farmers raised questions of safety, monopolization of seed ownership, property rights, ethics and who ultimately will benefit. We listened, and they listened. Eventually several of the scientists told us that they, as scientists, were almost never invited to engage in discussions of philosophy, ethics and morality. They were, according to them, discouraged from asking those kinds of question because they were not “scientifically relevant.”

It is no surprise, then, that Stephen M. Druker’s new book, “Altered Genes, Twisted Truths: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public” has met with negative reviews from the biotech industry. Druker, a lawyer, is criticized for writing a book about science without having a degree in science.

I just got a copy of the Druker’s book and have read the first chapter. The first chapter is interesting and I plan to keep reading. (Lest I be accused of being a Luddite, the book is an electronic version on my iPad.) The first chapter is less about science than it is about politics, something Druker is well qualified to write about.

Often opposition to biotechnology or genetic modification is discredited because it is supposedly based on “bad science.” Sometimes we have even allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of science-only arguments. Science and understanding genetics is an important part of the discussion, but biotechnology and genetically modification of seeds and animals is no longer just science. It is applied science. It is now technology which is used in commerce, has been released into the environment and is consumed by the public. While there are indeed many scientific questions which need to be answered, the discussion cannot be limited to those questions.

The science of inserting genetic material from bacteria into plants, from animals into plants, or from one species to another must be questioned from a scientific point of view. These kinds of genetic exchanges are not possible with normal crossbreeding and hybridization. On one hand, many of the resulting products are deemed safe by the scientifically questionable principle of “substantial equivalence,” meaning they are not significantly different from their safe naturally occurring forms. Yet, the companies using this technology, claim that the modified organisms are unique enough to be patented. Something cannot, by definition, be both the same as something else and unique. Obviously, Bt corn is not the same as non-gmo corn. Without genetic modification, corn is not toxic to root worms. In spite of it’s obvious differences, Bt corn’s safety is assumed because neither corn nor Bacillus thuringiensis is usually toxic to people, therefore substantial equivalence infers that Bt corn is ok.  In spite of what the industry tells us, there are scientists who do not agree that all biotechnology is safe.

When we discuss the regulatory approval of any technology, we cannot limit ourselves to the scientific pros and cons. Too often opponents of GMO’s are stifled by accusations that their arguments are not scientific. Just as a healthy ecosystem is only possible when many parts are in balance, healthy discussion and debate can only happen when there is a balance between all disciplines. We must be able to weigh decisions about the use of modern technologies by using science in balance with economics, ethics, morality, aesthetics, and philosophy. Democracy will not be well-served by elevating the validity of one kind of knowledge over others. The application of science in all cases must evaluated on the interests of the common good. Who will be hurt by it? Who will benefit? What will be the long term effects on the environment, on health, on economic well-being? Will the use of this knowledge enhance the quality of our lives?

I look forward to reading the rest of Druker’s book.

Copyright © 2015 Janet Jacobson and Sustaining the Northern Plains

Changing the world

Terry and I have been farming organically for more than 35 years. We began thinking about how to grow food when environmentalism was a growing movement among young, hippie types who embraced countercultural lifestyles and sought to move “back to the land.” Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring,” written in 1962, was gaining popularity while other “experts” were touting “better living through chemistry.” Some agronomists preached that in the future soil would simply be the medium which held plants and all necessary nutrients would be applied with a sprayer.

In 1980 markets for organically grown crops were small, hard to access and most crops were exported to Europe. The media coverage of alternative agriculture was limited and usually limited to condescending human interest stories.

Things have changed. Food stories of one kind or another appear daily in newspapers, on the radio, on television and over the internet. “Local food,” “organic,” “natural,” “grass-fed,” and “sustainable agriculture” are now regular topics of mainstream media. What is more important, these terms are now frequent topics of conversation at the dinner table and over coffee with friends. These ideas affect consumers daily food choices. There has been a dramatic shift in how many think about food.

The growth in local, organic, and grass-fed food consumption has created new challenges. What was once viewed as a novelty now is seen as threatening to companies which have expanded, consolidated and profited by “conventional” agriculture and food processing and distribution. Frequent editorials and food industry press releases disparage organic agriculture and the new food movement as elitist, impractical, and even dangerous.

Alternative agriculture in the past was rarely taken seriously and received minimal opposition. Not any more.

One of the current arguments used by industrial agriculture is that organic agriculture is not based on science. We are depicted as old-fashioned and farming the way our grandfathers farmed only with more weeds.

On the other hand, there are supporters of alternative agriculture that make outlandish statements, use pseudo science and fear to sell organic substitutes for chemicals. There are those who see organic as a marketing scheme and look to capture market share by using all the loopholes in the certification and labeling rules.

This is a crucial time for sustainable, organic agriculture.

Organic agriculture is science-based. We have good science on our side. Soil scientists have proven what we have long believed. Soil is complex and it’s health is crucial for growing healthy plants and animals. We need even more research which looks at what we do with defensible studies. That means we have to be willing to consider results that sometimes show that we have been heading down the wrong path. We need more research which studies how systems work in nature and how we can best copy what works. We need to support development of seed varieties which work in the systems we use. We need research into new equipment that is energy efficient, effective and of an appropriate scale. We will have to find a way to pay for that research.

We need to support development of organic agriculture in the Third World. Poor countries will never be markets for our products. The problem of hunger is an economic problem, not a production problem. We need to shift the discussion of “feeding the world” to one of justice and helping others feed themselves. We must advocate for making more resources available to small scale farming around the world.

We need to become scientifically literate so we can respond to critics who say we base our work on bad science. We also need to learn more about science so we don’t buy into organic quackery ourselves. Pseudo-science is easily debunked by those who find organic food and alternative agriculture a threat. One widely publicized snake oil seller can undo years of good work by many. Let’s not give the other side examples to support their claim that our efforts are a scam.

We need to learn to present our position clearly and credibly. We need to stop letting the other side frame the discussion. Don’t respond to attacks by other writers on the editorial page of the newspaper or the comments section of a web site. Write a letter to the editor which promotes what you do in a positive way. Don’t make claims you can’t back up. Don’t attack your neighbors and their farming practices. Doing so will only make them defend their position more resolutely. Ask questions. Be willing to answer questions without being defensive.

We are up against public relations specialists who have vast resources available to them. What they don’t have is us. Consumers trust family farmers and distrust large corporations. Build relationships. Talk about why you do what you do, how you care for your animals and your land. Be honest and humble. Be respectful.

Twentieth century sociologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

We can change the world.

Copyright © 2014 Janet Jacobson and Sustaining the Northern Plains

Science or technology

While participating in a North Dakota Senate committee hearing on glyphosate tolerant wheat more than a decade ago, a proponent of GMO technology compared opposition to tinkering with organisms’ cellular building blocks to a car. He claimed opposing the technology of GMOs was similar to the opposing the development of the automobile. He was trying to disparage GMO opponents by calling us Luddites. The result of opposing development of the automobile, according to him, would have resulted in our continued walking or use of a horse and buggy. We, he smirked, were guilty of asking plant breeding to travel in metaphorical horse and buggy. Then he made several references to good science and bad science.

Ten years later, the same flawed analogies are still being made. My response to the automobile analogy then was and remains, that if we had used better science in how we had developed and used the technology of the internal combustion engine, we could possibly have saved ourselves many problems. Perhaps we would not now be facing global warming, smog, freeway gridlock. We might not need to have debates about drilling for oil in the arctic and national parks. We might not need to stay awake at night worrying about energy independence and security. We might have even saved ourselves billions of dollars and thousands of lives lost in unnecessary wars fought to secure oil sources. I am not advocating the abandonment of automobile travel just yet. My point is that adopting the technology of cars and trucks has led to far-reaching and serious negative effects which Henry Ford could not have imagined.

Genetically modified organisms are an example of a relatively new technology. These plants and animals are not themselves “science.” Like the car, they are the application of science. They are the result of applied genetics. The car achieves the goal of moving people from one place to another and paying profits to the corporations’ executives and shareholders. Likewise, GMO organisms appear to achieve the goals set out by the companies selling them. They resist insects or they tolerate applications of herbicides. Just as sales of cars make money for Ford, GM and Chrysler, these products generate profit to the owners of the technology.

Just as cars have created unforeseen problems, GMOs are creating problems. Even though GMO wheat has never been approved for commercialization, glyphosate resistant wheat has been found growing in a field in Washington. This is not a surprise to the organic farmers in North Dakota who tried to raise the possibility of such contamination with researchers more than a decade ago. If more wheat fields are tested, my guess is it will be found that this is not an isolated case. Weeds are developing resistance to glyphosate because of the overuse of this single pesticide. Recent research hints that GMO corn and soybeans are having negative effects on the livestock which eat them. Proponents of the technology continue to maintain that no one has ever gotten sick from eating foods containing GMOs, but no one has done any epidemiological studies to back that up.

Scientists, at least those practicing “good science,” do not become so enamored with a hypothesis that they stop testing their ideas. Even Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is constantly being checked for validity. For proponents of GMOs to claim that science is on their side and has proven that their products are safe is a misuse of science. It is not good science to stop asking questions, to withhold seeds from independent researchers, or to claim no one has ever gotten sick from eating an altered food. The real answer is that no one knows if anyone has gotten sick. Investment in a technology changes the research questions being asked if those doing the research are paid by those profiting from the application. Science influenced by money is not good science.

Neither is science which asks questions based on an ideology good science. We need to make sure that those of us who oppose the use of GMOs are not falling into the same trap. If our scientific arguments are to have credibility, we must be sure the research we cite is just as rigorously designed and just as free from the bias.

I learned just enough from the genetics class I took forty years ago to understand that I know almost nothing. I did learn enough then and in my study since then to know that we have just touched the very surface of what there is to know about genetics, genes, chromosomes, not to mention what we don’t know about all the interactions between genes, hormones, and the world around us. Genetic modification is far more complex than souping up your car.

If a piece of mechanical technology like a non-self-replicating car can cause so many changes in our environment, health, economy, politics and culture, what kinds problems might we not see in the application of a technology that alters chromosomes of living organisms and reproduces on its own? It seems foolhardy, in this case, to put the technology before the science.

Copyright © 2013 Janet Jacobson and Sustaining the Northern Plains

 

Art and medicine

The Harvard Medical School is encouraging their students to study art.

One would think medical students should be busy studying anatomy, microbiology and all the other science necessary to be good doctors. With all the digital imaging capabilities available in medicine, the study of art might seem frivolous and a waste of time. Doctors don’t have to be able to draw their patients.

It seems that it is the wonderful advances in diagnostic technology that has created the need for medical students to learn about Van Gogh, Monet, DaVinci and Rembrandt.

Experts in medicine feel that doctors are losing their ability to observe and diagnose diseases directly as more diagnostic tools become available to them. The problem is even greater as the number of patients a practitioner sees each day increases. In their hurried schedule, they are relying on the technology, rather than their own observations to spot things that are unusual or changed in their patients.

Educators at the Harvard Medical School and other prestigious schools like Cornell and Yale believe that teaching students to observe art will make them better doctors. Students are taught using a technique similar to what art teachers are also using in elementary and high schools. The technique is called “Visual Thinking Strategies” or VTS.

The object of Visual Thinking Strategies is for the student to look at a piece of art, to describe what they see, to be able to justify what they see and to discuss it with others. Through the process, students learn to let go of what they think they should see and begin to make more objective observations. Since they have to explain their view to others, they develop more verbal skills and critical thinking ability.

As the children’s thinking skills and powers of observation improve, so does their ability in other areas of study. In elementary schools, teachers are finding that students who experience Visual Thinking Strategies do better on math and language tests. The youngsters learn how to discuss differing viewpoints since the interpretation of art rarely has a single right answer.

Just as elementary children learn to see the world around them in more detail, a recent study by researchers at Harvard Medical School found that future doctors who studied art using the Visual Thinking Strategies approach did better at observing and diagnosing their patients. They knew how to look at the person and see the little things that weren’t there before or shouldn’t be there at all. They observed more carefully how the patient is breathing, the shape of their face or the shape and color of rashes on the skin. Their diagnostic ability improved by more than 38% over students who didn’t get to study art.

The study of art is important for developing the ability to think clearly and creatively. These skills are essential for everyone: doctors, mechanics, computer repair people, farmers, cooks. We all need to be able to imagine, to consider all possible solutions to problems, to observe the world around us. Other studies have proven that learning music motivates students and improves their test scores in other areas such as math and reading. The arts are more than pleasant diversions in a school curriculum. They are an important part of a successful and well-rounded education. The skills learned in art class may be responsible for the next great technology or even for a life-saving diagnosis.

Then there is the fact that art and music just make life more enjoyable.

Copyright © 2013 Janet Jacobson and Sustaining the Northern Plains