Sustainable Change for Our Maine Food System

[Ed Democracy]

80/20 by 2020

 

Since 2006, Maine food policy has set an ambitious goal of getting Maine to produce 80% of its calories within Maine - leaving 20% needing to be imported from outside of Maine. 

 

Currently, Maine only produces 20% of its calories within Maine - leaving 80% needing to be imported.

 

Some scoff at this goal calling it impossible.  However, whether we achieve 80/20 by 2020 or 50/50 by 2050, this is the direction we need to take for our environment, our economy, and for our health.

 

This policy recognizes that it is aiming very high and that new infrastructure, new farmland, new processing facilities, new distribution systems, and new labor systems will be needed.

 

( www.maine.gov/agriculture/mpd/information/foodpolicydraft.pdf )

NEW SYSTEMS & OLD SYSTEMS

 

This is not a situation where we have a sound basic old system which just needs a little expansion with a tweak here and a new part there.

 

This is a situation where we have to create a whole new system ready to grow quickly and sustainably. 

 

Normally, with a basically sound system, occasional innovations happen which can just be incorporated little by little. 

 

However, sometimes systems cannot evolve beyond a certain point because of their basic design limitations.

Take computers, for instance.  They were first engineered during the mass global centralized industrial era.  They were room-sized slow behemoths which quickly became extinct.  Along came the internet, microchips, and desktop computers and, finally, the technology is starting to catch up with society in the local decentralized human era.  As the mass of humanity begins to take command of its own systems - systems of the people, by the people, and for the people, our systems are beginning to reflect natural systems. 

 
 Nature is a self-organizing, stable, dynamic chaos.  - GARRISON (Intro to Oceanography)

 

A self-organizing, stable, dynamic chaos is different from pure chaos.  Pure chaos - paradoxically - would become static, stagnant, and dead.  However, a dynamic living chaos that is stable enough to organize itself and impose just enough order of just the right kind at just the right time and just the right place to maintain harmony - that is nature ... healthy, organic nature.

 

THE BABBAGE DIFFERENCE ENGINE - A CAUTIONARY TALE

 

The computers of today trace their origins to the Babbage Difference Engine - a steam-powered system of metal gears - in 1822 .  However, the Babbage machine was never built - UNTIL 1991!  When it was built, it was determined that it would have worked better than average pocket calculators of today!  Clearly, Babbage was far ahead of his time.  It was an amazing accomplishment, especially, given the limitations of the science & engineering systems of the time. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM Wikipedia.org  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage ) :

Difference engine

In Babbage’s time, numerical tables were calculated by humans who were called ‘computers’, meaning "one who computes", much as a conductor is "one who conducts". At Cambridge, he saw the high error-rate of this human-driven process and started his life’s work of trying to calculate the tables mechanically. He began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions. Unlike similar efforts of the time, Babbage's difference engine was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of finite differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division.

 
The London Science Museum's Difference Engine #2, built from Babbage's design.The first difference engine was composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen tons (13,600 kg), and stood 8 ft (2.4 m) high. Although he received ample funding for the project, it was never completed. He later designed an improved version, "Difference Engine No. 2", which was not constructed until 1989-1991, using Babbage's plans and 19th century manufacturing tolerances. It performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum returning results to 31 digits, far more than the average modern pocket calculator

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

One caution we can gather from this tale is about systems: systems of systems and evolution of systems.  Motivated by a desire to remove human error from computing, Babbage envisioned a computer system.  Then, due to his pursuit of a better machine and due to the limitations of his time, his invention was never built & used, in his time - although it did give birth to a whole new science system: computer science.  In turn, this new science has resulted in the advancement of other sciences and the very science of engineering which was so limiting for Babbage in his time.  Yet, Babbage was also limited by the mindset which framed his time period.  By the end of the 19th century, came the rise of massively centralized industrial production and massively centralized society - schools, business, finance, farms, etc..

 

Many frames have been placed on the 20th century.  One might say that the overall frame of the 20th century might be: the grave dangers of globalized hypercentralization.

 

Today, we have very advanced capacity in systems modeling & engineering although it has not quite, yet, made its way into common usage.

 

COMMON PEOPLE, COMMON SENSE, & COMMON CAUSE

 

However, fortunately, we do not need either steam-powered systems of metal gears or massively parallel supercomputing power to use our natural common sense to see that everything is going local.  Our environmental systems, our energy systems, our economic systems, and our food systems all are going local.  Why?  Because common people using common sense have engaged in the common cause of asserting our humanity in the systems in which we live.  Common sense would also tell us that if we quickly reverse all the global system dynamics and divert them directly back into local systems which do not exist, yet, then there would be system overload, instability, and malfunction. 

 

From the time before massive global centralization, over 100 years ago, Maine was mainly self-sufficient agriculturally.  So, the situation that has taken us over 100 years to get into, we had better hope, will not take us over 100 years to reverse. How long is anybody's guess.  However, common people using common sense together in common cause will get it done as fast as is humanly possible.

 

WHOLES & PARTS

 

There are many, many exciting parts springing to life throughout the Maine food system. 

 

For sustainability, there must be coherence and cooperation among these parts within an integral whole process to facilitate communication and coordination over time.
 
All of these parts should come together to have a thorough look at this.  The absolute last thing we want is for any one part to really take off having great success only to leave other parts feeling slighted or left out somehow.  We all need to be in this together.  That is going to take some good sustainable leadership to help cultivate a transparent and inclusive whole from the many parts of the local Maine foods movement.
 
One piece of this puzzle is creating a joint model of the Maine food system as it is today:
 
+ supply - mostly global & national
+ distribution - big ships, big trucks, big distributors
+ markets - few centralized mostly- big-box stores
 
... then, start creating a joint vision of a new model of the Maine food system as we think it should be:
 
+ supply - mostly local
+ distribution - small trucks, ? rail ?, small distributors
+ markets - many decentralized mostly-small stores, farmers markets, etc.
 
... then, as we all see where we fit into big picture, this should facilitate communication & coordination as we all move together into our common future.
 
Just for example, if there was a Maine Foods Cooperative - like a utility owned by the ratepayers - which tied everything together then we could have one whole integrated Maine food system:
 
+ Producers could belong to facilitate easier supply
+ Distributors could belong which would facilitate easier distribution
+ Markets could join to facilitate easier marketing
 
As we see with Whole Foods, they have moved toward a false whole systems approach that is one-way and parasitic taking from local economies to benefit global investors.  Their moves toward the efficiencies of whole integrated systems alienated & cut out local producers who did not have the financial and logistical capacity to adapt to the Whole Foods system.
 
Maine Foods Cooperative could have the advantage of benefiting from the efficiencies of a true whole systems approach that is symbiotic by creating synergies with the local economies to benefit local producers and consumers.  We would cut out the middle man - the global investors & their big-box category killers - by creating a Maine food system of Mainers, by Mainers, and for Mainers!
 
 
BY THE NUMBERS
 
We need econometric models which show supply/demand and projected-supply/projected-demand - so that we can keep demand from getting too far ahead of supply.  If demand outstrips supply then prices will skyrocket and depress future demand and add general drag and instability.

 

We need a by-the-numbers model of the Maine Food System:

A - existing population

B - caloric intake (per person)

C - caloric output (per acre)

D - existing farmland (acres)

E - existing productive capacity (calories)

F - population projection

G - farmland projection  (acres)

H - productive capacity projection (calories)

I - total calories of demand (A x B)

J - calories imported (total)

K - calories imported (percentage of total)

L - calories exported (total)

M - calories exported (percentage of total)

 

 

GOOD PROCESS LEADERSHIP

 

We need a good process that is wholly transparent and wholly inclusive to create a whole Maine Food System.  This will require more than one or two people; more than one or two organizations; and more than one or two meetings.  It will require connecting everyone from the grassroots to the top-level policymakers in the state.  It should involve lots of small face-to-face meetings as well as conference calls, tele-meeting sites, web meetings and and a state-of-the-art website to truly and fully engage Maine.  This is a project which goes beyond ideology and cuts across all lines of division. 

 

This project offers us the opportunity to draw upon the best of the old and the best of the new.  Many Mainers are still with us who remember when we were a primarily agriculturally-based state.  We have a system of Grange Halls across the state which have been struggling to survive.  What a perfect symbol and what a perfect setting for many of the meetings and events which will be required for this project!

 

We need everyone talking with everyone - producers & consumers, farmers & non-farmers, retailers & non-retailers, wholesalers & non-wholesalers, distributors & non-distributors ...

 

We need to gather our best experts for advice on economics, environment, land use, real estate, finance, transporation, labor, business, technology, and agriculture.

 

The process needs to be driven by the grassroots with these fine experts, which Maine is blessed to have, serving the process with information and perspective.

 

[Andrea Perry]

http://www.msu.edu/%7Ehowardp/organicindustry.html

 

Check out this link for additional reasons why it is so critical to engage in the “common cause of asserting our humanity in the systems in which we live.”

 

Best,

Andrea

 

---

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.24/2018 - Release Date: 3/23/2009 6:52 AM

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.24/2018 - Release Date: 3/23/2009 6:52 AM

[Ed Democracy]

Holy smokes!!!  Thanks!  Yikes!

2009/3/23 Andrea Perry <aperr...@gmail.com>

[Harker, John]

Hey, Ed.....got any money...lets start an aquisitions company......yeah, right!!!!!! Thanks, Andrea, for finding this great work.

 

John Harker

---

From: mainefo...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Ed Democracy
Sent: Mon 3/23/2009 10:58 AM
To: mainefo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [mainefoodsystem] Re: Sustainable Change for Our Maine Food System