Organic Manure and Humanure (links)

Savitha:

Here is an inspiring documentary about breakthroughs in protecting the environment by transforming waste back into food/raw material, we can watch tomorrow. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/05/15/18416351.php

Brief Description about this documentary:

In the early 90s, the American "green" architect William McDonough and German "green" chemist Michael Braungart teamed up to realise the Waste = Food principle in man-made products. They replace the old maxim "Cradle to Grave" with the new principle of "Cradle to Cradle", meaning that all products must be completely biodegradable in the biosphere and serve as food for the natural organisms there, and that all non-degradable material must be able to be used as high-quality raw material for new products in the techno-sphere.

They took their ideas regarding global waste problems to the Ford Motor Company, NIKE and the rapidly developing China. They helped Ford transform their heavily polluted manufacturing sites into green areas that are safe enough for children to play in. Due to their encouragement, NIKE has designed toxin-free running shoes that can be completely recycled. McDonough and Braungart were also invited to China to develop China's first ecologically sustainable model village.

Gaurav:

I am currently reading Cradle to Cradle. It is a very interesting book.

Any links for organic waste disposal and humanure?
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2102 (posted on an Asha group)

Found a free book on Humanure for those interested -
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure_contents.html

Quoting Sanjeev from his post on another list -

Fundamentally, the concept of organic "waste" is an urban bane. It is
not necessarily an issue in rural India and even in places that it is,
the solutions are not necessarily what we get forced to use in the
cities (or locations with very limited space, no organic recycling,
etc).

There are a couple of solutions that have worked in the field:

1) one, are dry composting toilets.
http://smallisbeautiful.blogspot.com/2007/04/dry-composting-toilets.html
or
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html
2) gobar gas plants are capable of not just taking animal waste, but
humans one as well (through how the slurry is treated before it can be
used in the fields is different).

Humanure is a tricky subject to work on, because fundamentally it is a
taboo topic in our society. To work in this area requires
understanding of issues and conditions at a broad level. The two
biggest issues to solving the problem may not be the implementation,
but being able to look at the problem at a larger scale than making it
someone else's problem i.e. being able to think beyond what we have
seen all our lives (fighting against our conditioning that tells us
that what we have done is the only "good" way). Then, if we able to
work out a solution, being able to work with others to use it. This is
difficult in a village as people are looking up to us to understand
what is the "the good life" which is automatically interpreted as a
good city life with amenities including flushing your problems down
away from your habitat.

Gayatri:

Here's a really interesting article on composting. We just set up areas in our backyard to compost this weekend and the reduction in waste is a little astounding. This guide has definitely helped answer a lot of questions. We didn't use a specialized composting bin or anything just metal stakes and chicken wire.

http://www.compostguide.com/

Putting organic waste (from the kitchen) down the garbage disposal also poses another set of issues, since it takes so much more water to grind it up and then this slush has to be treated to extract the water from it. No idea where/how the remaining waste is disposed.

Open Mike 11: Global Food Crisis (links)

From Gaurav on the mailing list:

For the topic of discussion- how about a discussion on the current global food crisis -

"The head of the United Nations' world food program says "a perfect storm" is hitting hungry people around the globe. The cost of food is soaring. Food riots have broken out in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt, where the price of bread rose 10 times in a week. Afghanistan has asked for urgent help. Forty countries are judged to be at risk of serious hunger, or already suffering from it.

Here in America the number of people using food stamps is projected to be the highest since the program began in the 1960s."

1. The World Food Crisis - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/opinion/10thu1.html

2. Hunger in America - http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04112008/profile4.html

3. Asian Food Crisis - http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/18/asia/food.php

4. 30 Years ago Haiti grew all the rice it needed. What happened now? - http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley04212008.html

5. "India clocked in 94th in the Global Hunger Index - behind Ethiopia"
Indexing inhumanity, Indian style - article by Sainath - http://www.indiatogether.com/2007/nov/psa-index.htm

Open Mike 11: Global Food Crisis

Thursday Open Mike 11 (now on Tuesday)
Topic: Global Food Crisis
April 22, 2008 [Tuesday]
@ 8PM in Gaurav's House.
1781 Spyglass Drive, #244
Austin TX 78746

Vandana Shiva: Globalisation Pills for Globalisation Ills: Offering the Disease as the Cure for India's Deepening Food and Agrarian Crisis

Globalisation Pills for Globalisation Ills: Offering the Disease as the Cure for India's Deepening Food and Agrarian Crisis

Apr, 10 2008 By Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva's ZSpace Page / ZSpace

Over the last 15 years, India's food and agriculture systems have been severely destabilized as a result of policies of economic globalisation and trade liberalization. Two aspects of this destabilization are the agrarian crisis and the rise in food prices. Both have their roots in the same processes of globalisation. However, the government treats each separately and independently, and every false solution makes the crisis deeper.

The agrarian crisis has emerged as a result of the withdrawal of the state from public investment in agriculture, public supply of seeds and inputs, public procurement for public distribution of food. These functions have been increasingly handed over to corporate players who work for profits, not the food security of the poor or the livelihood security of farmers.

The World Bank imposed Structural Adjustment Programme of 1991, and the Rules of WTO that came into force in 1995 have jointly worked to dismantle the public framework for food sovereignty and food security and the forced integration of India's food and agriculture systems with the food and agricultural systems of rich countries.

This has resulted in deep agrarian crisis and an emerging food crisis, with farmers incomes crashing while food prices go through the rood. The food and agriculture ills the country faces are a direct result of policies of corporate globalisation. Yet it is the globalisation pill the government is offering as a cure for globalisation ills.

Prices of food started to rise as a result of India's domestic market being connected to global markets, especially through the imports of edible oil and wheat. In the early days of globalisation, the agribusiness that dominates trade lowered prices to grab markets. This is what happened with the dumping of soya in the 1990s. Now that global corporations like Cargill have created import dependency, they are increasing prices. Price fixing is a common practise of MNCs.

In addition to price fixing there is speculation through futures trading. And climate change as well as diversion of foods to biofuels are also adding an upward pressure on international prices. The increase in international prices provides a perfect reason to focus on food sovereignty. It makes both political and economic sense to focus on self-reliance in food and agriculture.

While India was being made dependent on imports of food staples, Indian agriculture was being shifted to growing cash crops for exports. The agriculture export zones were a major policy thrust. While the government has banned export of pulses and non-basmati rice, its priority to diverting land to fruits and vegetables and cotton for exports continues. This too has impact on food security and food self-reliance. Vegetables prices have also gone up. Why is there a ban on exports of pulses and no ban on exports of vegetables? Is it because powerful countries like U.S want to control the market of pulses, including selling to India? And will India continue its policy of being a supplier of cheap vegetables to rich consumers in the North while the poor in India are denied food? Instead of decoupling the domestic food economy from the unstable, speculative global market, the government is strengthening the coupling, thus introducing major turbulence in both production and prices.

Low import duty of edible oil had already had negative impact on our coconut farmers, mustard farmers, soya and groundnut farmers. The government has further lowered customs duty, which will aggravate the agrarian crisis for edible oil growers and also harm public health because the imported genetically engineered soya oil and palm oil are not really edible oils, they are industrial oils introduced into the food system by global agribusiness.

A year and a half ago edible oils carried an import duty of 99.4%. In late March the Government brought down the duty of palm oil from 45% to 20%. This has now been cut to zero.

Duty Changes

Basic Custom Prior to April 2008 Duty in percent From April 1, 2008

Crude Palm Oil 20 0
Refined Palm Oil 27.5 7.5
Crude Sunflower Oil 20 0
Refined Sunflower Oil 27.5 7.5
CrudeSoyabean Oil 40 0
Refined Soyabean Oil 45 7.5
(Business Line 2.4.08)

As a result of reduction of import duties on edible oils, the wholesale price of mustard oil came down from Rs. 80/kg to Rs. 68/- kg (Business Line 2.4.08). Since the duty cut has been announced just as the mustard is being harvested, mustard growers will face a deeper crisis than they are already facing.

Kerala Chief Minister, V.S. Achuthanandan has said that the Union Government's decision to withdraw duty on edible oils would be a big blow to Kerala as it would bring down the price of coconut, a major farm produce of the state (Hindu 2.4.08).

Instead of protecting our rich biodiversity of oilseeds and our healthy indigenous edible oil, the government is destroying our biodiversity and oil seed farmers to make us dependent on bad oils which will in anyway not be available in the future because they will be used to produce biofuels for the cars of the rich.

Mr. Achuthanandan said the right way to contain the prices of essential commodities was to strengthen the public distribution system. However, this too the government is dismantling.

First the universal PDS was destroyed and replaced by the TPDS on grounds that this would reduce public expenditure on food subsidies. However, the food subsidy bill has kept going up even while larger numbers go hungry. The wheat allocation for BPL category households has dropped from 7.34 million tones in 2005-06 to 5.5 m.t. in 2006-07 to 1:735 m.t in 2007-08. BPL households earn less than Rs.330 a month.

The reduction in off take led to a build up to stocks with FCI. This was used to open up markets to private players. The APMC Acts were dismantled. Global giants like Cargill, ITC, Lever, AWB bought up food grains and drove the prices up. The center had also dismantled the essential Commodities Act, which prevented hoarding and speculation. While the Government puts ads against hoarding, private mandis allow leagalised hoarding and speculation.

The seeds of the price rise were sown with the corporatisation of India's food markets. The artificial scarcity this created for the PDS system was then used as an excuse to import high cost low quality wheat, which further pushed up prices.

Increasing dependence on imports, will not solve the problem because international prices will keep going up under the triple pressure of speculation, climate change and biofuel and also because many countries Argentina, Ukraine and Russia have imposed export controls.

Neo liberal economist Bibek Debroy has welcomed the food crisis "the food crisis may finally catalyse agro reforms" he says in his article "No Time for Field Theories" (Indian Express 2.4.08). "Liberalisation and integration bring domestic prices closer to global prices.

Hence, Indian consumers will pay more for agro products, but pay less for manufactured products. That's the reform argument".

However, most poor Indians who are earning less than Rs. 20/- a day only spend on food - not on fridges and A.C's. They can only loose with rising food prices. What economists like Debroy forget is that globalisation links prices, but wages grow more unequal. Rising prices with lower incomes for the poor translates into hunger and famine. While Debroy might celebrate the rising prices of food in India due to integration of our food economy with the corporate controlled global food economy, the people of India are not celebrating. With 90% of the incomes of the poor, and 45 - 55% incomes of the average Indian going to food, the globalisation recipe does not work in a period of global rise in food prices.

The agrarian crisis and the rise in food prices have the same roots in globalisation policies, which have promoted the corporate interest and discounted the rights of farmers and consumers. These policies have been based on India growing export crops such as cotton and vegetables, and importing food staples such as wheat and edible oils. They have been based on dismantling the public systems on which agriculture and food security rests. The food crisis cannot be solved by pushing more trade liberalization and further undermining our food security and food sovereignty.

The solution to bringing food prices under control and ending farmers indebtedness and suicides are same - the promotion of food sovereignty based on maximizing nutrition per acre while lowering input costs, as well as on localization of distribution chains.

Globalisation ills need a localization pill. Not more globalisation.