The quest for ecological efficiency in food (redux)

Photo of Braeburn the barrow, a fine hard-working woodland pig we had, who fed a lot of folks a few years ago

"So, operationally, all effectively renewable energy on planet earth comes from sunlight. So we need an agriculture sponsored energetically from sunlight, in which fossil fuels are a minor input, or no input at all."

That's what I said a few weeks ago. The relevant experiment I was working on is the smallholding/homestead that Aimee and I have in Jackson, Maine. Now that spring is almost over and we are running primarily on on-farm sunlight, it's time for an update on our efforts to reduce fossil energy inputs to our many and various food-growing projects.

The sheep are currently kept very busy making a living from several small rotational grazings, but their main job is keeping three acres of lightly wooded pasture well-grazed. I fenced this in early spring, not without bloodshed, since I got bit by hundreds of blackflies and quite a bit of fence wire for my trouble. Four sheep per acre of productive pasture is the rule in Maine, and we have 12 on three, just right, but currently this particular land is scrawny, not having yet had the full "treatment." The system we worked out last year includes logging off all the saplings and many of the larger trees for firewood, leaving only the best forestry and conservation trees widely spread, to let on lots of sun, but also provide shade so it doesn't get dry, then scarifying with the York rake and spreading timothy and red clover seed. The tree stumps coppice, but the sheep make short work of the sprouts. There's a total of another acre of lush grass regularly grazed right now on which we use portable electric fence, and several more acres of varying quality available if we need it.

Three scrawny acres and one satisfactory one, is how I would summarize the land we actually use so far, out of our 15 1/2 available acres. The bottleneck in using more is twofold: if we are to utilize it, we need more animals to graze it, and more fence to keep them in. Both are expensive. We would also prefer not to keep too many more critters through the winter. The sheep herd will grow naturally over the years, and we can add to fence as we have dollars available. We have hoped for a couple small work ponies to aid in getting the firewood and a few sawlogs out of the woods. Fjords are the breed we want, because if we got a mare, the foals might be sold on at a good price, and they can handle our terrain and the small to medium size of our trees well.

Ewes with lambs to nurse need a little grain if they to be on such scrawny pickings. They now get oats, which come from from Aroostook County, as their main grain, reducing the embodied fossil energy in their feed. This is the big new thing, an experiment. They still need a little mixed feed, for Selenium, without which sheep get white muscle disease. But the oats replace 60-80% of the expensive bagged, mixed grain, and the cost savings is quite large. A bag of "Coarse 16" mix for sheep from Blue Seal feeds, their previous ration, is about 12 dollars for 50 pounds, or 24 cents a pound, while the oats are 10.9 cents a pound. In summer, with the switch to oats, it takes about 60 cents a day to keep our sheep.

The last of the mixed feed will soon be gone, at which point we'll shift to 100% oats and a protein/mineral block. The protein block is for selenium and trace minerals in the absence of the formulated bagged feed. We can reduce their oat ration yet further this summer when the smallest lamb is large enough to be weaned. Until the mid fall, this will be the picture: a little oats for energy and protein, with most, 90-95% by weight, of their feed coming from the land. A little boost of grain in tupping season, then we will switch to local hay with oats for energy and winter maintenance until the ewes start to grow new lambs in January.

Next, the poultry: The chickens are earning 90-95% of their living from bugs and small plants they peck at while roaming free for the daytime hours. They needed a little calcium supplement to their diet -- the eggshells were very thin, and so we added some calcium. They still get a little free choice bagged feed, but they eat very little of this, preferring to clean up after the sheep and pigs. The chickens are thus currently very sustainable in terms of fossil versus sunlight energy input. The four baby chicks get formula. We can't take chances with such young animals. But they're still so tiny, they don't each much, and they were just shifted to the chicken tractor yesterday, in which device they will learn to eat grass.

Now for swine: The pigs are still young, and so for good growth and until their gut develops the power and performance of a full-grown pig gut -- which is a truly powerful thing -- we have to be careful. But they'll eat the oats from Aroostook too. Pigs need 15-16% protein, and so the oats at 13% or so are not a strong feed. We have some cornmeal and cracked corn to experiment with, but that's not strong either, although it is a complementary protein, and so we will be are looking to get some local soybean meal or soybean pellets too for this purpose, but the current notion I have is to put a half ration of their remaining bagged, mixed feed on the bottom of their communal feed pan each feeding, and add free choice oats, as much as they will eat, on top, and see how they do until the mixed feed is gone, then switch to our own blend of soy, corn and oats, using the soy and the oats as the mainstay. They also get regular fork-loads of manure from the sheep's winter bedding, in which they love to root for tasty piglet morsels. Yum. Eventually, when they get a little bigger, they'll be put in a pen with tons of this stuff to go through, which they'll help break down and enrich for garden compost. They also get all the garden and kitchen waste. Running the waste through the pigs reduces the attraction for a bear, coyote, raccoon or other predator, which are a threat to the chicks, chickens and lambs.

In general, our Aroostook oat experiment will be ongoing all summer. We've already reduced our expenses for bagged mixed feed considerably, and replaced about 60-70% of the imported feed with locally produced feeds. The trick will be to find the mix that keeps everyone healthy and the meat animals (the three wethers and the two piglets) growing steadily.

We'll be monitoring this all very carefully.

We do this kind of experiment all the time, either formally or informally. Aimee makes fairly detailed lab notes of her work with plants. I tend to prefer the old mechanics approach of trail and error, and the nostrum, "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

I don't keep notes, unless I write them up like this. May be I should. Aimee is a much better scientist than I am though.

Parry et al try to get us square with reality

This is a good summary of the current climate risks. The graphical approach, I believe borrowed from the Stern Review, is very useful.

Squaring up to reality

Martin Parry, Jean Palutikof, Clair Hanson & Jason Lowe

Both emissions reduction and adaptation will need to be much stronger than currently planned if dangerous global impacts of climate change are to be avoided. June's UN talks in Bonn and July's G8 summit present opportunities for world leaders to face this challenge.

Cranberry Crossing

George Callas (of Newforest Institute) and I went to the Cranberry Isles yesterday to consult with the Cranberry Isles Sustainability Initiative, a group of concerned citizens worried about energy independence and climate change. The height of land on Islesford (according to Google Earth) is 25 meters, and many houses are close to sea level, while fuel costs there are higher than the mainland because fuel must be barged in. On the upside, there is a lot of blowdown spruce firewood available for free, or more correctly for the cutting and hauling, and the islanders typically burn several cords each a year.

We gave some talks, had a lot of nice conversations around the kitchen table with our hosts, and walked through some buildings to look at efficiency savings. We took pains to make sure folks knew that a walk-through is not a proper Home Energy Audit -- that would take several hours and quite a bit of puzzling to do properly. But George is a Maine certified Home Energy Auditor.

Me, I'm just a guy who likes to work on buildings, who happens to have a PhD in environmental policy. I really have no business giving building advice. But I am qualified to talk about the US policy environment for climate change and energy efficiency, which is really my gig, and as a sideline, of course, like all policy wonks, I am quite able with cost benefit analysis, which is the basis of energy audit (and climate mitigation) theory. So I am perfectly within my rights and street-legal to talk about payback and the costs and benefits of different energy technology.

That doesn't stop me opening my big mouth, though, if I can see daylight through the cracks in someone's basement. I have several ongoing home energy experiments, including the Bale House. And I am inordinately fond of spray foam.

As is the case all over Maine, few buildings on Little Cranberry that we saw, although all nice comfortable houses, were anywhere near their optimal tightness and insulation standards, and in each case we could identify several steps that homeowners could take, if they had time and money, to save energy, with possible heat energy savings up to 60% or more easily available.

George and I, being used to the colder temperature regime of northern Waldo County, took a few walk-throughs to adjust to the energy use data that islanders were reporting. An ordinary home with no serious upgrades as yet on Little Cranberry might only use 4-5 cords of mixed softwood/hardwood, and 200 gallons of heat oil. Here in Northern Waldo, that would be a more likely energy consumption for a more efficient home. Our old Great Farm farmhouse, which at this point is quite well insulated and medium tight, with upgrades throughout, still uses five cords hardwood and about 50-70 gallons of heat oil, and even George's celebrated earth-bermed mansion uses three cords. But the islanders can still save some energy despite their more temperate climate. And given the need to barge in fuel oil and propane, the costs savings per gallon are higher.

Funnily enough, on the ferry over we ran into a climate denier. George and I were chatting amiably about the things we usually chat about -- climate policy, energy efficiency, homesteading, and he was right across the aisle from us listening in. Eventually he piped up. He was more than a little derisory and very hard to talk to, being an aggressive interrupter, among other less-than-pleasant and less-than-reasonable conversational traits.

Regular readers will know that I've run into climate deniers before, and have more than a few theories about why they do what they do. I actually studied the former Wise Use movement, a similar backlash, for part of my dissertation, identifying both funding pathways and mental models which might be used by any future climate backlash. That prediction, of course, came true, and the climate backlash is now well and truly with us and has been for a while. The funding pathways for backlash theory have morphed from the former "Greening Earth" coalition, to ExxonMobil's funding of the George Marshall Institute and other groups. The mental models remain similar to former backlashes like the Wise Use Movement and John Birch society.

In the same way that a visible (and predictable) trace of antisemitism ran through German society, through German romantic poets and philosophers through Hegel to Haeckel to Hitler, a trace of super-conservative, hyper-Protestant, "backlash" theory runs through American society, from the Know-Nothings through the Isolationists to the John Birchers and Wise Users.

Don't get me wrong here. It isn't the same theory. Climate deniers are not Nazis, but their own very different thing. But the peculiar thread of American political tradition they come from in US society is quite old and definitely predates the climate issue. In the same way that Swiss society, for instance, remains influenced by Calvin hundreds of years after Calvin's death.

Once you know what you're dealing with here, you can try to predict outcomes.

Unlike the Nazi movement in Germany, this particular thread of political theory has never really gained full political power in the US. Instead, it wields occasional influence. Our current President, as I also showed in my dissertation, is or has been influenced by their trace of thought, but has other more powerful influences from the Republican mainstream than are in some tension with the backlash, such as the current quite strong business lobby for climate policy.

What happens is that events overtake the movement, events that negate the movement's theory, the American public shifts its interest, and the movement fades, although is never quite eliminated. This can take a long time, and events in some ways have to proceed until the movement's theory is reduced to an absurdity.

So the isolationists were believable and many of the American public, unbelievably, believed them, right on through the invasions of the Rhineland, the Sudetenland, Austria and Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and France. Somehow the American public just kept on believing the isolationist theories, which were multiple, that either Nazi Germany wasn't so bad and wouldn't kill the Jews and other victims of the holocaust (did they bother to read Mein Kampf?), or that even if war did break out, America should somehow keep peace with Germany and worry only about Japan. There were other versions, all of which seem absurd now, to various degrees.

Climate change, in the same way, will claim more and more territory for itself until this theory is reduced to an absurdity.

Unlike a lot of Europeans, I have a good deal of faith in America and Americans. This probably comes from knowing my British and my family history very well. Britain, alone, could only prevent Hitler from winning, primarily through the actions of my former service, the RAF, in the Battle of Britain, and through the foresight of Winston Churchill. We couldn't defeat him without the US. This is personal for me. My hometown was blitzed, dad was bombed out of his house, my mother was buzzed by a buzz bomb, and I'm quite sure I would not have liked growing up in Nazi-dominated England. The first black man my mother saw was an American GI, and he was, in no small way, one of her personal saviors, and rightly a hero. Too many Europeans have conveniently forgotten these American heros.

I haven't. I see them everyday, everywhere I go, even on the Isleford Ferry. But we need to remember that just a year or two or less before Pearl Harbor, most of these heros were isolationists.

They are the decent independent minded American, who comes to his or her own conclusion in his or her own sweet time, but when he or she does, well, watch out.

The US is a mighty vessel and takes a while to swing around. The Isolationists, Know-Nothings, Wise Users or Climate Deniers are standing in the bridge, yelling at the Captain at the top of their lungs to get him to keep the vessel on track. But the Captain is getting yelled at by lots of other folks on the bridge too. Eventually, he gives the order and the vessel swings around and, once again, civilization is saved. The Know-Nothings slink away to wait for their next opportunity.

The Captain, by the way, is not the President. We need to remember this too. The Captain is the Ameican people, and the order is that small thing called the vote.

In the meantime, the enemy is gaining territory. Pacific Islands, Bangladesh, Burma, these are succumbing to increased cyclone and storm frequency, combined with the slightly higher sea level. Sub-Saharan and North Africa, Australia, Southern Europe, and parts of the American west are succumbing to drought and in some cases wildfire. Millions of people are already at risk and thousands dying, mostly from the increased wars and competition for resources that hits when climate changes, but also from climate insecurity itself, particularly extreme weather.

The climate denier position is reduced more and more to an absurdity with each passing year. But they are still yelling at the Captain, and they haven't slunk away yet. A few of them are beginning to. Read this article below to read about the latest:


Exxon to cut funding to climate change denial groups

* David Adam
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday May 28 2008

The oil giant ExxonMobil has admitted that its support for lobby groups that question the science of climate change may have hindered action to tackle global warming. In its corporate citizenship report, released last week, ExxonMobil says it intends to cut funds to several groups that "divert attention" from the need to find new sources of clean energy.

Read more...

Monbiot begs Abduallah

I thought this was better from Monbiot. He usually annoys me, but this was funny. And anyone who thinks we can pump our way out of the oil peak is delusional.

An open letter to the leader of Opec's biggest oil producer, the one man who can force Britain to cut its carbon emissions

* George Monbiot
o The Guardian,
o Tuesday May 27 2008

King Abdaullah of Saudi Arabia

Your Majesty,

In common with the leaders of most western nations, our prime minister is urging you to increase your production of oil. I am writing to ask you to ignore him. Like the other leaders he is delusional, and is no longer competent to make his own decisions.

Read more...

Coming soon at your local hardware store: Aisle 28 and 7/8

Nanosolar solar panel printer

Regular readers may remember previous posts on this California company. They have proprietary technology that I believe will easily revolutionize the municipal and home energy industries. Basically, they print a solar panel onto a sheet of metal film, using less than tenth the materials of a regular panel.

I've been keeping up with them occasionally by reading news articles and their web site, and I was reminded to check in on them yesterday when Aimee and I visited two Home Depots in one day - the old Bangor Home Depot, which was having a moving sale - who could resist $25 a cart-load? - and of course the new one, where shopping was surprisingly muted for a holiday weekend because everyone was over at the old one, filling their boots, stealing from each other's carts, fighting over stuff they didn't really want, and generally doing the strange things people do at sales.

(We also had to go drop her computer off at Best Buy for a $350 refit. There goes 29.16% of our economic stimulus package, thanks to the authors of the Cyberlog-X virus, a nasty piece of work created by nasty people. A special message to virus breeders everywhere: My wife thinks you are the lowest form of life. She's a marine biologist, so she knows her slime. And you are that slime.)

Anyway, the power of retail to shape culture has to be properly appreciated, and it often isn't by folks in the sustainability business. Here in Maine, too many sustainability buffs are pure-as-snow back-to-the-landers. Aimee and I are definitely back-to-the-landers, but we're never pure. In fact, I get thoroughly annoyed by the search for purity wherever I find it, and generally feel an overwhelming, even obsessive, need to fight it on every front. Think of a cross between Lewis Black and Amory Lovins.

(I plowed a whole ten pound bag of chemical fertilizer into my otherwise fertilizer-and-pesticide-free garden last year just so it could never quite be organic for a few more years. It was worth every dollar and every minute. Eat manure, organic purists everywhere. We'll never be like you!)

Anyway, to cut a long rambling post short, on that Great Day when you can go down to your Home Depot and visit the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency aisle (it already exists for Harry Potter fans - aisle 28 7/8), and select from a large choice of household energy efficiency and renewable energy products: inverters, wind turbines, solar panels, laser thermometers, insulation packages, triple-glazed windows, etc, etc, then we will finally be on track to combating climate change with a force that is equal to the challenge.

American Retail. Your friendly sustainability giant.

I can hear the howls of derision from sustainability purists everywhere. Consumption, they will say, is our enemy, not our friend.

But everyone must consume, or die. And it isn't so much consumption that is our enemy, but our culture of wasteful over-consumption. To change culture, use a cultural weapon. To change a culture of wasteful over-consumption, use suppliers of consumer goods.

What if, instead of peddling fixtures, fittings, and building materials for the current average American dream home of 4,500 wasteful oil-heated, 200 amp, regular-grid-supplied square feet, American retailers sold fixtures, fittings and building materials for the new super efficient, 1,500 square foot or less, solar-and-wind-powered, super-insulated average American cottage home? Park a Prius, or better yet a Tesla sedan, outside this new average American home, and you have 40% of the climate emissions reduction problem solved right there.

I know lots of purist sustainability buffs who still have incandescent light bulbs and oil heat. They haven't quite made the connection yet.

What I got out of my Nanosolar update was the sly hint they dropped on their blog about creating a household scale product. At today's high oil prices, with their solar panel-printing technology, Nanosolar can probably turn out a household scale solar product at about half to one quarter the cost per watt of current products, increase total volume by an order of magnitude, and still make a huge profit. It's really just a matter of changing the configuration of the printing so it prints a different circuit, one that produces a lower voltage suitable for today's grid-tie inverters.

I am so looking forward to buying some of this stuff.

To sell this product, they're going to need that Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency aisle at Home Depot, Lowes, True Value Hardware, and all other good box store and franchise vendors of home improvement products nation- and world-wide.

Aisle 28 and 7/8. And a smidgin (in home improvement-speak). A hair. A gnat's...

If you're tired of this silly measuring/Harry Potter analogy, go to the Nanosolar blog here...

In our Backyard

From Stef 06 at the DEP:

Help Reduce the Pollutants, In Our Back Yard

Thinking about resealing the driveway this summer, might want to think twice ….

There are basically two types of driveway sealants on the market today. The first type is made from coal tar and the second from asphalt bases. The bases make the difference in how toxic these products are for you and the neighborhood stream or lake.

You might be thinking, wait a minute what does my neighborhood stream or lake have to do with driveway sealant? Research conducted in Austin, Texas found high levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons or PAHs in some of their local streams. PAHs are linked to various health issues including cancer.

Researchers in Austin found hot spots of PAHs in streams and were able to trace them back to pavement sealers used on parking lots and driveways. They found that the average concentration of PAHs to be 1,600 times higher in coal tar based sealants than asphalt based sealants. For this reason, coal tar based sealants are a potentially higher health risk than asphalt based sealants.

But wait, how do these PAHs get from the driveway or parking lot into the neighborhood stream? When it rains or the snow melts, the stormwater carries with it little hitchhikers of whatever it hits or runs across, in this case, pavement sealants. The polluted stormwater runs off the pavement to a storm drain or ditch which drains to the local stream. In Austin they found that particles in runoff from parking lots sealed with coal tar sealants were 65 times higher in total PAHs than runoff from unsealed asphalt and cement.

A report from the Great Lakes Environmental Center in March, 2005 showed that coal tar sealants in sediments were toxic to the life in the streams at the concentrations observed in Austin streams.

So if you are considering sealing your driveway or parking area this summer read the labels and use asphalt based sealant; avoid coal tar based sealants. The asphalt based sealants may cost a bit more but they are more environmentally friendly and less toxic for you and our waters. Please do your part to keep Maine's lakes, rivers and streams healthy.

This column was submitted by Kathy Hoppe, an Environmental Specialist IV with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) Bureau of Land and Water Quality. In Our Back Yard is a weekly column of the DEP. E-mail your environmental questions to infoDEP@maine.gov or send them to In Our Back Yard, Maine DEP, 17 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333.

CDM discredited

This isn't really news. We've known for several months that the CDM was being terribly abused. But what I'd like to know, is what will happen next? The major unknown factor will be the outcome of the US election, and the nature of the federal climate policy that will result.


Discredited strategy

Increasing allegations of corruption and profiteering are raising serious questions about the UN-run carbon trading mechanism aimed at cutting pollution and rewarding clean technologies

* Patrick McCully
* The Guardian

The world's biggest carbon offset market, the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), is run by the UN, administered by the World Bank, and is intended to reduce emissions by rewarding developing countries that invest in clean technologies. In fact, evidence is accumulating that it is increasing greenhouse gas emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. The misguided mechanism is handing out billions of dollars to chemical, coal and oil corporations and the developers of destructive dams - in many cases for projects they would have built anyway.

According to David Victor, a leading carbon trading analyst at Stanford University in the US, as many as two-thirds of the supposed "emission reduction" credits being produced by the CDM from projects in developing countries are not backed by real reductions in pollution. Those pollution cuts that have been generated by the CDM, he argues, have often been achieved at a stunningly high cost: billions of pounds could have been saved by cutting the emissions through international funds, rather than through the CDM's supposedly efficient market mechanism.

Read more...