It is not clear that using "biocrops" for bioplastics, fuel or building materials are more sustainable than conventional practices, especially if it means that these uses further deplete our ability to feed humanity and at the same time reduce biodiversity by promoting monoculture corporate farming. We need to be sure that the bio-based economy we are building is truly part of a bona fide sustainable solution using materials now treated as waste rather than further extending and empowering the corporate monoculture empire that was recently documented on PBS documentary King Corn.
What we face is not a linear problem (it is not just about food and that is the challenge we face); it is multifaceted and will hit humanity in many directions, Financial, Energy, Military/Prisons/Law Enforcement/Surveillance/Food/Water/Climate Change/Emotional-Social and Political.
All sectors will be affected, just as all sectors have been impacted by the current form of global malaise that has been touted as progress up to now.
As we talk of more synergistic and nature based solutions many often overlook that while dominant approach is very symptomatically and superficially oriented in how it looks at problems - it is also synergistic - but in the wrong ways (and the complexity of what is wrong does not easily fit in the media sound bite reality. Its has become so entrenched and massive it has wrapped itself around things we are taught to see as American as Apple Pie (a diet based on jello, hamburgers and coke) so the politicians and the media aren't able to discuss it in a way that is insightful). To consider the links between food policies, ideology and identity politics we need only read about Obama's reference to his youth and growing up making Jello molds to show that he was not an elite latte drinker:
I was raised in a setting with grandparent who grew up in small towns in Kansas, and the dinner table would have been very familiar to anyone here in small town Indiana -- a lot of pot roast and potatoes and jello molds...While considering the many challenges we face including the potential food shortage as well as the very business as usual pandering of the politicians to the prevailing mainstream values and icons of the day (that to me indicates a lack of real creativity and courage to find innovative solutions), I am also inspired by many inspirational solutions and the efforts of people to reverse prevailing trends and approaches.
To me this indicates that we make a mistake when we have expectations that real change will come from Washington, Wall Street or Hollywood and we invest in that kind of change at the expense of supporting the grassroots. Real change comes from us and in the way that we inspire others by our courageous work. We are still small in the face of the challenge of say King Corn or King Coal or King whatever (vested interests who cautiously and jealously guards their little fiefdoms of the American society/economy to prevent any enlightened ideas from spreading into the mainstream using very subtle means and measures of persuasion), but I am optimistic that time is on the side of those who seek a more community and nature oriented approach to life.
Jeff Buderer
oneVillage Foundation
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