Monsanto is in the courts again. This time they are after the dairy industry. Monsanto has had a history of aggressively protecting the patents
for their GMO seeds. They are well within their rights to do so. However, their goon squads and thug-like tactics leave much to be desired. Monsanto is going after companies that label their dairy products rBGH-Free. Monsanto holds the patent on rBGH or recumbent bovine growth hormone. It is given to dairy cows to vastly increase their milk production. Many people, for various reasons, are not crazy about the use of this hormone. There are several dairy producers, marketers and retailers who have chosen not to use Monsanto’s product. These companies have been labeling their products rBGH-Free.

Makes sense to me that as a consumer I have the choice in the products I buy. Monsanto does not feel the same way. Just like their victory in keeping their GMO corn and soybean content off the labels. They are now in court arguing that dairies that choose not to use this product cant tell us they are not using it. Yes, if you are not aware of the fact that in the United States, supposed champion of the free market concept, a corporation has
influenced policy makers to prevent people from knowing about the GMO content in the products they buy. If you buy anything in the US that has
anything derived from corn or soybean it is a GMO. And the company that produces it is not allowed to label it.

This is something that regardless of political ideology everyone who buys food in this country should be up in arms. Monsanto has a right to protect
their patents. Monsanto has a right to make a profit. Monsanto has a right to protection under the law. Monsanto does not have the right to prevent me from knowing what I am buying. We all have the right to know about what products we buy contain. This is the very essence of free market capitalism.

The consumer is allowed to make a choice about the products they buy. We have the right to know what is in the foods we eat and the products we buy. When corporations become so powerful that they can do the kind of crap Monsanto is doing today it is time for people to get angry. Get angry and take action. Contact the FDA tell them you want to know what is in the food you buy. Contact your Congress people let them know how you feel. This is our government and it only works when we do.

I will start with an NPR report I heard earlier this week. The report referenced the state of Texas requesting a waiver from the federal government on the requirement to use ethanol in their fuel. For some reason the folks at NPR neglected to point out that this request by Gov. Perry’s office came after one of the largest poultry operations in country, Pilgrim’s Pride, made a $100,000.00 investment ... oops, sorry... donation to the Republican Governors Association. Did I mention Perry chairs that little group? This was all reported in the Houston Chronicle. Not some blogger or little known tabloid the Houston Chronicle.

To make things even more interesting, the folks at NPR neglected to point out that the waiver the Perry administration requested was put together not just by the good hard-working government employees of Texas, but by a group of Pilgrim’s Pride lobbyists and public relations people from the firm Public Strategies.

NPR did mention the Grocery Manufacturers Association joining with the fine folks of Texas in protesting the ethanol mandate. Of course the USDA and others have already discredited the GMA claims that all the cost increase of food has been caused by ethanol.

I am not really surprised when reporters get stuff wrong. They are reporters, not scientists or policy makers or even practitioners of the black
arts (you know: economists). They report what they see. I would request that if a simple blogger like myself can find this information that it is not all
that tough for them to get it right.

Aside from the failure of NPR to actually get even the facts of the Texas ethanol waiver story correct, I would not expect them to do much better
with the food-versus-food thing in general. Here at BidForGreen we have tackled this subject several times, and it looks like we have to do it
again. Ethanol is NOT causing food prices to skyrocket, and people are not starving to death because of ethanol. Ethanol, from corn, is not the perfect answer to our energy needs. It is however, a step we need to take.

Today many look at the world we live in and fear we are facing potential catastrophe on a global scale. Others argue that if we change our wasteful ways we can reverse our damaging course and avoid coming disaster. Others still see no problem or need to change.
In 1798 the reverend Thomas Malthus wrote of his concerns that humanity would soon outstrip our ability to feed ourselves. Malthus noted that unchecked population increases geometrically 2 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16 and so on. Based upon the numbers he saw in 1798 he could easily see that human kinds population was going to outpace its ability to feed itself.

A few hundred years later and several generations after Malthus predictions, Garret Hardin wrote his “Tragedy of the Commons”. Hardin felt that the only way to insure we avoid the Malthusian it would be necessary that the human race relinquish its freedom, as Hardin put it, to “breed.”
Obviously, Malthus missed his mark, at least for a time. Hardin’s Tragedy has not yet come to pass either. We have staved off the disastrous consequences as perceived by both men with advances in agriculture and technology. That has allowed us to produce far more food with less land than ever before. The “green” revolution that introduced chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides has not come without serious ecological cost. We have learned how to mitigate many of the inherent problems to chemical-based farming but we still have a long way to go.

Now we begin to lean even more heavily on our agricultural and technological abilities. Along with the necessary food and fiber production we must have from the land we throw in energy production. More and more we depend on those who can work the land. Farmers have always been able to find ways to battle the elements and the markets to bring food to the tables of the world. It is truly sad to think that today we have more accountants and stockbrokers than we do farmers. We have less land in production and more urban sprawl eating up potential farmlands around the world.

Amazingly, farmers today are able to do so much more with so much less than ever before. Many farmers are switching to more sustainable less intensive methods of farming whenever they can. Many opportunities for people to purchase locally produced foods from farmers markets and even directly from on farm sales have become available.

We are beating the dire predictions of the past, and we are doing so in common sense ways. Thinking globally and eating locally, pursuing a sound bioenergy future based on respect for the land and the people who work it is our only hope for a sustainable future. We are doing these things and taking great strides toward that goal of a sustainable way of life. We are taking great steps but we need to do more.

If you are not buying foodstuff from local producers you should. If you are not supporting biofuels in your area you should. If you have not already turned an eye to the future, you must. And what is the best way to accomplish these goals? Of course, we think it starts here. Start by becoming a member of Bid For Green and signing up on our rss feed. This is a great way to start finding the green and sustainable products you want to use. BFG is also a great way to stay informed about things going on in the field of sustainability.

It’s an exciting time; stay with us. Be a part of what we are doing; spread the word about BFG to your friends and neighbors. And finally, hug a farmer if you can. We owe them more than we could ever repay.

All the things that Holmes looked at were smaller parts of the greater whole. The character was able to show the chain of events that connected
that bit of tobacco, or type of paper. All the little specks in the story where always interconnected in a complex way that in the end simply showed
the big picture to the brilliant mind of Sherlock Holmes.

In an odd way that enjoyment of Sir Doyle’s creation has gone a long way toward helping me understand the in, out and oddities of today’s energy
market. Let’s go back and look at market forces over the last couple years. We can start with the housing market in the US. There was incredible growth and lots of money made by people in the sub-prime mortgage market. It was a heck of a ride all the way till the point it collapsed and drug down several banks and lending institutions. All of a sudden the bubble burst and sent hundreds of speculators looking for the next big thing to make a fortune on. As money began to flow away from the sub-prime mortgages they begin to flood into other areas, especially oil.

As the sub-prime plummeted the oil futures shot up, nearly doubling in a year. No aspect of supply and demand caused the price to go up. No natural disaster in any part of the world caused it to go up. The practice of gambling on the futures market is what has caused the increase in a barrel
of oil to gush up to where it is at today.

Capitalism is a great and wonderful thing; it has allowed people to accomplish many wonderful things. Speculators and investment houses have helped many people meet their goals and accomplish their financial dreams. The market, however, should not be the ultimate arbiter of value in the world.
We should not allow futures trading on those things that are paramount to our survival, especially energy and food. We need investment in energy and agriculture but both industries carry more than enough of their own risk. We do not need to add more through futures trading in those markets.
If you want to gamble on Wal-Mart, great, take your chances with Boeing, or Quest. Leave energy and agriculture to the forces of supply and demand. We need to change the rules so that our future does not rely on the toss of the dice.

Corn-based ethanol in the US has been labeled as a crime against humanity by some. People complain about the high cost of everything from gas for their cars, diesel fuel for trucks and the price of everything at Wal-Mart has gone up.

Many times we have discussed that corn-based ethanol is not the long-term solution to energy independence in the US. Cellulose-based ethanol holds the greatest hope there. But believe it or not this blog is less about ethanol and much more about land use.

So far, many people have focused the argument that we should not be using a food crop for fuel production. Others complain that farmers are putting too much land in corn right now to try and reap the benefits of a strong market.

I suggest those with the big beef about ethanol should maybe stop talking and start doing a little digging into research about who they are really benefiting by trying to derail ethanol.

In Missouri we have a mandate that we need to have 10% ethanol in our gasoline. Economists figure that with out that E10 requirement we would be paying as much as a dollar more per gallon at the pump. A dollar that would have gone to the oil companies now goes back to the agricultural sector in the US. Notice I did not say to the farmer. As much as I would like to see that happen, American farmers get pennies on the dollar for any of their crops including corn. So by trying to stop the use of corn-based ethanol you are trying to put another dollar in the pockets of the oil industry. And with the record profits oil companies are making now, they certainly need all the help they can get.

Next, for those of you out crying that we are taking food from the poor.
Perhaps you should look at a few other crops that are not providing food or fuel. We have tobacco, hemp and cotton to name just a few of the industrial crops grown in the US. These feed no one and fuel only industry. Should we stop growing them as well in order to produce more food to be given to poor nations? Given to nations with the best of intentions to help people who need it? Unfortunately also given in ways that help destroy opportunities for local markets and locally produced agriculture.

How about our Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) designed to pay people to not produce on their land? Literally millions of acres of CRP land is not being farmed. If you really want to shake things up in the US let’s go ahead and take away property rights and put together a national land use management plan. Now we can designate where people can build homes and businesses and keep productive agricultural lands in production. Hey, we just cured not only food production but urban sprawl as well. All we give up is the concept of private property, a cornerstone of capitalism.

So lets plow through all the bull. If you are fighting the rise of ethanol as a transportation fuel you are siding with oil companies. Without biofuels, they are the only game in town. If you are fighting ethanol you are against renewable energy. If you are against ethanol you are against any real opportunity to build a society based on the ideas and concepts of sustainability. So take a moment and really think about what is going on, let these ideas take root and grow in your mind. The world is not perfect, but it is good.

We can live without money and we do not need oil to survive, but without water everything dies. Everything.

We have as much water today as we have ever had. Water does not fall from space, we have a closed loop system, so what we have is what we have.

Most of our water is in either the oceans or locked in either our ice caps or places deep below ground not easily accessible. Ocean water can be used for drinking water when put through an expensive and resource intensive desalinization plant, but it is still too salty for good irrigation water for crops.

Think about this for a minute: the six billion human beings alive today are sharing the same water. Not to mention that we are also using that same water supply to grow crops, water livestock, industrial purposes, the occasional bath, and yes, some folks even drink the stuff. I prefer beer myself, but even that requires approximately seven liters of water to produce one liter of beer.

The water we are using today is the same water used by everything that has ever lived on this planet. It is part of the same hydrological cycle that provided water for Abraham, King David, Jesus Christ, Genghis Kahn, George Washington, Adolph Hitler and Iggy Pop.

For that matter, the water we drink today has been used by everything from T-Rex (the dinosaur and the glam rockers) to the Woolly Mammoth to the great herds of bison that roamed the American prairie.

So the question for all of is not, “where do we get more water?”. We don’t. We have what we have. The question must be how do we get water to where it is most needed and how do we keep it clean and useable once it is there.

The answer is maddeningly simple: We must get appropriate technology into the hands of the people who need it. In many countries the water is there but it requires energy to get it. Solar becomes the obvious answer. Does solar power provide pumping energy 24 hours a day 7 days a week? No. However, for the bulk of the time getting water into holding tanks that can often times be gravity fed to end users makes a huge difference.

Once we get the water to the people, how do we get it clean and keep it clean. For the most part nature already does this in many different ways. Water processing in the developed world is not always that high-tech. We use filters; in most rural wastewater plants in the US one of the filtering media is sand. Add a few easy to supply chemicals and you have clean useable drinking water.

Well then, if it is so damn easy why have we not done it yet? You know the first answer: money. Getting people and technology to places that need the expertise takes money and a fair amount of dedication. The second is political will. This is tough one. You would not normally think that helping people would be that big a deal. Then you look at the cyclone relief efforts in Myanmar. You look at the problems we face with many governments around the world, especially in developing nations, who look at aid monies as a way to line their pockets and keep their power.

Now the conclusion to this somewhat rambling blog is again very simple. We, yes, you and I and everyone else we can convince make the change. We foster the political will, we use the nonprofit structures that are already in place and we make things happen. We donate money and we make sure it is used properly to give aid where it is needed.

Because everyone deserves water.

So it really is no wonder that much of the work I have done in my life has had ties in one way or another to water quality and supply especially. My wife and kids and I have had our own stream team here in Missouri for several years. It has always been a great family day when we go out to the creek and take our samples. It’s incredible when I can take a group of kids out to the stream from a local school and show them the amazing ecosystem of aquatic macroinvertabrates (water bugs) that live beneath the rocks of a stream bed.

What is even more satisfying is when they begin to understand that we all have one incredible thing in common. No matter where you live on this planet you are in a watershed. Kids get the idea of a watershed pretty quickly. They grasp how what they do at home can have impacts not only in their yard or driveway but many many miles downstream. And it is a big win for me when the kid’s parents grasp the concept as well.

What we all must do is realize that we all do live in a watershed and the actions we think are only impacting us right where we are are also having unintended consequences downstream.