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	July 13, 2005

Three Ideas That Will Grow On You Agricultural subsidies in both North America and Europe top $150B per year. This is tax money used to support business that would simply not be viable without it. Much of that money goes to the handful of global agribusiness companies that have oligopoly control over almost all food produced in the West; very little of it actually goes to small, community-based farmers. Much of that money is to encourage hugely inefficient, wasteful, and heavily polluting operations that raise non-native crops and farm animals and soak them with antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides and petroleum-based fertilizers. Meanwhile, with no big money behind them and no media attention given to them, there are some wonderful opportunities to make agriculture sustainable, healthy and beneficial to small, community-based farmers, that are completely ignored. In a previous article I wrote about the opportunity to grow Stevia, a native American plant that can be used for sweetening without either calories or the Frankenstein chemicals that today's overpriced artificial sweeteners contain. Here are three more 'growing ideas': Rooftop Agriculture: A combination of rooftop agriculture and hydroponics (using recycled 'gray' water) could make our cities self-sufficient in botanic (non-animal) foods. The benefits (health, cost savings, community self-sufficiency, security of the food supply, less reliance on foreign oil for both fertilizers and transportation) are obvious. And most city roofs aren't used anyway.  We need to get the biologists and urban agriculture specialists working with green industrial designers to figure out how to make this happen. (Thanks to Dynamic Doug Alder for the links). Hemp-Based Foods, Textiles and Other Products: Perhaps because agribusiness can't corner the market on it, and hence are pressuring the Republicans and Democrats in the US to keep harmless and efficient industrial hemp illegal, neither party at the national level will stand up and advocate the repeal of the ludicrous federal law banning growing the crop in the US. Ironically, the US is the world's largest importer of hemp, and representatives of both parties in farm states have been pressuring the government to at least turn over regulation of the crop to the states -- so far unsuccessfully. If you're an American, support the new bipartisan proposal for such a change. Hemp based foods are remarkably nutritious, hemp can produce more environmentally-friendly and durable paper and clothing than cellulose or cotton, and it can even be used to produce biodegradable substitutes for plastics, medicines, detergents and inks. Afghan Poppies for Medicine: Today's NYT has an editorial suggesting that licensing Afghanistan's flourishing (90% of the world's supply) poppy industry could take it out of the hands of drug dealers and use it to solve the desperate need for low-cost pain killers in much of the world (including the West). There are problems with the idea, which has backing from a major European drug research organization, but the real challenge is the bull-headedness of 'war on drugs' advocates. Perhaps the 30-50 million Americans who have suffered or will suffer from chronic pain at some point in their lives could put a bit of pressure on them. Solving two problems at once would seem like a slam dunk to me. There are a lot of good ideas like this out there. Why is our economy so inept at capitalizing on them? 3:24:06 PM  trackback []  comment []

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