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digitally processed images after photos I took of some seeds i grew into a frame & glass, and after I took them off it.

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by Deren Hansen

Some time ago Julie Danes pointed out that conflict should not be contrived.

What is a contrived conflict?

In comic books, bad guys are bad because they're bad. Slap on a label like, "Nazi," or, "Terrorist," and your job is done. Other examples include oppressive clergy, greedy corporations, and government conspiracies. It's conflict by definition, which is the height of contrivance.

Another kind of contrived conflict is what I call irrational conflict: characters at loggerheads whose differences could be resolved with a rational, five-minute conversation. Romances are particularly liable to this kind of contrivance when the author can't think of a better reason to keep the leads apart. Yes, misunderstandings occur in real life, as do coincidences, but as a general rule (because you don't want your readers rolling their eyes) you're only allowed one of each.

Of course, it's not that some kinds of conflict are contrived and other are not. Any conflict where the reader sees the puppet strings, or worse, the puppeteer (author), is contrived. Readers need and want to believe that the conflict in the story arises organically from the mix of setting, plot, and characters, and that the conflict couldn't have played out any other way.

When I think about organic conflict, whether it arises from characters or plot, I imagine the parties to the conflict as forces of nature. Picture what happens when a surge of the restless sea meets the immovable cliff. Or when the speeding car meets the brick wall.

The most compelling conflict feels inevitable: notwithstanding everyone's best efforts, the collision occurs.

Unlike the watered-down food label, "natural," organic conflict is a much healthier, and a much more satisfying choice.

Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

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Diarmuid Gavin loves to get digging with his daughter Eppie when he returns to Ireland but now when she drops into bed exhausted by the gardening she can read all about Seed City and dream about those mischievous vegie-beings.

Diarmuid was keen to pinch the cabbage crown from Shena when they met at the Edible Garden Show.

Or did he want the Carrot hat?

He certainly loved Secret Seed Society’s fun ideas for engaging children and gave us a front page promotion in The Mirror!

The first day Secret Seed Society could be found promoting organic gardening to children whilst the grown-ups signed up at The Soil Association.

Do you know what Chrissie Cress and Peter Parsnip like to play? well they certainly got everyone playing at the show. Take a look here.

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Robert Paarlberg is the B. F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University.  His new book, Food Politics: What Everyone Needs To Know, carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today’s global food landscape.  Politics in this area have become polarized and Paarlberg helps us map this contested terrain, challenging myths and critiquing more than a few of today’s fashionable beliefs about farming and food.  In the excerpt below we learn about the organic food.

Many who buy organic goods believe such foods are healthier than conventional foods because they contain more nutrients.  Others believe organic foods are safer to eat because they carry no pesticide residues.  Nutritionists and health professionals from outside the organic community tend to question both of these beliefs.

The strongest claim of superior nutrient content has been made by the Organic Center, an institution founded in 2002 to demonstrate the benefits of organic products.  In 2008, the Organic Center published a review “confirming” the nutrient superiority of plant-based organic foods, showing they contained more vitamin C and vitamin E and a higher concentration of polyphenols, such a flavonoids.  This review was rebutted, however, by conventional nutritionists who showed that the Organic Center had used statistical results that were either not peer reviewed or not significant in terms of human health.  Organic milk from cows raised on grass may indeed contain 50 percent more beta-carotene, but there is so little beta-carotene in milk to being with that the resulting gain is only an extra 112 micrograms of beta-carotene per quart of milk, or less that 1 percent the quantity of beta-carotene found in a single medium-size baked sweet potato.

Most certified health professionals find no evidence that organic foods are healthier to eat.  According to the Mayo Clinic, “No conclusive evidence shows that organic food is more nutritious than is conventionally grown food.”  European experts agree.  Claire Williamson from the British Nutrition Foundation says, “From a nutritional perspective, there is currently not enough evidence to recommend organic foods over conventionally produced foods.”  In 2009, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study, commissioned by the British Food Standards Agency, of 162 scientific papers published in the past 50 years on the health and diet benefits of organically grown foods and found no evidence of benefit.  The director of the study concluded, “Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally-produced on the basis of nutritional superiority.”  The acidity of organic produce was found to be higher, which enhanced taste and sensory perception, but there was no difference for health.

The claim that organic food is safer due to lower pesticide residues is also suspect in the eyes of most health professionals. The Mayo Clinic says, “Some people buy organic food to limit their exposure to [pesticide] residues.  Most experts agree, however, that the amount of pesticides found on fruits and vegetables poses a very small health risk.”  Residues on food can be a significant problem in many developing countries, where the sprayi

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There’s been really bad news about bees recently. Billions of them have been dying!

Why is this happening?

Most scientists agree that the widespread overuse of pesticides is one of the main causes. These days there are around 120 different pesticides found inside bees, wax and pollen. “We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies,” said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS’s bee research laboratory. The Soil Association has been trying hard to alert us for years about this.

Why are bees so important?

Other than being sort of cute, bees are one of the most effective pollinators on the planet. The honeybee pollinates crops, fruits, vegetables.. everything from apples to nuts, sunflower, coffee, soya beans, carrots and alfafa (used in cattled feed). Turns out that 1/3 of everything we eat depends on bees. Without bees we will face the collapse of the food chain!

So what can we actually do?

Thankfully there are quite a few groups trying to tackle this problem head on. Here are our the ideas we liked best:

Learn more about bees!

Avoid using pesticides – dummies guide

Plant bee-friendly plants -list of bee friendly flowers (pdf)

Get a bee shelter – here’s one

Adopt a bee hive

Become a beekeeper – there are lots of training courses

Protect swarms – if you see one contact these guys

So let’s get buzzing, it’s not too late!

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The day the health department showed up at our little chocolate factory to ask if it was really true that we were storing chocolate off-site was right in the middle of the period our employees were making each other cry.

For the last four years, Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates has been situated on the second floor of my sister-in-law Joanne Currie's bustling restaurant and bakery, Splash Cafe, in San Luis Obispo, CA. We have a pretty display case downstairs and a successful online business selling organic, fair trade chocolate in as many forms as we can invent.

My husband Tom is a truly great chocolatier, Joanne is a brilliant manager, and we have a crew of dedicated and creative employees. The reviews are great. We even won the SF Chronicle's Battle of the Bittersweets. So the orders keep coming: more big bags of bulk chocolate made to Tom's specifications, more co-packing contracts, more holiday business, more new items all the time.

All of which equals less space.

When the third employee came to Joanne's office in tears (there just wasn't enough room for that many people to do their work well) the moment she got off the phone with the health department, Joanne knew it was time to look for more space. Luckily for us, there was an empty storefront just down the street at 1445 Monterey. The economic downturn worked in our favor. We discovered we could rent a retail space for what we would have paid for warehouse space a couple years ago.

So the shop is a bonus, and I am having the best time outfitting it. This blog will mostly be about that. I'm collecting chocolate books for a library (any suggestions?) and buying old chocolate molds, pots, cups and tins to sell, designing the windows and even painting the furniture, while Tom and his crew invent new delicacies for the cases.

We're planning to be open in early July. I can't wait!

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Not illustration, but this demands to be blogged. Some freaky feather sculptures from Kate McWire.

Some more info at the great art blog, INSIDE THE FROZEN MAMMOTH.

via @nealemvf on Twitter

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Yesterday we posted part two in our dialogue between Robert Paarlberg (who recently published Starved For Science) and Pamela Ronald (author of Tomorrow’s Table). These two experts have been debating all week how to best ensure a safe food supply with the least amount of damage to the environment. This is the third and final part of the series, so be sure to read parts one and two first.

Robert Paarlberg is the Betty F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. His most recent book is Starved For Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa(Harvard University Press), explains why poor African farmers are denied access to productive technologies, particularly genetically engineered seeds with improved resistance to insects and drought.

Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis. Her laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and flooding. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her most recent book, written with Raoul W. Adamchak, is Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, genetics, and the Future of Food, which argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture–genetic engineering and organic farming–is key to helping feed the world’s growing population in an ecologically balanced manner.

Dear Pam,

Thanks for your last note. I like your final observation:

“So what I advocate is intensive farming using the most ecologically responsible approaches. In our view this would include many organic production practices and GE crops.”

I am attracted, as you are, to a number of organic production practices. What I find less attractive are the strict prohibitions in organic farming against some practices, such as the prohibition against all synthetic fertilizer use, or against all synthetic pesticide use. In many cases it will make ecological sense to restore soil nutrients by using a combination of both compost and synthetic nitrogen, yet the rules of organic certification make this impossible. It makes ecological sense, in many cases, to adopt an integrated pest management strategy, eliminating the routine use of synthetic insecticides yet keeping the chemical option available for the occasional circumstance when pest damage crosses a certain threshold. Yet once again the rules of organic certification make this practice impossible, since no use of synthetics is permitted.

I have another question about the rules of organic certification, which say it is perfectly all right to use “natural” poisons to kill insect pests. What is it that allows us to assume naturally occurring insecticidal substances are good, while those fabricated by people are always bad? This rule seems to derive, a bit too much, from the pre-scientific views held by the mystics and romantics who originated “biodynamic” and organic farming a century or more ago.

But perhaps I am missing something here.

Thanks,
Rob

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Dear Rob

The organic certification system provides guidelines for a biologically-based agricultural. One of the points of our book is that a truly sustainable agriculture will need to integrate many of these organic, scientifically-based principles. Yet it will also need to integrate new crop varieties, including those GE crops that satisfy principles of sustainable production. As you point out, different locations, crops and farmers will need to employ different approaches to achieve this vision. As Mike Madison, a fellow farmer, neighbor and writer says, “In dealing with nature, to be authoritarian is almost always a mistake. In the long run, things work out better if the farmer learns to tolerate complexity and ambiguity . . . Having the right tools helps”

Unfortunately such a sustainable system, although increasingly used around the world, has not yet been clearly defined. We begin that dialog in our book and appreciate your valuable contributions.

All the best
Pam

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Dear Pam,

Yes, I appreciate the dialog we have begun, and look forward to staying in touch. The point made by Mike Madison is solid. It was Rachel Carson who taught us best not to be either authoritarian or arrogant when working with biological systems, as we still know only a small amount about how they work, and especially how they work with each other. Whenever we introduce agricultural cropping systems into the natural environment we risk doing harm as well as good.

I have just been asked by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN to prepare a background paper that tries to imagine how the world can double its food production by the year 2050 (as will be necessary, given projected population and income growth in the developing world between now and then) without doing unwanted harm to the natural environment. A tall order, I think you would agree. I will have your nice book, Tomorrow’s Table, open on my desk when I get started on this task. Your willingness to integrate multiple approaches - from organic to GMO - into the design of sustainable farming systems is a persuasive approach to me. Thank you for opening so many minds with this inclusive approach.

Rob Paarlberg

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Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis and the co-author with her husband Raoul Adamchak of Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food which argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture–genetic engineering and organic farming–is key to helping feed the world’s growing population in an ecologically balanced manner. In the post below Ronald responds to an editorial by Paul Krugman.

“Most Americans take food for granted”, reports the New York Times in an editorial last week. I would add that we also take abundant water, vast expanses of wilderness and clean air for granted. The price of oil, global warming and skyrocketing food prices are changing the way we think about land. It is about time. Have we forgotten that land and its resources are precious? Have we forgotten how to be good stewards?

In an editorial this week in the NYT, Paul Krugman places part of the blame on biofuels: “We need to push back against biofuels that turns out to have been a terrible mistake.” But this conclusion is premature and overly simplistic.

Whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. If we destroy rainforests and grasslands to plant food crop–based biofuels, then Kurgman is right. This is a bad idea. Such an approach would release 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels. (Fargione et al, science 2008).

In contrast, biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials (so called cellulosic biomass) incurs little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages. Research on cellulosic biofuels have only just begun and there are tremendous opportunities. For example, plant biologists are working towards developing new and more productive non-food crops that can be grown on marginal lands. If we triple the yield of biomass we can use 1/3 less land. If we use the most ecologically responsible farming practices available (e.g. organic farming) to produce this new crop biomass, we can reduce the environmental impacts.

Nathanael Greene in an interview with Ira Flatow on Science Friday today said we need new innovations and we need to use them smartly. That is what should be done.

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New AGDM Blog...

Erika O'Connell, editor of Aritst's & Graphic Designer's Market, has recently begun a blog for artists. So far she's blogged about things like events, calls for entries, and what's in the 2008 AGDM (it's a great edition), talked about art and artists, and shared the story of recently meeting Henry Rollins (and how he's somehow connected to the 2008 AGDM). To check out the blog and sign up for the new AGDM newsletter, click here.

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