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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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I was so happy with how painting the cabinets has transformed our kitchen I'm going to show some "before" and "after"s, but there are still more changes to come. For those of you with something similar going on in your kitchen, I can tell you that this was our most affordable makeover yet at under $150. We had some leftover 1-2-3 primer, the cabinet paint (Debbie Travis, "cloudy white", semi-gloss latex) was around $40, new white hinges were around $40, new brushed nickel knobs and handles were around $60. Stores often sell these items in packs of ten as well, so you can really save there.

Here's the left side "before", I took this picture in the middle of unpacking. The old knobs were in the middle of the doors. And as I mentioned before the cupboards were made of fake wood laminate. Yuck!

Here's the "after" of the left side. I don't even mind the green countertop so much anymore:
Here's the "before" of the right side. Somehow it was even worse - the whole kitchen felt gloomy:
Here's the "after" of the right side. It's so much more cheerful now:
And this third view is from the eat-in area of the kitchen (not renovated yet) looking back into the galley kitchen area. This shows the wall where we took down a cabinet. Unfortunately the thermostat and an outlet were wedged underneath and cut into the tiling. But later on we plan to redo the tiles in any case. Once you change one thing you realize you need to change other things too. My friend Jaimie inspired me talking about apple green tiles, and Katie Muth's tiles are so pretty.Here's the "after", the pale green wall paint (Debbie Travis, "chiffon", eggshell latex) needs a second coat but you can't really tell that from the photo!We've ordered a new faucet online, the current one is leaky and specializes in going from cold to burning hot and rather than getting it fixed we're going to just replace it with something nicer. And someday we may replace those vinyl floor tiles. It's a constant dilemma deciding how much to spend on the house. I used to think that it was so small we'd definitely need to move soon and shouldn't put too much work into it, but that tiny house in my last post really inspired me. I mean, ours is more than twice as big! I thought we had the smallest house in Toronto but now I see I was quite wrong.

Living in a small space is a fun challenge, making things work on a small scale can be very satisfying. I really believe it's a good thing, you know, environmentally and all that. Too many possessions can weigh you down, I'm always trying to pare down but it's hard because I can be a bit sentimental about things. I'm working on it though.