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?
I
n 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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28 Days Later is a Brown Bookshelf Spotlight on Authors & Illustrators in celebration of Black History Month. Some of these authors and illustrators, you know. Some of them, you don’t. Among them are authors who have served as pioneers, blazing trails in their genre; two self-published who stood out in the very competitive market of independent authors; a National Book Award finalist, and Coretta Scott King honorees and award winners. All of them are playing an essential role in the field of children’s literature. Come find out more about these authors and illustrators and their work, their passion for children’s literature and what to expect from them in the future.
28 days later,
Black history month,
Coretta Scott King,
national Book Award
Sherman Alexie is brilliant. But you probably already knew that.
This week, I finally got to read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Wow. Just wow.
I won’t write a traditional review here, because plenty of other people have praised this book up and down, and there was that whole award thing, too…. What I do want to talk about is how this book impressed me by nailing some aspects of poverty that are rarely addressed in YA novels.
As a teacher in a small city school district, I know that about a third of my students are living in poverty, carrying with them each day the baggage that goes along with it. We have breakfast programs and free lunch and a good library, and that helps. Some. What we can’t always do, no matter how hard we try, is provide that new way of thinking that Junior figured out in Alexie’s book – that moment when living in poverty becomes so unbearable that a person has to make the painful choice to leave. In Junior’s case, it’s the decision to leave his reservation school to attend a more privileged white school in a nearby town.
There’s a scene in Part-Time Indian where Junior gives a lengthy and funny-but-true list of rules for fighting. His rules. The rules of the reservation. Among them…
- If somebody insults you, then you have to fight him.
- If you think somebody is thinking about insulting you, then you have to fight him.
- If somebody beats up your father or your mother, then you have to fight the son and/or daughter of the person who beat up your mother or father.
When Junior starts at the white school, one of the big guys insults him, and sure enough, Junior punches him. He’s stunned when the guy doesn’t fight back but walks off with his posse, all of them staring at Junior as if he were a monster...
I was absolutely confused.
I had followed the rules of fighting. I had behaved exactly the way I was supposed to behave. But these white boys had ignored the rules. In fact, they had followed a whole other set of mysterious rules where people apparently DID NOT GET INTO FISTFIGHTS.
“Wait,” I called after Roger.
“What do you want?” Roger asked.
“What are the rules?”
“What rules?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there red and mute like a stop sign. Roger and his friends disappeared.
I felt like somebody had shoved me into a rocket ship and blasted me to a new planet. I was a freaky alien and there was absolutely no way to get home.
The whole concept of different sets of rules is inherent to any study of the impact of poverty on learning. Some of my middle school colleagues and I participated in a study group focused on that topic last year, using
Ruby Payne’s book
A Framework for Understanding Poverty. It’s a fantastic book – one that should be required reading for anyone who works with kids in poverty, and especially for those of us who enjoyed more privileged middle class upbringings. The rules are different. Payne, like Sherman Alexie, does a great job demystifying this aspect of poverty and helping us to understand why it’s not so easy for Junior – or anyone – to just walk away.
National Book Award and Other Stuff...
- The National Book Awards were recently given and Sherman Alexie won in the Young People's Literature category for his first foray into YA, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. (Little, Brown). This is cool. I like Sherman Alexie and have read a number of his books for adults. I was keeping my fingers crossed for Kathleen Duey, though, and I'm bummed she didn't win for A Resurrection of Magic: Skin Hunger. But it's cool that her book gets a silver finalist sticker and I'm showing her cover in this post and not Alexie's. (I hope you found the right shoes for the ceremony, Kathleen. Zappos seldom does me wrong.)
- The New York Times Book Review recently published a special section on children's books (which features a review of Alexie's aforementioned award-winner). You can find it here. Be sure to click on The Best Illustrated Books of 2007 for a wonderful slideshow.
- I can't stop watching Gossip Girl. Oh I love that Chuck Bass. Anyone else think he's Logan Huntsberger with a healthy dose of 1980s James Spader?
- I've been light on the blogging lately--busy, busy pre-holiday stuff. And I'm off work all next week, eating pumpkin pie and whatnot, so my blog will be pretty quiet. After the holiday, I'll be back with more updates to listings in the 2008 CWIM. Stay tuned!
There is nothing like the vague, puffy language that describes some self-published books:
This (historical) picture book is a "charming mix of fact and conjecture."
The author is "world celebrated."
The illustrator is "award garnering" and the art is "delightful."
The age range is "2 and up" (if they'd said zero and up I wouldn't have been surprised.)
The promo copy reads "Awards: Check back often!"
Contrast this to the facts about
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian:
The author is: Sherman Alexie, a poet, filmmaker and established author of adult fiction. Real words he wrote: "All my white friends can count their deaths on one hand."
The illustrator is: Ellen Forney, who teaches at Seattle Cornish College of the Arts, and her art is better than words can describe: see for yourself
The age range is: anyone who reads the first page, because after that, you're a goner.
The promo copy (here) reads: This National Book Award Winner was read by Sara Lewis Holmes BEFORE it won the award, a first for her. She wishes to congratulate Sherman Alexie on winning that very cool statue and thank him for writing one of the few books she's kissed this year.
For more absolutely true things, see Sherman Alexie's recent interviews at
Finding Wonderland and
Interactive Reader.
National Book Award Nominees...
Finalists for the National Book Award for have recently been announced. Authors nominated in the Young People's Literature include 2008 CWIM contributor Kathleen Duey, for Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Book One (Atheneum) as well as Sherman Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown); M. Sindy Felin for Touching Snow (Atheneum); Brian Selznick for The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic); and debut author and Class of 2k7 member Sara Zarr for Story of a Girl (Little, Brown).
The full list is posted in GalleyCat. Winners will be announced in November 14.
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I'm happy for Alexie, too, becuase he's a great writer, though I haven't read this book yet.
Also Denis Johnson, whose Jesus' Son is linked in my mind to Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven because they're both these incredibly interwoven story collections.