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When it comes to Valentine’s Day, the most common question is “chocolate or flowers?” Though sustainably-grown cut flowers are a clear green choice, many people still prefer chocolate. But what if we didn’t have the option? What if the world’s cocoa plant population went extinct?

John Mason, executive director of the Nature Conservation Research Council, believes that “in 20 years chocolate will be like caviar…it will become so rare and so expensive that the average Joe just won’t be able to afford it.” The world’s cocoa supply is threatened, Mason explains, by the way in which it is grown.

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This is a guest post by Ed Bruske. He writes at The Slow Cook.  Ed lives in the District of Columbia. A reporter for the Washington Post in a previous life, he now tends his “urban farm” about a mile from the White House in the District of Columbia. Ed believes in self-reliance, growing food close to home and political freedom for the residents of the District of Columbia.

Warning: The following may contain dangerously subversive thoughts. Young children should probably leave the room….

Although I believe in food gardening, I am also convinced that we will only get so far trying to persuade Americans that there is a healthier way to eat, and that growing your own is a big part of the answer. But I also know there’s something else Americans care very much about: money. That’s why I am proposing right here and right now a big fat tax break on kitchen gardens that will not only spur our fellow citizens to start digging up their lawns like crazy, but will fit right in with President Obama’s economic stimulus efforts by getting everyone busy buying seeds and garden tools.

This proposal has the added benefit of creating a perfect opportunity for the kind of political bi-partisanship that Obama has been yearning for. I am certain that Republicans, who have never seen a tax break they didn’t like, will jump at the chance to support one that will provide fresh fruits and vegetables to every man, woman and child in these United States. This is more than a bread and butter issue. This is more than a Mom and apple pie issue. This is a beets and potatoes issue that people of all political stripes can easily sink their teeth into.

Why shouldn’t kitchen gardens get a tax break? We give tax breaks for home offices, which encourages workers to stay off the roads. We give tax breaks for mortgage interest, which encourages people to buy homes. We even give tax credits for children, which quite needlessly encourages couples who otherwise would not get along to have more sex. Written as they are into our federal law, these measures are a form of universally accepted social engineering, designed to create healthier, more productive, more satisfying living conditions for our entire society. So I ask you, what could be healthier, more productive, more satisfying than fruits and vegetables we can grow and harvest right outside our door? In fact, we can easily do without a home office, or our own house, or even more children. But we cannot do without food. Living without food would be hard if not nearly impossible. We should be encouraging people to grow more of it.

There is a deeper, more profound reason to use the federal tax code to promote kitchen gardens. As we all know, Congress has been unable to undo the corporate-government love knot that is responsible for so much of the bad food in this country. By that I mean the way our government uses our tax dollars to subsidize the production of a huge glut of corn and soybeans, which then finds its way via a chemical laboratory in New Jersey into nearly everything you see on supermarket shelves. Obesity, diabetes, hypertension, irritability–there’s a whole litany of unhealthy repercussions from government-supported agribusiness that we needn’t bother to repeat here. Try as it might, Congress hasn’t been able to wrap its arms around this problem. So I say let’s just put that one to the side. Let’s not pull out our hair over it any more. Let’s move on and consider tax breaks for healthy alternative foods, the kind you grow in kitchen gardens.

The reason I think our elected representatives in Washington will go for this idea is, first of all, it will get radical food groups off their backs about the cozy relationship they have with agribusiness. Once these tax breaks are passed, Congress can continue to accept those fat contributions from Monsanto and ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland and nobody will care. That won’t be where the action is any more. Everybody in the country will be focused on how to take advantage of the new tax breaks. Secondly, these new tax measures will win wide support because they embody two cherished American values: fairness and competition. Tax breaks for kitchen gardens will help level the playing field where growing food is concerned because up to now all the federal subsidies have been going to corn and soybeans. Nobody subsidizes carrots and broccoli. In fact, nobody even pays to advertise carrots and broccoli the way they do, say, Doritos and Pepsi, two products that just happen to contain a lot of corn. Giving tax breaks to people who grow their own collards and tomatoes will inject a fresh new competitive spirit into the business of producing food. With every family in America growing their own food, we can surely expect agribusiness to respond with a more efficacious high-fructose corn syrup, for instance, even a better tasting fry oil.

This is how it would work: If you are just starting your garden, you will be eligible for a federal tax credit on the land you put into production, up to one acre. I think $1 per square foot is a fair rate, which means that virtually every home owner could probably knock $1,000 right off the top of their tax bill. If you don’t pay any federal income taxes, it would mean a $1,000 check from Uncle Sam. Even better, you wouldn’t even have to own your own home. You could claim the credit if you rent, even if you are starting a garden on the roof of your apartment building or just planting basil in some window boxes. Starting your new garden will probably also require some tools and a good deal of labor. My plan provides a further tax credit of $500 for the purchase or rental of appropriate garden tools and any help you might have to pay for. The only catch is, you cannot claim tools that use fossil fuels. This conforms with our previously announced scheme to reduce greenhouse gases wherever possible in the gardening realm. Instead, this is what you do: When you go to Home Depot to buy your garden tools, grab a couple of those immigrant guys who are hanging around looking for work and take them home to help dig the garden. You can claim whatever you pay them on your tax credit form, anything within the $500 limit. Just remember to ask for a receipt.

As you might suspect already, this proposal would be a huge stimulus to employment, and not just for the guys hanging around Home Depot. Millions of gardeners will need their soil tested, which will instantly create jobs at state universities and other testing facilities nationwide. There will be a huge demand for shovels and trowels and watering cans: more jobs by the thousands for a nation hungry for employment in the manufacturing sector. Ditto for those factories that create compost and other soil amendments and are now sitting idle. They will be humming with new work. (Note: no deductions for artificial fertilizers or chemical pesticides. This is a sustainable, strictly organic tax program.) And what about seeds? You will certainly need seeds. My plan envisions a $50 credit for seeds, meaning lots of work for seed collectors.

What if you have never gardened before? Won’t you need some instruction on how to prepare your garden, what to plant, when to plant it? For that I have a very special feature in mind, something that is sure to take thousands of unemployed horticulturists out of bread lines and put them to work. I call it the “Kitchen Garden Corps,” whereby the federal government, as a further stimulus measure, would fund new positions in every single county extension service in the country, people trained and ready to show erstwhile kitchen gardeners how to grow more food and how to cook it for dinner. (And if we need to train the experts first, so much the better. More jobs for trainers.) Additional positions could be created to teach gardening on-line, a boost for the telecommunications and computer industries.

That’s all well and good, you are saying to yourself, but what’s to prevent cheating? What if somebody digs up their lawn but doesn’t plant anything? Do we let garden scofflaws just kick back and collect their checks? I struggled with that one, too. Perhaps we should require some sort of site visit and certification by an extension agent. Or maybe we could require that people claiming the credit provide photos of their garden at appropriate intervals in the growing season. But I think an even better remedy–one that market theorists will like–would be to provide further incentives to grow as much food in the garden as possible, to garden as intensively as soil and local weather conditions permit. Remember what Earl Butz told farmers back in the 70s: “Plant fence row to fence row!” Well, we would be telling home owners to plant from the back of the patio all the way to the wooden fence that separates them from their neighbor on the next street over. The incentive would come in the form of a subsidy check for the produce you grow, very much like the payments the federal government makes to agribusinesses that produce corn that can only be eaten after it’s been subjected to a complicated chemical process. You would be paid by the pound for all the organic eggplants and zucchini and butternut squash you grow. But you would need to weigh everything and keep very precise records. The IRS will print a form for this purpose, much like the one you fill out when you are claiming a profit or loss from the sale of your stocks. (The cost of the scale would be tax deductible, of course.)

In subsequent years, the tax credits that helped you start your garden would turn into tax deductions. Hopefully these incentives would be enough to keep you gardening year after year, producing food for your family and possibly even for the fruit and vegetable co-op you form with your neighbors. By then, there will be an enthusiastic response to the idea of further tax breaks for chickens, goats, rabbits and other small, food-producing animals. The entire nation will be healthier and happier, hooked on fresh, local food. That could mean hard times for traditional supermarkets and fast-food restaurants. But surely they will evolve in this competitive new food environment, perhaps even learning to serve healthy foods themselves. Thanks to these new federal tax measures we will be eating most of our food fresh out of the garden, which could lead to much less disease (less demand, hence lower costs, for health care) and much greater longevity (better days for retirement homes and registered nurses).

Which leads me to wonder: Will I still be gardening when I’m 140 years old?

More Information Here.

The following is a letter I’m about to send to the new Sustainability Manager of Cabarrus County, North Carolina where I live.  I thought I’d ask readers for feedback before I send it off.  Thanks for your thoughts.   -Aaron

Dear Mr. Grant,

I’m pleased to know that my local government has solidified its commitment to the future of this county and its citizens by hiring you as the first Sustainability Manger of Cabarrus County. Congratulations. Over the past few months I’ve deliberated on a few ideas I think will strengthen any attempt to establish this county as a leader in the effort to become a more sustainable place to live. It is becoming obvious to many more people that we must consider not only the future of our children and grandchildren who will inherit the decisions we make regarding our care and stewardship of this county but also the health of the local ecological systems on which we all depend for clean water, air and all other aspects of life. I want to share these ideas with you in high hopes they might prove useful to your efforts.

A short side note before I begin. Plenty of people fail to associate the current economic crisis garnering attention across the nation with the crises of energy and environmental issues facing this country. These three are actually more closely linked than might appear at first glance. Our diminished supply of natural resources, most notably our dwindling domestic supply of petroleum, has forced us to switch from a nation that grows stuff, builds things and actually produces objects of real value to a nation with an economic system based on financial speculation using credit to prop up the notion that we’re real not citizens but simply consumers. Hence we’ve been told until mostly recently that oure most important role in society is to shop. Petroleum production peaked in the US 1970 at just less than 10 million barrels a day. Today we stand at less than half that rate of extraction and no amount of offshore drilling or oil shale production will change that. Oil, the lifeblood of our economy, has dropped in price over the past few months largely because of the deleveraging of hedge funds and other financial institutions to cover the recent losses in the stock market. Demand destruction has played its part but the drop in oil use in the US and abroad doesn’t begin to match the dramatic drop in the price per barrel of oil. This drop in price is not indicative of the long term price trend based on resource availability.

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You could directly poison children, blow the tops off of mountains, pollute our waterways with mercury and other toxic compounds or you could just join the Hawthorn Group and spin these very same practices! Kelly Campaigns recently came across a Hawthorn Group letter to friends and family. I’ll give you some of the highlights.

Even in a communication-saturated environment we achieved, even exceeded, our wildest expectations (and we believe those of our client!). Not only did we raise the awareness of the issue, but we got the major candidates on both sides of the aisle talking about the issue in the debates, at campaign rallies and in interviews…

The presidential campaign concluded with both candidates, their running mates and surrogates talking about and supporting clean coal technology. The issue was mentioned in all four general election debates. This was a 180-degree turn from earlier in the campaign when none of the candidates were focused on this issue…

We watched as our message was transmitted by shirts and hats waved by thousands of excited supporters from the stands of high school gyms, floors of hotel ballrooms and tables of crowded coffee shops. The pictures of our supporters were caught and broadcast by local and national media, including USA Today and Fox News. Soon our message was repeated back to us from the podium by the candidates themselves…

“…as election day nears, both candidates are competing over who will do more to support clean coal initiatives. For that, some credit belongs to [ACCCE President] Stephen Miller.”(Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2008)

Here are some images from the newsletter.  Captions are from the Hawthorn Group.  Comments on the left are mine.

Damn liberal media!

Change!

I wonder how many of those “young supporters” will develop asthma or like eating fish with a helping of mercury?

You can read the whole thing here:

Hawthorn Group Coal Lobby Newsletter (PDF)

And you can read more of their boasting here:

Desmogblog

But wait, there’s more! Here are some highlights from a leaked 2004 coal industry memo.

The Pataki proposal, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), is in high gear. So far, Pennsylvania and Maryland have agreed not to formally participate in RGGI. The remaining northeastern states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Delaware and New Jersey) are committed to fashioning the program no later than April 2005.

In recent weeks, we have persuaded the RGGI participants to post the following pieces of CEED research on their web site for consumption by the states:

* A 2003 New Hope study showing reductions in greenhouse gases by the RGGI states would have an infinitesimal affect on global GHG concentrations.

* A 2003 Energy Ventures Analysis (EVA) study revealing negative economic results would flow to northeastern states that constrain CO2 emissions.

* A 2004 Energy Ventures Analysis report analyzing the affect of various cap and trade proposals, along with an output-based standard, on RGGI states as well as Pennsylvania and Maryland. EVA found that the economic consequences vary widely. We plan to use this research to sow discord among the RGGI states.

Our strategy in dealing with mercury has been two-fold: prevent states from taking precipitous or unwarranted action to regulate mercury and engage in the federal rulemaking to protect the interests of coal-based electricity.

Read the whole thing here:

2004 Coal Industry Strategy Letter To CEO of Peabody Energy

What amazes me is the self delusion present in these people, as if spreading misinformation, creating a “buzz” about mistruths and “sowing discord” is any different from doing the actual harm of coal fired power plants. Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Calling it “clean coal” and helping people believe this lie might be worse than actually burning the coal. I hope these people like heat because they have an eternity of it coming up.

So last week my local NPR radio show had an economist on to talk about the recent meltdown of our economy.  To the credit of this particular radio station they were having this particular economist on the show again because earlier this year he said that the economy really wasn’t in that bad a shape and that the media and their gloomy reporting was due a large portion of the blame.  Of course he turned out to be totally wrong and to his credit he said so.  As to the question of whether or not the mainstream media is being too gloomy I think the opposite is true.  MSM is still quite optimistic in my opinion.

I didn’t have time to call into the show and walk around my home with the phone to my ear in hopes that I might be allowed to ask a question in person so I emailed my question to the station.  It read something like this,

Would you ask your guest about a steady state economy as an alternative to the growth economy we now currently rely on?  Infinite growth in a finite system is impossible.  Thanks.

The host did ask my question and the response of this guest, who teaches economics at a local university was to bring on the pies. He said, “If we want more people to have a larger slice of the pie without taking it from others than we must grow the pie.” Grow the pie!  That’s all we need- more bakers!  I’ve heard this colourful suggestion used dozens of times and frankly I’m sick and tired of it.  Of course it made me wish  I could have posed a few follow questions to this particular economist.  I’ll have to settle for doing so here and now.

Question Number 1. What planet do you live on? Read more »

With enough abandoned lots to fill the city of San Francisco, Motown is 138 square miles divided between expanses of decay and emptiness and tracts of still-functioning communities and commercial areas. Close to six barren acres of an estimated 17,000 have already been turned into 500 “mini- farms,” demonstrating the lengths to which planners will go to make land productive.

I have a question.  How much bailout money will the gardeners and farmers of urban Detroit receive?  As it turns out I have more than one question.  When will this country recognize that we must make a fundamental shift in our way of life to continue as a society.  When will we face facts and realize that throwing good money after bad is stupid?  Consumers are turning back into citizens.  It’s becoming harder to make them buy stuff they don’t really need.  This is a good thing in the long run but in the short run it will derail our consumer-based growth economy.  The big question we should be asking ourselves is how much longer are we going to continue wasting our wealth on a failed reality and when will we wake up?  It’s time for real, fundamental change; whether we like it or not.

More on the Detroit food revolution