Environmentalists blather and quake in their hemp clothing as new research done by Canadian scientists are now able to reduce cattle-produced methane gas by 25%.  When I read the title heading in Science Daily’s May 09 issue, I couldn’t help but be solidly impressed.  How have researchers figured this out?  By compiling an extensive database of methane production values measured on cattle to formulate equations to predict how much methane a cow would emit based on its diet.  Researchers then genetically select cattle that inherently produce less methane.  Next stop?  Genetically selecting humans that produce less excretions.

In 2006, researchers officially quantified greenhouse gas emissions, stating that livestock is a bigger problem than a car emissions.  The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showed that livestock generates 18% more greenhouse gas than modes of gas transportation.

Worse, cattle are a large factor in enhancing drought situations by stripping the land, exposing the soil to the wind, and with no grass or shrubs with roots to hold the soil down, the soil is blown away or becomes nutrient-depleted.  Along with this soil deficiency comes water degradation.

When I lived in Oklahoma, there was this beautiful road sign that said “Keep our Land Grand” and next to that was a sign in the shape of Arkansas and Oklahoma’s trash being thrown into it.  A legal battle has ensued between the two states, with Oklahoma accusing Arkansas of dumping chicken, turkey, and cattle pooh into watersheds that then dump into Oklahoma streams and rivers, posing a huge health hazard to drinking water and recreational settings.

In Arizona, a long drought period has decimated the lands, further increased by the cattle industry.  The impact of grazing, drought, erosion, and fire are directly correlated to each other, and Dr. Robert Kattnig at the University of Arizona states that it takes upwards of two years or more to “recover” the land from cattle destruction.

In 2007, Washington State Beef Industry Statistics show that the sale of cattle was approximately $724,533,000 with an impact of $2.17 billion on the state’s economy.  There are approximately 11,700 cattle ranchers and 760 dairy farmers, and approximately 1.09 million cattle in Washington, of which 243,000 were dairy cows.  Total beef production was 848,710,000 pounds, whereas the entire United States produced 26.5 billion pounds of beef.  The “Total Use Mandate” of Washington allows for cattle to graze on public lands, further increasing the expanse and production of Washington cattle.

My teenage years were spent on a beef cattle ranch in the northeast corner of Oklahoma (plus a short and financially devastating stint with Emu ranching that ended with us turning all 200 of them loose–locals still say they see one every once in a while, providing them with a good dinner that evening).  My brothers and I were in charge of taking care of the cattle, all the way from bottle feeding, branding, castrating, to labor and delivery.  My favorite Christmas occurred when Dad gave us a wrapped box full of rocks, only to find out it was a treasure hunt that ended at the far end of the ranch with cows tied around 3 of our very own cattle.  My job was to get a bull calf into the head gate, then one brother would brand it, and my dad would finish the job by castrating it, turning it into a fine steer with a glorious ending at the local slaughter house.

Last Saturday, May 16th, my bookstore sold books at a Michael Pollan event in the Central Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, Maryland. Over 1,100 people showed up for this question and answer session with the author of (most recently) In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’ve only read an earlier book of his, A Place of My Own, but since I’ve been studying his precursor, Wendell Berry, it’s only a matter of time before I get to his other work. I’m always behind on the latest trends.

Tony Geraci, the new Baltimore City Head of School Lunches, interviewed Michael Pollan. I didn’t take these questions and answers down verbatim, so these are not direct quotes by Michael Pollan, but they are the content of what he said.

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In this episode of The Melon Underground, Electric Elliot sits down with peace negotiator, human rights activist and former Director of Centro Latino, Julio Quan to talk about the Cooperative movement and Tacoma’s plan for a Food Co-op.

Find out more about TFC at http://www.tacomafoodcoop.com/

Part 1:

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In a not-so-surprising-but-still-fascinating twist, researcher Cristina Gomes, along with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, recorded chimpanzees trading sex for food in the Tai Forest of the Ivory Coast.

In a June 2004 Wenner-Gren Foundation grant study, she and her colleagues recorded grooming, aggression, aggressive support, food sharing, and copulations as traded biological commodities on the meat market.  Male and female chimps groomed other chimps that groomed them in return, supporting Cristina’s original hypothesis that grooming suggests an exchangeable complex biological market.

Her second study, published this week on April 8th, shows an interesting tweak on her commodities  market theory: since females do not often hunt other animals, they trade sex in exchange for meat.  Cristina wrote in PLoS ONE, “The meat-for-sex hypothesis aims at explaining these cases by proposing that males and females exchange meat for sex, which would result in males increasing their mating success and females increasing their caloric intake without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting.”

Not only is this observation fascinating, but the long-term effects, as well.  Males do share meat for sex, but they are also sharing … for the sake of sharing, which means in the long run, they get more sex since they cultivate their female counterparts.  As the females get more protein in their diet, they are more likely to come into estrous, and once pregnant, carry a healthier offspring.  Survival of the fittest, a natural phenomenon that occurs in all life, is outplayed here as the gene pool expands and a sharing male’s genetic spawn continue the same tradition … if they are smart, that is.

Anthropologists must be all over this study, to determine if men will have a greater copulative success rate by  bringing better quality produce home from local farmer’s markets.  Sharing is caring.

It is a biological fascination to make connections between species, especially when they can be directly related to the human experience.  If male chimps cultivate a food caretaker mentality, how do human  males outplay a similar enactment?  How do human females respond, and what, exactly, is it that women are looking for in a man?  It is the eternal question that neither sex may fully be able to pie graph for one other.

While chimps trade meat for sex, women get bigger, better, and more orgasms if their partner has a good chunk of money available.  In another fascinating study, Dr. Thomas Pollet, a Newcastle University psychologist who, frankly, is quite young himself, recently submitted research that suggested “the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms.”  Pollet believes this phenomena is an evolutionary adaptation, hard-wired into women, “suggesting that women are inherently programmed to be gold-diggers.”

And meat shoppers, but of course, not their own meat–man’s meat.

You heard it here, The Melon.

The Melon is pleased to announce our new podcast, The Melon Underground. Join Chris “The Wedge” Van Vechten, Jometheus (Jack Faust) and Electric Elliot as they drinks some brews and shoot the shit about the universe.

Episode Zero covers a wide range of topics, from the first 104.678 days of the Obama administration, to education, Tacoma politics and the agriculture industry. Enjoy.

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I first met Jeff in 1999 and joined the the gypsies of Beekeepers in 2000; a young 17-year-old escaping the halls of educational facilities after graduating from high school. I joined a small circle of beekeepers in Long Prairie and Eagle Bend, Minnesota, which provided me the opportunity to assert my independence, financially provide my own way, be near my brother, and fall in love.

Author on the right, photo courtesy of Tina Kahrs

I probably idealize that time period too much, but it seems like the happiest days of my life were in Minnesota, secretly gardening naked, swimming with beautiful wood and painted turtles in the pond behind the bee shop, or mudding with our three- and four-wheelers at Spider Lake. In early spring every good beekeeper feels the itch to hurry with orange honey production in California and get on the road with the bees, heading northeast toward Minnesota, Land of the 10,000 Lakes, which naturally appeals to my DNA-laden wanderlust blood.

Jeff Anderson is a ruggedly-built stocky Minnesotan with sandy hair who looks like he stepped out of a Western Shootout Saga; and yet his voice is always calm and gentle which meticulously sounds out witty remarks in a very dry sense of humor. My fondest memory of Jeff was from Saturdays, when he would play the piano while I sang and Rachel, his daughter and my soon-to-be sister-in-law, played her flute. Jeff was the type of man every teenager wishes for her father (although I wouldn’t trade my own, but wouldn’t mind having a second one)–willing to get out on his-three wheeler and play in the mud with four young couples.

Jeff used to run a five-thousand-hive bee operation. But since 2000, Jeff’s bees have dropped from five thousand hives to less than two thousand. This spurred a research enterprise to find out why the bees died and charge the culprits to enforce the federal laws. California & Minnesota Honey Farms is a four-generational enterprise, handed down through the family since 1945. The family was featured in a May 1993 National Geographic Article on Beekeepers, and when my oldest brother, Rick, was 13 and saw another 12-year-old female beekeeper, that article inspired him to pester my parents to get him a beehive (which didn’t work). Unbeknownst to all, Rachel’s family seared into his mind and in 1999 they met in college, marrying in 2001.

Jeff Anderson, photo courtesy of Kyle Anderson

California & Minnesota Honey Farms has been in danger of extermination—not only from the disappearing and dying bees, but also from International Paper company.  International Papers is a vile corporation that illegally sprayed chemicals on the bees, which killed off thousands of hives and jeopardized the livelihood of a family whose business spans four generations, thousands of bee stings, and countless lonely nail-biting miles on the road.

Bees are like canaries in a coal mine—their decline and seemingly disappearance signals dangers for the rest of us. The problem is that beekeepers have become marginalized since agricultural areas are turning into developed cookie-cutter homes and industrial complexes, making it hard for beekeepers to be heard… until the Great Disappearing of Bees began sometime in 2005. This made Jeff Anderson, Protector of Bees, famous for his fight against International Papers.

Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi

In about two weeks I will take my first flight across the Pacific and begin a semester abroad in Viet Nam.* I am very new to world traveling – only this past summer did I take my first unchaperoned trip abroad, to the not at all threatening continent of Europe. Culture shock only took vague form when interacting with occasionally rude Poles.

Here are a few things I’m looking forward to and a few things I am nervous about.

Reasons for an anticipated excellent experience:

-The food. With a delicious abundance of regional and ethnic styles, I anticipate regretting no meal. As a coastal country, the seafood will be superb. I’m also a fan of street vendors, so much so that waiting the recommended six weeks until my stomach gets used to local bacteria may be a challenge.

-This year’s Lunar New Year (Tet) celebration occurs in February, when I will be in Da Lat. The celebrations include, of course, specialty food, fireworks, and general revelry. However, this is also a family holiday, and I look forward to getting to know my homestay family as well as the other students in my program in a cozy family dinner.

-The environment. Viet Nam is incredibly diverse, with ocean habitats, tropical forests, mountains, temperate forests, the Red and the Mekong river deltas, and much more. Like most of the rest of the world, many of these areas are threatened by development, but there remains much to see. Viet Nam is a biodiversity hotspot, with several new species discovered last year.

-The people. From what I’ve read thus far Vietnamese culture is relatively friendly and relaxed. It is nearly impossible to have business relationships within the country without first making friends with one’s Vietnamese partners, because of the culture of personal connection. There’s less of a division between personal and professional life than there is here, and I am excited to get to know people.

-Learning about Vietnamese perspectives. Non-Vietnamese writers are anxious to paint the Vietnamese people as totally friendly and open-minded (if socially conservative), with many admirable qualities, and minimal communist tendencies. But these writers are clearly reacting to the negative images of Vietnamese that we in the U.S. gained during the war; the image of them as enemies has not been erased from a lot of peoples’ minds. I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk to actual Vietnamese people directly and hear their thoughts on their own country, on mine, on what they care about, on the social trends and developments that are happening right now. On world events. On feminism. On, well, anything. I love learning about why people think the way they do, and I am quite excited to be immersed in a culture I have very little knowledge of.

-Learning about communism. In high school I studied the epic pissing contest that was the Cold War fairly extensively, but I don’t think I learned much about communism, and certainly not communism from a non-Soviet perspective. For one thing, the historians and politicians who wrote about communism clearly believed that to take any position other than a polarized one was equivalent to de-manning themselves. For another, we discussed only the big events, not the minutia of day-to-day existence (except where it “proved” that capitalism is better). Well, my personal identity does not depend upon my unrelenting defense (or attack) of capitalism, so I feel like I will be able to examine Vietnamese communism with a relatively fresh gaze. And what “communism” is now is very different than what “communism” is at any other point in history. I’d like to see what’s going on with that.

-Studying disease prevention. During my program I will write an independent paper on whatever I wish. I have chosen to examine epidemic diseases and the way that healthcare workers educate people in rural communities about prevention. Particularly, I want to compare knowledge and education about HIV/AIDS to another epidemic that has little to do with human sexuality – malaria, say, or Japanese encephalitis.

-Tea. I’m a fan, and in the U.S. it’s just not as ubiquitous as it is in Asian countries. I love that tea is going to be a drink option no matter where I go.

Halong Bay

Things I’m not looking so forward to:

-Struggling with the language. Vietnamese has six tones and is notoriously difficult. My passion as a student does not lie with the study of language, so I anticipate difficulty.

-Talking about sexuality for my research paper. Everything I’ve read so far just advises that I never even bring up sexuality with any Vietnamese person. Yet I must do so in order to evaluate knowledge of HIV/AIDS and its prevention. The cultural barrier + awkwardness about sex + people not trusting a stranger (me) + the language barrier + etc. = extreme potential for failure after it’s way, way too late to fix it.

-The almost certain bout of traveler’s diarrhea I will experience.

-Mild psychotic nightmares from taking the anti-malaria medication. Also the possibility of contracting rabies, worms, or any other gross tropical disease.

-Being regarded as a boorish, loud, uninformed, slutty, rude, insensitive American. In defense of people who may regard me as American and therefore uninformed, it is extremely difficult outside of an academic library to find anything on Viet Nam (not the war). There’s only travel books and war books, and the war books are 100% dominated by the U.S. perspective. Come on, America. We frickin’ doused the country in Napalm and bombed people and set up an embargo until the 1990s and we struggle with homeless PTSD veterans. We seriously can’t stock even one book in public libraries or bookstores from the Vietnamese perspective? In any genre? Come on.

Check out my travel blog for semi-regular updates.

*In Vietnamese, “Viet” and “Nam” are actually two different words. Like Chinese, most of the words are monosyllabic. “Viet” is the primary ethnic group in the nation, while “Nam” means south, which refers to the country’s position as south of China, its occasionally invading and always pushy neighbor. In English the words were pushed together in newspaper headlines by editors who didn’t know/care that the words were separate. This reflects a time when journalistic integrity apparently only applied to people of one’s own culture; should someone nowadays attempt to display such cultural ignorance, that person would rightly be called a dumbass.

photo credits http://flickr.com/photos/andrewhuxtable/

When I was in the 6th grade, one of the books I chose to read was entitled “A Day No Pigs Would Die.” It was a story of a young boy growing up on a farm with the task of raising a baby pig. Through bonding with the pig, the young boy learned about friendship; what the boy didn’t know was that once the pig reached a certain size it would be slaughtered. This news turned the boy’s life upside down. He first had to grasp the fact the he would lose a friend that he had come to love and that he would be the one to have to kill it (I believe with a spike and hammer). Now I might have missed the point of the story, but that’s what I got from reading the book. It was an awfully slow read for a slow reader like me, and it seemed as if the story would never end. I even thought about picking up Cliff Notes so I could get the report over with and not have to spend any more time to the book; however, I decided to see it through to the end. How would I know that many years later in my whimsical attempt at adult life that I would find myself in a somewhat parallel situation?

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From http://www.flickr.com/photos/diejohndoe/

Michael Pollan, author and environmentalist, published a letter earlier this month in the New York Times arguing that food policy should share an equal billing at the top of the country’s agenda with national security and rising health care costs. In the letter, which is addressed to the next president-elect, outlines why food policy is so important and what the government and citizens can do to improve our quality of life. He states that while the candidates have not addressed food policy thus far, many issues that have come up during this campaign are directly related to how we make our food and what kind of food we eat. Those are: energy independence, health care and global warming.

For now, I want to take a closer look at one of those aspects—energy independence—and explain how what you eat can affect our ability or inability to reach this goal.

I know we have all heard so much about energy independence these last few months that we can hardly stand to hear the chant “Drill, baby, drill!” or any phrase beginning with “green.” But the fact of the matter is that our current dependence on oil now significantly shapes our foreign and economic policies. Reducing our use of oil is one of the best ways that we can solve this problem. However, some people are still unaware of all the places petroleum products are used.

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