Developing a Food Security Plan for the New York City Bioregion

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Andrew

Is it Possible for the NYC Metropolitan Area Feed Itself From Its Foodshed?

This map is from the Food Systems Network NYC website

We are living in an age of unprecedented violent change, where three highly disruptive crises – global economic instability, climate change, and peak everything are converging insidiously to shred the fabric of society. The coming shocks: international financial collapse, epic flood and drought, energy and natural resource shortages, and extreme price spikes are likely to be catastrophic if we do not prepare. The New York City Bioregion is especially vulnerable to these disruptive changes. With one of the world’s greatest ice-free harbors on earth, New York City was built on global commerce. But today, the far-flung network of international trade that once pumped vibrant economic life into our communities threatens to collapse as imported natural resources along with the fossil fuels needed to transport them become increasingly scarce and expensive.

The inevitable decreasing availability of cheap fossil fuel will eventually make the transportation of food over long distances economically unfeasible, and the phrase “local food” will acquire an urgent, vital meaning beyond the current limited lifestyle implications. Local food will become less about maintaining eco-correctness and more about whether we’re going to have enough to eat. Urban/suburban agriculture is one solution, as is a food security plan that includes low carbon transportation and a new relationship between city dwellers and the farmers in the food shed.

Of course, the critical and immediate question is – what, exactly should we do: How should the New York City Bioregion respond productively to the end of cheap oil and the failure of our “growth at any cost” culture? How can we act proactively to rising sea levels, and less abundant, more costly natural resources including oil and food? Also, how do we finance the dramatic enhancements that must be made to the natural and human landscape for our Bioregion to survive and prosper? Finally, how can you and I, and other private citizens, join together to hospice the decline of the current system, and midwife the vital transformation into A Bright Green Future for the New York City Bioregion?

The seminal question about food security for the NYC Bioregion — How can the New York City metropolitan area community develop a food security plan to feed itself from farms within 100 miles of the Battery? — is discussed in the “Take Action” page of this website and more specifically by Slow Money an organization ”advocating investing 50% of our money within 50 miles of our home, specifically in organic and sustainable local food, farms, and processing.”

A local or regional “foodshed” could be defined in a variety of ways. A simple 100-mile radius, for example, is often used in “eat local” campaigns. Workable, sustainable foodshed mappings tend to take into account time and ease of travel, density of population, where and how natural water sources travel, and the innate productivity of land.”

Molly Watson defines a foodshed as “everything between where a food is produced and where a food is consumed. It includes the land it grows on, the routes it travels, the markets it goes through, and the tables it ends up gracing. First used in the early 20th century to describe the global flow of food, “foodshed” has recently been resurrected to discuss local food systems and efforts to create more sustainable ways of producing and consuming food.

Economist Michael Shuman has investigated the potential economic impacts of food localization. Recent research conducted by Shuman in Colorado, New Mexico, and Northeastern Ohio suggests that investment in local “food-sheds” can substantially increase both demand for, and supply of local food creating thousands of new jobs, generating hundreds of new businesses, and producing millions of dollars in revenues to support the local economy.

Shuman’s 2010 Cleveland study found that 25 percent food localization by the year 2020 would result in more than 27,000 new jobs. It would also generate $4.2 billion in economic activity, $868 million in added wages, and $126 million in state and local tax revenues – each year.

In a study for Transition Colorado Shuman found similar economic benefits. He determined that a 25 percent local food shift in Boulder County (including the City of Boulder) would create 1,680 jobs with wages of $82 million, new economic activity of $137 million, and $12 million in Taxes.

Using Shuman’s findings to inform the next steps of our own Food Localization movement, we could create a detailed strategic and economic plan for food localization in our own Bioregion now. Continue reading →

The “Long Emergency,” Permaculture, and Towns that Food Saved

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Andrew

The Permaculture Research Institute has published The Long Emergency and Towns That Food Saved

We live in dangerous times, when economic collapse, climate chaos, and peak oil threaten the foundations of society, abundance, and all we hold dear. “Business as usual” will no longer suffice, because that way leads to certain pain, peril and impoverishment.

Unspeakable acts of violence like the slaughter at the Sandy Hook school or at the Boston Marathon bombing; natural disasters like Katrina and Sandy; economic uncertainty; technical failure; “peak everything;” and climate change can offer opportunities for either despair and disengagement or innovative collaboration. In the aftermath of such disasters communities often experience a surge of purposefulness to deal with the crisis. As a result, there is a need for better understanding of the specific and general resilience of communities, ecosystems, organizations, and institutions to cope with change.

This post examines the use of Permaculture principles to harness purposefulness for collaborative planning for resilience and regeneration by examining two communities that are surviving and in some cases thriving by building on the
“sense of purpose” that occurs after a disaster or downturn.

This collaboration can take many forms including but not limited to defining “place” and by building consensus. In order to work there needs to be agreed upon definitions of place, resilience, regeneration, and Permaculture.

“Spirit of place symbolizes the living ecological relationship between a particular location and the persons who have derived from it and added to it the various aspects of their humanness. The reason we are now desecrating nature is not because we use it to our ends, but because we commonly manipulate it without respect for the spirit of place.” – Rene Dubos

“Where sustainability is abstract, Place is intimate, personal, filled with meaning and potential. Place arises from the rich connections among the earth, local nature and spirit. Regenerative development captures the unique rhythm and spirit of a place, partnering people and their place to create enduring value for all life. It helps people truly experience place, growing the caring required to make sustainability real.” Resilience may be defined as: “The capability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly through survival, adaptability, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change. Regeneration is the process of “building local capacity for sustainability that endures.”

The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century is a book by James Howard Kuntsler written in 2005 explores the consequences of a world oil production peak, coinciding with the forces of climate change, resurgent diseases, water scarcity, global economic instability and warfare that causes chaos for future generations. Kunstler argues that the economic upheavals caused by peak oil will force Americans to live in more localized, self-sufficient communities.

Permaculture is method of building on the “sense of purpose” that can be born from crisis resulting in a “new localism,”. Permaculture is “Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fiber and energy for provision of local needs. People, their buildings and the ways in which they organize themselves are central to Permaculture. Thus the Permaculture vision of permanent or sustainable agriculture has evolved to one of permanent or sustainable culture.” The core tenets of Permaculture are:

Take Care of the Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply. Without a healthy earth, humans cannot flourish.
Take Care of the People: Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence.
Share the Surplus: Healthy natural systems use outputs from each element to nourish others. We humans can do the same. By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles.

Consciousness of place and helping to shift belief systems can be encouraged by applying the common sense Permaculture ethics of care for the earth, care for people, and fair share – and by application of P.A. Yeomans’ functional relationship analysis to map, examine, and analyze the community or bioregion’s climate, landform, water, access and circulation, micro-climates, vegetation and wildlife, buildings and infrastructure, zones of use, soil fertility and management, and aesthetics and culture to give us the basic information we need to plan for more resilient communities and bioregions. The following are the basic tenets for community and bioregional sustainability. Communities can take advantage of the sense of purpose that results from crisis by exploring, and if there is consensus, implementing some or all of the following:

Operate as a self-contained economy with resources found locally.
Be carbon-neutral and become a center for renewable energy production.
Achieve a well-planned regional and local transportation system that prioritizes movement of goods and people as follows: walking first, then cycling, public transportation, and finally private and commercial vehicles.
Maximize water conservation and efficiency of energy resources through conservation.
Design and construct a zero-waste system.
Restore environmentally damaged urban areas by converting brownfields to greenfields.
Ensure decent and affordable housing for all.
Improve job opportunities for disadvantaged groups, and allow seniors and young people to play useful and meaningful civic roles.
Support local agriculture and produce distribution.
Support cooperatives and worker-owned commercial and manufacturing enterprises.
Promote voluntary simplicity in lifestyle choices, decreasing material consumption, and increasing awareness of the environment and sustainability

Detroit, MI, Hardwick, VT, and Facing The “Long Emergency”

Detroit was once one of the wealthiest cities in the world and now is the face of an almost dystopian failure while the small town of Hardwick, VT grappled with a changing economy and the loss of a once thriving regional industry. Both of these communities are examples of “towns that food saved.”

Hardwick, VT population is 3000 and it is the commercial center for the region’s farming population. Granite quarrying was the predominant business after the civil war and railroads were built to get the granite to the cities in which it was used for city halls and post offices. Hardwick is almost the antithesis of Detroit, it is almost exclusively white and rural, but two factors connect the two – agriculture and median family income.

Hardwick came to national attention as a result of a 2008 New York Times article , Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town, that said in part, “This town’s granite companies shut down years ago and even the rowdy bars and porno theater that once inspired the nickname “Little Chicago” have gone.” Continue reading →

HARVEST

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Andrew

Harbor and River Vessel Transport Company

The Sail Transport Network has printed an interview and my blog post about the Harbor and River Vessel Transport Company HARVEST, .

Why HARVEST? Why Now?

The New York City Bioregion is connected tenuously to the rest of the world by literally thousands of lifelines, including an aging and increasingly failure-prone power grid; an aging and leaky water system; and a vast network of roads, rails, shipping and air routes that rely exclusively on increasingly costly fossil fuels. Like a patient on intravenous life support, any major interruption in the flow of natural resources, energy, water or food to the metropolitan area could hamstring or permanently harm its economy and people. With global oil, gas and coal production predicted to irreversibly decline in the next 10 to 20 years, this collapse becomes not a question of if, but when.

All three of these great calamities were born out of the world’s profligate use of cheap, non-renewable fossil fuels. Like so many past boons, this one has now become a bane. It’s important to understand that all three crises are intimately linked to each other, and magnify each other: For example, a severe drought that continues in the mid-west, could cut off our region’s supply of wheat, corn and soy, causing food shortages and a financial meltdown. Peak oil requires that we drill for fossil fuels in increasingly extreme landscapes, like the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, prone to more and more powerful hurricanes, or by using hydraulic fracturing that will likely contaminate groundwater in the heart of New York and Pennsylvania farming. Our sprawling global oil pipeline stretches halfway around the globe, making us vulnerable and dependent on volatile states. An economic crash or financially-sapping resource war abroad, could wreck our balance of trade, and shatter our tax base, making it fiscally impossible to harden our infrastructure against climate change impacts, which would lead to more economic disasters. The accumulation of shocks could be catastrophic, if we do not prepare.

One of those tenuous lifelines is the global shipping industry and the NY/NJ Port. Higher petroleum costs, and higher wages in countries in which much of our imported goods are made could tear that lifeline. According to Low Tech Magazine, wind powered freighters may be just as fast as the largest most “modern” container ships.

“The Eugen Maersk (the world’s longest ocean freighter at 1,300 feet) left Rotterdam on the tail end of a journey from Shanghai. But the giant freighter is cruising at 10 knots, well shy of her 26-knot top speed. At about half speed, fuel consumption drops to 100-150 tons of fuel a day from 350 tons, saving as much as $5,000 an hour.

The German Preussen, the largest sailing ship ever built, was launched in 1902 and travelled mainly between Hamburg (Germany) and Iquique (Chile). It was rammed by a large steam vessel in 1910. A one way trip between Germany and Chile took the cargo vessel between 58 and 79 days. The best average speed over a one way trip was 13.7 knots. The lowest average speed was 10 knots. Additionally, one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50 million cars. It is time for a new age of sail.”

Who is doing it Now?:

The use of sailing vessels as transportation is nothing new. Many coastal schooners and sailing vessels are still working in the trade between main ports and remote islands and harbors in Africa, Caribbean, South America,

The Indian, Ocean and the Pacific. From Northern Ireland to Fiji, freight carrying sailing ships are being planned, built, and sailing. These first forays into what will become a huge post carbon enterprise are examples of how coastal short sea shipping along the North American coasts, bays, and rivers will be changing in the near and mid-term. Some
operating and soon to be operating examples are, the SV Kwai, Tres Hombres Packet Company, Greenheart, and B9 Shipping. These Ocean Going Ships Inspired HARVEST.

The idea for a the Harbor and River Vessel Transport Company came from a discussion I had a few years ago with Christina Sun an artist who blogs about things maritime at Bowsprite, and Will Van Dorp who photographs everything about New York Harbor. Will blogs at Tugster. During those conversations and talking with others who love sailing vessels and would like to put them to work hauling farm goods and general cargo on the Hudson River, the Bays of New York Harbor, and Long Island Sound — the genesis on an idea for just such a venture started to come together.

Continue reading →

Hubbert’s Peak, The Economy, and War for Oil

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Andrew

This post was published by OpEd News

I came across an historic and seminal document on a website called Energy & Capital http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/past-peak-oil/3109, that had a link to Marion King Hubbert’s 1956 speech about Peak Oil. Hubbert asserted that global oil production would follow a bell-shaped curve with a peak followed by an irrevocable decline.

Marion King Hubbert was an unlikely prophet. When he wrote this memo and presented it he was working for Shell oil as a geologist. In the paper that he presented to the American Petroleum Institute “Hubbert correctly predicted that production of oil would peak in the continental US around 1965-1970. Hubbert further predicted a worldwide peak at about 50 years from publication of his memo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory. Peak Oil is neither a theory, nor does it mean the world is running out of oil. The question however is whether or not we’ll be able to economically produce that oil,and what the more expensive less easily recovered oil will do to our economy already teetering on the edge of an energy, environmental, economic, and equity crisis?

That America’s oil would peak by 1970 was dismissed by everyone in the petroleum industry. But when U.S. oil production did peak in November of 1970 Hubbert’s work began to be taken seriously by scientists in the petroleum industry, government, and academia. This information did not make a media splash and the public was largely kept in the dark because the oil companies and the US government were reluctant to alarm the beneficiaries of the cheap oil that powered America and the developed world’s consumer based, fossil fuel addicted economy.

Hubbert predicted that world oil supply would peak around 2000 (many observers now agree that it actually peaked in 2004). But even today, few people in government or the corporate media have been warning the public about the implications for the economy.

This dearth of coverage is partly because the oil producing countries and the oil companies do not want to publish or confirm data on the amount of oil reserves because if the world has hit “Peak Oil” and is sliding down slope to scarcity, such a message could spark a panic in the markets or a rush to investment in alternative energy and fuels that would be damaging to the bottom line of fossil fuel industries. It would also shine a bright light on America’s misguided strategy for keeping the oil flowing, and prices low.

The US government has done everything it can to keep the price of oil artificially low through subsidies, tax breaks, and incentives. Some of the recipients of this government largesse have spent $ millions in lobbying to support their congressional cronies. The biggest contributors, Shell, Exxon, and Conoco Phillips, have spent over $105 million on lobbying Congress since 2011. Oil PACs have donated over $2.16 million to mostly Republican candidates. Koch Industries spent $16.2 million on lobbying and more than $1.3 million from its PAC.

To keep prices stable, oil producing countries look like they are competing to see which can “produce” the most oil. In reality they are vying to see which will reach the bottom of the barrel first. In this race to the bottom, these producers including the US are creating, environmental havoc.

The problem is exacerbated by the hype that arctic oil reserves, or Canadian tar sands, more off shore deep water drilling, or “fracking” will preserve the status quo or even reverse the slide to scarcity. The problem with these solutions is the “energy return on investment” (EROL). EROL is important because dwindling fossil fuels are beginning to use more energy to extract then they produce.

Although renewable technologies already have a better EROL than fossil fuels, very few countries (except perhaps Germany) are committed to the kind of program that would soften the “crash” that is likely to happen when energy produced by fossil fuels and nuclear become extremely expensive and scarce. EROI is important because it’s falling fast in the fossil fuel space, as dwindling supplies take more energy to extract. The problem is, we built industrial society on fossil fuels, while a sustainable society must be built on renewable energy.

Chris Martenson, on his blog, and in his book The Crash Course has a very scary chart illustrating how many thousands of nuclear power plants, hundreds of thousands of acres of solar arrays, hundreds of thousands of wind turbines, or millions of acres of soy beans or corn that will be needed to replace the liquid fuel equivalent needed to maintain a consumptive western society at 2009 levels. In the case of bio fuels, the world would need to plant more acreage in soy and corn that is in total agricultural use in world today. The notion that “they will come up with something to replace oil” is thoughtless and irresponsible. Even in countries with a robust alternatives program there does not appear to be enough time, money, or “bridge fuels” to make the transition painlessly. Continue reading →

Responsible Rebuilding After Sandy, New Jersey Needs Climate Change Leadership

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Andrew

Responsible Rebuilding After Sandy

Taking Climate Change Seriously

NJToday.net, and OpEdNews.com have published this as an oped and open letter to Governor Christie. The Star Ledger published the OPED as well

NJ needs climate change leadership

The following link is the letter sent to Governor Christie Sandy Memo to Christie.

The people of New Jersey have come through a hard time; Hurricane Sandy devastated

our communities, businesses and homes. I want to thank the Governor for his strong leadership through it all. His swift action in ordering a mandatory evacuation saved lives, and his bipartisanship resulted in a comprehensive, coordinated state and federal response.

However, I am disappointed in the Governor’s failure, so far, to lead us in preparing for the dangers ahead. The Atlantic Ocean continues to rise and warm, making hurricanes stronger and every storm surge more harmful. Irene and Sandy were back-to-back warnings. Now is the time to prepare for the fiercer weather of the very near future.

Now is the time to launch an innovative N.J. Coastal Commission to address climate change and oversee the rebuilding effort. This body would assure the future safety of our communities, and the protection of our coasts against intensifying storms.

The N.J. Coastal Commission would use the best science and technical knowledge to implement climate change adaptation strategies. It would help us rebuild smarter, strengthening building codes, and generating strategies for flood-proofing homes, towns, and vital but vulnerable buildings, such as hospitals, police and fire stations.

The Commission would make sure our nuclear plants and other energy infrastructure; harbors, roads, railways, and airports; drinking water supplies; and wastewater treatment plants were built to withstand more violent storms.

It would oversee the re-mapping of our coasts to anticipate new trouble spots, suggesting
“hard infrastructure,” such as sea walls, and “soft infrastructure,” like expanded coastal Islands, oyster reefs, dunes and greenbelts to reduce storm surges. It would help us to make the hard choices, retreating from the coast where necessary.

The N.J. Coastal Commission would create coastal resiliency and establish thorough storm emergency preparedness measures, anticipating and preventing future harm.

I also encourage the Governor to re-engage with other Northeastern state governors in
the Regional Green House Gas Initiative to address Irene, Sandy and the “new normal” which threatens us with more extreme storms. It is high time that our state took responsibility for our carbon contribution to climate change and made efforts to curb it.

We live in dangerous time, when “business as usual” will not suffice.That way leads to certain pain, peril and economic ruin. The more visionary path, to A Bright Green Future for our state is far more challenging. It is a road we must build as we walk it.

The most recent storms to impact New Jersey harshly pointed out flaws in our current development patterns. Hurricane Sandy, for all its devastation, was just a Category 1 storm, while last year’s Hurricane Irene was “only” a tropical storm. The landfall of far more ferocious, future storms is not only possible, but likely.

The unprecedented destruction from Hurricane Sandy and the public policy challenges of its aftermath make this a critically important transformative period in New Jersey history, and a singular moment to demonstrate leadership. I urge Governor Christie to seize this opportunity to initiate bold action resulting in lasting protections for New Jersey’s economy, environment, energy, and equity.

As the NY/NJ Baykeeper, I learned to see the New Jersey/New York Bioregion not as a collection of states or towns, competing industries or interests, but as a unified place. When seen from space our Bioregion is without seams. Its green mountains and hills feed thousands of tributaries, flowing into our magnificent estuary and the sea. Ours is a vulnerable state worth protecting, but protection now will take courageous leadership.

Saving the Bayonne Bridge and the NY/NJ Port

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Andrew

There are Less dangerous, Less Expensive Alternatives to Trying to Get Monster Ships to Inappropriate Ports

This Commentary was published in the Sunday January 20th Staten Island Advance and online, and now is available at OPEDNews.com.

The Bayonne Bridge from The Kill Van Kull

The Bayonne Bridge, an almost perfectly engineered arched bridge, is one of the most beautiful in the harbor. Some Port interests allege that the bridge is an obstacle to large container ships passing under it on the way to and from the ports in Newark, Elizabeth, and Staten Island, but in fact the proposed raising of the bridge is New York and New Jersey’s “bridge to nowhere.”

The Coast Guard will hold two public meetings in early February on the $1 billion Port Authority plan to raise the Bayonne Bridge from its current 151 to 215 feet to allow the newest generation of container ships to pass beneath the span en route to ports in Newark and Elizabeth.

The larger vessels are expected to begin traveling to East Coast ports from Asia after a widening of the Panama Canal is completed in 2014. The Coast Guard has also released a Draft Environmental Assessment (DEA), which addresses potential environmental and
socioeconomic impact of the raising of the historic bridge.

This $1 billion + boondoggle to jack up the bridge is predicted to be completed by 2019 at the earliest. I guess there have been sillier, or more expensive, and/or less needed projects proposed. But I am hard-pressed to understand the logic behind and the zeal to move forward on this ridiculous project.

Mariners, in particular the pilots who have to navigate the narrow, rocky, dangerous channel called the Kill Van Kull, are adamant that the bridge is not the problem. The problem is the inappropriate location of the ports and the logistics of moving huge ships in a channel that was never envisioned to accommodate them.

Common sense and the Port’s own studies show that there are less dangerous and less expensive alternatives to trying to get these monster ships to an inappropriate port, ships that based on the current glut of already built container ships, and the increased price of petroleum are unlikely to call on the Port of NY/NJ any time soon.

Unlike the European Union, the United States does not have a comprehensive port plan.
Therefore, each port on the East Coast, from Florida to Nova Scotia, is competing for the next generation of very large container ships. Instead of designating certain ports with deep, unobstructed facilities as feeder or hub ports and creating a fleet of very fast smaller ships to move container cargo to less accessible, but no less important ports in a coordinated way, U.S. ports are competing with each other by building duplicate facilities for the few very large ships that are likely to call on East Coast ports in the next 20 years.

When the Army transferred the Military Ocean Terminal Bayonne (MOTBY) to the city of Bayonne, those of us with an interest in the port were heartened by the plans that included a state-of-the-art container terminal for the largest of the ships that may call on the Port of New York and New Jersey (the so-called post Panamax ships). The Bayonne Local Redevelopment Authority asserted that it would bring a port developer on board who would raise $500 million for a new container port, bringing with it more than 3,000 jobs.

The former MOTBY would be the closest port to deep channels. It would save billions of public dollars, avoid the height limitations of the Bayonne Bridge and reduce the significant environmental impact that would be caused by continuing to attempt to deepen the dangerous, narrow Kill Van Kull and dredging more of the contaminated sediments of Newark Bay. The new port on the harbor side of Bayonne could be built using the newest, most efficient container management technology, including alternative fuel and electric vehicles and direct transfer of containers from ship to trains or ships to container barges, or ships to container rail cars on barges.

And a new container port at MOTBY would be close to Global Terminal in Jersey City and the Greenville rail yards. The MOTBY port would be positioned to link easily with the Port Authority’s reinvigorated cross-harbor rail float system and cross-harbor railroad if the plan is completed as designed. Taking all that into account, MOTBY is the premier maritime asset in the harbor and one of the most valuable maritime properties in the world.

But before the real estate meltdown, the Bayonne Redevelopment Authority planned to use the MOTBY site for high-rise housing and offices, with a yacht harbor in the last huge graving dry dock (a space to repair ships) in the harbor. Only a minimum amount of port commerce space was set aside, for what appears to be one cruise-ship berth. The MOTBY dry dock is one of the world’s largest and is the only one remaining in New York Harbor. But does it make sense to lose a significant number of good-paying, port-related jobs for the short term and questionable benefits of housing or the loss of public access and working waterfront?

I am convinced that if cooler heads can prevail, a compromise can still be reached, one in which the significant acreage at MOTBY, including but not limited to the 130 acres the Port Authority has committed to purchase, may be used as a container port and for port-related commerce, reserving some smaller portion for housing and recreation. The port and housing are not incompatible. Some of the most desirable housing in Seattle overlooks the port and its complex and interesting operations.

This solution would not only save one of the most beautiful bridges in the port, but also would be a more efficient use of the up to $2 billion that it will likely cost to raise the Bayonne Bridge and the unnecessary dredging and blasting of the Kill Van Kull and Newark Bay channels.

Peak Water

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Andrew

Peak Water and the Great Unraveling

Click here peak water for website to see a PDF of a presentation on Peak Water and its implications. And here peak water narrative to read a narrative that supports the slides.

Human beings have depended on access to water since the earliest days of civilization, but with 7 billion people on the planet as of October 31, exponentially expanding urbanization and development are driving demand like never before. Continue reading →

Local Food and Urban Agriculture

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Andrew

The inevitable decreasing availability of cheap fossil fuel will eventually make the transportation of food over long distances economically unfeasible, and the phrase “local food” will acquire an urgent, vital meaning beyond the current limited lifestyle implications. Local food will become less about maintaining eco-correctness and more about whether we’re going to have enough to eat! Urban agriculture is one solution, as is a food security plan that includes low carbon transportation and a new relationship with city dwellers and the farmers in the food shed. These are a few examples of working urban farms, and a proposal for a “foodshed” preservation plan similar to the watershed plan that NYC negotiated with upstate farmers to avoid the need for expensive filtration plants.

One of the world leaders in urban agriculture and inner city food security is Will Allen’s Growing Power. “Growing Power is a national nonprofit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. Growing Power implements this mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach and technical assistance through the development of Community Food Systems that help people grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner.”

In the NYC Bioregion one of the leaders in urban roof top agriculture is Brooklyn Grange Farms. “Brooklyn Grange is the leading rooftop farming and intensive green roofing business in the US. We operate the world’s largest rooftop soil farms, located on two roofs in New York City, and grow over 40,000 lbs of organically-cultivated produce per year. In addition to growing and distributing fresh local vegetables and herbs, Brooklyn Grange also provides urban farming and green roof consulting and installation services to clients worldwide, and we partner with numerous non-profit organizations throughout New York to promote healthy and strong local communities.”

Another start up is City Food, CityFood™ is a “triple bottom line” vertically integrated sustainable green business consulting firm and incubator focused on developing urban agricultural facilities, fostering farm and urban relationships and infrastructure and logistics for local food.

“The greater Newark (NJ) Conservancy‘s 1 acre urban farm on court street yielded almost 10,000 lbs of produce this year, and its 2.5 acre urban farm in the south ward will be coming online in the spring. Their youth run farm stand has thrived as well. Most of the produce we grew was sold through the farm stand to local residents.”

The seminal question about food security for the NYC Bioregion is discussed in the “Take Action” page of this website and more specifically by Slow Money an organization ”advocating investing 50% of our money within 50 miles of our home, specifically in organic and sustainable local food, farms, and processing.”

In order to get that locally grown food to market, there will have to be a low tech, low carbon, transportation system in place. The Hudson River, the Bays and tributaries to New York/New Jersey Harbor, and the Long Island Sound are the “highways of the future” for sailing cargo vessels. One such enterprise is the Vermont Sail Freight Project.

A complementary proposal called HARVEST The Harbor and River Vessel Transport Company will be a short sea shipping business delivering local produce and seafood throughout the New York/New Jersey Harbor. HARVEST will be a “for benefit” company based on the Farm Boat concept in Seattle and the Island Market Boat in Maine.

Historically, thousands of vessels plied the waters to and from cities on the Harbor and the farming areas of New Jersey and the Hudson Valley delivering fresh local farm produce, fish, shellfish, and passengers to ports along the way. The Hudson River and the Harbor was once a bustling highway linking even the smallest communities into a web of regularly scheduled routes. Farmers, dairymen, and oystermen relied on this vibrant and diverse fleet of vessels to bring their goods to market and to receive supplies. The schooners, sloops, and steam boats provided a unique way of life for early inhabitants. For those who worked the inland waters of the Northeast, the romance of the sea was a common element in their lives.

Today, the water highways still exist and need to be reinvigorated. Maintaining maritime trade routes is more than just a celebration of tradition. In a carbon constrained future sustainable water transport will be necessary and in the event of a regional disaster water-based community links can serve as vital infrastructure to the NY/NJ Harbor region.

NRDC’s Smarter Living site asks the question, “Like the idea of eating seasonal produce grown on regional farms but wonder what’s in season near you this week?” And includes search tools to find out where to get seasonal local foods and maps to nearby farmers’ markets and even includes directions by car, bike, walking and public transit. The site also has a smart phone application to help you locate what you are looking for. .

Transition NYC Bioregion, Preparing our Island City and its Bioregion for a Bright Green Future

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Andrew

My article Transition NYC Bioregion – A Bright Green Future has been published at OEN.

Sandy a Wake up Call

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Andrew

My oped Sandy a Wake Up Call has been published at OpEdNews.com.