My goals/my journeys, my components for a wonderful idealistic “real reality” (what is unreality, or disreality, or BS/besteira/caca for most) are/are for …
o moral and ethical application (profound & holistic) of the principles and processes of ecology/all being positively ethical applied community ecologists, or PEACEmakers;
o PEACE/pacifism (antiWar activism, disarmament at home & globally);
o equity;
o practicing what we preach concerning the Golden Rule … and necessarily abiding by the Second Law of Thermodynamics & the Precautionary Principle;
o living within our means and sharing what we have … and deeply caring;
o sustainable ecological community including Homo sapiens (vs. overshoot of the natural resource base & apocalyptic global climate change);
o dynamic homeostatic symbioses including Homo sapiens (“nature”);
and
o all beings in solidarity … and all beings humble, empathic, and just.
Most recognize, we believe, the SERIOUS problems & challenges of all this rampant artificalization here on EAARTH.
Therefore …
o We MUST have degrowth
o We must wean ourselves rapidly, of fossil energy and in general, reduce artificial energy-throughput.
I could list many more of these necessary GENERAL actions, but … (“coldly”) “picking on family a bit” with some needed actions which are more specific:
… We need to realize human & domesticated animal population control. … We should distribute our wealth & power to the have-nots. … We must get rid of many of these autos. … We need to reduce our living & air-conditioned space. … Dry clothes on clothes lines. … For all short trips with little cargo, BICYCLE or walk … Avoid travel by plane & cruise ships, especially for recreation and particularly for “trophy” hunting & fishing! … We need to tone down this “Space as the next frontier” a bit, and simply take care of Earth. … We need to begin to practice what is truly profound & holistic low-input preventative health. … Etc., etc.
(I am more of a communitarian than an individualist. And I have & do recognize my crazy Republican individualist of a youngest brother, as living as a minimalist & as living low-throughput. In this, he is better than I. … But he has been conned by the Right (the wrong) and in reality does support destructive, high- input/throughput systems … and socio-ecological injustices.)
…………
It IS imperative that we immediately begin to lay out these “bare cold Truths” “on the table” and socratically discuss ways we can address these challenges … AS FAMILIES (including babies/ the very young & the very old!), as demes, as human populations … IN SOLIDARITY. And we should begin this process immediately. Nevertheless, even just barely initiating this process is a very tough challenge!!! …
As great thinkers and scholars like the University of Texas’ Robert Jenson & the Land Institute’s, Wes Jackson point out, IT IS “AN INCONVENIENT APOCALYPSE” we are experiencing.
Nevertheless, We Haves with our tremendous Power, … simply continue to rock along in comfort in the status quo … heading along to “over the cliff’ and pulling along the rest of humanity.
“… we are, after all, striving for a better total-world to live in, and not a better way to kill FAW [fall armyworms], a more effective sampling technique for FAW, a more refined dynamic AT [action threshold] for FAW in CBG [coastal bermudagrass], or a higher quality bale of hay.”
In P. B. Martin et al. 1980. Action Thresholds for Fall Armyworm on Grain Sorghum and Coastal Bermudagrass,” pp. 375-405 Florida Entomologist 63(4)
Twenty (20) minute presentation—Sustainable Livelihoods for Small Family Farmers
“dr. paul bain martin will facilitate learning … about a continuing learning process … for realizing & enhancing sustainable livelihoods on small family farms. paul is/was an agricultural entomologist/agroecologist, biocontrol & IPM researcher (TAMU, UF, UGA, EMBRAPA [OAS]-Brasil), former TDA Sustainable Agriculture Coordinator and a small farmer-stockperson. Moreover, paul was privileged to teach for twenty-two 22 years at Historically Black and Hispanic-Serving St. Philip’s College.”
Poster presentation—Ecological Literacy, Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology, and a Return to Low Input Sustainable Agriculture
“We need to revisit the scholarly works and guidance of economists like E.F. Schumacher, Texan & Rice University graduate Herman Daly, and ecological systems engineer H.T. Odum as well as study the more recent works of economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. This will help to prepare us for a necessary return to enhanced efforts toward LISA, or Low Input Sustainable Agriculture and socio-ecological justice … while realizing sustainable livelihoods globally and in local/regional foodsheds.”
(I’ll use “PowerPoint Posters on ‘Ecological Literacy’, Andy Wilkinson’s Poem on ‘Mining the Mother Lode’ and ‘Positively Ethical Appllied Community Ecology'”)
Handout Material Used:
…………………………………
Warming Up—
***What does resilience mean to you in less than six
words (6) words (or a very few words)?
Do you harvest nopales, tuna,
radishes, greens, Tatume squash, okra, tomatoes and other vegetables, huitlacoche,quelites, lambs quarters, dandelion, purslane, greenbrier, acorns,
mesquite wood and beans, pecans, plantain, chapulines, gusanos, caracoles,
… ? Do you can and dry meats and
other foodstuffs, … ? Do you milk a cow,
nanny, ewe, make cottage cheese and butter, harvest venison, wild rabbit, and
squirrel, & wild pork, collect eggs from layers, … . … Do you have
composting toilets and solar-heated showers?
…
Do you believe in robust striving
for equity?
Amongst farmers?
For hired farm labor?
Should available labor, food/fibers/shelter,
water, even Land & Nature be regarded as “commodities?” “Common goods?” “Human rights?” Discuss very briefly.
***What is your concept of
a sustainable livelihood? Be brief?
What is the meaning of life?
Are we responsible for giving to and
taking care of the poorest in the world?
Do you spend much time thinking
about a sustainable livelihood? Disparity? Overshoot of our carrying capacity? Our
destruction of the
natural resource base?
The Golden Rule? The Precautionary Principle? The 2nd law of Thermodynamics?
Humans /living systems as we know
them are dependent on daily solar energy.
What are the most efficient and best systems for capturing &
transforming daily solar energy over a long haul?
Might they be climax
ecological communities?
***Absent fossil energy inputs,
how long does it take to build topsoil? Maybe hundreds and thousands of years?
Have you heard of “LISA” in a Farm
Bill? Discuss.
***What are the three (3) most important policies/plans/actions
necessary in order to realize quality of life for all?LIM/GR/EACC
***What are the most important “rules” to follow for a small family farm to be successful and morally & ethically successful? FYPTS,IKISS,WWLEL,LISA,NF,A
……………………………………………….
………………………………………
“Sage” Advice from a Generalist Elder
(Do Consider the Source)
The source—
2006-23. “Wes Jackson-ish ‘miller’,” “Farmers Union-type
agitator” & learner in solidarity w/ all … toward Positively
Ethical Applied Community Ecology/PEACE
1986-1992—Texas Dep. of Agriculture
in Austin, mostly w/ Commissioner Jim Hightower (Pest Management Specialist
& Sustainable Agriculture Coordinator) … & farmer-stockperson
1983—1986 and 1992-2006—High
school & community college (Historically-Black & Hispanic-Serving)
natural sciences teacher … and diversified small farmer-stockperson
(mostly cow-calf)
1977-83—Pasture entomologist
(biocontrol/IPM) in Georgia (UGA) & Brasil
1975-77-Fieldman/consultant for small
farm crop-contractor
1964-69—Undergraduate eventually
in agricultural entomology (worked in a cotton insects biocontrol
lab), TAMU
1946-1964—Oldest of 5 siblings on a diversified hog farm. Harvester of diversified crops & farm laborer in fields & a feed mill.
1.Follow your passion, talents, skills, knowledge base! … But do have a holistic goal, strategic plan, &
process of sensible replanning through monitoring, analysis, & critical
thinking.
2. Be wise
& keep your operation & life as simple as is feasible.
3. Be prudent
& work within your local/global ecological limits.
4. To the extent
possible, avoid direct and indirect use of fossil energy & materials.
5. Abide by the Golden
Rule, Precautionary Principle, 2nd law of Thermodynamics & the
mantra “Less Is More.”
6. Continually learn
& wisely do necessary research on the internet & otherwise (e.g., begin
w/ discussions w/ neighbors & local experts).
7. Critically think
& act and cautiously, in appropriate steps, become involved in local & national/global
politics. Efforts
—in solidarity—must be local & global and
toward much more climax ecological community.
………………………………………..
Other Thoughts to Leave with You
Family Farmers
“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood
of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it
is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily,
destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to
spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.”
Wendell Berry
This means:
A Golden Rule which includes Nature
PEACEcology (Appropriate continuing learning)
Less Is More! (More caring AND sharing!!!)
Today is the 1st day of the rest of your life! (And do listen to &/or make a lot of good music.)
Mill around (Wes
Jackson) & radically think/act out of the box
Introduction for Two Presentations at
the SFFFS Conference.
An Effort to Make Connections
Let me take you back to the period of five (5) to 20 years after WWII & say a bit about the life of a young naïve country boy born shortly after his Marine Dad arrived from the Pacific Theater in late 1945. The young fellow grew up on a 5-acre diversified hog farm with a large garden & a cow to milk every morning & evening after he reached 5 years of age. Moreover, he hoed & harvested various crops in the summers during his elementary school years … on farm worker crews of Tony Cruz & Salome Gallegos. (BTW, other than his brother Lawrence, most of his co-workers were Chicanos & Blacks.) In his junior high & early high school years he pitched Black Diamond, Charleston Gray, & Garrisonian watermelons … and a few yellow-“meated” & other varieties.
Later he worked in a feed mill
& its store, advised
farmer-stockmen on rations, fertilizers, medications, and pesticides to use,
and drove a green-bean harvester. … After he got his commercial driver’s license,
he regularly took hogs in a bob-tailed truck into the stockyards & Swift
& Co. in SA and then drove a semi one summer during his high school years,
falling asleep and wrecking ol’ “Bid Red” one night near Freer while
deadheading it back to Devine … after delivering a load of fresh green
black-eyed peas to a cannery in Brownsville.
This kid also sprayed cattle and other animal- and produce-targets (and himself) with toxaphene and other nasty chlorinated hydrocarbons and toxic biocides. Moreover, while working a feedlot just outside of Devine Texas, among many other feeding & veterinary, loading and unloading, and even castration duties, he implanted diethylstilbestrol in the ears of beeves . Finally, pre-OSHA regulations–and just before heading for his “fish” year at Texas A&M (and then a short time in Naval Air, then UF, UGA, and TDA and so on)—he almost passed under an avalanche of cottonseed hulls in a feed mill accident in 1964.
This young fellow was greatly influenced negatively & positively by all of the above post-WW II agricultural activities in the rural south central Texas town of Devine which bustled with the processing and shipping of watermelons, peanuts, hay, grain, vegetables, & broom corn in the summer months … as well as life-long shaping through Vatican II, the civil rights & ecological movements, & of course the dreadful Vietnam War.
His brother Lawrence was involved in the construction of elevators and infrastructure for the family cattle operations of our SFFFS Conference speaker Fred Morales and his sister Linda knows, & mother knew, the Morales family well (The Morales family moved to Devine about the time our young fellow left Devine.) And the Dad of the young country boy of whom I speak, provided Fred and his brother show-winning pigs for $15-25 /head.
Finally, the young country boy from Devine, Texas became aware of the work of SFFFS Conference keynote speaker, Gary Paul Nabhan (Gary Paul & he share the friendship of the amazing agroecologist, Miguel Altieri) in the 1980s while working for Jim Hightower’s TDA. And later he became enamored with the pragmatic and energetic/smart work in local sustainable agriculture of SFFFS Conference speaker Justin Trammell.
Anyway, all of this is a large
part of the why of the mindset and ethos of plain paul (a moniker given to him by LRGV onion
& sugarcane farmer Jimmy Carlson of La Villa, Texas).
paul bain martin
7 S’s/VV->^^
………………………………
paul bain martin (BS/MS-Texas A&M Univ., Ph.D.-Univ. Florida)
was raised in a small 2-bedroom, non-air-conditioned home with 5 younger
siblings (and worked with “migrant” labor crews) during the drought of the 1950s
on a very small south Texas (hog) farm near Devine, Texas—a farm which always possessed
a large garden, fruit trees, chickens and a milk cow. While in Florida during the “Energy Crisis of
the 1970’s”, Martin researched population dynamics of natural enemies of key
lepidopteran pests in a “model north Florida agroecosystem” (involving
vegetable crops and wild hosts, and including studies of Trichogramma and lacewings).
Martin was significantly influenced by ecologists like E.J.
Dyksterhuis (TAMU), Archie Carr & H.T. Odum (Univ. Florida) and David
Pimentel (Cornell) as well as ecological economist, Herman Daly. Moreover, a considerable amount of applied
ecological knowledge was developed in late night sessions with Miguel Altieri (UC
Berkeley) and during years as a pasture entomologist in Georgia and Brazil. Martin learned/manipulated to the best of his
abilities as sustainable agriculture coordinator in Jim Hightower’s Texas Department
Agriculture, and later taught biology/ecology at St. Philip’s College. (Martin has developed numerous research
publications, essays, and reports and has a recent book on applied ecology, Games
We Play. More Than 200,000 Years of Living Truthfully and 5,000 of Searching
for Truth.)
Martin’s wife taught science at Seguin High School and they have been recently or are currently involved with various organizations and efforts toward researching, developing and promoting positively ethical applied community ecology/PEACEmaking(i.e., a quest for ecological communities which are socially just, humane and ecologically sane), including some volunteer work/ecological activities with: Ogallala Commons (with humble collaborations on Lakota reservations, in NM-Pueblos, etc.), Kids On the Land, HEB Foundation Camps, Seguin Outdoor Learning Center, Dos Pueblos-NY/Tipitapa & Episcopalian Latin American veterinary projects and other international programs, & LULAC and local community gardens … and for/with their children and grandchildren on small “family Lands” near Stockdale & Rio Medina, TX.
………………………………
“Rollin’ in Sweet Earth’s Arms,” poem by paul bain martin
“… we are, after all, striving for a better total-world to live in, and not a better way to kill FAW [fall armyworms], a more effective sampling technique for FAW, a more refined dynamic AT [action threshold] for FAW in CBG [coastal bermudagrass], or a higher quality bale of hay.”
In P. B. Martin et al. 1980. Action Thresholds for Fall Armyworm on Grain Sorghum and Coastal Bermudagrass,” pp. 375-405 Florida Entomologist 63(4)
………………………………..
for many very obvious reasons re status quopower or a wish for it, most aren’t concerned with PEACE
i personally have a fundamental moral & ethical faith in PEACE based on current science
i believe in a profoundly holistic abiding by the golden rule and a realizing of dynamic homeostatic symbioses including quality life for humans and other species
this is my ethos and my natural god
for most it is an Artificial God and ethos of stuff, money, profits, and self … as well as prayer to their de facto masculine super-human of a God
1. Debating, sport, etc. … all activities of life … “should be” for appropriate learning. 2. “Nothing is absolute … for individuals or for ecological communities” (except for this statement). 3. In his little world, Plato recognized to some extent Wes Jackson’s and Robert Jensen’s “Inconvenient Apocalypse.”* … The “Big Truths” (greater now than in Plato’s 427-347 BCE lifetime) are: Disparity,Overshoot, Drawdown of the Natural Resource Base; and an Ignorant, Relatively Satisfied, & Immoral Populacewho don’t abide by the Golden Rule, the Precautionary Principle, or the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and don’t have an Ethos of Less Is More. 4. Both the Democratic and Republican Parties are de factowrong, wrong, wrong in doing a Clayton Williams-number** and letting Eaarth “be raped” through neoliberal capitalistic consumerism, and associated militarism. In that sense there is little difference in the two parties. However, the basic tenets of the Democratic Party, and goals, objectives/policy, strategies (if not tactics & actions) are head and shoulders above the Republicans*** in terms of realizing “Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology, ” long-tem PEACE, socio-ecological justice, and sustainable livelihoods. paul in vain
this started esta mañana with a desire to develop a simple poem about my beautiful wife and beautiful life
and then quickly flowed in to this little mente much of what i’d poured out into “beauty, energetics, and limits on quality and quantity of beauty”‘
in ourgames we play … more than 200,000 years of living truthfully and 5,000 of searching for truth
order or chaos or fractals; happy mediums; transitions in object-oriented ontogeny …
(la piedra prieta in games we play may become silt or clay, or simple molecules/atoms/quarks & gluons and melt into the abyss or aggregate, amalgamate, metamorphosize)
all processes of beauty
more is more … or odum’s a prosperous way down to hickel’s less is more and schumacher’s small is beautiful to daly’s steady state economy
aaahhh … what beauty!
…………………………..
my culture, my society forces me to mow and trim and fixup
and to enjoy the beauty of straight lines and right angles and the emptiness of voids in diversity; to enjoy the destructive order of artificiality
but ecosystems learning allows for an appreciation of the natural order and chaos, the fractals, of dynamic connectivity of life
it allows ants and spiders and mesofauna in my home with too much fretting
and careless “weeds,” lambsquarters, plantain, dandelions, green briers, wild purslane, and even opuntia in my yard
(and these are also wonderfully edible)
……………………
(There is more to this one which I have scribbled down. Hopefully it will eventually be continued and completed?)
