Green Options

In the comment streams on my blog posts there is a recurrent theme from one segment of the respondents - they have a deep distrust in the large companies that are involved in modern agricultural technology.  They don’t believe these companies will behave ethically because they are for profit entities “only answerable to their shareholders.”   

I’d like to speak directly to this as a long-time Ag industry insider whose experience does not support these suspicions. I know that some will dismiss this perspective assuming I am biased, but one has to balance potential for bias with actually having first-hand experience from which to speak.  Over the last 32 years I’ve work for or with most of the companies, large and small, that provide agricultural technologies.  Fourteen of those years have been as an independent consultant so I get to know what is going on inside of many companies in a given year.  I have still only had direct knowledge of a subset of what happens, but in all of that exposure I’ve never witnessed an unethical decision or action - not even the consideration of one.  I’ve seen certain decisions that were short-sighted.  I’ve sometimes seen decision-making processes that are more driven by fear than by opportunity.  I’ve seen missed opportunities because vision was lacking.  I’ve occasionally seen failures to take advantage of synergies that could have been realized between divisions of large organizations. I’ve seen problems, but I believe that some level of dysfunction is inevitable in any organization involving people.  Still, unethical behavior isn’t something I’ve seen so I disagree that it is automatically likely just because of the characteristics of the company.  

On balance I’ve also seen these organizations, large and small, frequently make important contributions to society in terms of the productivity and safety of our food supply.  I’ve seen these companies continue to do that in an environment of constant activist attack and very limited public understanding because so few people farm.

According to reports, McDonald’s is beginning to explore electric car charging stations at their restaurants. Starting on July 14, one of their locations, in Cary, North Carolina, will give drivers the option to charge their cars as they eat.

Says Environmental Leader,

The charging stations feature:

• Secure, authorized access to charging, which helps eliminate energy theft and cord theft.
• Networked ability for drivers to find and navigate to open charging stations.
• Control functions

[...]

Coulomb Technologies was founded in 2007 with the mission to ensure that anyone who is considering the choice to buy an electric vehicle will have adequate access to fuel for the cars.

In the US there are 247 million cars but only 53 million home garages, meaning that a lot of electric vehicles will need to be fueled outside the home garage. Exacerbating the situation, according to studies at UC Davis, 80% of owners of electric vehicles will want to charge more than once a day.

It comes to this: we need charging opportunities where our cars are parked when we sleep and when we work. Since Coulomb’s founding, much as been written regarding the “chicken and egg problem” with infrastructure and vehicles. Will people buy electric vehicles if they don’t have a place to charge them, and conversely, will anyone buy infrastructure if they don’t see cars?

From our friends at ZapRoot: Farmers take it to the extreme to protect their crops. The Auto Alliance has jump on the green bandwagon. These Guys are Full of **it returns.

Links for this week’s edition:

sustainablog - Killing for Crops
Gas 2.0 - Ecodriving with the AAM
EcoScraps - McDonalds Green Billboard
Shell and the Alberta Oil Sands
Sad Hippies

There’s a missing ingredient in our diet today that’s imperative to our nation’s health. You can’t add it to your grocery list, forage it at the local farmers’ market or plant it in your garden. It’s media literacy — the ability to critically question the hidden agendas in our “media diets” and evaluate the manipulating media messages we’re bombarded with daily .

Have no fear, Melinda Hemmelgarn is here. A national public health advocate, registered dietitian and award-winning “Food Sleuth” columnist, Hemmelgarn is the cape crusader for helping us, particularly if we have children, develop the savvy-thinking skills to objectively understand the media and thereby support a truly healthy food system. “After decades of working in the nutrition field, I grew convinced that the ‘eat healthy’ messages from the public health community simply weren’t working,” explains Hemmelgarn. “People aren’t changing their eating habits and a key reason why is that we are constantly bombarded with media messages promoting unhealthy food choices. When Pepsi has an annual advertising budget of $1.3 billion, their messages dilute the National Cancer Institute’s “eat more fruits and vegetables” messages, promoted with a budget of less than $5 million.”

Knowing that healthy food message couldn’t compete on advertising dollars, Hemmelgarn instead chose to help teach people how to navigate the message minefield of today’s vast media empire.

A 2007 McDonald’s billboard near Chicago featured growing lettuce plants stating, “Fresh salads”.  Considering the short life span of such a billboard, McDonald’s reputation for rainforest destruction, and the fact their salads are not organic, fresh (they are prepackaged), or healthy, I can’t embrace this campaign. Still, using plants for advertising is definitely a unique idea.  You can watch the billboard grow in this video.

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