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Environment

Lester Brown's Gift for Seeing Food Connections

Famed eco-thinker has a new autobiography, and is speaking in BC.

Hannah Wittman 2 Nov 2013TheTyee.ca

Hannah Wittman is an associate professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.

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Lester Brown: Founded influential Worldwatch Institute.

"Systems thinking comes naturally to farmers" -- Lester Brown

Lester Brown was born in 1934 at home, the son of a New Jersey farmhand, where family meals were cooked on a wood stove. There was no electricity, plumbing or running water -- but always plenty to eat from homegrown fruits and vegetables, a dairy cow and a flock of chickens. From the tender age of four, Lester was involved in cleaning out the horse barn and protecting the cash crop -- tomatoes -- from the deadly Colorado potato beetle by picking them off the plants, one by one. So, it's likely that Brown is well versed in organic growing methods.

He also went on to become one of this era's greatest thinkers about food systems and environmental limits, founding the influential Worldwatch Institute in 1974 and serving as its president until 2001. Today he heads the Earth Policy Institute.

Brown will be speaking in Vancouver on Nov. 9 and on Salt Spring Island the following evening. What he has to say is highly relevant to British Columbians at this moment.

Rising food prices, climate change, diminishing increases in agricultural productivity and highly unequal distributions of global wealth and access to resources are causing many young environmentalists to turn towards the local. Guerilla gardening, local food movements and pipeline protests center on protecting community assets against the far reaches of global capitalism. In B.C., we celebrate visionary changes in local food policy, urban planning, and mobilize to maintain the protection of our Agricultural Land Reserve.

But systems crises require systems solutions involving not only individual lifestyle choices and activism, but also serious engagement with social, economic, and environmental policy in national and international contexts.

Brown shares that perspective, as well as his life story, in his compelling new autobiography: Breaking New Ground: A Personal History. This is a life of far-reaching consequence -- Brown's critical interdisciplinary research teams have been leaders in bringing global environmental problems, and potential solutions, to the attention of national and international media and into global political arenas.

Which besides beetle plucking, brings us to another skill learned early by Lester Brown. Reading the newspaper instilled in the farm-dwelling boy a curiosity about the outside world. Brown recounts, "(At) an early age, my sense of self was being influenced by my fascination with these political leaders and scientists. They had addressed the major issues of the time and I wanted to do the same."

Everything is interlinked

The first in his family to make it through elementary school, Brown went on to receive an Agricultural Science degree at Rutgers and master's degrees in Agricultural Economics and Public Administration. He raised money to meet his school costs by growing even more tomatoes (because they are "fun to grow"), starting with seven acres in 1951, planting by hand 28,000 plants after school. In 1958, Brown sold 1.5 million pounds of tomatoes, making him one of the largest growers in New Jersey.

Big thinking is characteristic of Lester Brown's approach to life. Chosen to participate in a 4-H International Farm Youth Exchange, he spent six months in several regions of India in 1956. When working for the USDA a few years later, Brown was asked to evaluate a draft of India's five-year plan for agriculture. He looked beyond official predictions, closely reading regional newspapers and weather reports, and talking with agronomists and irrigation specialists about a quickly impending drought. What he learned caused him to predict a large crop shortfall. Brown then recounts his role in brokering the historic agreement in 1965 that exchanged a U.S. commitment to shipping grain reserves -- including 20 per cent of its 1965 wheat harvest -- to a drought-stricken country in return for India's commitment to initiating the Green Revolution.

Systemic and interdisciplinary thinking, what Brown calls his "distinctive personal style" rooted in his farming history, has been one of his most important contributions to global policy change. Highlighting a range of interconnected issues, related to the complexity of society and nature, involves thinking beyond "backyard" problems to highlight important and complex global agri-environmental processes. For example, he calls his 1963 study on global food projections, written as a junior analyst at the USDA, a "breakthrough" in its ability to bring questions of global famine, population growth, and the nascent Green Revolution to the newsstands and public policy fora.

'Plan B'

In 1974, Brown founded the Worldwatch Institute as an interdisciplinary research group that accepted no government or corporate funding. The institute focused on the newly emerging concept of sustainable development -- understanding the relationships between food, energy, population, water, environment and economy. With the express purpose of translating research into policy frameworks and changing public opinion, the institute funded its research program through the sales of books, translated into over 40 languages and published in the millions.

Today, as head of the Earth Policy Institute, Brown continues his work on creating alternatives -- what he calls Plan B, a call for total restructuring of the eco-economy. Addressing global population growth, reducing poverty and greenhouse gas emissions, and "restoring natural support systems" comprise the four pillars of the plan. He points out that a global carbon tax -- at a total cost of $185 billion -- is less than one eighth of what is spent on global defence.

Brown advocates providing students a new environmental education that includes "macro-level comprehension" in a world where specialization has become the norm. Those students will be well prepared if they have a strong work ethic, a strong public school system, transformative role models, and a "real interest in the world," says Brown. The integration of ideas -- and communication -- about new ways of thinking and planning for sustainability are Lester Brown's lasting legacy.

If you would like to hear Lester Brown speak on "The New Geopolitics of Food," he will be giving a talk in Vancouver at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 9. The event is a fundraiser for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' Climate Justice Project. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by clicking here.

He will also be speaking on Salt Spring Island (in conversation), on Sunday, Nov. 10 at 7:30 p.m. For details go here.

Brown's autobiography is available on the website of the Earth Policy Institute.  [Tyee]

Read more: Food, Environment

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