I've Been Working On A Master's Degree!

Starting this academic year, with the Canadian/American Thanksgiving celebration, students from different continents have organized a night of celebration to share their culture with the group. It's been amazing so far. Asian Night was a couple months ago and we learned so many different things about the different parts of Asia. There's been ongoing talk of African Night since October, but still no celebration. Last week, we had European Night and it blew me away! They required that all the attending students dress up as if for cocktails. It was the first chance I've had to look good down here. Well, I always look good, I just don't plan it like I did this night.They opened the European culture presentation with a play that they'd written based upon stereotypes of Europeans according to the other students. They gathered this information on large pieces of paper taped to a wall, on which other students were allowed to write their stereotypes over a couple weeks. My contribution was, "Europeans love to propagate stereoptypes." The play was offensive, extremely well done, and hilarious! They had us all laughing our heads off!

After the play we enjoyed some musical performances, european food, and then we danced - euro club style. I danced the Macarena to every single song. What a night!

In sadder news, the Department of International Peace Studies (DIPS) finished their program this week. This means that between 20 and 30 of our Asian kids are leaving us. We had a party on campus to say goodbye to them and I was filled with emotion. In fact, in the days prior to their final day, I had a nightmare of having to say goodbye to all my new friends and knowing I would not see most of them ever again. I cursed myself for not having enrolled in a two year program so I could spend extra time with everyone. And then I woke up, glad that I would finish school soon, but still sad that I will miss my dear friends. A couple of them, I've come to really respect and enjoy, and their departure really disturbs me. A giant regret I have, is that I didn't get close to many others. The University for Peace is pretty small. Only 160 students can say they'll be UPeace alumni this year, but even so, I can't hang out with and get to know all 160 students, though I regret not having tried a bit harder.

Becca finally managed to get her act together to lead me and some other university friends to climb the tallest mountain in Costa Rica: Chirripo, 3820 meters (in feet = tall!). It took us three buses, a nasty taxi ride, and 10 hours just to get to the base of the mountain. At the ranger station, where we were to register to climb, we learned that they close the mountain one weekend a year for a running race, and this happened to be that particular weekend... Wonderful. We arrived on a Thursday, wanting to climb on Friday, summit on Saturday, and return to town on Sunday. The race was only Saturday, but they would not allow us to pass. They said the soonest we could ascend was on Sunday. So we decided to wait. Half of our group went to the beach, and half stayed in the mountain town to enjoy the hot springs. I stayed in the mountains, of course. It was an amazing time, indeed, the first time I´ve actually enjoyed Costa Rica. I´ve enjoyed my friends, and on occasion the university, but I have not yet enjoyed the country. It was a pretty good feeling and I hope it will stick around for a while.The ascent up the mountain was mind blowing for an environmental nut like myself. We started out in the typical "jungle" habitat that I'm used to at lower elevations and climbed into a cloud forest. The flora and fauna were all completely different in a matter of kilometers.The cloud forest finally yielded to elevation as we entered the sub-alpine habitat. Amazing! This was perhaps my favorite ecosystem, as the species that survive, do so in extreme conditions and are so unique as compared to everything else I've seen in the rest of the country. A forest fire had raged through this part of the mountain 10 or so years before, but due to the slow ecological activity at this altitude, it looked as if it had occurred only one or two years prior. Finally, 9 hours and 14.5 km into our hike, we arrived to the lodge, at 11,132 feet. This is 1,132 feet more than all my doctors say I'm allowed to go on account of my bum lung. We checked into the lodge and popped the corks on our bottles of rum - we spent the rest of the day in celebration.

It was cold at the lodge, damn cold, but the warmth of the camaraderie that existed between hikers and climbers kept us comfortable and happy (I guess the rum may have played a bit of that role, too). We tried to go to bed early cause it had been a long day, but pulling myself away from the heavenly display of a starry night sky was too much to ask. I gandered for a while and froze my little ass off. Went to bed only to wake up at 3am in order to be on the trail at 3:30. Accomplished, albeit painfully.We got lost once on the trail - or rather, off the trail - as it was dark and I had left my navigational star map at home... An excruciating 2 hours went by before we summited, in which I stopped frequently and had some kind of persistent lightheadedness. Becca waited with me and kept asking me if I was going to die because of my lung or if I should go back. Then she went on to tell me she wasn't going to carry my body down the mountain. So of course I pushed on.Standing at the top of the mountain, 12,533 feet above the transvestite prostitute infested beach towns of Costa Rica, we watched the sun rise - slowly and majestically above the occasional smaller mountain tops, poking through the clouds. It was an amazing, amazing thing. Shaking and shivering, we watched in awe as the valleys all around us lit up. We had packed along a stove and some coffee, but no one's hands had the dexterity to function as the wind took most of our heat away from us.After some nice relaxing time near the summit, we spent the rest of the day descending, again, marveling at the extreme changes in ecosystems determined by elevation.Climbing the highest mountain in Costa Rica (and I think second highest in Central America) was a much needed break from classes. We began another class, the best class in the world, Ecological Bases for Sustainable Land Use - at long last, a science class! And then we took another break to the northwestern region of Costa Rica for some more hiking in one of Costa Rica's little explored national parks.Rincon de la Vieja (The Old Lady's Corner) scored another point for Costa Rica. I guess it only took me 6 months to figure out that the country is nice in the mountains, but shit at the beaches.Our weekend excursion in the north yielded the most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen; a super sore knee from lots of hiking; bugs that left us itchy, bleeding, and drained; encounters with 3 species of monkeys, including one that threw its feces at us; and some extremely relaxing geothermal heated hot springs that put a soothing close on our weekend.

Getting a master's degree is great!

UPeace - Organic Agriculture

I just finished a class called Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Sustainable Development. It really should have just been called Organic Agriculture, as we didn't really touch on anything else. It was two intense weeks of hippie ego-stroking. The final assignment was to use our readings to create a two-page editorial. I went against the grain on this one to balance the bias of the class. If anyone's interested in reading the articles I cited, I still have them in pdf format.

Dear So and So,

I grew up, studied, and worked in and around Portland, but now I'm living in Costa Rica to attend graduate school at the United Nations Mandated University for Peace. From the name of the university, you can accurately assume that the student body is somewhat of an alternative crowd. I'm writing to address an issue that I'm currently studying at UPeace; an issue that I first felt in the unique ambiance of Portland: organic food, and the public's misconceptions of poison.

The recently popular push for organic agriculture has many motivations: avoidance of chemicals in our food, getting back to nature, reducing our impact on the environment, fairness in costs and wages for farmers, and social responsibility. The thing is, some people want more than that, and their voices are loud and influential. According to IFOAM’s Principles of Organic Agriculture (IFOAM, 2008), organic agriculture is being pushed as a lifestyle rather than a practice, a moral value rather than a system, and even as a religion rather than a method.

In fact, organic agriculture is a subset, or a type of agriculture. It is a "new" way to raise crops with particular standards that happen to be stricter, environmentally speaking, than that of techniques seen in conventional agriculture. This particular methodology requires science as a tool to validate its significance. I could tell you that the sky is green, but observation contradicts that statement. The same is true here: I could tell you that crops grown without the use of pesticides are healthier, but testing is required to verify that claim. The scientific processes of observation, testing, analyzing, and reproduction are crucial to the success and the best methodology for this type of agriculture. So what does Science say about pesticides and health?

Anyone from the state of California can tell you, just about everything on the market today can give you cancer. From where did this paranoid misconception of chemicals come? The truth is, everything is made from chemicals, even you. Chemicals are the building blocks of everything you can see and touch. When Organic Preachers talk about “chemical-free food,” they really mean man-made, synthetic, or artificial chemicals. Organic Believers have manipulated the usage of the word 'chemical' as they have done with the word 'organic', which simply means a compound that has a carbon base to its molecular structure. Organic Believers have convinced many people that chemicals in our food is a bad thing - that chemicals are poison and that if you eat them you won't be healthy.

As the father of toxicology, Paracelsus, pointed out nearly 500 years ago, “Everything is poisonous yet nothing is poisonous. The dose alone makes the poison.” (Guggenheim, 1993). Even our most precious resource, water, is a poison. If you drink too much water, it is toxic to your body and you will die. Have you ever tried to cultivate fruits and veggies without water? If you're a fan of 'crunchy', you’ll probably love it! The chemicals used in conventional agriculture are designed to be toxic to pests, not to humans. Standards set by the USDA, and the FDA regulate limits so that the amount of artificial chemicals in our food never becomes harmful. The unfortunate thing is that the Organic Believers have made you afraid of these chemicals anyway.

In my class of future world leaders (how we should think of graduate students), we spent an hour one day bantering about the toxicity of butane in french fries and concluding that we didn’t want butane anywhere near our food! The conversation originated from a passage in The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which Michael Pollan wrote:

"Then there are 'anti-foaming agents' like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry... According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable."

He adds the word 'flammable' here to drive home his poison implication, but any cooking oil and most edible foods will burn! Does that make them toxic? Pollan goes on to say,

"Perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to 'help preserve freshness.' According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food."

Lighter fluid in our food sounds horrible, but it’s not! The amount permissible is so small that it's not poisonous for human consumption. Pollan connects TBHQ to butane (a very inaccurate connection, chemically speaking) in an attempt to relate to the Organic Worrier that something toxic is going into our food. Why would McDonalds put something toxic in their food? A sick joke? No. It’s there to ‘help preserve freshness’ as is stated. All food decomposes; the purpose of adding something to subdue infectious bacteria is a health and safety supplement. The problem with Pollan’s argument is that butane is not very toxic at all. According to OSHA and the Center for Disease Control, butane is not reactive, unstable, or significantly toxic (NIOSH, 2005) (OSHA, 2004). The most likely way it could harm you is by displacing all the air in your lungs and asphyxiating you. People dying from butane are huffing it, not eating it.

If you don't make a habit or hobby out of huffing chemicals, why then should you worry about butane in your food? Because Organic Believers tell you to. What kind of implications does that have on society? Consumption habits are altered, production methods change to adapt, some businesses fail and others spring up to accommodate the new trend. While Pollan uses fear to sell a book, he convinces Orangic Believers that butane is bad. If many Organic Believers are loud enough they could have the power to get McDonalds to stop using TBHQ. The result is a less safe McNugget. Is this really the sustainability we're looking for?

The organic community’s propagation of fear is eerily reminiscent of something most Organic Believers fought so tenaciously against in recent history: the Bush administration. The Bush administration was accused, and quite rightly so, of fear mongering in an effort to generate support for a ludicrous war. How are Organic Believers' efforts so different in fear mongering for chemical-free food? Their conspiracy theories use the same methods to manipulate people into making ill-informed decisions. In the end, we're losing sight of what's right.

Science is reliable and trustworthy. It can show us what is healthy, and what is not. It can inform us of the best actions to take, and most definitely has a place in organic agriculture. Some may claim that science is inconclusive on the topic of chemical-free foods. That's ok! It just means that further research is warranted and that no conclusions should go unquestioned. Policy makers, businessmen, Organic Believers, pseudo-intellectuals, and even reputable universities need to avoid using manipulated science to support their agendas, as was seen in the Badgley/Avery debacle of 2007 (Avery, 2007).

Consumers need to be aware of the assumptions, speculations, and misconceptions that are prevalent in today's market so that educated and responsible decisions can be made. Knowledge and responsibility are the only things that will ensure sustainability, the future of all kinds of agricultural production, and our health.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it,

Andrew Judkins

Bibliography

Avery, A. (2007). ‘Organic Abundance’ report: fatally flawed. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 22(4), 321–329.

Guggenheim, K. (1993). Paracelsus and the Science of Nutrition in the Renaissance. The Journal of Nutrition, 1193. Retrieved February 11, 2009, from http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/123/7/1189.pdf.

IFOAM. (2008). Principles of Organic Agriculture. 1-3.

NIOSH. (2005). NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards: n-Butane, Retrieved February 11, 2009, from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0068.html.

OSHA. (2004). Safety and Health Topics: Butane, Retrieved February 11, 2009, from http://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsampling/data/CH_222200.html.

Pollan, M. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma. New York: Penguin Press.