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The Arbor Group Thank you for joining us for Kitchen Table Issues with Rob Paarlberg and Eddie Hill.

Moderated by Kate Yoder.

Before we begin, we'd like to thank our Environment and Outdoors track sponsor UBS.

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Hello, everyone and welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

I'm Kate Yoder.

I'm a staff writer at Grist.org, where we cover of the recent book Resetting the Table Straight Talk About the Food We Grow In and Eddie Hill is the co-director of the Black Coalition and the director of the Black Farm Bureau.

So our talk today is called kitchen table issues.

The food we eat gets to our plate somehow, but we don't always think about how it got there.

And when you do start thinking complicated questions about health and what's happening to the soil.

And, you know, the long term livability of the So today we're going to cover a lot of ground.

I'm going to ask our panelists what they see as the biggest problems confronting We're going to look at categories like organic and local and do they really matter and how our farmers are adapting kinds of questions.

And then we're going to talk about the best path forward So Rob Eddie welcome and thank you for Thank you so much Morning.

Yeah, thank you.

So I guess first to start off, I just want to know more about the work that you're both doing.

So Eddie, could you tell us about the projects that you've been working on in the northwest lately?

Oh yeah, thank you.

And good morning, Nice to meet you, Robert and Kate and much appreciated Really exciting times in a lot of ways.

So it's it's most of the projects we are doing right now.

are what we're calling are shifting language to in terms of direct action.

So we've got a post-COVID environment We have data that from this event that happens every will now we, you know, 100 years.

So we have a global series of global health and supply chain impacts that have caused us to adjust as an organization.

What we originally started with was more of a not Band-Aid approach, but a training program that would stretch out three to five years.

A lot of the work because of COVID COVID has condensed down to 18 to 24 month turnarounds on farmer training , basic food systems awareness , more immersive and more hands on practical applications like emergency management response versus a Hey, we have 10 years to solve a hunger problem or a housing problem and a lot of the work we're doing now is turning , leaving brick and mortar and going into mobility.

So mobile food trucks, mobile food delivery systems electrifying projects.

Portland is one of the Robert.

And one of your one of the speeches or one of the presentations I saw we were talking about the electric electrification of the food system and not reducing vehicle miles, but shifting vehicle miles to electric and solar charging stations.

So in Portland is one of those cities that you mentioned similar to Seattle that has taken sugar tax.

So a lot of that money is coming down to the streets now in Portland Clean Energy Fund.

There's a a lot of the funders have shifted their their focus on on food systems now in a way that public health was going to 10 years ago.

So launching farms , there's a lot of dollars coming to from the Fed for either purchasing or covering the costs of leasing to own to look for farmland now, whereas we didn't have those dollars before COVID and we're still debating them with Congress.

The Recovery Act money like the $8 billion for farmers still held up in court.

So a lot of other infrastructure dollars have come down and we captured that money under the banner of green workforce and energy efficiency and renewables regenerative soil.

So securing farms, securing food facilities is a lot of empty restaurants and food kitchens to produce make value added products and then we're with community health services and wraparound services.

to act not just as a fresh food delivery like we did during A box of food to somebody in a motel or hotel is not going to help.

So working on pre-packaged or prepared foods, either frozen or ready to eat for a challenged population, But then there's a high price point right now for food delivery, so we're kind of balancing a new economy, trying to build a new economy based on the what we've been left with with post COVID.

So I'll leave it at that.

Getting some details later.

But there's a lot of transactional more money than most community based organizations have have been able to manage or understand that they can have.

that community capacity building as well.

So the infrastructure and community to manage this money is definitely not in place multiple things, multiple times, we'll get into it further.

But that's basically what's happening in Portland and Gotcha.

Yeah, that's great.

It's great to hear about that work, and I love that focus on direct action.

I think that's like everyone's wondering, what can we do now?

Yeah.

And Rob, I want to hear about the work you've been doing to.

I know you have a new book called Resetting the Table.

Can you tell us a little bit about Yes, and it's great to be here with Kate and also with with Eddie.

I'm an independent academic researcher on issues in global food policy, and I start, of course, by that title at the Harvard Kennedy School when my my new book, which I'm my publicist can answer, is that you never miss a chance that actually show people the book and a new book called Resetting the Table Straight Talk about the food we grow , and it was written with America's dietary health crisis and why people know this But it's important to be reminded how for the American diet really is.

Forty two percent of adults in the United States are now clinically obese, which 42 percent that is three times the level of the 19 sixties.

We eat too much meat.

We eat 20 to 60 percent more meat than dietary guidelines would call for it.

We don't eat enough fruits and vegetables.

Only one in 10 , one in 10 Americans eats the recommended daily portions of fruits and vegetables.

These things in combination have given us an a burden of chronic disease type two diabetes , stroke or heart disease and cancer or obesity related diseases are now taking the lives of 300000 Americans every year.

according to the National Institutes of Health.

So my book is designed to explain how we got into this trouble to find the explanations that are supported by the evidence and also to critique some of the explanation that aren't really supported by the probably to your audience that the big reason for this crisis is the kind of food that food manufacturing companies in the food service industry surrounds us with.

We live in a swamp of unhealthy foods.

Even at the supermarkets, 70 percent of the foods in the supermarket have considered unhealthy by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

We but these products are designed by companies to be virtually addictive.

They put in just the right mixture of salt, sugar and fat.

The ultra processed these foods so that they hit a bullet point in our mouth.

And that triggers the reward circuit in our brain.

And so we crave eating them again, even though we're not hungry yet.

It's a it's we can talk later about the possible policy responses to that, to that problem.

But I'll leave it there for now.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I definitely noticed walking around the store.

It's like you get to that chip section and you're like, This looks pretty good.

But yeah, it's interesting to think of this larger designs are contributing to the unhealthy eating.

So it's not just the grocery store when I go to my local CVS Pharmacy in Michigan, in order to fill a prescription, I have to walk through the candy aisle.

So in a single visit, I can try to protect my health and ruin my health at a pharmacy.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, that's a good observation.

So I want to do you know, what did you say?

Agreed So I know we have limited time today, so I just wanted to get into the really big questions First off, I wanted to know what do each of you see as the biggest problem with the US food system today?

And maybe Rob you can go first.

Well, I think inadvertently , I just described that a minute ago is poor dietary health, worsening dietary health and and and it's a problem that I do not trace to two behavioral weakness on the part of eaters in America.

The food companies that surround us with these unhealthy, addictive items say, Oh, well, what you eat is your responsibility.

You're putting We're giving you what you want.

And so it's a question of personal responsibility and that just can't really explanation for our poor dietary help.

I mentioned that aren't obesity rate today is three times as high as it was in the 1960s.

That can't possibly be true , that American eaters are three times as irresponsible as they were in the 1960s.

It's the food environment created by food companies, retailers and the foodservice industry that has us trapped in the unhealthy eating pattern.

I think questions about personal responsibility are also interesting.

I cover climate change at Grist.org , and so thinking about the ways systems are set up to make it difficult to make you know that the low carbon choices or the healthy choice, I think, is interesting.

Yes, there can be a degree of personal responsibility, but we have to think about these bigger, bigger Yeah, most definitely.

Yeah, And Eddie, I also want to hear your your response to the question.

The big question, what do you think is the biggest problem?

The food system today I think there is , and I agree.

I agree with you, Robert, on the the the lack of control or the lack of self-control Partially.

And you know, in some ways, I do think Americans have become three times less self informed are three times less interested in supporting democracy.

So I think there's a cascade in general of a loss of what systems mean And as an urban planner, my professional background as urban planner , food systems design and planning at the university of Washington, and just a lot of analyses and systems.

And growing up, I'm very much a George Plimpton kind of journalist.

I have a degree in journalism and started as a journalist, not a farmer.

But then I started farming like George Clinton and said, You can't write about something or having the experience of becoming a farmer and living out, I think my great grandfather, great great child laborer at Tuskegee University.

So I think that the the problems of the food system for African-American , specifically farmer, formerly enslaved populations and indigenous populations, that impact has been America plus, you know, or America multiplied by a factor of two in terms of health impacts, watching my family die from those diseases at an early age in their forties in the last generation for me drove me to be a vegan for 16 years, and I'm now one of, you know, I beat my grandfather, my dad's father and his brother and two uncles beat their age , right?

So I'm fifty six.

They all died pre 55 for alcohol, diabetes, heart angina, things like that.

So yes, we have a nutritional deficit in the food.

Yes, we have a soil that's been hyper abused and not regenerated.

We have composting and food waste systems that don't function in support of restoring and maintaining our ecosystems.

We have a commercial food system that globally has failed to produce numbers that they thought they were going to produce, and now they're focusing on the US.

Speaking specifically to Bill Gates and the Green Revolution in Africa and India, which didn't work for folks.

So now we buy up the U.S.

So I think a lot of the problems we don't buy private companies, buy it So I think one of the problems are several of the problems connected because it's a food system.

So it's not the length, , right?

They talk to all the trees and communicate messages.

So just putting the nutrition in people doesn't because I know a , informed people who eat a lot of fancy food and still do horrible things on the planet.

So healthy food and have lots of nutrition in their bodies.

So the drivers of this this problem are both natural.

We have biophysical and environmental drivers.

We have innovation and technology that's trying to cram into the food system right now to fix it and political, economic and socio cultural drivers like racism in the food system or marginalization of workers or lack of paying people for what they're actually worth at the back of the deck, farmers call it where you actually sell your vegetables Third party companies that are consuming land and consuming assets.

We have wars globally happening right now that are affecting and showing us that our nitrogen based fertilizers and excess supplies globally are shutting down because of the war.

So if we if we look at what the real problems for me in the way we've approached it from Black Food Sovereignty Coalition in in the Pacific Northwest food shed is to operate sort of a food district or food zone, right?

Bullshit.

And we know that Portland and Seattle are connected in the bio region of the cascade of Cascadia or the Cascade region of the country.

And we know that we're a blues, though we know that people are migrating here.

We know that the problems we are seeing are coming home.

To the Northwest, now that everybody's looking at the northwest as one of the last, the last places, they will be above ground during a flood that will be half freshwater, half as has a diversity of of of land and topography that can feed start to feed in that country.

States like California is losing water, so the problems for me are multiple and it requires an interdisciplinary approach and and it requires a level of interconnectedness and socially ecology that I think is absent from the culture in the United States right now.

And that's I think there's a social issue.

I agree with Robert on the nutritional to solve the problem.

It's a combination of reintegrating the food system at all levels of our lives.

Food as an as a utility, food is an infrastructure versus food is the solution to a specific social problem that will then unpack.

And you know, things are not rosy and say that.

But you know, the sort of a public health approach like we tried with the bodegas, we put vegetables in the store or fruit on the counter, then people eat really, you know, there's a culture underneath that.

Why are we doing this The re-education of people about home economics and land management are things that have been absent in the schools for a very long time.

So I think it's a combination of effects that are now coming home to show us that what we did before is not going to work.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, that's really insightful, and it's helpful to think about all of these complicated factors that are coming together.

And I a question implicit in that for Rob, too.

I mean, do you see the root of this of these problems is partly social and cultural?

Well, food systems are very different in different parts of the world.

I do quite a bit of my work in in rural Africa and the food system in rural Africa.

That is, it couldn't be more different from the food systems in in Seattle or Boston, where I live on most rural Africans are they produce food for a living that's their occupation They're mostly women and they don't have any of the things that farmers in the rest of the world have used to escape poverty.

They don't have irrigation, they don't have electricity , they don't have adequate road systems to bring in the fertilizer or to market their products.

They don't have veterinary medicine for their animals.

And as a result, the productivity of their labor is extremely low.

Their crop yields are only one third as high as crop yields in in other developing country regions and so no matter how hard they they work, they remain stuck in poverty and their and their children remain stunted and and undernourished.

What I find when I find a little strange to think about is that because these farmers don't use any synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

They're de facto organic And because their road systems are so poor, it's too expensive to move food around So they are de facto local.

This is an organic local food system that is not serving , not serving the welfare of the farmers in question.

So I don't I don't.

I want to specify what part of the globe we're talking about before I try to diagnose food system problems.

Yeah, I think it's super important to understand what works in one place might not work in another place and that you have to agreed.

And we can say in Africa that we still have we still have similar ways to analyze the conditions or why they're in that condition and what conditions are perpetuated through economic models.

through or through external, European or Western influence.

models through Western ideas of money in monetary systems and how I've been to Ghana I've been to South Africa, where U.S. aid on solar energy projects right when South Africa was in the year zero with no water and yes, Africa's different.

There's fifty one fifty two countries , three fifty three countries now.

And yes, they're all different.

And I would say that they're all damaged and still facing the the impacts of colonialism and the political and economic challenges of restoring systems and restoring ecological systems and socio cultural traditional practices that , you know, that have sustained people locally , regionally in ways that doesn't have to deliver to market.

We said a lot of folks who are subsistence farmers , most definitely there's tribes that like in Kenya and the way that business.

It was a composting program in Ghana.

that we went and visited and folks had come from USAID.

They had built the facility.

They had employed people to make compost and bagged things up.

And then when the company left, they took all the equipment and then the the community was left with sort of trying to figure out how to supply that.

The company was like , Well, that's our equipment.

We brought it to the U.S, but they didn't train anybody.

They didn't leave any management, or architecture systems and infrastructure to continue that.

That plan, nor was there succession planning in a lot of that work.

So it's not like there's just a clean slate and people just, you know, and again, like you said, Africa is a different place.

So that organic model of local and applying the same standards to chemical, which is a better way to run in most modes conditions for agriculture anywhere in the world without chemicals mostly works.

Again, I'm not an either or I'm a both and a little bit of colonialism in economic models need to match with the traditional Earth analogies of managing like forests like, you know, in the agro agroforestry could be improved significantly with the introduction and inclusion equitably of traditional native practices.

The forest management.

We now know that we have enough stories, enough data , enough people to talk.

We've got enough equity roadmaps now in colleges and universities to know that half of the things that people on the planet that have been doing been here in this region for ten thousand twenty thousand years.

and they can be integrated with technology like dissolvable hemp sensors that RFID chips and things that track things.

You know, Monsanto is doing that work.

So instead of instead of exacerbating the problem, we're trying to solve the problems that Africans aren't ready to make this change.

It's like, or maybe if we built the infrastructure like China is doing right.

So the going in and buying up land.

Let me just say Bill Gates is buying up U.S. farmland , now the largest owner of farmland in the US.

And like The handover to Native American people to manage properly and then pay them the money for it.

I mean, or to give it a victory package at the end of this or is it going to give all black people 40 acres and a mule who didn't get it when the South and southern slave owners got their money or free land?

So there's all these benefits and advantages to being to have been not now, but they all have exacerbated and caused the problems in the food system.

we're now dealing with.

I can't solve the problem now without fully addressing the U.S. base and, you know, global.

I can't mess with that right now because I can't.

I'm not going to Africa right now and growing food organizationally.

We have to homes right, our local areas, our regional food shares.

If we can each manage our food sheds more responsibly in the nation, there'd be a much better success or integrating and merging the ancient and the modern.

So I'll stop there Yeah, I'm sure we can.

I feel like we keep getting deeper and deeper into the root of these problems and important to also colonialism and how that's still affecting things I wanted to give a quick reminder to all of you watching at home in the audience.

Put your questions in the chat section on your screen So we're going to be asking some of those for now, I wanted to turn back to that question of organic that Rob brought up.

You know, I think that's kind of a buzzword we see in the grocery store and don't always question.

So I want to know.

I guess we'll start with you, Rob.

What does organic does it really matter?

Organically grown foods are grown without any synthetic manmade chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides , and since since those synthetic chemicals weren't invented until 1910, all of the food produced around the world up until 1910 was de facto organic The the limitations of organic, it's really not scaling up.

In the United States, only one percent of harvest in cropland in the United States is certified organic farmers and most commercial farmers do not like the organic standard because they can't use any synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

single most important contributor to agricultural productivity in the last in the last 100 years.

And since then, very few farmers grow organically, demand for organic isn't really satisfied in the marketplace.

So while the cost of organic produce is on average 54 percent higher than the cost of conventional produce, and this gets back to my dietary health question would our dietary health improve if we switched to an all organic system?

And I don't think it would.

The cost of healthy food would increase by by half.

And so already only one in 10 Americans eats enough fresh fruits and vegetables.

If we switched to an organic system, the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables would go down because the price would be would be so high.

And actually, a related problem with Re localizing our our food system right now.

Right now, one third of all our vegetables are imported in the United States.

At one half of our fruit is imported and 80 percent of our seafood is is imported.

These are all healthy food items.

We should be consuming more of all of these items if we re localized our food system and did without imports, well, the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables and seafood items would go down, the price would go up.

And once again, our health would not improve That makes a lot of sense.

And Eddie, I'll get to you next.

But Rob I have a follow up question for you because I also wanted to get to that question of , you know, local food versus imported.

And, I've been eating produce imported from California and all over the world and my supermarket just all winter And so I'm wondering, you know, is that sustainable Yes.

it is.

If you're worried about food, miles and the greenhouse gas emissions from food transportation and you have to remember that what matters isn't the distance the food travels.

It's the means of transport and it's the load size.

If you have ocean freight with large containers, full of food, any single item of food is going to have a very small carbon footprint and no matter how far it travels on the ocean.

On the other hand, if you have a small load size and if you go if you go to the farmer's market and buy half a dozen tomatoes, if you're driving your family car and if you're driving five miles out and five miles back, and if those tomatoes were hauled in a pickup truck from a local farm five miles to the market and five miles back, the carbon footprint of each tomato is going to be huge.

So it's not the distance food You shouldn't worry about that.

You should.

We should be aware of how it travels and the load size.

And I think fortunately , fortunately, we have improved technologies for all those things, and the best estimate is in our food system.

All of the greenhouse gas emissions from our food system in the United States, only four percent come from food transport Gotcha.

That's good to know And Eddie, I want to hear your response to this too.

What's what's your reaction to local and organic?

So I'm a I'm I have worked in both and had conversations with folks in both both arenas , conventional, organic and I. I can say, coming from a lot of conversations with local and national organized food organizations that are addressing what people of color versus say to to Washington, tilt or tilt alliance and Washington.

More of a standard , you know, dominant population white led eco organization that promotes gardening and organic gardening, not using chemicals or pesticides.

You know, Roundup things like that and improving pollinator buffers , things like that as part of their organizational work in Seattle has done great work.

How did the , you know, has the organic movement and I agree with you on the numbers of about the Robert, about the number of farmers that have moved to organic or non chemical or low tale No, till it is still extremely small and one of the factors missing in that conversation is there are market forces like Cargill and Monsanto and the Gates Foundation and other organizations at the highest level of economy, policy and government that work against and don't subsidize and that will impact now in terms of applications and getting people.

But this this either or conversation continues to be continues to be absent of a whole systems conversation So like, OK, yes, no, all local farms, everybody grows the garden in like in the war victory gardens.

Everybody did it right.

So if we're looking at nineteen hundreds in nineteen thirty eight and a garden, folks, regardless of nitrogen based, you know, they use fertilizers.

Not most didn't.

My great grandfather had a garden in his backyard, Chicago, until he died in his upper 70s and every winter had jam.

Every winter had pickled vegetables in the cabinet.

There was a snowstorm that could eat , and in the summer we always had fresh salad and and vegetables.

You know, few three or four different vegetables , tomatoes, things like that, so that the nutritive quality of the food that you're growing at home, no impact the environment at a small level like, you know, butterflies the butterfly effect.

So, you know, if you grow an ecologically healthy environment on your property, and socially take that responsibility and it spreads to neighborhood and then you've got a larger small farm, a half acre in the city or an acre.

It's helping provide not just nutrition, but an opportunity for people to see it, like knowing who your police officers are in the neighborhood Like the good old days right in the 1980s and the 70s.

And I think the the the conversation for us is not either or it's both And sometimes you have to use some camps.

Sometimes you can get or root rot in the field and you have to offset it with lime, or you have to offset it for a couple of seasons or let it go that the industrial meat production and you know, commercial commodity farming is a a good old boys network, gone gone haywire and those subsidies, like you were saying, Robert, and I've heard you say before about the how food is actually subsidized to be more.

It's not less expensive for farmers.

It's more , you know, it's more expensive.

It's the farmers can get more money and the ball, the meat industry does the same thing.

beef farmers are like innocent players in this game.

They are looking to exploit the needs as well.

Getting gouged our food because of Ukraine, because all of our wheat goes to Ukraine, that they grow or we like, why don't we grow randomly?

going to be able to grow spinach for much longer.

So why is Oregon and Washington, who can grow spinach?

Twenty four hours year round supply spinach for all the West Coast states and California stops growing fresh spinach.

So we're going to have We're going to have to change not just either or on chemicals or seeds or who's in control of land, but how we create a more broad spectrum.

Again, urban agriculture is not going to solve our problem.

Just like commodity farming, and half farms are the speeding, the aggregated feeding places.

We put cows and pigs and things like that without whole system regulatory shifts, whole systems, understanding of how commodity foods or subsidized sugar, you know, like that conversation about the history of sugar in the use of the use of sugar.

These are things that, again, senators, not just , not just it's just not the market driving people to eat like crap.

It's Joe Manchin.

It's other politicians who any government control.

It's a psychosis of of wanting to do what we want.

So again, you know, I go back to it's a spiritual war.

Her food and health It's a mental and psychological combat about what to do, and it's also a physical land in spatial conversation, like you can't have farms in a city because the land cost too much.

No, it doesn't.

You place that that property in a place where it's not valued for the food it produces, it's valued for some real estate or commodity gain or equity, right?

So similarly, economically , we have to change the way we value elements in the food system , like if you have a garden and you're on your meter, you should get a tax reduction on your house on your and you know, there's benefits that we can stick into places that don't have to do with arguing about chemicals and no chemicals So no more nutrition?

Yes, but chemically, we we know the chemical loads right now in kids, we know what glass of phosphates are doing to women.

We know what you know, the benefits or lack of benefits that have come out in the last five or six years of global attempts to solve the And again, I think one of the critical things we're leaving out is local economies, local and regional workers, farm , farm makers, farm producers, growers , the people that make the thing are still like schoolteachers They're still not valued at the level that we say they're important.

But the government has not invested in giving every teacher a flat $80000 salary in solving our education problem because it's just not about the money, it's about what education is.

And one more thing, everything I learned from Mike is is a book right about everything you learn from kindergartners, which you carry with the rest of your life.

So my kindergarten teacher, I went to a really nice school as a child.

University of Chicago Laboratory School Vivian Paley was my kindergarten teacher, one of the most famous I now know found out a couple of months ago.

One of the most famous childhood education educators in the United States.

And I'm like, OK, I was trained in that that school, Chicago school and a lot of ways, and it hasn't urging and synthesis , right?

So just as food works, I think we have to better synthesize and metabolize what we have and understand that certain things don't have metabolic properties rates and GMO seeds or highly CRISPR, whatever Apple is to make them square so we can put them in a box like in Japan with There's this things we don't need to do a test with food and food needs to be in the hands of the people that it is most close to to manage.

So I thought there.

Definitely.

Yeah, and I love what you're saying about , you know, it's not either or like we can integrate all of these solutions and it doesn't.

Yeah, it's not just one or the lot of choices.

And I wanted to go off of what you're saying and look at one of the audience questions, which is about education and these issues we've been talking about today.

So the question is we should be teaching these important connections and principals in our schools.

Is anyone working on a sustainable curriculum?

So I don't know Rob, do you want to go first and sort of talk about how you see this These conversations we've had today, how how would that Yeah.

Well, I'm not a I'm not a primary or secondary school person, but it's integrated now, of course, into into into college and graduate level work at the Harvard Kennedy School.

And so when I work with closely, our Bill Clark and he's created a whole new field called Sustainability Science, and it's been a challenge to translate the the ideal of sustainability into a decent scientific approach that's evidence based where you're not just talking about visions , you're you're measuring progress toward outcomes.

So yes, this is this is definitely happening at the university level and at the graduate level in particular.

Not sure that makes sense.

And Eddie Eddie of that.

Yeah, I think I think a lot a lot of the things and this is this is something I'm saying a lot in the last 30 days is I use Google.

We see people like I'm so many people are like, How can I find this?

I'm like, You know, there's this thing called Google , and we have all the than we've ever had in the history of humanity that we know of.

And yet our ability to find simple answers.

It's amazing.

So schools have been integrating sustainability curriculum and and hands on experiences already armed with school So there's been salad bars, there's been workshops, school gardens, all over the Pacific Northwest and other cities because this came out in New York.

I mean, if you look at will and the growing , urban agriculture is not growing because people you know, like wanted to do it.

I think part of the reason that urban like during the Victory Garden that education was a part of on at home economics was a class in school right home.

How do you at home economically?

How do you manage the money and all those classes we're taking out of the schools?

Trade trade programs You don't make bumper stickers anymore.

You don't make T-shirts.

You learn how to drill things together because of and academic iodized.

It's not a word I know you have infused the high.

The high academy and replaced the high academy and the need for proof.

Instead of understanding and losing the connection with with , you know, how to farmers know that it's raining.

I do it all the time.

We were like, Oh, it's going to rain in five minutes.

How do you know that?

And then start training, say I'm a farmer I don't have a I didn't study the major sciences that failed in chemistry three times And yet I can still tell you when it's and how much it migraine.

Why?

Because I've been farming for twenty six years, so I think there's a traditional knowledge that's waiting to be unpacked.

I think kids already know that the Earth is jacked up and we got to fix it.

And I think a more application, like in Washington state, they have a thing called in its school Superintendent did it 10 years ago at an island It's called the C three program.

And it's, you know, like, you know, like quadruple bottom line, right?

It was triple what culture and spirit, which is the things that original people or traditional people start with.

First And it's the last thing that the Western economic model put into their their their model.

So now, regardless of how you got to it, now the dominant economic system now knows that spirit and culture is necessary.

So the infusion of these things easier, just like an equity plan.

We have to explain stuff to the dominant population, to the dominant academy.

It needs place based in people based community building works?

I don't know.

Well, let's do that.

So I've learned to have this conversation and to hold these these these types of engagements because it's critical for people to know that schools are have already integrated sustainability and recycling programs that work.

That's sustainability.

What we need to those things as a national emergency or a , you know, beyond just saying we're going to end obesity because you're of people are going to be irresponsible.

So how do we start to build social responsibility?

How do we now, But how do we integrate sustainability and civics sustainability in policy creation, sustainability and , you know, there is no climate change or there is no global warming OK, there may not be global warming, but something's is, let's look at the data.

It's also talk to the elders and the traditional, and let's work with the children.

Right Like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, I was in Chicago.

There's mandatory black white everybody.

The Boy Scouts.

Why did you that social network where I can go to a place and meet people from all over the world and we can talk about merit badges, environment?

It was a different, different militaristic, mild male, militaristic way to approach.

And that's the United You like that stuff.

I join the army.

I'm a veteran, so I served in Germany in the 80s on the border.

And those those things work better when the society is integrated and is put into the system like toilet water.

You know, everybody thinks you wake up in the morning and expect the toilet to flush.

We should do and and resilience from birth to death, we should be doing something in our society or have some part of it is integrated in our education system.

and highlighted as part of how you economics that at home economics.

Yeah, definitely And I appreciate sort of the practical skills and knowledge and social connections that you brought up.

Definitely super important for education.

Amazingly, I think out of time.

I'm sure we could talk for another two hours about this You could get some great talking to you both both Eddie and Rob and Eddie.

You're in Seattle in person today, right?

I am.

Yeah, I came up from Portland.

Appreciate that.

Thanks.

And from Africa 4:00 to 6:00 , Clark, I'll be over at Communion.

African-American Brown on 23rd Union or 24th in Union at the corner.

I'll be at the bar from with some space for folks.

If you want to come through between four and six o'clock tonight in Seattle, Yes, I'm here in Seattle and continue And you know, I think this has given us all a lot to think about today.

Or should I say to on the squeeze and one one pun there at the end?

But Rob Eddie, thanks so much for taking the time to talk today.

One final comment on sustainability.

new book just won an award, a Nautilus Book Award in the category of green and sustainability, so check it out Congratulations my graduations.

I'm a write a book now.

Well, yeah, so great having you both those great shock today.

Much appreciated Thank you.

Nice to meet you.

man.

Take care.

Okay.

Yeah.

And thank you all at home for joining us.

I hope you'll have a chance to enjoy some of the other fantastic sessions at the festival online.

And one, I want to recommend it one.

And I looking forward to is a session that's after this.

My colleagues Zoya Teirstein is a brilliant climate reporter and she's interviewing Elizabeth Kolbert, who's a famous environmental author with really interesting things to say.

And nature and whether we can engineer our way out of these problems.

that humans created.

So you can find the rest of the at Crosscut.com/festival, and I hope everyone has a great day