Enterprise Resilience Management Blog

Weeds and Biofuels -- A Warning

My most recent post about biofuels [Cultivating the Right Biofuel] focused on an article by Roger Cohen who is fearful that the connection between increased use of food grains for biofuel and rising food prices will cripple a promising industry that deserves to be fostered. I've written a couple of posts on the connection between rising food prices and the increased production of biofuels [Search for Oil Alternatives Pushes Food Prices Higher and Rising Food Prices take the World's Stage]. I made it clear in the latter post that using food sources to produce biofuel was only one of the reasons that food prices were rising. Cohen was pushing for the use of sugar cane as stock material for creating biofuel. Others have suggested using crops that have little or no potential as a food source [see my post The Potential of Pond Scum]. Some analysts are warning, however, that the search for a non-food source of biofuel could create havoc as well ["New Trend in Biofuels Has New Risks," by Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, 21 May 2008].

"In the past year, as the diversion of food crops like corn and palm to make biofuels has helped to drive up food prices, investors and politicians have begun promoting newer, so-called second-generation biofuels as the next wave of green energy. These, made from non-food crops like reeds and wild grasses, would offer fuel without the risk of taking food off the table, they said. But now, biologists and botanists are warning that they, too, may bring serious unintended consequences. Most of these newer crops are what scientists label invasive species — that is, weeds — that have an extraordinarily high potential to escape biofuel plantations, overrun adjacent farms and natural land, and create economic and ecological havoc in the process, they now say."

I suspect there are a lot of potential consequences from using arable land to grow crops for biofuels (be they a food or a non-food crop). It will take a lot of land to grow enough raw material to make a dent in the overall fuel market. Removing that much land from producing food stuffs isn't going to help lower food prices regardless of what is grown on that land. The hope, of course, is that second-generation biofuel crops can be grown on land that is unfit to grow food crops -- because weeds seem to grow everywhere. That is also the crux of the problem.

"At a United Nations meeting in Bonn, Germany, ... scientists from the Global Invasive Species Program, the Nature Conservancy and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as well as other groups, presented a paper with a warning about invasive species. 'Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive alien species,' the paper says, adding that these crops should be studied more thoroughly before being cultivated in new areas. Controlling the spread of such plants could prove difficult, the experts said, producing 'greater financial losses than gains.' The International Union for Conservation of Nature encapsulated the message like this: 'Don't let invasive biofuel crops attack your country.' To reach their conclusions, the scientists compared the list of the most popular second-generation biofuels with the list of invasive species and found an alarming degree of overlap. They said little evaluation of risk had occurred before planting."

Many areas of the United States could offer an earful about their unhappy experiences with invasive species of plants of animals. Nutria (large rat-like creatures), for example, were introduced from South America into the United States in the 1930s. They are now a major problem along the Gulf Coast where they damage vegetation and destroy habitat in wetlands. Zebra mussels, which were introduced into U.S. waters from Eurasia in 1988, compete with native species and clog pipes. They are now a problem throughout many of the river systems in mid-America and are continuing to spread. Hydrilla, a native African plant, was introduced into the United States in the 1960s. It crowds out native species and is a problem in most of the U.S. coastline states. Snakehead fish, Africanized bees, cane toads, fire ants, European Gypsy Moths, are just a few of the hundreds (if not thousands) of invasive species creating challenges in America. The point is, the caution being sounded by the analysts is probably justified. As expected, the biofuel industry claims they are crying "wolf."

"The biofuels industry said the risk of those crops morphing into weed problems is overstated, noting that proposed biofuel crops, while they have some potential to become weeds, are not plants that inevitably turn invasive. 'There are very few plants that are "weeds," full stop,' said Willy De Greef, incoming secretary general of EuropaBio, an industry group. 'You have to look at the biology of the plant and the environment where you're introducing it and ask, are there worry points here?' He said that biofuel farmers would inevitably introduce new crops carefully because they would not want growth they could not control."

The conservation analysts fear that growing pressure from governments and the potential for quick profits will push investors to move much more quickly to plant crops than is wise.

"The European Union and the United States have both instituted biofuel targets as a method to reduce carbon emissions. The European Union's target of 10 percent biofuel use in transportation by 2020 is binding. As such, politicians are anxiously awaiting the commercial perfection of second-generation biofuels. The European Union is funding a project to introduce the 'giant reed, a high-yielding, non-food plant into Europe Union agriculture,' according to its proposal. The reed is environmentally friendly and a cost-effective crop, poised to become the 'champion of biomass crops,' the proposal says. A proposed Florida biofuel plantation and plant, also using giant reed, has been greeted with enthusiasm by investors, its energy sold even before it is built. But the project has been opposed by the Florida Native Plants Society and a number of scientists because of its proximity to the Everglades, where giant reed overgrowth could be dangerous, they said. The giant reed, previously used mostly in decorations and in making musical instruments — is a fast-growing, thirsty species that has drained wetlands and clogged drainage systems in other places where it has been planted. It is also highly flammable and increases the risk of fires. ... Jatropha, the darling of the second-generation biofuels community, is now being cultivated widely in East Africa in brand new biofuel plantations. But jatropha has been recently banned by two Australian states as an invasive species. If jatropha, which is poisonous, overgrows farmland or pastures, it could be disastrous for the local food supply in Africa, experts said. But Mr. De Greef said jatropha had little weed potential in most areas, adding: 'Just because a species has caused a problem in one place doesn’t make it a weed everywhere.'"

The tension between those promoting biofuels and those who see biofuels creating challenges of their own is bound to continue. There does appear, however, to be some room for compromise.

"From a business perspective, the good thing about second-generation biofuel crops is that they are easy to grow and need little attention. But that is also what creates their invasive potential. 'These are tough survivors, which means they're good producers for biofuel because they grow well on marginal land that you wouldn't use for food,' Dr. Howard said. 'But we've had 100 years of experience with introductions of these crops that turned out to be disastrous for environment, people, health.' Stas Burgiel, a scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said the cost of controlling invasive species is immense and generally not paid by those who created the problem. But he and other experts emphasized that some of the second-generation biofuel crops could still be safe if introduced into the right places and under the right conditions. 'With biofuels we need to do proper assessments and take appropriate measures so they don't get out of the gate, so to speak,' he said. That assessment, he added, must take a broad geographical perspective since invasive species don't respect borders."

Rosenthal reports that the annual cost of trying to control invasive species is roughly $1.4 trillion (or about 5 percent of the global economy). That figure alone should inspire politicians to regulate closely what kind of crops they permit to be grown for biofuel production. With oil prices continuing to set records and some analysts now predicting a barrel of crude will top $200, those calling for a "go slow" approach may find their pleas for caution falling on deaf ears.

Generating Hydroelectricity without Dams

With energy prices continuing to skyrocket and concerns about climate change grabbing headlines and Nobel Peace prizes, you would think that potential breakthroughs in alternative energy technologies would get more notice. According to an article in The Economist ["End of a dammed nuisance," 8 March 2008 print edition], "A new generation of free-standing turbines promises to liberate hydroelectric power from its dependence on dams." That's good news for both developed and developing countries.

"Even in today's more environmentally conscious times, hydroelectric dams are often unwelcome. Although the power they generate is renewable and appears not to produce greenhouse-gas emissions, there are lots of bad things about them. Blocking a river with a dam blocks the movement both of fish upstream to spawn and of silt downstream to fertilise fields. The vegetation overwhelmed by the rising waters decays to form methane—a far worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The capital cost is huge. And people are often displaced to make way for the new lake. The question, therefore, is whether there is a way to get the advantages of hydropower without the drawbacks. And the answer is that there may be."

China's Three Gorges Dam is an interesting case to look at when discussing the benefits and drawbacks of building dams to generate hydroelectric power. When completed and in full operation, the dam is expected to generate nearly 85 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. That energy is equivalent to burning 50 million tons of coal or 25 million tons of crude oil.  It will annually keep 100 million tons of carbon dioxide, nearly two million tons of sulfur dioxide, ten thousand tons of carbon monoxide, 370, 0000 tons of nitrogen oxide and 150,000 tons of dust out of the atmosphere.  The cost savings (even before oil and coal prices started to rise dramatically) were estimated to equal the costs of the project within three years of full operation.  Additionally, the availability of all that power was expected to create millions of desperately needed jobs. That's the up side. The down side includes the fact that hundreds of factories (built on land that has been covered by the lake created by the dam) either closed permanently or had to be rebuilt elsewhere. Over a million people had to be relocated and hundreds of towns, some historically significant, were buried under water. Additionally, nearly 31,000 hectares of farmland was lost to the reservoir in a country already suffering from a severe shortage of arable land. [see TED Case Studies: The Grand Canal and the Three Gorges Dam: A Historical Comparison]

Wouldn't it be grand, innovators thought, if one could achieve the benefits of hydroelectric power without the drawbacks of having to build a dam and create an artificial lake.

"The purpose of a dam is twofold: to house the turbines that create the electricity and to provide a sufficient head of water pressure to drive them efficiently. If it were possible to develop a turbine that did not need such a water-head to operate, and that could sit in the riverbed, then a dam would be unnecessary. Such turbines could also be put in places that could not be dammed—the bottom of the sea, for example. And that is what is starting to happen, with the deployment of free-standing underwater turbines."

Sounds too good to be true doesn't it. Well, in some ways it is.

"The big disadvantage of free-standing turbines is that they are less efficient than turbines in dams at turning the kinetic energy of moving water into electricity. They are also subject to more wear and tear than turbines protected by huge amounts of concrete. They can be hard to reach for repairs and maintenance. And their generators, being electrical machines, must be protected from the water that surrounds the rest of the turbine. A discouraging list. But in the past three decades computing power has became cheaper, helping developers to simulate the behaviour of water and turbine blades—something that is hard to do with paper, pen and formulas. Moreover, prototypes can be built directly from the computer models. All this has helped scientists and industry to solve the inherent problems of free-standing turbines."

The article then goes on to describe three different models of free-standing turbines that are getting attention. Each tackles the problems mentioned above in a slightly different way.

"The first new design was by Alexander Gorlov, a Russian civil engineer who worked on the Aswan High Dam in Egypt. He later moved to America where, with the financial assistance of the Department of Energy, he produced the first prototype of a turbine that could extract power from free-flowing currents 'without building any dam'. The Gorlov Helical Turbine, as it is known, allows you to use any stream, whatever the direction of its flow. The vertical helical structure, which gives the device its name, provides a stability that previous designs lacked. It is also relatively efficient, extracting 35% of the energy from a stream. In addition, since the shaft is vertical, the electric generator can be installed at the top, above the water—so there is no need for any waterproof boxes. In 2001 Mr Gorlov won the Edison patent award for his invention, and his turbines have now been commercialised by Lucid Energy Technologies, an American company. They are being tested in pilot projects in both South Korea and North America."

Output, of course, depends on the size of the turbine and the amount of potential energy in the "stream." Normally, one doesn't think of "streams" as having much potential -- one thinks of fast-flowing "rivers." For small villages situated along "streams," a few of these turbines might produce enough energy to satisfy their needs. At least that is the implication I get from the article's use of the word "stream."

"A second design is by Philippe Vauthier, another immigrant to America, who was originally a Swiss jeweller. The turbines made by his company, UEK, are anchored on a submerged platform. They are able to align themselves in the current like windsocks at an aerodrome, so that they find the best position for power generation. Being easy to install and maintain, they are being used in remote areas of developing countries."

UEK (which stands for Underwater Electric Kite) admits that its turbine requires a river (or ocean currents or a significant tidal flow) to generate electricity. Since it can swivel, the UEK turbine can take advantage of both ebbing and flowing tidal currents.

"Finally, a design by OpenHydro, an Irish company, is not just a new kind of turbine but also a new design of underwater electric generator. Generators (roughly speaking) consist of magnets moving relative to coils. So why not attach the magnets directly to the external, rotating parts of the turbine? The coils are then housed in an outer rim that encloses the rotating blades. And there is a large circular gap at the centre of the blades, which is safer for marine life. In addition, OpenHydro's generators do not need lubricant, which considerably reduces the need for maintenance."

OpenHydro's turbines are quite large and, according to company's web site, are designed to be deployed directly on the seabed (no mention of riverbeds). The article concludes:

"These new designs, combined with growing interest in renewable-energy technologies among investors, mean that funding is now flowing into a previously neglected field. According to New Energy Finance, a specialist consultancy, investments in companies planning to build or deploy free-standing turbines have increased from $13m in 2004 to $156m in 2007. Projects already under way include the installation by American Verdant Power of a tidal turbine in the East River in New York, and UEK, OpenHydro and Canadian Clean Current are operating pilot projects in Nova Scotia. And that, proponents of the technology believe, will just be the beginning. Soon, they hope, many more investors will be searching for treasures buried on the seabed—or, to be precise, in the water flowing just above it."

One of the advantages of these systems is that they can be situated close to the populations or businesses they serve; dramatically cutting down on the expense of building distribution systems. This is particularly important for remote areas near fast flowing bodies of water. A quick perusal of the businesses' web sites reveals that the industry remains in its infancy. It will be an interesting sector to watch as it matures. It also underscores the fact that science and technology remain extremely important if we are to meet current and future challenges in a responsible way.

Infrastructure and Disease

The crisis created by the cyclone that recently slammed the Myanmar coast highlights once again the importance of certain critical infrastructures. In my discussions about Development-in-a-Box™, I continually stress the importance of certain types of infrastructure (most of them having to do with building the foundation of a good business climate). One too oft neglected area that needs to be addressed is basic sanitation. Myanmar's junta has admitted that the victims of the cyclone need clean water or thousands more will likely die. Clean water is certainly part of the critical infrastructure that people need whether in crisis or not. They also need to be able to deal with human waste. Rose George, author of the forthcoming book The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times that shines a light on subject that many people find distasteful ["Send in the Latrines," 19 May 2008].

"It's the rainy season in Myanmar. It's also cholera season. When Cyclone Nargis arrived [at Myanmar's shores], the waters it unleashed destroyed houses and killed people and livestock. The storm also devastated other things that haven't made the headlines, but that can mean the difference between life and death: toilets. Even before the cyclone, 75 percent of Burmese had no latrines. Like some 2.6 billion other people worldwide, they do their business by roadsides, on train tracks or wherever they can. But the few latrines that did exist in the Irrawaddy Delta are now flooded or flattened, and their contents have seeped into already filthy waters. So what? There are other priorities, aren't there? Food, shelter and clean water are what aid agencies emphasize."

George, of course, knows the facts. She explains the "so what" in very descriptive terms.

"Human excrement is a weapon of mass destruction. A gram of human feces can contain up to 10 million viruses. At least 50 communicable diseases — including cholera, meningitis and typhoid — travel from host to host in human excrement. It doesn't take much: a small child, maybe, who plays in soil where people have been defecating, then dips his fingers in the family rice pot. The aftermath of a disaster like Cyclone Nargis — with masses of weakened people on the move — is a communicable disease paradise. The priority is containment. That's as fancy as it sounds: With the water table only 20 centimeters below the surface in Myanmar, it is little use to dig pit latrines, so buckets or tanks for human waste are needed instead. Providing such things is made harder by the refusal of Myanmar's government to accept help. And it is also hampered by our unwillingness to even talk about it."

George understands that those of us fortunate enough to live in developed areas with indoor plumbing and functioning sewage systems seldom give thought to such things. In undeveloped areas, however, relieving oneself is literally a matter of life and death.

"As Steven Pinker recently wrote in 'The Stuff of Thought,' the vocabulary of excretion has sneaked in and taken the taboo place previously held by religious words, and this switch parallels the rise of sewers and the sanitizing of excrement. A substance common to us all, and as vital to life as breathing, has become unspeakable, and particularly in the polite and powerful circles that could do something about its deadly effects. There's no place for squeamishness when — even without complicated and difficult disasters like Myanmar's — diarrhea trails only pneumonia as the biggest killer of small children in the world, greater than tuberculosis, AIDS or malaria, in numbers equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every hour."

George's sense of anger and frustration clearly comes through her every paragraph. She feels the same sense of frustration that anyone would feel who is screaming at the top of their lungs and still can't attract anyone's attention.

"Humanitarian aid agencies use the shorthand 'watsan' to stand for 'water and sanitation.' There's a reason those two words aren't in alphabetical order, and it's not poetry. When it comes to prioritizing aid, water has always received the lion's share of attention and money. Eddy Perez, a sanitation expert at the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Program, often shows an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito from the film 'Twins.' One represents water and the other sanitation, and he doesn't have to spell out which is which. Most developing countries spend less than 0.5 percent of their gross domestic product on watsan, and only 12 percent to 15 percent of that in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa goes to sanitation, according to the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report. Celebrities like Matt Damon and Jay-Z line up to talk about water. Shiny taps and clean water make good pictures. I've never seen a movie star pictured in front of a new latrine, though it can double its user's life span."

George, of course, is not arguing that housing, clean water, and food aren't important. They are. But so is sanitation. She also knows that sanitation is critical for development, not just in mitigating the consequences of natural disasters.

"Of course food and water are crucial. But feces can undermine both. If people are eating fecal particles, no amount of high-energy biscuits will make them well. In poor countries, diarrhea is the reason you find malnourished children in well-fed families. It's why millions of girls drop out of school, and why millions of dollars' worth of productivity is lost from workers sick with this week's bout of dysentery. Good disposal of human excreta can reduce diarrhea by 40 percent. Washing hands reduces it still further. Health economists reckon that every dollar invested in sanitation can save $7 on health costs and lost productivity. No wonder the readers of The British Medical Journal last year voted sanitation the greatest medical milestone ever, over penicillin and anesthesia."

When businesses start operating in low cost countries, it is not surprising that some of them help pay for "watsan" infrastructure. Their motives are not altogether altruistic. Businesses require healthy and productive workers in order to become or remain profitable. The return on investment in "watsan" projects is pretty good. George concludes:

"This year, the International Year of Sanitation, is a fine time to address a pointless and damaging conversational taboo. Solving sanitation is about more than semantics. But our refusal to talk about it says something about us, and none of it good."

Proper disposal of human excrement is important for the dignity of people. This is especially true in crowded urban areas. The lowest classes of society have often been required to deal with the excrement of those considered to hold a higher station. This has undoubtedly contributed to the fact that sanitation simply isn't discussed in proper society. Human dignity, however, is a subject that should be discussed.

Machine -- Heal Thyself

One desired feature of a resilient system is the ability to heal itself. Some animals escape from danger by shedding their tails once in a predator's grasp. This strategy would only work once if nature hadn't equipped them with the ability to regrow the lost appendage. Sharks wouldn't be able to use their slash and tear dining technique if new teeth weren't lined up to replace those lost during feeding. Although humans can't spontaneously regenerate lost limbs, they are capable of healing small wounds and recovering from most diseases. The search for self-healing inanimate systems is ongoing but not new. Designers for tire and fuel bladder manufacturers, for example, have managed to create systems that seal themselves when punctured. New materials are being developed that are capable of repairing themselves when damaged ["A healing balm," The Economist, 8 March 2008 print edition].

"One of the differences between animals and machines is that animal bodies can repair a lot of the damage that a cruel and hostile world inflicts on them. A machine, by contrast, has to wait for someone to come and fix it. But that may change if researchers in the field of self-repairing materials have their way. Two groups in particular—one in America and one in Britain—are trying to create composite materials that mend themselves if they get cracked, in much the same way that an animal's broken bone heals itself. The difference is that these materials will heal in minutes rather than months."

It doesn't take much imagination to understand how such materials could be used in all sorts of settings from aviation to automobiles. The cost of such material will like be cost prohibitive for most day-to-day uses, but they could prove cost effective when used in high risk, high cost system components.

"Such self-healing composites may take a while to enter everyday use. But if they can be made reliably they will be welcome in high-stress applications that are difficult to inspect regularly (the blades of wind turbines, for example) or are critical to safety (such as the doors and window-frames of aircraft)."

The approach being researched by the American team centers around embedding tiny capsules of "medicine" that are released when damage occurs.

"Jeffrey Moore and his colleagues at the University of Illinois are working on the problem by adding extra components to their composites. Like most such materials, these composites consist of fibres (in this instance, carbon fibres) embedded in a plastic matrix (an epoxy resin). The main extra component added by Dr Moore is a sprinkling of tiny capsules containing a chemical called dicyclopentadiene. If the composite cracks, the capsules near the crack break open and release the dicyclopentadiene molecules, which link together to form another type of plastic that binds the crack together and thus heals the material. To start with, Dr Moore had to nurse this process along by adding a second extra component—a catalyst based on ruthenium. This worked well in the laboratory, but ruthenium is too expensive for mass deployment. However, when he was playing with solvents that might be added to the system to speed the transfer of the dicyclopentadiene to the cracks it is intended to heal, he found a solvent that encouraged the process to work without the ruthenium catalyst. Alas, the solvent Dr Moore hit on, chlorobenzene, is pretty nasty stuff (it is used, for example, in the manufacture of DDT). But he has since found a suitable alternative that turns out to be even better. The chlorobenzene process restored only 80% of a material's original toughness. The new solvents restore it completely."

The British approach also encapsulates healing substances within their composite material, but in a very different manner than the U.S. team.

"Ian Bond and his colleagues at the University of Bristol's department of aerospace engineering are taking a slightly different approach. They use glass fibres rather than carbon fibres in their composite and, instead of adding capsules, they have put the healing molecules into the fibres themselves. The molecules in question are the two ingredients of epoxy resin. Half the fibres contain one ingredient and half contain the other. A crack in the material breaks the fibres, releasing the ingredients which react, form more epoxy, and thus mend the crack. The advantage of this approach is that it retains the basic fibre-plus-matrix structure of the material. Adding capsules changes that and risks weakening it. The disadvantage is that capsules are easier (and therefore cheaper) to make than hollow, fluid-filled fibres."

Like analysts who raise questions about an injured athlete returning to play in a big game, those who must rely on the effectiveness of critical self-healing composites are likely to raise questions about whether the system is as sound (i.e., healthy) as it was before the injury occurred. Unlike an athlete, who can tell those around him how he feels, composite materials don't currently have a way of notifying operators they have recovered from an injury. Researchers are working on that problem as well.

"Whichever system is adopted (and both might be, for different applications), two further things are needed. One is a way of checking that a component really has healed. The other is a way to top up the healing molecules once some of them have been used. Dr Bond thinks that one way to make healed 'wounds' obvious would be to add a bit of colour. A repaired area would, in effect, develop a bruise. Topping up the supply of healing fluid might be done by mimicking another biological system—the network of blood capillaries that supplies living tissues with the stuff they need to thrive. Both Dr Moore and Dr Bond are attempting to borrow from nature this way. If they succeed, the machines of the future will have longer and healthier lives."

The problem of making healed wounds visible seems easier to solve than the challenge of regenerating the healing mechanism itself. The "blood capillaries" approach, it seems to me, suffers from the fact that the healed wound basically forms a clot in the system preventing the flow of new chemicals. Materials scientists aren't the only researchers looking to create self-healing systems. IT system designers are also interested in creating systems that can detect and correct defects. These would be software solutions to system disruptions. I don't know how far in the future such systems will be found, but I'm sure they are coming. When they arrive, the world will be a more resilient place.

Memorial Day

Today in the United States Memorial Day is being celebrated across the breadth of the land. It is better known as the beginning of the summer vacation season than it is for the reason it was first celebrated -- to remember the war dead from the U.S. Civil War and eventually all wars. It was meant to be a day of somber reflection and reconciliation. When I was a child, I can remember the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) selling red artificial poppies around Memorial Day to help raise money for veterans. Although the VFW still sells them, I don't see as many people buying and wearing them. It seems to be a practice that has died as Memorial Day has become more of a "holiday" than a "holy day." The tradition of the poppies was the begun Moina Michael, a U.S. citizen who, who was inspired by a 1915 poem written by Jack McCrae titled "In Flanders Fields."  The last line of that poem reads: "If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields." Later that same year, Ms. Michael penned:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

On a web site by David Merchant that provides the history of Memorial Day, he writes:

"She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need. Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms.Michael and when she returned to France, made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries. In 1921, the Franco-American Children's League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the VFW for help. Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans' organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later their "Buddy" Poppy program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans."

Andy Rooney, once a war correspondent but now more famous for his 60 Minutes diatribes, remarked on yesterday's program that Memorial Day would truly be a day to celebrate if it marked the day when the world was able to end war and spare the lives of all the children who would have died had conflict not ceased. I fear that day is a long way off. So take a moment today and spare a thought for the valiant men and women who have been asked to sacrifice their blood on battlefields at home and abroad. Then help work for a brighter future in which promising lives need not be lost and hopeful dreams need not go unfulfilled.

Patents and Plants

The current global food crisis -- created by the confluence of climate change, high oil prices, and more people able to afford more food -- has both corporations and academia scrambling to find strains of popular food sources that will yield larger harvests, resist the vagaries of climate change, and repel damaging insects. The differences are the motivations that drive each group. The corporations are looking to lock up profits, while many researchers are motivated by the science and the good it can accomplish. Washington Post staff writer Rick Weiss reports that large agricultural firms are scurrying to file patents for gene lines that could lead to breakthroughs (and secure themselves a lucrative long-term future) ["Firms Seek Patents on 'Climate Ready' Altered Crops," 13 May 2008].

"A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming, according to a report being released today. Three companies -- BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St. Louis -- have filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of the climate-related gene families submitted to patent offices worldwide, according to the report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, an activist organization that advocates for subsistence farmers. The applications say that the new 'climate ready' genes will help crops survive drought, flooding, saltwater incursions, high temperatures and increased ultraviolet radiation -- all of which are predicted to undermine food security in coming decades. Company officials dismissed the report's contention that the applications amount to an intellectual-property 'grab,' countering that gene-altered plants will be crucial to solving world hunger but will never be developed without patent protections."

While pockets of resistance to genetically-altered plants remain, most analysts agree that genetically-altered plants will play a crucial role in helping feed the world in the decades ahead. A bigger question is whether companies should be able to patent entire gene lines as opposed to specific hybrid plants. Corporate justifications for seeking broad patents that claim hybrid plants would "never be developed without patent protections" ring hollow.

"Many of the world's poorest countries, destined to be hit hardest by climate change, have rejected biotech crops, citing environmental and economic concerns. Importantly, gene patents generally preclude the age-old practice of saving seeds from a harvest for replanting, requiring instead that farmers purchase the high-tech seeds each year. The ETC report concludes that biotech giants are hoping to leverage climate change as a way to get into resistant markets, and it warns that the move could undermine public-sector plant-breeding institutions such as those coordinated by the United Nations and the World Bank, which have long made their improved varieties freely available. 'When a market is dominated by a handful of large multinational companies, the research agenda gets biased toward proprietary products,' said Hope Shand, ETC's research director. 'Monopoly control of plant genes is a bad idea under any circumstance. During a global food crisis, it is unacceptable and has to be challenged.'"

The same arguments are being made in the medical field where companies are patenting human genes. It's an emotional and moral issue as well as an economic one. The companies are well aware that their public images are likely to suffer as a result of their actions; however, the potential profits are so large they're willing to risk it. Some companies are making token efforts to mitigate the public relations risk.

"Ranjana Smetacek, a spokeswoman for Monsanto, said companies deserve praise for developing crop varieties that will survive climate change. 'I think everyone recognizes that the old traditional ways just aren't able to address these new challenges. The problems in Africa are pretty severe,' she said, noting that Monsanto and BASF are participating in a project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop drought-resistant corn that would be made available to farmers in four southern African countries royalty-free. 'We aim to be at once generous and also cognizant of our obligation to shareholders who have paid for our research,' Smetacek said."

The time is quickly coming when all of the gene lines for food plants and animals as well as humans will be patented. The likely result will be less research not more.

"Gene patents allow companies to limit others from marketing those genes. The 35-page ETC report, 'Patenting the "Climate Genes" ... and Capturing the Climate Agenda,' documents about 530 applications for climate-related plant genes filed at patent offices in the past five years. A few dozen patents have been issued; hundreds of others are pending. Of the 55 major gene families at the heart of those applications, BASF filed 21, the report says. Other major players include Syngenta, seven; Monsanto, six; and Bayer of Germany, five. Among the report's concerns is the breadth of many applications. Protective genes are usually discovered in one variety of plant, and after minimal testing they are presumed to be useful in others, Shand said. In one typical case, a BASF patent claim for a gene to tolerate 'environmental stress' seeks to preclude competitors from using that gene in 'maize, wheat, rye, oat, triticale, rice, barley, soybean, peanut, cotton, rapeseed, canola, manihot, pepper, sunflower, tagetes, solanaceous plants, potato, tobacco, eggplant, tomato, Vicia species, pea, alfalfa, coffee, cacao, tea, Salix species, oil palm, coconut, perennial grass and a forage crop plant.' Publicly funded developers of freely accessible plant varieties could succumb to biotech's market dominance, the report warns."

The fact that there is publicly funded crop research ongoing undermines corporate arguments that climate resistance plants would "never be developed without patent protections." Unfortunately, some of these publicly funded developers are already conceding defeat.

"One of the biggest is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which runs 15 research centers worldwide and is funded by several international aid organizations. CGIAR has long emphasized non-biotech breeding to develop varieties ideal for subsistence farmers and their local conditions. Facing big budget cuts from its traditional funders, CGIAR is now a central player in the Gates-funded collaboration with Monsanto and BASF -- a project that a CGIAR spokesman defended as a 'global public good.'"

One thing is for sure, crops that emerge from the use of a patented gene are not going to help reduce food prices -- there's no profit in that.

"Experts said that both sides have oversimplified the pros and cons of biotech crop patents. 'I don't mind Monsanto developing these tools. I mind that we don't have an economic ecology that lets other companies compete with them,' said Richard Jefferson, founder and chief executive of Cambia, a nonprofit institute based in Australia that helps companies worldwide sort through patent holdings so they can build on one another's work instead of stymieing one another. Under the current system for patenting genes, he said, 'the little guys shake out and the big guys end up in a place a lot like a cartel.' Jefferson characterized the ETC report as extreme in its anti-corporate views but praised it for drawing attention to what he said is a real problem of corporate consolidation in the seed industry. Happily, he said, patent offices are 'getting a lot better' about not allowing overly broad gene patents. Jonathan Bryant, managing director of BASF's U.S. division, said plants have tens of thousands of genes, most of them unexplored. 'I think there's still plenty of opportunity for many companies and institutions,' he said. 'We're all looking to bring our technology together for a common good.'"

That last statement reminds me of Jack Nicholson's line in "Mars Attacks" -- something like, "Can't we all just get along?" Speaking about getting along, an article in the New York Times reveals how you can get involved in climate resistance plant research ["Join the Hunt for Super-Rice," by Steve Lohr, 14 May 2008]. Lohr writes:

"There is no quick fix to the world food crisis, but a project getting underway [14 May 2008] could make a difference in the long run. A team of researchers at the University of Washington are putting a genomics project on the World Community Grid in the computational search for strains of rice that have traits like higher yields, disease resistance and a wider range of nutrients. Ram Samudrala, the principal investigator at the University of Washington, describes the goal of the project as the pursuit of 'super hybrids.' The purpose is to hasten the pace of modern rice genetics, which since the 1960s has delivered a series of new strains, starting with higher-yielding semidwarf varieties, a breakthrough that was hailed as the Green Revolution. But the demand — all those mouths to feed — keeps rising. Rice is the main staple food for more than half the world's population. In Asia alone, more than two billion people get up to 70 percent of their dietary energy from rice."

So how can you help? Get connected to the World Community Grid.

"The World Community Grid, begun in 2004, gives selected humanitarian scientific projects access to massive computing resources. It taps the unused computing cycles of nearly one million computers around the world — much like SETI@home, the best-known distributed computing effort, which claims it has harnessed more than 3 million PCs in the search for extraterrestrial life. The World Community Grid places a small piece of software on your PC that taps your unused computing cycles and combines them with others to create a virtual supercomputer. Its equivalent computing power would make it the world’s third-largest supercomputer, according to I.B.M., which has donated the hardware, software and technical expertise for the project. Like so many sciences, molecular biology and genetics are being transformed by the use of computational tools. 'This project is an excellent fit for the World Community Grid, both the science and the mission,' said Joseph M. Jasinski, director of healthcare and life sciences research at I.B.M."

According to Steve Hamm, using the World Community Grid (created by IBM in 2004 as part of its corporate responsibility program) will allow the University of Washington group to find answers 100 to 200 times faster (in years rather than centuries) had they been restricted to using school computers alone ["IBM's Answer to the Food Crisis," BusinessWeek, 14 May 2008]. Hamm writes:

"By tapping a cluster of nearly 1 million PCs scattered around the world, the researchers hope to develop more nutritious, robust strains of rice sooner by completing complex genetic calculations in just one or two years. Those calculations might have taken 200 years if left to the school's computers. The University of Washington approach centers are breeding new strains of rice based on the results of the research."

Lohr concluded his article with an explanation of how the World Community Grid will be used.

"The grid will run a three-dimensional modeling program created by the computational biologists at the University of Washington to study the structures of the proteins that make up the building blocks of rice. Understanding the structures provides clues to their functions, interactions between the molecular parts and how certain desired traits are expressed. But the computing, which should last a year or two, takes the search only so far, noted Mr. Samudrala. It speeds along the study of 30,000 to 60,000 protein structures and the selection of rice strains to breed. But the super-hybrids must still be developed in greenhouses in places like the famed International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. 'In the end, it's still all breeding, but what we're doing should make it more targeted and productive,' said Mr. Samudrala."

Ultimately, it will likely be a race between the "for profits" and the "non-profits" to see who can patent the most genes. This places an important burden on the various national patent agencies. It also places a burden on an informed public to keep apprised of what is happening in this area. Unfortunately, the public outcry about food security often begins with lone voices in the developing world where those most affected have the least means of doing something about their predicament. Gene research is a complicated subject. It remains on the cutting edge of science and it is undoubtedly costly to conduct. As a businessman, I can understand why companies involved in such research deserve to profit from their labors. As part of the larger human race, I can also understand why people want to ensure that the common good is best served as we move forward. Compromises and accommodations are likely to be made as public/private partnerships are forged in an effort to ensure the world's food security.

Coming to America

The recent raid of a kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa, that netted more than 300 illegal immigrants working there reminds us that the debate about immigration is likely to remain a hot topic as America moves into the next phase of the presidential election ["Hundreds Are Arrested in U.S. Sweep of Meat Plant," by Susan Saulny, New York Times, 13 May 2008]. The raid also highlights the significant effects that such enforcement can have on local, national, and international economies.

"The plant has 800 to 900 people and is the country's largest producer of meat that is glatt kosher, widely regarded as the highest standard of cleanliness. The plant shut temporarily. ... Among people ...in Postville, 'there is a lot of fear,' said Prof. Mark A. Grey, who focuses on immigration at the University of Northern Iowa. 'It's absolutely devastating to the local economy,' Professor Grey said. ... According to Menachem Lubinsky, the editor of Kosher Today and a marketing consultant, AgriProcessors provides 60 percent of the kosher retail meat and 40 percent of the kosher poultry nationally, and most retail chains depend on it for supply. Mr. Lubinsky said the company was also the sole American packing plant whose products are accepted in Israel."

Undoubtedly, most of the illegal workers caught in the raid were from Mexico or countries south. According to an article in the Washington Post, immigrants from Mexico have less earning power and are the least educated immigrant group in America ["Study Says Foreigners In U.S. Adapt Quickly," by N.C. Aizenman, 13 May 2008]. As a result they end up in manpower intensive industries such as meat packing, agriculture, and construction -- backbreaking work where openings often go unfilled because enough willing employees cannot be found.

"Modern-day immigrants arrive with substantially lower levels of English ability and earning power than those who entered during the last great immigration wave at the turn of the 20th century. The gap between today's foreign-born and native populations remains far wider than it was in the early 1900s and is particularly large in the case of Mexican immigrants, the report said."

The news is not all bad, however. Aizenman reports that immigrants are actually assimilating faster than they did in the past.

"Immigrants of the past quarter-century have been assimilating in the United States at a notably faster rate than did previous generations, according to a study released today. ... The study, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank, used census and other data to devise an assimilation index to measure the degree of similarity between the United States' foreign-born and native-born populations. These included civic factors, such as rates of U.S. citizenship and service in the military; economic factors, such as earnings and rates of homeownership; and cultural factors, such as English ability and degree of intermarriage with U.S. citizens. The higher the number on a 100-point index, the more an immigrant resembled a U.S. citizen."

Of the top ten immigrant groups, Canadian immigrants assimilate the best (no surprise there) and Mexican immigrants assimilate the least. Undoubtedly, the fact that there are large Latino populations in many areas of the U.S. means that Spanish speakers don't have to assimilate quickly to get along. Judging by the data, however, just "getting along" means having many fewer opportunities to improve one's quality of life than those who assimilate.

"In general, the longer an immigrant lives in the United States, the more characteristics of native citizens he or she tends to take on, said Jacob L. Vigdor, a professor at Duke University and author of the study. During periods of intense immigration, such as from 1870 to 1920, or during the immigration wave that began in the 1970s, new arrivals tend to drag down the average assimilation index of the foreign-born population as a whole. The report found, however, that the speed with which new arrivals take on native-born traits has increased since the 1990s. As a result, even though the foreign population doubled during that period, the newcomers did not drive down the overall assimilation index of the foreign-born population. Instead, it held relatively steady from 1990 to 2006. 'This is something unprecedented in U.S. history,' Vigdor said. 'It shows that the nation's capacity to assimilate new immigrants is strong.' A possible explanation, Vigdor said, was that the economic expansion of the 1990s created more job opportunities at all levels, speeding the economic integration of immigrants. It could also be that because today's immigrants begin at such a low starting point, 'it's easier to make progress to the next level up' of integration than it would be if the immigrant had to improve on an already high level of integration."

Frankly, that the U.S. has a strong capacity to assimilate new immigrants is a bit surprising based on the increasingly shrill attention given to the 12 million illegal immigrants living in America. It is difficult for many people to disassociate their negative feelings for illegal immigrants from their feelings about immigrants in general. The fact that presidential candidate John McCain had to abandon his relatively compassionate immigration bill in order to secure his party's nomination is a sign of the xenophobic tension tugging at America's heartland.

"Vigdor also said his findings included cause for concern: most notably, the fact that the 2006 assimilation index of 28 is less than the previous low point of 42 in 1920. The difference indicates the substantial change in the composition of today's immigrants compared with earlier immigration waves. Although new arrivals at the turn of the 20th century were most likely to be eastern and southern Europeans, he said, 'one of the top five origin countries was England, and close to 100 percent of them spoke English.' By contrast, the majority of immigrants today are Mexicans and other Latin Americans, with the next largest share coming from a range of developing nations with languages other than English. The overall assimilation index also masks big differences between immigrants from certain countries. Mexicans, for example have an index of 13, while Vietnamese were at 41. And although immigrants who arrived as children tend to be nearly identical to their U.S.-born counterparts, apart from their lower rates of citizenship, those who come from Mexico are less assimilated and have higher incidences of teenage pregnancy and incarceration."

Vigdor attributes much the lack of Latino assimilation to the fact that those in the U.S. illegally have many paths to assimilation cut off to them. Culturally, he points out, they actually assimilate better than immigrants from India or China (although they rank beneath those groups in economic assimilation -- with a score of 66 out of a 100 compared to 96 and 90 respectively). Assimilation is a critical factor in advancing globalization and assuring a healthy economic climate. Emotions are likely to color the immigration debates in the U.S. and elsewhere (such as recent attacks on immigrants in South Africa), which will make passing sensible immigration legislation more difficult. No country can long tolerate a flood of illegal immigration -- the security risks are too high and enforcement costs pose an unmeasured, but negative, tax on the economy. A satisfactory U.S. plan for dealing with this challenge has yet to emerge. When it does, it will undoubtedly be a compromise proposal that makes no one entirely happy.

A Marketplace for Ideas

In March 2007, I wrote a post entitled Dating Game for Innovation. The focus of that post was UTEK, a technology matchmaking company that provides researchers an outlet for their ideas and companies a way to outsource innovation by providing access to a database of more than 35,000 discoveries. Anne Eisenberg, writing in the New York Times, reports on a similar effort to get companies and innovators together ["A Buyer’s Guide to Inventions, in Plain English," 11 May 2008].

"Inventors and companies like to court each other. Inventors need companies to move their ideas forward, and companies need inventions to help their businesses grow. But suitors sometimes have trouble finding that perfect partner. Now a Web-based service under development, the USA National Innovation Marketplace, offers a new tool intended to help with the matchmaking. The marketplace is an online registry that will have descriptions of inventions for browsing by prospective buyers."

So far, the service sounds a lot like UTEK. Here's the twist.

"Before inventions are listed, the registry will provide in-person or online workshops to help inventors recast their often technical prose in jargon-free descriptions for the business and industrial customers that are expected to shop at the site."

That might sound simple, but it's not. People like Brian Greene, who wrote The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, make good livings explaining difficult things to non-technical people. It's the same reason that the "... for Dummies" series of books have done so well.

"The registry and its translation service are the brainchild of Doug Hall, chief executive of Eureka Ranch Technology, a consulting firm in Cincinnati. It has developed workshops over the last five years for transforming the language of patent abstracts and other arcana into simpler prose. Mr. Hall said listings for the marketplace would have prose makeovers to ensure quick, easy perusal by the intended readership. 'Most people in business simply don't have the time and resources to translate the language of difficult-to-understand technologies into real products that consumers will buy,' he said. 'It's one of the business buyer's biggest problems.' The listings will have other improvements, too, he said. Company software will evaluate the invention's probable cost to the buyer before the first sale as well as other business angles, and add the information to the capsule description."

According to Eisenberg, inventors will bear the brunt of the costs associated with the registry.

"Inventors will pay a fee for the listing of no more than $2,000, Mr. Hall said. The registry, which will be at www.planeteureka.com, will not open officially until April 2009, but Mr. Hall says he has received many inquiries both from prospective buyers and sellers."

This is a very different business model than that used by UTEK, which pays research labs for licensing rights to its discovery. It then sells those rights to its customers for shares of stock, which UTEK agrees to hold for one year. UTEK sees this as a high risk/high payoff model. Planet Eureka is much more conservative financial approach, but inventors can negotiate high risk/high payoff deals on their own.

"Lesa Mitchell, a vice president at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., says she thinks the registry has tremendous possibilities. 'Mr. Hall understands that there is a lot of innovation lying dormant that could be packaged so that the commercial marketplace could understand it,' she said. 'Businesspeople don't have the time or patience to reformat and translate technical information. And we don't have enough translators in this space.' Post-doctoral researchers at American universities might benefit from a service like Mr. Hall's, she said. 'We have an abundance of scientific expertise that is not necessarily attached to industry,' she said. 'We need to support them in developing their translational skills to get the benefit from the research funding that we have in the U.S. economy.' Many geographic regions, too, might be helped by simply worded listings of inventions."

The U.S. Department of Commerce also sees benefits to this approach and is cooperating with Hall.

"Mr. Hall's partner in developing and refining content for the registry will be a nationwide group of organizations that participate in the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a Commerce Department program aimed at helping manufacturers, including small and midsize businesses. For instance, M.E.P. centers in Utah, Washington, and Virginia will offer Mr. Hall's workshops this year. Small companies that have products they want larger companies to commercialize are particularly interested in attending, Mr. Hall said, as well as independent inventors and university researchers in need of industrial partners. Inventors can sign up at the Planet Eureka Web site. 'When we are in their region, we will notify them so they have a chance to attend a translation workshop,' he said. Eventually, he plans to provide online training at the Web site."

M.E.P. members benefit because they first dibs on dealing with inventors.

"Small and midsize businesses connected to the project through local M.E.P. centers will get the first crack at inspecting inventions, for the initial 100 days. After that, the listings will be wide open. Mr. Hall is seeking buyers as well as sellers, with advice from his advisory panel, which includes Best Buy and Future Works, a division of Procter & Gamble. Sandy Johnson, chief executive of the Mid-America Manufacturing Technology Center in Overland Park, Kan., which receives some M.E.P. funding, wants to use the registry's services to help small manufacturing concerns in Kansas. 'A business may have a brilliant idea,' she said, 'but if they need a small piece of technology to make it work, it's virtually impossible to find right now,' because of incomprehensible descriptions."

When I discuss Development-in-a-Box™, I point out that it makes no sense for frontier economies to have to reinvent processes that are used globally in a best practice format. It also makes no sense to have to reinvent something that has already been invented. That is the beauty of Hall's scheme. There is a caveat. Eisenberg reports that Hall and the inventors realize that providing plain language descriptions of inventions risks having them ripped off.

"To protect their ideas, Mr. Hall said, inventors planning a listing at the marketplace should first file a preliminary patent. If they don't, a bit of concealment is in order, he said."

You certainly don't want to give up the "secret sauce," as I like to call it. Filing for a patent is neither cheap nor easy, but the benefits certainly make the effort worthwhile. This is especially true if an inventor believes he can team up with a partner who believes the invention will give the company a competitive edge. In that case, the company will provide legal and financial help to protect the patent. As a businessman whose company is inventing new processes, I know that having a place to go to look for niche inventions that could enhance my company's work could prove valuable. I suspect a lot of entrepreneurs will feel the same way.

Helping the Bottom Billion Revisited

Last October, Paul Collier, an economics professor at Oxford University, wrote an article for the Washington Post following the annual meeting of the World Bank presided over by its president, Robert Zoellick ["Will the Bottom Billion Ever Catch Up?," 21 October 2007]. I posted a blog on the article at that time [Helping the Bottom Billion]. I recently re-read the article and found just as many insights reading it the second time as I did the first. As a result, I decided to comment on the article again with a little bit of a different focus. In the article, Collier defines the "new third world" and the challenges they present to the World Bank and others concerned with bringing the bottom billion of world's population out of poverty. Collier wrote:

"The Third World has shrunk, but it hasn't vanished. The new third world -- the hard core of the development challenge that Zoellick faces -- is composed of about 50 countries that are home to a billion people. Globalization is propelling China and India toward wealth, and both are closing in on the prosperous with unprecedented speed. But globalization is not working for the bottom billion. Their incomes have been virtually stagnant. From 1960 to 2000, the new third world experienced no growth at all. Meanwhile, the economies of the rest of the developing world have enjoyed accelerating growth, decade by decade. First gradually, then rapidly, the bottom billion have fallen away from the rest of mankind. Encouragingly, Zoellick has picked up on this."

Collier notes that Zoellick told the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that the bottom billion should not be left behind. He finds that sentiment encouraging, but too late. The bottom billion, Collier laments, has already been left behind.

"During the golden decade of the 1990s, between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, the bottom billion's divergence from the middle 4 billion people on Earth accelerated to 5 percent a year, measured in per capita gross domestic product. By the millennium, the income gap between the average citizens of the bottom billion and those of the middle 4 billion was 5 to 1. And if you think that wealth gap is alarming, think about the lucky billion -- in Europe, North America, Japan, and elsewhere -- at the top."

It's bad enough, Collier insists, that the bottom billion have been left behind. In the information age, the even greater tragedy is that they know it. Collier insists that this is bound to cause problems.

"The further a billion people fall behind the rest of humankind, the more it will present the world of our children with unmanageable pressures. Even as the world's economies are bifurcating, the Earth continues to draw closer together socially through information and migration. So youth in the bottom billion know that they are being left behind. To catch up, they will need spectacular increases in growth."

In this case, connectivity is both a blessing and curse. The curse is that restless and hopeless youth are likely to cause trouble. But, if the world can find a way to connect the bottom billion so that they cooperate instead of fight, connectivity could prove to be a huge blessing. Collier paints the problem facing the bottom 50 countries in vivid terms.

"Most of the bottom billion live in Africa, but the countries at the bottom are scattered across the continents: places such as Haiti and Bolivia in Latin America, Yemen in the Middle East, many of the "stans" in Central Asia, and Laos and East Timor in East Asia. They are nearly all small, which is part of the problem. Countries with small and poor populations tend to lack the critical mass of educated and talented people to diagnose failure and do something about it. Globalization has compounded this shortage by making exits both feasible and attractive: The bottom billion are hemorrhaging their limited talent. Chinese students go back to China, Indian students now go back to India, but students from the countries of the bottom billion don't go back. Many of these small countries are also plagued by civil war."

The American essayist Thomas Paine wrote, "If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately." His contemporary, Benjamin Franklin, said something very similar. They, of course, were referring both to the colonial rebels in America and to the thirteen colonies from which they came. The countries containing the bottom billion have no way to "hang together" which is why they are dangling at the end of poverty's rope. Collier continues:

"Imagine if India or China were divided into 50 countries. Do you think they would all be at peace? To be small is also to be at the mercy of your neighbors, especially if you are landlocked. Suppose this country were not the United States but the Divided States, each sovereign and self-serving. The great manufacturing and agricultural heartland states would have been strangled at birth by the absence of interstate highways, railways and canals. The plight of Niger, which is dependent on Nigeria, and of Uganda, which is dependent on Kenya, is to be landlocked and located in the Divided States of Africa. A third of Africa's population lives in such countries."

Collier then provides his formula for helping these countries overcome the enormous challenges they face. His plan centers on finding ways to help them "hang together."

"In each country of the new third world, reformers are struggling with entrenched interests. Catching up depends on the reformers winning these struggles. We can't do that for them, but we can make their battles a whole lot easier than they have been. In 1945, the United States got serious about rebuilding Europe. Yes, there was aid, through the Marshall Plan. But there was also trade: Washington reversed the protectionism of the 1930s and created the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, thereby integrating Europe into the U.S. economy. And there was also security: Washington reversed the isolationism of the 1930s and created NATO, thereby stabilizing Europe by placing U.S. troops on European soil for decades. And there was also a shrewd attempt to create systems that produce good governance: Washington created the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and encouraged the formation of the European Economic Community, thereby starting the process of mutually setting standards that locked first Greece, Spain, and Portugal and then much of Eastern Europe into democratic market economies. It's feasible to get the bottom billion on a more prosperous track, but doing so will require a serious approach that utilizes all the instruments at our disposal -- and is sustained for at least two decades. Indeed, we will need the same toolkit we used in the recovery of postwar Europe: aid, trade, security and good governance, though utilized differently."

Collier has hit most of the hot buttons that I've addressed time and again in my discussions of Development-in-a-Box™: infrastructure, education, trade, good governance, standards, and security. All I would add to his list is health. Healthy populations are required to sustain development as well. Collier goes on to point out that some aid will be needed, but it is investment that really will help bring the bottom billion out of poverty.

"Aid will probably be more or less as important to helping the bottom billion as it was to saving postwar Europe: part of the solution but not decisive. The exclusive reliance on aid has distorted what should be institutions and energy devoted to development. Instead of development agencies, we have aid agencies. Instead of pressure from the street for development, we have pressure for aid. The distortion of institutions and citizen pressure is self-perpetuating because it crowds out consideration of other approaches. (What, for example, do you imagine aid agencies lobby for?) Our utter neglect of trade, security and governance policies for the bottom billion is a scandal -- and an opportunity. Properly used, these policies have real power, which is why they were employed for the recovery of Europe."

Collier concludes that in order to help the Third World hang together, the rest of the world must work together.

"Saving the bottom billion will also require the United States and Europe to work together. The emerging economies will need to do the same. To produce this unity of serious purpose, caring will not be enough: Goodness is in limited supply. Fortunately, it can be reinforced by the less morally demanding (and therefore better supplied) motivation of enlightened self-interest. ... In our democracies, politicians will ultimately do what we ask of them. It is our collective responsibility to grasp the challenge posed by the bottom billion -- and, critically, to get up to speed with the issues to understand what can be done about it. Only then will our politicians move from gestures to serious, effective actions."

As a result of my travels in the Middle East, I'm convinced of what Collier says. I believe he and I see things very similarly when it comes to helping he bottom billion. Hopefully, as Enterra Solutions' work in the Middle East matures, we can provide anecdotal evidence that "enlightened self-interest" is a powerful motivator for both those helping and those being helped.

The Return of Family Farms?

Food security continues to make headlines around the globe. I have written several posts on the subject of food in the past several weeks [Globalization, Food, and Resilience, Rising Food Prices take the World's Stage, and Cultivating the Right Biofuel]. The crisis, however, is not easing ["World Aid Agencies Faulted in Food Crisis," by Colum Lynch, Washington Post, 19 May 2008]. Despite catching the interest of the Bill and Melinda Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, analysts claim that agriculture hasn't been "hip" enough to capture enough of the world's attention.

"Buffeted by food riots at home, Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, this month lashed out at a distant culprit: The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], which he slammed as a wasteful 'bottomless pit of money' that should be abolished for failing to help increase global food production. Wade's broadside is part of a backlash against multilateral organizations that were created after World War II -- including the FAO, the World Bank and the World Food Program -- tasked with weaving together a safety net for the world's poorest. The recent spike in food prices has ripped a massive tear in that net, triggering riots around the world and threatening to plunge more than 100 million people into extreme poverty. Analysts say decades of neglect of agriculture by those agencies have left many countries with less food to feed their people. 'There has been a very deep institutional failure over how we deal with food problems,' said C. Peter Timmer, a Stanford University scholar who studies food security. 'Everybody understands that 80 percent of the world's poor are in rural areas. But the World Bank for 30 years has basically said market signals don't support agriculture, so we can't support agriculture.' ... Last year, the World Bank commissioned an internal review of its agricultural programs in Africa, concluding that 'over time, the importance of agriculture in the Bank's rural strategy has declined.' The bank's Independent Evaluation Group noted that total international agricultural aid fell from $1.9 billion in 1981 to less than $1 billion by 2001, and that the bank cut its number of agricultural specialists for Africa from 40 to 17 over the past decade."

Just to give you an idea of what that means, each World Bank agricultural specialist must cover an area the size of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado combined. Chef and restaurateur Dan Barber suggests that one solution to food security in the U.S. (and elsewhere) is to encourage the development of regional agriculture groups that can compete with the large agri-businesses that currently dominate the agricultural landscape ["Change We Can Stomach," New York Times, 11 May 2008]. Barber writes:

"Cooking, like farming, for all its down-home community spirit, is essentially a solitary craft. But lately it's feeling more like a lonely burden. Finding guilt-free food for our menus — food that's clean, green and humane — is about as easy as securing a housing loan. And we're suddenly paying more — 75 percent more in the last six years — to stock our pantries. Around the world, from Cairo to Port-au-Prince, increases in food prices have governments facing riots born of shortages and hunger. It's enough to make you want to toss in the toque. But here's the good news: if you're a chef, or an eater who cares about where your food comes from (and there are a lot of you out there), we can have a hand in making food for the future downright delicious."

Barber's basic argument is that consumers, by demanding food grown more responsibly, can affect what eventually gets to their plates. The questions raised by this approach include how much will this cost and whether it really helps solve the world's food security problems. Barber thinks it can.

"Farming has the potential to go through the greatest upheaval since the Green Revolution, bringing harvests that are more healthful, sustainable and, yes, even more flavorful. The change is being pushed along by market forces that influence how our farmers farm. Until now, food production has been controlled by Big Agriculture, with its macho fixation on 'average tonnage' and 'record harvests.' But there's a cost to its breadbasket-to-the-world bragging rights. Like those big Industrial Age factories that once billowed black smoke, American agriculture is mired in a mind-set that relies on capital, chemistry and machines. Food production is dependent on oil, in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, in the distances produce travels from farm to plate and in the energy it takes to process it. For decades, environmentalists and small farmers have claimed that this is several kinds of madness. But industrial agriculture has simply responded that if we're feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?"

That last question is a good one. Obviously, Barber thinks there is a problem or he wouldn't have written his op-ed piece. Having set the stage by asking that pertinent question, he goes on to make his point.

"Now that argument no longer holds true. With the price of oil at more than $120 a barrel (up from less than $30 for most of the last 50 years), small and midsize nonpolluting farms, the ones growing the healthiest and best-tasting food, are gaining a competitive advantage. They aren't as reliant on oil, because they use fewer large machines and less pesticide and fertilizer. In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre. Big farms have long compensated for the disequilibrium with sheer quantity. But their economies of scale come from mass distribution, and with diesel fuel costing more than $4 per gallon in many locations, it's no longer efficient to transport food 1,500 miles from where it's grown."

Barber is certainly correct about the effects of rising oil prices on both the production and transportation of food. Truckers are near the breaking point in trying to be competitive and trying to make a decent living. Railroad companies are ecstatic. Suddenly they have gained a competitive advantage in the mass transportation business. Putting that aside, however, the question remains, can 341 small farms really take the place of one large farm? Are there enough people still willing to farm small acreage farms? Barber's answers are not quite so certain. The only thing that is certain is that his solution is not going to save consumers money.

"The high cost of oil alone will not be enough to reform American agriculture, however. As long as agricultural companies exploit the poor and extract labor from them at slave wages, and as long as they aren't required to pay the price for the pollution they so brazenly produce, their system will stay afloat. If financially pinched Americans opt for the cheapest (and the least healthful) foods rather than cook their own, the food industry will continue to reach for the lowest common denominator. But it is possible to nudge the revolution along — for instance, by changing how we measure the value of food. If we stop calculating the cost per quantity and begin considering the cost per nutrient value, the demand for higher-quality food would rise."

With that argument, Barber's line of reasoning seems to have derailed. Cost per nutrient value sounds great, but it is hard to put "cost per nutrient value" on a product's label or on those little tags at the supermarket that provide cost/ounce data. However, he persists:

"Organic fruits and vegetables contain 40 percent more nutrients than their chemical-fed counterparts. And animals raised on pasture provide us with meat and dairy products containing more beta carotene and at least three times as much C.L.A. (conjugated linoleic acid, shown in animal studies to reduce the risk of cancer) than those raised on grain. Where good nutrition goes, flavor tends to follow. Chefs are the first to admit that an impossibly sweet, flavor-filled carrot has nothing to do with our work. It has to do with growing the right seed in healthy, nutrient-rich soil."

All of that sounds great. Getting cattle off grains and on grass may make more grain available for human consumption, but does it change the amount of methane produced by cattle? In previous posts, I've noted that Timberland has tried to reduce its "carbon footprint" by having ranchers change the feed used by cattle (whose hides are used to make Timberland boots) so that they release less methane gas. There are probably lots of such tradeoffs that need to be considered. Even then, consumer habits are the biggest pole in this particular tent. Every big supermarket now has an organic section. That section is not very large because consumers aren't willing to pay the higher prices charged for organic food. It is mostly the well-to-do who are found shopping there. Barber comes back closer to earth when he discusses cooperation among farmers.

"Increasingly we can see the wisdom of diversified farming operations, where there are built-in relationships among plants and animals. A dairy farm can provide manure for a neighboring potato farm, for example, which can in turn offer potato scraps as extra feed for the herd. When crops and livestock are judiciously mixed, agriculture wisely mimics nature. To encourage small, diversified farms is not to make a nostalgic bid to revert to the agrarian ways of our ancestors. It is to look toward the future, leapfrogging past the age of heavy machinery and pollution, to farms that take advantage of the sun's free energy and use the waste of one species as food for another."

All of this, of course, assumes the availability of fertile land and willing farmers. Many countries require fertilizer because they have plenty of sun but little arable land [see my post Fertilizing to End Famine]. Barber makes sense when he recommends that the waste products of one sector be used to support efforts in another sector. The same is true about selling food in markets nearer to where it is grown. This is good business as well as being responsible business. My partner Tom Barnett points out that this is more-or-less being done now. Only 18 percent of wheat crops are exported transnationally. The numbers for other grains are even lower: sorghum (14%), corn (12%), and rice (7%). The numbers are likely higher for more perishable foodstuffs. People in the developed world, however, have become used to eating what they like year around. Eating seasonal foods is not a pattern in most rich countries. Changing that eating pattern would be difficult and there would likely be unexpected (and negative) consequences in the agricultural sector of countries that rely on exporting food to the developed world. Barber, however, argues just the opposite claiming, "For years, the United States has flooded the world with food exports, displacing small farmers and disrupting domestic markets." There's probably truth in both arguments. Assuming enough small farmers can be found to carry out Barber's plan, his implementation scheme makes sense -- both here and abroad.

"Our support of the local food movement is an important example of this approach, but it's not enough. As demand for fresh, local food rises, we cannot continue to rely entirely on farmers' markets. Asking every farmer to plant, harvest, drive his pickup truck to a market and sell his goods there is like asking me to cook, take reservations, serve and wash the dishes. We now need to support a system of well-coordinated regional farm networks, each suited to the food it can best grow. Farmers organized into marketing networks that can promote their common brands (like the Organic Valley Family of Farms in the Midwest) can ease the economic and ecological burden of food production and transportation. They can also distribute their products to new markets, including poor communities that have relied mainly on food from convenience stores. Similar networks could also operate in the countries that are now experiencing food shortages. ... As escalating food prices threaten an additional 100 million people with hunger, a new concept of humanitarian aid is required. Local farming efforts focused on conserving natural resources and biodiversity are essential to improving food security in developing countries, as a report just published by the International Assessment of Agriculture Science and Technology for Development has concluded. We must build on these tenets, providing financial and technical assistance to small farmers across the world."

As I noted above, the big "IF" in this scheme centers on the availability of farmers. Barber concedes this is a growing problem.

"Regional systems will work only if there is enough small-scale farming going on to make them viable. With a less energy-intensive food system in place, we will need more muscle power devoted to food production, and more people on the farm. (The need is especially urgent when you consider that the average age of today's American farmer is over 55.) In order to move gracefully into a post-industrial agriculture economy, we also need to rethink how we educate the people who will grow our food. Land-grant universities and agricultural schools, dependent on financing from agribusiness, focus on maximum extraction from the land — take more, sell more, waste more."

Barber provides no suggestions about how to change demographic trends that are leaving the U.S. with an aging farmer population nor how to change consumer's food buying habits nor how wages can be raised so that people can afford more expensive organic food. Without viable strategies to meet these two challenges, Barber's scheme simply falls apart. He will have more luck pushing it in developing countries where the agricultural sector is still a major part of countries' economies. Not only is Barber's lack of a road map unsatisfying, his concluding paragraph is downright patronizing. His last words: "The future belongs to the gourmet." Unfortunately, only the relatively wealthy can afford to become gourmets and he doesn't tell us how he would guide the poor and the gastronomically challenged to that promised land.

Globalization and Giving -- the Rise of Chinese Philanthropy

With the death toll from China's recent massive earthquake expected to rise to nearly 50,000 people, the world has offered and Chinese leaders have accepted outside assistance. Western experts, for example, are monitoring some Chinese nuclear plants for damage that might have been created during the temblor. Other forms of aid from rescue units to money are also pouring in. One unexpected source of funds has been from the Chinese people themselves ["Chinese Open Wallets for Quake Aid," by Maureen Fan, Washington Post, 16 May 2008]. That may not sound surprising to outsiders (after all, who doesn't want to help when they see neighbors in need?), but as the article's sub-title explains, individual giving is rare "in a Society Long Under Sole Care of the State." This is not the first large natural disaster that has occurred since the Communists came to power, so why are the Chinese people opening their wallets in record numbers? Because, thanks to globalization, they can. Fan reports:

"At the headquarters of the Red Cross Society of China, volunteers turned a boardroom into a makeshift cashier's office Thursday, sending tens of thousands of fluttering bank notes through counting machines and handing receipts to people like Cai Lili, 30, who stood in long lines with bricks of cash to donate to earthquake relief efforts. Since a massive earthquake struck Sichuan province and surrounding regions three days ago, Chinese have donated $192 million to help their countrymen, according to China's Civil Affairs Ministry. The fundraising has come as officials have issued a rare public appeal for cranes and rescue equipment, hammers and shovels, bandages and medicine. In scale, the financial contributions have been unprecedented in China, which for decades taught its citizens that the state and the state alone would take care of them from cradle to grave."

This demonstration of giving is a positive sign for the Chinese government, its economy, and the rising quality of life the ordinary Chinese citizen. You can't give what you don't have. The Communist Party in China has been so concerned about maintaining control that it has banned most organizations that operate independently from the government, including charitable ones.

"There is no organized philanthropy here, and independent nongovernmental organizations are banned. Ordinary Chinese and famous Chinese, including Houston Rockets center Yao Ming, have simply decided to open their wallets to help the estimated 10 million people affected by the earthquake. Many have given as individuals in addition to or instead of giving at the office, saying they were making a statement about their gifts coming from the heart. 'I wanted to separate the collective action from the individual action,' said Cai, a clerk with the Beijing special armed police, who earlier gave $14 at the office, then stood patiently in line Thursday to donate $71 in her daughter's name. 'Although in this diverse society, there are many conflicting values, in the face of disaster we stand together.' On the opposite side of a table stood Zhao Shuangying, 48, sunglasses hanging from the collar of his pink polo shirt, belly protruding over a pair of