Globalization Deniers

Will low-skilled workers in developed countries ever again be able to enter a plant and find a high-paying union job? Even if blocking trade pacts and immigrants provides a temporary fix, reality requires preparing for a much different future. Looking at mass communication, air and space travel, and artificial intelligence, Villanova Professor Ilia Delio suggests we need political structures and public policies that support human socialization in the world's new phase of global life.

     Some jobs always will stay close to home: police officers, firefighters, even food trucks. But using cameras to improve police work in one country (by eliminating bribes and beatings, for example) is an idea that can translate to other countries the same way training practices that improve the performance of firefighters and new spices that jazz up menus can spread benefits around the world. Resisting the changes caused by globalization does no one a favor.

     The trick is to look to the future and to anticipate the needs and wants that men, women, and children everywhere still need and want to fill. I find it useful to enter two keywords: ted talks and trendwatching, into my computer from time to time to check the discoveries of those who think about the future all the time. Before mapping out paths on a college campus, for example, Tom Hulme told how it made sense to watch what paths students and professors actually took. I was reminded of the story of how the construction company hired to build a highway over a mountain in Saudi Arabia pushed a donkey over the edge of the mountain and watched the route it took picking its way down before imitating the donkey's route with a highway.

     Photos provide an excellent way for students around the world to get to know how each other live. Stephen Wilkes used the photos he took day and night at one location, not to map out a design for a road, but to make art. By combining all the photos into composites, he showed day and night life on a river in one photo and daily life at an animals' watering hole in another. Believe it or not, there are lots of people in the world who have no idea of what our home towns look like, just as I didn't know what a town in Syria looked like after it was bombed until  I saw a photo a drone took of the devastation. Students and teachers can go to ePals.com to find classrooms throughout the world that can exchange photos of their cities.

     The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) is sponsoring a contest to select digital format photos from around the world that show scenes and individuals that demonstrate four themes:

• Youth who are active community leaders and informed citizens that provide future opportunities and positive change.
• Diverse leaders who serve others and change every level of society for the better.
• Institutions that build just, prosperous societies by engaging communities, accountability, and responsive governance.
• Quality education, independent media, and new technologies that provide information and foster civic engagement in communities.

There is a $250 prize for the winning photo in each of the four categories. The deadline for submitting photos is April 25, 2016. Additional details are at irex.org/photocontest.

     With predictions that millions of people around the world will be hungry in the future, photos of young people using new farming practices might be a winning way to show the promise of globalization.

An Army Moves on Its Stomach

Napoleon was right. Whether its the army of ISIS, the French Foreign Legion, or the US Marine Corps, food fuels military operations. I remember reading about an incident in the US Civil War, when General Lee's army arrived at a supply depot, found it completely empty, and knew the South's cause was doomed. Hunger (and thirst) saps energy and morale.

     Countries, causes, and individuals that underestimate agriculture's value are in trouble. Mohsin Hamid describes the misdirected rural to urban rush in his book, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. The billion dollars worth of items Alibaba sold on Singles Day are no more able to feed a single person than King Midas' gold. It is a great misfortune that Pakistan, with 180 million people, has only 20% of its GDP devoted to agriculture and that in Nigeria, with 170 million people, agriculture produces only 23% of its $510 billion GDP.

     Considering food's importance for everyone, not just armies, agriculture merits the attention of every country's best and brightest. Indeed, modern agriculture is every bit as dependent on skilled techies as fields that now employ digital whiz kids. To help kids discover the challenge of moving food around the world, draw or find a picture of a farmer on the right side of a paper or board and a grocery store on the left side. Start writing down all that needs to happen in between.

     What does it take in Uganda, Africa, to go from the gift of a $500 heifer from Heifer International (heifer.org) that produces three gallons of milk a day to the sale, in a local market, of some of the milk the family does not use? Consider all the steps between the woman growing cocoa for the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana, Africa, and the retailers selling chocolate bars in Europe. Here are just some possibilities:

• Ask local farmers or Peace Corps volunteers to provide training for raising animals
• Grow feed crops
• Buy disease-resistant seed
• Cool milk
• Buy a truck
• Produce fertilizer from compost to increase crop yields
• Contract shipping space on a cargo ship
• Form a 4H chapter to interest the younger generation in farming
• Pass land use laws to protect small farms from encroachment by corporate plantations
• Lease an acre of land
• Provide police and security measures to protect farmers from gang violence and terrorists
• Build a warehouse to store cocoa beans rather than selling them all at once for a lower price than the revenue that could be earned by selling them over a period of a year
• Install irrigation and water pumps

Nowadays, the "Moo monitors" that dairy farmers attach to their cows' collars produce data about the health of their herds. Machines can pick almost every crop. GPS satellite technology enables farmers to monitor weather, judge the health of their crops, pin point the application of pesticide sprays and fertilizers, spot weeds, and measure yields as crops are being cut. Satellites even monitor the temperature and humidity of produce carried by sea in shipping containers in order to predict its condition for sale on arrival. Thanks to government funding and developers in companies like Planet Labs in San Francisco, which has developed small earth observation satellites that can fit in a shoebox, subsistence farmers will be able to utilize this up-to-date technology.

     Already, in countries with impassible roads that subject supplies and produce shipments to long delays, the widespread use of mobile phones enables farmers and fishermen to arrange trades, sales, and payment transfers.

     Since we all move on our stomachs, we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." The world is depending on kids to get involved in producing and distributing the food we all need to live.

                          Also, check out a few of the earlier posts on food and farming:

• Can Small Farms End Poverty?
• Nigeria's New Beginning
• World (Food) Expo, Hybrid Crops & New Farming Practices
• Back to the Land
• Dairy Cows on the Moove
• The Bees and the Birds
• Chocolate's Sweet Deals
• Coffee Prices Going Up, Allowances Going Down?

     

Personal Response to the World's Problems

Some effort is better than none. Asked if we are alone in the universe, former NASA astronaut, Barbara Morgan, responded in Time magazine (July 6-12, 2015), "In every crack in the sidewalk, there's something growing....Life seems to want to take hold...." Last year about this time, one bucket of ice water dumped over a person's head helped hope take hold for people suffering from ALS by raising $94 million to find a cure (See the earlier blog post, "Good Works Multiply Fast.")

 Learn that Nestle is filling the plastic water bottles it sells with ground water pumped out of drought-stricken, fire-prone California's San Bernardino National Forest. An even bigger problem: Why would someone in a developed country which has strict health and safety regulations to keep water free of pesticides and pollution drink water transported in plastic bottles from another country?
Response: Fill reusable bottles with water from taps or pumps in areas where water is protected by clean water acts.

Learn that nearly 800 million people in the world don't have enough to eat every day.
Response: Bring a can of soup or fruit to a shelter for homeless people, a food pantry, or church collection center.

Learn that usable items are thrown away in dumps that pollute the land and pose health risks for children tempted to play in them.
Response: Hold a yard sale to sell outgrown clothes and toys. Maybe, even give the proceeds of the sale to a charity.

Learn that a "religious" terrorist group has used a bomb to hurt people it doesn't like.
Response: Read the Barron's book series, This is my faith, or another children's book on religions to find out the true beliefs of Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. that have nothing to do with violence against those who practice other or no religions.

Learn the drawbacks of drilling for oil in the Arctic (See the earlier blog post, "North Pole Flag."), fracking (See the post, "The Lure of Shale Oil Independence."), and greenhouse gases (See the posts, "Pollution Update" and "A Healthy Environment.").
Response: Walk or ride a bike to reduce the need to be driven in a car that burns gasoline and look for ways to use less electricity from coal-burning power plants. What can you do without turning on a light, computer, or TV?

Learn that pesticides can harm the bees needed to pollinate crops and can reduce the milkweed food supply butterflies need to eat. (See the earlier blog post, The Bees and the Birds ".).
Response: In backyard and community gardens, pull out weeds by hand.

Learn that someone has been hurt or killed because of the color of their skin, where they were born, their religion, who they love, because they are girls, or because they want to vote.
Response: Pray for greater understanding, tolerance, and respect among all people in the world.

Food Photo: Memorable or Meager?

A local newspaper just ran a contest inviting readers to send in pictures of food in order to win tickets to shows and restaurants. An organization in Colombia had a related, but different, idea. To inspire people to give to its "Meal For Share" campaign, the group posted photos of frugal, often disgusting, meals that poor people eat to survive.

     Incidentally, hunger is not limited to any one place in the world. In the past month, 9% of the 11,979 U.S. adults who responded to an online survey (which missed those too poor to have online access at home) by Zogby Analytics (zogbyanalytics.com) said they had gone without food for 24 hours because of lack of money.

     Once you see someone digging through a dumpster or dump to make a meal out of scraps, carefully styled and lighted food photos become a reminder to make a contribution to organizations that feed the world's hungry. One food blogger reports that she uses salad forks and dainty appetizer spoons in her pictures, because she doesn't want regular-sized flatware to overpower the colorful servings shown on her tasteful aqua plates. Poor people are just happy to grow what they need or earn enough money to feed their families.

Young Voices

For 90 years, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards have recognized the outstanding ways students in grades seven through twelve have expressed their views of the world. When my granddaughter won a gold key this year for her modern fable about the consequences of a wolf's deception, I had an opportunity to look through the book of submissions from last year's winners that she received.

     With World Creativity and Innovation Week coming up April 15-21, this might be a good time for parents and teachers to encourage children and students to think about the world and compare what they draw and say with some of the representations and comments of Scholastic Art and Writing Award winners.

     One student disputed the stereotypes of color: yellow Asians, black Africans, brown Indians, and white Americans. She saw herself in many colors.

     World hunger was a topic that came up in several essays. A girl who wrote about villages where people "are skin and bones, their ribs visible" and their eyes always sad ended by saying that she never stops praying that, like "a blade of grass," these villagers can be "new and fresh." But a young immigrant from Laos who is a waitress in a bowling alley looks at American children in wonder when they "swallow between rounds" of arcade games and "drop food on the floor."

     Boys think about war. One made a sculpture showing a young man being persuaded to enlist in the Army. Another wrote about depth charges attacking a U-boat in World War II. A poet whose entry went from boy to old man included a stanza about being "a soldier with the callused heart mindlessly...following orders and longing for a purpose."

     Religion was a subject covered in art and word. Monks and Hindu statues caught the eyes of young photographers. One student looked at Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam and decided it was possible to start a world religion by deciding whom to exclude and what beliefs were contrary to the status quo.

     There were a number of unsettling dystopian views of the future. Meat and gems could not save a boy from a rare fever, and, when everything was plastic, only an old worn blanket could hold memories.

     For information about how students can share their voices with other young people and adults next year, login to artandwriting.org later this year.