THE BALATON BULLETIN

Newsletter of The Balaton Group

April 1991

Contents

Diversity and -- the Next Annual Meeting ...... 1 Species Diversity and its Rate of Loss ...... 2 How Much is a Wild Tomato Worth?...... 4 Free Trade, Diversity, and Community the Watsonville Case...... 6 Connections Between Biological Diversity and Economic Diversity...... 8 Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing ...... 10 Notes on Unsustainable Agriculture in the United States...... 12 Announcements ...... 13 News from the Members ...... 13 Stories, Quotes, Jokes...... 18

Diversity and Sustainability -- the Next Annual Meeting

The meeting will take place in Csopak on Lake Balaton in Hungary, September 3-8, 1991. We will assemble in Budapest for the bus ride to Csopak after lunch on September 3. We will depart by bus for Budapest after lunch on September 8. The plenary sessions are currently scheduled as follows. All speakers have been invited, but they have not yet been confirmed.

September 4 -- The Systems Theory of Diversity

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Why does make so much diversity? What is the value of diversity in ecological systems? What is the latest ecological theory of the relationship between diversity, stability, evolution, and sustainability? How much can diversity be decreased before ecological systems fall apart?

Dana Meadows, Dartmouth College Peter Allen, Solvay International Institute, Free University of Belgium Robert Costanza, Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies, University of Maryland Richard Norgaard, Energy and Resources Group, University of California, Berkeley September 5 -- The Destruction and Restoration of Why is biological diversity disappearing? How fast? Where? What can be done about it? Is it possible to restore biodiversity, once it has been lost? Are there illustrative case studies, good and bad, to teach us about the management of biodiversity?

Gerardo Budowski, U.N. University for Peace, San Jose, Costa Rica Lucia Severinghaus, Academica Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan Otto Soemarwoto, Institute of , Padjadjaran University, Bandung, Indonesia John and Nancy Todd, Ocean Arks International, Woods Hole, Mass.

September 6 -- Economic, Cultural, and Technical Diversity To what extent do the system functions of biodiversity in ecosystems also apply to economic, technical, and cultural diversity in human systems? What can we learn from ecosystem management that might be useful in managing social systems? Should we worry about the decreasing cultural and economic diversity in the world? Are there ways to increase social diversity?

Aromar Revi, The Action Research Unit, New Delhi, India Calestous Juma, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi, Kenya Michael Thompson, Musgrave Institute, London, England Herman Daly, World Bank

September 7 -- Diversity and Sustainability in East and West Europe Is Europe coming together, or is it falling apart, or is it doing one thing in the East and another in the West? Are the trends toward common markets and separate nationalities ominous, or favorable? Where are the dangers and where are the opportunities? Does any of the theory of diversity in ecosystems, economic systems, cultural systems, give us insight as to how to keep working toward sustainability and justice during the rapid changes in Europe (and other places as well)?

Niels Meyer, Technical University of Denmark Bert De Vries, RIVM, the Netherlands Joan Davis, EAWAG, Zurich, Switzerland Victor Gelovani, Systems Modeling Group, VNIISI, Moscow Stanislav Shatalin, VNIISI, Moscow Ferenc Rabar, Budapest University of Economics

Of course the meeting will offer opportunities for many other activities and discussions than those listed above. We have planned an excursion to the center that is working to restore Lake Balaton. There will

2 April 1991 be numerous afternoon discussion and work groups on topics selected after we assemble at the conference site. Plus there will be suitable commemoration of our tenth anniversary!!

Species Diversity and its Rate of Loss

(The following is an excerpt from Dana Meadows' textbook-in-preparation. The quotes from Norman Myers are taken from his article, "A Look at the Present Extinction Spasm and What It Means for the Evolution of Species," in R.J. Hoage, Animal Extinctions: What Everyone Should Know, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C., 1985.)

Scientists have described and named about 1.4 million living species. Estimates of the number of species yet to be discovered range from 5 million to more than 30 million. As the evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson has written, "we do not know the true number of species on Earth, even to the nearest order of magnitude."

By far the greatest number of known kinds of living creatures are invertebrates, especially insects; together, they make up 71 percent of known species. The known plants account for nearly 18 percent. The vertebrates account for just 3 percent of the total, and mammals make up just one-tenth of the vertebrates.

In terms of geographic distribution the number of species is highest near the equator and decreases along a gradient toward the poles -- and at any given latitude diversity is highest at low elevations and decreases with altitude. The two most diverse ecosystems on earth are in the warm- temperature, water-rich tropics -- rainforests on land and coral reefs in the oceans. Roughly 500,000 of the known species of plants and animals live in the tropics, but the actual number is certainly much higher.

How much higher? Many scientists are confident that rainforests, covering just 6 percent of earth's land surface, contain at least 40 percent of all species; some think the percentage is much higher.

The canopy of rainforest trees is proving to be an unexpected "mother lode" of species. To do a thorough study of insects in the tropical forest Smithsonian Institution biologist Terry Erwin sends a canister of insecticide up into the canopy and detonates it by radio command. Dead insects fall onto sheets spread on the ground, where they are collected and classified (birds, reptiles, and mammals are not harmed). In Peru Erwin found 41,000 distinct insect species in the treetops above just one hectare (2.47 acres), many of them previously undescribed. Similar surveys in the forests of Panama led Erwin to estimate that tropical forests worldwide may harbor as many as 30 million insect species alone. No one expects to find new plant or vertebrate species in comparable magnitudes, although new discoveries in those classes of organisms are also likely.

Other habitats where the number of species has hardly begun to be explored are the coral reef, the soils of tropical forests and savannas, and the deep seas. New explorations of the sea bottom are turning up an astonishing variety of previously undescribed species, far more than biologists expected.

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If we don't know within a factor of 10 how many species there are, how can we know how many we are losing?

We can't.

But how can we get a quantitative-minded policy world to take interest in a problem, if we can't even describe in numbers how bad it is?

We have to make the best guess we can.

That was the reasoning of biologist Norman Myers in the mid-1970s. The only number he could find to quantify the rate of species extinction was the commonly quoted "one species a year." He knew that number referred only to mammals and birds, and only to species that were actually observed to disappear (if you think about it, you'll realize that the disappearance of a species is not an easy thing to observe!). The real number had to be much higher.

Here is Myers' description of how he came up with a number that turned out to fuel a raging debate.

"The scientific community believes that at least two-thirds of all existing species live in the tropics. And of those two-thirds, at least one-half live in the tropical moist forests. We can thus reckon that these tropical moist forests contain nearly two million species.... I think it is fair to say that by the end of the century ... somewhere between one-third and one-half of all our remaining tropical moist forests will be so grossly disturbed or depleted as to have lost much of their capacity to support their current huge array of species....

"Now if we assume that between one-third and one-half of those forests are going to be degraded ... , we can estimate that two-thirds to three-quarters of a million species are highly threatened in these tropical moist forests alone. When we include other parts of the world ... and consider how much of these areas we are also likely to lose by the end of the century, it seems reasonable to surmise that by the year 2000 we could lose one million species out of the postulated minimum of five million....

"That averages out to more than one hundred and thirty species a day. But the big waves of extinctions are not expected to occur in the next two or three years but in the late 1990s, as human populations inexorably build up and generate their enormous impact. If we were to assume that the earth is [in the 1970s] losing just one species per day, then it is realistic, I suggest, to suppose that by the end of the 1980s it will be losing one species each hour; and that by the end of the 1990s, it could be losing dozens of plant and animal species with every single hour that goes by."

Here is a summary of the assumptions Myers made to come up with his estimate:

- There are 5-6 million species in total. - 2/3 of those are in the tropics (3.5 to 4 million). - 1/2 of those are in tropical rainforests (1.75 to 2 million). - 1/3 to 1/2 of the area of these forests will be destroyed by the year 2000.

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- There is a linear relationship between area of forest destroyed and numbers of species lost. - Therefore 600,000 to 1 million species will be lost in the rainforests. - There could be as many as 400,000 species lost elsewhere. - Therefore 1 million is a conservative estimate for total world losses by the year 2000. - Those losses will not be steady over time; they will be greater toward the end of the century than they were in the 1970s.

When Myers published those numbers, he created a shock wave. Some scientists claimed that the extinction rate could not possibly be so high. Others said it might be much higher. The matter is still not settled. What is clear is that the world is losing species much faster than scientists are able to discover and name them.

How Much is a Wild Tomato Worth? by Hugh H. Iltis

(Excerpted from Hugh H. Iltis, "Serendipity in the Exploration of Biodiversity," in E.O. Wilson, Biodiversity, National Academy Press, Washington D.C., 1988. Hugh Iltis, the Director of the University of Wisconsin Herbarium, is a famous field botanist who discovered, among many other things, wild teosinte, the ancestor of maize, and also the wild Peruvian tomato described here.)

Above the hacienda our jeep was soon stopped by a landslide. There was nothing to do but hike along that old Inca road until high above the river we stopped to eat our lunch of avocados, oranges, cheese, and small, boiled Peruvian potatoes, yellow and rich in protein.

All around us was a floristic wonderland, full of rare and beautiful plants. In fact, these arid inter-Andean valleys are veritable biogeographic islands, each with many endemic species and isolated from other valleys by wet tropical forests below and cold tundras above, a situation favoring speciation and, hence, biodiversity.

So here we spent the rest of the day, always collecting five specimens of each plant -- one each for the University of Wisconsin, the University of San Marco in Lima, the U.S. National Herbarium in Washington D.C. and one or two for botanists specializing in that particular plant family, who would tell us exactly what we had collected. This must be done, for there are no accurate, usable books on the 30,000 species of Peruvian plants, a flora so rich it staggers the imagination. (The northeastern United States is much large than Peru but has only about 5,000 species of plants; yet in the U.S. we have many up-to-date botanical compendia by which plant species may be identified.)

Presently we noticed a tangled, yellow-flowered, sticky-leaved, ratty-looking wild tomato, not much different from the weedy tomatillo so widespread in Peru. Nevertheless, we took immediate notice of it, for tomatoes belong to the potato family and this was a relative of a cultivated species. Wild or weedy tomatoes must always be taken seriously!

Not only did we collect herbarium specimens of this weedy tomato, describing it in our notebook under the serial number 832, but we also gathered two dozen of its green-and-white striped

5 Balaton Bulletin #27 berries, which are smaller than cherries. We smashed the berries between newspapers to dry their seeds, and weeks later we mailed them together with other tomato seed samples to Charles Rick, tomato geneticist at the University of California. Taxonomists do this sort of thing for each other all the time, unasked and as a matter of course, whether they know each other personally or not.

Later a thank-you note from Professor Rick informed us that our No. 832 was most unusual and perhaps useful in plant breeding. Not until 14 years later, however, did Rick publish it as a new species, along with another new species we had obtained on the same trip. Previously taxonomists recognized only seven species of wild tomato, and now there were nine! But there was more to come.

Dr. Rick crossed the progeny of the little tomato with a commercial tomato. After nearly 10 generations of back-crossing, Rick was able to produce several new tomato strains with larger fruit and a marked increase in pigmentation. But most importantly, they had greatly increased the content of soluble solids, mainly fructose, glucose, and other sugars, all attributes of prime importance to the tomato industry. While the usual type of tomato contains between 4.5 and 6.2% soluble solids, the genes from our No. 832 increased the content in the new hybrids to 6.6 to 8.6%. Rick wrote to us: "A number of years ago an expert estimated that each 0.5% increase in soluble solids would be worth about a million dollars. Greatly improved flavor is another benefit. I thought you might be interested in this use of your valuable collection and want to thank you again for your trouble and foresight in sharing it with us."

Adjusting for inflation to 1987 U.S. dollars, the value of tomato No. 832 could, if widely incorporated, be worth about $8 million a year. The yearlong expedition that found it and 3 years of follow-up research cost the National Science Foundation only $21,000, and yielded more than 1,000 different collected plants, now scattered in many major herbaria of the world. Perhaps the most significant values stemming from our expedition are yet to come, possibly from potatoes we collected, or from the hundreds of bits of botanical information we passed along to colleagues. But, as in the case of our tomato, collected in 1962, commercially utilized a decade later, and not described as a new species until 1976, the practical value of an organism can often not be recognized except after years of work.

For this reason I have no patience with the phony request of developers, economists, and humanitarians who want us biologists to "prove" with hard evidence, right here and now, the "value" of biodiversity and the "harm" of tropical deforestation. Rather, it should be for them, the sponsors of reckless destruction, to prove to the world that a plant or animal species, or an exotic ecosystem, is NOT useful and NOT ecologically significant before being permitted by society to destroy it.

Free Trade, Diversity, and Community: the Watsonville Case

(The Watsonville story was told by Alexander Cockburn in The Nation, November 5, 1990. The analysis of free trade and community is taken from Herman Daly and John Cobb, For the Common Good, Beacon Press, Boston, 1989.)

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Not far from the Pacific Ocean in California is the agricultural town of Watsonville, a town that was badly shaken by the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. In 1990 the town was shaken by an earthquake of another kind. The Green Giant frozen-food plant near the edge of town announced that it would lay off 370 of its 520 workers.

Since World War II cutters and packers at Green Giant had prepared broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and other vegetables grown in Northern California's Pajaro and Salinas valleys. The workers are mostly Mexican immigrants, mostly women, paid about $7 an hour. Over the years the work force has been gradually reduced by the use of labor-replacing machinery.

This last great reduction, however, came not from new machinery, but from a decision made in a corporate boardroom in London. There a food conglomerate called Grand Metropolitan decided to move Green Giant food processing to a town called Irapuato, on the main road between Guadalajara and Mexico City. Workers in Irapuato will get $4 an hour. The agricultural area around Irapuato will be transformed from growing corn and beans for domestic production to growing vegetables for export, to help pay Mexico's -- and Grand Metropolitan's -- debts.

The reason Grand Met has an enormous debt is that in 1988 it bought Pillsbury, which earlier had bought Green Giant, which still earlier had bought the original food-processing plant in Watsonville, a local firm called Russo Frozen Foods. Through that purchase and others, Grand Met now owns Burger King, Haagen-Dazs, Smirnoff vodka, J&B scotch, Alpo pet foods, Pearle opticals, and much else.

As a result of these international mergers, people in Watsonville who have worked at the plant for two decades will be jobless. Farmers in the area will lose their market. Peasants in Irapuato will get jobs but find their corn and beans much more expensive (especially since, also to pay its debt, and under IMF pressure, Mexico has removed its subsidy of those basic food commodities).

Or, as the Green Giant workers say, in a pamphlet protesting the layoffs, "So that New York bankers will get paid in full on some bad loans they made, so that frozen food executives will make super profits rather than ordinary ones, and so that the Grant Met board of directors can win their financial gamble and make the payments on their high-interest loan, Mexican mothers no longer can afford to buy enough tortillas for their hungry children, and unemployed Watsonville frozen food workers don't know how they are going to pay their rent."

Free mobility of either capital or labor has the same consequence: equalization of both wages and returns to capital. Labor can move to where the capital is and compete for the high-paying jobs, bidding down the high wages, or capital can move to where the cheap labor is and bid up the low-wage rate. The tendency toward equalization of wages is completely obvious in the case of free labor migration and only slightly less obvious in the case of free capital mobility. Those who advocate free trade and free capital mobility are simultaneously advocating equalization of wages.

What is wrong with equalizing wages? Of course wages in high-wage countries will fall, but wages in low-wage countries will rise. Is that not a good way of sharing -- "production sharing," as some business consultants call it? It is indeed a form of sharing, but "wage sharing" would be a better

7 Balaton Bulletin #27 name. The laboring class in the high-wage country shares its wages and standard of living with the masses of Third World workers. The capitalists in the high-wage country benefit from cheaper labor, first abroad and then at home as well. They are not sharing with cheap foreign labor, and are able to reduce their previous level of sharing with the laboring class of their own national community. Equalization of wages means that U.S. and European and Japanese wages fall to the Third World level and that the Third World level rises hardly at all. By making the world of separate national communities into a single, common, overpopulated labor pool in the name of free trade, [a Western industrial country] would compete away the high standard of living of its working class -- the majority of its citizens.

Social security, medicare, and unemployment benefits all raise the cost of production just like high wages, and they too will not survive a general standards-lowering competition. Likewise, the environmental protection and conservation standards of the community also raise costs of production and will be competed down to the level that rules in overpopulated Third World countries. Free trade, as a way of erasing the effect of national boundaries, is simultaneously an invitation to the tragedy of the commons.

International trade, despite the name, is not trade between nations, but trade between individuals that crosses national boundaries. The individual, not the nation, is the decision-making unit. Mutual advantage between individuals in different countries does not guarantee mutual advantage for the two countries.

Consider, for example, a U.S. firm that moves its production across the Rio Grande into Mexico. It lays off U.S. workers earning 10 to 12 dollars per hour and hires Mexican workers at less than two dollars per hour. The U.S. capitalist-owner is much better off, the Mexican workers are slightly better off, and the U.S. worker is much worse off. Does this firm want to integrate itself into the community of Mexico and sell in the Mexican market as well as buy Mexican labor? By no means. The firm does not want to be an integral member of either community. It wants to buy labor in the low- income country and sell its product in the high-income country. It wants to take advantage of high incomes in the U.S. product market while failing to contribute to the maintenance of that high-income market by buying labor in the U.S. factors market. Nor does it wish to provide a product suitable for raising the standard of living in the low-income Mexican market.

The community nature of the issue is made obvious by asking what would happen if all U.S. firms bought labor in low-income Mexico and sold their product in the high-income United States? Clearly the U.S. would cease to be a high-income country. Would Mexico then become the high- income country? Its wages would tend to equality with the now lower U.S. wages. Both countries' common wage level would then depend on whether Mexico controlled its population growth and on whether a demoralized U.S. population would maintain its low fertility, or, in the face of growing insecurity and loss of social insurance, would revert to high fertility patterns as wages declined toward subsistence.

By what principles, then, should international trade be governed? By balanced trade between national entities. This means that trade is between England and Portugal as two communities, not between individual Englishmen and Portuguese each seeking only their own advantage. Of course it will

8 April 1991 still be individuals who ultimately exchange goods, but subject to rules designed to protect community interest.

The first of these rules is that trade should be balanced. Balanced trade and capital immobility imply each other. If we have balanced trade, there is no need for, or possibility of, international capital flows. The consequence of free international finance (a necessary complement to free trade) has been the running up of unrepayable debts. Large surplus accumulations of money resulting from trade imbalances sought ways to grow exponentially and to recycle back to the deficit country to finance further trade deficits. Banks pumped money into deficit countries at a rate much greater than the ability of those governments to build wisely or to administer honestly.

Clearly there is a wide middle ground between free trade and national self-sufficiency. Neither extreme has ever been practiced and we advocate neither. We cannot settle the question of exactly what trade policies are best, but we believe that policies currently err on the side of too much free trade. We have argued that free trade is a case of individualism riding roughshod over community interests. Free traders, having freed themselves from the restraints of community at the national level have effectively freed themselves from all community obligations. World community at least at present is an abstract vision. The goal of building up a community of communities, a community of nations at the world level, is one we share. But we are sure it will not be achieved by sacrificing the real bonds of community at the national level.

Connections Between Biological Diversity and Economic Diversity

(The following is excerpted from a paper by Richard B. Norgaard of the Energy and Resources Group of the University of California at Berkeley. The paper originally appeared in the journal Ecological Modelling, 38 (1987) 107-121, under the title "Economics as Mechanics and the Demise of Biological Diversity." Dick Norgaard will be one of our speakers at the next Balaton meeting.)

The loss of biological diversity is generally attributed to two macro phenomena -- human population growth and technological change. A third macro phenomenon, the transformation of social organization, is rarely mentioned. This essay explores how the rise of social organizations based on specialization and exchange work with population and Western technology to reduce biological diversity.

The world before the rise of the global exchange economy can be viewed as a mosaic of coevolving social and ecological systems. Within each area of the mosaic, species were selected according to how well they fit the values, knowledge, social organization, and technologies of the local people. At the same time, the social system was evolving depending on how well it fit the evolving ecological system. Each was affecting the other.

The boundaries of each area were not distinct or fixed. Myths, values, technologies, species spilled over the boundaries of the areas of the mosaic within which they initially coevolved to become exotics in other areas. Some of these exotics fit and thrived; some adapted, some died out. But to

9 Balaton Bulletin #27 some extent they all influenced the further coevolution of the system in their new areas. Spillovers were immensely important as forces of change.

A few tattered remnants of coevolutionary agricultural developments remain to give us clues to the past. In nearly all of them farmers deliberately intermix many crop and noncrop and animal species. These agroecosystems coevolved with the values, beliefs about nature, technologies, and social organization of indigenous peoples over centuries or millenia. A dependable food supply was achieved in part by planting many different crops in different places at different times. To a large extent the stability of the food supply resulted from the ecological stability achieved through high species diversity within each system.

We are now beginning to learn how traditional peoples contributed to the growth and maintenance of genetic diversity. Traditional peoples created agroecosystems within which plants and microorganisms coevolved under different selective pressures than in environments which were only marginally disturbed by people. But technological uniformity was not imposed.

Agroecologists argue that conservation of genetic diversity is possible through the maintenance of traditional cultures and the transfer of some of their practices to modern agriculture. Diversity in coevolving agricultural systems is greater than in global exchange economies because coevolution is a local process, specific to local cultural knowledge, technology, and social organization.

The mechanistic grid of universal truths developed by Western science has boldly overlaid and destroyed most of the coevolutionary mosaic. Environments are merging through common land management practices, while biological diversity is narrowing because of the common selective pressure from the cropping, fertilization, and pest control practices of modern agriculture. Global markets, global values, global social organizations, and global technologies have resulted in global criteria for environmental fitness. Diversity of all kinds has been lost.

The concepts of comparative advantage, specialization, and the gains from exchange are central to the Western economic model. Capitalists and socialists disagree as to whether specialization and exchange should be optimized through the invisible hand of free markets or through the central direction of government planners. Nearly every country picks a mix of the two. But in whatever form or mix, we now think of economies as consisting of interconnected people rather than a mere collection of individuals, because exchange is central to our understanding of economic systems.

This framing of social order has affected diversity in two ways. First, the encouragement of development through capturing the gains of exchange has encouraged specialization and a reduction in crop and supporting species in every region. Second, when exogenous factors change, comparative advantage and the pattern of specialization and exchange changes. Variation in aggregate economic welfare is reduced through increased variation in the activities of individual actors. This increased variation imposes stress on biological species that leads to extinction.

Farmers, who once planted diverse crops for subsistence, connect into the global exchange system and begin to specialize. Physically homogeneous regions specialize in but a few crops. The reduction in the number of crop species results in an even larger reduction in the number of supporting

10 April 1991 species. The best fitting nitrogen fixing bacteria, most effective predators of crop pests, and most complementary host plants for each of these are particular to the farmer's field and cannot be purchased with the seed of the cash crop. This, plus the tendency of the global economy to force farmers into producing as much as possible to stay competitive with other farmers, encourages the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and high-yielding seed varieties. Soil is reduced to a medium for fertilizer. Pesticides reduce both good and bad weeks and insects. Not only are many species and genetic traits being lost, but numerous relations affecting the productivity and control of ecosystems will never be known.

Crops fail due to bad weather, new technologies are developed, tastes change. Perhaps more importantly, institutions change. Interest rates, lending policies, the strength of cartels and trade barriers vary, sometimes dramatically. These changes redefine which people, tools, and lands have a comparative advantage. Economists assume that factors of production are mobile, that labor, capital and land can shift between lines of production, and that each adjusts in a way that optimizes for the good of all. But this stabilizing process for the whole increases the amount of change at the individual level in terms of who does what and with which tools and land. And land is more complex than a tractor. Economists have given little thought to the environmental services that help give land its value. Environmental services cannot freely shift from the support of rice to the support of cotton to suburban lawns to concrete to alfalfa to marsh habitat for waterfowl, and back to rice.

Economic models have people with different capabilities filling different niches much like different species fill different niches in ecological models. But the two models differ dramatically with respect to how the systems are presumed to adjust to exogenous change. The economy is modeled as if it had predefined atomistic parts which mechanically adjust through market signals or central planning to optimize the performance of the system as a whole. Biologists emphasize how ecological relations between species affect evolution -- how the coevolutionary process defines the niches themselves. Ecologists do not assume that predefined species sort themselves into predefined niches according to their comparative advantages, optimizing for what is "best for all," given the exogenous influences at the time. They do assume that fit strategies assure survival; unfit strategies lead to extinction.

No doubt some species are evolving strategies to cope with the changing agricultural conditions dictated by the exchange economy (most likely pests). There would not be a problem if the species that supply the environmental services appropriate to a particular crop could coevolve to fill their supporting niches as fast as the global exchange economy leads farmers to shift crops. In this sense the mismatch between economic and ecological models can be reduced to differences in the speed of their adjustment.

The coincidence of the rise of the atomistic-mechanistic model and the rapid decline in species diversity is not mere chance. All agree that to some extent the technology, economic decisions, and social organization stemming from this model will have to change to sustain species diversity. The coincidence, however, has not encouraged a creative response from a broader base of understanding. People and their economic decisions are an integral part of the ecological system. To think of them separately is one of the unfortunate consequences of the idea of objective knowledge. The diversity of the ecological system is intimately linked to the diversity of economic decisions people make. There was considerable economic diversity in the past due to cultural diversity. How people interact with

11 Balaton Bulletin #27 nature today is heavily influenced by the monotonous signals of the global exchange system, built around the economic model. Biological diversity has declined with economic diversity.

The economic model has imposed additional species loss through increased intertemporal instability. More biological speciation and niche specialization is possible in a stable system. But comparative advantage, specialization, and trade lead all to adjust to each other, so that an economic event in Japan induces a temporary response in Kenya. Thus further extinction occurs. Local biological and social systems are destroyed when international markets dictate that corn should be planted throughout the region one year, wheat the next, and soybeans the third. Species conservation and the continued coevolution of cultural knowledge, local technologies, and unique forms of social organization need more areal diversity and temporal stability than the global exchange economy provides.

Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing (A Note From Neva Goodwin)

First, I wanted to let you know that, since the grant under which I had collected and edited papers for a special issue of World Development included some funds for distribution, I am able to send a copy to each of you. For those in North America, I will send them out from here; for those in the rest of the world, I will send your addresses to Pergamon, the publisher, and the journals should come to you from England. If you haven't received your copy by the time this newsletter reaches you, let me know and I will check with Pergamon.

Second, do you remember the idea I mentioned at Balaton for collecting "Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing?" I decided to go ahead with this myself and as a start sent out letters to about 80 people representing a wide variety of backgrounds -- including environmentalists, business persons, economists, scientists in several fields, social commentators, and people in government and planning. The interest and enthusiasm expressed in their responses encourages me to continue collecting ideas. I hope that this will become one of a series of books I will write or edit for Westview Press. (The first in the series will be Global Commons: Site of Peril, Source of Hope, reprinted from the World Development issue you will receive. Another will probably be a collection of papers from the seminar series I am starting at Tufts, called Motivating People to Act as if the Future Mattered. The third will be Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing.)

Here, therefore, I will lay out to you my question, followed by an explanation of the terms I use, with hopes that you will find the time and interest to share your ideas with me.

The question is: In the context of sustainable development, what are the Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing of which you are most aware?

- By "development" I mean human-directed changes that contribute to human well-being -- changes both in the material world of houses, factories, roads, irrigation ditches, etc.; as well as in immaterial aspects of our capital stock, such as knowledge and information, institutions and cultural patterns.

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- By "sustainable development" I mean development that enhances or at least does not diminish the future possibilities for continuing such overall positive change.

- By "Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing" I mean actions now being taken that are anti- sustainable -- that harm the future prospects for maintaining living standards -- and that also do more harm than good in the present. These are situations in which there are more losers than winners, and where, if we could stop doing these dumb things, there would be an overall gain in the present as well as the future.

Let me suggest a few examples, focusing particularly on the area of conservation of materials and energy. Conservation measures may be roughly categorized as two kinds, "easy" and "hard." The easy ones are the ones we can do right away just by being more sensible -- turning off lights, carrying a string bag to shop with, using a bicycle instead of a car. The reverse -- leaving lights burning when no one's there, piling up unneeded paper or plastic bags, wasting gasoline as well as our health -- are examples of Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing. Hard conservation measure, by contrast, often require both long-range planning and community/government cooperation -- for example, setting up recycling plants and collection systems, improving public transportation.

On the more macro level there are also easy vs. hard actions to be taken, and again the easy ones are Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing. They include, most notably, the termination of expenditures that governments, the World Bank, and others make on projects whose overall impact is uneconomical as well as unsustainable -- for example, cost-ineffective infrastructure to permit logging in forests that should be left alone, fertilizer subsidies that result in overuse, all hidden subsidies that encourage additional energy use at the taxpayers' cost.

If, at some point, reality forces us to prevent severe deterioration in natural resources and in our own living standards, Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing should be the easiest places to start. My hypothesis is that there are actually quite a few of these dumb things. Why do we go on doing them? Sometimes inertia: they once made sense and no one has taken the responsibility to say "Stop" with circumstances changed. Sometimes inaccurate information: they were bad ideas all along but were mistaken for good ones. Perhaps most often they are things that benefit a small group while a larger group is hurt, but the small group is more powerful and/or better organized. In all three cases, wide publicizing of Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing could help us stop doing them.

I should stress that I'm not looking for "Smart Things We Could Start Doing" (like going out of our way to recycle or paying more for gasoline). Those essential things belong in another book. My search is for things we could and should stop, where stopping wouldn't be difficult or require many changes. Do you have any pet examples you could cite -- on a local, regional, national, or global level? I would be grateful for a note from you, jotting down a brief description, with any supporting details you can supply. For example, where I can find out more about the particular things you mention, or what has been written about it, or who else is particularly knowledgeable in the area?

I'm also looking for material for a section on "Dumb Things We've Already Stopped Doing" -- examples would be McDonald's belated, reluctant decision to stop using styrofoam containers, or legislation that has begun to roll back some subsidies. Other examples would also be welcome.

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I hope this strikes you as interesting. It's the kind of question where answers are likely to emerge over time as one encounters things and suddenly recognizes them as Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing. I look forward to hearing from you.

Neva Goodwin, 11 Lowell Street, Cambridge MA 02138 USA

Notes on Unsustainable Agriculture in the United States

More than 7000 varieties of apples once grew in American orchards. Now there are less than 1000. Every broccoli variety offered through seed catalogs in 1900 has since disappeared. Not only seeds, but seed companies are disappearing. There have been nearly 1000 takeovers and acquisitions of seed companies since 1970, mostly by large agrochemical companies. (Information from Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney, Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity, University of Arizona Press, 1990.)

* * * * *

The U.S. Fertilizer Institute, which represents the fertilizer industry, is trying to eliminate the word "manure." It says the word has a positive and "natural connotation" that is not accurate. It wants people to know that the stuff "isn't a warm, fuzzy substance." It suggests using the term "fecal contamination." (From the San Francisco Chronicle.)

* * * * *

David Steinman, a California newspaper reporter, recently used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to the federal government's tests of foodstuffs sold in the U.S. He published his findings in a book, Diet for a Poisoned Planet. One of the facts reported in the book is that the Food and Drug Administration tested 16 samples of raisins and found a total of 110 different pesticide residues. In response the California Raisin Advisory Board appropriated $558,000 to discredit Mr. Steinman. Sun-Maid Growers, which accounts for 30 percent of California raisin production, retained a law firm in an attempt to persuade Mr. Steinman's publisher (Random House) to pull copies out of bookstores and cease shipments of further copies. Next two public relations firms were hired by the agrochemical industries to intercept talk-show interviews that the major networks were planning with Mr. Steinman. A pesticide lobbying group (which calls itself the American Council on Science & Health) enlisted the help of White House Chief of Staff John Sununu to "encourage" the Environmental Protection Agency to chastise one of its senior science advisors, who wrote an introduction to the book. The group accused Mr. Steinman of "specializing in terrifying consumers about technology they cannot see or understand," and of posing a threat "to the U.S. standard of living and, indeed, may pose a future threat to national security." (God help a country without unblemished raisins!) The U.S. Department of Agriculture also undertook a secret campaign to prevent media coverage of Mr. Steinman's book, working with the National Food Processors Association to make

14 April 1991

"low key" calls to potential reviewers at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the "Today Show" and others. The USDA mailed to its national network of spokespersons damaging background material on Mr. Steinman and advice on how to refute any connection between pesticides and cancer.

Announcements

The Global Citizen by Dana Meadows has just been published by Island Press, Washington D.C. The book is a compilation from the past five years of newspaper columns, plus some personal commentary.

Kluwer Academic Publishers, Spuiboulevard 50, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands, announces the publication of the first two volumes in its new series on "Environment and Management."

Volume I is entitled In Search of Environmental Quality Indicators, edited by Onno Kuik and Harmen Verbruggen of the Institute for Environmental Studies of the Free University of Amsterdam.

Volume II is Multiobjective Decision Support for Environmental Problems by Ron Janssen also at the Institute for Environmental Studies.

This is the publishing house that has also published Joe Alcamo's book The RAINS Model of Acidification (1990). It has a long list of interesting books on environmental management, sustainable development, and ecological economics. Interested Balaton Group members may want to write to them and ask for a full catalog.

News from the Members

Janos Hrabovszky writes: "Our fall was a busy one. My Hungarian commitments kept me running back and forth between Vienna and Budapest. Enjoyed teaching my two short intensive courses on agricultural policy to graduate students who are already working -- this provided opportunities for very interesting discussions."

"My work on establishing the CAPPA (Computerized Agricultural and Population Planning Assistance) model (developed by FAO) for Hungary is moving along slower than I hoped for. It is an interactive micro-computer-based algebraic model, which can be very helpful in exploring agricultural strategies and opportunities and needs for programs and policies. It is also an excellent teaching tool for demonstrating internal relations in the agricultural field."

"The Blue Ribbon Commission for the Recovery of Hungary's Economy is also restarting its activities, and I will probably contribute to its planned study on the impact on the Hungarian economy if they can join the EEC. I have informed them that I would like to participate, but to attend as few conferences as possible."

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"My newest activities have been as a consultant to an EEC technical assistance project for Hungary's agriculture. I spent two weeks with them in November-December, mainly in formulating specific terms of reference for projects on which to spend their money. I still have a commitment to work for them for a week or so this year."

"I have completed my course in Vienna on the Economics of Agriculture-Related Environmental Problems. Taught it for three terms, and now I am giving up all my teaching activities, because they keep me away from home too much. I have been toying with the idea of converting my Hungarian lecture notes on agricultural policy into a full-fledged textbook for university use, but I am coming slowly to realize that it would require a lot of work, and I am not ready for it. Part of the problem is that it needs to be drafted in Hungarian, and that is slow and painful going for me. After all, I have worked in English for the last 35 years."

"In general I feel that my original resolve to stop all professional work at the age of 65 was a sound one, and it is time now that I am completing 68 this summer, to stop. This is greatly supported by Lou, as she complains that she put up with my gadding about for 20 years of my work in FAO, hoping that when I retire we would have more time together, and she is right. Thus I plan to complete my present commitments and then fully retire. It will help that I plan to donate all my professional books to Hungarian universities, and thus I will have the good excuse of not having the necessary literature at my disposal."

"I plan to return to Vienna at the end of April. In June we would like to spend 2 weeks in Scotland, July-August in Vienna and Vahrn, September in Italy on the beach and in Rome. Then from October on we hope to be back in our usual routine of enjoying Vienna cultural life, till departing for the mountains in the beginning of February. Hard life!"

Dana Meadows has attended two exciting meetings lately that may mark the beginning of the formation of a U.S. Balaton-like network. Both were also attended by and partially sponsored by Steve Viederman. The first was held at Commonweal, north of San Francisco and was convened by Commonweal's director, Michael Lerner. Attendees included particularly specialists in political science, and the discussion focused on the institutional changes at the international level needed to bring about a sustainable world. The second conference, convened by John Mack of the Harvard Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age, shifted the focus from the macro to the micro - - to the psychological phenomena within us all -- including within workers for sustainability -- that lead to the kinds of behavior that perpetuate poverty and pollution.

Both conferences were fascinating, and both brought together many good workers in the cause of sustainability, in urban and rural areas, in government, technology, academia, and business. Dana, Steve, Michael Lerner, John Mack, and others are excited about the possibility of "networking the networks," so that we can all begin to meet and work synchronously with our partners all over the world.

Dana and Dennis Meadows are working on a revision and update of The Limits to Growth, to be released next March on the 20th anniversary of the original publication.

16 April 1991

Jorgen Norgard and Bente Lis Christensen have published in Politiken, the major Danish newspaper, an article with a title that translates "Economy in Conflict with the Environment." Its basic point is summarized in its first paragraph: "Actions are taken to make citizens more conscious about the environment and to make technology cleaner. This is altogether worthy and necessary. But it is not sufficient. And it is quite depressing to see that there seems to be an implicit agreement not even to mention the possibility of curbing the real cause of the environmental problem, economic activity. On the contrary. All decisions to protect the environment must by no means interrupt economic growth. Indeed there is a widespread understanding that the protection of the environment is of interest mainly as a new area for economic growth!" Jorgen and Bente go on to quote the distinction between "growth" and "development" made by Herman Daly at our last Balaton meeting, and to describe Daly and Cobb's book For the Common Good.

Jorgen adds in a letter: "I have met regularly with 10-20 people, mainly economists, devoted to sustainable development. Being a non-economist, I speak more freely about limits to growth and provide ideas for them. Some of them have told me that the picture Bente and I give in the article of an old forest as a society with plenty of dynamics, competition, development, but without growth in total biomass, has convinced them that we can -- and should -- have a steady-state economy!"

"Another activity I have been involved in is to establish an Ecological Council to counteract the official Economic Council, which is very traditional in its view on growth. So far we have a small grant to start up."

"I have got more opportunities to travel lately than I can manage. In March I am invited to speak at a conference on energy efficiency in Hong Kong. They have even accepted that I focus on implementing sustainability in society, rather than the mere technical conservation potentials. So I will go to Hong Kong, but have turned down another invitation to visit various cities in Australia. I will have to make a short trip to the East, maybe with a stop in Bangkok."

Aromar Revi has been honored by being chosen as an Ashoka Fellow!!! This special award is given by the Ashoka Foundation in Washington DC to Third World "public service entrepreneurs." About 50 people are chosen each year worldwide. Past recipients have included such inspirational people as Chico Mendes and Anil Agarwal. The award includes a small unconditional financial stipend, and perhaps more important, a link to the worldwide network of Ashoka Fellows and an international prestige that can help with fundraising in the future. The Balaton network is honored to be linked to the network of Ashoka Fellows through the deserving person of Aro!

Aro writes: "The first phase of the project on the Action Plan for Rural Housing that I'm doing for the Government of India is over. We have crunched huge amounts of data to run a forecasting exercise on demand, supply, resources, and manpower utilization over the next 10 years. This has to be verified on the ground with about 4 months of fieldwork."

"I have finally got into extensive geographical information system (GIS) utilization and am learning a bit about remote sensing techniques for resource mapping. We have digitized a large number of features and resources for all the 500 odd districts of India: apart from the normal stuff on boundaries, relief, and rail and road transport networks we have done things like temperature,

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rainfall, insolation, sky conditions, earthquake and flood regions. Natural resources: soil types, depth, minerals, land-use patterns, forests, water resources, and cropping patterns. Demographic data in time series, critical categories of employment, migration. House types, consumer expenditure and investment. By the end of the year we will be sitting on one of the most important GIS databases in the country."

"My dream for many years has been to link GIS type data representation with STELLA/Dynamo structural models. This would probably be easiest on the Mac, but I do not know of any Mac- based GIS systems. We have all the data recorded on Clark University's IDRISI; it's written in independently running routine in Pascal. When I have a little time to breathe we will try to construct simple models similar to the ones that Hartmut Bossel has constructed in BASIC. However the data retrieval and representation will be on a GIS."

"The computational requirements are immense -- I have usurped the Ministry's 386 system, but we've already filled up nearly 120Mb of memory without having completed even half the task. I never thought that I would long to have a super-mini for my work, or that number-crunching would become so important."

"I have the next draft of the film proposal together after working with the production/direction team in Bombay for a week. The budget will work out at about $500,000 for 10 episodes of 50 minutes each. This is dirt cheap for a Western television network, but a huge amount of money to raise in India. We are planning a rather daring experiment for the film, in addition to the conventional documentary format we will use for about 50% of the work. The plan is to get together about a dozen activists/artisans/slum dwellers from different parts of the country who have personal experience in the struggle for better living conditions. We will bring them together and travel to different parts of the country. We plan to teach them to use video cameras so they can make their own film, based on their own perceptions and priorities -- a film within a film. The professional film team will simultaneously be recording their experiences."

"I am also helping to coordinate a project in Asia to study rural displacement by development projects, ethnic and cultural conflict, and the general process of conventional urban-industrial development. We have drawn a complete blank on contacting groups in China who have been active in this area. Does anyone have contacts with activists in China? I may go there in July and then drop in on the ISAGA meeting in Kyoto."

"More news -- many of us, especially a number of professionals from the Development Alternatives Environment Division, have joined hands to start a new organization called "The Action Research Unit" -- TARU, which means "tree of life" in Hindi/Sanskrit. We continue to work on the range of issues we did at Development Alternatives, because our basic commitment has not changed. We are also planning work in some "softer" areas like education, health, and communications, in addition to the "hard" things we are rather good at: water, soil conservation, housing, textiles, income generation."

"Robert Gilman sent me a copy of the latest In Context -- it is one of the most remarkable journals that I have seen. Each issue carries the Gilmans' consciousness with it. I so wish we were all

18 April 1991

hooked to e-mail. It feels a little unfair to be left out in the cold, with a great idea, and have to use the stupid postal system!"

Dennis Meadows will host the first session to develop the Sustainable Development Education Toolbox that Bert De Vries proposed at the last Balaton Group meeting. June 1-8 will see a group including Dennis, Bert, Hartmut Bossel, Dana Meadows, Gerry Barney, John Sterman, Aromar Revi, Anupam Saraph, and several others working at Dennis' institute to survey available models and games, develop a curriculum, create new materials, design a dissemination program, and write several proposals for funds to support the next stages of the project.

Lucia Severinghaus writes from her sabbatical in Berkeley, California: "Originally I was going to spend the year working on data and writing manuscripts. I am doing a little of that, plus attending seminars, etc. One of the research projects I started last fall in Taiwan needs to use DNA analysis techniques. I am not trained in this at all. My team and collaborator in Taiwan had a lot of trouble getting usable results. I had the chance to learn it here in January, so I got involved. Now I spend about half my time improving my skills and exploring finer points related to my research, which is on hybridization of birds. Of course I could leave the work to my team and collaborator, but I am in the best place to get help for all the problems that might crop up. So I am doing as much as possible now."

"Of course I also try to spend some time with my husband and be more domestic than I was in Taiwan. Except now I seem to have so little time I am starting to cut corners on cooking and other domestic chores. Oh well, research really is more fun than housekeeping. Right?"

Chirapol Sintunawa says via FAX: "The tour to the temples is still in progress and invitations begin to increase for the talk on Energy and Environmental Conservation. During March 4-8 Jorgen Norgard was here for a short stay at the Balaton Bangkok Hotel and helped to get things organized for the television recording program. He left Bangkok on the same day I went to the television studio and also helped in discussion on the establishment of the Energy Efficiency Technology Exhibition Center."

"I will participate in Niels Meyers' conference on "Global Collaboration on a Sustainable Energy Development" in Denmark in April and then to gain knowledge and experience in energy conservation and efficiency, alternative agriculture, and water conservation I intend to visit groups in the United States during May, with one or two of my research staff. I plan to visit Dartmouth College, the International Institute for Energy Conservation in Washington DC, and the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado."

Otto Soemarwoto was honored upon the occasion of his retirement as director of the Institute of Ecology of Padjadjaran University in Bandung with a two-day symposium in February on "The Role of Ecology in Environmentally Sound and Sustainable Development." To show that retirement need not mean either the end of useful activity or the end of learning, Otto spent the month before his retirement ceremony at M.I.T. learning STELLA-based system dynamics with John Sterman. Over that month Otto and one of his colleagues from the Institute developed a model of the

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dynamics of rice cultivation in Indonesia, which they presented to the System Dynamics Group at M.I.T. at the end of their stay. During his time in New England Otto also took a little time to visit Dana Meadows and Betty Miller in the Connecticut River Valley and Dennis Meadows on the New Hampshire seacoast.

Gerry Barney has just published a fully revised and updated second edition of Managing a Nation.. This unique reference book surveys and reviews microcomputer software programs of special interest to those responsible for and concerned with the management of affairs of nations. The book covers sector-specific programs, multisector and global models. It includes extremely useful chapters on availability and use of global data bases for microcomputers. Before June 28, 1991 you can order a copy at the discount price of $46.15 which includes postage and handling: Westview Press, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, CO 80301.

Stories, Quotes, Jokes

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering. Aldo Leopold

A speech to dedicate a monument to the extinct passenger pigeon.

We have erected a monument to commemorate the funeral of a species. It symbolizes our sorrow. We grieve because no living man will see again the on-rushing phalanx of victorious birds, sweeping a path for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from all the woods and prairies of Wisconsin....

For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. The Cro- Magnon who slew the last mammoth thought only of steaks. The sportsman who shot the last pigeon thought only of his prowess. The sailor who clubbed the last auk thought of nothing at all. But we, who have lost our pigeons, mourn the loss. Had the funeral been ours, the pigeons would hardly have mourned us. In this fact, rather than in Mr. DuPont's nylons or Mr. Vannevar Bush's bombs, lies objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts. By Aldo Leopold

I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness ... much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.... We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon of which we do not dream. By William James

20 April 1991

Where do we start? We start everywhere at once. By Aldous Huxley

The Mad Farmer's Letter to Some Relatives in Town by Wendell Berry

Dear Folks, equals distance times velocity squared. We hear that you all have had a right hard Drink lots of beer. Pitch the can. You week, know Nature We know you're just worn out, empty just loves to recycle stuff. When you eat as an old beer can. You need to be throw your plastic dishes overboard -- a recycled. good way Lots of recreation will do the trick. to recycle them. They can be used again Recreation by all the hungry people downstream. is what we got out here. Come use it up. Spend a restful weekend, going fast, Or bring your bassboat. We can see and making noise out here where it's that you folks are realists. If you really natural want to fish, you got to put out the money. and wild and uncluttered, and a man If you haven't got the money, just borrow (women and children too, of course) can be it. free. Out here, we can still remember a few backward country people who thought you could fish You can do just as you please out here with a willow pole and a minnow or a because nobody lives here but country worm. people. They caught a lot of fish, but there was no recreation in it. Why, some of them would If you hear that rural unemployment rates sit are 31% higher than in the cities, don't still in one place a half a day at a time. worry. Don't worry about farmers going broke. But fish were slower back in those days; That just gives them more time for If you want recreation now, you got to recreation. move. If only 12% of the doctors and 18% of the Fish equal dollars plus distance times nurses velocity squared. live in rural areas, don't worry. We got Drink plenty of beer to prevent dehydration plenty of recreation. It keeps us healthy. and sunstroke. And repay Mother Nature for the fish you catch. Throw your beer When you come, bring your boat. Go fast cans overboard. up and down the river. Speed will increase the amount of recreation per mile per day. Come back in deer season. Bring your You will be surprised how the recreation pals. will add up if you hurry. Recreation

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We love to see you riding up and down the past midnight Sunday night, blow your roads horn in your Jeeps and red suits, rifles at half and holler. Break a bottle on the road. cock, We'll want to know you're all right. like Santa Claus's army. Bring plenty of beer. You'd rather not be caught, waiting for a big buck, way out here in nowhere with nothing to do; you'd just as well be at work. Leave your beer cans in the woods to pay for the deer. You know how Mother Nature loves little things like that. If you don't find a deer, shoot a cow. We want you to have a good time.

Keep your city clean. Throw your trash out the car window on the way home.

Pitching in, you know, requires pitching out. Out here is where it will end up anyhow -- in a sanitary landfill, natural, wild, and uncluttered.

As you drive along, recreationally drinking beer, please throw the empty cans onto the roadside where they can be picked up and recycled. This is a highly recommended charity to the poor. If possible throw the cans in people's yards where the grass is short and they will be easier to see. All the world loves a recycler.

The poor, you know, can be recycled too, once they pick up enough cans to afford a boat.

When you go by our house on your way home

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