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Tuisku “Snow” Curtis-Kolu

Art FILTERED RECOLLECTIONS - October 2018 Tuisku "Snow" Curtis-Kolu

A Portrait From Memory

Posted on October 17, 2018

Art by Tuisku “Snow” Kolu

Sketching portraits can sometimes feel like an intimate act. You become familiar with the curves, wrinkles, and freckles on the face of a stranger, a passerby. For a moment, you know their face better than your own. You see the story of their life, their memories etched into their skin – from laugh lines around their eyes to the years of stress carved into their forehead.

To them, they’ve simply passed an oddly ogling stranger. To you, a face with a fascinating story immediately begins to be warped by your memory.

Get sketching materials before it fades. Before your attempted replica becomes a false representation of what gave you such a heavy feeling of life.

Art Contributing Writers FOOD POLITICS - September 2018 Tuisku "Snow" Curtis-Kolu

The Real Cost of Industrial Agriculture

Posted on September 30, 2018
The Hungry Ghost

Written by Elizabeth Knight

It has been found that industrial agriculture produces only 30% of our food while using 70% of our resources. While on the other hand, small-scale farmers produce 70% of our food while using only 25% of our resources. This article will show that not only is the dominant method of food production pushed by our culture not efficient, but it actually has many hidden costs.

The Cost of Emissions

While conversations grow around greenhouse gas emissions and the damage that fossil fuels do to our environment, there are still some major players that aren’t being discussed enough. Namely, Industrial Agriculture. In a report done by GRAIN, an international non-profit that supports small farmers, around 44-55 % of greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to industrial agriculture.

Emissions come from several steps in food production. From the fertilizers and pesticides used to control crops. From machinery used to farm the land. From the cost of processing and packaging to transport and cooling of products. From the waste of products due to poor food waste management policies, both by governments as well as by grocery stores, restaurants, and consumers.

Then, of course, there is the growing awareness of how many greenhouse gas emissions come from the meat industry. Not only from the farms themselves but also from the destruction of forests and swampland either to house the CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), or to grow monocultures, like corn and soy, that are used to feed them.  

All of this adds up to quite a lot of fossil fuel use, most of which is not actually necessary, and some of which is detrimental, not only to the environment, but also to society.

How Industrial Agriculture Contributes to the Climate Crisis by Klimakollektivet

 

The Costs of Synthetic Fertilizer

The system of Industrial food production is based on specialization, or the establishment of monocultures. Monocultures are when huge areas of land are used to grow only one product, such as corn, wheat, or soy. This system is established because it is easier. A grower uses large farm equipment to plant one type of crop. Then this one crop is fertilized with synthetic, or chemical, fertilizers and maintained with the use of pesticides. While this may serve a short-term goal of producing said crop easier, there are several problems with an industrial approach to the natural ecosystem.

One of the first problems is the cost of fertilizing these types of manufactured ecosystems. The production of synthetic fertilizers relies heavily on the use of fossil fuels, as an ingredient of the fertilizer and as a resource needed to produce the fertilizer. The production of nitrogen fertilizers, for instance, accounts for 3-4% of the global use of fossil fuels. When NO2 fertilizers are put out they immediately release greenhouse gases, as it’s not possible for the soil to absorb all of it at once. This layer of nitrogen fertilizers also prevents the soil from absorbing any other GHGs.

Another side effect of synthetic fertilizer use is the run-off effect. The fertilizer that the soil can’t absorb, which is much of it, runs into nearby waterways. These fertilizers then keep on fertilizing, and in so doing create an imbalance in the growth of algae and seaweeds. This unnatural growth leads to a chain of events which cause oxygen deprivation in the water, killing off any animals who need oxygen to survive. These are appropriately called Dead Zones, and are entirely man-made phenomena.

The industrial agricultural process involves the use of pesticides. Unfortunately, these pesticides don’t only kill the insects which would harm the crops, they kill everything. Every small insect and animal that lives in that area – from the birds, bees, and worms – dies, creating a lifeless environment. This lack of biodiversity means that the soil doesn’t have a good mix of nutrients in it.

This lack of nutrients creates an addiction to, you guessed it, synthetic fertilizers, which contributes to creating the problem in the first place. Like with all addictions, the saddest part is that a tolerance is developed, so more and more fertilizers are required to get the same results. A huge cornfield essentially creates a huge patch of land that is functioning in a way that is entirely alien to how life on earth functions. In other words, this is not a naturally occurring system, and cannot be sustained in the long run.

The Costs of Monocultures

The next step in the fossil fuel heavy journey of food comes with the global dependency on import-export culture. If each region is growing one or two things, which must be shipped around the world to other regions which are growing a different one or two things, a dangerous system is created where no region has food sovereignty.  This is dangerous for a multitude of reasons.

First of all, it means that if something should happen to a particular crop, those growers are completely devastated. We all know the proverb about putting all your eggs in one basket, and that’s essentially what industrial agriculture is pushing. We’ve seen examples of how dangerous this can be in several instances since the onset of monoculture. From, the tragic Potato Famine in Ireland, to the citrus blights which occurred all over the Eastern Americas in the 1980’s. When growers rely on one crop they make themselves considerably more vulnerable.

Secondly, this means that in order for any one region to support itself it is dependent on imports from other regions. The cost of this creates food that is absolutely soaked in fossil fuels. From the cost of processing foods to make them last longer to the cost of packaging and refrigerating them for long journeys, it certainly adds up.  

Another cost is the loss of biodiversity in ways which also affect culture. When small growers must compete with huge operations it makes it much more difficult. This means that every year, around the world, small family farmers are kicked off of their land and displaced. Often these farmers must move to more metropolitan areas and then become purely consumers instead of producers of food. Farmer Displacement can also lead to the splitting up of families, a loss of sense of place or self and cultural identity.  

In the past decades, the world has gone from eating a varied diet, which changed according to region and season, to eating a much more narrow range of plants and animals. In every species of plant or animal that we eat we have reduced the varieties considerable. This means that all sorts of culture and heritage have been lost to monoculture farming. In so doing we have lost our autonomy. When we no longer know where our food really comes from and we cannot decide what we want to eat, we suffer. Both culturally and nutritionally. This year there have been studies citing the loss of nutritional value for crops grown in monoculture and using synthetic fertilizers. Below is a small example of how many species we’ve lost in only 100 years.

The Final Bill

There are plenty of arguments from industrial agriculture lobbyists stating that this method of production is necessary for feeding the world, for feeding our growing population. However, this method of production is short-sighted and unsustainable. It boasts higher yields at lower costs, and yet it still leaves one in eight to go hungry.

The current system of food production doesn’t include in its true costs: high greenhouse gas emissions, loss of soil health, loss of healthy ecosystems, addiction to resource intensive fertilizers and pesticides, loss of biodiversity and loss of food sovereignty.  

In conclusion, it’s time for us to genuinely consider the cost of how we eat. We should demand that our policymakers make policy that is based on science and not funded by multinational corporations that concern themselves more with profits than with consequences. We cannot continue to bend the earth to our industrial ideals. It’s not sustainable and we see more and more research to support this. The Industrial Agricultural system is a relatively new system, and it’s best for us to stop this system before we completely lose the resources to do so. There are viable answers to feeding the world to be found in all sorts of food sovereignty movements, from organizations like Grain to Via Campesina to The African Center for Biosafety. Let’s all educate ourselves about industrial agriculture and the real costs of what we eat so that we can make informed decisions and protect the world we share.  

Art MADNESS - July & August 2018 Tuisku "Snow" Curtis-Kolu

Cycling Creativity

Posted on August 1, 2018

Written by Tuisku “Snow” Kolu

Creativity can be a kind of madness, taking over your motive and drive whenever or wherever it pleases. This can be problematic when you’re on the road and have limited supplies to express yourself. But the Creative needs to be fed. Limited supplies doesn’t necessarily spell disaster for the Creative, but rather reforms its drive to find a way to express itself. Hence you find yourself painting with a messy brush that is falling apart onto a piece of bark ripped from a tree. For now, your mind can be still from the need to create, but not for long.

HOMEWARD - May 2018 Tuisku "Snow" Curtis-Kolu

Home of the Global Citizen

Posted on May 28, 2018
 

Written by Tuisku ‘Snow’ Kolu

The world is more interconnected than ever before, and while most still have some sense of home that is tied to a singular location – a family home, a city, a nation – this growing interconnectedness has created new groups and waves of people whose idea of home can be more convoluted.

Expatriate communities have been growing at an exponential level in recent years, leading to a new phenomenon of home identity. In 2017 there were an estimated 258 million people living outside their nation of origin according to UN statistics, compared to the 154 million in 1990. This is more than three and a half times larger than the population of the United Kingdom and about half the population size of the EU. While it is accurate that many of those living abroad may still have a sense of home tied to their origin nation, there is one particular group resulting from such migration trends that illustrate how the changing nature of global society has altered the concept of home –  Third Culture Kids (TCKs).

TCKs are individuals who spent some or all of their formative years in one or more countries outside their parents’ home country. The name comes from the idea that such a child would have three cultures – their parent’s native culture, the culture of the country they partially grew up in, and finally a combination of the two. This combination is a mixed identity that combines their parents’ culture and the culture(s) they grew up in. Many who feel an affinity with this definition have lived in several different nations by the time they are adults, allowing their cultural identity to include ideals and values of different origins. TCKs can develop into adults with a sense of global citizenship, belonging everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Many TCKs can find the traditional concept of home with its ties to a location unfamiliar, perhaps even uncomfortable. TCKs often experience discomfort with their identity on return to their nation of origin. Some psychologists discuss this as ‘cultural homelessness’, as many TCKs find it difficult to associate with a singular culture. There is a sense of otherness that develops from this. Personally, I found returning to my native country to be more confusing and alienating than when moving somewhere unfamiliar. To an extent, this often comes from an experience of ‘otherness,’ feeling foreign and disconnected. While I still felt some affinity with certain cultural elements, much was at odds with my identity. As such for many TCKs the concept of a singular location as a home can be inconceivable. There is an abundant amount of memes online attempting to put words to this experience – from the question ‘where are you from?’ setting off a full-blown identity crisis, to the confusing attempts at explaining why your accent seems to fluctuate between 3 or 4 different vocations.

However, much of this discomfort may come from the pressure to feel an affinity with the traditional concept of home. In a childhood where your head is cracked open beyond this notion – allowing the creation of an identity which attempts to compile an understanding and relationship to completely different sets of histories and peoples – this concept of home has to be explored in a different way. Because, once it is cracked, returning to a familiar national identity is easier said than done.

When releasing the concept of home from nationality, one can begin to assess the less tangible elements associated with it. This can be explored in how we discuss home. The idiom “in the comforts of one’s own home” suggests that people tend to associate home with a feeling of comfort; of familiarity. Moreover the saying “home is where the heart is” suggests a need for loved ones and community. I would also argue that this ties in a sense with our traditional understanding of home being tied to a nation, as home appears to be seeking the feeling of being understood.

Attempting to understand comfort and familiarity in relation to the life of a TCK can feel inherently flawed. There is not a lot of stability/consistency in the life of a TCK due to the often changing environment. However, life is change. Change is now one of the most familiar and comfortable feelings I experience in adulthood. This feeling of excitement for the unknown and the approaching change is wonderful. Arguably many TCKs are accustomed to change, understand it better than most, and are generally considered highly effective at assimilating to new situations and cultures. Hence many of us feel most comfortable in a migrating lifestyle and continue to do so into adulthood. As such, change is home because it feels consistent due to its inherently inconsistent nature.

Photo by Milada Vigerova

By understanding home in relation to community and loved ones, constant movement can once again feel at odds with such a development. As I discussed earlier, TCKs can find a considerable feeling of foreignness in relation to the country of their origin. Studies show that TCKs are often quick at developing friendships and creating a community in new surroundings, due to their ability to assimilate. As such much of the feeling of a sense of belonging can come from these ties with friends and family. However, I would argue that there is a further level understanding of your friends and community that is needed to feel ‘home’. Beyond your own assimilation, it is the feeling that someone else fully understands your identity. Arguably many TCKs struggle to find this as adults due to a migrating lifestyle and being surrounded by those who identify closely with nationality.

To an extent, TCKs have found new ways of achieving this with the help of technology and increasingly cheaper travel. TCKs have developed a considerable web presence, allowing individuals with similar childhoods to come together online and share their common experience. This includes discussion and advice forums, blogs, and a heavily dedicated meme culture. As such, there is a sense of a community of people who can come together due to a common set of TCK experiences. Occasionally you also get the joy of running into another TCK in real life and connect over the similarities in lifestyle. As such I would argue there is a similar bond between TCKs as there are between those that derive their sense of home from nationality. This is due to both groups sharing a common set of experiences. Cheap travel and social media also allow the TCKs of today to stay better connected to their friends and family.

I have been incredibly fortunate, meeting marvelous people throughout my travels that have given me a sense of community and understanding over time that has succeeded to allow a sense of home.

With regard to the changing nature of our society, it may be time to reassess our traditional conception of ‘home’. An exploration of the ideas related to home can allow those that may not seem as connected to feel more comfortable with their sense of identity, and less lost within such a concept. In taking time to reassess seemingly uncomplicated ideas such as ‘home’ in light of the changing nature of society, it may allow us to better understand and feel comfortable in this change. Although at first, it can feel at odds with what we traditionally consider home, it is arguably more similar than we may give it credit, in its seeking of comfort and community. There is some power in the ability to find home beyond a single nation, in seeking it in the large scale of fluidity of the modern global society. Being comfortable with such an identity can allow an exploration of ideas from several different perspectives – some call it a “three-dimensional” worldview.