I’d like to…

Program an addictive video game that teaches clinical knowledge. And then play it in order to study for boards.

Establish a program of victory gardens that supplies people with pots, soil, seeds, and the tools they need in order to tend small crops of vegetables. I’d then like to take half of the food and donate it to food banks.

Program a document system that combines a webpage with a spreadsheet, database, and a regular word processor. All online.

Be a trauma orthopedic surgeon. And an immunologist. And a physiatrist. And a psychiatrist. And a pain medicine specialist. Really I’d just like to combine these fields to treat people who are in large amounts of pain that restrict their ability to move around productively.

Own an apartment building. The top floor would be my penthouse and the roof would be my garden. I would include a pool at the bottom floors and garden rooms.

Own a coffee shop that turns into a bar at night. It would have flowers everywhere and would feature tango for five to ten minutes every hour. There would also be take-out.

Sleep regular hours…

Urban Agriculture: Health and Security – Part I

I’m reading the book Omnivore’s Dilemma right now.  It’s absolutely an amazing book, and his chapter about Polyface Farms, a 550 acre sustainably run farm, committed to local food sourcing has me absolutely transfixed by its’ efficiency and output.  I’ve found myself wondering how one could produce as much food as he does in an urban area.  It’s honestly helping shape my opinion of commercial farming – making me think that in a sense it is wrong.  I feel that biodiverse subsistence farming is a much better option unless you place constraints on the ecological impact of large-scale monoculture.  I read a statistic that says agriculture is responsible for 1/3 of our fossil fuel use in America and transportation is responsible for another 1/3.  We use massive quantities of energy to raise, harvest, and transport food.  But there are many alternatives for raising and harvesting food, and there are many alternatives for the transportation of food as well.  Our country has without a doubt suffered a huge loss of biodiversity, something which will undoubtedly make our food sources less robust and more vulnerable to disease, pestilence, or natural disaster.  Food security is the same thing as national security.  In addition, our current agribusiness principles do not properly account for differences in food quality (nutrition or microbial safety).  Unfortunately the market is differentiated solely on price.  And there are producers out there that do not want to include information as to the manner that their animals have been raised including a) where they were housed, b) the way they have been slaughtered and butchered, c) the way they were fed and kept healthy, d) the lifestyle they led including amounts of exercise and what pathogens they were exposed to, and e) how fast they were grown up.  I’d like to think of a way that I can manage to incorporate concerns of locality, microbial/parasitic safety, nutritional value, and environmental and economic sustainability into a system of agriculture for urban people.

With 50% of our people in America in cities (don’t quote me on that…) we need to figure out a way to include them in our food decisions and give them accurate information that will help them make long term decisions.  People would like to vote with their dollars and I am a proponent of that.  The first thing I propose is a marketing panel for livestock – they should be required to submit information about their feedstock sources, pharmaceuticals they have received, slaughterhouse ratings, and macro/micro-nutrient profiles.  I would also like to know the distance the meat traveled…This promises to be a long series of posts as I research this topic…hold on to your seats!!!