Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 24.1 of Digestable, your daily mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
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Today’s news, fermented:
Although I have long self-identified as an adult, I do still think, all the time, about what I want to be when I grow up. The uncertainty of the world, paired with the unpredictability of a life, looking from one’s twenties, are a constant reminder that I am not done growing up.
My mama, the person with whom I have been discussing this question the longest, sent me an article this morning about a person I would like to be like when I grow up. Her name is Zeynep Tufekci; the article is worth reading in its entirety. It’s called, How Zeynep Tufekci Keeps Getting the Big Things Right.
Things mentioned include:
The Zapatista solidarity movement
False binaries
Sharp critique of the American media
Being an information person and a social scientist
Using systems thinking to be right about big complicated stuff
Give it a read. Here’s a terrifying, beautiful insect.
(via)
The Second Look
So earlier I promised you all an answer to the nitrogen problem that involves a small smooth round object and then I just disappeared like all the oxygen in the Mississippi delta after an algae bloom. I’m sorry for leaving you all hanging but I’m back with the answer!
While you were reading about the extreme lengths humans have gone to in order to get nitrogen from the air to the ground you probably wondered if there’s way to fix nitrogen that doesn’t involve colonizing islands in the Pacific or using tons of energy to synthesize highly explosive fertilizers. You were absolutely right to wonder this, after all the human race wasn’t living under constant famine before the Haber-Bosch process was invented – and plants certainly do a good job growing on their own without the help of highly specialized human assistance. So what’s the one weird trick to fix nitrogen that corporate ag companies and chemical manufacturers don’t want you to know?
IT’S BEANS!
(please clap)
Something to know about me is that I have a mental “environmentalism” bingo board that is always in the back of my mind. The entire bingo board is one big space that says “Legumes have root nodules that host symbiotic nitrogen fixing bacteria.” To break this statement down, legumes (a.k.a. beans and other friends) have little growths on their roots that serve as cozy homes for friendly bacteria that can turn nitrogen into the air into soil nitrogen for plants to eat. Whether you’re talking about ecology, food history, climate science, farming, environmental policy, or any related fields, this fact is bound to come up eventually and whenever it does I bounce up and down in my chair like the excitable child I am and then post it to the meme page I created to celebrate the phenomenon.
Maybe I’m a bit overzealous in my celebration of rhizomal bacteria, but I do believe it’s one of the most important environmental concepts. Think about it, not only do plants use chlorophyll to literally make food from sunlight, they’re able to harness the magic of symbiosis to take this notoriously hard to find nutrient and focus it right at their roots. Not only that, but legumes fix enough nitrogen to not only feed themselves, but all the plants around them that can’t fix their own nitrogen. If you’ve been searching for a model of how to be a good neighbor, look no further.
Civilizations around the planet have been effectively harnessing this leguminous superpower for most of human history (shout-out to the three sisters). Staying at my parents’ house on Dakota land in rural Minnesota reminds me that the vestiges of this knowledge are even visible in the fields of the U.S. industrial agricultural system through the standard crop rotation of growing corn one year and soybeans the next. (those are soybeans in the photo)
But this gesture at ecological awareness within the industrial agriculture system doesn’t really cut it. Corn is a notoriously hungry crop. It’s not corn’s fault, the plant is a tropical grass that we keep insistently planting in less nutrient rich temperate landscapes where soybeans can’t fix enough nitrogen to satisfy it. On top of that, the intense cycle of deeply tilling soil every year and leaving fields without any vegetation to hold the soil down for half the year means that all that nitrogen the soybeans worked to fix escapes back into the atmosphere or washes away as the soil erodes. That’s why farmers spray tanks of ammonia gas and cow manure on their fields every year, because the rigid factory-like agricultural system prevents these plants from working together the way they evolved to do.
So industrial agriculture sucks. Duh. But farmers and other plant people have been implementing some very cool ways to put this plant-knowledge back into the system! There’s intercropping, planting crops that play nice together next to one another like in the three sisters tradition. Instead of corn having to survive off the leftover nitrogen from last year’s soy, the legume is right there fixing nitrogen in real time for everyone to eat. This method also helps reduce pests because if a bug really likes to eat corn, it’s harder for it to hop from corn plant to corn plant if there are squash and beans planted in between. Then there’s strip tilling, where instead of tilling the whole field, you only till the strip where you’re planting seeds. Similarly, no-till farming uses machines that dig a little hole exactly where the seed is planted and the rest of the soil remains undisturbed. Reducing tilling keeps those lovely hard-won nutrients from escaping the soil and prevents soil erosion. And then there’s my favorite, cover crops! This is where you plant a small, low to the ground crop over the winter or among the seeds of your main crop to hold the soil in place and prevent erosion. Some of the most popular cover crops are clover and alfalfa which are (wait for it) LEGUMES! So when you plant clover over the winter, you not only keep your soil in place and sequester a little more carbon dioxide, you also fix more nitrogen in the soil! Some cover crops, like alfalfa and rye, can even be harvested and sold, providing an extra financial incentive for farmers. If we were able to remove the legislative and economic hurdles that safeguard the current agro-industrial complex and implement these practices on a national scale, it would mean revolution for our food system, climate, and global ecology. We would be able to grow more and better food with less fertilizer and pesticides, restore countless eutrophied lakes and rivers, and begin to rebalance our planet’s nitrogen and carbon cycles.
In the city of Beirut following the ammonium nitrate explosion, people are behaving like beans. Like the neighborhood mutual aid organizations that formed during COVID lockdown and the collecting of resources, expertise, and power happening at Black Lives Matter occupations and demonstrations, neighbors focus on the things at their disposal and what they can generate to fill everyone’s needs. In the face of these tragedies, people form root nodules, spaces to share resources and form coalitions and ask our governments and systems to support us the way we support one another.
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
Whewwwwww there is drama in the Conway household today, folks. And I am here to give you the ~*Hot Goss*~.
Several weeks ago, the world became aware of the existence of one 15-year-old Claudia Conway, whose anti-Trump tik toks garnered widespread attention because Claudia, if you haven’t joined the dots by now, is daughter to Kellyanne Conway. Yes, the same Kellyanne who breathes life into D*nald Tr*mp’s bloated balloon body through her work as the President’s counselor, go-to pundit, and grifter.
Claudia, with her functioning brain and moral compass, has been openly feuding with her parents via Tik Tok and Twitter all summer, bashing them for their conservative views and urging Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to adopt her. Seriously, homegirl has NOT been holding back – oh, at all – when it comes to dragging her parents online. Which clearly indicates discontent and consternation have been brewing for some time in the Conway household. And thus, leading us to a series of tweets last night in which Claudia announced she will be pushing for emancipation from her parents due to “years of childhood trauma and abuse.”
And within hours of Claudia’s announcement, Kellyanne and her husband George Conway both announced their own respective resignations from their jobs. Yes, Kellyanne will be leaving the White House by the end of the month, while George (who is a vocal anti-Tr*mp Republican) will be withdrawing from The Lincoln Project, an organization he co-founded, to “devote more time to family matters.”
I’m actually shocked that this was the outcome of Claudia’s feud with her parents, and specifically with Kellyanne. Claudia seems to have been surprised too! And maybe it’s because I don’t believe anything anyone even vaguely connected to D*nald Tr*mp says or does, but given how bizarre Kellyanne and George’s marriage dynamics are, I’ve always assumed that the Conways were just grifting in this moment to get whatever they need – fame, money, positions – from a Tr*mpian sociopolitical climate. One just happened to be in the White House, broadcasting his propaganda on television networks for him, while the other swung the other way. And so I thought it was with Claudia, who “grifted” as the outspoken leftist child of the right-wing Conway family.
But I can accept that I was wrong, because Claudia is ultimately only a 15-year-old child who is finding her way, her voice, and her values in this world – just like most 15-year-olds are doing. I know when I was that age, I was outspoken as hell about literally everything. Tik Tok obviously wasn’t a thing yet, but I kept and maintained an extremely public blog that documented my feelings on my parents, school politics, you name it! And it must truly hurt to see your parents snipe at each other all day long in addition to propping up one of the worst presidents ever, especially when it goes against everything you believe in.
So props to you Claudia for standing up for yourself! And if it’s emancipation that you really want and need, then I hope you get it and get it with the support of other family, friends, and folks who will love, protect, and take care of you wholeheartedly.