Beyond Healthcare Reform: Living Well

Eat Food, Not too much, Mostly plants—Michael Pollen

The China Study includes a section on China, but is really about Americans and what we eat. Colin Campbell (the senior author of The China Study) contends that “what we eat” is making us sick and killing us prematurely.

In this well documented, chart filled, and very readable (to me) book, Campbell offers an evidence-rich defense of his proposition that if Americans switched to eating “mostly plants” in their original (whole food) form, they would reduce their risk of getting what Campbell calls “diseases of affluence”: heart disease, diabetes, obesity, a broad range of common cancers (most prominently breast, prostate and colon), several auto-immune diseases (e.g., multiple sclerosis), and others.

Campbell, a nutritional biochemist who rose to the top of his field and has served on a number of national nutrition advisory panels, began his career on a very different track, studying ways to make farm animals put on weight more quickly, with the goal of increasing protein consumption in the third world.  His focus changed away from protein when he actually went to the third world (first, the Philippines and then China) and was jolted by some of his research findings.

In the Philippines, for example, children were coming down with liver cancer, an unusual situation given that liver cancer is normally only found in older adults.  With some good detective work, Campbell and his colleagues discovered that the liver cancer was due to aflatoxin (a fungus-produced toxin) found in peanut butter made from moldy peanuts. But, the children who developed liver cancer were middle and upper class children. Poor children eating the moldy peanut butter were spared.  Campbell and his colleagues finally determined (through further investigations including surveys about eating habits) that it was the high protein (animal-based) diet that was creating the vulnerability.

The China Study and “diseases of affluence”

During the 1970s, Premier Chou EnLai, who was suffering from cancer, commissioned a study to find out the causes of cancer in China.  In the 1980s, the study was expanded, and Campbell was brought in due to his professional relationship with a senior Chinese nutrition researcher who had studied in the U.S.  The research they designed looked at geographic variation across rural Chinese counties (there are 2400 counties in China all together) and explored the associations between a variety of lifestyle and environmental patterns and death rates from a long list of conditions.

Here is a simplified summary of Campbell’s findings.

• People in rural China who ate a largely plant-based diet had extremely low age-adjusted death rates from heart disease, cancer and the other chronic conditions that Campbell labeled “diseases of affluence.”
• In contrast, those rural areas of China with higher rates of consumption of animal products had higher age-adjusted death rates of the same “diseases of affluence.”
• Eating animal products was strongly associated with “diseases of affluence.”

Furthermore, age-adjusted rates of “diseases of affluence” throughout rural China were far below rates in the United States at the time, even where animal protein consumption was somewhat elevated (though far below the consumption found in the typical American diet).  For example, the male, age-adjusted death rate from coronary heart disease in the U.S. was 17 times higher than in rural China at the time. The age-adjusted female death rate for breast cancer was five times higher for U.S. women than for rural Chinese women.

Can Americans (not just Chinese) benefit by avoiding animal products?

In addition to presenting his own scientific work, Campbell reviews numerous clinical and epidemiological studies conducted by others. Here are a few examples from the book.

• Type II diabetics who move to a low fat, plant-based diet can often achieve control without their medicines ( Source: a study by Dr. James Anderson in which 25 type II diabetics were put on a high-fiber, low-fat (limited animal products) diet, and within weeks 24 of the 25 patients were able to discontinue their diabetes medication and maintain control.)
• Heart disease can often be reversed with a low fat, largely plant based diet. (Source: a study by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn of 18 heart patients followed for 11 years reported only one coronary event during that extended time (the one patient went off-diet for two years), compared to 49 such events by the same patients during the eight years prior to the study.  Average total blood cholesterol was lowered (without drugs) from 246 mg/dL to 132 mg/dL during the course of the study.)
• Prostate cancer risk has been linked to dairy consumption (Source: a 2001 research review by Harvard researchers found “12 of…14 case-control studies and 7 of…9 cohort studies observed a positive associate between dairy consumption and prostate cancer.”)
• Breast cancer risk is associated with high levels of female hormones in the blood and with high blood cholesterol, both of which are also associated with a diet rich in animal products.  (Source: The China Study found that lifetime exposure to female hormones was 2.5-3.0 times higher in American women than rural Chinese women, who ate a largely plant based diet, and age-adjusted breast cancer death rates in America (in the mid 1980s) were five times the rural Chinese rate.)

Despite the evidence (and the above is just a tiny fraction of his extensive review), Campbell’s challenge is a big one. There are few vegetarians in America (3-4 percent of the adult population by one count) and hardly any vegans (0.5% of adult Americans). The “meat eating” culture and its industrial sponsors are a pervasive and a powerful deterrent to change.

As might be expected, Campbell is controversial. (So too are the USDA guidelines for the school lunch program which take into account the needs of agribusiness as much as the nutrition needs of children.) Like climate science, food science touches on a number of well-established industries and institutions that don’t want their business model (or food preferences) upended.  Campbell’s approach to his many scientific adversaries is reasoned and evidence-based.  However, he takes a harsher line with those he thinks are charlatans. This about Robert Atkins and his “low carb” diet:

“Perhaps it is a testament to the power of modern marketing savvy that an obese man with heart disease and high blood pressure became one of the richest snake oil salesmen ever to live, selling a diet that promises to help you lose weight, to keep your heart healthy, and to normalize your blood pressure.”

Campbell reviews some of the “clinical studies” promoted as evidence by Adkins, and suggests that the main effect of the Adkins Diet on weight is the low calorie impact.  During the initial phase of the diet, adherents are consuming only about 1450 calories a day, well below the US average of around 2250 calories. The Atkins’ diet’s impact on other aspects of health, however, Campbell views as uniformly harmful.

Vegetarian sympathizer’s assessment

My take from The China Study, the analyses by Campbell of numerous other clinical and cohort studies, and my friend’s own personal results (reported in my previous column) is:

• The evidence Campbell brings to the table about the harmful effects of eating animal products is solid and convincing, but not fully conclusive (the science is not “settled”);
• The strength of his arguments and the evidence he brings to the argument varies across diseases, with evidence supporting his claims appearing weak in some cases;
• Campbell is an advocate of a plant-based diet, and his advocacy may sometimes color his assessment of the science;
• Eating vegan apparently does no harm. Almost none of the clinical, cross-national, and cohort studies designed to study the effect of the food we eat on health have found an adverse impact from eating a plant-based diet (any disease or mortality correlations have almost all gone in the opposite direction).

As a result, a shift to a vegan(ish) diet is a step I think is prudent, pending further research, and the benefits appear to accrue on a continuum (you don’t need perfect adherence to the vegan diet to obtain the claimed benefits).

“The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health” by Colin Campbell, Ph.D., and Thomas Campbell, M.D., Benbella Books, Dallas, TX , 2006.

Eat Food, Not too much, Mostly plants—Michael Pollen

My wife, Kathleen, and I were having a discussion about the evening meal the other day.  She does far more of the cooking than I do (I mostly do the clean-up), but that was not the issue.  She was getting bored with our meals, the ones she was mostly responsible for cooking, because of my decision to go “veganish” after reading the book “The China Study”, written not by Michael Pollen, but by a nutritional biochemist named Colin Campbell.

“Veganish” is a self-mocking term used by our “foodie” group. (We get together for a vegan meal about once a month.) We use “veganish” to mean someone who eats vegan (no animal products) except when it is difficult to do so, say, when a very tasty fish dish is being served, or if it would be impolitic to not eat a portion of the cheesy Lasagna put on the table by a host.   The general idea of veganish is to eat mostly vegan, but not be a scold about it and be a bit flexible if the situation demands.  In other words, follow Michael Pollen’s advice above. (By “food” Pollen means something that our Grandmothers would have recognized as food, avoiding packaged foods with long lists of ingredients.)

Back to the discussion Kathleen and I were having. Food is not only a nutrient; it holds center stage in our social life.  Most of our social get-togethers are structured around food, and a part of our cultural or ethnic identity is characterized by the food we eat.  For Kathleen, removing animal products from our diet was something she mostly agreed with but sometimes she thinks there isn’t enough “ish” in veganish.

The evening meal remains an ongoing discussion with us, but why did we head down this path towards little or no meat, fowl, fish and other animal products (milk, cheese, eggs)?

The family farm

My mother grew up on a farm, and when I was a child my family would visit her homestead, where my grandmother and one of my uncle’s family still lived.  While there, I would enjoy the farm animals—huge hogs wallowing in a muddy pen, chickens and a couple of roosters in the hen house and attached “yard”, dairy cattle down by the barn, mules used in harvesting the money crop (tobacco), and in the more remote fields, beef cattle and , of course, the bull, a marvelous and fearsome specimen.

I had literally dozens of cousins, and we were often at our grandmother’s homestead together. Some of our favorite sports were stalking the hogs (using tobacco sticks as guns) and chasing the chickens in and out of the hen house (when my uncle was away).

I also enjoyed the productive activity on the farm, watching my uncle milk the cows or drive the mules between tobacco rows with the sled for loading leaves. But, the most exciting part of our visit was when my uncle went into the hen house, took a couple of hens under his arm, walked over to the chopping stump (all the cousins now gathered to watch), and severed the hen’s heads from their bodies with his hand ax.  He would then release the headless bodies and they would flap around for a minute or so. The cousins, mostly city kids now, except for my uncle’s own children, were witnessing food preparation from scratch, a rare observance. Killing an animal for food, like that, seemed normal, even exciting, and was morally okay, we thought.

I don[t have a picture of my Uncle, but here is his father, my grandfather (Ed Gentry), on the family farm north of Durham, NC, around 1915. Tobacco was the cash crop. The farm animals (except for the mules) and the garden were to feed the family, and occasionally to share with neighbors. My grandfathers pipe may have used tobacco he had grown and cured. He died during the great depression--of appendicitis that was misdiagnosed.

Later, after I became an adult, Kathleen and I owned a farm down in Dickson County (near Nashville) with my brother and his wife, and several friends, one of whom (Bob Newbrough) had grown up on a farm. We had an old Ford 8-n tractor, and a few beef cows and steers (and a bull) roaming the 100 or so acres.

This was about 40 years ago, and grass-fed beef was not yet considered gourmet. I recall that we would confine one of our steers for a month or so in a muddy barn yard, and feed him grain, trying to get him to gain weight.  I went with the fattened steer once on his final trip to the slaughterhouse, and watched a butcher with a rifle shoot him in the head before hoisting him on a hook for processing. It was a bit jolting, but not deeply shocking. We later retrieved the beef (cut into portions) and dined out of our freezer for the next six months.

Most of our cattle were wild animals, but we did have one cow, Isabelle, who was a pet. She had been raised by bottle after her mother died, and was friendly enough for our children to be near her.

My uncle’s farm was a family farm, where the farm animals lived in humane conditions, spending most of the day in the fields (or the chicken “yard”).   My friends and I had a hobby farm, which we used mainly as a retreat from our urban lives, and where the cattle mostly roamed, sometimes leaping over the fence and up to our neighbor’s house.  The industrial farm that produces most of America’s food is a different beast.

Ethical eating

I have been vegetarian for more than 20 years.  My decision to become vegetarian was not based on seeing the chicken beheading at my Uncle’s farm, or the steer being trucked off and then killed from my own farm.  Instead, it was the result of concerns about factory farming, the industrial scale farming that now uses extreme confinement of farm animals as a component of production efficiency.

I saw an ad one day targeting the factory farm by showing a calf, cramped in a small darkened pen, being raised (if you can call it that) for veal.  That ad, supplemented by a book by John Robbins (“Diet for a New America”), led me to become a vegetarian, a partial, but significant, step away from eating preferences that supported the factory farm.

My vegetarianism was limited to avoiding beef, chicken and sea life.  I made occasional exceptions on the sea life front, eating fish, lobsters or crabs once or twice a year.  However, I continued to eat animal products, including eggs, yogurt, milk, and especially cheese.

I have never missed eating beef and chicken, and probably filled that gap with cheese.  By continuing with some animal products, my ethical stance was compromised, though my justification was that I had taken a step in the right direction.

I took a further step about three years ago when I begin to shift towards local producers who offered eggs from free-range chickens and milk products from cows who spent all of their time grazing in the fields.  (Previously I had purchased organically produced eggs and milk, thinking that organic producers were more likely to treat their animals humanely.)

Now, the only member of our family who gets his food from a factory farm is our German Shepherd, Bain (and occasionally Kathleen when she treats herself and Bain to a steak).  Our attempt at shifting Bain away from industrially produced dog food did not go well—I won’t discuss details—but we have decided to leave him on his current diet for now (he is 13 years old, and has a sensitive stomach).

The parting gift (of health)

The China Study (see first paragraph above) arrived in my hands in a dog-eared condition, with the “good parts” highlighted with yellow marker. The friend who shared it with me said: “read it, but I want it back”.

My friend’s wife had become an expert on cancer during the 16 years she had been living with a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. As a result she was always exploring new ways to manage her own cancer, and she had obtained the book as part of her explorations.

My friend had found the book on the breakfast table (his wife had left it there for him to discover on his own–smart woman).  He read the book and took the book’s message (literally) to heart.

He has since become veganish, shifting his diet away from eating animals (beef, chicken, fish) and animal products (eggs, dairy) towards eating mostly plants (whole grains, fruits, and vegetables).  He eats exclusively vegan at home and is vegan-leaning, vegetarian at other times (when traveling or eating out). This was a huge shift for him. At an earlier time in his life he and his wife had been on the “high protein” Atkins diet, and then on the South Beach diet, and the idea of going vegan had not been anywhere near the top of his personal agenda—until he read the book.

Within nine months of his diet shift, my friend’s health metrics had improved from above normal (higher risk) to normal on all counts, including cholesterol (210 to 188 mg/dL), glucose (103 to 95) and even his PSA dropped following a worrisome earlier rise (4.4 to 2.7), and he lost 10 extra pounds in weight as an added benefit.

Sadly, my friend’s wife died late in 2010 following the metastasis of her breast cancer. To the extent the information in the book might have helped her, it arrived too late.

There are many books on “what we eat” floating around now. There are those in support of an Atkins style diet, “high protein, low carbs”, others that take on the industrial food industry (Michael Pollen has several), and then there is “The China Study”. The China Study stands out in several ways as the most compelling book of these “popular” food and diet books, and represents a sharp departure from the “low carb” fad.

My next post will review the book and explain why Campbell says my friend’s metrics returned to normal with his shift to a veganish diet.

About 18 months ago, my wife (Kathleen) and I joined together with another couple to visit a friend who lived near the Smokies. The round trip, mostly on Interstate, was about 400 miles.  We rode in our Prius (EPA rated at 51 city/48 m highway).  On the trip we got about 50 miles per gallon (slightly wind aided in one direction), hardly different than if I had driven there and back alone. Calculating on a miles per gallon per person basis, we stood at 200 miles per gallon per person (50 X 4).

The discovery that adding two people to the car, plus their extra baggage, didn’t have a noticeable impact on our mileage was a surprise, and puzzling. But, I soon moved on to other thoughts, without solving the problem.  But how does our Prius compare to riding the bus?  The answer isn’t as clear cut as you might think.

CSX: one gallon, one ton, 500 miles

Many of you have seen (or maybe heard) the CSX commercial which proudly states how green CSX is: one gallon of diesel fuel can haul one ton of goods 500 miles. That is impressive, a lot better than my Prius, which is carrying at most around 600 pounds and only hauling it 50 miles on a gallon.

To verify the CSX claim, I found some data published by the Association of American Railroads (based on federally collected data) giving information on total fuel consumed by freight trains in a given year, and the “revenue freight ton-miles” hauled by the trains as they consumed the fuel.  In 2009, the freight-ton miles (miles traveled times average tons hauled) was 1,532,214,000,000 ton-miles (yes, 1.5 trillion ton-miles) and the fuel consumed was 3,192,000,000 gallons.  Dividing ton-miles by gallons gives 480 ton-miles per gallon, or a gallon of diesel fuel will send a ton of freight 480 miles.  The reason trains can do this is that they can hitch an optimal amount of cars behind each engine, something trucks (and buses) can’t do.

CSX, making the claim that its trains take a ton 500 miles on a gallon of gas, appears to do slightly better than the average, for trains, and clearly much better than trucks are capable of.

A CSX coal train pauses near the historic Nashville train station (now a hotel), giving evidence that the ton (of coal) has already been loaded and is ready for its 500 mile treck on a gallon of diesel fuel to be burned at a TVA coal-fired power plant.

Nashville’s MTA: one gallon, one passenger, 42 miles

The National Transit Database provides statistics for mass transit across the nation, including the Metropolitan Transit Authority for Nashville. The 2011 data are not yet posted, but I was given a look at the numbers that will soon be posted.  If you divide passenger-miles by gallons consumed for the MTA (regular bus routes only and not on-demand services) the average bus got 4.28 miles per gallon in 2011 .  That number is not a confidence builder for green transportation.

Here is the next number: the average ridership on a Nashville bus is 9.8 passengers (passenger miles divided by vehicle revenue miles).  Multiply 4.28 times 9.8 and the miles per gallon per bus rider is 41.9. This does not compare very favorably to my Prius, at 51 mpg when I’m riding alone, and up to 200 miles per gallon per person with 3 additional riders.  However, this is well above the standard car on the road (22.4 mpg).

This direct comparison with the auto doesn’t give as strong a “green” rating to bus service as we would like, though the bus comes out clearly ahead when compared to the average auto with a lone driver (which is the case 80% of the time).

But this is NOT the way to look at how green city bus service would be for me.  The bus system serves many constituencies. One group of riders, for example, is those who are disabled and can’t drive. Another is those without access to a car. To meet those specific needs, and the more general needs of those who use the bus service daily, the bus system operates whether I ride or not. My car, on the other hand, only burns gas if Kathleen or I decide to get in and drive it.

Marginal, not average

So the fair comparison for my trip downtown is between my gas consumption when I drive my car downtown and my extra contribution to the bus’s gas consumption when I ride the bus downtown, not the average mpg of the bus. The economists call what I am talking about the “marginal” rate.

When I drive my car downtown (with four empty seats), the marginal rate for that trip, and my average rate are about the same—50 mpg. The bus is a different story. The bus I take generally has lots of empty seats on it, on average system-wide about 30, but on my morning trips about 10.  So I’m taking an empty seat when I get on rather than joining a standing-room-only bus. My added heft in that empty seat has a slight adverse impact on the bus’s mpg, roughly proportional to my contribution to the overall weight being hauled. A typical bus weighs between 12 and 20 tons when it’s empty, so my added weight (about 170 pounds) is hardly noticeable.  The bus is expending most of its fuel hauling its empty self around—the passengers hardly matter.

My back-of-the envelope estimate is that instead of 4.28 miles per gallon without me, the bus with me on board may get only 4.25 miles per gallon due to my extra weight (if I get on a bus with average written all over it). That difference (.03 mpg) means that if the bus goes 100 miles with me on it, my weight would cause the bus to use about 0.15 gallons more than it would have without me. Traveling 100 miles and using only 0.15 gallons translates into more than 650 miles per gallon, a very green number.

A bus rider about to make the five mile journey downtown. She will cause the bus to consume less than one ounce of diesel due to her weight (mass) during that journey. If she had driven a car downtown, she would have used up about 28 ounces (0.22 gallons) of gas.

My ride downtown on the bus, then, is about as green as can be, as is the ride of everyone who gets on the bus on any given day, since each of our contribution to gas usage is marginal, not average, and because the buses are not running full.  Of course, if I were to catch a ride with a friend going to the same destination whose car gets 22 mpg without me in it, a marginal rate would also apply.  The back of the envelope on that situation (adding my weight to a 3,000 pound car) would reduce my friend’s car’s mpg by a bit over 1 mpg—which explains how my Prius was able to get 50 mpg gallon even when hauling 4 people (two extra passengers, leading to a hit of about 1 mpg each) to the Smokies.

However, while the bus system on average is not as green as we might like (due to its multiple missions), the easiest way for it to be greener is for it to gain riders (though the new hybrid buses will also help), since most of the buses now have empty seats much of the time.  (I should note that many of the buses are crowded during peak commuting hours, so that additions to those buses might require an increase in service or the use of more of the longer bend-in-the middle buses (articulated buses).)

Moving from an average of 10 riders to an average of 20 throughout the day would double the average miles per gallon per person (probably to well above 80 mpg), a figure close to the EPA mileage of the Chevy Volt (94 mpg equivalent), and would remove thousands of cars from Nashville’s roads for only thimble fulls of extra diesel per added rider. (See previous post for more on congestion issues.)

Getting those additional riders is a challenge, but MTA is making progress.  I’ll talk about that in another column.

The # 3 stopping for me and a neighbor on West End Avenue at mid-morning.

When driving I meet traffic; on the bus I meet people

Few people have as a life ambition, or even as a minor goal, to ride a bus to get to work or to a meeting downtown.  Buses are about the past, aren’t they? And the future of public transportation is light rail, a mode that can generate excitement and, more importantly, ridership.

Light rail, we now know, is not yet in Nashville’s immediate future. The Mayor and his advisers decided it would be too costly after receiving the preliminary results of a study about upgrading public transit along the West End/ Main Street corridors.  Instead, we may soon have buses that have the look and feel of light rail as they purr down dedicated center lanes on that corridor, moving their riders along at a pace unmatched by the auto’s that are crawling in from Bellevue, Belle Meade or Gallatin.

But, until the new style bus lines are built, we have the existing bus system, competing for road space with cars, often with very few riders, and stopping at many corners, slowing (and annoying) the drivers behind them.

Getting to work in an “empty” car

Most Nashvillians drive an “empty” car to work. According to the results of the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS), nine out of ten Nashvillians drive to and from work in a car, truck or van , and about 8 in 10 commuters drive alone, typically leaving four of five available seats in their car empty.

In Davidson County that means about 231,000 “empty” cars are on the road on the way to work on any given week-day with almost one million empty seats. Another 15,000 cars (or maybe vans) have one or more of the passenger seats filled, providing the driver a companion or two to share the commute.  Davidson County’s cars are, of course, joined by many more cars from surrounding counties carrying their driver (again almost always alone) to work in the city.

All of this driving means that at any given time during the morning or afternoon commute, at least one part of this traffic system resembles a parking lot as traffic density, or maybe an accident, slows things to nearly a halt. Nashvillians may love their cars, but not the commute.

As the “empty” cars crawl towards their destinations, the city buses serving scheduled routes, 119 of them, are also at work, hauling an estimated 6,000 workers to and from their jobs during the typical weekday. (Another 24 buses are held in reserve.) This ACS estimate represents just over 2% of the Davidson County work force, not much in the scheme of things.   Our public transit numbers are below the national average (of about 5%), and well below the figures for New York City where 30% commute by public transit.  However, our numbers compare favorably to the other cities in Tennessee, where use of public transportation is hardly measurable, and closer to 1% of the commute mix. And our ridership is rising, up by about 25% since 2005. But aren’t buses like tractor trailer trucks during the commute, an obstacle to smooth traffic flow?

The bell curve coverup

The typical metro bus takes up about three car lengths on the road (it is 40 feet long), displacing two or three cars and blocking the view for those car drivers stuck behind it.  Moreover, the typical bus is mostly empty, carrying only an average of 9.8 passengers according to the 2011 figures on the National Transit Database (passenger miles divided by vehicle miles), when its seating capacity is 40, and it can hold almost 60, if riders are willing to stand.

An average bus load, then, of 10 passengers, is not very much.  It leaves a lot of empty seats on the bus. But “average” hides more than it reveals about the real story, with bus ridership and with congestion.

On average, the West End corridor is not congested, though it is heavily used.  It is only congested at particular locations (bottlenecks) or at particular times of the day (peak use times). The White Bridge road intersection, of course, is a huge bottleneck and there is also a bottleneck at the intersection with Bowling (as school children cross). The corridor jams up during lunch hour near Vanderbilt, when traffic lights magically switch from promoting traffic flow to obstructing traffic flow (and protecting pedestrians).  Average congestion, then, is a meaningless term, other than suggesting that there is a lot of traffic on the road and that particular segments and times-of-day are particularly clogged.

For the bus system, average use statistics are also misleading. There are peaks and valleys in bus use throughout the day. Sometimes buses are mostly empty, and at other times mostly full.

A congruence of peaks and valleys

What is interesting, though, is that peaks and valleys of bus use tend to coincide with peaks and valleys of congestion. During rush hours, when road congestion is at its worst, the buses are full (often standing room only).  During the mid-morning or late night, when bus use is light, road congestion is absent.

During the most congested part of the day then, the bus is actually serving as a road sweeper, removing 30-50 cars from the road as it lumbers along in front of you, while occupying space for only two or three of those cars.

That suggests a meditative practice for you, the driver of an empty car. Instead of sitting behind the bus in afternoon traffic and fuming at it for its slow pace and frequent stops, you could be instead offering a prayer of thanks to the 40 or so former drivers sitting on that bus who left their cars at home.

Those bus riders, of course, are not only to be praised, but to be envied as they enjoy themselves—reading the paper, checking their gadgets, talking with “bus friends,” or just napping.

You can check out the metro bus schedule for your area using the link below.

http://www.nashvillemta.org/setpage.asp?page=homepage.html

How our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and happier

Edward Glaeser, a New York City born and raised Harvard professor, mentions Nashville only in a few sentences in his new book, disparaging it as part of a group of low-density, sprawl cities in the South.  Yet, I understand that Mayor Karl Dean has read the book and shared it with others. The reason  is that despite little and adverse mention of Nashville, the book is full of insights and ideas that apply to Nashville and other southern sprawl cities.

Glaeser has a witty, but practical approach to his descriptions and prescriptions.  As a New Yorker who grew into adulthood without owning a car, he clearly likes the city he grew up in.  Yet, in a chapter comparing New York to Houston (the definition of a sprawl city), Houston comes out ahead as a place that is more friendly to middle-income families. And, in his middle age, Glaeser has moved out of urban Boston to the suburbs, where he makes a commute by car into Cambridge to talk to his students about urban living.  At least he fesses up.

Like the movie “Urbanized,” Glaeser takes us on a world tour, beginning with his home town of New York City, but his focus is less on the particulars of design and more on describing why cities are triumphant, despite their problems, and what makes particular cities successful.

His central thesis is that cities bring together smart people who can “produce new thinking.”  The new thinking then is transformed into products that people need and want by accessing the vast and diverse resources provided by the city.

To support his thesis Glaeser uses the data-driven tools of economics and also, like street-smart Jane Jacobs before him, makes street-level observations of “the crowds swooshing by” as they head to work, home, or play.

Urban density is green

Glaeser argues that dense is good (meaning green and productive and fun), and this leads him to support positions that many will not like.

• Up not out. He is an advocate of building “up” (the elevator) rather than building “out” (the car).  Building up often involves tearing down what already exists (our heritage) and rebuilding in a new character (taller) that fits new demands for more concentrated and productive living.   Suburban living, he points out, is surrounded by greenery, but is not “green.” The suburbanite is tethered to a car to get anywhere, and separated (as opposed to stacked) living units cost more to heat and cool.
• Preservation should be focused and limited. In this same vein, he argues that preservation should be limited and focused rather than widespread and indiscriminate.  He says preservation restrictions should target only the most significant or beautiful structures, but not every old structure. Cities must be allowed to remake themselves if they are to remain productive and affordable.
• Mortgage interest deduction. The federal income tax interest deduction on home mortgages should be eliminated or capped, he argues. The deduction encourages suburban home building (McMansions) in leafy neighborhoods or green cow pastures (sprawl), and discourages the building of high rise rental apartments near the city’s core.

Nashville’s skyline has added a number of tall buildings in recent years, most related to banking or insurance, but recent high rises have included condos and apartments–downtown living. When I arrived in Nashville in 1972, only two of the 10 tall buildings you see in this picture had been built.

Batman occupies the top floor. AT&T occupies most of the remainder. Cell phones with ears no longer exist.  Built in 1994, it stands 617 feet tall (tallest in Tennessee).

Two successful cities: Houston versus New York

In one chapter, Glaeser makes a direct comparison between Houston (where building codes are non-existent) and New York City (where building codes control everything). He ends up praising Houston for its reasonably priced housing as a boon to the middle class.  By comparison, New York is a boon for the wealthy who can afford to live in Manhattan, and to the poor who can live outside the city in the suburbs, yet commute in on public transit. Houston doesn’t have restrictive covenants that limit housing construction, and so construction occurs as needed to meet demand.  New York has many restrictions on building, with the result that housing stock is expensive. The middle class are priced out into the city suburbs, producing long commutes.

Houston, despite its favorable mention, however, is a sprawl city, built around the automobile and hostile to walking except in the shopping malls that can only be reached by car.  Sprawl cities, despite their middle class appeal, are energy hogs, contributing far more than they should to Carbon emissions on a per capita basis.

The father of urban (or village) sprawl

Glaeser, in his discussion of urban sprawl and its ecological damage, accuses a former Harvard undergraduate of being the “father of urban sprawl.” It is a surprising choice. That former student, as a young man seeking the simple life surrounded by nature, built a cabin by himself from scratch in the woods near a New England pond.  Henry David Thoreau, sitting in his hut near Walden Pond, might be surprised at what he spawned, but someone living on an acre of partially forested land in Bellevue or maybe Goodlettsville (and commuting 12 miles downtown) might consider themselves to be living out his vision (except for the commute, and having to hold a job).  Such a suburbanite, of course, might admire the simple, leafy life, but would be a very active participant in suburban sprawl, using much more energy to get around and to heat or cool his or her home than someone living in a high-rise in the Gulch or downtown.  Thoreau’s “green living” has become “brown” in our own era.

On the left, the L&C (Life and Casualty) Tower, the company that sponsored the Grand Ole Opry, and the oldest tall building in Nashville. On the right, a condo tower, housing, among others, one of two couples I know who have moved to downtown towers. The L&C Tower was built in 1957 and is 409 feet tall.

Attracting talent

Glaeser has lots to say about why cities fail and why they succeed, and what he has to say represents the key rationale for reading his book and the reason the Mayor distributed it to his staff.  Mayor Dean may even have taken his new-term playbook in part from the chapter on education—the skilled and innovative work force that is the key to the success for the modern city.

In his world tour of cities, Glaeser finds that successful cities each have unique features contributing to their success.  But, he thinks that successful cities have one thing in common: they attract smart people and help them work collaboratively.  They do this in different ways, though.  To develop his argument, he takes a look at successful “types,” using several example cities for each type.  He discusses:

• Capital (Imperial) cities (Tokyo, which is now the largest city in the world with approximately 36 million people; ancient Rome also gets a review),
• Well-managed cities (Singapore: clean, productive and “disciplined”),
• Smart cities (Boston, anchored around its elite universities),
• Consumer cities (Vancouver, an attractive place to go for “fun”), and
• Cheap (affordable) cities (Chicago, which in recent years has also been well managed).

He takes us through a brief history for each  of the examples (about 15 cities in all) highlighting important events and interesting people along the way. The biggest surprise to me was an African city (Gaborone, Botswana) that he included in the “well managed” section.

I think Nashville has elements of all of these types:

• It is state government capital (though not a national capital or a nation-state);
• It has been well-managed in recent years (intelligent mayors and effective city administration);
• It is supported by a strong college/university infrastructure, including one of the nation’s elite research universities (Vanderbilt with its medical center also happens to be Nashville’s largest employer);
• It contains a downtown that thrives with music, sports, theaters, restaurants and bars; and
• It retains relatively cheap, close-in housing, including a lot of new high rise condo’s and apartments.

Glaeser’s description (and vision) of the city will find many harsh critics, including all of my neighbors who have fought so hard to keep commercial development at a distance.

I remember, in particular, the transformation of the nearby Richland Golf Club into a gated community (more or less a black hole for those outside the gate) rather than an accessible restaurant/office/condo district (the developer’s first offer) surrounded by a “buffer” of single unit houses.

I have a mild regret about that decision, and wish occasionally for a shorter walk to nice restaurants, a coffee shop, or even a corner grocery store, as is possible in much of close-in East Nashville.

But what my neighbors and I would not have liked is the traffic the commercial district would have generated from outside our neighborhood; the rude intrusion of fast-moving autos steaming off the interstate with grumpy drivers who are indifferent to the neighborhood and its values. So it was not the thing itself (the commercial/office district) that was the biggest problem, but the way office workers and retail customers would have gotten to the area (the flood of automobiles) that led to the resistance.

Yet, I think Glaeser is correct in predicting that the leadership of successful U.S. cities (even southern sprawl cities) will see the benefits of mixed use, higher density, taller buildings, more public transportation, and certainly more bikes and walkability, in order for talent to be attracted and collaborate, and for economic growth to continue. Nashville is certainly growing taller, but it is also building out, particularly its suburban counties. Competing visions aren’t bad, though, and the city may be better for the competition.  The most important insight about cities is that they shouldn’t be just “one thing.”

If you are interested in where cities might be heading (and why people are heading to cities), you will find “Triumph of the City” dense with “aha” moments, well worth your time (and money).

Triumph of the City, by Edward L. Glaeser, Penguin Press, 2011

Three years ago, I didn’t have a workable road bike.  I would occasionally pump up the tires of my son’s old mountain bike, bought 20 years ago, and ride a few neighborhood streets, pedaling up the hill at Love Circle to give myself an aerobic workout, and then returning home exhausted.  At the time, I saw the bike as an exercise toy. I would get on it, ride around the neighborhood for awhile, and then return home. As such, it suffered the fate of the various stationary bikes and treadmills that my family has bought over the years: used for a time, and then passed on to someone else after it sat idle for some months. My son’s bike stayed with us, but it was mostly in storage (and still is).

Over the past three years I have transitioned from “bike as exercise” to “bike as transportation.”  I now use a bike, a new bike, or rather a new-old bike (a ventage Raleigh), to get around Nashville. So far this month (December), my bike and I have covered about 125 miles, and since April our monthly totals have typically been 150 miles or more. I’ve become an urban biker. How did this happen?

Transition

I didn’t become an urban biker in the natural course of things. The default option is driving a car.  Cars are the ubiquitous ever-ready vehicle for getting around.  Our cities are built for cars, and many cities are built to exclude any other form of getting around, especially walking and biking.  Parts of Nashville are that way, completely hostile to walking and biking, but the part I live in has many streets (and often sidewalks) that support both alternatives to the car.

The bigger barrier to biking in my part of town or anywhere in Nashville is “car culture.”  There is the unthinking assumption by even smart people that the only way to get somewhere is by driving.

The best joke I’ve seen lampooning this “car culture” is the framing piece in “The Gods Must be Crazy.”

A man walks out of his suburban Johannesburg house in his pajamas to his parked car, gets in, backs the car the 40 foot distance out to the road. There he reaches out of his car window and retrieves his morning newspaper from the mail box. He then returns the car to his parking spot next to the house, where he re-enters his home to take his morning coffee with the news.

My own cultural transition to biking had three important elements: (1) several of my friends bike and over time I began to bike with them; (2) I serve on an advisory group (to the Mayor) and met people who were urban bikers and who set an example for every day biking that caught my attention; and (3) through research and interactions on the advisory group, I came to understand that biking is a viable alternative to driving for many kinds of trips.

My service on the advisory group (BPAC or Bike Pedestrian Advisory Committee) is a unique opportunity, not available to many, but the mentoring within a friendship group of bike riders was an early step that should be available to most.  In fact, I think mentoring by more experienced bikers is an essential part of anyone’s transition to urban biking. While many mature urban bikers often ride alone, learning the skills of urban biking requires rides with others, mentors, who show you how to enjoy the experience while avoiding the hazards.

Why I bike

Here is my list.

• Biking is an outdoor adventure. And the adventure improves with experience. Biking takes me places I would not (could not) otherwise go and gives me unique, and often exhilarating, experiences while getting there.
• Biking is physical. I don’t have to think about doing a workout for my health. It happens when I ride.  It is a good complement to walking and hiking, which are my other favorite outdoor activities.
• Bikes are green, zero emission vehicles.  I can go 20 miles on a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice.
• In the urban environment, bikes are rapid transit.  I cam able to cover five miles or more in 30 minutes (compared to the 15-20 minutes by car), and most of my destinations are less than 2 miles (10 minutes) away (see pictures at the end).  In the city, cars must wait for traffic lights, find scarce parking spaces, and often stack up at left turn signals and four way stops.

Surplus vehicle

Kathleen and I decided to sell our older car (a Prius) last December, to see if we could get along without a second car while waiting to purchase a Leaf, Nissan’s all-electric car. The Leaf will be built near Nashville (at the Nissan Smyrna plant) beginning in 2012, and Nashville is one of the cities outfitted with infrastructure (charging stations).

We sold the Prius in April for a very good price.  The Blue Book price for used Priuses had surged following the Japanese Tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis, and that is when we made our sale.  Over the next several months, before a Leaf was available to us, we did quite well on one car.  As a result,  we decided the one-car family was working so well (I was riding my bike a lot more by then) that we recovered our deposit on the Leaf.

We’re now, happily, a one-car family with only occasional times when we both need a car going in opposite directions. Typically, I use our car only when I go places with Kathleen or with friends, when I use the car as a truck to haul stuff, or when I’m going somewhere after dark or in heavy rain. I also use it when the travel distance exceeds 10 miles or so. Finally, and without guilt, I bum rides with my friends..

Are bikers crazy?

In Nashville commuter biking seems heroic to some, and crazy (dangerous) to others, but it is mainly “seen” as invisible.  Many Nashvillians are surprised that urban biking even exists.  It is not something they think about. For them the car is the only thought when it comes to transportation.

And automobiles are seductive.  They offer speed and comfort, with no physical exertion required.  And so, most people opt to drive, particularly in a city like Nashville, which, until recently, was designed only for the car. (Street car tracks were ripped out here to make room for autos after WWII.)  To get more people out of their car and onto their feet or a bike or a bus, requires, in part, a redesign of the city, and in larger part, a redesign of the culture.

Biking is not for everyone.  Some can’t ride due to health or disability issues. And biking does require a degree of hardiness, especially in the cold of winter or the heat of summer.  Also, in Nashville there are the hills.

But for me, biking works right now, with no further structural changes to the city and with the support of the friends I have who ride. Urban biking is not only possible here, but enjoyable and relatively safe with proper precautions. Bikers are not crazy.

Some of my favorite biking/walking destinations (and distances from home)

Hillsboro Village in front of Fidos, where I get my coffee (2 miles)

Our neighborhood grocery, The Produce Place, with a bike rack featuring my transportation system (1.5 miles)

Cafe Nonna, on the porch where I meet with friends for a drink, featuring my two favorite servers, John Michael and Megan (1.5 miles)

Yours truly, returning from a biking adventure with groceries in the pack

Now showing at the Belcourt (in Nashville), Urbanized provides a stunning cinematic view of how urban design can solve a city’s problems, or make urban life worse, by taking the viewer on a tour of some of the world’s more interesting cities and the urban design projects which have shaped them. The theme of the movie is making cities both functional and green, and the worst enemy of both is the automobile.

We only get the briefest peek at Tokyo, the world’s most populous city, but what a visual treat. The longer look we get at Mumbai, which is vying for the title of world’s most populous (by 2050), is less delicious.

New York, Detroit, New Orleans, and Phoenix are the US cities profiled.  Phoenix takes a hit (a city of sterile sprawl), while New York is highlighted for the founding Godmother of urban design (Jane Jacobs, who praised neighborhood and mixed use back before it was popular), the destroyer of neighborhoods (Robert Moses, who routed expressways through established neighborhoods destroying them, much as happened in Nashville), and a grass roots initiative that created an elevated park and greenway in the central city out of an old, elevated rail line.

Detroit, of course, is a city of decline, from an inner city population of 2 million at its height, to around 700,000 today. (The metro area is larger.)  The focus there was an urban gardener, an inner city resident who took vacant lots and transformed them into vegetable gardens, in effect small farms.  In post-Katrina New Orleans, we take a tour of new homes in the devastated 9^th ward which were rebuilt using designs from west coast architects.  The film frowns while the audience chuckles at the beach-Malibu designs.

Other cities that get a review include Copenhagen (the masses bike to work), Rio (addressing fear of crime in the slums and seeking citizen input), Beijing (out of scale, loss of neighborhood), Mumbai (slums that stretch for miles and involve millions) , Brasilia (built from scratch by world class architects with sterile results), Paris (torn down and rebuilt two centuries ago with world class results), London (actually, Brighton, south of London, demonstrating how creative measurement can reduce energy use),  Stuttgart (a fight over a high speed rail terminal with its destruction of ancient oaks and historic buildings), and my absolute favorite segment, a focus on the former Mayor of Bogotá, Columbia.

In a portion of the Bogata piece, the Mayor is shown biking through a slum on a newly paved bike/walk path with numerous riders and walkers, while the street for cars is contrasted as a pothole-infested mud sink.  His explanation: he asked the residents what was needed, and they responded that they needed a way to get to jobs and to markets using the transportation they had, two feet or a bike.

Nashville’s urban design community went to the film on Friday night, where they did a post-film Q&A with one of the featured architects.  That means the theater is largely empty for your seating during the remainder of its time here (through December 15).  Don’t miss it if you are at all interested in the different directions Nashville’s design can take.

Note: This was posted from memory following one viewing, so there may be some errors.  The data below was obtained from the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2009 revisions).

Estimated Metropolitan Area Population (millions) of cities covered in “Urbanized”

City                           1950                   2010

New York                       12.34 m                 19.43 m

Detroit                             2.77                    4.2*

Phoenix                           .22                      3.68

New Orleans                   .66                      .86*

Tokyo                               11.27                  36.67

Mumbai                           2.86                    20.04

Beijing                              1.67                    12.39

Brasilia                             .04                        3.91

Rio de Janeiro                  2.95                    11.95

Bogata                             .63                      8.50

London                            8.36                    8.63

Paris                                 6.52                    10.49

Copenhagen                    1.21                    1.19

Stuttgart                          1.48                    2.71

* Note that Detroit and New Orleans population figures in the movie related to the central city and not to the Metro Area.

In late October, representatives from TVA and Nashville Electric Service (NES) came to our house, installed two electric meters, and certified two solar panels I had just installed on our roof (with help from professionals).

Two new meters were put in place, the one on the left measures kWh generation and the one on the right measures kWh use.

Solar power is not something I thought would work in Nashville, at least not yet. But then, last spring I saw an ad put out by a Seattle company named Clarion Power. Clarion offered a 200 Watt solar panel system that cost between $500 and $800, and you just plugged it in to a power outlet in your home.  I was interested in alternative power, because at the time we (Kathleen and I) were considering the Nissan Leaf (all electric car), and didn’t want to run the battery entirely off of TVA’s coal-fired generated electricity. (I’ll say more about the Leaf and TVA’s generating sources in another post.)

As I went through the process of figuring out the economics, the incentives, and the products, I kept being surprised.  I had (and still have) reasons to be skeptical of the promises of solar energy in the near term (with current pricing), but took the first step towards testing my skepticism by installing a small system and taking full advantage of incentives.

Solar water heaters give birth to skepticism  

We installed a solar powered hot water system in the early 1980s, using a low interest TVA loan (for about $3,000) and employing one of several contractors approved by TVA.  The system did a fine job of heating water. We didn’t have to turn on the electric boost at all between June and October, and it provided a strong temperature boost to the electric heating for most of the other seasons.

The system perked along nicely for about 12 years, but then developed a leak in a critical (and expensive) component. By that time, the system’s warrantee had ended (but the loan payback had three years to go) and the original installer was out of business.  Also, TVA was no longer supporting the water heater systems, so a call to TVA produced a “you are on your own” response.

Eventually we got a repair estimate from a plumbing company ($800).  We declined, and left the system in place, but not working, until about two years ago.  In the intervening years, we experienced continual problems with leaks around the panel’s roof mounts.  Finally, a friend with far more construction savvy than I, removed the system, patched our roof, and put the panels on his roof. He fixed the heat exchanger leak that had plagued us, and now enjoys hot water from the sun for the cost of his labor plus a few parts.

Exit Clarion

The Clarion product (mentioned above) was very interesting, but not yet available.  I wanted to find out more, but after repeated inquiries at the web site, I got only automatic email replies.  There was no way to make a phone connection that I could easily find, and so for me the Clarion system never got beyond its pretty advertisement on a web site. And the last time I looked, even the web site was gone. Instead of Clarion Power, the web site is held by Clarion Labs, and besides a logo and an email option, nothing else is on the site.

Payback

With Clarion off the table, but with my interest in doing something peaked, sometime in April or May of this year, a friend suggested Backwoods Solar (located in Idaho) as a reputable mail order company for solar panels.  I hooked up (by phone) with a woman named Sequoya Cross, a sales rep there, and we started discussing price and then estimating payback.

Payback refers to the amount of time it takes for the solar system to fully pay for itself, i.e., to break even.  We pay for energy from our local utility on a monthly basis, based on the amount used, season (higher rates in the winter and summer will soon be implemented), and type of user (residential has a higher rate).  TVA had a large increase in 2008 (20%), and is going to seasonal pricing next year (2012).  Otherwise there has been a long term modest upward trend since 1980, but US projections through the coming decade are for relatively flat rates.

A solar power generating system, on the other hand, is paid for up-front with a flat fee and then the energy it produces repays the up-front cost (and hopefully more) over the life of the system by off-setting the household’s electricity use.

My first estimate at payback (using a friend with experience with these kinds of calculations) was about 23 years, assuming flat energy prices and with a 30% federal tax credit.  That is, the system would have to sit on our roof for about 23 years before it generated enough electricity to pay for itself. Twenty three years was too long, at least for me and my even more solar-skeptical wife.  I was looking for something under 10 years.  At that point, Sequoya told me that my local power distributor might have a program providing additional incentives.

TVA’s “Generation Partners” Program

I made a visit to the TVA website and discovered that the utility had a pilot program called Generation Partners. Generation Partners would provide a $1,000 rebate on the cost of a qualifying solar/wind system and then buy the electricity generated by the system at a premium (12 cents per kilowatt hour) over the existing rate, for 10 years.  The current rate is about 12 cents per kWh. So, the buy-back rate is almost 24 cents per kWh.  I put the new numbers into my spread sheet, and the results are below.

The payback estimate

Two 250 watt panels (0.5kW)     $2,140

Electrician fee & supplies               $997

Installer (with my assistance)         $120

Extra installation supplies                $16

Total                                           $3,273

TVA Rebate                                 ($1,000)

Federal tax credit                        ( $682)    30% of $2,273

Net cost                                        $1,591

TVA buyback (per year)               $172.80 (See note)

Payback time period                    $1,591/$172.80 = 9.2 years

Note:  The estimate is that the two panels will generate about 720 kWh per year. TVA, through my local utility, will buy that output from me at 24 cents per kWh reimbursing me $172 worth of electric power annually. 

With this calculation completed, I decided to buy the system. I found and contracted (fixed price) with a local electrician, hired the friend who took my old collectors off the roof for installation help, and then purchased the panels and related equipment from Backwoods Solar.  Meanwhile, I had applied for and gotten approval from TVA for the system.  The electrical work was approved by codes and the system certified by TVA.

The two panels are mounted on a south facing dormer set at approximately a 30 degree angle.

Power use versus power generation

Our panels are now generating electricity at the rate of 2 kWh per day on sunny days, and much less than 1 kWh on cloudy and rainy days. Later, when the days get longer and the sun higher in the sky, it may generate as much as 3 kWh per day.  The generation of kWhs compares favorably to our household’s usage only when we are on vacation and the household is essentially shut down.

Household Electricity Use

Minimum                   4 kWh per day (when out of town)

Maximum                   55 kWh per day (average for July 2011)

Average                       26 kWh per day (annual average for 2011)

The minimum is due primarily to the refrigerator, plus a couple of lights we keep on while gone. (I typically cut the water heater off if we are gone more than a day or two.) Our maximum electricity use occurs in the summer air conditioning and winter heating months.  Also, our use goes up when we are very active in the house, cooking dinners, taking long hot showers, and washing and drying clothes. (We have gas heat for the main floor, but use electricity for cooling the main floor and heat and cool our upstairs office area with electricity.)

The future

I expect Kathleen and I will install more panels on our roof over time, and also will look for ways to reduce our usage (more efficient appliances). Within a few years, the panels on our roof may be generating almost all the electricity we use, with some flowing back to the grid when we are on vacation. For a solar system to fully cover our  household use (on average), we would need about a 6 KW system (vs. our just installed 0.5 KW system), or 24 panels.

The TVA and federal incentives make residential, roof-top systems a viable economic investment in Nashville right now.  Payback on larger systems (5 or 10 KW) with less tree blockage than we enjoy can be down around 6 years, and one individual with a larger pole-mounted system (the owner of GroWild Nursery in Fairview) told me he expected a 4-year payback.

I will update blog readers on our generating results when we’ve got about 3 months experience.

Here are links to Nashville Electric Service, Generation Partners (TVA), and to several of the vendors I used or received bids from.

NES contact: Hugh Allen, dallen@newspower.com (You need to speak with Mr. Allen before you spend any money.)

http://www.tva.com/greenpowerswitch/partners/ (Describes the program)

http://www.backwoodssolar.com/ (provided solar panels)

http://www.sundogsolarenergy.com/  (local installation contractor)

http://www.newsystemelectric.com/  (local electrician)

I didn’t expect to be posting another piece on chickens so soon, but (1) there is a bill on urban chickens being considered by Metro Council, (2) its a hot topic, and (3) I attended a meeting in my neighborhood on the subject last Saturday.

Last year there was an attempt to get a bill passed in the Metro Nashville City Council to allow “back yard chickens” in Nashville, which failed.  Now a new effort is underway, with a new Metro Council.

Vision from the 1950s

The metro council members who are opponents of a change in the law don’t actually make a case, at least not in published news accounts.  They merely assume a case—chickens are farm animals and we live not only in a city, but in the part of that city zoned residential. Chickens are smelly and noisy, and attract wildlife. And my constituents don’t like chickens, except as food.  Case closed.

These assumptions are, of course, true and false, and would be equally true or false of dogs and small children, and especially of teenagers (except for the “food” part).

These defenders of the sanctity of “residential” neighborhoods view the city as something that segregates living, working, buying, and demographics into zones, and prevents the zones from intermingling except in rare circumstances at well defined edges.  Theirs is a vision of the city, developed in the 1950s and built around automobiles, that views the household as a unit of consumption and not as a unit of production, and residential living as a constrained concept that separates you geographically from other activities, whether they be restaurants, playgrounds, grocery stores, or farms.

The problem with these other non-residence activities is often not the activity itself, but the annoying car that is required to reach the activity and then must be parked somewhere.  The zoning laws have the by-product of forcing the resident to use a car to get to other places he or she wants to visit, since none of those destinations are allowed to be near enough to one’s residence to walk.

This “50s” suburbanized car-dependent version of the city is what is enshrined in metro’s codes (and believe me, codes are important).  So it’s not really chickens that are a problem; the problem is the definition of a city and what urban life is and should be. The alternative vision I will propose in more detail on another post is not a return to 19^th century America (though that vision has its attractions), but a reflection of new realities and opportunities driven by technology and how people in cities want to live.

Are chickens a nuisance?

I’ll come back to the vision in a minute, but first want explore a couple of details about the current law and then the proposed law.  To find out what the law says, I went the website where Metro’s laws are published and looked under “animals.” The key provision there was in section 8.12.020. It says rather simply that “No person shall keep chickens within the metropolitan government area in such a manner that a nuisance is created.”

Looking up “nuisance” on the web (I couldn’t find it defined in the code) a nuisance is the unreasonable (or unlawful) use of your own property in a way that interferes with someone else (a neighbor) being able to enjoy or use his or her own property.  So, issues of smell and noise are important, and under this part of the existing code are actionable.

In a concession to neighborliness, the “nuisance” provision remains unchanged in the proposed new law. If your neighbor’s chickens are a nuisance, under the proposed new law you can still file a complaint, as you can today.

5 acres and a chicken

Unfortunately, this fully reasonable requirement (don’t be a nuisance) is not the important part of the existing law. The important part is in the zoning codes. It is there we find the real restriction—that farm animals cannot be cooped up at all in the urban services district and further, in the general services area, such animals cannot be housed on plots of less than 5 acres.

An issue that has arisen here is that the definition of “farm animals” in the code is not clear.  Many consider chickens under the heading “pets” rather than “farm animals,” and statements about how back-yard chickens are treated by children (petted) suggests pets may be the better term.  However, the current law must be considered “vague” on this point, and sometimes vague is good.

The proposed bill would change all of this, allowing residents in the urban services with less than 5 acres to raise chickens in their back yards.  It adds a set of requirements on chicken owners, though.  In brief the new rules:

• Prohibit roosters
• Limit the number of hens to 6
• Require that the hen’s housing and outside pen must secure the chickens from predators
• Require minimum pen and housing size
• Require a permit tied to fee of at least $25 annually (the fine for illegal chickens under current law is $50)
• Have rules around feed and disposal of waste (it can be composted)

I should note that the square footage requirements of the proposed law (2 sq. feet per bird of indoor space and 6 sq. feet of outdoor space) are well in excess of what the standard “factory farm” has for chickens (they have no required outdoor space and as many as 5 birds are squeezed into slightly more than a square foot of cage (14 inches on a side)). However, the proposed rules are below the European standard for free-range designation (10 square feet of outdoor space per chicken).  Nevertheless,  this proposed new law takes a big step away from the  extreme lifetime confinement in the factory farm.

The benefits of backyard chickens, as stated by advocates, are outlined in Gloria Ballard’s excellent blog, http://gloriaballard.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/cluck/ so I won’t repeat them here, except to say that food production in a residential neighborhood, whether hen eggs or asparagus, should be encouraged as an element of healthy and enjoyable living, within reasonable guidelines.

Consume and Produce

Backyard food production fits in with a broader vision of the city as a place where people’s residences can also be productive, and not just consumptive. Under this broader vision, your home can be

• a location for work (almost 5% of Nashvillians work at home according to the 2010 American Community Survey),
• a location for power generation (solar panels are going on roofs and in yards around town as part of TVA’s Power Generation program), and
• a location for back-yard farming.

Where you live can be more than just an isolated refuge from city life; it can be an integrated part of the city, within reasonable limits.  The point is to avoid being a nuisance to your neighbor and to be neighborly; to respect your neighbors and their reasonable use of their own property.

Under current law, there are lots of people who have back yard chickens “under the radar,” and the number is growing all the time. (It’s a movement.) The proposed new law puts new requirements on these hen owners, and most of the requirements, if not all, seem quite reasonable.

What the proposed law doesn’t do is address the “vision thing,” the outdated idea, still operative, of what residential life in the city should be. It does, however, take a peck or two at a new vision.  Fortunately, the Nashville Civic Design Center is taking on the broader project, and even within the metro code, there is now some “mixed use” options.

I don’t plan to have back-yard chickens.  I would much rather my neighbors have them, and share their eggs with me occasionally. However, I would consider getting a permit so that I could borrow my neighbor’s chickens and let them peck my back yard free of ticks and other troublesome bugs from time-to-time.

In addition to Gloria’s blog, interested readers can check out UCAN (Urban Chicken Advocates of Nashville) on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UCANUrbanChickenAdvocatesofNashville

I eat mainly plant-based products (Vegan-ish), but nevertheless occasionally consume eggs, milk products, and, on a very occasional basis, wild fish on location. I became Vegan-ish for reasons of improved health, more sustainable food production, and more ethical treatment of animals.  My particular interest in these “animal farm” visits is in knowing how the birds and cows, whose product I sometimes consume, are treated. Can animals (in this case milk cows and their brethren) be treated humanely and be raised ecologically, and the farm remain economically viable?

Several friends and I visited Hatcher Family Dairy in the fall of 2010, a sunny September day. The operation at Hatcher has a different feel from McDonald’s Farm (see previous post below covering my visit to Mr. McDonald’s farm). The Hatcher presentation is more sophisticated and there are more moving parts.

Hatcher Family Dairy is just off Interstate 840 (in fact, annoyingly split by 840) about 30 miles south of Nashville. Several friends and I went there last fall for the tour offered each Thursday morning.  Our tour included a large number of elementary age children overseen by a smaller group of frazzled parents.

The signage that greeted us (see below) is apparently mostly for the kids (except for the first item).

Lucy Hatcher, one of several Hatchers we met, was our guide for the morning, and she gave us a compelling pitch about family farms in general and Hatcher Farm in particular.

Ms. Hatcher first offered us the basics: family owned land and production facilities; 57 head of milking cows plus a few beef cattle and a bull; about 180 or so acres accessible to the cows.

Ms. Hatcher (one of five siblings who are active in farming) also gave us the interesting particulars about Hatcher Family Dairy. Hatcher, like Mr. McDonald (previous post), brands its products and sells them direct at its own outlet, and at farmer’s markets in Franklin and Nashville, grocery outlets (Whole Foods in Green Hills is where I have access to the milk), high-end restaurants, and supplies gelato ingredients (cream) to Mike’s Ice Cream.

Hatcher is not certified organic, though in practical terms they are nearly so.  They don’t give their animals antibiotics routinely, but will treat sick animals with antibiotics when bacterial infection is present, and feed the cows non-certified feed as a supplement to the pasture grazing.  According to Charlie Hatcher, one of two Hatcher Farm veterinarians, if antibiotics are used, the milk is discarded following withdrawal periods determined by FDA until the antibiotics clear the system. (He says that all milk, including organic, is required to be tested before the milk can be processed and offered for sale.)

Lucy Hatcher is shown showing off some of the Hatcher cows and the Hatcher bull.  She says that she and her siblings are all engaged with the farm, but that it is very hard work, and all of the next generation (including her own son) may not want to stay with it  The Hatchers collectively own 600 acres, but only about 180 are used for the dairy farm.

Hatcher Dairy definitely avoids the “factory farm” label.  Its cows are in the field most of the day, except they are milked twice, once in the morning and once in the evening.  (Milking takes less than 10 minutes.)  The cows seemed contented to my untrained eye, and were definitely adjusted to the presence of humans.

At birth the new calves are tagged with a number and a name.  They often get celebrity names, with a focus on popular culture and country music, but they also are given drink names (“Latte”). The names are placed on one of two ear tags for the cows, the other being an ID number, something like a social security number for cows. The naming is symbolic of treating the cows humanely.  It helps remind the Hatchers that the cows are more than a production unit, and it provides fun for the visitors to see some of the more interesting cow names.

Cows with especially good traits are selectively bred using artificial insemination.  (Sperm is purchased to provide diversity and to avoid in-breeding.)  Artificial insemination may be less fun for the cows and the bull, but it’s cheaper than bringing the bull on site.

About half the new calves are male (though sperm designed to produce only females is available for a higher price), and the males are raised for beef or are sold to neighboring “family” farms.  Ms. Hatcher emphasized that the male calves are not shipped off to become veal (which typically involves confined feeding), though she admitted they are slaughtered for beef when grown, but this follows a time of “living the good life” on the farm.

The cows live an average of eight years, though a few can live as long as 14 or more years.  This is a much longer productive life than typical factory farm cow. We were told that “factory farm” cows are productive for 4-5 years.

Hatcher Cows that are selected for breeding get two months off from milking towards the end of their pregnancy, and then are given some time with their newborns, but the newborns are soon separated into their own area, like children off to day care, and their mothers go back to work.

Some of the children get to practice milking one of the farm’s oldest, but still quite productive, cows while Ms. Hatcher explains things using the bull horn.  

Milk Economics

The cows are quite productive, squirting about 8 gallons of milk per day.  Since the Hatcher cows get about 70 percent of their nourishment from grass (the rest from feed), we were told that their milk has more Omega-3 fatty acids in it. (This is also said to be true of the eggs supplied by McDonald’s Farm.) The pasture, in turn, receives nourishment from the cows.  Their manure is recycled to the fields, producing verdant pastures. (We couldn’t see those pastures because they were over the hill from where our tour took place.)

The greener pastures were over the distant hill, just beyond the tree line.

My later visit to Harris Teeter Grocery Store to check prices found basic Teeter-branded milk selling for $3.50 per gallon.  Teeter brand organic sold for $5.00 per gallon, and the Horizon brand organic sold for $7.00 per gallon.  To break even, Ms. Hatcher said they had to sell their milk for about $5 per gallon, whether wholesale or retail.  At the Hatcher Store we obtained a half gallon for $3.25 ($6.50 per gallon), and at Whole Foods the price was about $8.00 per gallon (in half gallon jugs).

So, 57 cows producing 8 gallons per day year round (with some selected cows taking time off to give birth), has the farm’s annual production at about 160,000 gallons per year bringing in about $670,000 per year (at break even pricing).  That revenue must pay for the cost of feed, the labor of five full-time and several part-time Hatchers, and the cost of equipment.

In addition to fencing and buildings, and the normal complement of tractors, the Hatcher’s equipment costs include operating a dairy truck to transport the milk to market, the milking equipment (it’s not done by hand), and the processing equipment (pasteurized; separated into whole, 2% and skim, plus chocolate milk and cream), and bottled (or to be precise, poured into plastic containers) for sale.

The Future

We were told that the decision to process their own milk was a big one, requiring an investment of about $1 million.  That allowed Hatcher to exit the commodity market (with its strong price competition and limited quality differentiation) and offer their milk and related products in a market niche with higher prices and less competition. That niche (local product; grass-fed cows, though not entirely organic; humanely treated cows) is seeing growing demand, despite the much higher prices.  Charlie Hatcher says that the farm has yet to turn a profit, due to debt repayment, but that good milk sales through the recession have kept the operation growing.

My guess is that Hatcher will need to expand its operations and to constantly innovate to remain competitive, even as they are able to successfully brand themselves.  Their innovations to-date include a web site http://www.hatcherfamilydairy.com/Home.aspx, farm tours for a fee ($6), in-house Hatcher expertise (veterinarians; ag-school graduates), niche marketing at farmer’s markets and to high end restaurants, and investment in improved equipment and techniques. They might also consider developing an ice cream shop (sweetened with locally produced honey) and a product line of cheese.  Ms. Hatcher said that cheese is a whole different operation, and would likely involve another $1 million investment.

The expansion dictate will mean putting more cows in the field. To expand from 57 to 70 milking cows should require no additional land or equipment, and should lower their break-even sales price below $5.  The marginal cost of producing an additional gallon of milk as cows are added should be well below their average costs (the milking and production facilities are not running at full capacity).  Adding additional milking cows above 70 (the limit that their 180 acres will support) will take additional investment in land.  That means either (1) accessing more of the family farm or (2) moving their operation to a more remote location where the price of land is much lower than in the current spot in Williamson County.

Williamson County is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, and so land there is quite pricey.  While owning a horse farm for fun is economically viable for the idle rich, operating a farm that is supposed to pay for itself is another matter.

I-840, which is the farm to market road for Hatcher Farms, can also bring market to farm. So this exit will undoubtedly soon have a McDonald’s fast-food drive-through competing against the Hatcher Dairy store.  And this may force Hatcher Family Dairy to improve their offering, bringing in a coffee shop to serve locally roasted coffee and Burger-Up (12^th Avenue hamburgers from locally raised cattle) to take Hatcher’s locally grown steers directly to consumers on site.

Urbanites from Nashville will come down on the four-lane farm-to-market road and buy from Hatcher and friends, by-passing the fast-food McDonalds  (not farmer McDonald, who is much further down the road). But the local-locals, the people who commute the other direction to work the service industry or factories in Nashville, will cross the street to McDonalds (not the egg farm, the fast food outlet), and get their Big Macs from cows raised in Brazil or Argentina.

My take sounds cynical, or maybe elitist.  But here is my point.  The family farm that treats animals humanely need not be “retro” (quaint and preserved as a historic reminder) but instead can lead the way to a better future, one that embraces innovation (including technology), while preserving life-style. At any rate, I’m buying Hatcher milk and McDonald eggs (actually my wife is), and she is enjoying the considerable upgrade from factory farm organic and corporate free range (our previous options).

The next generation spends a few weeks in “day care” with other calves before venturing out into the fields.

For more information about where to buy Hatcher Dairies products, check out the link provided above.