There is no effective solution to the food crisis without reintegrating Ukraine's food production as well as the food and fertilizer produced by Russia and Belarus into world markets despite the war. Russia must permit the safe and secure export of grains stored in Ukrainian ports. Alternative transportation routes can be explored even if we know that by itself they will not be enough to solve the problem. And Russian food and fertilizers must have unrestricted access to world markets without indirect impediments. We did the primary staple for the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia for thousands of years. A bad year has meant starvation for millions. The French Revolution happened right after wheat prices spiked to take up over 80% of a worker's salary. In 1960s America, 16% of income went to food, but now it's half that. We live in, well, let me just say we lived in a world of ample food, of cheap food, and that world is about to change more rapidly than you thought. And it isn't climate change, fossil fuel prices, or even general inflation that's going to drive up the cost of wheat this year. It's the war on Ukraine. Today we're going to use our experience growing our own food as a backdrop to discuss just how important wheat can be. This is the low tech podcast. Hello and welcome. I'm Scott Johnson from the Low Technology Institute. You're host for podcast number 48 on May 27th, 2022, coming to you out of the Low Tech Institute's gardens in Cooksville, Wisconsin. Thanks for joining us. Today we'll be talking about the looming week crisis brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We'll also have institute updates. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter. Our handle is low underscore techno. Like us on Facebook, find us on Instagram, subscribe to us on YouTube, and check out our website, lowtechinstitute.org. There you can find both of our podcasts as well as information about joining and supporting their institute and its research. Also, some podcast distributors put ads on podcasts unless you hear me doing the ad, someone else is making money on that advertising. While all of our podcast videos and other information are given freely, they do take resources to make. If you're in a position to help support our work and be part of this community, please consider becoming a monthly supporter for as little as $3 a month through our Patreon page. Patreon.com slash lowtechinstitute. Thanks to Marilyn S, Donna B, Leanne S, Lane B, and Steven L for signing up lately. If you'd like to sponsor an episode directly, please get in touch with us through our website. Again, that's lowtechinstitute.org. And now, right on to the interview with Bill Mosley. My first guest is Bill Mosley, the DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography at McAllister College, who studies political ecology and agricultural environmental and developmental policy. In the past decade, he's worked with Save the Children, World Bank, Environmental Department, USAID, Peace Corps. And in his free time, he's active on Twitter posting on all these topics under at William G Mosley, that's M-O-S-E-L-E-Y. Thanks for coming on Bill. It's a pleasure to be here, Scott. Thanks for inviting me. Sure, glad to have you. So, we're going to talk about wheat today, and so I think I'm an archaeologist, so my ideas about wheat go really far back. So I think it'd be just real quickly, I want to do a little table setting and then we can jump right into what's going on right now. So wheat's been used around the world as a staple for millennia because it stores calories really well without refrigeration. It makes sedentary civilizations possible. Three centuries ago, most wheat was grown locally after the Industrial Revolution. Wheat kind of jumped over 10,000 years of wheat history, but since the Industrial Revolution, wheat's been traded internationally. And today, a few countries produce much of the world's wheat supply. The top producers are China and India, but they eat most of what they produce and more than what they produce. And the top five exporters in descending order are Russia, the U.S., Canada, France, and Ukraine. And we're going to do a page with a lot of really great infographics from Al Jazeera in the show notes. So obviously, Bill, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a potential wheat crisis. As Russian wheat won't be able to be sold on the international market, and Ukrainian wheat is being destroyed as we speak. I just heard a story in NPR this morning, they're putting mines in the fields of Ukraine and destroying their tractors and taking all their oil. Anyway, a really interesting story this morning on NPR. So first off, Bill, how concerned are you and how concerned should we be about this year's wheat supply globally? And what are the biggest challenges you see for this? Yeah, I think we should all be concerned. Wheat prices are at a 14-year high. Russia and Ukraine together account for nearly 30% of global wheat exports. Belarus and Russia also export a lot of fertilizers. So I think this is not just a problem now, but I think it's going to be a problem for several years to come. Because high energy prices constrained access to fertilizers means that farmers around the world are facing high input costs and are not going to be able to plant as much. And in Ukraine in particular, like you noted from the story this morning, their agricultural lands are being destroyed. In some cases it's going to take several years to bring those back into production. And Ukraine is really one of the wheat bread baskets of the world. As you noted, we have a handful of countries that produce the majority of the wheat that's exported. And then when you literally blow up one of these bread baskets, this creates a major problem. I think it's a particular problem for those countries that import a lot of wheat from the Black Sea region. So these are mostly countries in North Africa and in the Middle East. Yeah, I saw Egypt is trying to trade fertilizer for wheat from all kinds of Romania. And they were scrambling. Recently, India thought it was going to have a windfall this year because China's wheat was flooded out. And so they need to import more than usual. And now recently in the last two weeks, India's had a record heat wave that's destroyed a lot of the spring. Well, not a lot, but a significant enough portion of the spring wheat. So they're actually going to have to import instead of export. It feels me kind of like the woman who swallowed a spider with interconnectedness of everything. So for example, like Russia and Belarusian fertilizers are cut off from the farmers in Brazil grow less soybeans, which feed animals in China, which become meat sold internationally. And so meat prices go up. It's it's all it's amazing how interconnected we've become. So you largely work on food issues or at least a lot of your work as food issues in Africa and the less what I call the less industrialized parts of the world. How do you think people in these areas will be affected differently than those say where we are you're in Minnesota right now and I'm in Wisconsin. Correct. So, they are in a very precarious position. I think it's important to understand why they're in a precarious position. I mean, starting in the 1980s, several African countries underwent neoliberal economic reform at the behest of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And part of those policies really encourage them to focus on producing a few products for which they had a comparative advantage. So, you know, for many African countries, other than minerals, this was commodity crops.  And so they're deeply interconnected to the global food system that kind of works OK as long as global food prices are relatively low. But whenever there's a spike in global food prices, there's a problem. And, you know, and I think in particular for lower income middle income countries they don't have as many resources. You mentioned Egypt earlier. Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world. Bread is a staple. It's heavily subsidized by the government. But, you know, the government is struggling. They can only subsidize that so much. And there's there's a lot of concern that, you know, you could see another tenement square and sort of excuse me, you know, unrest in Egypt because of high bread prices. So, this is a major problem for several African countries, particularly those that import a lot of their food. I have to do folks. So I did my dissertation in Mexico in a really small village, you know, and a lot of them were subsistence farmers up until recently and then the government started subsidizing bought it purchased in corn. So they were all looking for other ways to earn money. Some of them worked on my archaeological project when I was there, and they would buy corn instead of raise it. And they had the knowledge to do that and I imagine that this year, they'll be putting in a lot more corn, because they don't depend on outside fertilizers they they grow at Milpa. So, Sweden agriculture in the in the forest around their villages. So they might be able to adapt and go back to some of these practices is that something that's possible in places that you've had experience with. Yes, I mean we do see people are adaptable. And they do shift. One of the countries I do a lot of work in is Mali in West Africa, and there there was a strike of cotton farmers in the mid 2000s, because they were unhappy with the global price for cotton. And a lot of them shifted back into sorghum production so this this this is possible you know farmers aren't passive they are adaptable. Do you think are have people become so disconnected and bound into the international global trade that they'll have major famine level disruptions or is it going to be more in convenience and a reversion maybe less less desirable crops and ways of getting their food. How do you see that playing out. If this, I mean it sounds like this is going to continue for a couple of years the disruption. I think short term there's a lot of concern. And I think people need assistance making the transition, you know if they have enough time they can, they can make that shift, but you know it takes at least another agricultural season to get a different crop in the ground. If you were banking on selling a commodity and importing food crop and the food crop isn't there or too expensive that that's that's a major problem in the short run. Like in the 80s when Reagan decided well we don't need a strategic grain reserve will sell that because it's not making interest will put the money in the stock market and then when there's a famine will just buy grain from somewhere, which historically speaking or you know as an archaeologist that that's not a good idea that hasn't turned out well in the past. And so my yeah for wheat is specifically because it takes almost an entire year to grow more unless you're doing spring wheat which isn't as good as winter wheat, you would have had to have been planting your wheat last year it's just not a possible to adapt so quickly like you say. So if are there any maybe anecdotal or interesting examples that might spring to your mind of how people use you mentioned growing sorghum. Anthropology I learned about how important sorghum was and a lot of communal agricultural activities in Africa, and other places, because growing food is kind of a boomer a bus thing you all hands on deck to plant and then all hands on deck to harvest and process. Are those types of community and social institution still extant in the communities or have they kind of disaggregated as people became more cash crop oriented. So, I'm going to answer this in two ways and I'll talk about the local level and what's going on at the national level in these countries. I think several countries need to diversify it's a problem if they're overly dependent on food imports. You know, a classic example would be Botswana, which is the world's largest producer of gem quality diamonds they export these things but then they import 90% of their food. And that that puts them in an extremely vulnerable position when supply chains are disrupted or food prices go up so they need to diversify. I think, after the 2007 2008 global food crisis, and in this crisis it was rice prices that went up in particular. There was a shift towards more local production or food self sufficiency. The way that was pursued and a lot of this was pushed by international donors was the new green revolution for Africa so basically industrial food production techniques that are very energy intensive. So, it becomes more expensive to produce that food. So I think the way forward, and this gets back at your question about sort of local knowledge and initiatives is agroecology and agroecology is both a science and a social movement. So, biologists think about farm fields like simplified ecosystems, and they're leveraging interactions between different crops crops in the soil crops and insects, leveraging those in a positive way to produce more food without external inputs So, it sounds like you have some experience with Mexico, a classic example there would be corn and beans and beans are legume they fix nitrogen that that the corn plant uses. So, this is, it's a science, I mean there are people in the academy that are thinking about how do we use ecology to produce more food. But a lot of these ideas also come out of local communities and traditional knowledge, so I think it's a really interesting field that sort of bridges, you know, experiential knowledge, right. And as well as book knowledge out of the academy. And it's also a social movement, because this way to produce more food is sort of threatening to the established sort of agribusiness group because there's not much money to be made from ecology There's not a lot of inputs to sell. Yeah, and it's unmeasurable. I was just saying to a friend yesterday, I grow most of our food at home, and that's not measured in our GDP.  We don't spend thousands of dollars every year, because I've grown the food at home, and that's not measured in any metric in the economy at all, at least in our country is anywhere as far as I know. You touched a little bit briefly on how energy dependent a lot of our modern industrial global food systems are and that's kind of, at least from my point of view, looking back thousands of years kind of an aberration very few countries or very few cultures depended on importing staples notable example is Rome, which was notoriously unstable as its bread supplies from Egypt, during some periods. And that's kind of what my organization does and maybe there's some people, fans of yours that are listening for people associated with you that are listening so what we talk about at the at my organization, the Technology Institute is thinking about how are we going to transition away from fossil fuel use in the future, specifically, well most problematic is going to be oil in the next 25 to 40 years, depending on how we use the remaining supplies. And that's going to have a massive shift in growing food and you talked about potential Tiananmen Square type uprisings in Egypt as the bread prices go up well. I misspoke it's to here square. And, which, I guess tire square itself was somewhat like Tiananmen Square asking for more democracy, whatever okay, going on anyway, the French Revolution, you know bread prices spikes right before the bread, the French Revolution, right so it's not a new problem so looking forward, and this is clearly speculative will caveat that that you know you're an expert in the here and now and what's going on but based on that kind of knowledge base looking into the future in the United States or other industrialized countries, if you could create a guiding idea for the future of some sort of local I imagine local food security going forward what sorts of social or technological sorts of things maybe informed by some of this agroecology or other things you've seen in Africa or other less developed areas. Are there, if you are the benevolent dictator of the future, what would our agriculture look like in 2530 years here in the US that might maybe be more resilient or resistant to a war in Europe, and our bread prices. So I think agroecology is equally applicable in the global north, as it is in the global south. I don't, you know, I don't really think of it in terms of low technology I think I have a more expansive view of technology, which include what I would call sort of soft technology know how and understanding. And I think, in many cases what we're placed, what we're replacing fossil fuel inputs with is, you know, understanding and know how about how ecosystems and agro ecosystems function. And so where I'm situated, you know, in the upper Midwest in the US, we have this agricultural landscape that's really dominated by maze and so he beans. It's increasingly, it's very, very vulnerable to drought, because, you know, maze cross pollinates over this sort of two or three week period and if you have a drought then your creates havoc. We also have a situation where animal production, which used to be integrated with crop production is increasingly separated from that. So we have, you know, these intensive sort of hog operations or chicken production facilities, which are major major producers of pollution. And so, I really think that we need to go back to a more diverse system, a greater mix of crops, we need to sort of reintegrate crop and animal production. And this is going to be more resilient to climate change, it's going to be less energy intensive, it's going to be less polluting, and it's going to provide, you know, more nutritious food for people. I mean, where I live in Minnesota, 90% of the crops we produce here are not consumed directly. I mean, a lot of it for ethanol production are high for those corn syrup so when, when, you know, certain scientists say we feed the world. Frankly, that's, that's, that's a lot of BS, because a lot of it's not being used to feed people. So I think there are some pretty significant obstacles in the way. One is the US agricultural subsidy system that really encourages the production of certain commodities. We have, we have a super lively, you know, mix of vegetable producers in the metro area where I live, but none of them get support from the government, it's all for the big commodity producers. The other, I think issue is that agroecology different ways of knowing have really been marginalized in the agricultural schools across the United States. And frankly, part of that is schools of agriculture departments of agronomy are highly subsidized by corporate ag. I think this transition needs to be driven by different ways of knowing, which means we do need to get this into our colleges and university so we can produce a new generation of farmers who's who's gonna really reinvent our food systems. Yeah, it seems that the soil right now is seen as just a sponge for MPK inputs and outcome plants and the, you know, the emerging fields of, or the emerging understanding of the microbiome of the soil. I'm interested, I'm excited to see how that changes maybe our, our, some of our, our view of agriculture, but yeah, I, I come from Babidji, Minnesota, northern Minnesota, and I had grandpa in North Dakota, and it was all one way. This is true, I don't just not picking on him at all. It's true of all industrial agriculture really seems such a one way street from, you know, natural gas largely producing nitrogen and the factories the Haberbosch process to the farms to the fields to the, you know, to the, to the factories to the market to us and there's no circularity in that economy and it's only possible because of this glut of fossil fuels we have tapped into right now that obviously is so regionally constrained that when we have these global disruptions. It has ripple effects because we've kind of chained ourselves into this. In one point of view efficient model for feeding lots of people, but it's only efficient in the it's like burning a candle at both ends it's not it's it's not actually efficient it's it's it's, it takes a lot of resources to do and we don't have those resources to continue using into the future. What do you, what do you do. Sorry, it's kind of not really a question. I do think this is crises are potential moments for change.  I know there's an establishment that will do everything in their power to sort of maintain the status quo. But I think especially crises that are prolonged so we have to crisis stacked on top of one another now the war in Ukraine coming off of two years of coven. I do think there's, you know, people are reacting to this, the servers farmers around the world are changing the way they grow crops, and I think if they are sort of nudged in the right direction, we can get a less energy intensive food system. You know, I'm a supporter of President Biden in many ways, but I was very frustrated that, you know, he's decided, I think because of high fuel prices to sort of double down on ethanol production and I think saw that the wrong way to go. I think we need to encourage, you know, more ecological approaches to agriculture, and then it's going to be less vulnerable to these to these price fluctuations and better for the environment and less vulnerable Yeah, it's, it's easy to revert to the mean, I guess they're not easy, but it's tempting to do this and we see this in Mesopotamia when their fields became, you know, sailing or too much salt in their soil. They, they didn't question the method of farming, they just did more and did more of a bad thing and it caused instability and collapse of the larger more complex society, the peasants were fine but it's the complexity that that that fails and I'm afraid, not afraid. I'm concerned that, you know, in the United States, we're so far removed from even the cultural knowledge our grandparents, maybe who went through the depression, or great grandparents, who went through the depression who had that knowledge to fall back on to be able to grow and subsidize a lot of their own foods I think in the US. We're having to relearn that and, you know, for me I grow my own wheat but I'm having to figure all this stuff out because I don't know anybody. I've never been taught by anyone how to I'm looking at farming manuals from the 1850s and stuff like that to try and understand what they're saying and relearn some of this stuff because it's there's no money for it. So we did a potato study on non mechanized ways efficient ways to grow potatoes and there was, I did a literature review before I, when I was applying for a grant and there's nothing done because all the money goes for big egg. And mechanized. There's just not the support there. And I hope maybe this will be a change. And hopefully as you say, a nudge, rather than a catastrophic mad max scenario where we have to change very quickly. Maybe this will wake people up. And it'll be a short term pain but perhaps pushes in a better direction. Are there. Are there any closing thoughts you want to leave us with as we're wrapping up our I want to want to over. I don't want to abuse your time. I appreciate you coming on to talk today is there. I saw you recently had a article out in high level panel of experts committee on world food security, which I'll link to in the show notes are there any other things that you've had out recently that might speak more to this or have different perspectives or open up different areas that that we didn't get to talk about today. Sorry to put you on the spot. So I think I, while I am currently working on a book on decolonizing African agriculture, I hope that's out in about a year, but I would like to just end on a more positive note I know it's easy to get pessimistic during a crisis. But, you know, the article to which I think you're referring on the site by the high level panel of experts for nutrition is basically about, you know, is the global food system on the cusp of a major change. I think there's the potential here, if we manage it well to sort of make a shift. And so, I think by my nature I'm tend to be more optimistic, and so I'm. I have to dream for a better future, and push towards that, you know, rather than being paralyzed by concerns about the old system collapsing, because we have an incredibly vulnerable global food system that's been built over by past policy initiatives that really doubled down on this energy intensive system that's dependent on long distance trade. And we know from a variety of shocks over the last couple of years that it's not working. At the top of that, you know, malnutrition and all its form from, you know, acute food insecurity to obesity are growing problems around the world so we, the system has to change. I absolutely hope so. And yeah, and I find for me, part of the reason I started this organization was from feeling a little helpless as an individual in this kind of changing system around us and so, you know, every day, I do, I get to work in my office and then I go out and I work in my garden and I'm, you know, actively doing something that has tangible benefits for my family my community. And I think that for me, that's a big help and I think it could be a catharsis for a lot of people who feel caught in this large system that we're all a part of. So, yeah, I really appreciate you coming and spending an hour chatting with me about this. Thanks again to Bill for taking the time to talk to me. So we can anticipate the crisis response of the current food distribution system. Wheat, corn, and rice will be moved around the world with ships, trains, and trucks, all using fossil fuels to get where they're going. And while this will help alleviate the distribution problem, it won't stop two things from happening. The short-term problem is that the grain supply will be down this year thanks to the things we've already talked about, from the destroyed wheat fields and equipment in Ukraine and the inability for Russia to sell its grain to the West to the great reduction of fertilizer availability affecting much of the northern hemisphere's planting season right now. The long-term problem is depending on long-distance transport of staples. And this is where the institute's perspective comes into play. We're looking a quarter-century into the future. As I've said before, no ancient societies relied on long-distance transport of staples. They didn't have the easy power of gas and diesel to move things around. When these are no longer available, it will make the most sense to grow our staples regionally. And this will force many of us to change how we eat and how we get our food. Food prices in cities will rise and perhaps we'll see people begin to move out of cities, especially if we're able to continue the trend towards remote work. Growing staples means we need space and know-how. We have the space in this country to grow enough food for ourselves. At last check, we have about seven acres per person. And now I realize that not all this land is arable or farmable, but even still, acre per person is more than enough space to grow all the food a person needs. It's even enough room to support some animals, chickens, a pig, a cow or goats for each family. But our future of local food may take many forms. People across the modern and historic world give us models to test. Just recently, for example, we've all heard of kibbutz in Israel, where people pool their resources and work together in agricultural production and social life. Americans, though, might gravitate towards a moshav model. Also from Israel, where a village has some common work, the wheat and potato fields. And some shared resources like tractors, workshops and other specialized equipment you don't use very often. But each family would have its own individual home, land and garden. In whatever form your community takes in the future, growing wheat, corn, potatoes and other staples would be an existential issue. In the last podcast, I mentioned the statistic that a person could grow a third of his or her annual calories in 40 hours of labor growing potatoes. And to grow this amount of calories for 40 people, you'd need only an acre. Wheat, on the other hand, is measured in bushels. And that fills about 8 gallons and weighs about 60 pounds. And from that, a person would get about 2 thirds of the weight in flour. So about 40 pounds of flour per bushel. That amounts to about 66,000 calories. Now, I've been growing my own wheat for a few years now. And industrial wheat production in the fields you might see around the country, they get about 45 to 50 bushels per acre. This is about double pre-industrial rates. Pre-industrial yields range from about 10 to 30 bushels per acre. My own yield fluctuates as I'm experimenting with planting methods, but I can count on about 20 to 25 bushels per acre. At that rate, to provide a third of one's calories from wheat, one would have to have about 4 bushels of wheat per person. That means 6 people could live off the wheat from an acre in my current production method. But first you might be thinking, OK, that's a lot of calories from wheat. But remember, before industrialization, people regularly ate one to two pounds of bread a day. A third of your calories would be about 12 ounces of bread. And now I know people are trying to move away from bread and carbohydrates and all these different things in gluten. If you're making sourdough bread, that really, and using long rises in your breadmaking process, that really alleviates a lot of the problems that people have with gluten because it breaks down enzymes. But we'll talk about that a different day. I've made a video on planting homescale grains on our YouTube channel. And if you just search for Loteq Institute on YouTube or click on the video's link on our website, you'll find it. Also, we're going to make videos about how to harvest and process grains later in the year. It does take time to prepare the field, plant the seeds, weed the field, harvest the stalks, let it dry, thresh it and grind it. Each step has a learning curve and that must be dealt with. Specialized tools make homescale grains possible without considerable amounts of times wasted and futile repetitive work. And I've been doing it a few years and I get better each year. And the reason I mention all this, our videos, all the different steps is it's a lot more involved to grow and process and use wheat than, say, potatoes. This is why I argue potatoes are a more important staple than wheat, but I think many of us would be a lot happier in our lives if we had local wheat available. And so what I'm really trying to say is, now is the time to think about learning to grow grains. Few of us have anyone around with direct knowledge of how to grow wheat or other grains without mechanization. Since the 1930s, tractors, reapers, and other machines have taken over agriculture, taken over that skilled labor that is needed for growing grains. Ask anybody who's tried to use a scythe without any instruction. It is skilled labor. In a century, we've lost the people with first-hand experience. So we're stuck learning by trial and error after reading descriptions in Victorian-era farm manuals like Book of the Farm from the UK or watching new video after video on YouTube. Maybe you live by traditional communities like the Amish or certain Mennonites. That might be able to teach you these skills, but that isn't available everywhere, and they don't all practice that anymore. By having people take up this as a hobby now, we're able to better supply our own local futures. Someone local would have to have the equipment and know how to use it when diesel isn't available for tractors. We, for example, will be offering our annual workshop where people can come and learn to harvest and process wheat this summer. Details will be available on the website soon, but it will be in around mid-July. If you want to hear about when we're having classes, head to our website and sign up for the listserv, or you can become a patron or member and you get to sign up early and for a discount. Wheat has been the primary staple for societies from Central Asia, through the Middle East, to all of Europe, and now much of the Americas starting almost 10,000 years ago. We've seen ups and downs with the supply, causing famine or baby booms. But our collective fate has been tied to this crop for millennia. This is the first global wheat crisis since the 1930s. Strikingly, that's when the Soviet policy of collectivization shattered the Ukrainian wheat industry. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme, as they say. So, although we have a better transportation and communication system now, will we be able to move and distribute food in a way to prevent widespread hunger? This is a question of political and social will as much as it is the physical presence or absence of enough grain around the world. We have to choose whether or not we're going to let this be a famine. And now for a brief recap of the research we have going on around the institute. Spring is our busiest time and we continue to churn ahead with a few research projects. The compost study is being revamped. We have been testing a system to capture the off gases from a compost pile and push them through a growbed. Now, gone are the heavy, difficult to move boxes that we initially tried, and now we're testing a series of piles on the ground covered by a tarp to capture the off gases and pump them under a growbed. We'll have a full episode on this as the study concludes next spring, but in the meantime, you can check out more under the research tab on our website, lowtechinstitute.org. We're also doing their thing at our research apiary next door. We've had two years of terrible winter survival in our attempt to breed mite tolerant honey bees. We're getting close to a conclusion in this study, but unfortunately will not be very optimistic in our findings and we'll have to think about new ways forward. I anticipate having a podcast about this in a few months. That's it for this week. The lowtech podcast is put out by the Low Technology Institute. The show is hosted by me, Scott Johnson, and our production team has doubled. I'm glad to introduce and welcome Hina Suzuki as our new podcast producer and editor who will be helping make this a more regular and engaging podcast. Welcome. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, YouTube, and elsewhere. We hope you enjoyed this free podcast. If you'd like to join the community and help support the work we do, please consider going to patreon.com slash lowtechinstitute and signing up. Thank you to our forester and land steward-level members, Marilyn Skjepan, and the Hamvises for their support. The Low Technology Institute is a 501c3 research organization supported by members, grants, and underwriting. You can find out more information about the Low Technology Institute, membership, and underwriting at lowtechinstitute.org. Find us on social media and reach me directly at scottatlowtechinstitute.org. Our intro music was Time Lapse off an album from the same name by Zylo Ziko. That song is under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Like non-commercial license and this podcast is under the Creative Commons Attribution and Share Like license. All this means you're free to use and share it as long as you give us credit. Thanks and take care.


So what does it mean to think critically? It's an interesting question because there's a lot of confusion for people that It's one of these things that's widely valued. It's taught It's been in curriculum for generations and yet not a lot of clarity about what it is So in a nutshell it comes from a Greek word meaning criteria It's criteria thinking and that's an important distinction often students think it means it means to criticize to be critical That's a misunderstanding and so what we wanted is help students understand critical thinking is to make thoughtful decisions using criteria to Guide you in your decision-making. So why is it important that that we focus on critical thinking? And I think there are two two sides to that one is So that students I mean first of all I frame it We live in a democracy if we have thoughtful civic engagement students have to be thoughtful about decisions they make they have to be Thoughtful about career choices they make about being a thoughtful consumer So to to just to live a full life you need to be thoughtful in decisions the flip side though Is that the students will learn the concepts in the content? We want them to learn more deeply if they learn it in a critically thoughtful manner So you know they can learn it in a more superficial way or they can learn it in a way that has engaged them in thinking more Deeply and so I would argue that whatever concepts I want students to learn They're going to learn more deeply in a critically thoughtful classroom And they're going to live a richer deeper life as a critically thoughtful person learn to think think to learn is to kind of picking up on two sides of You know we need to teach kids the intellectual tools to allow them to do the thinking But at the same time we found in working with with students and with teachers That you'll learn the content much better if it's been Problematized if you've been invited to think about the content But not only do I need to teach you the intellectual tools you need to be successful in thinking But what we find is the content the concepts I would learn much more deeply So there's kind of a double payoff when critical thinking underpins learning kids learn how to think better But they also learn to they learn deeper as a result of the thinking they're doing So it's kind of a double payoff teaching kids learning the ability to think deeply teach them to learn content through that thinking


Fy fwy rydw i, wrth gwrs, wrth gwrs, mae'r ystafell ydw i'n ddweud â'r cyflwyngau. Rydw i'n ddweud â'r cyflwyngau yma, mae'r ysgolwyddeithas Alexander Ritchie, Minister of Erskine Uniteg Freeturch, Burnt Island a'r moddoratour yma y Llywodraeth gennym. Rydw i'n gweithio i'n ddweud â'r cyflwyngau yma. O'r tro gyd i Caelifforniau, rwyf wedi'i cyntafol yma i'w nbl gwasanaeth Llanfwyr, o'r Llanfwyr Lleifwyr i'w Lleifwyr. Mae'r ffordd maen nhw'n fawr i'r gwaith, ein bod yn raddwyr gyda chyflin sydd y Chyflin Cymru Cymru yn ym Mhor yw'r Llanfwyr. Mae'r eich cyffordd o'i cyfrwyng iawn yn ein dweud yn ei ddeinol. Felly mae'n gweithio'r lleidwyr yn gyflawn i'r Llanfwyr a'r Llanfwyr, ond y satyrdi aftonwn yn any month of the year. Basketball teams are allowed to call time-outs in the course of each game. This lets them discuss their tactics, make a substitution or simply encourage each other. Crucially, during each time-out the match clock is paused and doesn't move until the time-out ends. This brief session is labelled time for reflection. It creates a space for quiet thought before the clock of parliamentary business starts to tick. Let me suggest that whether you are a person of faith or not, it remains a basic human need to make time for that pause. To think rather than to speak, look at ourselves rather than everyone else for calm stillness rather than frantic activity. From my own tradition, Jesus shared personal truths with others, often getting right to the heart of the person rather than at the superficial level of their outward appearance.  Another woman, at a well, found herself with someone able to explain all about her lifestyle. In her own words, come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. No time-outs yet in force in Scottish football, but we certainly need them in the midst of life's pressures and stress. We in the United Free Church of Scotland pray for this chamber and all its members faithfully asking God for the wisdom and counsel necessary for you to guide our national life. I hope that in the course of this week, and indeed this very busy day, each of you will take more than just this time-out, any quiet yet creative way enabling you to recharge, reconfigure, reboot whatever idiom works for you. For me, prayer is vital, a faith aid which is always accessible and never unavailable. Remember that the game clock pauses whilst you reflect, so the potential benefits are great, not least because no ground is lost and nothing has changed. You will return to the fray wiser and enriched, perhaps more balanced in perspective and more conciliatory in approach.


When a manufacturer wants you to review a digital output board for the Pi and almost triple the price they normally go for, you wonder if he really has something special or is just bold, for I will not compromise on integrity. Every few days people tell me that since digital signals are digital, there is no difference between digital sources. All kinds of arguments follow, sometimes well thought out, though wrong and sometimes simply ignorant. Point is that if I only change one digital source for another, I hear a clear difference on my three reference sets or if the difference is small, primary on my big set of one. And I hear these differences for decades now, as do a lot of my colleagues. If you don't hear any difference, you might buy better gear or watch my series on audio hygiene just to improve your stereo. Or just don't bother, that's your choice. I bring this up here since the subject of this review is a relatively expensive digital audio output board for the Raspberry Pi and the big question of course is does it sound better than the clearly lower priced competition? So buckle up for this one. LO sent me a board and a housing and as with almost all Pi housings, it came as a flat pack without instructions and made me long for IKEA instructions. But on the LO's side there is a clear instruction video that will help you out. After assembly you end up with an elegant looking housing that especially with the current non-spring loaded microSD slot makes it somewhat difficult to change the microSD card and the same goes for the network connection. But then again, that's mainly a reviewer's thing. Normal people will insert a microSD and network cable only once and leave it there. According to LO, there are 10 low dropout voltage regulators.  Having 10 of them on a board means that they must have been rather careful to supply clean power to the different parts and, for instance, keeping the noise from the Pi out of the digital onboard. Added to that, they also claim to use DC-DC converters that do the same but have switching noise and lower dissipation. There furthermore is extensive filtering, galvanic isolation and then reclocking using the Wolfson WM8805 SPDIF receiver to output the digital signal. There is no optical digital output for LO considered that to be a waste of quality and they are right. I advise to use Tosslink only when I suspect that galvanic separation is needed. The Tosslink connector has low bandwidth and if no galvanic separation is needed RCA is a better choice and BNC the best. Since LO has provided galvanic separation it would be wasteful to provide Tosslink. But they do offer BNC. Remember the SOtM-SMS-200 Ultra review I did? No, the LO-DG1 is not that good but it has the same charm as the SMS-200, the basic model. It performs clearly better than any digital output board for the Pi I have tested up till now, regardless the power supply used. And I used the Digi-1 mounted on a Pi 3B with the normal cheap wall wart connected to the micro USB on the Pi. The highs are surprisingly clean, there is more tonality in the lows compared to the competition and the stereo image is also clearly bigger and more defined. The SMS-200 with S-Booster power supply offers more detail and sounds more relaxed but then we are talking about €750 of gear as where the complete Digi-1 setup, Raspberry Pi, Digi-1, MicroSD card, power supply and housing is under €200. Compared to the HiFiBerry Digi Plus Pro, the Digi-1 has clearly superior highs, better sibilance control, more openness and somewhat deeper and better defined stereo image. It better have, given the price difference you might say, but I used the HiFiBerry Digi Plus Pro the way I described in the video HiFiBerry Digi Plus Part 2. The link is in the show notes. That is about the standard Digi Plus transformer version but the modification I did on the Pro is the same. And I used the Audiophonics linear power supply that cost €89 making the total cost of the HiFiBerry Pro setup the same as the Allo with the cheap wall board. Then I came across an interesting phenomenon. At the end of the day I wanted to enjoy some music so I selected the USB input on the MiTech Brooklyn to listen over the SOtM SMS-200 Ultra that now is standard in my setup 1. I left the Pi with the Digi-1 board connected to the SPDIF input of the DAC and kept it under power but not selected. I started playing one of my favorite albums, Urk by the Knits, a Dutch band and immediately noticed something was seriously wrong. The album contains strong sibilance but playing it over the Ultra and the Brooklyn, that's no problem. But it was now. Since I always will change only one thing at a time in my reference setup, I knew it must be the Pi Digi-1 combo so I disconnected the SPDIF and took the wall board from the socket. Immediately the sound as I know it was back. It appeared that the switching mode power supply was the problem so I replaced it with the Audiophonics linear power supply and that solved the problem. It also generated the question. If the switching mode power supply has so much influence on the main setup, how would the Digi-1 sound with the Audiophonics power supply? Well, slightly cleaner on the high end and more relaxed and certainly worth the 89 euros the Audiophonics cost or, if you like, slightly less for the iFi iPower, that is a switching mode power supply done well. I now couldn't resist to try the sBooster power supply too. That again gave an improvement but only slightly, audible on my setup one but not on the other two setups. And given the alternatives nowadays, it is not wise to equip a 20k stereo with a Raspberry Pi and Digi-1. Although it's fair to say that three years ago I would have been very happy with the Digi-1 on a Pi and fed by the sBooster. In my setup two, costing around 3k, it is a very fine solution when used with the Audiophonics or iFi power supply. And clearly the better choice than the competition. Whether it's worth the money in my setup three, a 1k set, I find hard to say since I was stupid enough to start with my setup one and once you have heard the artifacts of a device, you will hear them everywhere. My guess is that it will be noticed by some but not by all. For a simple digital output board for a Pi, the price of 99 US dollars seems steep. Rather steep. But it's no simple digital output board. It is of very high quality compared to the competition. Sure, use a microRendu or an SMS 200 and you get an Audiophile power supply and you get even more openness, more detail, cleaner highs and so on. But the testers setup with the standard power supply running the Rope A image and Rune came at about 65% of the SMS 200 sound quality using an sBooster power supply. Using the Audiophonics linear power supply brought it to say 75% of the SMS 200 with sBooster. And please don't ask me what 75% means. I'm just trying to give you an impression that that judgment will vary depending on your auditory system and your stereo. Let me also put it in another way. If you have a stereo in the same realm or higher as my setup one, the best choice I have found until now is the SMS 200 Ultra at 1700 euros or more, including a proper power supply. Below that the standard SMS 200 would be my choice and then the Raspberry Pi with the LO DigiOne board and the Audiophonics power supply. Please do understand that I haven't reviewed all available products on the market and if there is a manufacturer that thinks its product is better, please contact me. This review started that way and I'm glad LO did contact me. The developments in the digital music reproduction go quickly now, so if you want to stay informed, subscribe to my channel or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. See the show notes for the links. If you have a question, post below this video but please don't ask me for buying advice. See my About Questions video to find out why. If you like this video, please consider supporting the channel through Patreon and see super exclusive videos too. Just one dollar a month will do. The link is in the show notes and don't forget to tell your friends on the web about this channel. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.