Sustainable Golf – Question 5 last one for a while - unintended consequences

[Don_Mahaffey]

What are the unintended consequences of sustainability? How deep into the entire golf management/construction process do we need to look before we can say what we’re doing is sustainable? How much of the supply chain do we really care about? Do we care how the products we use are produced?  

If I manage an organic golf course and need to buy 10 truck loads of sod a year, and the sod comes from a sod farm that does not use organic practices, how sustainable is my model?

This is the last sustainable question from me for a while, and I’ve enjoyed the give and take, but don’t know if we’ve really learned much about what sustainability really means.

If I import plant material to stabilize an erodible area, and that plant material chokes out native species and requires intense management, my best intentions have become an environmental nightmare.

What principles of sustainability need to be tightly followed to avoid non-sustainable unintended consequences?

Here is a quote from wiki under the heading of Relevance Paradox:
Civil engineers, from the 1950s onwards, unwittingly caused a massive increase in the debilitating water borne infection schistosomiasis (bilharzia) for locals as a result of irrigation schemes that lacked simple low-cost countermeasures built in, simply because they had no knowledge of these countermeasures. Yet at the same time, the United Nations had already published guidelines explaining cheap countermeasures and how they could be built in to the design of the irrigation schemes: matters as simple as keeping velocities above a certain level to prevent the disease vector (a water snail) from attaching to the conduits. The civil engineers were victims of the relevance paradox because they thought they only needed to know only about engineering issues such as concrete and water flows, not how to control flow velocities to prevent the snail species that carried the disease from multiplying, so they failed to seek this information.[4]
The relevance paradox can and usually does apply to all professional groups and individuals in numerous ways.[5] While there are many examples of wilful ignorance, there are also many cases where people do not look outside the paradigms they are operating in and thus fail to see the long term consequences.
Are we in golf willing to look outside the paradigms we operate in?

[David Harshbarger]

Don,

Sustainability appears to be the response to the relevance paradox when applied to high input course maintenance practices. If the relevance box confines course maintenance practices to achieving the optimal garden playground, then a high input regimen can and has shown to be successful.  But these are the very practices that alienate conservationists, who in many regards share golf's interests in preserving green space and habitat. 

When the relevance box expands to include these concerns, you see sustainable practice replace high input practices.

One thing about the relevance paradox is that once your relevance box encompasses all the known Germaine issues, and they are taken into account, you are good.  Sustainable practices may represent a steady state given the known issues.

Of course since the world around us isn't in a steady state, outside forces, externalaties, need to be watched for new issues outside of current practice will emerge.  I think that is where you want this thread to go.  I wish I knew more about the substance of the issues to contribute to that.

[RJ_Daley]

I haven't read all of the sustainable threads and their many posts.  But, I scanned through some.  What I'm left with on the overall question of sustainable golf is that it is along the lines of David's observations in that golf - nor anything else requiring input of knowledge and application of practices - is in a steady state, and the concept of accepted definition of sustainable is always a moving target, as stated.

To me the most important aspect of the idea of long term sustainability is that we have a long line of tradition by the practitioners of the science of turf grass management, that reflects this sort of free and intellectual exchange of ideas, as Don is one of the best and most curious of these turf professionals, and that they have the passion to reach out to each other and other sciences to continually examine the issue in the spirit of what keeps ideas alive and the process "re-sustaining" itself to find better methods, constantly. 

I think that there is always a two edged sword that both helps and hinders sustainable process.  The negative is selling products for the sake of keeping the profits going for corporate and economic interests, that aren't always in the best interest of long term good use of resources to protect environment or promote most effective economical operations, leading to the long term unsustainable trajectory of golf and its courses.  Yet, the same market forces can work to allow truly valid and economically effective process where everyone wants to buy and use what helps promote effective practices.  So, what is successful, may by default become that which promotes sustainable process. 

To separate the positive trends towards sustainable practices from those that are wasteful and harmful at the end of the road, we need professionals to be fully engaged and passionate (as Don promotes) both for their own long term self interest and sustainable living, and for the health of the game-industry-courses-economy.  Sales/marketing profits must balance with free exchange of science advances and professional practioners passion to advance their knowledge and trade. 

[Bradley Anderson]

Don,

I can apply all the nutrients that my greens need in a year with 500 pounds of old school compounds like urea, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, sulfate of potash etc. But if I go with organic products I would have to apply 1,800 pounds of material to get the same feeding. This is because the percentage of nutrients in organic products is so much lower than synthetic products.

If I add 1/10th of a pound of N with a trace of P and K to my fairways 7 times a year I will use a total of 43 bags. But with organic products I would need to apply over 246 bags.

But maybe there is more to this than meets the eye. Maybe the production of urea needs to be added in to the equation? With organic products you are basically applying chicken shit and there isn't that much energy going in to its production. But shipping it and applying it is five times the cost of synthetics.

[Joe Hancock]

Don,

Does sale and closure of a golf course count as unintended consequences?

What golfers want vs. what they say they want are still miles apart.

Joe

[Tom_Doak]

Don,

Does sale and closure of a golf course count as unintended consequences?

What golfers want vs. what they say they want are still miles apart.

Joe

Joe:

Golfers in the 1970's didn't demand the kind of conditions we have today.  They only want it now because the golf business showed them an unsustainable ideal. 

Are you saying the sport has to die rather than go back to something simpler?

Keep in mind that we wouldn't REALLY be going back to 1970's conditions ... the improvements in grass species and technology ought to enable us to put out a much better product than what we could 35 years ago, with the same or less inputs as then.

[Mike_Young]

Don,
I think true sustainability would mean less sales and profits for the big players such as turf equipment manufacturers, irrigation manufacturers and fertilizer manufacturers.  Via marketing and their support of the various associations , they will not allow that to happen.
An example: An owner of a small 18 hole course around here was telling me of how he won a tractor trailer load of fertilizer at a trade show in a raffle.  He said he went home and put it out and it almost broke him that year.  He said he couldn't stop mowing, water pumping cost went up as well as electricity. 

[Grant Saunders]

Don,

Does sale and closure of a golf course count as unintended consequences?

What golfers want vs. what they say they want are still miles apart.

Joe

Joe:

Golfers in the 1970's didn't demand the kind of conditions we have today.  They only want it now because the golf business showed them an unsustainable ideal. 

Thanks for posting this Tom.

This is precisely the point I have been trying to get across regarding the role supers and the greenkeeping industry have played in contributing to todays problems.

[Tom_Doak]

Don,
I think true sustainability would mean less sales and profits for the big players such as turf equipment manufacturers, irrigation manufacturers and fertilizer manufacturers.  Via marketing and their support of the various associations , they will not allow that to happen.
An example: An owner of a small 18 hole course around here was telling me of how he won a tractor trailer load of fertilizer at a trade show in a raffle.  He said he went home and put it out and it almost broke him that year.  He said he couldn't stop mowing, water pumping cost went up as well as electricity. 

Mike:

That's not just in golf, brother.  Capitalism demands it in EVERY industry! 

I didn't know when we signed up for it that there were no brakes, and that we just had to keep growing until the whole thing blows to smithereens.  But you can see it everywhere nowadays, and the conductors are totally unapologetic about it.  That's why no one is allowed to think about real sustainability ... because it might cause some industry out there to make less money [any company!], and we CANNOT settle for any less in any way.

I was just hoping we could get golf onto a siding somewhere, instead of trying the Dukes of Hazzard solution to the "Bridge Out" sign ahead. 

[Bradley Anderson]

Don,
I think true sustainability would mean less sales and profits for the big players such as turf equipment manufacturers, irrigation manufacturers and fertilizer manufacturers.  Via marketing and their support of the various associations , they will not allow that to happen.

Mike,

This is not a fair characterization of the golf course maintenance industry.

[Mike_Young]

Don,
I think true sustainability would mean less sales and profits for the big players such as turf equipment manufacturers, irrigation manufacturers and fertilizer manufacturers.  Via marketing and their support of the various associations , they will not allow that to happen.

Mike,

This is not a fair characterization of the golf course maintenance industry.

Bradley,
It may not be a popular statement but I think it is a fair characterization..and as TD says..not just in golf...so often supts and pros are pissed when someone disses their associations but the present economy is going to clean up a lot of the baloney and associations are going to be at the top of the clean up list....just watch...
Nothing personal here Brad,
Mike

[Mike_Young]

Don,
I think true sustainability would mean less sales and profits for the big players such as turf equipment manufacturers, irrigation manufacturers and fertilizer manufacturers.  Via marketing and their support of the various associations , they will not allow that to happen.
An example: An owner of a small 18 hole course around here was telling me of how he won a tractor trailer load of fertilizer at a trade show in a raffle.  He said he went home and put it out and it almost broke him that year.  He said he couldn't stop mowing, water pumping cost went up as well as electricity. 

Mike:

That's not just in golf, brother.  Capitalism demands it in EVERY industry! 

I didn't know when we signed up for it that there were no brakes, and that we just had to keep growing until the whole thing blows to smithereens.  But you can see it everywhere nowadays, and the conductors are totally unapologetic about it.  That's why no one is allowed to think about real sustainability ... because it might cause some industry out there to make less money [any company!], and we CANNOT settle for any less in any way.

I was just hoping we could get golf onto a siding somewhere, instead of trying the Dukes of Hazzard solution to the "Bridge Out" sign ahead. 

Tom,
Agree 100%....but more importantly:  Next time you are this way I need to show you the bridge and the road where they filmed Dukes Of Hazzard.  It was three miles from my home near ATL.   
I do dnot know you were a fan of Bo and Daisy.

[Grant Saunders]

Had a chemical and fertiliser rep pay a visit to me today.

He was telling me about a great new product that everyone is using to fertilise their tees with.

I told him I threw away the catchers on my tees mower and as a result have only had to fertilise tees twice in he past 12 months.

He doesnt stop by here very often.

[Ron Farris]

Tom, Daisy grew up in South Dakota and graduated from the High School where my wife teaches.  Catherine Bach (Daisy) and Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd are some of the best things to come out of SD, including Sutton Bay in my unsolicited opinion.  Seems Jessica Simpon tried to trump Daisy a while back.  An old man in Japan told me that a golf hole should look like a beautiful woman.  Daisy may be what he was talking about:  Not certain, but I think she was all natural.  Not so sure about the Sustainability.