Pollenatrix

Old MacDonald had a.... what?

An architectural rendering for an urban office building? A condominium?

Nope.

Welcome to the future of agriculture, as conceived by a scientist at Columbia University.

"It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take for granted. Along the way, we despoiled most of the land we worked, often turning verdant, natural ecozones into semi-arid deserts. Over 60% of the human population now lives vertically in cities. The time has arrived for us to learn how to grow our food that way, too."

Read about Vertical Farming

Grim and Ironic

A week ago I wrote about Bev Anderson, a former Ministry of the Environment Enforcement Officer in Vancouver, B.C., who was forced out of her job by farmers and an "interested" politician who objected to her diligence in doing her job. It was her responsibility to make sure that farmers complied with regulations when they spread manure on their fields; the area has a high water table and a lot of rain, so if manure is not stored properly or is spread at the wrong time, there is a high risk that dangerous pathogens such as e. coli could enter the public water supply. Bev was not replaced, and her departure leaves the area with effectively no enforcement at all.

On the other side of the country, the Globe & Mail reported yesterday that two men were sent to jail for their role in the Walkerton disaster of May 2000. At that time, a right-wing conservative government was in power in the province, and in keeping with their extreme ideology they stripped the Ministry of the Environment to "reduce costs and bureaucracy". They also shifted water monitoring responsibilities to local town governments without ensuring that the qualifications and procedures were in place to do the job properly. The two men who were sentenced to jail were the bumbling idiots in charge of Walkerton's water utility.

With no enforcement officers and no checks in place to prevent it, cow manure from a farmer's field entered the public water supply in Walkerton in May 2000, killing seven people and making over 2,000 people in this small town seriously ill. Most are left with permanent and disabling injuries.

Keeping in mind the way Bev was harassed and forced out of her job for trying to prevent another "Walkerton" in BC, there is grim irony in this remark by the crown attorney who prosecuted the two men:

"I think it sends a sharp and clear message that if you are employed in an occupation of any kind where public safety is affected, that if you don't perform your legal duties according to law, there's a real risk that you can be sentenced to jail."

Too much of a good thing

Urban agriculture is a much-needed supplement to family incomes and helps feed Africa's urban poor, but its growing popularity is creating some problems. Suitable land is in such high demand that people are cultivating any open space they find, regardless of whether they own it or even have permission to use it.

"Instead of sticking to the designated places, urban farmers have even gone a step further to violate city by-laws by engaging in stream bank cultivation and even defacing recreational facilities such as soccer pitches."

Soil loss, chemical pollution, and hydrology issues are a concern, and a more recent study points to urban farming as a source of malaria.

While North Americans are (rightly) touting the value and importance of urban agriculture, it's a good thing to be reminded that what works in our culture and environment isn't necessarily going to be the packaged solution that saves the entire world.

Saving the world from ugly tomatos

A couple of days ago I wrote that the practice of breeding commercial vegetable varieties for appearance at the expense of all other qualities over the last 50 years has resulted in a shocking decline in their nutritional value ("Eat your heritage vegetables").

Now, A tomato grower in Florida has been prohibited by the marketing board from selling his produce because they are "too ugly". The grower, Joe Procacci, has developed a variety called "UglyRipe" which was a result of breeding solely for flavour.

Procacci says he developed the UglyRipe because his customers complained that Florida tomatoes, which are picked green and gassed to spur ripening, tasted "like cardboard."

Growers complain that Procacci's UglyRipes could wreck the reputation of Florida tomatoes. To allow misshapen and blemished tomatoes could open the way for a flood of ugly tomatoes to hit the market, says Reggie Brown, the tomato committee's manager.

God forbid we should be exposed to unattractive vegetables in the supermarket. Why not restrict all offerings to plastic produce, or maybe the wax varieties decorating grandma's dining room table, and be done with it?

Hindsight that is considerably less than 20/20

Joey DeVilla's blog today shows a very creepy vintage advertisement by Union Carbide (now a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company):

"Oxen working the fields... the eternal river Ganges... jeweled elephants on parade. Today these symbols of ancient India exist side by side with a new sight -- modern industry.

...India needs the technical knowledge of the western world."

In 1984 Union Carbide's pesticide plant was responsible for the worst industrial accident in history. Union Carbide had frequently exported "untested technology" to the Indian plant, which was poorly run. It had imposed a huge cost-cutting program at the plant, causing safety measures to be scaled down (they were all malfunctioning or turned off at the time of the accident). No disaster planning was in place. The disaster immediately killed 3,000 peple, and 15,000 more died later from injuries. The estimated number of people injured range from 150,000 to 600,000; 20 years later, people are dying from contamination in soil and water that has still not been cleaned up.

Union Carbide's response? That it was a victim, that the act was sabotage by an employee -- as though there is no connection between the actions of the employees and the corporation. Or how about this beauty:

"...In 1994, Union Carbide sold its half interest in UCIL to MacLeod Russell (India) Limited of Calcutta, and UCIL was renamed Eveready Industries India, Limited. ...As a result of the sale of their shares in UCIL, Union Carbide retained no interest in — or liability for — the Bhopal site"

Environmentalists and human rights activists point out that although Union Carbide took responsibility for its misdeeds in an asbestos lawsuit in Texas, victims in India have been ripped off:

"Union Carbide negotiated a settlement with the Indian Government in 1989 for $470 million US, a total of $370 to $533 per victim, a paltry sum that is too small to pay for most medical bills."

They also take aim at the Indian government, who is just now getting around to paying out claims and who have done little to expedite the clean-up:

"While we welcome the announcement that the Indian government wants to take proactive and urgent measures to conduct the clean-up, Greenpeace believes that after twenty years this is the slowest first step in history.

The group has also called for US firm Dow Chemicals to be made responsible for financing the clean-up."

Two things stand out for me on this issue:

1) Human rights and environmental health are inextricably linked, and this is the proof;

2) Kids in the sandbox are taught that if they make a mess, they're responsible for cleaning it up. How did the grown-ups who run global businesses escape this basic tenet of the human race?

The YES Men issued a phony press release in 2002 that baldly states what the company is thinking, but doesn't want to admit:

...many individuals within Dow would like the corporation to admit its responsibility, so that the public can then decide on the best course of action, as is appropriate in any democracy. "Unfortunately, we have responsibilities to our shareholders and our industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible.

...Dow does not and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If we did, not only would we be required to expend many billions of dollars on cleanup and compensation--much worse, the public could then point to Dow as a precedent in other big cases.

...For now, this means acknowledging that much as it pains us, our prime responsibilities are to the people who own Dow shares, and to the industry as a whole. We simply cannot do anything at this moment for the people of Bhopal."

Check out another of the YES Men's handiwork -- a mock Website that, while devastatingly effective, unfortunately snared the venerable BBC: "Dow Falls Victim to Elaborate, Sophisticated, Idiotic Hoax".

Reading all this makes realize that, 20 years later, few lessons have been learned about introducing new technologies into the environment in the name of "improving the human condition". One of today's many looming Bhopal disasters is probably genetically modified foods; rather than focusing on environmental health as a guiding principle, the prime concern is shareholder profit, pure and simple. A nice fat share price may improve someone's "human condition", but when the time comes to deal with the consequences, it sure won't be yours or mine.

You want it? They've got it.

The state of Georgia, U.S.A. is capitalizing on a hot commodity in the agricultural market to the tune of $70 million a year. That's not chicken shit. Oh wait. Yes it is.

Web site links those with chicken manure to those who want it

Going organic

An interesting article about New Zealand couple's experience in making the switch to organic farming.

But it was no fun being among the first farmers to go organic 20 years ago. Apart from the difficulties of learning to farm without chemicals, they also had to put up with unfriendly banks, being shunned by farm consultants, and snide remarks from other farmers.

In 1990 they gained Bio-Gro certification and went to their bank to refinance the farm loan. But they were turned down flat. The bank manager told the couple: "Don't you know you can't farm without chemicals? If you keep this up you'll be broke in two years, so why should we finance you?"

Determined and committed, the couple proved all of their detractors to quite wrong, and are now helping other farmers make the switch as well.

"We measure our success as guardians of the land not by material things, such as the car we drive or the number of farms we own, but by how we have enhanced what we leave behind for the next generation."

And that just about says it all.

Update on fight to save farmland

On November 23rd I wrote about the fight to stop a suburb of Vancouver from rezoning rare first-class farmland for industrial development, a move that is described as "killing the goose that laid the golden egg".

Retired Ministry of Agriculture agronomist Dave Sands chastised the land commission for even considering exclusions of top grade farmland from the Agricultural Land Reserve, especially as population pressures increase.

The ALC's mandate is to protect farmland for present and future generations, he said, but having an application process sends a message that the ALR is there for development. Sands pointed out that the local agriculture sector is very successful and "people will also need to eat. The ALR is not an ULR, an urban land reserve."

Here's newspaper report on the meeting.

To find out how you can help, please visit the Farmland Watch web-page.

Eat your (heritage) vegetables

Vegetables and fruit grown and sold commercially today are not as nutritional as they were in 1950. Researchers at the University of Texas have discovered that protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and ascorbic acid are lower in today's crops, with declines ranging from 6 percent in protein to 38 percent in riboflavin.

This may be only the tip of the iceberg lettuce. More research needs to be done on important foods such as grains, legumes, meat, milk and eggs which were not covered in the study. The findings suggest that important nutrients such as magnesium, zinc, vitamin B-6, vitamin E and dietary fiber, and phytochemicals may also have declined.

"During those 50 years, there have been intensive efforts to breed new varieties that have greater yield, or resistance to pests, or adaptability to different climates. But the dominant effort is for higher yields. Emerging evidence suggests that when you select for yield, crops grow bigger and faster, but they don’t necessarily have the ability to make or uptake nutrients at the same, faster rate."

A suggestion, dear home gardeners... when it comes time to order seeds for next year's vegetable patch, buy old-fashioned varieties. And consider joining organizations that share and preserve heritage varieties, such as Seeds of Diversity Canada (http://www.seeds.ca/en.php). There's no downside; they're healthier, and they taste a lot better than grocery store vegetables too.

A fine bouquet, with a hint of gishy, not gooey

Move over, winemaking industry... a waste management company in Whistler, British Columbia is producing a fine vintage compost for public consumption this year.

“We’re really like winemakers,” Kindree said. “Our job is to mix nitrogen and lots of water with the material so that it’s gishy, not gooey.”

Read the article