Here's to the Ladies! The women of sustainable agriculture

While it may be true that today's average farmer is most akin to Elmer Fudd, there is a growing (or maybe its just re-emerging) trend of women in agriculture. The agricultural industrial revolution introduced the farm to many boy-oriented products and practices like tractors (weee! look at my big toy!), pesticides (die bugs DIE!), and a narrow-minded linear perspective on a complex system. Thankfully for farms everywhere, a resurgence of women farmers is making waves in the agricultural industry.

Recently, Tom Philpott wrote an article for Grist titled: "Acknowledging Women's Role in the Sustainable Food Movement" and after reading it, I felt inspired to reiterate some of what he wrote. While the sustainable food movement does have a group of men in the spotlight (Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, etc) the voices and names of the women in the movement are becoming more and more recognizable every day.

Personally, I find myself so drawn to this topic because most of my biggest role-models in sustainable food are women.

-Firstly, I have my mom to thank for introducing me to farming and gardening at our home in suburban Boston. She is the one who first taught me how to plant a seed, help it grow, harvest the food, and compost the rest. Thanks mom.

-I learned the principles and practices of Permaculture from a woman named Joanna Pearsall, who is co-creator and organizer of the New Zealand EcoShow, a conference to bring together sustainability professionals. She is also an integral member of the New Zealand permaculture movement, and much more!

-I was inspired by the grit and determination I witnessed in Ann Cure, who co-taught an Agro-Ecology course I took during my BA at the Naropa University. Ann used to be the farm manager for the university-owned educational farm in Boulder CO, until the school's board of trustees decided to sell the farm to free up some cash to finish building the MFA facilities elsewhere... Personally, I left Naropa's environmental studies program after the sale of Hedgerow Farm. Ann lost her job at the farm, but she didn't even flinch. She went out, found the financing, and bought her own farm, Cure Organic Farm, which she runs to this day. She continues to provide educational opportunities to children in the Boulder area, along with delicious organic food to high-class restaurants and at the farmer's market.

-After Boulder, I moved to Oakland CA, where I was lucky enough to meet Temra Costa, who was then program director of CAFF (Community Alliance with Family Farms). I was inspired by her commitment to sustainable food, and then totally wowed when she released her book "Farmer Jane" which is all about the ways women are changing the food system. On her website, Temra writes:  

"As farmers, moms, businesswomen, chefs, and activists, women are changing the way we eat and farm. They are the fastest growing demographic to own and operate sustainable farms, comprise the largest percentage of sustainable agriculture nonprofit employees, own sustainable food businesses, cook the majority of household meals, and control household budgets. “Farmer Janes” are creating a more healthful, sane, and sustainable food system for present and future generations." 
 
-Another influential woman I encountered in California was Alice Waters. Her work as a chef led her to focus on where her food came from, and well beyond. I was lucky enough to spend some time at the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, and witness what growing a garden can do to change the way a child sees the world. Inspired by Alice and her work, I went and taught a gardening class at a small elementary school in San Leandro where the kids and I built up a beautiful and fruitful garden.

-I work with a company providing information, products, and equipment to the growing agriculture movement increasingly known as 'Biological Agriculture' which focuses on managing the microbial communities in the soil and on plants. The technology is amazing, and stands to put Monsanto out of a job. This technology, and the scientific approach to its agricultural applications, has come from Dr. Elaine Ingham, now president of Soil Foodweb Inc. I attended an educational workshop of hers after listening to her lectures on CD, and my life has never been the same since. In fact, I decided to pursue a master's degree in business to be able to figure out a way to bring these technologies to the world!

-Currently, my inspiration from Dr Ingham has led me to a very interesting project I am developing. I am working on a way to assist in breaking the cycle of chemical dependency in rural Indian agriculture. In my research, I have repeatedly come across the work of Dr Vandana Shiva (not to mention really enjoying her books Soil not Oil, Stolen Harvest, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Also, be sure to catch her interviews in films like Dirt: The Movie, The Corporation, and Blue Gold). Not to be overwhelming, but she also founded Navdanya, an organization networking, training, educating, and facilitating people working toward sustainable food in India (oh, and did I mention that Navdanya is a woman-centric organization and has a branch called Diverse Women for Diversity?)

So, without going further (and I assure you I could!), it is abundantly clear to me that women are back when it comes to sustainable food, or maybe they never left and we just haven't been hearing about them. In his Grist article, Philpott (actually his girlfriend) made the observation that: "the whole "vote with your fork" ethos that has dominated the food movement for decades is arguably a permutation of one of '70s-era feminism's central insights: "The personal is political." Lets keep that mentality moving!

In conclusion, it is clear to me, at least in my own path and development, that women have played a major role in leading me to where I am today in sustainable agriculture and food systems. Lets all try to find ways to recognize the women in ag who are shaping the next generation of food producers around the world. To my woman readers: what ways can I, as a man, help to support, promote and recognize the critical role women are playing in the food system?

Renewed in my gratitude to the women in my life who have helped to shape my perception of what a sustainable food system looks like, I'll end this post. Hopefully I'll be coming back to this topic less as a way to point out the unrecognized women of ag, and more to celebrate a wide-reaching public perception of women as an obviously powerful force in our food system.

Here's to the ladies!

Sustainable Food and Agriculture Resources

While I sit here on my soapbox shouting out to the world about all kinds of amazing ways that we can meet our food-system needs without utterly devastating our earth and the good people on it, sometimes I forget that not everyone thinks like me, or even has the same informational background I do...

So here is a chance for all of you who would like to learn more to have a look at some other places you can learn about this stuff I'm preaching:

Soil Microbiology and Agriculture:

http://biologicsystemsusa.com/ - My Company! Check us out, and our website is pretty rich with information, research, supplies, and more.


http://biologicsystemsusa.com/docs/catalog.pdf - Produced by my company, our catalog is actually an amazing way to get some perspective on this whole approach without having to 'buy the cow,' as they say

http://www.soilfoodweb.com/sfi_approach1.html - This is the website for all your Soil/Microbe/Plant interaction information. Dr Ingham, president of Soil Foodweb Inc, is a personal hero of mine, an amazing scientist, and an inspired change-agent.

 Soil Carbon Sequestration and Cows


http://www.savoryinstitute.com/ - Allan Savory is the founder of the Holistic Management movement, and his book is worth reading for anyone. Savory works all over the world to spread his experience and knowledge working with cows and other large herd animals to actually heal land. (Check out the project he did in Zimbabwe in a recent post of mine!)

http://soilcarboncoalition.org/ - These guys are serious about impacting climate change by putting the carbon back where it belongs, in the soil! There are some incredible stories, some really educational articles and papers, and be sure to check out the interactive map where you can actually see where (and how much) people have made a difference on their farm!

Enjoy these links! I'm sure there is plenty more to come...

Face your Food

A fellow food and sustainability blogger Organic Nation recently wrote about an event that I want to share. Fair Food International, a non-profit working to advance the cause of healthy and sustainable food globally, has initiated a campaign called "Face your Food."

The campaign recognizes that to enact change, especially in an industry so heavily lobbied by corporations, public support must be impossible to miss. So, Fair Food has invited people to make a video of themselves eating. The video will be slowed down and reversed, with the intended consequence of getting people to think about where their food comes from. 

Dorothee from Organic Nation writes:


"I think this is a great opportunity for folks in the U.S. to show their support not only for this organization, but for the concept of sustainable and fair trade food. I like how easy they make it to participate, you can simply use your computer's web cam to film yourself eating something and the site will turn it backwards and share it on Facebook with all the other entries."

As a huge food advocate myself, I absolutely agree that the premise behind this campaign (rallying public support around healthy food by creating a viral video campaign to which it is easy to contribute) is really good. The drive to bring out people's opinions around healthy food to show to the government and the food producers is hugely important.

Filming yourself while eating? The mere thought makes me uncomfortable. Watching up close other people eating, even in reverse? Not really an appetizing activity...

Unfortunately (or maybe not) the culmination of this campaign was about a week ago, so I missed my chance to put myself chowing down on Facebook (where they want me to post the video). In a way, it is campaigns like these that make me wonder... who thought this up? did they really think that this would encourage people to think about food sustainability? or about where the piece of broccoli in that blond guy's teeth came from? Honestly, it didn't me.

I am really glad to have encountered this post on Organic Nation, as it inspires me to think of how this kind of campaign (easily accessible, showing of public support for healthy food, directed to the decision-makers) can be otherwise structured to better guide people's minds to food sustainability.

A question to my readers: What kind of similar campaign (perhaps viral and video-based) could bring people together to voice their concern for healthy foods/lands/farms?

If I get some good suggestions, I may even take them to completion as part of a class I'm taking right now. So you never know, you might find that an idea you sprout here may become nationally fruitful!

Water, Water, Everywhere...

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," he probably didn't do it thinking about agriculture in the 21st century, but I will.

He wrote:  
"Water, water, everywhere,
     And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
     Nor any drop to drink."

While Coleridge may have been referring to the un-drinkability of seawater from the eyes of a sailor, I will focus on the un-drinkable water we create everyday through bad agricultural practices. Today, in honor of Blog Action Day, I'll be focusing on water. Since my focus is on sustainable agriculture, I'll take a moment to highlight some of the relevant posts I've made about water, and share some new information. 

First, allow me to point out a post I made back in August after reading an NPR release about the severe drought in West Africa. I brought to light, in comparison with the situation in Africa, which the UN was under stress about because they didn't have enough food to send to feed those who were suffering from the consequences of the drought, a positive example from Mexico. Doug Weatherbee conducted an experiment in rural Mexico growing corn during a severe drought season. He treated his land with biological inoculants (good compost and compost tea) and had some amazing results. Go to my post to see the pictures. 

One point I'll introduce, also related to water and specific to Africa, is that Ethiopia, for example, puts 96% of the water collected from above and below, into their agricultural system. The remaining 4%, a mere sip in comparison, pretty much entirely flows to the capital Addis Ababa, where it is drunk, used for watering lawns, and pooped in. The people who live outside the city rely on murky puddles of water which they share with livestock (who don't necessarily refrain from using those puddles as toilets). They come to the water with a bucket, push the cow out of the way, and fill up on their daily dose of drinking/washing/cooking water. All the while in the background, huge sprinklers are spraying thousands of gallons of water into the air, where most of it (on a hot day, as much as 85%) evaporates before it ever makes contact with the ground. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner certainly has some close relevance for these people. 

Another water-topic I want to mention is something I just recently discovered. Turns out, a team at the University of Minnesota produced a movie call "Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story." The film documents the ways in which bad agricultural choices are leading to major problems down the line. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it. U of M decided to postpone their release of the movie after some criticism was brought up by some interested parties *cough* LOBBYISTS! *cough*. Apparently the issue has turned into quite a debaucle over academic freedom, and the control that financial contributors to an educational institution ought to have over the material produced therein. 

Dixon, CA

One piece of info I am privy to related to this movie is that in Dixon, CA, home of almond, walnut, and other agricultural products, there are some concerns from farmers about their drinking water. The EPA has set the limit of nitrite (a soluble form of Nitrogen, and a popular fertilizer) to 1 ppm. On a small walnut farm in Dixon, the nitrite concentration in the water coming out of the faucet measured in at an astounding 75ppm! All that extra nitrogen comes from the excessive use of this synthetic fertilizer on Dixon's orchards. What a waste! Producing that fertilizer consumes 3-5% of our global natural gas production every year, only for it to become a health risk and pollution problem! Where's the logic there?! 

Okay, so I may be rambling a little, and I'll curtail my rant. Before I do, I just want to ask the question of whether it is really worthwhile for our food system to rely on an energy-intensive process that leads to water contamination, and actually decreases the soil's ability to hold on to that precious water. Is it really worth a 'dead-zone' the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf of Mexico? Is chemical-based agriculture really providing enough benefit to outweigh the cost to lives of people who are effected by contaminated drinking water, a system that doesn't allow drinking water for people outside the city, and a system that is devastated when excessive amounts of water aren't available?


Water, water, everywhere...

From Grist: Vote for the your favorite Food Villain

This week Grist has launched a poll to assess who is the world's worst villain of food. I know a few names popped into my head as soon as I saw the title, and I reckon some will for you too. Chances are, they're on the list.

As much as I really try to focus on positivity and possibility in my blog, there are some times when we just need to get together and collectively vent our frustrations with agriculture, the food system, and those who we perceive as actively trying to squelch the efforts of those trying to create a healthy and sustainable food system that will genuinely nurture.

Image courtesy of Grist.org

From the Grist article: "This is our attempt to root out who's currently keeping America sick, fat, and poisoned: a preliminary list of a Dirty Dozen rotten eggs spoiling our food system. Cast your vote, or write in your candidate in the comments below, and let's see who's food's Public Enemy No. 1 -- and plot what we can do to stop them."

So go read the article, cast your vote for the worst offender, and stay posted as to who comes out to be Food Villain #1!

Peak Soil and Sustainable Cheeseburgers

I read an article this morning from The Grist (full article here) called Peak Soil. The story centers around how our globe is losing its precious skin of healthy topsoil at alarming rates. They mention how Ethiopia loses nearly 2 billion tons of topsoil every year to erosion, and how the plowing and institution of industrial agriculture has ruined lands and people's lives for nearly one hundred years.

The brown color is made by the soil washing away downriver

The angle I found most interesting in this article was when the author turned the focus from loss of topsoil to herd-animal grazing. The author points out that there are very large herds of cattle, goats, sheep, and other grazers all over the world, and makes the claim that grazing those animals on our lands is destroying them. The article lists all kinds of statistics about how many sheep there are in China, etc... To those claims, I beg the question; 'why wasn't the globe facing mass desertification problems when there were herds of billions of large herbivores roaming the plains and savannas before man instituted practices of mass-extinction of wild herbivores and the domestication of what was left?'  Before the advent of agricultural management of herd animals, the hoards of herbivores that criss-crossed our lands vastly outnumber the pastured herds we now manage. Why, then, were these much larger herds not creating the same kind of devastation we see today? The answer is in the method.

When a large herd of grazers are penned up on a large parcel of land, each individual will actively seek out, in a lazy way, their favorite grasses, leaves, and plants. Usually there is enough land per animal (often around 2 acres per cow in the case of cattle) that the grazers can spread out and casually browse from the salad-bar selection. This means, first of all, that they don't eat the plants that aren't their favorite, which often leads to proliferation of troublesome weeds in pastures, and secondly, that the plants they do like aren't given the proper amount of time to recover between each visit from an herbivore, so they weaken and eventually die. When the plants die, there is less to hold together the soil, and come the next rainfall, away it goes.

Naturally, as you may have seen in NOVA documentaries or in the Planet Earth movie, given their natural habitat, large herds of grazers move in tight packs over large areas of land. In these dense clusters, they are constantly on the move (think of the baby caribou that is keeping pace with the whole herd only minutes after being born) because they are always being followed by predators. What this means for the ground they cover is that every plant gets nibbled down, the top layer of earth is churned up from all the hoofing and trampling, and the whole area is fertilized and irrigated by the herbivores. The plants then have ample time to recover before they are bitten again.

A suffering ranch in Zimbabwe, 2004

This natural pattern of grazing was the inspiration to Allan Savory (www.SavoryInstitute.com), a South African pioneer in regenerative agriculture practices. He asked himself, 'why can't we mimic the natural movements of grazers in our own pastures?' This question led to the development of what is know as Holistic Planned Grazing techniques, which replicate the effects of large herds moving in their natural pattern.

2005 - One nasty drought, one year of Holistic Grazing

He has tried and trued his practice over many years, and this one ranch in Zimbabwe is only one example. Simply by changing the way that we manage our herd animals, we can actually increase the health of soils, increase the living ground cover (plants), and drastically reduce the erosion rates. These images, taken over 4 years, clearly show what kind of impact the appropriate management of herd animals can have. The site where the photos were taken transformed from a near-desert into a lush grassland, with no input other than cows.

2006 - after a decent rainy season

2007 - after a major drought

 It is clear in the pictures how profoundly this land changes, even during years that experienced severe droughts, this ranch continued to improve its soil, cover the bare earth, produce healthier, happier, heavier cows, and mitigate whatever erosion might have been occurring down to nearly nothing.

It seems only fair that articles like this one from Grist would point the finger at herd-animals for committing these atrocities. On the surface of the issue, it seems that the animals are indeed overgrazing, and thereby destroying our precious lands. However, once we look a little closer, we can see that the animals are only doing what they do best, and actually, the methodology employed by the people who graze them is what is truly detrimental to our planet.

We can stop erosion and still feed the world! There are answers out there!

Nature had it all figured out. A planet in ecological balance for thousands of years... then we came along and thought we could do better... (hubris much?) We have dealt with the consequences of that choice for long enough, and now we are able to see the ways in which Nature really did have the right idea. We can emulate those natural patterns to our gain! We could swim upriver against Nature as much as we want, but we certainly won't cover as much ground if we work with the flow of the water...

May we all get the opportunity to eat meat that helped to halt desertification, erosion, climate change, and pollution!

Cheeseburgers that heal the world!!

Beets and Berries, Connecting the dots

There have been two news items recently that caught my eye. The first was about a decision by a federal judge to undo the approval of GMO sugar beets (hooray!) linked here. This decision sent the sugar-beet industry into an uproar with a lot of farmers concerned with how they would be able to meet their needs without roundup ready beets.

The second piece of news that grabbed my attention has been the release of a study conducted mostly by scientists from Washington State (Pullman) University, as well as members from Utah State, U of Oklahoma, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (full text here). The study compared conventionally grown to organically grown strawberries from 13 different farms. What they found is that "the organic strawberry farms produced higher quality fruit." The organic strawberries have a longer shelf-life, higher concentrations of many nutrients including antioxidants and vitamin C, and that they showed through their taste-tests that the organic berries were generally sweeter.

Wait, so the organic strawberries were sweeter? And the beet growers are thowing a hissy-fit because they can't grow their sugar beets conventionally? Has anyone else noticed this connection? Also worth noting is that the farms in the study didn't manage the microbial communities in their soils, so each trial was still a bit of a crapshoot (each farm could have started out with very different microbes, which will grow very different plants). I dare to suggest that had the organic trials incorporated a more thorough microbiological management, they would have seen results much more pronounced than what they found.

Determining the BRIX level for a fruit or veggie is a way of quantifying it's sugar content. According to John Evans of BounTea, a competitor/cooperator (coopetitor?) organization to my own BioLogic Systems, a normal grocery store carries veggies with a BRIX score of between 6 and 10. My guess is that typical organic would test right in between, probably at 10-15 or so. A vegetable given all it needs by the addition of billions of microbiological workers (i.e. good compost/compost tea) in the soil will regularly have BRIX levels of up to 20!

Hello beet farmers of the world! You can do it without roundup, grow beets with more sugar, do it for less money, with less dependence on certain multinational gene-manipulating corporate juggernauts! Doesn't that sound appealing!?

So yes, to recognize any arguments that might stem from this study, they did report lower levels of nutrients like potassium and phosphorous, but considering that their method of fertilization is to dump excessive amounts of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous (NPK) on the plants, that news comes as not much of a surprise. Yes, the organic crops also had lower yields by up to 25%. I believe that these places where the organic crops came in second can be explained by means of what microbes were present in each of these farms. What I found to be a bit of a pity is the way the study examined the microbiology.

Imagine billions of these guys working for your plants to provide them with all they need to thrive!

It seems as though the study simply mashed up all the microbes together and then weighed them to determine the total microbial biomass. What we miss by doing that is knowing what the diversity is like, what communities were present, what the relative populations are of specific organisms, which has a huge impact on the plant. They missed out on a great opportunity to really show that organic is more viable than conventional because they failed to properly account for the microbes. Guys, just because their little doesn't mean they don't matter! 

So here's my appeal to the university scientists. Now that we have this data, great! Job well done! Now lets go ahead and do another study comparing conventional, organic, and biologically managed veg. It is my belief that this proposed trial will leave no room for question. The biologic plot will, as it constantly does in undocumented trials, perform at least to the yield standard of the conventional, with all the added benefits from the organic. Who's up for it? Takers?