food forests

Permaculture, although around since the 1970s in Australia, is still a fairly new idea over here.  The word is a contraction of the words permanent, agriculture, and culture (interesting that agriculture, which means cultivation of the land, is so tightly tied to culture - without agriculture there is no culture!).  The idea of permaculture is a completely sustainable agriculture, and more so culture.  Sustainable means that there is no "garbage," that everything we need to live on comes and goes in a permanent, circular, mutually beneficial and dependent, and therefore WASTELESS cycle.  The principle of agricultural permaculture is planting crops together that complement one another in a wildly complex and diverse composition that emulates nature, although it is man-made.  These food forests work at every stratum of the vegetation, from low down mushrooms, herbs and flowers, to the next level of berry and hazelnut bushes, to higher up fruit and nut trees.

This is not a new concept, though.  But then - sometimes we need to revisit old ideas from a fresh perspective and a higher perch.  Thanks to the suggestion of a friend, I recently read the book 1491 by Charles Mann and learned about milpas.  Milpas are South American planting compositions that comprise up to a dozen crops (maize, avocados, squashes and beans, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potatoes, jicama, amaranth, and mucuna), which all "complement one another nutritionally and environmentally."  Some milpas, I learned, have been in existence for four thousand years without depleting the soil!!!

One of the problems of our conventional farming methods, which is exacerbated in monocultures, is the lack of diversity in crops, because a lack of diversity in the insect/grub/bird population follows it.  This disconnect between agriculture and nature then depletes the soil on top of it all.

I am never advocating a return to the past!  However, new for the sake of new is often short sighted.  In this case we have two inspirational and sustainable agricultural models whose principles are worthwhile knowing about.  (please also visit a previous post on "spiritual farming.")

the meat quandary - in 2 more installments

DSC076982. on eating produce Will Tuttle in his World Peace Diet, and the China Study, among many, are fervently advocating vegetarian and even vegan diets.  The two main arguments are that the industrial meat industry's carbon foot print, in combination with continually increasing demand for animal protein due to a still growing (and ever more affluent) world population, is disastrous to our environmental health (which it is), and that  meat eating contributes to, or causes, cancer and other civilization diseases (which it only does under certain conditions, some of which I mentioned in my last post).

Yet, the fact that the vegetarian/vegan movement is becoming so prominent points to a shift in awareness (of the abominable industrial meat industry, its contribution to global warming, and of the unhealthiness of industrial meat and cornfed beef).  Michael Pollan's famous advice to  "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" is good advice for most of us, indeed.

On another vegetably note, the basis for our existence is light, water and soil.  Produce is closer to light energy than meat is.  As we all know, plants grow through direct conversion of sunlight to energy.  When we eat plants we take in sun energy just one step removed.  When we consume meat, we are one step further removed from that light energy because we eat the animal that fed on plants that fed on sunlight.  And incidentally, humans don't usually eat predator meat because that is yet one step further removed from sun energy than meat from vegan animals.

However, as long as we keep subjecting our crops and soil to synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides (and killing the bees along with the birds in the process), and monoculturing our produce crops, and not demanding GMO labeling (which has already happened in Europe, Japan, Russia and many other industrialized countries), we are not achieving that much with vegetarianism/veganism.  We'll keep subjecting farm workers to the health dangers of working in chemically laced fields, big-ag will keep doing its thing with produce, Monsanto & Co. are still on the loose, and we are still ingesting mineral poor and poison sprayed food grown in depleted soil that had to be artificially enriched.  So, going vegetably must mean going organic/sustainable/biodynamic to have meaningful impact on body and environment.

to be continued...

the meat quandary - in 3 installments

DSC076951. on eating meat Humans have been eating protein forever, some ethnicities more of it, some less of it, depending on geographical circumstances.   Sustainable farming and animal husbandry have been practiced in conjunction since we humans became sedentary, using the animal manure as fertilizer for the crops, feeding the animals leftovers and scraps, and eating some (not lots!!) of them, all in a pretty balanced cycle.

The picture only became horrific in the last 50 years or so when we began to produce (!!) meat.  The plight of the animals in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), modern breeding aberrations, the realities of modern abattoirs and subsequent meat processing practices (documented ad nauseam (literally) in Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals) are nightmarish. One would not want to eat such meat!

The other problem is that the percentage of meat in our diet has reached addictive proportions with the decrease in meat prices, something that is not good for our body either (unless you were Inuit or Maasai, and then you wouldn't eat industrially produced meat).

Lastly, from an evolutionary perspective, increased meat consumption has been linked to increased brain growth (although I am thinking that our brains may not have grown in proportion with the increased meat consumption of the past 50 years, otherwise we might not be where we are at environmentally).

Dirt Magazine has a brief presentation on meat vs. produce in their May-June issue (article not yet online).  However, the two opinions are too simplified.  So please reserve judgement until you have read all 3 installments.

to be continued...

happy earth day

It does look like “…the economy provides us with all of our products…,” as environmentalist David Suzuki writes.  However, that is simply a belief, and an erroneous one at that. Suzuki clarifies that “This is nonsense, of course.  Everything we depend on….comes from the earth and will eventually end up going back to it.”   Whether it is paper, glass, steel, fiber, or even plastic, it helps to remember that those are all made from natural materials.  But we have lost the connection to where those things really come from because our lives have become so abstract, so removed from nature. Because of the separation in our mind between man and nature, we separate ourselves literally from nature altogether, we eliminate it downright from our lives (and we tend to forget that our garbage ends up there as well - see my recent post on that subject). So here is my Earth Day thought-of-the-day:

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spiritual farming

Huh, you might ask?  Yes, there is such a thing, and it is called biodynamic farming.  The Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association’s website defines it as a “spiritual-ethical-ecological approach to agriculture, food production and nutrition.”  Fred Kirschenmann, author of Cultivating an Ecological Conscience, explained in his 2010 keynote address at the conference of the association, that the present big-ag paradigm of maximum efficiency is geared towards short-term gain, and is only possible through specialization and simplification (the small picture, immediate gratification).  However, he says, farms need to be run more like organisms (the Gaia principle), in sync with nature.

We need a new agricultural paradigm, what with the bees dying, crop varieties diminishing (Tom Standage reports that “of the 7,100 types of apple (!!!) that were being grown in America in the 19th century…6,800 are now extinct.”  WOW!), monocultures that discourage insect and bird variety and promote disease, and GMOs and pesticides as misguided solutions to increasing production with short-minded profit in mind.  While there is so much more to say about the deficiencies of the present paradigm, I’d rather look towards the future and better solutions.

Organic agriculture, sustainable agriculture,permaculture, and biodynamics are all promising alternatives, of which the first is the most profit and least nature oriented (yep).  The term permaculture comes from the contraction of permanent and culture and agriculture (there is indeed no culture without agriculture).  Permaculture is a completely sustainable agri/culture practiced in symbiosis with local nature and without waste.  Biodynamics incorporates more lofty principles.  Just like permaculture it works with the farm in a symbiotic wasteless cyclical organism-like relationship.  In addition, though, it takes into account our embeddedness in the larger cosmic picture, and considers the planetary influences on seeds, crops and soil, and works with “homeopathic” soil enhancements since the health of the soil is first and foremost in growing minerally rich produce, the ultimate aim of agriculture.

healthy soil = healthy food = healthy body

voting with your $

DSC07680When you pay for something you not only send dollars but also energy its way, you vote for it, you strengthen it and its cause.  Say you shop at Walmart, or Whole Foods, or Amazon, or your local farmer (I know these are opposites in a way, that’s on purpose), you literally fill their pot with money. While it may not be immediately evident, remember that there is strength in numbers.  When a few thousand people take their food dollars away from Tyson and send them their local farmer’s way, it does make a difference.  When thousands of people become tired of built-in obsolence and take their household dollars away from shoddily made appliances and buy something well engineered that lasts, it does make a difference.  Why do you think big-ag and big-food businesses are so afraid of GMO labeling?  Because we make a statement with our money.

Today, a friend mentioned that it wasn’t necessary to buy organic avocados because they are not on the Dirty Dozen list of produce most contaminated by pesticides.  I explained that not only was the price difference only slight, but more importantly that I voted for a healthier environment and farm workers' health by buying the organic kind.

So next time you open your purse or your checkbook, remember it's a two-way street. It's not just about saving a few bucks, it's also about the cause you support.

stuff, stuff, and more stuff

  reduce, reuse, recycle

Not sure whether you have ever given trash, your’s or that of others, much thought. But here are some statistics.  The average amount of waste each person generates has increased from 2.68lbs in 1960 to 4.5lbs in 1990.  Luckily that number has held steady due to recycling efforts.   However, it still totals about 1.35billion lbs/day or 251 million tons per year!!! Now wait - this is only personal trash, which constitutes 2% of the waste stream – yikes for the industrial waste stream!  But let’s stay with our personal garbage, because that's where we can make a difference.

The first rule of thumb is that recycling and composting are good, but buying less stuff is better.  Besides, it’s been documented that we can’t gain happiness through consumption.  Elizabeth Royte, who wrote a very enlightening book on garbage, says that “We don’t need better ways to get rid of things. We need to not get rid of things, either by keeping them cycling through the system or not… desiring them in the first place.”

sponges made from plant materials

But once we have garbage, what are our choices? They are dumping, incinerating, and recycling.  FYI - in untreated landfills waste can take 40 to 50 years to decompose, in treated landfills between 5 and 10 years.  Yet, plastics may take hundreds of years to decompose!   And there are other problems with landfills: their toxicity (supposedly landfills are the largest source of human generated greenhouse gases, although CAFO’s, those enormous industrial animal feeding operations that make supermarket meat are also huge culprits), and the ever increasing amounts of garbage and landfill space needed (1.because of population increase, and 2.because our consumer society model is based on ever increasing consumption– the system breaks down if we stop consuming, and then the politicians scream “recession” - stop screaming with them).

compostable garbage bags

So, what can you do?

  • Don’t pick up any more plastic bags from the supermarket, bring your own cloth bags
  • Consume less, recycle and compost more
  • Use compostable garbage bags, recycled paper products, and products made from recycled plastic
  • Buy more groceries and cleaning supplies in bulk, reuse your glass jars and Chinese takeout plastic containers (I wish they would take them back, since I don’t like plastic in the first place), reuse your Ziplock bags a few times
  • Subscribe to Freecycle (they are all about giving and getting for free)
  • Donate your gently used unwanted stuff instead of throwing it away
  • Buy clothes at 2nd-hand stores (I am a huge fan)
  • Most of all – stop wanting, wanting, wanting stuff.

 

sacred agriculture

UntitledAgriculture is only about 10,000 years old and it has shaped today’s cultures fundamentally.  Agriculture enabled population growth and the population explosion of the past 50 years.  Agriculture is also what has brought forth culture as we understand it; it is specifically agriculture that enabled the development of the first great cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Agriculture was a new concept then, as we moved from a nomadic lifestyle and collecting our food through hunting and gathering, to settling down and harvesting food from the same surrounding area year-in and year-out.  The hunter-gatherer lifestyle permits nature to renew itself naturally, while agriculture, if not practiced wisely and in tune with nature, depletes the soil – and then what?

Agriculture is the unification of nature and man.  We exhibit our current disconnection from nature through the type of agriculture we have created – soil-depleting monocultures that require outside chemical input to produce food at the expense of environmental and human health.  However, the significant growth of the organic (funny -  until about 150 years ago all agriculture was organic), sustainable (better than organic), and  biodynamic (the best) agricultural movements demonstrates an emerging awareness of the deep connection between ourselves, nature and our food supply.  We exist as part of nature, not apart from nature, and strictly on the basis of light and water.  Without nature we do not exist. Sacred agriculture!

what do you want to do that for?

That is what we’ve heard many times since beginning the planning process for our new energy efficient house.  The most extensive argument may well have been around the merits of triple-pane windows.  In northern Europe triple-pane windows are now standard for new construction, and Canadians use them already extensively.  But here in the US energy awareness is still in its infancy and we kept being asked “what do you want to do that for?” In comparing windows, I found that Canadians build better frames, which makes a big difference, and they use orientation and climate specific glazing for optimal energy savings.  European casement windows have a much tighter fit than the double-hung windows typical for here because of the different frame design.  Passiv-Haus windows are the platinum standard, it tops them all (price included!).

Thinking ahead, Germans are already talking about quadruple windows!