This puppy doesn’t think it’s possible to have too many vegetables. Photo: snugglepup via Flickr

In these times of economic crisis, rising poverty, and diet-related health problems, you'd think local governments would have bigger priorities than counting the number of squash and broccoli plants on people's lawns. Unfortunately that's not the case for Georgia resident Steve Miller, a landscaper by profession and organic farmer by heart, who's been caught tomato-red-handed growing a downright offensive number of vegetable plants on his property outside of Atlanta. (The exact number of criminal plants unknown.)

Dubbed "Cabbage-Gate" by friends and neighbors of Miller, officials in Dekalb County, Georgia, are suing him for $5,000 in fines for not having his land properly zoned to grow such an apparently ridiculous number of vegetables -- even after he stopped growing them and got rezoned.

If the county is suing this long-time hobby farmer for growing too many vegetables, how many are "acceptable" anyway? Twenty? Eleven? As many as you want as long as that doesn't include cabbage?

Just when I thought life could not get more silly - this!

This weekend I will be talking more about our disconnect with food and the natural world.

My context - Jane Jacobs said that Dark Ages arrive when people forget. When they forget because of a cultural bias how to do important things.

Such as today - how to raise a child - what an education is - how to grow and cook food. All of these things are of course connected in one meta thing that we have forgotten - that we are part of nature and how nature herself works.

We have disconnected from nature and so we have got completely lost.

This weekend I will offer up a few stories of how others are finding their way home - stories that any of us can emulate. For the way home is available - we can remember.

Dispensing antibiotics to healthy animals is routine on the large, concentrated farms that now dominate American agriculture. But the practice is increasingly condemned by medical experts who say it contributes to a growing scourge of modern medicine: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including dangerous E. coli strains that account for millions of bladder infections each year, as well as resistant types of salmonella and other microbes.

Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to human health. They would end farm uses of the drugs simply to promote faster animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians.

The agency’s final version is expected within months, and comes at a time when animal confinement methods, safety monitoring and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under sharp attack. The federal proposal has struck a nerve among major livestock producers, who argue that a direct link between farms and human illness has not been proved. The producers are vigorously opposing it even as many medical and health experts call it too timid.

It's coming I think - finally - the health risks of the over concentrated system are now visible and the public are pushing enough to force movement. It will be a long slow battle but like Tobacco - the trend is set.

The question for farmers is what to do? God said to St Paul on the road to Damascus - "Saul Saul it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" In other words don't work against the trend.

On PEI our pork sector is now very small - I suggest that we help each other go for the alternative to confinement and get into the new space early with a PEI "No Drug" brand.

There is a spot for the small again in this new world of healthy food.

A darling young girl of about 8 years came up to the table and looked over our selection. Then she shyly asked if she could have a slice of cucumber.  I said, "of course".  She picked one up, popped it into her mouth and scampered away.

A Francophone couple from New Brunswick came to the table and I offered them tastes of our lightly flavored Mediteranian cucumbers, our orange cherry tomato, and a bit of fresh basil.  The gentleman came back a few minutes later and asked me if he could have another basil top, "Because it smell so good!"

A bit later, a couple with several young children came up.  I offered them a taste of a just-picked ripe tomato, a bit of fresh cilantro and a taste of basil. I joked with the parents that I was "subverting their children".  I said, "Once they learn what fresh food tastes like, they won't want anything else."

I was kidding.  Until I thought about it.

Maybe it really is subversive, an act designed to overthrow the establishment, to offer fresh, clean, naturally grown food to people.                 

Powerful forces in our economy and our governments are continuing to move against small producers. And new legislation is pending in the states that could make it impossible for homestead and market garden producers to supply their neighbors with healthy local food.

The premise of the new regulation is food safety,  as though selling a few hand raised tomatoes to a neighbor is as risky as shipping e-coli tainted hamburger to 12 states. It seems to me that the real risk is that we will continue to reduce the number of producers until no small farms are left and government has only a handful  of "too big to fail" producers to support as rural communities die. I've met senior farmers who nearly go to tears when they tell me that after 5 generations, they are retiring off the land because the kids don't want the farm. In many places today, its just too hard for our young people to make a go of it.  

But that all seems too grim on a day when local people stepped up to buy a few beans, some herbs, a bit of squash and to take a moment to share the news in the Farmers Market at The Dundas Plowing Match. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finally met John this weekend at the Dundas Plowing Match - He offers up an important warning I think. That in the guise of helping the public, the regulators are doing their best to shut down small operators.

The real risk, as John points out, is that we will have no alternative left and worse - lose the skills.

Businessman John Hantz is inching closer to a deal with the City of Detroit to commercially farm about 110 acres of city-owned vacant land on the city's east side.

Details remain under negotiation, and it was not clear how soon, or even if, a deal will be struck. Two people familiar with the negotiations say that the effort centers on about 110 acres of vacant city-owned parcels scattered within an area bordered by Jefferson Avenue on the south, Mack on north, Van Dyke on the west and Cadillac on the east. That extensive area includes the Indian Village district, where Hantz lives, as well as other populated neighborhoods, but the area also includes widespread vacancy.

Detroit already enjoys hundreds of nonprofit community, school and family gardens. But efforts to introduce commercial farming over the past 18 months have been slower to come to fruition because of the nontraditional nature of the land use.

Urban planners have estimated that Detroit contains between 30 and 40 square miles of vacant land, or more than 25,000 acres at the upper end of that range. The 110 acres would occupy less than one-half of 1% of the vacant land in the city.

Urban Farming is a small idea now but will be I think at the heart of the new food system

The Annual Bowen Island Harvest Celebration Market - BowFeast - was disrupted by a Food regulator who insisted that many selling jams etc have their food tested for safety. A 19 page set of regulations were also applied to the many backyard growers. (HT Chris Corrigan)

Does this sound odd to you?

This type of regulation on the surface looks as if it is there to protect us - but in reality it is there to ensure that small growers and processors are kept out - as happened on Bowen Island.

The PEI Egg industry tried to use food safety as their weapon to get rid of small flocks on PEI too. The irony is that the industrial process used by the large producers is in fact at the heart of the many risks that we face in food.

Scale and concentration are the drivers of risk. The concentration of animals is the greatest health risk and the concentration of production is our greatest food security risk. For instance, Hamburger is ground in a handful of sites. Look at what happend there routinely. Look at what happened to dog food that was produced mainly in ONE plant. Look at McCains challenges in Canada. That is why 2 egg producers in the US can have a problem leading to the recall of 500 million eggs.

Food safety will be better served when we have a much more distributed system. So too will food security. A thoughtful jurisdiction would be working to this end.

In that context, our real safety depends on supporting the local small producer.

This is not too hard to pull off. For this can be a provincial issue. So long as food is not exported out of a province, it remains in the provincial jurisdiction. So the complexity of a good start here - where each province can set up a local system is not too great.

Surely it would not be too hard to set up a new category of food production where the scale threshold was set low and where the principle would be to have a system that was safe because of the design of small units networked into a large system?

One World Café cooks up a recipe for others to follow

August 6th, 2010 @ 6:12pm

By Jed Boal

SALT LAKE CITY -- A Café in Salt Lake has discovered there's a growing appetite for its altruistic approach to business. There's no set menu, you pay what you can and a national chain is even testing out the business model.

Eight years ago, One World Café opened up at 41 S. 300 East with a simple goal: feed hungry people in the community with good organic food. There was no cash register, and diners paid whatever they thought was fair.

Now, research shows that model works, and others are eager to learn the recipe.

One World Café

Where: 41 S. 300 East Salt Lake City
Hours: Monday - Saturday: 11 am - 10 pm
Sunday: 9 am - 5 pm
What: No menu, no prices. Customers pay what they want.
For more information click here.

 

KSL caught up with the lunch crowd at One World as they enjoyed the best balanced meal head chef Giovanni Bouderbala dreamed up Friday: salmon and crab cakes, organic stir-fry vegetables and vegan chocolate cake for dessert.

The restaurant now has a cash register and a board with suggested prices, but you still pay what you want, or you can work for a meal.

"In One World, we're all here in the same place," says Bouderbala. "We can help each other. Somebody else will drop a couple extra bucks for you. That's how it works."

Then you drop a couple of extra buck for them, when you can.

The original owner now consults businesses nationwide that are giving the concept a try. Panera Bakery, a national chain, now runs a pay-what-you-want store in St. Louis and plans to open two more.

So if our traditional way of life and economy is hitting the skis - where is the new one that might take its place?

I am looking at the really "Old Economy" and the really Old Culture that sustained us for millions of year - the tribal hunter gatherer society.

But I am not looking at it with the view of us living in caves but as people in the 14th century looked back at the Classic times at the advent of the Renaissance. Looking back at the truths, lessons and useful ideas that were forgotten and that could be used in new ways.

One of the ideas that made humans different from all apes other than Bonobos - who also like us love recreational and social sex - was the sharing of food. We are hard wired to share food.

Next to sex, sharing food is at the heart of human social interaction.

One World Cafe uses a business model based on this idea. I see it as a "Renaissance Idea" an old idea rooted in our deepest nature that was forgotten and can be revived because it works and it is suited to who we are.

Here is more on the idea:

But what relation obesity and diabetes have to the mental functioning of the developing brains of children and adolescents has been uncharted territory -- exactly where a scientist like Dr. Convit and his research team would want to go.

They began their work studying obese adolescents with type 2 diabetes. They wondered if serious weight gain and diabetes reduced intellectual performance in youth. To answer this critical question, they would test the brain's functioning by measuring intelligence, reading, spelling, vocabulary, reasoning, memory, attention, concentration and mental efficiency. They would also do imaging of the brain by MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a scanning technique where the brain can be safely studied) to see if there were reductions in its size or capacity to function, of course factoring in age, that might be related to lower levels of mental performance.

Their results show that the adolescents with type 2 diabetes did more poorly across the board on mental performance tests. In addition, these same youth showed smaller brain volume for the entire brain and the frontal lobes, where much of our reasoning occurs. The frontal lobes are the last part of the brain to mature, making it is highly sensitive to change during adolescence. The abnormal findings Dr. Convit found occur more in obese diabetic youth than in (matched) youth who also were obese but did not have diabetes (or pre-diabetes -- in which the body has developed insulin resistance).

Obesity in youth has tripled in the past 30 years, with one in three three high school students now overweight or obese in the United States. Minority groups show even more disturbing trends with one in two Hispanic and four in 10 black youths affected. Obesity is the road to insulin resistance and diabetes, with their well known adverse effects on blood vessels and the heart -- which shorten life and erode its quality along the way. What is new, however, is that obese, diabetic youth also have their brains impacted and appear to have difficulty learning and succeeding in school.

Education is not only about school. Health is not only about medicine. Our minds our bodies and our perspectives are all set by the experiences that we have when we are young.

It makes perfect sense to me to make healthy eating part of school. This is not juts a pipe dream. My daughter works for a very successful organization called Real Food for Real Kids in Toronto that does just that. It offers real food to kids in Daycare and Kindergarten.

In so doing it creates new habits for the kids and for their families. In so doing it is becoming a critically important driver for a new better local food system in Toronto.

There is no better investment in our future than in making the link between local food and schools.

This goes beyond providing better food and stimulating local food production. Giving kids the chance to grow food themselves is part of this. Re-introducing them to the reality and the miracle of food.

Even this has a model - the Edible School Yard.

What could be better?

The under-30 unemployment rate in Spain has just hit 44 per cent, twice the adult rate. Italy also has passed the 40 per cent mark, and Greece has gone even further. If you count all the people who’ve given up looking, it means the number of people between 20 and 30 who have any form of employment in these countries is something like one in five.

An entire European generation is leaving school to discover they have no place in the economy.

This is what is happening in Europe - the industrial work has been exported along with the jobs - the jobs are just not there.

Is this not true at home as well?

The classic Political work is to get "jobs" but the pool of jobs is empty - unless you want to harvest fruit, serve coffee, kill chickens, blow leaves etc. Even on PEI our "slave jobs" in fish processing are no longer filled by locals but by people from Russia, India etc - people who want an entry point to North America.

So what to do?

I think that this starts with food It was food that was the entry point for the destruction of communities it will be food that is the entry point for their restoration.

Our system has destroyed community. Food is now "made" in industrial settings far away from the consumer - where machines or "slaves" do the work. I use the term "slave" deliberately as people who do crushing hard and boring and often dangerous work for just enough to feed them.

This is what happened in Rome. The thousands of local farms - the source of the manpower of the legions and the votes in the republic - were bought up by a few. The unemployed farmers had to come to Rome where they were bought off with bread and circuses. The now huge corporate farms were manned by slaves. The result - a vast underclass and a tiny elite and a system all built upon the muscle power of slaves and the use of capital.

Is this not our story? We have seen our own equivalent of the "Republic" a nation based on resilient communities settled by people who were largely self sufficient and so independent transformed into "Rome" where millions depend on the system for every part of their lives.

It was only 100 years ago, when 80% of Canadians and American lived this way in thousands of small communities where the economy was based on local food production. Like in Rome, these small farms have been squeezed out by capital and by regulations that punish the small. On PEI there were 14,000 farms - now there are maybe 200 that struggle. The people at first got jobs in factories that made the transition hard by in the end bearable in North America where pay was good in the new manufacturing.

The pattern was the same in England but the transition was harder.

For it happened 100 years earlier and there were on,y slave jobs waiting for the masses or emigration. This was the "Enclosure" time when land owners saw that they could get a higher ROI by replacing their people with machines or capital. So millions of country folk were driven off the land that they had lived on for millennia and either emigrated to America or Canada or went to the cities where they became "labour" or servants.

In time the manufacturing sector paid well. But a new form of Enclosure has taken place. People have ben replaced by machines, capital and by a global distribution system that draws on a labour pool of 6 billion. This is why wages have been going down in real terms for 40 years. This is why 2 people cannot support a family anymore. The result has been that many of us have gone into debt to cover the difference.

This is why nations themselves are so far in debt that they too have to cut themselves off from their people to serve the bankers.

For all those unemployed and for all our children - there are no good jobs that will come back - not with this system.

For the Good the factory jobs have been exported - they are not returning. Now many of the middle management jobs have gone. Many of the tech jobs and even higher end jobs have gone.

Like Rome, there are now only "slave" jobs or TV and fast food and despair.

So what to do?

The starting point is food - as it was when communities were destroyed by enclosure and by exporting manufacturing.

The road home to viable communities and viable lives is emerging naturally in the local food movement. Our food system is always the system that shapes society.

A new system is emerging that is intensely local but with a difference. It is not farming as we knew it but a system of very small intense operations linked in a network - like the web.

If we grow food this way locally all the work related to this - the growing, the servicing, the processing, the sales and distribution - all return home. We start to create the habit and the systems for doing things locally.

From that will grow a local series of other services and products - equipment would be first - but a new distributed model might break the central model for nearly all things. Why not local distributed manufacturing? Surely local media?

A new networked food system will be the foundation of a new society.
It will not be a mandated top down shift - but a shift of desperation. We see it in places like Detroit where the only way left is local. With millions unemployed, how will they eat?

What times we live in!

It is easy to give up hope right now. But for all my Doom Saying - I am very optimistic.

This video will show you why. It is the basis of a book I am writing where I do my best to show that we as a species may be living through the stages of development that a person will.

It is our relationship with Food primarily that drives each stage - with help from our prevailing use of energy and our communication system.

My call is that we are ending our Narcissistic Teen Age and entering the New Parent Age where we Partner with Nature to create the best future of our children.

I was lucky and spoke second - what was amazing was that nearly every talk that followed - none had spoken to each other before - made the point of using Nature as our guide.