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The Doers

My last post about Amateur Foods prompted an interesting discussion in the comments, and a comment from Cynthia led me to a new blog I haven’t seen before Growing Power.

Will Allen, in his first very well written and powerful post, offered a
A Good Food Manifesto for America.  In particular my attention was drawn to this:

Many astute and well-informed people beside myself, most notably Michael Pollan, in a highly persuasive treatise last fall in the New York Times, have issued these same warnings and laid out the case for reform of our national food policy. I need not go on repeating what Pollan and others have already said so well, and I do not wish merely to add my voice to a chorus.

I am writing to demand action.

It is time and past time for this nation, this government, to react to the dangers inherent in its flawed farm and food policies and to reverse course from subsidizing wealth to subsidizing health.

While I have a great deal of respect for Michael Pollan, and he has without a doubt done more to attract attention to the US and worlds food problems than anyone in the last century, he is not a doer.  By far the most important people in the battle to fix the broken food system in today’s world are the people in the field like Will Allen.

This is not the first I’ve heard of Will Allen.  Cynthia, a reader of this blog and someone I have been in frequent email contact with over the last few years told me about him some time ago.  Having interesting information and being able to translate it into a post suitable for publishing don’t always go together, as was the case here.  The same thing is true with Cynthia herself, who is very involved in the food culture of Virginia and a market gardener.  The best I can offer on her is to take a look at her recent comments on the last post.

Next on my list of doers are public domain plant breeders and collectors of old varieties.  Some really amazing things have been created or found in recent years by people like Tom Wagner, Alan Kapuler and Tim Peters in the US, as well as many others.  In Europe people like Lieven David, Ben Gabel, Frank van Keirsbilck and others.  Together with these people are all of those running small farms around the world, have a look at my links page for some of those.  I’m sure there are many others I’m forgetting.  These are the people who roll their sleves up and get their finger nails dirty, and they are all special in their own ways.

These are all the people creating the food systems of the future, and they are the ones we need to be talking and listening to.

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Amateur Foods

For some reason this subject has come up several times recently.  What I mean by amateur foods are those grown in someone’s home garden.

Many of us know what it’s like to have a glut of zucchini’s (courgettes) or when all 100 apples come ripe on your tree at the same time.  You give them away or you have methods of processing and storing them.  You may have neighbors or friends to give them to.  Since I grow about 1000 bulbs of garlic every year, it’s always a bit of an issue to find people to eat them.

What about selling them or giving them away to other people in your community?

President Obama has the stated purpose of producing fresh vegetables for a local homeless soup kitchen.  James recently posted about an initiative in his community to encourage hobby gardeners to offer their excess to others.  I got an email from Maureen telling me about her new site, The Farmers Garden, set up to match people offering their home grown fruits and veggies with those looking for offerings.

I must admit, while I usually try to be positive and encouraging, I’m also not shy about dismissing impossible sounding ideas.  I wasn’t very encouraging in my reaction to either of these initiatives.

The basic problem is this.  Being a market farmer is a very special skill, and takes considerable effort and dedication.  In most places in the world it’s difficult or impossible to run such an operation financially without government assistance.  Certainly it’s all but impossible in the face of government subsidized factory farms, or cheap imported alternatives.

While market shoppers may not be as picky as some, everyone expects their food to be reasonably free of blemishes, insect damage and generally look good.  Harvest gluts need to be managed with succession plantings and other season extension methods.  Varieties of plants need to be selected that fit in with the general business model of a market farm, and these are usually different from what we choose to grow at home.  A selection of produce needs to be offered that’s consistent with buying most of your food in a single place, and since people eat 365 days a year this sort of variety needs to be offered year round.  Most of us also depend on a relationship with the person we buy our food from, in order to have some assurance of it’s quality and safety.  It’s a tall order.

As much as I like the idea of communities coming together and sharing their food, and it’s certainly a great way to meet your neighbors, in my opinion what can come from a home garden is no substitute for market farmers.  It doesn’t matter if a whole community offers their excess produce.  It doesn’t seem like this kind of system will ever be able to provide a significant contribution to local food needs.  Or can it?

Hopeless idea or food system of the future?

Does anyone have first hand knowledge of a working system like this?

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Farmer Support Organization Gone Wrong

Here are parts 1 and 2 of a 60 minutes (American TV) segment on an organization called the Farm Bureau.

What was once an organization set up to support small farmers in the US, has turned into something completely different. Indeed, it’s turned into something completely irrelevant to small farmers .

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Perennial Grains Project

Traditional grains are annual crops.  That is, the land is cleared and plowed, seeds planted, several months later the crops are harvested and the cycle starts again.  This is particularly suited for energy and chemical intensive agriculture, because large swaths of land can be planted in the way, with a predictable and heavy yield, then the following year replanted with the same or a different crop.

Public domain plant breeder Tim Peters is working on creating perennial grains.  The way he’s doing this is kind of interesting.  For each of the cereal grains commonly grown today, he has sought out wild relatives in genebanks and other places and cross pollinated them with modern varieties.  The reason is because modern grains were made to be annuals for the convenience of the farmers, so what Tim is doing is reintroducing some of those genes that were lost in that process.

Why are Perennial Grains Interesting?

Perennial grains are interesting because they have a much better carbon footprint than traditional grains, and require fewer chemicals.

Besides the ground not needing to be plowed every year and the energy savings that comes from this, ground that’s disturbed releases carbon.  By not plowing the ground, it allows it to act as a carbon store.

Perennial grains develop strong root systems, and compete very well with weeds.  This reduces or eliminates the need for herbicide applications.

It’s expected perennial grains will also be more disease resistant than modern grains.

They are also drought resistant and do well in poor soils without the addition of fertilizer.

Potentially, this type of grain will become an important source of food for the world.

A Chance to Participate

Would you like to see first hand what a perennial grain looks like and help in the breeding process?

Tim Peters is looking for people to help him develop localized varieties.  The basic idea is to grow it, then select the strongest and most productive plants to save seeds from, then send these seeds back to him.  Of course you would be able to keep some too.

The first grain to trial is rye, and this trial is starting right now.  Planting is done in July and August, so there isn’t a lot of time. [Correction: Tim tells me that while July and August may be best, in fact the trial can be started any time your weather is warm enough to sprout seeds.]

The cost of participating is US$25.  This is because Tim cannot afford all of the postage and other support costs himself.

Next year other grains will be trialled, but it’s expected far fewer seeds will be available for these trials, and priority will be given to those who have successfully participated in the rye trial this year.

You will need some considerable garden space, at least several hundred square feet (30-100m2).  Perhaps you can do with a little less now, if you will have more space available in the spring.

If you’re interested, send me an email as soon as possible and I’ll pass your details on to either Tim or the project coordinator.  If demand for participating exceeds the available supply of seeds Tim may have to choose people according to the space they have available or if their climate is desirable for his trial.

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Garden Pictures June 2009, Part 2

My current favorite bean, Dog Bean, is growing here filling the bed and doing a pretty good job smothering the weeds.  It’s just started to bloom, so the dry bean harvest should be in 4-6 weeks.  I’m growing lots of different beans this year, given to me by a lot of different people.

dog_beans2

I’m quite excited about the sweet corn.  It’s Painted Hills created by plant breeder Alan Kapuler.  I purchased the seeds from his daughter’s seed company Peace Seedlings.  The website is a little out of date, and it’s worth asking them for their printed seed list which may have more varieties available.

The variety is a combination of a multi-colored starch corn called Painted Mountain and Luther Hills sweet corn, yielding a cold soil tolerant multi-colored sweet corn.

It’s clear this variety needs some more breeding/selection before it will truly be suitable for my climate.  I first had problems getting the seeds to germinate, because of damping off problems.  This might be unrelated to the seeds.  Then I had problems with the plants dying after transplant, again maybe this might be my fault for transplanting too early.  Now however, many of the plants are small and stunted and unlikely to produce ears.

The remaining healthy plants are however a true delight to watch growing.  Like the ears of corn, the plants are all different colors:

painted_hills

Among the plants that seem to be going slowly this year are the pole beans.  Many of the varieties I’ve planted this year have yet to start climbing their poles.  This one, Nekar Queen given to me by Crazytomato is not only climbing the pole but the name tag as well:

nekar_queen

The edible Chrysanthemums Kate gave me at last years meeting in Oxford are blooming their hearts out.  I never did get a chance to taste the greens before they started blooming.  Oh well, there’ll be plenty of seeds to try again next year!

chryth_greens1

Mike gave me seed for Cape Spitz, an oxheart shaped cabbage.  Oxheart cabbage is a real food staple here, sold in all the supermarkets and markets and often used in both Dutch foods and foods of former Dutch colonies.  The only other oxheart variety I’ve grown is Henderson Wakefield a few years ago, and I’m very curious to see how what Mike grows in South Africa compares with what’s available here locally.

cape_spitz1

I had originally intended to do a big planting of artichokes this year, and expected seeds from a couple of different seed savers as well as some purchased varieties.  In every case, something went wrong and I didn’t get the seeds I expected or they didn’t germinate, except this variety of Cardoon from Baker Creek.  I wasn’t really interested in trying cardoon particularly, except to grow it along side some artichokes, but here it is…  I keep hearing very negative things from fellow gardeners about it’s taste.  The gardener next to me says she has a friend who grows it, but only as an ornamental plant.  Anyway, here it is.  If I don’t get a chance to eat it this year, I’ll select the best 1 or 2 of the 12 or so plants I have to keep and grow next year and try then.

cardoon1

Finally, here is one of my oca plants.  They’ve been blooming and look good so far.  Last year I was unprepared to protect it from early frosts, and I din’t get much of a harvest.  The plants are daylight sensitive, and produce most of their tubers in the run-up to the winter solstice, but at the same time are killed by frosts, making this a challenging plant in almost any climate.  It also apparently doesn’t like to be grown in a greenhouse.

oca2