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Vegetarian is the New Prius

This article is about a month old now, but Kathy Freston wrote a really thought provoking article on how what we eat can have a bigger impact on global warming and other environmental issues than the car we drive.

For those people living outside of the US, or perhaps North America, a Prius is a hybrid electric car marketed by Toyota. Together with other hybrid cars and light trucks, they have become popular among people who want to drive a more fuel efficient car.

In the US more petroleum products are consumed each year producing food than by private cars. In addition, a stunning amount of water is consumed and vast quantities of chemicals and animal wastes are released into the environment. This is primarily because of the centralized food distribution and processing system that by now feeds almost everyone living in a developed country. Of course these problems are magnified in the context of meat production, because first crops have to be grown for animal feed, then the animals have to be raised, and the amount of feed they consume is enormous when compared to the meat produced.

Almost all of these problems are avoided when we eat foods that are organically and locally produced. If we eat in-season vegetables we grow ourselves or buy from a local organic farmer, the environmental impact is a tiny fraction of what it is when we buy out-of-season conventionally grown produce shipped in from far away. The same comparison can be made when we buy local, organic and grass fed eggs, meats and dairy products, versus conventional products.

Since most of us will continue to eat conventional food products, one of the most important environmentally friendly choices we can make is by eating fewer meats and other animal products. It can be better for your health too!

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Previous Posts Summary

It’s funny how with gardening blogs we always seem to be working with seasons. There are seasons in our garden, but also seasons with our blogs. With a new year ahead of us in our gardens, many new blog readers are popping up looking for gardening information. In addition many new gardening blogs are popping up as fellow gardeners want to share this year’s garden with others on the Internet. It’s also the time of year we all have too much time on our hands anyway.

It occurred to me that this blog is a bit clogged with a large number of posts, and this could make it difficult for a new reader to go through it all. If you are interested in particular topics, for example if you want to see pictures of some of the plants I grew last year or want some of my recipes, following the categories links on the front page of this blog is a good way to do this. I’m not going to list posts that are easy to find in this way here.

This blog started with some posts defining exactly what heirloom plants are, on a very basic level discussed some plant genetics and what exactly an F1 hybrid is, as well as introductions to some basic seed saving and storing techniques. Saving tomato seeds is a very good place for a beginning seed saver to start, and I made a post about this. I followed up on seed saving a bit later with a post about biennial plants, and again with suggestions for easy plants to save seeds from. An important thing anyone should consider when saving seeds is inbreeding depression. Growing garlic is very easy, one of my favorite garden plants, and here is a post about that. I also posted about cover crops.

While many people prefer to use fluorescent bulbs for growing seedlings, grow lights are also a good option. Many people are discouraged from using grow lights because they feel it’s too associated with growing drugs, but in fact they are the same lights used in public lighting and are frequently cheap and easily available almost everywhere in the world if you look for them. With a little planning and shopping around, they can be cheaper to purchase and operate than fluorescent lights.

When you start seedlings indoors, don’t forget to harden them before moving them outside!

If you grow peas, beans, garbanzo beans, lentils or any other leguminous nitrogen-fixing plants, you need to know about nitrogen fixing bacteria!

I am a big fan of my weed burner, and I made two posts about this here and here. I am also a fan of my Earthway seeder.

I am a member of the Seed Savers Exchange. I wrote first about it here, followed up here, and posted about them again here.

I think composting has to be a favorite activity of almost any gardener. I wrote two articles on composting, first an introduction to composting and mulching then a post specific to container composting.

Last year I made a post about coffee as a crop, and how the world market for coffee was turned upside down with the introduction of an F1 hybrid coffee bean variety. What happened with coffee has been repeated over and over with other crops with the introduction of hybrid varieties, and is a very import thing for everyone who cares about what they eat and grow to understand.

Long term storage of your harvest is an issue for all of us. One of the ways I do this is by dehydrating my harvest.

All Europeans and everyone living everywhere, should be aware of the so called Agricultural Apartheid as it exists in Europe. In practice what this means is all fruits and vegetables sold anywhere in Europe are commercial varieties and the seeds that produce them come from large seed companies. These rules make it virtually impossible for farmers to save their own seeds and regrow their own crops in Europe. This has also become an issue recently in Turkey, which may become a member of the European Union.

What has to be one of the most important books to be published in 2006 was Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. A must read for anyone who cares about what they eat. We also reached the 100th anniversary of Upton Sinclare’s The Jungle, and it’s really amazing how many things still haven’t changed since then.

Open Source software is a growing worldwide phenomenon, as people get tired of commercial software like that produced by Microsoft and all of the politics surrounding it. Linux is growing in popularity, and has even been recognized by governments around the world. There is a huge and well organized group of people behind the free software movement. Few people understand that the issues are almost the same as heirloom gardening, but we lack the large numbers of organized people. What can we do about this?

What comes after GM foods? I made a post about Marker Assisted Selection or MAS.

The US government has addressed the issue of hunger by redefining it. Now we have food insecurity!

Everyone needs to think about buying food locally, from people you know.

Of all the eating advice we get from everywhere, all the trendy diets and the promotions from cooking shows on TV, they all have one message in common. Eat more food! It’s time for us all to realize we need to ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.‘. Here is also some advice on how to avoid eating and growing GM foods.

Us food gardeners and seed savers are a dying breed. Here is a post on gardening trends.

Bird flu is an import issue for everyone everywhere in the world. Here is the other side of the story.

Biofuels are about to become an important part of our lives. Since they are crops that are grown on the same land as our food is, they are about to make a big impact on our food supply.

Here is what everyone should know before buying seeds from a seed catalog.

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Preserving Biodiversity and Diversity in Seed Suppliers

A recent post on Ottawa Hortiphilia addresses a very important trend we should all be aware of, the commercializing of heirloom varieties in seed catalogs.

Until recently most seed retailers were prohibited by clauses in their suppliers contracts from identifying open pollinated (OP) and heirloom varieties for what they were. In effect what this meant if a retailer wanted to sell heirloom seed, and identify them as such, they could only sell heirloom seeds and only purchase them from a very limited number of suppliers. This is still the case for most small seed companies, and it makes selling heirloom varieties almost impossible to do profitably.

It’s a very small victory that there are now a few companies selling both heirloom and non heirloom seeds, and identifying them as such. We will probably see more in the coming years.

It’s very easy for seed companies to mislead you into purchasing seeds that you think are suitable for seed saving, but really aren’t. For example giving them descriptions along the lines of ‘just like what your grandmother grew’, or giving them a name close to but not exactly the same as a similar heirloom variety. These days many seed companies put a broad statement on the front of their catalog about carrying more heritage varieties than ever before, don’t identify what any of them are, but give you the feeling like you can trust the seeds you buy from them.

Anytime you buy seeds from a company that does not sell exclusively heirloom varieties, you are taking a risk of buying something that is not suitable for seed saving. In any event, never purchase anything that is not clearly labelled as being suitable for seed saving or OP.

It is clear that more heirloom and OP varieties will start becoming available from larger seed companies. As this starts to happen, it’s important we do not lose our small seed companies. It’s important the meaning of heirloom, heritage or OP varieties does not get lost or that we find ourselves back in the position of only being able to buy seeds from the large seed companies. It’s very important we all think about buying seeds from people and small companies we trust and not faceless corporations with clever marketing departments and colorful catalogs.

We need more OP varieties

There is another side of the coin here.

There are a large number of OP and heritage varieties stored away in seed banks around the world. It takes a lot of time and money to get these varieties out of the seed banks, and into gardens and production on farms. There is much more work involved than just taking the seeds out of the seed banks and growing them, they have to be selectively bred first. For a long time now seed companies have been putting their efforts into developing hybrid varieties and ignoring open pollinated ones.

By showing a preference for OP varieties when purchasing fruit and vegetables, as well as encouraging seed companies to produce new and interesting OP varieties, we can provide incentive for large seed companies to invest in developing more OP varieties.

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Hybrid Vigor: Fact or Fiction?

As something of an extension on the previous post concerning inbreeding depression, there is an interesting article on page 7 of the latest issue of Seedling magazine on the GRAIN website. In this article is the suggestion that the much hyped hybrid vigor is really a complete myth.

Commercial hybrid varieties are always made from intensely inbred parent strains, because they need to be as genetically stable as possible. This means they display a very high degree of inbreeding depression, and are very poor performing as a crop plants. When the parent plants are crossed, the problem of inbreeding depression is solved, and the vigor is restored to what it should be. The so called hybrid vigor is usually determined by comparing the F1 hybrid to the parent strains, which is a completely unfair comparison.

This would seem to eliminate the only reason a for choosing hybrids over open pollinated (OP) varieties. Hybrids are very expensive to produce, and are frequently generously subsidized by governments so farmers can afford to buy them, in the logic they will increase food production. Seed companies of course prefer to sell hybrids, because farmers cannot save their own seeds.

Today the state of OP crop varieties is very poor, because these plants need to be regularly grown out and a lot of work is needed to select them for suitable traits. The seed companies have been concentrating on hybrid varieties and neglecting OP ones. Some seed savers have been working on keeping OP plants suitable for commercial use, but much more work is needed for this.