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Eat More Food!

Kitchen Gardeners International made a recent post about how new US Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines mean Americans are going to have to eat more! In order to produce the additional food necessary for the new guidelines, assuming it is to be produced domestically, crop land area for fruits and vegetables will have to nearly double. In addition milk production will have to rise by almost 30%. I’m sure eating all this extra food is going to go a long way to improving the health of Americans.

I recently installed a satellite TV dish, meaning I am picking up TV channels from the UK (mostly ITV + BBC). I am astonished how many cooking shows are on TV there. Every show has the same thing in common, they show you how to cook and eat large amounts of rich and mostly imported or factory farm foods. I have yet to see any vegetarian foods cooked. Beyond perhaps the odd salad intended as a side dish, I don’t recall seeing anything that would really be practical for a individual or small family on a budget, who wanted to eat local foods. It’s like every cooking show is an advertisement for European meat or fish companies.

Something happened a few years ago that seems to be forgotten by everyone. There were discussions over food guidelines in the UK. Together with the World Health Organization, the British Dietetic Association issued food guidelines that among other things recommended eating mostly fruits, vegetables and starchy carbohydrates like rice, potatoes and pasta. They said if you ate any kind of meat or fish, it should be limited to 90 grams (about 3.5 ounces) per day. There was an uproar. The food industry said you should not discourage people from eating food, only encourage them to eat the right foods. In the end the WHO adopted these guidelines, but the British Dietetic Association didn’t.

After recent elections in Holland, in which a previously unknown ‘Party for Animals’ gained several seats in the Dutch Parliament, there have started to be discussions about the kind of food that is produced here. This newly elected party would like to see a return to older methods of food production, that result in lower volumes of higher quality product. The food industry has said this will seriously impact exports, because exports are dependent on high volumes. It’s my understanding a Parliamentary debate on this issue is planned.

It’s really time a more sustainable and healthy approach to food is adopted by food companies and governments! The solution is not for us all to eat more, that’s for sure.

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Seed Savers Exchange Activities

I’ve been a member of the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) for a year now and learning more about the organization as I’ve been going along. I really think some of the things they do are very exciting, and I think it’s a little strange there doesn’t seem to be much discussion about them on the Internet. I guess it’s really the case that people tend to be Internet/Computer savvy or genetic conservationists, but not both. SSE people number in the hundreds or possibly thousands, probably more people than are garden blogging, but for some reason there doesn’t seem to be a lot of communication between the groups.

Many of us have probably stumbled across the SSE website, which primarily promotes the commercial end of the SSE. While the commercial activities provide important financial support to their other activities, and are worthy of support, I think many people don’t fully understand that there is a much larger side of the SSE than what is presented on the website.

In this post I will try to offer a little information about some of the ongoing SSE projects, together with a little background information.

The SSE has has 3 main membership publications: Seed Savers Yearbook, Seed Savers Summer Edition and Seed Savers Harvest Edition. The first of these, the Yearbook, lists all the varieties of seeds members are offering to other members. The purpose of the Summer and Harvest editions are to keep members up to date with both SSE news as well as developments in the world that impact SSE activities. The Summer and Harvest editions have been the inspiration of several blogs posts on Bifurcated Carrots, including this one.

Beyond the 3 main membership publications listed above, there is also a flower and herb exchange publication for people who subscribe separately to this, as well as numerous books and other publications.

When the SSE started in the 1970’s it was a simple seed exchange organization. It has grown considerably since then. In particular, in recent years, it has actively engaged in the storing and growing out of plant varieties. In part this was in response to the growing problem of the SSE not having enough younger members to replacing their older members, who are no longer able to share their seeds. The number of actual plant varieties being traded within the SSE is actually increasing slightly, but the number of people supporting this is declining. In order to prevent the situation that plant varieties are lost because there are not enough people to sustain them, the SSE decided to start saving and growing varieties themselves.

Another motivation for engaging in storing and growing out plant varieties came in the 1990’s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this time they received the entire collection of the Institut für Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung (IPK) or Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, in Gatersleben, in the former East Germany. It is believed to be the largest collection of crop varieties that were grown in the former Soviet Union at the time. The SSE is hard at work trying to grow out these plant varieties, and offer seeds to their members. A number of bloggers have been talking recently about how exciting it is to grow new plant varieties. I think the IPK collection could be a very exciting place to look for new varieties to try. A number of IPK varieties are already available to SSE members, and more are on the way.

Then there was the war in Iraq. Of the many injustices suffered by the people of Iraq was the coalition forcing a European style seed law on the Iraqi farmers. Iraqi farmers are now required to only grow crops that are on a list of allowed varieties, which mostly have to be purchased from US and European seed companies and include a number of GM varieties. Before the war Iraq was thought to be one of the most important places of crop biodiversity in the world, and was free of GM crops. A mad rush is underway by SSE people to save as many of these varieties as possible, in the hope that they may one day be repatriated. It turns out a number of Iraqi plant varieties are in the IPK collection, and the SSE is trying to identify these and make them available to SSE members.

The home for the SSE gardens is Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa. One of the problems they have is keeping their varieties free from GM contamination. For example, Iowa is where much of the corn in the US is grown, and in summer the air is so full of pollen it is almost impossible for the SSE to isolate their crops from neighbouring farmers, many of which grow GM varieties. As part of their efforts to address this problem, they have purchased some tracts of land that extend into very remote valleys, this is their recent Twin Valleys project. The SSE now owns one of the largest pieces of contiguous land in the state of Iowa, nearly 1000 acres or about 400 hectares. As well as building gardens and orchards on this land, they are also developing it to provide access to SSE members who wish to go hiking and enjoy it’s natural beauty, as well as people who wish to explore the SSE gardens. An increasing number of their gardens are certified organic.

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Beyond GM Technology

There is an interesting article I came across here by Jeremy Rifkin in the Washington Post.

In recent years a lot of attention has been paid to GM technologies. At the same time GM crops are becoming less popular, in part because of public opposition and in part because the insects and weeds that GM crops are intended to compete with have been developing natural resistance to these technologies. There is also an increasing body of scientific evidence suggesting health, environmental and safety problems with GM technologies.

So what comes next? What do we do when it’s time to move beyond GM technology?

One likely contender is called Marker Assisted Selection (MAS). You know all of these genome projects we have been hearing about, the mouse, the human, insects, even H5N1 bird flu? So far it hasn’t had much meaning to us, because there haven’t been any real world applications. It turns out this technology has been developing slowly, and scientists are starting to be able to identify marker genes that are connected to specific traits.

If I am looking for the perfect tomato, and it doesn’t exist yet, I need to select two different tomatoes to cross pollinate and hope I get something closer to what I want. If however, I have a catalog of gene maps of different varieties of tomatoes and I can use this information to better select candidates for cross pollination, the process can go much faster. Indeed if it’s possible to do computer simulations and modelling, I may be able to predict in advance exactly what will happen if any given two tomatoes are crossed. This is like doing what people have been doing for centuries with their own plants, and what occurs in nature anyway, but using a computer to help it go faster. This sort of information will be easier to share via computer networks, and stores of ‘open source’ genetic information can be made available to everyone.

It turns out one of the greatest risks to being able to use this technology is GM technology as it is used now. It may prove very difficult to remove GM contamination from crops, and this contamination may make MAS much less effective.  What is also critical for this kind of technology is biodiversity, something current seed laws and farming policies are putting under pressure.

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Dutch Politics Quickly Explained

Since today is election day in Holland, and there is not a lot growing in the garden, I thought I would write about something completely non-garden related — Dutch politics.

As I write this, the latest news is on the BBC website here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6170444.stm

Elections in many countries result in one winner, usually one person or one political party. In Holland, this is possible, but doesn’t usually happen. In Holland seats in parliament are won in the general election, with the most seats going to parties which get the most votes. 76 seats are needed to form a government, and unless one party gets this many seats outright different parties will have to come together to form a coalition government. Parties in the government nominate members for Prime Minister and other cabinet positions.

This election there are 24 different parties on the ballot. Here are a few of the more important ones:

Christian Democrats (CDA): Center right party, currently the largest party in the government coalition. This party is led by Jan Peter Balkenende, who is the current Dutch Prime Minister. This party is currently leading in the polls, and is expected to be the party that wins the majority of seats in the election. This party gets most of it’s votes from religious communities. PM Balkenende is himself a Calvinist-Protestant.

Liberals (VVD): This is liberal in the classic, European and economic sense, not in the North American sense. This party is center right to right, and could perhaps be compared with the US Republicans or UK Tories. It is a member of the current ruling government coalition. It’s most famous member is the current Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk also known as ‘Iron Rita’, because of her uncompromising stance on immigration issues. Minister Verdonk is behind the recent proposal to ban the wearing of a burka in Holland. A dispute between her and the D66 party (see below), triggered the collapse of the current government. This party gets most of it’s votes from the country’s wealthy. This party is not doing well in the polls, and rarely gets more than a few percent of the vote in any election anyway.

1966 Democrats (D66): Formed in 1966 from some of the most radical politicians of the time, this party has become very mainstream. It’s sometimes hard to tell if they are center left or center right, in fact it can often be hard to tell where they stand on anything. They promote themselves as being ‘honest’, and they triggered the collapse of the Dutch government a few months ago over it’s handling of the issues surrounding PM Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This affair led to her resigning from the Dutch government and moving to the US. Most votes for D66 come from people who are tired of all the other political parties, and want something different. They are not doing well now in the polls, and rarely get more than a few percent of the vote, but occasionally do very well. They are liked by many other parties, and frequently find their way into government coalitions.

Labor (PvdA): This is the largest and best known center left party. It is doing well in the polls, and is expected to get the second highest number of votes behind CDA. A few months ago it was doing so well in the polls, it seemed certain to be the clear winner in this election. In the last round of local elections, it was the clear winner in most places. It’s very possible it will score last minute gains in popularity, and come out as the largest party in the elections. Reportedly 40% of Dutch voters are still undecided. This party gets most of it’s votes from the working class. It has taken a lot of criticism in recent years for being too quick to forget its ideals and too willing to give up its stand on issues in the name of political expediency. For this reason they are losing a lot of votes to SP (below) because many voters think SP will stand firmer on their ideals.

Socialist Party (SP): This left party gets most of it’s votes from the unemployed or the lower classes. They also do better when the economy is not doing so well. As a party they can be unpredictable, so most other political parties don’t like working with them. They are rarely considered a serious political party, but sometimes get a lot of votes. The polls show them doing well this election, and it’s possible PvdA will try to form a government with them, possibly together with Groenlinks (see below).

Green Left (Groenlinks): This party was formed many years ago from a number of extreme left wing parties, but in recent years has become more center left. They get a lot of their votes from younger and/or more environmentally oriented people. They rarely do well in national elections, but sometimes do well in local elections. They are not doing particularly well in the polls, but may get a few seats. It’s possible they may emerge as a minority partner in a government coalition.

Okay, so these are the parties, what’s likely to happen in the election? Probably either CDA or PvdA will get the most seats. Whoever gets the most seats will try first to form a coalition, and if they fail the next largest will try. If no government can be formed, there will be another round of elections.

If CDA gets the most seats, it may have a hard time finding a coalition partner. PvdA was excluded from this last government because CDA didn’t want to work with them, so a coalition now between these two parties while perhaps the most logical thing, might not be so easy. It is certain the VVD will want to be a coalition partner, but it may not get very many votes. Since D66 triggered the collapse of the current government, they may not be a desirable coalition partner. It all comes down to exactly how many seats CDA actually gets.

If PvdA gets the most votes, it will probably prefer to form a coalition with CDA, which is why people are voting for SP instead of PvdA in order to try to prevent this coalition. PvdA may also be able to form a coalition between the various other left parties, because polls show most people will vote for a left or center left party, so there should be enough seats amongst these parties to form a government. PvdA will not want to form a government from a lot of splinter parties, because it may not be a stable government. Any sort of an all left coalition will almost certainly include SP, and PvdA does not like SP very much.