Make a Difference

A basic rule of advertising is that it takes a lot of repetition before your message gets through to the general public. Lately it feels like we’re right on the verge of success—but that we still have a couple of big steps to go.

In April, Bill McKibben, speaking at Bowdoin College, spent a lot of time emphasizing the need for people to eat local foods. Around the country people have begun taking a “hundred mile challenge,” trying to eat most of their meals from food produced within a hundred-mile circle. In Maine, over 2,500 families are getting their food from 75 CSA farms this year. A group of Aroostook farmers is considering organic dairy production.

At the same time, the ideas that we think are important—such as eating locally produced, organic food—are still outside the major policy debates in Augusta and in Washington.

The Maine Legislature’s Taxation Committee retained the sales tax on vegetable seeds for home gardeners this session, largely because the committee doesn’t think the tax matters to the people who are buying the seeds. Senator Ethan Strimling of Portland, who co-chaired the Legislature’s Task Force on Homeland Security, didn’t seem to think that growing food is as important to Maine’s security as an improved radio communication system and having public health nurses scattered around the state.

None of the discussions about Dirigo Health and other medical insurance programs talk about the importance of eating fresh, local foods as a key ingredient in keeping Maine people healthy. Diet and health are linked, though, as insurers in some parts of the country are recognizing as they start to offer discounts to CSAs as a way to encourage better eating habits among their customers; and several large hospitals have started serving organic food to their patients.

The push toward a National Animal Identification System is driven by the idea that better tracking will make it easier to find animals that have been in contact with animals that have Mad Cow and other diseases. The push involves no understanding that many people in Maine, and elsewhere, still raise food for themselves and for their neighbors with very little participation in the national food marketing system. In Mount Vernon, Maine, two commercial dairies and one poultry operation represent the traditional commercial sector that would be recognized by any Animal ID program. However, at least 50 families in town have animals that would need to be registered under the proposed Animal ID programs. So far the USDA, in particular, has given no indication that it understands how unworkable its proposed program is. Instead of investing in improved livestock health, the USDA is setting up a tracking system that will divert farmers’ (and vets’) attention from the important piece—the health of the animals.

Food labeling fits the same model. Congressman Mike Michaud, who has been very good on trade issues, supported the National Food Uniformity Act, even though it would overrule a number of existing Maine laws that provide a higher level of food labeling than the FDA has established. The national Act promotes the interests of large processors, including some of the large users of Maine potatoes, not the interests of food consumers and small farmers.

All the values that MOFGA has been promoting since our beginning in 1971—a local, organic food system; less reliance on energy imported to the farm; a system where consumers and farmers share the same interest—are slowly becoming widely shared values. This is where you can make a difference. Keep speaking up. Let your state and federal legislators know that you value local farmers. Support farmers who are producing the foods you want, the way you want the foods to be grown. Grow a garden. Share food with a neighbor. Have fun!

Food Security

The other day on the radio I heard a peep or two about our precarious food system. Not to be confused with the chorus of peepers serenading us from the pond this evening, or the entertaining tree swallows flying overhead this afternoon, this was more reminiscent of the groan the old pickup makes when I load it down too heavily with fresh manure.

Our leaders have, oddly, choked out hardly a meaningful word about food security since 9-11. Tony Blair did extol the virtues of small herds and local slaughterhouses during the Hoof and Mouth epidemic a few years ago, but I don’t recall hearing that anything came of it. “Small scale” and “local” are not popular concepts on either side of the big lake. It’s no secret that large-scale global agriculture ensures the spread of insects and diseases--a sort of unintentional but unavoidable terrorism and a major challenge to our food security. We can thank the Europeans, for example, for the dreaded codling moth that annually visits our 7,000 acres of orchards here in New England.

Not just widgets are being shipped in from China these days. Anyone who grows apples here knows that. Every spring more of our Central Maine orchard land falls prey to poplar and gray birch, and every fall more of our fruit arrives from some faraway place. Now we have a global orchard industry. In fewer than 10 years, China will be growing 40% of the world’s apple trees. The same holds true for many of our food products. Ask the orange growers in Florida or the garlic growers in Gilroy.

In a recent Iowa State University study, "Checking the Food Odometer: Comparing Food Miles for Local versus Conventional Produce Sales to Iowa Institutions," researchers found that the average non-locally-grown produce in America currently travels 1500 miles to your table. With more and more of our food coming from distant lands, opportunities for the introduction of new insects and diseases abound–not to mention the environmental cost of all that gasoline burned in unnecessary transportation miles, or the potential for food tampering. Who’s checking the thousands of containers that enter the United States every day?

We now appear to be in a permanent state of war. History tells us that during such times, food has long been fair game. When Union troops marched into the Shenandoah Valley, General Grant was quoted as saying, "I want to make sure a crow going through this valley will need three days rations." The Union troops burned everything, first and foremost the barns and all the crops. What will happen when the oil runs out or when China doesn’t like us anymore, or the produce stops streaming in from Central and South America? How quickly can we de-pave paradise and replant gardens and orchards?

Food security is the canary in society’s coal mine. In the late 18th century, France had the best soils in Europe, yet the country had food riots. In 1862, there were food riots in Richmond, Virginia. In 1905, bread riots preceded the Russian revolution. Chicago saw violent milk strikes in 1933. Perhaps we could follow Marie Antoinette’s suggestion that we substitute cake when bread becomes too dear. But without wheat or sugar, even cake will be hard to find.

This new era of skyrocketing oil prices, global uncertainty and looming chaos would be the perfect moment to champion the Victory Garden, as Franklin Roosevelt did 60 years ago when over 20 million Americans planted gardens and grew 40% of our food in back yards, school playgrounds and vacant lots. Growing our own was considered a patriotic, national duty. A family of four can grow a year’s worth of vegetables in a garden about the size of a large golf green. What better way to protect a nation, promote local economies, and reduce dependence on foreign oil? We could challenge all citizens to plant a garden or raise their own meat or buy their food from a nearby farmer. When I buy corn from my neighbors up the road, I know it’s safe to serve it to my family and friends.

Rather than concocting expensive, invasive programs such as “Animal ID,” the state should be encouraging citizens to produce more of their own food. Not so long ago, in fact, nearly everyone in Maine lived on very small farms. For generations virtually all of our food was grown within a few miles of home. In 1880 there were 198 households in Palermo, where I live, and 184 of them had at least one cow, and only two had as many as six cows; 165 had at least one horse; 151 had small flocks of sheep; and 104 had at least one pig. Well over half grew wheat; practically all grew potatoes; most grew hay, beans and corn; and many grew oats. Virtually everyone in town had an apple orchard. Food wasn’t cheap back then. It required hard work to produce enough to support the family year round. But it was secure.

Building Local Organic Communities

Russell Libby’s message to spend $10 a week on Maine-grown or Maine-raised food is oft-repeated now. Become an ELF, advises an upbeat article in the Brunswick Times Record by Darreby Ambler.1 Ambler quotes Maine's Eat Local Foods (ELF) campaign, which reiterates Libby’s message that if people spend just $10 a week on food grown here in Maine, we'll pump as much as $100 million into Maine's economy, much of it into the hands of local family farmers.

Ambler relates a friend’s advice that “the single most important thing I could do for the Earth was to eat local food.” Doing so reduces the energy and environmental costs of transporting food; helps preserve local open space; keeps money in our communities; makes us more secure when the petroleum runs out; and more.

“…I think anyone who lives in Maine and buys Idaho potatoes is a traitor,” says Ambler. Sorry, Idaho. Eat your own potatoes…

What’s the next step? How about creating local financial incentives for local farmers to use organic methods? Woodbury County, Iowa, thanks largely to the county’s first economic development director and supportive county supervisors, offers tax rebates to farmers who diversify into four-year crop rotations and organic production. This is “the first county in the nation to enact local farm policies that treat agricultural land as wealth-generating rather than money-losing,” Kamyar Enshsayan from the University of Northern Iowa tells us. What are your county commissioners up to?

Food stores can help build local, organic communities. Under pressure from British consumers to cut organic food miles, the Sainsbury’s chain says it has a three-year plan to contribute to domestic organic conversion costs.2 The opposite seems to be happening in my Maine locale, where the chain stores are bringing in more and more generic-organic-faraway stuff (in addition to all of the non-organic); the smaller, locally-owned stores and farmers’ markets are the places carrying foods from farmers we know.

The federal government could do more, and less. What if, for example, the portion of its corn subsidy that gets converted to high fructose corn syrup were diverted to producing nutrient-dense, local, organic food instead? The government-funded “diabesity” problem would diminish at the same time that local growers and processors would flourish.3

Local, organic farms raising healthful, nutrient-dense foods aren’t good just for us but for the earth and all its organisms. Read, for example, “America’s Eating Disorder,” by Blair Golson.4 Golson interviews journalist Michael Pollan, who says that Joel Salatin’s polyface farm, with its elegant rotations of animals and crops, “belies this basic American idea that our relationship with nature is a zero sum game -- by which we all assume that for us to get what we want from nature, nature is diminished.” Instead, we can actually improve the land for future generations. Pollan concludes that we don’t have to be “this pest species in nature, that we really have a contribution to make”—and eating local, organic food is a big part of that contribution.

The Eat Well Guide5 noted in Golson’s article is a great site for finding local foods. It just needs more local farmers and marketers to post their goods there; and we all need more local, organic farmers, period. I can’t think of any other solution that solves so many problems.

1March 24, 2006; posted at www.eatmainefoods.org/2006/03.
2 “Consumers Drive Local Food Practices,” in Breaking News on Food Marketing and Retailing, April 20, 2006, www.foodanddrinkeurope.com/news/printNewsBis.asp?id=67190
3 See “I’m Hatin’ It,” by Tom Philpott in Grist, Feb. 22, 2006, www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/03/02/jordan
4 Truthdig, April 19, 2006, at www.alternet.org/envirohealth/35084/
5. www.eatwellguide.org/

--JE
Copyright 2006

Freedom to Farm in Montville

A spirit of freedom dwells in the hills of Montville, and if you live here for any amount of time, you get a strong sense of it. For over 200 years, the people who have lived here have valued self-reliance, independent thinking, and, above all, they have had a sense of community that is uncommon.

On March 25, 2006, the town of Montville voted at its annual town meeting to include policy in its Comprehensive Plan that will effectively ban cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the town. Residents in and outside of Montville should be pleased with this forward-thinking, notable resolution. A GMO-free status appeals to the ideal that all people should have equitable access to life-giving seed and should have the freedom to ensure the food they ingest is nutritious and true to its name.

For many, the most disturbing cases of GMOs involve seeds or other reproductive organs of plants that have been altered to include genetic information from non-plant species. For example, some corn varieties have been modified to include genes from bacteria. This practice is ethically disturbing. Is it conscionable to cross members of different kingdoms? In addition, cultivating GMOs may irreparably damage the local, regional or global environment.

Corporations patent GMOs and claim ownership over every cell of life that contains genetic information held under their patents.

People who oppose cultivation of GMOs do not oppose conventional farming but seek to defend the rights of all farmers to raise crops that can retain genetic integrity from generation to generation. They believe that ownership of the genetic information in seeds does not belong to a corporation, but is commonly owned by all of humanity. They respect farmers’ right to and dependence on the age-old practice of saving seed.

Throughout history we have benefited from natural selection that occurs in the wild among plants. Strong strains survive a variety of environmental conditions and threats from pests. Our ancestors took advantage of natural selection and saved seeds from plants with desirable traits—such as seed from ears of corn with especially large, sweet kernels.

Selection has been enhanced through traditional plant breeding, in which “parent” plants are crossed to achieve desirable characteristics in offspring. For example, if uniform size of plants eases mechanical harvesting, breeders might focus their efforts on developing a variety that achieves a consistent height at maturity.

One of the most unacceptable consequences of growing GMO crops is that their genetic information tends not to stay where the crop is planted. One may respect the basic right of farmers to grow crops they prefer on their land, yet, since farmers cannot control pollen drifting from their plants on the wind, their choice may impact areas far beyond their acreage. When pollen from a GMO crop drifts, it may cross with GMO-free varieties, compromising the authenticity of resulting seed. Some GMO pollen, when ingested by beneficial insects and pollinators, can kill them, potentially reducing growers’ seed yield.

One would be falsely led to believe that without GMOs, modern farmers will not be able to feed the world’s hungry people. I firmly believe that traditional plant breeding programs can preserve a range of genetic material and produce yields required to feed people worldwide. Rather than ensuring production, GMOs threaten food security and endanger food quality.

Corporations that intensively develop GMOs are chained to the almighty dollar and answer only to their stockholders—not to mothers and fathers wanting to feed their children quality food, and certainly not to the environment.

For some of us living in the free hills of Montville, legacy has little to do with money and corporate dividends. My great-grandfather was a dairy farmer here, and he opened the door to a five-generation farming legacy built on the assumption that the freedom to produce your own food is an essential right granted by God and subjected to Nature—not to a corporation claiming the right to life by possessing a patent on the life-force of the universe.

While science holds many answers to securing our future, I believe GMOs do not improve the quality of our lives. Conversely, these products of science reduce our ability to be self-reliant, to sustain our children and ourselves healthfully, and they endanger our ecosystem and our descendants’ ability to assure sustenance in times of need.

Diana George Chapin holds a Master’s Degree in Plant, Soil, and Environmental Science and, alongside her mother and father, operates The Heirloom Garden of Maine. (Photo: Diana Chapin)