by Ginger Harris, Chapter Conservation Chair
The recipe: Mix the growing interest in healthy lifestyles with the growing concerns about global climate change and species extinction, heat it up in the “Great Recession,” and throw in a dash of the Slow Foods movement, and you have the perfect conditions for urban agriculture.
An Urban Agriculture Committee (ne “Urban Gardening”) began in the Eastern Missouri Group last fall, intended as an ad hoc committee to co-host (with the St. Louis Green Building Council) an educational program on “Urban Agriculture & Edible Landscapes.”
Some members, wanting to make the committee permanent, are developing two niche programs:
- spreading know-how and equipment to preserve summer-grown food for year-round consumption, initially by developing solar food dehydrators for use by community gardeners;
- helping to create farmers markets supplied by local residents in neighborhoods that aren’t well-supplied by grocery stores with fresh fruits and vegetables, preferably organically grown.
One of our members, Leslie Lihou, is currently enrolled in a 9-month work-study program learning about soil structure, how to take soil samples for testing nutrients, techniques for growing organic food, preparing it for, and selling it at, 2 farmers markets. She does this along with about 30 other “farmie” apprentices at EarthDance farm in North St. Louis County, the oldest organic farm west of the Mississippi. “Class” includes 8 hours of field labor and 2 hours of information/field inspection sessions per week, plus trips to other organic farms, and presentations on individual plants by each apprentice. Leslie reports they practice some no-till farming, with minimal disturbance to soil structure. To avoid using pesticides, they cover rows of arugula, broccoli and cabbage with cloth that lets in light and water but provides a barrier to cabbage moths and flea beetles. EarthDance has an e-newsletter and website: http://www.earthdancefarms.org/Home_Page.html
Some other organizations in St. Louis that focus on creating a healthy food system:
Gateway Greening provides technical assistance to community gardens and operates its own organic farm on city land near downtown. Community gardens seem to raise property values in neighborhoods where they’re established, so the city has an incentive to provide land and promote local organic gardening. http://www.gatewaygreening.org/index.asp
St. Louis University’s Fresh Gatherings is a student-run cafeteria and training center for dietitians and chefs. The staff and students prepare meals with local produce including some from its own garden. The cafeteria uses recyclable and compostable utensils and plates. They offer on-site classes in food cultivation for some St. Louis city schools and lead a health education program in an inner-suburban school district raising vegetables and chickens.http://www.slu.edu/x19799.xml St. Louis’ Healthy Youth Partnership held a Food Summit in March as part of its effort to reduce childhood obesity. http://healthyyouthpartnership.org/site/.
One visiting speaker represented KC Healthy Kids, which works with Greater Kansas City’s Food Policy Coalition. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a state representative from Kansas City, Jason Holsman, introduced a bill to encourage urban farm cooperatives, vertical farming, and sustainable living communities in Missouri. It’s expected to pass with bi-partisan support.
– Why organic?
The growing market for locally-grown and healthful food includes an increasing demand for organically-grown food. Part of this market demand is the desire to avoid food grown with pesticides and herbicides. Unfortunately, up till now, genetically-engineered (GE) food has typically included pesticides inside all parts of the plant structure, and is typically sprayed with herbicides that the plants have been engineered to tolerate. European researchers have found toxicity in the livers and kidneys of rats fed Monsanto’s GE corn, but we don’t yet know the effects on humans of long-term consumption of these artificial forms of food, because the U.S. government conducts no independent testing of GE crops before they’re approved, and does little to track their consequences afterwards. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/13/AR2010041301509_5.html
We’re left to conjecture based on limited animal studies and experiences with other forms of artificial foods such as transfats.
While the market for organic food is increasing, organic farms are being threatened by contamination from GE crops. Organic and other non-GE farmers have had to go to court to protect their farms from contamination. Three such cases involve rice, alfalfa and sugar beets. Rice farmers in Arkansas won a $48 million settlement against Bayer Corp. Alfalfa farmers won a temporary moratorium on the planting of Monsanto’s GE alfalfa. The judge in the sugar beet case urged farmers not to plant Monsanto’s GE seeds, and is considering a permanent injunction.
http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/
feb09/battle_against_gm_sugar_beets.php
Even the GE farmers are finding the expected economic “benefits” of GE seeds to be elusive due to the spread of herbicide-resistant weeds, and the fact that prices of GE seeds have sky-rocketed, while their maximum yields have not increased.
– What about “bee colony collapse?
The 4-year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees is deepening. A new study shows U.S. honeybees' pollen and hives laden with pesticides, so pesticides are attracting scrutiny now, specifically crops "coated" with neonicotinoid pesticides. A study published March 19 in the scientific journal PLOS (Public Library of Science) found about 3 out of 5 pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide – a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant.
EPA officials say they’re aware and "very seriously concerned" about problems involving pesticides and bees, but have so far refused to act. So the Sierra Club is now targeting Congress. Sierran Laurel Hopwood says “we know that banning nicotine pesticides saved the bees in Italy, France, Slovenia and other places.” An urban St. Louis bee keeper told me she hasn’t experienced bee colony collapse. Possibly because her bees don’t feed on pesticide-treated seeds and farm crops?
– and how about hungry countries?
For the above reasons, we should oppose the Global Food Security Act (S.384), co-sponsored by Senators Casey and Lugar until the bill is made technology-neutral. S.384 is intended to reform foreign food aid programs, but section 202 of the bill mandates GE crops for this federal funding. It’s inappropriate for taxpayers’ money to be steered to just one highly controversial technology (GE crops) dominated by two or three companies. It will not solve world hunger. (USAID has spent millions of dollars on developing GE crops over the past two decades, with not one success story to show for all the expenditures.) And thus it undermines the good intentions behind the bill’s focus on hunger.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/16/v-fullstory/1582612/study-echoes-warnings-of-evolving.html