Kicking the habit: why gardeners need to ditch their addiction to oil
John Walker, Landscape Juice
Here’s a question for you: what does the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (still underway as I write this*) have to do with your garden? And while you’re pondering that, try this: how much of the materials, equipment and gadgetry that make your kitchen gardening possible is made from a dark liquid just like that gushing from 1,500m (5,000ft) down on the ocean floor? Here’s a clue to get you started, whether you’re of an organic disposition or not: rather a lot.
The ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico has permeated the news for months, ever since the BP-run ‘ultra-deepwater semi-submersible oil rig’ Deepwater Horizon suffered a massive explosion in late April, and sank a few days later, with the loss of 11 lives. During the rig’s collapse, pipes carrying oil became damaged, and several subsequent attempts to plug or contain the leak failed. Since then, anywhere between 5,000 and 25,000 barrels (estimates vary) of crude oil a day have continued, after aeons of slumber, to spew from beneath the seabed.
Soon after the rig sank, slicks of dark liquid began to appear on the ocean surface and drift toward the ecologically fragile coastlines of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi in the southern USA. The worst man-made oil industry disaster in American history began to unfold and, by early June, was clearly visible from space.
I was in my greenhouse the day the Deepwater Horizon caught fire, sowing seeds in some much-used plastic pots and various plastic cell trays acquired over the years. The peat-free compost I was using was scooped from a plastic bag, and I wrote names and sowing dates on yellowing, much-scrubbed plastic labels. It was then that I asked myself the same two questions I’ve just asked you.
Here’s my answer to the second one: plant pots, multi-cell trays, some plug plant packaging, a fading plastic watering can, compost bins, a hosepipe, a hand sprayer, fruit cage netting, some fleece and insect mesh, a plant food container, some buckets, ground cover fabric, shade netting, garden twine, a couple of Tubtrugs, a water tank, a birdfeeder, some bed edging, some old polytunnel covering, a ‘patio bag’, and numerous empty compost bags. Granted, some are ‘recycled’ – the bed edging is made from plastic milk bottles and the water tank once contained orange juice – but all of the stuff on my list ultimately derives from one ancient substance:oil.
…Although growing organically spares us the worst shakes and shivers of addiction recovery, most of us will have some way to go before we’re completely tremor-free. But the rewards, both for ourselves and for the world around us, are priceless. By weaning ourselves off oil, we can, as gardeners, send a powerful signal down the supply chain that reduces demand for it (and for the other ‘fossil fuels’, coal and natural gas).
One of the main reasons for the spill in the Gulf of Mexico is that as demand for oil continues to rise, easily extractable oil supplies are getting harder to find, forcing oil companies to search for ever more hard-to-reach reserves. Piping oil from 5,000ft down on the sea floor is a dangerous, precarious business, with dire consequences when it goes wrong. Reducing demand for oil decreases the urgency to exploit increasingly risk-laden reserves.
By cutting back on all ‘new’ oil coming into our gardens, by using pots until they are on their last legs, by keeping fleece and insect mesh until it’s threadbare, by patching up leaky hoses, and by simply choosing oil-less stuff, we might just lessen the risk of another Deepwater Horizon. If this smacks of being a futile gesture when you look around your own plot, try multiplying it up by tens of millions of gardeners the world over; together, we would make a real difference.
(December 2010)
Leaked document shows EPA allowed bee-toxic pesticide despite own scientists’ red flags
Tom Philpott, Grist
It’s not just the State and Defense departments that are reeling this month from leaked documents. The Environmental Protection Agency now has some explaining to do, too. In place of dodgy dealings with foreign leaders, this case involves the German agrichemical giant Bayer; a pesticide with an unpronounceable name, clothianidin; and an insect species crucial to food production (as well as a food producer itself), the honeybee. And in lieu of a memo leaked to a globetrotting Australian, this one features a document delivered to a long-time Colorado beekeeper.
All of that, plus my favorite crop to fixate on: industrial corn, which blankets 88 million acres of farmland nationwide and produces a bounty of protein-rich pollen on which honeybees love to feast.
It’s The Agency Who Kicked the Beehive, as written by Jonathan Franzen!
(10 December 2010)
Saving our Soils and How the Old Peach Tree was Brought Back to Life
Niki Neave, Permaculture Research Institute of Australia
It’s not the soil itself — it’s the soil life that is the most important element. — Geoff Lawton, Permaculture Soils DVD
When the question came up, “How could permaculture be applied on a commercial scale successfully?” it led to an amazing opportunity to meet up with Nico Snyman, a long time South African farmer, and his wife Janie, who are using soil organisms to rehabilitate polluted and damaged soils.
Over the years Mr. Snyman has noticed a decrease in the number of farmers countrywide due to ever increasing input costs. He mentioned that farmers’ major expenses are the purchase of fertilizers and pesticides. (Many farmers of his time were brought up and taught at university to farm with these products.) His son, Peter, B.Sc Agric (Hons.), who is farming in Zambia, also noticed that after a number of years of the soil been treated with fertilizers, it had become infertile, infested with eelworm and nothing would grow at all.
They began to wonder if there was another way – a way which would require a new way of looking at farming in a new light. They realized that they would need to replace the biological component in the soil.
This eventually led Nico to (the now late) Dr Pieter Cloete, a D.Sc. (Agric) Biochemistry and eventually a medical doctor who discovered that when he took a soil sample from a totally undisturbed forest or wildlife area and was able to reproduce the organisms and introduce them into infertile, poor or damaged soils, that he started experiencing astonishing results…
…After this meeting and back at home again, I stayed in contact with Janie. She emailed this to me a few days later:
“The GROW AGRA bio-organisms and trials can restore depleted and eelworm infested lands within 2 years without chemicals. We think that Dr Pieter Cloete, posthumously, deserves the Nobel Prize in Agriculture and that his findings of anaerobic feeding of plants and trees and the establishment of such a bio-bank is in the same category like the findings of Albert Einstein. I am forwarding the pictures of our old peach tree which had, on top of its old age, Hyvar X contamination, which affected a huge Karee tree behind it to such an extent that it died completely.”
Janie told me that after 50 years of the old peach tree being presumed dead/dying it had started growing leaves again and then had all of a sudden started producing fruit. She put it down to the tree’s roots being able to reach and feed off the nearby compost heap (which had these soil organisms within it)…
(8 December 2010)
Want to See My ASPO Conference Talk About Food?
Sharon Astyk, Casuabon’s Book
It is claiming I don’t have permission to embed it (I do, actually), so you can see the video here.
I gave this talk back at the beginning of October, in my conference as a member of the ASPO-USA Board. This was only the second time that ASPO has had a significant talk about the connection between food and agriculture, so instead of trying to make claims about how this may play out, I focused on what we already know to be true. As you all probably know, I think that we’ve barely begun to plumb the depths of the connections between food and energy. I will say, if I ever give a talk there again, I’m asking not to go last! I was so tired I could barely see straight at the end of three days!
(9 December 2010)
Urban Farming, Community Resilience and the Death of the Motor Industry in Detroit (Video)
Sami Grover, treehugger
Yesterday I posted on ResilientCITY—the new project from the makers of the End of Suburbia. And earlier today I posted, from that same project, an interview with Rob Hopkins about the difference between sustainability and resilience, and why it matters. But another excerpt from the movie is just as revealing about what it really means to be truly resilient—and this one comes from a former teacher turned urban farmer who is making a living from the land on less than half-an-acre of abandoned inner city real estate.
(14 December 2010)
Planning Charitable Gifts to Your Favorite Food Organizations? Double Your Impact by Donating Dirty Stocks
Elizabeth Ü, Civil Eats
Investor beware: The mutual funds in which you invest may support companies that are working against your sustainable food system values. ‘Tis the season to dump those stocks, in the form of year-end donations to causes you do support. This is a strategy I learned last December, and it helped one of my favorite nonprofits attract an unexpected $20,000 gift.
…About this time last year, my friend Eric Becker at Clean Yield Asset Management outlined a win-win solution for me, and anyone else in a similar situation: donate the mutual funds (or stocks, as the case may be) themselves, rather than giving cash. These gifts are as tax deductible as cash donations, and because I don’t have to pay capital gains taxes, I can give more. The nonprofits can immediately sell the offending stocks or funds, reaping their current value without incurring any penalties. Voila, we no longer own any of Nestlé’s stock.
…Last year, I called La Cocina, a nonprofit in San Francisco that helps low-income women, primarily immigrants or women from communities of color, break out of the cycle of poverty by forming their own sustainable, food-based businesses. It turns out they weren’t set up to accept stock or fund donations, but they moved quickly to make it happen. A week later, they sent an email to their entire list announcing this new way to make donations, with a hint that this might be a good time to make changes to an investment portfolio to bring it more in line with La Cocina’s values.
About the Author
(14 December 2010)
Added Elizabeth’s byline at her request. -KS
