Snow

Snow- pillowy, enveloping, muffling, softening the world and making it new, making it another place, inviting exploration, transfiguring the ordinary and enticing the eye with plays of light and shadow, curves and edgings, hiding shadows and erasing the surface beneath. Or perhaps amplifying it with echoes in ways to make it mysterious and challenging to read. Negotiating snowy landscapes- new ways of locomotion, the potential of skis, snowshoes, and sleds. Some paths become easier, some much harder. And snow has myriad textures depending on wind, air and surface temperatures, intensity of sunlight, and history of the snowpack. Today the first heavy snowdump here at -11°C or so inspired me to dig out skis for the first time, rush to the ravine and ski down the [paved, multiuse] trail [the bike highway which denies winter to enable wheeled communte transport to downtown Edmonton] and set tracks in the openings in the valley of Mill Creek below. If they didn’t normally plow and sand this long grade I would ski it daily all winter long.
Skis are very practical ways to move over country under winter conditions. They enable the human user to take advantage of reduced friction and surface roughness to multiply the propulsive impulse of his or her muscles; the pointed poles provide traction where needed. Saami invented skis as a way to move through the taiga with their herds of reindeer.
In North America, a different solution to cross-country movement in a snow covered winter landscape was invented: the snowshoe. Traditional snowshoes are bent wooden frames netted with babiche (stretched rawhide) or other hide cordage, or sometimes apparently with plant material. These are affixed to the wearer’s feet to enable floatation, permitting the walker to avoid sinking down deeply in deep soft snows. I recall once a gruelling traverse across a snowy slope in the West Kootenays across deep soft snow coming back from a long cross country hike begun on the frozen weight-supporting spring crust of morning…..the return journey, though downhill, was exhausting, and very slow. We were down off the mountain close to midnight, having descended most of the way by starlight and feel. There are First Nations tales of the discovery of snowshoes. These enable winter hunting, moving from camp to camp, and greatly extend the range of human travellers in the Canadian forests. Not only do the shoes enable the human walkers to move over the snow, but they create trails over which dogs can pull toboggans, enabling the transportation of camping gear or other cargo, such as the meat harvested by hunters. In the winter in the North the swamps, lakes and rivers are converted into open trails and highways once they freeze sufficiently. Impassable alder thickets become open meadows, easy to traverse over top of the tangled stems.
Snowshoes come in many designs and webbing patterns, enabling travel over different types of snow conditions, in different terrain, and utilizing different locally available materials. My first encounter with Native made snowshoes was in the mid 1970s just after the birth of my daughter. One of the women who worked at the college where my then husband and I taught was the daughter of a skilled snowshoe maker. Percy made shoes for me and my husband out of local Rocky Mountain maple (Acer glabrum var. douglasii) and webbed them with caribou (Allen’s shoes) or deer (my shoes) babiche for the fine filling in the front and rear sections of the shoes, with heavier cow hide strips in the centre under the foot. The shoes had almost parallel sides, like the form of “Sherpa” snowshoes, and were decorated with red and black coloured woolen pom-poms. Do I have to have these, I asked Percy. Yes, he answered. He later commented that these coloured balls help to prevent snowblindness. He showed us a binding which allowed one to slip into the shoes without buckles. Some years later after I began ethnobotany research I was able to visit Percy in his home village of Kispiox and interviewed him about snowshoe making. I was permitted to photograph him doing fine filling.

Percy commented that the rounded toe of the distinctive Gitxsan design allows the toe of the shoe to ride high to avoid toeing in (and falling) while avoiding bruising the shin and knee, which pointed toe designs may do. The balance of Percy’s snowshoes is amazing; the shoes pivot to bring toe up, and short tail down at each step.

This photo (left) is one of my snowshoes showing the binding and my canvas boot. If snowshoe crampons are needed, as often in the mountainous terrain of the Gitxsan homeland, a short length of spruce stem with spike branches pointing down into the snow is lashed under the pivot point. Below is a shot of me and my daughter snowshoeing on our land in the late 1980s.

The neighbouring Witsuwit’en also make these round toed snowshoes, but more often make a traditional Dene style of pointed snowshoe. (see a pair photographed in Ron Sebastian's Hazelton Gallery in 2005 below)

I learned words for these types of snowshoes, and for the fine and coarse filling. I also learned about how to make emergency snowshoes of a hoop of red willow.The excellence of the local small maples for snowshoe making is reflected in the fact that the Witsuwit’en word for snowshoe, ‘ayh is also the name given to the maple. Maple shoes are strong and won’t break, but they are heavy. A tough small pine will make lighter snowshoes and the “fuzzing” of the softer wood will make them less prone to slipping, though they must be replaced more often.
Travelling to the Yukon in the early 1980s Allen and I encountered snowshoes with birch frames and quite a different webbing pattern. These were of the pointed toe overall shape, but the webbing under the foot was an open rectangular pattern, and the webbing was a distinctive cured caribou hide. We stopped in Teslin where the best snowshoes were said to come from and interviewed two snowshoe makers about how the snowshoes were made and the hide for webbing prepared. We ordered a pair of Teslin snowshoes to enable us to repay those we spoke with, and also to possess a pair of these remarkable shoes.
Some years later, in winter of 2000 I had the opportunity to see and to try Gwich'in snowshoes, intended for the fine powdery snows of the low Arctic taiga and alpine tundra. Wonderful snowshoes of large area, high upturn with rounded toes, and very fine filling. I found them remarkable to walk in, enabling good steady gate across or along the frozen river.

The photo of Gwich'in snowshoes was taken in the band office at Fort McPherson in December 1999.
In Edmonton, skis are usually more sensible than my snowshoes. I’ve only really used them two or three winters out of about 23. Now I see people wearing snowshoes that are high tech creations of completely different design and intent, like my cross-country skis, something for urban recreationists to use for outdoor exercise and fun.

Local Foods, Food Self-Sufficiency and Food Sovereignty

Thinking about local foods again. The global food system is complex and severs links with place at the same time as it offers a dizzying array of food products from all over the world, and also does in fact alleviate famine at the local level- as long as one has the foreign exchange to pay for food. This Saturday at our local Farmer's Market in Edmonton I came across a new vendor– a sheep's milk cheese dairy. Grass fed West Friesian sheep are pastured in eastern Alberta near Kitscoty, and amazing Camebert style cheese and Pecorino produced within 200 km of where I live has appeared.

I have recently been buying sheep and goat's milk cheese at our local Italian grocery; these products come from Greece, Holland and Spain.... wonderful to be able to support sustainable "niche" farming in Alberta now when I buy cheese. This morning with my cereal (not local Alberta made) I went to my freezer and pulled out a tub of frozen saskatoons which my friend and I harvested in the summer in Mill Creek Ravine, a local semi-natural area and park steps from my door. And poured organic Alberta milk on it (the yoghurt is from somewhere in Eastern Canada).

Of course I accompanied the whole thing with good strong espresso coffee made from locally dark roasted fair trade beans; the beans were a combination of Ethiopian and Peruvian fair trade coffees. Definitely not local. Possibly more socially and environmentally responsible than Folgers or Nabob. This summer we had quite a bit of rain, for semi-arid central Alberta. That meant that local urban yard fruit trees bore heavily. For the second time in a decade or so local apricots were abundant, so much so that it was literally impossible to process all of the fruit before it spoiled. My friend Rod was calling friends and acquaintances to come pick. I made amazing "gourmet" apricot preserves and butter from his fruit, small and flavourful hardy yellow and orange apricots.

Again, the sugar to make the preserves was not Alberta beet sugar, but was fair trade cane sugar from the tropics. Hopefully less damaging than standard sugar, with its horrific labour practices. I find that certain tropical products I am motivated to buy fair trade when possible (bananas, sugar, chocolate and coffee are the prime products).

(coffee cherries photographed in Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, Mexico in 1999)

unroasted coffee spread out for sale in the market in Huautla de Jiménez. People used to have garden plots in their yards. The old yards in this city were laid out with space for food gardens. Most of us have landscaped in the recent past, but tubs of tomatoes are found on decks, rhubarb plants lurk amongst the shrubs, and raspberry canes grow along garages or fence lines. I planted an apple and a sour cherry in my yard, and this year got the first substantial harvest of apples, enough to make two batches of apple butter and some pies (supplemented with fruit from a friend's abundant crop). My friend Riva, who learned the joys of berry picking on walks this summer, also converted a patch of quack-grass in her yard to a small garden, and was excited to harvest her own carrots.

She was proud to share, and pleased when I added some of her carrots to a bison stew at a recent potluck. That was local food par excellence - provided one grants the range of half a day's drive to market as "local". Bison from the Peace River country, onions,parsnips and parsley root from Camrose, carrots from Edmonton, herbs from my garden. There are areas of community garden in Edmonton, as well as in many other cities, and these also provide varying amounts of very local food to their participants. I am troubled, though, that eating local is no longer possible for many. Fast food is cheaper and ubiquitously available. Multinational businesses aggressively market their products in all corners of the globe. The Slow Food movement champions the distinctive qualities of the local, but many people cannot or choose not to afford these foods, which may cost more money and often cost more time, requiring life style commitment. So how much do these various efforts contribute to local food self-sufficiency? How much impact does our participation in local food production and marketing make? When I choose Fair Trade and organic exotic products, am I driving local prices up in the areas they are grown so that people may find it hard to access the foods that they grow? What about the pressure to grow luxury products like shade coffee or artisan chocolate? How do their ecological and human rights report cards come out?

A matter of temperature

Minus 25C- gray and starting to snow. Minus 28C yesterday, bright, sunny and cold. Walking in the ravine, with the the scintillating ice crystals on the snow surface and the sharp clear cold was wonderful. They say it will be plus two by the weekend. The temperature oscillations this winter are beyond my experience….drastic changes over 24 hours, or within two or three days. It makes me wonder how plants, animals, people, can adapt. This face of climate change is emerging as a key pattern… unpredictability of weather, and drastic shifts, spatial heterogeneity in the pattern of temperature and precipitation. Such shifts are stressors: winter thaws followed by hard freezes make it hard for caribou to paw through the snow to uncover the “reindeer moss” lichens they eat below. Moose find it difficult to walk through snowpacks with several crusts buried within them. Warm days in fall followed by sudden hard freezes can interfere with dormancy mechanisms in plants….similarly in the spring, where if plants break dormancy too soon and open their leaves, they may then be hit by frost, or a late season fall of wet snow can break limbs and inflict serious damage on trees. Organisms that can tolerate unpredictable change, that have wide amplitude in their habitat parameters, will survive. Anything that requires exactness and predictability in timing of change will be hard hit. Resilience is key… A Gwich’in friend once said, “Our Elders tell us never to plan. Because you never know what’s going to happen.” She then went on to comment ruefully that it was difficult with jobs to be flexible, and take advantage of opportunities… something I feel myself in a small way when it’s a perfect day to ski, but I have a meeting on the calendar that keeps me inside in a windowless room staring at projected powerpoints glaring on the screen. For travelling on the land, responding to the right combination of snow conditions and temperature is more important. As our structures become ever more bureaucratized and removed from the natural world, I worry about our ability to perceive and respond to change. Inertia is strong. The weather may change quickly, but our institutions change slowly, and are not well coupled to changes outside the socio-economic system.

Who eats Whom, Sustainability, and Environments

Top photo a selection of Mazatec special foods, Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, Mexico from 1999 Society of Ethnobiology field trip bottom photo Spring (Chinook) salmon hanging in the smokehouse, Moricetown, BC 1984 (AS Gottesfeld photo) Ultimately, trophic relations (who eats whom/what) are fundamental in ecology, and in human relationships to other organisms. Unless we are able to photosynthesize, we must consume something. Some human groups raise food plants and animals. Some gather, hunt or fish. For most peoples, taking the life of animals to use their flesh as sustenance require some kind of spiritual recognition (prayer, offering, thanks, appropriate practices) for the ultimate sacrifice of the life of one creature to sustain another. Indigenous North American cultures are noted for the elaboration of respectful practices in hunting and fishing. Mexican and Central American cultures (among many world-wide) create and plant milpa, and harvest crops, with ceremony and prayer. Contemporary urban Europeans and North Americans are largely insulated from these trophic relations, and pondering carefully the ethical aspects of where our food (both plant and animal) comes from. It comes, as it were, from the store.....and where before that is largely both invisible and out of mind. Some remnants of the cultural significance of the harvest remain in North American Thanksgiving holidays, which I’ve written about before in this blog. This weekend we celebrate the Canadian version, and I will roast a turkey, and make cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and apple pie from my own apples. Foodways are fundamental to cultures, deeply imbued with meaning. And the ultimate necessity to take in sufficient calories and nutrients, whatever the source(s) is literally vital, necessary to individual human survival. For those of us who have enough (or too much) to eat from the industrial global food system, the notion that one must derive one's food from the local environment is entirely alien. Today I was speaking with a colleague who lamented that in her rural area of northeastern British Columbia, it was impossible to find even fruits and vegetables from western Canada in the local supermarkets; most things come from the United States or South America. I am fortunate that, although I live in one of Canada’s larger cities, it has a large local food movement, and a number of farmer’s markets. In our highly seasonal environment, we are lucky that we have several Farmer’s Markets that run year round, enabling at least regional produce throughout the year (by regional I include Alberta and British Columbia). Really only the fruit comes from as far as southern British Columbia; most of the meat, poultry, grain, potatoes and root vegetables, and the greens and tomatoes come from a radius of a couple of hundred kilometres. Although the food supply is being increasingly globalized, for many people, especially those who live a subsistence lifestyle, the local environment must still supply almost all needs for food, medicines, and material culture. Many of these people live in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Being able to conceive of the fauna and flora of these exotic and distant environments in completely non-utilitarian terms (as objects of beauty, pure and unsullied spirits, as vulnerable others we must protect, etc.) is a luxury only possible because these places are not our home, and we are not dependent on these ecosystems for our personal survival. The construction of distant iconic rainforests as pristine reserves of biodiversity, and the lungs of the planet, while erasing the previous history and present reality of human occupance, in a way colonizes these spaces for "our" benefit and enjoyment, and denies the rights, needs and sovereignty of their human inhabitants. While conservation of biodiversity and avoidance of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change are vital global priorities, social justice and creation of sustainable solutions to global problems demand that we attend to the needs of local peoples while seeking to preserve global ecologies, and that we do not sweep aside local systems to serve “structural readjustment” and “debt servicing” of the nation states in which they dwell.

Spring and Oolachans

Apologies for the delay...this was actually written in March 0f 2010 and got lost as a draft. sigh. I got distracted trying to find photos. This one is an overview of the camp at Fishery Bay in spring 1980, showing the drying oolachans hanging on the racks.

Equinox time again...the spring equinox always seems to look forward, while the Fall perhaps look back. As the snows melt and anticipation of spring rises, the air is fresh and wet and full of smells and birdsong, I think about oolachan time. Oolachan, also spelled eulachon (Thalicthys pacificus) are anadromous smelt, rich in oils. In coastal Alaska the same fish are prized, and often termed “Hooligans”. Their arrival in the estuaries of rivers along the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska was widely anticipated and welcomed, as they brought an abundant source of fresh and rich food at a time in the year when stored foods were diminished and declining in quality, and hunting was extremely difficult due to deep wet soft snow. Many years ago my then husband and young daughter canoed to Fishery Bay on the Nass Estuary. The Nass (the name apparently means “belly” and comes from Tlingit) drew people from all the surrounding nations at the time of oolachan harvest in mid March to early April. Cedar dugout canoes made the trip from Haida Gwaii. Tsimshian and Nisga’a converged on their fish camps. Inland Gitksan and Witsuwit’en walked long trails known as “grease trails” through deep melting snows to the head of canoe navigation to come to harvest and trade for grease, the rendered oil that was (and is) the most prized product of the little fish. I was told they carried so much that each leg of the trail had to be walked three times to carry the goods to the coast and then back again with grease and fish. When Allen and Rose and I visited the fish camp of Charlie and Eunice Swanson when Rose was about 3, Eunice told us a story....she said that spring salmon and the oolachan had an argument about who was the saviour of the people....she laughed and said she forgot who won.

At the fish camp in Fishery bay the clouds of gulls wheel and fly in every direction, startled into the air by the slightest sound. They are attracted to the fish run, and to the fish meal left over after the grease is rendered. There is plenty of food for the birds. When we visited there some 30 years ago, people harvested some of these fat oolachan fed gulls along with the fish....I had never heard of anyone eating gulls before (nor since), but apparently they are quite palatable when they have been feeding on oolachan. People also hunted seals that came to follow the spawning oolachans.

The three pole frames for air-drying oolachans (digit) are conspicuous features of the oolachan camps. The long hand knotted trawls (long cone shaped nets) hung to dry after use are another conspicuous feature of the camps. These nets were formerly made of nettle fibre twine, and apparently took a year to make....no small amount of labour, given the need to harvest many mature tall nettle stalks and process them into fibre, spin the twine, and then knot the long fine net. It is fortunate that the rich soils fertilized by fish meal around the camp are excellent places to grow good quality nettles...and the investment in time to make the net would be repaid with tons of nutritious fish good for one’s own family use as fresh, dried, and smoked fish, and as fish oil. The fish and oil are valued and valuable for trading and for feasting (potlatching), where consumption and sharing of the grease adds stature to the Chief’s name and House.

Today walking in the ravine in Edmonton, the weather was fresh, and the melting snow and moist air reminded me of northwest BC in March. I found a tall fireweed stalk from last year, which had retted enough over the winter, and which was moist enough to work, and twisted a length of string while I walked. I used to do this with nettle stalks from by our barn when I lived in northwest BC. At the Museum of Civilization last month, I wasn’t able to see the nettle cord net they have in their collection, but I did see two spreading dogbane bana or large dipnets, and a couple of hanks of prepared fibre from dogbane(Apocynum androsimaefolium, related to Indian hemp) , called lekx in Gitksan, ready to twist into twine for netmaking. The dogbane cord in the nets was so well made and uniform I never would have believed it to be locally made cordage if the tag and accompanying fieldnotes hadn’t explicitly identified the material of the cord.

Seasonal knowledge and knowledge of seasonal cycles is vital in traditional life; being able to predict the timing of the spring high tides that will bring the life-giving oolachans was important business that could make a life or death difference to people’s ability to survive the year. Knowing when to start out from inland areas more than 100 kilometres away by trail was an exacting business. One way of coordinating this seasonal round of harvest and trade was by traditional phenological knowledge, such as the song of the robin which to Gitksan means that the steelhead (milit) will be moving in the rivers and can be caught. Another way is by the use of “calendrical sites” where the shift in location of the rising sun is tracked over a period of weeks at a known site to determine when it is time to depart the winter camp to go down river to meet the salmon (the “footprints” on the Sam Goozley territory, a Witsuwit’en clan territory are one such site). Talking to a colleague of mine at Tofino on Vancouver Island a couple of weeks ago I inquired about whether oolachan were on the coast. She replied that there were no longer oolachan runs into rivers on the west coast of Vancouver Island, but that the herring were in. The roe of spawning herring was another important seasonal resource on the coast, and I recall the crunchy salty taste of the roe with fondness.

Equinox...moving into the bright half of the year.

a Visit to the Salt Steppe in Hungary- ancient cultural landscape

The Salt Steppe (puszta) of the Hortobágy in Eastern Hungary is a wide grass dominated plain of low relief. The Tisza River meanders north and west to it. The local relief, though only a couple of meters, creates subtle and intricate gradients of moisture and salt, with the higher loess dominated areas relatively fertile and the depth to saline layers relatively large. Low lying places are dominated by marsh vegetation and standing water (reeds, bullrushes and the like). The intermediate elevations are alternately wet and dry, and hypersaline, with white salt crusts on the ground between sparse clumps of fescue. My friend and colleague Zsolt Molnár studies the herders’ knowledge of plant communities and environmental variation, matters of deep concern to them because of the subtleties of forage plant value, timing of availability to their herds, quantity and spatial distribution of forage through the year. This open area is also very rich in bird life, and tourists and nature lovers from throughout Europe come to visit this landscape. It has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is a National Park within Hungary. This ecosystem has also been home to humans for thousands of years, and the activities of humans have shaped, and continue to shape, the landscape. The activities of pastoralists have pervasive and often subtle effects on the landscapes that are grazed. The traditional knowledge of the behaviour and needs of the flocks and herds, and the nature and response of the vegetation and landscape, are part of what makes the continuing co-existence of people and landscape possible. Heritage breeds of animals, expecially the long horned Hungarian Gray cattle, and the incongruously curly-haired Mangalitza pigs are also conserved in the Hortobágy. It is apparent that herding has been going on in this landscape for a minimum of 1200 years, and likely for far longer. The Magyars were horse riding herding people who settled in the region about 900 AD, coming from Central Asia, and continuing pastoral traditions of that region. Likely herding peoples were in this landscape already before the Magyars settled. The features of the Hortobágy, then, that led to its preservation are born of a continuing relationship of people and land. The disturbance regime, if you will, that creates and maintains this landscape is one of human and animal activity, a pastoral regime, repeated in a sustainable way through time. This interaction is supported by tacit and embodied knowledge, learned through practice and close observation. Herders, Molnár finds, are not learning their trade and practices through formal education. Their knowledge, however, is often not perceived nor valued by formally trained managers, biologists, or park personel. Molnár’s research established that herders and biologists alike recognize the same groupings of grasses, forbs and marshy graminoid plants, and see the same drivers. Their actual classifications differed somewhat, because the herders’ primary concern is forage quality and distribution, where the botanists are more concerned about predicting the distribution of vascular plant species. Maintenance of the land requires the herders, and even the Park staff and managers of the UNESCO site have recognized that traditional herding activities are the best way to maintain the character of the landscape and vegetation. The herders we visited were herding cattle. Jóska is a young herder, bicultural, if you will, in that he was traditionally trained and also formally studied nature conservation. Although there has been a drought and grass growth is much shorter than normal, when we visited, it was pouring rain. Jóska, rain poncho clad, and his two dogs were at work, watching and moving the herd of 187 cows, calves and heifers that he manages for a consortium of 5 owners. His cattle are an all purpose mix, part Hungarian Grey, but also Simmenthal and some other types, resulting in a Hungarian Coloured variety dating from the 19th century. These cattle thrive here, and produce both meat and milk. The cattle are corralled at night next to Jóska’s herder’s hut. The bull is penned separately, and services cows and heifers who come in season each morning. He is fed hay and does not range. When they leave the corral, the cattle choose they way they will go, and Jóska and dogs follow. They move within a large area that is not fenced, and herder and dogs keep the herd together, and keep them moving and feeding, I am not sure if anyone has examined the effects on plant productivity and species mix of this strategy of continuous cropping and movement. I would anticipate that it would reduce overgrazing in specific localities, maintaining high productivity and forage growth. There are seasonal aspects to where they graze too. Some areas are productive in spring, but later barren and saline (pH 9 or 10!). The wetlands are likely grazed at the end of the season when more palatable and nutritious forage is gone. In the past herds were moved from the Hortobagy into the adjacent sand hill area in winter, but owing to changes in land tenure and the policy environment, this no longer occurs, and the herd remains in the Hortobágy to be fed on hay in the winter. There are fewer herds than in the past. Formerly, there were herds of horses, cattle, sheep and swine on the Hortobágy. Herders complain that some areas are becoming overgrown by willows and scrub, especially along the river channel banks, because there is not enough grazing. I found that the way of herding cattle differed significantly from what I have observed and briefly participated in North America. Cattle were not left to roam at will in a large fenced pasture or extensive range, but instead were actively herded and constantly attended during daily bouts of feeding on the pasture. The dogs are mixed breed and highly intelligent working dogs, closely attuned to the herder with whom they work and to the behaviour of the animals. The dogs respond to visual cues from the herder, the position of the staff indicating direction dogs are to go, or that they are to return to the herder. A staff raised to the left means that the dogs go to the left, and contain cattle movement on that side of the herd. The herders may use whistling or voice command, e.g. to send a dog or to restrain an eager dog that wants to engage in a herding movement against the judgement of the herder. But a good herder often directs his dogs with very little movements of hand and barely audible sound. The dogs know how to keep the herd together, turn the herd, and cut off strays or small groups that try to move away from the mass of cattle. Jóska sent both dogs for a large movement of the herd, and only one to contain just a few animals. I'm going to include some photos so you can get a sense of the place, the experience and the way of life.

Hungarian Gray Cattle, a heritage breed. Photo by Leslie Main Johnson

The herder Jóska with his dogs, accompanied by Viktor, Leslie, Anna, and Andras. Photo by Zsolt Molnár. References: Molnár, Zsolt. Forthcoming (2012). Classification of Pasture Habitats by Hungarian Herders in a Steppe Landscape (Hungary). Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (available on-line) Molnár, Zs. (2012). Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Herders on the Flora and Vegetation of the Hortobágy. Hortobágy Természetvédelmi Közalapítvány, Debrecen.

Food systems and Sustainability

Potato harvest at the Quechua village of Huito, showing local agrobiodiversity (photo Leslie Main Johnson 2008)
Two articles have caught my attention lately, telling a different story about traditional agriculture than I usually engage with as an ethnobiologist. One is an article about the potato in Smithsonian (Mann 2011), and the other is an article in the latest Scientific American about what will be needed to increase the world food supply without irrevocably destroying the environment to meet projected needs by 2050 (Foley 2011). The history of the potato and the innovative development of agroecological systems involving tubers and camelid livestock by Andean peoples goes well enough, and resonates with my own experiences visiting villages as part of the 2008 International Congress of Ethnobiology in the Cusco region of Peru. Mann's recounting of the frequency of famine due to grain crop failures in 15th through 18th century Europe was less familiar to me, and he goes on to detail how potato cultivation allowed an explosion of European population (which then gave surplus population for global imperial expansion). The story of the potato blight was familiar to me, though the fact that it came from Peru was not. I had elsewhere read of the rebuilding of potato varieties in Europe from a different subspecies of potato (Solanum tuberosum) in the southern Andes (Grun 1990). I had not realized the intimate connections of potato culture to both large scale monoculture agriculture, and to use of both fertilizers (initially guano also from Peru, later synthetic nitrogen compounds) and pesticides (the Colorado potato beetle apparently was nearly as devastating to potatoes as the blight, and farmers in desperation accidentally discovered that arsenic compounds would kill the beetles and thereby save the crop….beginning the escalating spiral of pesticide development and obsolescence that industrial agriculture is now caught in. No one mentioned whether the potatoes so produced were toxic…).

The other article dovetails, in a way, as it describes how the “green revolution”, based on intensive plant breeding, and high levels of inputs of pesticides and artificial fertilizers has allowed the global food supply to keep pace with population….but at substantial environmental cost. I recall learning that the neatly integrated system of rice paddy culture, which used blue green algae to fix nitrogen for the crops, and incidentally raised protein in the form of the carp that thrived in the flooded fields, and which controlled pests by staggering production and periods of rest, went out the window in Bali with the “green revolution”. When maximizing rice crop yield in reductionist fashion, the fields were too toxic for carp, the self fertilizing blue green algae no longer were permitted to maintain field fertility, and pest outbreaks accompanied monocultures of high yielding varieties of rice which all were planted and harvested in synchrony. Another cautionary tale from traditional agriculture detailed how traditional Zuni farming techniques could get crops with no inputs of irrigation or fertilizer (Muenchrath et al 2002). To be sure per field yields were low, but environmental costs and pollution were nil, and no irreplaceable water table draw-down occurred. Given the staggering impacts of industrial agriculture in terms of depletion of non-renewable water tables and water pollution from pesticides and fertilizers, the sensitive and nuanced Zuni example should not be ignored in the rush for "bigger and better".

So alarm bells began to ring in my mind as the Scientific American article talked of “reducing the yield gap” and inducing farmers in the poorest countries to grow higher yielding crops….which are often “genetically engineered”, patented, and costly…and usually are not locally adapted, require high levels of inputs, and may destabilize local diets and foodways. If for example, you clean weed fields, or worse use herbicides to accomplish this, you loose your nutritious spontaneous vegetation. These greens, such as amaranth, purslane and other plants, are highly nutritious, and can help balance local diet, and also can provide food sources while waiting for the maize or main crops to mature (Bye 1981; Baker 2006). In addition to their nutritional properties spontaneous vegetation and traditional crops can provide important medicines (Etkin 1986, 1994, 2006). In India and Nepal high use of spontaneous vegetation for food and to ensure nutritional adequacy has also been documented (Harisha R.P 2011, Daniggelis 2003) especially for the poor and for women and children. I am nervous always of top down expert solutions which do not take into account local needs, conditions and values. Too often the experts have destabilized systems that were fundamentally sound. In the industrial world we can learn from these systems, even if we can’t emulate them in total. I buy much of my food at the Strathcona Farmer’s Market in Edmonton, where the food is often organically produced and is largely grown by small holders.

We can do better than we have, and I believe that we should move cautiously and begin at home with sustainable options like organic farming, poly culture, reduced meat consumption, and an end to grain feeding of grazing animals. Multinational agricultural interests are not the place to begin. Potential human foods should NOT be grown for biofuels as Foley comments; more smart-cars and electric options would help here, as well as more bicycles. Much of the change needs to occur here in the rich populous “First World” where, shamefully, obesity is an expanding epidemic. We need to support more local food. We need to waste less. We also need the World Bank and other organizations to stop undermining local farming and traditional agriculture in other countries in the name of market rationality and debt reductions. I saw a documentary when I was visiting in Scotland 7 years ago detailing how African local poultry farmers were going under because structural readjustments were forcing Ghanians to buy Canadian factory chickens. Canadians shouldn’t even buy factory chickens, which are unhealthy and hard on the environment, and undermining local food self sufficiency by “structural adjustment” is immoral. I can’t remember the particulars, but viewing the show I was momentarily ashamed to be Canadian.

On the face of it REDD, championed by Foley, seems like a good idea. Who could oppose preserving the rainforest? However, the devil appears to be in the details. It designed to conserve tropical rainforest, but in South America is seen as yet another imperialist imposition from the rich First World impacting the already tenuous subsistence and autonomy of Amazonian indigenous peoples; quite a few anti-REDD posts have graced the International Society of Ethnobiology listserv. The gist of these critiques is that they are imposed as a globalized top-down solution with no regard for the realities or nuances of human co-existance with the rainforest, and threaten tenure, culture and livelihood of local peoples. Governments have used REDD as an excuse to attack and dispossess local people. While stopping Brazilian clearing of rainforest for industrial production of soyabeans for biofuels is a good idea, I would argue that prohibiting Indigenous people from a sensitive and sustainable swidden system supporting high crop diversity and enhancing regional landscape diversity is a bad idea, and also a violation of human rights.

Moving toward solutions: Foley critiques eating meat, and indeed meat production can be wasteful and environmentally damaging. In the North and in arid lands, however, eating meat makes sense despite the reduction of caloric yield as you go up trophic levels, because animals can turn inedible species into human food in regions which may have limited potential for intensive agriculture. I cannot eat red willow or grass, but moose and cows can. That sense goes out the window as soon as you jam the cows together in a feedlot and fatten them on grain. Cows are not made to eat grain, so become less healthy. Animal wastes become a significant pollution problem when they are concentrated in small areas. Small is beautiful; a few animals fertilize the pastures. Grass fed beef is healthier. We don’t need the fat in marbled meat unless we are working very hard… Moose, deer, elk and caribou are healthy, and require no cropland to support. Pasture raised cows, sheep and goats are also relatively low impact. In the cities, we could garden more as well, and adopt values of wasting less. There are no simple answers, but if those of us who are in danger of overeating and over-consuming were more moderate that would go a long way toward making more for all. If those of us who can afford it buy organic or sustainably produced food that would help as well.

Baker, Janelle Marie. 2006. “It’s Good for Many Things”: Wixárika (Huichol) Ethnoecology of Amaranth MA thesis, University of Alberta.

Bye, Robert A. Jr. 1981. Quelites- ethnoecology of edible greens- past, present and future. Journal of Ethnobiology 1(1):109-123.

Etkin, Nina (Ed.) 1986. Plants, Indigenous Medicine and Diet, Biobehavioural Approaches. Bedford Hills, NJ: Redgrave Publishing Company.

Etkin, Nina (Ed.) 1994. Eating on the Wild Side, the Pharmacologic, ecologic and social implications of using noncultigens. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Etkin, Nina. 2006. Edible medicines, an ethnopharmacology of food. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Daniggelis, Ephrosine. 2003. Women and “Wild” Foods: Nutrition and Household Security among Rai and Sherpa Forager-Farmers in Eastern Nepal. in Howard, Patricia, Ed. Women and Plants, Gender Relations in Biodiversity Management and Conservation. pp 83-97 London and New York: Zed Books.

Foley, Jonathan C. 2011. Sustainability- Can we Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?- A 5 step program could double food production by 2050 while greatly reducing environmental damage. Scientific American 305(5): 60-65.

Grun, P. 1990. The Evolution of Cultivated Potatoes. Economic Botany 44(3) suppl: pp 39-55.

Harisha, R.P. 2011. Livelihood and potential conservation roles of wild edible herbs. International Society of Ethnobiology Newsletter 2011 Number 2 www.ethnobiology.net

Mann, Charles C. 2011. The Eyes have it. Smithsonian 42(7):86.

Muenchrath, Deborah A., Maya Kuratomi, Jonathan A. Sandor, and Jeffry A. Homburg. Observational study of maize productions of Zuni farmers in semiarid New Mexico. Journal of Ethnobiology 22(1): 1-33.

Other resource: http://ipcca.info/parque-de-la-papa/about/ website of the Parque de la papa, Pisaq, Peru (the potato park)