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)

Of Lowbush Blueberries and Memory

Lowbush blueberry photo taken at Seeley Lake August 26, 2011


Lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium caespitosum) are sweet and delectable, with a tinge of apple to their flavour. They grow on low bushes (hence both the common and scientific names) some 15 cm (6 inches) in height, and the tiny berries are a bright blue, hiding under the waxy spoon shaped leaves. I have encountered these lovely berries rarely, as they are easily overgrown by bigger, faster growing species, but the memories of the places I have found and tasted them are sharp. The first time was now thirty years ago on a rocky alpine ridge just above timberline on the Seven Sisters in northwest British Columbia. I was hiking with my friend Joan while our husbands were canoeing on the Stikine River….we decided to take an overnight trip up the old Magnatron Mining Road to treat ourselves to something special. On the flank of the ridge above the trail in a rocky fell field were tiny blueberry bushes sheltering among the stones…. these minute bushes were not above 3 or 4 inches tall, but the berries were sweet. I remember my sense of wonder at their hardiness and tiny size. I remember our camp on a bench overlooking the Flint Creek basin below, our pup tent pitched in a flat grassy patch beside a tiny pond among the rocks, the northwest flank of Weeskinisht (Wii Ska’niist, the Big Mountain) with its small remnant glacier and snowfields above us.

My next real encounter came on another trip in the Coast Mountains, this time about 1985. My then husband and my daughter Rose and I hired a floatplane to take us in to a pair of lakes in the subalpine just below Telkwa Pass. We camped with another couple, Sheila and Peter, and the plane hauled our canoes in as well so we could explore the small lakes. Access to these with a canoe is impossible any other way, as the Burnie Lakes empty by way of the totally impassible Chlore Canyon, draining west into the Copper (Zymoetz) River near Terrace. The rugged glacier clad peaks of the Howson Range soar above the lakes, which are a milky blue with rock flour. Fishing for trout (camo-coloured a grey blue on their backs) was noteworthy, because you couldn’t see the trout until it was nearly landed, though the water looked clear enough. After a hike up to the snout of a glacier above the upper Burnie Lake, we moved camp to the second lake, walking by trail the short distance between the two. Here in the more sheltered woods along the little stream were mega-lowbush blueberry bushes, nearly a foot tall, and loaded with their delicious sweet berries.

In the years after those initial encounters, I began to study Gitksan and Witsuwit’en ethnobotany, and I learned that these little blue berries were ‘mii yehl in Gitxsanimax, and yintimï in Witsuwit’en. People used to manage the encroaching brush and grass by landscape burning, ensuring abundant and productive fruit. The area in the valley bottom between 2 Mile and Hagwilget was “just blue with berries” Alfred Joseph, Gisde We told me in 1987. People often used toothed berry pickers to strip the tiny fruit, and I could see why. But in the time I lived in the Skeena, lowbush blueberries were scarcely ever encountered. Berry patches became pastures, gravel pits, or were brushed over. Trails up the mountains to berry patches were overgrown or truncated by logging cuts. The little bushes linger in some places, but, in common with most blueberries and huckleberries, don’t fruit well when shaded.

On a visit home this past month, I was restless for places to walk. My friend Shari’s place is amazing and beautiful, nestled beside the Bulkley River between Hagwilget and Bulkley Canyons, with eagles perching across from her dining room window…. and bears walking casually through the yard in search of berries or heading down to the beach to fish. August is the “hyperphagous” stage when they are putting on fat for winter…. so walking the trails along the river seemed ill advised. However, driving down the Skeena toward Kitwanga, I decided to stop at Seeley Lake, a beautiful little lake right under the towering flank of Stekyoodin, known officially as Rocher de Boule. (Seeley Lake has its own stories, of the supernatural aquatic grizzly Medeek, and how it punished youth for failing to respect the beautiful fish of the lake- see Men of Medeek by Will Robinson as told by Walter Wright, Northern Sentinal Press, Kitimat 1962. The story is also briefly recounted on one of the Ksan 'Hand of History' signs at the shore of the lake.)

There is a little provincial park on the lakeshore with campsite and picnic area, and after enjoying the view down the valley, I noticed a sign for a hiking trail. Here on the rocky knoll by the lake and in a campground I was less likely to interrupt a foraging bear, so I set out on the trail…. and realized that one of the better stands of low bush blueberry I’d seen in years grew under the open tree canopy on the thin soil over the rock…. I began to scan for fruit, and picked a couple of small handfuls, reveling in their remarkable flavour. I mused that if I came back with a container, I could probably pick enough to take home. Because the knoll is so rocky, lusher brushy vegetation does not thrive, but the tough little blueberry bushes spread well.

A couple of days later I was back, enjoying the opportunity to walk and botanize again…and I remembered my yoghurt container to pick into. I realized that there was actually quite a lot of fruit in some areas, though it was hard to see as it was under the low leaf canopy for the most part. As I picked, I thought of my Elder friend Lavender, and her stories about picking lowbush blueberries some 65 years before. Lavender is from Fife in Scotland, and came to Kitwanga with her decorated Gitksan war hero husband Ray in 1945, a fiery and diminutive 18 year old. In 1945 the village was still quite traditional in many ways; the last longhouse was still standing, and the road had only been in for a year or two, though the rail line had run down the Skeena since the Great War. In summer of 1946 Lavender was recovering from the birth of her first child Naomi. She spent a lot of time sitting on the ground in the sunshine picking lowbush blueberries. Her mother-in-law Martha suggested she prepare the fruit in the traditional way and give it to the Elders. They were so delighted the Frog Chief adopted Lavender, and gave her a name that reflected her wonderful gift of berries. I think it was translated as something like “bringer of gifts from Heaven”. Lavender is 85 now, and stopping by her place in Kitwanga a couple of hours before I had just learned that she is in the clinic in Houston, frail and debilitated. I decided that I would give the berries to Lavender when I stopped down to see her later that afternoon, and redoubled my focus on picking.

We sat on her bed in the late afternoon sun, and Lavender lay back savouring the tiny berries one at a time, perhaps thinking back to happier times when she and her late husband were young and her little daughter was by her side. And I reluctantly headed East on the highway in the morning, returning to the city where I now live.

Fullness of summer-taste of the valley

The taste of the valley is in my mouth. The summer has been wet and buggy here in Edmonton, but this afternoon was bright and breezy, so I went down into the ravine for a walk. The saskatoons are still ripening- a few are wizened and past their prime, some fully ripe and others still tinted pink. The saskatoons (Amelanchier alnifolia) are not as sweet as some years, perhaps because of cooler weather and less sun- but they still refresh the mouth. Misaskwatomin….important food plant for the Cree of the Prairies, and ingredient in pemmican. The soapberries (Shepherdia canadensis), also known here on the prairies as “russet buffalo berry” were abundant, very juicy and sweet on a patch of bushes in a less fertile gravelly area [soapberries have the ability to fix nitrogen, so thrive in dry sandy or gravelly soils with little organic matter]. Not so appreciated on the prairies, the saponins in the eponymous soapberries enable making soapberry froth “Indian ice-cream” or, to the Gitksan in northwest British Columbia, yal is. I always eat a spoonful when passing the bushes. They are medicinal as well as food, said to be helpful for arthritis and for stomach problems. The medicinal dose is one spoonful. Soapberries are also high in vitamins A and C, and have relatively high calcium content, as well as sugars. So they are nutritious as well.

I’ve been reading Nina Etkin’s last book….it came out in 2010 after she passed away in 2009. It’s entitled Foods of Association, Biocultural Perspectives on Foods and Beverages that Mediate Sociability (University of Arizona Press). In it she explores the ways that foods are social actors, or facilitate association, and also (being Nina Etkin) looks at the nutritional and medicinal consequences of ingesting– or not ingesting– these foods. One of the chapters I found very rich was the consideration of street foods, not to be confused with (industrial franchised) fast foods. Etkin points out that street foods are not new, and that many of the world’s peoples have relied on street foods for a significant part of their nutrition for a long time. This is a sector of the informal economy, often the realm of women, or at least prepared cottage industry style by women in their homes. Although usually associated with urban areas, recent migrants and dislocations, Etkin demonstrates that the Hausa village she worked in in northern Nigeria also had street foods. She reminds us that, as a Muslim village, the women observe a form of purdah and do not venture out of their compounds to participate freely in public life, a gendered dimension of street foods I hadn’t thought of. Hence men, and children, more often have access to street foods than women (who usually prepare it). Neither can the women ordinarily sell the foods they produce– but their children can, sitting outside their mother’s compound. I was also fascinated to hear her analysis of the significant nutritional input that street foods could have for children….this is a polygynous society, so one man provides for several wives and for their children. His contributions are distributed evenly among the wives and their children. However, the women ordinarily contribute only to their own children….so women who have more cash (perhaps earned by selling street foods) can send their children to buy the (usually quite nutritious) street foods, thereby significantly enhancing the quantity and quality of food available to them. My connection to the book today was through considering my casual supplementation of my diet with a snack of local berries. I also spotted several large Agaricus specimens (perhaps A. augustus, the Prince) growing in the compacted and mowed meadow where people go to run their dogs. Several species of Agaricus, and also shaggy manes (Coprinus comatus) can be found in the meadow after summer rain, and I brought them home to cook up for dinner. Local foods….together with the mixed herb salad I picked earlier from my own back yard (Good King Henry, sorrel, lovage, chives, tarragon, a leaf of apple mint, and a handful of raspberries for the vinaigrette).

The Solstice is past and the light slowly diminishes, but the earth has not yet peaked in its warmth…the ancient Celts recognized this in their Sabbats which are halfway between the Equinoxes and Solstices. The Solstices and Equinoxes mark the shift of light regime, while the Sabbats track the seasonal shifts in the soil and air temperatures, vital for agriculture. There is inertia in the warming and cooling of the land. The feast of Lughnasadh or Lamas is coming up. In the Celtic cycle, as now understood in Neo-Pagan writing, this is the time of first harvest. In our northern latitude, fruits are ready, but the grain lags. In any case I think of it as the fullness of summer, and praise the ripening raspberries.

Sustainability as a way of life: visit to Larksong Farm, Ohio

Sustainability in the production of food is the basic level. Without that human life is not sustainable. I visited an Amish organic farm in Ohio about a month ago to learn about practicing sustainable agriculture. Since my childhood I had been aware of Amish, but had never really thought about their “quaint ways” as a template for sustainable livelihoods for the twenty-first century. Amish are nothing if not a model for resilience, for adaptability, for living in place. My trip to Larksong Farm was explicitly organized as a fieldtrip to learn about sustainable agriculture, part of the 2011 Annual Conference of the Society of Ethnobiology held this year in Columbus Ohio. The bus drove for an hour or more through little winding roads among small rounded hills and valleys. We began to see the signature black Amish carriages pulled by elegant black horses pulled up at corner stores and even gas stations (where the horses were being watered), triangular “slow” signs on the back of the buggy. We pulled into the drive of a modest farmstead where David Kline waited for us, stocky and good-natured bearded figure in his overalls and work shirt. We stood next to a large whitewashed barn with numerous cliff swallow nests under its eaves, a small log cabin with a lovely garden and a [largely disused] purple martin house on a post. [The birds comprise an important organic pest control system]. The farm, David told us, is 120 acres, seventy of it under cultivation by horse. His son in law was harrowing the hilly fields with a team of 12 Belgian horses- a skilled task. The farm is an organic dairy farm, selling its milk through the producer group “Organic Valley”, which has stricter standards for organic than any certification agency. The dairy herd is Jersey cows, and the pasture, hay and oats they are fed is produced on the farm itself. Oats and oat straw serve for the horses as well. Corn is also produced and fed to the livestock, and there is a vegetable garden for the family’s domestic use, along with several large fruit trees. David expounded on the effects that employing horses to work the land and for transportation has on the local landscape, as well as on the pace of life. In that part of Ohio, small towns thrive, because families need services available at distances practical to access by horse and buggy. The farm size and cultivated lands are also dictated by what is practical to work with a team of horses. As David commented, the horses dictate the pace of life; they need a midday break to eat and drink and so does the farmer. They don’t have lights to work into the night, so the farmer too rests in the evening. The remaining acreage at Larksong farm is woodlot, including what David describes as virgin white oak forest. The oak beams in the capacious barn were cut from the farm itself, and the oldest were dated by dendrochronology to the 1830’s. Another product of the woodlot is morrel mushrooms which fruit in early May; if he hadn’t had to meet with his visitors, David would have taken a walk in the woodlot to look for mushrooms. The manure from horses and cattle is spread to fertilize the land, and David asserted that mixing the manure with the carbon source of straw greatly reduced the potential for water pollution and enhanced the quality of the composted manure for fertilizer (that’s the way I used to manure my garden when I lived in Northern British Columbia, with chicken and rabbit manure mixed with straw and alfalfa hay).
While we stood talking, David’s son in law returned from harrowing and began to unhitch the team of 12 powerful and well-trained Belgians. They were hitched in four sets of three. Each trio stood patiently until its turn to be led to the barn for their food. David mused that horse harnesses used to be made from the hide of 4 year old bulls, which were thick and tough enough to withstand the stresses of pulling harrow or plow. Now modern commercial beef and leather production does not produce adequate natural leather for harness, and a synthetic product must be used….but there are risks; in the event of a tangle, the traces will not break, complicating freeing horses or people entangled in harness lines.

The dance of modern necessity, self-sufficiency, and the dictates of religious faith require creative problem solving, thought, and conscience. I noticed a small windmill pumping water, and a solar panel on an outbuilding. Perhaps more controversially, there was a small tractor, used not to work the land, but for its power take-out, which helped to move hay bales into the loft. A generator was used for brief periods to pump the milk into the storage container twice a day - and to charge cordless electric drills- though the house and buildings had no electricity, and the entire farm is “off-grid”.

We went into the comfortable farm building for the midday meal, prepared by David’s wife, his daughter, and a granddaughter visiting from New York state to help another daughter with her new baby and during her recovery from the birth. The front room had a big plate steel wood heater, reminiscent of a Canadian ‘Mamma Bear” Fisher stove though the make was different. When I lived on the land we too heated with such a stove in our front room. Natural gas run lamps, very much like the propane lamps I and friends had used “in the bush” for night-time illumination in cabins and little hand built houses lent a further air of familiarity to the scene. (The natural gas, David explained, came from a pipeline that ran down the road by the farm, and came from the local region). The water came from a well outside the kitchen door, where a hand pump provided potable water, though I think the running water in the bathroom might have come from the windmill driven pumped water; I didn’t ask.

The long table and benches accommodated our group and David, and we ate a lovely meal produced almost entirely on the farm itself: Yukon Gold potatoes and sour cream, salad, biscuits and butter, meat loaf with tomato sauce (the beef and the oatmeal both were produced on the farm), fruit crumble and “real” ice cream. The ice cream and the coffee and sugar were the only items I noted which definitely were NOT from the farm itself. Some sweetener was from the farm too: the large silver maple in front of the house yields abundant maple syrup.

Although the Amish community does not continue formal schooling beyond the eighth grade, clearly the family was well read and well informed; without television, people read in the evenings. And evidently write as well: our host David Kline is the author of several published books, most recently “Letters from Larksong Farm” published by Wooster Press (a local Ohio publisher) in 2010. My copy arrived in the mail yesterday, and I’m looking forward to learning more about the farm, its birds and animals, and the rhythms of life in eastern Ohio as I read David’s words.

In disturbing contrast, last week my partner and I were reading a feature article in the June issue of Scientific America about producing meat by tissue culture (p. 64 “Inside the Meat Lab” by Jeffrey Bartholet). Although conventional feedlot livestock culture is environmentally destructive, and turns animal flesh into an arguably unhealthy commodity, severing relations between people and what they eat, I can’t see that a high tech synthetic food will be less environmentally problematic, and potential for unforeseen health consequences are evident to me. More problematic I think is the artificiality of severing human kind from the web of life, of the plants and animals that sustain us on the earth, and of the social relations of food production and consumption. I would rather eat meatloaf and potatoes at Larksong Farm.