Organic, Inc.

Sam Fromartz is a man who loves good food and he’s a man who loves to cook. His interest in food and cooking led him first to Whole Foods Market, and later to an only-real-farmers-selling-their-own-produce farmers’ market near his home in Washington D.C.. But Sam isn’t just a food lover. He’s also a journalist, covering business for publications such as Fortune Small Business, Inc. magazine, Business Week, and The New York Times. As his enthusiasm for local and organic foods grew, his journalistic curiosity did, too, and so the foodie-journalist went on a mission to look at the story behind the organic industry. He chronicles his journey of discovery in his first book, Organic, INC: Natural Foods and How They Grew.

“I am not an agrarian writing about the deep meaning of the land,” he says early in the book, “nor a gardener focused on the best organic methods, nor a nutritionist in pursuit of the ideal diet, nor an environmental advocate preoccupied with ecology. I am a consumer who began to buy organic food, and then wanted to understand why. I sought to parse the myths from the realities and meet the people who were feeding me.”

The rise of the organic industry is mythological. By the 1970s, farmers, environmentalists, consumer advocates, and alternative retailers were working together. At that time, those involved in organic production and distribution were considered fringe elements, Luddites, or just a bit strange, and the organic industry… well it couldn’t really be called an industry at all. Oh, how things have changed! According to the Organic Trade Association, organic sales are continuing their two-decade trend of double-digit growth: 20.9% for food products and 26% for non-food products (cosmetics, pet foods, flowers, fiber, etc.) in 2006. And though organics’ share of the overall food market in 2006 was still less than 3% of the total U.S. food budget, the growth shows no sign as stopping. Nearly two-thirds of consumers say they have purchased some organic products in the last year.

What’s driving organic growth? Not advertising, according to Sam: “Total U.S. sales of organic foods in 2003 amounted to only a third of the $29 billion that conventional food firms shelled out for advertising that year,” he says in the book. “Demand has arisen because an alternative to the status quo implicitly made sense.”

Now, thanks to its meteoric rise, organics have also captured the attention of corporate America. WalMart, Target, and the major grocery store chains, are moving into the organic arena with fierce determination and competition. Many are developing “private brand” organic products, such as Parent’s Choice Organic baby formulas at WalMart. Big-food has bought into, or bought out, most the founding organic processors and distributors. Through Sam’s journalistic lens, we see the unfolding, from fringe to mainstream, as well as organics’ challenges and successes. He traversed the continent and the organic culture, interviewing a wide range of people, from the pioneer farmers who pushed the nascent movement in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, to the large-scale commercial growers who are climbing on the train now, and from the early-adopting and idealistic entrepreneurs, many of whom have now turned into corporate movers and shakers, to the traditional corporate types who are suddenly recognizing that organic products are something average Americans are buying into.

Organics’ growth, however, has brought mixed blessings, and caused strife in the community that fostered it. “There were so many different players and forces that created organic foods and the organic movement,” Sam tells me. “They didn’t have the same point of view, and often had highly conflicting points of view about where the movement should go.

“Retailers don’t have the same interests as food manufactures, and farmers don’t have the same interests as retailers. And in organic movement, there were not only these interests, but also the environmental groups, the consumer groups, rural advocacy groups. These people came together, and in their conflicted way they created an industry, and in spite of their differences, their underlying values were the same. They all believe in the underlying values first articulated as far back as the 1920s – that healthy soil means healthy plants and animals and healthy food. But they differ on the specifics to achieve that.”

Today there are organic pioneers who can’t talk to each other, because they disagree about how the movement has grown and changed. The founders of Earthbound, Drew and Myra Goodman, started as gardeners on 2.5 acres. Their garden grew, and they transitioned to distributor/processors handling 26,000 acres worth of salad greens per year, morphing into a garden-empire that is one of the largest companies in the bagged lettuce industry. “Spring Mix” salad might have been Earthbound’s springboard, but now they are also marketing vegetables, ranging from beets to yams; fruits, both fresh and dried; cookies and granola; and juices.

For many people in the organic community, the Goodman’s empire, with its industrial twist, is an aberration of what organic was supposed to be. In the book, Sam writes about an Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference, where Elizabeth Henderson, of Peacework Organic Farm, a New York state CSA, gave a keynote address entitled “Who should own organic?”.

Sam writes, ‘We need to make a decision,’ she told the fifteen hundred people in the audience. ‘Are we an industry. Or are we a movement?’

Henderson is clearly in favor of the movement over the industry. She’s not the only one. Sam interviews dozens of farmers and advocates who disparage the industrialization of organic agriculture. Yet as he points out, the Goodmans and other early adopters who grew organic into an industry shared the passion for environmentally friendlier production, better treatment of workers, and getting organic food to regular people, regardless of where they lived, or how much money they made.

“The pioneers of the organic movement really believed, and still believe,” Sam told me. “Even among those who bitterly disagree, when you get down to core values they all talk about the importance of what they are doing for people and the planet. Whether farmers or processors, they are not just thinking about getting a paycheck. They are really trying to change things. There will be disagreements about how, but the principal is shared among them, and in contrast to other businesses I have written about, that passion stands out.

At one point in the book, Sam says, “Consumers don’t just taste food, they experience it.” I ask him how farmers who are trying to connect directly to consumers use that insight?

“It has got to start with taste. If the food doesn’t taste good, no matter how great your story is nobody is going to buy it, but that has been the appeal of farmers markets: people can get fresh products that taste good and that they just can’t get anywhere else.

“When I talk about experience,” he continues, “it is the whole spirit. You aren’t just shopping. A farmers’ market is quite festive, you run into people you know, and you get to know the farmers. Then, on another level, you learn the story behind the food. That deepens the value and the experience.”

In spite of this, Sam offers a caution: farmers’ markets aren’t for everyone. “Although selling direct is a big thing and farmers get a premium price,” he says, “I’ve found that there is an underside to that business that isn’t talked about. It works best if you have access to major markets [big metro areas, like Washington DC, New York, etc.] and it doesn’t work for farmers who grow fewer or more specialized crops. The most successful direct marketers grow 50, or 100, varieties of vegetables, which is difficult to do.”

Sam finds hope in things like coops and other efforts to create different types of market structures. The WalMarts and Targets, Safeways and Kroegers, will allow conventional farmers to “get in the game”, while the local food movement will continue to grow as consumers seek out these small-scale producers. “Just because you have organics in the supermarket,” he says as we talk, “doesn’t mean farmers’ markets are going to go away. Local channels are going to expand as more consumers become aware of organic food’s values. Conventional growers and wholesalers getting into organics will help fuel that.”

The Killing Season

It is the dead of winter, and here temperatures plod along below freezing for weeks straight, often dipping down to the 30-degrees-below-zero realm. The wind blows and the snow drifts and reforms drifts someplace else the next day. It eventually sets up like concrete, destroying equipment as people try to cope with it.

This is the killing season, too. The weather is deadly, killing animals (and sometimes, people as well). Our local paper has carried articles in the last couple of issues about the sheriff’s office removing all the animals from a horse rescue operation. My guess is that the people who ran this place were well-meaning and good-hearted people, but they were ill-prepared for what they took on. I expect that soon enough I’ll also hear of ranchers losing calves. The cows have had to struggle for their food for weeks and weeks, yet the modern agricultural paradigm has them calving. The coyotes eat, and often get blamed for the losses, yet they are simply taking advantage of a sad situation. Spring will eventually come, but so many critters won’t be here to see the grass green up. We do have the ability to make rationale decisions, and should do so for our animals sake.

The National Western Stock Show

There are cows and so much more, at Denver’s annual stock show

Not so long ago, Denver was considered a COW TOWN, but today the city’s economy is driven by high-tech industries and tourism, instead of farming and ranching. Yet each year in January, Denver gladly pays tribute to its heritage and the western agricultural tradition, as cowboys and cowgirls of all ages (most of whom have never been close to a cow) come from all over the world for the National Western Stock Show. This week I got to spend a couple of days there.

The National Western Stock Show—or simply, ‘the stock show’ as locals call it—got its start in 1906, when western cattleman sought a way to stimulate demand for their animals, hoping to compete with Chicago and other eastern markets.
Today’s stock show is not only the place where cattlemen bring beef animals for show and sale, but it’s also the place where ranchers and hobby farmers alike proudly show, and sometimes sell, animals ranging from bison to yaks. It’s also a place where urban and suburban visitors–over 600,000 of them a year–get the chance to pet a sheep; take in one of the top ProRodeo events in the country; enjoy an old West show reminiscent of Buffalo Bill’s; be awed by the beauty and grace of the competitive horse shows featuring world-class athletes; or view one of the major Western art shows of the year.

Improvement in highways during the 1960s and 70s changed the way cattle were shipped to market, with more moving by truck instead of rail, so the Denver Union Stockyard faded away as a shipping center, but the site is still home to the National Western Stock Show Complex, which includes the original Denver Union Stockyards building and the outdoor stockyards that once held animals until they boarded their train to the packing plant. The Complex is located just off Interstate 25 and Interstate 70—the same highways that spelled the end of a rail market.

The stock show is still an important place for ranchers and farmers to buy, sell, and trade livestock. National Western staff estimates that about $500,000 worth of private-treaty sales (or sales directly between farmers and ranchers) take place during the sixteen days of January when the show is happening, and then there are the nationally recognized, auction-type sales that keep the sale rings hopping, with all sales combined ringing in over $5.5 million dollars. I watched several hours of the Lowline cattle auction, with some animals bringing over $14,000.

If you are around Denver this week, stop by the stock show, and honor our agricultural past, and future.

Power to the People

I belong to several listservs for writers, including one for environmental writers. In a recent dialog, one of my fellow writers said something to the effect that solar and wind, and other alternative power supplies, can’t meet our needs. Why not?

The argument goes that alternative energy can’t possibly meet America’s ever-expanding energy needs because it costs too much. I think this is wrong. The playing field for alternative energy has never been even: big power has received decades of heavy subsidies in the form of tax breaks and direct payments dating back to the early decades of the 20th century. Let’s first change the equation so that alternative energy is subsidized to the same extent as coal and nuclear and natural gas, and then see how the economics work out.

There are also more pieces to the puzzle that don’t seem to get weighed into most discussions:

Before we write off diffuse power as impractical, ask the millions of Americans who have suffered from extended losses of electricity due to weather if they would like individual power supplies, and the answer will probably be a resounding YES. We have lived off the grid, using solar panels for electricity, for the last decade, and have never once lost power for even a minute, much less days and weeks. It seems to me there would be a significant dollar value to our economy if no American lost power, and thereby productivity, again.

The massive infrastructure of big power is far more vulnerable to interruptions from natural disasters or terrorist attacks than diffuse power, and those failures can reverberate through all our critical infrastructures. Testifying before Congress in 2003, Paul H. Gilbert, Chairman of the National Research Council’s Panel on Energy Facilities, Cities, and Fixed Infrastructure, said,

“Our basic infrastructure systems are a highly integrated, mutually dependent generally highly utilized set of infrastructure components that provide our communities and way of life with vitally needed services and support. These include the electric power and our food supply, water supply, waste disposal, natural gas, communications, transportation, petroleum products, shelter, employment, medical support and emergency services, and all our other basic needs. While all these elements are essential to our well being, only one has the unique impact if lost of causing all the others to either be seriously degraded or completely lost. And that, of course, is electric power. Our technically advanced society is literally hard wired to a firm reliable electric supply… Because our critical infrastructure is so completely integrated, with the power out for even a day or two, both food and water supply soon fail. Transportation systems would be at a standstill. Wastewater could not be pumped away and so would become a health problem. In time natural gas pressure would decline and some would loose gas altogether. Nights would be very dark and communications would be spotty or non-existent. Storage batteries would have been long gone from the stores if any stores were open. Work, jobs, employment, business and production would be stopped. Our economy would take a major hit. All in all our cities would not be very nice places to be. Some local power grids would get back up and so there would be islands of light in the darkness. Haves and have-nots would get involved. It would not be a very safe place to be either. Marshal law would likely follow along with emergency food and water supply relief. We would rally and find ways to get by while the system is being repaired. In time, the power will start to come back. Tentatively at first, with rolling blackouts and then with all it glory. Several weeks to months have passed, and the clean up would begin. This is one man’s opinion.”

But a scary opinion it is.

Alternative, diffuse power is cleaner and greener. It’s emissions of greenhouse gasses are far lower, and mercury emissions are nonexistent, thus reducing many negative impacts to health and the environment. What is the cost of lost IQ from mercury? What is the cost of greenhouse gasses? These need to be factored into discussions of the cost-effectiveness of diffuse power.

Summer comes to your mailbox

I always love opening my mailbox in these first days after the new year, because it is overflowing with seed and poultry catalogs. I get to curl up in front of the woodstove at night, creating an impossibly long wish list that always has to be pared back when it comes time to actually place my orders.

Today’s haul included a few of my favorites. Johnny’s Selected Seeds, now celebrating their 35th year was the first one that I laid my hands on. I have been getting their catalog almost since Johnny (Rob Johnston) started the company. Rob told me several years ago about his start.

“I was a 22 year old, working at an organic vegetable farm in New Hampshire, and I just got really fascinated by the seed business,” he said. “Where do seeds come from, how do they get there, how does the seed business work? It became kind of a hobby of mine over the next few months, learning about the seed business. I had some success in finding unique seeds that our farm needed, and that some of the farmers we trucked with needed, so that is how I started this company.”

Johnny’s has grown into a major independent seed company, and their catalog has grown to almost 200 pages. They carry over 230 organic varieties and products. Since they are out of Maine, I know their seeds will be cold hardy, which is important for me. Illustrated with color photos front to back, it puts me right in the garden mood.

Another catalog I enjoy that arrived today is John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds. Their catalog doesn’t contain photographs, but instead is adorned with artists’ renditions of the plants. The drawings give an old-timey feel to the catalog.

I met one of the folks who works for Berlin Seeds at a meeting last year, and asked him to add me to their mailing list. Berlin is run by Amish and Mennonite farm families, so they don’t have an Internet site, but they do send out a great catalog that includes not only seeds, plants, and gardening products, but also an amazing array of other practical products, including nonelectric kitchen gadgets and tools, clothing, and even composting toilets!

The first poultry catalog, this one from Murray McMurray was also in the box. McMurray’s started business in 1917, and they’re still going strong. They sell day old chicks, ducks, geese, turkeys, guineas, partridge, and other fowl, as well as abundant supplies for the novice or expert poultryman. And they have an exceptional selection of books. Their catalog combines color photos and artists’ drawings.

Well, the fire and the catalog pile are calling… and I know in the days to come the pile will just get bigger, so I better get perusing! But you can find these fine folks at: www.johnnyseeds.com, www.kitchengardenseeds.com, www.mcmurrayhatchery.com, or call Berlin seeds to request their catalog at 877-464-0892.

Food for Thought: Barbara Kingsolver and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Carol talked to Barbara Kingsolver about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Barbara Kingsolver grew up in in eastern Kentucky, surrounded by farms and pastures. Though her father was a rural physician, the family actively gardened and raised beef cattle, supplying much of their own food. “I grew up with a farming ethic,” she tells me, “and certain presumptions about where food comes from. I learned that it’s a basic responsibility for humans to participate in their own food supply chains, as much as possible, and in my part of the world that meant incorporating gardening into everyday life. I have carried that devotion into a lot of unlikely places, including pots on the balconies of rental apartments in many major cities of the world.”

Barbara headed west as a young woman, making her home in Tucson, Arizona. But in 1993, while spending two weeks as a visiting writer at Emory and Henry College in Virginia, she met her soon-to-be husband, Steven Hopp, a biology professor who lived on a farm nearby. They married the following year and over the next decade spent time in both places, raising gardens, keeping a small flock of chickens, participating in a goat dairy co-op, and raising their daughters, Camille and Lily. In 2004 they decided to leave Tucson behind and settle permanently on the Virginia farm.

Best known for her award-winning fiction, including The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible, and Prodigal Summer, Barbara was recognized in 2000 with the United States’ highest literary honor, the National Humanities Medal. In May of this year, she published her 12th book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (with Steven and Camille contributing). The book chronicles a year in the Kinsolver/Hopp household, during which they committed to growing a substantial portion of their own food, or buying most everything else from local family farmers near the Virginia farm where they live.

In explaining how the project came about, Barbara says, “We always intended to live year ‘round on this farm.” She pauses for a moment, gathering her thoughts, and then continues. “Everyone who grows food knows the satisfaction of sitting down to a meal, looking at everything on the plate and knowing exactly where it came from. We liked the idea of stepping up our family production of food. It just seemed very natural, once we started, to try and make that production as complete as possible.”

The project became a passion, and even today, Barbara says it has changed the family’s life: “Over the course of that year, it shifted from project-status to a lifestyle — it became the way we live. We wouldn’t really think of eating any other way, in part because we feel embedded in this community of food producers. If I went to the grocery store and bought food from China, or Peru, I would be turning my back on friends. And, besides, the food is so good you can’t go back.”

Choosing to grow your own and buy seasonally, locally produced food is extra work, “but it has just became the way we live,” she says. “Right now, in my kitchen, for example, I have twelve pounds of tomatillos, 16 pounds of green soybeans, I don’t know how many pounds of tomatoes and peppers — but every evening when my workday here at the desk ends, I go to the kitchen and start freezing or canning stuff. It is overwhelming now, but in the winter it is so nice.” [Note: This interview took place in late August, 2007.]

As any farmer knows, things don’t always work out just the way you plan, and not everything has worked out over the years in story-book-perfect fashion at the Kingsolver/Hopp farm. I ask what some of their biggest challenges have been: “It’s funny how this goes,” Barbara says. “The first year we had sheep we didn’t have to worm at all. Most of our neighbors were having problems with their sheep, and you know how you start to feel a little smug. I thought, we are managing really well, making sure they don’t stay on the same pasture too long, running the poultry behind them… Then last fall we brought a ram in from the neighbor to breed our ewes — that was our downfall: this spring we started having worm problems with a resistant strain. When I talked to the farmer from whom we got the ram, this is exactly the strain they have.

“It keeps you humble,” she says with a laugh.

******

In the book, Barbara says, “Something positive is also happening under the surface of our nation’s food preference paradigm. It could be called a movement. It includes gardeners who grow some of their own produce — a quarter of all U.S. households according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Just as importantly, it’s the city dwellers who roll their kids out of bed on Saturday mornings and head down to the farmers’ markets to pinch tomatoes and inhale the spicy-sweet melons.” I know she and Steven travelled the country on a twenty-city book tour when Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was released. I ask what kind of reception they received, and if the book’s reception has bolstered her idea of a food movement?

“Absolutely. The book’s readership has exceeded everyone’s expectations. What we found as we traveled, is a burgeoning interest in local foods in every region of the country. It is different in every part of the country, but from Dallas to Chicago and North Carolina to California, people are waking up to investing in the local food economy. They are also waking up to the pleasures of fresh food that tastes good.”

The pleasures. That’s a topic that comes up time and again in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. And as we talk, Barbara’s passion for food shines through. “Every year we make some new garden discovery. This year it was ground cherries,” she almost gushes. “We put in a row of ground cherries and those things are wonderful; they really aren’t like anything else! They look like a husked tomato, but they are a yellow berry that tastes, hmm, almost like pineapple… they’re sweet and tart, and make the most wonderful pies and jams. You can bake them into a cake. Lily says, ‘This is my new favorite food.’

“You sure can’t get them down at the Krogers,” she says with a laugh. “And that means the garden has to be at least one row bigger next year.”

A few facts from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Barbara Kingsolver’s husband, biology professor Steven Hopp, contributed sidebars in each chapter that focus on food issues. Here are just a handful of the points he makes in his sidebars…

If every American at just one “local meal” per week from a family farmer using sustainable practices, we’d save a million barrels of oil per week.

There are over 3,500 farmers’ markets in the US today.

Per acre profits decline as farm size grows.

Food preference surveys show that American consumers are willing to pay more for food grown locally on small family farms.

Currently 98% of chickens are produced by large corporations in confined animal feeding operations.

In 1948, when pesticides were introduced, farmers use about 50 million pounds of them and suffered a 7% loss of crops to pests; by 2000 farmers were using nearly a billion pounds of pesticides, and crop losses climbed to 13%.

The Animal, Vegetable, Miracle way to improve the local food economy

“In the grocery store, when the cashier asks if you found everything you were looking for, you could say, ‘Not really, I was looking for local produce.’

Note: This originally appeared in the January, 2008 issue of Hobby Farms Magazine (www.hobbyfarms.com).

The Rich Get Richer

Today, the US Senate shot down a provision that would have limited payments under subsidy programs to $250,000.00. I know a lot of farmers and ranchers, but none in my circle of acquaintances takes the treasury for that kind of money. So who does? Well, Riceland Industries of Stuttgart, Arkansas, received almost $16 million in 2005.  Wow. That’s a lot of money.

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit that tracks who gets farm subsidies, 66 percent of farmers “do not collect government payments, largely because they do not grow one of the five crops that account for over 90 percent of the payments in any given year (rice, wheat, corn, cotton and soybeans). Among subsidy recipients, ten percent collected 73 percent of all subsidies amounting to $120.5 billion over 11 years. The top 10 percent of recipients between 1995 and 2005, who numbered 320,442, averaged $34,190 each in annual payments over that period. The bottom 80 percent of the recipients (over 2.5 million of them) saw only $704 on average per year-48 times less than those at the top of the subsidy pyramid.”

Senators who voted against limiting subsidies to a max of $250,000 per recipient include:

Alexander (R-TN)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)

Martinez (R-FL)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Who Needs an Energy Bill?

Last week the US Senate voted on an energy bill. The summary of the bill reads, “An Act to move the United States toward greater energy independence and security, to increase the production of clean renewable fuels, to protect consumers, to increase the efficiency of products, buildings, and vehicles, to promote research on and deploy greenhouse gas capture and storage options, and to improve the energy performance of the Federal Government, and for other purposes.” With all the issues facing this nation, from Iraq to global warming and extinctions, this seems like a no brainer to receive support. Who called in chits to block the bill? Would you be surprise at major oil companies, Southeastern utilities and coal-mining firms that opposed the legislation? Probably not. According to an article in the Washington Post, “One of the companies most opposed to the measure was Southern Co., the holding company for Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi utilities. The firm spent $7.1 million on in-house lobbying efforts and an additional $1.1 million for outside lobbying firms on energy and environmental issues in the first half of this year.”

The bill would have raised $21 billion in revenue over 10 years by virute of ending tax breaks for the nation’s biggest oil companies. In turn, it would have given additional breaks and tax incentives for research and development and implementation of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources, and it would have required utilities to start investing in these alternative energy industries.

Energy farming can help America’s ag sector at the same time as it reduces our reliance on foreign oil. Wind farms are sprouting up around the country. Alternative fuels for energy production (can you say, switchgrass) give farmers and ranchers a way to reduce their cost of operations while providing new markets. Agricultural interests need to speak out: we don’t benefit when Exxon does.

Here’s the vote tally of Nay voters:
Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

A Chicken in Every Back Yard

Herbert Hoover may have run for the presidency on the platform of a chicken in every pot, but I’d vote for a chicken in every back yard. Chickens come in crazy feather-doos, wild colors, and a wide range of sizes and shapes. When you see them eyeing up some poor unsuspecting insect just before the kill, you are thrilled by the fact that they are not 14-feet tall and sizing you up for lunch. Dinosaurs would have been scary!

Chickens are actually easy to raise. A small flock of three to six hens can easily be kept in most back yards, and most cities and towns in America don’t outlaw small flocks (though most do outlaw keeping roosters because they are noisy). Hens provide eggs and entertainment, eat insects (you will have a tick-free yard if your hens can free-range in a fenced yard when you are home) and kitchen or garden waste. Their only requirements are shelter from the worst weather and predators, and some inexpensive feed and water.

There are two great books for anyone interested in raising chickens in a backyard setting:

Disappearing pollinators

This morning I read one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen about the colony collapse among bees. It wasn’t a scientific study nor a media article. It was a letter to the editor from reader Nevin Hawlman of Sunbury, Pennsylvania, to Mother Earth News. He is beekeeper, from a family of beekeepers, but his bees are gone. What’s scariest though, is that this man who has spent his life around bees says that he sees almost no wild pollinators either.

“Last week,” he writes, “I picked up a wheelbarrow full of dropped apples, and saw only two yellow jackets, no other bees or wasps. In previous years there would’ve been dozens of bees, wasps and hornets on the apples.”

In years past my chive plants would have been loaded with small native bees when they flowered during the summer. Larger bumble bees would busily gather nectar from the flowering current bushes around the house. We never had many yellow jackets, but there were always several dozen different types of bees and wasps around the garden. Not this year. I thought it was something to do with our weather, but Mr. Hawlman reporting the same phenomenon half a continent away… Scary.

We are far removed from chemical agriculture, and we are completely organic here. We haven’t used any type of pesticide in the 11+ years we’ve lived here. This was range land before we came—not the kind of place where anyone would have used chemicals prior to our arrival. Which all makes my own observation far more ominous.

After reading Hawlman’s letter I went searching to find out what scientists say about wild pollinators. In a report by the National Academy of Science, I read, “Long-term population trends for several wild bee species (notably bumble bees), and some butterflies, bats and hummingbirds are demonstrably downward. For most pollinator species, however, the paucity of long-term population data and the incomplete knowledge of even basic taxonomy and ecology make definitive assessment of status exceedingly difficult.”

Not particularly upbeat, especially in light of Hawlman’s and my own (admittedly anecdotal) observations. Losing our honeybees will have dire impacts on agriculture and farmers, but losing the native pollinators as well will be calamitous for all of us. Three quarters of all flowering plants rely on natural pollinators. We can’t possibly feed ourselves without these insects.

No one is sure exactly what the cause of the honeybee collapse is. Possibly just a disease cycle. But probably in some part due to human endeavors. Habitat loss may contribute. So too, genetically modified corn or pesticides. Whatever it is, we’d best figure it out and start taking care of the insects and other creatures that take care of us.