skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Photo courtesy: Dirk Becker via TreeHugger
Once again, bureaucratic red tape has made a mountain out of molehill. However, in this case, there isn't even a molehill. Misinterpretation and governmental tunnel vision have created an incident out of nothing. A Lantzville couple have brought 2.5 acres back to a more natural state of being, increased the wildlife in that area, and made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Their reward? Read on...it will amaze you.
A man in Lanztville, British Columbia is facing a battle with the local government after converting his 2.5 acre "residential" lot from a gravel pit into a thriving organic farm. His refusal to "cease all agricultural activity" could land him six months in jail.
Acting on a single complaint from a disgruntled neighbor the regional district sent a letter to Dirk Becker giving him 14 days to "remove the piles of soil and manure from the property." The quoted bylaw states that property owners will ensure their property doesn't become or remain "unsightly". Specifically this refers to "the accumulation of filth, discarded materials or rubbish, which includes unused or stripped automobiles, trucks, trailers, boats, vessels, machinery, mechanical or metal parts." Admittedly, it can be argued that, to some a manure pile could be considered "filth". But, considering how Becker regenerated his 2.5 acres (see photo above) this characterization is an insult.
Becker explains the character of his neighbourhood and the evolution of his piece of property in an article he wrote for Synergy Magazine.We have 2.5 acres in total, as do several of our neighbours. Three doors down our road are both cows and horses. As you can see from our photographs, the area we live in can hardly be considered "urban". However, we are using the term to describe our situation as our property is zoned "residential" and we are doing small scale, organic growing of fruits and vegetables on one acre. Lantzville is a small community (population 3,500) just north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Even the name, Lantzville, evokes images of small town camaraderie, walking down main street, basket in hand, to see the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. It's surprising that on such a quiet, rural, two-block long, dead-end road, with forest across the street and acreages on either side of us, that we would end up being ordered to stop such an essential activity as growing food for others because of a particular bylaw.
The previous owner used an excavator and dump truck to mine and scrape the land bare. He had a soil screener set up on the property, selling the soil, then sand, then gravel, which resulted in lowering the level of the property by about four feet. When Dirk assumed ownership, all that remained was gravel. There were no worms, no grasshoppers, no birds, no butterflies; essentially - no living creatures!
Since 1999, Dirk has made a tremendous effort to heal the land, beginning slowly - one wheelbarrow at a time. Nicole joined him at the end of 2006. It has been a gradual, organic process from planting a few fruit trees and having a small growing area, to expanding with more hand-made soil using wood chips from local tree companies and a small amount of horse manure from local, Lantzville stables. Now we have four kinds of bees, several types of dragonflies, numerous types of butterflies, frogs, toads, snakes, hundreds of birds and much more! We have dedicated our time to supporting hundreds of community members who have sought guidance on how to become more sustainable in their own lives; from educating people on how to support sustainable local initiatives (including 4H and homeschoolers), to teaching families how to grow their own food.
The original letter asking Becker to stop agricultural activities arrived in September, 2010. Since then, there has been a huge public outcry in support of his activities, including a decent showing of 75 people at a support rally last night. Despite this, the municipality has recently hired a law firm to pursue the matter. Becker received a couriered letter in early June, once again asking him to stop growing food or they will proceed with legal action against him. What this could amount to, according to Becker, is a judge ruling that he is "in contempt" of the district bylaw and he could be sentenced to six months in jail.
Via TreeHugger
This post is reprinted from TreeHugger. The post was written by Timothy LaSalle of the Rodale Institute. I haven't changed a word or a link. Please enjoy.
Editor's Note: This guest post is by Timothy J. LaSalle of the Rodale Institute.
What I am about to share with you works for large-scale farmers as well as gardeners anywhere in the world. Pests and diseases do not like healthy plants, so weak plants are more susceptible to their damage. Chemical inputs of synthetic fertilizers begin a downward cycle of weakened plants that need pesticides and fungicides to prop them up.
This is not a new idea, but the work of French research scientist, Francis Chaboussou. He outlined plant responses and increased pest susceptibility way back in the 1980s as part of his "Theory of Trophobiosis" in his book, Healthy Crops: A New Agricultural Revolution Jose Lutzenberger, former Minister for the Environment in Brazil, calls Chaboussou's work, "the most important discovery in agricultural chemistry since Liebig," the 19th century German chemist known as the "father of the fertilizer industry."
But the agro-chemical companies don't want you to know this. They want you to think you need their fossil fuel-based, toxic and unsustainable products to grow food. Agribusiness is even lobbying at Copenhagen to receive funding for these practices.
Here is how Choboussou explained why soluble fertilizers work to increase disease and pest vulnerability. The soluble fertilizers cause plant proteins to break down into amino acids and change the carbohydrate to sugar ratios, affecting the plant's metabolism. This change makes plants more vulnerable. Pests and disease rely on malfunctioning plants for nutrients that are not available in healthier plants. When imbalance occurs, circumstances are ripe for infestation and infection. Further, chemical fertilizers inhibit the growth of life-sustaining fungi in the soils, damaging the biological health of the soil as well as that of the plant.
Chemically-treated soils produce weaker plants that are more physiologically stressed, and these plants become more susceptible to disease and insects as well. There is, perhaps, little difference for humans. Just like plants, scientist Dr. Warren Porter at the University of Wisconsin has informed us that as a human becomes stressed and is fighting disease, he or she will break down blood proteins, which creates a similar environment to what the imbalanced plant experiences with the application of fertilizers.
When plants get nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) as manufactured soluble salts--instead of from biologically released nutrients from a healthy, biologically alive soil--the plant becomes dependent on chemical applications for nutrition, instead of the soil. Increased applications of herbicides (to kill weeds) over time only further weakens the plants, creating more opportunities for weed resistance and pest infestation. For humans, it's the same as our immune systems are weakened by eating over-processed and corn syrup/sugar-based diets.
What happened to eating whole foods that are toxin-free and possess actual nutrition, whole proteins, complex carbohydrates? No person in their right mind would try to survive solely on vitamin supplements—why do we think our food supply can? Crops, and humans, demand a complexity of nutrients for optimum wellness that can only come from biologically derived nutrients.
Choboussou's conclusions are not surprising to those in the biodynamic, organic, regenerative, or ecological farming communities, who have known this truth for decades. Yet these life-based farming practices are not a return to "antiquated" methods of the pre-Industrial era. They are, rather, post-modern agriculture at its finest and most promising, and it is time to adopt it.
We must all restore health to ourselves, our families, and the planet in all the ways open to us. We need to learn how to work with nature to replace that which we have destroyed by trying to trick and manipulate it. This is best done biodynamically, organically and eco-agriculturally—without synthetics—and with aggressive soil regeneration in mind.
Soil regeneration is not just farming without chemicals.
● It takes intensive, well-planned practices and knowledge of how soil life works,.
● It means looking at the kinds of grazing that maximizes root growth with a biodiverse plant mixture in grasslands or pastures.
● It means cover crops/green manures and composts to build soil organic matter at faster rates without losing productivity.
● It means keeping soil covered as much as possible for as many days of the year as possible.
Agrochemical companies, take notice. Copenhagen is happening, and there will be new appreciation for farming that really works. The information exists, you can not keep it obscured forever. New media is joining old media and word of mouth to help common sense prevail through networks of farmers, scientists, activists and citizens who have seen the truth growing in their fields and nourishing their communities.
We have a chance to advance organic agriculture methods as a solution to climate crisis in Copenhagen, certainly. More importantly we have a chance to seize this opportunity for restoring our planet and civilization as it needs to be through a deep and reverential respect for soil, its biology, and life-producing qualities.
Over a year ago, I wrote a blog called "Is Organic Food Really Worth More Money" in which I touched on the destruction synthetic fertilizers and modern-day farming methods are having on our ecosystems worldwide. Now, it is becoming more acceptable that farming return to the old methods in an effort to turn the tide of global warming.
Organic soils such as those seen here could sequester 40% of global carbon emissions. Image source: Rodale Institute stock.
The scales of sustainability are definitely tipping toward the decline. The recommended safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we ourselves have set is 350 ppm (parts per million); and, today our atmosphere has carbon dioxide levels of 386 ppm.
Ooops! Looks like we might have finally gone too far this time.
However, there may be an answer with a retro twist – organic farming. After all, before the invention of chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers, all farming was organic farming. There was no other choice.
According to a report by Tim J. LaSalle, Ph.D., CEO and Paul Hepperly, Ph.D., Director of Research and Fulbright Scholar of Rodale Institute “organic farming could pull forty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere -- each year”.
Soil samples managed organically, on left, and chemically, on right.
The US Senate’s climate bill has set a cap on the greenhouse gas emissions Americans and their businesses can emit; and, have started a rewards program for the people and organizations that reduce their impact on the climate system.
As the bill stands now farmers are not neither allowed carbon credits nor given a cap on the amount of greenhouse gases that they can emit. This makes no sense since farmers can store atmospheric carbon dioxide in their soil as soil organic carbon which is carbon-credit worthy; but, they should also have a cap on the amount of greenhouse gases they can emit since agriculture is responsible for 15% of the US yearly emissions.
So how does agriculture account for 15% of yearly emissions? These gases are mainly produced when chemical companies burn fossil fuels to produce synthetic fertilizers and when distribution companies fly food around the globe.
The agriculture of the future will have to be climate friendly if we want any hope of being able to feed the world's inhabitants. The future farmers will have to use organic, regenerative, local, and biodynamic techniques which don’t produce greenhouse gases at the rate they do now.
The futuristic techniques they intend to employ are advanced crop rotations, allowing fields to lay fallow, intercropping, soil amendments and animal grazing are simply the techniques employed by farmers of the past when we lived in much closer harmony with the land.
Healthier soils stand up to the variations of wet and dry weather better than the chemically-laden soils we have built and depend on today. This is one reason why farmers should get credits based on the measured amounts of carbon they manage to sequester in the soil. It will encourage farmers to work to increase soil carbon rather than be limited by a specific, restricting law.
Rewarding farmers for measured carbon sequestration will not only encourage them to use techniques that hold carbon in the soil; but, soil rich in carbon holds water better, resists erosion and builds increased resiliency for an uncertain climate. It is expected that organic farming could pull 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere -- each year.
Not surprisingly to me, healthy soils perform better and actually mean more food for a growing global population. Reducing or stopping climate change and increasing the world’s food supply works for me!
Via TreeHugger
Photo courtesy: Dirk Becker via TreeHugger
Posts
