09 Oct Fri 2009
Fluff Pieces On No-Till Farming
On September 21, 2009, the Seattle Times published an article titled, "Northwest Farmers Band Together to Market Their Own Flour" by Melissa Allison. Here is the link to this article http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2009909525_localflour21.html. As usual, the article was all about marketing the product and only peripherally mentions the actual farming. A glaring omission in the article became evident when it mentioned the no-till practices of Fred Fleming and the other growers involved in the Shepherds Grain marketing cooperative. No-till, as practiced in commodities agriculture, usually relies on massive amounts of Roundup and other herbicides to kill weeds. Yet the article hyped the "buy-local angle" and the purported healthy and nutritional aspects of the Shepherds Grain wheat for artisan bakers and retail consumers. In other words, these farmers are getting a premium price for their grain because of the marketing niche created by the real organic/local/sustainable farmers. In other words they have jumped on the bandwagon under false pretenses. If you go to this article, you can read the 32 comments posted before the comment period closed and you will notice that they are overwhelmingly suckered into thinking that Shepherds Grain wheat is somehow healthier and better for the local community. Nearly all the commenters failed to realize that Shepherds Grain wheat is still grown with herbicides and chemical fertilizers. I fault the article writer for this misperception.
For another journalist's slant on no-till wheat, check out Paul Roberts' article in Mother Jones for March 2, 2009, "Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008." Here is the link: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/02/spoiled-organic-and-local-so-2008. Roberts first four paragraphs discuss Fred Fleming and his use of Roundup and no-till practices for erosion control. Roberts then goes on to lambast the organic and local movements. The logical extension of his arguments is to agree with Monsanto, Cargill and others, who are now mounting extensive ad campaigns that we need MORE biotech solutions to feed the world, MORE agricultural subsidies for corporate agriculture, and MORE globalization. This is nonsense, of course, but Roberts is following in the path of many of the so-called peak oil "experts" who cannot grasp that they will have to get off their duffs, out from behind their computers, and actually work with their hands once they cannot get enough fossil fuels to continue with their profligate modern lifestyles - which includes writing books and getting fees on their lecture tours. Paul Roberts most famous book is The End of Oil (2005) and he also wrote The End of Food (2008). I have a few issues with Paul Roberts and I hope to address his Mother Jones' article specifically in my next blog. However, here are my comments to Melissa Allison in an email about her article. They may seem brutal to you, but I am not above calling someone on their intellectual dishonesty. [Disclaimer: ALL email is public property, including my own. This is just the reality of the cyberworld.]
Wheat Article Seattle Times 9-21-09
| From: | Walter Haugen (wvhaugen@hotmail.com) |
| Sent: | Mon 9/21/09 12:15 PM |
| To: | mallison@seattletimes.com |
1) Industrial farming with diesel-powered combines and planters is not sustainable. How do we measure sustainability? Energy use, whether by joules, BTU's, KWH's, or kilocalories, all of which are interchangeable. For example, last year I grew 2.2 million kilocalories of vegetables using 1.1 million kilocalories of human and fossil fuel inputs. This year, I project 5 million kilocalories from 1 million kilocalories. This is using tillers, hand labor and no tractors. I suspect the farmers in the Shepherds Grain group are stuck in the usual commodity trap of using 10 kilocalories of fossil fuel to produce 1 kilocalorie of food. As a general rule, anytime you use tractors, you are not sustainable. This includes almost all of the so-called organic/natural/sustainable farmers right here in Whatcom County. Even an old Ford 8N uses a tremendous amount of energy in use and in the embedded calories of the tractor's construction and maintenance. BTW, calories and kilocalories are usually used interchangeably in nutrition and food production, simply because nutritionists started using the terms interchangeably and now the "calories" listed on your bag of flour are actually kilocalories. Everyone just accepts the blip.
2) Wheat grown in the Palouse and shipped over to Seattle and Portland is not local. Many economists are now poking holes in locavore arguments by showing that produce shipped 1500 miles on a semi is actually more energy efficient than a pickup load of produce trucked down to Seattle from Bellingham, for instance. This argument is sound up to a definable point on your odometer, usually somewhere between 25-50 miles. Thus, if I take a load of produce to Bellingham (25 miles roundtrip) in my Mistubishi pickup, the energy load per pound of produce is small. However, if I take the same load to Seattle (200 miles roundtrip), the energy load is much larger. You can find calculations on my Local Harvest blog if you like. The link is: http://www.localharvest.org/blog/15945/entry/some_common_errors
3) No-till agriculture is just another tool of industrial agriculture. There is no alternative paradigm in use, such as "feed the soil rather than feed the plant." The farmers who practice it are certainly being good stewards in terms of erosion control, but so are a lot of industrial farmers. Typically, no-till wheat production uses more chemical fertilizer and more herbicides, although there may be efficiencies in the scale of the operation. The no-till methods, as referenced in your article, do not use organic practices. There are some organic no-till methods being researched by the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, but I noticed the word "organic" was conspicuously absent in your article. Here are some links for you about no-till.
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2009/jan09/jan12/No-tillisatoollikeadiskorap.cfm
http://pnw-winderosion.wsu.edu/Docs/Publications/07%20pubs/EsserFall.pdf
4) Since you are a business reporter, your slant was of course related to the modern business model, which requires marketing first and production second. However, letting these marketeers get the benefits of efforts I and countless other real local, sustainable farmers and soil stewards have achieved over the years is a bit over the top. These farmers are making money from "feel-good" efforts slanted towards the uninformed public, while still using industrial, fossil-fuel-intensive farming practices. You are in the position of aiding and abetting their scam. Your article is Panglossian and misleading.
Walter Haugen, F.A. Farm, Ferndale, www.fafarm.org
"Our carbon footprint is small and our produce is tasty."