Day of Action to Stop GM Alfalfa

 

Next Tuesday, April 9th, there will be an action outside Peter Braid's office to help stop GM alfalfa from being released in Ontario. This is an incredibly important and urgent issue - companies may be trying to introduce Roundup Ready alfalfa to Ontario markets as soon as this spring. Since it is an insect-pollinated crop, the risk of contamination from GM to non-GM alfalfa is very high, and the effect on pollinator  health is yet unknown. Alfalfa is one of the main crops in hay and is used to feed many animals. It is also an important soil builder in organic crop rotations. The release of GM alfalfa would have a massive impact on organic farmers: because of cross-contamination, we may no longer be able to use alfalfa as feed or as a nitrogen-fixer in our cover crop rotations. The release would also increase herbicide use (alfalfa is not currently a herbicide-sprayed crop), and make it even more difficult for eaters to keep GM food out of their bodies. Once released, genetic material can't be taken back so we only get one chance at this.

Fertile Ground will be at the action on April 9th - please come out and join us! Children are oh so welcome. I would love to have a huge presence from the CSA and farm supporters to send a strong signal that this is an issue that matters to EVERYONE concerned about both personal and environmental health, not just farmers:


Tuesday April 9, 2013
12 noon to 1 pm
22 King St South, Uptown Waterloo.
Outside MP Peter Braid's constituency office.

Click here for more information about GM Alfalfa and these cross-Canada rallies. 

 

 Spread the word! Please post widely, and pass this around to friends, family, colleagues and anyone else you think may be interested!

Flyers and posters can be found here.  

I hope to see many of you out on the 9th!!

 

The Benefits of Local Food -watch your assumptions...

Here's an article that's been floating around online - I've seen it pop up on facebook a bunch. It's full of arguments I hear all the time about why local food is better. While I love the positive press for local food, there's some assumptions made in these arguments that I have to admit I find misleading. Here's a shortened version - the original article is here: 

Benefits of Local Food: 

By Erika Ichinose Pijai, MS, RD, CDN

• Local food travels fewer miles to land on your plate: The farther food travels, the more energy and gasoline must be used to get the food to your plate. Buying local will save energy costs and valuable non-renewable resources.
• Local food tastes better: Local food tastes better because it is fresher and has been grown or created with the consumer in mind.
• Local produce is more nutritious: The less time that passes between farm and table, the fewer nutrients fresh produce will lose.
• Local produce stays fresh longer: Since the produce was picked the day before, it will last longer in your refrigerator (if you can hold off from devouring it!).
• Local produce is safe: Local farmers are not anonymous and they take their responsibility to the consumer seriously. The risk for major E. coli outbreaks will be slim to none with locally-grown produce.
• Local food preserves genetic diversity: While conventional farming practices mono-cropping with limited plant varieties, smaller local farms often grow many different varieties and rotate their crops to provide a long harvest season with an array of different colors and flavors.
• Local produce benefits the environment and wildlife: Well-managed farms conserve fertile
  soil and clean water in our communities.
• Local food connects you to the land through the farmers who grow your food: Talking to the very farmer who grew and picked your food gives you insight into the relationship between the seasons, the land, and your food.

********

This all sounds wonderful. And much of it may often be true, but there are 2 things I feel a need to point out:

 1. This one is most important in my mind: 'local' and 'organic' are entirely different principles! Factory farms are local to somewhere. Local meat & produce is NOT necessarily safe. It doesn't necessarily benefit the environment and wildlife. It doesn't necessarily preserve genetic diversity. There's a better chance that locally-grown food is produced more sustainably since farms that sell locally tend to be smaller and smaller farms tend to have more careful & diverse growing practices....but that's quite the chain of mere tendencies. If you want sustainably-produced food, choosing "local" is not enough. Organic certification requires adherence to a range of sustainability standards. Organic is about production practices. Local is about distribution practices. They're both valuable and important. They're just not the same thing.

2. Local produce is not necessarily fresher, nor is it necessarily tastier or more nutritious. It has the capacity to be these things, since it doesn't have to travel. But a local farmer could choose to store meat, vegetables or fruit for weeks before distributing them. A local farmer may still be selling through a distributor who doesn't move the food quickly. A local farmer may also be growing for distant markets. Ask when it was harvested! If the seller doesn't know, they didn't grow it themselves.

The benefits of "local" (for you, the environment AND the farmer) sometimes break down when you aren't buying direct from a grower. Ask questions at the farmers market. Find out about growing practices. Find out just how far your "local" food travelled. If you're concerned about health - for the environment and for your body, choose local, small-scale AND organic.

The last point in the article above is key: talk to the farmer if you can - build a relationship you can trust. Buying local is incredibly valuable. Just don't be duped into assuming it's something it's not.

Valuing the Shares

Well, after worrying all season long about short-changing members due to difficult growing conditions, I finally sat down and calculated the exact value of produce members received. I'm surprised to discover that shares actually came in OVER value in the end!!

Small shareholders averaged $1 extra value/week
Regular shareholders averaged $3 extra/week

Turns out it pays to be a CSA member, even in a tough, droughty season. Maybe one of these years I'll learn to worry less...

Here are a few pics of our last CSA week of the season:

My fam at the farm

On Thanskgiving Monday, my sister and her family came with my parents to check out the farm. The chickens were of course the biggest hit (with the bees and the tractor following closely). Here's a few pics of my nephews helping with the chicken chores. They were oh so careful with the feed & eggs - no spills!

Taste Local Taste Fresh

The Fiddleheads/Fertile Ground table at Taste Local! Taste Fresh! last weekend. I spent it paddling in Algonquin Park and having close encounters with a couple of moose, but my intern Jackie and volunteer Jana represented. Thanks to Jackie for doin' up the lovely table decorations and Fiddleheads for the tasty beet salad!

The 1st of the Lasts

Hard to believe it’s September! This week a lot of you will have sent kids back to school. September is a transition time for us too at the farm. For me, it is the time when we are officially over the seasonal hump. It’s still busy, but every day is a wee bit less work than the day before.  The days are generally a bit cooler and more comfortable to work outside in, and we’re starting to watch the frost reports! Our next major transition comes with the frost, when many of our crops will be killed and we’ll switch to offering our fall selection of vegetables.

All the crops are now in the ground for the fall. The final things we planted included spinach, arugula, salad mix, mustards, cress, radishes and tatsoi. We’ve been busy with the 1^st of the lasts: the last thinning of the season (in the fall beets, turnips and daikon radish); the last BIG weeding in all the fall broccoli, kale and cabbages; the last sowing of seeds, and the last harvest of some summer crops like cucumbers and zucchini.

We spend a LOT of time harvesting this time of the year – we’re still in peak production right now. Fortunately, there are fewer other things that need doing, what with the planting finished, the weeds mostly beaten back, the irrigation lines in place in all the rows, and a lot of our finished crops already turned under and planted to cover crops. It feels good.

There are still 6 more weeks of CSA left, and plenty of fall storage harvest and field clean-up to finish after that, but there is something about September that brings some relief and a slightly more measured pace to our days in the field.

Enjoy the amazing variety of vegetables while it lasts! I know that I’ve been absolutely gorging myself on heirloom tomatoes 1000 ways, roasted eggplant, fresh cilantro and raw pole beans, knowing their season is far too short and I’ll be bemoaning their frosty demise all too soon… 

taste local! taste fresh!

This year's taste local! taste fresh! event is happening Sunday, Sept 16 at Riverside Meadows Park in St. Jacob's. It's a fundraiser for Foodlink - a great organization that helps support and promote local food in the Waterloo Region. More importantly, it's an awesome tasty afternoon!! Local farms are paired with local chefs to create amazing samples of fine, fresh food which you can nibble on off one-of-a-kind pottery plates listening to the strains of Juneyt's Gypsy Jazz in a lovely outdoor setting. We'll be paired with Fiddleheads this year.

Get your tickets by Aug 31 and they're only $75! Price increases after that.