Organics ABC

I spent much of this past weekend at the COABC (Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia) annual conference which was conveniently held in Sidney and attracted some great speakers and lots of friendly farm folk, with tasty organic fare to fuel the conversation ("When was the last time you saw organic milk at a conference?" we marvelled in the coffee queue; "This would be a first" we agreed.)

The two headliners for my interests were Chris Thoreau, an urban farmer from Vancouver, speaking about how to make money from farming in cities, and Todd Kabaluk, a researcher from Agriculture Canada, speaking on current research into wireworm.

Thoreau's talk on Friday night promised to go beyond community gardens to explore some of the economic aspects of urban farming. An entrepreneurial bent is needed to make money from farming in the city, and Thoreau's aim is to prove it's a viable economic model for some, both by farming himself and by creating an urban farming network in Vancouver (where there are 19 urban farms - comparing poorly with the 700+ that now exist in Detroit .. but on the other hand, there is - let us be grateful - not the same degree of vacant lots in Vancouver)

City FarmBoy is believed to be the longest standing urban farmer in Vancouver, farming 14 backyards and one rooftop. Farmers on 57th work with residents of the George Pearson Centre providing food and involvment to people living in the facility. Thoreau's own business, My Urban Farm: small scale sunflower sprouts delivered by bicycle. SOLEfood has literally taken over a parking lot on East Hastings, with the help of a grant from the city to set up. They use raised beds to grow food to sell at high end restaurants, farmers market, recreation centres and so on, using the proceeds to hire people and train farmers.

And then there was a reception, featuring Crannog Ales and Summerhill wines.



Friday night nibbles included...



On Saturday, we had opening addresses from Dag Falck,



of Nature's Path, explaining the negative effect that "natural" food branding is having on certified organic food sales. He pointed out that only half a percent of all farmland in North America is under organic cultivation, which means that shortages of organic ingredients are imminent if the sector continues to grow. There is a widespread misunderstanding of the meaning of the term - led by marketing - that leads the public to pay a premium for goods made from agricultural products that are - and cost- exactly the same as conventional products. There is a white paper on the subject, from COTA (Canadian Organic Trade Association).

Alex Atamanenko



spoke about organic items topical in Ottawa, including Bill C-474. There is still a shred of hope around the topic, with a new campaign to support a moratorium on GM alfalfa in Canada. He addressed the worrying elements in CETA (Canada–European Union) trade negotiations that threaten seed-saving, and later confirmed what I'd heard about the first-time inclusion of municipal level obligations that could end institutional support for local foods (the proposed changes would "prohibit municipalities from using procurement for sustainable development purposes such as promoting food security by adopting “buy local” food practices"). So lobbying is suggested at the municipal as well as federal level.

I went on to a talk abou soil ecology and alternative mulches for organic blueberry production; basically a discussion about traditional use of sawdust vs composts. One of the reasons was to reduce the loss or injury of plants through plant-parasitic nematodes, which can more easily be kept in check by natural predators such as those found in soil enriched with organic matter.

Then there was a coffee break



and I skipped out to do some errands. After a vibrant lunch



there was a panel on Community Farms, land leasing and other ownership models with Jen Cody of Growing Opportunities; Nichola Walkden of The Land Conservancy; and Heather Pritchard of Farm Folk City Folk. There was a lot of discussion about the ins and outs of land tenure when working with a collective or community model; issues to do with zoning, neighbours and conditions of tenancy.



Then it was time to turn to the most evil insect of them all. Todd Kabaluk gave a thorough consideration to the life and times of the wireworm, mortal enemy to all potato growers and many others besides. As has been previously discussed here, it's a long-lived pest with a big hunger and an undiscriminating palate; laying waste to seedlings and rendering root vegetables unsaleable. There are no known enemies, though research is looking for these; and it's hard to kill since its whiskers allow it to whisk up and down in the soil, so you can't be sure exactly where it is. As Kabaluk wryly observed, "Wireworms are where you find them".

One place you will certainly find them is in forage crops/ set-aside/ any longer-term grass (like lawns and turf) where moisture levels are steady and there's lots of food in the roots of grasses. Till that under and you move the grass and the wireworm beneath the soil; when the grass decomposes, and the wireworm loses its food source, you have created a situation where the wireworm must seek a new food source. If you've planted a crop, expect visitors, as they're attracted to the CO2 emitted by the roots.

Although some useful research has been done - involving brown mustard as a rotation crop; use of aromatic oils like citronella; and use of a fungal biological control - there is no quick fix available yet. Kabaluk is focusing on better methods of monitoring their numbers (to reduce the need, e.g., for corn farmers to automatically treat seed with clothianidin even where wireworm numbers are not known). The best summary he could recommend of non-chemical treatments is this article from 2008.

Supper was good and featured lots of salmon from Sointula, as well as local cheese and charcuterie. And a very nice apple and berry crumble to finish.



A last look at the silent auction items



- I was outbid on everything (luckily) - and some jolly tunes from the Jugbandits, and that was it for me. I couldn't make it to the Sunday sessions as I had a bee talk to attend.

Cutting the mustard

Apparently August 7 is National Mustard Day, at least in Wisconsin. They were already celebrating it in the Napa Valley with a mustard festival earlier this year. You could get in on a six-course mustard dinner which sounded like a hot ticket.

And this is the moment in any mustard conversation when good Canadians quietly ask whether you know that 90% of all mustard seed used in Dijon mustard production in France is imported from Canada?

And if you are interested in the politics of mustard seed oil in India, you can read this piece by the wondrous Vandana Shiva, about another Monsanto dirty trick.

Other things to know about mustard include its use in crop rotation trials in Prince Edward Island, where the potato crops are being ravaged by wireworm. It seems to be of some value there, as brown mustard is high in chemicals called glucosinolates, which when they break down produce isothiocyanates, compounds which are actually toxic to wireworms.

On the darker side of the family, Garlic Mustard is a problem weed that's invading fields in BC and many other parts of North America, where it was introduced by settlers as a salad green and medicinal herb (it's said to be helpful internally against bronchitis, asthma and eczema, and externally for minor injuries, slow-healing skin problems, rheumatism and gout).

Lovely lavender and scourge of the wireworm

The Canadian Organic Growers, with chapters across the country, has a lively membership on Vancouver Island, which includes summer farm tours in the area. Yesterday's tour took us to Cobble Hill to see a lavender farm, and on to Cowichan Station to visit a CSA operation that offers grain and vegetables to subscribers.

We started at Damali Lavender Farm and B&B,



where they grow lavender



and grapes (Castel) - which they had been selling to winemakers but are now turning to premium wine vinegar.



There's a labyrinth there, used occasionally for workshops and special events



We had a good look at the lavender still,



which is used to extract essential oils. Not an inexpensive piece of equipment, they invested in it after making do with a smaller version their first couple of years, and it's reduced the workload hugely; from 16 eight hour days to one. It's portable (they have a trailer to allow them to move it) making it possible to lease it out to others who want to press essential oils from various sources such as fir.

After an aromatic turn round the gift shop - everything from essential oils and soaps to teas (chocolate mint and lavender being a popular one) and vinegars - we departed for our tour of Makaria Farm in Cowichan Station. It's a 10-acre fruit and vegetable farm, famed for its peas and strawberries, and also for its innovative grain CSA which it started last year, born of Brock and Heather's desire to learn about small-scale grain production. They'd come across a copy of Gene Logsdon's 1977 classic Small Scale Grain Raising:An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers and were inspired to experiment with its concepts, while bringing in local experts like Tom Henry to offer on-the-spot guidance; by bringing in 55 other families they were able to share the knowledge, and workload, more widely. This year the grain CSA is more streamlined, with participants coming in to help with the harvest instead of maintaining their own plots.

This year's plantings have been hugely damaged by pests above and below the soil. Wireworm has devasted the couple's plantings,



as have ravens which have been descending in droves to pull seedlings out of the soil -



they suspect in search of wireworms. This has led to a heavy investment in modern scarecrows - motion-sensitive water pumps -



and experiments in stringing off portions of the fields in an effort to keep the birds off.



Here's a field that they planted and worked and then forgot to turn the scarecrow back on for just one night: by the following morning this was the scene:



They have done some epic work in soil-blocking, using old bread crates to hold them,



and a fancy machine (designed to plant into plastic mulch, in fact) to plant them.



Their peas (climbers on one side of the net and bush on the other)



and strawberries are thriving.



The barley looks healthy



but the Red Fife wheat



has been stricken by rust.



But the beneficial insects seem happy and fruitful, at least.

Hali work party bugs

Last week's work party at Haliburton Farm was a bit of planting - some fingerling seed potatoes going surplus. The smartweed had taken over a lot of the prepared beds so we weeded as we went, and came upon a few hungry bystanders: cutworms,



slugs,



and a few (but only a few, fingers crossed) of those potato-loving wireworms, the bane of organic gardening.

Wandered around a bit afterwards, noting the onion flowers



and the proximity of strawberry time!



The farmhouse, with the rebuilt farmstand on the right.



Tried an experiment with dock (yellow dock, I think?)



whose roots were the size of carrots.



Kind of looked like carrots too, once cleaned up.



Rather pretty and very aromatic - a kind of perfumed soapy smell.



You can eat the leaves, and make a tea from the root which is said to be good for the liver and digestion. I'd had some burdock & dandelion root tea in Duncan at Seedy Saturday, but mine was fit, I'd say, for the plants, a kind of deluxe compost tea maybe. Very bitter roots; like a lot of plants, some parts are bitter and others edible at different times of the year.

Bees knees and labelling of GMO produce - it exists!

I was trying to regain a bit of poetry in my life by looking through a birds & bees-ish poetry collection that's been by my bed for a few weeks now. I belong to the Poetry Book Society which brings surprising books into my life every few months. This one was Weeds and Wild Flowers, by Alice Oswald, which is a beautiful-looking book as well as another skilled collection of poetry. See how she describes a snowdrop:

A pale and pining girl, head bowed, heart gnawed,
whose figure nods and shivers in a shawl
of fine white wool, has suddenly appeared
in the damp woods, as mild and mute as snowfall.
She may not last. She has no strength at all,
but stoops and shakes as if she'd stood all night
on one bare foot, confiding with the moonlight.
...

And as for bees, Seeds of Diversity Canada has a campaign going to try to find out just what pollinators we have out there. Pollination Canada has a downloadable kit to allow you to be a Pollinator Observer and take measure of the bees, beetles, birds and other critters out there helping plants to propagate. There's another organization, the North American Pollinators Protection Campaign, which also aims to help endangered pollinators.

Back to the battles with crawlies: Haliburton has been fighting wireworms



for a while. Lately these little devils have developed a technique of attacking cucumber seedlings by crawling up the stem and sucking the life out of them, so they end up keeling over like this:



The organic solution is to use potato bait, for a wireworm loves nothing so much as a nice feed of spud. So the farmers have been cutting potatoes into pieces, skewering them with wooden skewers, and burying them near the seedlings they're trying to protect. Every so often you just pull them up by the skewer and pick out any perpetrators for a swift dispatch. Results:



Meanwhile, I was thunderstruck - delightedly so - to learn that despite the best efforts of our legislators, there is in fact labelling of genetically modified foods in North American produce sections! Who knew? But if you check the Produce PLU - A User's Guide 2006, you will find the following right there on page 17:

Q How is organically grown produce coded on a PLU label?
A The number 9 is added to the front of the regular four digit PLU code. (e.g. an organically grown banana would be 94011.)

Q How is genetically engineered produce coded on a PLU label?
A The number 8 is added in front of the regular four digit PLU code. (e.g. a genetically engineered vine ripe tomato would be 84805.)

We owe this to the International Federation for Produce Standards, for establishing PLU (Price Look-Up) codes, which are 4- or 5-digit numbers primarily used on fresh produce items and typically appear on a small sticker applied to the individual piece of fresh produce (info from the Produce Marketing Association). My lingering question is how much GMO produce actually gets labelled in this way, when it's still something that is only, by law, done voluntarily in this country.