Eat This Newsletter 178: Damned if you do and damned if you don’t
Hello
Things have been a bit topsy-turvy lately, so please accept a newsletter instead of a podcast episode this week. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Organic disasters
It’s a funny old world. In Sri Lanka, a government decree to turn the entire island into one big organic paradise has turned into a total disaster, while in Maine (and elsewhere in the US), farmers who worked hard to develop flourishing organic farms with precious little government support have seen their work ruined by synthetic chemicals lurking in the water.
Sri Lanka first. Modern Farmer reports that a presidential decree banning all agrochemicals in April 2021 has resulted, a year later, in “an economic and supply shortage crisis”. The story is a classic of unintended consequences: a third of the land simply wasn’t cultivated last year; yields of rice, in which the country was effectively self-sufficient, dropped 20%, resulting in 50% price hikes and a $450 million bill for imports and another $350 million in compensation and price subsidies; tea, main export and foreign-exchange earner, failed calamitously too.
It didn’t take long to lift the ban for tea, coconut and rubber, but by the time that happened, in November 2021, banks did not have the foreign exchange to allow importers to bring in the necessary synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. Everything is almost back to normal now, except for farmers who have seen their businesses devastated.
Could it have worked? Possibly so, had it been phased in, with more thought given to organic replacements for fertilisers and plant protection. Unfortunately, this botched effort has probably poisoned that well for the foreseeable future.
Which is a ghoulish segue to what’s happening in Maine, as reported in The Guardian. The story’s focus is Songbird Farm, converted over the past seven years into a thriving organic fruit and vegetable operation. Last December, however, the young couple who built Songbird up learned that their land was contaminated by PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. These comprise about 9,000 different compounds used to make products heat-, water- or stain-resistant. They have also been called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment, and they have been linked to all manner of human health problems.
The manufacturers that use PFAS often discharge waste into sewers, where PFAS can become incorporated in the sewage sludge that farmers, including organic farmers, spread on their land to increase fertility. That sludge – biosolids to the trade – is what brought the PFAS to Songbird and many other farms in Maine and throughout the US.
It is not at all clear how to solve the problem. There is probably no way to get rid of PFAS either before they get into the sludge or after it has been spread on the land. A ban on PFAS would anger the industries that currently use them, and will do nothing to help farmers with contaminated land. It really is a huge mess.
P.S As it happens, Sri Lanka hosts advanced research on turning human waste into fertiliser that is ideal for organic farmers, and while it doesn’t manufacture them, PFAS are in use in the country and are poorly regulated.
Sandwich fun
It is probably a false memory, but I swear that I was thrilled when the first Upper Crusts appeared on railway platforms in the UK. Not that I can remember when that was, only that a crusty baguette-ish loaf filled with agreeable cheese (sometimes, cheddar, sometimes brie) and slices of tomato that had not lain there long enough to soak the bread, was a thing of joy compared to previous offerings. Not suprisingly, then, I was attracted to a newsletter about The British Rail Sandwich, latest in a long series prompted by “the baroque and demented document that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches”.
Talia Lavin does a bang-up job of using the aforementioned sandwich to examine British culture, and not just railway culture, and not just British Rail, in some detail. I have not yet unwrapped any of the other offerings, but suspect I will in due course.
I should also note that Wikipedia sniffily claims that my fondly remembered Upper Crust baguette would not qualify for inclusion in the list were it not for the fact that they magnanimously choose to use an American definition of sandwich. Wikipedia claims (with citation, of course) that “in British English (and some other national English varieties), the definition of sandwich is narrower, requiring a sandwich to be made with bread sliced from a loaf, not other forms of bread such as rolls, buns, bagels or muffins.”
Tosh.
All grist to the patent-lawyers’ mill
By now I have linked to Patricia Bixler Bieber’s glorious themed compendia of talks about food and history so often that probably everyone who is interested has already subscribed. However, how can I possibly ignore the serendipity of her latest offering being about mills and flour when I can also share a flaccid British Rail sandwich? There’s a good section on the ding-dong battle between Joseph Ellicott and Oliver Evans, a fight that still thrills mill-lovers today.
Woodland grazing for sustainable livestock
You may have wondered why I seemed a bit lukewarm about the idea of rewilding last week. Probably because a wild area that can sustainably support large herbivores, like neo-aurochs, and even more so top predators like wolves or bobcats, needs to be incredibly large. I just don’t see it happening in 250 ha or even 2500 ha. Better to have less intensive arable agriculture alongside less intensive animals and truly wild areas elsewhere. That’s the basic principle behind an idea known in some quarters as silvopastoralism; livestock graze among trees, shrubs and grasses, adding animals to straightforward agro-forestry, which mixes trees and annual crops.
Vivian Arguelles Gonzalez, a veterinarian and PhD candidate at McGill University in Canada, is researching silvopastoralism in Mexico. She has written an extensive essay in The Conversation, pointing out that variants of the basic system offer not only sustainable livestock rearing, but also a trifecta of wins for climate change, deforestation and biodiversity loss.
A bigger picture
Last week’s link to Professor Bhaskar Vira’s lecture on food and sustainability, in which he pointed out how much local trees contribute to food security, brought forth an interesting response from a colleague who is an important figure in breeding wheat and other cereals. Maarten van Ginkel sent me a note that he is happy for me to share here.
For the 20+ years that I worked as a scientist in global wheat research targeting the Global South, I did not think much about trees. I was motivated by [Norman] Borlaug’s famous slide on forest area saved, if wheat yields can be increased, and focused on the latter. It was only when I moved into international agricultural research management, including several crops, livestock, agronomy, water management and policies in a systems-based way, that – inspired by contacts with the World Agroforestry Center – I started to see the trees in the agricultural landscape during my work travels, and appreciate their direct role in food security. I joked internally that I had not seen the trees for the wheat. I am sure I am not the only crop scientist that needs such awakening.
Although Borlaug’s sentiment is pretty well known, I have not been able to locate the famous slide; please let me know if you can. And if, like Dr van Ginkel, you have any comment on anything in Eat This Newsletter, don’t hesitate to send it as a reply.
Take care
Jeremy