Category: Politics of food justice

Book Review: Saved by Seeds, Embracing Diversity, Adaptation, and Resilience, by Chris Smith.

Front cover of Saved by Seeds by Chris Smith

Book Review: Saved by Seeds, Embracing Diversity, Adaptation, and Resilience.  Chris Smith. Chelsea Green.

“Seeds compress future potential and deep past into miniscule abundant objects” (Dr Courtney Fullilove.)

I always enjoy Chris Smith’s writing and speaking, ever since his first book The Whole Okra. This book includes his love affair with okra, as well as beans, tomatoes, and sorghum seed growing. Also here are six chapters exploring aspects of seed saving, seed sovereignty, preserving purity, encouraging diversity, adaptation and resilience and seed selection. For those drawn in to the seed saving community, the appendices provide details hard to find elsewhere.

Chris’s home in Asheville, NC is a 5-hour drive from the nearest coast and was thought to be a climate haven. A place that would be less impacted by climate change than many other places in the US.  But on 15 September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene moved over Asheville and by some measures caused a 30,000-year flood. Many lives were lost as entire towns were swept away. Felled trees devastated the energy infrastructure, flood waters and landslides ruined water distribution, and cell services were unavailable for weeks in some areas.

We cannot avoid climate change and have reached the limits of adaptation to it. We urgently need to work on quick recovery and mitigation.

Utopian Seed Project logo

In 2018 Chris founded the Utopian Seed Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating, researching, and celebrating resiliency in food and farming via crop diversity.

This is not a text book on growing seeds, although it has that information too. It’s an inspirational book on why and what if we challenge the current orthodoxy of heirloom preservation. Chris is neither advocating for heirloom preservation, nor advocating for hybrid seeds, either.

Heirlooms are not the David champion against Goliath hybrids, although Chris admits that publicly critiquing heirlooms is like picking a fight with everyone’s favorite granny. See the book for a comparison of seed savioring vs. seed saving. Don’t hold on to what was but seek what can be.

Seed strains can usefully and pleasantly evolve, with deliberate or accidental crosses, as has been happening over much of human history. The strict heirloom preservation movement is a more recent phenomenon. Chris started there, and moved to embrace diversity, adaptation, and resilience to find varieties adapted to his garden.

Slow adaptation doesn’t pay in this time of climate change. We need seeds that are highly adaptive and resilient (and therefore include more diversity). Back to “landraces”: local varieties of plants or animals that have distinctive characteristics born from development and adaptation over time to the local geographic region and that typically show greater genetic diversity than types subjected to formal breeding practices.

Heirlooms can be sirens, distracting us from what we actually need to seek –  varieties that are rare may be rare for a reason! Not everything is worth keeping!

Chris says “I’ve been deep in the seed world for over a decade, and from the start I’ve heard and read (and regurgitated) countless stories of the importance of heirlooms, while exploring diversity still feels fringe.”

There’s a concept in journalism called Hallin’s spheres, developed by Daniel Hallin, which describes how systems of status quo define the boundaries of acceptable discourse. I find the spheres to be a useful framework for thinking about our relationship with seeds.

  • The Sphere of Consensus generally maintains or protects the status quo and is collectively assumed to be true.
  • The Sphere of Legitimate Controversy includes areas of acceptable debate, but all remain “serious” topics.
  • The Sphere of Deviance includes ideas that are either invisible or dismissed. In mainstream circles, these are often considered unscientific, impractical, or purely ideological.

Ideas can move between one sphere and another. “Ideas in the sphere of deviance may be considered deviant just because they disrupt the status quo or current political regime . . .   At the time of writing, reporting has documented widespread edits to federal agency websites, including the USDA and EPA, where language related to climate change, diversity, and Indigenous communities has been flagged, removed, or replaced. I think it’s time to be deviant and disruptive.”

In Dr. Bennett’s book Plant Genetic Resources, she wrote: “ I see no special advantage in conservation in the form of seed apart from the very eminent one of convenience, and I think that attempts to find other merits in the “steady state” which seed storage represents, seem to come dangerously near to adopting museum concepts.”

“A freezer full of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basket.”

“Bennett and others advocated for seeds to be grown and saved by communities in order to maintain the people-seed connection so that the seeds could continue to adapt and evolve.”

We need in situ preservation for ongoing adaptive change. The world of community-centered plant breeding ecosystems points to a vision of a better world.

“Early American plant collecting and farmer adaptation is often romanticized, but American agriculture was built on stolen land, largely by stolen people, and in some cases, stolen seeds.”

The Emergence Network

“The Emergence Network asks, “What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?” One of the responses to the impact of the green revolution on crop diversity has been to preserve crop diversity. But this style of preservation feels similar to billionaire bunkers or an escape plan to Mars. We can and should preserve seeds, but the systems driving their loss are still very much in place.”

“The 2017 Census of Agriculture reported that 95 percent of US farm producers are white, while a 2018 National Agricultural Workers Survey reported that 83 percent of all farmer workers are Hispanic.”

As well as How-to, the chapters cover the history of seeds in the US, botanical and technical info to help seed-savers succeed, examples of seed-saving for some main crops, an overview of diversity, adaptation and resilience applied to seeds, a step-by-step sequence of exploring seed diversity, and more about genetic diversity, including using ultracrosses.

Here you will find the information you need to prevent accidental cross-pollination, save seeds, dry them and grow them next year. The science you need is there. The explanations are clear and amusing (grow enough of your grandma’s rare bean seeds so you can give some away and dilute the risk of her haunting you).

This book doesn’t shy away from complicated things such as mutations and sports, random genetic changes that occur unbidden and you may not even notice. If you do, you may form an opinion: is this a Good Thing, a Bad Thing or an Interesting Thing? Chromosomes carry genetic information, usually in pairs. Brassica oleracea has 9 pairs, Brassica rapa has 10 pairs. Usually if a B rapa and B oleracea cross the result will not be stable.  A mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse and cannot produce any offspring of its own. Occasionally in the plant world, a new tetraploid species (with two sets of paired chromosomes) forms and fertility is restored.

This book explains many details of genetic and epigenetic changes as well as inherited seed biomes and the mysteries of non-neuron-based intelligence. Don’t let these complex ideas deter you. You will marvel at our world after reading this.

Chris Smith, author of Saved by Seeds

Chris says “I am quite a pragmatic (non-woo-woo) type of person, but. . .” I’m similar. Plant communication is strange and amazing, challenging to what we were raised to believe. Chris asks “What is possible if we approach seed saving and plant breeding as a partnership between people and plants?” This could perhaps lead to the development of more resilient crops, very much needed in this time of climate chaos.

“We need genetic diversity at the variety level, especially for adaptive systems. Inbred heirlooms and uniform hybrids aren’t going to cut it.” There is a lot of value in diversity. Regeneratively-Grown Climate Blend whole wheat flour is a blend of unique wheat varieties grown using regenerative practices that improve soil health. Climate Blend showed no drop in yield in the 2021 heat dome over the Pacific NW. Other growers reported a 40% drop. “If we have a chaotic climate, our strategy is to have genetic chaos in the field,”

This kind of diversity is the same as the Landrace concept in indigenous farming: diverse populations that always succeed in growing a crop, depending on the conditions. “The term landrace is used in many contexts but generally it describes domesticated crop populations that have evolved intergenerationally (that is, over long periods) through traditional farming practices and natural selection in specific local environments.”

Front cover of The Whole Okra by Chris Smith

The book includes a description of Chris’s multi-year okra trials, which you can read more about in The Whole Okra.

You can also read in this book about Ultracross collards, Ultracross okra; the development of a Purple Peach tomato with delicious Cherokee Purple flavor; the okra progeny of Puerto Rico Everblush (a round, velvety pod with red blushing and tasty flavor) and Aunt Hettie’s red okra (a robust, chunky okra pod with great flavor and high productivity) and more. Chris is breeding for resistance, flavor and more. Diverse seeds create a breeding ecosystem that can quickly evolve, adapt to local conditions, and bring resiliency.

“We must do everything possible to rapidly mitigate our collective human impact on the climate. If we don’t, it’s game over for life as we know it.”

Community-based seed keeping has declined, and with that we have lost a traditional way of advancing seed genetic diversity. It’s time to reestablish seed-keeping as a community activity: everyone a seed saver instead of a handful of seed saviors; infinite seed options instead of a limited number of “perfect” varieties. Chris reports that he resisted being called a plant breeder for a long time because of the term’s strong association with what he perceived as elitist corporate and academic systems. He came to realize that it’s a term that seed communities should reclaim. “The human history of plant breeding is long and vibrant; its narrowing to a pursuit of profit and purity is a recent phenomenon.” Chris recommends Adam Alexander’s book The Accidental Seed Heroes, which I also enjoyed (and reviewed).

During the rise of Monsanto and genetic modification, independent plant breeders and researchers began discussing how the ideas behind open-source software could be applied to seeds. The idea of protecting seed freedoms with open-source concepts led to the formation of the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), which was officially established in 2012. They named four seed freedoms:

  1. The freedom to save or grow seed for replanting or for any other purpose.
  2. The freedom to share, trade, or sell seed to others.
  3. The freedom to trial and study seed and to share or publish information about it.
  4. The freedom to select or adapt the seed, make crosses with it, or use it to breed new lines and varieties.

To protect these freedoms, OSSI created a system for plant breeders to register their varieties with OSSI. When seeds registered with OSSI are shared or sold, the OSSI pledge goes along with them. No one can claim ownership in order to profit from a cultivar and prevent others developing it.

An issue has arisen of indigenous seeds used for private profit in a mostly white-led seed industry. If your beliefs include recognizing seeds as ancestors, or as beings embedded within specific cultural and spiritual lineages, then the idea of seeds as the common heritage of all humankind can be deeply inappropriate. This debate led to the Culturally-Informed Community Seeds Pledge, for seeds from plants that have retained ancestral, traditional, or cultural relationships with specific communities and places of origin.

The pledge states, “I respect the natural rights of seeds and their people by producing CICS-Pledged seeds under the pledge’s culturally-informed practices and code of ethics.” People receiving CICS-Pledged seeds are asked to follow the same guidelines.

Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) identified all the varieties they held that had a tribal affiliation. They then asked First Nations community members if they were okay with their seeds being distributed to non-tribal people. All but one respondent said no, they were not okay with it. So SSE took those seeds out of general circulation and reserved them for Indigenous communities.

Appendix A is a US Timeline of the Biological and Legal Enclosure of Seeds from 1790 to 2018. Until 1924, the US government ran a free seed distribution program, leading to profit-based seed companies. In 1889 The US commissioner of patents had ruled that it would be “unreasonable and impossible” to patent “the trees of the forest and the plants of the earth.” In 2018 The United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which recognized the rights of peasants to maintain, control, protect, develop, save, use, exchange and sell their own farm-saved seeds.

Appendix B provides population sizes and isolation distances for common vegetable crops.

Appendix C lists crop types and promiscuity

Appendix D lists seed companies selling Ultracross seed and other genepool collections.

The 8-page Glossary, a bibliography, an index and chapter notes round out the offerings in this remarkable book.

Thoughtful, inspiring, and of practical help, this is a book to treasure.

Seeds in glass jars. Best to label seeds inside and outside the jar. Photo Broken Banjo

Book Review: Africulture by Michael Carter Jr


Africulture: How the Principles, Practices, Plants and People of African Descent have Shaped Agriculture

by Michael Carter Jr. Chelsea Green, 2026. 308 pages, $22.95 US, $40.00 CAN, 22.95 GBP.

As a fellow Virginian, I am honored to offer praise for Michael Carter’s new book, Africulture.  I enjoyed his account of his family’s farming history. Mr. Carter shares five generations of Black farming experience and reminds those of us who need reminding, that without African farming experience, white immigrants like me would not have survived long in the American colonies.

With inspiring bios of prominent Black farmers and educators, Africulture presents an uplifting message and encouragement to other farmers, especially Black farmers. I value Mr Carter’s work to preserve civil rights, and his determination to raise awareness of the painful history of Black people in the US, including segregation, Jim Crow, lynching and resistance. I learned a lot more Black history from reading this book. I’m not including it in this review as I imagine many of you already know a lot more than I do about that.

Mr Carter tells us: “The average age of a farmer in Virginia is fifty-nine, but for Black farmers it’s sixty-three. Between 2017 and 2022, Virginia lost 10 percent of its farmers and 20 percent of its Black farmers. The state is losing Black producers at a higher rate than any other demographic.”

“The amount of land lost by Black farmers and families in the last sixty years is, I dare say, a sin to our ancestors who made it their sole mission to acquire land between 1865 and 1965. I’m a benefactor of my ancestors’ efforts and I refuse to let go of what was sacrificed by my grandfather and his brothers with their World War II checks.”

He writes in a very lively, readable style, using stages of plant growth: Seeds, Soil, Roots, Compost, Leaves, True Leaves, Pestilence and Resistance (plants and people), Flowering, Fruit as metaphors of Black farming history. His work includes Principles of Africulture, using limited inputs: reuse materials your farm provides, properly dispose of whatever waste ends up on your hands; use sustainable organic practices, co-operate on marketing and training, and strengthen future generations of Black farmers.

The Carter Family in Ghana

Michael Carter and his immediate family spent 5 years living and working in west African countries, especially Ghana, 2012-2017, before returning to his family’s farm in Virginia. Living in Ghana changed the Carter family’s perspective. The Carters were regarded factually, as obroni, people from the horizon, or white men. Skin color was not seen as the major identifier, but foreignness was.

Vegetables and fruits were bought fresh daily, and cooking dinner required full attention, dedication and love. There were lots of leafy greens, including Nigerian spinach (Celosia argentea), gboma (Solanum macrocarpon) (the g is silent), Alefe (Amaranthus cruentus), nkotomere (cocoyam leaf/taro leaf /elephant ear, Colocasia esculenta), water leaf/boko boko/fame flower (Talinum paniculatum) and ayoyo/jute leaf (Corchorus olitorius), which I wrote about in June 2025 as Molokhia (pronounced “mo-lo-HEY-ah”), Egyptian Spinach.

The Ghanaians have a very well-developed understanding of the medicinal value of plants.

Food Crops from Africa

From May to September the Virginia climate is like the rainy season in West Africa. I appreciate the descriptions of tasty African crops that might be useful in central Virginia for climate change resilience. To grow Ghanaian crops, we need to choose those with shorter growing cycles. Our season is too short for the tree crops or annuals needing 6-9 hot months to maturity.

Virginia can grow amaranth, Nigerian spinach, managu, molokhia, okra, sorghum, millet and cocoyam, all sown in the continental US after Mothers’ Day, the second weekend in May. Soil temperatures should be 70°F-75°F (21°C–24°C). Their roots grow deep, enabling them to be drought tolerant, and helping provide more trace minerals. A bonus is that deer don’t seem to like these greens.

Several African greens also have ornamental relatives, but the green-leaved versions are preferred for eating. I don’t know why. The greens need to be stewed well over a high heat with palm oil and egusi (seeds of specific melons). Taro tubers and leaves need careful cooking.

“Two African crops—sweet potato greens and Nigerian spinach—contain some of the same nutrients as kale, but they are dependent more on the fungal network to supply their nutrient needs. Their content of manganese and some other micronutrients is higher than that of kale.” Clif Slade says, on selling the leaves of sweet potato plants: “You can talk about doubling your money. . .  There’s $20,000 per acre in the [sweet potato] leaves with the right market, and eating them can help control blood pressure.  Large amounts of sweet potato leaves can be fed to livestock. And at Virginia Tech, they’re pelletizing the stems and feeding tilapia.”

First Leaves

The “First Leaves” chapter has information on rice, cotton, indigo, peanuts, cocoa, vanilla, coffee, honey and kola, and several leading Black farmers. It was here I learned more about my “sweet potato hero” Dr George Washington Carver. I immigrated from a climate too cold to grow sweet potatoes, so I knew nothing. This was pre-internet, and I was thrilled to find a photocopy of Dr Carver’s 1936 publication “How the Farmer Can Save His Sweet Potatoes, and [32] Ways of Preparing Them for The Table.” I had not understood properly how to cure sweet potatoes before storing them. Gratitude to Dr Carver! Dr Carver was even more famous for his work with peanuts. Did you know that boiling peanuts preserves them for several days without refrigeration?

Dr Carver also designed a mobile demonstration lab called the Jessop Wagon, which was used to take information out to remote rural areas of Alabama and provide information for farmers. He wrote “It has always been the one ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of my people possible, and to this end I have been preparing myself for these many years, feeling as I do that this line of education is the key.”

Dr Booker T Washington was born into slavery in 1854 and walked 500 miles to enroll in the Hampton Institute in SE Virginia at the age of 16. His dedication to education, community building and Pan-Africanism was huge. Dr Washington became the first principal of Tuskegee University in Alabama, where the students and local community hand built the collage, including making the bricks, sewing their own sheets and growing their own food.

Dr W E B Du Bois wanted the Talented Tenth, the most capable Black students, to receive the best education and so serve as a think tank and group of leaders for the Black community. He is more widely known as a highbrow intellectual rather than a rural pragmatist like Dr Carver and Dr Washington. Later he developed a wider understanding of the needs of Black farmers.

Mr Tetteh Quarshie, a Ghanaian blacksmith, established the commercial cocoa industry in Ghana in 1879, and export began in the 1890s. Cocoa is native to central America, and became cultivated in Africa, especially Ghana, in the early-mid-1800s.

Vanilla was much coveted by the Europeans, who had no success getting it to grow. 300 years later, someone figured out that a very specific pollinating bee that was only found in Mexico was needed. The French shipped seeds to their colonies off the coast of Africa, Réunion and Mauritius. 21 years later, a 12-year-old enslaved African boy, Edmond Albius, used hand pollination, smashing the anther sac and stigma together between his fingers, solving the problem.

Watermelon was one of the best cash crops for Black farmers in the South, easy to grow, easy to transport, kept well in its skin. This superfood is a great hydrator and a nutritional powerhouse. But watermelon was heavily denigrated as poor people’s food, and disrespected, cast as bad, backward, food for country bumpkins.

Our Genes are Made of What our Ancestors Ate.

African crops grown in American soil by enslaved Africans with African expertise helped sustain the colonizing immigrants. Our bodies are made of the food we eat. Our lineage reflects the foods of our ancestors, which may have come from other continents.

Three quarters of the British colony of Jamestown died of disease and malnutrition between 1609-1610, despite eating rats, snakes and their own dead neighbors. They had refused to follow local foodways, instead trying to grow cool weather UK crops. White settlers in 1619, when the white population had been reduced to 12% of its size, decided they would need to enslave Black people to grow their food. Some of the enslaved people arrived with leftover food stores, and the African crops grew well in the SE US, but in the Midwest, 50 years of soil mismanagement led to the Dust Bowl. Ignorance and greed destroyed 6 feet (2m) of topsoil.

Racial Equity

Equity is not just about perceived treatment but includes discussions and ideas around shared ownership and control of resources. White European men have determined what resources they want and how to get them and control them. Financial equity is the value of an asset after the cost (debts, liabilities) have been subtracted. Equity depends on ownership and is a store of financial value. Social equity (including racial equity) is defined as justice, fairness and impartiality. It’s also a store of value for people, ownership in communities, controlling resources (not necessarily owning).

Black people sometimes risk their jobs, homes, freedom, even their lives, when dealing with white people. White people need to face being outside their comfort zone, to become educated in other cultures. This book seeks to improve people’s racial literacy around the bigger history of agriculture. Buy from local Black farmers and local Black businesses, and other enterprises of people of color.

The Fruits of the Ancestors, Legacy and the Future

Fruit is both the fulfillment of the plant’s growth and the container of the seeds to start the cycle again. A responsibility and a survival instinct. Plants share resources in the soil. When someone asks for help, try to give them a hand. Mr Carter gives space in his book for soil brothers and soil sisters.

Carter Farms and the Africulture non-profit

The Carter Farms land, purchased in 1910, was almost lost near the end of the 1920s, when it was used as collateral on a $636.40 debt. The stock market crash of 1929 meant the borrowers could not repay the cash. Of the ten siblings in that generation, Mrs Mattie Shirley Carter Pryor, one of the youngest, great-grandmother to Michael Carter Jr, was the key person who saved the land.

Michael Carter Jr went to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, an HBCU, where students were encouraged towards employment in the USDA or the agriculture industry, not to be farmers. Carter was not interested in being a farmer. He was more interested in his minor, fashion design. It was many years before he regained his connection to the land.

When Mr Carter and his family returned from Ghana in 2017, he combined a job at the Virginia State University Small Farms Outreach program with selling African vegetables to restaurants.  He established the non-profit Africulture to focus on “the principles, practices, plants and people of African descent that have contributed to agriculture.

From Carter Farms in Orange County, Virginia, Michael Carter, Jr provides technical farming assistance, events and workshops on growing and marketing African and other specialty vegetables. The land around Carter Farms became an epicenter of Black landownership and cooperative economics, farmers helping each other buy land.

“Africulture became an official nonprofit in 2020. Small farmers found themselves in a unique situation that spring because of COVID-19. Small farmers across the country became a lifesaving force for families and communities, setting up farmers markets and driveway stands where customers could come and pick up produce, proteins, and value-added products during a time when entering a grocery store felt dangerous.”

Carter says “I wanted to use the Africulture platform to promote connections on many different levels. The African ideal that everything is connected always resonated with me, a stark contrast to the siloed, isolated, subjective thinking in most of the West. The connections among music, food, soil, agriculture, literature, meta- and quantum physics, nutrition, and mental health maybe aren’t normally seen, but they are made clear to me through my Africultural lens.”

Africulture appendices include a timeline of African American agriculture, incorporating that of the Carter family, some of whom arrived in the first generation of exiled Europeans reaching the US; a Carter Family Tree, with African, European and Native American roots; and a table of nutrient levels in crops at Carter Farms. There are chapter notes and a selected bibliography, and a 17-page index. There are 16 pages of color photos and several archival B&W images are seeded throughout.

More information

  • Michael Carter Jr has taught a course on Africulture at the University of Virginia.
  • The Black Family Land Trust (BFLT) based in Raleigh, NC, works as a conservation land trust, to keep Black families on their land in Virginia and several other states. “The Sixth Love Language – A Will.” Putting land in a family land trust can save a family from fighting. The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act 2020 helps prevent involuntary loss of family land.
  • Visit the Black Farmers Index (blackfarmersindex.com), the largest, FREE, most comprehensive directory of Black Farmers. The Index connects you to traditional and non-traditional growers, from row crop farmers, ranchers, vegetable and fruit producers to beekeepers, fisherfolk, foragers, vintners & more. There are 12 regional groups.
  • For those in Virginia, there’s also the VirginiaBlackFarmerdirecrtory.com.
  • Celebrate National Farmers’ Day in the US on October 12.
  • The Happily Natural Day Festival in Richmond, Virginia, is on Saturday Aug 29, 2026

Book Review: The Resilient Farm and Homestead, by Ben Falk

Front cover of Ben Falk’s book, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, revised edition. Chelsea Green

Book Review: The Resilient Farm and Homestead: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design. Ben Falk. Chelsea Green. Revised and Expanded Edition, 2024. 342 pages, $44.95 US, 40G BP.

Ten years after writing the first edition of his book, Ben Falk has made a revised and expanded edition with new information on greenhouse design, agroforestry, silvopasture, beekeeping, human health and more. Even more valuable are his further ten years of experience feeding his thoughts and practice of permaculture in a cold Vermont climate, no-till farming, native versus introduced plants and insects, vegan versus livestock-included farming, dealing with climate change and living a whole life. He was a single, physically fit, energetic and slightly idealistic, 25-year-old when he landed on his 10-acre homestead in 2003, and 35 when he wrote his first book, encouraging readers to “Be bold and try stuff.” After another ten years, he has a partner and a son, a lot of lived experience with various agricultural theories, a realization that his first decade was the “establishment phase,” a career in professional land use design, and determination to live a balanced life. His gained wisdom shines through.

Ben has the courage to tackle his earlier ideas and those of other agricultural writers and speakers and say what did not work for him and what does. You can be confident that his suggestions are practical and efficient, as well as resilient. The beautiful photos show ideas in action, not merely under construction as some permaculture publications do. Rice paddies in Vermont, possible but sensible? Swale-enclosed ponds, lovely.

The book includes chapters on creating a legacy in a time of change, design and site establishment, water and earthworks, fertility harvesting and cycling, food crops, adaptive fuel and shelter, resilience and regeneration for the long haul. There are useful appendices, including an aptitude quiz on living a resilient lifestyle, a skill list for emergencies, a curriculum for a resilient homestead, a checklist of tools and materials, a vulnerability checklist, and a glossary, a resource list, chapter notes and a thorough index. The introduction lists 20 new ingredients in this revised edition (including a list of 30 common cold climate site design and building mistakes); 16 practices they have stopped since his first book (spraying compost tea takes too much time and shows little result); and 10 new practices they have adopted (grazing cows).

Farming and ecological living can appeal to people across the political spectrum, but Ben does not shy away from briefly mentioning the current threats of economic, social and environmental collapse, while addressing vulnerabilities and how we might respond. This is not a “doom-reading” book, but an encouraging and very practical one! “If we steer Earth towards adaptive regeneration, we’ll see true resilience much sooner than by just letting it develop ‘naturally’.”

This book uses permaculture design and its framework for problem-solving and refers to numeric zones within a location. This is concisely explained, so don’t let the word deter you if you are new to permaculture. Ben Falk has not unquestioningly adopted that cause, or the Green Dream (personal ecological consumerism regardless of lack of fundamental political change) but thoughtfully tested and applied ideas that work and don’t cause problems elsewhere in the world. Ben advocates for people becoming producers rather than merely “less-bad “consumers.

The chapter on design and site establishment is best read before you decide which piece of land to buy. This is the time to consider your mission, goals, analysis of what’s possible, and how you plan to do that. To make your land use design, analyze what’s available, consider your options and implement your decisions, (aka think-design-do-reflect-redesign) as many times in a repeating cycle as you need to. Likely you’ll have more ideas for tweaking the system than you have energy for, so you’ll need to prioritize the adjustments that will have the most effect. This ensures maximum regeneration of land for minimum energy and time input. Ben lists his top five leverage points: swale construction and use, grazing animals, broadcasting seed and transplanting, cutting and clearing trees, scraping and tillage to create bare soil.

We need crops that convert the most sunshine and rainfall into usable food. More nut trees, for example, and intensive rotational grazing. Much of the cold-temperate climate landscape would be most productive converted to permanent silvopasture. Sometimes fossil fuel use to develop a site sooner is very worthwhile. Examples include chain saws, earthmovers, electric power tools.

Resilience is the ability of a system to recover from disturbances. Factors include Diversity, Redundancy, Connectivity and Manageability. Efficiency is not the same as Resiliency. The “whole world” picture needs to be included, and adapting to changing conditions must be built in. Actions that increase both biodiversity and biomass increase the ability to be regenerative.

No single design works for all sites or all groups of people. Your own skills and aptitudes are your most dependable asset. Practice welcoming adversity (the blessing of disillusionment), as a chance to learn and grow stronger. Try to avoid tight attachments to your goals, as this can lead to big struggles. Check out popular notions that others have already found faulty: planting marginally-hardy perennial plants beside bodies of water does not keep them warmer in winter! Your climate is not the same as information from ten years ago would have you believe! Keep your own weather records. Likewise, observe whether some practices you don’t believe in – dowsing for example – do in fact work. Modify your design to balance theoretical “best” practice with practicality: perfectly on-contour plantings do slow, spread and sink water best, but they make mowing and harvesting harder.

Once you have your land, assess it in some detail before taking any firm direction. Work with the realities of your land, rather than planning to radically change them. You may see a better plan emerging. Good designs incorporate the ability to change. Using modular designs makes this easier. For example, consistent bed and path sizes.

Overview of Ben Falk’s homestead. Photo from his website, https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/

Swales are on-contour ridges made by ditching along contours and piling the soil below the ditch, helping even out the water supply and retaining water that would have run off the surface as much as 20ft downhill. Swales make great places to plant hedges, and the space between one swale and the next makes a good small paddock for intensive rotational grazing.

Only the importation of fertility from other parts of the world has enabled chemical farming to continue after the Great Soil Erosion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When this becomes no longer tenable, will we turn to regenerative farming, or let society collapse? We can save farming by building and conserving topsoil.

When we make compost we need to investigate the source and the content of the materials: What feedstock was given to the Organic livestock that provides the manure? Was it from lab rats with a diet of antibiotics or worse? Grasses take up PFAS, such as those in flexible plastic sheeting. But if not contaminated, they can be a key nitrogen resource. Are roadside leaves safe? Pond weeds, comfrey, burlap bags, cover crops and organic mulches all have their advocates, Human urine benefits plants. Humanure is possible if the household doesn’t use pharmaceutical drugs. Biochar can increase soil water retention, reduce nutrient leaching and encourage diverse micro-organisms, but poorly made biochar can stunt plant growth spectacularly.

Wood chips are great, but wood chippers are expensive to own and operate and a pain to use. (One colleague said to me, “Lots of money, lots of noise, lots of gasoline, lots of time, lots of logs and branches. Small pile of chips.”)

Remineralization is the replacement of missing or deficient minerals, which could be factors limiting crop health. The Soil Food Web is an approach that focuses on soil biological activity as the main limiting factor in crop health.

Livestock has an important role for resilient homesteads. Regenerative high density stocking with very short periods of grazing in each paddock (called intensive tall-grass grazing or mob stocking ) is very productive and builds soil. Tall grasses (having deep roots) are grazed down to within a foot of the ground (not all the way down). Some roots die back once they are no longer needed.  As the tops quickly grow back, more roots grow, and soils build. Active management produces much healthier soil than neglect does. Anyone wanting to restore a neglected field area can read what not to do, and what to do, in this chapter. Ben’s approach included sheep, prescribed burns, scything, and over-seeding for several years. But no tilling or plowing.

There are benefits to mowing in some circumstances, with correct timing and severity. Stem density increases and grasses are promoted. If the existing plants have been cut down enough by grazers or machinery, May and June are the windows for lightly reseeding. Never let a field lie fallow for more than a year. Water management will help reclamation. Mow early and often.

Consider permanent fencing. Plan tree plantings in straight rows to make fencing and mowing easy. Refrain from pruning off lower branches if you plan to have livestock, as that will deter browsing. Feed hay to cattle on pasture if needed. If you don’t want to raise animals, you need to mulch or mow the understory of your trees and perennial vegetables. Those tasks take a lot more labor than raising livestock.

Ducks and chickens, sheep and cows all have their niche. Ben found sheep to be more work than cows, and both to be quite an emotional and logistical commitment. Sheep are prone to many diseases, but have a role as smaller, short-term livestock, practical on a smaller homestead. Ducks eat slugs, forage actively, are cold-hardy and have low health maintenance needs. They are good layers, and good mothers, have good predator-awareness, and generally won’t fly away.

Don’t believe all the generalizations you might hear about livestock, species, varieties or even individual animals. Ben reports that his ducks never ate mature vegetation during the growing season, for 3 years. In year 4 they attacked the cabbages. Who knows why? It was a dry, relatively slugless summer, which might have contributed. Observe what is true of your animals this year, but don’t depend on the same thing happening next year. Do believe that chickens will scratch up your seedlings and new transplants!

Keyline plowing is favored by many permaculturists. It was developed in the drylands of eastern Australia and may not translate to moister climates. It doesn’t work well in New England, for example. It may be useful in cold climates (where weather and soil conditions combine to move water across the soil, rather than into it) if drought conditions prevail. Managed small ephemeral ponds can capture and hold heavy rainfall.

Ponds at Ben Falk’s homestead. Photo from his website, https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/.

In-ground septic systems have leach fields capable of supporting good crop yields, of either cover crops or food crops. Plants cannot move bacteria or other organic pathogens through their tissues, so there is no danger of E. coli in tomatoes grown above your leach field. Plants can, however, bioaccumulate heavy metals and other inorganic compounds. If in doubt, test the plants. Research 2020-2023 suggests plants tend to accumulate PFAs as well as toxins in their vegetative parts, rather than their fruits and seeds.

Chapter 5 moves us on to details of food crops. Long ago, Polynesians navigated the Pacific in their canoes, locating small pieces of land to settle. They took with them 24 special “canoe plants”. These included foods, medicines, fiber and dye plants, building materials and ceremonial plants. They carried plants gathered from a wide area of the world, to adapt to many situations.

Alongside the benefits of perennial crops, there are some disadvantages. Climate weirdness brings changes to frost dates that kill blossoms and pollinators, and can affect chilling hours and flowering dates. One harvest per year from the space the crop occupies can be less than short term multi-cropping annuals provide. Establishment of perennials can take years (so grow some annuals around new perennials for the first few years).

People with short growing seasons would do well to grow lots of storage crops, and all of us are advised to grow a wide range of diverse crops. The book has tables of perennial crops best suited to various extremes of weather, Goldilocks crops to try out on a small scale, if at all, and those that give high yields.

For simplicity, focus on larger quantities of more-reliable long-storing foods rather than lots of small-quantity foods (but keep that crop diversity in mind!). Although Ben’s family used to grow paddy rice, they no longer do so, due to challenges of aquatic weeds, and losses to birds. Especially focus on summer-planted late fall harvests, to preserve food for the Hungry Gap from March to whenever it warms up enough to produce spring harvests. Another option is fermented storable foods like krauts and kimchi, which take less work than canning.

Ben Falk, author of The Resilient Farm and Homestead. Credit Marcia Falk.

Ben has a very interesting essay on “Native to When? “Invasive” Species, Species-ism, and Optimization” that really got me thinking. Healthy ecosystems include high diversity. Humans are part of the ecosystem (not kings or tyrants, but participants). We intend to manage our gardens and farmland in a responsible right-action kind of way. Not merely sit back admiring the view while elsewhere forests are razed to grow soybeans to feed us and our livestock.

Permaculture views plants and other organisms that have been in place for 10 or 100 or 300 years as not fundamentally more natural or proper than recent arrivals. More important is to consider what the plant does and how it affects the soil and other organisms, and our needs in that space. Plants, animals and other humans are not regarded as evil aliens.

Permaculture seeks inclusion and synergy, with adaptation to challenges that arise. This includes a high level of biodiversity, embracing the legacy of food systems from across the globe. It is not modeled on what the ecosystem looked like on the North American landmass in 1491, or before native peoples managed the land to promote chestnut and oak forests, or before mass migrations of buffalo or any other date.

Some conservationists seem perversely focused on getting back to specific species and ecosystem arrangements from an idealized past time, even if this involves large inputs of fossil fuels, chemicals, labor and money.

We are unwise to adopt a “Nativist War-on-Alien-Invader” ideology. During the time that humans have been moving around the Earth, we have moved around plants and animals (and associated microbes). What year could be chosen as a starting point to determine whether a plant is native or alien? We have potatoes from South America, corn from Mesoamerica, honeybees and earthworms from Europe, apples from Southwest Asia, and much more. Choosing European contact as a starting date is a prejudice that ignores previous centuries of land management.

No living thing is permanent. Plant successions and ecosystem change are natural. Native white pine and goldenrod have forced out numerous species across New England. A human moving a plant from one area to another is no more unnatural than a bird moving seeds. Movement of species is part of biodiversity. It is our responsibility to determine if it would be helpful to redistribute a particular species, considering the needs of other humans and other forms of life.

Ben says (and I strongly agree) “Feeding oneself from a monoculture in Iowa or Mexico while devoting time to spraying Japanese knotweed with toxic chemicals will not get us where we need to be.” Attempting to maintain the world around us in a static condition is simply not an option. We now need to provide for 8 billion humans. Hunting and gathering is no longer viable for most. We cannot live as people did when the Earth was more thinly populated.

Worries about invasive alien species may also indicate a fear that nature will “take over”, and even a belief that humans are separate from nature, perhaps its masters, a very colonial concept.

The urgent ecological and social issues in front of us require unified solutions. Fragmented approaches, including wars on specific plants (and cultures), have rarely, if ever, worked. Species eradication and similar fear-based hyper-controlling and divisive efforts fail even as they line the pockets of Monsanto. Treating all life-forms with respect leads us to more understanding, with prospects for synergy. Why, oh why, do the Acknowledgements list 16 men, while Ben’s wife Erica Koch is one of only four named female family members? Let’s have more biodiversity and inclusion!

Chapter 6 covers adaptive fuel and shelter, well worth reading, but one on which I took few notes. It includes house design and construction, fuel for heating and for power equipment, tips on common mistakes to avoid. Chapter 7 is on resilience and regeneration for the long haul, including intergenerational success, children on the homestead, and more.

The whole book is thoroughly researched, clearly written, and will be tremendously useful to all who use it. For more, see Ben’s website https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/ 

 

Twin Oaks Community Sustainable Agriculture Pledge

Why we Wrote a Twin Oaks Sustainable Agriculture Pledge

Roma paste tomatoes that suffered drift of herbicide in hot weather.
Photo Twin Oaks Community

One summer, after herbicide drifted in very hot weather into our patch of Roma tomatoes and damaged them noticeably, we gardeners got together with other managers of our other agricultural areas, to find common ground, and avoid causing problems for each other in future. We share our land, and generally our approach to sustainable agriculture. Getting it formally agreed and put into writing was a good idea.

The Twin Oaks Sustainable Agriculture Pledge is a joint policy statement from all the Agricultural Areas about how we farm here, putting in place some kind of standards and a code of practice that we can all adhere to. Each Area may supplement this Pledge with a statement about its own particular practices, which may vary from those of other areas (eg if it becomes feasible to get organically grown grain for Poultry but it’s still prohibitively expensive for Dairy to do the same, then we can have that difference). The goal is not to make us all have to do the same, or make us 100% Organic.

The Principles behind the Twin Oaks Sustainable Agriculture Pledge

  • To produce food of high nutritional quality in sufficient quantity to feed the community as much as possible with our home-produced foods, for as much of the year as possible.
  • To promote and sustain Twin Oaks as a healthy rural community and to foster an ethic of land stewardship among our members.
  • To encourage and enhance healthy ecosystems within the farming system, involving micro organisms, soil flora and fauna, plants and animals.
  • To maintain and increase long-term fertility and conservation of soils.
  • To promote the healthy use, conservation and proper care of water, water resources and all the life it holds.
  • To use, as far as possible, renewable resources in our agricultural systems, and to use them at a rate less than their replacement.
  • To work, as far as possible, within a closed system with regard to organic matter and nutrient elements, maximizing our use and minimizing the waste of what we produce.
  • To work, as far as possible, with materials and substances that can be reused or recycled, either on the farm or elsewhere.
  • To give all livestock conditions of life which allow them to perform basic aspects of their innate behavior.
  • To minimize all forms of pollution and other negative impact on global ecological systems that may result from agricultural practice.
  • To maintain the genetic diversity of the agricultural system and its surroundings, including the protection of plant and wildlife habitats.
  • To allow everyone involved in organic production an adequate return and satisfaction from their work, including a safe working environment.
  • To work to avoid exploiting people and other cultures.
  • To consider the wider social and ecological impact of our farming systems beyond Twin Oaks.
  • To expand knowledge and access to information about sustainable agriculture.
  • To progress towards an entire organic production chain, which is both socially just and ecologically responsible.

The Purpose of the Twin Oaks Sustainable Agriculture Pledge is

  • to be more intentional about our agriculture,
  • to be more transparent (so that anyone can easily know what our agriculture managers might be doing), and more accountable to the membership,
  • to improve our communication about our agricultural practices
  • to improve co-operation between agricultural areas
  • to align practices in our agricultural areas as far as possible

Our Reasons for Doing This

  • The various agricultural areas at TO, including our agricultural income areas and food processing areas, operate independently on a day-to-day basis, although we are all part of TO Community and our collective budgeting system .
  • We all work within the TO precepts listed in our Bylaws, including “C. …assum(ing) responsibility for maintaining the availability of natural resources for present and future generations through ecologically sound production and consumption;” and “G. …striv(ing) to be self-reliant by producing for itself the goods and services necessary for the maintenance of the Community.”
  • Our Statement of Religious Beliefs proclaims, among other things, that we endeavor “To  respect and preserve the natural environment for the use of our own and other species, now and in the future.”
  • Members have an expectation that our farming is loosely organic but we leave it to managers to decide on practices within their area. There is an increased desire in the community for more sustainability.
  • Although our agricultural practices are open to any member who wants to inquire, if we don’t ask, things can happen which most of us don’t support.
  • We hope to increase the discussion in the community about sustainability and agriculture, increase our awareness and intentionality, and move us towards greater sustainability.
  • Sustainable agriculture will require and support a sustainable society. Our challenge is to meet human needs without denying our descendents’ birthright to the natural inheritance of this planet.
  • The costs and fragility of the present system of American agriculture are becoming each day more evident.
  • Sustainable systems are more efficient in their use of energy, biological sources of fertility and pest management, and enhance rural communities and encourage people to remain on the land.
  • A sustainable agriculture that provides nourishing food, protects those who work the land, helps stabilize the earth’s climate, and safeguards soil and water depends on our ability to meet a number of challenges. Organizing to acknowledge and address these challenges together increases our chance of success.

Reasons for Writing our own Pledge Rather than Applying for  USDA Organic Certification

USDA Organic symbol

Our Tofu and Seed Growing businesses are USDA certified, for good reasons, as they sell to the public, and people look for the USDA symbol. But we believe the domestic areas would not benefit from Organic Certification, which involves a lot of paperwork, and some restrictions which would cost us a lot of money.  Additionally, USDA Organic Certification is focused solely on the contents of the product. There are many other aspects of our farming that we care about –

  • locally produced food, minimal food miles,
  • freshness, flavor,
  • fair treatment of workers, worker safety and well-being,
  • carbon footprint, sustainability for the future of the planet,
  • humane treatment of livestock,
  • water, soil and wildlife protection,
  • food safety, nutritional content,
  • social and economic responsibility both locally and globally,
  • efficient use of fuel and other resources,
  • responsible stewardship of the land.

Our concerns are much wider and deeper than just the organic product. Also, we want a method that is in keeping with our trust-based system, not one of outside inspectors.

Sources of Inspiration, and Ideas we Have Drawn From

Certified Naturally Grown logo
  • Certified Naturally Grown which is an organization for farmers following the USDA standards without getting certified. https://www.naturallygrown.org/
  • OMRI (Organic Materials Research Institute) lists products acceptable for use by USDA certified farms. https://www.omri.org/
  • IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements) https://www.ifoam.bio/ and https://www.ifoam.bio/why-organic
  •  National Agricultural Library Sustainable Agriculture
  • Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage https://www.dancingrabbit.org/ecovillage-life/eco-living/

We have based our Sustainability Pledge initially on the IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements) principles and standards for organic agriculture.

Each Twin Oaks Managerial Area may define its own sustainable agriculture Practices, based on the shared principles in our Pledge.

Climate Change in Virginia Report

 

The First Virginia Climate Assessment

We gardeners and farmers are experiencing the climate changing. We need to pay attention and reduce the risks to our land, crops, livestock, lifestyle and livelihood. We also need to be resilient and adapt our farming and gardening to realities we face. This publication is a clear help in doing that. While it’s written for Virginia, it can be useful to those in neighboring states. Those in other states can look for (ask for or work for!) a similar publication for their state.

We are all vulnerable to climate change, either directly or by secondary effects such as wildfires, vector-borne diseases, road closures, power blackouts and failures of our aging infrastructure. Farmers can lose profits (income) or even their entire livelihood.

The First Virginia Climate Assessment

The First Virginia Climate Assessment was published in November 2025 at George Mason University. It includes sections on Climate Variability, Recent History, Projected Changes, Temperature, Precipitation, Sea Level, Heat Risk, Flood Risk, Drought Risk and Cascading And Compound Effects.

Virginia has 27 different ecoregions and 6 climate divisions: coast, plains, mountains. Since Thomas Jefferson started his weather journal at Monticello in 1776, we have experienced about 4.5°C or 8°F of warming. Virginia has become warmer and wetter overall, remembering that the averages include a range of specific changes, not simply a gentle shift upwards of a few degrees or fractions of an inch.

Monticello Then and Now Temperature Comparison from the First Virginia Climate Assessment:

Projected Changes, quoting from the First Virginia Climate Assessment:

  1. “Virginia’s climate is shaped by weather patterns stemming from higher and lower latitudes, while regional variation reflects topography and coastal proximity (high confidence).
  2. The Virginia climate has become warmer (very high confidence) and wetter (medium confidence) in recent decades, with greater precipitation extremes (high confidence) and more frequent tidal flooding (very high confidence) along the Atlantic coast.
  3. Climate projections indicate continued warming (very high confidence) and wetting (medium confidence) for Virginia through the middle to late 21st century, with chronic tidal flooding along the Atlantic coast (very high confidence).”

This 98 page science-based work includes a glossary of the unusual words, and was published with support from support from the late Honorable US Representative Gerry Connolly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and former Virginia Climate Center Project Manager Amanda O’Connor. It is thoroughly down-to-earth and provides a collection of evidence-based take-home messages. By incorporating information from a range of experts in the field, and including statements as to their level of confidence in their findings, the authors ensure we are getting a realistic picture of what the future holds.

Virginia Temperature 

Large temperature changes and increasing extreme heat events are bringing greater health risks, labor disruptions, crop and livestock stresses. The adverse effects are found in the state’s major economic outputs, especially crop production and livestock.

In Virginia, we are experiencing larger temperature swings throughout the year. In January 2024, within a stretch of 11 days, Charlottesville experienced a daytime high of 79°F (26°C) and a daytime high of 28°F (-2°C), the largest January range on record.

With higher humidity in hot weather, outdoor workers have a harder time cooling themselves, as sweat cannot evaporate off the skin. We are losing cold days faster than we are going hot days, but the effect is not as benign as that might sound. Conditions have become more erratic: hot days followed by much colder days. On April 20/21, 2026, we had a real frost (27°F/-2.7°C). We’ve been having hotter-than-usual weather, including 90°F/32°C. This variability and range is hard on crops. Crops germinate, make fast growth, and then get zapped or fried.

Quote from the Virginia Climate Assessment on Temperature

  1. “In Virginia, large seasonal and daily variations imply that the most prominent temperature effects will be shifts in extremes (high confidence).
  2. Observations indicate that while there is an overall increase in temperatures across the Commonwealth, the coldest days are warming faster than the warmest days (high confidence).
  3. Global climate projections display a robust, statistically significant warming signal of mean and extreme temperatures in Virginia across a wide range of emissions scenarios (high confidence).”
Observed and Projected Temperature Change from Virginia Climate Center at George Mason University

Virginia Rainfall

In recent years, Virginia has had both high-impact rainfall and extended periods of drought, combined with windier conditions that can lead to wildfires.

Virginia is experiencing wetter conditions overall, with more frequent and intense rain/snow events. Although the number of days with rain in both spring and fall are remaining steady, the amount of rain is increasing. This increases the likelihood of flash flooding, and of saturated soil, reducing crop yields, perhaps increasing crop diseases and pest outbreaks, and disrupting transportation. Summer and winter tend to be drier seasons, but they, too, are becoming wetter via flash droughts – quick onset droughts that can end very suddenly.

Half of Virginia’s rural counties face water shortages that jeopardize $472 million in crop production. Data centers are a new feature that also require large amounts of water. Who will get first rights?

Quote from the Virginia Climate Assessment on Precipitation

  1. “Virginia’s precipitation patterns reflect a complex interplay of seasonal cycles, diverse storm mechanisms, climate pattern variability, and regional topography (high confidence).
  2. Virginia is experiencing wetter conditions overall, with more frequent and intense precipitation events (medium confidence).
  3. Spring and fall are getting wetter, particularly in coastal regions, while summers are becoming wetter in the eastern Chesapeake Bay watershed (high confidence).”

Here’s the information-rich Office of Flood Resilience Planning.

Virginia Sea-Level Rise

Sea-level rise and sinking coastal land are leading to “sunny day flooding…” The sea is rising regardless of recent rain. Because of a combination of land erosion and rising waters, Virginia is experiencing a faster sea level rise than the average global rate. This affects not just coastal regions, but far inland. Salinity (salt levels) are rising in the York River and migrating inland. (I live and farm in the York watershed, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay.) https://www.virginiaplaces.org/watersheds/3wsheds.html

Virginia Watersheds and Divides. Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation

Quote from the Virginia Climate Assessment on Sea Level Rise

  1. “Sea level has been rising in Virginia due to a combination of global sea level rise (very high confidence), land subsidence (very high confidence), and influences from oceanic and atmospheric variability (moderate confidence).
  2. Future projections indicate that sea level rise will accelerate across Virginia coasts (high confidence), causing acceleration in coastal flooding (very high confidence).
  3. The impacts of sea level rise lead to changes in Virginia’s ecosystems and shorelines (high confidence), habitat conversion (high confidence), groundwater salinization (high confidence), and erosion (high confidence)”

Virginia Climate Equity

Cities such as Richmond have shown uneven exposures to hazards like heat, and resulting neighborhood-level vulnerabilities leading to the need for tools like the Climate Equity Index to address such issues. The key climate-related risk here is referred to as “Economic exposure”. Social vulnerability to climate change in Virginia is shaped by a combination of geographic exposure, socioeconomic disparities, and historical inequities. In Norfolk (and elsewhere) , historical differences have led to disproportionate climate impacts on low-income and marginalized communities, limiting access to resilient infrastructure and adaptation resources.

Impacts and Implications for Virginia

There is much more information in the report, including the impacts of the various risks. Download the publication yourself to read more. We all need to know this information and think about how to prepare ourselves and our farms for what is coming over the horizon. This publication is invaluable for discussion groups, home-schooling and individual research for projects.

Other Virginia Climate Change Resources

For those who prefer to listen than to read, WHRO Public Media has a one-hour story by Virginia Hafner: Virginia’s first Climate Assessment highlights how conditions are changing across the state

and Radio IQ Meteorologist Nick Gilmore provides the CommonWx newsletter, including The first Virginia Climate Assessment: a warmer and wetter Commonwealth

The Future for Virginia Climate Assessment

This first Climate Assessment is planned to be followed by others in the future, that will build on this foundation by adding finer-scale geographic detail; expanding coverage of climate impacts on agriculture, public health, transportation, ecosystems; and giving a more comprehensive review of disasters such as wildfires and landslides, all while ensuring relevance and applicability. This way, Virginia can prepare for and respond to the challenges (and even the opportunities) presented by a changing climate.

Exposure to various risks is only one component of vulnerability; later Assessments will address the other components: sensitivity and adaptive capacity.

Virginia is working to become more resilient to climate change, including the recent establishment of the Virginia Office of Resilience, and the enormous efforts led by community groups, universities, and non-profits across the Commonwealth. Together, we work to ensure all Virginians, present and future, can mutually flourish alongside the rich natural resources for generations to come

The recommended citation

for the Assessment is Ruess, P.J., Kinter, J., Ferreira, C.M., Ortiz, L.E., Ellis, A.W., Ermagun, A., Ezer, T., Fox, A. Klinger, B., Maggioni, V., Peterson, T., Allen, M., Burls, N.J., Cash, B., Clower, T.L, Costadone, L., Dollan, I.J., González-Dueñas, C., Henneman, R.F., Hoffman, J.D., Larson, M., Lindquist, H., Mitcham, M.B., Mitchell, M., de Lima, A.d.S, Tong, D., Ugliano, A., Whitehead, J. (2025). The First Virginia Climate Assessment. https://www.vaclimate.gmu.edu/virginia-climate-assessment

Creative Commons license

 

Biodegradable Compostable Produce Labels

Plastic fruit labels are the bane of gardeners who make compost. USDA ARS photo

Good news for those like me who are bugged by plastic fruit labels that live forever. Composting just concentrates them as all the biodegradable compost ingredients reduce in bulk. Both the labels and the adhesive are petroleum products that we’d be better off without.

The USDA Agricultural Research Service has a report Developing Eco-Friendly Compostable Produce Labels on successful research into making fruit and vegetable labels and adhesive that are biodegradable in home composting systems. Now, we may remember how we have been disappointed in the past with “compostable” plates and forks that actually require industrial composting facilities to digest them. This is much more promising!

As well as the labels, we need the adhesive to be eco-friendly. ARS researchers in the Bioproducts Research department in Albany, CA, collaborated with the produce industry to develop a food-safe, home-compostable biopolymer adhesive that has been lab tested on a variety of produce and meets the requisite standards. The researchers experimented with more than 250 variations of adhesive and many methods of applying the adhesive, drying and curing it, to find a solution to this multimillion dollar issue.

Their research addresses a key issue of uneven spreading of the adhesive coating on the back of the labels. The adhesive needs to work on smooth apple skins, lumpy orange peels, furry kiwi skins, waxed and unwaxed produce, produce still warm from hot climates, as well as refrigerated produce. The stickers need to stay on the produce during packing, unpacking and retail sale, but be easy for the consumer to remove, and not leave bits of adhesive behind.

The U.S. exports more fruits and vegetables than any other country in the world. Countries such as France, New Zealand and Australia have begun implementing laws banning imports of fruits and vegetables that do not have fully compostable Price Look Up (PLU) stickers. (Yay!) Biodegradable labels will help U.S. fruit and vegetable exporters meet the more stringent international standards. And we all benefit from less plastic in the world! US produce exporters will benefit from being able to continue exporting to countries with the bans.

Here’s a video about it:

Ready to Scan: Creating 100% Biodegradable PLU Stickers

https://youtu.be/04MGx0KRMvI

Jubilee, our much-loved orange slicer tomato. No stickers! Photo Pam Dawling

Those who only eat what they grow, and only compost material from their own farm or garden will not have the problem of finding lots of glowing white labels as they spread their compost. The rest of us can try to minimize the number of stickers that get into our compost-making. I wrote about how we do this with our “Fruit Label Sticker Cards”

One of our early Fruit Label Sticker Cards

 

A ready-to-use Fruit Label Sticker Card

Book Review: The Accidental Seed Heroes by Adam Alexander

The Accidental Seed Heroes by Adam Alexander

Book Review: The Accidental Seed Heroes: Growing a delicious food future for all of us.  Adam Alexander. Chelsea Green. 2025. 128 pages, $29.95US, $40CAN, 20GBP.

By stewarding heritage varieties and breeding wonderful new ones, farmers, plant scientists and gardeners across the world are the seed heroes giving us delicious food that considers our environment and is resilient in the teeth of our changing climate. Adam Alexander brings us absorbing and inspiring stories that give us hope and encouragement for our future, and ideas on how to move forward with providing good food.

This book shows us the big picture of feeding the world and goes in well-explained depth into plant breeding and selection. After reading this book, we can feel pride in our food-growing efforts and encouraged to do more. We will have a renewed respect for seeds and seed growers. The book includes a glossary and chapter notes for those wanting to know more.

This book is a delightful compilation of very readable short chapters that are an engrossing combination of travelogue, food writing, biology, farming and science. The engaging stories of traditional farmers preserving indigenous crops are matched with modern plant-breeding efforts focusing on flavour and sustainability.

This book salutes people who fervently believe seeds should be owned in common, not used to make private profit, and the growers who breed crops that are not dependent on chemical inputs, uniformity and monoculture, particularly those who freely share their seed-breeding work with other breeders.

A “cultivar” is a variety that has been deliberately bred to meet a farming need, while the word “variety” includes plant types that have arisen from accidental crosses and mutations. The two words, however, are often used interchangeably. A landrace, farmers’ or folk variety (FV) is a plant population with a limited range of genetic variations, which is adapted to local agroclimatic conditions and has been generated, selected, named and maintained by local farmers.

Accidental Seed Heroes gives a great explanation of plant breeding, both phenotype breeding (classical, traditional) by hand pollination or mutagenesis (forced mutation), and genotype or molecular breeding, including transgenics (genetic modification) in which genes are transferred from one species into another. Adam does not argue about genetically modified cultivars, but points out that those designed to thwart a specific bug or disease are continuously evolving and are vulnerable to losing their immunity. Also, we don’t need them.

Stories in this book range from indigenous crops like enset, tef and sorghum used in the Global South, and grain mixes known as maslins grown to provide resilience in the face of extreme climate variations, to vegetables and fruits both prosaic and exotic.

Dr. John Garton, photo from Wikipedia

The first chapter provides a brief history of plant breeding in Europe, starting at the beginning of the 19th century with Dr John Garton who systematically cross-pollinated thousands of combinations of grain varieties. His first big success was an oat named Abundance, in 1892. John Garton worked for the public good, creating a great diversity of new varieties which spread throughout the British colonies. Garton offered to donate his whole body of work, with seeds available free (or at market price) to farmers. The ag board turned down his offer, and for 85 years, Gartons Limited sold his seeds.

In the US from 1843, US Navy ships collected plants and seeds across the world for the benefit of American farmers. The seeds were distributed free. Newly arrived immigrant farmers were very happy to develop the wheat varieties they knew from their home countries.

Newly created open-pollinated varieties were sold or given away. Both publicly funded bodies and independent research groups founded gene banks with thousands of varieties of every type of crop, making their work available to all who requested it, with no strings attached. This proliferation of crop development continued until the discovery of genetics in the early twentieth century led to plant patents.

In the UK, the Plant Breeding Institute and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) were established 1912-1919. F1 hybrids were developed by selecting pure lines of plants with specific traits and then crossing them, resulting in cultivars that were better than their parents. These public institutions were privatized by the Thatcher government in 1987, and later sold to Unilever, Monsanto, and RAGT (associated with Bayer).

The next theft of the common wealth of seed germplasm was to grant patents to seeds and treat them like intellectual property. The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) was established in 1961 and now has 79 member countries. Four criteria are used to determine if a variety can be patented: novelty, distinctiveness, uniformity and stability. The rules of patents say that conventional breeding employing essential biological processes cannot be patented, but agribusinesses have succeeded in receiving patents, due to varying interpretations of the rules.

Patents impede small-scale plant breeders from building a sustainable food production future. The author has a lot of information here about Intellectual Property (IP) rights, Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBR) and growers’ rights. Just 5 seed companies control over 40% of seeds sold worldwide. 6,995 seed companies own an average of 0.008% each.

Albania and Ethiopia are two countries offering insights and examples of sustainable ways to feed ourselves, thanks to the genius and persistence of farmers. Ethiopia’s climate varies from arid desert to tropical and subtropical arable land with large rivers, and mountains up to 3,000 meters high. Ethiopia is home to a huge diversity of domesticated crops, and one of Africa’s oldest and largest seed banks, working with over 30 local community seed banks. Farmers borrow seeds and after harvest, return the amount they borrowed, plus a little more.

This “conservation through use” provides security by decentralizing the seed supply and adapting varieties to the changing climate. 90% of agriculture in Ethiopia grows such “Farmer Varieties” of crops. The Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute (EBI) holds germplasm of 90,000 varieties of edible and medicinal plants. Some is stored in the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway.

One of Ethiopia’s most important indigenous crops is enset (Ensete ventricosum), commonly known as the false banana. Ethiopia is the only country to have domesticated this valuable carbohydrate crop. The stem and root are fermented and ground to make porridge, bread and pancakes. The fibers are used as a packing material and to make rope. Enset is propagated clonally, and provided the rate of harvesting is sustainable, it is a wonderful insurance crop.

Enset, the false banana, in Ethiopia. Photo by Sabine Troeger Creative Commons BY license. https://www.promusa.org/blogpost357-Enset-the-false-banana

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Extracting fiber from enset, the false banana. Photo by Guy Blomme. Creative Commons Creative Commons BY license. https://www.promusa.org/blogpost357-Enset-the-false-banana

Albania has a wide diversity of plants and is the last of the Balkan states to introduce hybrid cultivars. Until 1990, the system of collective farms enabled Albania to feed itself sufficiently, if not well. After the collapse of communism, the land was reallocated to individual families, with an average holding of 1.4 hectares (2 acres), and the country continues to grow almost all the food it needs. In the last 30 years, farmers have moved away from growing and saving seeds, and Albania now imports 80% of its seeds. Traditional seed varieties are rapidly being lost.

Adam devotes a chapter to bread, wheat and other cereals. There has been a myth that good wheat for bread baking can’t be grown in the UK or most of the US; that northern climates with cold winters are needed. Adam discovered Hen Gymro (“Old Welsh”), a Welsh Farmers’ Variety of wheat that is wonderful for bread baking. It grows and yields well in what could be seen as unpromising conditions and produces long straw good for thatching.

Wheat started its evolution in the Fertile Crescent, (eastern Mediterranean). Wild grasses were the ancestors of emmer and einkorn. Wheat is special in containing many glutenins, which help create good stretchable stable doughs.

Sorghum was domesticated in Sudan 5000 years ago. It is one of the world’s most important cereals, and there are about 25 species native to Africa. Three other grasses: maize, wheat and rice, provide 50% of the calories consumed in the world.

The 1930s US Dust Bowl saw farms turn to dust because of eight drought years following many years of poor land management. Dryland Farming methods for growing with less rainfall and irrigation were ignored: pasture rather than arable farming; attention to healthy soil rather than extracting water for irrigation and using fertilizers to get high yields; diverse crops rather than monocropping which is vulnerable to disastrous diseases.

Climate change is likely to drastically reduce global maize yields (due to higher temperatures), but increase wheat yields due to higher CO2 levels. Crops bred to succeed in low-input systems will most likely do better than homogeneous cultivars.

Tef is a super cereal, fast-growing, viable at elevations of 0-3000 meters, used to bake the fermented flatbread injera, eaten daily in Ethiopia.

Hunter-gatherers could avoid famine by finding different plants to eat. Domestication reduced options, increasing the risk of starvation. Many gardeners and farmers practice some kind of “insurance-growing”: hardier kale to eat if the weather is awful and the preferred kale doesn’t do well; chard for hot weather leafy greens.

Included in Farmers’ Varieties of cereals are maslins, which are mixtures of different grains (sometimes including legumes) grown together. These provide greater resilience against pests, diseases, droughts and floods than varieties grown separately. When wheat and barley are grown together, in drought the barley survives. In good years, wheat does better and yields more than barley. This is insurance against bad outcomes.

Diverse heterogeneous seed mixtures (evolutionary populations and cultivated land races) have greater resistance to pests and diseases and are therefore more valuable to farmers. They adapt to changing environments in just five years. They can be traded at seed swaps, but not publicly sold in the US, because they don’t meet stringent government requirements. Encouragingly many farmers and growers are working locally to increase and improve crops that can do well under organic and regenerative agriculture.

An average of 43% of people in the UK eat beans on toast once a week.

Next, we move on to beans. In the UK, canned baked beans provide ubiquitous quick meals. The bean used is the small white haricot, also known as the navy bean. Ironically, this bean does not grow well in the UK climate! 50,000 metric tons are imported annually, mostly from the US, to just one Heinz factory in Wigan. There, 3 million cans are produced each day. Another supplier, Princes, in Lincolnshire, produces 0.72 million cans per day.

In the UK there is a big move to develop more beans for the chilly damp cloudy climate. In 2023 Princes pioneered a conventionally-bred British-grown bean, Capulet, and is expanding the acreage of that variety. 43% of the UK population eats beans-on-toast at least once a week.

Capsicums are next. Really hot peppers have their enthusiasts, although I am not one of them. If you are, you’ll enjoy reading about the hundred chili pepper varieties grown at Sea Spring Seeds in an interesting method involving no deliberate crossing. They have keen eyes for spotting improvements and saving seed from those plants.

Sweet bell peppers are grown in California on a huge scale for winter harvest. These hybrids are harvested in just a few passes over the fields, demonstrating a classically fragile food system. This crop needs about 5 gallons of water per pepper, and is being grown in a desert, with water extracted from the Colorado River and declining aquifers.

Tomatoes grown in Rajasthan, India use various colors of shade cloth to moderate the extreme range of temperatures there. 50% green shade was working best at the farm Adam visited. That area gets very little rainfall and over-extraction of ground water using tube wells was causing the salinity of the water to increase. Finding crops that can cope with high-salt conditions is a modern-day challenge.

Adam Alexander, author

Adam’s visit to Austria led to the Awesome Emma tomato, bred by two amateur seed breeders to thrive outdoors in a low-input system, such as organic farming, in the foothills of the Alps. Awesome Emma is descended from Bianca (a small pale yellow cherry) and Stripes of Yore (bred by the American who brought us Green Zebra). The fruits are purple and gold cherries with a complex flavor, and a tasty balance of sweetness and acidity.

Awesome Emma cherry tomatoes https://www.123seeds.com/cherry-tomato-awesome-emma

A network of professional plant breeders (the Bauernparadeiser-Projekt) across Austria, Germany and Switzerland is developing new tomato cultivars resistant to late blight (Phytophthora infestans) which thrives in high humidity and rainfall. Most of the blight-resistant varieties are hybrids, but in Hessen, Germany a company is selling a diversity of blight-resistant OPs.

Hybrids offer uniformity, reliability, high yields and sometimes great flavor. A good example is the much-loved Sungold cherry tomato. Cultivars like this lend themselves well to efforts to develop an OP strain, and many growers are doing just that.

“Dehybridising”, or growing F2s and their offspring using classical breeding methods, has proved to be a successful strategy for freelance breeders to develop new lines. I do not like the word “dehybridizing” as there is really no going back or “undoing” involved. It’s more a matter of using the plant’s genetics to create something new, closely resembling the desired fruit.

Mango Lassi cherry tomatoes. https://vitalseeds.co.uk

Adam investigated the creation of Mango Lassi, a delicious red cherry tomato, developed by Vital Seeds in the UK from 25 plants of Sakura cherry, which is a great starting point. From the F2 generation of 25 plants they carefully selected for flavor, growing habit and other traits. From the best six plants they saved their F3 seeds and grew another 25-plant generation. They took seed from the best four plants, which had fruit with some mango flavor, and started selling Mango Lassi.

The next chapter is about breeding pea seed, particularly Honest Ærling’s Genuine Eating Pea. The name sounds better in Danish: Æliger Ærlings Ærgte Æde Ært. Adam already had his own favorite pea, Avi Juan, which he wrote about in his earlier book The Seed Detective. Other well-loved pea cultivars include Winterkefe, a tall tasty mangetout or snow pea with some winterhardiness for early spring harvest, maintained in Switzerland by ProSpecieRara.

Sugar snap peas originated with an accidental mutation found in an Idaho pea field, bred with Mammoth Melting Sugar to have larger, straighter, tender pods of sweet fat peas. After eight years Sugar Snap was ready for sale.

Sweden is stricter on pesticide use than many other countries. Pea researchers in Sweden have worked to find resistance to downy mildew and pea root rot. Breeding for resistance to multiple diseases is hard because it can reduce flavor and yield. When stable resistance can be bred in, the cultivar can continue to be used for many years. Most Birds Eye pea cultivars have been grown for 25 years!

Frozen peas are very important these days. Invented by Clarence Birdseye, Birds Eye went on to become a business model bringing together farmers and breeders in the pursuit of quality. All Birds Eye peas have the recessive rr gene (wrinkle-seeded) which creates peas with twice as much sucrose as RR (smooth-seeded) peas.

In the UK, Birds Eye buys its peas from The Green Pea Company, a cooperative of 250 growers, all within a short drive of a freezer plant so the peas get frozen promptly after harvest. Birds Eye contracts with the coop and covers the harvesting costs, while the coop covers the risk of poor yields, and other bad luck.

We want peas sweet, but greens can be tasty and healthy when bitter. Bitter compounds serve the plant by deterring insect pests. The bitter compounds in brassicas are glucosinolates. When our gut microbiome interacts with these compounds, highly bioactive compounds form and help our liver and kidneys remove toxins. Cooked broccoli is better than raw in this cleanup task. Lettuce plants, when stressed by drought, heat or old age, can produce excess milky sap (latex) containing bitter sesquiterpene lactones. Some bitter plants such as hemlock are very poisonous. We need to discern which are good for us, and which not!

The next chapter is about eggplants/aubergines, which, 300 years ago, were creamy-white and goose-egg sized. In their homeland of India, 2,500 varieties of eggplant grow in hugely diverse climates. Despite this, there is no guarantee that there is an eggplant for every climate! Gardeners in cool climates find this a challenging crop.

Seed breeders are challenged because eggplants are parthenocarpic – they set fruit without pollination. Growers, however, benefit from this trait, as a decent yield is achievable even when conditions are wrong for pollination! Commercial breeders have little incentive to develop strains for marginal climates. Fortunately there are growers who rise to the challenge.

Søren Holt in Denmark has a shady, wet, windy garden. He started with Applegreen, and other varieties that flourish in cool climates with a short growing season. He pondered how to overcome the self-fertilizing habit that made cross-pollination rather unlikely. He had promising results with Skorospely, Rima and Almaz (Black Diamond), developing a locally adapted Danish Farmer Variety. After three years, he had three breeding lines of F3 plants, including one that gave high yields of large eggplants. But few seeds!

There could be a paradigm shift in plant breeding, to improve biodiversity, food security and human health, and to sequester more carbon than produced. This will take a lot of work, both in persuading people to take that path, and in breeding suitable food crops. In Andhra Pradesh, in the rice bowl of India, the regional government has set up a goal for the entire state to grow food agroecologically. With one million farmers enrolled, they have achieved an 11% increase in productivity and almost a 50% increase in income, using sustainable farming methods, as well as improving social cohesion and wellbeing.

Adam firmly believes that future generations will look back on the 21st century as the time when agricultural sanity was restored. Everyone who grows food and saves seeds is on the right side of history! Open-source plant breeding empowers all seed growers to be part of building resilience and sustainability into our food system.

Book Review: What Your Food Ate, Montgomery and Biklé

                                                                                                                         Book Review: What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health. David Montgomery and Anne Biklé. Norton, New York, 2022. 380 pages, USD $18.95, CAD $24.95 paperback.

To have healthy food we need to start with healthy soil. This book is a call to be part of the regenerative farming movement that includes successful practical, cost-effective ways to care for the soil-and-food aspect of our lives.

What Your Food Ate is well-researched, convincing, very readable, well-written and lively. It is a book to read carefully, in small bites: rich, nutritious and very filling. Your brain will need time to digest each chapter. A book to come back to repeatedly, to top up your learning and check your beliefs.

Dave is a geologist, Anne a biologist. They re-examine beliefs about health, medicine, our bodies, our food and our farming, showing how regenerative farming can heal the soil, restore the land and grow nutrient-dense, flavor-packed food, helping us towards better health. The health of the pasture influences the health of the livestock. And the health of our food influences our own health. Hence the title of this book, What Your Food Ate.

The food we buy today is a lot less nutritious than that our grandparents ate as children. You need to eat several of today’s apples to keep the doctor away! When food production follows short-sighted goals, water and air pollution, climate chaos, and bad working conditions for farm laborers all prevent optimal general health and well-being.

Desires for easily obtained (“cheap”) food, sufficient for everyone (if fairly distributed) led some to believe bigger was better, and more was better still, with a focus on calories rather than quality. Nowadays, over two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and obesity-related illnesses account for 20% of healthcare spending. The percentage of income spent on food fell by half since the 1950s, but the cost to society of healthcare more than doubled. It has become more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent or cure them in the first place. How food is grown affects human health. Cheap food has high costs!

In the past century we have switched from eating mostly minimally processed plant foods and some meat, to more than half the calories filling up North Americans now coming from ultra-processed foods. Many chronic diseases and auto-immune disorders arise from inflammation promoted by refined carbohydrates, highly processed meats, trans fats and some vegetable oils.

In good soil, plants take in what they need of both macro- and micro-nutrients. Disruption caused by the agronomic trinity of mechanized tillage, agrochemicals and monocultures leads to weaker plants and less nutritious food. Industrial fertilizers tend to contain only macronutrients. These do spur growth, especially in poor soils. But plants (and animals) need micronutrients too.

How do plants eat? Photosynthesis fuels plant growth by combining water with carbon dioxide. The soluble part of the humus in the soil is drawn up in water by the roots, growing the plant. This discovery led to the temptation to supply soluble chemicals directly to the soil to boost growth (hydroponics).

How do insoluble minerals move from the soil into the plants and animals that become our food? Rocks and soil supply the elements that don’t come from air or water, via the bodies of microbes (bacteria and fungi, including mycorrhizal fungi that coat the roots of some crops), cycling them around. For those seeking a concise understandable description of plant nutrition, photosynthesis and soil microbes, you’ll find it here.

Co-Author Anne Biklé

Carbon makes up half of the soil organic matter; plants actively recruit and support communities of microbes that promote their well-being. A 1994 study showed that tropical soils could only be tilled profitably for less than ten years, after which the organic matter had been used up. Temperate prairie soils typically survive for just over 50 years of tillage before wearing out. Starving soil microbes in the pursuit of quantity cannot provide quality crops.

USDA agronomists found significant declines in iron, zinc, and selenium in wheat varieties from 1873 to 1995. When high-yielding Green Revolution varieties were introduced they unintentionally decreased mineral density. Breeding for larger size causes the nutrients to be diluted to fill the larger product. But ignoring nutrient density, we are feeding many people a relatively empty diet, leading to obesity and chronic illness. In the same world, other people have insufficient calories and chronic micronutrient deficiencies.

In England, the Broadbalk Wheat Experiment started in 1843 to test the effects of various chemical fertilizers and organic manures on yields. Concentrations of four minerals in the wheat remained stable until about 1960 than decreased significantly every year after that, despite there being no decline in the mineral levels in the soil.

A wheat farmer in Oregon grew two adjacent fields of the same crops, under two different methods of weed control. One was the conventional method of continuous winter wheat with applications of glyphosate. The other was a complex rotation of spring barley, winter wheat and a cover crop mix. The purpose was to determine if keeping the fields vegetated year-round would outcompete the weeds and make glyphosate unnecessary. After two years both fields produced 75 bushels an acre. The wheat from the cover-cropped field had 35%-56% more boron, manganese, and zinc, and 18%-29% more copper, iron and magnesium, without any supplemental minerals. Trillions of microbes were ferrying the minerals to the crop.

Suspicion that farming practices, soil health, nutrient density and human health were declining had been a concern in England since 1939. A 1936 study found two-thirds of children had major dental problems. For comparison, the English population of Tristan da Cunha, an island in the south Atlantic, had perfect teeth. The agricultural methods were to blame. It is now thought that exposure to soil and its microbes, fungi and bacteria early in life protects against asthma and allergies. A troubling question has been whether we can feed the world while also nurturing soil life and building fertility. It might be thought that the decline in nutrient content could be offset by eating more, but that is not so.

Although nitrogen is nitrogen regardless of the source, there are differences in what else (if anything) is delivered with the nitrogen. Synthetic nitrogen can stimulate microbial activity, causing organic matter to break down quickly. Corn, wheat and rice all take up more nitrogen from the soil organic matter than directly from applied chemical fertilizers.

A 2017 analysis of 56 studies globally paired organically farmed and “conventionally” farmed fields with the same soil type, for 16 years. Organically farmed soils held almost 50% more carbon and nitrogen, with more microbial diversity than the conventionally farmed soils.

When farmers in the 1990s took a shortcut to dealing with weeds using glyphosate, they found that glyphosate-resistant GM corn, cotton or soybean yields did not grow bigger than non-GM crops despite the lack of weeds.  And by 2012, almost 50% of farmers had glyphosate-resistant weeds in their fields.

Glyphosate was marketed in 1964 for cleaning corroding pipes. Next it was marketed as an antibiotic. Consuming antibiotic-laced food messes with our gut microbiota. Roughly 40% of the molecules in our bodies come directly or indirectly from our gut microbiota.

Co-Author David Montgomery

In the soil, glyphosate binds to minerals, substantially reducing uptake of copper, zinc, manganese, iron and calcium, making them almost unavailable to plants and microbes. After glyphosate use, neither crop plants nor weeds are able to make several essential amino acids. Glyphosate damages the mitochondria of some plant and animal cells (but apparently not mammals). Beneficial microbes suffer from being dosed with an antibiotic, leaving plants vulnerable to pathogenic fungi such as root rots, and the consequent stunting of growth. In the 1990s, 24 diseases in 14 crops were found to have increased with glyphosate use.

Modern processing strips important nutrients from our staple grains. It has long been known that white rice causes deficiencies leading to beriberi. A 2010 study showed that eating white rice five or more times a week increases the chance of diabetes by 20%. Eating brown rice twice a week or more decreased the chance of diabetes by 10% compared to eating it only once a month.

During the Second World War, people in the UK switched to being more food self-sufficient. Public health improved during the war years, as people were encouraged to “Dig for Victory”; dietary education was widespread; sugar imports were cut while those of cheese, fish and dried pulses were increased; wartime bread was made with less-refined flour; and food was rationed (meaning rich and poor got more equal access). The health of the nation improved.

After the war, nitrogen fertilizer was promoted, using factories where nitrogen had been made into explosives. High levels of nitrogen in our food and water react with amines in our stomachs, forming nitrosamines, associated with cancer of the stomach, bladder, and in men, the prostate, in women, the ovaries. Colorectal cancer and thyroid disease, as well as birth defects, are connected with high nitrate levels in drinking water. Minerals and vitamins are adversely affected by high nitrate levels. Consuming fresh vegetables and fruit provides something of a protective effect.

When the USDA decided to include hydroponic food production as Organic, many farmers pointed to the wording in the Standards requiring good soil health practices, and formed the Real Organic Project. Hydroponic growers choose what to put in the water they cycle through the roots of their crops. When profitability and not health is the highest value, they add the NPK and not the micronutrients.

Relying on chemical fertilizers increases the demand for pesticides; higher pesticide use compromises plants’ ability to defend against soilborne pathogens. Soils farmed organically have a higher abundance of mycorrhizal fungi, likely contributing to disease suppression. Soil building practices improve soil health, crop health and human health. Microbes from compost provide huge benefits to the soil, even when the compost is spread only thinly. They boost the abundance and activity around the crop roots and suppress pathogens.

Farming practices that promote mycorrhizae and increase the beneficial bacteria will increase the mineral and phytochemical content of the crops, making them healthier, more resilient and more productive. People eating those crops have the phytochemicals they need to enjoy good health. Just a month on a phytochemical-rich diet (whole grains, nuts, at least six servings of vegetables and fruits daily) reduce cholesterol levels by around 15% and increase antioxidant activity by 1/3-2/3. Consuming half a clove of garlic a day can reduce cholesterol levels by 10% – I’m not sure how long that regimen lasted.

Silverwhite Silverskin garlic
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Of 100 preschool children in Seattle, 99 had measurable amounts of at least one pesticide residue. Almost 75 had two or more. Those in households where pesticides were used in the garden had higher levels than those that did not use pesticides. Tests on 1,000 adults in the US found pesticide residues in all but 20 people, indicating widespread contamination. Levels varied one-hundred-fold. Changing to an organic diet can decrease levels within a week.

Pesticides have effects beyond the target plant. Acute exposure is most dangerous, but chronic exposure from inhalation, skin exposure, food and water can all take a toll over time. Falling human fertility rates have been linked to pesticides. Prenatal exposure has been linked to developmental problems in the first two years of life. Childhood exposure increases the odds of ADHD and other neurobehavioral problems as well as leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Farmers, with a higher-than-average exposure to glyphosate, have higher rates of lymphatic cancers. Pesticide residues are also associated with many gastrointestinal, neurological, respiratory and reproductive effects, Parkinson’s disease and endocrine disorders.

Over the past century our growing use of pesticides has killed off almost half of the world’s insects, and large numbers of grassland birds. Among conventional agronomists glyphosate is generally regarded as safe because it has low acute toxicity and it was believed to break down rapidly in the soil. More recently, concern has increased, partly because glyphosate seems to be everywhere.

Particularly virulent poultry pathogens (Salmonella and Clostridium) are highly resistant to glyphosate, while beneficial bacteria are killed. Glyphosate is toxic to lactic-acid bacteria that usually control Clostridium botulinum in cattle. Ingestion of glyphosate-contaminated feed could undermine the balance in the gut of the cattle and predispose them to disease.

Some phytochemicals, such as glucosinolates, control soilborne pests, including fungi, bacteria, insects and invertebrates. Healthy soil helps plants resist pests and pathogens, and reduces the need for pesticides. Pests rebound faster than their predators, so the pests rebound in sprayed fields which soon have as many pests as unsprayed fields. Unsprayed fields have more predators, and no sprays. Composted plant debris and manure decrease the number of pathogens. Crop rotations can reduce soybean aphid populations to just 25% of prior levels.

The chapter on dairy production is entertaining and illuminating. A cow’s rumen may hold 50 gallons of fermenting forage and trillions of microbes. The bodies of the bacteria provide protein to the cow, who converts them into meat and milk. Our stomachs are very acidic and do not digest by fermentation but by dissolving our food. Very different.

In fermenting the cow’s feed, the microbiota in the rumen produce two main by-products: gases and fatty acids. Fatty acids combine to make fats, many of which are essential and valuable, such as those that build cell membranes, feed brains and eyes, and contribute to milk. The balance and composition of fats (and phytonutrients) in milk depends on the type and quality of the plants the cows eat.

A young helper in the muddy garden. The cows left footprints but did not help. 
Photo Wren Vile

Today most US cows live indoors eating carbohydrate-rich foods, mostly corn and soy. Their milk contains less milk-fat and more saturated fats than pastured cows. Their butter and cheese are not as nutritious or flavorsome. The phytochemicals with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antitumor effects are in much lower levels in concentrate-fed cows, and their meat is not as good either. Since 1945, death from heart attacks have been associated with eating lots of animal fats, and with cholesterol in particular. The data pointed that way, but other factors, such as unsaturated fats, were overlooked.

The countries with the highest rates of heart attacks and fat consumption also consume the most sugar and omega-6-rich oils from seeds. In a study, Japan and Italy had the lowest rates of fat consumption and heart attacks, with low consumption of omega-6s but lots of other fats, such as omega-3s from fish (Japan) and omega-9s from olive oil (Italy). An ignored Minnesota study from 1968-1973 found that replacing animal fats with omega-6-rich vegetable oils lowered cholesterol but increased death from heart disease.

A balance of omega-6 and omega-3 fats helps the immune system to manage inflammation. The typical American diet today has 10-20 times more omega-6s than omega-3s, 3-5 times higher than what is thought best for health. Chronic inflammation in the arteries is a big risk factor for high blood pressure, heart attacks, and other indicators of cardiovascular disease.

We have been encouraged to think that fish is healthier food than beef, but it depends on what your food ate. Much fish eaten in the US is farmed, kept in pens and fed manufactured feedstocks. They tend to have high ratios of omega-6s to omega-3s. Fully pasture-raised beef can be better!

Chicken is no longer a low-fat alternative to beef. Many chickens today have 5-10 times more fat than those in the late nineteenth century. The ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s has increased a lot.

Half of the cattle in feedlots die of bovine respiratory disease, a non-contagious chronic disease that compromises overall health. Antibiotics are commonly administered as a preventative measure, but these can lead to other problems. Rotational grazing provides ruminants with the best quality forage, and they are experts on choosing which specific items to eat that day based on their needs. Humans also have subconscious body wisdom, and choose particular foods at different times, when they can. Ultra-processed food products have manufactured sweet, salty, umami and oleogustus (fat) flavors added to make them more palatable.

Receptors in the gut pass on info that sets other processes in motion, like the endocrine cells in the gut that adjust the release of insulin to match food intake. Bitter taste receptors nudge us to choose bitter foods which help us deal with some respiratory infections, potentially decreasing the need for antibiotics. Several common bitter dietary phytochemicals, especially kaempferol, resveratrol and quercetin, help knock back coronaviruses, including Covid-19.

A study comparing what people ate on an ultra-processed diet and an unprocessed foods diet found that the ultra-processed diet led people to eat well beyond when they were full and gain about one pound of weight per week. The rush to low-fat diets (without distinguishing between different types of fats) led to Americans eating more low-fiber carbs and gaining lots of weight, as the carbohydrates turned into fats in the body. More bad advice was to choose lean over fatty meat, leading people to consume more processed meats with lots of salt and additives like nitrates.

Diet-related chronic diseases surged in wealthy countries in the twentieth century, and dietary advice swung back and forth. The gut microbiome influences how many calories a person can extract from their food, and weight regulation is not simply balancing calories in with calories out. Low-fat diets lower the level of “good” HDL cholesterol, especially in women, and triglycerides go up. The 1990s Boeing study showed no evidence that saturated fat in the diet led to increased risk of heart disease or fatal heart attacks. 30 years previously the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences came to much the same conclusion. That was opposite to the newly released US Dietary Guidelines.

Conjugated linoleic acid fat in milk (and meat) from cattle on pasture provides anti-inflammatory benefits, helping prevent some cancers, type 2 diabetes, arterial plaque buildup and bowel inflammation. Counterintuitively, it can help reduce body weight in obese people. A study of 5000 men showed that greater milk consumption is associated with a reduced rate of dying from heart disease or cancer, and no increased risk of dying from any specific cause. The benefits do depend on what the cow ate.

Inflammation is valuable as a short-term defense against things going wrong, but if inflammation becomes chronic, other problems can occur, such as Alzheimer’s, asthma and heart disease. Too much immune system dampening with anti-inflammatories can lead to its own problems. A well-balanced store of fats will help, and that depends on what we eat.

For omega-3s, cold-water fish and small fish, like sardines, as well as walnuts, broccoli, green leafy vegetables and some seed oils including flax and canola are good sources. Meat is only a good source if the diet of the animal provides the right balance. People with the highest omega-3 consumption have lower inflammatory markers, while those with the highest omega-6 consumption have the most.

Inadequate levels of omega-3s, micronutrients and antioxidants seem to have all played a role in health outcomes for people with Covid in the US. High levels of omega-6s may have facilitated the spike protein entering human cells. What a person ate in the few months prior to encountering Covid (or other viruses such as flu) can affect susceptibility. Omega-3-containing foods are the way to go. Omega-3s help reduce the chance of age-related cognitive decline and show promise for treating depression. There are striking parallels between rising homicide rates and increased omega-6 consumption. (Remember that correlation is not causation.) If you want to eat less omega-6s, avoid processed foods full of high omega-6 seed oils, and to better balance the omega-6s and omega-3s, switch over to grass-fed meat, dairy and eggs.

Fiber-rich whole grain diets benefit our health, lowering cholesterol, blood pressure and maybe heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. We can increase the nutritional content of grains (as true for other plants) by increasing the organic matter in the soil, intercropping legumes and grains, and generally building healthier soils. The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) involves planting rice seedlings at a younger stage, with fewer seedlings per clump, using compost rather than artificial fertilizers and a push weeder that buries weeds in the soil rather than continuous flooding for weed control. This leads to much higher yields, because the soil is healthier.

Vitamin deficiencies are now widespread in the US. Some deficiencies will cause the body to selectively serve short-term needs, setting the stage for trouble later if the diet does not improve. A 2020 study of the diets and health of 200,000 adults over 30 years showed that inflammatory diets were associated with an almost 40% greater risk of cardiovascular disease. A study in Philadelphia found that delivering 3 healthy meals a day to chronically ill Medicaid patients for six months reduced healthcare costs by almost one third. Providing meals cost half as much as a day in hospital.

Reintegrating livestock and vegetable production doesn’t mean letting the cows in the garden!
Photo by Bridget Aleshire

Regenerative farming practices can restore soil health, allowing production of abundant, diverse, nutrient-dense crops. These days there is renewed interest in no-till or reduced-tillage methods. These practices include continuous crop and/or cover crop plants, compost, crop rotations, diverse crops, soil carbon sequestration, and reduced use of gasoline, diesel, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Often this will include both rotated vegetable crops and rotationally grazed livestock. The combination can profitably build soil and improve our food supply. Building soil health is a sound path forwards. It shapes the health of future generations. We are what our food ate.

Years ago, I enjoyed reading David Montgomery’s earlier book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations and was drawn in by the title of this newer book.

The authors have a 50-page 1000-entry reference list, which they wisely decided not to put into the book. It’s available as an e-bibliography at www.dig2grow.com.

Sustainable Agriculture Conference Nov 2-4, 2024

Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Conference

I’m speaking at the 39thSustainable Agriculture Conference  this weekend. Click the link to register.

Saturday Nov 2 and Sunday Nov 3: Durham, NC Convention Center,

Hotel: Durham Marriott City Center.

Monday November 4: Half-day On-Farm Intensives near Durham, NC

CFSA’s Sustainable Agriculture Conference, 39 years strong, brings together farmers, food systems change-makers, and community leaders from across the Carolinas and a wider area, for a weekend of learning and community focused on advancing local, sustainable, and organic agriculture.

The conference features practical workshops, an expansive trade show, and plenty of networking opportunities, all curated with the rich, diverse food systems landscape of the Carolinas in mind. Connect with our community of farmers, foodies, educators, activists, and community leaders through this unique, authentic celebration of innovation in local, sustainable agriculture – you’ll walk away inspired, with new farming and food systems tools in your toolbelt, and maybe even some new best friends.

Gentry summer squash in our hoophouse.
Photo Alexis Yamashita

My Workshops

I will be presenting two 75 minute workshops (60 minute presentation plus 15 min Q&A):

Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests

on Saturday 11/2 at 10.15-11.30 am in Junior Ballroom B.

This workshop explains how to plan sowing dates for continuous supplies of popular summer crops, such as beans, squash, cucumbers, edamame and sweet corn; cold-weather hoophouse greens and year-round lettuce. Using these planning strategies can help avoid the wastage of gluts and the lost opportunities of shortages.

Printed and online pdf handouts available.

Our raised beds at Twin Oaks in summer

and

Crop Planning for Sustainable Vegetable Production

on Sunday 11/3 at 8.30-9.45 am in Junior Ballroom B (remember we will have turned our clocks back one hour!)

Learn to master the planning circle so you can produce crops when you want them and in the right quantities, and sell them where and when you need to support yourself with a rewarding livelihood while replenishing the soil. This workshop will provide planning tools for diversified vegetable production along with a step-by-step planning process that considers income, markets, crops, scheduling and mapping. You’ll also learn various fine-tuning tricks to fit more in and improve your plans each year.

Printed and online pdf handouts available.

My books will be on sale at the book stall run by Chelsea Green, and I will be signing books at the book signing.

Peruse the program to read about the 80 fantastic workshop sessions and start building your event agenda. Read about special conference activities, including:
  • Policy In the Plaza
  • Collard Variety Tastings
  • Social Hour
  • Farmer Veteran Meetup
  • Book Store
  • Farming While Black Film Screening (ticketed) $15. See more below.
  • The Trade Show in the Grand Ballroom includes a book swap, seed and plant swap (or share), the Heirloom Collard Project, Book Store and 50 trade booths. (see participating exhibitors)
Trade Show at the CFSA Sustainable Agriculture Conference

There are two morning workshops and two afternoon workshops each day, with a choice of ten topics in each session. There are 30-minute breaks between sessions, and a 2-hour lunch break, 11.30-1.30. Lunch and dinner are not included, and we are encouraged  to explore local restaurants. Check out the Discover Durham website and the printed food guide provided at registration.

Breakfast and mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee and snacks are provided on Saturday and Sunday, in the Grand Ballroom.

Planned workshop topics at this year’s conference include: soil health and fertility, crop planning and cover cropping, farm business marketing and branding, farming for climate change mitigation and adaptation, agroforestry, farm diversification, food systems equity and inclusion, growing in high tunnels, mushroom cultivation, food waste management, land access and succession, farm bill advocacy, farm business financial planning, agritourism, water quality, native plants, seed saving and sovereignty, and, and, and…the list goes on! Specific workshop information is available on the Conference Website.

Saturday night movie and discussion

Saturday evening there is a showing of the movie Farming While Black, an award-winning feature-length documentary film that examines the historical plight of Black farmers in the United States and the rising generation reclaiming their rightful ownership of land and reconnecting with their ancestral roots.

The film chronicles Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm and two other Black farmers’ efforts to regain their agricultural heritage. Collectively, their work has a significant impact, as each is a leader in sustainable agriculture and food justice movements.

After the screening of this film there will be a follow-up panel discussion with the film’s co-producer, Lynn Waymer, and three farmers from the Carolinas—Delphine Sellars of Catawba Trail Farm, Kendrick Ransome of Golden Organic Farm, and Ashley Walker of So Herban Homestead—each with their own stories of reclamation and empowerment through land stewardship.

Tomato transplants (not grafted) in pots, ready to plant out in mild weather.
Photo Wren Vile

Hands-On Tomato Grafting Workshop on Sunday morning

For those who don’t need my Crop Planning workshop on Sunday morning, there is a two-part tomato grafting workshop, led by Dan Gagnon of Broadfork Farm. This workshop is designed for experienced tomato growers who want to use grafting techniques to improve production and increase tomato yields.

In the first part of the workshop (Session E, “Tomato Grafting Success for Growers”), Dan reviews research and best practices to replicate for successful grafting, utilizing slides and video taken at Broadfork Farm. In the second part of the workshop (Session F, “Hands-On Tomato Grafting”), Dan will demonstrate the grafting process, and attendees will work in small groups to gain hands-on experience with tomato plant grafting.

Supplies for hands-on grafting are limited to the first 25 participants, so those interested are encouraged to sign up in advance to secure their spot. (Note: This is the only weekend workshop with advance sign-up.) On-site, all are welcome to attend, but any priority for any remaining hands-on seats will be given to those who attend the first half of the workshop.

Add a Monday On-Farm Intensive to Your Experience

Limited spaces may be still available for you to add one of our Triangle-area on-farm intensive workshops to your ticket! Email CFSA registration support at info@carolinafarmstewards.org or see us at the registration table on-site to add an intensive to your ticket; note that on-farm intensives are not included in conference passes and are sold on a first-come, first-served basis. Numbers of spaces were true on October 25!

  • Farmer-to-Farmer Organic Management Strategies & Soil Health Seminar—RambleRill Farm (Hillsborough) 14 spots remain
  • The Art and Science of Turkey Processing (*includes turkey*)—Jireh Family Farm (Durham) 10 spots remain
  • Liberation Through Abundance: Market Gardening with Perennials and Cooperative Economics—Bountiful Acre & Full Plate Farm (Graham) 21 spots remain
  • Hands-On Mushroom Production On Straw & Logs (*includes lunch & log*)—Haw River Mushrooms (Graham) 4 spots remain
  • Agritourism Design on a Sustainable Urban Farm—Hawk’s Nest Healing Gardens (Durham) 10 spots remain
  • Growing Native Plants and Cut Flowers Using Regenerative Methods—Wild Scallions Farm (Timberlake) 5 spots remain
  • Building on the Past: Resilience and Agritourism—Catawba Trail Farm (Durham) 30 spots remain
  • Agroforestry Farm Design—Panther Creek Forest Farm (Durham) 3 spots remain.

See my Events Page for future conferences and gatherings where I will be speaking.

 

Sewage sludge is a health and safety risk for farmers, gardeners, and everyone

 

Large sewage treatment plant. Wikipedia

About sewage sludge

Sewage sludge is the solid matter produced at wastewater treatment plants. Disposal of this industrial waste is expensive, so the companies have incentives to find a way to dispose of it more cheaply. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allows it to be spread on farmland as “biosolids,” a fertilizer rich in plant nutrients. Sometimes it is even provided free to farmers.

Sewage sludge, also known as biosolids, has been in the news recently for its inclusion of toxic PFAS (Forever Chemicals, a category of about 15,000 compounds that don’t break down naturally, but accumulate in the human body and the environment, including food crops and livestock).

Cartoon image of child on a toilet

What are PFAS?

PFAS are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a group of synthetic chemicals that are resistant to heat, water, oil, and grease. They are used in non-stick cookware, water-repellant fabrics, stain-resistant upholstery (including in cars) and more, including some dental floss. There are no legal limits for PFAS in food and water.

Why are they bad for our health?

PFAS are linked to some serious health problems like decreased immunity, birth defects, high cholesterol, cancer, and liver and kidney problems. Because they don’t break down, but persist in the environment, they have got into our water and soils. Farmers who spread biosolids on their land as fertilizer are finding levels of PFAS building up to very unsafe levels.

Consider this article in the Guardian newspaper: Texas farmers claim company sold them PFAS-contaminated sludge that killed livestock. (The Guardian newspaper has no paywall. They ask you to register and to pay what you can when you can.)

Two small ranches near Grandview, Texas, found their livestock dying, and their county has launched a criminal investigation into the waste management giant Synagro, which sold the biosolids to nearby farmers. Separately, the two ranchers have filed a federal lawsuit against Synagro, alleging the company knew the sludge they were selling was contaminated.

Synagro used Fort Worth’s wastewater from a treatment facility about 30 miles north of the ruined ranches. In late 2022 sludge was spread on a neighbor’s crop field across the street from the plaintiffs’ farms, and the suit alleges that the highly mobile chemicals migrated to their farms.

Soon afterwards, almost all the fish in a pond on one farm, that fed the family, died. Tests showed catfish with PFOS (one type of PFAS) blood levels as high as 74,000 parts per trillion (ppt) – a level 30,000 times above the dose that can sicken humans who eat the fish. Several horses and about 10 cows on one of the farms died without explanation since the sludge was spread. A stillborn calf had a liver with levels of 613,000 ppt.

Scientists at work. Image EPA

The PFAS levels found on the farm by independent testing were “shockingly high”, said Kyla Bennett, policy director for the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit, which is helping with the analyses.

The farmers say that since the sludge was sprayed, they have suffered high blood pressure, respiratory and cardiac problems, widespread pain and skin irritations. One of the farmers developed a mass on her spine that threatens to leave her paralyzed.

Drinking Water. Image EPA

The farms’ well water was contaminated at levels of PFOS more than 13,000 times higher than the federal health advisory, a Guardian calculation indicated, and affected meat (livestock) was as much as 250,000 times above safe levels, alleged the lawsuit.

The families will probably have to abandon their ranches, the source of their livelihood. There are very few laws regarding sewage sludge – the EPA only mandates monitoring for nine heavy metals. And so, getting a conviction in a criminal case may prove difficult. The success of the civil lawsuit will depend on what Synagro knew, or should have known, about PFAS in its sludge. In October 2021 the EPA announced the PFAS Strategic Roadmap 2022-2025 which includes risk assessment for PFAS in biosolids.

The Guardian has many articles on PFAS

One of the Lynbreck Highland cattle.

A good product went bad and got much worse

Sewage sludge has been used as a fertilizer since the 1920s, taking over from the widespread use of animal manure. Biosolids may contain macronutrients nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sulphur with micronutrients boron, calcium, copper, iron, manganese, magnesium, molybdenum and zinc.

Sewage sludge has been known for toxicity problems for a long time. Heavy metals, industrial chemicals, antibiotics, steroids and hormone medications, they’re all in there. The EPA has set limits for arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, selenium and zinc but has not regulated dioxin levels, or radionuclides. In 2014, the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, discovered extreme levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in their biosolids due to illegal PCB dumping at regional wastewater treatment plants.

Researchers at Virginia Tech, warned in 2013 that excreted antibiotics (from livestock and people) spread on farm fields were contributing to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and are a serious environmental problem.

USDA Organic symbol

No biosolids on Certified Organic Farms

USDA Organic Certification does not allow the use of biosolids on Certified Organic farms. This knowledge offers a safe way to find good food to buy. But many small farms don’t want the expense and inconvenience of getting and staying certified. Unless you personally know those farmers, you won’t know whether or not they use biosolids.

But the problem is much bigger than what’s in your own dinner. The percentage of farmland certified organic in the US is dropping and is below 1%.

Quoted from the 2021 Organic Survey:

“Between 2019 and 2021, the number of certified organic farms with organic production in the country increased 5% to 17,445, and the number of certified acres decreased 11% to 4.9 million. Certified organic cropland increased 3% to 3.6 million acres while certified organic pastureland declined 36% to 1.3 million acres.”

Real Organic Project logo

Real Organic Project

I have written here about the Real Organic Project.  The farm products from a tiny minority of large industrial operations now being certified are at odds with the original intent of organic farming. Unfortunately, these few operations produce a large, and growing, proportion of the food labeled organic on the market today. Some of them are constantly looking for ways to wiggle round the Organic Rules. The Real Organic Project is a movement to do exactly as it sounds: bring real organic back to claim the name, and show up imitations and greenwashing.