To Farm or Not to Farm

No time for a full meal, but here's a little excerpt from a great Time magazine article to chew on:

A transition to more sustainable, smaller-scale production methods could even be possible without a loss in overall yield, as one survey from the University of Michigan suggested, but it would require far more farmworkers than we have today. With unemployment approaching double digits — and things especially grim in impoverished rural areas that have seen populations collapse over the past several decades — that's hardly a bad thing. Work in a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) is monotonous and soul-killing, while too many ordinary farmers struggle to make ends meet even as the rest of us pay less for food. Farmers aren't the enemy — and they deserve real help. We've transformed the essential human profession — growing food — into an industry like any other. "We're hurting for job creation, and industrial food has pushed people off the farm," says Hahn Niman. "We need to make farming real employment, because if you do it right, it's enjoyable work."

It's intriguing to think about farming as a future career. It's definitely not what I dreamed of as a kid, but I can't deny that I love plants. I recently read an inspirational story of a Burnaby man who's making a go of a 1-man salad greens growing operation. Makes you wonder if a green roof and a solarium or two could grow what it takes to keep a small cafe or lunch spot in the produce...

Yeah, how about THESE tomatoes?

Heritage. Organic. Local. Cherry tomatoes. O farmers market, I love you. Check these babies out, you NEVER see any of these varieties in the supermarket. The round yellow ones are almost translucent, and supersweet and soft. And do you see those dark ones? You'd think they were cherries or something. All the varieties except the little orange ones are heritage. They've still even got some field dirt on 'em.

Heritage, or heirloom plants are an interesting topic for me because of my background with plant biology. I mean, I'm all for maintaining and increasing genetic diversity, and that's what heritage cultivars are all about. Also, heirloom plants can often be more disease resistant and easy to grow in local conditions, because they have adapted over the years to the particular stresses and challenges of their environment. The novelty of getting to sample unusual varieties of fruits and vegetables is another big factor in my purchase of heritage produce.

I read an article recently which had some interesting points which are not often discussed when it comes to local food. Rather than think only about how far your food has travelled, the author suggests that we should also consider how efficiently it was grown, the amount of time and resources that went into its production, the amount of CO2 produced in the plant's full lifespan. While I find this interesting to consider, I think that even though some varieties are less efficient to grow, they are worth saving anyhow.

Personally, I would much rather subsidize someone on a family farm struggling to grow the same varieties that his great-grandfather did, than someone planting a monoculture of Monsanto Roundup Ready 2 Yield(TM) soybeans. But I can understand how the Federal Government might consider the latter a much better bet than the former. Western society has already gone so far down the road of growing only the most efficient, high-yield, transportable, truck-ripening of plants, there is no coming back. In the meantime, I don't think there is any harm in trying to support local, heritage farmers the only way we can - with our grocery-buying dollars.

One thing you cannot deny - heritage tomatoes have some damned awesome names. Hillbilly, Green Zebra (not a true heritage tomato btw., est. 1983), Abraham Lincoln, Dwarf Champion, Banana Legs. Maybe I'll become a heritage-tomato-spotter or something.

*Note: the 7 little fruits in the upper right hand corner of the top photo are actually tiny plums, not cherry tomatoes.