Extreme Agriculture

wiscidea

Hero Member

Offline

Posts: 1087

Extreme Agriculture

« on: July 29, 2009, 01:38:27 PM »

It is a long article, so I'm pulling a few paragraphs out to lay a foundation for my questions. If this topic is of interest, I encourage you to skim through or read the original article. The material I'm posting here has obviously been removed from its original context.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/12/MN0218DVJ8.DTL

Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety

Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Monday, July 13, 2009

Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel
and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the
Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an
alternative to pesticides.

He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety,
because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No
vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind.

...

Vegetation harboring pollinators and
filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line
wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer - and anything that
shelters them - are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley
against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.

...

The deadly bug first appeared in hamburger meat in the early 1980s and
migrated to certain kinds of produce, mainly lettuce and other leafy
greens that are cut, mixed and bagged for the convenience of
supermarket shoppers. Hundreds of thousands of the bug can fit on the
head of a pin; as few as 10 can lodge in a salad and end in lifelong
disability, including organ failure.

...

Galvanized by the spinach disaster, large growers instituted a
quasi-governmental program of new protocols for growing greens safely,
called the "leafy greens marketing agreement." A proposal was
submitted last month in Washington to take these rules nationwide.

...

Large produce buyers have compiled secret "super metrics" that go much
further. Farmers must follow them if they expect to sell their crops.
These can include vast bare-dirt buffers, elimination of wildlife, and
strict rules on water sources. To enforce these rules, retail buyers
have sent forth armies of food-safety auditors, many of them trained
in indoor processing plants, to inspect fields.

...

Some science suggests that removing vegetation near field crops could
make food less safe. Vegetation and wetlands are a landscape's lungs
and kidneys, filtering out not just fertilizers, sediments and
pesticides, but also pathogens. UC Davis scientists found that
vegetation buffers can remove as much as 98 percent of E. coli from
surface water. UC Davis advisers warn that some rodents prefer cleared
areas.

...

They do know that trees have been bulldozed along the riparian
corridors of the Salinas Valley, while poison-filled tubes targeting
rodents dot lettuce fields. Dying rodents have led to deaths of owls
and hawks that naturally control rodents.

...

Frogs are unrelated to E. coli, but their remains in bags of
mechanically harvested greens are unsightly, Gordus said, so "the
industry has been using food safety as a premise to eliminate frogs."

...

Farmers are told that ponds used to recycle irrigation water are
unsafe. So they bulldoze the ponds and pump more groundwater, opening
more of the aquifer to saltwater intrusion, said Jill Wilson, an
environmental scientist at the Central Coast Regional Water Quality
Control Board in San Luis Obispo.

...

Seattle trial lawyer Bill Marler, who represented many of the
plaintiffs in the 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach, said, "If we want
to have bagged spinach and lettuce available 24/7, 12 months of the
year, it comes with costs."

So...

A lot of this seems to be done for our convenience. It is possible to obtain perfectly safe food from land right next to or even integrated with with wild vegetation. It is possible to obtain perfectly safe food, even if wild animals roam through the fields. It is possible to process food to minimize hazards. It is possible for every one of us to protect ourselves by learning how to properly wash and prepare food. But it requires effort, a bit more money, and PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.

Seriously, is it morally acceptable to exterminate wildlife, including predators that control pests or even insects that pollinate our crops, just so we can purchase a bag of "clean" processed lettuce free of frog guts? A bag of lettuce we can dump in our bowls without thought so we'll have a bit more time to watch the latest reality TV shows instead taking time to wash and chop a head of lettuce? I don't think so. I think it is morally appalling that anyone is willing to sacrifice so much of Creation, or perhaps even our long-term survival as a species, for convenience.

Thoughts?


	Logged

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." -- James Madison

Lilly

Forum Moderator
Hero Member

Offline

Posts: 2201

Religious affiliation: Christian

Re: Extreme Agriculture

« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2009, 03:24:53 PM »

Quote from: wiscidea on July 29, 2009, 01:38:27 PM

So...

A lot of this seems to be done for our convenience. It is possible to obtain perfectly safe food from land right next to or even integrated with with wild vegetation. It is possible to obtain perfectly safe food, even if wild animals roam through the fields. It is possible to process food to minimize hazards. It is possible for every one of us to protect ourselves by learning how to properly wash and prepare food. But it requires effort, a bit more money, and PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.

Seriously, is it morally acceptable to exterminate wildlife, including predators that control pests or even insects that pollinate our crops, just so we can purchase a bag of "clean" processed lettuce free of frog guts? A bag of lettuce we can dump in our bowls without thought so we'll have a bit more time to watch the latest reality TV shows instead taking time to wash and chop a head of lettuce? I don't think so. I think it is morally appalling that anyone is willing to sacrifice so much of Creation, or perhaps even our long-term survival as a species, for convenience.

Thoughts?

I majored in Horticulture at the University of Arizona and remember sitting in Plant Pathology class learning about ergot. The picture of a man with his limbs rotting off particularly affected me. I guess that's when I realized that nature will kill you in some pretty horrific ways given half a chance. Man has always struggled to make his food supply safe. E. coli is just another challenge in a long line of challenges.

This article is only dealing with greens. That's where the latest problem has come from. Roaming deer and dirty diapers have no place around such a crop. The particular bad strain of E. coli comes from feces as far as I know.

I can understand why buyers of such crops would be cautious. They're the ones who are going to be sued if they sell contaminated produce. The only problem I see with mass producing these crops is that any outbreak affects more people. But I don't think a small local farmer is more clean. In fact I think they can be worse depending on the quality of the farmer. The bottom line to this problem is poop.

Personally I don't buy greens in a bag. I've never been comfortable with that. I buy head or leaf lettuce and spinach, and clean it myself. I also sprout my own sprouts. I would never buy unpasteurized milk or apple juice. That's just asking for trouble. And my personal preference is to cook properly most everything I eat.


	Logged

Shirley

Hero Member

Offline

Posts: 645

Re: Extreme Agriculture

« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2009, 06:57:31 PM »

My thoughts are that it is a wonderful thread but we have no hope of changing their views on it. They will always see it as just another normal problem in dealing with agricultural needs without realizing that we are creating the problems which we never have valuably in the history of mankind except in the last 20 years.


	Logged

Pages: [1] Go Up

« previous next »

Search

TOC

User

Recent

Stats

Members

Stats

Users Online

	Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.	July 31, 2010, 10:14:58 AM
		Login with username, password and session length