Category: Agriculture

Book Review: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

Book Review: The Botany Of Desire

Quick Facts on The Botany of Desire

When looking for books about nutrition and eating, it’s hard not to stumble up Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. But this is not a review of those books. While both interesting and worth the a read by anyone nutrition-conscious, it is one of Michael Pollan’s other books that is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and simply I cannot bring myself to discuss In Defense of Food or Omnivore’s Dilemma when there is a more stunning work to be mentioned. Published in 2001, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World is . It looks at the interplay between humans and plants. It’s not a nutritional guide, it’s an exploration of our own nature and, more importantly, the plants that exploit it.

Yes, I said the plants that exploit us. Think about it this way. When we describe how a plant produces nectar so that a bumblebee will lands, drink the nectar from the flower, and in the process pollinates it, we look at is as a master manipulation of the plant. The plant has somehow taken advantage of the bee’s hunt for food to sexually reproduce. In The Botany of Desire, Pollan asks one simple question that leads to an incredible new world view of plants: “What existential difference is there between the human being’s role in this (or any) garden and the bumblebee’s?”

Like Bees to a Flower

The book centers around four plants that have excelled at exploiting our desires: Tulips, Potatoes, Apples and Cannibus. Each has succeeded spectacularly by appealing to a different desire of ours: tulips satisfy our desire for beauty, potatoes, for control, apples for sweetness, and cannibus for intoxication. By doing so, they have become four of the most widespread and readily recognizable plants in the world.

Just think about the millions of tulips that travel around the world to end up a fixture of the suburban landscape, or the feeling of superiority we get from our complete domination of the potato in modern agriculture. Think of Johnny Appleseed, who spread a plant that evolved in Asia across the United States, leading to our current culture where 55 million tonnes of apples are grown worldwide every year, with a value of about $10 billion. Or, think of cannibus, better known as Marijuana: people literally risk their lives and kill for a weed. How can we look at these plants and think that they are anything but evolutionary masterminds?

In general, we tend to give more credit to the wild species around us, as if they’ve achieved some feat that domesticated species have fallen short of by being unique, special and rare. But Pollan challenges this mental separation we make. What is truly the aim of a species in a broader sense – to be admired for its uniqueness, or to spread its habitat globally? The four plants he talks about have come to be grown on almost every continent in unbelievable quantities, and they have done it by producing compounds and characteristics that we find appealing. Is it really any different than producing nectar for a bee?

The Book… and More!

It’s a 304 page masterpiece clearly driven by Pollan’s own love for gardening and plants. Every chapter is packed with amazing information, hilarious anecdotes, and brilliant writing that makes it difficult to put down. It is sure to reshape the way you look at the plants around you, whether they be on our lawn or your plate.

Botany of Desire Cover

But, I’d be lying if I said I chose this moment to share this book with you randomly. In truth, there is another reason I wanted to tell you about this book today. I want to give you enough time to read the book before October 28th. Why then? Because PBS has decided to do a documentary centered around this book.

The two hour feature will explore visually many of the amazing spectacles that Pollan talks about, from the potato fields Idaho to the apple forests of Kazakhstan. It will take us inside the bustling tulip markets in Amsterdam, which deal in the billion dollar flower industry, to the highly controversial medical marijuana plants in America. It follows the natural history of the four plants that have so exquisitely linked themselves in our cultures, and will compliment the book with fascinating images that you have probably never seen before.

I highly recommend grabbing the book now, giving it a quick read, then catching the PBS documentary on October 28th! After all, the book is always better, but the movie is sure to be engrossing, entertaining, and eye-opening, too.

30 September 2009
Can Biodiversity and Agriculture Coexist? How Super Metrics Made Wildlife Enemy #1 on the Farm (Day 4)

Think back to a time before agriculture existed. Hawks pounced on squirrels, coyotes chased field mice and bison roamed the Great Plains. Thousands of insects randomly pollinated umpteen numbers of plants, all scattered around having developed specific adaptations to their little hobbits. It wasn’t always a happy place – plenty of ruthless natural selection was taking place – but the species evolved to coexist into a hodgepodge we now call biodiversity.

Then came Homo sapien. As super hunters, we first decimated the populations of any large animals we found in Africa. Nomadically, we spread out of the continent – largely driven by the desire to find more of these animals – but even way back when, our actions caused irreparable damage to the ecosystems we encountered. When we simply ran out of animals to attack, forced to the brink of starvation, we finally settled down into communities and start farming. Only then did agriculture truly begin.

It’s from that background we begin to examine a tough question – can biodiversity exist in a world of monocrop staples like corn and rice, amphibian crushing pesticides, and food safety protocols that explicitly make farmers keep sterile fields free of small animals? The answers are varied from those we have spoken to on the Nutrition Wonderland Tour of America.

Different Approaches, Methods

Sustainability has become such a hot marketing concept that it often gets detached from its meaning, so it helps to define what we are talking about here.

Their logo

If you truly want to engage in the conservation of habitats before humanity ‘adjusted’ them, agriculture has no place. Sanctuaries and national parks serve that role, and perform an increasing important service in preserving these little oases. But that’s not what we are dealing with here says leading sustainable agriculture expert Jo Ann Baumgartner, director of the Wild Farm Alliance.

We spoke with her in the agricultural hotspot of Watsonville, CA, home to some of the most productive lands in the world. Her non-profit helps farmers move towards sustainable agriculture methods, some of which surprised us.

She explains sustainable agriculture is about allowing farms becoming a part of their natural environments, while still maintaining their ability to help feed humanity. Growing smaller, more diverse crops, restoring natural filtering grasses and hedges for wildlife around the periphery, reducing or eliminating chemicals – and allowing animals different pathways between their native habitats is all part of this delicate balancing act.

Many of these methods come into direct conflict with food safety. Exactly how that developed requires us to wind back the clock a few years.

How Wildlife Became the Enemy of the Farm

In 2006, there was a well publicized outbreak of e.coli in the spinach grown in California, causing a dramatic loss of money for farmers, handlers and anyone involved with the leafy greens. No one is quite sure about what exactly caused the contamination, but the best guess we have is that the feces of a feral pig who was harboring the disease came into contact with some spinach in a field.

Greens aplenty for the LGMA

Without a concrete explanation at hand, legislative powers in Sacramento began to rumble about tightening the screws on the spinach trade. This led most major growers to sign onto the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (LGMA), a codified set of enhanced food safety standards designed to keep your greens safe and sound. That was a pivotal moment for biodiversity on the farm Baumgartner explained, as habitat removal was drastically accelerated.

The source of the plight? A dirty buzzword among industry vets call supermetrics. This idea is promulgated by private buyers of leafy greens to distinguish certain operations which go beyond regular safety practices and meet a secret list of demands. A superficial look at these rules would make the whole thing seem like a laudable goal for every farmer. The reality though is quite different explained Diane Stuart, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz whose focus deals with the environmental impact of food safety legislation.

Supermetrics have become a key aspect wholesale buyers like grocery store chains use to determine from whom they will buy their crops. The tougher the standards, the more likely your crop is to sell. Consequently, farmers have ripped out native landscapes and hedges at an alarming rate.

Since the LGMA was put into place, the Monterey County Resource Conservation District office put together a survey of leafy greens growers and found that nearly 90% of all farmers questioned had removed a significant amount of native vegetation from their lands. This process is still going on today and it’s a never ending cycle added Stuart. If a farmer wants to sell his crop, he has to meet these standards. Failing to do so could literally mean the farm.

The Cost of Action, Inaction

The case for conservation of pristine habitats is known worldwide at this point, thanks to some very hard working individuals and organizations. But the idea of conserving nature on farms is still in its infancy.

The USDA’s Precious

The Wild Farm Alliance and a rag-tag collection of public interest groups are on the cutting edge of explaining this paradigm. Implementing reform takes the form of localized food systems that decentralize risk, developing biodiversity plans with farmers, farmer education and habitat restoration. Policy changes are also being contemplated with regard to agriculture, reflected in grumbling about the Farm Bill, food safety legislation and some new, aggressive USDA initiatives designed to get farmers to take better care of their lands.

Farming conservation grants are debuting this year at the USDA and they operate with similar logic to big industry. The name of the game is money, so consider the position financially. In economic terms, USDA needed to put a cost on an undesirable externality – in this case habitat destruction – and make that cost offset the lost value of the environment.

Its the same idea behind carbon ‘cap and trade’: heavy-handed government policy shaping land use patterns, anathema to the spirit of American agriculture. But with a projected population of 500 million by 2050 – the way we use land will change regardless. The idea sustainable farming advocates and now the USDA is to shape land use by smoothing out the impact agriculture has on the surrounding environment, a laudable goal much more funding needs to be directed into.

Is a New Way Even Possible?

But the real question is: just how safe do we want our food? What are we willing to lose in the process? Baumgartner put that question to us and its still ringing in our heads over here. Its not an easy question nor does it have a convenient answer.

Should farmers dress in spacesuits to avoid contamination? flick user ginza_line

Sustainable farming methods may not come at a large financial cost (although some definitely do), but the premises would require a sea change from consumers. The USDA can fund whatever it wants but most people want a bag of fresh greens and they want it safe. That choice writhes its way clear up to the farm – and the food system is responding with a product most people want, despite its environmental impact.

Are we willing to go back to heads of lettuce and bunches of spinach? For some, that answer is yes but for most its likely no. Diane Stuart explained how some processors are pioneering new techniques like irradiating the crops, using ozone and requiring more testing to ensure safety. But with large plants capable of processing 5000 bags per hour, there is inherently more risk. The air quality on airplane flights or the germs in a hospital immediately come to mind as examples.

Stuart was especially confident in the ability to change agriculture into a driving force for biodiversity in the environment but we are not so sure. We can adjust the processes all day long but if consumers continue to demand a super safe bag of spinach, someone out there is going to deliver it. Both experts we spoke with have excellent plans on how to get individual farms to use more sustainable methods but serious changes to the food system would be required to get there. For now, these changes impact fractions of a percentage of the farms that feed the US and the world – merely experiments on what could be.

Time will tell if we can reverse the trend of habitat destruction on farms in a substantial way and balance that with food safety measures. Decentralizing the food system as Stuart suggested would go a long way to ensuring one bad batch of food does not find its way across the entire country in a matter of days. Along with the habitat restoration technique, the tools we need to fix the problem are at hand now. The will to do so, however, remains illusive.

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This is Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America – Day 4, Watsonville/Salinas/Santa Cruz, CA

29 September 2009
Food Safety as a Marketing Tool: USDA Monterey Hearings on NLGMA (Day 3)

Nutrition Wonderland is now up in Monterey, CA as part of our Tour of America and today we are attending the first of the USDA’s hearings on nationally adopting the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (LGMA). This new proposal, dubbed the NLGMA, would extend the existing agreement that covers California and Arizona across the entire nation – even extending into Canadian and Mexican imports.

Harvesting in Salinas Valley

While it may seem a bit much to cover such a specific agreement, it is important to note that in this case, the USDA is literally borrowing a regulatory framework from industry – which is unusual. In fact industry, in this case Western Growers, is asking the USDA to adopt this policy at a national level. And remember, the LGMA only exists because of the massive consumer boycott that followed the 2006 e.coli outbreak in spinach. Consequently, it has been highly contentious with numerous public interest groups speaking out against the measure. We wanted to take a closer look at what is really being talked about here and how it would impact the small farmers it is largely targeting.

Full Steam Ahead

The first person we saw at the USDA hearing was Laura Mills, representative from Metz Fresh, a major handler/shipper for 10 large leafy greens growers. Most of her testimony was based around the idea of industry specific Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs). She talked about the lengths LGMA signatories would go in order to meet – and often exceed – their own guidelines. Remember, LGMA was set up by the growers themselves, large ones at least, so the 2006 e.coli incident would never happen again.

Most of this behavior was fueled by ever pickier buyers says Mills. Don’t think of buyers as consumers, rather buyers refers to actors in the wholesale market – say Whole Foods or Safeway buying from a farm. These same buyers now look to growers who can exceed the LGMA standards by meeting supermetrics, as they were coined throughout the debate. Exceeding those LGMA standards sometimes comes with some severe environmental consequences, a topic we will cover in detail tomorrow but, industry reminds us, the result of this extra work is a safer food supply.

The consumers dictate the market and the buyers relay those signals upstream to the growers, says Mills. Safer food is the message being sent up the supply chain and LGMA is meeting those expectations. The question then becomes – just how safe do we want our food?

Hold Your Horses

One of the best counterpoints of the day was a gentleman named David Runsten, director of the non-profit Community Alliance for Family Farmers (CAFF). This group of both large and small growers said they stand against the NLGMA. Runsten contends some very large leafy greens growers are also members in CAFF but we did not independently verify that. His general idea was completely the opposite of Mills, arguing against different standards for different crops. Small growers may have 1/2 acre plots of up to 100 different types of produce – especially for farmers targeting minority communities, Runsten added.

Case in point, we met the Yang Farm at the Silverlake Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles earlier this week. They had a host of crops catering to an asian tongue, like bitter mellon, chinese eggplant and asian pears. If there were an NLGMA for a variety of different crops, farms like Yang’s could be put into financial jeopardy – or more likely, they would simply stop growing the more regulatory onerous ones. When you see the diversity of crops local growers showcase at farmer’s markets, it gives Runsten’s argument significant weight in our minds.

Runsten’s continued in some other compelling ways. He mentioned the idea of leafy greens itself is a marketing term, a point lost on many in audience it seemed. This gets more contentious when you consider where to place truly leafy greens like cabbage, collard and mustard greens. As of now, they are outside the LGMA but still leafy and green – just not inside the industry fresh cut green packs we see in the stores, so they remain outside of the regulatory framework.

Case Study – California Strawberry Commission

Regulation is not the only path large growers can take to enhance food safety. Annika Forrester, the Food Safety and Grower Communications Specialist for the California Strawberry Commission, spoke with Nutrition Wonderland last week about how she helped develop a major new program to educate migrant farm workers about proper safety and sanitation in the fields.

The Commission became more interested in protecting its industry after a hepatitis outbreak in Guatemalan strawberries decimated the market for strawberries in America during the late 1990s, much the same way greens growers reacted. Couple the loss with the fact strawberries are field packed – that is the field workers literally package the berries you would find in your supermarket – this crop was ready for some food safety attention.

Forrester helped create an educational food safety flip chart which acts as a graphical guide, engineered to overcome language barriers common among migrant farm workers. Forrester mentioned specifically that migrant worker managers, often Mexican, have problems communicating with their employees, now coming from deeper in Mexico – regions like Chiapas and Oaxaca that are traditionally Mayan, where Spanish itself is a second language.

The California Strawberry Commission holds training sessions around California, educating the managerial work force directly, so they can train their farms hand in better sanitation practices. The program has been implemented in early 2009 and so far, over 500 managers have been trained – using the flip chart to educate another 35,000 field workers by Forrester’s estimates.

Is It Really Large Versus Small?

Large organizations, as a whole, do not see food safety as an unnecessary burden. Both the leafy greens growers and strawberry growers are taking steps, albeit very different ones. One point is universal though: everyone is eager to have a more streamlined regulatory framework. We heard from Drew McDonald of Taylor Farms, the largest processor of leafy greens at the USDA hearing, that lacking a coherent food safety agreement was a key reason the LGMA was created in the first place.

In the absence of such an overarching food safety agreement, self regulation becomes a marketing tool. Think of the way Volvo established itself as a car brand: safety IS a marketable aspect of all types of products. With leafy greens, large growers can say they have a procedure where smaller ones cannot and use that to raise prices. The market for local foods is now so strong, smaller farms can differentiate themselves in the market in other ways outside of safety without this agreement – like sustainability or biodiversity for example. Smart industry here would see LGMA as a marketing weapon they can use to establish a competing cache to the local scene.

Instead, what we saw here is that opinions on moving towards a national LGMA, an NLGMA, broke down into familiar categories. Large packers and handlers were strongly supportive of expanding the existing agreement – largely because they have nothing to lose. According to testimony at the USDA’s Monterey hearing, 90% of all leafy greens are currently covered under the agreement already – so applying that protocol nationally costs nothing to large growers/handlers because they are already doing it. Smaller, local farms that have not implemented the extra safety protocol would face substantial costs, estimated at between $25-50/acre (figure given during hearings).

Some Final Thoughts

But the real question here is why apply bother with all of this? Local, small leafy greens operations have not had any reason to implement anything like this because there has never been a large scale outbreak from those operations. Despite being asked by the USDA, no grower or packer could cite an outbreak having come from a farmer’s market. All of the contamination in leafy greens has come large scale producers – think back to the bagged spinach. It was not an isolated incident either.

This all makes some sense if you think about it. Small growers do not have large distribution networks, so even if there was a localized outbreak it would stay localized. In that sense, the CAFF opinion makes the most sense – extend the LGMA solely to fresh cut products and leave the rest out. That view ignores the contentious small/large farm dichotomy and instead focuses extra safety measures on where the problem has been – with distributor fresh cut product.

We will have to see how the situation develops, as there are 7-8 more of these events around the country. Simultaneously, the major food safety legislation before the Congress has now moved over to the senate, changing names from HR 2479 to S 510. As all of this advances, we will continue to look deeply into the issues for you.

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This is coverage for Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America, Day 3.

25 September 2009
David vs. Goliath: A Maasai Warrior, Regional Food Crisis & Agricultural Innovation (The Backpack Farm Program)

Welcome Rachel Zedeck of the Medea Group who explains to a Western Audience some of the problems going on in Eastern Africa, specifically how an inadequate agricultural system fails its own people. She puts forward a new solution – the Backpack Farm Program – and explains how it could help the people. Rachel will be regularly contributing her advice and experience on developing sustainable agricultural systems using a microfinance model in Eastern Africa.

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It was late in 2007 when I first arrived in Southern Sudan by way of Kenya, to research a new model of socially responsible agricultural development. Within a year and half, I was emotionally raw and physically exhausted. My personal battle with African development models had taken its toll. Even with several years of field experience in post conflict countries, I was ready to quit and crawl home.

Moses, a Maasai in modern day Kenya

Then, I got into a taxi driven by Mr. Moses Lenchula Lenkupae. Well dressed, soft spoken and polite, I immediately felt safe in his presence. Perhaps this was because Moses is a Maasai warrior from Samburu, an arid and picturesque region 7 hours drive from Nairobi.

Well educated by Kenyan standards, he came to Nairobi to drive a taxi because it was the easiest way for him to find employment. He explained to me that as the eldest son in his family, he needed to help support his mother, 7 brothers and sisters – and now his father’s second wife and two newborn babies.

Immersion Comes at a Price

During the following months, I learned more about his family as well as the plight of the Maasai people in Samburu. Both groups regularly face raids on their cattle from the neighboring Turkana, Pokot and Borana tribes as well as corrupt police units regularly spilling over into bloodshed. Just last week more than 21 Samburu Maasai were killed in tribal violence.

But the Maasai have struggled since the turn of the century when a viral epidemic killed large herds of cattle and goats. This tragedy was followed by severe drought caused by successive years of short rains. Over half of the Maasai and their animals perished. Soon after, more than two thirds of Maasai lands in Kenya were taken away by the British and Kenya governments to create settler ranches, which are now the well trodden wildlife reserves and national parks of both Kenya and Tanzania.

Drought, a common site in the Horn of Africa – thanks to suburbanbloke on flickr

In 2009, severe drought is once again killing Maasai herds in Samburu. The damage extends throughout Kenya’s pastoralist regions, including Mombassa and the arid North East Province (NEP). Herds of animals are being brought into the cities despite the drought, but they are often sick and dying animals, too weak or poor quality for sale. That has sent the prices of cattle, goats and sheep plummeting, sometimes more than 80%. Local herders have little recourse since they do not know how to diversify their business models during high risk months.

But still Moses continues to drive his taxi through town either in a well pressed oxford and tie or his traditional red robe and beads.

The Grain Crisis

The pain doesn’t stop there for Moses or East Africa though. As a result of drought and short rains, the region’s grain belts are simply not producing enough grain to support regional demand; coupled with disproportionate demand for food aid to support humanitarian emergencies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan (North and South). In the last 18 months, the grain prices in the East Africa region have fluctuated wildly with average maize price in 2009 some 20-60% higher than historical norms.

Dramatic PRice Fluctuations in Staple Crops, image thanks to isivivane.com

These numbers represent more than simple price fluctuations or the impact of drought, but also the region’s integrated vulnerability. If one country in the East Africa region suffers from short rains and a weak harvest, then the region suffers as a whole. But there are those of us who believe there is always hope.

With an estimated 100 million small landholder farmers in East Africa and an additional 25 million in South Africa, these farmers represent a tangible, practical solution to the region’s food insecurity while increasing rural income as well as impacting the GDP in their prospective countries. How to turn more than 100 million farmers into a productive food system for Africa, capable of overcoming regional conflict and drought, has been out of reach. These economic problems become more real when you see them up close.

My friend Moses’ sister Rose was brought to Nairobi last year with acute Malaria and almost died. There is only one clinic in his community and it refuses to treat anyone who can not prove they can pay at the gate before entering the compound. Luckily Moses can help provide with his taxi income but many others cannot.

Ideally the community could fund their own health clinic, providing the services they need at prices they can afford. But none of that can happen amidst famine, where entire families struggle to survive. Western safety nets are unknown here and the people of this region need to be earning enough from either cattle or subsistence farming to provide for their families. I don’t want to see another Rose go without the care she deserves, which has driven me to find a solution.

A Practical Solution – A Farm in a Backpack

With both the land and a workforce capable of producing food, my organization began to see that maybe the commercial world could succeed where so many UN and NGO programs had failed before.

In April 2009, after two years of frustration, I finally secured what I call my ‘wonder’ team of agriculture experts. Together we have launched the Backpack Farm Program. The program enhances bottom pyramid value chains which target small landholder farmers’ production models with cutting edge agricultural inputs, training and monitoring.

The Drip Irrigation Model

Currently, small landholder farmers lack both the technical capacity and financial equity to enter the wholesale markets – which could substantially alter the food crises of East Africa. Their yields are typically poor, estimated at one-quarter of the global average leading to insidious hunger and poverty. To counter the weak production, our partner Lachlan Agriculture designed the “fusion farming” model, a combination of biological products, botanicals and reduced toxicity pesticides.

By eliminating the need for traditional fertilizers, and distributing a customized and cost effective drip irrigation system and training on green water management (rainwater) techniques, we think the Backpack farm model could potentially create a huge shift the mindset of how to develop rural economies and impact Africa’s food insecurity.

Bringing It Home

Solutions like the Backpack Farm Initiative can’t wait. I often think about Moses. While he isn’t rich, he can help his family and saves to expand his business. His real dream is to attend an American university to study animal husbandry and then return to Samburu to attract new commercial investments in cattle farming.

Moses talks about Samburu like it is his own magical kingdom, one given to him by his ancestors. He reminds me of what real struggle and commitment means in Africa. I have no right to give up on my dream of being part of the solution to feed Africa when he continues to work 18 hour days to help his family survive. I hope to help him lead the warriors in his village to build a new future for his people by using the land they have lived on for thousands of years in a new way that is genuinely sustainable for the people of East Africa.

23 September 2009
Is the Strawberry the Future of American Agriculture? (Day 1)

Nutrition Wonderland’s first stop of the journey is an exceptionally beautiful place called Oxnard, California. It anchors a rapidly growing area but more importantly, it is the principal city in the Oxnard Plain – one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world. Known as the Strawberry Capital of the World, Oxnard also grows cucumbers, peppers, herbs, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, lima beans – the list goes on. In short, this place is an agricultural mecca.

The model?

Still, this community is at a turning point. The same beauty that gives the region bumper crops also jeopardizes its agricultural future. As it turns out, a delicately crafted piece of legislation and high yield crops are all that stands between the region turning into a concrete jungle like formerly agricultural Orange County. We spoke with the California Strawberry Commission in the California Strawberry Festival’s Oxnard office this past week about some of the challenges and opportunities facing their industry – and more generally – agriculture.

The Past into the Present

Carolyn O’Donnell, the Communications Director for the California Strawberry Commission, introduced us to some of the background involved with Oxnard and its strawberries. The community gets its name from agriculture; its named after a pair of sugar beet processing brothers that came to the area back in the late 1800s. Today, the region is home to the majority of strawberry production in the United States, an intensive production of continuing harvests that occurs twice annually.

One of the most interesting points in our discussion came from Sue Odgers, resident of the area for 50 years who has watched Oxnard transform from a 1970s population of 26,000 to well over 200,000 today. The region wasn’t always known for its strawberries as it is today, she told us. The community used to be known as the lima bean capital of the world, along with growing a sizable amount of sugar beets.

Crops Growing in Oxnard

Our tour of some of the farms in the area bear out Odgers observation. We saw many fields of red bell peppers ready for the picking, an incredibly sophisticated tomato hothouse and, of course, some early planting of strawberries. The common theme with all these crops? Higher selling prices at market. After all, strawberries are far more sexy than lima beans.

Moving To High Dollar Crops

The move from cheaper crops to high dollar produce mirrored the change in population. Strawberries specifically are a very high dollar crop, so each farm can extract more dollars-per-acre than with lima beans. The switch in crop cover, it turns out, was a vital move in maintaining the area’s agricultural base – and one that could easily be overlooked as other agricultural communities look to emulate Oxnard’s success.

With all the extra strawberry coverage in Oxnard, we asked about pesticide usage, as berries in general regularly score highly in pesticide residues (.pdf link). O’Donnell pointed to continued growth in organics, now over 5% of the crop, and also mentioned that these harvests are inherently more sustainable than other crops simply because multiple harvests can come out of one field in the same year. The Commission is also making a push to replace methyl bromide by funding research into methods that can reduce dependence on the dangerous fumigant.

Connecting to the Community

Sue Odgers, a volunteer who sits on the California Strawberry Festival board, also plays a vital role in connecting the community to its signature crop by helping to organize an annual festival. Now in its 27th year, the two day California Strawberry Festival is a celebration of the food – and the region. Local arts and crafts creators stand shoulder to shoulder with growers, cooks and community leaders.

A Picture of the Festival in Action, thanks to the CSC

Attendance is strong and focused around enjoying a variety of strawberry products, the favorite of which is a build-your-own strawberry shortcake booth. Odgers also described the scholarship fund the festival has setup. Now over $1,000,000 strong, the scholarship goes directly to help the children of migrant farms workers afford higher education.

Creating the connection between the farmers and residents of the cities on the Oxnard Plain is crucial so that residents see sprawl as taking away something meaningful from the communities. Such involvement helped the Ventura County region stay ahead of the development as we learned from Annika Forrester, the Food Safety and Grower Communications Specialist for the California Strawberry Commission.

Ventura County’s Different Plan

Oxnard’s complex farming past has evolved into legislation to stay ahead of the changes wrought by sprawl Forrester explained. Every 10 years, the state of California requires each county to publish its ‘General Plan’ for land use which, taken together, guide growth around the state. California tends to reinforce suburban style land uses which primarily convert agricultural land into tract home and strip mall development, according to sources inside the planning office we contacted.

Image from the S.O.A.R. Intiative

The first community to actively organize against this planned encroachment was Napa Valley back in 1990, whose voters passed the Measure J. Its legal success against developer’s challenges that went all the way to the California Supreme Court provided Ventura County – home to Oxnard and other agricultural communities – a blueprint for how to protect their lands.

This culminated into the S.O.A.R initiative of Ventura County, an amendment to the General Plan passed back in 1998. The initiative locks in land uses primarily so agricultural lands stay that way. Ventura County went a step further and established an urban growth boundary, appropriately called CURB, that restricts all development outside said lines (Learn More Here). Only a simple majority vote can bend the CURB’s restrictions.

All the members of Strawberry Commission referred to the impact this legislation has had on the region. Without it, it seems beyond likely that many more acres of prime farmland would have been lost to development.

A Way Forward

To get people to eat better and practice better nutritional habits, we as a nation must physically have the right foods available for people to eat. Strawberries, along with the myriad of other crops coming out of the Oxnard Plain, are part of that answer. We have all seen the studies associating produce consumption with a reduction in chronic disease [1, 2, 3] – but translating a health answer into development policies is complex and hard to understand at a distance.

From what we saw, the Strawberry Commission is doing a good job of bridging that chasm between frenetic city life and more traditional agricultural farmers with their festival. While we would have hoped to see more than 5% of their total crop as organic, that percentage is surely growing – and its still more important that the crop continues to exist, organic or not. And that’s the real issue facing Oxnard and many other communities – how do we make development and agriculture work together?

Communities will have to assign higher values to agriculture in general. Oxnard is fortunate in that sense. The community came together to draft aggressive legislation that aimed to keep the area’s agricultural history intact. Switching from lima beans to strawberries and other high value crops also helped by driving up the value of agricultural lands, giving local farmers some ammunition against soaring land prices. But not every community can be the strawberry capital of the world.

Balancing population growth while still being able to grow the food for those new mouths will require delicate planning that may change from community to community. Oxnard, with a combination of legislation, community involvement and adoption of higher value crops, is a great example of how to make this work. However, development challenges will continue and forward thinking communities have to get out in front of the issues before land uses change forever.

When we travel up the coast to Santa Cruz, we will explore the other side of this issue: conservation of undeveloped land. The big question we will be asking is how to transition conventional agriculture into a lower impact, sustainable land use that can co-exist with natural open spaces. We will be speaking with the Wild Farm Alliance, the Monterey Aquarium and the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Sustainable Agriculture school to find out how they think it can work.

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This is the story from Day 1 of Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America.

22 September 2009