Agrarian Road Trip with the Presbyterian Hunger Program

Guest post by Toxic Free NC Intern Laura Valencia.

After interning with Toxic Free NC in the summer of 2009, working specifically on farm worker advocacy, I was left with the nagging sensation that the global food system was seriously ill. I learned first-hand about the symptoms of the sickness through sharing stories with farm workers who provide much of the labor that keep the food system chugging along. Pesticide exposure, poor housing, and unsafe working conditions were just a few aspects of the status quo that I not only heard about, but saw with my own two eyes. It wasn’t hard to come out of the summer with the idea that the food system is an unbridled beast, a problem that neither law nor economy would be able to fix.

Then, in the spring of 2010 I heard about the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s Agrarian Road Trip to the US Social Forum. Although the name is a total mouthful, the idea is quite simple: get together 15 people from across the country to road trip through eight states and visit just and sustainable agricultural projects. Or, in other words, my dream vacation. This trip gave me the opportunity to see the local agriculture movement as up close and personal as I saw the problems with conventional agriculture, and learn about much needed local solutions to national and global problems!

We toured from Louisville, KY to Detroit, MI by way of Berea KY, Maryville TN, Asheville NC, Wytheville VA, Mullens WV, and Youngstown & Cleveland OH (map). I’d like to report on the NC projects that our group visited and commend your state on a fantastic variety of agrarian projects!

The Veteran’s Restoration Quarters and Transitional Housing in Asheville, NC is a converted Motel 8 with over 150 rooms. According to Director Michael Reich, the facility is in the top 5 of 600 similar facilities in the United States, evidence that they run a tight ship! One project, the Victory Garden, was started by two current residents who asked for a garden when they moved in. They now work a large piece of land sunrise to sunset every day of the week. This victory garden not only provides food to the men’s quarters, but also to the women’s quarters in the city. The two men also run a weekly tailgate market to support their project! Produce also goes to the culinary classes where other veterans work to develop skills. The Victory Garden serves the community: it is not divided into plots for different people, it is a garden that is completely communal. While giving us a tour, the men mentioned their composting initiatives and also their use of IPM. In the photo to the left, Ed, a resident of the Veteran’s Restoration Quarters talks with Talitha, a Road Tripper from California. If you look closely, you can see a patriotic scarecrow in the background!

The Free Store at Warren Wilson College was started in 1999 as a part of Warren Wilson College’s super progressive recycling program. As a college student, I was blown away by WWC’s initiatives across campus: local food advocacy in the cafeteria, sustainable ag practices taught in the classroom, and an eco-dorm for leisure activities! As a college student, I am also sensitive to big-budget college spending vs. small-budget college student saving. The project that I saw that really appeared to not only be cutting-edge environmentally but also progressive socially was the Warren Wilson Free Store. The Free Store is an initiative to divert waste from the landfill – the message on their website is clear: “If you have some stuff you want to get rid of, no matter what it is, and you think that someone else might still be able to use / salvage it, bring it down.” Shelves upon shelves are filled with half-used shampoos, old cell phone chargers, dirty shoes, and suitcases. Just about everything a college student would throw away is found there, and more! I even picked up a “Warren Wilson Admissions” polo shirt. This project is part of WWC’s awesome recycling program, which you can check out here.

Our group spent the night at Warren Wilson College and had the pleasure of making Marc Williams’, local ethnobotanist, acquaintance. Marc led us through a meal that used over 30 ingredients, the vast majority local and harvested just that day. The menu included: herbal tea of monarda, spearmeint, sassafras leaves; pesto of lamb’s quarter and basil; garden salad with more lamb’s quarter and lettus, garnished with day lilies and monarda (left); and for dessert, juneberry-blackberry cobbler. Marc Williams, our favorite genius, is an ethnobotanist, teacher, chef, and farmer who went to Warren Wilson College and Appalachian State University. He is leading an online course that is donation based and based on the book Botany in a Day. Check it out!

One last story I’d like to tell is about a lunch our group shared in Brevard, NC at Fred and Elizabeth Bahnson’s homestead. Because our trip was sponsored by the Presbyterian Hunger Program, we often spent time with theologians and learned specifically about faith-based organizing around the local foods movement. The Bahnson couple, who are building an eco-house just up the hill from their gravity-fed edible forest and permaculture garden (idyllic, no?) are both theologians who met at Duke Divinity. My fellow roadtripper Bethel (her blog here) describes the Bahnson’s projects with detail:

Where the Bahnsons live is actually a microclimate in the midst of the mountains – a tropical rainforest, receiving nearly 80 inches of rain each year – as much as Seattle. As they build their new house, the Bahnsons have planned to harvest the rainwater, situating their catchment system on top of a hill – to gravity-feed to their biointesive growing beds. In addition to rainwater catchment, Fred has designed swales on the contour of the land to irrigate native fruit trees and prevent erosion on the steep slope on which their farm is southerly-facing. Other highlights of their farm-to-be are living mulches that fix nitrogen (lupine) and accumulate other deep nutrients (comfrey), as well as growing their own grains (Hopi blue corn for grinding). Elizabeth is currently dreaming of a goat dairy.

If you are interested in the connection between food and faith, check out an article Fred Bahnson co-wrote for the organization he founded, the Anathoth Community Garden. He points out, as many agrarian theologians do, that human and humus are not so far apart, a fact often supported by the Bible’s stories. The Bahnson’s are a living example of a desire to serve the soil rather than dominate it.

gardeners' tool: what's in your fertilizer??

On Saturday my husband came home from the garden store with a little bag of fertilizer labeled "For Organic Gardening!" I was skeptical. Fertilizer is notorious for being full of other contaminants besides the potassium, nitrogen and phosphorous you want out of it.

The bag directed me to the company's regulatory website to read about the ingredients. That website directed me to this one: The Washington State Fertilizer Product Database. Hot dog!!

I looked up the "for organic gardening" fertilizer and discovered that it contained 37.9 ppm arsenic. Arsenic! Just to put that number in perspective, the EPA's arsenic limit for drinking water is 0.010 ppm. That makes the fertilizer levels more than 3,000 times higher than the EPA's limits for drinking water. It was also full of mercury, cadmium, lead, and plenty of other stuff that doesn't belong in my vegetables. And I want to put this stuff on my garden.... really?

Luckily we have a nice big compost pile in our backyard full of rich organic matter for the garden. We returned the bag of fertilizer (and told the store why we were returning it - they were a bit taken aback).

The good news is that you don't need to buy fertilizer additives for your garden - compost is easy to make at home. The bad news is that fertilizer is full of virtually unregulated contaminants. The Washington State database lets you find out what's there - but only after you've bought the stuff. The USDA should crack down on fertilizer makers. The rest of us can learn about organic gardening and make our fertilizer the do-it-yourself way.

How an herbicide in "organic" compost is destroying organic soils - A cautionary tale.

Guest post by Bruce Olive, hobby gardener, Olive Farms in Orange County, NC.

On February 9, 2009, Dow Chemical registered the website URL www.BanAminopyralid.com. They haven’t developed a website yet, just purchased the domain and squatted on it. Kind of strange for the company who actually makes a product called Aminopyralid. For those of you who are not farmers or gardeners, the word Aminopyralid most likely has no meaning. But for UK gardeners last year, and for many US gardeners this year, this hormonal herbicide used to kill weeds in hay and straw fields has become a nightmare.

Early signs of aminopyralid poisoning include leaf cupping, fernlike growth, and twisted vines. Photo by Bruce Olive.

Here’s the deal. In the tightly knit coven of commercial chemical and seed producers (often one and the same), agricultural extension services and growers/producers, “programs” is how the work of the farm gets done. A “program” consists of soil amendments, herbicides, pesticides and seed stock genetically modified to flourish in this chemical bath. You plant the right seed, you spray the right chemicals, and everything comes up roses. But unintended consequences have a strange way of showing up where you least expect them. Take the case of Aminopyralid for example. You get a great yield of hay and straw with the “program”, using Dow herbicide products such as Grazon and Forefront. You sell the beautiful, thistle-free, weed-free straw and hay to local horse and cattle farms, who are totally pleased with the thistle-free product. The horses and cows eat the hay, and bed on the straw. You compost their manure and the straw bedding, let it cook for a year or so, and then sell it to compost packagers and vegetable gardeners as “organic” compost, just the way you always have. But you don’t have any idea the compost contains a toxic herbicide with a 533 day half-life. Then the local extension service begins to get calls about twisted tomato vines with curly leaves, wilting eggplant, and droopy potato plants. Strawberry producers loose a season’s crop. Suburban gardeners report wilting zinnias.

And then you suddenly realize that the herbicide was in the manure, passed on through the animals, and has now contaminated the soil. And may continue to contaminate the soil for years to come. Recently pulled by Dow from the UK market due to its devastating impact on vegetable and flower gardeners, the true impact of Aminopyralid is only just now being felt in the US. While there were some reports of impact last year, it seems to be in the application of aged compost this year that is being felt on a growing basis. We appear to be running a year behind the UK in our cycle, but the spring of 2009 will be remembered by many local farmers and market gardeners as the “Spring of Aminopyralid”, and the cascade of unintended consequences that followed its use. Soil remediation is possible but can take several years. For certified organic farms this contamination will be treated as “an act of God,” so they will not lose their certification but will lose the infected land until it can be remediated.

So when Dow registered www.BanAminopyralid.com back in February of this year, they were undoubtedly expecting someone else to want to register it shortly after. Or perhaps they were simply being good corporate citizens, preempting the public outcry. Where this will go is anybody’s business. Being America, the likelihood of a class action lawsuit is probably greater than the likelihood of a ban on the chemical. In the meantime, beware of putting any manure-based compost on your garden, whether from a big box store in a plastic bag or from a local farmer in the back of a truck. Not to place any blame, but to understand that folks may not even know their compost is toxic. Test all compost and manure with small plantings BEFORE you apply to your garden. Unlike herbicides such as Roundup, the hormonal herbicide lets the plant grow for quite a while before destroying it. What looks like a curly leaf virus or aphid problems may not be what you think it is.

Our own garden is ruined for this year, with hundreds of greenhouse raised seedlings destroyed. We are currently remediating this land following directions from the Rodale Institute. Not to be defeated, we have in the meantime plowed up another patch and put it behind some electric fence.


The first step in remediation is don’t give up – plant a new garden with a deer fence!

By all means, continue to buy local, but buyer beware….the Dow slogan "bringing good things to life" is not necessarily referring to the life of the things in your deer protected patch of Piedmont heaven.