Agricultural Ingenuity Boosts Sustainability

June 17, 2008

If you’ve been watching the news lately, you’ve probably been steering clear of tomatoes. Salmonella poisoning is a serious medical issue, and while some companies, such as fast-food giant McDonald’s, have concluded that the danger has passed, the more cautious among us might remain wary for days or weeks to come.

In a world as full of industrialized agriculture as ours is , food scares are hardly new. Beyond the media frenzy over the link between Mad Cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, cases of everything from e. coli contamination to the ever-present specter of bird flu are now commonplace on news reports, even as confined animal feeding operations, commonly referred to as CAFOs, consume eight times the antibiotics used on the human population.

But as pressing as these potential hazards in our current agricultural system might be, they remain just that: potential. By far the most currently pressing negative aspects of our industrialized agricultural sector are not health risks, but the facts of global warming emissions. Each year, millions of tons of carbon dioxide are produced in the growing, harvesting, shipping, and refrigerating of produce alone.

Fortunately, the ingenuity and willpower of a handful of local business owners and farmers may provide insight into how our agricultural future can be made both healthier and more sustainable. In fields outside of Kalamazoo, MI, on the eastern fringes of the American Midwest, the growing season is fairly short, featuring long springs and cold, harsh winters. Yet using basic, low-impact technology such as high tunnels, also known as hoop houses, local growers like Dennis Wilcox of of Blue Dog Greens is able to grow crops well past the normal season, with some hardy plants growing year-round under their new-found protection.

“Without supplementary heating, the crops are protected more from snow and other elements than from the cold," Wilcox explains. But even so, the small amount of shelter lets Wilcox get an edge on the spring planting season as well. In warmer regions, too, the tunnels can be useful, protecting extremely fragile crops from the first frosts of the year.

But local, low-impact, organic agriculture is only part of the solution. It takes local businesses dedicated to serving fresh, local foods to make these crops viable products. Businesses like the Food Dance Café in Kalamazoo, which serves fresh, local produce year-round, creating demand and introducing the larger populace to the improved taste and safety of non-industrial agriculture. As Julie Stanley, head chef at Food Dance notes, “I started buying locally produced ingredients, which was unusual in Kalamazoo. My focus then was on flavor and freshness, which is still my top priority. But now I'm also satisfying a growing demand for local foods.”

Photo by ouvyt