Margotlog: Clean Dirt: What You Learn Crossing an Ocean

Margotlog: Clean Dirt: What You Learn Crossing an Ocean

He was young and full-faced, pleasant, with that mid-western regularity of speech--a young man on his way from the western edge of Iowa to Johannesburg, South Africa. I wasn't going nearly so far, only to Florence, Italy. It never occurred to me to visit South Africa, but he had a product to sell--a machine developed by his farmer-tinkerer father that did something neater than usual with fertilizer.

The urge to question as I travel sometimes leads to learning the unexpected. It seems possible to pick a stranger's brain miles high in the atmosphere in ways I'd never do on the ground. Something about proximity amid relative safety--after all, we are surrounded by others and there are the flight attendants if something goes awry.

We were talking about dirt, as in mid-western farm soil, and what has been dumped in it for decades, with mounting consequences. As in the herbicide Round-Up and its persistence in the soil and plants far longer than the package suggests. As in evidence that Round-Up causes cancer. As in Round-Up's ability to bind calcium and thus give test results that say plants contain calcium, yet that calcium is not available to the human body..As in the decimation of North American bees caused in part by the die-off of flowing plants in fields (and lawns) necessary for honey-gathering insects. (Not to mention the danger to humans from pesticides used in farming that leach into the water we drink.)

As in the fact (he tells me) that most bees in the U.S. are no longer native but imported from Italy. As in the fact that to keep "pests" from damaging corn (the largest crop grown in the U.S.), more and more pesticide must be used every year. As in the only way to avoid this is a very simple and ancient practice of crop rotation and allowing fields to go fallow (i.e. run to weeds) every so often.

We land in Amsterdam and he heads off to visit the city before his much later flight, and I go to my gate for Florence. Our conversation becomes a lens through which I view all the Italian rural scenes from train and bus windows for the next two weeks. Here is what I ponder:

* Poppies are the Italian dandelion. If a field is left to itself, it will sprout poppies with abandon. Beautiful red, vibrant cups on stems studded hither and yon across relatively small fields.

* There is almost an equal ratio of planted to nonplanted (i.e. fallow) fields. The Italians are thus following this old measure for reducing the insect pests of their crops. (And by plowing in the weeds, adding nutrients to the soil.) Thus they need to use far less, or perhaps no herbicides or pesticides at all, since in a field deprived of corn, the corn borer dies from lack of fodder. And when corn is then planted a year or two after the field is fallow, the corn borer has melted away.

* I heard just before I left that the European Union outlawed the use of pesticides called neonicotinoids, the pesticides most damaging to bees. I hail this as I assume that now Italian bees are less vulnerable than before, I wonder what it will take for the U.S. to show this kind of sensible self-interest as I remember my father's outrage when a single roach dared show itself in our South Carolina kitchen. We were instantly at war.

* I try to imagine a cartoon character that's an insect and shows itself a friend of humans. Kafka's short story "Metamorphosis" is the only thing that pops up--a gigantic coackroach with human faculties. I want someone to help me love all insects the way I'm learning to love all birds, even the hawks and harriers that capture in spectacular swoops the pigeons and sparrows (and an occasional cardinal) I feed in my backyard.

* I delight in the wonderful simplicity and flavor of Italian food, Yes it costs more than food does in the U.S., but Italian tomatoes are like tart ambrosia not the cardboard simulacrum we have here. Italian ice cream (gelato, thank you very much) is almost always light and delicious, flavored with just the right amount of pistachio or chocolate or cherry. Vegetables on the grill--zucchini, eggplant, for instance--sprinkled with balsamic vinegar--well there's no better way to enjoy summer veggies. And the pasta, almost always made from scratch, is melt-in-your-mouth. These people care deeply about the flavor, texture, the rightness of food. Yes, they drink our junk--the colas. But other than that, they eat what makes eating a pleasure, and now they have helped make growing human food part of a natural cycle that does not destroy or cause illness. THAT'S A HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENT, given what happens not so far away from my front door in Minneapolis/Saint Paul.

Margotlog: Insects Among Us

Margotlog: Insects Among Us 

 About eight summers ago, driving home to the Twin Cities from vacationing on the North 
Shore, I routinely encountered many Monarch butterflies taking their lazy flight south. 
Then suddenly a year or two later, there were almost none. Around the same time, I began 
reading (Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker) about "colony collapse" among our 
nation's bees. 

As the excellent article by StarTribune Josephine Marcotty (5/3/2013) reports, this 
die-off of bee colonies is accelerating. Culprits identified by Marcotty and earlier 
science writers include loss of flowering habitat, and even more clearly, the increased 
use of pesticides on farm fields (and orchards too), notably insecticides in the class of 
neonicotinoids. 

Genetically modified corn which is resistant to the effects of insecticides and 
herbicides allows farmers to spray their fields with greater and greater doses of these 
toxic chemicals. Just as Rachel Carson warned in Silent Spring of bird and insect deaths 
due to DDT, so now we as a people are facing the loss of beautiful and very necessary 
insects 

Small-scale beekeepers I know within 60 miles of the Twin Cities report no trouble 
raising and maintaining their hives, but they neither live in heavily farmed 
neighborhoods (as perhaps does Steve Ellis, Barrett, Minnesota, beekeeper  quoted in 
Marcotty's article), nor do they truck their colonies to California to pollinate almond 
orchards. Such disruption is also potentially harmful to bees (Kolbert).

The European Union has just banned the use of neonicotinoids, and Marcotty remarks that 
University of Minnesota bee scientist Maria Spivak "said Europe is more willing to 
ban pesticides based on perceived risk."

Marcotty then quotes Spivak directly: "The U.S. has a much stricter policy and 
approves pesticides until [it's] proven that they are a problem."

I'm an English teacher, and as such encourage my students to look for illogical and 
prejudicial use of language. Try this on for size: A "stricter" policy approves 
pesticides until they are proven a problem. This seems not stricter at all, but rather a 
"looser" policy, favoring chemical companies who produce not only genetically 
modified corn but also the pesticides and herbicides spewed on fields where such corn is 
grown. Note my prejudicial use of "spewed." Not a nice word, suggesting 
"indiscriminate, reckless," and yes "harmful."

It becomes clearer and clearer that unless the U.S. bans these damaging pesticides and 
probably the genetically modified corn they're used on, we will soon have no flying 
insect friends to pollinate our apples, strawberries, almonds, blueberries, and many 
other trees and plants which still abide by natural "unmodified" procedures. 

Given the evidence that the enormous U.S. corn crop goes largely to bulk-up feed lot 
cattle, producing beef far higher in fat than grass-fed cattle who come to "market 
weight" walking the range and eating grass (which their stomachs are naturally 
formed to digest)...evidence that the hugely damaging use of corn syrup to sweeten colas 
has created a U.S. epidemic in childhood and adult diabetes and obesity...evidence that 
using corn to create ethynol is neither environmentally nor economically viable... (see 
the documentary movie "King Corn")...

Well, the choice from this side of the supermarket aisle seems all in favor of veggies, 
fruits, and nuts. And bees and butterflies.