(no subject)
WANTED: A PERFECTLY LOCAL CHICKEN
FOR A TRULY SUSTAINABLE BREAKFAST, WHICH COMES FIRST? THE TOFU OR THE EGG?
By Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
July 13, 2005
http://www.thetyee.ca/Life/2005/07/13/LocalChicken/
Does vegetarianism make ecological sense? For more than 15 years, the
answer, for us, has been yes. We accepted the now-familiar sustainability
formula: on any given tract of agricultural land, it is almost always
possible to produce more vegetable foods than animals to eat. Add in the
question of cruelty (which seems to increase with every "efficiency" added
to animal husbandry), and for us the issue was no contest.
These days, however, we¹re asking a new question. Does vegetarianism fit
into a local, sustainable diet?
Now things are getting complicated.
Alisa and I were near-vegans when we began our Hundred Mile Diet three
months ago. Suddenly, everything we could eat or drink at home had to come
from local land and waters, and immediately an unexpected ethical question
loomed. What the hell are we going to eat for breakfast?
The neighbourhood chickens
Consider: we knew of no locally grown and milled cereals or flours. It was
too early in the year for fresh fruit. We couldn¹t eat rice pudding, or
scrambled tofu, or that nice Egyptian fava bean breakfast called ful
medames. What we had were potatoes and . . . more potatoes.
Well-meaning friends offered the following advice: "Buy eggs, you idiots!"
Sorry, well-meaning friends, but it¹s not that easy. Yes, there are local,
organic, free-range chickens busy producing local eggs. But what are the
chickens eating? The answer, typically, is feed that has travelled the same
kinds of distances as most grocery-store products‹an average, according to
World Watch, of a whopping, globe-warming 2,500 to 4,000 kilometres.
Then we discovered the UBC Farm.
Tucked among the conifers that spread south from the central university
campus, UBC Farm is home to an organic market garden as well as 83 Hy-Line
Brown chickens. Beyond raising our own, this is about the closest connection
to local food that we could ask for. Alisa and I can ride bikes to the
Saturday public market (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.), where we are free to walk the
grounds and visit the chickens (though they never seem to remember us). We
can see for ourselves the birds' living conditions‹500 square metres of free
range in which the handsome, rust-coloured hens forage for bugs, eat at
feeders, or peck at organic waste from the farm. We even know, roughly, the
birds' birthdays: the whole brood was born in December 2004 and will be kept
three years before slaughter.
Much of what the chickens eat, then, is as local as can be. Their cereal
feed is not. According to Mark Bomford, program coordinator for the farm,
the organic feed comes from Alberta. It is, however, brought to Vancouver
via a transshipment arrangement, by which trucks that deliver steel to
Alberta return with loads of chicken feed.
More importantly, UBC Farm is working toward all-local feed for the
chickens. The students and staff have experimented with growing grain
on-site, and plan to revive old threshers and other farm machinery from a
former agricultural teaching and research complex on campus. While Bomford
admits it¹s "mostly lunchroom talk" right now, the ultimate vision is to
grow, harvest and blend a complete chicken feed on the farm. Meanwhile,
Bomford adds, the chickens do more than simply lay eggs‹they contribute to
the sustainability of overall food production. Chicken manure is a potent
fertilizer, and the Hy-Line Browns are also being tested for pest-control
duty.
Global vegetarianism? No thanks
As for the eggs‹we'll take a dozen, thanks. When it comes to eating locally,
we've had to abandon strict vegetarianism.
The strange fact is that vegetarianism as commonly practiced is, like the
rest of the industrial food system, propped up by the globalization of food
and everything that it entails, including a total disconnection between food
consumers and producers, and the cataclysmic ecological costs of shipping
food around the world. At its worst, global vegetarianism is still cleaner
and greener than global meat-eating, and is certainly more humane. On a
local level, though, the questions are more complicated.
Why were the UBC Farm eggs so important to us? Because vegetable-based
protein sources aren't exactly abundant in these parts. There are hazelnuts;
unfortunately, Alisa is allergic to them. The most readily available protein
sources are all animal-based: fish and shellfish, eggs, dairy, meat. It is
increasingly clear that local, sustainable eating is not always going to be
vegetarian. Imagine attempting a Hundred Mile Diet in Whitehorse (a brother
of mine is considering exactly that‹and picturing a lot of meals of fish and
game).
I can hear the carnivores cheering now. Well, don¹t roll out the coupons for
Memphis Blues Barbeque House just yet. UBC Farm may be committed to
principles of local sustainability and humane stewardship, but they are far
from the norm. When it comes to food choices, the line-up of questions
facing animal products is long. Where did the product come from? Where did
the feed for the animal come from? Was the feed genetically modified? Was it
organic? Was the animal "improved" with a biomedical soup of hormones,
stimulants, antibiotics? Were its living conditions acceptable? Can we live
with the conditions of its slaughter?
So much complexity, and it¹s still only breakfast time.
Delta wheat
The good news: asking these kinds of questions led Alisa and me in
surprising directions. By making inquiries about chicken feed, we eventually
found locally grown Red Fife wheat, a heritage variety almost forgotten by
industrial farming. Once we¹ve milled the grain generously given to us by a
Delta farmer, we¹ll have breakfast options beyond hash browns: like, say,
pancakes smothered in seasonal berries from the U-pick operations on Westham
Island near Ladner. A search for other heritage grain growers led us to Dan
Jason of Salt Spring Seeds‹who also stocks seed for regional soy, black,
pinto and other dried beans and legumes, and who has made his own
100-percent-local tofu. In theory, a vegetarian or even vegan diet could be
supplied by local farms.
"It¹s time, it¹s really time," said Jason. "Even on [Salt Spring] island
here there's talk of growing beans and grains on a larger scale, owning a
combine cooperatively or something like that."
If and when it gets to that point, I suspect the chickens and their eggs
will still be with us. I recently spent half a year researching a book in
the Dominican Republic (shameless plug: Dead Man in Paradise will be
published by Douglas & McIntyre in October), where self-sufficiency remains
a grand tradition. In the city of Santo Domingo, a modern urban capital of
more than two million people, it's no surprise to wake up to the rooster's
crow and see hens foraging on the boulevards. According to Bonita Magee,
project manager with Farm Folk/City Folk, there is no current local campaign
to roll back Vancouver's prohibition against raising chickens, bees and
other useful animals in the city, but she knows there is a quiet upwelling
of support for the idea. She knows, in fact, of chickens being kept
illicitly among us.
It¹s one kind of grow-op the neighbours don¹t seem to mind.
Next time: The pleasures of local eating, recipes included.
............
Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon will be writing twice a month on The Tyee
about their attempt to eat well on the Hundred-Mile Diet. For more
information on finding locally produced food visit the web site of
FarmFolk/CityFolk at
http://www.farmfolkcityfolk.ca
FOR A TRULY SUSTAINABLE BREAKFAST, WHICH COMES FIRST? THE TOFU OR THE EGG?
By Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
July 13, 2005
http://www.thetyee.ca/Life/2005/07/13/LocalChicken/
Does vegetarianism make ecological sense? For more than 15 years, the
answer, for us, has been yes. We accepted the now-familiar sustainability
formula: on any given tract of agricultural land, it is almost always
possible to produce more vegetable foods than animals to eat. Add in the
question of cruelty (which seems to increase with every "efficiency" added
to animal husbandry), and for us the issue was no contest.
These days, however, we¹re asking a new question. Does vegetarianism fit
into a local, sustainable diet?
Now things are getting complicated.
Alisa and I were near-vegans when we began our Hundred Mile Diet three
months ago. Suddenly, everything we could eat or drink at home had to come
from local land and waters, and immediately an unexpected ethical question
loomed. What the hell are we going to eat for breakfast?
The neighbourhood chickens
Consider: we knew of no locally grown and milled cereals or flours. It was
too early in the year for fresh fruit. We couldn¹t eat rice pudding, or
scrambled tofu, or that nice Egyptian fava bean breakfast called ful
medames. What we had were potatoes and . . . more potatoes.
Well-meaning friends offered the following advice: "Buy eggs, you idiots!"
Sorry, well-meaning friends, but it¹s not that easy. Yes, there are local,
organic, free-range chickens busy producing local eggs. But what are the
chickens eating? The answer, typically, is feed that has travelled the same
kinds of distances as most grocery-store products‹an average, according to
World Watch, of a whopping, globe-warming 2,500 to 4,000 kilometres.
Then we discovered the UBC Farm.
Tucked among the conifers that spread south from the central university
campus, UBC Farm is home to an organic market garden as well as 83 Hy-Line
Brown chickens. Beyond raising our own, this is about the closest connection
to local food that we could ask for. Alisa and I can ride bikes to the
Saturday public market (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.), where we are free to walk the
grounds and visit the chickens (though they never seem to remember us). We
can see for ourselves the birds' living conditions‹500 square metres of free
range in which the handsome, rust-coloured hens forage for bugs, eat at
feeders, or peck at organic waste from the farm. We even know, roughly, the
birds' birthdays: the whole brood was born in December 2004 and will be kept
three years before slaughter.
Much of what the chickens eat, then, is as local as can be. Their cereal
feed is not. According to Mark Bomford, program coordinator for the farm,
the organic feed comes from Alberta. It is, however, brought to Vancouver
via a transshipment arrangement, by which trucks that deliver steel to
Alberta return with loads of chicken feed.
More importantly, UBC Farm is working toward all-local feed for the
chickens. The students and staff have experimented with growing grain
on-site, and plan to revive old threshers and other farm machinery from a
former agricultural teaching and research complex on campus. While Bomford
admits it¹s "mostly lunchroom talk" right now, the ultimate vision is to
grow, harvest and blend a complete chicken feed on the farm. Meanwhile,
Bomford adds, the chickens do more than simply lay eggs‹they contribute to
the sustainability of overall food production. Chicken manure is a potent
fertilizer, and the Hy-Line Browns are also being tested for pest-control
duty.
Global vegetarianism? No thanks
As for the eggs‹we'll take a dozen, thanks. When it comes to eating locally,
we've had to abandon strict vegetarianism.
The strange fact is that vegetarianism as commonly practiced is, like the
rest of the industrial food system, propped up by the globalization of food
and everything that it entails, including a total disconnection between food
consumers and producers, and the cataclysmic ecological costs of shipping
food around the world. At its worst, global vegetarianism is still cleaner
and greener than global meat-eating, and is certainly more humane. On a
local level, though, the questions are more complicated.
Why were the UBC Farm eggs so important to us? Because vegetable-based
protein sources aren't exactly abundant in these parts. There are hazelnuts;
unfortunately, Alisa is allergic to them. The most readily available protein
sources are all animal-based: fish and shellfish, eggs, dairy, meat. It is
increasingly clear that local, sustainable eating is not always going to be
vegetarian. Imagine attempting a Hundred Mile Diet in Whitehorse (a brother
of mine is considering exactly that‹and picturing a lot of meals of fish and
game).
I can hear the carnivores cheering now. Well, don¹t roll out the coupons for
Memphis Blues Barbeque House just yet. UBC Farm may be committed to
principles of local sustainability and humane stewardship, but they are far
from the norm. When it comes to food choices, the line-up of questions
facing animal products is long. Where did the product come from? Where did
the feed for the animal come from? Was the feed genetically modified? Was it
organic? Was the animal "improved" with a biomedical soup of hormones,
stimulants, antibiotics? Were its living conditions acceptable? Can we live
with the conditions of its slaughter?
So much complexity, and it¹s still only breakfast time.
Delta wheat
The good news: asking these kinds of questions led Alisa and me in
surprising directions. By making inquiries about chicken feed, we eventually
found locally grown Red Fife wheat, a heritage variety almost forgotten by
industrial farming. Once we¹ve milled the grain generously given to us by a
Delta farmer, we¹ll have breakfast options beyond hash browns: like, say,
pancakes smothered in seasonal berries from the U-pick operations on Westham
Island near Ladner. A search for other heritage grain growers led us to Dan
Jason of Salt Spring Seeds‹who also stocks seed for regional soy, black,
pinto and other dried beans and legumes, and who has made his own
100-percent-local tofu. In theory, a vegetarian or even vegan diet could be
supplied by local farms.
"It¹s time, it¹s really time," said Jason. "Even on [Salt Spring] island
here there's talk of growing beans and grains on a larger scale, owning a
combine cooperatively or something like that."
If and when it gets to that point, I suspect the chickens and their eggs
will still be with us. I recently spent half a year researching a book in
the Dominican Republic (shameless plug: Dead Man in Paradise will be
published by Douglas & McIntyre in October), where self-sufficiency remains
a grand tradition. In the city of Santo Domingo, a modern urban capital of
more than two million people, it's no surprise to wake up to the rooster's
crow and see hens foraging on the boulevards. According to Bonita Magee,
project manager with Farm Folk/City Folk, there is no current local campaign
to roll back Vancouver's prohibition against raising chickens, bees and
other useful animals in the city, but she knows there is a quiet upwelling
of support for the idea. She knows, in fact, of chickens being kept
illicitly among us.
It¹s one kind of grow-op the neighbours don¹t seem to mind.
Next time: The pleasures of local eating, recipes included.
............
Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon will be writing twice a month on The Tyee
about their attempt to eat well on the Hundred-Mile Diet. For more
information on finding locally produced food visit the web site of
FarmFolk/CityFolk at
http://www.farmfolkcityfolk.ca