elizabeth claire alberts closedloop cuisine...cover kamut in a pot with at least three times the...

3 9 : 1 2 0 1 3 a l t e r n a t i v e s j o u r n a l . c a 5352 a l t e r n a t i v e s j o u r n a l . c a 3 9 : 1 2 0 1 3

Closed-Loop CuisineA new café in Melbourne, Australia, has raised the bar on what it means to be waste-free.

DANNY COLLS grabs a small compostable cup from the shelf behind the dining bar. Inside is a wad of cling wrap, a lollipop stick, a

rubber band, a pen spring and a bottle cap. “You’d be surprised what people leave on tables,” says Colls, Silo’s co-owner. More surprising is that this is the only waste accumulated by the busy inner-city café in a week. There are no trashcans. No piles of plastic packaging or cardboard containers. No discarded food scraps.

The kitchen counter merges with the communal dining bar offering patrons a full-on view of the action.Left: Jam jars become soup bowls at Silo.

PHO

TOS

CO

UR

TESY

OF

BYJ

OO

ST.C

OM

52 a l t e r n a t i v e s j o u r n a l . c a 3 9 : 1 2 0 1 3

ELIZABETH CLAIRE ALBERTS


labelled vegetable oil, olive oil, vodka – that line the Ecoply shelves above the kitchen counter. Black plastic strawberry crates decorate the ceiling, storing terracotta crockery and glass takeaway jars. When you sit on a stool at the dining bar, your feet dangle over metal kegs. The bar is made out of cosset, a mixture of recycled plastic and sawdust. Leather off-cuts cover the stools. The outside seating is constructed with old irrigation pipes. Former jam jars are used as glassware.

Likewise, the food at Silo is so good that customers rarely have leftovers. Bakker and Colls have teamed up with award-winning chef Douglas McMaster to create an array of delicious dishes like four-grain salads, wild mushroom rice bowls, and cauliflower and brown butter soups. In addition to using organic and seasonal ingredients, McMaster incorporates local foraged foods into his dishes, such as dune spinach and wild garlic flowers.

Even some of the café’s appliances are locally sourced. Silo uses a milk tap system called the “Juggler,” designed by Sydney-

based engineers. The Juggler draws milk from kegs in refrigerators below the counter, not only eliminating the need for plastic bottles, but saving the baristas from opening the fridge countless times a day. Silo’s more globally sourced eco-devices include a Wega Green Line coffee machine that powers down when idle, saving up to 46 per cent on the café’s power bill. A hospital-grade eWater system sterilizes tap water for cleaning, killing bacteria without the need for toxic detergents and disinfectants.

Think of an environmental issue, and Bakker and Colls have found a solution. Or, at least, they’re searching for one. For instance, the dynamic duo has been working with manufacturers to produce a 100 per cent compostable takeaway cup, without the bit of paraffin wax that current cups use. “There’s nothing on the marketplace,” says Colls,“so we’re slowly working on things like that.”

Does this waste-free business model work? Even though Bakker and Colls pay a premium for the direct delivery of high-

quality food, Colls says that Silo saves money by cutting out intermediaries. But he admits they’ve faced many challenges. “The start-ups were expensive,” he says – $35,000 for the dehydrator, $16,000 for the Juggler, $12,000 for the coffee machine.

But these initial investments garnered a huge response from environmentalists. “We had people travelling hundreds of kilometres to come and have a coffee and see this thing,” Colls says, “but of course, they only come once.” Colls doesn’t say it, but there’s also an irony in the idea of people using large amounts of energy to visit a waste-free café. He expresses a desire to attract more local clients by providing first-class hospitality, which will allow them to “penetrate the market deeper and educate more people.”

Although Bakker and Colls have taken an extreme leap with Silo, they advocate change in small steps. “Get your cafés off the bottle,” advises Colls. “Put the milk system in. No more milk bottles. No more milk caps. No more milk crates. Now that’s a simple commitment to change.” Silo’s state-of-the-art eWater system.

Ingredients2/3 cup olive oilJuice from one lemon1 beetroot1/4 cup kamut (soaked for 12 hours)1/4 cup French green lentils 1/4 cup whole red lentils 1/2 cup quinoa 1 large avocado1/4 cup fresh cilantro1/4 cup chicory leavesSalt

Whenever possible, buy sustainable ingredients in reusable containers from your local co-op or farmer.

DirectionsWhisk together olive oil and lemon juice.Shave beetroot into paper-thin 1/2-inch slivers. Marinate in lemon-oil mix

for two hours.Cover kamut in a pot with at least three times the amount of water. Bring

to boil. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, or until tender. Rinse green and red lentils, cover with three times as much water. Bring

to boil. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until lentils are softened but still firm.

Rinse quinoa in fine mesh bag. Bring three times the amount of water to boil; cook for approximately six to nine minutes. (There should be a tiny dot still visible in the grain.)

While all four grains are still warm, season each well. Cut avocado into chunks. Pick the leaves of the cilantro and finely chop

the stalks. Finely slice the chicory leaves.Combine cooked grains, beetroot in lemon-oil mix, avocado, cilantro

(leaves and stalks) and chicory. Add salt to taste.

Serves four. Finish your plate to avoid waste!

SILO chef Douglas McMaster’s

four-grain salad recipe

Silo, the brainchild of Melbourne hospitality stalwart Colls and environmental artist and designer Joost Bakker, is possibly the world’s first truly waste-free café. Whereas other waste-free businesses rely on municipal recycling to earn that label, Silo is a closed-loop operation. “All of our produce comes in reusable plastic crates,” explains Colls. “Our milk comes in 20-litre tins. Our coffee comes in tins.”

Silo avoids the recycling bin by developing relationships with local organic and biodynamic food producers, who deliver supplies to the café in reusable crates, kegs and containers. Silo’s chefs also eliminate the need for manufacturers’ packaging by preparing everything from scratch – milling their own flour, baking their own bread, making their own yogurt.

The food waste they create goes into a dehydrator, tucked in the café’s back alley. This washing machine-sized appliance runs for six or seven hours at a time, turning 100 kg of organic matter (table scraps, coffee grinds, cardboard and paper) into 10 kg of sterile, nutrient-rich fertilizer. “The compost goes back to Joost’s farm to grow carrots and tulips,” says Colls.

Although “cooking” organic matter may seem a bit odd, Colls explains that South Koreans have dehydrated their food waste since the 1980s, when their government banned organics from landfills. The dehydrator uses about 6.7 kilowatts of energy per day, not much more than the small Salamander grill in Silo’s kitchen, which uses 4.6 kilowatts daily. Although the dehydrator is hidden, the staff exhibits a saucer of the brown, mushroom-scented fluff that it produces on top of a display case of mustard-and-cheese sandwiches and chocolate muffins.

Silo’s no-recycling standard and dehydration process seem pretty revolutionary, but Colls isn’t quick to grab world titles. “We’re not saying that we’re the most sustainable café in the world, or we’re the most innovative, or we’re the most organic or biodynamic. We’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re a café that if you happen to scratch, you’ll find something really, really special.’”

And Colls is right. The more you scratch, the more unique character you discover.

With 15 seats inside a meager 50 m2, Silo’s close quarters benefit from an open-plan design. Kitchen counter space merges with a communal dining bar, allowing customers to sip moscato while they watch the chefs roll oat groats and knead bread dough.

Nearly every material inside Silo is repurposed. The décor relies on reusable containers that are deployed for food deliveries, such as the stainless steel tins –


Some Like It Wood-fired goodies are feeding community spirit in Dartmouth, NS.

n a crISp Saturday afternoon, Lorrie Rand savours a lunch of baked arctic char and roasted

carrots while she chats with friends and neighbours. Not far away, a father and son test steaming rice-stuffed squash and decide that it’s done to perfection. Dave Courtney, meanwhile, nudges glowing coals into a pile and eases pesto pizza onto the 800°F stone.

Rand, Courtney and the families here on the Common in downtown Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, belong to a group called PACO, or Park Avenue Community Oven. Committed members and curious residents gather every Saturday in the 120-hectare park and

recreation area to stoke the flames of the region’s first wood-fired community oven.

The idea for an outdoor oven on the Dartmouth Common sprouted in early 2012, inspired by the local community gardens. Building a four-season oven next to existing garden plots seemed an innovative way to entice more people to share and enjoy fresh food. The group approached their city councillor and she loved the idea, forked over $20,000 of discretionary funds and gave PACO the go-ahead.

“We were surprised at how fast it all came together,” says Rand.

Surprised by the speed, but thrilled by the results. PACO enlisted seasoned natural

builder Gena Arthur and her company, Eco-Developments. Arthur has built more than 25 earth ovens for private clients in Nova Scotia, but designing a community oven for use on public land presented new challenges. The oven had to comply with park safety codes, yet remain accessible to the community. The resulting structure, completed in September 2012, is one-of-a-kind: a domed clay oven (about four feet in diameter) atop a stone foundation, surrounded by a 12 x 12 foot clapboard hut. With the walls of the hut closed the building resembles a woodshed, and the dark green siding blends with the grassy hills and deciduous trees that surround it. But with

just a few hands and minutes, the hinged clapboard opens to reveal doors, awnings and three stainless steel countertops – the “woodshed” morphs into an outdoor community kitchen.

“We call it our transformer-oven,” Arthur says. “And we managed to source all those materials locally: the clay, stone, wood, even blacksmithing for the oven door.”

The Park Avenue oven may be new to Dartmouth, but sharing fire is as old as cooking itself – and just as practical. Clay ovens take several hours to reach baking temperature, but once the coals are hot, pizza will cook (and feed a crowd) in 60 seconds. While the oven cools (a 24-hour process), meat and vegetables can be simmered, preserve jars sterilized, fruit dried and yogurt cultured. Dividing the day-long cycle of heating and cooling among the community makes sense. In many countries, particularly those around the Mediterranean, public ovens still draw bakers into town squares. Canada has seen a slow-burning revival over the past decade or so, with Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal and Placentia, Newfoundland, among the places that now boast communal wood-fired ovens.

For PACO, reviving the art of community cooking has also sparked a bout of community learning. After funds had been transferred and construction began, the group discovered that not all local residents shared their passion for an earth oven on parkland. But now that pizzas are sizzling in the finished structure and many of those residents have come out for a taste, PACO feels the neighbourhood is on board. They do advise, however, that oven enthusiasts consult the community well before breaking ground.

As for the cooking, Rand says, “We’ve had a few singed eyebrows, but most of the meals have turned out really well.”

Between May and November, PACO offers training each Saturday morning – how to light and maintain the fire, basically – and everyone must attend a training session before using the oven. Within its first few months of operation, PACO trained enough intrepid cooks to see pumpkin tart, bagels, dried tomatoes and dozens of pizzas emerge from the brick hearth.

“The local foodies know all about us,” Rand says, “but we also want to appeal to people who might not normally bake their own bread or pizza.”

The streets around the Dartmouth Common are home to many youth groups, half a dozen churches and several seniors’ residences. PACO hopes these organizations, as well as families, individuals and businesses, will take advantage of the

oven. No doubt PACO will get their wish – news of the Park Avenue oven has quickly spread among locals and beyond central Dartmouth. In fact, parks and community groups from around Nova Scotia and as far afield as Ireland have contacted Arthur to ask about creating similar projects in their regions.

Arthur understands the attraction: “Wood-fired food tastes fantastic,” she says. “And besides, people love fire. There’s just something magical about it.”

Certainly, PACO has witnessed some of that magic. “I thought folks would cook and enjoy their own food,” Rand says, “but almost everyone brings extra, enough to share.”

On a Saturday afternoon in late November, Dave Courtney pulls cheese

bread and a golden calzone from the oven with a wooden peel. He slices both on the stainless steel counter and the scent of tomato and parmesan fills the air. He hands slices to his two daughters, then gestures to the group still lingering around the warm oven. “Help yourself!” he says. And they do.

Katherine J. Barrett runs LiteraryDesign.ca and is a food columnist for US-based Literary Mama.

Nova Scotians can contact Eco-Developments (eco-developments.ca), the Ecology Action Centre (ecologyaction.ca) and/or South Shore Social Ventures (theblockhouseschool.org) to get involved. Alternatively, you could organize your community to build an earth oven or root cellar, or seek out and support ones that already exist.

Marla MacleoD points to a watering can near the door of the root cellar inside the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) and explains how to keep conditions right for winter storage. “If the humidity drops, we just water the floor,” says the environmental NGO’s Food Connections project coordinator. To MacLeod’s right, a straw-bale wall partitions the cellar from the basement and the rest of the downtown house that serves as EAC’s Halifax headquarters. To her left, a small window vents air to the outside, and rows of shelves await this year’s local produce – potatoes, carrots, beets and apples.

Prior to electric refrigeration, most homes had root cellars or cold rooms, a place to store summer’s bounty through the winter. Nowadays, basements are often insulated – great for TV and teenagers, but too warm and dry to keep vegetables fresh. And with supermarkets importing a steady stream of warm-weather produce, root cellars may seem obsolete.

The EAC begs to differ. Among its many activities, this diverse and vocal 42-year-old NGO supports community gardens all over the city and maintains a four-season greenhouse as part of its Food Action program. The idea is that ready access to cold storage will further encourage Nova Scotians to buy and eat local veggies year-round. In mid-2011, the EAC launched a funding program that provides $400 grants to community groups to help them build cellars in publically accessible spaces. A third round of grants was issued in late 2012, and to date a total of six community organizations from across the province have received funding to build six cellars.

An hour south of the EAC office in the village of Blockhouse, the most recent root-cellar grantee, South Shore Social Ventures Co-op, is converting an abandoned school into a model of sustainable building, energy, food and community. Projects coordinator David Cameron is using the $400 to create innovative cold storage, with a solar chimney for ventilation and pans of water on the floor to ensure optimal humidity. He is also experimenting with one straw-bale wall and 10,000 bound journals discarded by Dalhousie University to insulate the other three walls. Together with natural-building workshop participants, Cameron has erected a test wall of interlaced books covered in earth-plaster, which he monitors regularly to determine insulation value (he estimates the books will add R-15 to the existing walls). Cameron hopes that schools, growers, community groups and residents will use the cold room in summer and winter to store and share local produce.

Back at EAC in Halifax, MacLeod checks in with other grant recipients – among them an arts council and a first nations student project – on the construction and use of their root cellars. She also works to secure EAC’s own funding to keep this vital shoot of the community food infrastructure growing into 2013.

Katherine J. Barrett

Some Keep It Nova Scotia’s root cellar revival.

O


Sarah Berman

Salad TowersLocal Garden raises the roof for growing produce on top of a Vancouver parking lot.

EvEry gardEn has its niche. Vancouver’s growing culture has blossomed over the last two years,

adding nearly 500 new plots since 2010. Whether your decision to eat local is swayed by footprint, economy, land sovereignty, nutrition, community, bioregionalism or just plain taste, Vancouver has cultivated a diverse enough network of urban growing projects to cover all the angles.

“I think there’s a place for everything that’s out there,” says Tracey Chapple of Local Garden, as I arrive on the top floor of a City-owned parkade on Richards Street. The sun is blazing over the edges of several of Vancouver’s signature glass towers.

At first appearance, Local Garden has a solid handle on reducing the footprint needed for conventional urban farming. Their greenhouse takes up just 22 parking spaces and uses a patent-pending Verticrop conveyor system to pack four hectares’ worth of planted produce onto about 370 m2 of urban space. It is the first of its kind in

North America and a compelling roadmap for bringing large-scale farming into dense urban areas, having already taken root in Chicago and Linköping, Sweden.

Trays of baby kale, arugula and basil are stacked 12-high in a twisting, floor-to-ceiling, closed-loop conveyor system. I am surprised to learn there is no soil in Local Garden – the compact facility uses hydroponics to feed the rotating crops. Light and water are controlled through an automated array of funnels and fixtures. A handful of workers plant Russian kale seedlings in coconut husks, loading the plants into the white plastic trays by hand.

Part of Local Garden’s niche is that it maximizes space and yield for one purpose: growing leafy green plants. “You can see it wouldn’t work for tomato plants because they need more height,” Chapple observes among the dense walls of greens. “Same for plants that need deep-rooted soil underground.”

Chapple, who works in communications and outreach at Local Garden, says the Verticrop system is built to grow leafy greens in the most sustainable and commercially viable way possible. No

pesticides, herbicides or genetically modified seeds are used. The system re-circulates water, using 90 per cent less than a conventional land farm.

“If there’s aphids or any other unwanted pests, we treat them all naturally,” adds Chapple, noting the rooftop farm’s relationship with The Bug Factory, a BC business that cultivates pollinators and other beneficial insects. “For example we’d bring in ladybugs or other natural predators.”

The business’ goal is to produce 150,000 pounds of greens per year, which Chapple says the greenhouse is on track to do when it hits its one-year anniversary in November 2012. By narrowing its scope down to a couple dozen strains of leafy vegetables, Alterrus – the Vancouver-based parent company that owns Local Garden – is also able to concentrate on delivering to local restaurants and retailers within 24 hours of harvest.

“Our philosophy is to grow food where it is to be consumed, and therefore our greens don’t lose a lot of nutrients from harvest to delivery,” says Chapple. “If I had to get my produce in from California, it can spend four to seven days on a truck before

Local Garden’s patent-pending, closed-loop Verticrop conveyor system is built to grow leafy greens in the most sustainable way possible.


Vancouver’s Rising Urban GardenersFrom convErTEd lawnS to massive urban orchards, a sampling of the city’s robust growing culture.

Inner City Farms

The five friends who formed Inner City Farms have helped local homeowners convert their boring, unproductive front lawns into community-led growing operations. They use a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) model to connect growers and eaters through a produce-bin pickup program. innercityfarms.com

SOLEfood

In July, the city’s largest-scale urban farmer continued branching out from its flagship space in the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and established the largest urban orchard in North America. The 500-tree orchard will grow apples, pears, cherries, plums, figs, persimmons and lemons in raised planters above a former gas station. SOLEfood employs 25 full-time staff, many of whom are Downtown Eastside residents that face barriers to employment. solefoodfarms.com

Victory Gardens

Grown out of a friendship and a desire to reconnect with the production of food, this trio of young Vancouverites offers garden consultation and planning services to communities that want to revolutionize their unsustainable food systems. The name may hearken back to WWII-era propaganda, but these ladies are nothing if not forward-thinking. victorygardensvancouver.ca

Fresh Roots

Focused on the training side of agriculture, these plots serve as outdoor, hands-on classrooms where school communities and residents build vocational skills while addressing food sovereignty and community health. freshrootsurbancsa.wordpress.com

SkyHarvest

Another high-tech rooftop growing project currently in the development stage. Once complete, the 1,115-m3 space will grow peppers, cucumbers, lettuce and heirloom tomatoes. Currently providing microgreens at UBC’s farmer’s market. skyharvest.ca

Yummy Yards

A small-scale, multi-locational urban farm based in backyards on Vancouver’s west side. CSA pickup locations in Kitsilano and Southlands. yummyyards.ca

Learn more about Local Garden at localgarden.com.

it actually gets to the retailer. By the time it gets to my table, it could be anywhere from seven to 10 days since it was picked.”

Such a fast turnaround has turned heads among Vancouver’s budding farm-to-table restaurant scene since they began growing. “We sell everything we produce,” says Chapple of the rising demand for as-local-as-possible. “[Celebrity chef] Trevor Bird was at our launch event in November.” Upscale restos like Bird’s Fable (a portmanteau of Farm and Table), Parker and Boneta were some of the first businesses to jump onboard. Retailers like Choices, IGA, Fresh St. Market, Dollar Grocers, Urban Fare and others followed suit.

Chapple shows me a photo on her iPhone of the bike couriers who delivered one square-metre batch just a few blocks north to Boneta earlier in the afternoon. “The fact that we can produce 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of leafy greens every week, all year round – to provide fresh produce even in February – I think that’s really giving a lot back to the city and to the community,” she says.

Local Garden also gives back by creating job opportunities for people who face barriers to employment through a program called Mission Possible. The Christian humanitarian agency connects people challenged by homelessness and other barriers to employment with meaningful work in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Close to the end of my visit, a photographer from The Province drops in to snap photos of the fresh-faced staff popping kale plants into position. Alterrus CEO Christopher Ng also makes an appearance, shaking hands and keeping a steady eye on operations.

Local Garden was launched with start-up funding from Vancity’s Community Capital – an investment the company aims to pay back within five years. “I wouldn’t say we’re profitable yet, but we’re approaching that really quickly,” Ng told The Province.

“Like any start-up, that initial capital is hard,” adds Chapple. As part of its Greenest City 2020 initiative, the City of Vancouver has opted to help the commercial farm get rolling by providing an affordable 10-year lease (although the space wasn’t generating any revenue previously).

With so much support and creativity behind it, Local Garden may prove a model worthy of broad replication. And if not on parking lots, there are always other urban spaces to cultivate – just ask Vancouver’s other pioneering growers.

Sarah Berman is an independent reporter and editor who has written for the Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s and Adbusters.

Challengewhat is.

Imagine what could be.

Bachelor’s, Master’s & PhD programswww.yorku.ca/fes


“The secret is to get out of their way,” says Glenney, letting them turn nutrients from that organic matter into biomass, then storing and discharging it.

Glenney’s method, fencerow farming, produces nearly twice the yield of neighbouring farms in Dunnville, Ontario. His first row of soybeans is planted directly into his lawn and more than 200 acres of soy and cornfields stretch out beyond it. He lets his entire field emulate the uncultivated soil on each side of the fence (hence the name fencerow), without the interference of plows. Glenney’s interest in no-till farming was piqued at age 14, and he’s encouraged farmers all over North America to do the same, yet “in our area, it seems like everybody is going back to the plow,” says the 63-year-old. “My theory is they have to plow because they plow.”

Not everyone is neglecting Glenney’s advice. A&L Biologicals, an agro-ecology research lab focused on plant productivity and reducing cost and ecological impact, formed a team to study why fencerow farming is so successful. A&L used Glenney’s 2012 growing season to produce a report on the physical factors that allowed for root health and sustainable corn and soy production. “It’s relatively remarkable,” says George Lazarovits, research director at A&L. “Breeders’ expectations by the year 2050 is that they will be able to increase the yield of corn to 300 bushels per acre. We’re going to spend a couple million or more doing this. Along comes Dean Glenney with the current varieties, and he grows 300 bushels. Why do we have to wait another 35 years when we can do it today?”

On a breezy day in August 2013, Glenney welcomed a few dozen Québécois farmers to his land to learn his approach. Before the group arrived, he told me to look at the walkway to his back door. Clusters of wildflowers filled the cracks and spaces between rock slabs. “We don’t have to do anything to the ground,” explained Glenney. “The plants, the bacteria and the soil will.”

While Glenney may champion simplicity, his audience complicates things. Rows of chairs faced a projection screen in Glenney’s barn, and a truck was parked beside it serving up coffee and donuts courtesy of DuPont Pioneer, North America’s largest hybrid seed producer. As the farmers filed off a bus, it became clear that Pioneer had coordinated the presentation for this group of loyal genetically modified (GM) seed customers.

Glenney noted in his lecture that he “starts with good seeds.” He’s experimented with other varieties but has planted primarily Pioneer seeds for about 30 years. Formerly Hi-Bred Corn Company, Pioneer has been testing and modifying corn and soy varieties since 1926. Glenney plants non-GM soybeans, but says cost and demand keep him planting GM corn. Non-GM soybeans are sold at a premium, particularly in Asia and Europe, because more and more North American farmers grow modified varieties. There is no such current demand for non-GM corn, although the vast majority grown in North America is GM.

Lazarovits discovered Glenney’s method and realized it might be worth deeper consideration after the farmer entered and won the Pioneer-sponsored Ontario Corn Yield Challenge in 2010. The two men met during a post-contest conference in Montreal. Together they applied for research funding from the Grain Farmers of Ontario, who in turn applied to the federal government under the Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program.

A&L’s study of Glenney’s farm is one of seven projects being funded by the federal government through the Grain Farmers of Ontario. The feds have invested more than $850,000 on these projects to study pest and high-yield crop management. Going into the second harvest of Glenney’s crops, Lazarovits says their initial research has developed and adapted methods for separating plant and soil organisms to determine those that promote a high yield. “You have a ruler to measure the height and width of the plants,” says Lazarovits. “There’s no ruler to measure microbiology. Measuring that component and developing the tools, those are not trivial things.”

The research team has isolated organisms that are unique to Glenney’s land, and they now hope to begin measuring their different functions – key information in the race for the highest yield. Organic farmers have long been interested in microbiology, but Lazarovits says it has only recently become an area of focus for industry. “Pioneer is coming to meet with me,” he says, adding that they want to know why their seed varieties get different yields at different locations. Lazarovits also points to the strategic alliance between Monsanto and Novazymes, announced in December, as just one indicator of large industry players investing heavily in microbiology.

Finding a way to bottle the success of Glenney’s formula could reap huge profits for a company such as Pioneer or Monsanto. Certainly there are concerns about the potential impact of higher yielding GM seeds. Lazarovits argues that the GM

ElainE ansElmiYield of DreamsBy getting back to the roots, an Ontario farmer baffles crop scientists and genetically modified seed makers.

For 20 Years, Dean Glenney has been planting his corn and soybean crops in exactly the same spots. Using a reconfigured five-row planter with narrow tires that line up precisely between well-established rows, he plants seeds right into the roots of last season’s crops. Instead of turning the soil, he lets worms bring dead leaves and other detritus down into their holes and act as a slow-release fertilizer.

The Fencerow Farming DifferenceTo undersTand The microbiology at work in Glenney’s crops, Lazarovits’ team compared samples from four test plots (with 20 plants per plot) on Glenney’s farm and four on a neighbouring farm. “The microbiology within the plants at the two locations was vastly different,” explains Lazarovits. “It was day-and-night different, even though we were growing the same plants.”

Conventional wisdom suggests that Glenney’s undisrupted soil would have a much more diverse variety of organisms. The test plots proved that stem juice from the neighbouring farm’s corn had a significantly higher diversity of bacteria, whereas Glenney’s corn had much few bacteria types – but 100 times the amount of bacteria. “He doesn’t disrupt the soils, so you get microorganisms that specialize in the soil,” says Lazarovits. He calls it a “probiotic approach to agriculture.”

A&L’s study is now trying to identify the specific plant-promoting functions of the microorganisms within Glenney’s crops, as well as applying for more funding to try and find similar correlations between high and low yields on other Ontario farms. “In the long run, it doesn’t matter [what bacteria] is there, it matters what they’re doing,” says Lazarovits. “Function is what, ultimately, the growers will want.”

ElainE ansElmi

PHO

TOs

BY

ELA

INE

AN

sELM

I


component of the seeds has no bearing on the microbes inside the plants. “The changes that are associated with the plants themselves, those are for resistance to herbicide – a protein that breaks down that chemical,” he says. “It’s not going to alter the fungi or bacteria.”

Locavore News editor Elbert van Donkersgoed highlights one potential environmental problem with fencerow farming and GM seeds. “In order for it to work, my concern is that the corn produces a lot of Bt,” says van Donkersgoed, referring to the natural pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis. Bt is used to control corn borers, but its impact on other organisms requires more research and its potential for overuse could create another resistant pest.

Regardless of seed variety, van Donkersgoed says there is valuable information coming out of Glenney’s farm. “I think that there’s learning here for every type of farmer, even for organic farmers,” he says. “And there’s learning here for those who are into conventional farming. They can significantly improve their sustainability

by understanding what Glenney has accomplished.”

Pioneer and other private companies will be paying close attention to how the community of microorganisms in Glenney’s soil can be applied to the seed itself, taking advantage of the benefits without years of cultivation. “There’s an opportunity here both for science, and for those who could duplicate in the lab what Mr. Glenney has done on his farm,” says van Donkersgoed. “It’s something that Pioneer would have deep enough pockets to find out if it’s possible. I would prefer if there was enough public money available to pay for that research, and that the results would end up in the public domain.”

The first stages of research are publicly funded, and Lazarovits says it is widely beneficial. If, for example, the average corn production is 150 bushels per acre, selling at a cost of $6 per bushel and a growing at a cost of $500 – the farmer is making a profit of $400 per acre. Lazarovits says on Glenney’s farm, by getting 300 bushels per acre at the same operating cost, he is taking in $1,300 with the same conditions.

“You’re looking at a 300-per-cent increase in profit or more. That’s sustainable agriculture,” says Lazarovits. “You want farmers to make money and we want this extra yield if we’re going to have eight billion people on the planet.”

While a higher yield is of interest to both GM and non-GM farmers, large players with deep pockets certainly stack the deck to one side. Whether or not scientific research leads to a short-order method of replicating Glenney’s success with GM or organic crops, van Donkersgoed says farmers of every stripe should be paying attention. “He has created a unique soil community on his farm, on his rows of crop,” he says. “That I think is a very significant finding and that is something I think is significant to anyone growing sustainable agriculture.”

Elaine Anselmi is a displaced Torontonian working as a reporter in northeastern BC.

A&L Laboratories’ report on Glenney’s crops is available at alcanada.com in the “Research” section.

52 a l t e r n a t i v e s j o u r n a l . c a 3 9 : 6 2 0 1 3

Mother Earth Knows, but She’s Not Tilling

no-Till is an approach to agriculture that forgoes plowing, opting instead to use cover crops and/or crop residues to maintain soil cover. No-till fields absorb and retain more moisture, keeping soil closer to its natural state. No-till soil retains its porous structure while the cover and root-stabilized structure minimizes both water and wind erosion. Increased insect and annelid (segmented worm) numbers ensure aeration and long-term nutrient cycling.

Tilled fields undergo many significant changes to the soil structure, nutrient cycling and erosion rates. The soil can become compacted, requiring more tilling to “fluff” it back up. Increased air spaces within the soil can lead to accelerated microbial activity and a quicker release of carbon as a greenhouse gas. In fields that have been flooded, drying mud can form a crust on the surface that can interfere with seedling emergence. Without cover, the bare soil is succeptible to water and wind erosion, leading to problems with agricultural runoff and loss of fertility.

not tilled Tilled

DIA

GR

AM

BY

NIk

HA

RR

ON

CANADIAN MAGAZINES E V E R Y W H E R E

FIND

Insta

@MyCdnMags

DISCOVER hundreds of Canadian magazines

SHOP for subscription deals & fi nd the store closest to you

VISIT CanadasMagazineStore.ca

elizabeth claire alberts closedloop cuisine...cover kamut in a pot with at least three times the...

Documents