Coffee Row

A conference on the Food Crisis!

Sophie — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:21:51 +0000

A few weeks ago, Katherine and I were lucky enough to attend McGill’s conference on global food security and the food crisis. We were going because the topic was interesting and could be applied to what we teach, but for myself, I did not have much expectations. Well, colour me amazed! It was one of the most interesting and informative conference I’ve ever been to. If you go on their website, you’ll see all of the powerpoints of the speakers and they are worth the read. Some of the speakers were Minister of Agriculture in their countries. There were of course a lot of academics but quite a few politicos also. A really well run conference. And the best part? The food was delicious! Local, healthy, tasty… the department of dietetics made menus that fit perfectly with the conference.

The one thing that I took away and still remember now is this awesome quote by Jim Cornelius of the Foodgrains Bank, who said that “you can’t eat retroactively”. People need food now not later and the damages that are done by malnutrition now can never be completely undone.

From bread basket to library of the world?

Sophie — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:01:53 +0000

I’m trying to be back. It’s hard. We’ll see…

But here is something really interesting that Katherine found in Canadian Geographic. I wonder if the next big new patent for the CEF will be easily transformable wheat.

War

Sophie — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:38:16 +0000

Gardening is a war. When I started gardening, I thought it was going to be a nice little hobby with the side benefit of improving my vegetable consumption during the summer. Little did I know that it would help me discover the darker side of my personality. I’m a violent person, that’s all there is to it. I see freshly planted plants chewed to the ground and start thinking of buying a gun, or rigging an electrical fence, or both… I would never have described myself as willing to take up arms to defend my property, but faced with groundhogs and rabbits, I seem to loose all sense of live and let live that has ever been in me.

I read the yarn harlot’s blog on a regular basis. She sometimes talk about this yarn hungry squirrel (check the entry for August 28th) that makes away with her roving and her constant battle to defeat said squirel. I used to find this really funny. I’m sure you can see that I don’t laugh much anymore. Although I would never hurt an animal, the power of the urge really threw me.

And then there’s weeds. The war on weeds, is never ending, but it seems more brutal than last year. I try to weed, but it does not seem to matter how much I pull out, there is still more growing. I’m having a hard time finding the carrots!

But don’t worry, I will prevail. Against wildlife and undesired growth alike, I will show that humans can have the upper hand. And if worse comes to worse, there’s always round-up and electricity…

It’s a good thing I don’t depend on me to eat…

Sophie — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:00:30 +0000

When I started the garden, I wanted to have a fun thing to do, learn about gardening, and potentially get some yummy stuff to eat. Eventually, I started focusing more on the yeild of said garden and on how this was reducing my consumption of earth resources. Let me tell you right now that it’s a really good thing that I don’t depend on this garden to eat. Between the cold weather of the last few weeks and a crazy schedule that makes time in the garden a rare event, I have not been making great progress. To be quite honest, at this point, I might get tomatoes and mint. That’s it. I’m going to have to do something about that!

Talking about tomatoes, we’re going to try an upside down planter this year for a couple of plants. Since I can’t affix them to the building (heritage building, which mean that people get really stressed when you want to use nails for anything…) we had the installation tech build us a stand to hang them from. However, said stand really looks like a cross at the moment. So much so that I’ll have to rush to install the planters before I get a complaint. He did take a few funny pics of him draging the “cross”. What can I say, he’s a funny guy.

All is well that ends well

Sophie — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:15:31 +0000

So thanks to a kind grand-mother, we now have a few hens and a rooster. Which means that we may even get some chicks at some point. The beauty of this is that they will not need a heat lamp, as they will have their mother… Oh nature, when you save us!

By the way, I just learned that chickens are easily scared. I was trying to take pictures to show you the new chickens, and they kept running away from me. When I was at one end of the coop, they would go to the other and vice versa. I tried to be really quiet, but I could see that they did not trust me (especially that flashy thing in my hands). Who would have thought?

On another note, the sheep have been sheared and are now almost all outside. The Sheep Shearing festival edition 2008 went quite well and we got to share our passion for fiber with a lot of people once again.

I am now wondering what the odds are that the museum will let me get a Merino ewe… or maybe an Angora rabbit… or maybe an alpaca (that one is less likely, I know). Maybe if I start small…

The difficulty with poultry

Sophie — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:16:47 +0000

When I was a little girl, I went through different phases of carreer choice. I wanted to be a hairdresser, a ballerina, a doctor, a chef… let’s just say that over the years, I toyed with many different ideas as to what I’d do when I grew up. Never did I think that I would one day be on a mission to find poultry.

The difficulties with poultry are many and wide ranging. The first problem with those d*&m birds is related to available facilities. The poultry house that I have at the moment does not have power. That would not be a problem if it was not that newborn chicks need heat lamps. Which in turn would not be a problem if I could buy adult birds… But adult birds seem impossible to find. We have asked everyone we could think of, and no go…

Seeing how complicated it was to have chickens, we thought to look into getting ducks. The problem with ducks is that they need a pool to be happy. And the problem with pools is the threath of West Nile Virus. So no ducks. Then we looked at swans, but swans have the same requirements as ducks, but are mean on top of that, so no swans…

Does anyone knows what Big Bird is up to for the summer?

More on the food crisis

franz — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:34:14 +0000

As is unfortunately the case, the answer to this issue is not a simple as the press would wish it to be. Which is to say there is no ONE reason to explain what’s going on. Clearly folks in other countries do not have the margin of comfort that we experience here in Canada. When you rely on rice as a main staple and its price increases greatly over a short period of time you are in serious trouble. When the costs of fuel or fertilizer to help raise that crop go up, you can’t just decide to not grow rice this year….it is after all a staple in your diet. Not to belabour the point but folks in Canada have no idea of just how lucky most of us really are.

Its what Michael Pollan calls the Western Diet that although containing some combination of grains, veggies and meat has a rather high reliance on the later. Well that diet is mighty expensive to maintain, for example feedlot beef consumes quite a quantity of fuel simply in the feeding and care of livestock. If we were to start to consume more grass-fed beef we could lower the impact our diet has on the global situation. Furthermore, many of the preprepared foodstuffs we in the WEST so enjoy (many of which really aren’t great for our bodily systems) also require substantial amounts of fuel to grow, process and deliver. I am not advocating we eat sticks and roots BUT cutting back on our consumption of foods containing high fructose corn syrup for example would help the environment (and likely our waist lines too). Having made that point….countries such as India and China that have decided to aspire to the western ideal are now spending more money….fuel….food production acreage on feeding the livestock that will become the meat in their new western style diets. Not to suggest they didn’t consume meat previously, they did but certainly not in near the quantity that we in the West do and to the level to which they now aspire. This all means there is less money and land for the staple goods that traditionally folks living in the rural sectors of those countries comsumed. Their farmers see a profit in the new products BUT the food they produce doesn’t remain in the local economy, rather it goes to markets in the urban centres….leaving the farmer with no food reserves. It may be a bit of a generalization BUT in some of the countries experiencing food shortages the real problem is for those folks living in the rural areas, not to say the urban folks have tons of food but rather that the problem is most acute in the country. Execeptions to this being in Haiti and to a bot lesser degree the Phillipines.

Finally farming folks in those countries that are now experiencing the greatest problems have traditionally lived much closer to the edge, drought, flood and pests have long been problems. The unfortunate fact is the current problem is having a much much greater and long-lasting impact than the previous hazards. Keep in mind the current situation didn’t just happen since January 08, it been building for a while and we in the West are only just now hearing of it now.

So what CAN we do, my cents worth, donate the the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, curtail at least a little of our wasteful habits in terms of food consumption….it never ceases to amaze (and upset) me just how much food we waste on a daily basis, look to public transit where its available, try to eat a bit less processed food and try to eat locally as much as practically possible. None of these actions is going to miraculouly turn things around overnight but by the same token if us “resource gluttons” were to watch our actions (and our waist lines) in a small way we can help contribute to a solution. Finally we MUST get over the “us and them” mentality that still seems to be lurking about in dark corners when these situations come to light.

Garden update

Sophie — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:47:07 +0000

The last frost. That’s all I’m waiting for at the moment. The seeds that were started earlier this month were transplanted into bigger containers. We ran into a little problem with the sweet peppers. We seeded tomatoes, eggplants, marigolds and sweet peppers at the same time and under the same conditions. We used an indoor self-watering seed starter under a lamp. We followed instructions… The tomatoes all did quite well, half of the marigolds and one third of the eggplants sprouted. The sweet peppers however did not grow. Not a one! Mold started growing on the soil. They received the same treatment as the other trays, but did not survive. We know that they had too much humidity, but what we don’t know is why. Why did the other trays work out? I guess we’ll have to buy pepper plants, and hopefully figure out something for next year. If anyone has a clue…

So now I’m waiting for the last frost. Here is a link to an almanac with the last frost dates for different cities in Canada. Ottawa is not bad with May 6th, and with 151 days in the growing season, we should be able to do something. We’ve prepared the soil (we tilled and prepared raised beds), so now there is only to wait. I’ll get pictures as soon as there is something to see!

(update) Not that there is much to see, but here are a few pictures. In this one you can see the layout and the raised beds, and the compost bin.

In this one you can see the rainwater drum, so that I can try to be helpful to the environment. We put nets over the opening so that mosquitoes are not tempted to think it’s a welcoming swamp…

Le 411 sur la crise alimentaire

Sophie — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:46:16 +0000

Depuis quelques semaines, tout le monde semble parler de crise alimentaire. Qui n’a pas entendu parler de la monté du prix du maïs en Amérique du Sud et du prix faramineux du riz en Afrique. Ça fait un bout de temps que j’entend parler du lien entre l’éthanol produit pour additionner à l’essence et le prix du maïs, mais la plus part du temps, c’est sans donner de piste de solutions ou encore pour faire des accusations. Bien que je n’ai moi non-plus beaucoup d’idées sur comment améliorer la situation, j’ai lu samedi dernier dans La Presse un article sur le sujet qui éclaire le problème avec une lumière différente. Voici le lien à l’article en question.

Il va sans dire que le lien entre la demande pour le maïs et son prix est clair. C’est toujours la question de choix qui est plus vaseuse. Si j’utilise l’essence enrichie à l’éthanol, je réduis mes émission de gaz à effet de serre, mais je contribue à la crise alimentaire. Pas facile comme choix. C’est sure qu’avec le beau temps, le vélo devient une option… Ce questionnement me pousse à me demander de quoi il en retourne plus exactement. De combien est-ce que l’éthanol ajouté à l’essence réduit vraiment les gaz à effet de serre (il faut quand même le produire…) et en quelle proportion est-ce que cette demande augmente les prix. On parle de crise alimentaire dans les pays pauvre, mais quel est l’effet de tout cela ici?

Bien des questions, peu de réponses. Je cherche et je vous en reparle…

Interesting Article About Colony Collapse Disorder

franz — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:40:30 +0000

There was an article in a recent edition of Ontario Farmer (one of the pile of aggie papers on my desk) that suggested researchers feel one of the contributing factors to CCD is bees that are “jet-lagged”.

Given a beekeeper here in Ontario who contracts his hives out for pollination duty may ship some of his/her flock to orchards in the south of the province, then to canola fields in the west-central area and then maybe as far as the blueberry fields of Nova Scotia those little fellows can get tuckered out what with all that pollination and travel. Then again if they didn’t do that duty I would have less access to Canadian (frozen) blueberries for my ice cream and a locally-grown apple for my lunch bag.