by Brian Brett
Now the tomato is ubiquitous, one of the most common fruits we find in our produce. Mandatory at salad bars, it’s also essential to many sauces. I eat tomatoes sauced, fried, dried, roasted, and fresh in any variety of recipes. One of the lovely qualities of the tomato is that the fruit has evolved to match recipes that use it. We grow Romas for their thick pastes and sauces, and big slicers for just that. Sharon’s brother passed on to us an unnamed heirloom he’d encountered, so we called it Graham’s Goodkeeper. It lives up to its name and sells well in the seed catalogue. An indeterminate variety, it continues ripening and fruiting until frost, and the tomatoes are long-lasting. Another of my favourites is the Principe Borghese, a drying tomato. Its centre is juice and seed, without any divisions. You can scoop it out with a spoon and then dry the shell, which we do in our food dehydrater. It’s also determinate, like corn, meaning these tomatoes generally ripen around the same time, so you can preserve them in volume. It’s great for soups in winter. Our decorative tomatoes, yellow cherry, tiger stripe, and green apple (which ripens without turning red and tastes like a green apple), give style to a salad. Some tomatoes have a higher acid content, so they are grown for canning, because they are not as susceptible to botulism.
Sharon gathers our tomatoes and runs them through an Italian hand grinder, a clever heritage machine that crushes tomatoes and squeezes the juice out for us to freeze while separating the seeds and skin, which she puts in a bucket of water and ferments in the greenhouse. Tomato seeds need to ferment for viability, as the fruit does in the wild, dropping to the ground and rotting. After the bucket develops a thick layer of mould, she stirs the mess, releasing the seeds, which sink to the bottom; she pours off the top gunk into the compost and rinses the bucket until the seeds are clean. Then she sieves them and scatters them onto a plate or a piece of glass to dry. Afterwards they can be stored for the following year. Meanwhile, we pour the paste-juice into containers and freeze it for later in the winter, when we are less busy and can cook large batches of barbecue or tomato sauce, or salsa on the wood stove. We put aside our own seed and sell the remainder to Salt Spring Seeds, since they are all heirlooms and breed true.
UNLIKE PRE-AGRARIAN SOCIETIES, WHICH thrived more on perennials and fruits—what we now call permaculture— farmers have shifted increasingly toward the annual crops of today. Along with fruit and nuts, these crops dominate our produce. Thus we have become dependent on seeds. However, as the transnationals systematically buy up seed companies, they are reducing their stock through attrition.
A real seed catalogue should be a winter fantasy. We settle back with it by the fire, drinking hot chocolate, dreaming the summer and fall cornucopia into existence— every plant perfect and in far greater abundance than we will ever grow in reality. A gardener needs those fantasies to accept the reality of what summer produces, because gardens are always what they are, not what we imagine.
Seed catalogues of the past were filled with dreams, dreams that are disappearing like the people who live the rural life. The scantiness of today’s catalogues compared with the enormous volumes of fifty years ago depresses anyone who has gardened for years. What was once a joy is now a litany of loss. Just picking up these thin booklets is heart-rending. What’s gone this year? The crops that used to be anticipated are now the first disappointments, as you scan through the pages and learn that another favourite endive or corn or lettuce has disappeared.
It also used to be, in the mists of history, that the local farmer grew tasty varieties that might not ship well or weren’t perfectly shaped or coloured, or were incapable of cultivation on an industrial scale. These varieties are vanishing quickly from the corporate catalogues, which are designed more for the industrial grower than for the home garden. Sometimes I wonder if the corporations don’t want us to grow tasty fruit and vegetables to compare with the colourful cardboard sold in the produce departments of today. In addition, the majority of commercial seeds are now hybrids that won’t grow true in a second generation. That way you can’t keep your seed but must buy it again every year. The companies will tell you they have nothing against heritage seeds; it’s just good business to stream their customers into consuming what is more profitable.
Several of these multinationals produce pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers, as well as farm machinery. The business plan is to remove the seeds from the farmer’s control and retain a limited number in the hands of the corporation, seeds that are designed to work best with that corporation’s chemicals and machinery. They now sell such “packages” to farmers: herbicide, plow, seed, fertilizer, pesticide, harvester. The culmination of this philosophy is the notorious “terminator” seed that was being developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a subsidiary of Monsanto until the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity requested a moratorium on its development in 2000. So far, that moratorium has been successful.
Combine the loss of seed diversity with the invention of gm (genetically modified) seeds, which are infecting the basic crops of corn, soy, cotton, and canola, and the history of human cultivation is facing its worst crisis since our neolithic ancestors discovered seed saving. Of 350,000 of the world’s known plant species, 60,000 are threatened with extinction today. Domesticated plants are disappearing faster than wild varieties. Seeds handed down in families and villages for centuries have been eliminated in this continuing botanical holocaust. Since the nineteenth century 95 percent of cabbages and 81 percent of tomatoes are no longer grown commercially, retained in seed banks, or listed in seed catalogues—gone!
Even more dangerous is our tinkering with gm seeds, which is radically different from the simple breeding humanity has performed since we began cultivating plants and domestic animals. Although traditional farming has ultimately created an enormous diversity of plants and animals, it never crossed the species line. You can’t interbreed different species naturally, though there’s a couple of plant species that experts are debating about, but that’s likely a classification issue and not a species cross. Diseases can cross from species to species, but that involves mutation, as with avian flu. That’s why the inability to interbreed is generally referred to as the “species barrier.” The closer you get to it, the more difficult interbreeding becomes. Thus hybrids will not breed true to their parents, nor will their offspring resemble them. To create a hybrid plant you have to breed two extremely different parent genera and produce one generation of seeds. Next year you must breed those two parent genera again. The same with animals, only they seem to hit the infertility barrier more often. If you breed a donkey with a horse you get a mule. Sterile. End of the line. gm crosses that line by creating mutations, injecting genes from one species into another, and, as its proponents say, opens up the universe. gm can create butterfly-killing corn, tomatoes with frog genes, and potatoes that are pesticides.
GM seeds also have the potential of creating a rogue plant. Imagine a terminator gene leaping from plant to plant: The end of flowers. The end of fruit. The end of vegetables. This scenario is far-fetched, but some of the accidents in the production of gm seeds suggest it might not be as far-fetched as transgenetic enthusiasts would have us believe. The numbers are shifting too rapidly to say how many North American crops are gm , but it is well over 50 percent in the varieties of crops released so far, and these crops are now cross-pollinating with natural, organic crops.
Equally scary is the potential of a gene containing a pesticide like Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) spreading from plant to plant, endangering pollinators. Albert Einstein is rumoured to have said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” This statement isn’t entirely accurate, like most great quips. There are many pollinators besides the European honeybee. But releasing insect-killing plants into the natural world is no way to farm wisely or guarantee that life on our planet will survive this century.
&nbs
p; Of the first ten efforts to inject a gene into a plant, all went wrong. The initial commercially produced gm corn, Starlink, engineered to enhance cattle growth, was not fit for human consumption. (Imagine developing an allergenic corn unfit for humans!) In its first year of commercial production this modified corn was accidentally funnelled into food products worldwide, sparking recalls of trainloads of corn, tacos, and breakfast cereals.
The reaction against gm seeds has been so intense that the agribusiness enablers (political and bureaucratic) of both the Canadian and American governments refused to legislate mandatory labelling on the grounds that adult human beings, though capable of voting in a democracy, are incapable of deciding what they should eat and might be subject to food panics (such as not buying gm products). Government bodies insisted “voluntary labelling” was the solution. However, the first major supermarket chain in Canada that stocked food labelled “gm Free” was visited by representatives of agribusiness, and suddenly afterwards it refused to stock any food that was labelled “g m Free” because it would give uncontaminated food an unfair marketing advantage. This tactic of banning labelling happens all the time in the food industry. That’s why it’s illegal for an American dairy farm to advertise that it doesn’t use the controversial bovine growth hormone, and thus the incentive to raise untreated cattle is removed from dairy farmers.
Without labels alerting us, we end up buying gm produce unknowingly. The industry can now claim that almost everyone is eating GM foods, so these Frankenfoods must be healthy and we should create more. That’s why it’s assumed the corporations contaminated corn and soy and canola with GM genes first—these grains are in almost every processed food in existence.
Inserting frog and fish genes in tomatoes is a creepy business, but it gets really scary when companies like Monsanto start creating herbicide-resistant plants. Not only have these genes already crossed over into organic produce, but they’ve also passed into wild plants, creating superweeds that are herbicide resistant. It’s also feared they will make pests Bt (the best organic pest killer) resistant and kill too many beneficial insects. Between crashing pollinator populations and superweeds, the monster might already be unleashed.
The worst danger is the partnership between the trans-nationals and government regulatory bodies. Patent laws now make you liable if your fields are polluted with gm seeds in Canada. If I am growing organic canola and gm pollen drifts onto my field, I could lose my organic status. Worse, I’d be legally obligated to pay the seed company for the “theft” of its product and be forced to allow it to bomb my organic fields with poisons to destroy the “pirated” crop. According to the laws of Canada, gm businesses also have the legal right to herbicide-bomb grain fields they only suspect of stealing their genes. If not all of the crop dies, that means there are GM -patented genes contaminating the field, and the innocent farmer is liable for damages. This automatically destroys an organic farmer’s legal status because the farm has been sprayed, even if the farmer is innocent.
The GM manufacturers are attempting the same strategy in the United States and Europe. Since it appears that GM genes are moving quickly into the natural environment, some environmentalists have claimed it’s no longer possible to grow organic canola, soybean, and corn in North America. Contaminated corn has been discovered in the isolated mountains of Chiapas in Mexico, where traditional seed collecting has continued for centuries. The drift is big.
UNTIL ABOUT THREE DECADES ago the fate of North American seeds was in the hands of hundreds of tiny seed companies, a few large ones, a cluster of surviving sixties communes, a few old ladies from the Ukraine or fussy Italian tomato growers, and so on. When the transnationals began creating gm seeds and taking over seed companies and eliminating their stock or shutting them down, a growing storm of back-to-the-landers, old-time farmers, and ecologists recognized the danger, and the battle was on. Dozens of organizations like Seeds of Diversity, Seeds of Change, and Seed Savers have sprouted, along with rebel seed companies like Dan Jason’s Salt Spring Seeds. It’s a strange, sometimes hilarious guerrilla battle between transnationals armed with fat lobby funds and agricultural ministries tucked in their pockets, and a fluid underground of gardeners and farmers and ecologists attempting to preserve the seeds of history.
I volunteered at a recent Seedy Saturday on Salt Spring— these charity events for seed savers are a redoubt of local food—promoted by educated rebel growers and a host of vegans. I packaged the seeds while mothers and ancient hippies and retired professionals with gardening habits thumped their donated bags of seeds onto the counter. Local growers, cooks, alternative-energy promoters, bamboo lovers, relief organizations (Seeds for Malawi), and orchardists displayed their retail goods. The hall was packed. It was practically panic collecting as seeds were donated, then sold for a song, or just handed over, because a half-dozen of us couldn’t package them as fast as they were donated. We raised thousands of dollars for all the good causes, and by late afternoon the place was cleaned out. There were mislabelled seeds, wet seeds, and dead seeds, but there were far more good than bad germs given back to the community. So despite all the obstacles thrown at the seeds of the world, wild and domesticated, I still can’t help but smile when those gauzy summer winds of thistledown float like clouds across the field—declaring that the planet still intends to seed itself—for now.
13
STOP AND LOOK
THE SKY WAS a propane-fire blue. The old ghetto blaster was cranked up to abusive volume. Our pack of rap-playing nineteen-year-olds were splitting and stacking thirteen-foot cedar rails and digging ditches according to my erratic instructions. It was a moment when you stop, aware of something, although you have no idea what’s different. We turned as one and saw the two giant birds swoop overhead and circle the ponds before they landed on the tall maple.
“What are they?” Joaquin asked—bare chested, head shaved, wearing big wraparound sunglasses, blocking the sun with a dirty hand while attempting to make out the birds against the shimmering light. And he thought the birds looked weird?
“They ain’t eagles,” I said, “and they sure aren’t vultures— they’re ospreys!” I’d never seen them on these islands. One dived off the big-budded maple and circled the ponds, gliding lower and lower. The ducks remained undisturbed, although an eagle would send them into hysterical formations. They knew a fish eater when they saw one.
The osprey plunged into the pond, enormous wings folded back, talons extended, head down, at what seemed around forty-five miles per hour; then it sank out of sight— a stunning assault. We could see its huge dark shadow swimming. It was flying underwater! It came up, beating its wings against the surface, thrusting itself into the air. Gaining altitude it approached the limb where its mate had supervised the performance. It landed, shook the water off, and leaped into cruising mode again, before diving and failing to find prey once more.
That was it for work. Seb brought out the beer, and we all took seats on the deck, cheering this useless hunter while his mate (judging from the sour look she gave him after his first failure, our male crowd automatically assumed she was the female), who refused to hunt, became more peeved. Within an hour she was shrieking and he was foxtrotting mechanically, one talon up, one talon down, a psycho on his branch, while she denounced his incompetence. By then several empty beer bottles were rolling around the deck and we were guffawing mercilessly at every failed dive. “That bird is too useless to catch my goldfish!” We wondered if he was fresh off the nest and if they’d just become an item.
Finally, the female left in a huff, while the male danced himself into a frenzy on his branch. Then he launched again and hit the pond with a crack you could hear a half mile away. By now, I figured the goldfish were hiding two feet under the mud at the pond bottom, but suddenly the osprey surfaced like a god out of black water, a golden fish between his talons. As he gained altitude he effortlessly flipped my ten-inch goldfish face forward so that the fish resembled an orange torpedo hangin
g from a bomber’s fuselage, in an undignified yet streamlined formation. The triumphant osprey performed a victory flight ten feet over our heads, displaying his trophy, and we couldn’t help cheering, though I had some regrets about my goldfish. Then he landed in a tree across the field.
I took out my binoculars and watched him lunch. He held the goldfish the way a kid would hold an ice cream cone, only it was still twitching and slapping about. He calmly began chewing its face, holding it up and looking back at us, while the fish spasmed between his talons. It was the cruellest lunch I’ve ever seen, as he decapitated that living fish, working his way down to the meat, taking his time. Predators don’t have our sentimental morality. The boys took turns with the glasses, and the excitement faded. Watching this gory lunch wasn’t anybody’s idea of fun. They gradually straggled to work, and I followed, thinking about more than diving ospreys.
We all live in the world, but what world do we live in? This was perhaps the only opportunity in their lives for these young, healthy men to witness an osprey hunt and its aftermath. They are modern kids. They didn’t enjoy watching a victim being eaten alive. They returned to lifting rails onto the fence and hollowing out their drainage trenches. And I recognized that’s why these young, rambunctious idealists had come to Trauma Farm—because it was an opportunity to witness what was disappearing: the natural world of simultaneous beauty and laughter and terror.
NOT TOO LONG AGO I encountered a knowledge test. Do you know ten local birds, ten local trees, ten local flowers? Shut your eyes. Now, point to the north, point to the west. What phase is the moon tonight? Where will it rise, and when was the last time you watched it rise? What kind of ground is beneath you, and when was it created? Who were the first people who lived where you lived? Do you know how an internal combustion engine works? What is the second law of thermodynamics? Can you find the North Star at night? Can you recite more than three lines of a great poem aloud? Of course it’s not a real knowledge test, but it asks wonderful questions about our quality of life. The poet Patrick Lane used a similar test for his students and was shocked to learn how many would-be poets couldn’t name more than three local birds or trees. Then he asked them how they expected to be writers if they didn’t know what was going on in the environment. That got a sea of blank faces. They thought writing meant expressing themselves— not recognizing the world celebrating its diverse expressions all around them.
