Organic Connections July-August 2011 by Natural Vitality

Organic

Connections JULYâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;AUGUST 2011

The award-winning magazine of Natural Vitality

Chef Greg Christian Street-Smart Sustainability Fred Kirschenmann The New Food Revolution Queen of the Sun Documenting the Plight of Bees

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You don’t have to be Einstein

lbert Einstein was credited as defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Sometimes it takes quite a while to fully understand the results of our actions. Things we’ve done or items we’ve consumed repeatedly that were considered good or benign may reveal themselves as damaging in the longer term. Back in the day, mercury was prescribed as a cure by doctors. Smoking was “cool.” Happy Meals apparently had no health consequences. The economy was doing well in the trusted hands of the financial services industry. In time, we found out differently. It’s easy to assign blame, but I don’t think lack of future vision is a crime. We have all enjoyed the fruits of cheap energy; yet when they see the damage done and the environmental trouble ahead, sensible people don’t keep doing the same thing. I only take exception to those who continue promoting products or behaviors when the evidence is in that existing ways are harmful. As a general—but sad—rule, where large dollars are involved we don’t always get the truth: not from Washington, not from Big Pharma, not from big chemical/industrial agriculture, and not from Big Food or other lawyered-up recipients of big cash flow generated by the way our society has been operating. Do giant processed-food companies, fast-food restaurant chains and candy companies really want to join in the fight against an epidemic of obesity and diabetes? Is the Corn Refiners Association really giving us the “facts” about high-fructose corn syrup, as their big-dollar ad campaign asserts? Is refined sugar the safer, healthier natural alternative, as some soda companies would have us believe? If you just tune in to corporate America and its lobbied friends in government, you might get depressed about the state of the world. I suggest the best (and safest) antidepressant is to simply look around. There is a lot of integrity in this world. It comes from individuals. Most of the people I know are honest and trustworthy. They want happier and healthier lives. This is why the market for natural and organic products is expanding and why farmers’ markets are growing. More and more people are trying to buy and live green. Thanks to the Internet and social networks, individuals are reaching out to each other and the world is changing.

Ken Whitman

In this issue

or•gan•ic |ôr ganʹik| denoting a relation between elements of something such that they fit together harmoniously as necessary parts of a whole: the organic unity of the integral work of art • characterized by continuous or natural development: companies expand as much by acquisition as by organic growth.

4 Chef Greg Christian The street-smart Chicago chef talks about the Organic School Project and his Beyond Green program, through which he is spreading sustainable practices to food service companies and institutions.

8 Fred Kirschenmann Respected thought leader, former member of the National Organic Standards Board and expert on ethics and agriculture, Kirschenmann discusses the new food revolution, the inspiring work of Stone Barns Center, and the need for a cultural shift in how we relate to nature.

Organic Connections™ is published by Natural Vitality Editorial Office 512.222.1740 • e-mail info@organicconnectmag.com Product sales and information 800.446.7462 • www.naturalvitality.com © 2011 Natural Vitality. All rights reserved.

12 Queen of the Sun Director Taggart Siegel and producer Jon Betz give OC the story behind the important and beautiful documentary Queen of the Sun, which deals with the plight of bees fallen victim to the practices of industrial agriculture.

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G Greg Christian is a highly successful Chicagoarea chef, author, consultant and entrepreneur. His Organic School Project has done much to change the bleak landscape of public school lunches in Chicago and is now moving beyond the scope of one city to address the national problem. Through his consulting business, interviews and writings, he has become a major voice in the advocacy of a local, sustainable food system. What makes Greg unique, however, is his pragmatic and often spiritual approach to actually bringing his visions about. He knows it’s not an easy crusade—but understanding this, his approach is one of realism: what it will truly take to win, not just the battles, but the war. His philosophy is outlined in his recent book Food and Forgiveness, which details his compelling journey into sustainability. Organic School Project

Greg began his sustainable food activities with the Organic School Project—and how that came about is, in itself, a distinctive story. “My youngest kid was really sick with asthma,” Greg told Organic Connections. “Basically the doctors couldn’t help her. She was at the hospital every other week and in intensive care regularly. My ex-wife (wife at the time), who was the primary caretaker, said, ‘We’re losing this battle. We’re going to start doing alternative medicine and we’re going to start eating only organic food.’ So we began feeding her all-organic food, and she got much better. “Then we were eating organic at home and sending the kids to school with all-organic lunches, and my oldest would come home 4 organic connections

Chef Greg Christian

Street-Smart Sustainability

This brought about Greg’s philosophy of all the time and say, ‘Dad, you wouldn’t “Grow, Teach, Feed,” which became the manbelieve what the other kids ate at school!’ tra of the Organic School Project. But Greg And the truth was I didn’t really care. I didn’t say that to my kids, but my children were sensed there was a part yet to be realized. “I covered; they were eating their organic food, knew I was still missing something,” he said. the youngest wasn’t going to the hospital “One day it hit me in meditation: Honor anymore, and we were cool. all. This means respect the current system, “I stopped drinking about nine years ago honor and bless the current system, forgive and started meditating and contemplating the current system. This does not mean a lot, and I realized that I actually did care support the current system with money; it what other kids ate at school. I realized, in does not mean you have to like the current soberness, that all the children are the future system—but honor and respect it. “The current system will provide five billion of the world. So I began thinking, ‘How can free and reduced meals a year in American I do this?’ “Then it came to me that kids have to schools. No other country has that system, grow food; kids have to learn about food all so we’re really lucky. Now, are we feeding year—food in culture, food in nutrition, kids unhealthy food? You bet. But the sysfood in the environment—not nutrition in a tem is not an afterthought. In other places, week, which is what it currently is in people would give their lives if they knew America. They have to become involved their children had this.” Once Greg had the fundamentals of his program, he created a business plan and went to work. Before too long he found himself before Sue Susanke, the food service director for Chicago Public Schools—about whom he had been sternly warned. “She had been the boss for 37 years, and everybody had told me she was this scary lunch lady,” Greg related. “They had said, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to meet her? Good luck with that! She’ll eat you for lunch! She hates guys like you!’ ” What actually occurred was the exact opposite. “The first thing out of this lady’s mouth was, ‘I look forward to being your partner on this project.’ I was stunned! I said, ‘You don’t know what it is yet!’ She replied, ‘I know. Now you can tell me what it is.’ It was a miracle, and I attribute the miracle to what I said earlier about honoring all.” For the next three years or so, Greg got in up to his elbows. “I put vegetable gardens in ten schools,” he recounted. “Into three schools I placed full-time nutrition, food and culture, along with environmental with cleaner food, more food made from teachers. And then I actually fed one school scratch, more local food, and more organic for 16 months. I wrote a food policy—it’s on the Organic School Project website. It’s the food over time.”

Cadillac food policy for any school anywhere in America, and I fed the children by following that policy exactly.” The program met with varying reactions from school staff and parents—but with the kids, Greg found he had been absolutely right about what was required to get them eating healthy food. “By sixth grade, kids’ palates are shot,” Greg pointed out. “They’re addicted to flavorings. I’m convinced that, just as the cigarette companies finally got busted for putting chemicals in cigarettes that were way more addicting than tobacco, it’s the same with food. I can’t prove it, but I’ve been saying it for years and I know it’s true. “So, what that means is the children have to garden a little more, they have to learn a little more about food, and it’s going to take a bit more time. I’ll give you an example: The first quarter of the school year in the school that we fed, ratatouille was on the menu once a week. Ratatouille is chopped-up eggplant, zucchini and mushrooms, with a little tomato, onion and garlic. No one ate much of it at all. But by the fifth week, we ran out early! In five weeks we went from serving none to running out.” The first phase of the Organic School Project—being hands-on in schools—came to an abrupt end when Sue Susanke, who turned out to be Greg’s biggest champion, retired. “The lady who inherited me and that project said, ‘No more pilot projects in cafeterias in Chicago Public Schools.’ I fed the school in the last third of the year; then she told me that I had to serve more hot dogs, hamburgers and pizza. I replied, ‘No, I’m not going to do that,’ and I ended up pulling out.” But Greg had made his point: this year, largely because of the publicity he generated, Chicago Public Schools have a goal to spend two million dollars on local food to feed their students. He is now well into phase 2 of the Organic School Project, putting to work all he has learned from phase 1. He is producing a series of books called the Grow Teach Feed Collection, which is a comprehensive set of instructions for schools on how to feed students healthy meals. He is also obtaining funding to build economically sustainable farm-to-school models.

“When the Organic School Project had been up and running for a time, I realized that I couldn’t live two lives. Soberness kicked in; I was more sensitive and I couldn’t do it.” Beyond the Schools Greg began by taking a look at food sources for his catering business. He was in After Greg began the Organic School Project, for quite a shock. he realized his push for sustainability couldn’t “I just started to call my vendors and ask stop there—it had to make its way into his them where the food came from,” Greg said. business ventures as well. “Not one vendor had one answer to any of my

questions. I even had people who knew how to dig. We could not find out. They would say, ‘Oh, there are 11 possibilities; we’re not going to tell you because we’re not sure what you’re going to do with that information.’ “We finally just went around the vendors, working off the sides of boxes. I brought in some mapping people, and we plotted on a world map where all of our inputs came from and the routes they took to the kitchen. organic connections

We started calling, e-mailing, Googling— whatever it took. “At that time, I did over a million dollars in box lunches; for years I had the majority of the box lunch business in Chicago. I listed out all the inputs for the lunches, so I had the exact miles. One of the box lunches I served consisted of a vegetable pasta salad, a homemade chocolate-chip cookie and a turkey sandwich. The traveling, for all the ingredients in that little lunch, came to 32,000 miles, not including packaging! Then I found out that the compostable flatware I was using for it was coming from China and had over 6,000 miles on it. “One of the ingredients we frequently used was cherry tomatoes. These tomatoes came from Holland, and every fancy place in America will know what I’m talking about— every chef has these Holland teardrop tomatoes all winter long in their salads. It turns out the Dutch supplier uses five farms around the world: in Africa, Israel, Holland, South America and elsewhere. Each farm sends their tomatoes to Holland, and then they package them and put their name on the outside, after which the tomatoes follow a whole other route from Holland to your kitchen. “At that point, it all started to really crash in on me. Those tomatoes had 8,000 or 10,000 miles on them! It was ridiculous how they flew all over the world, then all over America, before I got them in my kitchen so I could put a tomato on my salad in January.” The tipping point came when Greg and his staff researched the coconut milk they used on their coconut shrimp—a very popular and moneymaking dish for them. “We had a diagram,” Greg recalled. “It was like the trees are here but the coconut gets shipped over there, and they get the milk out and the milk gets shipped over there, and then they process and can it. It was this squiggly line; it was crazy.” After seeing this, Greg drew his own line. He dropped coconut shrimp from his menu and then began making many other changes as well. “All you can do when you find out the current scene is figure out how to deal with it, and change your ways,” said Greg.

discovered that education is a large part of the process of bringing about true sustainability. Part of the problem is the fact that the food companies that many organizations buy from claim to be “going green”—but they don’t actually say to what extent, and customers don’t know enough to ask. “A museum, school or hospital could be hiring a food service company or restaurant,” Greg explained. “Normally they would draw up a request for a bid to send out to various food service companies, and as part of that request they might say, ‘Tell us about your green program.’ Then the bidders would all bid for that multiyear contract and present their green programs. The organization, not being really educated about greenness, sustainability and food, would say, ‘Okay, so if we hire you and this is your green program, can we tell our stakeholders, our board, our customers and our staff that we’re going green with our food service?’ And the food

of them are just a lot of fluff. They do not have a real plan. I don’t want to name names, but, for example, one company says they’re doing $12 million in local food. Yet it’s a multibillion-dollar-a-year company. Twelve million dollars in local food? That’s like a sneeze! You’ve got to be kidding me! Another company claimed to be a supporter of the World Wildlife Fund; but when we dug into it, it turned out they had done one tiny thing, in one place, in 1984. That wasn’t the way they presented it at all.” Knowing that these companies could present themselves as green without really being so, Greg found a way to begin to actually force the issue: he includes sustainability initiatives right in with his customers’ contracts, which the food service companies must agree to. “Our Beyond Green program is about bringing to institutions (which hopefully will include schools and cultural institutions,

service company would say, ‘Yes, you can tell them you’re going green because you’re inheriting our green program.’ Then the Further Outreach organization would give the winning bid out and would turn to their board and say, Following his success with the Organic ‘We’re going green because our food service School Project, Greg began consulting company says we’re going green.’ companies and organizations, using his phi“My staff and I did some deep digging into losophy and practices. As with children, he these ‘green’ programs and found that many

and then hospitals, prisons, old-people homes and convention centers—anyone that hires a food service company) a real sustainability strategy so that the institution doesn’t inherit a food service company’s strategy. “I’ve aggregated standards for sustainable food and sustainability into a huge matrix,” Greg continued. “There are about 50 cells in this matrix, into which I’ve dropped

6 organic connections

by the food service company because it’s right there in the contract. In another example, ‘We want you to assess the current reality; we want you to figure out where all your food is coming from, and you’ve got a year to do it. So, where’s the milk coming from? Are there hormones in it or not? Where’s the chicken coming from?’ “These qualifiers then go out in the bidding process to all the people who think they want a restaurant in the Field Museum—the biggest food companies in the world. It means that we can bring in a strategy with actual measurables, because all of the strategies have measurables.” With his Beyond Green program, Greg also utilizes his methods to help companies that are preparing food themselves so that they can incrementally become fully sustainable. Greg is focusing in on particular types of corresponding potential goals. Here’s an organizations with Beyond Green. “I like to example of how it would work: The Field specialize in schools and cultural institutions Museum in Chicago is about to go out and because I think those are the leverage points,” request bids for a ten-year contract from he said. “I especially believe schools are the restaurant groups to run a couple of resleverage point in moving the food system.” taurants in their museum. I sit down with them and put up on the board hundreds of possibilities of sustainability goals, and The Perfect Storm then they pick one from all possible goals. For instance, an obvious one would be how When asked how he thinks a sustainable food much local food do you want to be served system will eventually hit the mainstream, at these restaurants in ten years? So we bat Greg concluded in his distinctive style. around ideas and make it real, since we don’t “It’s completely unsteady in the Middle want to lose people from bidding on this East, where we get our oil. It has been for ten because it’s too extreme. And they might years; however, we’ve had dictators keeping it say, ‘Well, we think 25 percent local food steady. But it’s all a house of cards, and we’re in ten years; let’s shoot for that.’ Then I and starting to see the house of cards fall. Our my team incrementalize those goals over ten food system is completely based on oil, and years. That strategy then becomes inherited once that crumbles we’re in a lot of trouble,

because we’re flying food and driving food and shipping food around the world. “Coincident with that, we’re seeing a lot of studies emerging about how unhealthful our food system is. So I think it’s going to be a combination of gas prices going way up, some kind of environmental event like losing the corn crop two years in a row in America, and health issues. A perfect storm is coming. We’re going to start planting vegetables where we used to plant corn and wheat, and we’re going to let the animals out of the barn so they can walk around. “The big food companies are going to be a part of it—they will step up and see the light or they’ll be gone. It’s that simple. “Look what happened in Cuba. They’re now growing 90 percent of their food in Havana for Havana. It happened overnight. When the wall fell, their oil stopped coming from Russia. Three days later, the tractors stopped in the countryside and they started planting in Havana. Now they grow over 90 percent of their food in the city for the city. It’s just not that hard to figure out.” To find out more about the Organic School Project, visit www.organicschoolproject.org. For more on Greg Christian and his consulting, visit www.gregchristian.com. Greg’s book Food and Forgiveness is available from the Organic Connections bookstore.

organic connections

Fred Kirschenmann

The New Food Revolution

co-authored many articles and books dealing with ethics and agriculture.

over 400 ecological dead zones as a result of the kind of farming that we’re doing. “That debate is currently going on and in A Different Kind of Agriculture some ways it’s a healthy debate. Unfortunately, on both sides people tend to be dismissive of Having spent his career examining in consid- the other side instead of engaging, which I erable detail our current agricultural system think would make a better conversation. and the many sustainable alternatives avail“The difficulty with that first scenario— able, Kirschenmann has much to say about which I call ‘industrial agriculture’ because it really follows the industrial economy model— is that it is absolutely dependent on cheap energy and other resources like surplus fertil“My friend Bill Heffernan, who is a retired izers and fresh water. Those resources are not rural sociologist at the University of Missouri, going to be there in the future, so I think told me once that if the modern food system we’re going to have to transition to a different were to choose an appropriate motto for itself, kind of agriculture. It has to be a much more it would be Just Eat It,” Fred Kirschenmann agroecologically designed system in which tells Organic Connections. “In other words, we have more diverse food systems on the we do not want people to have a voice about landscape that use less energy because the enthe food system. They should just go into the ergy stays nested in the system. In other supermarket and buy their food, or go into words, if you have a diversity of crops and a restaurant and eat their food—without livestock, then the waste from the livestock any knowledge of where it comes from or any becomes the food for the crops and the waste other form of engagement. from the crops becomes food for the live“That era is coming rapidly to a close now, stock; so you save energy in the system. I because we’ve got a kind of new food revoluthink there are going to have to be systems tion that’s taking place. People want to know that are designed along those lines.” where their food comes from; they have some interest in the sort of food that their kids are The Economics of Farming going to eat.” industrial agriculture and why it must change Kirschenmann was recently the recipient or die—and how sustainable farming is the Besides the environment, today’s industrial of the Growing Green Thought Leader award only future we have. agriculture has another victim: the farmer. from the National Food Defense Council— “There are two schools of thought about “We always say that we have a cheap food and to those familiar with his work, it’s no industrial agriculture now,” Kirschenmann policy,” says Kirschenmann. “I’ve always surprise. Currently serving as both director says. “One is that the only way to feed the argued that we don’t have a cheap food of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agri- world is to intensify what we have been do- policy, we have a cheap labor and a cheap raw culture and president of the board of direc- ing over the last 60 years. After all, it’s been materials policy, and that creates a very diftors of Stone Barns Center in New York State, successful, right? I mean, we’ve doubled and ferent type of economy. The way it’s currently he is a longtime leader in the organic and tripled and in some instances quadrupled organized, in a typical food chain everybody sustainable agriculture movement. Among yields of a few crops, and so what we’ve got competes with everybody else. The retailer many other accomplishments, he served to do is simply apply more technology and wants to get the food products from the disa five-year term on the U.S. Department of do more of the same. tributor as cheaply as possible; the distribuAgriculture’s National Organic Standards “The other school of thought is, we have tor wants to get them from the processor as Board, and has chaired the administrative used and are using up our resources and cheaply as possible; and the processor wants council for the USDA’s North Central Region we’ve had a lot of unintended consequences to get the raw materials from the farmer as Sustainable Agriculture Research and Edu- that nobody wanted to see happen, which are cheaply as possible. But the farmer doesn’t cation program. He also has authored and creating big problems for us. We now have have any market power, so he simply has to 8 organic connections

take whatever price he’s offered. And that leaves the farmer in a very vulnerable position economically. “If you look at the data in terms of income that farmers have gotten from farming activities exclusive of off-farm jobs or government subsidies, there’s been very little net farm income since about the middle of the 1980s. Just this last year with prices going up the way they have for a short time, there is some net income; but if you look at the data over a longer period, what invariably happens is, as crop prices go up, all of the input costs including land rent go up as well. In a relatively short while it eats up that extra income. Then when the crop prices go down again, as they do in certain cycles, the input costs never go down as rapidly; thus, over a period of time, farmers actually tend to get penalized.” These types of economics have had a serious impact on the farming industry as a whole. “When you start to break it down, as Mike Duffy, who is an agricultural economist and a friend of mine here at Iowa State University, has done for years, you see we now only have 192,442 farms that produce three-quarters of all our agricultural production,” Kirschenmann continues. “Additionally, 30 percent of our farmers are over age 65, and only 5 percent are under age 35. We’re headed for a very serious human capital problem and we have to begin doing something about that.”

specialist from Washington State University they determine what the cost of the farmers’ production is going to be. They take that number and add to it a reasonable return for investment and labor to the farmers, and then that’s the price per bushel of wheat that they guarantee to the farmers, regardless of what happens in the marketplace.” Care and Feeding of Soil

Kirschenmann also sees the care of the soil as something that has been totally eliminated from “modern” farming, and something that needs to be restored if we are to succeed.

Going beyond the intellectual discussion, the new agricultural model can be seen in action at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture—a non-profit farm and education center located just 25 miles north of Manhattan in Pocantico Hills, New York. Stone Barns Center is also home to its partner restaurant, world-renowned Blue Hill at Stone Barns. “I’ve been involved with the Stone Barns Center from the beginning,” Kirschenmann tells us. “This was a project that was dreamt up basically by David Rockefeller and his daughter, Peggy. They wanted to create a

What we need to do now is to begin changing that culture into one in which we recognize that we are a

part of nature and that we have to work with nature and operate in terms of both nature’s gifts and nature’s constraints.

“Here again, we have part of industrial culture,” Kirschenmann explains. “It goes back to an essay that biological chemist Justus von Liebig wrote in 1840, in which he pointed out that we could use synthetic inputs—principally nitrogen, phosphorus and potash—and dramatically increase the production of our crops without having to go through the laboA Different Agroeconomic Model rious process of ‘manuring our soils,’ as he put From his observation, Kirschenmann sees it. He envisioned this new way of producing methods that are already working to remedy food, and it was a perfect fit for the industrial culture. So we got away from this notion that this situation. “There is a growing demand for highly we had to feed the soil, that we had to attend differentiated food products produced at a to the biological health of the soil; we simply scale that’s attractive to our school systems, inserted the synthetic inputs. our healthcare institutions and restaurant “Even as recently as 15 years ago, some of chains. There are a number of companies my colleagues who are in soil sciences renow that are tapping into that market. It’s ferred to the soil as the material to hold a not just midsized farms, although it tends to plant in place—that was the only function be midsized farms that can transition to this it performed. The truth is that soil is a living new way of being in the market to produce community; there are actually more living and differentiate a food product. These farms organisms beneath the surface of the soil than can then network together into marketing there are above. And that living community, networks, such as Organic Valley, Shepherd’s as Sir Albert Howard1 pointed out 70 years Grain, Country Natural Beef, and Red To- ago, needs to be fed. The primary food for mato. Shepherd’s Grain is a great example, in that living community is humus,2 and humus which they don’t compete with other players comes mainly from well-composted what we in the food chain—they work cooperatively. call waste materials: livestock manure, plant With the Shepherd’s Grain farmers, when it matter—any biodegradable material can be comes time to get ready to plant the next crop composted. All waste materials that are bioof wheat, they meet with the millers and bak- degradable can go into compost, which in ers, and then with the help of an extension turn feeds the soil.”

10 o r g a n i c c o n n e c t i o n s

Stone Barns Center

center that honored Rockefeller’s wife, whose name was also Peggy. Rockefeller’s wife was a very strong proponent of sustainable agriculture and farmland preservation. It was largely her involvement and generosity that started the American Farmland Trust, for example. “She died suddenly in 1996, so David wanted to do something to memorialize her passion and her gift. He and his daughter came up with the idea of creating a center for sustainable agriculture in an urban area that would accomplish that. David donated 80 acres of the Rockefeller estate, which had stone barns on it—originally dairy barns— that were actually built when J. D. Rockefeller was in charge of the family. They decided to renovate the barns and create this center. “They wanted some help in determining what a center like this should be composed of, what it should do, what its program should be. They put together an advisory group—I believe there were 20 of us involved in it—to help them think through how to design this so that it would be of service to the greater community. They asked me to serve on the board, so I’ve been involved in it from the start. About two years ago they asked me to serve as the president of the board and become more involved on a daily basis; so I spend about a week a month out there on site now. “It’s been an incredibly inspiring experience for me. One continuing part of our work is

to have an educational place for children so that they can learn where food comes from and how it’s grown. Chefs at the restaurant also help the children understand how to prepare food. The changes that take place in these kids have just been so amazing and so heartening. “Another aspect of what we do is our beginning farmer program. There’s a whole new generation of young people now that want to farm, and they don’t want to do commodity agriculture—they want to raise food for people. So they need experience in how to connect with the land, as well as how to get access to land, obtain affordable capital, and all of that. We have both a horticulture operation and a pasture animal operation, and the farm managers have a dozen to fifteen apprentices and interns that work with them. Most of them usually spend about a year at the place. “It’s uplifting to work with these young people. Seventy percent of the apprentices and interns that have gone through the Stone Barns experience are now engaged in fulltime farming in one way or another. That’s truly rewarding for me. “The other thing that’s been inspiring is working closely with people in an urban community like New York City. There’s a new culture around food in this country, especially in urban centers. I’m encouraged now that we’ll begin to see a political force taking place in our urban communities that is going to help to eventually bring about a number of the policy changes we will need in order to meet some of these challenges for the future. And I find that very exciting.” Man as Part of Nature

to begin changing that culture into one in Kirschenmann concludes with an observa- which we recognize that we are a part of tion about needed cultural shifts. nature and that we have to work with nature “The reconnection of the community and operate in terms of both nature’s gifts with the land isn’t just a problem for agri- and nature’s constraints. culture—it’s part of a more general prob“We need to bring some of that old lem,” Kirschenmann says. “One piece of wisdom into our consciousness and our good news here is that a number of authors culture. One of the things that we try to do now are recognizing that we are on the at the Stone Barns Center, especially with cusp of having to make some significant children, is to help them understand and cultural shifts. For instance, Dianne appreciate, with all of the rich biotic comDumanoski, in her book about climate munity that is there in the gardens and with change called The End of the Long Summer, the animals, that they’re a part of it and this points out that in our current culture we is their world, and there’s a way to take care see nature as something we dominate, of it that enriches the whole. That enrichsomething we are going to force to do what ment then also contributes to their health we want it to do. That’s a viewpoint which is and to their future. Cultural shifts as we a major contributor to the problem causing know take time, but it is a shift that I think climate change. What we need to do now is we need to nurture.”

To find out more about Stone Barns Center, visit www.stonebarnscenter.org. For further information on the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, visit www.leopold.iastate.edu. 1. Sir Albert Howard (1873–1947): English botanist and organic farming pioneer; a principal figure in the early organic movement. He is considered by many in the English-speaking world as the father of modern organic agriculture. 2. humus: the dark organic material in soils, produced by the decomposition of vegetable or animal matter and essential to the fertility of the earth. Stone Barns cover photo by Annabel Braithwaite.

organic connections

Queen of the Sun

Documenting the Plight of Bees by Bruce Boyers

years. That was another big whoa! How did he know this, 80 to 100 years ago? It’s at this time now that we’re having Colony Collapse Disorder, and it’s devastating. Making Queen of the Sun “I then spent three years, most of it with producer Jon Betz, on this fabulous journey. Reports of escalating numbers of disappear- A lot of that time I was in New Zealand, Ausing bees inspired Taggart Siegel, director tralia and Europe, filming mostly organic and of the 2005 documentary The Real Dirt on biodynamic beekeepers. I knew they would Farmer John, to take on this project. “After have deep insights into this phenomenon and finishing The Real Dirt on Farmer John, I why bees are disappearing.”

sponsors, including Whole Foods Market, Your Garden Show, Slow Food International, Sierra Club and the Audubon Society.

With the many issues facing the survival of our planet today, documentary films have taken a major role in conveying information and viewpoints often omitted by advertisersupported mainstream media, and in motivating viewers to action in solving some of these matters. An inspirational example is a new documentary called Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?, through which director Taggart Siegel and producer Jon Betz lovingly show us the natural truth of bees and what must be done to save this disappearing but enormously vital link in our food chain. As Queen of the Sun opens, dancer, artist and beekeeper Sara Mapelli performs a slow, flowing dance, during which her body is literally covered with bees. In a later scene, a bareheaded Yvon Achard, French beekeeper and bee historian, has his face pressed close to a buzzing bee colony—while he tickles them with his mustache. “Beekeepers, they are choosed by bees,” he says. “You can brush by mustache . . . and they like!” Queen of the Sun, recently released and now showing in theaters, has been the recipient of no less than nine film festival awards and has garnered rave reviews, including one from Roger Ebert proclaiming, “A remarkable documentary that’s also one of the most beautiful nature films I’ve seen.” This engaging and ultimately uplifting film weaves an unusual and dramatic story told through beekeepers, scientists and philosophers from around the world as they reveal both the problems and solutions inherent in renewing a culture that’s in balance with nature. The film has gathered some noteworthy

came across some environmental articles on the disappearance of the honeybee and Colony Collapse Disorder,” Siegel told Organic Connections. “In one article there was a quote from Einstein that said, ‘If bees disappear, man has four years to live.’ Even though it’s been disputed that he said this, it woke me up: within seconds I realized that was my next film. I knew that I wanted to be making a film from the angle of organic and biodynamic beekeepers. “Soon afterwards I discovered a book with seven lectures by Rudolf Steiner, who, in 1923, said to beekeepers that if they continued the practice of mechanized and industrialized beekeeping and artificial queen breeding— which had just come about as part of the industrial age—bees would die out in 80 to 100

Colony Collapse Disorder

Gunther Hauk is a leading biodynamic beekeeper and farmer, located in Virginia, who is featured prominently in the documentary. “Colony Collapse Disorder is a bill we are getting for all we have done to the bees,” he states in the movie. “It’s just a name that was given to a phenomenon that . . . A hive is found empty; food is there, honey is there, but the bees are gone. The first thing we look for is, who is the cause for that? Who is responsible? We are not going to solve the problem by us killing a virus or a bacteria or a fungi, because the problem is an inner one.” Hauk goes on to say that we have lost, just in the US, approximately 5 million colonies, each containing between 20,000 and 60,000 bees. organic connections

There is a 600,000-acre monoculture of almonds in the central valley. The problem is that every one of those trees, every one of the blossoms, needs a bee to

visit it. Yet if there is nothing but almonds in the central valley, there is nothing to eat for the bees for the 50 weeks of the year that the almonds aren’t in bloom. While the cause of colony collapse has yet to be totally isolated, the message clearly conveyed in Queen of the Sun is that if we return to the natural ways of the bees, we can solve it. It’s also equally clear that, given the methods being employed by modern beekeeping, such an occurrence—along with an overall decline in the honeybee population— is not at all surprising. Contribution of Industrial Farming

bees required to pollinate vast monocultures. Antibiotics are applied to try and curtail the diseases, but bees themselves—as well as any humans that consume the resultant honey— become resistant to such antibiotics. Another problem is that of forced unnatural breeding, which leads to a weakening and dying out of bee strains. One of the most frightening pieces of information revealed in the film is that a relatively new class of pesticides called neonicotinoids— among the best-selling insecticides worldwide—targets insect nervous systems and actually affects the ability of bees to learn, remember and navigate, all of which would contribute to the inability of a bee to return to the hive after foraging. But the most telling difference between commercial beekeeping, with its myriad of mounting problems, and natural beekeeping can be seen right in the attitudes of the bees— as the filmmakers discovered. “Filming was very different from beekeeper to beekeeper,” Betz recalls. “For instance, in filming with Gunther Hauk I don’t think we wore any protective gear at all, because Gunther’s relationship with his bees was such that we felt the bees would be able to sort of understand our approach. By and large, if we were just very calm, not aggressive, moved with slow movements and simply gave the bees their space, we didn’t really have any problems. “Filming in the almond fields was a completely different story. You’re not working on that intimate level at all, and you’ve got people in full bee garb with head covers, forklifting pallets of hives on and off trucks. That was a lot more frightening because you have these swarms of angry, angry bees that are not pleased at all with what is going on.”

In modern farming, hundreds of thousands of acres are devoted to a single crop—a practice known as “monoculture.” Operating in this manner is contrary to nature in numerous ways, not the least of which is the harm done to bees. A great example of a monoculture shown in the film is almond growing in central California. “There is a 600,000-acre monoculture of almonds in the central valley,” relates bestselling author Michael Pollan in Queen of the Sun. “The problem is that every one of those trees, every one of the blossoms, needs a bee to visit it. Yet if there is nothing but almonds in the central valley, there is nothing to eat for the bees for the 50 weeks of the year that the almonds aren’t in bloom.” Industrial agriculture’s answer to the problem has been to truck thousands of hives over thousands of miles each year, moving them according to the needs of various crops. “They end up taking these huge semi-trucks and loading thousands of beehives and chucking them down, for instance, in the almond fields,” Betz explains. “Often beekeepers don’t allow their bees to summer in a place where they can collect a lot of good forage. Some leave honey in the hives over the winter, but others will sell that honey and then feed the bees sugar, sugar water or corn syrup in the winter.” The Natural Way There are many critical issues caused by commercial breeding, as shown in the docu- Contrary to the manifold issues routinely mentary. These include diseases from other encountered by commercial beekeepers, countries, imported with the high volume of Queen of the Sun shines in portraying the 14 o r g a n i c c o n n e c t i o n s

opposite scenario—when bees are allowed to function as nature intended. Left to her own devices after she emerges, a young queen engages upon a “marriage flight,” taken at approximately 600 feet in the air. Accompanying her is a swarm of male drones, and about a dozen of them mate with her. When she returns, she is carrying over a million sperm and can lay millions of eggs over her lifespan. Compare this natural event with the commercial methods—in which queens are bred and artificially inseminated—and the survival differences can be readily seen. “If we take away the innate qualities that bees have developed for the last hundred million years, we’re taking away something that goes against their system,” Siegel notes. “Biodynamic beekeepers let the queen mate with any drone that she would like. The strongest and the fittest survive, and that’s developing a stronger beehive.” Another issue that commercial beekeepers consistently encounter deals with a pest called the varroa mite, which invades hives and feeds on bee blood. These are countered by using stronger and stronger pesticides— which in the end will only lead to mites that are resistant and bees that are further weakened or killed off. In contrast, the film portrays several natural approaches that are not harmful at all. “There are methods being

employed now that really are, in a very sustainable way, allowing the bees and the mites to co-adapt without using any chemicals,” Siegel says. “That’s what they used in India when the varroa mite came to Asia; bees and mites co-adapted because beekeepers couldn’t afford chemicals. Now they have this healthy relationship between the bees and the mites.” But the most telling thing for the viewer will be the many shots of healthy bee colonies—producing plentiful honey, avidly performing their pollen-gathering and

pollinating duties—which show that, left Solving the Long-Term Problem alone and to their own hundred-millionyear-old instincts, bees will thrive. In bee- The plight of bees—and the solution to this keeping, such instincts can be successfully problem—is best summed up at the concluutilized by beekeepers who fully understand sion of Queen of the Sun: and appreciate the bee’s natural cycle, many “Bees belong to be all over the world,” orof whom are featured in the documentary. ganic beekeeper Ron Breland says, “and the great problem now is they are not, because What You Can Do we are creating places where they can’t live. . . . An alternative to rolling on the interMuch can be done, right from our homes, to states 20,000 miles a year would be to go to assist bees in regaining their survival. the various monoculture productions and “There are many ways we can all help,” simply tell them, ‘The writing is on the wall. Siegel points out, “from simply planting a One of these springs you’re going to call for diversity of flowering herbs and wildflowers migratory beekeepers and they won’t be in our yards and gardens to writing peti- there for you and you’ll be out of business. tions to Congress, through our website Why don’t you take a small portion of your queenofthesun.com, to ban the use of holdings and plow it under and plant it neonicotinoid pesticides and stop the pro- with bee-friendly crops to sustain those liferation of genetically modified plants. creatures all year long, not just for three Supporting chemical-free beekeeping by weeks in the spring? That way you will purchasing local, raw organic and chemi- know what your situation is, because they’ll cal-free honey is also a great way you can be there right on your property.’” “Turning this crisis around is not going to support a growing movement of beekeepers be easy and it won’t happen overnight,” Gunwho are concerned with fighting the dether Hauk advises. “The bees are telling us to cline of the honeybee.”

become true caretakers, and the only solution is creating a surrounding of wildflowers and forage and diversity. . . . People have asked me, ‘Why do you do what you’re doing? Do you have hope, with all the mess we are in, with all we are doing in nature?’ And I would say I would have hope to the very last day, to the last plant. The bees are the most exquisite beings. They show us what this service can be like.” Find out more about Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?—and preorder the DVD, which will be available in late summer— at www.queenofthesun.com. Join Queen of the Sun’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/Queen-of-the -Sun/176383025731985. Learn the simple actions you can take right in your yard to help the bees at www.queenofthesun.com/get-involved /10-things-you-can-do-to-help-bees/. organic connections

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