PLENTY
GLOBAL WARMING AND AFRICA’S FOOD SUPPLY
IT’S EASY BEING GREEN
THE WAY WE EAT › FUTURE OF THE FAMILY FARM › 8 GREAT ECO CHEFS › GREEN GARDENING GEAR › CULINARY VACATIONS
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PLENTY IT’S EASY BEING GREEN
83 CONTENTS
FEATURES
APRIL/MAY 2007
38
IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR Behind the scenes of five eco-conscious farms. BY CHRISTY HARRISON
44
AN UNCERTAIN HARVEST Increasingly volatile weather patterns around the world are
already causing supermarket prices to rise. But when it comes to global warming and the food supply, the real losers will be those in developing countries. A look at how one corner of Africa is coping. BY JOCELYN ZUCKERMAN ON THE COVER 35 38 44 60 83
Green gardening gear The future of the family farm Africa and global warming Culinary vacations Eight great eco chefs
2|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
54
A LONG, STRANGE TRIP Thirty years ago, The Farm was the archetype of a model
community. Today, it has shed communalism for capitalism. A writer visits a place of the past to learn about its future. BY LISA SELIN DAVIS
60
MOVEABLE FEASTS Take an eco-friendly culinary vacation, and learn how to cook everything, everywhere. BY NICOLE DAVIS
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FAST 17 Al Gore as cult hero; Nina Planck on organic food and elitism; global warming protestors; endangered species of the future; eco-friendly shaving cream; what not to recycle.
FORWARD 25
PEOPLE How a vodka czar is saving wild salmon. BY KEVIN FRIEDL
28
TECHNOLOGY Bioprospectors are searching
for treasure in the form of plants and animals. BY SAM BOYKIN
31
BUSINESS Outdated electronics are being diverted
from landfills to recyclers. BY CHRISTINE CYR
32
THINKING Donald Culross Peattie’s A Natural
History of North American Trees; David R. Montgomery’s Dirt; new and noteworthy books.
35
54
GREEN GEAR Make your backyard a second home
with our picks for garden and patio accessories.
44
CHOICES 71
HOME A Colorado home goes green by going
76
CULTURE Big-game safaris trade rifles for
tranquilizer guns. BY KIERA BUTLER
78
HEALTH The lowdown on a chemical found in everything from nail polish to shower curtains. BY EMILY GERTZ
80
RETREADS Urban loggers find new uses for old landscaping. BY ALISA OPAR
83
FOOD Eight great eco chefs; why gluten-free goodies are crowding supermarket shelves; natural fruit juices.
IN EVERY ISSUE 6 8 12 14 88
PLENTY ONLINE FROM THE EDITOR CONTRIBUTORS LETTERS THE LAST WORD
4|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
GLOBAL WARMING AND AFRICA’S FOOD SUPPLY
PLENTY IT’S EASY BEING GREEN
28 Cover photo-illustration by AARON GOODMAN Cover models DANA DELISA AND ARMISTEAD JOHNSON Hair and makeup NANCY SPRAGUE Clothing EDUN
THE WAY WE EAT › FUTURE OF THE FAMILY FARM › 8 GREAT ECO CHEFS › GREEN GARDENING GEAR › CULINARY VACATIONS
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from the editor
What We Eat When I was growing up in the ’70s, our standard family meal was frozen vegetables, freeze-dried mashed potatoes, and broiled steak. Never out of season, produce in a box was cheap and thought to be a healthy alternative since the vitamins were being preserved at peak freshness. The concepts of organic food and buying local hadn’t really entered into the national consciousness yet. My mother prepared dinner in about 15 minutes, which didn’t mean it was made without love. Times were just different. Tastes started to change quickly. The ’80s were all about salad and pasta. Steak was out, and low-fat carbo-loading was in. Then, of course, steak made a comeback with the high-protein diets of the ’90s such as Atkins. These diet fads reveal a consistent trend: People are finally becoming informed about what they are consuming and how they’re feeding their families. Of course, humankind by necessity is food obsessed. But the way we talk about food reflects the luxury of being able to consider it as more than just sustenance. The products we choose are more often than not a moral, ethical, or political statement. We want our food to not offer just nourishment, but also an experience. The evidence is everywhere, from the eye-candy visual thrill of Whole Foods’s produce displays to the food-porn sensibility of shows like Giada De Laurentiis’s Everyday Italian. People are even taking culinary vacations. (Check out eight of our favorites, starting on page 60.) This is not to say that our economy has transformed into a locally grown, organic utopia. Sales of organic food are growing by around 20 percent annually, but overall, organics are only two percent of the market. Big Ag still dominates. But more than ever before, people are looking critically at what they bring home and the effect it has on the overall economy and the environment. The success of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Marion Nestle’s What to Eat points to a new trend: Consumers are trying to learn more about where their food comes from and how it is made. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of easy answers. We will have 8|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
some big hurdles to overcome in the years ahead, as global warming affects weather patterns and our ability to grow food (“An Uncertain Harvest,” page 44). And locally grown food that’s delivered inefficiently can leave just as big a carbon footprint as food shipped from across the country. Still, the growth of the organic sector is helping to breathe life into family farms (“It’s a Family Affair,” page 38) and today’s consumer awakening is a good sign that more changes are to come. I usually spend the same 15 minutes my mother did putting together dinner, but I’m lucky: There is a great organic market near my home. And if I want more variety, there are several other options that aren’t too far out of my way. Organic markets aren’t yet as prolific as Starbucks, but it probably won’t be long until Starbucks goes organic as well. They’re already getting rid of trans fats. Our habits don’t necessarily have to change that much, but our consumption can.
MARK SPELLUN Editor in Chief
PLENTY EDITOR IN CHIEF Mark Spellun EDITORIAL MANAGING EDITOR SENIOR EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITORS
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EDITORIAL INTERNS
Deborah Snoonian Sarah Schmidt Kiera Butler Alisa Opar Susan Cosier Sarah Parsons Caroline McCloskey Joshua M. Bernstein Justin Tyler Clark Bari Nan Cohen Lisa Selin Davis Liz Galst Christy Harrison (Food Editor) Barry Lank Kate Siber Alison Sherbach Justin Nobel
ART ART DIRECTOR DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR
Tracy Toscano Richard Gambale
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Published by Environ Press, Inc. Chairman Arnold Spellun 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, New York 10019 Tel: 212.757.3447 Fax: 212.757.3799
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Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, and other materials must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. PLENTY will not be responsible for unsolicited submissions. Send letters to the editor to letters@plentymag.com or to PLENTY, 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019. Copyright Š2007 by Environ Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Views expressed herein are those of the author exclusively. PLENTY has applied for membership to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. PLENTY (ISSN 1553-2321) is published bimonthly, six times a year. The annual subscription price is $12 per year. PLENTY is a publication of Environ Press, Inc., 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019. Periodical postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to PLENTY, P.O. Box 621, Mt. Morris, IL 61054-7568 or call 800.316.9006. PLENTY is printed on 80% recycled paper and manufactured with elemental chlorine-free pulp. Please recycle. PLENTY offsets its carbon footprint with eMission Solutions, a division of Green Mountain Energy (greenmountain.com).
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contributors
JOCELYN CRAUGH ZUCKERMAN (“An Uncertain Harvest,” page 44), says she was devastated to be told that she couldn’t visit the Lake Turkana region during her reporting trip to Kenya for her story about global warming and food supply. “There’s evidence all over the country that global warming is already a painful reality there,” she says. “The troubles up north, fueled by a recent barrage of AK-47s, struck me as particularly ominous.” Jocelyn, who served as a Peace Corps volunteer in western Kenya from 1991 to 1993, is the deputy editor of Gourmet magazine.
DAVID SOKOL (“Aggressively Passive,” page 71) has something in common with the subject of his story, Anson Fogel: They’re both installing 4.2 kilowatts of solar panels at their homes this year. Fogel’s green home in Aspen isn’t the only thing that impressed David. “Anson’s got a booming voice, he’s assertive, and he loves gadgets,” he says. “It didn’t jibe with my idea of an eco-homeowner, but now I’m convinced that Anson is a great spokesperson.” David lives in Beacon, New York, and also writes for Surface, Metropolis, and Architectural Record.
KIERA BUTLER (“Goodwill Hunting,” page 76), an associate editor at Plenty, says the most interesting part of writing about eco hunting was finding a New Yorker who has a real baboon sitting at his table. Before joining Plenty, Kiera worked at Columbia Journalism Review, where she wrote about Jesuit priests, oral history, and high school journalists, among other topics. Her articles have been published in Utne Reader, the New York Post, and OnEarth magazine. When she’s not writing, Kiera can be found playing bass in her band, the Asthmatics, or participating in a spelling bee at a bar.
NICOLE DAVIS (“Moveable Feasts,” page 60) grew up in the restaurant business, but only recently discovered the joys of cooking—in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Nicole flew to British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley to attend an outdoor cooking class run by two winemakers. The school has since closed, but the experience made her realize how much you can learn about a place from cooking with its fresh, local ingredients. Her writing has also appeared in Budget Travel, Backpacker, and Popular Science. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband Mike, the primary beneficiary of her newfound cooking skills.
AARON GOODMAN (cover image), a photographer and illustrator, has worked for more than 55 national publications, including Time, Newsweek, Backpacker, and Forbes. He is also a regular contributor to ESPN The Magazine, where his images appear on the back page, “0:01.” On weekends (when he’s not chained to a desk in his New York City studio or shooting his latest project), Aaron spends his time renovating the 90-year-old house he shares with his fiancée, Terry, and their two cats.
12|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
letters
“I don’t think Wal-Mart deserves a two-page article in any magazine for the atrocities it has brought to Americans. The only thing Wal-Mart deserves is to be shut down for good.”
SPOILED MY DINNER
MOORE OR LESS
I was eating dinner when I read your interview with Tyler Elm (“Big Changes at the Big Box,” February/March 2007, page 24). Halfway through, I felt sick. It’s a very sad day when an environmental magazine applauds Wal-Mart for its move towards greater sustainability. The foundation of Wal-Mart’s business strategy is not the clean, green image that Mr. Elm painted. Wal-Mart has been criticized for polluting drinking water with its bagged herbicides and pesticides, and for leaving huge, abandoned stores and parking lots unoccupied for years. Wal-Mart practices unfair treatment of laborers in China, provides unaffordable health care, and ruins locally owned businesses. I could go on, but I would hate to ruin anyone else’s meal. I don’t think Wal-Mart deserves a two-page article in any magazine for the atrocities it has brought to Americans. The only thing WalMart deserves is to be shut down for good. Marcella Kerbein Santa Rosa, CA
Love your mag! But I was disappointed to see Patrick Moore quoted in “Burning Question” (February/March 2007, page 19). It’s not a surprise that he advocates for nuclear energy, since he is a paid consultant for industry who cloaks himself in a greensounding consulting firm that routinely opposes the environment. On the other hand, good piece by Erika Villani about the need for strong standards for organic personal-care products (“Beauty Products That Are Good Enough to Eat,” page 71). Stacy Malkan Berkeley, CA
14|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
NECESSARY LEADERSHIP Your recent editorial (“From Marches to Carbon Offsets,” December/January 2007, page 6) was on-target. Someone needs to get us organized. I tried to find out if there was go-
ing to be a big gathering on the Mall in D.C. this year for Earth Day, a perfect year for this event given our anti-environmental president, a new Democrat-controlled Congress, and the success of An Inconvenient Truth. But what did I find when I Googled “Earth Day”? Lots of individual events, and the organization that supposedly linked them all together listed nothing. There is a leadership vacuum. Dick Howlett Via e-mail
FLAWS IN FIBER OPTICS I like your mag a lot—so much that I’m taking time on a Saturday to write about a big faux pas I think you made. “The Plenty 20” (February/March 2007, page 49) lists some great companies, including some I hadn’t heard of. But someone bought the hype from Fiberstars without knowing all the facts. The truth is, fiber optics are only light carriers. They do not create or increase light.
letters
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Fiber optics are great for specialty locations like underwater or in museums. But for household use, they’re too expensive and have lots of embodied energy with no increased efficiency. Fiber optics are made from high-grade, virgin polymers that use large amounts of fossil fuels in raw materials and manufacturing, and they take lots of energy to produce. And the special fixture called a metal halide lamp that was referenced has been in commercial use since the ’60s! Sorry folks, bad choice for a top-20 pick. You might want to run things by an energy and sustainability consultant. Chris Prelitz, LEED A.P. Eos Green Consulting Laguna Beach, CA
JAZZED ABOUT ZIPPERS
Dear Kristia, Thanks for writing. Send your unwanted zippers to: Donna Jean Petrell 1312 Wisconsin Street #326 Hudson, WI 54016 You can also check out her website: zipperworks.home.att.net or e-mail her at zipperworks@att.net.
Thank you for including the article about the zipper artist (“The Zip-Up Artist,” February/March 2007, page 68). It’s amazing how she turns something useless like a broken zipper into fantastic art! We wouldn’t need any new landfills if we all thought like her. Reusing is better than recycling. I have some old zippers. Could I send them to her? Are there any kitchen-sink artists out there too? I really enjoy Plenty. Thanks for putting it together. Kristia Wasik Brecksville, OH
OUR BAD Illustrations for “The Plenty 20”
(February/ March 2007, page 49) should have been credited to Matt Bandsuch. Also, due to a production error, a few lines of text were omitted from “Happy Together” (February/March 2007, page 40); the full story is available online at plentymag.com. We regret the errors.
Plenty managing editor Deborah Snoonian and her own piece of Petrell’s zipper art.
Write us at letters@plentymag.com.
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PLENTYMAG.COM|APRIL / MAY 2007|15
FAST
> AL GORE AS CULT HERO
> NINA PLANCK ON ORGANIC ELITISM > GLOBAL WARMING PROTESTERS
> ENDANGERED SPECIES OF THE FUTURE > ECO-FRIENDLY SHAVING CREAM > WHAT NOT TO RECYCLE
POWER FLOWERS IMAGINE WALKING through a virtual garden and helping it grow just by moving. That’s exactly what visitors to Ultra-Nature, a light exhibit by digital artist Miguel Chevalier, are able to do. As people walk, run, or prance through the installation, motion sensors read their movements, and trigger the plants to bloom and sway from side to side. Chevalier created his garden for a show last year at Sejul Gallery in Korea (an earlier version was displayed in a subway in Oslo, Norway). The exhibit is now on a world tour, having stopped in Pittsburgh and Mumbai last winter and continuing on to Paris, Turin, and elsewhere during 2007, allowing us to interact with nature in an entirely different environment. —Susan Cosier
PLENTYMAG.COM
|APRIL / MAY 2007|17
fast CLAIM CHECK
it’s a dark january night in Durham, North Carter, 29, who runs a website devoted to Carolina, and the pulpit is empty at the eco-friendly living in Miami. Meanwhile, in Peace Covenant Church. Still, 30 churchgoOhio, retired chemical engineer Jack Roesler, ers, physics professors, and housewives are 67, joined 25 college students and other ecogathered to hear an altogether different gos- minded folks for a viewing at a University pel: the impending climate-change apoca- of Toledo undergrad’s house. “I didn’t move; lypse, as told by Al Gore’s documentary An I was riveted,” says Roesler, who welcomed Inconvenient Truth. “People left sobered but the chance to meet like-minded folks from encouraged that we possess the means to alter different walks of life. “It was refreshing to our future,” says job-training director Karen be surrounded by people that care about Mortimer, a 61-year-old church member the environment and want to discuss the iswho took part in a peculiar phenomsues.” enon that is gaining strength. But MoveOn’s Truth binge was One year after its theatrical rejust the beginning. Viewings lease, An Inconvenient Truth has continue to proliferate in outbecome an environmentalist’s popside-the-multiplex venues like corn-popping Rocky Horror Picture New York City’s Inwood Hill Show. Its November DVD release Nature Center, as well as Greenfueled a groundswell of screenings ville Christian College in Brockthat culminated in a nationwide “See ville, Ontario. And Gore’s Climate the Truth Movie Party,” sponsored Project is now training 1,000 by Gore and MoveOn.org on Australians and Americans December 16. The event feato travel their countries and tured nearly 2,000 simultanegive variations on his clious showings in all manners mate-change lecture. Now of venue, including homes, ordinary people like Morchurches, bars, and museums. timer, who started cooking One such screening in downvegetarian meals and turning town Miami’s Mitrani Art down her thermostat after Building drew 35 people, from watching Truth, have started 20-something hipsters to married hosting home screenings. “As Al couples to a septuagenarian. “It Gore said, there is a response in allowed us to build a commubetween denial and despair,” nity and act locally,” says the she says. “It is action.” A YEAR AFTER TRUTH’S RELEASE, AL GORE’S screening’s cosponsor Rebecca —Joshua M. Bernstein STILL A ROCK STAR
[
ROLL CALL OF THE WILD Much like American Idol contestants, animals protected by the Endangered Species Act are on one day, off the next. The Western Great Lakes population of gray wolves was the latest to get axed from the ESA’s list of federally protected species, and the bald eagle may be next. (The Fish and Wildlife Service must decide whether or not to remove the bird’s federal protections by June 29.) The FWS is in the process of making decisions about several other species, too—both adding and removing them from the list. Here’s what’s on the table. Don’t be fooled by the brevity of the “Proposed for Listing” section: The FWS is also conducting preliminary research on 278 candidates. —Sarah Parsons 18|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
]
Proposed for Listing Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) Coho Salmon (Oregon population) (Oncorhynchus kisutch)
These days, recycling is more ubiquitous than ever. The EPA estimates that the U.S. recycles 32 percent of its waste, and in many cities, residents need only place their glass, plastic, or paper in the proper receptacle outside their front doors. But sometimes it’s hard to tell if a particular piece of garbage, like a greasy, cheese-encrusted pizza box, is actually recyclable. In these instances, is it better to toss something that’s potentially recyclable in the landfill-bound trash, or take your chances and send it to the recycler? THE CLAIM:
WHEN IN DOUBT, THROW IT OUT. THE FACTS: Misidentifying recyclables is costly. In Phoenix, for instance, almost 25 percent of items mixed in with the recycling aren’t really recyclable, and removing this errant trash (which is rerouted to the local landfill) costs the city nearly $1 million every year. Some unacceptable junk, such as plastic grocery sacks and extension cords, can jam conveyor belts and cause equipment breakdowns. Food scraps left clinging to cans and other packaging can also gum up the works. These work stoppages and machine repairs add to the costs that recyclers charge cities. And even if the non-recyclable trash doesn’t cause delays or damage, it still has to be separated and transported to a dump, which wastes resources and makes recycling more expensive. THE CONCLUSION: If you’re not absolutely sure that an item is recyclable, bypass the recycling bin and throw it in the trash instead. For a list of recyclables, contact your local recycler or the National Recycling Coalition (nrc-recycle.org). And if you’re still wondering about that pizza box—pitch it in the recycling bin only if it’s free of food and grease. —Alisa Opar
Proposed for Delisting Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) Johnston’s Frankenia (Frankenia johnstonii) Idaho Springsnail (Pyrgulopsis idahoensis) West Virginian Northern Flying Squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus fuscus) Gray Wolf (Northern Rocky Mountain population) (Canis lupus)
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF THOMAS FUCHS
An Inconvenient Cult Following
Vicious Cycle
fast BURNING QUESTION
Q: IS THE ORGANIC FOOD MOVEMENT ELITIST? Majora Carter
Act Globally
Founder and executive director, Sustainable South Bronx “Why pick on the organic food people? It’s not their fault that some people are too poor to afford organic. Or that Big Ag subsidies make non-organic cheaper. Or that the oil economy, failing education system, and widening income gaps have conspired to make an ‘organic food movement’ one of the many groups fighting for a modicum of common sense. The organic food movement is pretty far down on my list of targets. I love their carrots, too!”
Does all the news about global warming ever make you wonder why masses of people aren’t out protesting in the streets? On April 14, they will be. Join in as protestors nationwide finally demand that our lawmakers wake up and smell the carbon. Organized by Bill McKibben, author of several books including The End of Nature, Step It Up 2007 is the first nationwide protest pressuring Congress to pledge an 80 percent reduction of carbon emissions by the year 2050. To find rallies going on in your area, or to organize one yourself, go to stepitup2007.org. —Alison Sherbach
Nina Planck Founder of London Farmers’ Markets and former director of New York City’s Greenmarket
PLENTY LABS
Shave the World When it comes to shaving, I’m a no-frills kind of gal. A little soap, water, and a razor, and I’m all set. My boyfriend, Matt, on the other hand, has sensitive skin and scoffs at the idea of using anything other than name-brand shaving cream in an aerosol can. Recently, we agreed to meet in the middle and try out eco-friendly shaving creams, lotions, and foams. We were tickled to find that these aerosolfree, all-natural products moisturized our skin and left us razor-burn free. —A.O.
Alba Moisturizing Foam Shave $6.95, 5 oz. albabotanica.com With its (aerosol-free) pump, colognelike scent, and foamy texture, this formula is most reminiscent of traditional shaving creams. It’s much better than the old standbys, though: a little goes a long way, it doesn’t dry out your skin, and the peppermint helps relieve the “burn” of shaving.
Kiss My Face
Earth Science
Moisture Shave $6, 11 oz. kissmyface.com Peaches and cream might seem like a sickly sweet scent for shaving cream, but thanks to the sage, horsetail, and orange flower, it was pleasantly refreshing. If you aren’t into fruity shaving creams, though, KMF offers a variety of other scents (as well as an unscented version).
Moisturizing Shaving Creme $5.25, 4 oz. shopearthessentials.com This shaving cream was a favorite for both of us. The subtle scent of chamomile is nice, but what really won us over was the smooth shave. A light layer of this silky cream delivers friction-free razor strokes, and the vitamin E and aloe left our skin feeling moisturized.
Tom’s of Maine
JASON
Natural Conditioning Shave Cream $6.69, 3.6 oz. ediblenature.com I was immediately drawn to the minty scent of this shaving cream—and the soothing tingle it gave my skin—but Matt was initially disappointed by its lack of lather. Whipping up the cream with a shaving mug and brush worked wonders and transformed it into a luscious foam.
All Natural Shaving Lotion $6.95, 8 oz. jason-natural.com The jojoba beads in this thick shaving cream are supposed to lift the hair shaft and exfoliate without drying the skin, and they certainly seem to work. Matt liked the close shave, and I enjoyed a fresh-scented shave that didn’t irritate my skin.
20|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
“Organic food and whole food— what I call traditional food—is frugal. Buy a whole chicken. It serves four people twice—the second time as soup. Buy fresh, local produce in season and canned wild Alaskan salmon. This gives you more nutrition for the buck than industrial food. Shop the perimeter of the supermarket where you’ll find meat, fish, dairy, and produce—real food. In the center aisles are processed, nutrient-poor, high-profit-margin foods. That’s what will eat up your budget.”
Arturo S. Rodriguez President of the United Farm Workers of America “Too many consumers believe just because produce is organic that the farm workers are treated better. But some growers who farm organically and embrace the rhetoric of ecological farming just want to appeal to a profitable market. They treat workers just as poorly as growers using pesticides. Farm labor can be decent work with union protections. That’s why the union label is as important as the organic label.”
Barry Glassner Author of The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food is Wrong “I have found both elitism and anti-elitism in the movement, sometimes within the same person or organization. Some people proudly note that organic farms are pesticide-free places to work and live. But when I ask why the movement doesn’t give equal priority to ensuring that farms, distributors, and retailers provide living wages and health care, the atmosphere changes. The person will change the topic or offer excuses.”
fast BY THE NUMBERS
Pole Position Happy International Polar Year! This spring marks the start of the holiday-cum-research effort devoted to our planet’s icy nether regions. The project involves thousands of scientists and actually spans two years, wrapping up in March 2009. In the meantime, here’s a crash course in what’s going on far above and far below the equator.
Fahrenheit, projected for the Arctic region over the next 50 years.
10
Percentage of the earth’s ice bound in Greenland’s ice cap.
23 Level, in feet, that the world’s oceans would rise if Greenland’s ice cap melted, drowning the southern half of Florida.
4 Population of the Arctic, in millions. 4.5 Mean temperature increase, in
Signpost at Arctowski Base in Antarctica.
degrees Fahrenheit, measured on the Antarctic Peninsula in the last 50 years.
90
Percentage of the earth’s ice bound in the Antarctic ice sheet.
1862 Year Santa Claus got his North Pole
529 Cast and crew members involved in
197 The level the world’s oceans would rise,
home, according to the poetry and artwork of illustrator Thomas Nast.
in feet, if the Antarctic ice sheet melted, threatening cities like New York, London, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
making Happy Feet, an animated film about emperor penguins that find their soulmates via singing and tap dancing.
Year the geographic South Pole was first reached by explorer Roald Amundsen.
14,000 Number of tourists who take
1985 Year the springtime depletion of the
cruises to the Antarctic each year.
ozone layer was discovered above the Antarctic by British scientists.
10,000
1911
Number of scientists and support staff researching Antarctica during the summer.
2050 Year the Arctic Ocean could
0 Number of native people living in Antarctica.
be ice-free according to a report from Cambridge University.
40,000 Number of emperor penguins using Antarctica as a breeding ground.
17 Total number of penguin species. 279 Total number of species of plants and animals that have already responded to global warming by migrating closer to the poles.
DILEMMA
Guiding Light Q: My mom used to say that if I’m going to leave a room for just a few minutes, I should leave the lights on because it takes more energy to turn lights off and on in a short period of time than it does to just leave them on. Is that true? 22|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
Though there is a surge of energy for a fraction of a second when you turn on a light, it is such an insignificant amount that it is not even measurable on a normal meter, says Steve Selkowitz, a lighting expert at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. So whether you’re leaving for a few hours or just stepping out for a few minutes to grab the mail, Selkowitz says the most energy-efficient strategy is to always shut the lights off.
SOURCES: BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY; U.N.E.P.; U.S.G.S.; HISTORYBUFF.COM; GREENLAND-GUIDE.GL; IMDB.COM; BIOSBCC.NET; ANTARCTICCONNECTION.COM; CLIMATECRISIS.NET
3.6 Mean temperature increase, in degrees
It’s the Rainforest Alliance’s big
and we’re celebrating. This year we’re celebrating our two decades of work to build a sustainable future… protecting wildlife and wildlands and the rights and welfare of workers and their communities, working with farmers and foresters to cultivate crops and harvest wood in ways that contribute to a healthier Earth, conserving some of the world’s most wondrous natural places, teaching hotel owners how to be green and environmentally responsible, helping businesses make Rainforest Alliance Certified products available to caring consumers.
Celebrate a fruitful and sustainable Earth with us. Look for the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal on coffee, chocolate, bananas, oranges, pineapples,
©2007 Rainforest Alliance
guava, flowers, ferns, wood, paper, furniture, guitars, windows, doors, floors and more.
JOIN US ON MAY 16, 2007 IN NEW YORK CITY FOR THE RAINFOREST ALLIANCE’S ANNUAL GALA. Please visit our Web site, www.rainforest-alliance.org for details.
PEOPLE
25
TECHNOLOGY
28
BUSINESS
31
THINKING
32
GREEN GEAR
35
FORWARD
Orri Vigfússon works hand in hand with the fishing community to protect salmon habitat.
An Upstream Battle PHOTOS COURTESY OF RANDY ASHTON
How a vodka czar is saving the wild salmon BY KEVIN FRIEDL the wild atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is only a few sake rolls away from serious trouble. While its range once spanned the North Atlantic from the Hudson River to the coast of Portugal, wild stocks have plummeted due to pollution, indiscriminate dam building, parasites from commercial fish farms, and, in particular, overfishing. In the past 30 years alone, wild-salmon populations have fallen by two thirds, and the species has all but disappeared from some parts of North America. If the tide has begun to turn recently for the fish, it’s thanks in large part to the dynamism of Orri Vigfússon, Icelandic vodka tycoon, sportfisherman, and dedicated salmon conservationist. Since 1989, Vigfússon and his organization, the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF), have negotiated agreements to protect salmon in the coastal waters of Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the U.K., Ireland, and Norway through a combination of simple but creative measures. These include
buying out commercial fishing licenses, lobbying governments to enforce quotas, and training fishermen to find alternate sources of income. As a result of these efforts, the wild Atlantic salmon population has been growing over the past few years, a change that Vigfússon has seen firsthand while fly-fishing in Iceland’s Big Laxá river (he always releases his catch). Plenty talked to Vigfússon about the salmon’s plight—and comeback. ☛ PLENTYMAG.COM
|APRIL / MAY 2007|25
forward | people You’ve always had an intimate connection to the sea, but you weren’t always a conservationist.
When I was growing up, my family had a herring fishery on the northern coast of Iceland. Like most fisheries, we overfished the herring stocks and they collapsed. Maybe that taught me a little bit about how not to manage the salmon stocks. Was that when you realized these resources needed to be better managed?
It happened gradually. Having been a sportfisherman, I’ve seen the stocks diminish and in some regions disappear. I decided we had to do something about this. We had to invent new ideas. Commercial netsmen who give up the right to harvest something, they should be properly compensated. Your approach is more market-based than a lot of traditional conservation strategies. Do you think this has made your organization more effective?
Absolutely. There is no science to my philosophy—it’s simply common sense. Most fisheries in the world are badly managed. If you can give the industries, the stakeholders, a kind of ownership of the resource, they will take much better care of it than in a commercial free-for-all. Do you worry about other threats to the species?
Many problems are facing the Atlantic salmon, but the salmon-farming industry has been particularly negative. It’s not just the pollution from the fish farms; they also generate a lot of sea lice, which then attack wild salmon stocks. The long-term problem with these salmon farms, though, is that all their escapees go up the rivers and breed with wild salmon, and that may have a very negative long-term genetic effect. So what can be done about these farming operations?
I would like to see the salmon-farming industry moved ashore. On the coastland, you can at least control it. But instead of expanding into farming everything, we should try to manage the wild stocks properly and kill less of the biomass. If you do that, the salmon will gradually recover. 26|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
Vigfússon tastes lumpfish roe, the “poor man’s caviar.”
COMMERCIAL NETSMEN WHO GIVE UP THE ‘‘ RIGHT TO HARVEST SOMETHING, THEY SHOULD BE PROPERLY COMPENSATED.” —ORRI VIGFÚSSON
Besides running the NASF, you also manage a successful vodka company, Icy Vodka. Has that experience helped you negotiate commercial agreements with the fishermen?
Absolutely. Last month in Copenhagen, we had a meeting with the leaders of the commercial salmon netsmen in the North Atlantic to discuss how to find markets for alternative species to fish, like lumpfish and snow crab. We have been very successful in generating a lumpfish industry and a market for lumpfish caviar, the “poor man’s caviar.” What is it about salmon? People seem to respond to this fish in particular.
But of course. The salmon is one of the most beautiful creatures on earth. Salmon sportfishermen get very dedicated to this project.
And in between all that, maybe you’ll get to do some fishing yourself.
I try to go fly fishing in July and August. Lots of my friends from across the world come and visit Iceland during those two months, so I get to meet them and fish with them and have fun. But in September, I’m back on the road, trying to raise money and negotiate agreements. Are you optimistic about the future of the Atlantic salmon?
I am. We have had a breakthrough in Ireland, and what we can do now is start a major restoration program in Europe. A few hundred years ago, the river Rhine was the world’s biggest producer of wild salmon. They were almost completely eliminated, but there is now a restocking program and a few hundred salmon have entered the river system. The Rhine of course goes into Germany and France, all the way up into Switzerland.
How will you know when you’re done?
I would like to finish cleaning up Ireland and Norway and Scotland. Simultaneously, I would like to start this big project in [continental] Europe to restore the salmon stocks there. I probably won’t live long enough, but I would like to use the same policies for restoring the cod stocks of the world.
You mean people used to fish for salmon in the Swiss Alps?
There used to be quite a good run up to the Schaffhausen Falls, near Zurich. This is our goal—to get them back there.
i
FIND OUT HOW TO HELP SAVE THE SALMON AT NASFONLINE.ORG.
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forward | tech
Hitting the DNA Jackpot Bioprospectors are searching for treasure in the form of plants and animals— and they’re making sure everyone shares in their booty BY SAM BOYKIN nearly four years ago, J. Craig Venter, the maverick biologist who cracked our genetic code in 2000 on the heels of the government-funded Human Genome Project, launched a bold expedition. He and his crew sailed around the globe, collecting water samples every 200 miles and sending them to the J. Craig Venter Institute for genetic analysis. Since the voyage ended last year, researchers have been sifting through the six million new genes collected. The findings, which will eventually be made publicly available, 28|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
may yield a better understanding of ecosystems, knowledge that will help prevent emerging diseases, and a cache of new alternative fuels. Venter’s expedition is one of the most highprofile examples of bioprospecting—collecting biological samples to develop patented products or processes. It isn’t a new practice. Penicillin, widely used since the ’40s, is derived from a mold, and researchers have long scoured the globe looking for potentially useful plants, micro-organisms, and enzymes.
Recently, though, pharmaceutical companies and academic labs have amped up their efforts to track down unknown species in undeveloped corners of the world. They hope to hit the jackpot by finding the keys to everything from curing diseases to creating new fuels. It’s no wonder they’re so gung-ho: Even a seemingly obscure find can yield big money. For instance, San Diego–based Diversa sent an underwater probe to explore deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Pacific Ocean. The ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR
tech | forward mission produced an enzyme, launched last year as Valley ‘Ultra-Thin,’ that improves the efficiency of ethanol production, and is estimated to garner revenues of $100 million a year. There’s no guarantee, of course, that bioprospecting will generate lucrative products. But as biotechnology advances, it’s likely that more goods derived from nature will hit the market, bringing in big earnings. Private companies’ reluctance to share those profits drove developing nations to create the Convention on Biological Diversity at the 1992 Earth Summit. The Convention, which was signed by representatives of 150 governments—though not by the U.S.—mandates conservation of biological diversity and equitable sharing of the benefits derived from it. Biopirates, or companies that don’t follow the guidelines, run the risk of destroying biodiversity and undercutting social and economic development opportunities for poor nations, say human-rights and conservation advocates. According to Beth Burrows, director of the Edmonds Institute, an environmental nonprofit, “The time has come to think about honestly and equitably dealing with other people, and understanding that our goals and values aren’t the highest ones throughout the world.” Companies, meanwhile, argue that bioprospecting is a win-win situation because it generates products that increase the value of biodiversity, thereby increasing incentives to conserve it. Heather Kowalski, a Venter Institute spokesperson, explains that studying the largely unknown microbes in the world’s oceans might prove useful in addressing environmental problems. For example, understanding how marine micro-organisms cycle carbon into and out of the atmosphere might lead to new products for environmental clean-
up. And recognizing the value of these organisms could boost ocean conservation. Though U.S. companies aren’t beholden to the Convention, some follow the guidelines anyway. In 2004 Diversa launched Cottonase, an eco-friendly enzyme that reduces the need for harsh chemicals used to make cotton textiles. The enzyme, found in Costa Rica, was developed with that country’s National Biodiversity Institute, which Diversa pays nearly
BIOPROSPECTING GENERATES PRODUCTS THAT INCREASE THE VALUE OF BIODIVERSITY—AND INCENTIVES TO CONSERVE IT. $70,000 per year to support collection and training, says Dan Robertson, a Diversa vice president. Similarly, the Missouri Botanical Garden gives African countries it works with more than financial contributions: It also provides training programs, scientific equipment, and technology transfer to bolster research. The Garden is one of several institutions that make up the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG), which promotes conservation and economic growth. The collaborations have produced several promising biological compounds, some with antimalarial properties, and also helped establish a framework for countries to benefit from discoveries made within their borders. Many developing nations “don’t have a strong scientific research organization that can advise decision makers about how to treat their natural resources,”
says James Miller, a former curator at the Garden. “The ICBG programs are very much about addressing that infrastructure.” Despite efforts to protect poorer nations’ rights, some believe nature shouldn’t be patented. “Once a resource is privatized through the patent system, a community that once had access to the resource may lose the legal right to use it, may no longer be able to afford to buy it, or may lose the power to decide how it’s used,” says Hope Shand of ETC Group, a sustainability nonprofit. Africa’s Bushmen have experienced what happens when companies aren’t compelled to follow the guidelines. In 1997, pharmaceutical giant Phytopharm bought the rights to the appetite-suppressing ingredient found in Hoodia, a plant generations of Bushmen have consumed to stave off hunger during treks through the Kalahari Desert. In 2004, the company developed Hoodia-based weight-loss shakes and diet bars—without any agreement with the Bushmen. In response, the South African Savings Institute, an economic development group, recently negotiated a deal whereby the Bushmen will receive six percent of all royalties. As for Venter, who was accused of biopiracy during his company’s voyage around the world, he pooh-poohs the notion. “Where we needed to get permits, we did,” says Kowalski. Venter has said repeatedly that his findings will be made available on GenBank, the National Institutes of Health’s public databank of genomic data, and that his institute is not seeking intellectual property rights on the data. Though he compares his voyage to that of the HMS Beagle, whether it will lead to discoveries as momentous as Darwin’s will depend on mysteries deep within the ocean—and whether Venter and his team have what it takes to solve them.
SUSPICIOUS FINDS In 2006 the Edmonds Institute released a report detailing instances of questionable biodiversity acquisition—cases in which companies took natural resources from African nations without making benefit-sharing agreements. Here are a few of the highlights: Diabetes Drug: In 1995 Bayer patented a method for manufacturing the diabetes drug Precose using a bacteria strain, SE50, which comes from Kenya. In 2004 Precose sales totaled $379 million.
Impotence Treatment: Canada-based Option Biotech patented the seeds of Aframomum stipulatum—consumed by some African tribes for centuries—for use in an impotency drug called Biovigora. It’s sold in more than 750 stores across Canada for about $30 per bottle.
Flowering Plant: Swiss biotech giant Syngenta patented Spellbound, an ornamental plant introduced in 2005, along with a mascot, a blonde doll called Lizzie the Spellbound Fairy. The bushy, flowering plant is a cross between two species native to East Africa.
Skin Lightener: Unigen Pharmaceuticals patented an extract from Aloe ferox, a southern African plant, for use as a skin lightener. It’s currently available in the U.S. as a bulk ingredient in personal care products.
PLENTYMAG.COM|APRIL / MAY 2007|29
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business | forward
E-waste Not Outdated electronics are being diverted from landfills to recyclers BY CHRISTINE CYR when ipods die, some are relegated to basements or garages, but most end up in the trash. According to the EPA, Americans throw out more than 2 million tons of consumer electronics annually, making e-waste one of the fastest growing components of the municipal waste stream. When these electronics break down, they release mercury and other toxins. But there is a silver lining: Out of the mounting pile of e-waste, a booming recycling market has emerged. The International Association of Electronics Recyclers, an industry trade group, says that more than 500 U.S. companies recycle 1.4 million tons of electronics annually, generating $1.5 billion in revenues. But recycling this equipment isn’t simple. First, the metals and plastics must be separated, then the circuit boards shredded to separate the aluminum, iron, and copper from the valuable precious metals, such as silver. And sometimes, the plastics are impossible to reuse if they contain multiple resins. It’s a labor-intensive and costly process—and the industry’s dark secret is that many “recycling” businesses just sell old electronics to brokers who ship them to developing countries with lax environmental standards and cheap labor. Generally, dismantling a computer in the U.S. costs about $35 per hour—versus 25 cents an hour abroad.
Fifty to 80 percent of used U.S. electronics are shipped to India, China, and parts of Africa, according to the Basel Action Network (BAN), a nonprofit that monitors toxic waste. Often, the electronics aren’t recycled at all. After workers remove the most valuable parts, such as circuit boards, they dump the rest. “Some of the newer recycling companies are making a lot of money because they’re just moving materials—they’re not actually recycling them,” says Thomas Hogye, an electronics recycling consultant. There are few economic incentives to recycle responsibly, but companies are making strides to do the right thing. More than 40 recyclers have signed the BAN pledge, vowing not to send hazardous e-waste to landfills, and to ensure that all the companies they hire to take apart old electronics—called demanufacturers—meet environmental regulations. One BAN-endorsed recycler, Silicon Valley-based GreenCitizen, tracks the parts of the
electronics they collect to make sure they are dismantled correctly. James Kao, GreenCitizen’s CEO, works exclusively with three demanufacturers that don’t ship materials abroad. This agreement, says Kao, assures his customers—who pay roughly 50 cents a pound to recycle—that their electronics will not end up in a landfill. “We spend a lot of time educating businesses and consumers about the e-waste crisis,” he says. “We have a very strong and loyal customer base, which is growing.” Like GreenCitizen, California-based Onsite Electronics Recycling is expanding despite having to sacrifice financially, says Janice Oldemeyer, the company’s president. “We’re frequently solicited to sell both our e-waste and commodities to companies who don’t appear to be concerned with the final end destination of the product,” she says. “The prices these companies offer are often greater than what we are able to make through dismantling and shipping to responsible end outlets. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be profitable by being responsible.” A lack of federal regulation has allowed the tide of e-waste to continue flowing out of the country, but states are stepping in to stem the flow. Four states have passed e-waste recycling laws, and at least 23 more are considering similar legislation. Washington and Maine make producers responsible for taking back equipment, a policy that some environmental and trade groups advocate because it pressures manufacturers to design equipment that is easier and less expensive to take apart and recycle. In California, the fee consumers pay when purchasing a television or computer goes to help offset the cost of demanufacturing the material. A five-year pilot program in Maryland holds counties accountable for collecting electronics and recycling them. Regardless of your state’s policies, you can find a recycler with a diligent tracking system to ensure that your electronics are recycled appropriately. After all, even if we are living in a technological revolution, we don’t have to contribute to e-waste anarchy.
REPUTABLE RECYCLERS Unless you pay a fee (ranging from $1 for a toner cartridge to $30 for a computer) to get rid of your electronics, they’ll probably end up in a landfill. Here’s how to find a legit recycler. The Basel Action Network
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
Free Geek, a reuse organization,
lists recyclers that don’t export e-waste to developing countries or dump it in landfills (ban.org).
lists most of the major manufacturers’ take-back programs (svtc.org).
specializes in refurbishing old machines (freegeek.org).
PLENTYMAG.COM
|APRIL / MAY 2007|31
forward | thinking
Paul Landacre’s scratchboard etching of a paper-birch stand.
He Speaks for the Trees The return of a nature writing classic REVIEWED BY VICTORIA SCHLESINGER
donald culross peattie strode through thou- called “a volume for a sands of miles of American wilderness wearing lifetime.” Houghton a green Stetson hat, a coat, and a tie. Around Mifflin re-released the his neck hung a pair of binoculars and over 488-page tome this his shoulder was a vasculum, the metal cylin- year, hoping to beder field botanists once used for carrying their guile a new generation plant specimens. of green readers. HavThough that was a good six decades ago ing changed little from the original edition, (before the invention of plastic and lightthe new book is both a relevant natural-hisweight equipment), even in his day Peattie tory reference and a snapshot of a time when was a singular sort of scientist—one with trees weren’t always inanimate. a background in poetry, who observed the “Against the Indian summer sky, a tree lifts country’s great ecosystems trail by trail, from up its hands and testifies to glory, the glory of a the Appalachian Mountains and the Mojave blue October day,” begins Peattie’s essay about Desert to the Olympic Pensassafras trees. “Yellow or orange, insula. All the while he color blood orange, or sometimes lected botanical samples and softest salmon pink, or blotched wrote poetic prose about the with bright vermilion, the leaves wilderness, and in particular of the Sassafras prove that not all the trees, around him. autumnal splendor is confined By 1950, Peattie had beto the northern forests.” Flowery come one of America’s most and learned, Peattie’s writing will widely read naturalists, with most likely be manna for poets numerous books and a color anyone aching for the outumn in The Washington Evedoors—but slow torture for the ning Star and Chicago Daily heavily caffeinated or snarky. News. He compiled his life’s In 110 essays, Peattie dework into what was to bescribes in lyrical detail the natcome the definitive popular A Natural History of North ural history, quirky lore, and reference on the natural his- American Trees building properties of as many tory of North America’s most By Donald Culross Peattie tree species. From poplars to important trees, a two-book saguaro cacti, Peattie tells the (Houghton Mifflin, $40) set that The New Yorker life story of each tree as though 32|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
he’s spinning a campfire yarn about great and distant relatives, quietly slipping in technical details about identification. Also retained from the original volumes are Paul Landacre’s scratchboard etchings (a technique for scratching black ink off a white clay base), which illustrate each species in a spidery, august splendor. While the life cycles of trees haven’t changed since Peattie’s day, the composition and health of our forests have. In 2002, the U.S. Department of Agriculture boasted roughly 749 million acres of forest, the same as in Peattie’s day—but that number doesn’t distinguish between old growth and tree plantations, or their biodiversity. Measured plots with rows of 20, 30, and 40-year-old sugar pines are not the forests Peattie was referring to when he wrote, “A grand old Sugar Pine two or three hundred years old can stretch out its lower limbs high above the heads of many other species – the Incense Cedars, Yellow Pine, and the Firs…Everywhere is a sense of light and space, of hope and time.” But his inspired words can go a long way in stirring us to restore them.
thinking | forward
Digging Up History A new book unearths the cultural significance of soil REVIEWED BY MARK K. ANDERSON
saving the world’s food supply is a dirty job— literally. In his new book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, David R. Montgomery argues that the rise and fall of great societies is profoundly connected to the ground people till. Most of the book is spent chronicling the history of soil degradation—an epic tale of resource depletion through the depths of recorded time, from the Halls of Montezuma (collapse of some Mesoamerican societies, Montgomery notes, was exacerbated by slashand-burn agriculture) to the shores of Tripoli (crops from North Africa’s farmlands fueled both Greek and Roman empires for centuries before erosion dried out its soils). Indeed, this subject is such fertile ground that readers may lose patience with Montgomery’s gopherlike habit of burying some of his best material far from the light of a topic sentence. But despite these flaws, the book remains a compelling read. The sad lesson Dirt tells and retells is that we humans seem almost genetically predestined to misuse and neglect the resources beneath our feet, often rediscovering the significance of healthy soil only after it’s too late. As Montgomery points out, more than a few disasters in American history can be traced, at least in part, to erosion. During the ’30s Dustbowl, for example, careless ag-
ricultural practices caused some parts of the Great Plains to lose more than three quarters of their original top soil. The closing three chapters focus on the absurdities of modern agriculture, chief among them that vast amounts of precious petrochemicals are now wasted replacing soil nutrients lost to lazy, erosive industrial farming techniques. Montgomery makes a persuasive case for “no-till” farming—surgically inserting seeds into the ground rather than churning up farmland that ends up getting washed or blown away. Because erosion is drastically reduced, farmers needn’t rely so heavily on fossil-fuel derived fertilizers to replenish the lost nutrients. Plus, the increased organic matter in the ground absorbs carbon dioxide, reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Both the history and the polemics of Dirt are enlightening, well founded, and thoroughly researched. They are also sometimes littered with statistical and factual tillage. The author’s encyclopedic grasp of geology, biology, and world history shines in the book’s stronger moments: He deftly argues, for example, that the Roman Empire’s self-destructive agricultural practices left a population vacuum that northern Italy’s fertile fields filled—a phenomenon that may have sowed the very seeds
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations By David R. Montgomery (University of California Press, $24.95)
of the Renaissance. But within a paragraph this fascinating theory is cast aside, and Montgomery has moved into the more mundane territory of European cultivation statistics. At times like this, one wishes Montgomery had seeded his own arguments a little less haphazardly and recognized that the historical narrative speaks for itself. As he demonstrates many times over, turn up too much dirt and it’s likely to be lost to the winds.
New and Noteworthy Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon (Crown Publishing Group, $24)
If you eat like most people, your dinner tonight will travel an average of 1,500 miles before it reaches your plate. To reconnect with the people and places that produced their meals, Smith and MacKinnon spent a year eating only foods from within a 100-mile radius of their home. (P.S., we love the title!)
A Leaky Tent is a Piece of Paradise Edited by Bonnie Tsui (University of California Press, $19.95)
Learning to pitch a tent is a pretty typical camp lesson, but not when the class is taught by a drag queen. That essay, and 19 others by journalists under 30, showcase the talents of a new generation of nature writers.
Guerilla Gardening: A Manifesto
The Most Important Fish in the Sea
by David Tracey
(Island Press, $25)
(New Society Publishers, $19.95)
Under the cover of darkness, activists sneak into vacant lots in urban landscapes across the country with one purpose—to turn them into gardens. Tracey describes the mission of these rebellious groups, and includes tips on how to get involved.
by H. Bruce Franklin The fish Menhaden, used in everything from fertilizer to soap, is a vital part of many marine ecosystems—and it’s in grave danger of being fished out of existence. Franklin shows how anglers and environmentalists can work together to preserve this crucial species. —Susan Cosier
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green gear | forward 速
THE GARDEN OF
Good and Eco
Whether your outdoor activities involve planting an organic vegetable garden or simply drinking cocktails in the shade, these environmentally-friendly garden and patio accessories will make your backyard a second home
WINTER OLYMPICNICS From the slopes to your backyard barbeque: The Recycled Snowboard Picnic Table, made of previously used snowboards, makes for a great conversation piece. Styles vary because different types of boards are used for each table. ($485, snowshack.com)
GOT MILK? Spend a sunny afternoon in the Deluxe Adirondack Glider, a gliding chair made from recycled plastic milk jugs. It comes in six different colors and easily accommodates two. Great for relaxing on the patio with a good book or a good friend. ($639, bytheyard.net)
FOLD OUT THE BARREL Add a hint of sophistication to your patio with the Wine Barrel Stave Chair. These folding recliners are made from aged, recycled oak wine barrels and are perfect to lounge in while sipping a glass of Pinot Noir. ($149 for one, $269 for a set of two, vivaterra.com) PLENTYMAG.COM
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forward | green gear
®
WIGGLE ROOM BAMBOO-PALOOZA Add a little eco-style to your compost heap with the Bamboo Composter. Made from 100% natural and sustainably harvested bamboo, it holds up to one cubic yard of lawn trimmings, leaves, or food scraps. Just unroll, and set in your yard—it couldn’t get any easier. ($68.50, store.greenfeet.com)
Yes, liquefied worm poop can help your garden grow. TerraCycle’s Plant Food comes ready to use for both outdoor gardens and large, indoor plants. As a bonus, it’s packaged in a reused two-liter soda bottle, so you can recycle it when it’s empty. ($11.95, dirtworks.net)
SAVE IT, DON’T SPRAY IT Quench your plants’ thirst while conserving water. The Water Miser attaches directly to your hose and offers six different spray levels, so plants get only the amount they need. ($10 to $12, greenhome.com)
DON’T BUG ME Rid your tomato plants of pests with Green Light’s Lawn and Garden Insect Killer. Its organic blend of thyme, clove, and sesame oils repels bugs, and the bottle attaches to your garden hose for easy application. ($14.99, cleanairgardening.com)
GLOVE-LY These Hemp Garden Gloves protect your hands from rosebush thorns and splintery garden tools. The hemp is grown without chemicals or pesticides, and is three to four times more durable than cotton. ($9.95, veganstore.com)
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green gear | forward ®
HANGING GARDENS No room for an herb garden? Opt for the Culinary Hanging Herb Basket instead. The recycled-fiber container comes with soil as well as basil, thyme, oregano, chives, and parsley seeds. Just add water and sunlight to enjoy homegrown herbs in eight weeks. ($23.95, store.greenfeet.com)
DIG IT Apparel company Can You Dig It? uses organic fabrics and eco-friendly dyes to create its plantingthemed duds. Gardening aficionados will get a kick out of the long-sleeved “Mulch Maniac” T-shirt. ($32, canyoudig-it.com)
MULCH-O-MATIC The Flowtron Leaf Eater quickly chops up leaves, grass clippings, pine needles, paper, and other organic waste to use as mulch or compost. Equipped with a motor that runs on household electricity, you can be sure it will keep your lawn and the environment healthy. ($195, naturalgardening.com)
SUPER SOAKER The Soaker Hose is made from 65% recycled tire rubber and uses 70% less water than the average garden hose. And with its low price and durability, it’s an eco-gardener’s dream tool. ($29.99, conservastore.com)
NIGHT LIGHT
CRITTER GIT ’ER There’s no need to use poisons or other unsavory pest control methods. The Humane Trap lures and safely captures squirrels, weasels, chipmunks, rats, and other small animals—sans maiming or killing. Transport creatures to a more desirable location, so they can frolic in a meadow instead of burrowing in your flower beds. ($36.95, abundantearth.com)
Trade in your garden gnome for the Solar Garden Frog. The cast-resin tchotchke is filled with white solar-powered LED lights that charge during the day and cast a subtle glow at night. ($89.52 for a set of two, eco-lights.com)
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IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR
Behind the scenes of five eco-conscious farms BY CHRISTY HARRISON
It’s not easy running a family farm in the U.S. these days, and the statistics reflect that. Every week, roughly 330 farmers—including families that have farmed for generations— quit the business. In 1935, there were nearly seven million farms in the U.S.; by 2002, only around two million remained. And family farms that do stay in business have an aging workforce; today more than half of farmers are between the ages of 45 and 64, while only six percent are younger than 35. So what’s it like to run a family farm? And what does it take to keep one afloat? We posed these questions to owners of five long-running farms around the country. While all agree that the natural-foods movement helps business, they are each embracing different strategies for keeping their farms up and running. Two are actively planning for growth and expansion, enlisting other small farms to help grow crops, and thereby helping those farmers keep their way of life. Others are scaling back— or encouraging younger generations to seek other professions. Here are their stories.
Elden, Wendell, Harlan, and Homer Lundberg employ other family farms to help them grow rice.
LUNDBERG FAMILY FARMS RICHVALE, CALIFORNIA SPECIALTY: RICE
Albert and Frances Lundberg left their corn farm in Nebraska during the Dust Bowl era, headed west to California’s Sacramento Valley, and bought a 300-acre rice field. The crop, they reasoned, was well-suited to the fertile land at the foot of the Sierra Nevadas, and would lend itself well to the kind of eco-friendly farming they hoped to practice. Albert and Frances have since passed away, but today, Lundberg Family Farms—one of the largest growers of organic rice in the country, with annual sales between $10 and $50 million—is about 14,500 acres strong, including land they’ve contracted from about 30 other family farms. How did this farm manage to grow while staying in the hands of one family? The second- and third-generation Lundbergs aren’t quite sure. Albert and Frances’s four sons decided independently to go into farming within a few years of one another; eventually, they joined forces to take over the family business. But when it came time for their own children to enter the workforce—including Jessica Lundberg, now 32, and her cousin Grant Lundberg, now 43—there was some uncertainty about the farm’s ownership. “I didn’t always know I’d go back,” says Jessica, now the nursery manager and board chair of the company. A former biology student who once thought she might go to medical school, Jessica ultimately found that she could apply her knowledge of biology on the farm. She enthusiastically describes the details of her job: figuring out organic methods for increasing crop yield, developing new varieties of rice, and managing the quality of each crop. “We’ll actually walk the rice fields with knives and bags and cut out anything that’s not supposed to be there,” she says, referring to weeds and other plants that may have gotten mixed in with rice seeds as they were planted. “It’s a lot of fun.” Indeed, Jessica’s passion makes terms like “seed soaks” and “worm castings” sound exciting. And as chair of the company’s board, Jessica also enjoys the opportunity to use her communication skills (and to dress up instead of trekking around in muddy boots). Jobs like this, which didn’t exist in the past, have allowed third-generation Lundbergs to continue working in the business. “Some family members are out in the field every day, and others are on the business side,” says Grant, now the CEO of the company. (He falls squarely into the latter camp.) Of course, many of these new roles would not exist if the company wasn’t successful. That’s the chicken-and-egg problem of any family business: It has to be doing well enough for the next generation to want to get involved, but the kids also have to contribute in order for it to do well. The Lundbergs have had the good fortune to strike this balance for three generations in a row. And the growth of the natural-foods industry certainly hasn’t hurt. Albert and Frances used sustainable growing practices before it was chic, but they sold their rice to large distributors, so it was never labeled organic. Their children, recognizing a demand for natural products in the ’60s, began selling their organic and eco-farmed rice under the Lundberg name. And they continued to adopt eco-friendly practices, including wind power and the construction of special mills and storage facilities that can be kept pest-free without the use of chemicals. Now, with the organics market booming, Grant says the challenge for the third generation “is to be as innovative as my dad and his brothers were.” PLENTYMAG.COM
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From top to bottom: the sugar shack at Coombs Family Farms; sampling the syrup; a family photo from 1920.
COOMBS FAMILY FARMS JACKSONVILLE, VERMONT SPECIALTY: MAPLE SYRUP
When Arnold Coombs was nine years old, a schoolmate demanded, “Hey, Coombs, you going into the old man’s business?” Sugaring—tapping maple trees to produce syrup—was what his family had done for six generations; he’d tapped his first tree at age four or five. Now, at 46, Coombs is the general manager of Coombs Family Farms, which makes and distributes syrup in partnership with Bascom Maple Farms, which is owned by Arnold’s childhood friend Bruce Bascom. Each year the farm sells two million pounds of certified organic maple syrup, and also supplies retailers such as Stonyfield Farm, Boar’s Head, Costco, and more than 75 private labels. Despite its growth, Coombs’s operation maintains its roots in the land and the community. To tap the maples during the six-week sugaring season, Coombs and his workers use “health spouts”—small-gauge plastic tubes that do minimal damage to the trees. Besides tapping their own maples, Coombs and Bascom source sap from more than 1,000 small farmers, providing them credit to buy equipment in exchange for syrup. And for the past few years, the farm has sponsored a free training seminar for these farmers, teaching skills such as proper forest management, responsible tree tapping, and selling syrup over the Internet. Coombs introduced organic maple syrup in the late ’80s, and today it makes up roughly twenty percent of the company’s business. The certification process, though costly, has proved to be a good investment. Maple farmers face a new challenge in global warming, which has shortened the sugaring season and caused production to move northward, 40|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
where freezing nights and warmer days still enable sap flow. Partly as a result, Canadian syrup production has more than tripled since the ’70s, while Vermont’s continues to decline. Invasive species like the Asian longhorn beetle are also a looming threat. Arnold acknowledges the ups and downs of his industry. “You can’t do something else and do sugaring on the side—it’s really a way of life,” he says. When asked if he thinks his own sons—Max, 17, and Addy, 15—will carry on with the farm, Arnold shrugs. “I think right now, basketball coach and pro skateboarder are what’s on the agenda.” He adds, though, that Max accompanied him to a conference recently, and that Addy will be working in the farm’s candy kitchen this summer. “For the first time this year, they volunteered to work in the sugar house,” says Arnold, who admits that in his own case, it took a bit longer. “The more I was into it and looked into the heritage, it became a bigger part of it for me,” he says. Sitting at a table with a maple-print cloth, a maple calendar on the wall, and a jug of syrup in front of him, Arnold’s father, Bob, puts it perfectly. “Maple,” he says simply, “is just what we do.” —Sadie Stein
VILLAGE EDGE FARMS AND ORGANIC CHOICE DAIRY NELSON, WISCONSIN SPECIALTY: DAIRY
“MY PARENTS DIDN’T TELL ME THAT I HAD TO COME BACK. I WAS HAPPY WORKING ON THE FARM.” From top to bottom: Testing the milk for quality; Greg Hetrick (left) with his son Zach, nephew Andrew, and brother Dennis.
Greg Hetrick, 49, always knew he would grow up to run Village Edge, the farm that’s been in his family for five generations. “My parents didn’t tell me that I had to come back,” he says. “I just didn’t want to go to college after high school. I was happy working on the farm.” Today, Hetrick and his brother Dennis run Village Edge together. Greg attributes the company’s modest but continued success to being open to change and investing in new equipment—but only when they have the resources. “My father always said if you didn’t have the money or couldn’t get it soon, then you didn’t spend it,” Hetrick says. Slow growth has been another key to sustaining the business; he’s kept the current herd of 130 cows for about a decade. Hetrick began adopting sustainable farming practices in 1991. After the farm received its organic certification in 1997, Village Edge partnered with four other farms to found Organic Choice, a jointly held corporation that sells its milk—together with milk that it buys from other small farmers—on the open market, helping all of them to reduce costs. This new venture has been a good lesson in how to run a business, says Hetrick, who now regularly attends sales and marketing meetings. That’s in addition to a seven-day workweek that starts at 4:30 every morning, when Hetrick begins the first of two daily milkings, and progresses to tasks like cleaning out stalls, routine veterinary work (using homeopathic remedies in place of antibiotics), and harvesting and preparing hay while the cows munch fresh grass. “There’s nothing better than seeing a cow out at pasture,” he says. “You see these old cows out there kicking their heels up, like a bunch of little children running out in the playground.” His son and nephew pitch in, along with foreign exchange students he’s hired. He makes a point of eating every meal with his family. While glad that the demand for natural and organic fare has helped his and other farms stay in business, he sometimes worries small operations like his could shrink or disappear now that large companies are entering the sustainable food industry. One dairy that concerns him is Horizon, which currently buys about a third of Organic Choice’s milk. Wary of becoming too dependent on deals like this one, the company is now launching its own line of products, including cheese, yogurt, and an energy drink. For Hetrick, this is an important step. “Horizon, they’re big, and they like to push you around,” he says. “The sooner we can get away from them, the better off we are.” As the market for locally produced food grows, Hetrick may get his wish. PLENTYMAG.COM
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A worker at Lazy S Farm tends to prized Red Wattle hogs. (His son just likes to watch.)
LAZY S FARM GLASCO, KANSAS
SPECIALTY: HOG FARMING
“We’ve always farmed—ever since I’ve been married, and that’ll be 50 years this month,” says Larry Sorell, 66, a softspoken fourth-generation hog farmer who raises Red Wattle pigs, a heritage breed. Technically, Sorell is retired. In reality, it’s proving impossible for him to leave farming behind. When Sorell was growing up, his family’s land totaled 400 acres—not huge by modern standards, but still 10 times larger than its current size of 40 acres. “We sold most of the land in 1980; we had to downsize to keep going,” he explains. At that point, Sorell got a job off the farm. “I worked for a big hog corporation for about 20 years, in management, and when I retired we came back here. We didn’t give it up, though—we were away for a while, but we were always here on weekends.” His family’s pigs have always been free-ranging— never confined in sties or houses—but the heritage hogs are a recent (and lucrative) addition to his business. When Sorell first returned to his family’s farm, he began raising rare-breed Bronze turkeys and selling them through Heritage Foods USA, an online and mail-order food company. From there, the decision to raise heritage hogs was a logical next step, and the farm’s income has roughly doubled since it began selling the pigs. Chefs at some of the nation’s top restaurants serve meat from Sorell’s farm, and consumers snap up some 1,400 Red Wattle hogs and 4,000 heritage turkeys each year. 42|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
The small, rustic farm is home to several other heritage breeds, including chickens, Jacob sheep, and llamas—all of which graze in rotation on fields of brome, a drought-resistant grass. The animals are contained within an electric fence so that they don’t bother the neighbors, who are primarily cattle and hog farmers. But the fields are open to guests, as is the farm’s greenhouse: Sorell’s wife, Madonna, runs a bed-and-breakfast on the property, and another cabin is designated for hunters, who are allowed to use several acres of the farm’s land to hunt deer, pheasant, and quail in season. Yet despite recent gains, Sorell doubts that any of his nine children or 23 grandchildren will take over the business. “My sons and their wives all have careers, so it would be pretty hard for them to downsize and come to a 40-acre farm,” he says. Only one of his sons is a farmer, and his grain farm is significantly larger than the family plot. While his children do come home often to help out, “that’s about as close as they want to get,” Sorell says. One upside to being so small, though, is that there has been no encroachment from big agribusiness interests. “Big farmers aren’t interested in 40 acres,” Sorell says. “So it’s not something that they would put their eye on.”
“MY SONS AND THEIR WIVES ALL HAVE CAREERS, SO IT WOULD BE PRETTY HARD FOR THEM TO DOWNSIZE AND COME TO A 40-ACRE FARM.”
PAHL’S FARM APPLE VALLEY, MINNESOTA SPECIALTY: VEGETABLES AND GARDEN PLANTS
“Who says we’re successful?” Gary Pahl, 47, says with a laugh, when asked how a fifth-generation family farm like his has succeeded through changing times. “It keeps getting tougher and tougher every year,” he says, growing more serious. “If it were up to me, when it comes time for my kids to take it over, I’d tell them to find another profession.” In the 20 years that Pahl has been running his sustainable vegetable farm with the help of his brother Brian, he has seen vast changes, most of them for the worse: profits erode, buyers diminish (due to the growth of chain stores), and costs rise, while retail prices stay the same. What about farmers’ markets? They’re not a very big part of the equation, Pahl says. “Most of our business either goes to wholesalers or directly to chain stores.” When Pahl came to work in the family business after finishing his college degree in agricultural business, he got the message from his parents that if he wanted to take over, he had to come up with a business plan that would generate enough revenue to support all the family members involved in the farm. Eco-friendly practices have been one way of achieving this. “The more sustainable you are, the more competitive you can stay because you aren’t applying as many pesticides and things,” he says,
echoing the sentiment of other family farmers who believe that agricultural chemicals are a big expense. Introducing an on-site garden center is another way he’s helped bolster the farm’s income. “It helps to get cash flow earlier in the year, because you can start selling products in the spring while you’re waiting for fall crops to come in,” he explains. Whatever his yearly revenues, though, Pahl believes that he’ll have to continue working on the farm until he retires. “All of my assets are tied up in it,” he explains. “You really don’t have a choice, unfortunately, because you’ve worked so hard for so many years to build a business that this is where you’re at. You want to see it succeed. My dad’s 73 years old, and he still gets on a tractor and helps out.” While the whole family is wedded to the business in many ways, nobody has actually lived on the farm for the last few generations, and Pahl feels that is a good thing. “If you live there, you’re going to work 25 hours a day instead of just 20.”
Brian Pahl on the corn harvester (top); Wayne Pahl sorts through the bounty (bottom).
An Uncertain Harvest
Increasingly volatile weather patterns around the world are already causing supermarket prices to rise. But when it comes to global warming and the food supply, the real losers will be those in developing countries. A look at how one corner of
Africa is coping. 44|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
STORY AND PHOTOS BY JOCELYN CRAUGH ZUCKERMAN ILLUSTRATIONS BY JASON LEE
Scenes from the frontlines (left to right): A young resident of the Makunda relief camp, in western Kenya’s Busia District; more residents of the camp; sand bags where the Nzoia River broke through the dykes; at work in the tea fields of Kericho, where rising temperatures are threatening the Kenyan tea industry.
T
he night the dykes blew, Calimentina Anyango and her family grabbed what they could and ran for higher ground. For the next three days, the rain pounded down. There was nowhere to hide, nothing to eat. The babies cried till exhaustion gave way to sleep. And when the clouds finally cleared, what was left of the family’s ravaged mud home sat in plain view across a decimated field of cassava—a lonely reminder of what little they’d once called their own. Six weeks later, Anyango and her three sons, three daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren are still sleeping on the skinny ridge in western Kenya that they fled to on that night. Among some 10,000 people who were driven from their homes by the unprecedented downpours that began here in the Busia District, on the border of Uganda, in late November and continued into the New Year, they now take shelter in tents donated by Doctors Without Borders. And every week, one of them makes the three-mile trek to a health-care center where World Vision and the Red Cross distribute PLENTYMAG.COM
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sacks of high-energy Unimix. But they have nothing else: no water and the land. For them, adaptation is a matter of sheer survival.” for drinking, no charcoal or kerosene for cooking, no blankets, no If anyone still harbored doubts about whether human-driven globshoes. They have no crops to harvest and no fields worthy of tilling. al warming is a real phenomenon, the February report released by the And though they are surrounded by stagnant Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pools of water, they have neither mosquito likely put an end to them. “February 2nd AFRICANS “ARE GOING nets nor anti-malarial medication. will be remembered as the date when uncerTO BE CAUGHT “Especially we need food,” says daughtertainty was removed as to whether humans had anything to do with climate change on in-law Jenna, cradling her 14-month-old son BETWEEN THE DEVIL this planet,” said Achim Steiner, executive Abraham. Another of Anyango’s grandchildren, James, slumps listlessly in his young OF DROUGHT AND THE director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which administers the mother’s arms. “He’s three months old?” I DEEP BLUE SEAS panel. “The evidence is on the table.” ask. “One year,” she corrects me. Indeed, by now we’ve all heard about the Anyango expects her family will be OF FLOOD.” rising sea levels, the melting ice caps, and the here on the ridge for another four or five increasing incidences of hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, and floods. months, when, she’s hopeful, the ground will have dried up enough Every other day, it seems, some bizarre new detail—whether it be azaleas to enable rebuilding and replanting. As for the threat of future blooming mid-January in New York’s Central Park, or Russian bears floods now that the dykes are gone, she doesn’t have the luxury of worrying about that. “We will just go back,” she says of the family’s emerging from hibernation weeks ahead of schedule—turns up in the news. But less has been said about the impact that climate change is sodden compound. “We don’t have anywhere else to go. And we likely to have on the world’s supply of food. According to the review don’t have any money.” published last October by Sir Nicholas Stern, the former chief econo“This is the new life,” says John Okello, a local who also fled his mist of the World Bank, a rise of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius in average global home and who now volunteers at another of the seven makeshift temperatures (equivalent to about 5 degrees Fahrenheit, the increase prerelief camps established here in the aftermath of the floods. “We dicted by many climate models) would put up to 200 million people at have not experienced anything like it before.” risk of hunger. Essentially, says Stern, the entire African continent will become scorched, and famines and disease caused by flooding and water shortages will increase in intensity by 60 percent. his past November, in a speech he delivered to the 6,000 England’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change recently reported that, delegates gathered in Nairobi for the 2006 United Nabecause of Africa’s particular location and topography, temperature intions Climate Change Conference, former secretary-gencreases over many areas of the continent will likely be double the global eral Kofi Annan placed the blame for global warming on average. And given its heavy dependence on agriculture—70 percent of “a frightening lack of leadership” and said that it would Africans make their living from the land—the resultant changes in weathbe developing countries, especially those in tropical regions, that would er patterns have the potential to massively compound the continent’s other bear the brunt of rising temperatures. “The impact of climate change woes. “Global warming is set to make many of the problems which Afwill fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest countries, many rica already deals with much, much worse,” said Andrew Simms, policy of them here in Africa,” he said. “Poor people already live on the director of the London-based New Economics Foundation. As dry areas front lines of pollution, disaster, and the degradation of resources
T
WHY IS AFRICA SO VULNERABLE TO CLIMATE CHANGE? As former secretary-general Kofi Annan explained at the U.N.’s Climate Change Conference in Nairobi last November, the African continent is in a particularly weak position when it comes to global warming. Here’s why: WATER SUPPLY
AGRICULTURE
BIODIVERSITY
DISEASE
RISING SEA LEVELS
DESERTIFICATION
One third of Africans live in drought-prone areas, and as lakes and rivers dry up, competition for water will intensify. This is particularly worrisome in regions where water sources are shared by different communities or nations.
Most of Africa relies on rain-fed crops. As a result, it is highly vulnerable to seasonal shifts and changes in precipitation patterns. Declines in agricultural production threaten the food security of entire populations.
Given Africa’s heavy dependence on natural resources for everything from food and fuel to shelter, medicine, and tourism, communities will be directly affected by the loss of biodiversity that climate change is expected to cause.
Changes in rainfall will affect the presence of vector- and waterborne diseases. Higher temperatures and flooding, for example, will result in larger populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes. This is of particular concern in areas with inadequate healthcare resources.
Coastal zones around the continent—most of which already lack reliable infrastructures such as bridges, buildings, and paved roads—could be completely wiped out by flooding. Declining numbers of tourists in coastal areas could cripple local economies.
Two thirds of the African continent is comprised of desert or drylands. Rising temperatures and decreasing precipitation affect both the nomadic societies that migrate in response to rainfall variations and the agriculturalists who suffer when soil quality degrades.
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WARMING CLIMATE, SHRINKING FOOD SUPPLY Researchers are predicting—and, in some places, already observing—how warmer temperatures, rising sea levels, and other effects of climate change will impact Africa’s food and water supply.
1.
Oceans are becoming more acidic as a direct result of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. This acidification will have major effects on marine ecosystems and the fish stocks upon which coastal populations rely.
2. The bleaching of coral reefs due to rising temperatures and lower sea levels could result in the extinction of major coral species, with associated losses of local fish stocks.
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Scientists estimate that rising temperatures could result in a 33 percent reduction in maize grown in Tanzania.
4. By late January of this year, floods that had blasted northeastern Kenya sparked an epidemic of the mosquito-borne Rift Valley Fever, killing nearly 150 people and hundreds of animals.
5. Climbing temperatures in Kericho, Kenya, are threatening the region’s vital tea industry.
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In Uganda, a temperature increase of 2°C would drastically reduce the area suitable for growing Robusta coffee, one of the country’s major exports.
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Studies suggest that Sudan’s sorghum yield could drop by a staggering 82 percent with even a slight rise in local temperatures.
8. The level of Kenya’s Lake Nakuru has dropped dramatically in recent years, and by November 2006, more than 800,000 flamingoes had deserted its shores, robbing a lucrative tourist destination of its main attraction.
9. Prolonged drying trends in Botswana and else-
SOURCES: ANNA BALLANCE; UNEP/GRID-ARENDAL.
where are adversely affecting nomadic societies that migrate in response to rainfall variations; as a result, both people and livestock are dying.
10. In Gambia, where groundnuts (or peanuts) account for 85 percent of exports, changes in rainfall patterns could cripple the national economy.
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Rising sea-surface temperatures off the coast of Namibia may already be contributing to declining fish stocks; on land, scientists expect that warming trends could cause more than 30 percent of threatened plant species to become endangered or extinct by 2080.
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Aridity is on the rise in Niger, which was hit hard in 2004 and 2005 by droughts that drove up the cost of grain and took a heavy toll on livestock.
get drier and wet areas get wetter, he explained, Africans “are going to be caught between the devil of drought and the deep blue seas of flood.”
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CASH CROPS UNDER SIEGE TEA Kenya’s tea industry employs 10 percent of the country’s population. But average temperatures in the growing area have risen 3.5°C in the past two decades, endangering the industry and putting millions of livelihoods at risk.
or Anyango and her family, the abstraction that is global warming has already manifested itself in the form of an empty stomach. And they are not alone. This past November, 1.8 million people were driven from their homes by heavy flooding in northeastern Kenya, Ethiopia, and central and southern Somalia. Coming on the heels of an extended dry period that left the ground unable to soak up the rainfall, the downpours—which were the worst the region has experienced in half a century—proved the death knell to crops already on their last legs. And just a year earlier, severe drought in the same region had left eight million people without food; so many animals were lost that herdsmen aren’t expected to recover their livelihoods for several years. While it’s true that a warmer earth will mean longer growing seasons for agricultural zones in the northern hemisphere and other regions, the overall result of a world heating up is a food supply wearing down. A series of experiments conducted by the London-based Royal Society in 2005 showed devastating impacts from warming on such international staple crops as maize, rice, soybeans, and wheat. Estimates suggest that climate change will likely reduce crop yields by 10 percent over the whole of Africa, and even more in specific regions. Because so much of the global economy is rooted in agriculture, it too is set to suffer crushing blows. Worldwide, the reported losses from climate-related disasters rose from $131 billion in the 1970s to $629 billion in the 1990s, and it’s estimated that the figure could reach $150 billion per year in the coming decade. In Africa, where agriculture accounts for half of total exports and represents 40 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), economic viability is inextricably linked with patterns of precipitation. The 1997–1998 El Niño floods and the 1999–2000 drought, for example, are estimated to have cost Kenya alone 40 to 49 percent of its GDP. This past January, Kenya’s Standard newspaper reported that the seasonal export of raw cashews had dropped by 95 percent due to low production caused by heavy rains. SOURCES: OTTO SIMONETT; UNEP/GRID-ARENDAL. Shocks like these have already trickled down to supermarkets in Europe, where most of Africa’s food exports land. And here in the U.S., we’ve felt the effects of similar upheavals in Central and South America. That’s on top of whatever In the aftermath of the flooding, many residents of Kenya’s Busia havoc climate change is wreaking closer to home: This District walked several miles past January, for instance, back-to-back blizzards in the to pick up relief food. Rocky Mountains threatened the cattle industry to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. (Look for the fallout on your bill the next time you enjoy a steakhouse dinner.)
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f course, heavy, monsoon-like rains are the ultimate breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes, and rising temperatures provide more habitats where they can thrive. According to Stern, a 2°C rise would expose up to 60 million additional people in Africa to malaria every year. Out in western Kenya, where the disease has long been a way of life, more sick people and fewer farmers in the fields—not to mention fewer students in the classrooms and fewer traders in the markets—are a constant threat not just to daily meals 48|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
COFFEE Uganda is currently home to 500,000 coffee farms, but research has shown that rising temperatures would drastically reduce the area suitable for cultivating this important crop.
“WHEN I WAS GROWING UP,” SAYS NAIROBI NATIVE KEVIN N’JUGUNA, “I ONLY USED TO HEAR ABOUT MALARIA. NOW I KNOW LOTS OF PEOPLE WHO SUFFER FROM IT.” but to the local economy itself. And now people in places that were once immune to the disease are also falling ill. “When I was growing up,” says Nairobi native Kevin N’juguna, “I only used to hear about malaria. Now I know lots of people who suffer from it.” Mosquitoes and the floods they ride in on also attack the food supply itself. Driving around the Busia District, I don’t have to look very hard to see the devastating effects of the virus known as Banana Bacterial Wilt. Believed to be transported over short distances by insects and exacerbated by rain, this previously unheard-of scourge surfaced in Uganda six years ago and has since spread like wildfire through smallholder farms here and in neighboring Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Uganda, where banana farms account for 28 percent of total cropland, the disease has already resulted in annual losses of $360 million. As historian Jared Diamond aptly chronicles in his book Collapse, and as the Kenyan environmental activist and Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai has long emphasized (see “Strong Roots,” page 51), degradation of the land—whether due to natural disasters, overgrazing, or other conditions—leads to increasing competition for scarce resources, and often to violent conflict. Rising worldwide temperatures seem already to be fueling this phenomenon: Growing pressure on pastureland and water supply was responsible for deepening tensions between nomads and agriculturalists in Niger during the drought of 2005, and the ongoing troubles in Darfur have been blamed in part on competition for land. Now Kenyan pastoralists, too, are coming to blows over the environment. Back in the early 1990s, when I lived in the country as a Peace Corps volunteer, I made three trips up to Kenya’s hot, dry Lake Turkana region, where, save for the occasional Giacometti-esque figure moving across the shimmering horizon, a visitor in search of solitude could drive for hours and encounter nothing but barren beauty. I have every intention of heading back on this trip, but am told repeatedly that I’d be crazy to go anywhere near the place. In recent years, the 250,000 or so Turkana who inhabit the area—majestic nomads who have long since made their peace with its harsh climate—have faced hardships like none they’ve previously known. The dry spell of 2004, which the local people refer to as Atiaktiak ng’awiyei, or “the one that divided homes,” because so many families were forced to split up to survive it, was the latest in a series of rain-free periods the Turkana have experienced since 1999, when the drought they dubbed Kichutanak (“it has swept away everything, even animals”) hit the region. Today, as water sources continue to deteriorate (Lake Turkana enjoys only half the inflow it once did) and healthy pasture becomes increasingly hard to find, the strains that have always existed between the Turkana and the neighboring Pokot tribe are intensifying. This past December, The New York Times reported that more than a dozen people had been killed and thousands of goats, camels, donkeys, and cows stolen when hundreds of armed warriors from the West Pokot district stormed into the Turkana village of Lorengipi. Though such attacks are nothing new, rarely have they been carried out on such an exaggerated scale. More dis-
At home on the ridge: Calimentina Anyango with her three-year-old grandson, Clinton.
turbingly, whereas in the past the marauders arrived wielding traditional spears, today’s raiders brandish the AK-47s that are available so cheaply and readily across the border in Somalia.
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nstead I head back east, stopping in the town of Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria, where Francis Otieno Faraji, helping me into his creaky fishing boat, has his own stories to tell of an ecosystem in distress. “You see those mango trees?” he asks, pointing to a dense grove 150 feet off in the distance. “Three years ago, the lake reached all the way up to them.” Today, thanks to the receding waters, fishermen like 19-year-old Eric Okoth Odok and 17-year-old Vincent Oduor, whom we encounter a half mile or so out on the lake, are forced to head farther and farther from the shore in pursuit of their catch—often ending up in Ugandan territory and getting themselves arrested in the process. “These Kenyan waters are just a nursery,” for the Nile perch that make up the lion’s share of the fishermen’s catch, explains Faraji. Indeed, the few specimens that Odok and Oduor do PLENTYMAG.COM
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pull in are no bigger than six or seven inches long. Anyone who’s seen the 2004 film Darwin’s Nightmare knows that the problems surrounding Lake Victoria are by no means limited to climate change. (Invasive species, overfishing, pollution, and AIDS all have their place.) But rising temperatures aren’t doing anything to help matters. The level of the lake—which is the main Fishermen Eric Okoth Odok (left) and Vincent Oduor feed for the Nile River as well as a vital find themselves traveling source of food, water, transportation, ever farther into Lake Victoria in pursuit and electric power for some 30 milof their catch. lion people—has dropped six feet in the past three years alone. A December 2006 report by the U.S.-based Water Resources and Energy Management International concluded that higher temperatures could cause the evaporation of up to half of Victoria’s inflow from rain and rivers, threatening both the immediate community and more than 100 million Egyptians, Sudanese, and others living on the Nile. “People talk about the snows of Kilimanjaro,” says Aris P. Georgakakos, the chief author of the report. “We have something much bigger to worry about, and that’s Lake Victoria.” The truth is that every one of Africa’s major lakes is today in a state of crisis. Lake Chad, once the world’s sixth largest, has shrunk to an unimaginable 2 percent of its 1960s size, and the level of central Africa’s Lake Tanganyika dropped five feet from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, according to a 2003 article in Nature. Its sardine harvest, a major source of dietary protein for the local community, has contracted by half since the 1970s.
TROUBLED WATERS Scientists predict that freshwater, a precious commodity already in short supply in some African nations, will become increasingly scarce in the coming years if global warming (along with population growth and urbanization) continues as expected. This graph looks at the impact of a drier climate on water supply, comparing its availability in 1990 to that projected for 2025. According to UNEP, 18 countries and more than 600 million people could experience water stress within the next 20 years.
SOURCE: UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR AFRICA (UNECA), ADDIS ABABA; GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK 2000 (GEO), UNEP, EARTHSCAN, LONDON, 1999; DIGOUT, DELPHINE, BASED ON A SKETCH BY PHILIPPE REKACEWICZ; UNEP/GRID-ARENDAL.
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n the face of rising temperatures and increasingly dramatic (and destructive) weather patterns, many local communities have begun taking matters into their own hands. Pulling into the Maasai village of Kisamese, in the drought-stricken Kajiado District about 20 miles south of Nairobi, I hook up with Jane Minisa, a perky 34-year-old mother of four, who proudly leads me across a rocky path to the 1,000-liter water tank that dominates her neighbors’ backyard. Backed by UNEP and implemented by a local non-governmental organization, the water-harvesting project that resulted in the tank, which Minisa built with the help of her co-members in the Tubula Women’s Group, represents a much bigger vision. In order to receive instruction and funding for it, the women were required to carry out other tasks—digging holes for new trees, preparing a vegetable garden, and fashioning a dam for rainwater harvesting—aimed at sustaining their community.
“On a personal level, you can make a decision that you want to understand how nature operates, and work with it in your own backyard.”
STRONG ROOTS Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, is often called the Tree Woman—and for good reason. In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement, an organization dedicated to planting trees and educating people in Kenya—and all over the world— about the importance of conservation. To date, the Green Belt Movement has planted more than 40 million trees, and the organization has played a key role in the creation of the Billion Tree Campaign, a new United Nations initiative to plant one billion trees worldwide by the end of 2007. Plenty spoke with Maathai about global warming in Africa, the connection between environmental and humanitarian crises, and the importance of optimism in the fight to save the planet. —Kiera Butler
PHOTO BY AP
You’ve often pointed out that some ancient African traditions—like the ones you grew up with—are actually “green.” Can you give us an example? There were some trees that were considered sacred. They were never cut, just left to grow and fall on their own. One such tree is the wild fig tree. Because it wasn’t cut, it sent a lot of roots very deep, and it fixed itself very firmly into the ground, and it therefore helped to stabilize the soil in these highlands where we lived. Also, because the roots went so deep, they connected with the groundwater system and helped bring water from underground reserves to the upper levels. Quite often, whenever you would find these trees, you would find a stream. Do you think that modern Africans— and people in general—have lost sight of those traditions? As people move into the cities, we tend to forget our connection to the earth.
When we congregate in the cities, we build houses, we create concrete, and we literally cut ourselves off from nature and the way nature operates. How can we begin to remember and implement them? We can start with something understandable and something that all of us participate in: the creation of greenhouse gases. And on a personal level, you can make a decision that you want to understand how nature operates, and work with it in your own backyard. The Billion Tree Campaign is partly to raise awareness about these issues among ordinary people. In your opinion, has global warming already begun to affect some parts of the African continent? Yes, very seriously. We have seen that the glaciers on Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro have melted. And scientists tell us that they have melted faster this
time than they have in the past 100 years. We have seen with our naked eyes many rivers that used to be big rivers; they are now small, and many streams have dried up. Although this can be attributed to interference with the forest, especially deforestation, it’s also attributed to climate change. What particular challenges do you think Africa will face as climate change intensifies? For one, we know that it will likely interfere with the availability of freshwater. This will probably create conflict and war among people. Many of the wars we fight in Africa are actually over resources, whether it’s between communities themselves, or between Africans and people from outside Africa who are interested in its resources and find it necessary to access them. People fight over water, land, farms, and grazing ground. We know that in Darfur, one issue that causes conflict is grazing ground. This situation can only get worse if the environmental crisis continues. And it’s important to think about this now so we can begin to find solutions. Absolutely. We have been saying that the pastoral communities, for example, need to cut down on their animals. You cannot have so many animals that you completely degrade your land, and then when drought comes you lose everything you have, including your own life. It’s also very important to protect forests, and this is one of the reasons I’m advocating for the protection of the Congo’s ecosystem. It’s one of the major ecosystems that we need in Africa, but also in the world. It’s very highly threatened by both legal and illegal logging. Even after seeing widespread environmental degradation in Africa, you’ve remained optimistic. How have you managed to maintain that optimism? It’s important to maintain your optimism because the alternative is to give up. And that would be terrible. So we have to continue telling people that if they don’t do something, the result will be much worse. I always believe that people can change. I just hope we will have even more change before it is too late.
And they’re not the only ones. At the Nairobi conference, Agnes Mosoni Loirket, the woman responsible for spearSatellite photos of Lake Chad, which straddles the borders of Nigeria, Cameroon, heading the initiative, told the delegates that in the past two Niger, and Chad, show its changing shape. Once the world’s sixth largest lake, it years alone, women’s groups in the region have constructed has shrunk to a mere 2 percent of its 1960s size—the victim of an increasingly dry more than 80 of the tanks. “Before the project,” she exclimate that forces farmers to use the lake’s water for irrigation. In these photos, plained, “women used to leave early and sleep close to the areas of the lake that have been taken over by vegetation appear in red, and the river, leaving children going to school unattended.” ripples at the lake’s edges represent encroaching sand dunes. Minisa herself knew that story all too well. But these days she has the time to craft beaded jewelry and run a small shop, earning enough extra cash between the two to send all four of her children to school. She also takes solace in the knowledge that, whatever shocks may result from climatic changes (which she attributes to “the lack of trees and the use of factories”), she and her family have a steady supply of drinking water and an acre and a half planted with beans, maize, and other crops. Similar water-harvesting initiatives are proliferating across 1963 1973 the developing world, and experts say they have the potential to make a big difference in the face of rising temperatures. Kenya, for example, currently gets enough rainfall to supply the needs of six to seven times its population of 40 million. And the beauty of small-scale efforts like Minisa’s tank (which required just four days of labor and cost just $60) is that, unlike big, exposed dams, they lose little water to evaporation. At the close of the November conference, Kenya’s water minister announced plans to require all new buildings to include similar structures. 1987 1997 Back in my old stomping grounds out west, I come across other signs of a growing dedication to mitigating the effects—and the causes—of climate change. One afternoon I stop by the The company recently launched a $50 million cogeneration project, Mumias Sugar Factory, a huge compound near my former home that’s which involves installing a new environmentally friendly boiler and upvisible from miles away thanks to the two thick plumes of gray smoke it grading the power system to better utilize bagasse, the fiber that remains sends into the air, marring the otherwise idyllic expanse of apple-green after the juice has been extracted from sugarcane. By the end of 2008, fields and periwinkle sky. There, James Luchacha, the head of factory says Luchacha, the factory will produce enough power to meet its own operations, assures me that the plumes will be gone within two years. needs and have some left over to sell to the national grid. In addition,
THE MELTING SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO The ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro has shrunk by an astonishing 82 percent since it was first surveyed in 1912, and several of the rivers that it feeds have begun disappearing during the
1993 52|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
summer months. If warming continues at its current rate, scientists predict that the cap could disappear completely in as few as 15 years. Melting snow and ice at high altitudes results
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in less snowmelt to feed the rivers during dry periods, when farmers need it most, and creates more runoff during rainy seasons, making flooding more likely to occur.
2003
PHOTOS COURTESY OF NASA
NOW YOU SEE IT...
Maasai tribeswomen (from left) Hannah Morio, Jane Minisa, and Grace Solio now all have water-harvesting tanks to call their own.
the company recently signed an agreement to begin selling its carbon emissions reductions to a Japanese firm. (Bagasse is considered a clean fuel under the Kyoto Protocol.) “The only thing I’m getting out of this is legacy,” says Luchacha, his face opening into a wide grin, “but I’m really looking forward to it.”
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WATER-HARVESTING INITIATIVES ARE PROLIFERATING ACROSS THE DEVELOPING WORLD, AND EXPERTS SAY THEY HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE IN THE FACE OF RISING TEMPERATURES.
erhaps most significantly, the world community seems finally to be making the connection between global warming and a threatened supply of food. This past December, the consortium of scientists known as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research announced a climate-change initiative whose goal is to breed crops capable of withstanding heat, flooding, and drought. And India’s Navdanya, the organic farming program led by environmental activist Vandana Shiva, also recently launched a plan to establish seed banks for drought-, saline-, and flood-resistant crops. Increasingly, governments and aid organizations are supporting forward-thinking strategies like agro-forestry, in which trees are cultivated together with food crops, which helps prevent erosion, restores the soil’s fertility, and provides shade for the crops (while also sequestering carbon); and conservation farming, a minimumtillage strategy that traps moisture, improves the quality of the soil, and minimizes erosion, thereby fostering more drought-tolerant growing conditions. Researchers are also aiming to improve climate-change monitoring capacities across the developing world and to implement early warning systems that will give farmers the information they need to protect their harvests. Columbia University, for example, has paired farmers in India and Zimbabwe with
climate and agricultural scientists for just this purpose. And at the November conference, Annan announced the Nairobi Framework, a U.N. initiative intended to help developing nations get funding to promote clean energy technology and manage the climate threat in general. Included in the Framework is a program that will facilitate carbon finance agreements under the Kyoto Protocol between developing and industrialized countries. The World Bank has estimated that by selling carbon credits, developing nations could earn as much as $100 billion a year by 2050. Some have suggested that small-scale farmers themselves ought to be allowed to participate in emissions trading schemes. Given the logistics involved, such an arrangement might prove a little tricky to pull off, but the idea of it alone points up the fact that there’s something drastically wrong with this picture. “My people do not drive four-by-fours,” a Maasai woman named Sharon Looremeta told the delegates at the Nairobi conference. “We don’t go on weekends, on holidays by flight. But we are feeling the first and worst of climate change. We had hardly little rains for the last three years. Animals are dying, children are not going to school, women are spending all their time in search of water.” And, of course, people are going hungry. Unless industrialized nations do more to curb their own emissions, factoring climate change into new development and agricultural initiatives can only go so far. As Kofi Annan put it in his address to the delegates, those who would drag their feet on the former “should be seen for what they are: out of step, out of arguments, and out of time.” In an increasingly globalized world, after all, it won’t be long before the hunger pangs of Calimentina Anyango begin smarting right here at home. PLENTYMAG.COM
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A Long,
THIRTY YEARS AGO, THE FARM WAS THE ARCHETYPE OF A MODEL COMMUNITY. TODAY, IT HAS SHED COMMUNALISM FOR CAPITALISM. A WRITER VISITS A PLACE OF THE PAST TO LEARN ITS FUTURE.
Strange Trip
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t was, at its peak, the largest and most famous commune in America—a place where some 1,200 self-described hippies took a vow of poverty, kept house in school buses, and pledged to save the world. When I looked it up a few months ago, I learned that The Farm not only still existed, it seemed to be thriving. Back-to-the-landers had transitioned seamlessly into the digital age. Their website (thefarm. org) abounded with blogs, an ever-increasing tally of the cost of the Iraq War, sound files of poetry readings, and a 25 percent discount on holiday orders of the Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook. The Farm had grown up, shifting from a zero-accumulation commune to a veritable industrial park of creative capitalism, not to mention a popular tourist destination. For me—a brown-rice baby, the daughter of hippies—The Farm represented the ultimate in counterculture living. Last fall, I visited The Farm for a few days, hoping to learn not just what it had become, but what might become of it.
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he gate to The Farm—among 1,750 acres of red and white oaks, hickories, and dogwoods in Summertown, Tennessee, an hour and a half southwest of Nashville—is tucked away on a tiny paved street, past miles of roadside churches and prefab houses. The clos54|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
est business, the Summertown Store, rents DVDs and sells bait, tackle, and five varieties of pork rinds. I pulled past the Welcome Center (which sells beaded jewelry and Farm history books), down their long driveway, and felt…well, a mild sense of disappointment. Where was the community? The Farm’s billowing fields of maidenhair ferns and goldenrod were largely uninhabited. Tourist season was over, the guest inn (called You’re Inn) closed, and the Eco-Village Training Center dormant. Their own FM station, 88.3 WUTZ, quietly broadcast Democracy Now and The Thom Hartmann Show. I saw a few modular buildings, rusty school buses, and modest houses nestled in the woods. Deer leaped between the trees, certain of their safety here during hunting season. There’s not a lot of communal space at The Farm, and there’s no longer any farming, save for a halfacre of blueberries. A wooden gazebo called Head of the Roads perches at the intersection of their main thoroughfares: First, Second, and Third roads. Nearby is the motor pool—largely a collection of rusty Stephen Gaskin, who initiated the Volvos tended by a mechanic with cross-country trek that fostered The Farm, presides over a group meeting long hair and a beard, the unofficial (above); an original caravan bus, once style of Farm men. Beyond that sits used as temporary housing but long since abandoned (opposite). the plum-colored Farm Store, sell-
PHOTO BY JOEL STERNFELD (OPPOSITE)
BY LISA SELIN DAVIS
The principal of the The Farm School, Peter Kindfield, sits in on a game of Scrabble (left); Roberta Kachinsky, co-owner of The Deli, prepares rolls (right).
ing tie-dyes and tofu, and about a mile away are The Farm School and the community center, where Farmies who wish to share a communal dinner gather once a week. “There’s not a lot of togetherness,” says Peter Kindfeld, The Farm School’s principal. “But there’s a big feeling of togetherness.” The pace of life slows considerably here; interviews that normally take half an hour lingered to two, which may be why I didn’t see the bustling community I’d imagined: People are inside, talking. Douglas Stevenson, The Farm’s unofficial spokesperson, suggested I come during the summer, to see a Farm day in action. “The blueberries are a major social scene,” he told me. But here I was in late fall, when The Farm slipped into hibernation.
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By the early ’80s, the population of The Farm had swelled to 1,200 people, but the bonds of community and camaraderie were beginning to dissolve.
he Farm’s original settlers were devotees of Stephen Gaskin, an English professor who taught at San Francisco State University in the ’60s. His infamous Monday Night Class—a primer on “God, the universe, life, and truth”—became a countercultural phenomenon, attracting as many as 1,000 attendees of all ages every week. In 1969, a group of Methodist ministers invited Gaskin to speak at churches across the country; a year later, Monday Night Class hit the road. Gaskin and 300 followers, from students to businessmen, zigzagged across 7,000 miles in seven months, traveling in a caravan of dilapidated school buses to deliver their message of hippie-tinged moral rectitude—a sort of Protestant work ethic applied to Timothy Leary. When the trip was over, the Gaskinites craved a place where they could live out their values permanently. “It seemed like a good idea to get in the backwoods and do our own thing,” says Gaskin. They settled on Tennessee because “land was cheap and the people were friendly,” says Stevenson. “California was already eaten up by building codes,
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and communes had been bulldozed. Plus, anything anyone said in California was dismissed: ‘Oh, it’s just the crazy hippies.’ ” That they could be taken more seriously in another part of the country was key, because unlike many communes, which turned inward and sought refuge from the larger world, Farmies focused outward. (The sign on their Greyhound bus read: gotta save the world.) So they pooled their money, purchased 1,000 acres of land, and parked those buses to live the message they’d spent more than half a year promoting. Outsiders gave them a nickname: “The Technicolor Amish.”
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rom the beginning, The Farm was as much about vocation as it was about vision, both as a matter of convenience and an expression of can-do spirit. When they set out in those buses, “kids suddenly had to learn auto mechanics. It was part of the challenge to keep the caravan on the road,” says Stevenson, himself a high-school dropout (he eventually earned his diploma) who showed up on The Farm in 1973. After buying the Tennessee land, the Farmies cobbled together their own shelter—first modified buses, then Army surplus tents, and, later, a few insulated homes—and began making decisions by consensus, with Gaskin presiding over group meetings. Though many aspects of life on The Farm resembled those at other communes at the time (vegetarianism, homegrown food, shared meals), “our businesses all happened in response to things happening in the world,” says Gaskin. Those businesses and skills were, not surprisingly, based on the community’s self-sufficiency. Farmies became authorities in satellite communications by using ham radio to stay in contact with the dozen or so sister communities that sprang up from Florida to Colorado. Babies had been born during the 1970 caravan, so an expertise in midwifery developed. Gaskin’s wife Ina May, author of Spiritual Midwifery,
Signs of old-school activism still abound at The Farm (left); an employee of SE International tests equipment (right).
among many other books, became one of the country’s foremost authorities on the subject. In 1978, Farmies created The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook, which introduced many Americans to meatless cuisine; out of that effort, The Book Publishing Company grew. They cultivated soybean crops, popularized tofu, and, some say, invented soy ice cream, resulting in the formation of FarmSoy Dairy. Revenues from all these entrepreneurial efforts were, of course, shared. For years, Farmies managed to remain engaged in the larger world while living apart from it. On the ham radio one night in 1976, they heard a distress call from Guatemala, where an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale had hit, killing some 22,000 people. The Farm’s nonprofit, Plenty International, sent a group to bring much-needed construction supplies to poor (and poorly treated) Mayans. In the late ’70s, as the Cold War fomented the No Nukes movement, Farmies formed SE International, a company that manufactured personal monitoring devices similar to Geiger counters. They brought soy farming to Belize, St. Lucia, and South Africa, and even set up an ambulance service in the South Bronx, because, Stevenson says, “We found we didn’t have to go outside the country to get to the Third World.”
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y the early ’80s, the population of The Farm had swelled to 1,200 people, some 500 of them school-age children. But the bonds of community and camaraderie were beginning to dissolve. “We got diluted by the growth,” Gaskin admits. Achieving consensus, difficult enough when the Farmies were only a few hundred strong, became nearly impossible. People were still crowded, sometimes living 40 to a house, and many wanted for the basics, like fresh produce and shoes. One particularly starved season they called the “Wheatberry Winter” (named after their diet). Despite their enterprising and idealistic nature, the Farmies were malnourished, underem-
ployed, and losing faith both in their way of life and in Gaskin, the man who’d led them to this lifestyle in the first place. They racked up $400,000 in debt. “Some of us felt like we needed to close the gate and regroup,” says Stevenson. And so they did. After a series of protracted and painful group meetings came “the changeover,” as their transition from commune to cooperative came to be known. It resulted in a massive exodus and purging that eventually shrunk the adult population to 100, plus 150 kids, in 1983. Now that those kids have mostly grown and gone, the population has settled around 200 people, a third of them under 40. The Farm School became a private entity; families pay $2,500 in tuition per child each year. The satellite communities in other states folded or separated. “We pulled everything back to Tennessee,” says Stevenson. “The land is the bond.” “There was a several-year shakedown,” says Gaskin, who was dethroned in the changeover, but continues to live and work at The Farm. “I don’t think I was the only one who grieved for about a year.” However much he misses it, though, “at the same time, I don’t have to run it.” The Farm’s heyday in the ’70s: group dinners (left) and informal gatherings (below).
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hese days, The Farm sort of runs itself. It’s set up like a small town, where you know and approve of every single one of your neighbors. The land, buildings, and homes are now held by a trust, a nonprofit dedicated to conservation. A board of directors oversees operations, and the membership committee (those serving are elected to two-year terms) takes care of approving new Farmies. Residents pay $100 to $150 per month for shared expenses, including the water system and the Welcome Center. And the businesses, save for The Book Publishing Company, are now individually owned; the money you make from your business, even if it’s on Farm property, is yours. Stevenson himself is a perfect example of The Farm 2.0. “I was one of the lucky ones. I’d seen that The Farm needed to PLENTYMAG.COM
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Farmies still work together on the annual blueberry harvest (left); women still have babies at the birthing cabin (right).
make money,” he says. His proclivity for all things technical, and The Farm’s reliance on technology to spread its message, led him to form a satellite-TV business. Stevenson now owns Village Media, which makes videos for everything from nonprofit fundraising to weddings, and he also writes freelance articles for digital-camera consumer magazines. Other Farmie businesses have also survived. Some are even thriving. Mushroom People sells shiitake spores and supplies; The Mail Order Catalog offers hard-to-find vegetarian items. SE International and The Book Publishing Company are now million-dollar companies. While both employ a large percentage of Farmies, accumulation of wealth is not the goal. “It’s about giving back,” Stevenson explained. “An essential part of The Farm’s philosophy is the concept of ‘right livelihood’—that your work is seamless with your personal beliefs. This is expressed in various ways through our companies and nonprofits.” Gaskin still makes money lecturing, and his books remain in print, but he’s not the family breadwinner. “Ina May is the real star,” he says of his wife, the birthing expert. It’s not that Farmies are now capitalists—they’re pragmatists. It’s the rural South, the edge of Appalachia, and jobs are hard to come by. So you can’t live at The Farm unless Douglas Stevenson you can find a way to sustain yourself there, with his wife and one way to do that is through tourism. Deborah and their baby son Jody (right); Hundreds of visitors come each year (tourists Stevenson now owns from Prince Edward Island to Arizona have Village Media, which produces videos for a signed the Welcome Center guest book), so variety of events and some Farmies rent out rooms in their homes. businesses (below). For $35 a night, I snagged a comfortable bed and vegetarian meals from longtime Farmies Pat and Vickie Montagne. Vickie, who came to The Farm at 21 to have her first child with the midwives in 1977, now runs the Welcome Center; Pat works as a handyman. “I already had a Porsche before I got here,” says Robert Moore, a refugee from the insurance business, who lives in a house that was vacated by a couple who left The Farm after the changeover. Moore works part time at The Mail Order Catalog and 58|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
has held various positions at other Farm businesses during his 35year tenure. I asked him what he thought his former insurance colleagues were doing. “They probably have group medical and their houses are paid off,” he says. “They probably have a very good life, a middle class life.” He says this with not one trace of envy, but with no disdain either. The other issue, which is an odd one since the community hopes to add another 150 or so members: It’s not very easy to join. “You have to show a whole lot of dedication to get in,” says Kindfeld, the school principal. Interested parties are encouraged to attend a Farm Experience Weekend, where they participate in communal dinners and nature walks, and take workshops on midwifery, green building, or other Farm initiatives. After a few visits, they can become provisional members, and, once approved, they can build houses, as long as the sites are okayed by neighbors and the land-use committee. The Farmies’ attitude is one of “We’re looking for a few good men”—people with similar values who embrace their vision of work and community. It is, for all intents and purposes, an exclusive, gated community—even if the gate remains open most of the time. Kindfeld relocated to The Farm three years ago with his wife and two schoolage children, having dreamed of living on a commune and working at an alternative school. He proudly calls The Farm “the land of aging hippies.” “There are 300 million Americans living essentially the same lives,” he says. “And there are 500 or 600 doing something really different.”
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he future of The Farm largely depends on what the children of those aging hippies will do. I sat in on “morning sharing circle” at The Farm School, during which kids and teachers discussed how they felt and made requests of one another and the universe. A tie-dye pattern graced the front of the school’s
Farmies pose for a group shot. Today, a membership committee vets potential new members via interviews and by having them attend a weekend of events at The Farm; they seek people who have similar values and embrace their vision of community.
magazine, Hippie Print. The high-school social studies course (kids from different grades often take classes together) is called History of American Imperialism, and in science class—Alternative Energy— students discussed forced convection, an energy-efficient method of heat transfer, and displayed impressive homemade convection devices (a coil soldered to a tin can, a black foil-wrapped pill box). Despite the curriculum’s lefty bent, Kindfeld says students are plenty prepared for extra-Farm activities. “You learn to be self-motivated, and learn a problem-solving approach to the world,” he says. The problem with some of the most selfmotivated kids, at least in terms of The Farm’s future, is that to make a difference in the world they usually need to go off-Farm to do it. Many end up in Farmie hotspots like northern California, New York City, and Asheville, North Carolina. “Most people move away, at least for a little while,” says Julia Skinner, 23, one of the few second-generation members who has never lived anywhere but The Farm. “I haven’t found anywhere else that I wanted to be.” Her brother, on the other hand, went to college and spent three years as a carpenter in Asheville. He recently returned, but there’s no housing for single folks here; he and his sister live with their parents, and he’s not sure if he’ll stay. “I love it here—it’s part of who I am,” he says. “But I can’t really say if I’m going to live here forever. It all depends on where my life takes me, and right now I’m pretty clueless on that.” (He’s now in Asheville, working on a three-month carpentry project.) Slowly, the second generation has begun to pick up the reins. Stevenson estimates that 40 to 50 of the current residents are second generation, and they’re becoming more active on boards and committees. The first generation believes the youth won’t let it disappear. “A lot of kids who grew up here, they’ll start coming back. It’s just a matter of time,” says Roberta Kachinsky, who co-owns the
Deli, which sells barbecued seitan and homemade granola prepared in the community center kitchen. But Kachinsky’s partner, Ramona Christopherson, pointed out a problem they’ve faced in the past: The Farm, in its current incarnation, couldn’t sustain all the second-generation Farmies if they wanted to return. “If they came back now, the jobs they got would be ours, and then what would we do?”
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indfeld likens The Farm’s journey to Hegel’s philosophy of thesis-antithesissynthesis: You begin with a conviction, move to believe the opposite, and then settle somewhere in between, with a new idea that transcends but includes both. Right now, the population is a little sparse, and there’s an air of uncertainty that rustles through the sumac leaves. But the community seems to be gearing up again, heartened in part by the same grumbling dissatisfaction in America that led to their formation in the first place. A faction of Farmies recently hopped a school bus and took $2,000 worth of supplies to New Orleans—Farm-style hurricane relief. “It’s a crazy world right now,” says Stevenson. “It’s sort of circle-up-the-wagons time— time to hear from the hippies again. It’s a tired label but we’re not in denial about our hippie roots. The general philosophies of peace and nonviolence and caring for the Earth still ring true. We were right then and we’re right now.” The question remains: Do they have enough voices to be heard? To get from The Farm back to Nashville, I took five left turns, then veered onto the interstate. “Left all the way—it’s a theme,” says Stevenson. I listened to their radio station for as long as I could, but just past the Summertown store, the signal began to fade into the familiar twang of country music and the rumbling of Christian radio, The Farm’s radical agenda and hopes for the world slowly being drowned out by the mainstream.
“There are 300 million Americans living essentially the same lives. And there are 500 or 600 at The Farm doing something really different.”
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Moveable Feasts
BY NICOLE DAVIS
itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no wonder environmentalism and gastronomy tend to go hand in hand. After all, both share a respect for whole food, thoughtful growing practices, and quality over quantity. The natural result of this union? The eco-friendly cooking-school vacation. What better way for green-minded foodies to indulge both their love of the land and love of food than to partake in this latest travel sub genre? A growing number of eco chefs have begun inviting vacationers to study in some of the most beautiful locales in the world. Whether you prefer making handrolled pasta on an organic olive farm in Tuscany or muddling a curry paste using organic lemongrass you picked in Thailand, the world really is your kitchen. Here are eight sustainable cooking schools where you can nourish your inner gourmand. â&#x2DC;&#x203A; 60|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
COURTESY NAME OF PERSON TK
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Take an eco-friendly culinary vacation and learn how to cook everything, everywhere
Students get busy at Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland. PLENTYMAG.COM
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FOOD ARTISANS Montepulciano, Italy
Learning to make pizza at Food Artisans (top left); a meal served al fresco (top right); students harvesting grapes (bottom). 62|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
When asked why she moved from California to Tuscany six years ago, Pamela Sheldon Johns, founder of Food Artisans, an Italian cooking school and tour company, is hardpressed to name just one reason. “There is still a lot of artisanal, traditional food here,” she says. “People still think about food seasonally—and my daughter’s school lunch is 90 percent organic.” Her passion for her new home shines through in the way she immerses her students in Italian culture. Johns’s tours (there are four different ones) cover all the important regional cooking styles of northern, central, and southern Italy, but nothing rivals the experience of cooking Tuscan food on her working organic olive farm. There, Johns gives hands-on lessons in rustic peasant cuisine like ribollita (a hearty vegetable soup) or pici (a thick, hand-rolled spaghetti) in the kitchen of her 400-year-old villa. Students also attend tastings at local Montepulciano wineries and pecorino cheese producers; dinners hosted by neighboring villas; and impromptu poolside parties, where classes focus on how to make various antipastos and fresh margherita pizzas baked in outdoor brick ovens. “It was magical,” says Deanne Raish, a student who plans to go back this year. “We really got to experience how the Italians live.” Details: A weeklong class including all meals and lodging costs approximately $3,500 (805.963.7289, foodartisans.com).
ANNIE’S KITCHEN Murs-en-Provence, France Annie Jacquet-Bentley is best known for founding L’Ecole des Chefs, an apprentice program that allows home cooks to train under star chefs. With Annie’s Kitchen, she’s inviting students to learn Provençal cuisine in her 18th-century shepherd’s home in the town of Murs. Her state-ofthe-art kitchen overlooks hills of lavender and olive trees, and there she teaches students to cook like she does—sans recipes. “The best approach to cooking is seeing what’s fresh at the market, then coming home and coming up with dishes,” says Jacquet-Bentley. Those include classics like bouillabaisse, claufoutis, and chocolate madeleines, as well as forays into other dishes like roasted lamb and goat-cheese soufflé. Since classes consist of only four to six people, students receive a lot of attention. They’ll also visit local artisans who make goat cheese, bread, and honey, and take wine-tasting lessons from a sommelier. Details: Five-day classes are $2,650 including meals (annieskitcheninprovence.com). Local lodging starts at around $70 per night for a bed and breakfast (hote-en-luberon.com).
Annie Jacquet-Bentley in her Provençal kitchen (top); the school’s scenic lavender fields (bottom). PLENTYMAG.COM
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Students pick their own organic vegetables at Rancho La Puerta’s farm.
RANCHO LA PUERTA Tecate, Mexico Fitness of the mind, body, and spirit has always been the philosophy of Rancho La Puerta, a historic spa situated in a cactus-and-wildflowerfilled valley just over the Mexican border on the Baja Peninsula. And to fuel the reams of activities it offers—60 in total, from mountain biking to meditating—the spa has always served Mexican-Mediterranean cuisine, primarily vegetarian, sourced from its five-acre organic garden. Starting this summer, however, guests will have one more activity to choose from when the world’s first fitness spa opens its cooking school, La Cocina Que Canta (The Kitchen That Sings). Its director, food writer and Napa Valley insider Antonia Allegra, is just one of the culinary heavyweights affiliated with the 4,500-square-foot facility. Michel Stroot, the only spa chef ever to be nominated for a James Beard award, will serve as consulting chef, while Jesus Gonzalez, who worked alongside Stroot for 14 years, will teach students how to cook inventive, healthful dishes like Baja paella, sea bass in rice paper, and pineapple-and-candied-ginger sorbet. The school’s approach, says Allegra, is to show that “food is not a recipe that you get out of a magazine,” but rather nourishment rooted in the natural world. Toward that end, students will pick the vegetables they’ll be cooking that day from the spa’s garden, and attend discussion groups led by nutritionists and food experts. Details: Weeklong visits, including classes, meals, accommodations, and ground transportation from San Diego International airport, start at $2,690 per person (800.443.7565, rancholapuerta.com). 64 |APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
Breaking ground at the school’s organic garden.
PHILO APPLE FARM Philo, California Over ten years ago, Sally Schmitt left her famous Napa Valley restaurant, French Laundry, in the hands of Thomas Keller and embarked on a new job: teaching cooking classes on her family’s biodynamic apple farm. Lessons take place around a big butcher-block table in her farmhouse kitchen. “My aim is to get people to use real ingredients, and do as little as possible to them. I know that’s been said 5,000 times before, but we really do,” she says. Using organic fruits, herbs, and vegetables as well as goat cheese straight from the farm, Schmitt teaches four different meals over the course of a weekend, beginning with a Friday night three-course dinner of, for instance, artichoke soup, baconwrapped scallops, and roasted pears served over cinnamon ice cream. Between meals, guests can tour the 30-acre farm, visit nearby wineries, explore the redwoods of Hendy Woods State Park, and unwind in one of the three cottages Schmitt has decorated with four-poster beds and claw-foot tubs. Scenes from Philo Apple Farm: guest cottages (top), a cozy bathroom (right), and interactive classes (above).
Details: Weekend classes—which can sell out a year in advance— start at $1,500 including lodging and meals, and run February through Thanksgiving (707.895.2461, philoapplefarm.com). PLENTYMAG.COM
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PHILIPKUTTY’S FARM Kumarakom, India When this sustainable island farm in the southern Indian state of Kerala began offering homestays in 1999, proprietor Anu Mathew realized her guests enjoyed more than just the moonlit boat rides on the lake, walks through the mango groves, and massages at the local Ayurvedic center. They also liked to hover in the kitchen, where her mother-in-law prepared red fish curries, shrimp masalas, and vegetable stews. “Many of our guests like to watch cooking, and they want to know how to make curry, so that is how we started this,” Mathew says of the farm’s informal cooking school. Each day, guests of Philipkutty’s lakeside villas can take a class with Aniamma Philip, or “Mummy,” who teaches the traditional foods of India’s southwest66|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
Philipkutty’s lakeside villas (above); a traditional meal (inset).
ern coast. Many of Mummy’s ingredients come from the mostly organic farm. The curry leaves and ginger grow just outside her kitchen door, and exotic fruits like the dark, smoky kokum just beyond. Mathew also leads tours of their tropical crops, and is always on hand to suggest a dozen other activities, from visiting local Hindu temples to spiking fresh jumbo prawns for the next day’s meal. Details: A $200-a-night stay includes three meals a day. Cooking classes are an additional $12 per person (+91 4829 276529, philipkuttysfarm.com).
BALLYMALOE COOKERY SCHOOL Shanagarry, Ireland
Students gather herbs in the traditional garden (above); one of the school’s signature dishes: poached pears (right).
In her thick Irish brogue, Darina Allen, chef and proprietor of the Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland describes her approach to food: “It’s very simple. We just cook from the farm and surrounding gardens according to the seasons—the way we’ve been doing for the past 15 years.” Her dishes really are as straightforward as she says. Grilled mackerel comes from the bay a mile away; winter stews are stocked with root vegetables, like Jerusalem artichokes, grown on her 100-acre organic farm; blackberries for summer compotes are picked from one of her 12 gardens; an Italian mousse-style ice cream starts with fresh cream from her Jersey cows and eggs from her free-range hens; and a local butcher provides pigs that students learn to use tail to snout. But Allen’s humble description doesn’t do justice to the breadth of activities Ballymaloe offers. At the farmhouse-turned-school, which is attached to a 14th-century Norman castle, foodies can choose from 12-week professional certificate courses, two to five days of intensive introductory classes, or daylong primers on forgotten skills such as foraging—all within walking distance of the 18th-century cottages that Allen rents out by the week. Details: Daylong classes start at $220; five-day courses are $1,086. Lodging starts at $37 per night, or $126 per week (+353 2 464 6785, cookingisfun.ie).
Showing how it’s done at Chiang Mai.
FOUR SEASONS CHIANG MAI Chiang Mai, Thailand There are dozens of cooking schools in Thailand, but only one Chef Pitak. The charismatic, multilingual chef was such an integral part of Alan Rosen’s trip to Chiang Mai, a cosmopolitan mountain town ringed by hill-tribe villages, that he plans on returning for a refresher course. “We ate at the best places in Thailand, and his cooking was the best Thai food we had,” he says. The setting is surely a perk: The thatched roof, open-air kitchen overlooks deep green rice paddies, and a tinkling, nearby waterfall outside completes the peaceful aesthetic. But it’s Pitak Srichan’s ability to teach novices technical dishes, like an intricate lattice of fried egg, that truly impresses. “He takes no shortcuts, and he doesn’t dumb it down,” says Rosen, who, in addition to preparing
prawn-and-papaya salad, roasted-duck curry, and classics like pad Thai, learned to muddle fresh lemongrass and galangal gathered from the resort’s organic herb garden. Each morning begins with a trip to the local market, where students can buy exotic fruits such as the pricklythorned durian and indulge in coconut rice pudding for breakfast. Over the following four hours, Chef Pitak guides them through a four-course lunch as they take in the scenery. Details: The culinary package is $675 per day with lodging, or $150 without (+66 53 298 181, fourseasons.com/chiangmai); nearby accommodations such as the Chedi Chiang Mai are available ($180 per night, gmhhotels.com).
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JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL Brasstown, North Carolina
The Folk School’s larder is stocked with wholesome ingredients (above); strolling in the organic garden (left); studying the fermentation process (below).
If somehow you missed (or miss) summer camp, the John C. Campbell Folk School is where you can make up for lost time. The 300-acre campus in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, complete with dorms, campgrounds, and a cafeteria, is a backwoods lab of forgotten skills like blacksmithing, weaving, and soapmaking. Its culinary program, one of the newest components of the 82-year-old school, has grown from a handful of classes in 1999 to its current roster of 43 offerings. “If you had told me the Folk School was going to be as big as it is today, I would have said you’re dreaming,” says Carla Owen, an instructor who has worked at the school since the ’70s, and now helps oversee the cooking classes, which cover everything from Scandinavian cuisine to chocolate making. She’s watched the on-site garden go from being chemically treated to becoming 100 percent organic, and has seen the importance of sustainability grow in each class. Milk from the cheese-making class, for instance, comes from a nearby dairy; the vegetables in the wintergardening class come from the instructor’s own garden; the sweeteners for Owen’s breadmaking class are local honey and sorghum syrup (a traditional Appalachian ingredient). The kitchen features a giant hearth that provides heat for the 18th-century cooking class, and a wood-fired brick oven where Owen bakes breads. If you’re game for more activities after class, you can learn English country dancing, quilting, or woodcarving, or simply walk the school’s scenic trails alongside wandering creeks and into the mountains. Details: Weekend classes, including dormitory accommodations and meals, are $384; weeklong classes are $792 (800.365.5724, folkschool.com).
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CHOICES
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SCOTT BARTLEET
Aggressively Passive
Strips of recycled barn wood are used as a textured screen (on the structure at right) for this hilltop perch.
A house near Aspen goes high-tech to ensure a climate-sensitive design entrepreneur anson fogel and architect scott bartleet are keen on defying expectations. When Fogel prepared to build a house on 4.5 acres in Carbondale, Colorado, he decided that 2,300 square feet would suffice. That’s an average size to most Americans, but puny in this wealthy resort area near Aspen, where 15,000-square-foot megamansions are typical. Meanwhile, Bartleet was tasked with creating a house incredibly well-adapted to the mountainous climate—even though the native Australian had lived in Colorado for only a few years. The Fogel residence was the first project for Flux Design Studio, which Bartleet runs with his wife, Lyndal Williams, from a converted Methodist church in the neighboring town of Basalt.
BY DAVID SOKOL
When Fogel approached Bartleet in 2004, he had already selected a spot on his land overlooking Aspen’s Roaring Fork Valley, and had a rough idea of its size and layout. “I started doing the design myself and then realized that artistically I needed some help,” Fogel recalls. “Especially with how the volumes sat on the site.” ☛ PLENTYMAG.COM
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choices | home
Clockwise from top left: The stairwell is enclosed in low-emissivity glass, which lets in light but keeps out heat; a deep overhang on the house’s south side protects the interior from harsh summer sun; architect Scott Bartleet chose rusted metal (no maintenance!) for the garage’s exterior.
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Showing respect for the landscape, Bartleet minimized the project’s footprint by designing a two-story home and delicately placing it alongside a small grove of piñon trees and centuries-old sagebrush. “It’s really about responding to the site and its variables, and that shapes the building,” Bartleet says of the approach. For example, he stacked the kitchen over the bathrooms, which allows the plumbing to work efficiently and to take up as little space as possible. Fogel, a die-hard techie (he owns ESC, a company that installs home audiovisual and lighting systems), collaborated closely with Bartleet, especially in the design of passive systems to minimize energy consumption. “We brought in weather equipment and tracked changes in the climate,” he says. The placement and direction of the house’s windows are the result of their research. “It’s purely a function of prevailing winds and
cross ventilation,” Fogel says. “On the upper level, where windows take advantage of convection, the data suggested we didn’t need as many as we thought.” The window placement, plus orienting the house to reduce exposure to direct morning and afternoon sunlight, made air conditioning unnecessary. Other design features also protect the house from temperature extremes. Structural insulated panels (SIPs) were used in lieu of traditional framing. Bartleet explains that in addition to their excellent insulating properties, SIPs are prefabricated in a factory according to construction drawings, thereby eliminating waste. Inside, the structural panels are further insulated by sheetrock. On the exterior of the building, different materials such as glass and wood define the various components of the house. The western elevation of the house features a screen of vertical strips of recycled barn wood. The space be-
home |choices Clockwise from left: The stainless-steel kitchen has views of the surrounding landscape; an open staircase allows light to filter through; recycled wood floors in the living room vary in hue and shading.
FOGEL CALLS HIS HOME “A LAB WHERE WE EXPERIMENTED WITH DIFFERENT APPROACHES AND TECHNIQUES” FOR GREEN BUILDING. tween the screen and the building’s exterior traps the sun’s warmth, yet allows too-hot air to escape naturally, instead of transferring the heat to the building. Fogel’s home is a media paradise, with a projector and drop-down screen, digital audio and lighting systems, and concealed
speakers. And yet, thanks to the house’s careful orientation, LED lighting, Energy Star appliances, and a high-tech building management system that adjusts heating according to weather conditions, “the home uses less energy than a small apartment,” Fogel says. He’s now installing a 4.2-kilowatt sys-
tem of solar panels that will produce enough energy to power his home year-round. Perhaps more importantly, Fogel is taking what he learned in the private sphere back to the office. Last year he founded a new business called InPower Systems, which provides climate data and energy mitigation analyses and installs renewable energy systems. Sound familiar? Fogel calls his own home project “a lab where we experimented with different approaches and techniques.” Now he’s selling his A/V clients, the owners of Aspen’s super-size houses, on technology that’s more exciting than surround-sound: photovoltaics, building management systems, geothermal heat pumps, and LEDs. The homeowners are biting. Fogel estimates that he’ll pimp these palaces with half a megawatt of renewable energy this year alone. PLENTYMAG.COM
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choices | home
Go ahead, hang ’em out—line-dried clothing lasts longer and smells sweeter.
Well Hung Clotheslines—a.k.a. “solar dryers”—are making a comeback BY JENNIFER ACOSTA SCOTT when i think of my childhood backyard—a large, rambling plot on the Alabama Gulf Coast—the first thing that comes to mind is the clothesline. A thick, green wire suspended between burly T-posts, the line was a focal point in the back half of our five acres. I can faintly recall dashing in and out of bed sheets as they flapped in the wind. But the years marched on, younger siblings arrived, and laundry eventually became an exclusively indoor event. The last time I saw that clothesline, it was nothing more than a pair of dilapidated posts, defeated by an almondcolored Kenmore and a box of Bounce. Since then, clotheslines have become a rare sight for me. But a new crop of sheetwashers is attempting to return those archaic “solar dryers” to the American backyard. 74|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
Armed with promises of fresher-smelling linens and lower energy bills, they trumpet the virtues of clotheslines—and warn that our “right to dry” is being slowly eroded. Skyrocketing electric rates and an interest in sustainable energy sources have created a “ripe audience” for clothesline use in recent years, says Alexander Lee, the founder of Project Laundry List (laundrylist .org), a Concord, New Hampshire–based group that promotes line drying. But Lee says some communities are discouraging would-be line dryers by crafting rigorous
covenants that outlaw the use of outdoor clotheslines. “We’re seeing it more, not only in townhouse developments, but in certain single-family home communities where they have homeowners’ association regulations,” Lee said. “Nothing can be seen from the streets, and all that.” He adds that the rules sometimes even carry over to solar-based electric or hot water systems. Fort Lauderdale resident Poppy Madden can attest to this. In both 2000 and 2004, Madden was ordered to appear at a hearing for violating a city ordinance requiring
ARMED WITH PROMISES OF LOWER ENERGY BILLS, A NEW CROP OF SHEETWASHERS TRUMPETS THE VIRTUES OF THE CLOTHESLINE.
clotheslines to be at the rear of one’s property. Madden maintained that her clothesline, located in her side yard, was less visible there than it would be in her backyard, which could be seen easily by boaters passing through the adjacent canal. “I don’t know why they insisted on having them in the rear,” Madden says. “So many houses around here back up to the water.” After two hearings, the city agreed with her, and she was allowed to keep her clothesline in place. Madden’s battle was aided by a Florida state law that prohibits restrictions on clotheslines and similar “energy devices based on renewable resources.” But residents in other states often aren’t as lucky. Only one other state, Utah, has a law on its books to protect line drying. In response, Project Laundry List maintains an online registry of communities and towns that restrict or ban the use of clotheslines, and features photo galleries with artwork illustrating the beauty of hanging laundry. The group has also tried its hand at lobbying: In 1999, members worked with former Democratic senator Richard “Dick” McCormack of Vermont to introduce the “Right to Dry” bill, which would have
limited the ability to ban clotheslines. (The legislation died in committee.) However, the organization’s chief objective is to provide information and dispel myths about line drying. In addition to savings on electric bills ranging from 6 to 10 percent, Lee says, drying clothes on a line preserves them and gives them a fresher smell. Even stiff fabrics like denim can be mostly dried outside, he adds: “You can just throw them into the dryer for a couple of minutes at the end.” Yet for all its benefits, a clothesline is still a rarity in the laundry world. So what’s standing in the way? It may be the need for immediacy, says Tor Allen, director of the Rahus Institute, a nonprofit group dedicated to resource efficiency. “We’re in this age of ‘I need everything done now,’” Allen says. “We have microwaves and everything is cooked in a minute. Line drying is sort of the slow-cook approach. It takes maybe a little extra effort, as opposed to just popping clothes in the dryer.” Madden has a more blunt outlook. “I think people are lazy,” she says. “It’s so much easier for someone to stand at the washing machine, which is right next to the dryer, put stuff in the dryer, push the button, and that’s it.”
DRYING IS THE SLOW-COOK APPROACH— ‘‘LINE IT TAKES A LITTLE EXTRA EFFORT, AS OPPOSED TO JUST POPPING CLOTHES IN A DRYER.” JUST HANGIN’ OUT Ready to kiss your dryer (mostly) goodbye? Check out these clothesline options. TRADITIONAL The oldie-but-goodie—two posts connected by pieces of rope or wire—is ideal if your wash loads are large and you don’t mind a permanent fixture in your yard. Components are readily available at most home-improvement stores; or check out clotheslineshop.com for an everything-included kit. DRYING RACK They won’t hold a full load of laundry, but these folding metal or wood racks can provide effective drying in inclement weather or yardless apartments. See models at abundantearth.com. UMBRELLA Made of folding aluminum parts, these upright units can be set up and taken down with a minimum of fuss. Perfect for small yards. Visit eclothesdryers.com to order.
No yard or floor space? This simple rack-and-pulley device allows you to hang your laundry from the ceiling for out-of-the-way drying. Available at the1898house.com.
PULLEY
It’s true that the average person unknowingly wastes up to 30 gallons of water every day. Pay attention to water usage, because the water you save today will ensure good rock skipping spots in the future. Like to learn more? Visit www.epa.gov/watersense
choices | culture Vet-safari participant Saskia Murray (left) and wildlife workers carry a tranquilized cheetah at a nature reserve in South Africa.
Goodwill Hunting Big game safaris swap rifles for tranquilizer guns BY KIERA BUTLER
if charlie irish is not the only stockbroker in Manhattan with a taxidermied javelina in his apartment, he is almost certainly the only one with a taxidermied javelina and an African nyala. Irish is 64, and to ask if he is an avid hunter begs a rhetorical question about the Pope’s religion. He has hunted game for his entire life, in many remote corners of the world. And the javelina and nyala are not alone in Irish’s home: Among other stuffed beasts, there is a red stag, an Arapara ram, an impala, a hartebeest, and a baboon that sits posed at a table, clutching a beer can. If you were to visit Irish’s apartment, the first thought to cross your mind would probably not be, “That’s nice, but where 76|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
are the elephants?” But the keen observer would notice that the African “big five” (elephants, lions, water buffalo, leopards, and rhinos) do not roam the otherwise teeming plains of Irish’s living room. “I don’t have any interest in killing the big five,” he explains. “They’re too pretty.” But a few years ago, Irish met research ecologists Steve and Michelle Henley, who run a branch of Save the Elephants, an unusual conservation nonprofit. The Henleys’ work is focused in the Timbavati nature reserve, deep in the bush of the northeast corner of South Africa. The Henleys invited Irish on a “green hunt”: He would have a chance to hunt an elephant—without killing it. As a concept, green hunting, sometimes
called eco-hunting, takes some getting used to. The basic principle: Accompanied by vets, game wardens, and researchers, the hunter stalks his prey. Once the animal is in range, the hunter takes aim and shoots it with a tranquilizer dart. During the 10 to 15 minutes that the animal is unconscious, the researchers and vets change its tracking collar, draw its blood, examine its teeth, and perform other research and veterinary procedures. The hunter usually has a chance to have a picture taken with the animal before giving it a shot to reverse the effects of the tranquilizer, then the team leaves, and (this is where it gets really surreal) the animal wakes up and walks away. The privilege of darting an animal does
culture | choices ORDINARILY YOU’D ‘‘NEVER GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO TOUCH A LION, LET ALONE LOOK IN ITS MOUTH!”
Charlie Irish poses with the elephant he darted.
not come cheap. At Save the Elephants, the hunt alone, not including the price of travel and accommodations, costs $12,500. But that money goes to fund the research projects and maintain the private reserve. The Henleys, who are married and met at a research workshop about savannah ecology in the late ’90s, study elephants’ movements. “There is an opportunity for this [practice] to be abused,” says Steve Henley. “Someone could have a property of five acres and one elephant, and dart that elephant every other weekend, and the elephant would be traumatized. We believe green hunting must be driven by the research and not by the economics.” Mac Hunter, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Maine, agrees. While he likes the fact that eco-hunting generates interest in wildlife—and income to support it—he worries about the potential for it to go wrong. “This is a practice that has impacts,” he says. “It is probably not totally benign.” He also wonders whether the money generated by green hunting is best spent on research and veterinary procedures. The big five have already been the subject of countless studies. The greatest threat to wildlife in Africa right now, Hunter says, is habitat encroachment. “If there’s any money for philanthropy here, it’s preferable that it would go toward habitat protection,” he says. So far, green hunting has not been as popular as the Henleys had hoped it would be. In the five years since they came to Save the Elephants, only seven people have gone on green hunting safaris. Steve Henley thinks the cause might be a perception problem of sorts. ILLUSTRATIONS BY JASON LEE
“We’re called ‘Save the Elephants,’ and maybe that puts hunters on the defensive,” he says. “All the hunters we’ve had have been completely enthused about it. But some hunters think it would lack a sense of completion. To them, actually killing the animal is important.” For those who are not so excited about shooting an animal (even knowing it will get up and walk away a few minutes later), there are also vet safaris, on which a trained professional tranquilizes the animal, and then allows participants assist with research tasks while the animal is unconscious. Dr. Peter Brothers, the veterinarian who runs Brothers Safaris in Pretoria, South Africa, hosts such safaris for both veterinary students and tourists. Brothers works with researchers all over South Africa. “We screen the projects very carefully,” he says. “We assess why it’s being done and how it’s being done, and if I consider it a good ethical reason, we might get involved.” For tourists, a Brothers custom-made vet safari can cost between $2,000 and $4,000, accommodations included. Like the Henleys, Brothers puts part of the income toward the research. This is not everyone’s cup of tea. But for those who dream of getting up close and personal with leonine molars, a vet safari is about as good as it gets. One Brothers vet-safari alumna, 30-year-old Saskia Murray, gushed, “Ordinarily you’d never get the opportunity to touch a lion, let alone look in its mouth!” She rapturously recalls luring a lioness and waiting for her to approach as darkness fell in the bush. “There were all these noises: squealing wildebeests, frogs, and birds, and eventually, we heard crunching noises. Very carefully, Peter shined the light down and darted the lion.” The group then helped change the animal’s tracking collar and looked at its teeth and claws. Then they watched from afar as the lioness woke up. “It was absolutely incredible,” she says.
HOW TO HUNT GREEN Eco-hunting is gaining popularity as an alternative to traditional big-game hunting in Africa. Here’s how they do it at Save the Elephants (savetheelephants.org). 1: Shortly after the hunter arrives at the Timbavati Nature Reserve in South Africa, research ecologists Steve and Michelle Henley explain the research project that he or she will be participating in. This way, the hunter understands the reasons behind the hunt. 2: On the day of the hunt, the hunter goes out with researchers and other trained professionals. The team locates the elephant, and the hunter shoots the animal with a dart filled with a morphine derivative. 3: After about ten minutes, the tranquilizer renders the elephant unconscious. The team then starts its work— changing tracking collars, administering medicine, and performing other scientific and veterinary procedures. 4: The hunter has his or her picture taken with the elephant. 5: The hunter injects the elephant with a “reversal drug.” A short while later, the elephant wakes up and walks away. 6: The elephant resumes its life in the wild—and the hunter can check in periodically with the Henleys to see how the animal is doing.
Unlike Murray, Irish was not particularly interested in the research—for him, the draw was the excitement of the hunt, and the knowledge that “from an ecology standpoint, you’re pretty much helping the elephant.” Still, he has often found himself wondering what Classic Charlie, the elephant he stalked and darted three years ago on his eco-hunt, is up to. “I talk to Michelle from time to time to see how he is,” says Irish. “I heard he’s doing fine.” PLENTYMAG.COM
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choices | health
Plastic Oh-No A chemical found in everything from nail polish to shower curtains may be linked to health problems BY EMILY GERTZ as THE GRADUATE once predicted, plastics have become ubiquitous. Unfortunately a common chemical additive of this nowindispensible material, called phthalates, is raising some concerns. While recent research suggests that these chemicals may be dangerous to human health, a little knowledge can go a long way in helping to weigh the risks and make safe choices. Phthalates (pronounced “thalates”) are plasticizers that are commonly used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics pliable. A few of the products made from PVC softened with phthalates include shower curtains, floor tiles, and window blinds. Phthalates have been found in some soft plastic children’s toys, such as teethers and pacifiers (despite a much-touted voluntary phase-out several years ago), as well as some sippy cups and nipples for bottles. While plastic food containers typically have a recycling number embossed on the bottom—PVC is #3 —many other products may only note that they’re made of vinyl on their packaging. Phthalates are sometimes added to other common products as well, such as caulk, paint, cosmetics, and toiletries. They make nail polishes flexible and durable, help lotions penetrate more deeply into the skin, cause fragrances to evaporate more slowly, and enable colors to last longer. Food wrap made of PVC is still used in food-service settings, like deli counters, although it’s largely been phased out of consumer products. PVC is also used to make soft plastic medical equipment, like bags for blood and intravenous fluids, tubing, and more. And if you happen to have an invitingly soft “jelly rubber” or “cyberskin” erotic toy in your bedside drawer, chances are it’s made from vinyl that’s been softened with phthalates. Clearly, phthalates are very useful chemicals, but here’s the bad news: In some studies on rats and mice, exposure to high levels of phthalates damaged the liver, kidneys, and reproductive system. Reports published in 2002 and 2003 suggested that minute levels of phthalates were linked to DNA damage in human sperm. A 2005 study by researchers at the Harvard 78|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
Medical School, two Harvard hospitals, and the Centers for Disease Control found that infants treated in intensive care units with equipment containing phthalates had high levels of the chemical in their bodies. And in another 2005 study, University of Rochester researchers found that exposure to everyday levels of phthalates in utero affected the reproductive development of infant boys: Mothers with higher exposures had sons with certain genital irregularities, as well as smaller penises than those born to mothers with the lowest exposures. These boys were also more likely to have an undescended testicle. Phthalates generally enter the body via inhalation or absorption; heat, agitation, and age can accelerate their escape from plastics. That newcar smell everyone loves? It comes from phthalates. A car dashboard made with PVC can heat up to 200 degrees on a hot, sunny day, and UV rays accelerate outgassing. Phthalates are also lipophilic, or attracted to fats. Fat present in blood can actually draw them out of IV bags, for example, and carry them into the body. So how much exposure is too much? Unfortunately, no one is quite sure what the safety threshold is. The amount of phthalates you might take in from any one source—an application of nail polish, the outgassing from your vinyl beach chair—is probably very small. But little research has been done on what our cumulative exposure may be from all the phthalates in our homes, workplaces, and schools. Given some of the alarming research findings of the past few years, though, why aren’t phthalates restricted until we know more? “There’s a misunderstanding the public has that when they go to the store and buy a product, someone has tested it and deemed it safe,” says Joel Tickner, Sc.D., an environmental health professor at the University of Massachusetts– Lowell, but “the sad reality of our current system is that there’s no government requirement to demonstrate safety before chemicals are used in products.” Generally, under federal laws, a substance has to be proven harmful to be restricted or banned, rather than proven safe before use. Not only that, but it must be shown to be
MINIMIZE YOUR EXPOSURE TO PHTHALATES READ THE LABEL
LOOK IT UP
GO FOR E.U. STANDARDS
SWITCH MATERIALS
Avoid products with DBP (dibutyl phthalate), or some variation of the word “phthalate”; synthetic fragrances are also likely to contain phthalates. The terms “all-natural” and “organic” sound nice but mean little.
Research products and find safer ones with the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database (ewg.org). See the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ list of phthalate-free products at nottoopretty.org.
Brands with Germany’s certified natural cosmetics seal, like Dr. Hauschka, are free of phthalates. Products made by Weleda and Aubrey Organics are also certified, though the packaging doesn’t always say so.
Reheat and store leftovers in glass or ceramic cookware. Buy PVC-free toys for your tot. Choose cloth curtains in lieu of vinyl shower curtains or blinds, and pick safe, ecofriendly bamboo or cork instead of vinyl flooring.
harmful enough that the benefits of regulating Lunder, senior analyst with EWG, “but tests it significantly outweigh the costs of the regulawe’ve commissioned in the past, and general tion to industry. By contrast, in the European knowledge, indicate that many more use Union, chemicals generally need to be proven phthalates and don’t put them on the label.” safe before they’re approved for use, a standard This is because of a loophole in FDA regulacalled “the precautionary principle.” Two kinds tions: Fragrances are considered part of trade of phthalates commonly used in cosmetics here secrets, so companies are not required to rehave been banned by the European Union. veal every single ingredient in them. But many U.S. advocates are working to Many safe-cosmetics advocates want Eurochange the situation, despite the lack of gov- pean manufacturers to sell their phthalate-free ernment oversight. A coalition called Health formulations to U.S. consumers as well. If Care Without Harm is fighting for safer althey can do it cost-effectively in Europe, they ternatives to PVC in medical gear. The group reason, they can do it here. Industry, however, scored a success last year at its annual con- resists. John Bailey, Ph.D., executive vice presference when two top medical-device manu- ident for science at the Cosmetic, Toiletry and facturers announced new lines of equipment Fragrance Association, contends that current made without PVCs or phthalates. And U.S. laws adequately protect consumers, and there’s activism on the personal-care-product that phthalates in cosmetics are safe. Recent front as well. In 2002, a coalition called the research implicating phthalates in hormone Campaign for Safe Cosmetics had 72 proddisruption fails to balance the hazard versus ucts tested, including lotions, deodorants, the risk, says Bailey, who compares phthaland hairspray, and found that 52 contained ate use to driving a car: Sure, moving across phthalates. In 2003, the landscape in a the nonprofit Envimetal box at 65 miles AND KEEP IN MIND. . . ronmental Working an hour is inherently Plastic bottles marked with recycling symbol Group created the dangerous, but the #1 are made from polyethylene terephthalSkin Deep Database, actual probability that ate (PET or PETE). Containers made from PET are often used for products like water, which rates 15,000 you will get hurt in an ketchup, milk, and vegetable oil. Despite personal-care prodauto accident is very the “phthalate” in its name, PET is chemiucts based on the small. Similarly, Bailey cally different from PVC and is not associingredients listed says, while phthalates ated with phthalate leaching. Some experts still say it’s best to avoid reusing disposable on their labels. The can be hazardous, in PET containers, and to avoid heating foods group found 89 nail typical daily uses they in plastics. It’s also worth noting that some polishes and nail present little risk. plastic food containers may contain a subtreatments that listed For many of us, it’s stance called bisphenol-A (BPA), which, like phthalates, has been implicated as an enphthalates, says Sonya going to come down to docrine disruptor. If you want to limit BPA deciding for ourselves: exposure, one easy way is to minimize or Do we consider phthalavoid using polycarbonate plastic bottles (marked with #7). ates safe enough just because they haven’t been definitively proven dangerous? Or would we rather follow our own precautionary principle and avoid them until they’re proven safe?
choices | retreads
Out of the Woods
At the Bronx Zoo, a CitiLog employee loads felled trees, which will be made into a reception desk and conference tables for the zoo.
Urban loggers find new uses for old landscaping BY ALISA OPAR stubby warmbold is an old hand at logging. When he was a boy growing up in Canada, his family owned sawmills, and for the last 16 years he’s run a logging company. With his long beard and penchant for flannel shirts, he looks the part. But Warmbold isn’t your typical logger. Instead of felling trees in forests, his company, CitiLog, takes wood cleared from parks, roadsides, medians, and other urban and suburban areas and makes it into lumber, which then becomes everything from flooring to furniture. “It’s good common sense,” says Warmbold, who has run the business with his wife, Maria, out of Pittstown, New Jersey, 80|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
since 2000. “If you’ve got a tree you’ve got to take down, use it.” In the past, the walnut, oak, cherry, and other hardwoods that CitiLog salvages would have been turned into mulch or firewood, or even sent to a landfill. The company takes trees that may have been killed or damaged by storms, insects, disease, or natural causes, or that must be taken down because of construction projects. Warmbold and his crew of 15 Amish craftsmen do everything from harvesting the trees and hauling the timber (often with horses, because they’re low impact) to sawing logs, and building made-to-order products, all
using eco-friendly materials such as nontoxic glue. Clients include homeowners, Yale University, the Pentagon, and the Bronx Zoo, where Warmbold recently removed logs that will return to the zoo as a reception desk and conference tables. Similar enterprises have been popping up across the U.S. and Canada, as well as Brazil and Australia. Such businesses not only prevent perfectly good trees—many of which are hardwoods that are hundreds of years old, and larger and denser than forest trees—from going to waste, but they also tap into a source of old-growth hardwood that leaves forests untouched. According to
RESOURCES Before you hire an arborist to cut down that dead tree in your yard and turn it into mulch, consider calling an urban logger who can transform it into a desk, chair, or whatever strikes your fancy. Here’s a sampling of urban forest recyclers throughout the country. CitiLog Pittstown, NJ 908.735.8871 citilogs.com Horigan Urban Forest Products Glenview, IL 847.729.1023 horiganufp.com Metro Hardwoods Cleveland, OH 216.651.2345 metro-hardwoods.com Metro Hardwoods Maple Grove, MN 763.425.9293 metro-hardwoods.com The staircase and flooring in this private residence are made from CitiLog’s stockpile of salvaged wood.
the U.S. Forest Service, if the city trees cut down each year were all sawed into boards, they would produce 3.8 billion board-feet of lumber, or almost 30 percent of the hardwood lumber churned out annually in the U.S. Building with urban lumber also imbues the results with a sense of history, says Bruce Horigan, who launched the Chicago-based Horigan Urban Forest Products with his wife in 2003. Last summer, a windstorm knocked down trees in Chicago’s Jackson and Washington parks, both designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who is perhaps best known for designing New York City’s Central Park. The city gave the trees to Horigan, who is making them into lumber at his sawmill. “I can’t swear that any
Urban Hardwoods Seattle, WA 206.766.8199 urbanhardwoods.com
individual tree was planted by Olmsted,” says Horigan. “But these trees were put there during the time that he did the landscaping. They’re a part of history.” In some cases, the practice can also provide opportunities for social good, too. CitiLog, for example, offers job training for disadvantaged young people. Through their nonprofit, CitiWood Works, the Warmbolds are building a sawmill in Washington, D.C., where 18- to 26-year-olds will be trained and licensed to saw the district’s wood. “It will be a green fabrication shop, run on biofuel, making a green product, where people will be able to learn a working trade,” says Warmbold. “It’s good for the planet, and it will give these young people opportunities they might not have otherwise.”
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food | choices
Slow Food Nation Eco-friendly chefs take eating well to a whole new level John Stewart, co-chef and co-owner of Zazu and Bovolo in Sonoma County, California, is so serious about his handmade salumi that he tattooed a butcher’s cheat sheet on his arm.
BY AMY ZAVATTO
from west coast bastions of the organic movement to small farming communities in the heartland, diners around the country are becoming more aware that what we eat and where it comes from affects the world around us. This awakening comes thanks in part to green-minded chefs, who have become stewards of good food—good to eat, good for you, good for the environment, and good for the economy. With their farm-focused menus, eco-friendly practices, and strong ties to everyone from the farmer to the hungry diner, these foodie forerunners are the bright lighthouses who guide us to a land where a meal’s origins matter as much as how it tastes. Here are eight toque-wearing, torch-carrying culinary leaders, ready to inspire your appetite for carefully crafted cuisine. ☛ PLENTYMAG.COM
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choices | food JOHN STEWART AND DUSKIE ESTES CHEFS AND OWNERS, ZAZU AND BOVOLO SONOMA COUNTY, CA
MARC MEYER CHEF AND OWNER, COOKSHOP NEW YORK CITY
KATHY CARY CHEF AND OWNER, LILLY’S LOUISVILLE, KY
It ain’t easy being green in a concrete jungle, especially one that slows down for no chef. Marc Meyer, though, is willing to step back and make sure his American/Mediterranean menu features sustainable ingredients and that the restaurant itself respects eco-friendly practices. He has outfitted Cookshop with bamboo furniture and a recycled wood-beam ceiling and stocked it with eco-friendly provisions, like straws made from cornstarch. He also tips his toque to local growers by featuring them front and center on his menu.
Kentucky is well known for its beautiful horses, its pure limestone water source, and the bourbon that is made from the latter. But ask anyone around Louisville, and they’d add one more thing to that list: Lilly’s. More than a source of delicious sustenance, Kathy Cary’s eclectic eatery is also a place of local-product pride. Having grown up on a nearby farm herself, Cary works directly with organic and sustainable Kentucky farmers—around 12 during peak season, including Duncan Farms, whose rabbit she crafts into croquettes drizzled with a sauce made from Woodford bourbon (there are almost 40 labels on the bar list). “I’m a firm believer in the dirt,” she says, “and planting the seeds and watching them grow.” With that in mind, she began Seed to Table in the early ’90s as a tribute to her farming grandmother and former sous chef, both of whom died within days of each other. Through the program, Cary teaches inner-city kids not only how to grow and cook their food, but also that what goes in the earth is as important as what goes into their bodies. 84|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
Husband-and-wife chef team John Stewart and Duskie Estes are less interested in what’s easily available than in what’s good and good for you. “We grow up to 30 percent of what we serve, and emphasize the local farmer,” says Estes. The committed environmentalist also uses whatever scraps she can’t compost as feed for their chickens, lays old cardboard boxes in the garden as a natural weed prevention, and uses sustainable practices to grow grapes for Zazu’s very own house wine. Stewart, on the other hand, focuses his attention on the multitude-of-patience task of creating salumi—cured, preserved pork, handmade in the Italian tradition. He uses only naturally-raised, free-range, hormone- and antibiotic-free heritage breeds of pork, and the process (which he learned from Mario Batali) can take years. Recently Stewart and Estes went on a tour of butcher shops in Italy to learn more about the technique. At first, many of the old proprietors didn’t take the young American couple seriously—until John rolled up a sleeve and revealed his tattoo of a butcher’s eye view of a pig. “That was the pass code,” says Estes.
HUGO MATHESON AND KIMBAL MUSK CHEFS AND OWNERS, THE KITCHEN BOULDER, CO When Hugo Matheson says, “I’m not the most motivated person,” you truly should not believe him. Since he and Kimbal Musk opened The Kitchen three years ago, they’ve served three meals a day, seven days a week at the 80-seat eatery—an exhausting schedule for restauranteurs of any stripe. But the two are also committed to using the very best sustainable, local sources, and while it might save time to, say, condense suppliers, you won’t find either of them doing this. Anytime. Ever. Local sourcing is the driving force behind The Kitchen. But their commitment doesn’t stop there. They recycle fryer oil into biodiesel, use biodegradable straws and paper products, and get their electricity via wind power. Sure, taking these steps can add extra dollars to The Kitchen’s bill every month, but Matheson believes it saves so much more in the end: “The big question I always ask myself is: What is the true cost of food?”
food | choices TONY MAWS CHEF AND OWNER, CRAIGIE STREET BISTROT CAMBRIDGE, MA They say you can never go home again, but after cooking everywhere from Singapore to Santa Fe, Tony Maws knew the only place he wanted to open his French bistro was back in his hometown of Boston. At the same time, sustainability and local sourcing were important. The result is a menu that changes daily depending on what ingredients are freshest, best, and closest to home, like organic carrots grown in sandy New England soil, which Maws insists are the most delicious on the planet. “I don’t spend money on pomp and circumstance; I spend it on, say, the best lamb you can have,” he says. His meats are all-natural and hormonefree, and about 80 percent of his wine list comes from small, sustainable vineyards. “There’s something really important about terroir and place, and we’re not afraid to stand on a soapbox and say we believe in that.”
BARB LAVIGNE AND GEORGE WILKES OWNERS, THE ANGRY TROUT CAFÉ GRAND MARAIS, MN Their proximity to the shore of Lake Superior allows Barb LaVigne and George Wilkes to get lake herring, trout, and whitefish fresh daily, and serve it grilled, fried, or smoked in this 50-seat spot, which has been serving diners since 1978. Their menu also includes locally raised pork, chicken, and sweet corn, as well as organic Minnesota wild rice, but the two source more than their food locally: all of their electricity comes from wind; their organic cotton linens are sewn by a local seamstress; and they are members of a community-supported agriculture farm. Says Wilkes, “We take a total view of everything that we use or waste.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF REBECCA BOUSQUET (TOP RIGHT)
DAVE TALLENT CHEF AND CO-OWNER, RESTAURANT TALLENT BLOOMINGTON, IN Being Midwesterners, chef Dave Tallent and his wife, pastry chef Kristen Tallent, were all too aware of the irony spreading across their home state of Indiana. You can drive for miles and see one of two things: acres upon acres of farmland, or strip malls featuring fast food. So when they opened their farm-focused eatery in 2003, they wanted to do more than make good food: They wanted to encourage local farmers to contribute. Their menu boasts locally raised produce, duck, lamb, and beef, and Tallent made a deal with area farms to keep growing and supplying him year-round by using naturally heated greenhouses. Those relationships have benefited both the restaurant and the growers. “Now they ask what I’d like and they’ll say, ‘I used to grow that and no one bought it…’ It’s pretty cool!”
i
VISIT PLENTYMAG.COM FOR RECIPES FROM THESE ECO-FRIENDLY CHEFS.
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choices | food
Beyond Bread
Mary’s Gone Crackers offers a variety of gluten-free snacks.
Why are gluten-free products crowding supermarket shelves? BY CHRISTY HARRISON walk into any natural-foods store these days and you’re likely to find a special section stocked with gluten-free foods: pasta made from rice, teff-flour cookies, quinoa-and-amaranth crackers. Even major supermarkets now carry alternative goodies containing no wheat, barley, or rye—and with the gluten-free products market growing at about 17 percent per year in the U.S., you’ll soon see many more such items. A rash of new books from major publishers—with titles like 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes (Wiley, fall 2008), Gluten Free, Quick and Easy (Avery, summer 2007), and even Living Gluten-Free for Dummies (For Dummies, 2006)—are slated for release or are in stores now. So what on earth is gluten? And why are people avoiding it? Gluten is the protein found in wheat, barley, and rye—as well as several less-common related grains—that gives them the ability to stick
together and form doughs and batters. Recent research indicates that at least one in 133 people has celiac disease, a genetic condition that makes them unable to digest gluten. For celiac patients, eating foods with gluten can damage the lining of the small intestine, leading to digestive discomfort, inflammation, and malabsorption of nutrients—which in turn can trigger other health problems, such as osteoporosis, skin rashes, and infertility. Doctors speculate that there are even more undiagnosed celiacs out there, and that others may be sensitive to gluten without having full-fledged celiac disease. “Some people just feel better when they don’t eat gluten,
and that may mean that they don’t digest it very well,” says Joseph Murray, a doctor and celiac disease researcher. Symptoms of gluten intolerance are similar to but less severe than celiac symptoms and can include diges-
Get Juiced Spring is in full flower, bringing with it warmer days, ballgames, barbecues, and picnics. You’ll need cold refreshments with all that running around, but let’s be honest: Beer can’t meet all your hydration needs. Then again, water gets boring fast, and most commercially produced juices are cloyingly sweet, nutritionally laughable, or both. So, we found five fruit juices and juice blends that are sure to please your taste buds and quench your thirst. These organic options are also healthier than your average store-bought refreshers, so drink up.—C.H.
SANTA CRUZ ORGANIC LIMEADE $2.59 FOR 32 OZ., scojuice.com
ADINA LIME MINT MOJITA $3.49 FOR 14 OZ., adinaworld.com
WALNUT ACRES ORGANIC MANGO NECTAR $3.69 FOR 32 OZ., walnutacres.com
RW KNUDSEN ORGANIC PEAR JUICE $5 FOR 32 OZ., knudsenjuices.com
ITALIAN VOLCANO BLOOD ORANGE JUICE $5.69 FOR 25 OZ., deliciousorganics.com
Lightly sweet and nicely tart, this juice was one of the few that our tasters agreed was balanced enough to drink straight-up without risking sugar shock. It could also be mixed with seltzer to create a refreshing, light drink with just a hint of citrus.
This beverage is exactly what you would hope for from a virgin mojito: a fresh, spearminty nose, with subtle citrus notes and only a tiny bit of sugar. It also has an herbal tea-like quality that made us feel healthier with every sip (a lot more than we can say for the non-virgin mojitos we’ve had).
Can’t find a fresh mango? Here’s the next best thing: a nectar with a thick, velvety texture, and an intense, deep flavor to match. Since mango is naturally very sweet, some of our tasters said they’d prefer it mixed with seltzer.
We tasted a number of pear juices, but only this one made us feel like we were biting into a fresh, ripe pear. The flavor edges slightly toward apples at the finish. It’s sweet but not cloying, making it a good alternative to often-saccharine apple juice. We also liked Knudsen’s Mango Nectar, which is juicier and less sweet than the Walnut Acres version.
The acidic, spicy tang of this thick juice left us no doubt that it’s the real deal. With just a trace of sweetness and a mouth-puckering finish, it’s a great choice for sipping over breakfast, but also works well in cocktails, where its distinctive blood-orange color really stands out.
86|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
PHOTO COURTESY OF BEN ADAMS
food | choices tive discomfort and inflammation. Free, Quick and Easy, says she used to know all One reason that gluten intolerance is on the the company founders “on a first-name basis,” rise may be growing dietary concerns among but that’s changing—Gluten-Free Pantry, for the public. “The medical community is slowly instance, was recently bought by the Canadian becoming more aware of the problem, but that company Glutino, one of the world’s largest pales in comparison to the public’s awareness gluten-free food manufacturers. of how food affects us,” says Stephen Wangen, Whether suffering from celiac disease or not, a naturopathic doctor based in Seattle. Recent the gluten-free community feels very strongly fads like low-carb and raw-food diets require about its cause. Many people report feeling people to cut out wheat and other grain prodmore energetic and alert when they don’t eat ucts; some experts think these diets may have gluten—perhaps in part because eliminating led some people to realize they felt better when wheat and related grains means cutting out they avoided gluten. The market for gluten-free many high-glycemic foods, such as packaged goods is expanding among non-celiac sufferers, snacks and fast foods. Danna Korn, the author too, as a growing number of people remove gluof Living Gluten-Free for Dummies, argues that ten from their diets even without a diagnosis. everyone could benefit from giving up wheat Developing gluten-free crackers, cookies, and its relatives. “My son has celiac disease, and other products involves much trial and but I’m not gluten-intolerant; still, I wouldn’t error. Specialty flours made from gluten-free touch gluten if you paid me—not after the refoods like rice and corn, or “heritage” grains search I’ve done,” she says. “Our systems were like sorghum and quinoa, must be coaxed not designed to handle gluten.” That may be into forming dough, which rarely bakes with an extreme view, but it seems to be catchthe same texture as wheat flour. So a binding ing on. “There are a lot of people who avoid agent, like xanthan or guar gum, is added to wheat simply because of the health benefits,” give gluten-free baked says Joseph Pace, the goods the same elaschef and owner of RiCELIAC OR INTOLERANT? ticity and feel as those sotteria in New York Celiac disease—and its less serious relative, gluten intolerance or sensitivity— that contain gluten. City, a celiac-friendly are both classified as food intolerances, The catch is that evrestaurant that also distinct from anaphylactic food allergies. ery single ingredient sells a line of prepared The former cause more subtle, chronic has to be processed in gluten-free foods. physical problems, while the latter produce a violent reaction that can involve swelling, a gluten-free facility Despite the rising hives, or difficulty breathing. to be considered unpopularity of the gluYour doctor can test you for celiac contaminated, because ten-free diet, most docdisease or gluten intolerance. Testing even a trace of wheat, tors say it isn’t for everyinvolves taking a blood sample, which will be screened for the presence of specific barley, or rye can trigone. For one thing, it antibodies that indicate a reaction to gluten. ger a reaction in glucan be hard to obtain Don’t change your diet before getting ten-sensitive people. adequate amounts of tested, however; otherwise the results may be inaccurate. Many of today’s big certain nutrients—like names in alternativefiber and B vitamins— grain goodies are (or began as) small, indewithout wheat and its cousins (in their wholependent companies whose owners often had grain form, at least). Moreover, it’s hard to truly personal reasons for launching their product stick to the diet, and it’s expensive to buy glulines. “When I went to parties with tables full of ten-free items, which often fetch a premium of cheeses and dips, there wasn’t a cracker or bread more than 300 percent. stick I could eat,” writes Mary Waldner, coAnd let’s face it: Eating processed founder of the company Mary’s Gone Crackers. foods—be they gluten-free cookies or vegan Another manufacturer, Gluten-Free Pantry, was ice-cream sandwiches—isn’t as healthy as founded in 1993 by celiac sufferer Beth Hillsticking to whole, unrefined fare. So while son, who was dissatisfied with the gluten-free gluten-free goodies won’t solve the nation’s baked goods on the market. Carol Fenster, a obesity or diabetes problems, they may be cookbook author whose titles include the fortha crucial step toward better health for many coming 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes and Gluten people—maybe even you.
Gluten-Free Sugar Cookies These little bites are packed with buttery flavor and have a wonderfully light texture. INGREDIENTS
¾ lb. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces 1 ¼ cups confectioner’s sugar 3 cups sifted gluten-free flour mixture (we use the gluten-free all-purpose flour mix from Bob’s Red Mill) 1 ¼ tsp. xanthan gum (available in the baking aisle at most natural-foods stores) 1 tsp. salt 1 ¼ tsp. vanilla PROCEDURE
➊ In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. When mixture is smooth and velvety, add vanilla and blend well. ➋ In another medium-sized bowl, mix flour, xanthan gum, and salt. ➌ Slowly add flour mixture to butter mixture, stirring to combine, until you have a big, sticky ball of dough with excess flour dusted over the top and sides. ➍ Use your hands to fold in the excess flour, kneading to combine. (The dough contains no gluten, so don’t worry too much about overkneading.) ➎ Roll dough into several logs of about an inch in diameter, wrap in wax paper, and refrigerate for 3 hours or up to 2 days. ➏ Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two or three baking sheets with butter, or line with parchment paper. ➐ Remove dough logs from refrigerator, and place on a flat surface that’s been dusted with gluten-free flour. Using a sharp knife, cut dough into 1/8-inch slices. Place on baking sheets. Lightly flatten the edges of each cookie with a fork. ➑ Bake until cookies are golden brown, about 10 to 15 minutes. Cool and serve as is, or frost them before serving (see plentymag.com for our maple-vanilla frosting recipe). PLENTYMAG.COM
|APRIL / MAY 2007|87
the last word
Uphill Both Ways Sometimes a walk in the park is no walk in the park BY SASCHA ZUGER
as the mother of a small child, I decided to give up my car in favor of a more economical and ecologically sound mode of transportation. Saving a few bucks and my son’s future environment by walking seemed like a reasonable decision. However, I didn’t anticipate that the perfect preschool for my son would be more than four miles from our home. Between parking fees and rising gas prices, it occurred to me it would cost an extra hundred dollars a month just for the school trip. In a year, this could pay for one of those island-vacation packages from the newspaper’s travel section. So with no more investment than a decent pair of running shoes and a stroller, both of which could be put to good use in general, I thought I’d defy physics and walk myself to the Bahamas. My city had constructed a 16-mile recreation path, allowing a myriad of bicycles, rollerbladers, and jogging strollers to get from one place to another. Using my trusty online map, I found the path that ran right in front of our house and also came within a half of a mile of the school. It looked lovely, running along the river and passing through four different parks. Fresh air and exercise on an enjoyable, scenic walk? My plan was perfect. What the map did not show was that in our otherwise flat town, there was one giant hill that the path went up and over in order to reach the other side. The first time my son and I came to the hill, I was sorely tempted to take the five bucks we’d saved on the car trip and bribe a
passing cyclist to tow us up. I had to lean at such an angle to inch the stroller forward that I worried I would end up flat on my face. The vision of the stroller running over my prone body as it bounced back down the incline was chilling as I stared at the rough asphalt a mere foot from my nose. I believe at one point I panicked and yelled for my son to toss anything overboard that weighed us down. Sippy cups, crayons, and diecast metal cars flew past in my peripheral vision and littered the path behind us. It was tragic, but the sacrifice had to be made. The downhill trip was no easier. The smell of burning rubber wafted up as I skidded down, wearing the soles of my tennis shoes to nothing from the friction. While terrifying to me as the pusher (or rather, the desperate hanger-on) of the stroller, it did save the price of admission to the local theme park’s roller coaster for my son, who laughed his head off and stuck both chubby arms straight up in the air the whole way down. He was even more delighted when he thought my subsequent huffing and puffing was a rendition of the Three Little Pigs. The rest of the trip was a dream. It was warm and balmy; the ducks and geese swam past, followed by little lines of their babies; and my son’s never-ending questions about things we passed led easily to discussions about nature. We talked about the rivers flowing to the ocean, covered a rudimentary lesson on plants versus people in regard to carbon dioxide and oxygen produc-
tion, and discussed the fact that, no, if he were to cut mommy in half, he could not tell how old I was by counting my rings. The stroller was equipped with an integrated speaker system, but I didn’t need it for entertainment. My son played his own version of car bingo, keeping score of track-suited grandpas and bikers in spandex. I decided the trail of Cheerios we passed on the ground must be some other kid’s Hansel and Gretel–style insurance that his mom wouldn’t lose her way home—and designed a stroller with GPS and a solar-powered fan in my head. I’d make millions. In short, the experiment was a success and took only a bit over an hour. And the time difference between vehicle ride and walk could have been reduced, had my son not needed to stop in the schoolyard to run around and breathe life-giving carbon dioxide on every tree. I had to stop him when he started crawling around trying to feed the grass as well, for fear he would hyperventilate. So, giant hill notwithstanding, we are now converted and official pedestrian commuters. Of course, as we live in the far North, the real test will come next winter. Not only will our daily trip to school mean we have to walk four miles, uphill both ways…it will be in the snow. Sascha Zuger is a former dolphin trainer and schooner captain. She lives in the Catskills, where she writes children books, among other things.
Got an eco story to tell? E-mail us at lastword@plentymag.com. 88|APRIL / MAY 2007|PLENTYMAG.COM
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