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Where
do you find a family-operated small farm in the year 2000? Why,
on the Internet, naturally.
It's all about
connections. When I discussed the idea of doing an article about
organic versus synthetic or genetic food production, a friend of
mine suggested I talk to a farmer. Not just any farmer, but a woman
who grew up in the family farming tradition.
Not just any
woman farmer, either. She turns out to be versed in the history
of foods and the current trends in agriculture, as well.
Julia Biales
allowed me to interview her on such wide ranging topics as current
concerns with genetic alteration of our most basic foods, to self
sufficiency for the urbanite with a green thumb. Witty and intelligent,
Julia gives one confidence in the future of farming for the coming
millennium.
Robert:
Hi Julia, tell us about your involvement with family farming.
Julia:
I have a family farm in the Adirondack mountains, much like
the one I grew up on, where I grow locally adapted plants for the
food service trade and for people with food sensitivities, and of
course, for our own use as well.
We give tours
demonstrating no-till farming, permaculture, cloning, and how to
select and save seeds adapted to particular growing conditions --
in our case high and cold.
We organize
our off- time around meeting up with other small- land holders,
home schoolers, touring other people's work, going to college and
working on degrees.
Our farm is
open to the public, and we hold classes regularly on the latest
techniques. We freely share seed stock, knowledge, and have participated
in inner city garden programs. We are involved in the organic gardening
community. I write.
One of the
most pleasurable things I do is show people how raising a small
garden, with hand tools and easily available supplies, can produce
an important part of a person's healthy diet at low cost. With a
little effort, hobby and pleasure gardens can reap real exercise
and nutritional benefits.
Robert:
It sounds as though farming is your life. Tell us a bit about your
background, if you would.
Julia:
I'm of mixed races and mixed cultures: Jewish, Gypsy, and Mongol,
two generations of war baby. My father was Hungarian, and born during
World War I conflicts. He got involved in the Hungarian uprising.
He eventually
came to the United States, where he taught gymnastics to upper class
New York City girls. He ran off with his drinking buddy's teen age
daughter.
They didn't
know much about the country. They moved to Watertown, New York,
unprepared for the deep cold and harsh conditions. They eventually
settled in an area where a large proportion of the people are Native
American. The Native Americans helped them out enormously and provided
an accepting culture for their (Native American featured) kids.
I left, and
then moved back, to raise my own family. Change the particulars
and you get the background of most of the family farmers I know
-- freethinkers for generations, involved in and opinionated about
politics, religion, and other issues they believe in, more than
most people I've met. And, I tried all kinds of lifestyles before
coming back to farm.
Robert:
Family farming in the age of giant "agrifactories" is a risky occupation,
isn't it?
Julia:
Family farmers are far more accepting of fear within themselves,
and capable of handling life within the parameters of managed risks,
than most people I've met. My family is no exception.
Being willing
to family-farm today, in the era of agrifactories, is living your
life for your beliefs, and that typifies those who start up or remain
on small-holdings farms. I wouldn't be at all surprised if, years
from now, groups of us were seen starting another Amish-Mennonite
type group, taking, as will fit, from today's culture but not open
to everything.
Like the Amish,
we are living the life we would like to. We take vacations not to
get away from our jobs, but to learn and grow, and meet up with
like minded people. It's interesting talking with people who don't
farm, who go on "play" vacations.
I was talking
with someone about going to a Magician's convention and learning
more about that craft, and about being able to socialize with other
performers, and she said, shocked, "But don't you ever just *quit*?"
Well, no. I love what I do.
Robert:
It sounds as though you certainly have a full day. Have you formed
opinions regarding genetic manipulation of food sources?
Julia:
The problem of unintended consequences looms in my mind. Take wheat.
This plant has three parents -- three separate groups of seven chromosomes.
Durum wheat and the older grains have only one or two types of gluten,
so they don't rise well, but a proportion of people with wheat intolerance
can eat these without trouble. Add the extra set of DNA and you
have two molecularly different types of gluten, and a lot of it.
You can pop a handful of triploid wheat berries in your mouth, chew,
and blow bubbles like bubble gum!
Robert:
Which do you see as representing the best hope for providing
an adequate local food supply for the Third World in the future:
Organic production
methods?
Synthetic
foods?
Genetically
altered foods?
Julia:
Actually, more pavement is the answer. Most famine today is
caused by failures of distribution, exacerbated by wars and hatred.
But to your
question:
* Organic
production methods?
We're learning
so much about how to improve species quickly. Teaching people to
clone for themselves is a way of saving on seed costs -- if you
take a snip from an indeterminate tomato plant you can keep that
plant alive and going pretty much forever, just keeping that bit
in water and feeding it over the winter, and taking cuttings from
it to plant out in the garden, for example. Selecting seeds from
the best of your crop allows for continual improvement in your gene
line.
* Synthetic
foods?
Technically,
I'm not strictly organic in practice. I have asthma and use an inhaler.
If I could go without, I would, but it's medically necessary at
this time for me. I'm not going to risk my health on ideals. Farmers
in Europe also use this sort of technique on their fields -- when
needed, only as needed, using synthetics to build up humitic nutrients.
I don't do this myself but I don't need to. It may be that there
are ways of balancing the two approaches into something less doctrinaire
and more productive.
* Genetically
altered foods?
Dr. Kelsey
and Dr. Borlaug fight it out in my mind every time I choose a new
seed or try a new technique. Where do you draw the line between
potential benefits and unknown harm?
Although I
disagree with him on some important points, Norman Borlaug is among
my role models.
Robert:
On what point do you most agree?
Julia:
I agree with Norman Borlaug that we can indeed feed the world, and
feed far more people than we have now, on less land with less labor,
and that expanded knowledge will be the key. I agree that roads
and contacts with other cultures are the key to world peace and
to ending world hunger. The lack of infrastructure in Bosnia and
in Africa have a lot more to do with starvation than do particular
crops.
Robert:
On what do you disagree with him?
Julia:
I strongly disagree with him that cultural stagnation can be addressed
by bringing in new genomes alone.
I strongly
disagree (to the point of anger) that there should be a different
safety standard for poor people and crops than for rich people,
and that those who are opposed to the biotech crops are doing so
out of callous indifference to the poor -- check out this month's
Reason Magazine for his current rant.
Robert:
Finally, would you like to offer any information or opinion
which you feel is pertinent to the discussion of organic vs synthetic
or genetically altered foods?
Julia:
The new developments are coming too fast and happening too carelessly.
We grow enough food now to feed all of us but political barriers
create starvation, in developing nations leave us dependant on agribusiness.
It took some
incredibly good fortune, and a whole lot of looking, for me to find
independent technologies that I could learn to use for myself; to
do what the big seed companies couldn't do -- create strains for
my plot of earth specifically.
We don't need
more "big brains," we need better trained, more independent farmers.
In particular, we need women farmers.
I've worked
in inner city areas showing how, even in the middle of an urban
area, a ten by ten plot can produce valuable food in a small amount
of time with low tech tools.
I've worked
with rural people, showing them how to use readily available techniques
to keep a garden going longer, grow better safer crops, and preserve
these crops for easy and delicious meals.
Skip a couple
of television shows twice a week and you can grow for yourself;
save money, while losing a little wieght, by way of a change of
lifestyle.
Economic liberty
can be as easy as ten by ten square feet by one hour a week by a
few dollars of supplies, beating the stock market at its best. All
you need to do is know how and do it.
And more people
would love to know how.
What we are
willing to trade for the very real risks is the time to be a family.
To get to know each other, to be free to make our own working hours.
Probably, the sweetest result is to be able to live alongside your
children, and your family.
I've probably
had more time with my husband in our ten years together than my
grandparents did in sixty years of marriage. My kids don't see me
as someone from another generation, they see me as like themselves,
like they will be and I know, really intimately know my family as
they know me. Never mind quality time, we've shared so much of what's
really mattered to each other. We are all here for each other in
work, in play, and because there's no 'boss' to pay besides ourselves
and no commute, we have far, far more free time.
Free time,
control over our lives and our choices, you don't get to live your
life over again. I'm more than willing to take on some controlled
risk to live the life I've dreamed about -- Little House on the
Prairie, real time.
Copyright
© 2000 Robert Marcom All Rights Reserved
Robert
Marcom is the Moderator of NetAuthor (www.netauthor.org), Vice
Chairperson of Eguild (www.eguild.org) and author of A Voyage
Through The Cosmos and The Earth Rocks!
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