Victory gardens: a model for a more sustainable food future

By Adrian Higgins, Published: May 25

Since Britain’s Prince Charles came to town this month to talk up the vital need for more sustainable food systems, another event pressed the message home for me: exploding watermelons.

In China, the land of lethal milk, toxic pet food and tainted honey, we now have cucurbits that have spontaneously detonated after farmers sprayed them with a growth hormone. Read the label, guys!

The industrialization of agriculture is one thing; the globalization of it is something else. The closer I am to the source of the veggies I eat, the better I feel about myself and the planet. The most satisfying food on my plate is the carrot or pea that I knew as a seed. In my garden, I’ve been harvesting fattening heads of lettuce this month along with great quantities of kale, all grown with a small investment of money — a few dollars for seed — and the delightful duty of raising these plants. I’ve just put in some tomatoes I started in March and sowed some parsnip seed for a fall harvest. The beans and cucumbers will be close behind. The cycle spins merrily.

I don’t mention this to be smug (well, perhaps a little) but to reinforce what Prince Charles was exhorting at Georgetown University at the Future of Food conference, organized by Washington Post Live. His message, shared by a whole modern movement, is that our system of industrial agriculture is ultimately bad for our planet, if not our bodies. The conference speakers and panelists want to see a shift to organically grown food that is raised far closer to market. For them, this invariably comes down to a much larger network of small, local and regional farms and cooperatives supplying supermarkets and consumers directly through farm stands, farmers markets and community-supported agriculture cooperatives.

What seems to be flying under almost everyone’s radar is the difference millions of home vegetable gardens could make. This is a missed opportunity. If there were some almighty crisis that imperiled our food supply — exploding watermelons? — many of us have the potential, at least, to sustain much of our needs. The model exists in the victory garden that emerged in World War I and reached its zenith in World War II, when vegetables grown by homeowners and other amateurs supplied 40 percent of the nation’s needs.

Many of these 20 million gardens took the form of community gardens on vacant city land or at highly visible sites such as the White House or New York City mansions. Apart from the two-year-old vegetable garden at the White House, many of these urban farms and community gardens have either survived or are being reinvented in our time in cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. One of the conference speakers, Will Allen, has established successful inner-city farms in Milwaukee as a national model.

As laudable as these programs are, the movement needs to tap into every cross section of society, not least the suburban gardener. “It doesn’t seem like the suburban homeowner is being included in this,” said Laura Lawson, author of “City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America.” Victory gardens were successful because everyone was in it together, and the movement was something positive in the face of a crisis. The current debate, she says, “is not joyous, it’s reactionary.” Lawson chairs the landscape architecture department at Rutgers University.

In terms of the home victory garden, an exemplar persists in a fascinating wartime instructional film by Uncle Sam, which can be seen at www.archive.org/details/
victory_garden. Here the Holder family somewhere in northern Maryland (real or fictional, we wonder?) is shown creating a quarter-acre victory garden.

On several levels the film is sorely dated; on others it is not, offering valid and honest practical advice. If such a victory garden were planted today, it would be smaller, the soil would be mulched, with more compost and fewer and safer pesticides. We’d have more productive varieties, perhaps more trellising and a greater emphasis on fresh multi-seasonal veggies and less on canning.

I’d like to think we would still have as much teenage gusto to keep it humming along, though obviously there were aspects of gardening then, as now, that were burdensome. Indeed, soon after the war ended, most victory gardens quickly vanished.

This may not have been due to sloth as much as a new patriotic imperative. “The whole focus of the country turns to consumption,” said Amy Bentley, author of “Eating for Victory.” “Automobiles, houses, appliances. That whole ethos is directly contradictory to the previous ethos of saving and doing it yourself.”

And the gardening, when it occurred, wasn’t always the Catoctin cornucopia captured in the propaganda film. A lot of folks tried it but failed, especially in urban areas where the farming touch was already lost. But generally it worked, in part because there was food rationing and because people realized they could make a difference. “It was successful because it was needed, but it was also a concrete, visceral way to contribute to the war effort that wasn’t just sacrificing,” said Bentley, who is also an associate professor of food studies at New York University.

I think there will come a time when we will need victory gardens on every block, in a post-industrial, post-global planet, when advancement is measured in localizing our world, not expanding it. It will be medieval, in the best sense, but with law and order and antibiotics.

I think we are already moving toward that place. People such as Rosalind Creasy are showing us that fruit and vegetable gardens can be beautiful while making a statement. The lawn as landscape icon was a declaration that you didn’t have to farm anymore. Perhaps we can replace it with a front-yard veggie garden that declares the age of the lawn over. What a proclamation that would be for thrift, self-sufficiency, horticultural skill, concern for the environment and the world we pass on.

Prince Charles said the other day that “we have to put nature back at the heart of the equation.” I think we should put every gardener at the center of it, too.

Follow @adrian_higgins on Twitter for updates on gardening and other cosmic events.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/victory-gardens-a-model-for-a-more-sustainable-food-future/2011/05/18/AGsc2MBH_story.html

Paying For Trouble - When You Think What You Buy Is Safe

She had her house sprayed for fleas, and then the trouble began

By Sue Eisenfeld, Published: May 23

Last winter, despite a low-level warning beacon in my gut, I hired a company to apply a chemical flea treatment in our house. Not wanting to waste time on home remedies that might not work, I thought, “Let’s just get it over with.”

I made this decision even though I’d been a “ban lawn-care pesticides from our campus” activist in college and had spent nearly my entire professional life as a communications consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency, writing materials for the public about environmentally sound behavior.

As an environmentalist, I am an organic vegetarian. I avoid processed foods with ingredient names I can’t pronounce, use reusable tote bags, avidly recycle and drive a low-emissions car.

Yet, on the eve of my decision, I looked at my poor kitty. Despite applications of topical anti-flea drops, he’d been licking himself raw during the past four months. I had to take some kind of action, and fast.

The treatment seemed reasonable: An aerosol flea spray would be applied directly to the floor; it wasn’t some kind of flea bomb or fogger. I assumed that if there were risks or warnings or precautions I should know about, the pest control company, which we’d used to treat the exterior of our house against ants, would tell me. I decided to trust “the system” — which, I reasoned, was created to protect consumers, after all.

The next morning a man came to our house with two aerosol cans of a pesticide and targeted our hardwood floors and rugs, as well as the concrete floor in the basement. The pesticide — in the form of a mist designed to fall quickly to the floor — contained chemicals to kill insects and interrupt the life cycle of fleas.

The technician didn’t provide any instructions other than to take the cat and stay out of the house for three to four hours until the product had dried.

Six hours later, my husband and I returned home and found big wet drops all over the floors. When we called the pest control company, the manager was perplexed. He recommended that we mop up the residue, then throw away the sponge.

While my husband did the mopping, I wrote an instant message to a friend: “This is a disaster,” I typed. “Don’t worry about it,” he wrote back. “It’s no big deal.”

Strange symptoms

The next morning, I awoke to a headache in the back right quadrant of my skull. I felt a bit woozy and off balance and figured I was coming down with a cold. By evening, my arms were buzzing with an odd, electric energy. My husband and my cat were fine.

The next day, my left arm and leg felt icy hot. And my torso reacted to cold as if it were being stung by yellow jackets.

In another 24 hours, my fatigue was so intense that even if the house had been on fire, I couldn’t have peeled myself out of bed. A day later, my right side lost much of its strength. I struggled to brush my teeth, write, type and lift a fork. Standing up in the shower and lathering my hair became things I could no longer do at once.

Two trips to the emergency room ruled out a stroke and a brain tumor. But an MRI scan showed a lesion on the spinal cord in my neck. This scar or defect, I was told, had chewed away some of the protective myelin that coats nerves and transmits messages in the nervous system. This damage was scrambling messages being sent throughout my body about temperature and pain and strength and balance.

Process of elimination

A week after my symptoms began, a neurologist diagnosed the problem as transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord. Until my spinal tap and blood test results came back, he couldn’t tell me the cause.

Transverse myelitis can be the result of a viral infection such as chickenpox, shingles, herpes, flu, HIV, hepatitis A or rubella. It can also be caused by abnormal immune system reactions, and it’s sometimes a complication of syphilis, measles or Lyme disease.

The neurologist said my symptoms could also be caused by multiple sclerosis, lupus, thyroid disorder, tuberculosis or other diseases.

“What about pesticide exposure?” I asked.

My doctor listened to the story of the chemical flea treatment and the coincidental timing of the onset of symptoms, and then rushed out of the room to call the manufacturer of the chemical spray. When he came back, he reported that the company’s medical staff said no one there had heard that their product had caused such symptoms.

“It’s concerning, however,” my doctor said. “And I sure wouldn’t use that stuff myself.”

He put me on a megadose of intravenous steroids for five days, then steroid pills for a week. My icy-hot sensation began to fade, and my strength began to return, although a full recovery took several months.

Soon my test results started streaming in. Lyme disease: negative. Lupus: negative. Meningitis: negative. Tuberculosis: negative. Cancer cells: negative. But four tests involving the cerebrospinal fluid that are often used as indicators of multiple sclerosis came up positive — stunningly unpleasant news that made my mind swirl.

“We can’t know for sure about multiple sclerosis,” my neurologist explained, “until you get a follow-up MRI in four to five months, to see whether the lesion is still there or if there are any new ones.” A definitive diagnosis, he explained, requires either two “episodes” like the one I had experienced, or two or more lesions on the spinal cord. I would now just have to wait.

Seeking information

My recovery involved physical therapy, occupational therapy, exercise and rest. My mental recuperation required research. I wanted to know more about this pesticide.

First I found the pesticide label online, with its information about using the product properly. What this told me was that the technician had not given me enough information. The label instructs users to cover all food-processing surfaces, utensils and exposed food prior to spraying. We hadn’t been told to do anything like that — to remove the dishes sitting out on our drying rack, to cover our cutting board or the fruit and vegetables on our counter.

The label directs pesticide applicators to avoid thoroughly wetting the surfaces being sprayed. Yet there had been those drops on the floor six hours later. It also says that the sprayed area should be ventilated after treatment. News to us.

I then contacted the pest control company and the manufacturer to report the incident. The pest control company said that an experienced technician had done the work. The manufacturer declared that information about any reports of health effects was proprietary.

So I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the EPA, the federal agency responsible for regulating pesticides. Although incident reports made to the manufacturer may be considered proprietary, the manufacturer must give them to the EPA, which also collects incident reports from the public and from other government agencies and nongovernmental organizations.

A few weeks later, I got my response: an 82-page report from the EPA that made it clear to me that MS wasn’t the cause of my symptoms. The report showed that from 1992 until early 2010, 156 “minor” human incidents had been reported to the agency concerning the product used in our house, as well as 24 “moderate” and 515 “major” human incidents.

Among the complaints in the moderate and major medical incidents were dizziness, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, muscle weakness, tremors, abdominal pain, disorientation, stumbling, coma, seizure, liver failure, lethargy, numbness, blurred vision, chills, blood in the urine, memory loss, migraines, inability to walk and heart attack.

A second FOIA request about three of the active ingredients in “my” pesticide revealed that thousands of medical complaints had been filed about these chemicals when they were used in other pesticide products.

Four months after my neurological episode, when I was finally able to walk in a straight line and not have my right hand buzz every time I bent my head toward my chest, I had another MRI. As I had expected — after weeks of follow-up neurological studies, blood tests and second opinions — the possible MS diagnosis was thrown out. My spinal cord lesion — attributed to, as my neurologist put it, “an autoimmune response to pesticide exposure” — had vanished.

At home, I threw away our conventional cleaning products and purchased all-natural cleaners. I canceled our quarterly outdoor pesticide treatment against ants. I bought essential-oil bug spray for summertime mosquitoes. I returned to working on the book I had just started to write and the new career I had launched.

I could have left it at that: gratitude, a new beginning, a renewed commitment to health. But I knew something more needed to be done to prevent incidents like mine — or worse — from happening to others. So here’s what I learned:

Consumers must receive more information about the pesticides being used in their homes. And they need regulatory backup protection.

If the company I dealt with had been required by law to show me the label information or read it to me aloud like a Miranda warning, I would have put away the apples and tomatoes, covered the cutting board and dishes, and, later, opened the windows and set up fans.

Similarly, if, before treating my house, the pest company had been required to provide me with the EPA’s Citizen’s Guide to Pest Control and Pesticide Safety — much as contractors, home sellers and landlords are required to give occupants certain brochures about the hazards of lead-based paint — I might have been encouraged to evaluate less-toxic alternatives or ask more questions.

If the label information had provided directions for contacting my state pesticide regulatory agency to report misuse or problems, I might have called soon after my problems surfaced. The agency could have sent an investigator to my house in Virginia to collect evidence to determine if the pest control company had broken any laws.

Finding pesticide residues on a food preparation surface or on a cat’s water bowl “would hang an applicator,” one state investigator told me. Not obeying the label instructions is a violation of federal and state law, and in Virginia, the company could be fined up to $5,000 for this violation, a penalty that could motivate it to train its technicians better and provide homeowners with more information.

Beyond that, it’s time to improve the system for regulating pesticides. Congress and other policymakers should reform the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1947 and the EPA regulations that implement it. Pesticide manufacturers, in performing mandatory safety studies before their products are allowed on the market, should be required to test the combined effects of multiple pesticides and the effects of their pesticides combined with chemicals that people are exposed to each day, such as plastics and drugs.

Manufacturers should also be required to tell the EPA and consumers what the “inert” or “other” ingredients are that can make up 95 percent of a pesticide product: Some of these substan-ces can be even more toxic than the active ingredients.

The federal pesticide law or EPA needs to better define what kinds of detrimental effects are unreasonable for people to suffer. Currently, if a pesticide performs its intended function without “unreasonable adverse effects” to human health or the environment when used according to label instructions, it is allowed on the market. But the law never defines “unreasonable.” It says only that to determine “unreason­able risk,” EPA must take into ac­count “the economic, social, and envi­ronmental costs and benefits.”

Finally, EPA should be required to assess whether any “green” products can achieve the same results as pesticides, with less risk. The federal law should require an assessment of such alternatives as part of the pesticide approval process, eventually restricting the use of certain chemicals as safer approaches and technologies become available. This idea would be a new way of thinking, but it is time for the outdated regulatory approach to pesticides to move into the future.

My decision to use a chemical pesticide in my home was a moment of weakness, a test of blind faith in a system that was supposed to protect me from harm. No one knows why I was affected and others in my household weren’t. Thankfully, I am completely recovered.

Yet, the desire for quick, no-fuss ways to get rid of bugs will never fade. Without additional protections, unwary consumers will continue to turn to chemical products they assume are safe. They will find that they may be protected from bugs — but not from harm.

Eisenfeld is a writer and editor in the Washington area. This article was excerpted from the May issue of Health Affairs and can be read in full online at www.healthaffairs.org.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health/she-had-her-house-sprayed-for-fleas-and-then-the-trouble-began/2011/04/21/AFmjC49G_story.html

Solar Church In DC

Congregation is first black church in D.C. to be powered by solar energy

By Darryl Fears, Published: May 3

A historic black church that has sat on the same corner in LeDroit Park for 99 years has become the first African American church in the District to rely on renewable solar energy for electrical power.

Florida Avenue Baptist’s installation of 44 solar panels was hailed at a ribbon-cutting Tuesday by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and other government officials as a breakthrough in the black community, where the clean-energy divide mirrors its well-known high-tech digital divide with the white community.

“This is an important first,” said Jackson, whose agency recently started a faith-based initiative to increase clean-energy awareness among religious groups. “They’re saying: We’re going to take the lead in helping African American homes to become energy efficient.”

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Earl D. Trent Jr., said the panels’ installation, by a North Carolina-based company in March, was important not only because the church will save money on its $3,000 monthly electric bill from Pepco but also because it will reduce “dirty” coal-fired energy and enable him to establish a “green ministry” that could awaken churchgoers who know little to nothing about clean energy and its benefits.

African Americans tend to live in older, less energy-efficient homes equipped with older appliances and, therefore, have higher energy bills.

According to “Energy Democracy,” a 2010 report by the Center for Social Inclusion, African Americans spent an average of $1,439 on electric bills in 2008, more than what Latino and Asian Americans spent, and significantly higher than what white Americans paid.

“We want to be a model for green energy,” Trent said in an earlier interview. “I’ve gotten calls from pastors who want to find out how they can do this,” he added, raising his hope that the renewable-energy divide can be bridged.

African American churches have historically led social change in black communities, raising awareness of civil rights in the past and now, possibly, environmental justice, Trent said. Helping to lower coal-energy production, even marginally, at power plants is a symbolic step in a nation where, he said, many black people live near such plants and their smokestacks.

“African Americans have more sources of pollution in their neighborhoods than others,” Jackson said, standing on the roof of the church near Howard University Hospital as the sun beat down. “We have mercury, neurotoxins building up in our bodies . . . mothers pass it to children. We have . . . developmental disorders. All that comes back to this,” she said, pointing to the row of solar panels.

“I think it’s an extraordinary thing,” said Vernice Miller-Travis, vice chair of the Maryland Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities. “For me, this is a big story, even if it’s just one church. You know how black churches are. If one pastor does it, the others have to do it because they don’t want to be outdone.”

When ministers inquire about getting panels, they’ll learn that they’ll have to spend green to go green.

At Florida Avenue Baptist, which has 500 members, the cost was $60,000. With prayer, and 12 members of the flock who were willing to invest money in exchange for Solar Renewable Energy Certificates, the cost was overcome.

The certificates are a kind of energy credit that companies such as power plants buy to sidestep government regulations and penalties for producing too much pollution.

The idea to go solar came to Trent through Gilbert Campbell III, a co-owner of Volt Energy, a North Carolina clean-energy company with an office in Washington. Campbell, a Howard University graduate who met Trent years earlier through his father, a pastor, had a proposition.

“I want to share with you the benefits of the church looking at solar,” Campbell recalled saying in December. “You have an opportunity to educate younger students in the church,” he said. “There’s a value associated with that.”

Volt Energy helped Florida Avenue Baptist set up a business, allowing it to make the investment and receive the certificates. The investors recouped $18,000 within 60 days from a federal tax credit that for-profit entities receive for making investments in renewable technology.

Volt Energy also customized a curriculum for the church, teaching energy efficiency, recycling, and the how-tos of using energy-efficient light bulbs and reading energy bills to children.

Last week, Pepco turned on the power generated by the panels.

The church is expected to save 15 percent, about $450, on its monthly bill, Campbell said. More money will probably be saved after an energy audit of the church and the installation of energy-efficient doors, windows and light fixtures, he said.

The church plans to eventually install a monitor outside the sanctuary so that its members can see the amount of energy being produced and the money being saved, Trent said.

“They’re excited,” he said. “They can’t wait to see.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/african-american-church-in-dc-is-first-to-be-powered-by-solar-energy/2011/05/02/AFt4vdiF_story.html

Electric Vehicle Nay-Sayers

More of the negative view:


U.S. unlikely to reach goal of 1 million electrics on the road by 2015, report says

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 1, 2011; 8:59 PM

President Obama's goal of putting 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road within four years is unlikely to be met because automakers are not planning to make enough cars due to uncertain consumer demand, auto industry leaders concluded in a report being released Wednesday.

The finding is based on the manufacturers' announced production numbers and an analysis of consumer demand.

The first two plug-in cars from major manufacturers, the Nissan Leaf and the Chevrolet Volt, went on sale recently, garnering widespread attention for the energy-efficient vehicles.

But the panel of industry experts who authored the report concluded that expanding sales within four years to meet the milllion-car goal is improbable.

"There is a big challenge in going from marketing the Leaf or the Volt to early adopters to selling them to mainstream retail car-buyers," said John Graham, dean of the school of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, which conducted and funded the 80-page study. "Until then, the automakers' production plans will be quite cautious."

The study panel was made up of a Ford executive, a federal energy scientist and representatives from an environmental group, academia and an industry research group. Input was also received from Nissan and General Motors.

In his State of the Union address last month, Obama said he is aiming to get 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

"With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015," he said.

The federal government is already offering incentives as high as $7,500 for consumers to buy plug-in cars and putting up $2.4 billion for battery and electric-car manufacturing.

But even with that encouragement, the public's adoption of electric vehicles could be slow.

The $32,780 Leaf and the $41,000 Volt cost far more than a comparably sized car with a gas engine, which typically sells for $20,000. The battery range of the Leaf, which is all electric, is less than 100 miles, and places where batteries can be replenished are sparse at best. Also, it can take hours to recharge.

As a result, many automakers have balked at making the investments to mass produce plug-in vehicles.

"When you start to aggregate the automakers' announced intentions, it's difficult to get to 1 million by 2015," Graham said.

The two leaders, by far, are GM and Nissan.

GM has announced it will produce up to 45,000 Chevrolet Volts in 2012.

Nissan has indicated it will sell about 25,000 Leafs in the United States this year and is building a Tennessee plant that it says can manufacture 150,000 a year.

But under existing laws, sales for both companies could drop after each one sells 200,000 plug-in cars, because at that point the $7,500 federal tax-credit incentive for purchases expires. New bills in Congress would lift the cap on the tax incentive from 200,000 to 500,000 per manufacturer.

Although skeptics of electric cars have questioned the value of the government's role in encouraging their adoption, automakers and environmentalists have been pushing for more federal incentives for consumers and the construction of recharging stations.

Robbie Diamond, president of the Electrification Coalition, agreed that consumer demand under current federal policy will remain too weak to meet the goal.

"It's hard to see how we get to 1 million vehicles with current policy," he said.He added that new incentives will create more demand. "If 1 million want to buy electric cars, the automakers will make them," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/01/AR2011020106455.html