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October 11, 2011
· Foreign insects invade US post 9/11
· China strives to plough a new furrow
· Bill signed to aid Calif. farmworkers
· Smarter toxins help crops fight pests
· Popularity of crop swaps is growing
Foreign insects invade US
(Associated Press) FRESNO, Calif. — Dozens of foreign insects and plant diseases slipped undetected into the United States in the years after 9/11, when authorities were so focused on preventing another attack that they overlooked a pest explosion that threatened the quality of the nation's food supply.
At the time, hundreds of agricultural scientists responsible
for stopping invasive species at the border were reassigned to anti-terrorism
duties in the newly formed Homeland Security Department — a move that
scientists say cost billions of dollars in crop damage and eradication efforts
from
The consequences come home to consumers in the form of higher grocery prices, substandard produce and the risk of environmental damage from chemicals needed to combat the pests.
An Associated Press analysis of inspection records found that border-protection officials were so engrossed in stopping terrorists that they all but ignored the country's exposure to destructive new insects and infections — a quietly growing menace that has been attacking fruits and vegetables and even prized forests ever since.
"Whether they know it or not, every person in the country is affected by this, whether by the quality or cost of their food, the pesticide residue on food or not being able to enjoy the outdoors because beetles are killing off the trees," said Mark Hoddle, an entomologist specializing in invasive species at the University of California, Riverside.
Homeland Security officials acknowledge making mistakes and say they are now working to step up agricultural inspections at border checkpoints, airports and seaports.
While not as dire as terrorism, the threat is considerable and hard to contain.
Many invasive species are carried into the
Plants and cut flowers can harbor larvae, as can bags of
bulk commodities such as rice. Beetles have been found hitchhiking on the
bottom of tiles from
Abrupt shift post-9/11
Invasive species have been sneaking into
But the abrupt shift in focus that followed the attacks caused a steep decline in agricultural inspections that allowed more pests to invade American farms and forests.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, The Associated Press obtained data on border inspections covering the period from 2001 to 2010.
The analysis showed that the number of inspections, along with the number of foreign species that were stopped, fell dramatically in the years after the Homeland Security Department was formed.
Over much of the same period, the number of crop-threatening pests that got into the U.S. spiked, from eight in 1999 to at least 30 last year.
The bugs targeted some of the nation's most productive
agricultural regions, particularly
A look at the damage:
No fewer than 19
Mediterranean fruit fly infestations took hold in
The Asian citrus
psyllid, which can carry a disease that has decimated
The sweet orange
scab, a fungal disease that infects citrus, appeared in
Chili thrips, rice
cutworms and the plant disease gladiolus rust also got into
The erythrina gall
wasp decimated
Forests from
In all, the number of pest cases intercepted at
Spiraling costs
Once the pests get established, costs can quickly spiral out
of control. The most widely quoted economic analysis, conducted in 2004 by
For instance, if the destructive infection known as citrus
canker were to become established in
"It's all about early detection, and it wasn't their
priority at the time," said A.G. Kawamura, secretary of the California
Department of Food and Agriculture from 2003 through 2010, who was sharply
criticized for the spraying in
Image: Agriculture specialist John Machado, with U.S. Customs and Border
And it's not just humans who pay the cost. Wildlife and beneficial insects die when fields are sprayed.
The problems began when the Homeland Security Department absorbed inspectors who worked for the Department of Agriculture. The move put plant and insect scientists alongside gun-toting agents from Customs and Border Protection and resulted in a bitter culture clash.
Agriculture supervisors were replaced in the chain of command by officials unfamiliar with crop science. Hundreds of inspectors resigned, retired or transferred to other agencies. Some of the inspectors who remained on the job lost their offices and desks and were forced to work out of the trunks of their cars.
It took authorities years "to learn there's an important mission there," said Joe Cavey, head of pest identification for a USDA inspection service. "Yeah, maybe a radioactive bomb is more important, but you have to do both things."
At the time of the merger, at least 339 of 1,800 inspector positions were vacant. By 2008, vacancies had increased to 500, or more than a quarter of the original workforce.
Profound effect
The effect of the exodus was profound. One East Coast port
director told a congressional investigator that she was left without a single
agriculture inspector. An airport technician in
One agriculture inspector who defied authority was demoted,
despite being credited with saving
While working at an international mail center outside
He showed it to a supervisor, who, according to the Congressional Record, replied: "Look, we are here to protect the country from acts of terrorism. What do you expect me to do?"
The inspector sidestepped the supervisor and called the USDA. The resulting investigation ended with arrests and the incineration of 4,000 potentially infected trees that had been growing at an unregistered nursery in a prime citrus region.
But within a month, the whistleblower was demoted to search through the dirty laundry of passengers returning from foreign trips.
Government officials now acknowledge the problems and say
they began taking corrective steps after Sen. Dianne Feinstein of
"That was a huge moment for everybody," said Kevin Harriger, Custom and Border Protection's acting executive director of agriculture programs. "We took it on the chin and said, 'You're right. We heard you. We've been remiss in several key areas.'"
Critics in Congress say serious damage has already been done.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, a Hawaii Democrat and member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, said the improvements aren't happening fast enough. He's asked the Government Accountability Office to reopen an investigation.
"When change like this happens, you hope people get it right the first time," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, a California Democrat who also investigated the problems. "But if they don't, it's not them who pay the price. It's society that does."
China
(Asia Times) – The world's major seed companies are trying to outrun skepticism and bad economics to dominate the world's seed supply with expensive proprietary products. Billions of dollars and the future of the world's food supply are at stake.
The Chinese government is caught between its desire to radically increase agricultural output and its fear of growing concerns by citizen activists over its lackadaisical enforcement of its food safety responsibilities.
As
In a mere five years, XY335 has emerged as the dominant corn
variety in north
Now
Maybe that would open the door to new GM strains of corn
seed; and maybe that would shut the door on calls to investigate the allegation
that GM corn is already growing in
A pound of rice from the field is a pound of rice on the table. A pound of wheat is a pound of bread.
But a pound of corn turns into half a pound of chicken; less than a quarter pound of pork; and only a couple ounces of beef.
If meat is to continue to come to the table, enormous amounts of corn are required.
And, if a nation's government has decided to participate in the great ethanol boondoggle, then additional millions of tons of corn are required as feedstock.
Ironically,
The current policy for grains is 95% self-sufficiency; but it looks like the government is considering easing that guideline to 90%. [1]
It is also looking to boost corn output.
An important potential source of increased output is improved yields: more corn per hectare. According to the agribusiness industry, the savior has arrived: genetically modified seed.
GM corn, produced by Monsanto, DuPont and a variety of other
genetics companies, has taken the
According to the US Department of Agriculture, 88% of American corn fields are planted with GM corn. Whether or not this is a good thing generates a lot of debate and it is by no means clear that GM corn has accounted for increased yields.
Since the 1930s, corn yields have improved at a remarkably
steady rate of 1.6 bushels/acre/per year in the
An important factor is, perhaps, the fact that the genetic modifications implemented to date in corn (and, for that matter, cotton and soybeans, the other two major markets) do not increase the yield potential of the seed.
Increasing yield potential is still a matter of painstaking traditional breeding practices in the field, not the insertion of miracle high-yield DNA into corn germ plasm in the laboratory.
Genetic modification deals solely with the mission of "protecting the yield potential" of superior hybrid varieties.
In practical terms, this means playing some interesting tricks with the corn genome to make it easier to deal with the weeds and critters that afflict the crop, so that less of it gets spoiled and the farmer is able to gain the full advantage of the superior (natural) genetics.
GM seed began with a rather crude concept: herbicide tolerance.
It involved modifying the genome of a broad-leaf crop, soybean, so it could survive a dousing of herbicide that targets broad-leaf weeds.
It is no coincidence that the biggest players in genetically modified seed are also the world's biggest producers of herbicides: Monsanto, DuPont (which purchased the venerable hybrid corn outfit Pioneer), and Dow.
The big winner was Monsanto, which placed big early bets in biotech, perfected and licensed the broadleaf herbicide-tolerant gene, and also managed to sell a lot of its broadleaf herbicide, glyphosphate, aka Roundup along the way. At its peak in 2008, Roundup contributed US$2 billion in profit (not revenue) to Monsanto's bottom line.
Corn got into the GM act in a big way with the development
of Bt corn. "Bt" stands for Bacillus
thuringiensis, a bacteria that causes caterpillars'
guts to explode when they eat it. Caterpillars (like the European corn borer,
which afflicts corn in the
Genes that enabled corn plants to produce Bt were inserted into the genome. In fact, they were inserted multiple times, in a process known as stacking, so they would produce Bt in different parts of the plant and deal death to various underground as well as aerial pests at different stages of their life cycles.
A milestone of sorts was reached with the release of "Genuity Smartstax", a Monsanto/Dow joint effort that piled on six varieties of Bt expression with two additional herbicide tolerance traits on top for good measure.
The biggest enemy of the GM focus on weeds and pests is Charles Darwin, specifically natural selection.
Resistance to herbicides and Bt is inevitable. In fact, significant resistance to Bt can arise in a bug population in two generations, and then it can spread through a population like wildfire. When one considers that corn borers can go through as many as seven generations in a single growing season, the stage is set for some rather alarming developments.
Government regulators in the
On the herbicide side, frequent rotation to non-Roundup crops is encouraged so that the weeds are not continuously exposed to the herbicide.
On the Bt side, it's even more complicated. The US Department of Agriculture wanted growers using Bt seed to create bug refuges equivalent to 50% of their acreage. These refuges, where non-Bt crops are grown, would sustain a population of non-Bt resistant pests that would mate with the evolving Bt-resistant pests across the fence and dilute the gene pool.
The seed companies were not enthralled with the idea that they would be structurally barred from 50% of the corn market. They successfully lobbied for a cut in the refuge percentage to 20%.
Acting on the corporate credo "More is Never Enough", Dow then argued that Genuity-Smartstax kills pests in multiple ways and inhibits the development of resistance. The US Environmental Protection Agency agreed, at least tentatively, and conditionally approved further reduction of the refuge area to 5% for stacked-gene corn. [2]
For those who place their faith in the virtue of corporations, the efficiency of the marketplace and the wisdom of the farmer, it is an unfortunate fact of life that herbicide-tolerant and pest-resistant seed, designed to make a farmer's life easier, encourages him or her to divert attention, energy, care and capital away from important herbicide and pesticide resistance issues to other aspects of the agribusiness operation - like increasing acreage.
Recently, there has been a spate of stories illustrating what happens when genetic problems get out of hand.
Pigweed is a nasty weed that can grow three inches (7.52cm) a day and to a height of two meters, and damage harvesting equipment. It's even nastier when it becomes resistant to Roundup, as farmers in the American South are learning.
Most years, Larry Steckel gets
three to five calls on glyphosate failures. Earlier this summer, the veteran
"Glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth [pigweed] is blowing up, mainly in cotton and soybeans. Resistance was confirmed in three counties last year. We're up to at least 10 counties now - all on the west side of the state."
Does Steckel have a handle on the tolerance/resistance levels?
"That's a huge concern. In the past, when you applied 22 ounces of Roundup WeatherMax to a resistant pigweed, it'd at least cause symptoms. Now, in some cases, we can spray 152 ounces and not see any symptoms."
The rapid spread of the resistance has "absolutely shocked" Steckel. "It's hard to believe how quickly and strong the resistance has become and spread." [3]
If Roundup doesn't take out pigweed, then it has to be scorched with some other herbicide or chopped out.
Monsanto may not be overly concerned. After all, its Roundup resistant gene (which it licensed to virtually every other seed company) goes off patent in 2014 and it has a new herbicide and new gene waiting in the wings.
Meanwhile, researchers at Iowa State University, not exactly a hotbed of opposition to agribusiness, reported that rootworms were displaying resistance to one flavor of Bt bacteria in fields planted with Bt corn for three consecutive years.
Conclusions/significance, in their words:
This is the first report of field-evolved resistance to a Bt toxin by the western corn rootworm and by any species of Coleoptera. Insufficient planting of refuges and non-recessive inheritance of resistance may have contributed to resistance. These results suggest that improvements in resistance management and a more integrated approach to the use of Bt crops may be necessary. [4]
To sum up: GM corn does not increase yield potential. It is a tool to protect yield potential through weed and insect control. Nor is it the sole measure available to control weeds and insects. It's supposed to be an easier, more effective way. But GM corn use brings with it the inherent risk of development of resistance. When that happens, its benefits go out the window.
Farmers find themselves going backwards, not forward.
As the New York Times quoted one farmer struggling with Roundup-resistant pigweed:
Mr Anderson and farmers throughout
the East,
"We're back to where we were 20 years ago," said Mr Anderson, who will plough about one-third of his 3,000 acres [1,214 hectares] of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. "We're trying to find out what works." [5]
Bear in mind that GM corn seed sells for about $10/acre more than conventional hybrids.
Ostensibly, this price level is necessary to recoup the vast research and development expenditures related to genetic modification.
However, Monsanto was booking profits of up to $2 billion a year on Roundup and a significant portion of these profits probably got plowed into the work of developing herbicide-resistant GM seeds that would sell more Roundup.
Over the past 20 years since biotech corn came on the market, the price of GM seed has increased 139%, while conventional hybrid corn increased 49%. The increase in conventional hybrid seed prices is roughly parallel with improvements in yield - which appear to be largely attributable to traditional enhancements in plant genetics, not gene modification techniques - an indication that the price/value relationship is steady.
An increase of 139% in the price of GM seeds is perhaps an indicator that cost-benefit equation may be out of whack. That also increases the anxiety of poorer countries that their farmers will be forced to purchase ever-more expensive seed after they get hooked on GM products (and the farm practices that sustain it).
It seems more likely that farmers were enticed into paying a premium for GM seed that included no additional yield potential over conventional hybrids, and offered some short-term cost and efficiency advantages in weed and pest management that, in the long term, might well be illusory.
As the vice president of the National Corn Growers Association (and vociferous Monsanto critic/litigant) Troy Roush made the point that the real attraction of Bt seed was that it permitted farmers to skimp on important issues of pest and weed management and concentrate on increasing acreage instead:
"The increased ease of use and convenience of herbicide tolerant crops enabled many farmers to significantly increase crop acreage which helped to offset higher production costs and, in some cases, lower yields. Biotech companies encouraged farm expansion by offering discounts for buying seed in bulk.
"The advent of glyphosate tolerant weeds necessitated the return to using tillage for weed control, eliminating the time savings that was initially afforded by using biotech crops.
"Farmers who expanded farm size are now finding it difficult, if not impossible, to manage the larger operations now that additional time is required for weed management," [Roush] said. [6]
From the view of US agrichemicals and genetics producers, maybe the answer to new problems of resistance is new herbicides and more complicated anti-pest genetics.
But, as the problems and costs of the GM strategy multiply
for US farmers, maybe the end of an exciting and profitable run in
Pioneer, a subsidiary of DuPont, has achieved some remarkable results in yield with its Xianyu 335 hybrid corn variety.
Development of the variety began in
XY335 is now the second-most popular hybrid corn seed in
Pioneer has also been dogged by rumors that the seed's male parent, PH4CV, is genetically modified, and that, in addition to high yields, XY335 also delivers mutations and sterility in pigs and rats that eat the corn.
GM corn is not approved for commercial use in
In 2010, the International Economic Herald published an
article based on months of field reporting describing the rapid penetration of
XY335 into
The good news for Pioneer was erased by an editor's afterword. It declared that it had received reports of abnormalities in areas where a lot of XY335 was grown and consumed. It sent back its reporter for a second look, and tentatively stated:
The population of rats decreased, sows miscarried ... various kinds of animal abnormalities caused one to be uneasy and bewildered. Increase in natural predators, moldy corn, ecological pollution ... these various possibilities were refuted one by one. The only remaining factor that tied all these animal abnormality clues together was the feed that these animals had consumed: XY 335. [7]
It also reported allegations that XY335 was a genetically modified organism, and that the reported animal abnormalities were caused by genetic modifications.
These concerns mirrored some studies in Europe and
The fact that some genetic modifications actually reduce yields - instead of increasing or sustaining them - in unexplained ways also gives many people the willies.
There are billions of dollars of sales - and millions of dollars of industry-supported research - at stake, and the international seed producers have not been shy in protecting their interests, and critics of GM foods are the targets of systematic rebuttals.
One study claimed that birth defects, far from being caused by Bt corn, were caused by damaged, fungus-infected non-Bt corn and proposed:
Perhaps faced with results like these, government regulators around the world should require farmers to plant Bt corn. [8]
Touche, safe food advocates!
The 2005 patent for one of XY335's parent lines, PH4CV, certainly envisages genetic modification. It reads:
Methods for producing a maize plant containing in its genetic material one or more transgenes and to the transgenic maize plants produced by that method. [9]
In a rebuttal, Pioneer vociferously denied that XY335
contains a GM component. Pioneer
Attempting to defuse the situation, the president of Pioneer China stated that its success was attributable to good seed with high viability and superior customer service, not genetic secret sauce. [11]
That denial has not placated the citizen activists who raise
questions about the safety of
Lax enforcement of food regulations led to a series of food scandals, such as the melamine milk scandal, that have impacted the prestige of the Chinese government overseas and at home.
As a matter of politics, the Chinese government is officially extremely conservative when it comes to approving GM crops for human use. But what about soybeans?
Since it moved away from a policy of soybean
self-sufficiency in the 1990s,
There is the suspicion that the Chinese government is
slow-walking approval of GM seeds in order to give the domestic seed industry -
undercapitalized, technologically backward and reliant on underfunded
agricultural institutes for new varieties - time to catch up, and to pressure
foreign owners of superior genetics to shift ownership and development to
Certainly, while food safety advocates are concerned about the potential dangers of XY335, the Chinese government appears more concerned with the possibility that Chinese agriculture will find itself dependent on foreign genetics whose supply and price will be determined in Western boardrooms rather than Chinese ministries or corporations.
The dominant local hybrid corn variety, Zhengdian
958, has been around too long and is showing vulnerability to pests. Once ZD958
falls by the wayside, DuPont/Pioneer's XY335 will be the dominant supplier of
corn seed in
Despite the concerns of food safety activists, it looks like the Chinese government plans a move into GM corn in the near future.
On September 21, the Economic Examiner reported on a backgrounder from the Ministry of Agriculture that stated that GM wheat and rice seed would not be commercialized over the next five to 10 years.
Corn was another story.
Since corn is primarily consumed as an animal and ethanol
feedstock, the ministry's consultants believe the seed industry can turn to GM
corn seed without the same anxiety that GM rice or wheat would entail. (The
issue of
Therefore, the commercialization of GM corn seed in the next five to 10 years is a distinct possibility. [13]
A major advantage of GM corn in the West - that it allows acreage increases for farmers who otherwise would be overwhelmed by time-consuming weed and pest management issues - is not as important in China, with its limited arable land, small plot size and large farming population.
Duplicating the economic imperatives and policies of Western GM agribusiness probably will not.
Promoting GM seed is big business for seed companies, herbicide companies, research organizations and government ministries.
Whether it's good business for the farmer is another question entirely.
Peter Lee writes on
East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with
Bill signed to aid Calif.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California will soon punish agriculture employers found to have violated union election rules by letting regulators automatically certify farmworker unions as a penalty.
Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he had signed the bill, SB126.
The bill, by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a
Democrat from
Brown, who signed the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act during his first stint as governor in 1975, vetoed another farmworker unionization bill earlier this year. SB104 would have made it easier for unions to organize farmworkers by allowing them to sign petitions away from the fields.
He and Steinberg compromised on SB126 after Brown said Steinberg's first bill would change the framework of the original law.
Smarter toxins help crops fight pests
(University of Arizona via RedOrbit.com) – A slight change in molecular structure introduced by genetic engineering gives crop-protecting proteins called Bt toxins a new edge in overcoming resistance of certain pests, a University of Arizona-led team of researchers reports in Nature Biotechnology
One of the most successful strategies in pest control is to endow crop plants with genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt for short, which code for proteins that kill pests attempting to eat them.
But insect pests are evolving resistance to Bt toxins, which threatens the continued success of this approach. In the current issue of Nature Biotechnology, a research team led by UA Professor Bruce Tabashnik reports the discovery that a small modification of the toxins’ structure overcomes the defenses of some major pests that are resistant to the natural, unmodified Bt toxins.
“A given Bt toxin only kills certain insects that have the
right receptors in their gut,” explained Tabashnik,
head of the UA’s entomology department in the
Unlike conventional broad-spectrum insecticides, Bt toxins kill only a narrow range of species because their potency is determined by a highly specific binding interaction with receptors on the surface of the insects’ gut cells, similar to a key that only fits a certain lock.
“If you change the lock, it won’t work,” Tabashnik said. “Insects adapt through evolutionary change. Naturally occurring mutations are out there in the insect populations, and those individuals that carry genes that make them resistant to the Bt toxins have a selective advantage.” The more a toxin is used, the more likely it is pests will adapt. Bt toxins have been used in sprays for decades. Crops that make Bt toxins were commercialized 15 years ago and covered more than 140 million acres worldwide in 2010, according to Tabashnik.
In a joint effort with Alejandra Bravo and Mario Soberón at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Tabashnik’s team set out to better understand how Bt toxins work and to develop countermeasures to control resistant pests.
“Our collaborators developed detailed models about each step at the molecular level,” Tabashnik said, “what receptors the toxins bind to, which enzymes they interact with and so on.”
Previous work had demonstrated that binding of Bt toxins to a cadherin protein in the insect gut is a key step in the process that ultimately kills the insect. Results at UNAM indicated that binding of Bt toxins to cadherin promotes the next step – trimming of a small portion of the toxins by the insect’s enzymes. Meanwhile, Tabashnik’s team identified lab-selected resistant strains of a major cotton pest, pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella), in which genetic mutations altered cadherin and thereby reduced binding of Bt toxins.
The findings from UNAM and UA considered together implied that in resistant strains of the pest, naturally occurring genetic mutations changed the lock — the cadherin receptor — so that Bt toxin – the key – no longer fits. As a result, the trimming does not occur, the whole chain of events is stopped in its tracks, and the insects survive.
Said Tabashnik: “So our
collaborators in
In initial tests, the researchers found that the modified toxins killed caterpillars of the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta, in which production of cadherin was blocked by a technique called RNA interference. The modified toxins also killed resistant pink bollworm caterpillars carrying mutations that altered their cadherin.
“Those experiments led us to hypothesize that any insect carrying a mutant cadherin receptor as a mechanism of resistance would be killed by the modified Bt toxins,” Tabashnik said.
To find out, the team invited colleagues from all over the world to participate in an ambitious experiment. “We sent them native and modified toxins without telling them which was which and asked them to test both types of toxins against the resistant strains they have in their labs,” Tabashnik said.
It turned out things are more complicated than the hypothesis predicted. The modified toxins did not always work on insects with cadherin mutations, and they worked surprisingly well against some insects whose resistance was not caused by a cadherin mutation.
“We still don’t know why the modified toxins were so effective against some resistant strains and not others” Tabashnik said. “The take-home message is we need to look at this on a case-by-case basis.”
Tabashnik pointed out that “based on the lab results, we think the modified Bt toxins could be useful, but we won’t know until they’re tested in the field.” He said the results are promising enough that Pioneer, a major agriculture and biotechnology company, made a significant investment to pursue the technology.
Through the UA’s Office of Technology Transfer, the UA’s stake in the technology has been licensed to UNAM, which in turn selected Pioneer as their commercial partner in exploring its potential for commercialization.
“At the very least, we’ve learned more about the pests and their interactions with Bt toxins, ” Tabashnik said. “In a best-case scenario, this could help growers sustain environmentally friendly pest control.”
In addition to Tabashnik, Bravo and Soberón, the following co-authors have contributed to this study: Fangneng Huang, B. Rogers Leonard and Mukti Ghimire at Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge, La.; Blair Siegfried and Murugesan Rangasamy at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Neb.; Yajun Yang and Yidong Wu at Nanjing Agricultural University in Nanjing, China; Linda Gahan at Clemson University in Clemson, S.C.; David Heckel at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany.
Popularity of crop swaps is growing
(SFGate.com) – An American subculture is trying to fend off the apocalypse, one heirloom tomato at a time.
Crop swaps - meets where people trade their backyard bounty - are sprouting up all over the nation, but especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The seeds were planted decades ago: I'll trade you a few of my Meyer lemons for a couple of your golden zucchini. Then, with the advent of the grocery store, consumers were more likely to buy just what they needed. But in these times of economic crisis, bartering for food is making a comeback.
The weekly - or monthly - food exchanges may seem like a neighborly way to show off gardening prowess or to parlay an abundance of tomatoes into a week's worth of variety. But for some, it's a survival tactic: building resilient communities to not only withstand a recession, but to endure severe energy shortages and global warming.
"People want to connect," said Carole Bennett-Simmons, co-organizer of Transition Berkeley's two crop swaps. "We want our neighborhoods to be strong in hard times, and that means building a strong economy and strong urban agriculture."
The Transition movement started gaining traction in
While not all crop swaps are sponsored by Transition United States, the concept is basically the same: to encourage bartering - money is never allowed - to support urban agriculture and bring together neighborhoods.
In the early days, Robin Mariona,
"It depends on the season," Mariona said. "Right now it's great. We've got rhubarb, artichokes, beans, two different summer squashes, strawberries, lettuce, herbs and flowers.
"Someone brought small heirloom tomatoes," she said. "Those sell in the store for $4.50 a pound."
During the summer, Mariona said,
she doesn't have to buy fruits and vegetables. Whatever her garden doesn't
produce, she gets at the exchange, held every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the
At the
As many as 40 people attend each session, trading 30 varieties of produce. Participants display their items on tables and blankets and there is a drawing to determine who trades first.
Reception to the event has been so positive that Transition
Berkeley along with the Victory Lee Garden Foundation are holding a second crop
swap every third Sunday of the month at
In
"In the last three years we've had more and more people
interested in growing their own food, especially because of the bad
economy," said Julie Hanft, founder of the
exchanges. "The community gardens in
In
Although not a crop swap, the organization spreads the idea of self-sufficiency by planting public and private spaces.
When winter hits and crops are less abundant, some of these groups exchange seeds and plants. Others have hopes of achieving community self-reliance.
"Our next plan of expansion is using the (
End Transmission