Honeybees and sustainable agriculture

Last Friday I drove over the state-line to go to a film screening of Queen of the Sun at Hawthorne Valley Farm. The film takes a look at the state of honeybees in the U.S and beyond -- anywhere that ecologically balanced systems are being ravaged by large-scale industrial agriculture. It treats the issue of Colony Collapse Disorder not with shock or surprise, but with sadness, understanding, and urgency. With all that we expect from bees for our food production in our agricultural system, of course there's a problem. Extensive monoculture, pesticides, genetic modification -- not to mention the way bee hives themselves are cared for and trucked around on an industrial scale -- it's no wonder the bees are dying!

Take the pollination of almonds, for example. Honeybees are trucked in from all over the United States during the pollination season on California almond orchards. Because bees from many regions of the country are brought together (all together), it gives them the opportunity to share infections - from mites to viruses. And when the U.S bees weren't even enough to do the job, the U.S granted permission to import honeybees from New Zealand. These bees brought with them foreign diseases such as the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. Cue increasing honeybee health problems in the U.S. The industrial hive caretakers interviewed (albeit briefly) in the film stated that they don't do what they do for any other reason to make a living. They have to travel the distances, truck their bees around, and feed them what they do because that is what our industrial system calls for.

(What are hives fed when they're getting started? High fructose corn syrup. Oh, the irony of having producers of the most naturally delicious sweet-stuff on earth consuming one of our sweet industrial poisons!)

The bottom line here is that there aren't enough economic incentives to take care of our land and pollinators (and water and seed stock and farm workers....etc.) to change our industrial food system into something socially and ecologically conscious. We are biting the hand that feeds us, and it's biting back.We have to change out ways. Buying conventional vegetables at the supermarket supports the petrochemical industry and Monsanto more than it supports the future of our health and environment. I often find it totally overwhelming, and I end up getting flustered when I go to a mainstream supermarket instead of a natural foods co-op or Whole Foods. Some simple ways to change the agricultural system in the U.S are to buy local, organic and/or naturally grown food from small-scale and family farms. If we shift our mindsets to make it a priority over buying the newest hippest technological gadgets out there, it might be possible to find an extra few dollars each shopping trip to make the shift over to purchasing sustainably-grown veggies.

But there are so many practices and questions that make my head spin. For example, should I stop eating almonds (even organic almonds)? If my focus is on local and sustainable, shouldn't I get my protein from animals and their by-products rather than trucked-in nuts and legumes from large-scale agricultural enterprises (even if they're organic)?

I've been thinking about and questioning the practices of animal agriculture a lot lately. I had visited Hawthorne Valley Farm for a tour of their dairy the week before I came back for the film, as part of the Northeast CRAFT program. As someone who has leaned towards a vegan diet more or less over the last three years, I came into the tour wary of livestock and grazing practices no matter how sustainable they might be. I was hoping to be blown away -- perhaps to see that the dairy cows were being treated like queens and that I could now eat all the cheese and yogurt I had ever craved! To a pretty large degree, I was impressed with their dairy. Calves are kept with their mothers and weaned after 16 weeks (compared to industrial systems in which calves are ripped from their mothers soon after birth). Cows are milked in the morning and the calves are then able to nurse for the better part of the day. The somatic cell count of the milk is under 100,000-200,000 cells per milliliter (excellent quality) versus industrial milk's upper limit of 1,000,000 cells per milliliter. The connection between the dairy and meat industries (male calves are auctioned off because of feed and pasture limits), the waste issue (although composted manure is great for vegetable agriculture), and the housing issue (old barns where cows spend more time in the winter often don't have the space or air-flow for optimal health, and cows must be secured in some way to their stall for their safety so they don't fall or get stuck somewhere) still bother me, however.

If I had a veggie farm with extra acreage for grazing animals, would I buy a cow or two to milk? I don't think so. But on a scale from industrial/inhumane to sustainable/conscientious, I'm finding it easier to branch out and eat animal by-products knowing that I'm able to support some of the small-scale farms that actually do care for their animals and the nutrition of their products. Again though, I don't want to assume that owners of and workers on industrial animal farms have no feeling of responsibility for the food they produce. It's not a battle of the cold-hearted versus the loving. As a nation, we need our policies and our mindsets to change. Right now.