Is medical botany the answer to 'Silent Spring'?

In the book that is credited with triggering the American environmentalist movement in the 1970s, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) claimed that the widespread use of chemical pesticides and herbicides were having an irreparable effect on our natural environment and our health. The New York Times reports on Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a research scientist studying medical biochemistry and botany at the University of Ottawa school of medicine.

The article opens:

Diana Beresford-Kroeger pointed to a towering wafer ash tree near her home.

The tree is a chemical factory, she explained, and its products are part of a sophisticated survival strategy. The flowers contain terpene oils, which repel mammals that might feed on them. But the ash needs to attract pollinators, and so it has a powerful lactone fragrance that appeals to large butterflies and honeybees. The chemicals in the wafer ash, in turn, she said, provide chemical protection for the butterflies from birds, making them taste bitter.

Many similar unseen chemical relationships are going on in the world around us. “These are at the heart of connectivity in nature,” she said.

The main focus of the report is on the many uses of trees and the many effects they have on our health and environment. Ms. Beresford-Kroeger has a somewhat radical idea in how we can incorporate medical botany into our urban planning and sustainable development. Again, from the NYT:

She favors what she terms a bioplan, reforesting cities and rural areas with trees according to the medicinal, environmental, nutritional, pesticidal and herbicidal properties she claims for them, which she calls ecofunctions.

Wafer ash, for example, could be used in organic farming, she said, planted in hedgerows to attract butterflies away from crops. Black walnut and honey locusts could be planted along roads to absorb pollutants, she said.

This theory, if researched and implemented correctly could spell the end of the need for chemical pesticides and herbicides, if the same result could be achieved by creative foresting.

Ultimately, the article leaves the reader with the notion that we really know very little. "Dr. Wilson, at Harvard, said that more research into the role of trees in the ecosystem was imperative and that it was alarming how little was known. 'We need more research of this kind to use the things we have, such as trees, to their fullest,' he said." "We," of course, are urban westerners. Indigenous peoples, have incredible knowledge of their native botany and its medical uses.

This knowledge is not lost and we can learn it from others. The important research that Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger is incredibly important for the future of our food production and could be key in producing urban farming as a reality.

Millions of pounds of synthetic chemicals are dropped on our food supply, and therefore into our soil and water, to protect crops from bugs. These chemicals are not harmless. 'Bioplanning' provides an alternative to the wasteful and harmful practice that utilizes our natural ecosystems instead; cycles and processes 'built in' so that our planet functions in balance and order.

Check out the article, it's a good read!
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Winona LaDuke talks about Thunder Beings

One of my favorite people, 1996 and 2000 Green Party vice-presidential candidate and activist Winona LaDuke, has an interview in Yes! Magazine. Ms. LaDuke has made her name with an amazingly impressive and positive resume as an activist for indigenous rights, and environmental and anti-nuclear movements as well. Born to a Jewish mother and Ojibwe father in LA, Ms. LaDuke now lives on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota, and is the executive director of Honor the Earth and White Earth Land Recovery Project (YOU REALLY NEED TO CLICK HERE!!!), in the interview Winona LaDuke spins a tale of traditional belief, traditional food and how to live and not destroy.

Ojibwe is a language of 8,000 verbs. The word for “work” is a strange construct for us. It doesn’t mean we aren’t a hard-working people, but in our language, the word is anokii, which means that whether you are fishing or weaving a basket, what you are doing is living—which is not the same thing as being paid a wage to do something.
After the harvest, we have a big feast, and we dance and tell stories. The anthropologists watched us, and they didn’t like that. They said we would never become civilized because we enjoyed our harvest too much. We did too much dancing, too much singing.
When you no longer enjoy your relationship to your food, to your plant relatives, to the harvest, to the dancing and singing—when you end up with a harvest that has no relationships or joy, I think that must be the mark of civilization and industrialized agriculture.

Ultimately, Winona LaDuke sets out a very positive look at possibilities. She tells it like it is, and unfortunately, "it" is a depressing tale of how governments, corporations, and pure consumer ignorance has led to the absolute depletion of indigenous food practices and indigenous food knowledge--worldwide. But LaDuke shows us this positive example from her own homestead,

We are growing more of our own food. About seven years ago, we got a handful of Bear Island flint corn from a seed bank and now we have about five acres of it. The corn is higher in amino acids, antioxidants, and fiber than anything we can buy in the store.
The traditional varieties of food that we grew as indigenous peoples—before they industrialized them and bred out much of the nutritional value—are the best answer to our diabetes. A third of our population is diabetic. We give elders and diabetic families traditional foods every month: buffalo meat, wild rice, hominy.
My 8-year-old, Gwekaanimad, and I started a pilot project with the school lunch program after I saw that they were eating pre-packaged food from
Sodexho, Sysco, and Food Services of America. We try to give our school kids a buffalo a month and also some deer meat, some local pork, and local turkeys. We started growing and raising our own. It’s just a start. We had to de-colonize our kids, too, because they got used to thinking that their food was that other stuff.
We plowed 150 gardens last year on our reservation. I’m a big proponent of gardens, not lawns. It turns out in most reservation housing projects you can’t grow food. That spot in front of your house is where you park your car, or your dogs will trample it, or your cousin will drive over it. So we’re putting two-foot-tall grow boxes up there, and you can grow a lot of vegetables in them.
Our goal is to produce enough food for a thousand families in five years. And these foods we are growing in anishinaabe akiing are not addicted to petroleum, and they don’t require irrigation or all those inputs. These strong plant relatives just require songs and care for the soil. And in a time of climate destabilization, that is what you want to be growing. You don’t want to be guessing with some hybrid.

Personally, I'm going to listen to Winona LaDuke about rice LONG before I listen to Uncle Ben.
Really, click above, read the interview, buy some rice and other goods (Minnesota's closer than Thailand or India, even if it isn't local!), but more importantly, you can trust it came from a positive source.

Thank you, Winona LaDuke, for a lifetime of positive action, creation and living.
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All who are hungry, come and eat...

This famous phrase from our Haggadah (Passover ritual book) highlights an aspect of Jewish culture that is all but lost in our 21st century. In the ancient Jewish world there were two institutions to ensure that all were fed: the tamchui, the communal meal plate; and the kuppah, the communal fund. Today these institutions have been replaced by the occasional soup kitchen and fund raising campaigns, but the replacements do not provide the same service as the original.
Yet, there are those acting now and creating a model of an alternative to the profit-driven food market.

We are in a world of soaring food costs largely propelled by the increase in the cost of oil which is the foundation of shipping food around the world. As costs rise, individuals like you and me can feel it in our pocket books--and if you'd made serious changes, in your belly too.

Let's play a game. We're going to imagine a wonderful place, a restaurant that could only be the product of dreams. Imagine a place that serves fresh, organic, local foods; where the menu is never set but constantly changing based on the whims of the chef and the availability of the local farmers' market. Imagine that at the end of your scrumptious meal, you get your bill, and the total reads "Pay what you'd like!"

Impossible, you think! Unlikely, you dismiss! I retort, it is possible and it is real, and what's more... you have two options!

The SAME (read: So All May Eat) and the One World Cafe's are two examples which I have encountered of people making a real difference in the availability of fresh, organic, local foods and reasonable prices (unless you choose to pay an arm and a leg!). Both feature similar concepts: No set menu, no set price--the only thing set is that you're sure to get delicious, nutritious, fresh, organic and local food. They will also take your labor as payment, instead of money. Like in the old TV shows and movies; can't pay or the meal? Wash some dishes instead!

SAME Cafe is located in Denver, CO and was founded by Brad and Libby Birky, the One World Cafe, founded by Denise Cerreta, is located in Salt Lake City, UT.

I have never been to either of these places (as I've never been to Salt Lake City and not been to Denver in years and years) but I will make a point to go if I find myself near either of them. What they provide is not just delicious food at the price you want to pay; they also act as a model for ways to provide sustenance and support and not be profit driven. That being said, according to their website, One World has experienced steady growth since their opening. Support them with your money, support them with your love and prayers, support them however you can. One thing is sure, these two places are a dream come true!
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