The Art of Fermenting/Pickling

Another wild week full of fun and learning took place in Sustainable Agriculture some weeks ago:

This week we learned all about how to pickle the fruits and vegetables we grew on the farm and how to overall maximize its flavor. We were instructed to bring jars from home with a lid and told that we needed to add fruits and vegetables, water, spices, salt and vinegar. These conditions create the perfect environment for lactobacilli which is a big aid in the process of pickling your fruits and vegetables. It also eliminates bad bacteria which will have a negative effect on your fruits and vegetables. Picklingis crucial for many reasons. For one it allows you to preserve a fresh produce for longer. It also like I stated earlier adds flavor to the overall crop. In countries that don't have reliable electricity this could really help them out. Fermenting also encourages microbacteria which creates compounds like lactic acid or achohol which helps preserve food. Fermentation can be utilizied in a variety of foods like miso soup, yogurt, beer, pasta and many other foods. Overall Fermentation is very important for food preparation and it is something that people should use in their everyday lives.

-Zach

The Sustainable Solution

This week in Sustainable Agriculture we started off by learning about the nationwide agricultural transformation of Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the movie Power of Community: Cuba, we learned that after the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba experienced a 34% drop in GDP and could no longer afford to continue their practice of conventional agriculture that required heavy amounts of expensive inputs. Cuba was forced to find a new way to grow food for a hungry country, and they did so in an amazing way as their transition to more sustainable methods of growing food resulted in a solution to their food crisis. Without the help of mechanized industrial farming, more Cubans had to join the farming force and help manage the farms across the country. Cubans found ways to grow food in all areas, even in city streets and complexes that previously would never have been considered reasonable areas to grow food. Although it initially seemed that Cuba was destined for years of poverty and hunger, their adoption of sustainable agriculture actually was very beneficial for their country as the food became much less expensive to grow and because it was being grown in all sorts of areas across the country, the cost of transporting the food was drastically cut.

- Dean Watson. 

Learning about Sustainable Farm Methods in Cuba

This week we spent most of our time in the classroom due to the poor weather. On Monday in class, we started watching a documentary on farming methods in Cuba. The movie talked about how Cuba had to overcome the loss of resources from the Soviet Union. It showed some of the agricultural transformations that they had to make in order to deal with the loss of resources for farming and to become more sustainable.Cuba had to scale down all of their industrial farms because they were no longer able to use large machinery in the fields. As a result of this they had to go back to the older farming techniques that involved using animals. The government also helped by giving open land to the farmers for free. This increased the number of small farms in Cuba and made the job of being a farmer more respectable and higher paying. Overall, the way that Cuba handled the transformation was good and resulted in making Cuba have a more organic and sustainable farming system. On Tuesday we continued watching the movie and finished it in class. On Wednesday in class, we learned about different farming techniques and how they are used and also researched some local farms that use some of these techniques.  

Cuba

This week in class, we watched a video about the Cuba Peak Oil Crisis. The Peak Oil Crisis occurs when the total oil supply in the world has reached a maximum extraction point and after reaching this point, heads into a decline. This will have detrimental global effects and the Crisis is not so far off based on recent calculations.

Cuba already experienced their own Peak Oil Crisis, when the Soviet Union fell and they were left with no one to get oil from or trade with. Instead, the entire economy had to work as a cycle inside their own country. They developed many interesting practices as a result of the crisis, which is what the video showed us.

One big change they had to make was farming techniques. Before the Crisis, Cuban farmers were using conventional methods to grow their agriculture and importing around 50% of some of the most used products in cooking, like rice. However, this was not sustainable and couldn't support the needs of the entire country itself. Instead, farmers transitioned to organic, sustainable methods, spraying 21% less fertilizers and using crop inter planting. They have also switched to using animals for labor on farms which saves fuel and exerts less pressure on the beds so as to not compact the soil. And after a 3-5 year transition period, relatively normal to a switch in agriculture, the farmers were switched over and could begin building up the economy again.

Many also cleared out many spaces that could be used for urban farming and gardens to grow their own food. This cleaned up many cluttered, ill-used spaces in Cuba and made way for beautiful, beneficial gardens and small farms. They now supply 80-100% of fruits and vegetables produced. Farmers are also now among the highest paid workers in Cuba because of the Crisis.

The world is eventually going to experience the Peak Oil Crisis and if we don't change our methods now, we will be forced to when the time comes. If it were up to me, the whole world would take a page from Cuba's book and prepare themselves for what is to come, but we will just have to wait and see.

- Noe

Fibershed & Poor Weather

In the Redwood Classroom this past week we had a guest speaker Rebecca Burgess who has recently started a non profit called Fibershed. Fiber shed is an organization that focuses on reducing carbon emissions by making 100% cotton clothing. The company doesn't create the 100% cotton clothings but they help fund the manufacturers. At the begging of her presentation she states that on average about 70% of your clothing in your wardrobe is plastic. She made this very clear to us because if your clothing isn't cotton, in most cases it is polyester and other plastic like materials. Over all, Rebecca has started a successful non profit that is helping raise awareness about the carbon emissions of plastic clothing, and she is helping others make the chance towards 100% cotton clothing. As far as the farm the farm weather has been lately, is has maintained very rainy weather for the past couple of weeks. With almost everyday being rainy, our class has received very little farm work to focus on our one beds.

Milan

Preparing for Spring

In Sustainable Agriculture this week, we had a seminar that focused on the future of the agriculture industry as well as how we as individuals can influence the industry. We also discussed different agricultural methods and their effect on the environment, such as permaculture, which focuses on replicating nature as closely as possible by minimizing inputs, not tilling the soil, and using a lot of perennials, compared to biointensive farming which is currently used on our farm because it involves maximizing the space in our beds by using close plant spacing and increasing biodiversity while still minimizing inputs. I also submitted my research report this week along with the other year two students, where I discussed flowers and the positive impacts they can have on our farm in the future, as well as the uses for flowers. For example, tulip bulbs are able to be substituted for onions in recipes, and borage tastes like cucumber and can be added to salads or water. I have planted D8 with flowers in the past, but over the winter weeds started to take over. I had the opportunity to prepare my bed for adding more flowers by planting seeds last week and weeding my bed to make room for the new flowers alongside the flowers already planted in bed D8. -Micaela W

FOOD MILES REPORT

This past week we have been working on a food miles project that pretty much represents the importance of every single ingredient that your food contains, and by doing this project we discovered the way the product is made, how they get their ingredients, how they package their product and most importantly how many miles each ingredient had to travel to get to where the product is made. This project shows many important details about the food you pick for example I choose a clif vanilla almond protein bar, and this bar is very high in saturated fat which was very surprising and many of the ingredients for this bar had to be grown outside the US which made the process of making this bar more difficult. Overall this project helped me understand that having a sustainable life and getting healthier products will benefit us more.- Camilo