FARMING NATURE

Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

With Jo Ann Baumgartner, Executive Director, Wild Farm Alliance and

Sam Earnshaw, Executive Director, Hedgerows Unlimited

Back in 2006, a multistate outbreak of E. Coli O157:H7 killed three and sickened an additional 202. The source of that E. Coli was found to be spinach from California, and the cause was believed to be contamination from the spinach farm.

Consumers stopped buying the spinach, as well as other leafy green produce, and so growers had to leave their precious greens to go to seed in the fields.

Though the contaminated spinach came from one grower, the entire leafy greens industry suffered its consequences. As a result of their suffering, and threats from the government, growers got together and formed the California Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, which in effect, laid down the law on how member growers could tend to their leafy greens.

Consequent to the implementation of the Agreement, growers began fencing off their fields from all the wild things in nature that might harbor E Coli. Today, many of those farms are as barren of extraneous life as can be made possible. No deer… no skunks… no birds… no anything!

But wait… Not everyone thinks that farms need to be without life. In fact, some point in the other direction and claim that farms should foster the growth of as much life as possible. And these contrarians lead us to ask:

Should nature, and its wildlife, be allowed back on farms?