Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,

Welcome to another fall season, I do hope you have been enjoying it as much as we have.

As the days become shorter and the nights cooler, mornings are fresh with dew, and brilliant colors splash about on leaves of summer green. There is wonderful variability in the colors of fall leaves; yellows, reds, purples, pinks, and oranges, sometimes blending to their own scheme, or shouting out, look at me, in a singular blaze of glory. Fall has once again arrived.

Someone in my class asked me, "So what elves or fairies cause this color change in the plant leaves?" Actually, it’s neither elves nor fairies. The colors in the plant leaf are there all the time; they are just being covered up by chlorophyll, the green pigment in the plant. As long as there is active growth, the chlorophyll will continue to keep the leaves green. When growth slows down because of shorter days there is less photosynthesis from the sun, and the other color pigments in the leaf begin to show through. However, it’s not just shorter days that bring out the colors in the leaf. Cool nights and warm days, the amount of soil acidity, minerals in the soil all contribute toward helping to create the beauty in nature we call Autumn.

It has been brought to Barbara’s attention that the city of Modesto and Turlock have available high quality compost for agricultural, commercial and residential use. The City of Modesto will formulate a compost mixture to meet your needs, including the blending of biosolids if desired.

If for some reason you can’t build your own compost pile, Barbara and I strongly support municipal compost programs and urge you to support them.

Now is a great time to plant a lawn, plenty of cool days to germinate grass seed. See your nurseryperson for recommended varieties of blended grass seed.

For growing annual color set out from transplants: pansy, viola, primula, snapdragon, stock, statice, larkspur, and calendulas. Sweet peas can be started from seed (use plenty of manure).

For perennial transplants, set out delphinium, foxglove, hollyhock, day lily, peony, oriental poppy, coreopsis, columbine, shasta daisy, and candytuft.

This is a good time of the year to seed California natives such as California poppy, baby-blue eyes, clarkia, lupine, and others.

For the vegetable garden it’s getting late—try transplants of broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and kale. For seeding, try beets, leaf lettuce, carrots, and spinach.

At this time of year the weather can be fickle; don’t let the soil dry out especially for seeds.

Above all, get out and enjoy your garden and the natural world beyond.

By Myrtle Osner (reviewing publications of RUDY PLATZEK)

In three articles in Agrarian Advocate, the newspaper of Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), Rudy Platzek tackles several problems in California agriculture with a new vision.

As founder of Valley Vision Project, Platzek has analyzed the multiple problems emerging for farmers and proposes some changes.

He says, "If it can be dreamed, it can be done." His vision of the problems:

• We are losing our farmland and small farms. In the five years between 1992 and 1997, California lost 4.4 percent of its farmland, or 1.3 million acres. Almost all of this is due to urban sprawl.

• Our food supply is increasingly vulnerable.. Small farms are dying and large farms will follow. Eighty million new appetites are added to the world’s population each year. (Platzek quotes UN and US statistics showing that much of the globe’s farmland is already seriously degraded.) The decline in American farms will make us increasingly dependent on imported food; transporting the food we now import uses immense amounts of oil and this situation continues to worsen.

• California’s ecological health is in decline. International competitiveness to grow more and rely on more petrochemicals leads to industrialized monoculture and is a major reason for our loss of wildlife and soil degradation over time.

Food belts proposed

Instead of surrounding cities with "greenbelts" (often touted as a solution to urban growth boundaries), why not surround them with "foodbelts?" asks Platzek. As Platzek sees it, the park-like green strips that some planners propose to buffer city dwellers from farmers do not save any farmland nor grow any food, and they don’t work to save cities from growing ever larger onto the farms.

Our cities have become increasingly distanced from their food supply. We face increasing air pollution and degradation of our highways from the long truck trips needed to move food for long distances. By surrounding cities with small or medium farms growing a variety of crops whose produce is consumed nearby, we could conserve the land specifically for local food supply.

Foodbelts would simultaneously protect farmland, enhance farm viability and improve food security. They also provide a framework for ecological restoration, one of the greatest challenges to humanity this millennium. Platzek backs up his beliefs with statistics on how much cultivated land is required to feed today’s population.

Farmers are caught in a web of uncertainty about whether to remain in farming when developers offer inflated prices for their land to build ever more and larger houses here in the Central Valley thanks to pressure from housing-starved coastal counties.

New tools are need to protect farmland

Changes might include permanent urban growth boundaries and mandated state goals, conservation easements, land trusts etc. Most of all, though, the answer may lie in helping farmers stay in business with such things as federal compensation for doing so. The big subsidies that big farmers get could be used, rather, to help small farmers close to cities maintain financial security, reevaluating food-growing as a form of national security. In turn, the public, who want to curb sprawl and preserve parks and open space, would benefit in increased food security.

What are Community and Regional Foodbelts?

Community foodbelts are the lands within two or three miles of urban communities that are located in productive farming areas. Regional foodbelts are located within 100 miles of metropolitan areas. The productive farmland of a community’s foodbelt includes current and potential community gardens, urban farms and farmed land beyond the urban fringes. Foodbelts may include managed open space such as riparian habitat, waterways and other uses compatible with agriculture. (Platzek outlines procedures that should be adopted in the General Plan of both cities and counties.)

By STEVE BURKE

That word best describes current land use practices, which allow urban areas to expand, especially onto farmland, without:

• Correcting the jobs / housing imbalance (not enough jobs locally for the population).
• Improving public transportation systems (more people = more cars = more traffic).
• Making sure new development "pays its own way". This means ALL of the costs: new roads, sewer, and water; public services (police, fire, schools); repair and maintenance of infrastructure, etc. It is now a public subsidy, despite what officials tell us. Developer fees pay only for some infrastructure, and taxes only pay for some of the services upkeep. YOU pay the rest.

In the world of recovery, the definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It is also known in recovery, which deals bluntly and successfully with addictive practices in general, that a change in behaviors does not come until one faces the full consequences of one’s behaviors. Usually, that does not happen until there is a crisis.

And crisis is what we are in. The signs become clearer, more widespread, and more harmful every day. Witness:

• Street maintenance, public safety needs, and other government services are rapidly falling behind.
• The air quality in the San Joaquin Basin has received a "severe" designation from US EPA, the worst rating possible, bringing consequences that are economic as well as environmental. With this designation comes a requirement to have a basin-wide (the entire San Joaquin Valley) plan for meeting ozone standards for the year 2005. EPA must have this plan within 18 months. If they do not approve it, 900 more businesses will need permits to operate because of their air quality impacts. (Currently 2800 businesses must do this). Further consequences involve the loss of Federal funds for transportation projects. These two scenarios qualify as nothing short of Draconian for business and the community-at-large. When you add to these the costs to human health and agricultural production, you have a truly frightening scenario.

This situation did not suddenly pop up. Those responsible for land use decisions,—local and state government officials—have chosen to ignore it. Now we must all pay the price for their not-so-benign neglect.

• The water situation is critical for both quantity and quality. Supplies have been over-allocated, with everyone adding to the demand without considering the big picture. The last six years have been good water years, so there is a false sense of security, but the inevitable next drought will harshly demonstrate the foolishness of building like there’s no tomorrow. And once again, while the facts have been on the table, short-sightedness, greed, and parochial self-interest have produced a crisis.

Look at the San Joaquin River: abused, overused, polluted, dry in long stretches. Salinity build up (the cause of failure for irrigated cultures down through history) is unmanageable. Two and one-half million tons of salts accumulate every year, with little of it assimilated by current systems.

The overwhelming impacts to this and other resources are reflected in an increasingly Draconian regulatory environment, the result of ignoring the inevitable and finally hitting the wall. Now the inadequate water supply is the focus of struggles between the Big Three Users: urban, ag, and environment. Ask those who work in these areas about the hopes for quick and easy solutions and you will get the same answer: there are none. Point the fingers where you choose; the reality of the situation remains the same.

Crisis

• What about energy? Are we not having rolling brownouts now? Do news articles not tell of the challenge to meet existing demands? Are not Silicon Valley companies planning their very own power production facilities to fulfill their needs, realizing that current production is inadequate? Are these not enough signs that we have reached the limit?
• How about traffic impacts? Roads are increasingly overwhelmed and under-maintained. The Bay Area gets more like LA, the Central Valley gets more like the Bay Area, and everywhere is headed towards gridlock. The studies show we cannot road-build our way out of auto impacts and transportation needs. Do you see this wisdom reflected in land use decisions? No, we see the same mistakes repeated.

Against that backdrop, how can we sanely talk about adding another 10 or 15 or 20 million people in the next few decades to this state, regardless of any need or desire to accommodate them? Where is the water and where is the energy? If those two most basic questions can't be answered, then all else is fantasy, an extremely myopic, shortsighted, and dangerous exercise in futility and destruction: doing the same thing over and over an expecting different results.

It's time to stop saying, "When we get to a crisis, we'll have to (fill in the blank)." It's time to stop denying, dreaming and repeating mistakes. It's time to deal with basic, far-reaching and unavoidable changes.

By SALLY MEARS

'Tis the season when certain events rear their ugly head, and justify themselves simply by calling it "traditional family entertainment." A few of these forms of entertainment that affect (infect) our area are the rodeo and the circus.

These pastimes are really that: past their time. (Was there ever a time they should've existed?) Rodeos are accepted because they involve just "food" animals anyway, thought to be 'expendable.' And, sadly, farm animals are exempt from animal cruelty laws. Circuses have been around for a long time and have the draw they do because of their mystique and their exotic animals. But the reality behind these events is very sad.

Let's take Kenny, the baby elephant from Ringling Brothers. that was forced to perform a third show in one day even though he was very sick. He died later that day. But luckily some sponsors had a sense of morality and compassion. Sears pulled their sponsorship of Ringling Brothers. because of this. This happened just two years ago. And there've been more deaths since then. Circus Vargas and Culpepper & Merryweather have had many violations with the USDA for their treatment of animals.

California rodeo facts: several horses in the last few years have been killed in rodeos, the most recent (last fall) being a horse named Colonel who slammed into a wall at the Santa Barbara Fiesta rodeo. People watched in horror as this horse lay there with its neck broken. Nor was this the first death at this rodeo!

Calves have had their necks broken and have endured internal bleeding as well as bruising and other broken bones due to roping. One incident involved a calf that had its neck broken and was left lying outside for many hours without anesthetic until the slaughterhouse truck arrived. There need to be strict regulations because farm animals should not be exempt from animal cruelty laws. Shouldn't their short life be better than this, since their ultimate fate is an unnatural death? T. K. Hardy (an animal vet and steer roper) said, " I keep 30 head of cattle around for practice. You can cripple three or four in an afternoon. It gets to be a pretty expensive hobby." Many times, the only protection for these poor animals are the groups that try to help protect the animals and deter people from paying to keep these events going. Remember: it all comes down to money—every time.

Circus facts: Every time someone pays to see circus animals, the animal pays too. The good news is that circus attendance has declined dramatically over the last 10 years, as people are becoming more aware of how wrong these events are. Many times animals are taken from the wild, and their parents are killed because, obviously, they protest.

Circus officials use the defense that "we are saving the animals from poachers." If they truly cared they would not beat animals to perform tricks, and they would save other animals that were not potential circus performers. Once again it's money—animals living a pathetic existence of neglect, captivity and often abuse or death. There are many other forms of entertainment than such things. There is also an ever increasing list of animal-free circuses. I have a complete listing of these as well as other ideas of good family entertainment that don't involve animal exploitation.

This is my plea: Let rodeo and circus operators know you think this form of entertainment is wrong—calling it tradition is not an excuse! Christians and slaves being killed by wild animals and other humans in the coliseums used to be tradition, too. And not so long ago some caged circus performers on display were human beings with deformities and birth defects.

ACTION: For more information on animal-free circuses, or how you can help educate others, write: S. E. Mears, PO box 111, Hickman, Ca 95323; email: salamndr@earthlink.net 

FOOD Initiative

Note:  Connections webmaster is seeking additional local links for this section--if you have one please email the webmaster