November food for Thought

Heya everyone, 

October has wound down and November is winding up, and with it, most home gardens and farms without greenhouses are preparing for winter. Of course, there are always the root veggies and vegetables that overwinter, but the majority of locally grown food is coming to a close with the change of the season and the impending first frost. The tell tale sign of this shift was I had a new customer reach out to me and tell me that their own garden was closing up shop for the season, and they were going to start using Locally Fed's services. That warmed my heart, as a new customer always does! But it also made me think of all the avid home gardeners that are starting to winterize their gardens. 

This could mean cutting down the last stalks of kale, or taking down the old tomato vines, or in our case, figuring out what to do with a large amount of green onions and moving my husbands bikes from outside in our little garden to his parents dry garage. 

I've talked a bit before about how I love the autumn, and how it feels like turning inwards, keeping warm, dry & cozy inside and bringing in the harvest. What a beautiful change of season it is. A time to preserve and plan out how veggies will get us through the cold months, until the beautiful and welcomed return of spring weather and the anticipation of that growing season comes again. 

My masters thesis was on bioregional food and how short-food-supply-chains can enhance sense of place. Though my thesis was quite a few pages long, I felt I barely scratched the surface of those topics, and am so eager to learn more. Now, I am a bit distracted by my one year old son who is now running around our condo, and doing any sort of research or studying when you're not actively a student is hard, but I am feeling the itch to start again. Will I be starting another masters program or spring for the PhD? Absolutely not. Though I would love to be a student forever, I never want to write a test again in my life, but a long and in-depth paper on a topic I love and work in? That does sound appealing. 

Until I can find a proper avenue for that, or have experienced enough to eloquently write about whatever that experience may be, this blog will be my outlet. 

Alas, here we are. I invite you to continue if you're at all interested in these topics, but also have a place in your heart, and reading comprehension, for my ramblings.

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Soil. 

That is really where it all starts, right? Without good soil, we do not have nutritious food. Without food, we cannot survive. It really is as simple and complex as that. Billions of microorganisms live within the top 10% of soil, which is where the majority of our food is grown. Does soil health matter you may ask? Why, yes it absolutely does. 

A research article I was perusing, compared regenerative farming and conventional farming practices in California and Connecticut and it's affects on soil composition over 5-10 years. It should not be a surprise to anyone reading this, that the food produced from regenerative farming practices "produced crops with higher soil organic matter levels, soil health scores, and levels of certain vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals (Montgomery et al., 2022)." This research also found that "farming practices that affect soil organic matter and microbial communities are under-appreciated influences on crop nutrient density, particularly for micronutrients and phytochemicals relevant to plant health and chronic disease prevention in humans. These preliminary results point to soil health as a more pertinent metric for assessing the impact of farming practices on the nutrient composition of crops than the usual distinction of organic and conventional practices (Montgomery et al., 2022)." Pretty cool, eh?

Before I move on, I just want to geek out for a minute longer, and show you what these researchers found in regards to cabbage grown on a regenerative farm in California. This cabbage "had 46% more vitamin K, 31% more vitamin E, and 33% more vitamin B1, 60% more vitamin B3, and 23% more vitamin B5 than cabbage from the regularly tilled organic field. The regenerative cabbage also had 41% more calcium, 22% more potassium and less than a third of the sodium, 35% more carotenoids, and 74% more phytosterols (Montgomery et al., 2022)." So interesting. My whole working life, I have been enmeshed in organic farming and organic products, but since attending my Masters in agroecology and being exposed to more regenerative farming, my horizons have been broadened and I am so thankful for that. 

But, back to soil.

Soil, and more specifically soil organic carbon (SOC), is the bedrock of growing anything. I was just flipping through some articles, and came across one about SOC changes in the Lower Fraser Valley and that affect on climate change (the article is from 2020, (Paul et al., 2020)). The study was carried out on an area of 3031km². The researchers took date from 1984-2018 using "archived and recent soil samples, remote sensing, and digital soil mapping" and concluded that SOC loss was present in 61% of the research area, gain in 12% and 27% remained unchanged in those 34 years (Paul et al., 2020). This was interesting to me, as that 61% is a significant number. The researchers also found that adopting "reduced tillage, increased crop diversity, grassland rotations, cover cropping, increased organic inputs or changing land use from annual to perennial cropping" on agricultural lands had a positive impact on sequestering atmospheric CO₂ (Paul et al., 2020). In fact, no till agricultural practices actually increased SOC by 15cm specifically in Western Canada (Paul et al., 2020). How cool is that? And you know who practices no till? Local Harvest!

A great resource I found while I was doing my thesis was the 'Southwest BC Bioregion Food System Design Project' completed by students of the Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) and Kent Mullinix. This project focused on increasing the food production of BC's Southwest bioregion. This bioregion encompasses Powell River, Sunshine Coast, Squamish-Lillooet, Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Their opening statement after concluding this four year project, is that Southwest BC spends $8.6 billion dollars on food, and the majority of that is exported out of the province and country (Mullinix et al., 2016). If BC can capture and keep more of that food in-province, there are of course numerous benefits, but one of the main ones is that this act will increase Southwest BC's food self reliance. How wonderful would that be? That could increase food security for BC residents, and further food sovereignty in the province! 

If one needs a refresher, and I am one that does, of what exactly food self-reliance is, here you go, "Food self-reliance measures the proportion of the population’s diet that could be satisfied by locally produced food. It compares the quantity and types of food in the diet of the bioregion’s population (the food need) to the quantity and types of food produced there (Mullinix et al., 2016)."

Anyways, alls to say, is I've been thinking about eating seasonally in the Pacific Northwest, supporting BC farmers who are farming with sustainable, organic and regenerative practices. As stated above, I am pretty well versed in organic farming, products and standards (I dabbled in compliance, audits & inspections at Discovery Organics), but am relatively new to regenerative farming practices. When I first Dan Oostenbrink, the owner and operator of Local Harvest, he explained to me that at Local Harvest, they follow every organic farming practice, and then go even further with practices such as no-till, foster biodiversity, hand weed and hand harvest all of their crops. 

During my program, I also was exposed to the word 'agroecology'. I had never heard of the word, even while being in the organic produce sector, and from my experience, the word is much more prevalent in Europe and South American agricultural circles. I'll give a definition below:

"Agroecology, according to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, is a holistic and integrated approach that simultaneously applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agriculture and food systems.

It seeks to optimize the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while also addressing the need for socially equitable food systems within which people can exercise choice over what they eat and how and where it is produced (Mtombeni, G., Regeneration International, 2024)."

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Alright, I think that is enough musings for this week. If you've made it this far, thank you very much! I appreciate the veggie support and the reading support. 

As we head into the colder months, turning towards our local producers is more important than ever, as this is the slow season for them as well. Looking for Christmas gifts? Try and seek out locally produced items, Instagram is a great tool for that, look up artisan winter markets in your area, all of those types of things! 

There is one market I am wanting to go too, it is by another Oostenbrink sibiling, Jack Oostenbrink. He owns a plant store called Fruits & Shoots (what a cute name, eh?), and he is having a winter market with carefully curated local artisans and their products on November 29th and 30th.

I will link his Instagram and website below:

Website
Instagram

 

Okay! That's all folks! 

 

Big Love, 

Sev & Locally Fed

 

 

 Sites Cited:

Montgomery DR, Biklé A, Archuleta R, Brown P, Jordan J. 2022. Soil health and nutrient density: preliminary comparison of regenerative and conventional farming. PeerJ 10:e12848 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12848

Mullinix, K., C. Dorward, C. Sussmann, W. Polasub, S. Smukler, C. Chiu, A. Rallings, C. Feeney, and M. Kissinger. The Future of Our Food System: Summary of the Southwest BC Bioregion Food System Design Project. Richmond, British Columbia: Institute for Sustainable Food Systems, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, 2016.

Paul, S., Dowell, L., Coops, N., Johnson, M., Krzic, M., Geesing, D., & Smukler, S. (2020). Tracking changes in soil organic carbon across the heterogeneous agricultural landscape of the Lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia. Science of The Total Environment, 732, 138994. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138994

https://regenerationinternational.org