Big News, Big Change

L’Avant Gardener is now merging with The Haute House. To visit the site, please click here. This website is now, well… retired. But all of the same information and good stuff can be found at the new address.

L’Avant Gardener ♥s Grey Water

If you haven’t heard of Grey Water, you can’t afford not to read this. Why? Because it can seriously improve the well-being of every person on Earth.

In my junior year of college, I had a professor who claimed that the third World War would be fought over water. He backed that statement up with data showing past battles beginning with the misuse of this priceless commodity. When one, powerful entity owns and operates the only source of a very necessary element of life, they have an immense responsibility to distribute it fairly. Ideally, we wouldn’t have to depend on the often greedy natures of people in power to provide us with something as unavoidably necessary as water. However, we live in a world where everything has an owner and we, as individuals, don’t own much of what we have.

Despite rising tides, water is not an infinite resource. Around the world, scientists are trying to desalinate ocean water and purify sewage. These are not the experiments of a carefree class of graduate students. These are last-ditch efforts to ensure that we, as a society, can continue consuming at the rates we do. So far the results say no, we can’t.

Grey water isn’t a solution, but it is a way to delay the inevitable. Maybe it can even stall the terminal abuse of the Earth’s limited water sources long enough for those scientists to uncover some more optimistic data.

So what is it exactly?

Putin, On Poultry

Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, recently held a town-hall meeting of his own. The topic was local poultry, and the guests invited to attend were all Russian farmers and poultry producers. He wanted to talk about reducing the amount of food imports to a healthily growing agricultural community like Russia. He stated that 25% of all poultry meats were being imported, a statistic he vows to change dramatically. To do this, he is offering government assistance to farms in need of modernization, and revisiting the regulations set by the European Union in 2008, concerning animal based agricultural standards. He stresses that Russia should adopt these rules, and begin to process meats in a way that makes local producers comparable to those of the EU. He also points out that the USA should begin to enforce these new safety, sanitation, and welfare restrictions if they are to continue profiting from the Russian market. As of now, we are signed on to sell 600,000 tons of poultry to the Russian people in 2010, and I ask: Can we afford to ignore this demand?

What’s more, say what you will about Putin… but I like a leader who works alongside the provincials. If were to speak out against the current administration on any subject, it would be that it has failed to embrace the agricultural community that is responsible for holding our culture together. I would really like to see someone from DC visit the Sedgwick County Extension Office and have a public discussion on marketing wheat products, and reducing grain imports.

Could we learn something from Russia?

Read Vladimir Putin’s Opening Address Here.

Is Italy Racist?

Many of you may have heard of the recent riots in Rosarno, Italy. Tensions between African immigrants and the Calabrian locals came to a head when two local farm hands were maliciously shot at with air rifles. The victims’ peers fought back, the Italian police retaliated, and the rest is riot history. Over a thousand immigrants have been evacuated, and some face deportation.

The story of Italy’s racism did not begin with field workers and a couple of young xenophobes in Rosarno. Matteo Fraschini Koffi, a freelance writer based in Kenya, recently published an article on allafrica.com about the racism in Italy, his former home. Published in December of 2009, less than a month before the riot, the article reads like a list of crimes committed against the peoples of Africa: A Ghanaian boy tortured. A man from Burkina Faso beaten to death by a local businessman and his son. A black actor assaulted on the street. A man beaten brutally in front of his daughter. While America is only now realizing that this crisis exists, it may already be a way of life for African-Italians.

Maybe.

Shortly after BBC, the Vatican, and NPR admonished southern Italians for their obvious hatred of immigrants, a silent protest blossomed from the streets of Rosarno. Banners hoisted by both Italian natives and African immigrants read “Abandoned by the state, criminalised by the mass media, 20 years living together is not racism!”

So, despite multiple riots, (some against the Camorra Mafia, for blatant exploitation of immigrants) and shouts from evacuated farm workers of “I want to go back to Africa. Italy is too bloody!” what are we to think? Is this a huge step backwards for humanity, or a skirmish blown out of proportion? And why, oh why do we only hear about this sort of racism when it’s too late to resolve the issue?

I can’t help drawing parallels to Southern California. After all of this time, the racism is still simmering. Even if we embrace the cuisine, the music and the cheap labor, we wrinkle our noses at the communal housing, the heavy accents… and, ironically, the lack of available jobs. Maybe Americans don’t have a right to criticize Italy… yet.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

An Update from L’Avant Gardener

A thousand apologies. My holiday hibernation (which was more like a spastic cross-country wallet-bleeding albeit joy ride of a month) lasted longer than I expected. But I have good news!

I am now, officially, writing for verb[ICT], an online magazine you can access here. The people are great, and any opportunity to write is a good one in my opinion.

However, L’Avant Gardener and Haute House are still my babies, and therefore my priorities. Expect some really great stories in the near future.

A Happy New Year to all of my readers. May you find love, peace and warmth wherever you give them.

Myth 4: Food vs. Our Environment

The authors of World Hunger: Twelve Myths don’t pretend this isn’t an issue. In fact, the chapter opens with a statement saying something akin to “Okay, okay. The worsening environment will definitely stand in the way of food production, and producers aren’t exactly eco-saints, but…”

They proceed to claim that food production’s assault on the planet’s valuable ecosystems isn’t as terrible as you may think. What’s more, the act of blaming food production is a waste of energy as the true criminals aren’t farmers at all.. they’re businessmen.

Stated plainly, the myth under fire is this: Incresing pressure to feed the world’s hungry is destroying the dwindling resources needed to grow any food at all. And, stated plainly, the book’s response is: Indeed. But why?

Look at the facts. There are enough resources to sustain humanity until its population reaches 11 billion people. This is an interesting point, but it feels pretty backwards when you consider the staggering numbers of hungry on the planet. How can we boast such potential when we aren’t even getting food to the 6.8 billion we already have? And why don’t these malnourished masses have food, if so many of them are classified as farmers? There is a common thread, just in case you were wondering.

Dislocation.

Defining Agriculture: Slow Food

Slow Food is a movement that began back in 1986 with an Italian communist food writer named Carlo Petrini. He jump-started his career when he organized an opposition to the opening of a McDonald’s by the Spanish Steps in Rome. (“Hmm, whatever shall we do? Monument to John Keats or a Dollar Menu? Hmm..“) At the time, the development of a culture that would keep in check the ever-growing “fast” food monster was imminent. It was only a matter of time until someone spoke out against wrappers and patties.. and that someone was Carlo.

Slow Food is now a relatively loose term, but can generally be defined as food that:

• Is grown with taste and quality in mind.
• Does not disrupt the natural environment.
• Is marketed locally.
• Is bought and sold at fair prices.
• Does not contain unnatural additives.

More officially, Slow Food is a governed body of foodies on a mission. To date, it has over 100,000 international members, and countless more followers. Then why haven’t you heard of it? Well, Carlo isn’t so popular in the United States yet. Surprising, I know.

Slow Food organizes oodles of markets, clubs, meetings, meals, classes, and has even developed its own university, The University of Gastronomic Sciences. It works with public schools to start community gardens and provide food and an agricultural education to children around the globe. It’s also responsible for networking thousands of otherwise estranged supporters and bringing them together in events such as Slow Food Nation, the colossal gathering in San Fransisco that fed and informed over 50,000 attendees.

Pros and Cons:

Pros: The founding ideas behind this movement are, to me, invincible. Food should be enjoyed, nurtured, savored, and properly paid for. That means putting back into the earth what you took out, and giving back to the producers what you’ve consumed. I love the idea of building school gardens and I’m passionate about any attempt to offer viable options to a society far too dependent upon fast, thoughtless, unhealthy and tasteless food.

Cons: Some say that Slow Food is a creepy, leftist cult of plotters attempting to undermine the foundation of capitalism. Also, any world in which I’m fined or publicly scorned for buying my end-of-a-long-week bacon cheeseburger and Coke is a world to which I simply do not want to belong.

(Thanks to Steph for the tip.)