Almond Conundrum

July 11, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Well, there they go—the last of the almonds. The last I will buy for a long time.

I absolutely love almonds. They’re one of my favourite nuts. But I had already replaced most of the almonds we eat (which come from California, producer of 80% of the world’s almonds) with locally grown walnuts, in my effort to eat closer to home. Now, however, they’ll be a very rare treat.

In my post last week about our relationship with bees, I talked about how North American bees are forced to forage in agricultural monocultures, leading to poor nutrition and exposure to pesticides. The largest of those monocultures is in California’s almond growing region, where the bees are “parked” every year during almond flowering in order to pollinate the trees.

Add to that the gallon of scarce California water that goes into producing each almond, and I find I can’t keep buying them. At least not the ones at the grocery store.

BUT, in deciding that, I’ve discovered that there are NZ almond growers as close to us as Marlborough, and that, with a little coddling, we might even be able to grow them ourselves!

So, with that, I have cheerfully sworn off California almonds. I’ll be checking out my local nurseries for almond trees, and tracking down those locally produced nuts!

The Last of the Cheese

July 6, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

We marked another milestone in the food year yesterday—we ate the last of the goat cheese. We managed to finish off the Parmesan and Bishop’s Corner* on the same day.

It’s true, you only know what you’ve got when it’s gone. The goat cheese is that way for me. During the height of milking season, when rounds of cheese crowd out other food from the refrigerator, I can forget what a gourmet delight it is. I can forget that our ‘everyday’ cheese would cost us about $100/kg if we had to buy it. But when I’m staring at the last tiny sliver of perfection, knowing that my next bite of cheese is going to have to be run-of-the-mill commercial cow cheese, I recognise the value of what we produce.

So we savoured our last bites, and look forward to spring, when the milk will again be flowing, and the rounds of cheese will start stacking up.

*Bishop’s Corner is a cheese of my own creation—a happy mistake that turned out better than what I meant to make. I make that mistake over and over again now, and have named the cheese after a local crossroads.

A new relationship with bees

July 1, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

My friend, Maryann, researches pollinator decline. Her focus is on honey bees, and how honey bee management can affect bee health.

The picture is a complex and disheartening one, but one that offers glimpses of what sustainable bee management could look like. Wherever they live, honey bees are beset by an array of diseases and parasites. Under the non-intensive, almost natural management regimes used in much of Africa, the bees fight off these pathogens and parasites without intervention from bee keepers. Intensely managed North American hives crumble under their onslaught.

North American hives are shifted from place to place, following the flowering crops, in order to provide pollination services for huge monocultures of fruits, vegetables and nuts. Hives are packed close together in vast arrays, making it easy for disease to spread from hive to hive.

The heavy use of herbicides in the agricultural landscape mean that the only source of pollen and nectar may be the crop to be pollinated. Bees evolved to feed on a wide variety of flowers, and cannot survive on one food alone. Imagine being forced to eat only broccoli—it’s good for you, but if you ate nothing else, your health would suffer.

Add to malnutrition the fact that the pollen the bees are eating is laced with no fewer than 137 different pesticides, many of which are toxic to bees or interfere with their growth, development and learning. And these pesticides are mixed with a range of substances to help them stick to the plants or disperse evenly when sprayed; these chemicals can be as poisonous to bees as the pesticides, and they are virtually unregulated.

Poor nutrition, poisoned food, and crowded conditions make North American bees susceptible to disease and parasite outbreaks. Bee keepers’ response has largely been to treat hives with pesticides to kill the parasites that spread disease, further adding to the chemical load the bees must support. When parasites develop resistance to pesticides (which they do at an alarming rate), the weakened bees are overwhelmed, and the colony dies.

I have long been uncomfortable with the North American management of bees—we squeeze everything we can from the poor animals, pushing them to their physiological limits in poor conditions. It’s no wonder they are in trouble. If we forced any other livestock to live in overcrowded conditions and eat poisoned food that didn’t meet their nutritional needs, the public would be outraged. Now, this unsustainable management has created a crisis, as the animals we depend upon to produce much of our food die in unprecedented numbers.

We need to develop a more gentle approach to bee management—one that respects the needs of these little animals. We need to critically evaluate (and curtail) our use of pesticides, and reconsider our model of vast monocultures in favour of more mixed agriculture. We need to give bees a break from the agricultural landscape so they have opportunities to eat food not laced with pesticides. We need to manage bees less for our own convenience, and more for their health and well-being. We need a new relationship with bees, forged from an understanding of bees’ needs, and aimed at long-term sustainability.