Recently I visited Salinas Valley, a warm, oak-filled landscape flanked on all sides by steep canyons, and fed through the center by the Salinas River.
Multi-generation California farming families make up most of the valley’s land ownership. Most of these families grow spinach, lettuce, or other leafy greens, earning this valley the nickname of “America’s Salad Bowl”. Most growers are true stewards of the land”, meaning that the growers show that land use and environmental values can coexist.
The growers I met on my trip were proud to show me their acreage, and seemed to feel lucky that they had beautiful land to run around on (and prime fishing spots) too.
Yet changes imposed from above are squeezing farmers, forcing them to destroy the land they depend on and love. Large corporate buyers of the Valley’s leafy greens have imposed “food safety” rules that growers must abide by if they’re to sell their crop. And these rules, concocted in a board room disconnected from not just the land and decades of agricultural practice, but from science, could actually make our food less safe.
Before the fall.
Mention the year 2006 to any grower, worker, broker, shipper, buyer, or local government official, and get ready to watch them cringe.
That year’s e.coli outbreak — eventually traced to bagged spinach grown in the Salinas Valley– made over 200 people sick (three people died) across 26 states, and for months the nation endured a seemingly endless food safety crisis. The event proved disastrous for the Valley, whose annual agriculture production reaches into the hundreds of millions. Once source estimated a loss of roughly $3,500 per acre for farmers.
The Center for Disease Control made a best guess on the source contaminated spinach back to the source– a 50 acre farm that also ran cattle. Subsequent tests found 26 of the ranch’s cattle tested positive for the same strain of e.coli that caused the outbreak. Feral (non-native) pigs seen in the area around the ranch were also determined to be “environmental risk factors”.
Action and re-action.
Justifiably, corporate purchasers of spinach and leafy greens had to act. But rather than impose regulations tied to science, whoever sat in the board rooms of those corporations who perhaps have never visited farmland decided that all living creatures– cattle, rodents, deer, amphibians, birds, domesticated cats and dogs– had to go. And these new “Super Metrics” dictate that any trace of animal presence– tracks in the soil, perhaps– give the corporations the right to refuse an entire yield.
There is not a single study supporting the idea that deer or frogs or birds or dogs caused an e.coli outbreak. The elimination of riparian (river) or pond habitats on farms, science shows, may actually increase the risk of food-born pathogens.
Danny Marquis, resource conservationist at the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service noted that: “Studies demonstrate that relatively small grass buffers can filter 99% of pathogens, and over 40 field trials show that vegetated treatment systems and constructed wetlands can treat human pathogens.”
Not worth it
Though the Super Metrics are proprietary, talk to any grower or take drive along the Valley’s crisscrossing dirt roads and the requirements become clear. Where oak trees once shaded the Salinas, home to a (now declining) population of steelhead, the ground is bare. Grass cover is gone, causing dust and particulate matter to swirl around the fields when even the slightest breeze blows (some guess dust may spread e.coli). Farmers have had to get rid of their family pets. Some report their pets found shot by paranoid neighbors. Ponds, many of which once contained, among other life, Federally Endangered red-legged frogs, have suddenly become sterile.
Break the law to pay your bills.
Farmers, forced between choosing to forfeit their crop or violate state and federal air, water, and soil quality laws, chose the former. And the corporate buyers get off scott free, and often herald their products as “sustainable”.
Several conservation groups are teaming up with academics and local government officials to research the impacts of the Super Metrics. Others are investigating possible vectors of e.coli as a way to rule out wildlife that is innocent in the food safety battle.
Consumers can speak with their wallets. Demand for bagged greens is driving many of these new metrics. As convenient as bagged greens are, according to Jo Ann Baumgartner, Director of the Wild Farm Alliance: “The fact is, the bag itself is a micro-incubator. Many cut leaf surfaces increase areas of infection, and washing of thousands of pounds of greens at a time can spread pathogens to scores of consumers.” In fact, 17 of the 26 e.coli outbreaks between 1993 and 2008 were traced to the bagged leafy greens industry.
Ultimately the increasing demand for food to feed a growing world population will mean that growers need to abide by strict safety guidelines. But knee-jerk regulations that ignore both science and generations of knowledge about the land won’t get us there.