Wanted: A Perfectly Local Chicken

August 21, 2005

For a truly sustainable breakfast, which comes first? The tofu or the egg?

[in the interest of preserving the environment, the authors are on a

'100-Mile Diet'. They have vowed to eat nothing originating more than

100 miles from their home in Vancouver. This is the second in series.]

Does vegetarianism make ecological sense? For more than 15 years, the

answer, for us, has been yes. We accepted the now-familiar

sustainability formula: on any given tract of agricultural land, it is

almost always possible to produce more vegetable foods than animals to

eat. Add in the question of cruelty (which seems to increase with

every " efficiency " added to animal husbandry), and for us the issue

was no contest.

These days, however, we're asking a new question. Does vegetarianism

fit into a local, sustainable diet?

Now things are getting complicated.

Alisa and I were near-vegans when we began our Hundred Mile Diet three

months ago. Suddenly, everything we could eat or drink at home had to

come from local land and waters, and immediately an unexpected ethical

question loomed. What the hell are we going to eat for breakfast?

The neighbourhood chickens

Consider: we knew of no locally grown and milled cereals or flours. It

was too early in the year for fresh fruit. We couldn't eat rice

pudding, or scrambled tofu, or that nice Egyptian fava bean breakfast

called ful medames. What we had were potatoes and . . . more potatoes.

Well-meaning friends offered the following advice: " Buy eggs, you

idiots! " Sorry, well-meaning friends, but it's not that easy. Yes,

there are local, organic, free-range chickens busy producing local

eggs. But what are the chickens eating? The answer, typically, is feed

that has travelled the same kinds of distances as most grocery-store

products—an average, according to World Watch, of a whopping,

globe-warming 2,500 to 4,000 kilometres.

Then we discovered the UBC Farm.

Tucked among the conifers that spread south from the central

university campus, UBC Farm is home to an organic market garden as

well as 83 Hy-Line Brown chickens. Beyond raising our own, this is

about the closest connection to local food that we could ask for.

Alisa and I can ride bikes to the Saturday public market (9 a.m. to 1

p.m.), where we are free to walk the grounds and visit the chickens

(though they never seem to remember us). We can see for ourselves the

birds' living conditions—500 square metres of free range in which the

handsome, rust-coloured hens forage for bugs, eat at feeders, or peck

at organic waste from the farm. We even know, roughly, the birds'

birthdays: the whole brood was born in December 2004 and will be kept

three years before slaughter.

Much of what the chickens eat, then, is as local as can be. Their

cereal feed is not. According to Mark Bomford, program coordinator for

the farm, the organic feed comes from Alberta. It is, however, brought

to Vancouver via a transshipment arrangement, by which trucks that

deliver steel to Alberta return with loads of chicken feed.

More importantly, UBC Farm is working toward all-local feed for the

chickens. The students and staff have experimented with growing grain

on-site, and plan to revive old threshers and other farm machinery

from a former agricultural teaching and research complex on campus.

While Bomford admits it's " mostly lunchroom talk " right now, the

ultimate vision is to grow, harvest and blend a complete chicken feed

on the farm. Meanwhile, Bomford adds, the chickens do more than simply

lay eggs—they contribute to the sustainability of overall food

production. Chicken manure is a potent fertilizer, and the Hy-Line

Browns are also being tested for pest-control duty.

Global vegetarianism? No thanks

As for the eggs—we'll take a dozen, thanks. When it comes to eating

locally, we've had to abandon strict vegetarianism.

The strange fact is that vegetarianism as commonly practiced is, like

the rest of the industrial food system, propped up by the

globalization of food and everything that it entails, including a

total disconnection between food consumers and producers, and the

cataclysmic ecological costs of shipping food around the world. At its

worst, global vegetarianism is still cleaner and greener than global

meat-eating, and is certainly more humane. On a local level, though,

the questions are more complicated.

Why were the UBC Farm eggs so important to us? Because vegetable-based

protein sources aren't exactly abundant in these parts. There are

hazelnuts; unfortunately, Alisa is allergic to them. The most readily

available protein sources are all animal-based: fish and shellfish,

eggs, dairy, meat. It is increasingly clear that local, sustainable

eating is not always going to be vegetarian. Imagine attempting a

Hundred Mile Diet in Whitehorse (a brother of mine is considering

exactly that—and picturing a lot of meals of fish and game).

I can hear the carnivores cheering now. Well, don't roll out the

coupons for Memphis Blues Barbeque House just yet. UBC Farm may be

committed to principles of local sustainability and humane

stewardship, but they are far from the norm. When it comes to food

choices, the line-up of questions facing animal products is long.

Where did the product come from? Where did the feed for the animal

come from? Was the feed genetically modified? Was it organic? Was the

animal " improved " with a biomedical soup of hormones, stimulants,

antibiotics? Were its living conditions acceptable? Can we live with

the conditions of its slaughter?

So much complexity, and it's still only breakfast time.

Delta wheat

The good news: asking these kinds of questions led Alisa and me in

surprising directions. By making inquiries about chicken feed, we

eventually found locally grown Red Fife wheat, a heritage variety

almost forgotten by industrial farming. Once we've milled the grain

generously given to us by a Delta farmer, we'll have breakfast options

beyond hash browns: like, say, pancakes smothered in seasonal berries

from the U-pick operations on Westham Island near Ladner. A search for

other heritage grain growers led us to Dan Jason of Salt Spring

Seeds—who also stocks seed for regional soy, black, pinto and other

dried beans and legumes, and who has made his own 100-percent-local

tofu. In theory, a vegetarian or even vegan diet could be supplied by

local farms.

" It's time, it's really time, " said Jason. " Even on [salt Spring]

island here there's talk of growing beans and grains on a larger

scale, owning a combine cooperatively or something like that. "

If and when it gets to that point, I suspect the chickens and their

eggs will still be with us. I recently spent half a year researching a

book in the Dominican Republic (shameless plug: Dead Man in Paradise

will be published by Douglas & McIntyre in October), where

self-sufficiency remains a grand tradition. In the city of Santo

Domingo, a modern urban capital of more than two million people, it's

no surprise to wake up to the rooster's crow and see hens foraging on

the boulevards. According to Bonita Magee, project manager with Farm

Folk/City Folk, there is no current local campaign to roll back

Vancouver's prohibition against raising chickens, bees and other

useful animals in the city, but she knows there is a quiet upwelling

of support for the idea. She knows, in fact, of chickens being kept

illicitly among us.

It's one kind of grow-op the neighbours don't seem to mind.

Next time: The pleasures of local eating, recipes included.

Previously:

Living on the Hundred Mile Diet

Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon will be writing twice a month for The

Tyee about their attempt to eat well on the Hundred-Mile Diet. For

more information on finding locally produced food visit the web site

of FarmFolk/CityFolk at www.farmfolkcityfolk.ca.

http://energybulletin.net/8138.html

August 22, 2005

Are you trying to convert people to eat eggs?

Jo

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" rvijay " <rvijay07

Sunday, August 21, 2005 11:15 PM