Amid all last week’s hub-bub about asylum seeker policies, Spanish football, State of Origin football and footballers reacting badly to sleeping tablets, you might have missed a mysterious little news item about an act of horticultural sabotage in north Queensland. Around seven million plants, including four million tomato seedlings, have been killed after they were deliberately poisoned at a seedling nursery in Bowen.
Police believe herbicide was injected into the nursery’s irrigation system, and the rumours are flying. Some say the poisoning was an act of industrial sabotage. Some suggest that another grower was trying to force up tomato prices. Others are even claiming the poisoning was an act of terrorism.
Whatever the motive, the repercussions from this event are obvious. Bowen is the largest winter growing tomato region in Australia, harvesting 80% of the nation’s crop during spring. The loss of millions of seedlings means that if you were planning to make chicken parmigiana sometime in September, one of the main ingredients just got a whole lot more expensive. Prices are expected to triple over the coming months and reach in excess of $15 per kilo.
The loss of a crop is a devastating blow for any farmer, and I wouldn’t wish such an event on anyone. It’s also a serious blow for farm labourers and nursery workers who’ll need to look elsewhere for a job. But while this event is a difficult pill to swallow for those directly involved, I also think it can serve as a timely reminder of the problems associated with the industrial model of food production, and the urgent need for us to get back to basics.
Some of the issues are immediately obvious. Throughout southern Australia tomatoes are a summer crop. However in our society’s desire to have whatever food it wants, whenever it wants it, we’ve largely abandoned the time honoured practice of eating whatever produce is currently in season. Instead, we either eat processed food when fresh produce isn’t available, or worse still, import produce from overseas. In the case of winter tomatoes, we don’t seem to have any qualms about transporting produce via fossil fuel powered vehicles across thousands of kilometres, a process associated with the concept of “food miles”.
Less obvious in the Bowen tomato sabotage is the issue of food security. Unlike our ancestors, who grew fruit and vegetables and kept backyard livestock, we find ourselves in a position of extreme vulnerability when it comes to food supplies. Almost every household is dependent upon supermarkets, but to minimise inventory sitting idly in warehouses, the supermarkets operate according to a “just in time” delivery system. It’s estimated that there is just three day’s supply of food actually stocked on the shelves.
When demand exceeds supply, fresh produce prices go up. But when calamity strikes, prices skyrocket to unaffordable levels. This happened following Cyclone Larry when a large portion of North Queensland’s banana crop was wiped out, and it will happen as a result of the Bowen tomato poisoning.
The solution to the issues of food security, dependence upon supermarkets and long distance transportation, is simple. It’s also affordable, and empowering. It builds community. It leads to improvements in physical and mental wellbeing. It is, of course, to grow your own food, right in your own garden.
I’ve been growing my own fruit, vegetables and herbs since Kylie and I got married in 1998. Twelve years later and we reckon that in summer, our garden supplies about 80 percent of our fresh produce requirement. Supermarkets are still a necessary evil. But we seek to make up some of the shortfall by swapping with neighbours and buying things locally. We’re not aiming for total self sufficiency, but we are determined to grow as much as possible.
There’s more to it than pure economics though. Something I’ve realised in the last year or two is that alongside my wife and kids, food growing is one of the great passions of my life. When I’m outside digging in my vegie garden or working in the orchard, I experience the kind of deep, pit of your guts satisfaction that comes from directly suppling my family’s need for food.
If I could turn the clock on my gardening efforts back to 1998, I’d only change one thing. I’d plant more fruit trees. That’s it. Growing my own food has been one of the best things I’ve done in my life to date, and I’d encourage you too, to take up the spade, align yourself with the seasons and bring forth from the soil a bounty richer than you have ever imagined!
First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 18th July, 2010.
