How do you grow organic vegetables in an increasingly toxic world? Landed with pH disturbed by increasingly acidic water? Where do micro-plastics, heavy metals, persistent pesticides, nano-materials and wind-borne radionuclides permanently accumulate? Where does increasing air ozone disrupt photosynthesis?
In his first new book Gardening in the ruins (editions écosociété), Trievoise Bertille Darragon systematically lists everything that pollutes vegetable gardens, and presents several “tips and tricks” to prevent damage to crops.
What conclusions can be drawn from this work? To find out more, here Grenoble interviewed Bertille Darragon.
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here Grenoble: How was the idea for this book born?
Bertille Darragon: At the end of 2017, with a gardener friend and partner in the environmental struggle, we made the same point: despite the climate disaster and widespread industrial pollution, gardening manuals still give passed the same advice, as if the various accidents were passing. our gardens, like the Chernobyl cloud.
We wanted to do research to better understand how human activity affects plant activity and evolution, what are the reasons for the decline of plant biodiversity, and how to think about concrete mechanisms to manage a garden we are the best at the cost.
We had originally planned some kind of conference, with different speakers. Finally, we chose a written one. For years, we worked on the planetary boundaries 9: we wanted to wipe away all the ecological damage that affects gardens. It was an encyclopedic work… I finished the “chapter” on pollution, and it ended up as a book.
Your work compiles and synthesizes scientific information about ozone, acid deposition, heavy metals, pesticides, plastics, nanomaterials and radionuclides to a great extent. What major scientific sources did you link to?
What was your approach?
Obviously, it would be better to be able to go further, especially on highly controversial topics such as the dangers of GMOs or pesticides. It is inevitable that there is a bias in my research, for example regarding the number of deaths due to Chernobyl.
One of the wonderful lessons we can learn from your book is: “There are no more oases”. No plot of land, or ZAD, or organic vegetable garden is safe from pollution by plastics, by polluted water, by persistent pesticides, by heavy metals or radionuclides. It is impossible to farm without suffering in some way from the disasters of the industrial lifestyle. Impossible to escape from this increasingly toxic world. So we have to fight to change the system. But how? What are the most promising operator dynamics in your eyes?
In my eyes, the most relevant dynamics are those that attempt alliances. For example, environmental associations that support specific requests from the farmer’s movement. Or Fatima Ouassak who wants environmentalists to be a sounding board for the needs of working class neighborhoods. Or even queer market gardeners in Bure who distribute pamphlets explaining the links between anti-sexism and the fight against nuclear power, while they help on farms. I am not the most talented in these alliances, but I thank those who create these links: they are the only shield we have against the current extreme right.
When we read your book, we think strongly about organic food, about the amount of organic agriculture on land that is becoming increasingly toxic, regardless of the efforts of farmers . What is your relationship with organic despite everything? Does eating organically protect us more from pollution, or should we turn to stricter labels? To put it another way, after writing your book, how do you feed yourself?
For me, eating organic has always been a way, not to protect myself, but to contribute to agriculture that does not add too much pollution to the soil, and to the bodies of agricultural workers. I have not changed my mind or my practice on this. And it suits me better to demand stricter organic labels than to fight for a conventional ban, with support for farmers to change their farming methods.
Despite the many “tips and tricks” you present to help gardeners eliminate a variety of contaminants in vegetable gardens, reading your book can be very discouraging to anyone who wants to start making their own food. In an increasingly toxic world, what’s the point of gardening, after all?
In your vegetable garden, you can do what you can to limit certain pollution, for example by using little or no plastic. This is possible if the size of the garden is compatible with the opportunities we have for manual work.
On the scale of market gardening, we gain productivity as a result of knowledge, experience and working logic. Nevertheless, and even in a small area, it is difficult to get by without using a tractor, a plastic greenhouse, nitrogen pellets, etc. So if the alternative to gardening is to buy your vegetables from the local market gardener, you should help them, to replace some of these products with human labour. But our society is not organized around this, and our lives do not always allow it.
Has writing this book transformed you, or changed your view of the world?
I believe that the thing that changed my view of the world the most is what I read about considering plants. But this chapter remained as a computer file… And otherwise, this research on polluters gave me a thousand reasons to hate this industrial world even more.
What is your next research topic?
For now, I want to have more time for research that directly serves local resistance, whether against the establishment of mega-hill reservoirs or the extension of the Trièves road, the RD1075so it can accommodate more trucks.
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On the same topic:
– How much does an organic vegetable garden “bring in”?
– Can urine be used to fertilize gardens or vegetable patches?
– Where can you learn gardening and grow a vegetable garden when you don’t know anything about it?
– How many farmers would it take for Grenoble to be self-sufficient in food?
2024-04-29 16:19:58
#vegetable #gardens #toxic #world
