Ordinary Heroes: The Gardener – Peter Berti
“Ordinary Heroes” is a series of interviews about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Some people wiser than me claim that to live a life that is truly lived, a life that is beyond existing, a person must find their one gift, their one great talent and give it to the world as a gift. The great part of this choice is that the person who gives away their gift gets to live an extraordinary life. I hope this tale of these ordinary heroes doing extraordinary things will inspire you to do the same.
Peter loves to garden. Yummy vegetables, not pretty flowers. Three years ago, after being a responsible Father and husband he finally took the plunge to make his dreams come true and bought 15 acres of bush near the Marlborough Forest, which for you city slickers is on the way to beautiful Smiths Falls. Peter was born in Toronto and educated at the University of Guelph, earning a PhD in Nutrition. He has spent most of his life with his family of 4 children and wife in Ottawa working as a consultant to support better nutrition in the 3rd world. His work with food also became the centre of his home life as he built up a huge garden that covered most of his back yard. This is his tale, but first let’s start with a tidbit from his favourite writer and poet, the Christian champion for rural living, Wendell Berry.
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front [in part]
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
We talked at his farm inside his small greenhouse on a cold Spring day, with the spinach sprouts pictured above sitting beside me, while he took a break from building his passive solar home.
Gord: It’s chilly out there – thanks for chatting with me inside this warm greenhouse.
Peter: Glad you like it. Even though its cloudy its toasty warm here it is really comfy in here, sort of climate change warming the planet.
Gord: True, but today not here to talk about unpleasant topics like climate change: we’re here to talk about you. What inspired you to move to the country from Ottawa to build a Passive solar home, renovate an old barn that was just about to fall over and create a market garden for 50 families that you hope will one day make you enough money to earn more than minimum wage and happily garden into your 90s.
Peter: Well the fact is that I love to garden. You know that because you saw me in my garden 25 years ago, but I can only do it because I have a “real job” that pays the bills. You want to know what I think will be needed to save the world? Increase the price of food. Use full cost accounting for the price of food. I grow good food. Its healthy. Its nutritious. Anybody eating my food will be healthier than those you buy imported “stuff” in the grocery store.
Gord: But people are complaining about the high prices of food right now! They’d go nuts if they heard you talk.
Peter: Yes, I know that, that’s why I don’t talk about it. But let’s get real here; I earned nothing the first year working in my garden 12 hours a day, and by the third year, if you don’t count my capital investments like buying the land, buying a tractor and all that other essential stuff, I earned $9/hour. That’s not going to attract young people to farm. That’s not sustainable. Unless you have more expensive food you eventually won’t have farmers being able to grow nutritious food. I know you have a bunch of farmer friends, are any of them rich?
Gord: No, unless they sell their land. They’re all in debt past their eyeballs. I just talked with a young farmer who bought a local greenhouse that grows tomatoes because he couldn’t afford to buy farmland. By the way, did you hear the news that two of every five farm operators in Canada will retire over the next decade? Two thirds of producers also don’t have succession plans in place and the government thinks the solution is to bring in immigrant farmers from elsewhere? What are your thoughts?
Peter: Isn’t it obvious? Land and machinery and fuel is too expensive relative to the income farmers earn. Only a crazy man like me would choose to work 24/7, earn less than minimum wage and have massive debts on top of all that. Clearly the kids of the farmers retiring see that and want no part of it. Bringing in immigrants sounds great, but we will end up with the same problem when their kids also see that farming is not a financially viable way to live. If you want to eat, especially if you want nutritious food, you need farmers to earn more money and that means food prices have to go up.
Gord: OK, I get it! Let’s go back in time to find out how your irrational love for a vocation which won’t pay the bills came from. When did this journey begin?
Peter: My grandparents immigrated from Italy around 1910 and bought land near Toronto for a market garden. Their stroke of brilliance was that this land was on a south facing slightly sloped hill that allowed their crops to be ready 2 weeks ahead of most other farmers. This meant they could charge top $, at a time when there was little imported food from elsewhere. They were able to live a middle class life style because the food was expensive enough to pay the bills. Of course I helped out in their garden and of course my Dad also had a large garden on his property. I don’t know if you remember but in the old days boys had no choice but to help their Dad’s with all their projects. I hated that kind of manual work; fixing cars or building a house or gardening but it turned out I hated gardening less than everything else so I ended up spending most of my time working in our garden.
Gord: That’s quite funny: you now do what you hated the least, not exactly a promising start. That reminds me of a movie I just saw yesterday about farmers in Malawi called ‘The Ants and the Grasshopper’. Every heard of it?
Peter: Of course I know it! I worked for 7 years as the nutritionist for that project. I visited Malawi and worked with the families to make ensure that that the food they grew was more nutritious by ensuring the crops were planted together. We used a method called inter-cropping to increase the nitrogen in the soil because the Malawi soils are nitrogen deficient.
Gord: What a coincidence! Please tell me more because I have the feeling that our readers are going to find this an interesting tale.
Peter: OK, here goes. In the 1950s most in Malawi had a more nutritious diet of millet, sorghum and cassava. Now the main food is maize porridge which they eat 3x a day which only grows by adding chemicals and nitrogen fertilizers which happened during the Green Revolution. While this gave them more calories they are “empty” calories which have low nutrition value. The result is that children do not grow up as healthy as they could be. The project I worked on started in 1998 and I worked on it until 2007 had the objective to help farmers grow nutritious food without these expensive inputs. The movie you saw about the relationship between sustainable farming and climate change is an outgrowth of that project.
Gord: I think our readers would be interested in knowing the details of the inter-cropping method you mentioned.
Peter: Well, we alternate rows of maize or millet with rows of legumes like beans and peas or ground nuts like peanuts which provide nitrogen. In my garden and farmers in Malawi also grow “green manure” which are crops like clover or winter rye which send their roots underneath any crop and provide nitrogen. Another big part of the project was the develop a seed bank so the farmers control and develop seeds that work best for them. The social part of the project is at least as important as the farming methods. In the past the women did all the growing of food and childcare. The project also worked to change the village and family relationships whose ultimate goal with healthier and happier children. This goal was something the men could understand and be part of. This approach increased the organic content of the soil and increased the health of the children. See graphic at the end and this website https://soilandfood.org/ for details.
Peter shows you his “green manure” of winter rye
Gord: How did that work change what you do in your garden?
Peter: That work had be realize that only organic farming is sustainable along with methods like zero till. Zero till allows the deep roots of my “green manure” spread roots which not only provide nitrogen but break up the soil to allow for better air and water travel through the soil and create perfect conditions for worms. I want to emphasize that for food to help build a healthy body must be nutritious and varied: this only possible when there is rich, organic soils not full of toxic chemicals.
Gord: Will these lessons from Malawi and your garden help us change our society so we can live sustainably?
Peter: Of course! I have learned that it is the combination of organic farming method, social/family stability and good education is what creates the conditions for broad based social and technology changes that create a sustainable way of life. Based upon what I read it seems that more people are recognizing that agriculture is a critical element in our climate change fight, for soils farmed properly are a carbon sink while most current methods make soils emit carbon. But to farm sustainably needs more farmers using fewer chemicals and less machinery.
Gord: Sounds good, although opposite to what I see happening around me. Tell me more about how you are doing your bit to make your soils a carbon sink.
Peter: I have 70 rows that are only 2.5 feet wide and 50 feet long. Each row has slightly different soils which I have tested so that means I plant different crops and take care of them differently. I track the history of what I plant in each row. I work full time in the garden during the growing season and do my consulting in the winter to pay the bills as that pays 10x as much as my farming efforts.
Gord: Isn’t that ironic?
Peter: Yes, I find it VERY ironic that I earn 10x as much consulting for farmers as working as a farmer. I guess that is life in our modern world – it is filled with ironies that make you scratch your head in amazement.
Gord: Well, I know you are busy working on your new home. Thanks for your time and be safe working.
Peter: Thanks. I hope to move into the home with my wife later this summer. You are welcome to back any time to help with the weeding!
References
Malawi Project
https://soilandfood.org/research-results/
Effect of participatory agriculture on children’s health
Impact of ag interventions on nutrition
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