Vernal notes

Spring has sprung, but the grass ain’t yet riz. Give it another week, maybe. While the field I’m thinking about harrowing is still too squishy, we’re getting some of those breezy days that really dry things out. It’s not an ill wind if it bodes well for tractor work, but it could bring another bad fire season, given the absence of snowpack in the woods this year. The forest floor can become quite tindery during this period before leaf-out.

With daylight stretching into the evening, and the sun offering some welcome warmth on the face, people who felt cooped up all winter are now spilling outdoors like kids on recess – some engaged in frenetic activity, others just vaping contentedly. Nova Scotia’s new-sprung premier, Iain Rankin, might be one of those feeling the urge to get out there and play a round of golf – the guy’s CV actually includes a diploma in golf club management – but right now he wouldn’t be caught dead on the links.

If he hasn’t done so already, Rankin needs to reverse the provincial government’s decision to delist 285 hectares of park land at Owls Head, on the Eastern Shore. The area has effectively been under conservation for decades, but it was not yet legally designated as such – and it was coveted by an American businessman who wanted to build a major golf course development there, so in 2019 the province quietly removed it from the Parks and Protected Areas Plan. Then, with former McNeil cabinet minister Michel Samson lobbying on behalf of the developer, a secret agreement was hammered out for the sale of this public land, which includes about 7.6 kilometres of shoreline, for a grand total of $216,000 – which is not enough to buy a bungalow in Ecum Secum these days.

Even an olfactorily compromised COVID patient could detect the stench emanating from this deal – and the optics are ugly too, especially for Rankin, whose leadership campaign emphasized the twin virtues of transparency and ecological sustainability. The land purchase is now on the back burner, and a judicial review may soon shed some light on the dubious process. The government could then go back to the drawing board and attempt to do it over again in a sunshiny Liberal fashion, instead of the shady way.

I should try to keep an open mind about golf. We’re all entitled to our silly pastimes, and this one is only slightly sillier than most. What gets to me is the massive modification of natural landscapes to create the desired venues, with their artificially undulating fairways carpeted in high-maintenance turf. There is the pretense that players are out there enjoying nature, when in fact they are indulging in a gaudy green fantasy – as obscene as the gardens at Versailles, requiring a great deal of upkeep but growing nothing edible. (You might even say it’s off-putting.) Apparently there are more ecological ways to build golf courses, and presumably Iain Rankin knows something about this. The first stipulation should be to keep them away from our coastlines.

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For those who are more adept with a garden rake than a nine-iron, there may be an urge to clean up the yard as soon as we get a few warm days. Some people even feel a compulsion to gather up organic matter and set it alight, or to burn off dead grass in fields or ditches – which increases the aforementioned wildfire risk. But there is an increasing awareness that we should just skip the early-spring tidying, in order to avoid disrupting pollinators that have overwintered in the ground or in garden debris. Some insects hibernate inside plant stems, and others actually camouflage themselves as twigs or leaves. Various moths, flies, and beetles may perish if exposed to the elements, or to predators, too early in the season. One rule of thumb is to delay our obsessive raking until we’re consistently getting overnight temperatures above 6 degrees C. By that time, most pollinators will have moved on.

Maybe this April I’ll do some woods work instead. It’s nice to get a jump on blackfly season. I also want to look around for specimens of Red trillium (Trillium erectum), which is a spring ephemeral – meaning it develops quickly at the end of winter, to take advantage of the sunlight that reaches the forest floor before the trees are in leaf. In her article “Beautiful stinker,” in the March issue of Atlantic Forestry Review, Nicole Violette Laforge describes the fascinating life cycle of this native perennial. “Because the flower does not have nectar to trade for pollination service, Red trillium compensates by emitting an odour that has been compared to rotten meat,” she writes. “This attracts flies and beetles, which transfer pollen from the male segment of the plant to its female segment.”

That’s a pretty remarkable reproductive strategy. But should we really entrust such important work to the whims and appetites of icky bugs?

Fear not – human ingenuity has got this one covered. An Israeli company called Edete recently announced that its artificial pollination technology will undergo commercial-scale field trials this year in Australian almond orchards – starting in August, when the trees blossom. This system involves the mechanical collection of flowers; a proprietary method for isolation and storage of pollen; and the use of robotic devices to apply the pollen to flowers with great precision and accuracy.

There is nothing inherently wrong with artificial pollination. Many gardeners do it, and the practice dates back to the Ancient Mesopotamians, who were keen to increase the productivity of their date palms. What’s odd is the way this new technology is being pitched. Edete’s promotional literature touts the system as a means of “reducing the deficiencies of erratic and dwindling insect-based pollination.”

In this brave new agricultural world, ecological collapse is a foregone conclusion. “The decline of natural pollinators, namely insects and specifically honeybees, has led to an intensified search for a solution to protect crop yields and solve the challenge facing farmers who need to grow more fruits while facing a shortage of beehives for pollinating their orchards,” reads the company’s press release. “This problem must be solved to meet the food security needs of the world’s growing population.”

Apparently the technology can also be used for pistachios, apples, cherries, pears, and plums – but almonds are the low-hanging fruit, because the industry is extremely valuable, continually expanding, and highly consolidated. It’s big business in Australia, but far bigger in California, where this crop covers well in excess of a million acres. The Golden State accounts for about 80 percent of global almond production, and that’s where Edete plans to go next. In both jurisdictions, a relatively small number of growers control a large proportion of the acreage – which presents an opportunity for anyone offering large-scale mechanistic solutions. A clue to the company’s mindset lies in the fact that its CEO and co-founder is the former VP of engineering and R&D with Plasan, a manufacturer of armoring systems for military vehicles. We’re talking about a warlike approach to farming here.

The imperative of replacing natural pollinators sounds a lot like Elon Musk’s pronouncements about the merits of shipping off to Mars – since we’re rapidly messing things up here. And the larger irony is that almonds are part of the problem. The crop plays hell with the vast numbers of honeybees brought in to provide pollination service. The bees are essentially subjected to intensive feedlot conditions, magnifying their exposure to disease and pesticides – in an environment in which intensive agriculture has already taken a heavy toll on natural pollinators.

It also bears mentioning that almonds are a thirsty crop. Australia’s Murray-Darling river system is a fluvial basket case, and California’s aquifers are on track to be pumped dry, partly due to the vast demand for irrigation. While almonds are not entirely to blame, the gold-rush expansion of this industry has pushed development into arid regions that used to be desert – where orchards make as much ecological sense as the verdant golf courses of Abu Dhabi.

We should not be surprised that agri-tech companies tend to foster unsustainable practices. When your business model is built on offering these types of solutions, you actually have a vested interest in the breakdown of natural systems. Farming continues to become more capital-intensive, driving further consolidation. There will be a captive market for the next technological fix, and the assurance of further profits. Thus the attitude of resignation to the demise of the bees. Sorry, not sorry.

I’m not talking about a cadre of evil people hatching devious plans. (That would be paranoid, right?) What’s at play here is a perfectly normal type of corporate logic. For a goldmining enterprise that must incur extra costs to accommodate certain threatened species, it is desirable if those species are hastened to total extinction. (In some jurisdictions, small farmers could be counted among those endangered species.)

Hey, I like almonds as much as the next person (especially when they’re heavily salted, or glazed with tamari to impart that umami deliciousness). But a protein source to feed the world? That’s the same ludicrous claim we hear from the open-pen salmon industry. The key to global human nutrition is diversity, with a focus on crops that are best suited for local growing conditions.

On that note of self-righteousness, I’m heading outside to lift my nose in the air and sniff the spring breeze. DL