@農자료창고

http://m.news.naver.com/read.nhn?mode=LSD&sid1=101&sid2=263&oid=056&aid=0010367977

누가 농사를 잘 짓는다는 건, 흔히 생각하듯이 얼마나 많은 양의 농산물을 균질하게 생산하느냐가 중요한 문제가 아니다. 
그보다는 자신의 농지에서 얼마나 먹고 먹히는 먹이사슬을, 즉 건강한 생태계를 만들어 잘 관리하느냐가 관건이다. 그래야 지속가능성이 확보된다. 

헌데 지금의 농사는 후자보다 전자가 더 중시되고 있다. 이윤과 효율성이란 명목으로 지속가능성은 깡그리 무시되거나 그조차 이윤과 효율성의 한 도구로 사용되곤 한다. 

캐나다의 한 농부가 쓴 재미난 책을 찾았다. 

<Market Gardner>가 그것이다. http://www.themarketgardener.com/

제목부터 재밌다. 

자급으로 먹고 살 수 있는 세상이 아닌데 '시장'을 배제한 채 살아가기는 힘들다.

그렇다면 시장을 현명하게 이용하자.

마켓 가드너, 즉 시장형 텃밭농부는 그러한 뜻을 담고 있는 것 같다.

어느 출판사에서 이 책의 번역을 맡겨주면 재미나게 할 수 있을 텐데. 움직여 봐야 할까.

Maggie Cheney, center, the director of farms and education for the food-access group EcoStation:NY, at the Bushwick Campus Farm in Brooklyn with Kristina Erskine, left, and Iyeshima Harris, garden managers.

If you wanted to find someone picking a fat tomato this week in the City of New York, you could go see Esther and Pam, near the kiddie-pool planters on the rooftop of the Metro Baptist Church in Hell’s Kitchen. Or Maggie, Benia, Iyeshima and Kristina at the Bushwick Campus Farm and Greenhouse. Or Deborah, Shella, Sarah, Kate, Rachel and Chelsea in the West Indian haven of East New York Farms. Or Kennon, Leah, Jennifer and Charlotte at the Queens County Farm Museum, which has been planted continuously since 1697. Or Mirem, Cecilia and (another) Esther in the converted parking lot outside P.S. 216 in Gravesend. Or Nick, Caspar and Jared, on a one-acre farm and orchard in Randalls Island Park.

Wait a sec. Nick, Caspar and Jared: Are those unconventional girls’ names now, like Kennedy and Reagan? Because if you’re looking for a farm-fresh tomato in the city this summer, you’re likely to find a woman growing it.

In recent years, chefs, writers, academics, politicians, funders, activists and entrepreneurs have jumped on the hay wagon for urban agriculture. New York now counts some 900 food gardens and farms, by the reckoning of Five Borough Farm, a research and advocacy project.

Yet city farmers will tell you that the green-collar work on these small holdings is the province of a largely pink-collar labor force. Cecilia, not Caspar. And they’ll provide the staffing numbers to show it.

Deborah Greig, the agriculture director of East New York Farms in Brooklyn.

This is where the speculation begins — and, inevitably, the stereotypes. Are women more willing to nurture their communities (and also their beet greens)? Are men preoccupied with techie farm toys like aquaponics? Is gender the reason the radio at the Queens Farm washing station is always stuck on Beyoncé and Alicia Keys?More significant, if urban ag work comes to be seen as women’s work, what will that mean for the movement’s farming model, mission and pay?Counting New York’s urban farmers and market food gardeners can seem like a parlor game: part math, part make-believe. Data on gender is scarce to nonexistent.The federal 2012 Census of Agriculture isn’t much help. It suggested 42 farm “operators” in New York were men and 31 were women. But the census published data from just 31 city farms. (Under confidentiality rules, it doesn’t reveal which farms participated.) And its definitions fail to capture New York’s unique abundance of nonprofit farms and community gardens.

Onika Abraham, right, the director of Farm School NYC, at the Governors Island Urban Farm with Katherine Chin.

A “farm,” by census standards, is any place that grew and sold (or normally would have sold) $1,000 worth of agricultural products in a year. Yet surveys from the parks department’s GreenThumb program suggest that some 45 percent of the city’s hundreds of community food gardens donate their harvest to neighborhood sources and food pantries. Blair Smith, who compiles New York’s data for theU.S.D.A., explained, “Those are not farm businesses, at least from our standpoint.”

New York’s urban farmers — the people who actually work in the field — offer a sharply different head count of what you might call bulls and cows. Of the 19 farms and farm programs that contributed information for this article, 15 reported having a majority of women among their leadership, staff, youth workers, students, apprentices and volunteers. (Of the remaining four, one claimed gender parity and another hired two men this summer from a seasonal applicant pool of 18 men and 30 women.)

It’s a snapshot, not a statistically rigorous poll. Still, the farms, from all five boroughs, represent a broad sample of New York’s particular growing models: a commercial rooftop farm; community gardens; and farms attached to schools, restaurants, parks, churches, housing developments and community organizations. The sample included two city-based farmer-training programs and two out-of-state sustainable farm-education schools and fellowships. These are the types of programs that mold future urban farmers.

Describing their own farms and gardens, managers suggested that women make up 60 to 80 percent of field workers, organizers and educators. Applicant pools are similarly unbalanced for summer postings, internships and certification programs.

Kristina Erskine, a garden manager at the Bushwick Campus Farm in Brooklyn.

Farm School NYC, an affiliate of the food-access nonprofit Just Food, “is 100 percent female-run,” said its director, onika Abraham. But then, she added, “I’m the only staff person.”

More important, Farm School NYC receives 150 to 200 applicants annually for professional agriculture instruction. For this year’s entering 30-person class, Ms. Abraham said, “the breakdown for applicants was 76 percent women and 24 percent male.” (Applications for next year are open through Sept. 15.)

The gender divide appears to exist in salaried posts and volunteer work alike. For 18 years, Steve Frillmann has led Green Guerillas, which provides support and materials to more than 200 community garden groups. Most of these sites lie in central Brooklyn, Harlem and the South Bronx, and three-quarters of their volunteer leaders, he estimates, are women. So, too, women typically represent 75 to 80 percent of the applicants who want to join Green Guerillas on an AmeriCorps stipend.

It’s challenging work, and Mr. Frillmann, 49, is happy to hire whoever wants to do it. “To be honest with you, we’ve never really lifted and looked under the hood and tried to figure out why,” he said.

At the extreme, Edible Schoolyard NYC runs a food and garden-teaching program with two growing plots and a staff of 16. Sixteen of these employees are women.

Kate Brashares, 40, who is the group’s executive director, said: “It’s a little unusual we don’t have any men on staff at the moment. There are usually one or two.”

Ms. Brashares believes that the diversity of her employees should reflect the low-income communities where they work. That diversity includes gender. “We talk about wanting to get a few more men in the place,” she said. “It’s funny, we haven’t talked about it that much, though. It’s one of those things that just sort of happened. As we’ve gotten bigger, it’s gotten more obvious.”

Less obvious is why the discrepancy exists. Ms. Brashares speculated about the prevalence of women in education and nonprofit careers. But ultimately, she concluded, “I honestly don’t know.”

•

Karen Washington has been observing the community garden scene for more than 25 years from her plot in the Garden of Happiness, a couple of blocks from the Bronx Zoo. She also organizes the Black Urban Growers conference and a long list of other food and neighborhood initiatives. This roster may explain why Ms. Washington, 60, is prone to make work calls at 10 o’clock at night, say, after teaching a class on season-extending hoop houses, or on the way home from running La Familia Verde farmers’ market.

Nowadays, she sees a cohort in her gardens that she gauges to be 80 percent women. “It was more 60/40 back in the early days,” Ms. Washington said. “Mostly Southern blacks and Puerto Ricans. They were in their 40s and they’re in their 80s now.”

Explaining the gender gap on a community garden level, she said, “a lot of it, from my point of view, had to do with the fact women lived longer than men.”

The stereotypical image of an American farmer may be a white man of late middle age captaining a $450,000 combine in an air-conditioned cockpit, high above a flokati of corn. But this profile is a poor match for farmers in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa — that is, the groups that often predominate in New York’s community food gardens. Nevin Cohen, 52, an assistant professor at the New School and an expert on urban food issues, points to a telling statistic from a United Nations special rapporteur: “Women are 80 percent of the global agricultural labor force.”

Many of the women who farm in Bushwick with Maggie Cheney possess experience in small-scale agriculture. They’ve long fed their families out of extensive kitchen gardens (as Colonial-era immigrant women did in New England). Ms. Cheney, 30, is the director of farming and education for the food-access group EcoStation:NY. And on the group’s two growing sites, she said: “I tend to work with a lot of recent immigrants from Africa, Mexico, Ecuador. And the islands: Jamaica and Haiti, the Dominican Republic.”

Ms. Cheney’s youth interns (five boys and nine girls) include the children of some of those immigrants. Yet wherever they were born, the youth growers at the Bushwick Campus Farm do not approach New York gardens as virgin soil.

Their fathers may have experienced farm labor as a harsh and exploitative activity, Ms. Cheney said. These men are not necessarily the easiest people to recruit for a hot afternoon of unearthing potatoes. By contrast, “I see a lot of girls interested because they may have that positive relationship to being the ones who cook in the family and buy the food in the market.”

She added, “The ones that I see, their roles at home are very gendered.” The politics of the New York “food justice” movement start at progressive and run to radical. But the connection between women and urban farming can appear traditional and even conservative.

Born and raised on the Lower East Side, Ms. Abraham, 40, recalls visiting her family’s black farmstead in Alabama. She said: “My grandfather grew row crops: cotton, soybeans and corn. He worked the fields. My grandma was home with a large vegetable garden and chickens.”

Put another way: “My grandmother grew the food; he grew the money. And I think maybe the scale of what we do in the city relates more to this kitchen garden.”

•

The Five Borough Farm project identified three commercial farms in New York, all of them sophisticated rooftop operations. Gotham Greens, for example, runs two (and soon three) climate-controlled hydroponic greenhouses in Gowanus and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (Next stop: Jamaica, Queens.)

Of the company’s 50-odd employees, more than two-thirds are men, said the company’s 33-year-old co-founder, Viraj Puri. “At Gotham Greens, our approach is more plant-science and engineering focused and less ‘gardening’ focused,” Mr. Puri wrote in an email. He posited that this orientation may account for the different gender skew.

Beyond these few enterprises, the city’s farms exist not just to grow okra, but to advance a shopping list of social goals. These include recreation, nutrition, public health, environmental stewardship, ecological services, food access and security, community development, neighborhood cohesion, job training, senior engagement and education. We ask a lot of our gardens.

Mara Gittleman, who jointly runs the Kingsborough Community College farm program, at the end of Manhattan Beach, often sees urban farming likened in the news media to “the new social work, or this thing you do for poor people.” In response, Ms. Gittleman, 26, founded the research project Farming Concrete to record and publicize the surprising yield raised in community gardens. These are vegetables that come not from the glittering glass on high, but from the ground up.

Be that as it may, if you’re trying to account for why so many college-educated women are attracted to urban agriculture, nearly everyone agrees that a social calling is the place to start. “Definitely, the most visible influx is young white people, and I’m one of them,” Ms. Gittleman said.

If urban farming were just about the crops, it would be cheaper and easier to do it 50 miles north. Urban farming, however, is not a solitary or single-minded activity. Along with the weeding and pruning, the job description includes sowing community interest and reaping grants.

Kennon Kay, the 31-year-old director of agriculture at Queens Farm, said: “What makes this farm different is the element of public interaction. We have over half a million visitors a year.”

The farm staff currently numbers two men and five women, which is actually a bumper crop of gents. And Ms. Kay takes pains to say: “I don’t want to knock the guys. They’re great.”

That said, in her experience, “Women have been extremely effective in multitasking, planning, communicating and being the representatives of this public organization.”

Inevitably, there’s an inverse to saying that women are attracted to work that involves children and the elderly, caring and social justice. In short, you’re implying that men don’t care, or care a lot less.

This is what you might call the men-as-sociopaths hypothesis (M.A.S.H.), and Nick Storrs, 29, who manages the Randalls Island Park Alliance Urban Farm, does not buy it. “I would refute the claim that guys are sociopaths,” he said.

Having cheerfully dispensed with that libel, he struggled to explain why men seem less interested in the social goals of community agriculture. “I don’t know, because I am interested in it,” Mr. Storrs said.

So where are the men?

“Wall Street,” Ms. Washington said (a theory that may not be inconsistent with M.A.S.H.).

The Bronx’s vegetable plots, she will tell you, are not insulated from what goes on outside the garden gates. “A lot of our men of color are incarcerated,” she said. “Huge problem. If you tell a 21-year-old man just out of jail to go into farming, he’s going to look at you as if you have two heads.”

Or in the words of Esther Liu, 25, a rooftop farmer at the Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project: “Men? Perhaps they want a living wage.”

•

The time has arrived, as it always does, to talk about money. The pay for community-based agriculture starts low and climbs over time to not much higher.

Ms. Cheney endeavors to pay her youth interns $8.30 to $9.30 an hour and the Bushwick farm managers $17 an hour. Farmers with longer tenure may earn $20. These are decent wages in agriculture, Ms. Cheney said. Yet they’re hardly enough to keep up with the climbing rents in a gentrifying neighborhood.

Deborah Greig, 32, oversees the crowded market at East New York Farms, leads the gardener-education program, manages dozens of youth workers, and cultivates specialty crops like dasheen and bitter melon. (And some 65 to 70 percent of her farm staff, apprentices and youth interns are women.) “I get paid $37,000 a year,” Ms. Greig said. “I started at $28,000 or $29,000, which was huge at the time. And I have insurance included.”

The permanence of the job, which she has held for seven years, is a boon to Ms. Greig and to the community where she works. Ultimately, Ms. Abraham, of Farm School NYC, argues that only stable employment will make urban farming viable for neighborhood women — and men — who lack the safety net of a college degree and family support.

For her part, Ms. Greig is probably underpaid. Don’t tell anyone, but she would do the job for less. “People don’t expect to be paid very much doing this work,” she said. “It’s a labor of love to a certain extent. I don’t think we’ve come up with a hard and fast model to pay people exceedingly well for doing nonprofit urban-farming work.”

Sounds like a job for the guys on Wall Street.

John Sponaugle raises sheep and turkeys on his farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. With two turkey houses that collectively hold 36,000 turkeys at a time, some would say he runs a “factory farm.” Sponaugle would choose the term “family farm” – a different label with an entirely different connotation. Modern Farmer sat down with Sponaugle to talk about his life on his farm, whatever other people choose to call it.

I’m sure there are folks who would feel that this is a factory farm, but I don’t think so. To me, having a factory farm means you’ll need to hire several people. It’s not just going to be a family running it, like we’ve pretty much done with our farm. I do have one man who works for me full-time, but he’s almost family. He’s been here for quite a few years.

My wife and I purchased this particular farm in 1979. Her grandparents lived right across the road from us, in that little white house right across the road, and when her grandmother died we bought part of that farm that was theirs. Her father lives about a quarter-mile north of us here, and maybe sometime we’ll have his farm. I help him farm. He’s 83 years old and still gets around probably better than I do.

We have been here continuously since 1979. It was a pretty big step for us to buy this farm. We decided if we were going to make that commitment that we’d get married here, so we got married in the front yard, right in front of the house. That was May 13, 1979.

I grew up on a farm in Highland County. When I was very young, we had chickens. We grew some turkeys. We had cattle and sheep. I went to James Madison University – Madison College at the time then – and when I graduated from there, I started teaching high school math. I taught for 10-and-a-half years, I think, but I left because of all the garbage that came down from higher-ups in the education system. That was right about the time that standardized testing was beginning.

So I built my two turkey houses in the summer of 1983, when I was still teaching. I started turkeys in November. I taught school until Christmas, and then I left the educational system. My only income has been from the farm ever since. My wife was a librarian at an elementary school but she’s retired now. It hasn’t been easy, but I don’t know that there’s a better environment to raise a family in.

We have two daughters. Our oldest daughter went to graduate school in Arizona. She got married several years ago, but after her husband retired from the Air Force, they decided to come back. They’re staying with us presently, and I’ve given them some ground down by the river where they want to build a log house. They want to start this spring. She has a four-year-old son.

And our youngest daughter has a five-month-old son. She never did leave. She and her husband live on the other side of U.S. 340 in Grottoes, about five minutes away. They got married in the front yard here like we did, two or three years ago, on the same day in May.

So we have all the family here where they can farm. Both of my daughters have some interest in it. Hopefully, I can start backing out a little bit and let them do a bit more. I’ve had a few health problems over the years. I’ve had Parkinson’s for about 15 years now. And in 2009 I had a farm accident that really probably should have killed me but didn’t. So it’s sort of nice to think that they’re going to continue on.

Sponaugle’s sheep on his farm in Virginia.

Our sheep and our turkeys complement each other pretty well. Those are the two things I do. We did have some cattle, but a few summers ago, it got really dry and I ran out of grass. That wasn’t too bad a deal because I could feed hay, but then the well they were using started getting muddy because they were taxing it too much. I ended up selling all of them.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know exactly how many sheep I have. Probably about 125 brood ewes, which is a reasonable size. We generally average about 1.8 lambs per ewe. We have purebred Suffolks, purebred Hampshires and purebred Dorsets. We’re a little different from most people because my sheep are mainly just for breeding stock. The offspring don’t go much for slaughter. We only sell maybe the bottom 25 to 40 percent each year for meat.

The big thing we’re doing now is selling lambs to youngsters to show at county fairs. We sell them mainly in the Shenandoah Valley, but all over the state somewhat, and some into Ohio and once in a while, Indiana. We also sell some breeding sheep.

With the turkeys, we contract with Cargill. We start 18,000 birds in each house, which means we start 36,000 at a time. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but the amount we gross is deceptive sometimes. This sounds unreal, but last year we grossed around $150,000 That sounds like a lot of money, but then I had to pay my bills. I had to pay $30,000 or $40,000 for fuel. I had to pay $15,000 or so in electric bills. I see a lot of money and when I get my check from Cargill, it looks pretty nice. But then when I finish paying my bills it doesn’t look so hot.

Turkeys are a more steady income, generally. For sheep, in the top end of the business where I am, it depends just how good they are. We have a ram here that we paid $10,000 for, but his offspring are worth a fair amount more than average sheep. Basically this has to do with differences in lambs, little things that most people can’t even notice.

There’s probably not a normal day on the farm for me now. It depends a lot on my health. Sometimes I don’t even get out until 9 o’clock, but I can do that because of the guy who works for me. His typical day starts about 6 or 6:30 in the morning. He’ll go check the turkeys, and then do the chores with the sheep. After lunch, he goes back through the turkeys to check that everything’s fine and that the birds are OK.

When he finishes that, he’s back out doing whatever. This time of year, we’re cutting firewood because we heat a fair amount with wood. In the wintertime, we start feeding the sheep again around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Chores right now aren’t too terribly much. This is one of the times of year where the sheep require the least attention. But we’re also working our tails off now cleaning out the barn in preparation when the lambs start coming.

I wouldn’t trade this life for anything. More than anything else, my daughters grew up learning some responsibility. I give my wife a lot of credit for that. When my daughters sold lambs at the fair, my wife always gave them their money. Most parents say they put it away for college, but we gave ‘em their check. Then they had to pay for their own clothes and everything during the year. one daughter was always real tight and didn’t have any problems, but the other one kept running out of money. They really learned responsibility. They knew my wife wasn’t going to give them any extra. When they ran out, they ran out until they sold another lamb or whatever.

Nowadays things are different from what they used to be. Unless you have a pretty good-sized operation, you can’t generate enough income to buy the real estate and build the buildings you need to farm and make a living. You can’t do it. That’s really the reason why I’ve done what I’ve done with the sheep. I’ve spent a lot of money on my sheep, because to survive, you have to have value-added products. And with the turkeys, things are a lot different from what it was 50, 75 years ago. You’ve got to have an operation this size to survive.

Sometimes folks come out here and build a house right next to a turkey house or whatever and start complaining because it smells. But they still want to eat. Somewhere along the line, people have to tolerate a little bit of something. If they want food as cheaply as we give it to them, then they’re going to have to learn to accept and tolerate a few things.

This isn’t only my business. I’ve made it my life. It’s everything. Anybody who knows anything about sheep in the state of Virginia will know my name. My work and my hobbies were tied around my sheep.

Interest in urban agriculture has grown as residents seek to revitalize cities and improve access to fresh produce. Investigators are figuring out how to maximize the benefits of gardening while minimizing the risks of contaminated urban soils.

Author Rebecca Kessler is all too familiar with the difficulties and uncertainties of cleaning up dirty urban soil, having embarked on a multiyear project to convert a paved parking lot at her Providence, Rhode Island, home into a beautiful and fruitful garden.

In 2012, 35% of U.S. households grew food, spending $3.3 billion in the process, up from 31% of households spending $2.5 billion in 2008. An estimated 1 million households participated in community gardens in 2008.

On a bright late-September afternoon, Mary Bleach showed visitors around the community garden near her apartment in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. The sunflowers were nodding their heads in acquiescence to fall, but rust-colored marigolds, pink cosmos, and fuchsia morning glories were still abloom, and a few lazy bees hit them up for nectar. Kale, collards, okra, callaloo (a relative of spinach), tomatoes, onions, herbs, eggplants, beans, peanut plants, and a squash vine with leaves bigger than Bleach’s head entangling 15 feet of chain-link fence—all were still soaking up the fall sun’s rays. Bleach said she lives out of the garden in summer, and she freezes enough to eat well into winter, too.

All this vegetable profusion would soon be gone. Winter was coming, yes, but also heavy machinery to scrape the land level and to haul away the ramshackle chain-link fence and the timbers dividing one plot from another. After more than 25 years, the garden at the corner of Lucerne and Balsam streets was slated for a makeover: handicapped-accessible concrete paths, sturdy fencing, new water service, and reestablished plots with granite dividers.

Boston University toxicologist Wendy Heiger-Bernays and three students had come to check out the site in preparation for a detailed soil contaminant study that would inform the renovation. If the garden’s soil were anything like other Boston soils, it would contain elevated levels of lead—in Dorchester yards, 1,500 ppm of lead is common.1 In the worst-case scenario, much of the garden’s soil would have to be removed and clean topsoil and compost trucked in.

And those old timber plot dividers? They were pressure-treated lumber of a vintage that was preserved using chromated copper arsenate—although when they were installed, they were considered a safe alternative to creosote-soaked railroad ties, another common landscaping material. In a 2009 study of three other Boston community gardens, Heiger-Bernays and colleagues showed that arsenic can leach from pressure-treated lumber into garden soil, and that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can leach from old railroad ties.2

Heiger-Bernays and her students eyeballed the garden’s perimeter. The adjacent houses were Boston’s signature triple-deckers, probably around a century old and layered in old lead-based paint. Long ago, similar houses stood where the garden now grew. Lead-based paint, asbestos, coal ash, and automotive oil from them could still haunt the garden soil. The lot had stood weedy and trash-strewn for years before Bleach and other neighbors reclaimed it in the 1980s.

The students bagged soil samples near the timbers, along the fenceline adjacent to the houses, and in plots throughout the garden. They would take these samples back to Heiger-Bernays’s lab for analysis.

Over the years the garden has been tested for lead and some clean soil brought in. Recently, the city has brought in truckloads of municipal compost almost every year. This black gold not only supplies nutrients to crops, but also dilutes contaminants and binds them to soil particles, reducing the risk of human exposure.3,4

Over the past decade, the garden’s owner, Boston Natural Areas Network, has systematically renovated select community gardens to further improve and remediate soil as well as to enhance the gardens’ beauty, accessibility, and permanence with high-quality infrastructure. It’s an effort to make growing food in what Heiger-Bernays calls “non-pristine” city soils as safe as possible, so that the many delights of gardening can flourish in the heart of the concrete jungle. “It’s about trying to really maximize those benefits while recognizing and minimizing the risks,” says Heiger-Bernays.

Boston is not alone in its efforts. In cities around the globe, gardeners and farmers are digging into backyards and vacant lots, replacing blighted eyesores with lush, productive vegetation. But as in Boston, these other urban soils are often heavily contaminated, prompting questions about potential health consequences of this supposedly wholesome activity. And while alternative growing methods such as rooftop gardens and hydroponics duck soil contamination issues, they tend to be more expensive and are unlikely to replace gardening in the ground any time soon, sources say.

In the United States, no regulations specifically govern contaminants in soils used for food production, and testing for them can be prohibitively expensive. Experts disagree on the severity of the problem, jurisdictional standards conflict, and advice about how to remedy or work around urban soils has been fragmented and all too often confusing. But recent interest in urban agriculture as a way to green cities, grow jobs, and help quench urban food deserts is bringing new urgency to the research—and a few new solutions.

Often a site’s history provides a clue to what contaminants may linger in the soil. Former parking lots and car washes often carry metals, PAHs, petroleum products, solvents, or surfactants. Demolished commercial or industrial buildings may leave behind asbestos, PCBs, petroleum and oil, or lead-based paint chips, dust, or debris. High-traffic roadways have a legacy of lead and PAHs from vehicle exhaust. Former parks and lands adjacent to railroad rights-of-way can bear pesticide residues. 

Measuring Soil Health

City gardens were not unusual during early U.S. history, but after World War II they largely disappeared. A gardening revival took root amid the urban decay of the middle and late twentieth century. Although data capturing the trend are elusive, food gardening in general is increasing.2 In 2012, 35% of U.S. households grew food, spending $3.3 billion in the process, up from 31% of households spending $2.5 billion in 2008, according to the National Gardening Association.5,6 One million households participated in community gardens in 2008, according to the association’s most recent estimate.7

An awareness that urban gardeners may be digging into some pretty nasty soil emerged along with the community garden movement in the late 1970s.8,9 A 1983 study identified elevated levels of lead, cadmium, copper, nickel, and zinc in Baltimore inner-city garden soils.10 While some common contaminants occur naturally in soil, the levels “were just so high compared to soils found in agricultural areas that it became very clear that these were problematic soils,” says Howard Mielke, a research professor at Tulane University School of Medicine who led the study.

Other studies followed, finding heavily contaminated urban yards and gardens across the United States.1,11,12 Contaminants tend to concentrate in low-income neighborhoods with large minority populations—although rural areas are not immune.12,13,14

Lead from old vehicle exhaust, paint, and past industrial activities is the most widely documented pollutant in urban soils. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 23% of privately owned U.S. homes built before 1980 have soil lead levels exceeding 400 ppm—the current hazard standard for bare soil in children’s play areas—and that 8% exceed 2,000 ppm.15 PAHs, emitted when carbon-containing materials such as wood and gasoline are incompletely burned, are also quite common.

Often a site’s history provides a clue to the contaminants that linger in the soil. Former parking lots and car washes often carry metals, PAHs, petroleum products, solvents, or surfactants. Demolished commercial or industrial buildings may leave behind asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, petroleum products, or lead-based paint chips, dust, or debris. High-traffic roadways have a legacy of lead and PAHs from vehicle exhaust. Former parks and lands adjacent to railroad rights-of-way can bear pesticide residues.4

Gardeners themselves sometimes introduce potentially dangerous chemicals. Heiger-Bernays is looking into accounts of rising pesticide use in some Boston community gardens, including the use of restricted chemicals, in spite of rules prohibiting them. Biochar—partially burned organic matter, such as charcoal—is another potentially problematic additive. It’s an ancient soil amendment now being touted as a way to combat climate change by sequestering carbon underground.16 Yet it’s chock-full of PAHs, Heiger-Bernays points out, some of which may remain more bioavailable than others.17

Mielke and his colleagues recently created a detailed map of soil lead and children’s blood lead concentrations across the city of New Orleans, highlighting a strong association between the two.13 Mielke says similar studies could and should be done nationally for a host of contaminants. “It’s amazing how little mapping is taking place,” he says. “If we had a map of every city, we’d have a vision of what needs to be done.”

Unlike the gardeners at the corner of Lucerne and Balsam, most people wondering what might be lurking in their soil don’t have a team of environmental scientists standing by to help. Affordable soil testing is often limited to laboratories affiliated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension System, which measure nutrients, acidity, organic content, and occasionally lead or other metals—but rarely other potential contaminants.18 If they do, the costs add up quickly. For example, Pennsylvania State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences charges $65 to test one sample for cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, chromium, and zinc. Add arsenic, mercury, molybdenum, and selenium, and the price rises to $160. PCBs cost another $80.19 PAHs are not on Penn State’s menu, but elsewhere testing for the 16 PAHs regulated by the EPA costs $250, says Ganga Hettiarachchi, an environmental chemist at Kansas State University.

Yet testing a single sample is rarely sufficient because contaminants occur patchily, says Hettiarachchi, who is studying garden soil contaminants in seven cities and food crops’ absorption of them under various conditions. For instance, lead is often concentrated near foundations of old houses and surface runoff pathways in residential yards, but hot spots can turn up anywhere an old painted board was discarded, say, or a long-gone fruit tree was sprayed with lead-arsenate pesticides.1,20

Furthermore, a recent Brown University study showed that lead contamination can spread farther and penetrate deeper than expected. Soil data from Rhode Island yards showed that lead-based paint spread more than 400 feet from nearby water towers, and often penetrated more than 12 inches below the soil surface.14 “The heterogeneity of contaminant distribution is one of the biggest challenges,” says Hettiarachchi. “You cannot actually afford to run so many samples.”

Gardeners often wind up testing for lead only, if anything, which Heiger-Bernays says can serve as a sentinel signaling the presence of other contaminants. She recommends gardeners target their testing to areas most likely to be contaminated, such as near foundations or old painted structures, and they can keep costs down by combining several samples taken throughout a key planting area into a single sample for testing. Or, she says, skip the testing and just proceed as though the soil were contaminated.18

Testing a single soil sample rarely tells the whole story of contamination in a yard or garden plot. For instance, lead is often concentrated near foundations of old houses and surface runoff pathways in residential yards, but hot spots can turn up anywhere.

Exposures and Health Impacts

Exposure to pollutants while gardening comes mainly from accidentally ingesting soil or inhaling contaminated dust, either while gardening or after tracking it home on clothing, shoes, and tools, according to interim guidelines for safe urban gardening from the EPA.4 The risk is greatest for small children, who not only are most vulnerable to toxicants but also gleefully put dirty fingers directly into their mouths.

Produce itself tends to be relatively safe, provided it wasn’t grown in heavily contaminated soil and is washed before eating.4 Most food crops tend not to absorb contaminants, and what little they do absorb generally stays in the roots.4,21 (One notable exception is rice, which absorbs arsenic unusually well.22) Certain contaminants, like zinc, kill plants before they reach concentrations dangerous to people, says Rufus Chaney, a research agronomist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As urban agriculture flourishes and diversifies, however, at least one new exposure pathway has come to light: Health officials recently reported elevated lead levels in the edible portion of eggs from chickens raised in New York City community gardens.23 These chickens had been kept in areas with maximum soil lead concentrations of 600 ppm. The eggs were not likely to pose a health risk, the authors say, although eggs from chickens living on higher-lead soils possibly could. But overall, Chaney says, concerns focus on the ingestion of soil, not food.

Experts interviewed for this story could not recall a single case where illness had been traced directly to contaminated garden soil—a connection that in any case would be very difficult to prove. Yet for lead and other contaminants, garden soil may join other sources of exposure that add up for kids already at high risk, says Heiger-Bernays. “We know that urban centers like … Dorchester have these really recalcitrant elevated blood lead [levels] in some of the kids,” she says. “We figure that by adjusting some of the soil lead, we’ll be decreasing their overall exposure, because the lead in the soils ends up as lead in the dust in the home.”

Elevated blood lead levels in children are strongly linked with cognitive, motor, behavioral, and physical problems, including an increased risk of poor school performance and criminal behavior.24,25,26,27 A parallel body of research, much by Mielke and colleagues, shows a strong relationship between elevated soil lead and elevated blood lead in children.13,28,29,30,31,32 And while a 1998 pooled analysis of 12 studies found that lead-contaminated floor dust was a greater contributor to children’s blood lead levels than lead-contaminated soil, it nevertheless predicted a geometric mean blood lead level of 3.5 µg/dL in children living in homes with soil lead levels of 500 ppm when floor dust lead levels were very low.33 By comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently considers 5 µg/dL the threshold for “elevated” blood lead, while pointing out that “no safe blood lead level in children has been identified.”34

But experts debate just how concerned gardeners should be about lead. The current EPA hazard standard of 400 ppm for bare soil in children’s play areas is generally viewed as the green light for gardening freely in unremediated soil.35 This standard is based on the EPA’s Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic (IEUBK) model, which assesses the risk of elevated blood lead in a young child exposed to environmental lead from multiple sources. This model assumes that 30% of the lead in soil and dust ingested by children under age 7 is bioavailable—that is, it is absorbed into their bloodstream.36 But the IEUBK defines elevated blood lead as 10 µg/dL, twice the CDC’s threshold.

Individual states including Massachusetts, Minnesota, and California have established lower soil lead standards to protect children, and many European nations regulate soil lead at 100 ppm.37 (On average, the values that the EPA and other U.S. authorities use to regulate lead, cadmium, arsenic, nickel, chromium, mercury, copper, and zinc in soil are 10 times higher than elsewhere.37) “Four hundred [ppm] doesn’t cut it,” Heiger-Bernays says.

In a new document intended as a practical guide to safe urban gardening, she advises against gardening directly in soil with more than 200 ppm lead, and even recommends adding clean amendments to soil with more than 100 ppm lead.18 She arrived at those low action levels by balancing what she says is a strictly risk-based lead concentration of 2–50 ppm with consideration for what gardeners can realistically achieve. Even so, the levels are low enough to be “almost heretic” and are sure to get her lambasted by regulators, she says.

But Chaney says the EPA standard of 400 ppm is sufficiently protective for gardening. He points to his own unpublished research indicating that less than 5–10% of the lead in urban garden soil is bioavailable, compared with the 30% assumed by the IEUBK model.38 By contrast, the lead in unamended soil at contaminated mining sites can average an estimated 90% bioaccessibility.39

Garden soils may be safer than other urban soils because they receive regular additions of phosphorus through compost and other amendments, which speeds up the formation of pyromorphate, an insoluble compound of lead, say Hettiarachchi and Chaney. 40,41,42,43 In a forthcoming paper, Hettiarachchi and colleagues found that adding compost to soil reduced the estimated bioavailability of lead by 20–30%, compared with unamended soil.3 Chaney also points out that humans take up far less lead when they ingest it within a few hours of a meal than when they ingest it on an empty stomach.44,45

A considerable amount of research has gone into developing a cheap and easy test for lead bioavailability as part of a quest for a sure-fire way to improve soil safety by amending it, rather than replacing it.42 Yet for now such tests remain under development and confined to research laboratories, so there’s no way for a gardener to know for sure whether his or her high-lead soil might actually be fairly safe.

for gardeners, exposure to pollutants comes mainly from accidentally ingesting soil or inhaling contaminated dust, either while gardening or after tracking it home on clothing, shoes, and tools. Produce itself is relatively safe, provided it hasn’t been grown in highly contaminated soil and that it’s washed before eating. Typical garden fare tends not to absorb contaminants, and what little is absorbed doesn’t travel far.

Cleaning the Soil

The most thorough solution to cleaning up a garden is to remove the contaminated soil, then lay down a special fabric barrier topped with clean soil.4 But that’s a huge undertaking that can cost thousands of dollars, even for a small yard, putting it out of reach for most gardeners.46

Simply installing the barrier fabric and new soil on top of the old is a more feasible option. So is building raised beds filled with clean soil—especially for root crops—and covering any exposed contaminated soil with mulch or grass. Less problematic soils can be amended by mixing in plenty of compost to dilute contaminants and bind them to soil particles. Gardeners can further reduce their exposure by peeling root crops, removing the outer leaves of leafy crops, washing their produce and hands before eating, and leaving dirty garden gear outside.4

Although it can be tricky, ideally gardeners should also test incoming compost or soil because there’s little guarantee it will be much better than the old soil, says Heiger-Bernays. She and her students have found that few authorities either enforce rules governing what goes into compost or test the final product, although some voluntary standards do exist, such as the U.S. Composting Council’s Seal of Testing Assurance.47

Furthermore, contaminated compost is not as rare as a gardener might hope. For example, in 2011 Heiger-Bernays documented a spike in lead levels in Boston’s municipal compost to around 350 ppm. As a result, the city temporarily stopped delivering its cherished compost to Boston gardens. The cause of the spike was never confirmed, although sources speculate that old painted wood may have been tossed into the compost stream, or leaf blowers may have kicked up old paint particles around house foundations. (Boston’s new composting contractor, City Soil, appears to have resolved the problem.) Boston compost also had high levels of PAHs when the city added street sweepings to its mix, a practice it has since abandoned, says Heiger-Bernays. And since 2000, plant-killing compost has surfaced in more than a dozen states after the introduction of pyridine and pyrimidine carboxylic acids, persistent herbicides that do not break down during the composting process.48,49

To top it off, there is also some evidence that fresh, clean soil can pick up contamination from the garden site. For example, raised beds may become contaminated with high-lead soil blown in from the surrounding garden.50

Boston is a gardening hub, with around 175 community gardens in which some 3,500 families grow produce worth $1.5 million each year.51 The city spends around $300,000 annually to build new community gardens or renovate old ones. This figure is matched by private and foundation support through organizations such as Boston Natural Areas Network. Given that commitment, the city’s recent embrace of commercial farming as a way to bring employment, affordable produce, and an economic boost to the inner city seemed a natural step. New zoning regulations to make space for farms within city limits are slated for signing by the outgoing mayor, Thomas M. Menino, in December 2013.52

A provision in the new regulations specifically addressing soil contamination sets Boston apart from most other cities bitten by the urban ag bug.53 “Due to Boston’s industrial history and its archaeology and the oldness of the houses, there was always a burden of heavy metal concentrations in the soil. So we felt it was necessary that people farm wisely to protect not only themselves but anyone else from the toxic metals,” says Thomas Plant, director of special projects at the Boston Public Health Commission, which developed the soil contamination provision.

One vocal councilman wanted the city to require a professional environmental site assessment with extensive soil testing and replacement of all contaminated soil on city-owned lots used for farming. This costly requirement “would kill urban agriculture in the city of Boston,” says Plant. The final regulations give would-be farmers the more practical option of simply assuming the soil is polluted, covering it with barrier fabric, and trucking in clean soil to grow in. Most farmers are expected to take that route.

Soon after their September visit to the garden at Lucerne and Balsam, Heiger-Bernays’s students finished testing the soil samples. They were pleased to find that lead maxed out at 220 ppm, even near the old houses. Samples taken from a pile of the new city compost had low lead, too, at 120 ppm. Levels of arsenic and other metals were also low or nondetectable throughout the garden.

“That was a really nice surprise,” says Heiger-Bernays, who has identified lead levels up to 3,000 ppm in other community gardens bordered by lead-painted homes. She chalked up the healthy soil to Bleach and her fellow gardeners diligently applying compost, year after year. Further testing and research into the site’s history will tell more, but for now it seemed the renovators would need only to replace the soil at select spots and add more compost to keep the garden at Lucerne and Balsam safe for growing by any measure.

Garden soils may be safer than other urban soils because they receive regular additions of phosphorus through compost and other amendments, which speeds up the formation of pyromorphate, an insoluble compound of lead. By contrast, the lead in unamended soil at contaminated mining sites can be 90% bioaccessible.

References

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17. Hale SE, et al. Quantifying the total and bioavailable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins in biochars. Environ Sci Technol 46(5):2830–2838 (2012);http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es203984k.

18. Barrett P, et al. Best Management Practices for Soil Use in Urban and Non-pristine Gardens Minimizing Health Risks While Maximizing Health Benefits. Boston, MA:Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health. Pre-publication (2013).

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21. Finster ME, et al. Lead levels of edibles grown in contaminated residential soils: a field survey. Sci Total Environ 320(2–3):245–257 (2004);http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2003.08.009.

22. Zhao F-J, et al. Arsenic as a food chain contaminant: mechanisms of plant uptake and metabolism and mitigation strategies. Annu Rev Plant Biol 61:535–559 (2010);http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-arplant-042809-112152.

23. Spliethoff HM, et al. Lead in New York City community garden chicken eggs: influential factors and health implications [accepted for publication]. Environ Geochem Health; doi:10.1007/s10653-013-9586-z.

24. Binns HJ, et al. Interpreting and managing blood lead levels of less than 10 µg/dL in children and reducing childhood exposure to lead: recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention. Pediatrics 120(5):e1285–e1298 (2007); http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2005-1770.

25. Zahran S, et al. Children’s blood lead and standardized test performance response as indicators of neurotoxicity in metropolitan New Orleans elementary schools. NeuroToxicology 30(6):888–897 (2009); http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2009.07.017.

26. Nevin R. Understanding international crime trends: the legacy of preschool lead exposure. Environ Res 104(3):315–336 (2007);http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2007.02.008.

27. Mielke HW, Zahran S. The urban rise and fall of air lead (Pb) and the latent surge and retreat of societal violence. Environ Internat 43:48–55 (2012);http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2012.03.005.

28. EPA. Air Quality Criteria for Lead (2006) Final Report: Volume I of II. Research Triangle Park, NC:National Center for Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (October 2006). Available:http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordispl​ay.cfm?deid=158823#Download [accessed 18 November 2013].

29. Mielke HW, et al. Associations between soil lead and childhood blood lead in urban New Orleans and rural Lafourche Parish of Louisiana. Environ Health Perspect 105(9):950−954 (1997); http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470368/.

30. Mielke HW, Reagan PL. Soil is an important pathway of human lead exposure. Environ Health Perspect 106(suppl 1):217–229 (1998);http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1533263/.

31. Zahran S, et al. Linking source and effect: resuspended soil lead, air lead, and children’s blood lead levels in Detroit, Michigan. Environ Sci Technol 47(6):2839–2845 (2013);http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es303854c.

32. Laidlaw MAS, et al. Seasonality and children’s blood lead levels: developing a predictive model using climatic variables and blood lead data from Indianapolis, Indiana, Syracuse, New York, and New Orleans, Louisiana (USA). Environ Health Perspect 113(6):793–800 (2005); http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.7759.

33. Lanphear BP, et al. The contribution of lead-contaminated house dust and residential soil to children’s blood lead levels: a pooled analysis of 12 epidemiologic studies. Environ Res 79(1):51–68 (1998); http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/enrs.1998.3859.

34. CDC. CDC Response to Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Recommendations in “Low Level Lead Exposure Harms Children: A Renewed Call for Primary Prevention.” Atlanta, GA:U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (updated 7 June 2012). Available: http://goo.gl/jKOO35 [accessed 18 November 2013].

35. EPA. Lead: Identification of Dangerous Levels of Lead: Final Rule. 40 CFR Part 745 Fed Reg 66(4):1206–1240 (2001); http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-TOX/2001/January/Day-05/t84.pdf.

36. EPA. Short Sheet: Overview of the IEUBK Model for Lead in Children. EPA #PB 99-9635-8. Washington, DC:Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (August 2002). Available: http://epa.gov/superfund/lead/products/f​actsht5.pdf [accessed 18 November 2013].

37. Jennings AA. Analysis of worldwide regulatory guidance values for the most commonly regulated elemental surface soil contamination. J Environ Manage 118:72–95 (2013);http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.12.032.

38. Zia MH, et al. In vitro and in vivo approaches for the measurement of oral bioavailability of lead (Pb) in contaminated soils: a review. Environ Pollut 159(10):2320–7 (2011);http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2011.04.043.

39. EPA. Estimation of Relative Bioavailability of Lead in Soil and Soil-Like Materials Using In Vivo and In Vitro Methods. Washington, DC:Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (May 2007). Available:http://www.epa.gov/superfund/bioavailability/lead_tsd_main.pdf [accessed 18 November 2013].

40. Hettiarachchi GM, Pierzynski GM. Soil lead bioavailability and in situ remediation of lead-contaminated soils: a review. Environ Prog 23(1):78–93 (2004);http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ep.10004.

41. Yang J, et al. Lead immobilization using phosphoric acid in a smelter-contaminated urban soil. Environ Sci Technol 35(17):3553–3559 (2001); http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es001770d.

42. Ryan JA, et al. Reducing children’s risk from lead in soil: a field experiment in Joplin, Mo., demonstrates alternatives to traditional cleanups. Environ Sci Technol 38(1):18A–24A (2004); http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es040337r.

43. Scheckel KG, et al. Amending soils with phosphate as means to mitigate soil lead hazard: a critical review of the state of the science. J Toxicol Environ Health Part B: Crit Rev 16(6):337–380 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10937404.2013.825216.

44. James HM, et al. Effects of meals and meal times on uptake of lead from the gastrointestinal tract in humans. Hum Exp Toxicol 4(4):401–407 (1985);http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/096032718500400406.

45. Maddaloni M, et al. Bioavailability of soilborne lead in adults, by stable isotope dilution. Environ Health Perspect 106(suppl 6):1589–1594 (1998);http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1533442/.

46. Dixon SL, et al. The effectiveness of low-cost soil treatments to reduce soil and dust lead hazards: the Boston lead safe yards low cost lead in soil treatment, demonstration and evaluation. Environ Res 102(1):113–124 (2006);http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2006.01.006.

47. USCC. Seal of Testing Assurance (STA) [website]. Bethesda, MD:U.S. Composting Council (2010). Available: http://compostingcouncil.org/seal-of-tes​ting-assurance/ [accessed 18 November 2013].

48. Michel FC, Doohan D. Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet: Clopyralid and Other Pesticides in Composts. AEX-714-03. Columbus, OH:Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, The Ohio State University (undated). Available: http://ohioline.osu.edu/aex-fact/0714.ht​ml [accessed 18 November 2013].

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드디어 <서울을 갈다>가 출간되었습니다.

마지막에 큰 편집 실수로 인해 이해식 청장의 칼럼이 빠지는 불상사가 생겨, 전량 회수 이후 보충작업을 거쳐 재출간되었지요. 아마 그 전에 책을 구입한 분이시라면 희귀본을 소장하게 되었습니다.

대담을 정리하고 구성하면서 가장 크게 목표로 삼은 건, 누구나 쉽게 술술 읽을 수 있도록 하자는 것이었습니다.

그래서인지 손에 잡으면 앉은 자리에서 바로 끝까지 읽을 수 있기도 하더군요. 분량도 200쪽이 넘지 않는 간략함 때문에 더욱 그런 것 같습니다만...

이 책은 서점이나 인터넷 서점 등에서 구입하실 수 있습니다. 여기로 바로 가보셔도 되구요.

 http://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ISBN=8975276589

---------

도시농업이 열풍이다. 주말농장, 시민텃밭. 적절한 공간을 마련하지 못한 살마들은 옥상에 베란다에서 작물을 키운다. 게다가 도시 양봉을 하는 사람들까지 등장했다. 

취재자는 유럽의 농민들 가운데 35세 이하의 젊은 농부는 단 7%라는 사실을 보고는 과연 그들이 어떻게 살고 있는지 알아보기 위해 길을 나선다.

짧은 영어이지만 알아들은 바를 나열하자면, 

첫번째로 목화와 사탕무, 옥수수, 토마토 등을 680에어커의 농지에서 재배하는 젊은 관행농민이 나온다.

그는 대부분 수출하고, 아주 일부만 그리스 시장으로 출하한다. 

현재 농사에서 가장 어려운 부분은 물 문제. 건조한 지역이다 보니 물이 부족하고, 그로 인해 생산일정에 차질이 생기기도 한다고.

그는 현재 그리스의 농업은 지속가능하지 않다고 평가한다. 왜냐하면, 젊은 사람이 너무 없기 때문에 낡은 기반시설처럼 언젠가 멈춰버릴지도 모른다고 이야기한다.

정부에서 제공되는 보조금은 충분치 않다고. 그런데 예전에는 수입을 최대한 올리기 위해서 더 많은 수확량을 생산해서 팔아야 한다고 했지만, 자신은 더 고품질의 농산물을 생산하여 더 높은 부가가치를 올리려 한다고 말한다.

두번째로는 도시농부가 잠깐 등장하여 도시농업이 그리스의 재정위기를 극복하는 데 도움이 될 수 있다고 언급하며 사라지고,

마지막 올리브 농사를 짓는 젊은 농부가 나와 귀농이 필요하다고 이야기하며 마무리. 중간에 잠깐 도시의 여성이 나와 귀농하자고 이야기하는 부분도 보인다. 

이 부분에서 열심히 생산해도 그냥 값싼 수입산을 들여다 파니 뭐 할말이 없다는 이야기도 나온다. 역시나 한국과 비슷한 처지이런가...

농업 부문은 자유무역의 대상이 되어서는 안 된다는 주장이 강하게 떠오른다.

Videoblog on CAP | Episode 1: Food Security from foodpolitics on Vimeo.

다음편...

처음에는 달팽이 농장을 하는 자매가 나온다. 그들은 생산된 달팽이의 70%는 유럽의 각지로 수출하고, 나머지 30%는 그리스에 판매한다고. 

농사를 지어 좋은 점이라면, 자연에 가까이 살 수 있으며 그리스의 경제위기에서도 큰 어려움 없이 살아남았다는 점.

어려운 점은, 정부에서 각국의 달팽이 시세라든지 수요량 등에 관한 정보를 제공해주면 좋겠다고 한다. 역시 모든 걸 농민 개인이 알아서 하기는 어려운 것이다. 그래서 정부의 각 기관이 있는 것이 아니겠는가. 

두번째로는 산토리니에서 와인을 제조하는 사람이 나온다.

그의 포도나무는 수령이 100년이라는데 아주 흥미롭다. 해풍이라는 자연조건이 포도나무를 납짝 엎드리게 만들었다. 또한 흙이 화산토라서 포도의 맛과 향이 다를 것 같기도 하다. 그 때문에 수확량이 적지만 고품질의 가치가 높은 포도가 생산된다고. 

이 사람은 6에이커, 그러니까 7300평쯤 되는 밭이 있다. 여기에 1에어커당 70유로의 정부 보조금이 나온다. 

그럼 모두 420유로를 받는 셈인데, 이걸로는 인건비도 충당하기 힘들다고... 그래서 젊은 사람들이 농업에 종사하기가 어렵다고 지적한다.

역시 그리스도 우리와 비슷한 상황이다. 자, 한 번 봅시다.

Videoblog on CAP | Episode 2: Young Farmers from foodpolitics on Vimeo.

500마리의 염소를 방목하는 목동을 지나쳐 대규모 축산업을 하는 20대의 형제를 만남.

그들은 800마리의 젖소, 850마리의 고깃소, 200마리의 송아지 등 모두 2000마리 정도를 사육한다.

유럽연합에서 권하는 공간보다 더 넓은 공간과 쾌적한 보금자리를 제공하여 양질의 우유를 생산하려 노력한다고.

이들이 생산하는 우유의 양이 그리스 전체의 1.5%를 담당한다. 하루에 55톤의 사료를 먹이고, 한 마리당 45kg의 우유를 생산한다고.

8가지의 곡물을 섞은 사료를 먹이는데, 콩은 쓰지 않는다. 그 이유는 유전자조작일 가능성이 높고 그리스에서 생산되지 않기 때문. 

다음으로 유기농 시설하우스 농부. 그는 토마토, 오이, 바나나 등을 생산.

비닐하우스의 비닐은 4~5년에 한 번 교체하는데, 그렇게 걷어낸 비닐은 깨끗이 하여 재활용시키기에 환경을 오염시키지 않는다.

그는 그리스의 미래는 농촌에 있다며 자신은 이곳을 떠나지 않겠다고.

마지막으로 토종 종자를 보존하는 운동을 하는 사람이 등장.

FAO에 따르면 대규모 단작 방식을 지원하는 농업정책으로 인하여 세계의 토종 종자 가운데 90%가 소멸했다고 지적.

그러나 토종은 생물다양성과 미래의 기후변화 등에 소중한 유전자원이라는 점을 강조.

Videoblog on CAP | Episode 3: Environment from foodpolitics on Vimeo.

마지막으로 농업 장관을 만나서 지금까지의 이야기들을 총정리한다.

이건 그냥 한 번 쭈욱 끝까지 보시길...

Videoblog on CAP | Episode 4: Epilogue from foodpolitics on Vimeo.