More week’s links
The Chronicle has stopped publishing a real food section on Wednesday (at least online; I haven’t seen the paper Chron for quite a while.) They spread their food articles out over the week, and a couple days ago, there was a very nice article on food preservation through fermentation. Not only are there recipes, but there is also an unusually extensive list of resources at the end.
But the big article for me this week is in the NY Times, about backyard fruit gleaning. You may recall that the paper of record published an article on a similar topic last year, which featured Village Harvest. But Kim Severson writes today about individuals’ foraging backyard fruit mainly for themselves. She features Forage Oakland, Fallen Fruit and Neighborhood Fruit. Although the article discusses several groups that pool participants’ fruit, so that each can enjoy the harvest from everyone’s trees all year, there is a strong current among the people featured that “fruit wants to be free.” And, as it says in the second half, and more forcefully in the comment section, the homeowners whose fruit it is don’t necessarily share this view.
I’m obviously happy with the Village Harvest model of sharing backyard bounty with those in need. And Village Harvest has a nice, big truck and lots of equipment that makes it easy to harvest large quantities of fruit quickly. Neighbors coming together to share fruit and vegetables with each other is a wonderful thing, too. But websites that give even the mistaken impression that it’s OK to take anything that’s reachable by leaning over the fence are more problematic for me.
One other thing that goes unmentioned is the LBAM quarantine that affects the Bay Area. Evidently, Davis is now under quarantine, just a little way from the Central Valley. Fruit, vegetables and plants and flowers are not allowed to move even within a quarantine zone. Village Harvest has a permit with the county to distribute fruit within our zone, and we always have any fruit inspected by the county if it’s going to go outside of the zone.
Last year’s pheromone spraying for the light brown apple moth was a public relations disaster, and, given the subsequent spread of the pest, it was obviously not effective at what it set out to do, either. Given the widespread cynicism about the spraying, most people with an opinion about LBAM seem to think that it’s not really a problem. I can’t judge how destructive it is; the larvae are indiscriminate feeders who will seemingly eat anything. But there are plenty of people outside of California who do not want the moth to spread to their area and, justified or not, they will ban California produce if it is infested.
Thanks for the reminder that the light brown apple moth (LBAM) program has not gone away. In fact, the state’s draft Environmental Impact Report on the LBAM eradication program, which is planned for the whole state, is expected this month.
One small correction to your post: you refer to “the subsequent spread” of LBAM after the aerial spraying of Monterey and Santa Cruz counties in 2007. In fact, the pest is not spreading; it has been in Davis and other areas for years, but the state has only now begun setting traps in these areas that are being reported in the news as “newly infested,” so they are simply finding the moth for the first time because this is the first time they have looked for it there. UC entomologists, notably Dr. James Carey, an expert in this field, have been saying since the outset of the LBAM controversy that the has been established in the state for decades. These finds of LBAM in traps in newly monitored areas only confirms Dr. Carey’s statement.
As far as how destructive LBAM is, I can tell you — and I run a farm with a fruit orchard — that LBAM has not done any documented damage anywhere in the state, there are other leaf roller moths such as orange tortrix and fruittree leafroller that actually do damage fruit trees, and there are pests like the codling moth (not related to LBAM but a significant pest of CA agriculture) that do truly significant damage to crops and for which the state does not do eradication or mass pesticide application programs such as they propose for LBAM. It makes no sense to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year (especially in the current economy) and risking the health of people and our food supply to try to eradicate LBAM.
Wow, the previous comment is so true and so rare to read the truth about LBAM anywhere.
Hundreds of insects that are mor.e of a threat than LBAM, but many people don’t realize that cause they only hear about LBAM. They only hear about it because the California Agriculture Department wants to beef up their budget so they pretend it is a major threat, when it is not.