High Elevation Gardening Web Log "Blog"

Over two days we had two keynote addresses that were mind altering. The first was by Maude Barlow who is head of the Council of Canadians a large public advocacy organization in Ottawa, Canada. She is also the founder of the Blue Planet Project and has written a book entittled "Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle of the Right to Water". She spent her time outlining the global water crisis, that along with global warming, poses one of the gravest threats to our survival. In talking about "hot stains" - the parts of the earth running out of clean drinkable water - I was surprised by how bad it currently is. They now include northern China, large areas of Asia and Africa, the Middle East, Australia (which she called the canary in the mine), the Midwestern United States, and sections of south America and Mexico. She outlined the causes, offered some solutions, and last of all offered hopeful signs of changes/solutions happening already. I thought I did pretty well at conserving water (except at hospice), but she changed my view of what we could all be doing as individuals. To give you some idea how powerful her talk was, she received a 5 minute standing ovation at the end of her presentation.

If that wasn't enough, the next day opened with Wes Jackson. He is a Kansan and thePresident of the Land Institute which was founded in 1976. The Institute has worked for more than 20 years on issues in agriculture, with the primary aim of developing an an agricultural system with the ecological stability of a prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops. They have developed a perennial grain called Kernza (TM) and are working on sorgum, corn, legumes and other crops. Life Magazine named him as one of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century and Smithsonian Magazine as one of the "35 who made a difference". He has worked tirelessly to make agriculture in America a renewable source for the land and its people rather than extractable. Others like to use the word sustainability, but I personally liked his choice of words. He is currently working along with several others, with the Obama administration to come up with a 50 year farm plan. It would slowly begin to move us towards Natural Systems Agriculture with more perennial crops. His talk covered everything from the beginning of life to the roots of agriculture. He brought some Kernza (TM) to show and tell. It had roots that were probably 20 feet long and 2 feet wide and then had a slide of current wheat (less than a foot for roots) to demonstrate how it helps the soil. As with Maude Barlow, his talk was a mix of history, reasons for the problems, solutions and hope. He also received a standing ovation.

All the presentations over the 2 days were wonderful but the two keynotes really set the tone for the conference. I will review a couple others on this blog that sheded light on the topic for me. I highly recommend attending this 2 day annual conference next year. Just search the net for xeriscapenm.org.

Loni Shapiro