Friday, July 11, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Oyster Men
The pure oyster industry in one of America’s most productive and threatened marine bay ecosystems.
“Be careful with those shells,” Rusty says. “You cut yourself and get oyster mud in there and you won’t ever leave, stay here for good.”
The allure of Apalachicola, Florida can feel that strong. Somehow Apalachicola Bay did not go the way of Pensacola Bay, Tampa Bay, and East Bay. Rather than towering condos, designer “traditional neighborhood developments,” and more second-homeowners than actual residents, Apalachicola remains just a little town on a big bay that’s more geared to working fisherman than golfing vacationers. The roots run deep here but like the cypress trees lining blackwater creeks, they show themselves proudly, knobby knees and all. Rusty’s family has been working the bay for generations; he’s been at it for 18 years. In a white t-shirt and white workpants spattered gray with oyster shell and mud flecks, a sunbeaten Got Jesus hat over the tanned, handsome face, Rusty’s baptism in this water, culture, and industry came long ago.
The United States oyster industry ranks in the top five of world producers. Two species exist in our waters, the Crassostrea virginica (Atlantic or Eastern oyster) and the non-native Crassostrea giga (Pacific oyster). Eastern oysters account for roughly 75 percent of the national harvest, pulled from the Chesapeake and Gulf Coast waters. However, over the last half of the 20th Century, Chesapeake numbers have plummeted from as many as four million annual bushels in Virginia in the mid-century to 20,000 bushels recently. Pollution, over-fishing, and two deadly bacteria outbreaks contributed to this decline. But the Gulf Coast oyster has remained strong aside from the destruction of hundreds of Louisiana beds following Hurricane Katrina. Oyster beds in the Gulf Coast are both public and private with harvesters leasing acreage for a small annual fee. Apalachicola Bay has provided as much as 13 percent of the total oyster production in the US and 90 percent of Florida’s production.
Like the bivalve itself, the oyster business is crusty and raw and salty. It’s also pure. Oystermen like Rusty motor their hand-built wooden skiffs into the bay at dawn. The handmade ($1,200 to build) boats anchor to the shallow oyster bed. You get a boat and a motor, you got a business. No company logos, no managers, no timesheets, just a few dozen 18’ boats with men swinging wide wooden Vs against the blue sky. Pure industry.
They fill as many sacks as they want (up to a state-imposed limit), they listen to music, make jokes with oystermen working the same bed, then pack it up and head in mid-afternoon. Or whenever they want to. The oyster house buys each boat’s harvest, assuming there are orders from restaurants. The men get paid ($15 per 60lb bag) and go home: contract workers, not migrant workers. Just as pollution corrupts the oyster’s delicate bacteria-fed diet, large-scale corporate machines would wreck the oyster industry and a way of life measured more in generations than decades.
The efficiency, simplicity, and accessibility of it all distinguish this business from the mega-corporations producing the majority of our food. As Michael Pollen, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, discovers at Polyface Farms, the true test of a food source’s credibility is access. Here in Apalachicola, the entire process is as wide open as the bay. Oysters grow in the waters a mile away. Men use their backs and tongs made by hand in Apalachicola to pull them from the water. Only full oysters, properly sized, go into the sacks, the rest gets pushed back into the water to keep growing. By mid-afternoon boats return to the house, unload, weigh, stack, rinse, box, and leave, ready to eat at restaurants from Charleston to Birmingham. No chemicals, one middle-man, no waste (shells are replanted by the state to create new beds, like compost). Everyone involved is present. Tommy and TJ Ward, owners of Buddy Ward & Sons Seafood, work the dock and the packing house with everyone else – TJ boxing the rinsed oysters, Tommy moving pallets. No CEOs in a distant city watching the bottom line. Just people in Atlanta and Pensacola willing to pay $10 for a dozen oysters on the half shell and men in East Point and Apalachicola happy to be out on the water all day raking oysters, making good money, and being free.
Wednesday we met Bruce at the boat put-in. Bruce’s family has ridden the rise-and-fall of Apalachicola’s natural resource industry (cotton then timber the sponges and now seafood) for five generations. He’s made some money now and does this and that, invested in various businesses. He drove us among the oyster-tongers at Hagen’s bar. He knows many of them. Everyone wants to talk about freshwater and what the current drought and tri-state “water war” will mean to Apalachicola oysters and the fisherman way of life. “Damn Georgia, but they gotta drink, too.”
Looking out over the glistening, blindingly bright surface broken by three dozen silhouettes of boats and men making oyster-tong V’s, one gets the sense they are floating at the edge of another fall, this time that of the oyster.
Bruce has an idea and some of the oystermen we spoke to over the bow of the boat agree. If the Corps of Engineers can build a levee at the man-made “cut” the freshwater balance can be managed within the bay – during drought, the levee closes, locking in the freshwater flowing in from the Apalachicola River. During the floods, the levee opens, flushing the pollutants carried down in heavy run-off. Commercial and recreational boats can still move in and out of the bay when the levee opens.
The water-war talk courses through the Apalachicola watershed from the oyster boats all the way to the state capitols of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. The water begins as a mountain stream near Helen, GA, a few hours north of Atlanta. It flows southwest, stopping at the Lake Lanier reservoir, a major water source for Atlanta, then passes directly through Atlanta and into other reservoirs along the Georgia-Alabama border before meeting the Flint River. The Flint begins south of Atlanta and passes through the agricultural counties of central and southwest Georgia. At the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee, the Apalachicola River begins. Andrew Jubal Smith, Executive Director of the Apalachicola Riverkeeper alliance, hears everybody.
“When we talk about the issues between the states of the Apalachicola,” Andrew says, “We look at Atlanta often and say that there’s almost an unlimited capacity to use the water in the Chattahoochee River because it’s such a huge population base who’s economic engine is growth. In these twenty years of litigation over the use of the system, water conservation and limits on withdrawal have never been on the table. The beautiful thing about the current drought is that it has the potential to make our leaders in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and the federal government (Corps of Engineers and Fish and Wildlife) really examine all the issues that need to be managed so that this river system can support the human and economic needs and also, for us here in Apalachicola, it can sustain the healthy ecosystem that sustains our economy.”
Sunset at 13 Mile oyster house illuminates a half-dozen guys bringing in their yield. Rusty and Zach are the manliest team yet, beefcake guys with nice, macho demeanors. They bring in a big boat – forty-seven 60lb bags ($705) – but they aren’t going out to celebrate. Wednesday night church service at 6pm. They’d have gone out years before, now they’re saved. And, as long as they can work the tongs and oysters cling to the Bay’s beds, they’re free.
“Be careful with those shells,” Rusty says. “You cut yourself and get oyster mud in there and you won’t ever leave, stay here for good.”
The allure of Apalachicola, Florida can feel that strong. Somehow Apalachicola Bay did not go the way of Pensacola Bay, Tampa Bay, and East Bay. Rather than towering condos, designer “traditional neighborhood developments,” and more second-homeowners than actual residents, Apalachicola remains just a little town on a big bay that’s more geared to working fisherman than golfing vacationers. The roots run deep here but like the cypress trees lining blackwater creeks, they show themselves proudly, knobby knees and all. Rusty’s family has been working the bay for generations; he’s been at it for 18 years. In a white t-shirt and white workpants spattered gray with oyster shell and mud flecks, a sunbeaten Got Jesus hat over the tanned, handsome face, Rusty’s baptism in this water, culture, and industry came long ago.
The United States oyster industry ranks in the top five of world producers. Two species exist in our waters, the Crassostrea virginica (Atlantic or Eastern oyster) and the non-native Crassostrea giga (Pacific oyster). Eastern oysters account for roughly 75 percent of the national harvest, pulled from the Chesapeake and Gulf Coast waters. However, over the last half of the 20th Century, Chesapeake numbers have plummeted from as many as four million annual bushels in Virginia in the mid-century to 20,000 bushels recently. Pollution, over-fishing, and two deadly bacteria outbreaks contributed to this decline. But the Gulf Coast oyster has remained strong aside from the destruction of hundreds of Louisiana beds following Hurricane Katrina. Oyster beds in the Gulf Coast are both public and private with harvesters leasing acreage for a small annual fee. Apalachicola Bay has provided as much as 13 percent of the total oyster production in the US and 90 percent of Florida’s production.
Like the bivalve itself, the oyster business is crusty and raw and salty. It’s also pure. Oystermen like Rusty motor their hand-built wooden skiffs into the bay at dawn. The handmade ($1,200 to build) boats anchor to the shallow oyster bed. You get a boat and a motor, you got a business. No company logos, no managers, no timesheets, just a few dozen 18’ boats with men swinging wide wooden Vs against the blue sky. Pure industry.
They fill as many sacks as they want (up to a state-imposed limit), they listen to music, make jokes with oystermen working the same bed, then pack it up and head in mid-afternoon. Or whenever they want to. The oyster house buys each boat’s harvest, assuming there are orders from restaurants. The men get paid ($15 per 60lb bag) and go home: contract workers, not migrant workers. Just as pollution corrupts the oyster’s delicate bacteria-fed diet, large-scale corporate machines would wreck the oyster industry and a way of life measured more in generations than decades.
The efficiency, simplicity, and accessibility of it all distinguish this business from the mega-corporations producing the majority of our food. As Michael Pollen, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, discovers at Polyface Farms, the true test of a food source’s credibility is access. Here in Apalachicola, the entire process is as wide open as the bay. Oysters grow in the waters a mile away. Men use their backs and tongs made by hand in Apalachicola to pull them from the water. Only full oysters, properly sized, go into the sacks, the rest gets pushed back into the water to keep growing. By mid-afternoon boats return to the house, unload, weigh, stack, rinse, box, and leave, ready to eat at restaurants from Charleston to Birmingham. No chemicals, one middle-man, no waste (shells are replanted by the state to create new beds, like compost). Everyone involved is present. Tommy and TJ Ward, owners of Buddy Ward & Sons Seafood, work the dock and the packing house with everyone else – TJ boxing the rinsed oysters, Tommy moving pallets. No CEOs in a distant city watching the bottom line. Just people in Atlanta and Pensacola willing to pay $10 for a dozen oysters on the half shell and men in East Point and Apalachicola happy to be out on the water all day raking oysters, making good money, and being free.
Wednesday we met Bruce at the boat put-in. Bruce’s family has ridden the rise-and-fall of Apalachicola’s natural resource industry (cotton then timber the sponges and now seafood) for five generations. He’s made some money now and does this and that, invested in various businesses. He drove us among the oyster-tongers at Hagen’s bar. He knows many of them. Everyone wants to talk about freshwater and what the current drought and tri-state “water war” will mean to Apalachicola oysters and the fisherman way of life. “Damn Georgia, but they gotta drink, too.”
Looking out over the glistening, blindingly bright surface broken by three dozen silhouettes of boats and men making oyster-tong V’s, one gets the sense they are floating at the edge of another fall, this time that of the oyster.
Bruce has an idea and some of the oystermen we spoke to over the bow of the boat agree. If the Corps of Engineers can build a levee at the man-made “cut” the freshwater balance can be managed within the bay – during drought, the levee closes, locking in the freshwater flowing in from the Apalachicola River. During the floods, the levee opens, flushing the pollutants carried down in heavy run-off. Commercial and recreational boats can still move in and out of the bay when the levee opens.
The water-war talk courses through the Apalachicola watershed from the oyster boats all the way to the state capitols of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. The water begins as a mountain stream near Helen, GA, a few hours north of Atlanta. It flows southwest, stopping at the Lake Lanier reservoir, a major water source for Atlanta, then passes directly through Atlanta and into other reservoirs along the Georgia-Alabama border before meeting the Flint River. The Flint begins south of Atlanta and passes through the agricultural counties of central and southwest Georgia. At the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee, the Apalachicola River begins. Andrew Jubal Smith, Executive Director of the Apalachicola Riverkeeper alliance, hears everybody.
“When we talk about the issues between the states of the Apalachicola,” Andrew says, “We look at Atlanta often and say that there’s almost an unlimited capacity to use the water in the Chattahoochee River because it’s such a huge population base who’s economic engine is growth. In these twenty years of litigation over the use of the system, water conservation and limits on withdrawal have never been on the table. The beautiful thing about the current drought is that it has the potential to make our leaders in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and the federal government (Corps of Engineers and Fish and Wildlife) really examine all the issues that need to be managed so that this river system can support the human and economic needs and also, for us here in Apalachicola, it can sustain the healthy ecosystem that sustains our economy.”
Sunset at 13 Mile oyster house illuminates a half-dozen guys bringing in their yield. Rusty and Zach are the manliest team yet, beefcake guys with nice, macho demeanors. They bring in a big boat – forty-seven 60lb bags ($705) – but they aren’t going out to celebrate. Wednesday night church service at 6pm. They’d have gone out years before, now they’re saved. And, as long as they can work the tongs and oysters cling to the Bay’s beds, they’re free.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Rivers, Chicken Poo, and You
In the Appalachian foothills of the southeast, the scent of chicken and hog parts can hit you like a warm stench blanket. You could be driving down the highway, passing another big-rig that turns out to have hundreds of live pigs stuffed into it, their whiskered snouts poking through the metal grates as if they too want to get as far from the putrid smell as possible. Or you could be passing an open field behind a Gold Kist sign and surrounded by misplaced ponds that smell like they're full of the chlorine supply for all the nation's water parks. Or you might be paddling down one of Alabama's many river systems after a rain and suddenly the water smells like chicken poo and you're reconsidering jumping in for a swim. Lastly, you could live in the effected areas and have to deal with the coughing, nausea, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney problems, and other medical ailments associated with the excess waste product from industrial farms far too big for their britches.
I spoke with Nelson Brooke, the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, about this issue, which he encounters most days of the week considering his job involves first-hand monitoring of the streams and rivers in the Black Warrior Watershed.
Industrial livestock operations are nothing new - their size and corporate efficiency yield the numbers that keep McNuggets, BK Broilers, Tyson frozen chicken fingers, and KFC poppers at Third World prices. In northern Alabama the problem is especially acute: Alabama ranks third behind Georgia and Arkansas in broiler chicken production and Culman County is the state's largest producer. Nelson and the folks at the Black Warrior Riverkeeper have published a report on the situation within the Black Warrior River Watershed, one of Alabama's most ecologically important river systems. Check out the full report by the Black Warrior Riverkeeper HERE .
Tyson, Gold Kist, and others have large processing operations in this region but the most elusive and challenging production component, from a regulatory standpoint, are the CAFOs spread around the rural countryside. CAFO stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and, frighteningly, they are beginning to stand for the modern American family farm. A large, corporate agricultural producer like Tyson or Gold Kist will develop a privately owned small farm to the point of being able to produce chickens or hogs at the rate required to turn a profit. The farm operation is turned over to the owner. What's left looks like a small family farm (with a jolt of adrenaline, perhaps) but the economic vitality relies on a sound relationship with the corporate chicken/hog buyer. This puts pressure on the individual farmer to a) produce more, more, and then a little more and b) to keep his/her mouth shut and property closed to as little regulation and oversight as possible... because to produce more one must provide more antibiotics and hormones and then dispose of more chicken poo.
The common method of poo disposal is as a fertilizer over crop fields and pastures. Large trucks cross the fields spraying the yellowy dust from its sides. Despite the fact that chicken waste is a “hot” fertilizer, full of nitrogen and phosphorous, this dispersal practice is common and accepted by authorities. However, according to the Riverkeeper report (per Auburn’s College of Agriculture), northeast Alabama alone produces three times more animal waste than the entire state can handle as fertilizer. On the area’s notoriously thin soil, this fertilizer inevitably runs off into the nearest stream.
Kayakers and canoeists in north Alabama know to look for the chicken gauge on the Alabama Whitewater page. 1-3 chickens indicates the relative amount of waste runoff in certain rivers. Most in the north part of the state have a 2 or 3 rating, not that such a formal system is needed; step down to the riverside after any amount of rain and it's like sticking your nose into the soup pot, only its chicken poo, not noodle.
GOOD HOT WINGS, GOOD BACON...
Organizations like the Black Warrior Riverkeeper - blackwarriorriverkeeper.org - (part of the nationwide Waterkeeper Alliance) does a great job monitoring the situation in north Alabama's watersheds with people like Brooke.
Of course, the everyday consumer has the greatest (and easiest) opportunity to help. First, know the source of your chicken and pork. If the label says "Free range" on your eggs, chicken or pork product, you can feel pretty certain you're getting meat that was not a raised in a confinement broiler barn, the practice industrial farms have used since the late '60s when they put the then-popular free-range method out of business (withdrawal of growers' contracts led to a collapse of free-range techniques within a few years).
See factoryfarm.org, sustainabletable.org, locallygrown.net, and eatkind.net for more information and sources of healthy meat near you. Also see the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network at http://www.asanonline.org
The following pictures were taken two weeks ago at the Locust River and Graves Creek in northern Alabama.
Pond in front of Tyson plant
Algae bloom in wetland between Tyson plant and Graves Creek
Spectator at Locust River Invitational Races, a few miles below the Tyson plant's effluence into Graves Creek
I spoke with Nelson Brooke, the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, about this issue, which he encounters most days of the week considering his job involves first-hand monitoring of the streams and rivers in the Black Warrior Watershed.
Industrial livestock operations are nothing new - their size and corporate efficiency yield the numbers that keep McNuggets, BK Broilers, Tyson frozen chicken fingers, and KFC poppers at Third World prices. In northern Alabama the problem is especially acute: Alabama ranks third behind Georgia and Arkansas in broiler chicken production and Culman County is the state's largest producer. Nelson and the folks at the Black Warrior Riverkeeper have published a report on the situation within the Black Warrior River Watershed, one of Alabama's most ecologically important river systems. Check out the full report by the Black Warrior Riverkeeper HERE .
Tyson, Gold Kist, and others have large processing operations in this region but the most elusive and challenging production component, from a regulatory standpoint, are the CAFOs spread around the rural countryside. CAFO stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and, frighteningly, they are beginning to stand for the modern American family farm. A large, corporate agricultural producer like Tyson or Gold Kist will develop a privately owned small farm to the point of being able to produce chickens or hogs at the rate required to turn a profit. The farm operation is turned over to the owner. What's left looks like a small family farm (with a jolt of adrenaline, perhaps) but the economic vitality relies on a sound relationship with the corporate chicken/hog buyer. This puts pressure on the individual farmer to a) produce more, more, and then a little more and b) to keep his/her mouth shut and property closed to as little regulation and oversight as possible... because to produce more one must provide more antibiotics and hormones and then dispose of more chicken poo.
The common method of poo disposal is as a fertilizer over crop fields and pastures. Large trucks cross the fields spraying the yellowy dust from its sides. Despite the fact that chicken waste is a “hot” fertilizer, full of nitrogen and phosphorous, this dispersal practice is common and accepted by authorities. However, according to the Riverkeeper report (per Auburn’s College of Agriculture), northeast Alabama alone produces three times more animal waste than the entire state can handle as fertilizer. On the area’s notoriously thin soil, this fertilizer inevitably runs off into the nearest stream.
Kayakers and canoeists in north Alabama know to look for the chicken gauge on the Alabama Whitewater page. 1-3 chickens indicates the relative amount of waste runoff in certain rivers. Most in the north part of the state have a 2 or 3 rating, not that such a formal system is needed; step down to the riverside after any amount of rain and it's like sticking your nose into the soup pot, only its chicken poo, not noodle.
GOOD HOT WINGS, GOOD BACON...
Organizations like the Black Warrior Riverkeeper - blackwarriorriverkeeper.org - (part of the nationwide Waterkeeper Alliance) does a great job monitoring the situation in north Alabama's watersheds with people like Brooke.
Of course, the everyday consumer has the greatest (and easiest) opportunity to help. First, know the source of your chicken and pork. If the label says "Free range" on your eggs, chicken or pork product, you can feel pretty certain you're getting meat that was not a raised in a confinement broiler barn, the practice industrial farms have used since the late '60s when they put the then-popular free-range method out of business (withdrawal of growers' contracts led to a collapse of free-range techniques within a few years).
See factoryfarm.org, sustainabletable.org, locallygrown.net, and eatkind.net for more information and sources of healthy meat near you. Also see the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network at http://www.asanonline.org
The following pictures were taken two weeks ago at the Locust River and Graves Creek in northern Alabama.
Pond in front of Tyson plant
Algae bloom in wetland between Tyson plant and Graves Creek
Spectator at Locust River Invitational Races, a few miles below the Tyson plant's effluence into Graves Creek
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Patagonia Billionaires
Bloomberg.com: News
Check out this article on the various issues around the purchasing of Patagonia land by international billionaires. There are several references to Douglas Thompkins and his Parque Pumalin that relate to the fight to keep Endesa out of the Futaleufu.
Check out this article on the various issues around the purchasing of Patagonia land by international billionaires. There are several references to Douglas Thompkins and his Parque Pumalin that relate to the fight to keep Endesa out of the Futaleufu.
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