Season 1 Episode 6
Ben Binversie:
Evidence has been accumulating for years that this nation's industrial food and agriculture system is environmentally and economically unsustainable, but what can we do about it?
Brett Newski:
(singing)
Ben Binversie:
[00:00:30] This is All Things Grinnell. I'm your host, Ben Binversie. On this week's show, we're talking sustainability. First, we've got a story about the Grinnell College Garden, which has grown tremendously over the past two years. Then, we'll talk with Heather Swan, poet, artist, and scholar of Environmental Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was on campus earlier this fall to talk about honeybees, the threats facing them, and efforts to maintain them around the world.
This [00:01:00] week's show is coming up next after a word from Grinnell College.
The information and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not represent the views of Grinnell College.
The Grinnell College Garden began in 1999, established by a small group of students, faculty, and community members interested in promoting local foods. The local foods movement was picking up steam with Grinnell's first community-supported agriculture project, [00:01:30] the expansion of the Grinnell Farmer's Market, and the formation of the Grinnell Area Local Foods Alliance.
Initially located at the Dunham Farm at Penrose Street at 16th Avenue, the Garden covered about one-tenth of an acre, provided by the Dunhams free of charge. After its third year, to increase access and visibility, the garden was relocated to the college campus to an 80' by 80' space on the west side of Park Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.
The Center for Prairie Studies provided funding for two full-time student workers in the summer, [00:02:00] but during the school year, the garden relied solely on volunteers. As a result, it was difficult to maintain a productive garden throughout the growing season.
In the late 2000s, some students began an effort to revitalize it. Still, it was an uphill battle, working with limited resources. Two years ago though, as the College made plans to repurpose the space occupied by the garden, the Center for Prairie Studies requested and received permission and some funding to construct a new garden behind Food House at 1128 [00:02:30] East Street.
In the Spring of 2017, a large group of students, staff, and faculty laid the plans for a new, more ambitious garden. Jon Andelson, as the Director of the Center for Prairie Studies, has been at the helm of this resurgence. He says once they got permission from the college for the new site, he started exploring possibilities and reaching out to people. They received a donation of lumber from the parents of a student and that really set everything in motion.
Jon Andelson:
That lumber was a key ingredient that [00:03:00] made us decide to have raised beds. That made us decide to go with a drip irrigation system in the beds. We needed a way to fill the beds and a friend of mine, who's a local farmer, donated the compost.
Ben Binversie:
With some additional help and donations of seeds, the new garden was on its way.
The newest iteration of the garden solves a lot of the problems faced by the old one.
Jon Andelson:
We grow a lot more. In the past, Dining Services, because we raised so little, really wasn't interested in what we were [00:03:30] producing and so they didn't take it. But last summer, right away, when they saw the new scale and saw what we were capable of producing, they started saying, "Yes."
So we have been in the habit, ever since last summer, of contacting them, telling them what we have, asking if they want it. They've almost always said "yes" to everything.
Ben Binversie:
Now, around 75% of the garden produce goes to the dining hall, with another 10% to Mid-Iowa Community Action, and the remaining [00:04:00] 15% to staff, volunteers, and for special events. With adequate funding, a paid garden consultant, more space, and the ability to hire student workers both during the summer and academic year, the garden has been able to thrive.
In its first year, it produced around 1,000 pounds of produce, and this year, they surpassed that number by another 100 pounds.
There are around 50 varieties of plants in the garden, which has about 1,800 square feet of production space. Andelson says they [00:04:30] adhere to mostly organic practices, but the garden is not certified organic.
Jon Andelson:
And that's an important distinction in the market, but since we're not selling our produce, but donating it, it's a distinction that we can make. But we couldn't sell our produce as certified organic because you have to go through a lot of paperwork and there's an annual inspection and a fee. We thought, "Well, there's really not need to do that," but we don't use any [00:05:00] synthetic fertilizers or chemicals.
We had a big problem with Japanese beetles this summer and we used the manual method for getting rid of them: just plucking them off and popping them in a jar of soapy water.
Ben Binversie:
And that sounds like a job for student apprentices if I've ever heard of one.
Hannah Galloway:
It was so strange having the power in your hands of just murdering such a large quantity of living things, but it was definitely necessary. [00:05:30] They were just attacking our basil crop especially. Yeah, I think it kind of brings you closer to the idea of if I want to really treat my plants right, I need to take a more hands-on approach with eliminating pests.
Ben Binversie:
That's Hannah Galloway. She was one of the student apprentices at the garden this past summer.
Although students working in the garden come with vastly differing levels of gardening experience, they are eager to learn. Whether through brain or brawn, [00:06:00] creativity or curiosity, the students play an instrumental role in the garden. They have a say in the decisions about what to plan and when to plant it.
Hannah Galloway:
Even though there's forces acting on us like the dining hall wanting us to plant copious amounts of spinach, at the end of the day, it's still completely up to the workers there what will be planted. For example, I made a bunch of okra starts and there's just this massive bed of okra that's slowly being harvested.
Ben Binversie:
[00:06:30] The summer before working in the garden, Hannah worked at Mustard Seed Farms in Ames and she brought that experience with her to the college garden.
Hannah Galloway:
At the beginning of the summer, I saw that all of our tomato plants were horrifically tipping over and using some trellising skills I'd learn from Mustard Seed, I just built a trellis for them.
Ben Binversie:
In addition to the paid student apprentices during the summer and student workers during the school year, there are students from the college, high school, and broader Grinnell community who volunteer [00:07:00] at the garden, taking time out of their busy schedules to help out on garden work days.
Dominic Townsend-Carroll, a first year, is one of those volunteers. He heard about the garden during New Student Orientation and has been volunteering ever since. I asked him why he dedicates his time to the garden.
Dominic T.C.:
To start with, it's a really peaceful and just calming thing. It takes me away from my studies. Just some nice manual labor breaks that up. I just love food. I occasionally get to take home some of the products from the garden and that's always fun.
Ben Binversie:
[00:07:30] This fall, I caught up with some of the student workers and volunteers during a workday at the garden.
Hannah Galloway:
But we do have kale, if you want to plant kale.
Jon Andelson:
That can be direct seeded now.
Jacob Friedman:
Is Kale an okay thing to plant?
Jon Andelson:
Yeah. It's really cold-hearty. It can take overnight temps to the mid-20s or below. You could just re-rake that bed and plant ...
Ben Binversie:
On this day, in addition to tending the garden, they were planting something entirely different: a new sign. [00:08:00] It proved to be more difficult than anything else they planted in the garden, as they had to navigate around roots and electrical cables, but the sign did eventually get planted and then the students took me on a tour of the garden, all 23 raised beds, including a hügel bed, which is a raised bed technique made of logs, twigs, sod, and compost used for centuries in Germany and Eastern Europe.
There's also a hoop house, a compost pile, and a drip irrigation system. It's all pretty impressive [00:08:30] and any Grinnellian who remembers the old student garden would marvel at this one.
Walking around, I stumbled upon some funky yellow vegetable that I had never seen before. It looked like a tiny, yellow, pimply pumpkin, but I wasn't sure what it was.
Jon, what are these?
Jon Andelson:
Those are cucumbers.
Ben Binversie:
These are cucumbers?
Jon Andelson:
Yeah! You can take one home. They're really quite good.
Ben Binversie:
Really?
Jon Andelson:
Yeah, yeah. Take a couple.
Ben Binversie:
Okay.
Jon Andelson:
I know they don't look like them.
Ben Binversie:
No, they don't! I've [00:09:00] never seen cucumbers that look like this.
Jon Andelson:
But that's because we have so standardized our supply of vegetables, so everybody thinks that eggplants are this big and purple. Well, only some are. Everybody thinks cucumbers are like that and green, but only some are. We have radishes that are white, not red. We have what else? Carrots that are white, not orange.
Ben Binversie:
[00:09:30] You're blowing my mind out here.
Jon Andelson:
We try to diversify.
Ben Binversie:
Yeah.
Jon Andelson:
Yeah.
Ben Binversie:
The garden has a lot of funky produce like this. If you're accustomed to shopping in grocery stores for produce, you might not recognize some of the plants, like the white carrots.
Jon Andelson:
It's getting a little better with apples, but about 30 years ago, if you went to the store, you could get Golden Delicious or Red Delicious, and maybe one other type. At least today, we've got a bunch of different kinds. Same thing with potatoes. [00:10:00] You go to the store, you can choose Russets or Reds or the yellow ones. If you go to Peru and you find literally 500 different kinds of potato.
Ben Binversie:
Wow.
Jon Andelson:
I'm not exaggerating.
Ben Binversie:
Our photographer, Justin Hayworth and I, marveled at the size of the plump tomatoes.
Wow. It looks more like a squash than a tomato.
Justin Hayworth:
That is a one-slice BLT tomato.
Ben Binversie:
It [00:10:30] is. Jacob Friedman, a senior, worked in the garden this summer. In addition to being paid for his work, he also received a generous allotment of grape tomatoes from the garden, but his favorite part of the garden, from a purely ecological perspective, isn't the tomatoes, but rather, the Three Sisters bed.
Jacob Friedman:
For at least 700 years, Native Americans have been planting these three crops together: corn, squash, and beans. [00:11:00] They all work in conjunction with one another to keep the soil healthy, not overdo it from taking one nutrient. For instance, the corn uses a lot of nitrogen but you're growing beans at the same time, which restores nitrogen to the soil. And then the squash has these giant leaves that protect the soil from the sun and keep it cool [00:11:30] and moist, and also, the vines are thorny so pests can't get to it. It's this beautiful little ecosystem, almost.
Ben Binversie:
Harmony.
Jacob Friedman:
And the corn, the beans grow up the corn too so that's pretty neat.
Ben Binversie:
Last spring, Jacob took Jon Andelson's anthropology class, Culture and Agriculture.
Jacob Friedman:
Taking that class and then working here really has done a lot to change my outlook, if not [00:12:00] my future path. I do want to continue to be involved in this kind of work for as long as I can, seriously. It's really rewarding and feels valuable. Yeah. Apart from that, it's just really enjoyable to spend your time, get your hands in the dirt.
Ben Binversie:
Yeah.
Christina Collins, a second year, is another one of the student workers in the garden. [00:12:30] Last year, she and Rachel Snodgrass, another second year, worked together to create a map of the garden.
Christina Collins:
We realized or everyone realized that our map wasn't super detailed, so we wanted a new one. We launched this process of getting the map done. I need to have things really exact because of who I am and also, it's helpful, so we went and we measured everything in the garden. Like, everything. At a certain point, it was really cold, but we still had to measure, so I have a very vivid memory of it snowing and us with [00:13:00] one of those scientific, super long tape measures, running.
Ben Binversie:
Sarah Cannon, a senior, grew up in Chicago where her family grew peas in a little plot in their alley, but her summer apprenticeship at the garden really introduced her to gardening in a meaningful way. She enjoys the practical experience of learning to garden as a valuable companion to classroom learning. Working in the garden has opened Sarah's eyes to elements of food justice that relate to her studies as a political science major.
Sarah Cannon:
I think food sovereignty [00:13:30] and the power dynamics associated with who has access to what food and when is something that I'm definitely way more conscious of now than I was before working here.
Ben Binversie:
A common sentiment among those involved with the garden is the joy of seeing the garden's produce in the dining hall and knowing that they picked that tomato or planted that spinach.
Hannah Galloway:
I saw them out the corner of my eye and I was like, "Oh my god yes, I need to take these cucumbers" because they were the ones that I physically planted. I think they were [00:14:00] true lemon, they're the round, strange looking ones. I was excited that the dining hall is basically down for serving things that look kind of funky to most people.
Ben Binversie:
Isabella Sferra [00:14:14] is another first year who has found her way over to the garden to volunteer this year and she also enjoys the fruits, or vegetables, of her labor.
Isabella S.:
Yeah. It's especially interesting because you can see that map where it says, in the dining hall, all the food that they've gotten locally and then sometimes, you'll see Grinnell College [00:14:30] Garden and I was like, "I helped pick that."
Ben Binversie:
In addition to providing local food for the dining hall, the garden also yields other benefits. Some professors have started to use the garden as a teaching resource.
Vince Eckhart, Professor of Biology, is teaching a tutorial on the evolution of domestication. The class is reading a book by Jonathan Silvertown called, "Dinner with Darwin" about the evolutionary history of food domestication. They made a trip out to the garden for class, where Hannah Galloway guided them on a tour.
Vince Eckhart:
I'll tell you, the students were [00:15:00] particularly interested in one area where they've got, actually, non-food plants, where they've planted things that are supplemental food resources for animal pollinators like butterflies and bees. I think my students asked more about that. Some of the students were interested in plants that they ate at home, like one fellow, who's from Fairfield, Iowa, is accustomed to eating okra. Most people don't like okra but he grew up and his father grew it in the garden and it made him think of his dad.
[00:15:30] But the one that I wanted them to look at most closely was Jerusalem artichoke for the reason that the chapter in this book, in "Dinner with Darwin," talks, among other things, about the evolutionary ancestors of food plants and Jerusalem artichoke is interesting because that's a plant that was domesticated from a plant that's wild around here. You can find its wild ancestor growing in roadside ditches and other [00:16:00] wet areas in the Grinnell area.
Ben Binversie:
The connections for Eckhart's class to the garden may seem intuitive, but other professors outside of the sciences are also making use of the garden.
Steve Andrews, Professor of English, took his tutorial's involvement a step further by having them actually plant beans in the garden's hoop house. The tutorial is called Castles, Foundations, Freedom: "Walden" and the Liberal Arts.
I asked the students what in the world beans had to do with Henry David Thoreau.
Speaker 1:
The book we're reading [00:16:30] by Thoreau, he has a chapter titled, "The Bean Field," and so it connects to what we're reading.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Thoreau talks a lot about self-sufficiency and working with your own hands and making your own life for yourself, kind of taking care of yourself. Making your own food is a big part of that and working with the earth to bring something to life.
Speaker 3:
I can relate with it, but he's planting a whole bunch of things, but we're just planting one.
Ben Binversie:
Andrews is apparently very fond of the fact that a bean [00:17:00] you're going to plant is called a pulse. Not a seed, but a pulse.
Speaker 5:
Thoreau's also very fond of it, so there's a lot of different metaphorical trails we've gone down.
Speaker 6:
We've gotten multiple emails that say, "Check your pulse."
Ben Binversie:
Check your pulse?
Speaker 5:
Yes!
Ben Binversie:
Students tell me that Henry David Thoreau prescribed to the ideology of Pythagoras – yes, the triangle guy – but he also had other ideas, one of which was a belief that beans came from the same source as humans, so eating beans [00:17:30] was akin to eating human flesh and Thoreau abstained, which really begs the question of why he planted all those beans in the first place.
Just like Thoreau, these students refrained from eating their beans, not because they are Pythagoreans, but because they will keep them as seeds for Andrews' next tutorial.
In addition to a resource for classes, the garden is also just a nice place to relax or study, as many students have told me. Sprinkled throughout the garden are little quotes about the joys [00:18:00] of gardening and the importance of sustainable food. One of them reads, "It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a home-grown tomato." Indeed, just being near the garden can be rejuvenating.
By any metric, the garden has been successful these past two years, but that success has only come as the result of some incredible collaboration. The garden has received donations of time, expertise, and resources far beyond the college campus extending into Grinnell's local agricultural community [00:18:30] and throughout the state of Iowa.
It's impossible to thank everyone, but some notable assistance came in from Nick Koster from the Conard Environmental Research Area, who led the construction of the raised beds and helped install the drip irrigation system; local farmer Howard McDonough, who donated rich, beautiful compost to fill the beds; Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, who donated seed; and the college's Facilities Management, who donated a hoop house frame and helped transport the storage shed and compost bins from the previous [00:19:00] location.
One of the most important collaborators though is Ann Brau, who now serves as the paid consultant for the garden. But her involvement with the garden goes all the way back to its beginning in 1999. At the time, she was starting Grinnell's first CSA, so she was very involved in the local agriculture scene and students sought her out because of that and her friendship with Jon Andelson.
She grew up on a small, 80-acre farm in Chelsea, Iowa and studied Agricultural Education [00:19:30] at Iowa State. She now runs Compass Plant CSA, a four-acre farm located 10 miles east of Grinnell, with her husband Lisle Dunham. She brings much needed expertise to the garden.
Ann Brau:
I have helped them set up a working plan for how the beds go. We decided to go with raised beds because of the condition of the soil at the site. It also makes it a little easier to maintain, [00:20:00] aesthetically pleasing, cleanliness. Then you don't have the neighbors yelling at you because you got weeds everywhere.
I also will walk through the garden and go to each bed and tell them, "This is what needs to be done, done, done, done, done." I'll give them a list of 30 things and they're kind of like, "Oh my god! What does this woman want us to do?" I'm a little overwhelming at times, I'm sure.
Ben Binversie:
But the students appreciate [00:20:30] her guidance and really benefit from her teaching.
Ann Brau:
And I try and put it in their experiential level of knowledge. Science-based, obviously, because it all is science, but there is an art and a finesse to it that they don't have yet and that's where this space allows them to develop that.
Ben Binversie:
This is the type of experiential embodied learning that the students have told me about and that Jon really espouses in his teaching.
[00:21:00] Learning the value of local food requires more than just a theoretical understanding; it's hard to grasp my reading it in a text book. You need to work with the soil and taste the food. That kind of learning is one of the motivating factors behind Ann's involvement in the garden. She also just really cares about local food.
Ann Brau:
People need to eat real food. That's the basic premise is you need to eat real food, you need to know where your food comes from, and you should be involved [00:21:30] in it somehow, whether you participate as a producer, as a backyard grower, as a pot of basil on your counter, or a member in a CSA, or you go to the local farmer's markets. You should know where your food comes from.
Ben Binversie:
I asked Ann how the garden manages to elicit support from people throughout the community.
Ann Brau:
Well, Grinnell College is a unique spot in a unique place, for one thing. It is also the enthusiasm [00:22:00] of the students that they bring to the project and that there is a good core of people in the Grinnell community that want local foods to succeed. You bring all of those together, the synergy is there for since to develop as it has.
Ben Binversie:
Another critical part of the garden's success is the irrigation system, which gives Ann just a touch of garden envy.
Ann Brau:
If you've lived in Iowa any length of time, [00:22:30] you look back over just the last week, we have gone from 90s to 30s to 40s to 60s and had rain all the way along. Prior to that, we had dry conditions all the way along for a good chunk of the summer. If you can't control your water input to the plants, you don't get consistent growth. Because this is a demonstration experiential [00:23:00] educational location, that consistency helps a lot.
Ben Binversie:
The diversity of the garden also makes it more resilient.
Ann Brau:
Diversity is going to be the salvation of any garden because one thing may fail, but another thing may survive the conditions at the same. Adding color adds nutrition to your diet. Adding a variety of different plants also allows you to eat the whole season [00:23:30] and provide maybe some storage capabilities in what you plant if you have the ability to store food.
Ben Binversie:
In addition to bountiful harvests of delicious food, the garden also produces students who care about agriculture. More than a few of the current garden workers and volunteers expressed plans to keep local food a priority in their lives.
But the garden has been producing green thumb Grinnellians for years. Jordan Scheibel is one of those Grinnellians.
Jordan is a 2010 [00:24:00] graduate and an alum of the garden. He's putting that experience to use now as the owner of Middle Way Farms, an organic farm just north of Grinnell. Jordan's interest in agriculture blossomed at Grinnell and he eventually decided to stick around after graduation, working at Grinnell Heritage Farm before making the leap into starting his own farm.
Jordan Scheibel:
There's a quote I really like, which is, "There's no more intimate way to relate to your environment than to eat from it." I think part of the ways that people feel alienated from ecology [00:24:30] and the place around them is because we no longer look to the area around us to actually feed us; it's just this backdrop and then we think food comes from somewhere else. We don't think of the land around us as providing for us and pretty much for all of human history up until mid-century, people had this real sense of connection to land, that it was something you depended on. I think we don't even think of depending on anything except maybe electricity and things like that.
That's one aspect, I think, of local food is [00:25:00] that it reintegrates us back into our environment. I think, for me, local food, when I cook with it, it's a different product. It tastes entirely different to me and it makes ... I get so much more pleasure out of eating locally produced food than I do out of eating mass produced food or even organic mass produced food, which I buy.
Local food reconnects us to our environment and it reconnects us to food as an actual life-sustaining activity rather than something that we just have to get [00:25:30] through so we can get to more interesting stuff.
Ben Binversie:
Right.
Jordan Scheibel:
You know? I think of food as being really central to my life, rather than, "Oh, well I gotta cook dinner quick so I can go do the stuff that I really want to do." For me, actually, food is an organizing activity. It's the way that I give love back to people, it's the way that I take care of myself, take care of the people around me. Yeah.
Ben Binversie:
In addition to the 1,000 pounds of produce the garden yields, the hope for the future is that it can produce more graduates [00:26:00] like Jordan who become connected to the soil and food.
The college garden likely won't make a significant impact on the local agricultural system here in Grinnell, but everyone who interacts with the garden gains an appreciation for the value of local food, and ideally, incorporates that into their everyday lives.
Jon Andelson:
Well, it's just so important, Ben, that we find different ways to farm and different ways to feed people because there's so many problems associated [00:26:30] with our current agriculture system, environmental problems and social problems. Not to mention economic non-sustainability because many years, the only way farmers make money is through government supports of one kind or another. The price of corn is way down, the price of soy beans is not good, and now the trade war with China, not clear how that's going to impact it.
And then also, the way people eat. We don't eat [00:27:00] well as a nation. Too much fat, too much sugar, too much salt. We need to reinvent the backyard garden, the deck garden, the community garden as well as larger establishments like Middle Way Farm or even more so, Grinnell Heritage Farm.
Ben Binversie:
Indeed. We as a community and society more broadly are still a long way from sustainable agriculture as the norm. [00:27:30] Even though the college garden is a small venture, it is a wonderful example of putting sustainability into action.
To see photos of the garden and look at their harvest data for the past two years, check out the story online at Grinnell.edu/podcast.
Like sharks, bees are often misunderstood creatures. We don't have as many [00:28:00] scary movies about bees, sure, but people are often scared of them or at best, tolerate them as a necessary nuisance. Bees, though, play a critical role in our food production. With bee populations on the decline worldwide, it is essential that we understand these amazing creatures and the vital function they serve in our world.
Heather Swan, a poet, lecturer, and beekeeper herself, traveled around the world researching these threats and the ways that people are responding. She recently visited Grinnell to talk [00:28:30] about her concerns, but also about the hope and resilience she found. I asked her how she became so enthralled with bees in the first place.
Heather Swan:
When I was really little, I lived in an area that had a prairie outside my door. My parents were working in their studios and my little sister was too young to hang out with me, so I mostly hung out with my dog in these prairie and wood spaces. I became really aware of all of the non-human beings that were in those environments in a [00:29:00] way that was very open because I hadn't been trained that humans were above everything else. It just didn't occur to me that they weren't as valuable as we were. So I've been interested in insects since I was really small.
And then when I was about eight years old, my dad took me to a beekeeper's farm and we attended a honey harvest. The honey harvest entailed opening up [00:29:30] the honeycomb and getting the honey out of those little wax chambers. I had never seen anything like that before, but we were in this room and there were all of these bees flying around. The smell of the honey and the wax was just extraordinary and so beautiful and overwhelming. Intoxicating, really.
But also, to watch a human being interact with these insects in a way that was so ... He wasn't wearing [00:30:00] a lot of gear or anything like that. I thought, "That's incredible that he can be with these bees." So I thought, in the back of my mind, I thought, "That's the coolest job ever to be able to work with bees."
Then it was much later that I actually got involved in apprenticing people, but that was really when I was, I don't know, bitten? Right? Or whatever with a-
Ben Binversie:
Stung.
Heather Swan:
Yeah, stung! Stung with the magic of honeybees was when [00:30:30] I was probably eight.
Ben Binversie:
Yeah.
Heather Swan:
Yeah.
Ben Binversie:
I can relate to that smell. My dad usually does it in the garage. When he steals the honey from the bees, he does it in the garage and it's just the heat and it's ... Oh, wow.
Heather Swan:
It is. It's really amazing. The wax. And also, you can get that just going and standing near a hive. The smell of the wax, the honey, and then the propolis is also just that smell, it's one of the best smells in the world to me. [00:31:00] Anyone that's listening should get to a beehive so they can experience that in some way because it's just like none other.
Ben Binversie:
Yeah. So there's nearly 20,000 species of bees based on my Google research. How did the western or European honeybee become so prevalent and important as a pollinator of crops worldwide?
Heather Swan:
My research has led me to understand this story in one particular way, but [00:31:30] we've been interested in the honeybee. Even there are cave paintings in South Africa and in Spain that show images of people taking honey from the bees, so we have been interested in taking the honey from them for a long time. There's some evidence that the Egyptians used bees; they moved them up and down the Nile to do that kind of pollination.
The apis [00:32:00] millifera was not in the United States until the European colonization, so they have been here for a long time, but they were not here initially. So a really interesting problem, I think, that for people thinking about conservation and the use of the honeybee as an industrial tool is the fact that they're not-
Ben Binversie:
Native species.
Heather Swan:
They're not native species. It's [00:32:30] really interesting to think about, if we really look at which species are really original, it'd be really hard to parse out which species of fish we shouldn't eat and all of those things, but from my thinking, I think we have to look at where we are right now. That is that we're in the situation where we are using the honeybee as an industrial tool. There's a lot of really great research being done on how really effective native pollinators [00:33:00] are and that they could actually, if we increased the habitat for those bees, we could actually lean on the honeybee less, which might be really terrific.
Ben Binversie:
What are all those other bees doing? They need to get off their bee-hinds and pollinate. What are they up to?
Heather Swan:
I don't think it's that they are not pollinating. The biggest thing that the native bees is that their habitat has been destroyed. The bumblebee is a really fantastic pollinator for certain kinds [00:33:30] of plants. The miner bee is really good for pollinating other kinds of plants.
A lot of times what we think is that each pollinator could pollinate everything, but that's not the case. That in fact, the flower shapes ... The bees and the pollinators evolved so slowly over time. There are really specific, special relationships between these different [00:34:00] beings. So if you eliminate one group of plants, then you are going to eliminate the food for a big group of insects and other kinds of pollinators. There are other ways of pollinating besides just insect pollination.
But I think that the biggest thing is that we, by planting, something like I visited the restored prairie called CERA this morning.
Ben Binversie:
Yeah, Conard Environmental Research Area, I think.
Heather Swan:
Yes. [00:34:30] That's an amazing space because those native plants, that native prairie will support a whole range of insects and pollinators. It's great for anyone that has honeybees because the honeybees will have more forage, but it's also really great for all of those other insects.
Ben Binversie:
Can you paint a picture for us of the major threats facing the honeybee right now?
Heather Swan:
The biggest issue, I think, is that there's not enough [00:35:00] forage for a lot of insects.
The honeybee, specifically, has been used as, as I said, a tool in agriculture. So if you take a honeybee to pollinate a crop that has one thing growing only, like a monocrop situation, take almonds for instance. The thing people say about the almond grove is that it's about the size of Rhode Island. That's one [00:35:30] plant that's growing there. There's been some movement lately to at least start to plant crops of flowers along the edges of those giant fields, but if you can imagine, going in and the bees will pollinate those crops and then they have nothing else to eat. What they do is they feed them with high fructose corn syrup to supplement their diets.
If you know [00:36:00] those insects ... One of the things I think about honeybees, to go back to your original question, is that why honeybees and humans, but I think it's because the honeybee is such an easy ... Not easy. They have such an amazing community and humans have been interested in them for so long partly because of their organization and because they have that kind of a [00:36:30] community and they have something that we want – honey – we have studied them really extensively.
So partly, I think, our interest in them comes from the fact that they have a lot to teach us. Left to their own devices, like I was just in Europe where the honeybee is native, and the thing about the honeybee is they not [00:37:00] only live beautifully in community, but they also are constantly giving in their relationship to the land. They're taking nectar, but they're pollinating those flowers. There's this incredible symbiotic relationship that's so harmonious and beautiful.
I feel like taking those insects and putting them into these models of production and feeding them something unnatural like high fructose corn syrup, it's sort of heartbreaking. Well, for me, it's really heartbreaking. I think that [00:37:30] we could definitely live with them in a better way, for sure.
Ben Binversie:
Is there anything more vital or whose absence could be more dangerous than the honeybee?
Heather Swan:
Oh boy, that's a really tough question. Plankton, maybe? Jeez. That's a tough question because it's making me think about a hierarchy and I don't like to think of that at all.
Ben Binversie:
Ah.
Heather Swan:
I feel like I would much rather try to create safe ecosystems [00:38:00] so that we're not losing anybody, you know? That's an interesting thing.
There are a lot of people that would say that if you lose the honeybee, our agriculture systems will fail because we have become so dependent on them. That's true. It will have a huge effect. If we were to actually lose the honeybee and did not get ... One of the solutions, which I talk about in my book in fact, is [00:38:30] making a little flying machine, like a little tiny robot bee.
Ben Binversie:
Yeah, I heard about those.
Heather Swan:
And pollinating with those. I think what I heard recently was that Walmart bought a patent for one of the insect pollinator, these robo bees, and I thought about just ... In fact, there was an article that I read was just like, "What a joke that is to imagine that, that would make any financial sense." But the fact that they bought [00:39:00] that made me think, "Wow, they really are concerned because they think"-
Ben Binversie:
If Walmart is-
Heather Swan:
That's what I thought! I hope I'm right about that. I'm pretty sure. I can look it up, but if we think that is a possible future solution, I think that's sort of terrifying to me. Wouldn't it be-
Ben Binversie:
Yeah, it is [crosstalk 00:39:17].
Heather Swan:
Well, and I was imagining how much money that you would spend to make these communities of machines, which would eventually fail, and birds would eat them and choke and so on, and there would be all kinds [00:39:30] of problems. Why not just make a better environment for the things that are doing it for things?
So one of the interesting things is that if we do stick with the model that we do have now and we are continuing to use the honeybees as the major pollinator, one of the things is that they just need more food to eat. We just need to create more biodiversity.
One of the things that I talk [00:40:00] about a lot with people is all the amazing strategies that we have available to us right now that are happening. There are urban farms popping up everywhere. Amsterdam just did this really wonderful thing where they took the sides of their highways and the sides of their railroad tracks and they just planted native flowers all along the edges of these. They've seen an amazing increase – in the city – of [00:40:30] bees and native bees. They've stopped using pesticides within the city and the bee death has gone down.
It's just like these possibilities are here and we can do them. It's just about deciding to make these things happen. But I think there's hope. It's hard to see it sometimes, but I believe there is.
Ben Binversie:
So on the opposite end of hope, what would a dystopian future without bees look like?
Heather Swan:
Well, there would be no fruit. One [00:41:00] of the things to think about is just the stuff that we consume all the time is fruit, coffee, chocolate, almonds, nuts, many kinds of nuts. So many of those things are pollinated by insects. If we didn't have that population of pollinators, it would be pretty boring to eat. We can do a lot of creative things, but I would still like to be able to have a [00:41:30] peach or a pear, you know?
Ben Binversie:
Yeah.
Heather Swan:
I also love chocolate and coffee, I will admit. I would be sad to lose those things too. But yeah, I think it would be fairly bleak without those insects.
The other thing is that – this is maybe a dark thing to mention – but there was a study out of Germany last year that measured flying insect populations over the past 25 years. [00:42:00] The insect population has decreased by 75% and that's a lot. You think about the problem with eliminating insects is that they're the foundation for everything else. Birds eat insects and many small mammals are connected to insects. There are insects that were not even measured, not the flying insects but the insects that are in the soil or the insects that are responsible for decomposition [00:42:30] is partly dependent upon insect populations. We don't think about insects as being valuable but they are so crucial to having a healthy ecosystem.
I feel like the honeybee, in a way, is a like ... My mother calls it "the gateway bug" because if you become interested in the honeybee and you recognize the beauty of that insect, then it opens your eyes to all of the other [00:43:00] beautiful creatures that are right here living with us but we just take for granted so much.
Yeah, certainly the honeybee is special too in that ... This is different from the pollination part completely. It has to do so much with my own relationship with bees, which some beekeepers who are interested in beekeeping for money don't have the opportunity to really just watch these insects [00:43:30] doing their work, which I just picked up these two little bees that were outside of my hive. They were wet, it had rained, and they were struggling in the grass. I picked them up and I put them in my hand. They walked towards each other, even though one of them had a wing that was damaged and they couldn't fly, they were both damaged. But they both went directly to each other and began grooming each other and taking care of each other.
It was the most beautiful thing. I thought, " [00:44:00] These insects have ..." It's hard because it's anthropomorphizing to say that they exhibit love, but there's no other way for me to really describe the relationship that they have with each other in the colony. It's such a selfless, beautiful way that they just care for each other, and care for the plants.
That's part of the reason that I focus on the honeybee and why humans can become so enamored by them. There are so many societies that [00:44:30] thought of them as sacred. There's something really special about them, but just on an ecosystem level, to recognize that these insects are so ... If you start looking at the honeybee home and think that it's just the hive, it's certainly not. They're connected to what's growing outside within a five-mile radius. All the plants, they're going to the trees to get sap for making propolis in their hive, and they’re connected to, of course, [00:45:00] the water systems because they drink the water and the water is feeding these little plants.
You see that interconnectedness so clearly and for me, I would say that experience has made me want so much to go forth with this message that we really need to pay attention to this incredible system that we have, this sort of miraculous web of interacting lives that we need to respect. [00:45:30] We're just one part of those systems and we often think of ourselves as above them or separate from them, but we're part of them, and we're doing a lot of damage right now but we can choose to live differently. We can live more like a bee. That would be great, wouldn't it?
Ben Binversie:
Yeah. In your book, you not only sought out to pinpoint the threats to honeybees, but also to explore that people are doing about it. You talked to a whole host of people in different fields, different countries, talked to beekeepers, [00:46:00] farmers, artists, entomologists, ecologists, and other advocates, people from vastly different fields all working to solve this problem. Do you think that's indicative of how we must tackle these global ecological problems, like getting everybody to contribute their own skills in their own way from various angles?
Heather Swan:
Absolutely. I think that what I imagine is that this book that I created is just one scenario. [00:46:30] It could be possibly a model for the way that we approach lots of different problems.
The thing is that I think one of the things that I wanted when I started this journey, I was keeping bees and it was when I was just beginning, really, to get serious about it, and I realized they were suddenly in decline and they were dying left and right. I thought, "Oh my gosh. I want to find the bad guy." I realized there wasn't one problem; it was all kinds of problems. [00:47:00] It was how many pesticides we're putting on lawns and it was habitat reduction and it was mono culture and it was viruses. There were so many problems.
I thought, "Oh, I see. It's a really complicated problem, so therefore, we have to have really complicated answers." We always want to find just one simple solution to something, but in fact, it has to be more holistic, I think.
And yes, I think the interesting thing is that a lot of the [00:47:30] scientists that I know, we have this idea about these different disciplines being so separate, but in fact, when these disciplines begin to talk to each other ... If I'm a scientist, I can do a great experiment and I can come up with this body of information, but if we don't change the cultural belief around whatever scenario we're talking about, we won't see change. Just putting [00:48:00] the science out there doesn't change things.
So there's really, I think it has to be a concerted effort from all of these disciplines. I'm not suggesting that everybody has to be at the table at all times, but to recognize that we're not at odds with each other, that in fact, there are all of these ways in which we can be ... An artist is going to do a really different kind of work than a scientist, but their goals may be very similar.
I [00:48:30] feel, in my experience of going and talking to people and meeting people who are on the ground doing this work, there's so much wonderful work going on. There's so many people who are passionate. I just feel really hopeful for the future, which is surprising to people usually because the narrative that we see in the media is so dark. It's such an apocalyptic story and I think that it's important that story is out there because [00:49:00] it motivates people, but it's not the whole story. There are lots and lots of ways in which change is happening already. It's in all of these pockets that don't necessarily get-
Ben Binversie:
They don't talk to each other always.
Heather Swan:
They don't always talk to each other, that's right. And maybe they don't need to, but it's really great for me to share those stories.
The space where I was this morning is an amazing example of change. That's preserving these environments and, in fact, making them better. [00:49:30] That's happening. That exists right here. If anyone's feeling down and they're in the area, they should go over there.
Ben Binversie:
Go over to CERA and be rejuvenated.
Heather Swan:
Yeah!
Ben Binversie:
Hopeful.
Heather Swan:
It's a beautiful place.
Ben Binversie:
Yeah. You contribute, in various ways, through your writing as well as art. In your book, you end each chapter with an illustration. How do you see the role of your artwork in this effort?
Heather Swan:
I think of myself ... It's interesting because my background is ... [00:50:00] I grew up with a painter and a potter. I was in clay studios and paint studios my whole life. We lived in art communities too so I would, as a little girl, after I lived in that prairie, the next place I lived was in Colorado in an art center. It was all of these buildings that had been little cabins that had been turned into studios. I would run from studio to studio and I'd just [00:50:30] chat with all the artists. It was pretty great. Really fun, actually.
So the thing is that I've always made visual art, but then I really was interested in language as another art form, so I studied poetry. When I was doing environmental studies, I realized that ... My PhD's in literature, literary and environmental studies. What I was thinking about a lot was how we represent these problems in language and [00:51:00] pulling from all of the visual art training and the poetry training I had, that's how I came up with this idea of this book.
After every chapter, there's a gallery. I feel like the gallery sections of the book shouldn't be seen as anything less. I don't think that they're ... They're not just decoration in the book, that they're actually other ways of making an argument. Sometimes, [00:51:30] those arguments are affecting in a really different way than a statistic might be.
By braiding storytelling, and science, and art, I was hoping to make this piece something that would hit people in more than just one way, that they would maybe moved intellectually and emotionally at the end of the day. I guess I'd have to talk to the people that read the book to see if that actually worked.
Ben Binversie:
[00:52:00] Well, it's working for me.
Heather Swan:
Okay, good. Whew.
Ben Binversie:
It's definitely far too easy to think that the tiny animals don't matter or that they're dispensable because there seems to be so many of them, but thank you, Heather, for sticking up for the little ones and making sure that we understand their importance. You're the bee's knees.
Heather Swan:
Oh, thank you! Thank you so much for taking the time. It's been an honor to be here.
Ben Binversie:
Heather Swan is a beekeeper, poet, and lecturer at [00:52:30] the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her book "Where Honeybees Thrive" is a beautifully illustrated mosaic of visual imagery, stories, and science, which explores efforts to ensure a sustainable future for honeybees and ourselves.
You can find a link to that, as well as her other work, on our website, Grinnell.edu/podcast.
You hear that music? It’s alright, but you know what I’d rather hear? Grinnell music. That’s right. I want to include music from Grinnellians on the podcast. [00:53:00] Whether you make music on garage band, or play in an actual garage band, I don’t care. I want to hear your original music, preferably clean, although I’ll listen to it regardless, so don’t be bashful. If you have music you’d like to be featured on the podcast, or know someone who might, let me know- email me at podcast@grinnell.edu. It takes a lot of music to make me sound interesting, so please send some songs my way.
[00:53:30] Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! That’s Shakespeare’s King Lear. And that [wind] is the wind here in Grinnell. It has indeed been raging and blowing, and cracking its cheeks, whatever that means. Many a Grinnellian has battled the white winter winds on their way to class, and cold winters are nothing new here. This winter, though, is getting [00:54:00] a bit extreme. So extreme, that the College had to cancel classes on Wednesday for the first time in recent memory. I was too busy trying to stay warm, so I didn’t have time to dig in to the history of snow days at the College, but I thought I would turn it over to our alumni to tell me their memories of memorable snow storms in Grinnell’s history.
You can share your story with me in writing, or, preferably, by sending me an audio clip of yourself telling the memory. There are tons of voice recording apps for phones- just choose one and give it a spin. Email me what you’ve got [00:54:30], and I’ll include a few stories on the next show. If you’re in the midst of this polar vortex, stay inside, stay warm, and listen to some podcasts. And if you’re somewhere warm, well, listen to some podcasts anyway.
With that, we'll wrap up this week's episode. Next time, we're talking with Grinnell Emeritus Professor of Economics, Jack Mutti, about the impact of tariffs on the economy here in Iowa and beyond. We'll also expand on our conversation [00:55:00] with Jordan Scheibel, who we heard from in today's episode. He graduated from Grinnell in 2010 and now runs Middle Way Farm just outside of Grinnell.
Music for today's show comes from Brett Newski and Audioblocks. If you'd like to contact the show, email us at podcast@Grinnell.edu, find us on Twitter with #AllThingsGrinnell, or check out our website, Grinnell.edu/podcast for more information about the guests from today's show.
Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. [00:55:30]
I'm your host, Ben Binversie. Stay weird, Grinnellians.