Sustainable Agriculture

The CVHS Sustainable Agriculture Subcommittee

In the spring of 2020 the Chilkat Valley Historical Society (CVHS) initiated a Sustainable Agriculture sub-committee—a new pathway for the organization aimed at shining a light on current food security questions and establishing greater locally control.

The founding purposes of the committee are to address barriers to the sustainable production of more local food, including

  • Gaining an understanding of barriers to skilled growers producing and marketing more local food
  • Researching the potential for mentoring programs that can increase individual food security and increase production;
  • Evaluating the mechanisms and opportunities to increase the availability of land suitable for farming and lowering barriers to food production including community gardening and commercial operations;
  • Cultivating relationships with experts, such as UAF Cooperative Extension, the Alaska Farmland Trust and other groups.

 

What Sustainable Agriculture Means to Me

Please consider what “sustainable agriculture” means to you and contribute to this conversation here: My Sustainable Agriculture

 

Strengthening Our Food Connection

The Chilkat Valley possesses tremendous fish and wildlife resources that connect culture, the economy, and overall community well-being.  However, in a typical week, feeding Haines mostly comes down to barge logistics.  That’s not a strong position for the long haul.  Local food is a sustainability and a security issue.  Affordability, markets, land-use policy, and the strength of our connections as interdependent consumers are also in play.

  • How can Haines Borough and Klukwan increase sustainable food production and self-reliance next year, or five of ten years from now?

 

Less Soil and Less Health

US farmland soils are being depleted about 10-times faster than they can be replenished by nature, collectively losing some 1.7 billion tons of material yearly[i]. Our “Green Revolution” in the aftermath of WWII launched new hybrid seeds, ingenious new poisons and we dramatically increased the power we apply to agriculture.  We’ve consolidated food production and produced much greater quantities of “cheap” food, but simultaneously our health has suffered with obesity and type-II diabetes running off the charts.

 

The Blessing of Productive Soil

Give Mother Nature enough time and she creates the miraculous community of mineral, plant, bacteria, fungi and animal life that we call “soil.”  Because the Upper Lynn Canal landscape is so brand new—fresh out from under a Pleistocene ice-sheet only a few thousand years—we have relatively little of this amazing stuff.  To feed ourselves we’ll have to keep the soil we have healthy and make more.

C14—Carbon is the Coin of the Realm in this miraculous, regenerative, subterranean economy.   Carbon sequestration in top soil is fundamental to terrestrial life in our Blue Boat Home and is the bedrock of sustainable food production.  That is why compost is so important.  Compost availability represents a bottleneck for sustainable agriculture growing beyond the scale of home gardening.  Composting is growing and several Haines area businesses are, or have been, engaged in producing this crucial soil amendment.

  • In 2012 through 2013 Community Waste Solutions was producing EPA “Exceptional Quality” compost using bio solids (aka- sewage sludge), but that is not now part of their current business model.
  • Haines Compost is a family business run by Jenny and Harry Reitz, converting food waste into compost.
  • Jim Szymanski is marketing a Liquid Fish soil amendment product.
  • We have the remarkable prospect of converting higher volumes of fish waste into high-value compost at Haines Packing and at Excursion Inlet Packing.

Expanding grower access to great compost is important to soil-building agriculture and a place that can use greater focus and opportunity.

 

 A Vision for Sustainable Agriculture

Latitude 59N and our rain forest biome make agriculture and food production a challenge, but year-after-year we are expanding local agriculture and we have a farming history.  Beginning in 1904 and ending when old age curtailed his ability in the 1940’s, Charlie Anway grew and marketed apples, sweet and tart cherries, strawberries and a variety of vegetables here in Haines.  A few of Charlie’s “legacy” apple trees, each over 100 years old, still produce prodigiously.

The CVHS wants to do more than restore Charlie Anway’s idyllic cabin.  We want to share his passion for horticultural experimentation and promote the contemporary relevance of this early history.  We want to foster and promote the fresh, new science of place-based food production and help people live with greater vitality.  The opportunities are significant.  Private individuals and the Haines Borough own large tracts with full solar access and water, places where soil-building organic agricultural programs could potentially be established and thrive.

The CVHS Sustainable Agriculture effort is about getting creative and envisioning a sustainable way into the future.

  • Can we take stock of, and sharpen, our educational, economic and land-use tools and speed the movement towards sustainable food?
  • Can we expand and refine Alaska-region growing models, build more healthy soil, create new economic opportunity and community, and foster a culture of local food security?

Contact us if you would like to have a voice in this conversation.

[i] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/03/slow-insidious-soil-erosion-threatens-human-health-and-welfare