Food & Travel...

Jim Koan is doing something revolutionary on his Flushing, MI farm. Or, is he? Instead of using pesticides to rid his orchard of a pest, Koan is going old school and using pigs.

Koan’s 120-acre apple farm in has been plagued by the Plum Curculio Beetle that lays its eggs in apples and makes the fruit drop too early from trees. He could have used frequent sprays of pesticides for years to get rid of the beetles, or he could use pigs. (He tried chickens and guineas, but they weren’t hard enough workers and the guineas were taken away by hawks. He contemplated sheep, too, but in the end hard-working pigs, too big for any hawk or coyote to steal, were the best bet.) Now he has a group of pigs who shuffle through the orchards when the apples infected with beetles start to fall. They eat the apples and the eggs that would have spelled disaster for next year’s crop, and clear the ground and eat weeds in the process. The pigs make short work of an apple orchard, eating every last contaminated apple. And, bonus: once the pigs have solved the beetle problem, Koan plans to sell them as organic pork.

The Detroit Free Press reported on Koan’s farm on January 28, 2008. I like this story for a few reasons. First, I like the image of pigs rooting around apple trees in Michigan, especially when juxtaposed with the image of tractors driving through the same field spraying pesticides on low-hanging Golden Delicious fruit. And, I like the idea of using pigs when it comes to my own health and the nutrition in my food.

To give you an idea of where pesticides fit into life today: in a 2005 report, the Centers for Disease Control found that toxins used in pesticides (neurotoxic pyrethroids) were found in people’s blood and the Environmental Working Group discovered that developing fetuses are born with an average 200 toxic chemicals inside them (taken from The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by Sandor Katz). Some of theses toxins ended up in bloodstreams, not because anyone was chugging chemical waste, but because they were eating apples, pears, lettuce, and other fruits and vegetables that had been coated with pesticides as part of the ‘growing process.’

So, revolutionary or not, pigs are a refreshing idea.