According to recent reports, bluefin tuna schools are this century’s version of the bison herd: Their luscious red flesh remains extremely popular with sushi diners worldwide — so much so that overfishing has pushed Pacific bluefin stocks to a 96 percent decline since the 1950s. Their extinction as a food source is edging towards reality.

But when the various forms of tuna — toro, otoro, maguro — are so synonymous with Japanese cuisine, is it even possible for sushi to move beyond its cornerstone fish? The science indicates that consuming sushi in a way that’s sustainable has shifted from a nice idea to an absolute necessity in 2013. Bun Lai, chef and owner of Miya’s Sushi restaurant in New Haven, Conn., has carried that ethos from well-meaning notion to practice. He redefines what it means to be a sushi chef by insisting the most popular item should stay off the menu. In tuna’s place, he’s simultaneously turning invasive species into table fare and nudging sushi back to its freshwater origins.

Here, Bun Lai shares his secrets and talks about the cuisine’s future.

Q. How long have you been foraging in Connecticut?

A. I’m by no means an expert, but I’ve been foraging all my life. Both of my parents were nature lovers and we were always outdoors. When my Japanese mother first came to this country from China, she discovered many of the plants she used to collect and eat when she was little also grew in New Haven. I would go out and dig up wild burdock and pick lamb’s quarters. I loved doing it and it sort of grew from there.

Q. How productive is the Long Island Sound as a food source?

A. I’ve been fishing in in the rivers and streams of Connecticut and the Long Island Sound since I was very little. But one of the challenges for the restaurant [is] that we’re looking for fish that are not commercially popular or available. There’s all sorts of sources for local seafood incorporated in the menu like whelks, periwinkles, and tunikit. But what’s really difficult is finding seafood that’s caught in a sustainable or ethical manner.

The irony is there are plenty of bluefish and striped bass swimming around Long Island Sound, but you can’t eat them due to mercury advisories.

Q. So what is the motivation behind culling species introduced to the area?

A. Theoretically, if we were to eat invasive species it would help to restore and regenerate habitats. Today we eat very few species like tuna, in terms of plants and animals. And because of it we’re having a horrifically damaging impact on the living planet.

These days, there are more Asian shore crabs than there are native green crabs in the area, far and away. When I was growing up all you would see would be green crabs. In April we go out for Japanese knotweed. Around the world it does billions and billions of dollars in damage. So for about a month and a half we use the knotweed in recipes, pickling and blanching them. The common denominator for invasive species is their resilience. I grew up eating periwinkles; the common periwinkle is another invasive species in the Long Island Sound.

Q. Are some of these ingredients not seen on menus more often because they’re hard to obtain or difficult to process?

A. It’s easy to get, because it’s a matter of just going out and collecting them. [But] a lot of stuff is not the kind of food people are used to eating. You really have to open their minds to eating it. One of the most sensual dishes that we have on our menu and [was] mentioned in Saveur magazine and [on] the Food Network is kanibaba, our invasive shore crab dish. We know that it’s delicious and that people like it. When you look at it in that light it’s really no big deal at all. It’s really a matter of putting it front of people.

Q. Do you get much pushback from customers when they realize there no sushi mainstays on the menu?

A. Most of the people walking into Miya’s know what to expect; we have a lot of return customers. Once in a while we get customers that pop in expecting a traditional sushi restaurant based on a Google search without having read the reviews. And they ask for mainstays of sushi like California roll, which is our kanibaba. Or a tuna roll, but instead of tuna we have a lionfish dish.

We don’t win everyone over. We still have people walking out on us. But we have simple and earnest answers to explain why we do what we do. Six out of eight of the most popular tuna are threatened species. And the ones that aren’t threatened are caught in a manner that’s destructive to the ecosystem, with extraordinary bycatch.

Q. Does idealism get in the way of running the restaurant?

A. I think the most important thing in the creation of my cuisine is to understand that you can’t make can’t make everybody happy. Not everybody is going to appreciate it, or like [it], and some will think it’s complete trash. People have to realize they have a far-reaching impact in their choices.

The challenge has been to stop serving the bedrock ingredient of modern sushi. When I thought about doing it a couple years ago and discussed it with my top staff, people were hyperventilating. But for me, if I know that I’m doing the right thing [but] it’s scary at the same time, then I know I should do it.

Q. Has it helped you develop as a chef?

A. Cooking is my bushido. The first thing I am is an artist; my food speaks for itself. People come to me because they can’t get the kind of food we create anywhere else in the world. The most important thing for me in the creation of my cuisine and my business is that they’re completely intertwined. And I’m always checking myself to make wise choices.

My mother opened Miya’s in 1982. [It was] the first sushi bar in Connecticut. She wanted to create a traditional Japanese food that was healthy. Today my mom loves the food as it’s evolved.

Our techniques are very different in every in possible way from most contemporary sushi chefs — starting with the rice we use, a whole-grain medley, [and] our soy sauce is citrus-based. We use local maple syrup. None of this stuff is a secret. We gave our recipes to Eating Well magazine in an eight-page article on eating sustainable sushi.

Q. Now that you’ve taken tuna and shrimp off the menu at Miya’s, how do you reconcile that with running a sushi restaurant?

A. People have to understand that food as culture is constantly evolving. American cuisine is not the same as it was in 1950, for better and for worse. And to understand where food is going, it’s good to know its past. If you’re talking about sushi, the cuisine developed over thousands of years with rice along the Mekong Delta. It’s a river cuisine. In the beginning there was no tuna sushi. It was all freshwater fish packed and fermented with rice. The people were eating catfish, carp, and freshwater bass. Today all over Asia there are really ancient ways in which fish is fermented in rice. In rural Japan there’s narezushi, a carp-based sushi. It smells like the stinkiest cheese imaginable.

Original sushi wasn’t like anything it is today today. In a lot of ways we’re tipping our hats to the genesis of sushi by not using ingredients considered to be the bedrock of sushi.

Q. Can you give credence to the rumor that jellyfish is the next tofu?

A. The Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese eat them. Will it be the next tofu? I doubt it [laughs]. We use jellyfish at Miya’s in a dish called Peanut Butter and Jelly with wild hunted hare or animal welfare-approved rabbit. When jellyfish is dried and rehydrated again the texture changes completely. People like it for the texture, not the flavor. If you were to dehydrate tofu, which people actually do, it’s similar to jellyfish.

We named it after a conventional American staple. We’re trying to have people rethink what is traditional and classic food. Our work is about changing people’s perspectives, and [we hope] to move and inspire them in many different ways.

The notion of eating invasive species has gained traction among hunters, eaters, and chefs embedded in the food movement in recent years. Whether it’s iguanas in Florida, lionfish off the Atlantic coast, or plants that have long been considered weeds, ethical eaters, the thinking goes, can chow down in good conscience, secure in the knowledge that with every bite, they’re helping to remove an unwanted animal from the ecosystem. Jackson Landers, a hunting instructor and author based in Virginia, has been championing this idea for years. His latest book Eating Aliens: One Man’s Adventures Hunting Invasive Animal Species offers a gourmand’s guide to hunting and eating these unwanted plants and animals, taking aim at feral boars, Asian carp, and other creatures incurring an outsized impact on the landscape with hefty appetites for destruction.

We spoke with Landers recently about his book, federal regulations on wild foods, and the stench of the nine-banded armadillo.

Q. What inspired you to write Eating Aliens? 

A. After completing the draft of my first book [The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food], I started looking around for another project that would utilize my skills as a hunter, writer, and educator in a positive way. A lot of people are doing great work on climate change and habitat loss, but with invasive species not only was there a lack of awareness, but there are few people doing anything about it. Eating Aliens is Douglas Adams’ travelogue Last Chance to See in reverse. Instead of setting out to find the most rare and endangered species existing in the world in need of protection, I set out to look for the most dangerously overpopulated species that don’t belong in the United States and need to be removed.

Q. You grew up in a vegetarian household. Given the premise of the book, how did you get over the hump?

A. Gradually, between the ages of 10 and 12, I went to other people’s houses and had chances to eat meat and discovered that I liked it. At some point, my parents stopped being vegetarians — eating turkey for Thanksgiving and burgers for Fourth of July. I think it was a shock for them when I first started hunting. But the reasons as to why people like my parents became vegetarians are entirely consistent with my values. In the ’70s, people wanted to know where their food came from, and raised questions about the relationship between our diet, our bodies, and society. More recently, the intellectual center of the food movement has shifted to be more about ethically sourcing meat. My parents understand that.

Q. Why does the idea of hunting invasive species resonate with you?

A. There are so many people right now who have meat-eater’s remorse — people who eat meat and feel kind of bad about it, but they’re not actually going to stop. Or they’re vegetarians and their bodies actually crave meat. But there’s so much awareness about what’s wrong with the mainstream food system — and they haven’t known what to do about that. The beautiful thing about hunting, especially invasive species, is it’s a way of dropping out of the mainstream meat paradigm, where so many of the ethical and health problems associated with eating meat arise.

Also, I’m a firm believer that humans evolved as omnivores that seasonally ate quite a lot of meat. Our bodies and minds have evolved to respond positively to hunting. There’s an instinct to hunt that’s a part of us. We haven’t been leading an urban lifestyle long enough to have physically evolved way from that yet. People want to feel active about getting food from the land without relying on someone else.

Q. How do you define an invasive species as opposed to the annoying or pesky ones?

A. My definition of an invasive species would be a species physically moved from a place in the world where it has traditionally existed into a new habitat — usually by human beings. In this new habitat they are increasing in their numbers and range. I hunt white-tailed deer in my home state of Virginia all the time. Is it overpopulated? Is it a nuisance species? Yes, but it’s still native. Just because a species is annoying doesn’t make it invasive.

Q. In the course of researching the book, was there was ever a point where you said to yourself, “never again”?

A. Usually when conditions were difficult and it was taking a long time to get something, it was because I was learning how to hunt it. I don’t mind physical hardship in the outdoors. The surprising thing is nothing I ate while working on Eating Aliens really tasted bad. That said, nine-banded armadillos have a funk to them. I have this scent memory of stinky armadillo belly that’s going to haunt me. But I don’t think that should prevent people from eating armadillos that other people have hunted.

Q. Local and federal agencies seem to be divided on this issue. How is conservation reconciled with food safety? For example, should we hunt species like feral boar rooting in spinach fields?

A. The [U.S. Department of Agriculture] doesn’t really care if hunters are out in spinach fields shooting feral boar. The [Food and Drug Administration] has more of a problem in that regard. Because whenever federal regulations come into play involving the sale of meat across state lines, it has to be slaughtered and processed in an approved slaughterhouse — which is kind of ridiculous. In Europe, wild game can be killed in the field, brought to the butcher, cut up, and sold. It’s not like big E. coli or brucellosis outbreaks are happening; they’ve been doing this in Europe for over 100 years with good science behind it. There’s no special food safety danger with regards to selling the meat of animals that have been killed in the field, which is to say on a hunt.

Q. So why can’t you buy a venison burger at McDonald’s? 

A. Deer are a designated game species. Agencies don’t want to see it monetized, which would incentivize the taking of wild game. That said, I think there’s tremendous market potential with regard to invasive species. I think that could be done with wild pigs — trapping boar, slaughtering them, processing that meat, and selling the pork at local farmers markets.

Does local and organic food matter more to people in Maine than it does to other Americans? It’s possible, but Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) insists that’s not why she introduced the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act, a small but encouraging set of legislative reforms meant to accompany this year’s farm bill.

And while the “marker bill” has yet to be embraced entirely, some parts of it have clearly influenced the Senate’s draft of the larger farm bill, which is said to be about to hit the Senate floor this week. Most sustainable food advocates have seen it as a welcome push for small-scale agriculture, after decades of federal support for industrial farming.

We spoke with Pingree recently about bill, the work behind it, and her motivation to get a farm bill passed before the last one runs out in September.

Q. You’re on the Armed Services Committee. Do you have any thoughts or ideas on how food security and national security are tied together?

A. One of the challenges of conventional agriculture — whether it’s the use of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, or how food is grown and distributed — is that it’s energy-intensive. There’s a general agreement, at least among people like me, that national security is better served if we’re not so dependent on foreign oil and other sources of energy. The more you can localize your food system the better off you are.

Q. So what can Maine gain from the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act?

A. There’s a huge growth in interest on the part of people in buying more food locally, whether it’s going to farmers markets, shopping directly at a farm, or joining a CSA [community-supported agriculture program]. The average age of our farmers [in Maine] is going down because more young people are engaging in farming or staying on the farm. And the number of farms under
 cultivation is actually increasing. We see this trend in Maine as a huge opportunity. It’s allowing a lot of farmers to come back. The market for organic milk, for example, has completely changed over the last 20 years.

Tourism is our largest industry. People come to Maine to eat our lobsters, but they also want to eat our spinach, sweet corn, and tomatoes.

Q. What does that have to do with shortening the supply chain?

A. Basically by creating more opportunities for accessing your food locally. 
One such program is the Farmers Market Promotion Program, to promote greater awareness of local food production. So you can meet local farmers, look them in the eye, ask questions, and eat samples. We have other programs to improve distribution and aggregation — making it easier for small-scale farmers to sell their produce.

Q. You mean like food hubs?

A. Yes. And there’s a lot of conversation about that. We have some examples of food hubs in Maine and we’re anxious to see that model replicated elsewhere.

Q. We’re in the middle of an election cycle. Does Congress really have an incentive to pass a farm bill this year given the level of divisiveness between both parties? 

A. I have no crystal ball. That said, the Senate has moved the bill through the ag committee and the [House] chair has a commitment to bring that bill to the floor of the House. The Senate will likely take up the bill this month and we’ll know whether they can get enough votes to pass it. If not, we’ll start over next year.

Q. So which have the most impact, states with the most resident farmers or the states with the most farm lobbyists?

A. There are farm lobbyists working on every possible issue down to the most minuscule detail, and that includes lobbyists working on behalf of sustainable and organic farming and young farmers. There are good advocacy groups on all sides here. Admittedly some of the big interests have more muscle behind their lobby. But the truth is the farm bill affects all regions of the country in different ways. Over 80 percent of the dollars in the farm bill are for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP] and hunger benefits programs. So the greatest impact will most likely be on low-income citizens who are scattered throughout the country.

Q. Are we getting to the point where food production and food assistance should be uncoupled from one another? They’re interrelated, but aren’t they separate sets of problems?

A. Linking food subsidies like SNAP benefits and farm procedures and processes has a lot of history in Congress. Changing that is one of the many reforms I’d be happy to see. But I don’t expect in this particular era we’re going to be able to. Frankly we’ll be lucky if we eke a farm bill out the door or even manage to extend provisions of the farm bill beyond Sept. 30 without radical change.

Q. Is there anything in the proposed farm bill that members of the food movement could get excited about?

A. One them is organic certification cost share, so if you’re a farmer that wants to convert from being a conventional farmer but you think, for instance, there’s a better market for organic milk, there’s a federal fund to help you make that transition. That fund is now at $80 million, a big increase over what it was before.

Q. You’ve served in the state House and now Congress. How much of an effort is it to pass legislation as big and unwieldy as the farm bill?

A. It’s an enormous effort. My staffer Claire Benjamin has done an incredible amount of work over the last two years basically to both write the title that we’re currently talking about and then to organize advocacy groups and to work with committee members. As much as anything, because I just joined the agricultural committee during this session, it’s been a big effort of getting to know my colleagues, and then finding like-minded members of the House both on and off the committee, and then working with 200 or so advocacy groups around the country that have endorsed our bill. So each one of those groups required a variety of conversations.

Q. Are you up for reelection this November and if so what role does the farm bill play in electoral politics?

A. Yes. Everybody in the House has to run every two years. So this is the election 
year for all of us. I may or may not be back. I will say it’s a popular issue with my constituents, but that’s not why I did it. I did it because it’s a great opportunity. I’m passionate about the topic and I’m an organic farmer myself.

Before I came to Congress I owned an inn and restaurant and we’ve added an organic farm to our operation. And I’m lucky enough to have help doing it. So when I do talk to people about actual issues of certifying a creamery or getting organic certification or any of the things farmers need to go through, I know what they’re talking about and I understand the process.

In 2009, lifelong beekeeper Dan Harvey faced an existential crisis when he lost 
much of his honeybee stock to colony collapse disorder (CCD). So the former Vietnam-era Special Forces veteran did what came naturally: He took to the deep dark woods of the Pacific Northwest, searching for answers to his predicament.

Harvey began by hunting for wild and feral bees living near his home in Port Angeles, Wash. (These bees have escaped from commercial colonies and find refuge in the tall timber and glens enveloping the Olympic Peninsula). For years, he crossbred the feral bees he captured with honeybees in order to produce hybridized hives that would be well-suited to the dank climes of the temperate rainforest region.

Then one day Harvey discovered an isolated
 hive full of bees he claims are highly resistant to Nosema ceranae, a pathogen and debilitating fungus considered one of the many threats related to CCD.

“The fungus would lodge in their gut, making the digestion of pollen impossible, leading to die-offs,” Harvey explains. But since he’s introduced the wild bees, his colonies have been on the rebound — no small feat in today’s bee climate. Now, three years after the initial crossbreeding took place, the offspring are proving themselves to be survivors.

At a time when honeybee populations are dwindling, and bees continue to abandon doomed hives, and the link to agricultural pesticides is stronger than ever, news of these disease-resistant bees has resulted in local and national media coverage.

According to the Department of Agriculture, CCD has accounted, at least in part, 
for 30 percent of bee losses annually, since 2007. It’s also jeopardizing beekeepers, rural economies, and the farm communities that depend on those bees. Worldwide honeybees pollinate 400 crops, while adding an estimated $15 billion in revenues per year to the U.S. farm economy.

Despite their pastoral image, the burden placed on the domesticated honeybees is a weighty one. Bred for their non-aggressive demeanor and ample honey production, they’re also expected to help propagate tens upon of thousands of acres of flower-pollinated crops on farms throughout the U.S. and Europe.

As scientists and beekeepers have been literally and figuratively
 beating the bushes to understand CCD, they’ve often turned to the
 role genetic diversity plays in the overall health of bee colonies. And recent research published in the peer-reviewed science journal PLoS ONE suggests honeybees are as adverse to monogamy as they are to monocrops.
 In fact, mixing it up, so to speak, can yield unexpected and surprising benefits for honeybee populations. Honeybees — whether feral or domesticated — need variety. Not only do worker bees spend their waking hours hopping from plant to plant, but some queen bees are also promiscuous, mating with multiple males in a brief period of time. And, as it turns out, there’s a biological rationale for this promiscuity; the overall fitness of the hive depends upon these multiple partners.

“Most bees, ants, and wasps mate singly. Honeybee queens are different 
in that regard — producing highly productive hives that dominate their landscape,” says Heather Mattila, a researcher at Wellesley College.

In the study published in PLoS ONE, Mattila and her co-author Irene Newton found that bees — like humans and other species — depend on helpful bacteria to aid in digestion. And the genetically diverse bee colonies they studied had a significantly greater number of probiotic species living in their guts than the more uniform hives. Moreover, the uniform beehives were 127 percent more likely to contain harmful pathogens than their more diverse counterparts.

“We’ve never known how genetic diversity leads to healthier bees, but this 
study provides strong clues,” says Matilla.

Unfortunately, most honeybee hives are of the uniform type. Early settlers brought just one subspecies known as the “dark bee,” Apis mellifera mellifera, with them from northern Europe to the Jamestown colony. It remained the only honeybee in the U. S. until the introduction of the Italian honeybee, Apis mellifera lingustica, in the mid-19th century. Today, the latter is the most common.

Susan Cobey, a bee breeder and geneticist at UC-Davis, believes the recent findings underscore the complex nature of honeybee societies. Her own research has
 taken her as far afield as the Republic of Georgia’s Caucasus Mountains in search of honeybees possessing beneficial genetic traits.

A 1922 U.S. ban on the importation of bees and the overreliance on a
 subset of honeybees bred for ease of handling and productivity has led to 
genetic “bottlenecks” limiting genetic diversity, she points out. Speaking metaphorically, she adds: “It’s like you had one boatload of people come over here that populated the whole U.S. and no one else is allowed in.”

After 500 years of only two types of honeybees dominating the landscape in the U.S., the thinking goes, the lack of genetic diversity is weakening their ability to resist CCD.

To get around the bottleneck, Cobey’s work focuses on enhancing honeybee stocks through the manipulation of bee semen to widen the gene pool. With the help of beekeepers overseas, she’s importing the germplasm of a subspecies of honeybee known as Apis melliflora caucasia, which is native to the fringes of southern Europe. “They’re providing the best of their stock,” she says.

Not that there’s one simple fix for CCD. Diversity is just one part of the equation. “A lot has to do with pesticides and nutrition,” Cobey adds. “The amazing thing about bees is they bounce back [for a while]. But at some point they collapse.”

Scientists and beekeepers alike are working furiously to prevent that from happening. But in the meantime, it might be wise to ask: What if we turned back the clock on agricultural production and allowed honeybees to forage and frolic more freely?

From time to time a book merits its title. Published in 2010, Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind may just be the No. 1 book on the No. 2 business. In it, Gene Logsdon manages to be both funny and educational as he advocates for overcoming our aversion to excrement for the sake of healthy soil.

According to Logsdon, we need manure and lots of it. He contends we should follow our nose for practical and elegant solutions to improving soil fertility, and turn waste into compost fit for crops and gardens.

We spoke to Logsdon recently to get the straight poop.

Q. You’ve had a long career in journalism. What inspired you to write a book on manure?

Gene Logsdon. (Photo by Ben Barnes.)

A. I was hearing from lots of readers who were getting into backyard farm animals, especially chickens. They did not seem to have any appreciation for the rude fact that animals defecate and urinate and no realization that they would have to deal with that manure. Since I really hoped that small-scale animal husbandry would become a fact of American life, and having memories of when it was, even in towns, I knew that without proper manure handling, the new movement was going to get into trouble with neighbors. And lead to all the silly rules that previous generations used to keep farm animals far from their noses.

What is really funny about this is that it didn’t matter to those paranoid about chicken manure how many big dogs loped through their backyards, shitting and pissing all the way. Dogs and cats are part of modern culture, even if they produce twice as much manure as a hen. Thinking about dogs and cats made me realize, with a little research, how god-awful amounts of pet manure were literally going to waste in this country. So I started writing. When I did, I realized how much I knew about manure. How pitiful for a man to reach his majority, as they say, with nothing else to brag about except a keen knowledge of shit.

Q. How long have you been farming?

A. I started doing farm work at age 5. In grad school, my wife and I kept a little homestead farm and then again during the 10 years I worked for Farm Journal while living in the Philadelphia area. My father and I milked 100 cows for a while, a foolish mistake in our case. That was “real farming.”

What I do now — for 38 years — is farming, but [it’s] not a commercial venture. I am not a “real” farmer because I make very little money at it, but I live much more of a farming life than most of the big grain farmers around me.

Q. Has the price of petroleum-based chemical fertilizer remained high (as gas prices have)? And if so, how has it affected farm operations in your area?

A. Fertilizer prices are going through the roof. Corn farmers are putting on $100 worth of it per acre this year. If you have 5,000 acres of corn, that’s half a million bucks. Since we are supposed to have a surplus of natural gas, which is used to make nitrogen fertilizer, that price could come down, but from everything I can see, the price of phosphorus and potash is going to keep going up. As I say in Holy Shit, this just makes manure that much more precious and holy. But of course, since corn prices have also gone up, the big farmers are still driving the price of land (as well as fertilizer) higher and higher.

Q. If 6,000 years of civilization are based on six inches of fertile topsoil, what does the current state of farmlands in the U.S. tell us? Are we headed for a collapse at the current rate of consumption?

A. I don’t see a collapse in yields in the near future. But it is almost impossible to keep good fertile topsoil with organic matter content of at least 3.5 percent (5 is much better) on large-scale farms operated with heavy machinery. Erosion is still very bad on hillier land. Compaction is a growing problem.

Every civilization I have studied has collapsed in time because of poor farming. Or good farming encouraging overpopulation, which finally lead to poor farming. History teaches me to be a pessimist. China maintained a garden farm economy for 40 centuries (remarkable). But in the end, it just encouraged more population growth and eventually there was not enough food to go around.

Q. In the city, organic dirt costs $19 for a 25-pound bag. Are farmers in the right business? That seems like a lot of money for dirt.

A. For the price you quote, a city gardener could make his own, the compost way. Just takes more time than the busy modern man thinks he has. Back in the early 1900s, when horses were the main means of travel, city gardeners often made their own soil by piling horse manure, bedding, and leaves about three-feet-deep on a gravel pad. They let it decay. And with water, they had a grand garden in a couple of years.

Q. For non-farmers in the audience, what’s the difference between manure and compost?

A. When manure decays it turns into compost just like any other organic matter. The compost decays further into humus. After two years of decay, the manure compost has lost all of its very bad elements (like parasitic worms) and if you use commonsense hygiene, it is no different from handling compost made from decaying leaves except that it is a lot richer in nutrients.

Q. You might have raised the ire of environmentalists with the chapter on the merits on biosolids, or sludge. Did you expect a pushback, and do you use any on your crops?

A. Oh yes I did. And I learned that it is easier to convince an evangelical Christian that not everything in the Bible is the truth than to convince an evangelical environmentalist that properly treated biosolids are like a million times safer than riding around in an automobile.

The National Academy of Sciences has twice given properly treated biosolids a green light. So have many scientists who know a helluva lot more about sludge than the environmentalists do. The only real problem is that humans like to dump their old pills and other drugs and cleaning fluids and industrial wastes, etc. down the toilet. Progress with that problem is ongoing and I expect it will be solved. But the danger is exaggerated. I don’t see cultural attitudes changing very fast, so I just shrug and quit arguing.

I have used dried sludge (“cake” in the trade) from our local water treatment plant on my garden. It works fine. I have gone through the process of sewage purification test tube by test tube with the people who work at the plant. The problem is just plain horribly exaggerated compared to other pollution problems we face.

Q. In the closing chapters you mentioned we should be literally and figuratively get our shit together. Can you explain?

A. We must think about getting our shit together literally not figuratively. This stuff slides through our bodies every day of our lives. It goes in as lovely, lush, tasty food. The body takes out what it needs for nutrition during a process in which the stuff is totally and integrally a part of our digestive process. But the second it slides out into the pot it becomes terrible, rotten, awful, disease-ridden stuff. If it were white and smelled like roses, we would be saving literally billions of dollars every year, using it for fertilizer instead of spending billions trying to make it disappear.

Driving down side streets in southeast San Diego past paddling ducks, native sage, and ugly, graffiti-covered utility boxes offers a whiff of the promise and the menace befalling Chollas Creek.

This is no Blue Danube: Bounded and bisected by freeways, a cypher of an old creek traverses low-income neighborhoods via a series of ravines and concrete channels. Nonetheless, a local nonprofit organization has set out to salvage the creek from urban ruin. In the process, the group hopes to create a place for healing and restoration in a neighborhood sorely in need of both.

Unlike reverie-inducing waterways such as the Hudson or the Mississippi rivers, which served as engines for Americaʼs economic development, the rivers of Southern California tend to be short, quirky, and intermittent. More often than not, theyʼre considered hindrances to progress by boosters eager to make way for highways and shopping malls. Many, like Chollas Creek, have simply been entombed in concrete.

Laced with heavy metals, Chollas Creek is one of the most heavily polluted waterways in San Diego County. In the aftermath of winter storms, the lower creek can resemble a slow-moving landfill.

“We’re kind of a dumping ground for demolition and construction debris that comes from outside the neighborhoods,” says Leslie Reynolds, a former San Diego State University administrator who is leading the charge to clean up the creek.

In 2007, Reynolds founded the nonprofit Groundwork San Diego to tackle Chollas Creek head-on. She sees the cleanup as an environmental justice issue since it impacts some of the poorest parts of San Diego.

“I know I sound like a broken record, but why is this allowed to happen?” she asks on a recent midmorning tour, surveying a corridor of houses edging the creek whose ragged fencelines would not be out of place in the slums of Tijuana. She points out an intersection, known as the “Four Corners of Death,” that is ground zero for local gang activity. Even more telling are the reinforced doors and windows meant to keep the occupants safe and intruders out.

Fixing the mess will be enormously complicated, requiring the reduction of roadside pollution, stopping illegal dumping, removing invasive weeds, and perhaps most challenging of all, persuading residents to look upon the creek as a source of pride rather than an eyesore.

Still, Reynolds sees the creekʼs potential as a catalyst for change. And thanks to help from federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service, support from philanthropies such as the TKF Foundation, and a small army of volunteers willing to do grunt work, the creek is coming back to life, albeit in piecemeal fashion.

Work has already begun to restore the natural flow of the creek. Crews have begun eradicating invasive weeds choking the creek’s banks, and Groundwork San Diego recently mobilized hundreds of shovel-wielding volunteers to stabilize hillsides in Radio Canyon sorely in need of erosion control.

The ultimate goal is not just a less-polluted Chollas Creek, but a series of green paths and pocket parks along sections of the creek, parts of which are already in place, linking the upper reaches of the watershed with the San Diego Harbor. The greenway will traverse 23 miles and thread through densely populated neighborhoods where green space is lacking.

Hopefully, efforts to restore the creek will bind the community to a common purpose. “We just see people literally blossoming from this process,” says Christine Tanabe, a spokesperson for TKF, which recently gave Groundwork San Diego $45,000 to fund restoration planning. She hopes that “thoughtful working together” will translate into “other improvements in other aspects of their community and life.”

TFK has had prior experience coaxing similar restoration projects into existence in equally gritty sections of Baltimore and Washington, D.C., turning neglected properties into focal points for community residents and local control. In the McElderry Park neighborhood of Baltimore, the foundation helped locals transform a trash-strewn lot frequented by drug addicts into a meditation garden.

TKF is now sponsoring the “Sacred Spaces, Open Places” design competition, offering $4 million in awards — and Groundwork San Diego plans to enter. But given the inherent challenges facing Chollas Creek, can restoration efforts actually work?

Efforts to redesign the Los Angeles flood channel seemed equally quixotic, until community activists rebranded it the L.A. River and got city higher-ups to pay attention. In 2007, the city approved a river revitalization plan that tacitly acknowledged decades of poor planning decisions, and vowed to take nearby communities into account. The plan has spurred local efforts to restore the river to its original contours and to create green parkways.

South of San Diego, the town of Imperial Beach, too, has been undergoing a remarkable transformation. Wedged between Interstate 5, the Pacific Ocean, and the U.S.-Mexico border fence, Imperial Beach was California noir. It faced infrastructure challenges as daunting as Chollas Creekʼs that were exacerbated by ongoing U.S.- Mexico border tensions. After decades of local activism and a series of highly publicized events highlighting the abysmal state of water quality, crews have restored a wetland, installed basins to capture storm runoff, and seeded hillsides with native plants to prevent further erosion. It’s not Eden, but at least it’s no longer being ignored.

So perhaps, with loving care and diligence, a trashed creek in a run-down corner of San Diego can one day become an urban oasis. It’s too early to determine the ultimate fate of Chollas Creek, but it’s certainly too soon to count it out.

Tucked into San Diego’s rolling hills, Archi’s Acres is a stark departure from the war Marine Sgt. Colin Archipley left behind. Rather than hunt down insurgents, he now grows oversized basil and specialty crops on six acres for local markets. The work is hard, but for Sgt. Archipley, it feels like a respite from the six years he spent training and fighting in Iraq.

In need of a second act, Archipley and his wife Karen pooled their resources to open the farm in 2007. Their mission is twofold; they hope to operate a successful small-scale organic farm and help soldiers make the transition from fighters to champions of sustainable agriculture and financial independence. Together the couple runs a program called Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT), a six-week course run in partnership with two local community colleges that focuses on organics and hydroponics (and the combination of the two, which is rare), as well as greenhouse production and the basics of putting together a business plan.

The couple belongs to a budding veterans-to-farmers movement, a larger effort to recruit vets released from military service to help reinvigorate the aging population of farmers, 40 percent of whom are expected to retire within the next decade. I spoke with Archipley recently about the program and the larger scope of the movement.

Q. In your TEDx presentation you mentioned that food security is tied to national security. Would you mind elaborating on that?

A. When people aren’t hungry they naturally feel better. But more importantly any strong economy is based on a foundation of agriculture. And that’s definitely true in the United States. The original colonies were founded on tobacco, corn, and cotton. Those ties go all the way back to the start of our country. Globally, areas that have food have access to agricultural systems and those agricultural systems build a foundation for local economies. You have money flowing, people are able to pay their bills, feed their family, [pay for an] education, and so forth. If you look at a global map, areas that have food shortages are more hostile.

Q. That’s quite a transition from Marine sergeant to farming. Did you have any understanding of what you were getting yourself into?

A. We had no idea. And that might have been a good thing because we had no understanding of how difficult it could be. We purchased the farm because we really liked the property and the area, not with the idea of becoming full-time farmers. When I came back from Iraq, I still had a few-month commitment with the Marine Corps. [Then] I starting working with the avocados and I really enjoyed that. One thing I enjoy about agriculture is the physical lifestyle it provides. I couldn’t see myself in a cubicle. [We like] the fact that 
we’re self-employed. I don’t have a manager staring over my shoulder. Our boss is our customer. We started the training program to share that message with other like-minded people who might enjoy similar types of freedoms.

Q. How many people have passed through your Veteran Sustainable Agriculture Training program?

A. Last year, I think we trained about 45 people and we have 15 people we’re working with right now. We work with a lot of active duty soldiers, which means they need to get permission from their commanders to come and train here. Last year was [about] proving that agriculture is a viable career and that we have a viable business. There’s got to be more options available for military people entering the private sector in these crazy times.

Q. Do you think the program simply allows soldiers to decompress or does it actually lead to careers in farming?

A. We see ourselves as an agribusiness incubator. Our goal is to lead men and women from the military into careers in agriculture, or into entrepreneurship in the food and fiber industries. It can give them a greater sense of a mission; like the military, the food system is a part of something greater. You can hang your hat up at the end of the day and say 
I really did something today to make my community a better place.

Q. How much food do you produce?

A. [On six acres] we grow 10,000-plus pounds of avocados, 1,200 basil plants per week, and several cases of kale per week. I don’t know offhand. But we are very productive — to the point that we are sustainable.

Q. After the Civil War, Union soldiers received favorable terms under The Homestead Act to settle the West. Do you see historical ties between military service and farming?

A. Absolutely. When the vets came home from World War II, the VA [U.S. Dept. of Veteran Affairs] had an ag training program. And like the vets that reclaimed the West, the vets that are entering farming now will have to discover the future of agriculture. I think the industrial farming model is at a tipping point, it’s no longer sustainable.

Around the turn of the century, about 30 percent of Americans worked in ag. Now it’s less than 3 percent and over half of them are at retirement age or above. So they’re ready to leave the industry. Any time you have a void in the marketplace someone is going to fill it. This is our opportunity.

Q. We have the GI Bill, which enables you to go to school and receive job training. Is there something like that for farming?

A. Well, we’re GI Bill approved; soldiers can come to us through the VA.
 As far as lending and purchasing programs for farms, there’s CalVet home and farm loans. But we’re excited to see what comes out of the Farm Bill — if the provisions will have lending programs that will be a little more accessible to vets.

Q. Aren’t the start-up costs still tremendous?

A. More and more investors are looking at ag as a better place to put their money. What
 has done well since the crash of the markets? Agriculture has. Why? Because you have 7 billion people [in the world] and 310 million Americans who need to eat. There are wants, needs, and musts in the economy. You’d like an iPad, but you must eat. Food is becoming more valuable. Jim Rogers, a very successful investor, was quoted in Time Magazine saying: “If you want to make as much money as a banker become a farmer.”

Q. Do you have any alumni success stories?

A. Yes. Mike Hanes. He was a nine-year Marine with several deployments. After separating 
from the Marine Corps I think he spent two years on the streets, living under a tree. We befriended him and put him through the training program. He has the best hot sauce recipe in the world. Since then he’s launched Dang!!! (a hot sauce made with maca). Now you can find his product at Whole Foods stores throughout California; hopefully nationwide pretty soon.