Woodland, California: Doug Heath, Monsanto tomato breeder.

Even though I grew up in suburban Detroit, I’ve been a vegetable gardener from a very young age.  I developed a love of that.  As far as I can remember back, one of my uncles was a gardener…and I remember eating peas from behind his garage when I was really little, maybe five or six.  And we grew up on the poor side.  My mother raised 4 kids and we had canned peas.  That was the cheapest thing.  So I thought, I don’t like peas…they taste pasty, yuck.  And I ate those things; it was like magic to me.  I was like, “Wow!  How can that be?!”  Even as a little kid I’m thinking, “these are like candy!  What happened?  How could things be so bad in that can?”  And it just kind of stayed with me. 


You've probably never met somebody so passionate about tomatoes.  Doug Heath spends his life with them.


*A caveat before this article begins:  Please be aware that the term "hybrid" is unrelated to "genetic engineering" or "GMO." Many assumptions are often made about Monsanto's seed development; STEWARDS attempts to present straightforward transcriptions of interviews with agriculturalists across the board, including their personal perspective on the current state of American agriculture.


We welcome comments and discussion; please feel free to ask for clarification of terms or offer critique.  If it has been a while since your last genetics class (do you remember Gregor Mendel and Punnet squares?), I recommend reviewing our previous blog post, which contains some videos of the basics, before reading the full interview.

 

It was another hot summer day when we arrived in Woodland, California at a Monsanto Company research station. We had traded multiple calls and emails with public relation folks in St. Louis (at Monsanto's headquarters) and they agreed to set us up for a couple of hours with Doug Heath.  We met him in the old farmhouse office and hopped in his truck to explore the plots.


I’ll give you a background of the place here. I’ve been here 17 years. When I came we were a small, privately held company called Petoseed and this station, which stared as a Petoseed station in the early ‘70’s…it was a farm. And the house you just came in through was the farmhouse that got converted a little bit into an office. Other than that there were basically just some barns. This was a Yolo County farm.


Basically, Doug is tasked with research and development of fresh market tomatoes.  Monsanto has breeders based around the world, working on crops in different climates and cultures.  Doug is responsible mostly for tomatoes that will be adapted to and grown in the Americas and Australia.  It's a big job, and he spoke of the satisfaction that comes when he stands in the field of a farmer abroad and looks out on a crop of a fruit that he bred here in California.

He walks us up and down rows of tomatoes in the research plots; it is a little late in the season, but many plants still have some over-ripe fruits that we sample.  


I’ll sort of take you on a tour through flavor here.  I’m going to go up in sweetness.  I’ll end up with something that’s really really really sweet.


We taste a diversity of his projects off the vine, and he often pauses one of his detailed answers to our questions to elaborate on the particular balance of a variety's acidity, sweetness, history, or nutrition.


We recognized the importance of interviewing people like Doug who are often under-represented in discussions of modern agriculture in the media.  There are many negative associations that are made about companies such as Monsanto and their work; unfortunately, no matter your positions on hot-topic issues, there is a lot of misinformation out there as well.  For the record, there is no genetic engineering happening with tomatoes here.  There are modern scientific tools used, but the methods are traditional: grow a crop, save the best plants, grow the crop again, and cross-breed lines of tomatoes to create successful hybrids.


I’m a traditional plant breeder; I’m doing things just like Mendel did with his peas, crossing things together and selecting for traits.  That’s really what we’re basically doing here still; my job really hasn’t changed.  You know, we’ve gotten new owners twice, but the job remains the same.  We’ve got these tools, like the molecular marker allows us to go quite a bit faster.  


The molecular markers that he mentions are small stretches of genes on DNA that scientists can look for to see if a desired trait has been introduced into a given plant.  This means that Doug can take a sliver of a leaf from a young tomato plant and send it to the lab; the lab analyzes the DNA.  If the genes that they are looking for are present, he can grow the plant out and save its seed for reproduction.  This cuts years off of research because he does not need to wait for an entire growing season to find out  if a plant has become disease-resistant, for example.

And what traits is he working towards?  Resistance to diseases such as Fusarium wilt and late blight are big ones.  He makes the case that breeding resistant strains of plants lowers or eliminates the need for spraying.  Fusarium, much like the flu, is always changing and evolving.  Every few years a new strain of the disease arrives, which affects most tomatoes, whether they are heirlooms, grown organicaly, or grown conventionally.


Last year in particular there was a big outbreak of late blight on the east coast, so a lot of tomatoes were lost.  That becomes like a serious spray program!  Pretty powerful fungicides to control it.  So if we can provide something that’s resistant genetically, the grower doesn’t have to pay for the spray and the consumers get something that’s unsprayed.  So it works into the organic movement as well.
One of his projects involves the breeding of heirloom tomatoes.  This has drawn criticism; many people believe that there is a stark dichotomy between heirloom fruits and larger-scale commercially available ones.  Doug doesn't believe that this is necessary.  He repeats how important it is for him to maintain flavor, color, and quality.


So why does he work on heirloom varieties?  First of all, because he and his children love them.  Practially though, his focus is mostly to increase their disease resistance and their yield.  One particular variety that he likes typically only sets 2-3 fruits per plant.  The plant's flowers are often malformed, resulting in damaged or nonexistent fruits.  Through cross-breeding and selection, he has been able to come up with a line that contains all of the original flavor and color, but yields many more fruits per plant.  This is a boon to gardeners and farmers, and Doug does not believe that they need to choose between yield and quality.


There’s a lot of skeptics, and I expected that.  There’s a lot of stuff in the press on the topic and it’s a very emotional topic for people.  I’m not surprised about that because people know that there’s a heritage related to that, these seeds have been passed down…I started working with these because I recognized that they were so unique, the colors and flavors.  I’m just trying to improve upon a good thing.


There’s an emotional attachment, and they probably feel that a breeder like me is out to ruin them, but they don’t understand that I’m not.  I’m working with them because I love them too!


Apparently one source of pride for Doug is that he developed a seedless tomato several years ago, a remarkable breakthrough.  Others had tried, but he was proud to tell us that he had bred a tomato that was plump, delicious, and seedless.  It turns out that there is quite a demand for it, especially amongst people with diverticulosis, a condition that prevents them from eating things with tiny seeds.  He refuses to call a project complete until it matches his ideals for flavor and quality.  He doesn't just work towards a single trait; he wants the whole, tasty package.

We asked him about the negative media surrounding Monsanto and its projects.  He is frustrated at the assumptions that are made by the public, and wishes that he could explain his methods and passion directly, to open ears:


...the seedless tomato, which I mentioned was traditional breeding from my work the last 17 years…when people found out that it was from Monsanto, they instantly assumed that it was GMO.  It’s like, "here’s something new, it must be GMO!"  And I’m reading the blogs and I’m thinking, “My gosh!  People have no clue.”  


Some people were saying, “Yeah, Monsanto’s making everything sterile so they can control the food supply…” And it’s amazing.  So yeah, misinformation travels fast.  You can try what you can to set the record straight, I mean every time I read one of those I want to jump in a correct them, but at some point I can’t stay up all night doing this!

But it makes me sad that people understand so little and that they assume the worst, for sure.  I mean it’s far from the case.

Doug appreciates his predecessors, the researchers, farmers, and gardeners who have made strides in the tomato breeding community.  He tells us the story of a professor whom he got to meet that was working on creating seedless (parthenocarpic) tomatoes:


His name was Dr. William Frazier, we called him Tex Frazier and he was from Oregon State University up in Corvallis.  I got a chance to meet him before he died, and I knew he was working on these parthenocarpic tomatoes.  My predecessors told me, “go visit Tex!  We think he’s got a garden at his house.”  He’s retired, but he’s got a garden.  And sure enough, this guy had like a hilltop garden in Corvallis.  And having been a professor he was very meticulous, he had everything labeled...and the juiciness…I cut one of these things and my shoes got all wet.  I was like “woah!  What is that?!”  It was a really great thing to tap into the stuff he had, because he had a lot of the pieces of the great flavor that are here as well.  Didn’t have much disease resistance left ‘cause he was just selecting for the seedlessness and the flavor.  It really made a great impression on him that I was going to be able to commercialize this.  He couldn’t quite understand how I was going to do it.


But this guy was so passionate evidently that they buried him with some tomato plants and tools.  It was so great to have met him in his house and this handoff of some important seeds that I was able to put into production...I hope I can name one after him.   Big Tex or something like that! 


He also notes Jack Hanna and Charlie Rick as two significant contributors to the tomato world.  Charlie Rick collected samples of wild tomatoes from around the world and stored them at UC-Davis so that breeders could "delve into the past" to find disease resistance and other genetics that might be bred into existing commercial crops.  Doug references this as we sample a sun-warmed tomato off the vine:


Isn’t that amazing?  So now you can taste the acids too, but this is kind of high-sugar, high-acid.   The typical old-time flavor, “oh my grandpa had tomatoes like that!”  Check out the juice on that thing.   See, we just do not see that anymore in modern varieties.  And I really had to delve into the past to grab stuff like that. 


He agrees with the common perception that commercial varieties of tomatoes have been fairly bland in recent decades, and is happy to see the market moving away from that.  As a breeder he is victim to market demands for the most part, but he also must forecast the future as best he can.  Because it takes anywhere from 4-12 years to develop a commercial variety, he must predict the desires of the public.

It’s nice that we are able to keep on discovering things too, that’s the fun of it.  You never know everything; you have to keep an open mind.  That’s important, I think, as a scientist, to keep an open mind.   Because if we didn’t we’d still think the world was flat and if you went you went off the edge, you went off the edge of the turtle’s back! {laughs} We never know everything; we’re always discovering new things. 


Towards the end we asked him, as we asked all of our interviewees, "What would be some ideal changes you'd like to see in the ag system?"  His response was not unlike many farmers:


I would like to see more land trusts and things like that, preserving the land.  I don’t want to see ever-shrinking farmland, ‘cause there’s probably only so far we can go with this mega-production on a small piece.  I would like to see more land trusts and things where good prime agricultural land is maintained for that, or even just wild wetlands and things like that.  But for farming, not developing really good farmland…putting buildings on top of prime agricultural land, that doesn’t make sense to me!  That’s what I would like to see.  That’s probably another political question, but I think for the good of the planet and the populations in the future, we better think about stuff like that, maintaining good farmland. 

And then being good stewards of that land you have. 

Click the jump to read the full interview with Doug Heath.  It is a long one, and includes some practical information about field rotations, more personal stories, explanations of nutrition and sugar analysis, details of disease-resistance genetics, and perspectives on the agriculture system.

Richvale, California: Dennis Lindberg, 86. Rice farmer.

Well, I was born here in 1924.  On July 23rd, 1924.  When I was a senior in high school I grew my first rice crop as an FFA project.  I bypassed college and all and went to the School of Hard Knocks or whatever you want to call it.  

This year I planted my 69th consecutive rice crop.  Somebody asked me when I hit 50, "well aren't you gonna retire?"  And I said, "Hell no!"  I've been very fortunate in those years.

 In the spirit of welcoming the unexpected, let us leave the midwest in the sweltering last days of July and fast forward through a few states to an interview that took place in Richvale, California.

Richvale is nestled north of the fertile fruit and vegetable valleys that supply many of us non-Californians with carrots and lettuce in the winter months.  The first farmers to inhabit Richvale tried to persuade wheat to grow here, but the climate and terrain were unsuitable for that crop.  It wasn't until Dennis Lindberg's father started farming the land around 1911 that he and his peers realized this land was perfect for growing rice.
  
I have a great respect for my father and other people who settled this community in the years beginning '11, '12, and '13.  We just celebrated our 100th anniversary of the founding of Richvale.  They came here to what was primarily wheat land.  And not very good wheat land at that.  There was some farms established that'd been abandoned.  Well, then a group out of the San Joaqine Valley Realty Firm came up here and formed what the called the Richvale Land Colony and they started promoting, selling this land.


This was as early as '09 and '10, if you will.   Rice was just in its infancy in California at that time.  The first rice was grown in probably '09 or '10 on an experimental basis down and out west of Gridley from what I understand.  Then, of course, as things went on, by 1915 the land developers were gone.  They grabbed their money and left, if you will.  

So it was left to our founders to get an irrigation system.  It didn't have proper drainage; there were a few wheat farmers out here, and when they were farming rice it would leak out onto their wheat, and of course they didn't like that.  And there were no improved roads.  So our founders went through a living Hell, if you will, till they got something established and founded this [BUCRA].  This facility was founded in 1915.  My father was one of the founding members and on the original board of directors.


So, I feel a great debt of gratitude in those of us of second and third generation to our forebearers, forefathers, who founded this community and provided a place for us to do something with our lives.

 

 Dennis, or "Denny", as he is known in his community, exudes excitement, an abundance of civic pride, and a passion for growing rice.  As a hobby he also grows watermelons of generous proportions.  He and his son, Gary Lindberg, farm about 400 acres of rice in this region of around 500,000 acres.  We were connected to him, for all intents and purposes the local historian, by Jim Morris at the California Rice Commission.

The Butte County Rice Growers Association (BUCRA) building where we met Dennis also contained evidence of his artistic abilities; the front waiting area had one of his hand-fashioned metal duck sculptures featured.  He creates these metal ducks with different themes (the Fire Department Duck and the Evangelist Duck, for example) and sells them as fundraisers for the town of Richvale.

It's a city without a real city government, if you will.  They call me kind of the ipso facto mayor around here.  I don't live here anymore; my son lives on the farm.  We live over in Thermalito.

Richvale had been a boom town that could have been on its way to busting in the early 1900's, but its citizens wouldn't hear of it.  When the economy started tanking back then, and the townsfolk were abandoned by the developers, this hamlet rolled up its collective sleeves and started planting rice and helping each other get through.  There is a definite Bedford Falls feel here and Dennis could easily play the role of George Bailey, town enthusiast and champion.  The fire department, a local cafe, and schools are operated and maintained in a large part through donations and volunteer power from the community.  Dennis describes his town as a "self-help community."

 

When asked what he'd like to see change in agriculture, he spoke, among other things, of the need to remind people that this rural Californian community exists out here, producing an incredibly important food crop.  He references Lundberg Rice, a neighbor who specialized in organic growing (no relation, by the way, between the Lindbergs and the Lundbergs.  Both families were early settlers here):


Public acceptance that we're out here.  And we want to remain here!  We got to keep this commerce going.  You know, out at Lundbergs, there's 250 employees in that facility over there.  Right here at Butte County we must have 50!  We got an irrigation district with 12 employees, we got a drainage district with 4 or 5, we got a school...you gotta keep those things going.  And rice is what's doing that in this case.  I want to see that continue.

 

Like some of the other farmers we've talked to, Dennis relates how much technology and equipment has been improved over the last decades.  He is working on his 69th rice crop this year and he grows a short-statured variety.

When the Lindbergs got their first harvester it could harvest in a day what a brand new harvester could do in an hour today.  Denny used to let his fields lay fallow every other year but demand has become so great for rice that he plants every year now.  Water rights are an issue we heard many farmers express concern about, but Richvale has impenetrable water rights that keeps the ever growing population of southern California off their backs.
  
I saw this industry...I consider it a privilege...I'm 86 years old by the way...I got to see horses working in the field as a kid.  I've seen this industry come from the horses and the hundred-pound sacks to stationary harvesters.  I even pulled the bundle wagons if you know what they are.  They put the rice in shocks about so big around, and you went around with a bundle wagon, pull it with a tractor.  When I was 13 years old, pulling that bundle wagon out and over to the harvester, where you unhooked and went and got another bundle wagon.


In those days they hired transient workers, hobos if you will.  They were coming out of Oregon and Washington up there in the grain harvest.  They'd hit here about October.  Well, come Saturday night or if it rained, you paid 'em off you didn't always see 'em again!  {laughs}  So my dad had to get me out there one bad winter in 1937 when I was 13.  So I got exposed to some of that and I begged to continue.  I though, "boy, this is cool, man!"  Not that I didn't enjoy school.  I was a good student; I was a straight A student my first two years, but then I got more interested in farming than I did school.

Lundberg Rice, also based in Richvale, is the leading grower of organic rice in the country; Dennis mentions that they "put this town on the world map".

Dennis estimated that 60% of the rice grown here is sold domestically, and 40% is exported.

 

Like most farming communities, time is made and set aside for recreation, especially if it involves agriculture.  Before we hit the road, Dennis drove us out to his rice paddies and just beyond, where he has his watermelon patch.  Every year he grows 4 or 5 gargantuan melons to be used in a weight-guessing competition; whoever is closest to the actual weight takes the melon home.  Travis and I were sworn to secrecy (melons have been stolen in the past) about the location of the patch, and Dennis took us to a seemingly overgrown portion of his field.  After furtively glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he surreptitiously bent down and pulled back a layer of grass to expose the promising green-striped shell of a watermelon already the size of a mini-refrigerator.  As quickly as it had been uncovered it was inconspicuously tucked back into its hay bedding and Dennis straightened up and had us renew our vows to keep mum about the location of the watermelon.

 

As a parting gift he gave us two lesser melons and the sparkling wisdom of a man who has seen his fair share of harvests- "when you cut 'em open they should go 'snick!'- that's how you know you've got a good one!"  

A few weeks ago, Dennis wrote to us again to update us on the aforementioned watermelon.  Below is the 90 pound monster.  Dennis' son, Gary (right) and Donald Rystrom (left) each guessed within a pound of that.

 

Read the full interview after the jump, including stories of growing up in rice country and facts and opinions about the industry...

Burnsville, NC: Nicole DelCogliano, Green Toe Ground Biodynamic Farm

Friday we headed toward Celo, an artistic community about an hour away from Asheville. The Toe River runs through these mountains and we followed it to Nicole and Galen's biodynamic farm. As we pulled over onto the shoulder by their barn, lines of people walked down their drive with towels slung over their shoulders and coolers in tow. We have already heard about the swimming hole on the property, and I am so impressed that the people are so welcome to stream onto the property. Nicole and Galen seem to really welcome the community; a dying art when there's private property involved.

It's CSA pickup day so we talk to Nicole as she does the chores she needs to do. The farm is beautiful, there are kids running around, and I see a puppy being chased by a toddler. The plots are long rectangles bordered by the river, and a cow looks down contentedly on us from her hilly pasture. I feel like we are in the middle of nowhere, but there is an obvious community around them. Nicole and Galen have a thriving farm and lots of supporters.
Nicole summarizes the biodynamic concept and speaks of the difficulties of starting a new farm as a young couple. They have toyed with different ways of distributing their produce, and the CSA model seems to work best when up in the mountains, a fair drive from an urban center.

Nicole invited us to stick around to help stir a biodynamic tea that evening, but we are on our way to Hannh Levin's (a friend of our friend Jenna, and another incredible musician) cabin nearby.

Kutztown, PA: Rodale Institute, Jeff Moyer

There is a certain amount of impulsivity destined to occur on a roadtrip like this. Trav does his best to plan out our route and call farmers and extension agents ahead of time, but every so often we stumble upon an amazing opportunity by way of a road sign. This was the case as we meandered down the Pennsylvania highway toward Lancaster and passed a sign for the Rodale Institute, a well known and highly respected educational/agricultural/technological center.

Trav's defensive driving skills had us whipped around in no time and we wound our way down some back roads to Rodale. We made an appointment to talk with Jeff Moyer, who has been the farm manager since the 1970's, and he took us on an amazing tour of the farm. We learned that the Rodale Institute is a non-profit that has been extremely influential in researching organic methods of farming in a scientific and practical way, and sharing their research findings with the public. J.I. Rodale bought the property in the 1930's because of an interest in the connection between healthy farming practices, healthy soil, and healthy people. Before anyone else really thought about organic farming, especially on a commercial production scale, Rodale saw a connection between what people ingest and how their health is affected. One of the goals of the farm today is to show anyone (long-time farmers, newcomer farmers, gardeners, grandmas, urban farmers, me) that it is just as economically, environmentally, and fundamentally viable to practice organic/sustainable farming as conventional farming.

To practically demonstrate this, Jeff will plant the same crop side by side and treat on conventionally and one organically, then measure how they do. The Institute finds that the organic plots produce as much, and in some cases, more than the conventional plots. Jeff said that a lot of farmers come to the Institute doubting that organic is a profitable way to farm, but they often leave with new ideas about how they can transform their operation to be profitable and sustainable. One thing Jeff mentioned that has really stuck with me is the fact that as consumers, each one of us has so much power. If we want a tomato that tastes like a tomato, then we may either have to grow it ourselves, or pay a local farmer to grow us a real tomato. Our other option is a cheap tomato, a tomato from thousands of miles away that was bred with genes to withstand a 20 mile an hour impact on plywood because it will need those genes to survive its insanely long ride to our grocery store.

The Rodale Institute offers all kinds of workshops covering topics like cover crops, no till farming, organic pest management and how to customize your plot to your needs and space. The Institute provides information and visual aids, and seeing profitable, organic, life affirming farming is worth a trip out there.

Interestingly, Jeff, who has been with the Institute since the '70's, created the no-till crimper for commercial-scale use. The crimper is basically a roller that attaches to a tractor and breaks the stems of a cover crop, such as rye. No-till systems can be applied to organic and conventional crops, reducing the amount of off-farm inputs needed to amend soil and increasing organic matter in a plot.

Westfield, VT: Jack Lazor, Butterworks Farm

"Well, he has a radio voice" was what Trav told me when I asked about Jack Lazor of Butterworks farm. Upon meeting Jack I had to concur, he does have a gentle, smooth voice that would be perfect for the radio and he has a kind and welcoming personality to go right along with his voice. Butterworks is located in northern Vermont but the yogurt produced there can be found all over New England, and Trav and I just bought a quart in Maryland at a Whole Foods Market. It is really creamy and naturally sweet; if you happen to see Butterworks yogurt somewhere you would be wise to give it a taste. It puts other yogurts to shame.

Jack invited us to join him in his kitchen for a cup of tea and he began the story of how Butterworks came to be. He and Anne began with a few cows making yogurt in their home for themselves and some others on a pretty small and informal scale. From the beginning they were organic, believing that if you treat the land with respect and honor you will be working with a much healthier system. As Jack spoke about the land I began to understand that he views it as a partner; not to be abused and stretched to its limits but to be nurtured and replenished so that it can continue to foster life. He graduated from Tufts University, where he studied the history of agriculture and moved to Vermont in 1973. In 1976 they purchased 60 acres for about $20,000 and have been growing crops since 1977.

Jack spoke about his cows and their milk with a similar reverence. They are milking around 45 Jersey cows (Jersey's because they give sweet and creamy milk). Jack gave me a glass of milk to try, and it did have a really pleasant, sweet taste. Employees on the farm are also treated with the utmost kindness and respect; Anne just finished a mediation/nonviolent communication course to facilitate healthy and assertive communication within the farm community. There is a farm meeting once per week where business can be discussed and feedback shared.

Jack was gracious enough to spend a whole afternoon with us, and when he got a call requesting some cheese to be portioned and wrapped for shipping (the cheese is processed off the farm) he asked us to join him in the dairy. We got to try a newer product, maple kefir, that was like a fizzy and tasty drinkable yogurt as well as some cheddar cheese that was delicious.

The cows have a unique and beautiful living situation; in the winter they are kept in a large solar barn (like a giant cow hoop house) that lets in a lot of light and has a back door for ventilation. The granary is right next door and while Jack was slicing cheese Trav and I walked down to the mill area and got 5 pounds of whole wheat flour (which was turned into pancakes and really good bread, if I may say so myself). The granary is a tall wooden building that has stairs to take you higher and higher until you reach the top room, which looks like a square steeple from the outside.

Peering out of the windows we could see into Canada and there were beautiful views in every direction. Jack pointed out the corners of the view that were part of Butterworks farm: the wheat fields, the miscellaneous grain crops, the pasture, the feed fields. They now own about 110 acres in pasture and hay and farm at least 350 more. The dairy, though, is what pays the bills.

Until 1990 almost all sales were within Vermont, but now Butterworks yogurt is available through distributors around the country. He and Anne are in the process of transferring ownership of the farm to their daughter, Christine, and her husband. It comes with plenty of challenges and through Jack's honest, open conduct, we learned about the emotional and practical challenges of a family business. They now have over $1 million in sales, putting them in a bigger-business tax bracket, which seems somewhat in contrast to Jack's friendly, humble and kind personality.

He sent us on our way with a few gifts from the dairy and we headed back Montpelier way. I find myself still thinking about what a grand time we had on that farm and what a huge contribution Butterworks makes to the wider community.