Hometown Hero: Anna Cummins

Anna Cummins, marine educator, environmentalist, recalls, “The creek next to my house was my favorite place to explore. One day, following the creek far north of my house, I saw horse manure from a stable draining into the creek. It was the first time I connected what happens on the land and what happens in the ocean. I was nine and it was my first ‘aha’ moment.”

Cummins recounts a later, serendipitous, ‘aha’ moment. “I was living in Europe and I got lost in Paris and went to a bookstore I knew how to find. In the bookstore I got invited to a film. I went only because I had nothing better to do. The film was Design Outlaws. It was about the environment and I walked away from the film thinking, this movie makes such sense, why aren’t we choosing to live this way?

“For the first time I thought about being an environmentalist as a career. I went to grad school at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. At the World Oceans Conference 2002 Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Foundation spoke about the massive quantity of plastic waste in the North Pacific Gyre and the harm it causes.

“I learned about petroleum based plastics and how they leach chemical additives, which are endocrine disrupters, such as phthalates, and BPA. These chemicals are linked to reproductive disorders and other health issues. Marine organisms ingest the photodegraded plastic particles resulting in the disruption, and in some cases breaking, of the food chain. The food chain we depend upon for life.”

Cummin’s next ‘aha’ moment came in a Montana Avenue coffee shop. She saw people with their plastic water bottles and all the plastics being used in the coffee shop when biodegradable materials could easily serve the same purpose. Cummins said she thought, “If these people knew the effects of their behavior, they would want to make different choices.

“Many people have the perception that water in plastic bottles is safer to drink than tap water. The beautiful image of a mountain stream on the bottle leads us to believe the water comes from a pristine source. The idea that we’re taking good care of ourselves by carrying around plastic water bottles has become the standard, but it’s really been a very effective and false marketing campaign that we’ve bought into.

“We’re becoming walking experiments – without giving our consent. The chemicals in plastics affect us in ways that we neither know nor understand. What we need to do is to adopt a precautionary principle. The manufacturers should have to prove that the chemicals are safe as opposed to what happens now, which is to take products containing those chemicals off the market only after it is proved that they have harmful health effects.

“I became overwhelmed with the feeling that everything I do is harmful to the environment and I was feeling hopeless,” Cummins said. She started working at the Algalita Foundation, and in 2008, she crewed for Captain Moore, crossing the Pacific Gyre on the Oceanic Research Vessel Alguita. For a month she collected surface samples over a 4000- mile ocean area.

“We studied lantern fish, small deep-sea fish that live about 1000 feet down and surface at night to feed,” she said. “They mistake photodegraded plastic particles for food and that’s relevant to us because the lantern fish are prey for tuna and other fish that we eat. We are now just beginning to understand the health threats we bring to ourselves with our own plastic waste.”

In the middle of the Pacific Gyre, Marcus Eriksen, Cummin’s crew mate, made her a blue ring out of discarded plastic fishing lines and proposed. Anna asks, “How could I say no to that?" They decided, when they returned to land, to launch an awareness raising project. Ericksen made a raft out of discarded plastic bottles, the Junk Raft, and sailed it from Long Beach to Hawaii and Cummins was responsible for all land support, for making speeches, and for publicity.

They also took a Junk Ride on bicycles down the Pacific Coast from Vancouver to Tijuana to talk about plastic and how people could make a difference by being conscious of the effects of their choices. Cummins and Eriksen spoke at elementary and high schools, universities and city councils all along the way.

“In 2009 Marcus and I started the 5 Gyres Institute with the goal of exploring the subtropical gyres to study plastic in the world’s oceans and to bring the issue to an international audience because it is a global problem.”

Anna Cummins tells of being inspired by the work of other environmentalists and how that offsets her feelings of hopelessness. “I believe that knowing the problem means having the responsibility of choice. The knowledge is not a burden but a privilege. Why would I not make a choice to protect the natural world?”

What Say You: Fable Farm

Barnard, VT. Fable Farm community dinners are every Thursday throughout the growing months. Members of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) get together at the Fable Farm’s gardens, next door to the iconic white church and just down the road from the General Store, est. 1836. All of Barnard is invited to share an evening meal of tasty pizzas, baked in an outdoor oven they built themselves. Local musicians play on guitars, drums and violins; children climb the trees; dogs romp in the garden; and every one eats together at the outdoor picnic tables. CSA members go home with their weekly share of the crop. www.csacenter.org

In the early 1900’s Barnard was a popular tourist destination. Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson lived at Twin Farms in Barnard and New Yorkers took the train from New York to Woodstock, VT and then came up the hill to Barnard for the clean air, the drinking water quality lake, the green of the woods, and the delicious produce from the local farms.

One hundred years later, a new generation of entrepreneurs has come to Barnard. They’ve come without money, but with a concept of building community and creating economic stability, through a new paradigm of sharing the production and the enjoyment of the food the community eats.

Christopher and Jon Piana, call themselves ‘salvage’ farmers because they bought a heater for their greenhouse, so they could extend the growing season by starting plants early and in a protected environment, and an engine for their roto-tiller, but everything else they use for farming is reused, something someone has given to them, something made from materials that would otherwise be discarded.

They farm on property they don’t own, with the generous permission of people who have land they live on part time and of farmers who live here year round. The member’s weekly share changes month by month. Right now there is an abundance of corn, garlic, zucchini, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, fennel, cabbage, beets, kale, onions, leeks, and herbs. Everyone is invited to help themselves to the sunflowers and cosmos and herbs growing in the gardens.

The first year twenty families joined, providing enough capital for, literally, ‘seed money.’ In a few years time, in a City with a population of under 1000 people, CSA has grown to 65 families, each pay between $400 to $550 annually and some families pay, not in cash, but in work on the farms.

The Pianas hope to build much more than an organic food co-op. They are consciously working to recreate a new cultural archetype. “Industrial agriculture is both hugely polluting and hugely alienating”, says Christopher. “Our agricultural adventure is healing for all of us. Eating healthy food is essential to how we feel every day. More than that, food is powerful because it cuts through the current right/left paradigm. Every one needs food.”

The Pianas and the members of the Barnard Community Supported Agriculture are not unique to Barnard. They are part of a nation wide, but locally organized, movement to grow community and healthy relationships through sharing the production of organic food. Fable Farms is now 3 years old. CSA groups have been on the East Coast for about twenty years. Currently, California and New York lead the nation in CSA and related groups. www.localharvest.org

Willing Workers on Organic Farms, an organization, started in New Zealand, makes it possible for people to travel all over the world working on organic farms. Like the Fable Farms community, these are people who are seeking to create a new paradigm – one that ‘relocalizes’ agricultural production and connects producers and consumers, one that doesn’t rely on petro-chemicals, one that is transitioning from oil as the primary energy source to an economy based on solar and other forms of sustainable energy. www.wwoof.org

Fable Farm has workers this summer from Maine and from Rome and from Paris. The farm workers get tents to live in, they share in the food they produce, eggs from the farm’s hens, goat’s milk and grains, and they are invited into the community of Barnard. “Whether they’re new to farming or old hands, it doesn’t make a difference, every willing hand helps and it’s invigorating to us and to the community to have people come here from all over,” says Christopher Piana. “But the real truth is that we wouldn’t be successful if it weren’t for the spirit of the community in Barnard.”

Santa Monicans share in the creation of this new paradigm. We support relocalization when we go to meet our neighbors and buy our produce at any of our four, weekly farmer’s markets. We support the transition from an oil-based economy when we buy produce that is not grown with petro-chemicals, the organic produce. Santa Monica connects producers and consumers at community gardens and through our garden sharing programs. In doing so we become a part of a worldwide movement that is entirely local. http://www01.smgov.net/farmers_market www.smgov.net/comm_progs/gardens

Here’s to the fruits of summer and to the bounty of all our gardens.