Search Results

Some places are just a place. Some places are a journey. Three days out of Vladivostok, the westbound Number One train lumbers across the Siberian outback like a team of driven oxen. The train’s nineteen hulking, crimson and blue cars creak and groan as they throw themselves forward at speeds not much different than when this track was hacked through half a continent of nearly impenetrable forest and bog in the days of the last tsars a hundred years ago. Three days aboard this beast-machine has gotten us deep into Russia, beyond a hundred ragged towns with names like Obluche, Zilovo, Spassk-Dalny, and Shimanovskaia, nearly every one of which, it seems, was established as a gateway to the mines and prisons of the tsars’ exile system or of the Soviet Gulag, and which generations later still seem more outposts than towns. Clusters of log homes and cabbage patches line the tracks, ashen concrete apartment blocks rise beyond, and doleful bands of kerchiefed women at each station peddle pirozhki and salted fish, unshelled pine nuts in newspaper cones, and hard-boiled eggs cradled in baby carriages. All are thinly tethered to Mother Russia by the lace curtains and flowers in every window, the stubbornly proud train stations, and these two thin steel rails. We’re three days deep into Siberia and, it seems, no place at all. Brown fields spread from the outskirts of the settlements, blotted at random intervals by abandoned and half-collapsed factories, and through the emptiness between passes an almost unchanging plain coursed by wandering rivers and deep thickets of dark pine and fir, wispy white birches, and larches glowing a brazen yellow. Dawn this morning revealed the regional capital of Ulan-Ude, the latest in a string of sullen cities of cinder blocks and smokestacks. This afternoon will bring us to the tarnished old imperial city of Irkutsk, first settled in the seventeenth century and later the destination of some of the luckier of the tsars’ exiles. We’re 3,700 kilometers west of the Pacific, 5,500 kilometers east of Moscow, 250 kilometers north of Mongolia, and south of nowhere.

This chapter introduces Scenic View Farm and its owners and principal operators, John and Katie. After an overview of the farm’s history and characteristics relative to other New England farms, the chapter captures the sights and sounds of its picturesque landscape. Such natural beauty drew many of the farmers whose stories are included in this book into a life of farming. However, Scenic View’s landscape is commingled with countless decisions John and Katie have made, balancing their need to stay in business with countless other commitments, including the struggle to achieve sustainability. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, which many farmers like those at Scenic View depend upon for stable sales, require diverse crops to meet consumer demand. Flowers spruce up the property and yield consistent profits when other crops break even season after season. The chapter also introduces challenges organic farms face, like an outbreak of tomato blight that swept the region. Scenic View’s CSA helped them weather the blight and maintain their organic certification. However, the availability of supplemental income is critical. The chapter shows how farmers try to make good matches in their businesses allowing them to farm responsibly, even those who feel they cannot eschew pesticides completely.

One of every six children suffers from some form of neurodevelopmental abnormality, mostly of unknown causes. Environmental pollution is known or is suspected of causing damage to brain development, but we routinely do not test chemicals for such effects. The brain is our most complex organ, and its complicated development is uniquely sensitive to toxic effects caused by industrial chemicals. Because we rely on the full function of the entire brain, even small deficits may negatively impact our brain functions. Unfortunately, toxic metals, pesticides, and many other industrial chemicals now interfere with optimal brain development. The toxic effects incurred will last for a lifetime. Due to serious blunders, we have created a public health catastrophe by allowing pollution with chemical brain drainers. But prevention is possible and realistic, so that we can make prudent decisions to protect the brains of our children and grandchildren.

Pesticides are often designed to interfere with the functions of the nervous system in pests, such as insects. But the brain biochemistry is similar in humans, and pesticide exposure can therefore cause toxicity to children’s brain development. This risk is almost never examined, however. When pregnant women are exposed at work or at home, the pesticides are shared with the fetus. Studies in several counties now show that community use of pesticides may harm brain development and cause lasting damage. We also know that over 200 chemicals, including many pesticides, solvents, metals and many other industrial compounds, can cause brain toxicity in adults. We must therefore assume that they are able to cross the blood-brain barrier and cause toxicity to developing brains. But even for pesticides designed to be neurotoxic, there is no systematic testing.