Rotary

Remember that there is a Tri-Club (Woodinville Rotory, Rotaract, and Interact) food drive at the Sammamish Valley Grange on May 29th.

Pat Ford is celebrating her birthday this Friday, May 14, 2021- She wore her pajama top that says, “Live what you love,” good words for all of us.

Our Speaker, Dave Hunter from Crown Bees – www.crownbees.com, dave@crownbees.com

Dave started out talking about his approach to agriculture which is to ask “why, what’s the root cause of this” in approaching any problems from the loss of bees to the lessening of crops. Bees are the only animal that is absolutely essential to our food supply. We are using more chemicals and the chemicals are not very selective. Roundup kills everything. Dave has found that growers change at the speed of a glacier and even when there is a good solution that will help them, they are agonizingly slow to adopt it.

Vision of a future

• Right crop in the right location
• Polyculture is in tune with nature – multiple crops together
• High insect load, low pest load – other bugs eat pest insects
• Little outside irrigation needed
• Soil is regenerated
• High revenue/acre
• Food is grown near/in populace

Dave mentioned an example of 30 people with 70 acres that was too much for them to keep up with so they dropped down to 17 acres and it is supporting all 30 of them.

What needs to change

• Consumer awareness, become Prosumers
• Understand food security
• Increase pay of farmers by buying locally (CSA) Community Supported Agriculture
• Shift ChemAg to biological
• Right bees on right crops
• Legislate change
• Focus research on better organic/polyculture practices, then educate

Crown Bees Actions

• Collaborate and work with science
• Teach good practices
• Practice what we preach
• Programs Underway include the Cornell Mason Bee Edu, Community Garden Program, Bee Buy Back, and Native Bee Network

Of around 4,000 specie of bees, only one, the European Honeybee is managed.

Neonicotinoids are treated plants that kill insects that eat on them. You have to ask for non-neonic plants.

Support CSAs!