Fieldwork

So the harvest has finished!

With the help of my 4 and 6 year-old kids, we cut the matured wheat and bundled it with twine. It was left out to dry for a week but the rains have continued so we’ve hauled it away to shelter it while it dries out. With any luck, I speculate that we will have grown enough wheat to grind into flour for a couple of loaves of bread. I’ll post again with results of the bread if we are so lucky.

Thank you to all who participated in this installation project: Tony French, who supplied the seeds and who plowed the plot; Susie, Chris G., Richard and Erin for their help during the planning and installation; Beacon Lite Ltd. for supplying and delivering the security fencing; and all of the friends and art-lovers who’ve encouraged us and participated in this project.

I would speculate that we’ll be watching the food prices continue to rise. Hopefully, you have found this piece thought-provoking and that, on some level, it has resonated with you. From discussions with others, the reactions have been personal as well as global, ones of sadness and of humour, of "what the ?@#?" and "Yes!" This is what is so satisfying for me, to see a range of reaction and emotion, connecting the personal with the global issues and providing a little surprise along the road.

Here’s a final picture of the plot post harvest. 

Thanks, Chris O. 

Gene Logsdon, in his book, Small-Scale Grain Raising, recounts step by step methods on how to grow wheat. "It’s easy to grow", he states, and I believe him.

What is not easy, is to predict the heat, the rains, and the other natural interventions that can adversely affect the success of a crop. Birds picked at it, insects flocked to it, and even a wild turkey was seen staring at the wheat through the steel fence. As the wheat grew tall, some of the most intense and heavy rains fell, flattening sections of the "crop". With the luxury of a tiny plot, I was out gently lifting the salvageable stalks back up in hopes that the wheat could be saved.

Obviously, for many farmers with larger fields or plots, growing wheat, like many other commodities, entails a certain amount of risk and physically propping up flattened sections of large fields is just not practical. Commodity Investors, weighing the potential profits versus the risks, are not directly dependent on the success of the crop for their survival. Many people living in the developing world are dependent on their farms and on the availability of affordable staple foods like wheat, rice, soy, etc. for their daily diets. Increasingly, even North Americans are also feeling the impact of price increases, especially for food and agro-fuel producing crops such as wheat, corn, and soybean. Rice and flour prices continue to increase rapidly, in some cases, by more than double in less than 8 months. 

Now the harvest season is in full swing. In the next blog, some pictures of the wheat bundles/shocks…. 

As part of the current installation, spec-u-late, I will be posting bits and bobs of supporting information that is related to the theme of the project. If any of you viewers would like to add your suggestions for thoughts of interest as you relate to this piece, or the themes of art, food security, commodity speculation and the future of food, please feel free to post us a comment.  

In the meantime, have a look at our current links.

-chris o. 

spec·u·late

• To meditate on a subject; reflect.
• To engage in a course of reasoning often based on inconclusive evidence.
• To engage in the buying or selling of a commodity with an element of risk on the chance of profit.

spec-u-late seeks to draw attention to a space that is normally vacant, to elicit curiosity and surprise among those people who look as they pass. A tiny crop of heritage wheat, growing in a highly secure, enclosed space, spec-u-late aspires to trigger questions about the current global food crisis, the dramatic rise in commodity prices and the security issues that increased food insecurity creates.

As commodity markets, such as wheat, corn and rice, become flooded with an influx of capital fleeing from other sectors of a turbulent global financial system, the very foods that sustain the majority of the world’s population have become suddenly and increasingly unavailable and unaffordable.

spec-u-late highlights the divisions that lie between producer and consumer, between stakeholder and disenfranchised, between people and their experience of food production.

-Chris O.