Learning from Alberta:

A Report about My Ten-Day Visit to
Northern and Central Alberta

March 6, 2005 to March 15, 2005

At the annual convention of the National Farmer's Union in Saskatoon in November 2004, where I first became a member, some fellow members from Alberta intended to visit Alberta sometime in the spring of 2005. I promptly agreed. My visit to Alberta was finally scheduled but coincidental to the four young RCMP officers who were gunned down by a lone killer outside of Edmonton, the province's capital city. Also around the time of my visit, the United States' government decided to close the border to Alberta on account of mad cow disease, commonly known as BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy).

The VIA train goes eastward through Edmonton three times a week. I booked a seat for a Sunday departure at 5:30 pm from Vancouver. I decided to attend church and receive communion before I went, so I went to the 10:30 mass at St. Barnabas Church in Victoria. I wanted to go after I had received the Holy Communion. The 10:30 am service finished about 11:40 am, leaving me time to reach the bus station where the bus connects with the ferry for Vancouver. The noon bus is the last bus of the day where I could make such a connection. Any other buses would not get to the train station in time for my departure. Somehow, the service was lengthened by an unforeseeable event - the installation of new church wardens. I kept looking at my watch. It was ten minutes until noon. I told my friend Helen to leave the church and start warming the engine. Just as soon as the priest had concluded celebrating the bread and wine, I left my pew and raced right to the high altar, placing myself ahead of the bishop and looking very beseechingly at the celebrant of the mass, indicating that I would like to receive right away. He understood the situation and gave me the Holy Communion without hesitation. With that, I left the church and seated myself in the moving vehicle. We arrived at the bus depot exactly at noon and I boarded the bus in the nick of time. When the bus took off, I started praising God for such a close call. So, I made it to the Vancouver train station and the train left on time, exactly at 5:30 pm. It was a divine close call.

In Edmonton, I stayed at the Grand Hotel, right next to the Greyhound bus depot. The next morning, I took the Greyhound bus to Peace River and then to Fairview. It was a ten hour bus ride. The passengers on the bus were mostly First Nation people of different origins. I arrived in Fairview right on time and my National Farmers' Union brother, Peter Lundgard, was waiting to pick me up. We visited until midnight. Peter and his wife, Mary, have four grown-up children. He is an organic farmer, drinks natural milk, and eats his own organic beef. He has 640 acres of grassland divided into 80 lots and he moves his cattle to a new lot every day. After 80 days, the cattle are moved back to the first lot. He calls this holistic management of grazing. The cattle are fed alfalfa which could fix nitrogen of the air into the soil. The kind of alfalfa he grows is the bright yellow-blossomed alfalfa with the Latin name, megicago falcata. It is a perennial. He gave me some seeds to take back to Victoria. I am growing them in sand, in my greenhouse in Victoria.

Visit to Fairview (north of Edmonton)

Most cattle farmers in Alberta feed their beef cows with industrial animal feeds that are from ground genetically modified grains such as GMO corns, GMO canola, and GMO soybeans. The feed arrives in pellet form. These farmers grow their cattle on an industrial scale and crowd them into feed lots. Normally, cows are known as herbivores, that is, they should graze on grass. However, industrial production demands faster growth, therefore, GMO grains are used instead of plants. I told them that GMO means genetically modified organisms, but in reality GMO could mean genetically mutated viruses (GMV). In recent years, there have been many epidemics due to genetically modified viruses. GMV such as the avian flu viruses and SARS viruses which are mutated common cold viruses. The cattle, not only were fed on grains, but also on ground up animal parts from butchers in the process known as rendering. Still worse, the rendering often included the body parts of sick and dead cows. These animals were not let free in pastureland, but crowded into feed lots. It does not require much imagination to understand why they are susceptible to diseases.

Peter and I had many good conversations over the course of my visit. He told me that if I could grow alfalfa in sand, he would go to China to help shrink China's desert. We also discussed how there are so many young organic farmers in Victoria and British Columbia. They are all very idealistic, most of them are young, most of them are female, and most of them are good looking! Practically all of them have no land. On the prairie, they have land, but all the farmers are aging and there is no one to replace or succeed them. I suggested that we entice the young idealistic organic female farmers to fill the gaps on the prairies. The farmers all agreed, except their wives. In fact, at the most recent SIOPA and COG meeting in Victoria since my return from Alberta, my proposal and resolution regarding the young organic female farmers, which is in the minutes and will be circulated to the membership, will hopefully amount to something one day. In other words, I have begun to take action on my learning in Alberta.

My host, Peter Lundgard, made several phone calls to a farmer in his neighbourhood. His name is Marwyn Peaster. Every time Peter phoned, he spoke with Marwyn's wife Lisa. Marwyn and his family are Mennonites from Mississippi who moved to Alberta about ten years ago. He has feed lots with about 700 cattle. After several attempts on the phone, they finally agreed to receive me the next morning. Marwyn Peaster was the first man who was found to have owned the first mad cow in Canada. It is because of that single mad cow that the United States has closed its border to Canadian beef exports. In fact, the whole world has closed its borders to Canadian beef. In reference to Marwyn Peaster and his mad cow, Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta went public to condemn Marwyn and it was headlines across Canada. Ralph Klein said that when Marwyn Peaster discovered his mad cow in 2003, Marwyn should have "shot it, shoveled it, and shut up". When I was in Alberta, this became an oft-repeated phrase quoted by the people there. Because of that, people in Alberta have threatened Marwyn Peaster, he has been accused of different things, and the media has been hunting him, leaving him with no peace. This was the Marwyn Peaster who, after so many phone calls, had agreed to see me. The next morning after an hour and a half of driving, my host, Peter Lundgard, and I arrived at Marwyn's farm. In fact, Peter, had never met Marwyn, so he was curious to see what kind of man he was.

When we arrived at the farm, we met the family and we met Marwyn and his helper, Tim Koehn who is a Canadian Mennonite. Here is the conversation we had. Marwyn bought the "BSE cow" on May 28, 2003 in Lloydminister, a town in Saskatchewan close to the Alberta border. When he bought the cow, Marwyn was only 29 years old. He thought the cow had a sore leg because it walked slowly. He noticed that the cow limped after he purchased it, but the cow was definitely not mad. It never charged at him like other cows occasionally did. He decided to have it butchered for hamburger. Prior to butchering they discovered that the cow was sick. The cow did die of pneumonia and the autopsy of the cow w as in different hands. The cow was pronounced BSE, that is mad cow disease, but Marwyn has never seen the results. Marwyn and his friends thought that it was dubbed BSE for political reasons. To this day, he could not fathom what kind of a plot was behind it. He knew he was blamed out of political convenience. The matter was in the hands of the government veterinarian now. My friend Peter who was standing right next to me told me that no organic farms in Alberta have ever known any BSE case. I casually commented that the so-called BSE cow probably died of SARS, but he did not challenge me.

Peter took the opportunity to preach the virtue of organic farming to both Marwyn and Tim. Marwyn was still angry when he told me that he had to apologize to the entire Canadian people for what happened. My anger was aroused when they told me that this eight year old BSE mad cow when dead was rendered as feeds into the feed in the industrial feed system. In fact, in 1997, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) banned feeds from bovine to bovine rendering. We took pictures of ourselves together.

Peter stated that 78% of grains grown in North America are fed to cattle. A cow's digestive systems are designed to handle cellulose from plants and not starches and proteins. But today, grains are used to feed cattle in the feed lot system. If we go back to the good old days when we used forages containing grass and plants, 78% of grains have to be grown because it takes six pounds of topsoil to grow one pound of grain. We will be able to find ourselves in the situation where we do not need to rely on first the chemical fertilizers, secondly, the pesticides, thirdly, the heavy machinery, fourthly, the petroleum, finally, the capital spending.

I met quite a few cattle farmers in Alberta. At Peter's farm, the cattle graze on alfalfa; they are not fed with grain. The cattle farmers I met pay attention to the feed they use for their cattle and know that the feed contains grain. Their chief concern is on the rendering of the remains of cattle from the butchery. However, I have not heard from a single cattle farmer who is concerned about the kind of grain that has been used to make the feed. They all know that the grains used have all been genetically modified, such as the corn, the canola, and the soybeans. These are major constituents of the grain feeds and the fact that they are genetically modified does not concern them. I told them that their grains contain genetically modified organisms. The fact that their genetics have been modified means that their genetic structure has become unstable. Unstable gene structure has to undergo changes in the gene structure. Once a gene has undergone a change, it has mutated.

We often hear about the danger of mutated viruses without realizing that these mutations come from recombination between the viruses and the modified gene. We may have a lot of unknown and new mutated viruses. For instance, we are busily preparing a vaccine against the avian flu viruses and the worry we have is if the viruses keep on mutating we have to keep on making new vaccines to catch up with the new viruses. If we keep on feeding the cattle with genetically modified grains, we are not helping the situation at all. Once the grains are genetically modified, they have unstable DNA which will mutate. The danger is what if only one of the mutated viruses is epidemic in nature and there is no vaccine available to cope with it. In theory, a good part of the world may be wiped out, but we hope that does not happen.

So I kept telling our farmers that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency should inspect the contents of the GMO's in the animal feed, be they for cattle, poultry or pigs. In Europe, the European Union may require labeling the amount of GMO's in food for human consumption. There is a big loophole there. They do not require labeling the feed for animal consumption. So, the whole world is indirectly eating GMO's from the animals we slaughter.

The grinding of the GMO grains to produce combinations of fragments into new or more contagious and more epidemic microorganisms could take place by the same principle inside the syringe. When different people with different infectious viruses use the same syringe, different infectious viruses could get stuck on the interior surface of the same syringe. The forceful passages of these viruses through the same syringe could also cause fragmentation of the genetic materials and recombination can take place producing more virulent viruses. This may be one of the reasons that the AIDS viruses multiply. At the beginning when there are few viruses, the "one gene, one protein" concept may still hold true, but through the course of time, through repeated recombinations, and complex mutations the DNA may be mutated in such a way that small numbers of genes will produce more proteins. This will make the "one gene, one protein" mechanism into one gene, many proteins, or many antigens. As a result, our defense mechanism may become very vulnerable.

According to Peter Lundgard, the organic cattle farmers in New Zealand also use mineral supplements from quarry rocks, mining minerals, seaweeds, sands, silicas, etc. New Zealand has no BSE cows because they do not feed their cows with genetically modified grains.

A former USDA veterinarian, Dr. Lester Friedlander, who was a USDA veterinarian from 1985 to 1995 and chief inspector at the largest hamburger plant in the US, said he was fired for speaking out about safety issues. He claimed that his former colleagues have told him about new cases of mad cow, that is BSE. He was making a speaking tour in Edmonton in early April 2005 when US officials found new cases of the disease and chose not to reveal them. This was reported by the Edmonton Journal on Wednesday, April 6, 2005.

On Monday April 11, 2005, the Globe and Mail of Canada reported that 100,000 cattle farmers in Canada are suing the Federal Government of Canada for incompetence and negligence in the case of BSE. The lawsuit states that at least one BSE cow was imported from the United Kingdom in the late 1980's and was eventually ground up into feed, infecting a number of cattle that ate the feed. The statement of claim says that in 1996 a certain feed company recklessly continued to use the material in its feed products because it was cheaper than using soybeans. Allegedly as little as less than one milligram of infected feed could trigger BSE in a cow. In 1993, BSE was discovered in one of the 191 animals Agriculture Canada tested. They quickly discovered that 80 of these cattle had died and their remains were used in animal feed. This meant that cattle infected with BSE were in the food chain. On May 20, 2003, the discovery of BSE in a Canadian cow led the United States to close its borders to Canadian cattle and beef exports.

When I was in Alberta, I noticed that the farmers were already concentrating their attacks on the Canadian Government for failure to stop using the BSE cow from rendering into the cattle feed food chain. I called their attention to not only the presence of a high percentage of grains in the feeds, but also to the presence of genetically modified grains in the feed. These genetically modified grains are chiefly genetically modified corn, canola, and soybeans. I pointed out that all these genetically modified products are ground up and incorporated into pellets in the cattle feeds. Why fuss about grinding up of these genetically modified grains in the feed? Because grinding up is worse than digesting these GMO's in the animals' systems. The action of grinding up had reduced all these GMO's and mutated organisms into molecular fragments of genetic materials. These molecular mutated fragments can easily recombine with the genetic materials of microorganisms present in the animals particularly the bacteria and viruses. To transform them into disease bacteria or viruses, this increases the risk of epidemic opportunity and unknown infections. BSE is only one of the more prominent infections to be noticed. How many other cows have suffered weakened or collapsed immune systems?

I kept insisting that the farmers should pay attention to this action of grinding up the GMO products. I also urged the CFIA not only to ban the rendering of dead cattle into the feed system, but also to investigate the presence of GMO's in the feed and the effect of grinding up the GMO's in the feed. Such investigation may better be conducted by an independent and non-governmental institution.

Peter Lundgard gave me some seeds and they are the bright yellow blossom alfalfa (medicago falcata L.). Peter had a vision when he watched television one night. He saw the Gobi desert of Mongolia on the screen. He saw on the edge of the seeds some green grass. He thought they looked like the bright yellow blossom alfalfa. He had a vision that maybe we could reclaim the desert by growing alfalfa. I immediately responded to him by saying that if alfalfa can grow in the desert it could stop the spread of the desert into the farmlands and it could stop the dust storms in the northwest of China.

One year, on the train in China, I saw the dust storm following the train with my own eyes. I immediately asked for some of the seeds which he uses to raise his organic beef cattle on his farm. I started growing these seeds in the back of our college in Victoria. My studies began by sowing these seeds in small flowerpots. My studies consist of two kinds. First, by growing these alfalfa seeds in the sand to mimic the desert. Secondly, by growing them in the regular soil. The following are the results of my study so far. It took about two weeks for the seeds to germinate. They first germinated in the sand, then a few days later in the soil. One thing is for sure; it takes water to grow alfalfa in the beginning. There is daily watering of the seeds. We repeated the same study three times in bigger flowerpots and in troughs. We obtain the same result each time. It takes water to grow. Also, they come out in the sand first, and after, the soil. The alfalfa grows better in the sand. All the experiments have been done in duplicate. Some were grown in the greenhouse and some outdoors. This is only the initial, limited study, and the conclusions we draw are preliminary. Already, however, we can see a trend.

When I phoned Peter Lundgard to keep him informed of the progress of my studies, I highlighted the fact that I was able to grow alfalfa seeds in the sand. He was surprised. I phoned another organic farmer in Saskatchewan, Elmer Laird, he was surprised too. So, I am proud to pursue this sand and alfalfa project. The following is only a preliminary report.

Alfalfa seeds could germinate in early spring. In our case, they germinated in April. They can be grown indoors, in a greenhouse, or outdoors. It does take water to grow, whether in the sand or in the soil. The implication is that it is possible to grow alfalfa in the desert. However, one should be willing to invest the initial amount in water to grow it. However, once the alfalfa is growing, there are benefits:

1. Alfalfa is a legume which is capable of fixing the nitrogen in the atmosphere into its roots and when a good crop of alfalfa is back into the soil, it may add as much as 450 kg per hectare into the soil.
2. If the sand can grow alfalfa better than the soil, it could supply more natural nitrogen fertilizer into the desert, thus reclaiming the desert and transforming it into good land for production of crops.
3. The initial investment of water into the desert in order grow the alfalfa is strictly speaking an investment. However, when we have turned the desert into a field of alfalfa, according to the principle of hydrophilicity which means water loving. The desert will not attract rain as such, because it is too hot. Such high heat cannot make rain condense into clouds. The dust will drift to areas where it is cooler. If the field is green and cooler, the rain will fall and it will change the climate of the desert into a cooler, habitable area for plants and animals.
4. One reason why in our studies the alfalfa is growing better in sand than in soil is because inside the greenhouse, which is warmer than the outside, the sand is heated up more quickly than the soil.
5. The sand is growing better than the soil is likely due to the fact that the sand contains a lot of tiny bits and pieces of rock and these rocks, upon contact with water, will release minerals which are nutritious. This presents another reason why the alfalfa in the sand is growing better than that in the soil.
6. The hot desert contributes to global warming when heated by the sun. The heat is reflected into the outer atmosphere, contributing to immediate warming up of the atmosphere. When the desert is covered with fields of alfalfa, it reduces such reflected heat and the cooling of the air by rainfall. Growing alfalfa in the desert will reduce global warming.
7. When we put natural fertilizers into the soil through the roots of the alfalfa, we do not need to use the chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers are produced by chemical industries utilizing oil as a source of energy. Burning oil increases the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, producing global warming. Therefore, alfalfa based fertilizers reduce the consumption of oil and decrease global warming a second way.
8. Using chemical fertilizers is destructive to the microorganisms in the soil and ruins the humurous structure of the subsoil. As such, crops are prone to diseases and as a result, chemical pesticides are sprayed on these fields which contaminate the soil, the air, and causes cancer in humans through airborne pesticides.
9. The alfalfa roots provide a natural fertilizer to the soil that is considered as the green manure in organic farming. This will result in mineral rich produce. It is the mineral rich effect that makes the food more nutritious, taste better, and free from chemical contamination.
10. A nation consuming healthy food will produce healthy people. Healthy foods are safe foods. A nation with healthy and safe citizens will reduce the cost of health care. A safe and healthy people are a happy people.

Visit to Camrose (south of Edmonton)

After another ten hours of bus ride from Fairview, I arrived back in Edmonton. The following morning I headed south by bus to Camrose. My host in Camrose was Harvey Thomas who organized for me to meet some members of the NFU. None of these farmers farm organically. They are all conventional farmers. In fact, Alberta as a province has few and far between organic farmers. I met about ten farmers in the conference room of a bookstore in Camrose for two days to learn about how they farm. The bookstore is Pop'lar Books and the owner is Janice DePaoli who offered her facilities free for our good cause. We were all very grateful to her. Of course, I came to learn why they don't farm organically. I asked them why they don't. The reply was more or less unanimous. We are too old to change. Most farmers today in Canada are farming in their 60's or 70's with no apparent successors to take over the farming. None or few of their children will succeed the family business because farming is losing money.

I arrived in Alberta in amidst of the news that the United States was closing their borders to beef cows from Alberta. The reason? Mad cow disease, for the Americans, originated in Alberta. For me, the greater crisis is who will farm in Canada 20 years from now. No one knew the answer. But these elderly farmers told me why they are too old to change. It would take several years to change over from conventional to organic. By that time, they would already have one foot in the grave. Alberta has far fewer organic farmers than Saskatchewan.

People in Alberta are less socially conscious than in Saskatchewan. Albertans themselves confess to me they are more influenced by the United States. The first national health care system started in Saskatchewan while Alberta has been intimating that they will privatize their healthcare system. People in Alberta are generally more business oriented than those in Saskatchewan because they have oil and natural gas.

Speaking of oil and natural gas exploration, Harvey Thomas told me that due to oil and natural gas exploration and production activities, a lot of water is consumed and the water table in Alberta is sinking every year lower and lower below the ground level. I told him that if the water level is lower and lower below the surface, the surface is drier and drier. A dry surface does not attract rain because a drier surface is warmer and warmer temperature is less able to condense the cloud into rains. True enough, less and less rainfall has resulted year after year in Alberta and they have had a series of droughts over these years. The prosperity from oil and gas exploration can only be regarded as temporary. The mad cow disease and drought conditions might, in the long run, produce damaging effects on Alberta's environment and economy.

Now, the farmers I met told me that they are farming conventionally, that is, using chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides, growing genetically modified canola, because the growing season in Alberta is short. Therefore, a lot of chemical fertilizers must be used to speed up growth and to ripen crops faster. Chemical nitrogen will keep crops green to promote the growth but chemical phosphates will ripen the crop when harvest time comes.

Another farmer, George Calvin who is a direct descendant of John Calvin, made a bottom line statement by saying, "The rate limiting factor is water." He is right! During my few days in Camrose, I also attended a debate which took place on the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta. The debate centered on the closing of the American border to keep out Canadian cows and grains. The debate discussed how Canada could open up new markets in Japan and China. Some people at this debate made negative remarks about China, saying that China is a competitor to the Canadian economy. At that point, I spoke up.

I said, "Please do not regard China as competition, but welcome China as a market for Canadian grains and beef. Do not keep out China on the issues of human rights and the one-sided report of Tibet. If you want China as a market for the future, we should not perpetuate hostile perceptions of China in the Canadian public."

After the meeting, we adjourned for refreshments. One Canadian lady walked up to me and said that she agreed with my viewpoint. Canadians should respect the Chinese. For instance, she said, you should respect my blonde hair, and I will respect your oriental slanted eyes. She made such remarks to me in the presence of Harvey Thomas. This got Harvey Thomas very upset. So Harvey said to her, "Please do not make fun of Dr. Tan's racial characteristics."

The next morning, Harvey told me before we went to church that if he had the chance to attend a Canadian Wheat Board meeting he would comment that if we liked to have China as a market to sell Canadian things, we would have to first learn to respect the Chinese.

On the day of my departure from Edmonton, I had breakfast at the Grand Hotel restaurant. A Chinese man had a conversation with me in Chinese. When I complained to him that the teapot he gave me was spilling tea all over the table because of a poor spout design, he explained that he did not design such a teapot. It was designed by the westerners. Then he stated to me that however superior the west should be, the "superior" west cannot catch up to China in three areas: (1) culture, (2) philosophy, and (3) cooking.

When I arrived at the Edmonton VIA station, the manager told me that due to freight train derailment in Ontario, my Vancouver-bound train would be delayed by 12 hours. He offered to pay for the roundtrip taxi fare for me to spend the day at the West Edmonton Mall. I went and spent the whole morning in a shop selling massage machines. The manager was a Chinese lady and she was very friendly with me and personally experimented with a whole range of massage products on me.

The rest of the day I saw two movies. The second movie I saw was Ocean's Twelve. The story is about the stealing of a precious object in a very well-guarded museum. A network of radiation beams crisscrossing at all angles guarded this precious object. But the thief who stole it, did so by exotic exercise of synchronized acrobatic dance. It immediately gave me an insight about life that oftentimes, going through difficulties, God guides us by a network of divine coincidences; He works in mysterious ways.

Close