Day 4 at Brother Nature Farm or Stupid!

Last night I was trying to explain to Larry the concept of Bonfire Night. I told him how we make an effigy of a man to represent Guy Fawkes, then burn him at the stake while sending up lots of fireworks to signify his attempt to blow up the houses of Parliament and how we do this gleefully, cheering as the Guy catches fire and burns. He looked at me as if I was insane. A little while later I found him reading about it on Wikipedia. “That’s some f***’d up s*** man” he informed me while shaking his head.

I like the way Larry expresses things. He is African American and there’s a brutal honesty to his language. Another one of his expressions is “Stupid”. Some things are amazing, some things are fantastic and then some thing are stupid, meaning something more amazing than amazing and more fantastic than fantastic.

There are some things about America that are indeed stupid, both by my definition of the word and by his.

Larry clearing leaves from the salad garden

This morning I was working out in the garden, clearing leaves from the salad beds when a white car pulled up by the greenhouse and the driver just sat there watching us.  Greg tells me that they get a lot of urban agritourism here and that people often curb crawl around the block staring at the gardens and the people working in them. Then my imagination kicked in. Maybe it was Homeland Security come to deport me. I had said that I was only staying until Wednesday but I’m still here and will only leave on Sunday. But then again, if they did deport me it would save me the cost of the bus ticket back to Canada and if they didn’t accept my status as a Permanent Resident of Canada I might even get a free trip all the way to the UK. So I smiled and waved thinking “Bring it on!”

Turns out that the lady in the car was a student at Wayne State University who is an Anthropology student who wants to use Greg and the farm as a case study. So that’s awesome, but sadly there’s no free trip to the UK in it for me.

Then another couple of people showed up, this time carrying clip boards. They started talking to me and I offered to give them a tour of the greenhouses but they said they’d wait for Greg. They were from the City of Detroit and had come to investigate a complaint. Greg has been, by accepting money from people to dump leaves, breaking the law.

Landscapers, dumping leaves into rows to be composted

The situation is like this. Landscapers gather lots of leaves from people’s properties at this time of year. Normally they pay around $250 for 40cubic yards of leaves to dump them at a registered facility which will burn them sending CO2 into the atmosphere and adding particulate matter to the air. Greg had been offering an alternative. Dump your leaves with him and pay $40 for 40 cubic yards of leaves. He will pay someone local to rake the leaves into windrows to be composted thus putting money into the local economy, saving the landscapers money, reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emission, re-mediating polluted land, using the finished compost to grow healthy food for the neighborhood, creating attractive green-spaces where otherwise there would just be weeds and garbage and generally making everyone happy.

Old building materials that Greg clears up from abandoned lots at no charge to the City, to create farmland

But there had been a complaint and so the City of Detroit needed to come, complete with their clip board, to investigate. They were, it had to be said, extremely nice people. Very polite, very understanding, but insistent that they needed to uphold the law.

Then another piece of information emerged. It wasn’t a neighbour that had complained. Greg looked visably relieved to learn that. He has great a great relationship with his neighbours and thought that he had their support for his work, so it clearly upset him that someone might be unhappy with the situation. You could see him thinking “Why didn’t they come and talk to me? I’m a nice guy. I would have listened to them”. But it wasn’t a neighbor who had complained. It was the owner of a dump. They were likely pissed off that they were losing business to Greg and wanted him shut down. They don’t care about the leaves. They don’t want to make compost or remediate waste land. They aren’t concerned about rats  or any other supposed risks associated with processing organic waste by composting it. They just want the cash for burning the stuff. It’s a matter of business. Of economics. And Greg was getting in the way of them making money. So they called the City.

One of the many abandoned, burned out buildings in the community. Greg wants to turn this into an anvironmental justice education centre.

Now the City of Detroit has laws in place to protect the Environment. To prevent illegal dumping of waste. To force owners of old cars to dispose of them properly. To prevent the creation of environments where rat populations might explode. Are these laws successful in any of these things? Well that’s questionable. A few lots down from where Greg farms someone dumped a load of old building rubble which is likely full of lead and other contaminants. Is the City of Detroit actively trying to chase down and prosecute the people who dumped the waste? No, or course not. They have no idea who they are and lack the man power to do anything about it. Greg on the other hand is open with the fact that he is composting leaves and waste from a local brewary, because he thinks it’s a good thing. Because it is. So the City decided to come after him instead.

As I said, the people from the City were very nice, but they did keep reminding Greg of the law which states that you cannot accept money for solid waste unless you have a registered facility. The fact that this is on a very small scale, only accepts compostable materials, is not trying to make money out of the compost (just grow vegetables) and is actively improving the environment instead of damaging it seems to be irrelevant. The law is the law.

Greg is, apparently, a Blight on society

Several months ago I was talking to someone about the Canadian Organic Standards and the interpretation of them as a legal document. She told me that whenever there was any debate about a particular aspect of the standard she would go back to the intent of that ruling. What did the ruling hope to achieve? After all, we create rules not for the sake of creating rules but with a particular outcome in mind. In this instance the rules around the disposal of solid waste were clearly created to protect the environment, prevent polution and the spread of pests and disease. The work that Greg is doing is protecting the environment, is reducing polution and does not cause the spread of pests and disease. He shouldn’t be getting threatened with a fine. They should be shaking the man by the hand.

One of Greg's many neighbours who think what he is doing is awesome

So what is the problem here?

If we go back to the original complaint, it is clear that it was motivated not by community members upset by Greg’s behaviour but by a business concerned entirely with profit, or loss of it.

It is the responsibility of the City of Detroit, who are public servants, paid with tax payers money, to represent and protect the rights of the Citizens of Detroit. It is not their responsibility to intervene in what amounts to a petty complaint from a business who doesn’t like someone else edging in on their turf.

Yes, according to the letter of the law, Greg is in the wrong. But according to the intent of the law he is in the right. And if the wording does not express that intent well enough then the wording needs to be changed. As humans we are supposed to create and mold laws, not the other way round.

Right now I can’t help thinking that both Greg and the City of Detroit are pretty darned stupid. One by my and one by Larry’s definition of the word.

Greg, you really are Stupid!