Efforts To Improve Vaccination Rates In State, Michael Perry On Work And Storytelling, The Risk Of Losing Seasonality In Produce

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• New Efforts To Improve Wisconsin Vaccination Rates

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  Vaccination rates in Wisconsin lag behind national goals, especially for vulnerable groups. We find out about a new effort that will begin in 2018 to try to improve those numbers.

• Michael Perry On Work, Storytelling And Much More

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  From his time as a volunteer firefighter, to his current gigs as a writer, newspaper columnist, musician, and host of Tent Show Radio, Michael Perry just might be one of the hardest working guys in Wisconsin. And that theme of work figures prominently in a new collection of essays, pulled from his 15 year writing career. He joins us to talk about the book, which covers such diverse topics as mushing, nursing, and puking.

• The Risk Of Losing Seasonality In Produce

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  The produce section of most grocery stores will have many fruits and vegetables available year-round, whereas not that many years ago, having strawberries in January or winter squash in July would have been unheard of. We learn what systems and structures have led to this convenience, and at what potential cost.

• How Seemingly Perfect Produce Is Available Year-Round

  The neat rows of nearly identical produce at the grocery store can be soothing to look at. The bright colors catch your eye. Peppers, tomatoes and oranges are acrobatically balanced on top of each other. But those eye-pleasing fruits and veggies could be wiped out at any moment if the right insect or disease comes along.

  Why? In one word: monoculture, says Rob Dunn, a biologist and the author of “Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future.”

  Monoculture — planting and cultivating a single crop in a place year after year — is largely how food is grown, Dunn said.

  “This is the way we farm almost everything now. We find the variety that makes a lot of whatever we want, and we plant that everywhere. And that has lots of benefits,” Dunn recently told WPR’s “Central Time.”

  The practice was a major cause of the Irish potato famine of the 1840s.

  So why do we still do it?

  The benefits include the ability to grow a crop that is commercially viable on a global scale, consistency (the fact that every banana you eat tastes more or less the same), and reliability (why you can find a banana in pretty much any grocery store regardless of the season).

  But monoculture presents a lot of risks, too. Species that become monocrops are chosen based on characteristics like how well they ship and how prolifically they grow — not flavor, nutritional quality or disease-resistance, Dunn said.

  Take the story of the Gros Michel, or “Big Mike” banana.

  “The banana industry was on the lookout for something you could plant a lot of, you could put it on a boat (and) get it to the U.S.,” Dunn said.

  Enter the Gros Michel — the banana that Americans ate in the 1940s and ’50s, planted pervasively throughout Central America, Dunn said. It was planted clonally, not with seeds, so all of the bananas were identical.

  “But of course, it was just like the potato famine. So, if any pathogen could ever find the Gros Michel, it was in trouble. And that’s just what happened. We planted a monoculture, the pathogen caught up, and the pathogen wiped out the Gros Michel,” he said.

  The Gros Michel’s story should be a cautionary tale — but after the variety was nearly wiped out by a fungal disease, sellers scrambled to find something similar. And they did: the Cavendish banana found in grocery stores today.

  “It, too, is susceptible to a bunch of different pathogens, and so there are now are several that threaten to wipe it out,” he said.

  Specifically, the Cavendish is susceptible to a disease called Black Sigatoka. Cavendish growers manage that susceptibility by pruning leaves and consistently using fungicide. But heavy use of fungicides can make the strains that survive stronger and have negative impacts on the environment and health of workers.

  So what can you do? You may not be able to overhaul the global agricultural system, but Dunn did suggest supporting local farmers who grow heirloom varieties of plants.

  “I think the important thing to remember is you can make a local change that has a really big impact on the overall story. What you purchase, what you grow is really important in this,” he said.

  So while monoculture is likely to continue on a global scale to give us those perfectly shaped bananas, strawberries and other produce — at least you can make a stop at your local farmer’s market and support farmers who are growing tomatoes you’re unlikely to find in the supermarket — and certainly not year-round.