This last week we have listened to both the U.S. and China blame each other for the spread of the COVID-19 virus. When it was suggested that it originated in a lab, my mind took me back to school and college days and even before.
My mom’s cousin was married to an entomologist who worked for Agriculture Canada in Ottawa. My dad affectionately referred to him as the bug man. Even though the bug man and his wife only had three kids, he grew enough in his little 15 by 20 foot garden to feed 10 families.
He didn’t believe in chemical sprays or fertilizer and caught bugs at night when they slept in short pieces of pipe which he laid in every row of his little garden. Early each morning he went to the garden with a little tin pail half full of soapy water and picked up each little piece of pipe, tapped it on the edge of the pail and when the bugs fell into the soapy water, they died. He then thoroughly stirred up the soapy water and dead bug mixture, strained it through a rag, and sprayed the leaves of the vegetables. This organic spray killed many other mites and bugs.
When I was in school, the agriculture class was taught the same time as chemistry and or physics. I wanted to take Agriculture and I thought that physics was mostly just common sense and chemistry was better left to chemical engineers. When I went to college, most of us farm kids were more interested in mechanics, animal science, plant science than the chemistry course which I squeaked by with some studying, physics lab which was just common sense, or soil botany taught by another bug man. The college bug professor did teach us that in each teaspoon of good soil, there were hundreds of living little animals. These little animals, properly looked after would turn soil into a very soluble form of organic fertilizer.
Years after I graduated from college, I learned in the university of life that some sprays and chemical fertilizers would kill many of these little soil animals. At college we were told that soil was only necessary to keep plants from falling over and they could be fed totally on a chemical diet.
It was also during the 60s that funding of university experimental trials switched from mostly government grants to shared funding. The government realized that twice as much research could be done if the college found private funding for research and the government matched it.
The drug and seed companies had the most to gain with this method of research funding because now the government would pay for half of their research. Since a guaranteed term is only four years, results were expected within four years so the party in power could use the results of the trial as a benefit in the next election.
This was almost the end of basic research which usually took many years to complete, leaving the next government in power to claim the prize. We then noticed that the communist countries moved ahead in basic research because whoever was in power was sure he would still be there when the research was over.
It was also many years after I left college that the university professor who invented DCAD, showed me how to balance rations buy using the atomic weights of all the feedstuffs. For the first time in my life, I had found a need for chemistry. To this day I still have that chart that gives the atomic weight of each element.
It was also long after I left college that I learned that it was much more important to balance the nutrition for the bugs that live in the gut of an animal that just feeding the animal. These bacteria digest the roughage and feed that do not just break up in the stomach. They also protect the lining of the gut to prevent perforated gut and several other digestive tract disorders. Residues from some sprays also kill these beneficial and necessary bacteria. Some sprays are not a poison but chelate (tie up and make unavailable) certain elements. This condition can kill most weeds but some crops can be bred to live without them. Without some of these elements, early embryonic death of fetuses and some other digestive disorders can be observed.
Pharmaceutical companies make profits by selling vaccines to prevent an illness or drugs to kill or reduce sickness after it strikes. The challenge for them is to be the first on the block to come out with the vaccine or drug to address the sickness. If they could source the problem and develop a vaccine or drug before the problem arrives, they are the winner. Although pharmaceutical companies have been working on vaccines and drugs to address some of the most dangerous viruses to arrive in the last century, some still remain a threat unresolved. Many theories and rumors have surfaced in the last weeks that this COVID-19 has been worked on in several labs, and even experimented upon from country to country and even to different continents. Let’s hope that more promising results arrive soon. Time for politics, religion, race, colour and profit to be put aside until we win this war. Be safe and thankful where you are.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
gladcrest@gmail.com
