Potential for Floating Agriculture Across the Mohawk Akwesasne Region

Letter to the Editor

Potential for Floating Agriculture

Across the Mohawk Akwesasne Region

There was a time long ago when the Mohawk people of Akwesasne practiced commercial agriculture for local and regional markets. While some Mohawk farmers raised cattle to produce milk and beef, other Mohawk farmers cultivated a variety of fruit and vegetables. Following the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the power dam, aluminum smelting plants opened at Massena and emitted massive amounts of fluoride from their smokestacks.

Large amounts of fluoride emissions contaminated the soil across the Mohawk territory and decimated a once thriving agricultural sector of the economy. The soil is still contaminated right up to the present day. However, new developments in plant cultivation offer some hope at reviving agricultural production across the Mohawk region. While the soil is contaminated, cleaner water flows in the rivers that pass through the region, allowing for development of floating agriculture.

Cultivation pots containing clean fertilized soil may be secured between pairs of pontoons, with only the bottom of the cultivation pots touching the water. During summer, river water temperature reaches 25-deg C or 77-deg F which is suitable for floating agriculture. The bottom of each pot will contain a layer of stones and a cotton rope that extends from the soil into the river water. Capillary action will cause some water to soak upward from the river into the soil and sustain plant growth.

The pontoons would be secured next to a riverbank with arch trellises installed at the river bank. Vines growing in each cultivation pot would extend to each trellis and the vines would produce such vegetables as tomatoes, zucchini, sweet peppers, squash and melon such as cantaloupe. The use of arch trellises allows for vertical agriculture which can increase crop yield within the confines of a small area.

Suitable locations across the Mohawk Akwesasne region to practice floating agriculture are to be found along the Raquette River downstream of Rooseveltown and along the St. Regis River downstream of Hogansburg. There are small areas of calm water around Cornwall Island where pontoons holding cultivation pots may be secured next to the riverbank with land-based trellises supporting food producing vines. Floating agriculture represents a possible opportunity for interested Mohawk entrepreneurs.

Harry Valentine

Cornwall, ON