Based on an article by Chelsea Green‘s Makenna Goodman
(Healingtalks) In recent years, there’s been a crackdown on small dairies producing raw milk, designed as an obstacle to the growing legions of consumers demanding healthier and more flavorful milk. Raw milk has been deemed “unfit” for human consumption by the FDA and other government sting operations, and the public propagandized into fearing it. According to some fear-mongers, for example, raw milk causes rabies.
David Gumpert, author of popular blog The Complete Patient and forthcoming book Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights (Chelsea Green, Oct 2009), asks an important question: How much of the fear-mongering from the pro-pasteurization people is real, and how much is propaganda from Big Agribusiness? Gumpert says the anti-raw-milk campaign is just another governmental technique to sanitize the food supply—even in the face of ever-increasing rates of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, and allergies.
Here are 10 things you should know about raw milk that the government won’t tell you:
Raw milk is healthier: Pasteurized milk is accused of causing everything from allergies to heart disease to cancer, but back in the day, these diseases were rare. In fact, clean raw milk from grass-fed cows is chock full of healthy amino acids and beneficial enzymes, and was used as a cure.
Raw milk does not make you sick: That is, if it is properly collected from cows fed good, clean grass. Grass-fed milk has natural antibiotic properties that help protect it from pathogenic bacteria. But it’s worth noting, if you’ve been using pasteurized dairy products, you might want to eat small amounts of yogurt or kefir for a week or so, for a dose of probiotics, just to be safe. I did, and it helped.
Not all raw milk is the same: The cow’s diet, how and where it’s raised, and how the milk is collected are all factors in the safety and quality of raw milk. Cows pastured on organic green grass produce milk with good health benefits. It’s good to know where your milk is coming from.
Pasteurization was instituted in the 1920s to combat TB, infant diarrhea, undulant fever and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods. But modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks, and inspection are enough of a precaution, and pasteurization has become irrelevant.
Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer.
Calves fed pasteurized milk don’t do very well, and many die before maturity. Scary, considering the milk originally came from their mom.
Raw milk sours naturally but pasteurized milk turns putrid; processors must remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process called centrifugal clarification. Gross.
Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required for pasteurized milk. This means, pasteurization is used as a nifty way to wash away all forms of bad bacteria that are allowed to flourish freely before the process. Imagine that for a second.
Raw milk has more butterfat, which is rich in fatty acids that protect against disease and stimulate the immune system. Skim milk doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better for you, in other words.
Pasteurization laws favor large, industrialized dairy operations and push out small farmers. When farmers have the right to sell raw milk directly to their consumers, they can make a decent living even with a small number of cows. Support small farmers!
Based on an article by MICHAEL TORTORELLO Published in the NYT
(Healingtalks) This article was inspired by coming away from auditing a four day course in Permaculture Design led by Wayne Weiseman, 58, the director of the Permaculture Project, in Carbondale, Ill.
As a way to save the world, digging a ditch next to a hill of sheep dung would seem to be a modest start on a hobby farm in western Wisconsin. And the trenchers, far from being day laborers, had paid $1,300 to $1,500 for the privilege of working their spades on a cement-skied Tuesday morning in late June. Fourteen of us had assembled to learn permaculture or simple systems for:
Designing sustainable human settlements
Restoring soil
Planting year-round food landscapes
Conserving water
Redirecting the waste stream
Forming more companionable communities
Turning the earth’s looming resource crisis into a new age of happiness.
It was going to have to be a pretty awesome ditch.
History of Permaculture
The movement’s founders, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, coined the term permaculture in the mid-1970s, as a portmanteau of permanent agriculture and permanent culture. In practice, permaculture is a growing and influential movement that runs deep beneath sustainable farming and urban food gardening. You can find permaculturists setting up worm trays and bee boxes, aquaponics ponds and chicken roosts, composting toilets and rain barrels, solar panels and earth houses. Truly, permaculture contains enough badges of eco-merit to fill a Girl Scout sash.
Aim of Permaculture
Permies (yes, they use that term) like to experiment with fermentation, mushrooming, foraging (also known as wildcrafting) and herbal medicine. Yet permaculture aims to be more than the sum of those practices, said David Cody, 39, who teaches the system and creates urban food gardens in San Francisco. “It’s an ecological theory of everything,” Mr. Cody said. “Here’s a planet Earth operating manual. Do you want to go along for a ride with us?”
Prevelance of Permaculture
It’s hard to say just how many have climbed aboard the mother ship. In San Francisco, Mr. Cody saw more than 1,500 volunteers turn out in 2010 to create Hayes Valley Farm, a pop-up food garden near the site of a collapsed freeway ramp. “I like to say it was the largest sheet-mulching project ever done in the world,” said Mr. Cody, who designed the garden following the permaculture principles and directed the process of covering the ground with a cardboard weed barrier and organic material. “We sheet-mulched about an acre and a half,” he said. “That’s something like 80,000 pounds of cardboard diverted from the waste stream.” In the last four years, Mr. Cody has helped train 250 students through the Urban Permaculture Institute in San Francisco. Scott Pittman, 71, who directs the national Permaculture Institute from a farmstead outside Santa Fe, N.M., estimates that 100,000 to 150,000 students have completed the certificate course since the philosophy was developed in Tasmania over three decades ago. “In the U.S., I would say we represent 40,000 to 50,000 of that number,” he said.
Permaculture as a Decentralized Movement
But then pemaculture has no membership rolls or census-takers. By intention, “it has been, for all of the years I’ve been involved, a pretty decentralized movement,” Mr. Pittman said. The message seems to get out in its own fashion, without publicists. Mr. Mollison, for example, has been permaculture’s leading figure since the late 1970s, and his books have hundreds of thousands of copies. Yet his name has apparently never warranted a mention in this newspaper. Permaculture, Mr. Pittman said, is “guided by the curriculum and a sense of ethics, and that’s pretty much it.”
Nicene Creed
The ethic of permaculture is the movement’s Nicene Creed, or golden rule: care of the earth; care of people; and a return of surplus time, energy and money, to the cause of bettering the earth and its people. In its effort to be universal, permaculture espouses no religion or spiritual element. Still, joining the movement seems to strike many of its practitioners as a kind of conversion experience. Mr. Pittman first encountered Mr. Mollison and his teachings at a weekend seminar in New Mexico in 1985. As a system, permaculture impressed him as panoptic and transformational. “It shook my world,” Mr. Pittman said. Almost on the spot, he decided to drop his work and follow Mr. Mollison to the next stop on his teaching tour: Katmandu, Nepal. Soon after, he began to lead courses alongside Mr. Mollison, in cities and backwaters around the globe. Mr. Mollison hasn’t toured the United States in almost 15 years. At 83, Mr. Mollison has “kind of faded into semi-retirement in Tasmania,” Mr. Pittman said.
Permaculture Affecting the Mainstream
Yet in recent years, Mr. Mollison’s ideas seem to have bubbled up from underground, into the mainstream. “I just trained the Oklahoma National Guard,” Mr. Pittman said. “If that’s any kind of benchmark.” The troops, he said, plan to apply permaculture to farming and infrastructure projects in rural Afghanistan. It’s a system, permaculturists contend, that can work anywhere. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, Claudia Joseph, 53, has used the precepts of permaculture to develop new food gardens at the Old Stone House. (Its original 1699 Dutch edifice was a locus of the Battle of Brooklyn in the Revolutionary War.) “It’s a huge breakthrough,” she said. “To go from a swatch of grass to 1,000 blueberry bushes.” The parks department recently bulldozed two of her gardens in an overhaul of the playground in the surrounding Washington Park.
Food Forests
But in a few protected spots, Ms. Joseph, an environmental educator and consultant who lives two blocks away, has already started on an edible food forest. This “guild” of complementary plants is the opposite of annual row-crop agriculture, with its dead or degraded soil and its constant demand for labor and fertilizer. Permaculture landscapes, which mimic the ecology of the area, are meant to be vertical, dense and self-perpetuating. Once the work of the original planting is done, Mr. Mollison jokes in one of his videos, “the designer turns into the recliner.” At the lowest level of a food forest, then, are subterranean crops like sweet potatoes and carrots. On the floor of the landscape, mushrooms can grow on felled logs or wood chips. Herbs go on the next level, along with “delicious black cap raspberries,” Ms. Joseph said. Other shrubs, like inkberry, winterberry and elderberry, are attractive to butterflies and birds. They’re an integral part of the system, too. But more likely to appeal to the children who attend the nearby William Alexander Middle School is a Newtown Pippin apple tree, “a variety first grown in Queens,” Ms. Joseph said. Ruling the forest’s heights are the 40 large pin oaks already in the park, whose abundance of acorns will make a banquet for squirrels.
From Bushmeat To Patio Gardens
Permaculture also looks favorably on high-quality bushmeat. But Ms. Joseph will be leaving that harvest well enough alone. With its focus on close planting and human-scale projects, permaculture is ideally suited to a small suburban yard or a patio garden.
Where Students Are Of To….
But most of the students I met in Wisconsin had their own 1,000-blueberry-bush visions and ideas on how permaculture could help fulfill them.
Kellie Anderson, a 27-year-old rolfer, lived for five months in a giant sequoia tree named Keyandoora. (At the time, she was protesting a logging plan in Humboldt County, Calif.) After the workshop, Ms. Anderson said, she planned to inhabit a 1986 diesel school bus that she and her boyfriend were in the process of converting into a camper. But fortune seems to have taken her instead to Sanibel Island, Fla., where she is now helping to plan a sustainable-housing community.
Kris Beck, 48, a founder of an energy-efficiency tech company, had a notion to build a sanctuary with a megalithic stone circle (think Stonehenge) on her family’s old Wisconsin dairy farm, along the Mississippi River bluffs. Bruce Feldman, 60, who spent two decades as an English teacher overseas, experienced the collapse of the baht in Thailand (he was being paid in that currency), and an earthquake in Japan, in 1995, that left him wandering the streets for four days.
These events, Mr. Feldman said, “got me thinking that I should start preparing for my own future,” ideally, a four- or five-acre self-reliant homestead in the Ozarks of Arkansas. The site of the workshop was a permaculture Shangri-La unto itself: 60 acres of rolling pasture and woodlands, a few miles from the Buffalo River in Wisconsin.
In 2004, Jeff Rabkin and his wife, Susan Scofield, bought this Amish farm for $125,000. The original plan was to lease out the fields and build a cordwood cabin as a weekend home. Instead, under the influence of permaculture, Mr. Rabkin became seized with the idea of stewarding the property himself. To this end, he and a permaculture buddy, Victor Suarez, 44, bought a small flock of sheep and planted 300 fruit and nut trees. During the work week, Mr. Rabkin, 49, and Ms. Scofield, 48, run a marketing and public relations firm in Minneapolis. That background is apparent in the catchy name they gave the place: Crazy Rooster Farm and Amish Telephone Booth. But the Amish telephone booth is no gimmick. The couple installed a phone line in the shed next to their farmhouse, and their neighbors roll up in buggies to make calls. While Amish visitors mill around in Mr. Rabkin’s yard, they may strike a deal to sell him three steer and two heifers, or 20 black-locust fence posts. Like a coneflower patch draws honeybees, Mr. Rabkin said, “I like to say that the telephone attracts beneficial wildlife — our Amish neighbors — which is what permaculture tells us to do.”
Ms. Scofield collected asparagus, beets and raw milk from neighboring farms to feed the permies. The occasional Amish visitor, like Thomas Zook, who delivered a bucketful of new potatoes in the middle of a downpour, gave a glimpse of what low-impact living might look like, taken to an extreme.
Mr. Zook’s father, Jonas Zook, even dropped in to watch a video about pond management, but walked out after a minute or two. After marathon days of PowerPoint presentations, I wouldn’t have minded joining him.
Zones Patterns and Functions
For all its exhilarating ideals, permaculture is a movement grounded in “zones,” “patterns” and “functions.” Labs, as it were, took place in the toolshed. On the first day, Mr. Weiseman demonstrated how to create biochar, or partly burned charcoal, in a primitive “rocket” stove, a device he assembled out of a piece of ductwork and a paint can. Helpful mineral elements attach themselves to the unique molecular structure of biochar, Mr. Weiseman explained. Mixed with compost, it makes a top-dressing for trees.
Next, he started bubbling compost tea with an aquarium pump in a plastic bucket. (“Even petroleum has a place in permaculture,” he said. “The five-gallon bucket is the greatest application of petroleum in the world.”) He wrapped a clump of standard compost in a cloth like a hobo’s bandanna pack and dunked it in water. Next, he added molasses to feed the brew. After a couple of days, we would fling this brownish broth over the kitchen garden to enrich the soil with beneficial bacteria. That was the concept, anyway.
Faith or Science
A week after the workshop, I ran these theories past Jeff Gillman, 41, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota and an author of four books about gardening practices and the environment. He professed to be “a believer in the whole concept of permaculture.” But he dismissed the compost tea as “lunacy.” Scattering a few foreign microbes into a sea of soil, he said, was like parachuting 10,000 people across the breadth of the Sahara. They would not survive. Normal compost, the solid stuff from a backyard bin, “should already contain all the microbes that are beneficial to the soil,” he said. And if it doesn’t, “beneficial microbes move in very, very quickly.”
With biochar, Mr. Gillman admitted to a bit of bafflement. “Charcoal, in general, is not in and of itself harmful to soil,” he explained. “It helps to hold on to nutrients. But having said that, it boggles my mind why you would take a perfectly good block of wood that you could use as compost or mulch, and burn it.” IN a broad sense, though, permaculture is not about the scientific method or textbook agronomy. “I don’t know that anyone has ever done a double-blind study of permaculture,” said Mr. Pittman of the national Permaculture Institute.
“Most people in permaculture are not that interested in doing those kinds of studies. They’re more interested in demonstrating it. You can see the difference in species diversity and yield just by looking at the system.” As Mr. Weiseman observed, permaculture may be a “leap of faith.” But not leaping might have its own consequences.
Forecasts of Permaculture
Beginning with Mr. Mollison, permaculturists have forecast a near future of resource scarcity. “Not just peak oil,” Mr. Weiseman said, “but peak water, peak soil.” And the news, with its drumbeat of economic decline and ecological catastrophe, feeds the prophecies. In this dystopia to come, permaculture won’t be a lifestyle choice, but a necessity. “We know what’s right,” Mr. Weiseman said. “We know what’s best. We feel this thing in our bones and in our heart. And then we don’t do anything about it. Or we do. And I did. And it’s bearing fruit.” But preparing for doomsday in San Francisco, Mr. Cody said, is not what draws a crowd of busy souls to shovel horse manure on a drizzly Saturday morning. To the 12 central tenets of permaculture, then, Mr. Cody added a 13th: “If it’s not fun, it’s not sustainable.” In other words, why mourn the eventual demise of our office blocks and factory farms, when there’s a feast to be made, right now, in your own backyard?
Introductions to Permaculture
The Movement in Your Backyard A good introduction to permaculture is Bill Mollison’s 1991 book, “Introduction to Permaculture” (Tagari Publications, $25). For a start, it’s 350 pages shorter and about $75 cheaper than his “Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual,” the movement’s full, unexpurgated testament. The greatest hits of permaculture are all in the “Introduction”: the ecological ethics, the landscape design principles, the domestic architecture. The book also dabbles in some colorful minutiae. Will shredded licorice root make suitable wall insulation? Does a goat like to munch carob pods? (Spoiler alert: the answer to both is yes.) New Yorkers won’t have much use for the section on “Avenue Cropping Techniques for Monsoon Tropics.”
Going Local With Permaculture
Permaculture’s philosophy may be universal, but its practice, focusing on microclimates and native ecosystems, is strictly local. In this spirit, dozens of cities hold regular permaculture gatherings. The New York Permaculture Meetup Group is one such place to post questions and view local projects. New members can join at nycpermaculture.info, and attend the next assembly on Aug. 2, said Alice Lo, 29, of Rego Park, Queens, one of the event’s hosts. If Meetup participants go home believers, they may be ready for the baptism of an immersive Permaculture Design Certificate Course.
Learning More
Many of these workshops take the form of a residency. Ms. Lo suggested a permaculture-and-yoga biathlon, Aug. 5 to 25, at an ashram/ranch in the Catskills. For information: (845) 436-6492 or sivananda.org/ranch/perma_design.html. Wayne Weiseman, who taught my course at Crazy Rooster Farm and Amish Telephone Booth, worked as an organic farm manager, an outdoor skills instructor, a public school teacher, a cabinetmaker, a luthier and a New York cabdriver. He brings these trades to the teaching of permaculture. Mr. Weiseman will lead fall workshops in Jessup, Md., and Americus, Ga. (For information: www.permacultureproject.com). Permaculture should be practiced at home. Commuters can be sojourners at courses in Brooklyn (permaculture-exchange.org), San Francisco (upisf.com), Oklahoma City and Albuquerque (permaculture.org).
And if all these newly minted permies feel compelled to quit their day jobs and start urban farms?
(Healingtalks) US farmers are for the first time growing GM corn plants for putting ethanol in petrol tanks rather than producing more food.
Aid organizations warn the GM corn could worsen a global food crisis exposed by the famine in Somalia by diverting more corn into energy production.
The food industry also opposes the new product because, although not inedible, it is unsuitable for use in the manufacture of food products that commonly use corn. Farmers growing corn for human consumption are also concerned about cross-contamination. The corn, developed by a branch of the Swiss pesticide firm Syngenta, contains an added gene for an enzyme (amylase) that speeds the breakdown of starches into ethanol. Ethanol plants normally have to add the enzyme to corn when making ethanol.
The Enogen-branded corn is being grown for the first time commercially on about 2000 hectares on the edge of America’s corn belt in Kansas. Syngenta says it will allow farmers to produce more ethanol while using less energy and water.
Meanwhile, campaigners say the corn will heap pressure on global food supplies and contribute to environmental degradation. ”The temptation to look at food as another form of fuel to use for the energy crisis will exacerbate the food crisis,” said Todd Post, of Bread for the World, a Christian anti-hunger organisation.
Although individual events such as the Somalia famine are caused by a complex combination of factors, several studies have established that the expansion of biofuels has pushed up food prices worldwide.
A World Bank report released yesterday says food prices that are now close to their 2008 peak have contributed to the famine in Somalia. The food industry is warning of the dangers of contaminating existing corn crops with GM corn.
Even a small amount of the amylase corn – one kernel out of 10,000 – could damage food products, according to data supplied to the North American Millers’ Association by Syngenta. The European Union, South Korea, and South Africa have not approved its importation.
Farmers will grow the corn under contract to an ethanol production plant, getting a premium over regular corn.
Steve McNinch, of Western Plains Energy, in Kansas, the only ethanol plant to have processed the GM corn, said adding a small amount of amylase corn to the mix – about 10 per cent – would increase production.
Let’s Begin With the Very Deepest-Digging or Taproot Reason to Go Organic
(Healingtalks) There are many great reasons to go organic and we have gathered a list. But the conventional reasons leave out the most deep-digging one of all. This involves the heart and soul of our modern industrial culture. What this refers to is something radical, and the word radical means going to the root, or in this case the taproot problem.
Imagine that our dominant modern philosophy of nature, the mathematical and mechanical, which dramatically brought us out of medieval culture and into the Industrial Revolution (with its “gifts” of mechanized agriculture, food production, delivery, and serving – including McDonalds) is really out of sync with the deepest core essence of nature. This means we need to learn something different about nature than what is taught in most all elementary schools, high schools and/or colleges.
Imagine that again what has led us to create synthetic lab chemical is an ideology of nature, namely the belief-laden following of wherever the symbols of mathematics point us in nature, and unfortunately to the deepest depths of nature.
Why is that a falsely guiding vision, one involving both a reversal illusion and corruption of consciousness?
This is because those lofty and elevated math symbols, stripped naked of their royal garbs, are really but our left-brain’s highest or most universal symbols to separate all elements of our consciousness. The number “1″ is the universal separate whole, the ultimate building block of mathematics, like a “point” in geometry.
Why is a math-based ideology of nature then a very, very, very serious problem?
First, if you systematically separate things in nature, especially what is most together, it then falls apart! Atom bombs symbolize this. Their design by Dr. Femi used the framework of Cartesian coordinates (the mathematization of geometry) or the visualization of space universally separated or disintegrated.
Secondly, it is not just dead matter than can be disintegrated. Remember what is most deeply connected in the whole in nature happens to be organic life.
Thirdly, lets consider the math-based philosophy of nature as out of sync with nature’s true deepest essence. There are steps to this process.
Imagine that at the core inner depths of all of nature and cosmically is something else, namely life. Imagine this to be true even if it is rare to bring this inner essence to the surface.
Imagine that the essence of life is something we and all living forms experience as “consciousness,” awareness or sentience.
Imagine that this consciousness forms the universal relationship of connection in nature. When we are conscious of something we simply connect with it. Universal connection creates a Oneness in nature and this would mean consciousness and life are at the foundation of nature’s Oneness and not what math symbols point to.
If that is so, then the math-based vision of nature, in a marriage with $-signing and when driven far too deeply, pits us directly against the very core essence of nature, including the core essence of ourselves (or what keeps us and the rest of organic life whole and healed).
It pits oneself against nature’s life thus producing systemic death or the death of whole ecologies and species. This is why when you test not individual synthetic chemistry but the entire underlying order (by throwing a large random mix of chemicals in a compost heap) all of life therein dies. That is exactly what is happening in our times…why species are dying, why chronic ills (especially consciousness-depletion diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer and diabetes) are increasing at exponentially pandemic rates.
Now we can add to this all the other reasons to go organic, most of which are derivative of the above:
No toxic chemicals in organic products
Organic certification means products are grown and handled according to strict procedures with no toxic chemicals added.
Avoid toxic load for ourselves and our environment – our air, water, soil and our bodies
Buying organics promotes a less toxic environment for all living things. With only 0.5 percent of crop and pasture land in organic, according to USDA that leaves 99.5 percent of farm acres in the U.S. at risk of exposure to noxious agricultural chemicals. Industrial agriculture pollutes not only farmland and farm workers; it also wreaks havoc downstream. Pesticide drift affects non-farm communities with odorless and invisible poisons. Synthetic fertilizers are the main culprit for dead zones in delicate ocean environments, such as the Gulf of Mexico, where its dead zone is now larger than 22,000 square kilometers, an area larger than New Jersey, according to Science magazine, August, 2002.
Go organic to protect future generations
Before a mother first nurses her newborn, the toxic risk from pesticides has already begun. Studies show that infants are exposed to hundreds of harmful chemicals in utero. We are now have four generations of exposure to agricultural and industrial chemicals since the 1940’s, and whose safety was deemed on adult tolerance levels, not on that of children. According to the National Academy of Science, “neurologic and behavioral effects may result from low-level exposure to pesticides.” Numerous studies show that pesticides can adversely affect us, increasing the risk of cancer and decrease fertility.
Organic farmers build healthy soil and avoid erosion
Soil is the foundation of the food chain. The primary focus of organic farming is to use practices that build healthy soils. Mono-cropping and chemical fertilizer dependency has taken a toll with a loss of top soil costing an estimated $40 billion per year in the U.S., according to David Pimental of Cornell University. There is also a disturbing loss of micro nutrients and minerals in fruits and vegetables. Feeding the soil with organic matter instead of ammonia and other synthetic fertilizers has proven to increase nutrients, with higher levels of vitamins and minerals found in organic food, according to the 2005 study by the Organic Center State of Science Review, “Elevating Antioxidant levels in food through organic farming and food processing.” Also soil in America is eroding seven times faster than it can be replaced. Organic farming is the solution to this problem.
Organic production reduce health risks
Many EPA-approved pesticides were registered long before extensive research linked these chemicals to cancer and other diseases. Organic agriculture is one way to prevent any more of these chemicals from getting into the air, earth and water that sustain us.
Organic farms respect water resources
The elimination of polluting chemicals and nitrogen leaching, done in combination with soil building, protects and conserves water resources.
Organic farmers work in harmony with nature
Organic agricultural respects the balance demanded of a healthy ecosystem: wildlife is encouraged by including forage crops in rotation and by retaining fence rows, wetlands, and other natural areas.
Organic producers are leaders in innovative research that avoids poor science
Organic farmers have led the way, largely at their own expense, with innovative on-farm research aimed at reducing pesticide use and minimizing agriculture’s impact on the environment. What’s avoided iscloned food or GMOs! Today an astounding 30 percent of our cropland is planted in GMOs.
Organic producers strive to preserve biological diversity
The loss of a large variety of species (biodiversity) is one of the most pressing environmental concerns. Organic farmers and gardeners have been collecting and preserving seeds, and growing unusual varieties for decades. On organic farms you’ll notice a buzz of animal, bird and insect activity. Organic life is thriving in diverse habitats. Native plants, birds and hawks return usually after the first season of organic practices; beneficial insects allow for a greater balance, and indigenous animals find these farms a safe haven. As said best by Aldo Leopold, “A good farm must be one where the native flora and fauna have lost acreage without losing their existence.” An organic farm is the equivalent of reforestation. Industrial farms with clear cutting of native habitats focus mostly on high farm yields and not the preservation of life.
Supports organic farming, those who care the most about our environment, and helps keep rural communities healthy
USDA reported that in 1997, half of U.S. farm production came from only 2% of mechanized, non-organic farms. At the other end of the spectrum and according to Organic Farming Research Foundation, as of 2006 there were approximately 10,000 certified organic producers in the U.S. compared to 2500 to 3,000 tracked in 1994, and measured against the two million farms (1/2 of 1%).. Small family farms that are organic tend to farm in harmony with nature, with their surrounding environment, helping to bring together extended families and rural communities.
Organic abundance
Now every food category has an organic alternative. And non-food agricultural products are being grown organically – even cotton, which most experts felt could not be grown this way.
Organic food tastes better and with truer flavors
It’s common sense – well-balanced soils produce strong, healthy plants that become nourishing food for people and animals and that then tastes great. It makes sense that strawberries taste yummier when raised in harmony with nature, but researchers at Washington State University just proved this as fact in lab taste trials where the organic berries were consistently judged as sweeter. Plus, new research verifies that some organic produce is often lower in nitrates and higher in antioxidants than conventional food.
Protect farm worker health
Farm workers in this country and abroad are exposed to the highest concentrations of agricultural poisons. The devastation to them and their families is well documented. Higher cancer rates abound. Those who harvest our food deserve better. Help them by voting with your pocketbook which means buying organic foods.
Organics aren’t really more expensive
Many hidden costs are involved with the buying of conventionally products. These hidden costs include billions in federal subsides favoring big business. Chemical regulation and testing, hazardous waste disposal, environmental damage and cleanup, illnesses and hospitalizations are among vast hidden costs. Low prices of conventional foods are also often a signal that the farm workers did not receive a fair wage.
Save energy with organics
Organic farming is accomplished with less energy consumption. Inputs like fertilizer are naturally occurring and require less processing than substances manufactured by huge chemical companies. Organic food generally travels less miles from farm to market saving energy in transport. Many organic farmers incorporate alternative and renewable energy sources into their farming/homesteading systems.
Save a Life with organics
The best of natural healing centers use organic nutrition and detoxification (removing the toxic chemicals lodged in our bodies) to help reverse chronic ills and save lives. We can be proactive and not take in those chemicals by going organic.
Keyword Tags: Go Organic, Reasons to Go Organic, save a life with organics
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We are all aware of escalating food prices, but what’s driving the shortages and the price hikes? The answer is multifaceted: global political unrest, inflation, weather anomalies, the nuclear incident in Japan and the rising price of oil that increases the cost of planting, harvesting and transportation have all played their part.
US & Abroad Facing Food Shortages
Over the past several months, US cropland has been decimated by a one-two-three punch. Flooding and tornadoes have destroyed portions of Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Oklahoma croplands, leading to crop failure for many US staples: rice, corn, wheat, soybeans and other crops. Livestock has also been negatively impacted in many of these regions.
In the US wheat belt, Texas and Oklahoma have suffered drought conditions, which lead to the failure of portions of the regions wheat crops.
Many outside US borders aren’t faring any better. France is experiencing drought and Russia is likewise battling drought along with an infestation of locust. Canadian farmers have reported late planting due to unseasonably wet conditions.
The price of coffee, sugar and cocoa hasn’t totally caught up with us yet, but recent political unrest in Africa has already impacted supplies of sugar, coffee and cocoa, driving up their price to unprecedented levels. Superfund Financial officials have stated it is possible prices for these commodities could increase five to ten-fold by 2014. Wal-Mart’s CEO, Bill Simon, has weighed in by warning the public there will be an across-the-board price hike for foods.
Already, the price of corn has nearly doubled over the past few years; partially due to one-third of the nation’s corn crop having been allocation for fuel production. Add in another 44% increase in soy bean prices, 47% increase in wheat prices, and projections for sugar, butter, oats, and orange commodity price hikes and you get the perfect storm for runaway food prices.
Food Crisis – More To Come
Since the Fukushima meltdown, the F.D.A. says our food chain is still safe. In fact, safe enough that they do not seem to have committed to strict guidelines on testing fish caught in the Pacific Ocean (the one that Japan continues to spill nuclear waste into).
Responsible restaurants and sushi bars have turned to performing their own tests to extend peace of mind to their customers. Although the US media hasn’t reported extensively on the impact to the food chain over the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, the poisoning of Japan’s food crops, Kobe Beef and fish are a realistic concern. While radiation continues to leak into the Pacific Ocean and radiation plume particles are deposited globally from Fukushima through snowfall and rainwater, testing has shown Japan’s crops and fish to be contaminated. Fish contamination is especially problematic with regards to world food prices, as Japan exports 15% of the global catch, although fishing in the region has been significantly slowed due to heavy damages of fishing boats and production in the area. High concentrations of radioactive contamination have been reported in albacore, anchovy, and Japanese sand lance caught in their waters.
To date, Officials have underplayed the long term effects of consuming fish caught from the Pacific Ocean, yet recent studies reflect bottom fish and fish that travel close to surface of the Pacific near Fukushima are found to have high levels of radiation and new concerns are being reported on contaminated fish found in Iwa, Japan located 500 kilometers from Fukushima. Studies also warn of health risks with consumption of fish that have been affected by radiation poisoning near Fukushima that then travel beyond the affected area and are caught elsewhere in the Pacific-with tuna being at the top of list. Many countries have already placed a ban on fish imports from the belabored country.
Fortunately, the US imports less than 4% of its food supply-opposed to 15% of seafood’s– from Japan. However, the FDA has placed a ban on Japanese imports of milk products, vegetables, fruits and beef. Due to supply and demand, the recent ban on the relatively low percentage of Japan’s imports to the US market can have an effect on our food prices.
Problems with exports from Japan are egregious enough, but with regards to safe consumption of fish and shellfish, the Gulf oil spill must be taken in to consideration. B.P sprayed a reported 870,000 gallons of the dispersant Corexit over the gulf in an attempt to control the 2010 oil spill. Since then, cleanup workers and people living in the affected areas have reported illnesses, with some having to be hospitalized, who point to the Gulf oil spill as the cause.
Reports from the media and officials disagree there are health concerns while residents cry foul over B.P and the government’s urging that nothing is amiss. Those already effected, and others worried over the long-term effects of the dumping of Corexit dispersants aren’t buying the “there’s nothing to see…” stance on B.P’s part that is being reported by certain sectors of the mainstream media. In an attempt to uncover the truth, it’s worthwhile to understand Corexit readily claims, “No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product.” Many critiquing the impact on human and sea life claim the heavy dispersant spray did nothing but settle the oil below the surface of the Gulf waters; out of sight, out of mind. There seems to be judication of oil spill workers and resident’s health risk concerns as cleanup workers report being warned not to wear face masks during the clean up (ostensibly to calm resident’s fears and quash media attention). Further, many fisherman and cleanup workers have been told not to discuss concerns they have over health risks of Corexit, most specifically Benzene, one of the chemicals used to eradicate the oil spill which has been found to cause cancer.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has gone on record with their belief that it is not necessary to monitor fish and shellfish caught in the Gulf, as they do not consider the chemicals used in the dispersant Corexit to pose any health risks to humans.
It appears the consumer will need to practice due diligence with regards to consumption of sea food from both the Gulf and Pacific Ocean. If it is ever determined by officials the impact to sea life with the Gulf oil spill to be higher than limits set by the FDA, expect sea food prices to skyrocket.
Radiation Reaches Our US Borders
Already, many states in the US have reported increased radiation contaminants in drinking water, with the highest concentration being reported in Chattanooga, Tennessee, although the EPA has assured the population that levels are far below the maximum containment level. Milk in Vermont was found to have the highest contamination of Cesilum-137, although Washington, Oregon, Phoenix and Los Angeles had varying degrees of contamination in milk, with some pushing the allowed limits of maximum containment set by the EPA.
Very concerning is recent high radioactive isotopes found in Boise, Idaho-one of the nation’s farm belts that ranks 3rd in nationally grown vegetables. The majority crop grown in Boise and surrounding areas is potatoes. Boise also produces Hay, Alfalfa, Kentucky Blue grass, barley, sugar beets, Lentils, sweet corn, carrot, onion, garden beans, turnip, lettuce, and grapes. It isn’t only crops that Boise contributes to the US food chain. They also raise a portion of the US market of beef. Although we must insist on the safety of the food we eat, and should expect the EPA to do their job of watch-dogging the food chain, should concentrations of radiation contamination be classified above acceptable EPA limits, crops and beef may cease to be distributed from this region, and the price of these crops will see a sharp price increase; again led mostly by supply and demand.
Should the Food Chain Be Broken
Many of us never consider how our food arrived to the grocer’s shelf, but rather that what we need is available. The truth is, grocers no longer carry back stock, and why just before a storm or a situation arises like the recent tsunami alert in Hawaii, the shelves are picked bare. Today’s modern grocer carries only a 72-hour food supply. But should an emergency arrive that has lasting effects, and deliveries are disrupted, shelves could remain bare. As Americans, we have relied too heavily on constant trips to the grocers.
Blame the Food Crisis on the Bankers
Grocers have long depended upon lines of credit, as they operate on profit and loss, with some stores locations pulling in more than others. But should bankers start tightening their belts on these lines of credit, as they have with consumer loans, the results could be disastrous to food supplies. Based upon the US dollar’s decline, we should all be preparing for such an eventuality.
Genetically-Altered Food
Of course, none of the issues already discussed address the possible ramifications of GMO (genetically modified organisms) food, or GM (genetically modified) food.
Studies preformed on lab rats and other mammals do not generally reach the public, but studies that have been released are alarming; infertility, allergic reactions, low birth rate, immune deficiencies, gastro-intestinal illness and more.
Many consumers have turned to organically grown fruits and vegetables, but it is possible these growers will be negatively impacted by Bill S.510, the Food Safety Bill which was recently passed. Tighter controls, documentation, and the high cost of mandated insurance coverage for organic growers may drive up the already higher costs of healthy fruits and vegetables, and some warn that regulations may disallow organic growers to sell their produce beyond a narrow geographical parameter-another words an organic grower in Oregon may not be allowed to sell to Washington grocers. Until new regulations begin to take effect, it is anyone’s guess what the backlash may be.
It is probable organic ranchers will experience an increase in their organic feed, which will drive up the cost of organic beef.
So What Are Solutions To Our Food Crisis?
None of what’s been discussed is good news to the consumer, especially with high unemployment, higher taxation, and lower income for those who have been forced to accept lower wages or part-time work during the continued economic downswing.
The good news is there are many ways we can cushion ourselves from rapidly increasing food prices and still eat healthy. The bad news is it takes work.
Grow Your Own Food
Growing a garden from heirloom seed is one of the few assurances we have against skyrocketing food prices. Why heirloom? Heirloom seed produces fruits and vegetables that are higher in vitamins and nutrients. Their seed can be saved from one season to the other. Another benefit with heirloom seed is knowing what you’re putting into your body, unlike the unknown health effects that may show up later when eating GMO and GM fruits, vegetables and grains. By growing your own food you control the use of pesticides, herbicides, and some fertilizers that have been found to contain carcinogens. If you haven’t already, study up on composting and small worm farms that will turn soil into a rich environment for the best garden yields possible.
If you already garden, think about a greenhouse and cold frames to extend the growing season; especially for those of you who live in colder climates.
Fish Your Food
If you’ve grown alarmed over eating seafood caught from the Gulf Coast and Japan, you may want to consider a fishpond. You’d be in good company; although not reported, many folks have turned to cultivating their own fish supply in response to questionable food safety measures with regards to the fishing industry. Internet websites, bloggers and You Tube offers free do-it-yourself instructions on building and maintaining fishponds. For those who live in cold climates, where the cost of heating a pond may be prohibitive, look for advice on large indoor fish tanks that can be maintained in a basement.
Fence Your Food
Two excellent sources of protein are chickens and goats. They offer high yield for minimal expenditure of time and money. Chickens will provide eggs and meat, and should you have the land, free-range chickens can forage for a portion of their food. It may a surprise to some living in urban areas, but since a resurgence of public interest in raising chickens, many municipalities allow them within city limits. There might be restrictions on roosters; neighbors don’t typically enjoy the 5:00 AM crow of a rooster. The good news is hens are resourceful and will lay eggs without benefit of a rooster.
Goats will yield milk, butter, yogurt and meat. For those living in rural areas, your biggest concern will be sturdy fencing, for goats are escape artists, so be sure to study up on fencing requirements before you bring home a goat. And should you decide to take the leap of goat ownership, you will need more than one because goats are very social animals.
Store Your Food
So far we’ve covered gardening, fish farms and keeping chickens and goats for food security. There is one more step you might consider; food storage. While the price of food continues to escalate, foods that are purchased at current prices will be protected from inflation and shortages.
Food storage can come in many forms; bulk foods, canned goods, dehydrated and freeze-dried foods, and MRE’S. However, it should be mentioned recent demand for dehydrated, freeze dried and MRE’S has lead to a sharp increase of price. Many suppliers of these long-term storage foods are back ordered because of demand relating to their long shelf life (usually between 5 – 15 years), so practice due-diligence with regards to back-order time lines. But before you place an order, be aware that some suppliers “pad” their shipping prices, while others charge a flat $5.00 shipping fee, no matter how much shipping weight your order entails.
Typically, the purchase of bulk foods can save upwards of 35% or more of the cost of food. Check with larger chain stores who sell in bulk and ask their price for beans, rice, baking mixes, pasta’s and spices so you can do a cost comparison. You should also check with a grower in your area. A grower’s prices are often much lower, as you are then cutting out the middle man-the grocers and their necessary profit margin. By purchasing bulk quantities from a grower, you can drastically reduce the price of beans, wheat, and fruits and vegetables. For those of you willing to home can fruits and vegetables, your pantry shelves can be filled for future use. Another benefit of buying from a grower is the ability to investigate whether pesticides, herbicides and certain fertilizers have been used.
The cost of canned goods can be greatly reduced through coupon clipping and checking weekly online circulars, newspaper inserts and purchasing canned goods during flat sales, usually held once or twice a year, which typically reduces their costs by 50% or more.
Control Your Food
We have control over empty pantry shelves, even if it’s done one trip to the grocers at a time. With food storage comes freedom from worry, so we can get on with the business of living. But you’d better get busy now. There seems to be every indication we are in for a bumpy ride.
Visit Survival Diva Blog survivaldiva.com/ for more information on rural living, gardening, home canning, food storage, and tips on combating skyrocketing food prices.
EVEN SMALL DOSES OF CHEMICALS POSE HEALTH HAZARDS Early on governments tried to estimate safe amounts of chemical additives in our food. However, more research is showing that relatively small doses of chemicals can be just as hazardous to our health as large ones. This means there are no real safe limits to agricultural and food chemicals.
CHEMICALS ARE UNNECESSARY TO GROW FOODS “Synthetic” compounds are just that. They are unnatural and unnecessary. This includes toxic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, GMOs and so on in our agriculture. Also there is no food that can’t be grown as well or actually better using organic means. Right after World War II a large cadre of army chemists began working in private industries and their collective motto was “better living through chemistry.” Foods were then thought to be ”enhanced” using chemical additives and processing agents. These chemicals changed the colors, flavours, textures and shelf-life of foods. But then it was discovered that many, if not most, synthetic chemicals caused various illnesses and serious side-effects and people were shocked. The cultural propaganda and expectation had been otherwise.
CHEMICALS HARM THE SOIL’S LIFE Chemicals tend to literally sterilize and systemically kill life in our soils. Organic farmers have confided with me that their organic lands are full of living critters, otherwise absent or severely reduced on surrounding chemical-laden farms. This includes birds, butterflies bees, worms, chipmunks and so on. They all tend to avoid chemicalized farms. Also countless micro-organisms seem to get harmed and the overall biodiversity of life.
CHEMICALS POISON OUR AIR AND WATER Most chemicals do not biodegrade within a growing season. Like nuclear waste products chemicals tend to hang around and create dead zones. This is true not only our soil but the surrounding air and seeping waters.
ORGANIC FOOD IS BOTH HEALTHIER AND SAFER Countless studies have shown the higher nutrient value of organic foods. Organic foods are thus safer to ingest. They are not laden with dangerous and toxic chemical traces.
EATING ORGANIC HAS BECOME MUCH MORE CONVENIENT You can nowadays find all kinds of organic fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds in most major food chains. We are no longer as limited in our organic food selections.
AN ILLUSION MAKES ORGANIC FOODS SEEM MORE EXPENSIVE Government subsidies for high-tech, chemical-laden farming causes non-organic foods to have lower prices. However, if we add the health and environmental costs to such products, they are ultimately far more expensive.
ORGANIC GROWING IS SAFER FOR FARM WORKERS Organic farming does not result in the same worker safety problems and cancerous outbreaks that are common in industrialized farms.
ORGANIC FARMING HELPS REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING An exciting and literally groundbreaking discovery was made at Rhodale Farms. It is that certain organic soil microbes (killed on non-organic farms) such as mycorrhizal fungi that grow on plant roots, powerfully block the release of carbon dioxide. This reduces the atmospheric emissions that cause global warming.
WHY CHEMICALS POLLUTE Back in the 17th century, Newton proposed that all of nature followed only math-based, mechanical laws. Tie those laws together and you get the whole unity of nature. This was a root tenant for the development of modern chemistry, physics and biotechnology. The flaw of that Newtonian worldview is extremely deep. Math symbols really abstract how best to separate all elements of consciousness – symbols like 1,2,3. We cannot count 1,2,3 apples any more if we make applesauce. This is because what was separate is now blended together as one. Imagine that a) much more deeply at the core of nature is what we experience as ”life” and that b) at the core of this “life” is what we experience as consciousness, and c) that consciousness represents the principle of connection itself in nature. Now if that is so, and mathematics abstracts the polar opposite principle of consciousness separation, the math-based worldview will systemically undermine life. It has to. We are now experiencing that harsh and surprising lesson - a very, very deep and profound failure of a commonplace belief and worldview.
