A courtesy of Healing Touch Chiropractic and Dr. Gary Easter
Feburary, 2006 Grandpa's Garden When I was a kid growing up in WV, gardening was a part of life. My grandparents, Ralph and Marie, are part of The Greatest Generation. The generation that grew up during The Great Depression and came of age during World War II. To them the thought of not growing your own food in your own garden was absurd. The Victory Gardens that this generation grew, provided 40% of the food for the entire United States during World War II. Some of my youngest memories are of walking along behind my grandpa while he picked up freshly plowed potatoes and tossed them into a bucket. Later on, I was allowed to drive the tractor while he worked the plow to dig up those potatoes. Each year we always had more vegetables than we could eat. The rest were canned or given away to friends and family. To this day, my favorite food is fresh garden tomatoes, thickly sliced, with a little salt and pepper and maybe some shredded cheese. Somewhere between WWII and today, gardening was commercialized, standardized and specialized into a few major agribusiness corporations which produced most of the food for the rest of the world. Farmers worked in accordance with nature, by planting according to phases of the moon, using natural pesticides and fertilizers. Agribusiness, on the other hand, seeks to manipulate or control natural factors to reduce costs and increase production. The results of this has been soil depletion, ozone destruction, and species specialization from many varieties of species of vegetables to a handful. Soil depletion is the process through which the soil looses nutrients by growing successive crops without replenishing the nutrients that these crops take from the soil. Repeated use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides disrupts the complex ecosystem web of microbes and minerals. This means that food today does not have the nutritional content that it did in our grandparent's day. Today it's very difficult to get the vitamins and nutrients you need from your diet alone. Ozone destruction is caused by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These include carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen among others. The main source of these gases is the burning of fossil fuels. Power plants and vehicles are the big offenders. Soil depletion actually contributes to this. Less nutrients in the soil means less vegetation which means less removal of carbon dioxide from the air via the process of soil carbon sequestration. Species specialization is the breeding of species of vegetables that have characteristics that make them easy to mass produce at a low cost. This can be done naturally or through genetic modification. We have been breeding crops for years naturally to improve crop yields. The difference between this and genetic modification is that traditional breeding can only take place between closely related species. Genetic modification allows us to move DNA between unrelated species. Most common is the use of bacterial and viral genes in food crops. The problem is what happens if these genes are passed to other species of plants through cross pollination? A gene allowing resistance to an herbicide may be useful, but what if that gene gets into an actual weed species? Answer: Super weeds that herbicides can't kill. Another gene modification is development of a terminator gene. This gene causes seed sterility. This means each year, the farmers have to buy their crop from the agribusiness corporation instead of saving seeds for next year. Again, what happens if this terminator gene gets into another plant species? Is there a danger of this? You bet. Recently the USDA's own auditor said they failed to adequately regulate field trials of genetically modified crops. In some instances, the USDA did not even know the location of the field trials for which they granted permits. Proponents of GE crops say they are the only way to feed the world's growing population. 800 million people go hungry every day because they cannot grow or buy enough food. Yet the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) finds there is more than enough food in the world to meet current global needs, both now and several decades into the future. The causes of food insecurity are political and economic; many people are too poor to buy food, lack the land or other resources to grow food themselves, or are unable to obtain food through existing distribution systems. On top of this there are now reports that genetically modified crops can hurt you. So, now that I have put you all to sleep with my techno-babble lullaby, what do we do about all this? First, take an interest in what you eat and were it comes from. Start your own Victory Garden to grow as much of your food as you can, naturally and organically. If you can't do this, or can't produce enough to feed your family, then subscribe to a farmer's coop service. For a small up front fee, you can get weekly deliveries of organic and locally grown food. You are avoiding dangers of soil depletion because they use sustainable farming methods. You save the ozone by buying from farmers in your local community, which saves all the fossil fuels burned to get the other crops from Brazil to your local market. Lastly, you avoid genetically modified crops which can be hazardous to you and your environment. The link above if for a farmers coop here in Carroll County, if you are not local to here and which to find one, check online at www.localharvest.org for one near you. Laughter Therapy 1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent. |