Organic Farming

http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2013/05/denver-botanic-gardens-369.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigPictureAgriculture+%28big++picture++agriculture%29

 

 

For Beautiful Pictures

A group of American scientists have been studying how to replicate properties found in certain types of bean leaves that can capture, or at least slow down, the pests.

Generations of Eastern European housewives doing battle against bedbugs spread bean leaves around the floor of an infested room at night. In the morning, the leaves would be covered with bedbugs that had somehow been trapped there. The leaves, and the pests, were collected and burned — by the pound, in extreme infestations.

 

Now a group of American scientists is studying this bedbug-leaf interaction, with an eye to replicating nature’s Roach Motel.

A study published Wednesday in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface details the scientists’ quest, including their discovery of  how the bugs get hooked on the leaves, how the scientists have tried to recreate these hooks synthetically and how their artificial hooks have proved to be less successful than the biological ones.

At first glance, the whole notion seems far-fetched, said Catherine Loudon, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in bedbug locomotion.

“If someone had suggested to me that impaling insects with little tiny hooks would be a valid form of pest control, I wouldn’t have given it credence,” she said in an interview. “You can think of lots of reasons why it wouldn’t work. That’s why it’s so amazing.”

But even though there is no indication that the bean leaves and the bedbugs evolved to work together, the leaves are fiendishly clever in exploiting the insects’ anatomy. Like the armor covering knights in medieval times, the bedbug’s exoskeleton has thinner areas where its legs flex and its tiny claws protrude — like the spot where a greave, or piece of leg armor, ends.

“The areas where they appear to be pierceable,” Dr. Loudon said, “are not the legs themselves. It’s where they bend, where it’s thin. That’s where they get pierced.”

This folk remedy from the Balkans was never entirely forgotten. A German entomologist wrote about it in 1927, a scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture mentioned it in a paper in 1943, and it can be found in Web searches about bedbugs and bean plants.

But the commercial availability of pesticides like DDT in the 1940s temporarily halted the legions of biting bugs. As their pesticide-resistant descendants began to multiply from Manhattan to Moscow, though, changing everything from leases to liability laws, the hunt for a solution was on.

The first task was to determine exactly how the hooks — the technical name is trichomes — worked. The process was viewed through an electron microscope, Dr. Loudon said. “The foot comes down onto the surface, but as it’s lifting up, it’s catching on these hooks,” she said. “The point is pointing down. So all of their legs get impaled.”

“And as soon as one leg gets caught,” she added, “they are rapidly moving legs around and try to get away on the surface. That’s when they get multiply impaled.”

Dr. Loudon and her co-authors — Megan W. Szyndler and Robert M. Corn from Irvine and Kenneth F. Haynes and Michael F. Potter of the University of Kentucky — then set out to mimic the mechanism.

Using a casting process similar to one a sculptor might choose, the scientists replicated, with polymers from different epoxies, the geometry of the trichomes, the sharp point on their tips and their flexibility and strength. Sometimes the tips of the hooks broke off during the molding process, resulting in a hybrid of biological and fabricated materials.

On the natural leaves, bugs were snagged, on average, after six steps, or locomotory cycles. (In one cycle, each of the insect’s six legs moves once.) Once stuck, they tried to free themselves, but they usually ended up just flailing in place around the impaled limb.

The bugs, however,  were largely unimpeded by the synthetic surfaces. According to the study, it took them, on average, a Hitchcockian 39 steps to be momentarily snagged, but their armor was never pierced, and they usually moved on.

The scientists, though, think they know what needs to be done. “Future development of surfaces for bedbug entrapment must incorporate mechanical characteristics of whole trichomes,” they concluded in their paper.

And they are far from giving up. As they wrote in the study, “With bedbug populations skyrocketing throughout the world and resistance to pesticides widespread, bio-inspired microfabrication techniques have the potential to harness the bedbug-entrapping power of natural leaf surfaces.”

Or as Dr. Loudon said, “It would be our greatest hope that ultimately this could develop into something that could help with this horrible problem.” Already, she said, she and her colleagues have a patent on the technology pending. It has, she said, been optioned by a commercial company.

 

http://www.smilinggardener.com/organic-soil-management/organic-composting-101?awt_l=DXgtA&awt_m=3jNZbqallP2DE1m&utm_source=aweber&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130518&utm_campaign=broadcast

 

 

 

 

 

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Bi-Rite Market is a landmark in San Francisco’s Mission District, a quintessential example of art deco architecture, which has stood in the same place since 1940. In the late nineties the market began stocking and selling sustainably and locally produced items, and they now do so exclusively. In the process, they have brought change not only to the food system in the area but to the neighborhood itself.

The store has been in Sam Mogannam’s family since 1964, and he worked in it when he was a boy. As an adult, and following a stint as a chef, Sam took over the store as owner. “At the time we took it over in 1997, it was a classic bodega in the Mission District,” Sam told Organic Connections. “There were metal bars on the windows. The neighborhood had really gone through a downward spiral. Dolores Park, half a block away, was a drug trading ground. It was a tough block; it was a tough neighborhood.

“When we opened, we started with six employees and on the block there were probably about 40 total jobs. Now on that one single block of 18th Street there are some 400 people working in the various markets, restaurants and shops. It’s amazing to see what having a good, solid neighborhood business can do. It attracts other businesses and really creates a local identity for the neighborhood.”

The Sustainable Approach

The basis for the neighborhood reawakening was food and cooking. Sam, a trained and experienced chef, had one unshakable requirement for taking over the market. “I needed to cook,” he explained. “So we gutted the space, built a kitchen right in the middle of the store, and really just started from scratch. I brought a completely different perspective to the grocery business. Because I was a chef, it was a very ingredient-driven store. I was selling a lot of the same products that I had gotten used to using at our restaurants. We were sourcing from farmers’ markets, and we were one of the first stores in San Francisco to have meat that was antibiotic- and hormone-free. Then it just evolved.”

Today, the store sources from 40 to 50 farmers and another two dozen ranchers. The business has grown remarkably—a second Bi-Rite location, also situated in San Francisco, has just opened.

Farm and Creamery

Some of the store’s produce, eggs and dairy products come from Bi-Rite’s very own farm, located in nearby Sonoma. “The farm came about for a couple of reasons,” Sam explained. “Our produce buyer had been farming in Colorado before he moved to San Francisco and was itching to get his hands back into the soil. Also several of us on the team wanted to get a deeper understanding of the complications and challenges of growing food organically. So we made a commitment to finding some space. Initially we started with half an acre, and now we’re farming with a couple of acres just so we can learn and get closer to where our food is coming from. It’s given us really an incredible opportunity to have tighter, more meaningful conversations with the people that we’re buying our food from, our farmers and ranchers; it’s been an awesome process.”

The store also gave birth to the nearby Bi-Rite Creamery, owned and operated by Sam’s wife, Anna. Anna and her business partner had created ice cream for years in restaurants, and wanted to not only share their flavors but utilize responsibly sourced dairy products. “We started working with the Straus Family Creamery up in Marin,” Sam said. “They’re the first organic dairy west of the Mississippi, and we were the first shop in San Francisco to use organic milk for ice cream.”

 

Giving Back to the Community

The third business operated by Bi-Rite is called 18 Reasons, a community education and arts center. “I came from the restaurant business where I was responsible for a guest’s experience, and I was able to have good long conversations with guests and influence them over that period of time,” Sam related. “I was missing that ability to engage, because transactions in a grocery store are minutes. You’re doing them repeatedly and so you can have some influence, but sometimes you just don’t have enough time to go really deep into a conversation. We wanted our customers to be able to meet the people who were actually growing and raising their food.

“We started doing classes, dinners and tastings with our producers. But more than just tastings, they were in reality explorations into the evolution of how these farmers came to be; so the people who were supporting them, who were buying the food from them, had a chance to get to know them. It’s an important part of our mission to create community through food. We felt that there was that opportunity to connect the folks in the urban environment with the folks in the rural environment.

“It has since evolved into not only these explorations with the growers but also basic cooking and nutrition classes. We do a lot of work with kids now around basic cooking, as well as around building life skills for them so that they’re able to go out and get a job, able to prepare a good résumé, and have some foundational skills so that they can feel productive in society.”

Great Service, Food and People

“There are two pillars that we stand on: great service and great food,” Sam concluded. “We can’t have great service without great people, and we can’t have great food without great relationships with the people that produce it for us. It’s that simple.”

For more information, please visit www.biritemarket.com.

The agronomic side of strip-tilling is an important component and Mike Petersen, agronomist with Orthman Manufacturing, offers some primary tips — in an agronomic sense — that successful strip-tilling provides, including reduced nutrient loading to...

A new analysis finds higher yields from industrial-style agriculture, but a role for organic farming in certain circumstances.

 

 

 

A paper in this week’s issue of Nature reinforces the argument that a hybrid path in agriculture — incorporating both industrial-style production and organic practices where they make sense — gives the best chance of feeding some 9 billion people by midcentury with the fewest regrets.

The paper, “Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture,” is by a doctoral student, Verena Seufert, and the geography professor Navin Ramankutty, both of McGill University, and Jonathan Foley, the director of the Institute on the Environment of the University of Minnesota. They found that, over all, conventional farming methods produced 25 percent higher yields than organic techniques, but organic came close for certain crops in certain soils. The authors’ core conclusion?

[T]here are no simple ways to determine a clear ‘winner’ for all possible farming situations. However, instead of continuing the ideologically charged ‘organic versus conventional’ debate, we should systematically evaluate the costs and benefits of different management options. In the end, to achieve sustainable food security we will probably need many different techniques — including organic, conventional, and possible ‘hybrid’ systems — to produce more food at affordable prices, ensure livelihoods for farmers, and reduce the environmental costs of agriculture….

To establish organic agriculture as an important tool in sustainable food production, the factors limiting organic yields need to be more fully understood, alongside assessments of the many social, environmental and economic benefits of organic farming systems.

I caught up with Foley by e-mail, saying that the paper appeared to paint a picture in which cereals, particularly, benefit from fertilizer and the other inputs favored in large-scale farming, while specialty crops can offer smaller farming operations sustainable levels of income. Here’s his reaction:

We really need new “hybrid” approaches, taking the best of the conventional and organic paradigms, and deploying them when and where they make the most sense.

In this study we found that organic systems can compete very well with conventional farms when it comes to fruits and many kinds of vegetables. And they do very well (understandably) with legumes. That’s the good news for organic farming.

Where organic has a lot of ground to make up is in the major grains, especially staples like wheat and rice. There we found that organic farms have significantly lower yields than their conventional counterparts.. And since most of the world’s bulk calories come from these cereals, this is a really big deal. Organic practices, as we know them today, just cannot produce the same volume of grain calories that conventional farms do on the same land base. That assumes, of course, that our goal is to grow calories — which is only one measure of food production and only one aspect of food security.

The bottom line? Today’s organic farming practices are probably best deployed in fruit and vegetable farms, where growing nutrition (not just bulk calories) is the primary goal. But for delivering sheer calories, especially in our staple crops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on, conventional farms have the advantage right now.

Looking forward, I think we will need to deploy different kinds of practices (especially new, mixed approaches that take the best of organic and conventional farming systems) where they are best suited — geographically, economically, socially, etc.

http://earth911.com/news/2013/04/08/grow-food-small-spaces/

 

 

Last week, I flew to Greenville, South Carolina to meet with the Kluge family. I talked with them about their health, looking to understand the roots of their family crisis of morbid obesity, pre-diabetes, renal failure, disability, financial stress, and hopelessness. We talked about how they could dig themselves out of their scary downward spiral, a spiral that is affecting more than 150 million Americans (including tens of millions of children) struggling with the physical, social, and financial burden of obesity and its complications.

I thought that, perhaps, in knowing one family intimately, I could understand how we might find a way out of this slow motion disaster, a threat to the security of our families and our nation far greater than al-Qaeda or terrorism.

What I learned was this: we have to cook our way out of this mess.

Food Terrorism: Our Biggest Threat

The threat is food terrorism—the wholesale hijacking of our health, our palates, our brain chemistry, our kitchens, homes, and wallets by Big Food. Lobbyists working on behalf of the $1 trillion food industry have staged a takeover of our government. The average congressman spends five hours a day pandering to Big Food and other corporate lobbyists to raise money to stay in power. This leads to policies that support the production, sale, and promotion of disease causing, hyper-processed, industrial, factory-made Frankenfoods.

Why should the USDA pay $4 billion a year to soda makers by allowing food stamps to be used to purchase sodas? Our government serves up 29 million servings a day—over 10 billion servings a year—of soda to our poor. So much for the food stamp mission of “good food for hungry people!”

Government agricultural subsidies, food programs (like Women, Infant, and Children nutrition; school lunch; SNAP or Food Stamps; etc.), Food and Drug Administration policies (such as classifying high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners as generally recognized as safe), and Federal Trade Commission policies (like allowing $30 billion of junk food marketing mostly to kids), directly results in our obesity and chronic disease burden.

The costs are staggering. By 2040, 100% of our federal budget will be needed to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. Our federal debt soars, our kids are sicker, leading to an achievement gap that limits our capacity to compete in the global marketplace, and 70% of our kids are too fat or unfit to fight, threatening our national security. These are not small problems. They threaten our future, not just the fat and sick among us, but all of us.

A Visit to a Food Desert: Rescue Mission on One Kitchen

So, with this in mind, I traveled to the South, the epicenter of our obesity and diabetes crisis. If I understood the obstacles to turning the tide of obesity for just one family then, maybe, just maybe, it would help me find the key to ending this madness. I went there to help with a new documentary on childhood obesity with Laurie David and Katie Couric called Fed Up, coming out in late 2013 or 2014, which I hope will be for childhood obesity what An Inconvenient Truth was for climate change.

Pickens County, South Carolina, where the Kluge family lives, is a food desert, not just because there are almost 10 times as many fast food and convenience stores there as supermarkets. The Kluges’ kitchen was also a food desert with barely a morsel of real food. There were no ingredients to make real food, only pre-made factory food science projects with unpronounceable, unrecognizable ingredient lists. Unless you look at the glossy pictures on the front of those packages, there is no way to know if what’s inside is a Pizza Stuffer, Pop-Tart, Cool Whip, a corn dog, or Hamburger Helper. They all contain the same processed ingredients: high fructose corn syrup, flour, salt, hydrogenated fats, MSG, colors, additives, and preservatives, all squeezed into injection-molded inventions of different colors, shapes, and textures, but all containing nearly the same ingredient list.

A government health survey of South Carolina found that 90% of people there don’t get enough exercise, 92% don’t eat more than two vegetables a day (which includes fries and ketchup), and 33% had at least one soda a day.

And so it was with the Kluge family. The parents Tina and John and their 16-year-old son Brady are all morbidly obese. Brady has 47% body fat and his belly is 58% fat. He said he is worried he will soon be at 100% body fat. His insulin levels are sky high, which drives his relentless sugar cravings and food addiction and promotes storage of more and more belly fat. Being obese at 16, his life expectancy is 13 years less than thin kids and he is two times more likely to die by the age of 55 than his thin friends. His father John, at age 42, suffered renal failure from complications of his obesity. The whole family is at risk.

They desperately wanted to find a way out but didn’t have the knowledge or skills to escape from the food terrorists. They blamed themselves for their failure, but it was clear to me that they were not the perpetrators but rather the victims. When I asked them what motivated them to want to change, the tears started to flow, and John said he didn’t want to die and leave his wife and four boys. His youngest, Nicholas, is only seven years old. John cannot get a kidney transplant to save his life until he loses 40 pounds, and he had no clue how to lose the weight. He was trapped in a food desert and in the cycle of food addiction.

Now that science has proven that processed food—and especially sugar—is addictive, the conversation has changed. When your brain is hooked on drugs, it is a fiction that willpower and personal responsibility alone will solve the problem.

Cooking Our Way Out of Obesity and Disease

None of Kluges knew how to cook real food. They didn’t know how to navigate a grocery aisle, shop for real food, or read a label. They had been hoodwinked by “health claims” that made them fat and sick, including “low fat,” “diet,” “zero trans fats,” or “whole grain.” Whole grain Pop-Tarts? Zero trans fats in Cool Whip? It is 100% trans fat, but since the serving size is small, and the food lobby forced Congress to permit them to label a “food” as having zero trans fat if it has less than 2 grams per serving, they can legally lie. The Kluges didn’t know that chicken nuggets have 25 or more ingredients and only one of them is chicken. Actually, it is a chicken-like substance.

They grew up in homes where things were either fried or eaten out of a box or a can. They made only two vegetables, boiled cabbage and canned green beans.  They didn’t have basic cooking implements, such as proper boards for cutting vegetables or even meat. They had some old, dull knives they never used, hidden under the cupboard. Everything they ate was pre-made in a factory. They lived on food stamps and spent about $1000 each month on food, half of that spent eating out in fast food places. Eating out was their family sport.

Tina’s mother had a garden, but Tina never learned how to grow food, even though they live in a beautiful, temperate rural area. She didn’t know how to chop a vegetable or sauté it. She knew grilled chicken is healthy but said she couldn’t feed that to her family seven days a week.

The Cure Is in the Kitchen: A Doctor’s Recipe for Health

So, after much thought, as a doctor, I realized the best way I could help them was not to shame or judge them, not to prescribe more medication or tell them to eat less and exercise more (a subtle way of blaming them) but rather to teach them to cook good, real food from scratch, even on a tight budget, showing them they could eat well for less.

We got the whole family cooking, washing, peeling, chopping, cutting, touching real food: onions, garlic, carrots, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, salad greens, even asparagus. Tina, to my surprise, pulled out a bunch of fresh asparagus from her fridge (which, I suspect, she got knowing I was coming to their home) and told me how she hated asparagus. “Once, I had asparagus out of a can, and it was nasty,” she said.  “But then a friend told me to try one off the grill, and even though I didn’t want to, I tried it, and it was good.”

My theory about vegetables is this: if you hate them, you’ve never had them prepared properly. They were likely a canned, overcooked, boiled, deep-fried or highly processed and tasteless mush. Just think of overcooked Brussels sprouts or mushy canned green beans.

I showed Tina and the kids how to peel garlic, cut onions, and snap asparagus to get rid of the chewy parts. I taught her to sauté them in olive oil and garlic, to roast sweet potatoes with fennel and olive oil, and to make turkey chili from scratch. We even made fresh salad dressing from olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper instead of using gummy bottled dressings laden with high fructose corn syrup, refined oil, and MSG.

The little boys came running into the kitchen, lured away from their Xbox by the sweet, warm smells of chili and roasting sweet potatoes in the oven, smells that had never come from their kitchen before. They all ate the food and were surprised at how delicious and filling it was.

After a happy, filling, healing meal of real food, cooked in less time and for less money than it would have taken them to drive to Denny’s and order deep fried chicken nuggets, biscuits, gravy, and canned green beans, Brady, the morbidly obese, nearly “super obese” teenager with a body mass index of almost 40, Brady, who struggled to get healthy against all odds, who wanted to go to medical school, who wanted to help his family, said to me in disbelief, “Dr. Hyman, do you eat real food like this with your family every night?” I assured him I did.

I left for home amidst tears of relief and hope of a different future for the Kluge family. I wish I had time to take them shopping, to show them how to navigate a supermarket, to teach them to plant a simple garden in their backyard, to take back their health.

Eating and Cooking Well for Less

I left them with my cookbook, The Blood Sugar Solution Cookbook, and a guide from the Environmental Working Group called “Good Food on a Tight Budget” about how to shop for, cook, and eat real food for less. Five days later, Tina, the mother, texted me to let me know that the family had lost 18 pounds and was making chili again from scratch. We can end this mess one kitchen at a time, one meal at a time.

Time and money are the biggest perceived obstacles to eating well. Neither is real. We have bought in to the insidious marketing messages: “You deserve a break today.” Give me a break!

Americans spend eight hours a day in front of a screen. We spend two hours a day on the Internet, something that didn’t even exist 20 years ago that we have now somehow found time for. What’s missing is the education, the basic skills, the knowledge, and the confidence. When you don’t know what to buy or how to cook a vegetable, how can you feed yourself or your family? The Kluge family taught me that it is not a lack of desire but the prison of food addiction and food terrorism that holds them hostage. But there is a way out, a Navy SEAL raid on our captive millions.

Michael Pollan’s new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, brilliantly lays down the argument that we have to cook our way out of our healthcare, environmental, and financial crisis, that cooking is essentially a political act, or, as I have said, cooking is a revolutionary act. His new book beautifully re-acquaints us with the essential act of cooking, the act that uniquely makes us human but which we have abdicated to the food industry. We have, he argues, become food consumers, not food producers or makers, and in so doing, we have lost our connection to our world and ourselves.

He says, “The decline of everyday home cooking doesn’t only damage the health of our bodies and our land but also our families, our communities and our sense of how our eating connects us to the world.”

Cooked is a beautiful mediation on cooking and the use of fire, air, water, and earth—the ancient skills of food preparation that we have lost. But the subtext here is that cooking is fun, freeing, and the most essential and real activity we can do every day.

And as a physician, one who is deeply concerned about our fat and sick nation, about my children’s and your children’s future, I say the best prescription for this ailment is something so simple, so easy, so healing, so affordable, so revolutionary, and so accessible to almost everyone. It’s this: cook REAL FOOD in your HOME with your family and friends.

I dream of one day creating a national Eat-In day like the one I just celebrated with few thousand from my online community, only on a larger scale, during which millions participate, a day where we all cook, share, and eat real whole food, made from scratch with family and friends. It’s simple but revolutionary.

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below–but remember, we can’t offer personal medical advice online, so be sure to limit your comments to those about taking back our health!

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

 

The world's food systems have changed radically in the last 20 years, not to mention since the Green Revolution. Many of these changes have not been for the

 

 

Sometimes I think that the next big revolution will take place in a vegetable garden.

Instead of bullets, there will be seeds.  Instead of chemical warfare, there will be rainwater, carefully collected from the gutters of the house. Instead of soldiers in body armor and helmets, there will be back yard rebels, with bare feet, cut-off jean shorts, and wide-brimmed hats.  Instead of death, there will be life, sustained by a harvest of home-grown produce.  Children will be witness to these battles, but instead of being traumatized, they will be happy, grimy, and healthy, as they learn about the miracles that take place in a little plot of land or pot of dirt.

It often seems lately that almost everyday the “powers that be” are making power grabs towards creating a society of food totalitarianism.  Julian Rose, a farmer, actor, activist, and writer, wrote an article just this morning called Civil Disobedience or Death by Design and it is a “must read” for anyone who believes in the importance of natural food sources:

“From now on, unless we cut free of obeisance to the centralised, totalitarian regimes whose takeover of our planet is almost complete, we will have only ourselves to blame. For we are complicit in allowing ourselves to become slaves of the Corporate State and its cyborg enforcement army. That is, if we continue to remain hypnotized by their antics instead of taking our destinies into our own hands and blocking or refusing to comply with their death warrants. This ‘refusal’ is possible. But it will only have the desired effect when, and if, it is contemporaneous with the birthing of the Divine warrior who sleeps in us all. The warrior who sleeps-on, like the besotted Rip Van Winkle in the Catskill mountains.”

Here are a few of the issues that have come up recently:

The European Union is in the process of criminalizing all seeds that are not “registered”.  This means that the centuries-old practice of saving seeds from one year to the next may soon be illegal.Collecting rainwater is illegal in many states, and regulated in other states.  The United Nations, waving their overworked banner of “sustainability” is scheming to take over control of every drop of water on the globe.  In some countries people who own wells are now being taxed and billed on the water coming from those sources.  Nestle has admitted that they believe all water should be privatized so that everyone has to pay for the life-giving liquid. Codex Alimentarius (Latin for “food code”) is a global set of standards created by the CA Commission, a body established by a branch or the United Nations back in 1963. As with all globally stated agendas, however, CA’s darker purpose is shielded by the feel-good words.  As the US begins to fall in line with the “standards” laid out by CA, healthful, nutritious food will be something that can only be purchased via some kind of black market of organically produced food.Regulations abound in the 1200 page Food Safety Modernization Act that will put many small farmers out of business, while leaving us reliant on irradiated, chemically treated, genetically-modified “food”.

In the face of this attack on the agrarian way of life, the single, most meaningful act of resistance that any individual can perform is to use the old methods and grow his or her own food.

Growing your own food wields many positive and healthy results in the struggle for a  healthy, sustainable, and democratized food system:

You are preserving your intelligence by refusing to ingest toxic ingredients.  Many of these ingredients (and the pesticides sprayed on them) have been proven to lop off IQ points.You are nourishing your body by feeding yourself real food.  Real food, unpasteurized, un-irradiated, with all of the nutrients intact, will provide you with a strong immune system and lower your risk of many chronic diseases.  As well, you won’t be eating the toxic additives that affect your body detrimentally.You are not participating in funding Big Food, Big Agri, and Big Pharma when you grow your own food.  Every bite of food that is NOT purchased via the grocery store is representative of money that does NOT go into the pockets of these companies who are interested only in their bottom lines.  Those industries would be delighted if everyone was completely reliant on them.You are not susceptible to the control mechanisms and threats.  If you are able to provide for yourself, you need give no quarter to those who would hold the specter of hunger over your head.  You don’t have to rely on anyone else to feed your family.

Consider every bite of food that you grow for your family to be an act of rebellion.  If you live in the suburbs, plant every square inch of your yard.  Grow things vertically.  Use square foot gardening methods.  Make lovely beds of vegetables in the front yard.  Extend your growing seasons by using greenhouses and coldframes.  This way you can grow more than one crop per year in a limited amount of space.   Use raised bed gardening techniques like lasagna gardening to create rich soil.  If you have problems with your local government or HOA, go to the alternative media and plead your case in front of millions of readers.  We’ve got your back!

Don’t overlook the joys of beekeeping, the bees need our help as they have been under assault by GMO crops and other pesticides.

If you live in the city or in an apartment, look into ways to adapt to your situation.  Grow a container garden on a sunny balcony, and don’t forget hanging baskets.  Grow herbs and lettuce in a bright window.  Set up a hydroponics system in a spare room (but look out for the SWAT team – they like to come after indoor tomato growers!)  Go even further and look into aquaponics. Create a little greenhouse with a grow light for year round veggies.  Sprout seeds and legumes for a healthy addition to salads.

If you live in the country, go crazy.  Don’t just plant a garden – plant fields!  Grow vegetables and grains.  Grow herbs, both culinary and medicinal.  Learn to forage if you have forests nearby.  Learn to use old-fashioned methods of composting, cover crops and natural amendments to create a thriving system.

Raise micro-livestock if possible.  This option may not work for everyone, but if you can, provide for some of your protein needs this way.  Raise chickens, small goats, and rabbits, for meat, eggs and dairy.  If you are not a vegetarian, this is one of the most humane and ethical ways to provide these things for your family.  Be sure to care well for your animals and allow them freedom and natural food sources – this is far better than the horrible, nightmare-inducing lives that they live on factory farms.

Learn the art of saving seeds from one season to the next.  Different seeds have different harvesting and storage requirements.  Go organic in your garden, learn to use natural soil enhancers and non-toxic methods of getting rid of pests.  Plan it so that your garden is inviting to natural pollinators like bees and butterflies.  If you wouldn’t apply poison to your food while cooking it, don’t apply it to your food while growing it.

You may come up with some issues with the local government and regulations at some point, be prepared for this by understanding your local laws and doing your best to work within that framework. If you cannot work within the framework, know what your rights are and refuse to be bullied.  Call up on those in the alternative media who will sound the alarm.  Every single garden that comes under siege is worth defending.  Learn about permaculture and how to design a real food forest.  Instead of buying pretty flowering plants for your yard, landscape with fruit trees (espalliering is a technique that works will in small spaces), berry bushes, and nut trees.  These can provide long-term food sources for your land with minimal upkeep and effort involved.

For the things you can’t grow yourself, buy local.  Especially if space is limited, you may not be able to grow every bite you eat by yourself.  For everything else, buy local!  Buy shares in a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Visit your farmer’s market.  Shop at roadside stands.  Join a farming co-op.  Support the agriculture in your region to help keep local farms in business.  (One note about farmer’s markets:  Some farmers markets allow people to sell produce that originates at the same wholesalers from which the grocery stores buy their produce.  I always try to develop a relationship with the farmers from whom I buy, and I like to know that what I’m buying actually came from their fields and not a warehouse.  And don’t forget, a farmer’s market is not a guarantee that food is grown organically or sustainably.)  Find a local market or farm HERE.

Lastly, Learn to preserve your food, go back to the old ways and learn to save your harvest for the winter.  Water bath canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, and using root cellars are all low-tech methods of feeding your family year round. Not only can you preserve your own harvest, but you can buy bushels of produce at the farmer’s market for a reduced price and preserve that too.

There is a food revolution brewing.  People around the country and the world are educating themselves about Big Food, Big Agri, and the food safety sell-outs at the FDA are disgusted by what is going on. We are refusing to tolerate these attacks on our health and our lifestyles.

Firing a volley in this revolution doesn’t have to be bloody.  It can begin as easily a planting one seed in a pot.

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

Picture of a free range poultry farm 1918

(CLICK TO ENLARGE) Meet the Beneficials - Natural Enemies of Garden Pests by ipm.ucdavis.edu

John Vidal and Annie Kelly: By shunning all but organic farming techniques, the Himalayan state will cement its status as a paradigm of sustainability

 

Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilisers.

But rather than accept that this will mean farmers of the small Himalayan kingdom of around 1.2m people (according to Pema Gyamtsho, Bhutan's minister of agriculture and forests; the World Bank estimates it at around 740,000) will be able to grow less food, the government expects them to be able to grow more – and to export increasing amounts of high quality niche foods to neighbouring India, China and other countries.

The decision to go organic was both practical and philosophical, said Gyamtsho, in Delhi for the annual sustainable development conference last week. "Ours is a mountainous terrain. When we use chemicals they don't stay where we use them, they impact the water and plants. We say that we need to consider all the environment. Most of our farm practices are traditional farming, so we are largely organic anyway.

"But we are Buddhists, too, and we believe in living in harmony with nature. Animals have the right to live, we like to to see plants happy and insects happy," he said.

Gyamtsho, like most members of the cabinet, is a farmer himself, coming from Bumthang in central Bhutan but studying western farming methods in New Zealand and Switzerland.

"Going organic will take time," he said. "We have set no deadline. We cannot do it tomorrow. Instead we will achieve it region by region and crop by crop."

The overwhelmingly agrarian nation, which really only opened its doors to world influences 30 years ago, is now facing many of the development pangs being felt everywhere in rapidly emerging countries. Young people reluctant to live just by farming are migrating to India and elsewhere, there is a population explosion, and there is inevitable pressure for consumerism and cultural change.

But, says Gyamtsho, Bhutan's future depends largely on how it responds to interlinked development challenges like climate change, and food and energy security. "We would already be self-sufficient in food if we only ate what we produced. But we import rice. Rice eating is now very common, but traditionally it was very hard to get. Only the rich and the elite had it. Rice conferred status. Now the trend is reversing. People are becoming more health-conscious and are eating grains like buckwheat and wheat."

In the west, organic food growing is widely thought to reduce the size of crops because they become more susceptible to pests. But this is being challenged in Bhutan and some regions of Asia, where smallholders are developing new techniques to grow more and are not losing soil quality.

Systems like "sustainable root intensification" (SRI), which carefully regulate the amount of water that crops need and the age at which seedlings are planted out, have shown that organic crop yields can be doubled with no synthetic chemicals.

"We are experimenting with different methods of growing crops like SRI but we are also going to increase the amount of irrigated land and use traditional varieties of crops which do not require inputs and have pest resistance," says Gyamtsho.

However, a run of exceptionally warm years and erratic weather has left many farmers doubtful they can do without chemicals.

In Paro, a largely farming district in south-west Bhutan, farmers are already struggling to grow enough to feed their families and local government officials say they are having to distribute fertiliser and pesticides in larger quantities to help people grow more.

"I have heard of the plan to turn everything organic. But we are facing serious problems just getting people to grow enough", said Rinzen Wangchuk, district farm officer.

"Most people here are smallholder farmers. The last few years we have had problems with the crops. The weather has been very erratic. It's been warmer than normal and all the chilli crops are full of pests. We are having to rely on fertilisers more than we have ever had to in the past and even these are not working as well as they initially did."

Dawa Tshering, who depends on his two acres of rice paddy and a vegetable garden, says that for decades his farming was chemical free.

"But its harder now because all our children are either in the capital or studying. Nobody wants to stay, which means we have to work harder. It's just my wife an myself here. We cannot grow enough to feed ourselves and take crops to the market, so we have to use chemicals for the first time. We would like to go back to farming how we used to, where we just used what nature provided."

But in a world looking for new ideas, Bhutan is already called the poster child of sustainable development. More than 95% of the population has clean water and electricity, 80% of the country is forested and, to the envy of many countries, it is carbon neutral and food secure.

In addition, it is now basing its economic development on the pursuit of collective happiness.

"We have no fossil fuels or nuclear. But we are blessed with rivers which give us the potential of over 30,000megawatts of electricity. So far we only exploit 2,000 megawatts. We exploit enough now to export to India and in the pipeline we have 10,000 megawatts more. The biggest threat we face is cars. The number is increasing every day. Everyone wants to buy cars and that means we must import fuel. That is why we must develop our energy."

Agriculture minister Gyamtsho remains optimistic. "Hopefully we can provide solutions. What is at stake is the future. We need governments who can make bold decisions now rather than later."

• This article was amended on 13 February 2013 to attribute the figure given for the population of Bhutan

BEYOND PESTICIDES — In addition to risks to bees, sulfoxaflor is also classified as “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential” based on the incidence of tumors and carcinomas in mice and rats .n apparent contradiction to its stated intention to protect pollinators and find solutions to the current pollinator crisis, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the unconditional registration of the new insecticide sulfoxaflor, which the agency classifies as highly toxic to honey bees. Despite warnings and concerns raised by beekeepers and environmental groups, sulfoxaflor will further endanger bees and beekeeping. The U.S. EPA continues to put industry interests first to exacerbate an already dire pollinator crisis.

In January, the agency proposed to impose conditional registration on sulfoxaflor due to inconclusive and outstanding data on long-term honey bee brood impacts. At that time, the agency requested two additional studies—a study on residue impacts, and a field test to assess impacts to honey bee colonies and brood development. This week, the EPA granted full unconditional registration to sulfoxaflor stating that there were no outstanding data, and that even though sulfoxaflor is highly toxic to bees it does not demonstrate substantial residual toxicity to exposed bees, nor are “catastrophic effects” on bees expected from its use. While sulfoxaflor exhibited behavioral and navigational abnormalities in honey bees, the EPA downplays these effects as “short-lived.” The agency says it has reviewed 400 studies in collaboration with its counterparts in Australia and Canada to support its decision. However, these studies do not seem to be currently available in the public scientific literature.

Instead of denying or suspending registration in the face of dire pollinator losses, the EPA instead has chosen to mitigate sulfoxaflor impacts to bees by approving a reduced application rate from that initially requested by the registrant, Dow AgroSciences LLC, as well as increasing the time interval between successive applications. The EPA also approved new pollinator label language it believes to be “robust” to protect pollinators. Sulfoxaflor labels will state language such as:

“Do not apply this product at any time between 3 days prior to bloom and until after petal fall.”

and advisory pollinator statement:

“Notifying known beekeepers within 1 mile of the treatment area 48 hours before the product is applied will allow them to take additional steps to protect their bees. Also limiting application to times when managed bees and native pollinators are least active, e.g., before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. local time or when temperature is below 55oF at the site of application, will minimize risk to bees.”

However, beekeepers have noted that 48 hour notice is oftentimes insufficient to move their hives to a safer location and that prior notification is not always provided. Label statements, like those authorized for sulfoxaflor, not only underscore the risks to bees, but like most pesticide product labels are unrealistic since sulfoxaflor is a systemic pesticide whose residues can continue to exist in the plant (including pollen and nectar) for longer periods of time that well surpasses the recommended application intervals, and therefore exposes bees to residues longer than suggested. Similarly, label language such as this is extremely difficult to enforce at the use level.

Several comments were submitted by concerned beekeepers and environmental advocacy groups, like Beyond Pesticides, that stated that approval of a pesticide highly toxic to bees would only exacerbate the problems faced by an already tenuous honey bee industry and further decimate bee populations. However, the EPA outrightly dismissed these concerns and instead pointed to a need for sulfoxaflor by industry and agriculture groups to control insects no longer being controlled by increasingly ineffective pesticide technologies.

The EPA also noted that none of the objections to sulfoxaflor registrations pointed to any data “to support the opinion that registration of sulfoxaflor will pose a grave risks to bees,” even though the agency itself acknowledges that sulfoxaflor is highly toxic to bees. Instead, the agency says, “Comments suggested that pesticides can pose risks to bees and that the agency should not allow yet another pesticide to threaten bees.”

The agency’s approval of sulfoxaflor and its attempts to mitigate risks to honey bees highlight the real deficiencies in the agency’s risk assessment process. Risk assessment approaches have historically underestimated real-world risks, and attempts to mitigate adverse impacts with measures that prove insufficient and impractical. These risk assessment approaches make determinations that the risks are “reasonable,” while failing to take into account numerous circumstances and realities that make honey bees vulnerable to chemical exposures, including user failure to adhere to application rate guidelines, and local environmental conditions that may predispose crops, and other plants, to accumulate higher chemical residues, especially in nectar and pollen. In addition to risks to bees, sulfoxaflor is also classified as “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential” based on the incidence of tumors and carcinomas in mice and rats.

Given the global phenomenon of bee decline and the recent precautions taken in the European Union regarding bee health with the two-year suspension of neonicotinoid pesticides known to be highly toxic to bees, it is irresponsible that the EPA will allow yet another chemical with a high potential to be hazardous to bee health into the environment. It is also counterintuitive to current agency and interagency work to protect pollinators.

Sulfoxaflor is a new active ingredient, whose mode of action is similar to that of neonicotinoid pesticides—it acts on the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor in insects. Even though it has not been classified as a neonicotinoid, it elicits similar neurological responses in honey bees, with many believing that sulfoxaflor is the new generation of neonicotinoid. Sulfoxaflor will be registered for use on vegetables, fruits, barley, canola, ornamentals, soybeans, wheat and others.

..

In this modern society, different technologies are introduced to enhance our usual way of living. But as this grows to be more and more advanced, we are now experiencing the damaging effects not only in our daily lives but also in our environment. Organic Farming is one way of helping our world to get better and preserve it for the next generations to come.

 

What is Organic Farming?

Organic farming is a form of agriculture that relies on natural fertilizers, crop rotation, compost plants and animals and organic pest control. Natural Farming absolutely does not utilize any man-made or synthetic solutions which includes chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Most of these chemical compounds together with other unnatural materials intended for fertilizing, crop disease regulation, weed and pest management can result in possible extensive damage to the environmental condition.

Organic agriculture has turned out to be widely recognized throughout the last generations. Many farm workers are eliminating ways or substances that poison our ecosystem and negatively affect the human body. A number of people are taking advantage of a more eco-friendly and more nutritious standard of living.

 

Historical Starting Point

The background of organic farming is a contemporary heritage and solution of the midpoint and latter part of the 20th century. Before the mid-20th Century, all of the food was organic and natural. There was no single hazardous compound included with the developing and growing of crops. Not having any harmful pesticides of artificial fertilizers were accustomed to pollute the soil as well as the plants that developed on them. After that, farming was revolutionized.

Up until the Second World War, all the cultivation was pure and organic. For a very long period of time, the land was fresh. Fertilizers were made of plant remains which had been composted and manure from grazing wildlife. The ground was balanced for the reason that farmers applied crop rotation as well as regulated combustion.

In the event that farming tradition changed the people and started to become farmers, they discovered that foodstuff are harvested from the land, together from the crops and the creatures that consume it. As a result of experimentation, the process for agriculture was developed. The old-fashioned technique was handed down from one generation to another and carried on all the way through the beginning of the 20th Century.

Sustaining the world in its best state will not only benefit the people of today but also the people of tomorrow.  A healthier environment will give us a healthier living and this method of agriculture is one of the best answers to help lessen the problems of the planet where we live.

By means of organic farming, farm workers discover balanced, advantageous agricultural strategies, and are recapturing the knowledge of their farming history. Natural cultivation enriches the land for a long period of time. It raises the lasting produce, nourishment importance and efficiency of the harvests. It provides biologically fresh water availability, and assures general prosperity, health care of everyone, the animals, farms and as well as the society.

A fresh look at tensions over Monsanto and the arrival of “big ag” in Nepal.

 

Here’s a quick update on efforts to expand access to higher-yielding hybrid seed in Nepal. Even though the country already has lots of different varieties beyond their own traditional supplies, a recent plan to expand access to higher-yielding seed, facilitated by the United States Agency for International Development and involving Monsanto, hit a big roadblock, as was explored here not long ago (“In Nepal, Farmers Struggle as City Dwellers Fight Monsanto“).

 

Below you can read reactions to this situation from Pamela C. Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, San Diego, and her husband Raoul W. Adamchak, an organic vegetable farmer. Together they are authors of the eye-opening book “Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food” (which was praised by Bill Gates).

 

But first, here’s an update on the situation in Nepal, where a Ministry of Agriculture hearing was held last Sunday and covered by Kashish Das Shrestha, a Nepal-born photographer and writer now based in New York City. (Have a look at his photos of farming and protests over Monsanto on the Asia Society blog.) His report, posted on MyRepublica, is worth a full read. Particularly notable is this long statement by Hari Dahal, the ministry spokesman:

 

Because we are food insecure to some extent we do feel that we should use hybrids. Second thing is, there is tremendous pressure from the companies too. If there is a provision to file an application then companies will and have been filing applications. So we can’t pick and chose. There is no denying the companies are quite influential. Personally, I feel even hybrids need to be kept within a restriction—the quantity we use, the space we allocate and the regions we pick, that has to be clear. If a company like Monsanto comes it will eat us whole.

Which is why we need to be aware from the start; this is an extremely sensitive issue for us. We cannot accept hybrids just because China or India does so because their capacities and ours are starkly different. They can chase a company out, but not us. Our budget is dependent on the donor community and we are generally weaker. Yes, we need hybrid for food production. Sure, the companies need to do some business too. But it needs to be restricted….

If an organization like USAID wants to help us with a company like Monsanto, we would hope that they would help us to actually develop our own hybrids instead, not to import their foreign seeds.

 

Here’s Pamela Ronald’s reaction to the news from Katmandu (the italicized snippets are from Shrestha’s piece) and the general situation in developing countries weighing the merits and drawbacks when multinational companies come calling:

 

Hybrid seed yield more and require less pesticides (because they carry robust traits for resistance to pests and disease) as compared to open-pollinated seed. Because farmers reap both environmental and economic benefits, most farmers in the U.S., including organic farmers, purchase hybrid seed. The drawback to hybrids is that the seeds saved from hybrids are not very productive. To maintain productivity, farmers must purchase new seed each year. It seems reasonable then to run a pilot project for “20,000 farmers and include training on hybrid maize production practices and facilitate linkages between producers and end-users.” That way farmers can evaluate for themselves the costs and benefits of the seeds. Let the farmers decide.

“the Secretary cautioned against building an anti-hybrid mood explaining that the nation needs it for food production.”

I agree.

The important question are much broader than whether to plant hybrids or not. Do the seed promote food security so the Nepalese can reduce imports? Do the seed enhance economic stability of Nepalese farmers? Do they seed reduce the use of insecticides and pesticides, thereby enhancing health of farmworkers?

“30 international companies have introduced more than 250 foreign seeds so far, 16 maize hybrids have been approved by the Ministry.”

This seems reasonable diversified and should allay fears that Nepal will be reliant on a single company, Monsanto. If this is the main concern, suitable regulations could be developed. Another point to consider is the potential benefits of fostering a home-grown hybrid seed industry, which would reduce reliance on foreign companies and produce another source of income for the Nepalese.

 

Here’s Raoul Adamchak:

 

I’m an organic vegetable grower in California and plant over 50 different varieties each year. Some of those varieties are hybrids because they have traits like yield, pest resistance, or flavor that make them far superior to open pollinated (OP) varieties. While hybrid seed usually costs more than OP seed, it is a small proportion of overall costs of production. For example, I buy only hybrid sweet corn seed, usually a variety called Vision ($26.90/lb). It is a supersweet variety that is delicious and maintains its sweetness for up to week. I use it for my CSA (subscription produce system), where I can put it into baskets each week without icing it, and be sure that when my customers eat it in a day or two, they will be happy.

There are no OP sweet corn (e.g. Double Standard from Johnny’s Selected Seed @$18.60/lb) varieties that even remotely compare to Vision. I think of OP varieties as “cow corn”, tough, chewy, lots of corn flavor, and little sweetness. No, I can’t save seed from Vision, but I wouldn’t want to save seed from the OP variety. I don’t grow field corn, which is the crop at issue in Nepal, but virtually all of the U.S. field corn crop is from hybrid seed. The reason growers, organic or conventional, chose hybrid corn is yield, uniformity,and disease resistance.

If only OP corn was grown here, yields would be dramatically lower, resulting in poorer farmers and more land in production. To insist that growers in Nepal only grow OP corn is to insist that they remain poor, subsistence farmers. Nepal is presently a net importer of food. Land degradation due to population pressure is an increasing problem. Without improved seed and increased yields, the situation will only worsen.

Producing hybrid seed is a scientific advancement of the last century. Many seed companies around the world, in Japan, Europe, India, China, and North America, produce hybrid seed. If Nepal wants to develop its own hybrid corn varieties in the name of local food and ag sustainability, it wouldn’t take more than one university-trained plant breeder, a field site, and 5 to 10 years to produce productive hybrid varieties suitable for Nepal.

I encourage farmers in Nepal to evaluate existing hybrid varieties to see if they meet their needs and do it in ways that minimize risk. They need to know if hybrid varieties increase yield and/or reduce fungicide use, if they are cost effective, and if they meet the demands of their customers.

I also encourage them to use crop rotation, cover crops, compost, crop diversity, and use practices that support beneficial organisms. Improved seed is only one facet of sustainable farming. Most importantly, farmers need to be at the table to help decide what is sustainable for them and for the country.

 

 

Please go through the readers comments for this post at:

 

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/nepal-and-others-mull-monsantos-role-in-advancing-agriculture/

 

The Ghirardi Compton Oak has been a piece of League City's history for over 100 years. The tree stands 56 feet tall, has a canopy that is over 100 feet wide,...

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BFTj0hM3DHM

 

 

http://earth911.com/food/how-much-produce-should-i-buy/3/

 

This is another post though not directly related to farming it shows how to avoid food spoilage.

 

 

 

The other day I was feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and defeated about the whole GMO thing. There is SO MUCH evidence that GMOs, and the chemicals that are used in concert with them (like Roundup) are destroying our health and planet. And yet the infiltration and power and pockets of the chemical companies seem to know no bounds. The tricks being used to pervert the Farm Bill and sneak the new “technology” into people’s lives unaware are far beyond what would be considered ethical. But who has the time, attention span, and money to fight back? Some of us have day jobs. And all the petitions we sign seem to go into a black hole in a big White House. (Obama, have you checked the attic lately?) Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions and answered surveys that they want GMOs at least labeled and out of our food system. Why aren’t you listening, Mr. President?!

But then it occurred to me. We have the solution! We have the power! YOU have the answer in your HANDS RIGHT NOW! Forget Washington (well, let’s not forget it, but isn’t Washington always the LAST to change?)  Ultimately, there is only one way to ensure that there are no GMOs in your food, and that is to buy, grow, and eat only organic food.

Buy eat and grow ONLY certified-organic food. It’s that simple. Certified-organic foods are the ONLY products you can buy that ensure you are not buying, eating, or supporting the GMO mafia. Eating certified-organic food is the only way you can ensure that you are not poisoning your children, poisoning yourself, and poisoning our environment. Isn’t that worth a few extra bucks in the supermarket? SERIOUSLY??!!! Yes, it’s worth it. Consider it your own lobbying budget. You are voting with your dollars, and the capitalist free market must respond to that. That’s why Wonder Bread and Twinkies bit the dust—not because of any government regulation, but because people wised up and stopped buying them.

I know you have questions. Why is organic so much more expensive? (Because the government penalizes organic farmers and artificially subsidizes chemical farmers.) How can you be sure it’s really organic? (Because organic food is the only food that is independently inspected every year to keep its certification—unlike that chemical fertilizer plant that exploded in Texas, which hadn’t been inspected since 1985. 1985!!!!!!!!!). Isn’t local food better than organic? (Only if it’s organic local food, because why would you want to support food that has contaminated your local community? And everything is local to someone somewhere!)

What’s the opposite of a boycott? A quick google search landed me on the term “carrotmob” (a campaign that supports a business in order to create positive change)—that’s perfect! Let’s carrotmob organic food! This is an act of individualized political activism that will do more to change the world (and your personal health) for the better than any march, any vote, any gala dinner event, any charity run, or any other thing will do to solve this issue once and for all.

Remember, only YOU can stop GMOs dead in their tracks.  What are you waiting for?