mind body planet

I left off last time talking to you a little bit more in depth about the particulars of the Organic foods we see cropping up, pun intended, all over the grocery store. I’d like to keep that conversation going today ad get back in to in once again. I think that for now what deserves a little bit of attention are some of the particulars that I have experienced that you may not know much about.

I have worked as a farmer in the past at a few different locations. Several of these were Organic farms, some were not certified but could have been if they had the high cost of being certified. Then some of these places were not Organic at all and that was fine at the time for me. So I really have got to see a lot of differing practices when it comes to farming and the biggest issue for me at this point in my life is sustainability. I feel like the issue of whether or not we are poisoning ourselves slowly with pesticides is not nearly as pressing an issue as that of the complete degradation of the planet. If we have no planet then we have no species thus agricultural techniques are a moot point. Of course when we look at from that perspective the Organic farms are protecting the chemical balance of soil because there is no pesticides used. They are also much better at sustaining lots of biodiversity. This is something that conventional farms don’t really even consider. Organic farms are much more about nurturing rather than simply industrializing the growth of life on this planet. The only problem that some say arises from this is that Organic farms require much more land to grow the same amount as the factory farms. This means for some people that if we were to try and sustain the current world population on Organics we would in turn be leading to more destruction of rainforest to grow food. That would, if it actually was the case, would again negate the point of sustainability. 

I’m going to turn to one of my best resources for food information right now and finish today with a quick word about Michael Pollan. He is a world renowned author and scholar who has written a great deal on things like this. He has studied the primary documents ad the facts on the yields ad his view is simply that we could actually increase the world’s food supply by almost one half if we were to switch everything over to Organics. He claims that where the problem lies ow is in the diversity of types of farming. If we were to switch over today then things would have to change in every single ecosystem to accommodate and that would ot be reflexive of the simple industrial growth estimates that every is looking at.

Once again the class time is a callig and I must be gettin on. We’ll keep on with this discussion next time.