There were some corrupt links in yesterday's post. I had so many
interruptions yesterday that I sent the email without testing the
links, my apologies.
Meanwhile, many of you have sent additional information, including a
handy link:
It's very tempting to get wound up and yell a bit, but the idea that
we will run out of food has been around "forever". It seems to be a
carefully cultivated type of paranoia, probably so severe that we
people are infecting other kingdoms of nature with our particular
illness. Obviously, the solution is not to stockpile the way
survivalists are doing because this causes a type of congestion that
is very similar to cancer: put the surfeit somewhere and then try to keep
it from becoming moldy and do something to keep the rodents away and
then build a fortress around yourself so that when less prepared
people get hungry, they don't steal what you had the foresight to
stash.
We, including many who make policy, have been conditioned to believe
the population is too large for countless years. I discussed this in
an article last summer:
However, the theory is basically flawed. Instead what we have seen is
relatively constant population growth and a seemingly miraculous
ability to sustain the higher levels of people. The problem is
therefore not food but how we live. As I have been trying to show you
through positive posting, permaculture can feed the world. Geoff
Lawton, the Dead Sea miracle worker, is absolutely clear on this
subject:
Perhaps it is true that we cannot continue to live in the obscene and
wasteful way of the late 20th century, but we do not have to run out
of food. . . and we do not have to export war, bird flu, and GMO
seeds to hold down population. We do have to get our environmental
act together, but we also need to recognize that contrary to advice
of Malthus, which was essentially that "superior" human beings should
have more children, that there is obviously a human phenomenon similar
to what happens in the plant world when there is a drought: we go to
seed. We become obsessed with procreation and progeny when we are
toxic and dying; and up to a point, this tends to result in a higher
birth rate until Nature steps in and makes sure we are not able to do
this because our bodies have become too corrupted to produce viable
offspring. Surely a statement like this is offensive to some people,
but I believe we have been seeing this on a larger and larger scale
and a few medical doctors have (privately) expressed a concern that
we are not far from an infertility crisis, one that favors the
survival of a few tribal communities in very remote parts of the
Planet.
When I first studied fertility, approximately 10-20% of young couples
were unable to have children without some major intervention. This
figure is probably an acceptable one and assures homes for orphans
and work for people such as myself who have special talents for
overcoming infertility, but when the cause of infertility is not
random but intentional, the rate soars. If I look back on the early
part of my career, there was only one failed attempt to assist a
couple and I knew it would fail for at least four years (and did not
follow up to see what happened after that) but today, the odds of
overcoming infertility are much lower. Moreover, I would not agree
with Malthus at all about who is superior and why. It is possible
that those who live in the closest proximity to Nature are the best
equipped to survive so the argument is about as silly as who is
highest on the food chain.
If a human eats an animal or head of cabbage, he or she may presume
to sit high on the food chain until fungi begin the inexorable
decomposition of our bodies -- while we live or after we have
surrendered our bodies to fate -- then, it is no longer possible to
claim the top position.
In any event, while I have never subscribed 100% to the concept that
we are what we eat, I believe what we eat is important. We are,
however, whoever we believe we are and this is not carved in stone so
we can change if we want.
Food is nutritious according to a number of very simple and logical
factors. Plant food depends on good soil. I mentioned recently that I
am committed to composting now. It is a way to reduce the amount of
undesirable "export" to landfills and improve the quality of the soil
on my little spot on Earth. I did what I usually do to avoid
rediscovering the wheel: google, google, google. One compost
experiment at a university resulted in a harvest of pound of potatoes per square
foot:
In my tenure in this body, I have lived in many different climatic
zones and seen very rapid decomposition of yard "waste" in Hawaii and
relatively slower in New Mexico, but, ironically, it has been
unbelievably slow in my present area. I now understand it is not the
cold but the depletion of nutrients. Despite the humidity, leaves and
grass are very slow to break down here, but the compost bin has worked
considerably better. I thought it was due to the red wigglers I got
from the farmer's market on Bainbridge Island, but the problem with
the leaves on the ground is evidently a lack of active microbes and
this has to be corrected. Everyone agrees that one can compost when
the temperature is below freezing because the microbes themselves
produce heat. This worked for me in New Mexico, but not in the
Pacific Northwest. We have to be very careful of what we put in our
soil and water if the soil is to remain alive and capable of
producing nutritious food.
Savika in front of compost bin and behind my patch of potatoes.
Picture taken August 29, 2008.
The other argument for growing one's own food is transport. I hate to
admit it, but some of my herbs are global travelers. For instance, and
this is not meant to discourage sales, but it is a concern, the black
cumin you get came originally from Egypt, the finest quality in the
world. However, it is organically grown to specifications in India
and then shipped to the U.S. where it is cold pressed to make oil.
This oil is sent to a lab that fills the gelcaps and then the gelcaps
are sent back to the lab to be put into bottles and then the bottles
are shipped to me and I send them to you. I ship them to Thailand and
Florida and Brazil and Norway so, as I said, they are world travelers,
but I am guessing that in some cases, 90% of cost of the black cumin
is transport. Now, not everyone can afford the equipment for cold
pressing seeds. This starts at about quarter of a million dollars,
but practically everyone could grow a few plants just for the seeds
and compost the leaves and other plant parts and this, my friends, is
the revolution and why Monsanto is playing the endgame with not just
our members of Congress but the Canadian and EU politicians as well
as all the people who say "yes" to their bidding the world over. The
one thing we can be absolutely sure about is that if Monsanto and ADM
and the others were to prevail, our environment would be so
significantly destroyed that life as we know it would cease.
Therefore, get on the phones and express your protest. Or, use the
one click method:
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