HomeAbout JeffContact

Why Organic Farming Will Save the World

Organic Lifestyle Comments Off on Why Organic Farming Will Save the World

Very simple. Anyone can see that chemical-based agriculture using toxic compounds to kill weeds and insects and energy-intensive chemical fertilizers to grow crops is just not sustainable.

The world’s soils are eroding and in terrible shape. The air is a dump for carbon dioxide and other harmful gases that are causing climate change. Chemically-contaminated food is causing disease, and if that isn’t bad enough, the very nature of our food is being manipulated by genetic engineers. The whole set-up is designed to separate us from our money as we do what we must to feed ourselves and our families, despite the negative consequences on the plants, animals, people, and ecosystems. Conventional agribusiness has produced a confluence of unforeseen damages to the earth.

Here’s why organic agriculture will save the world: it is sustainable. It’s modeled on the natural processes of life that tend toward the development of wholesome ecosystems that have reached sustainability. It recycles. It takes, but it gives back. Organic farming actually improves the soil as it grows crops and animals. Because it uses nature’s systems, it sequesters carbon, keeping it in the soil and preventing it from forming greenhouse gases. It cherishes life and encourages biodiversity (the key to good health). It enables a deep understanding of the value of nature’s principles. It produces a confluence of unforeseen benefits to the earth.

What stands between us—the community of people who want our world to be clean, wholesome, and natural—and the businesses who use conventional, toxic farming methods?

The answer is our government and its entanglement with corporate agribusiness. The core problem is that bought-and-sold legislators and bureaucrats and their corporate cronies are running a huge scam and wallowing in money because of it.

You want your food to be labeled if it contains GMOs? No—you don’t get to know that. And what’s that you say? How many chemicals are in the environment and the food supply? Well, approximately 60,000, but the EPA and FDA have only tested a few thousand for safety. And that’s because those bureaus aren’t there to protect you, they’re there to protect agribusiness.

Big Ag, Big Chem, Big Pharma, and Big Biotech are running con games and we are all the marks. This is because those businesses thrive on profit as their top priority. There’s nothing wrong with making a profit, unless you do it by creating a confluence of damages to the earth and its inhabitants. You who think you can’t afford organic food because it’s too expensive, agribusiness makes you pay to be poisoned.

Study after study shows that organic farming produces yields essentially equal or even better than the yields of crops grown conventionally. So the criticism that half the world will starve if we go organic has long proven to be nonsense.

Far from it. Converting farming to organics will feed the world both through benign corporate organic farms, but also through small farms and gardeners; that is, restoring traditional farming to indigenous peoples, skills that have been taken away by scams like The Green Revolution, Golden Rice, and Monsanto’s schemes to control the world’s food supply.

To make an organic agriculture possible, all we need in America are legislators, bureaucrats, and businesspeople who have the best interest of the earth and its inhabitants as a first priority instead of the bottom line. Denmark and Germany are converting to 100 percent organic farming. They have legislators who back this.

Don’t forget to vote.

***

WHAT’S IN YOUR TOOTHPASTE?

The Cornucopia Institute is a national food and farm policy watchdog group working to uphold the integrity of organic, local, and other forms of alternative agriculture. Here is an executive summary from the Institute regarding problems with some of the major toothpastes. If you want more details, including a chart of safe vs. suspect toothpastes, visit their website at www.cornucopia.org. They write:

Carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, allergens, irritants, and other toxic chemicals do not belong in cosmetics or personal care products. Yet, they may all be found in toothpastes and other oral health products, even in those marketed as “natural.” The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), does not systematically assess the safety of personal care products. Rather, the $71 billion cosmetics industry reviews, assesses, and evaluates its own products—self-regulating in the absence of strong or meaningful federal regulatory oversight.

The U.S. lags behind many other countries in cosmetic safety, allowing the use of hazardous chemicals banned in Canada, Japan, and Europe. Just 11 of more than 12,000 ingredients used in cosmetics are restricted for use in the U.S., while more than 1,300 chemicals have been prohibited in cosmetics sold throughout Europe.
Every day the average man uses five to seven personal care products, containing 85 unique ingredients. The average woman uses nine to 12 products daily, containing 168 unique ingredients, while the average teenage girl will use up to 17 products each day, containing more than 200 unique ingredients. But outdated, obsolete, and overall toothless regulations, as well as a glaring lack of public information, imply that millions of Americans are kept in the dark about the safety of personal care products used on our bodies and in our mouths.

The law governing cosmetics was passed in 1938 and, despite the development of a plethora of synthetic compounds commonly used in personal care items, has not been significantly amended since it was enacted. In fact, compared to its authority to oversee pharmaceuticals and food products, the FDA is virtually powerless when it comes to regulating cosmetics.

The FDA has no power to review products before they go on the market. Companies do not have to list all of the ingredients in their products, nor are they required to register their manufacturing facilities with the government or report “adverse events,” making it difficult for regulators to identify potential problems. Essentially, the cosmetics industry regulates itself.

It’s impossible for the average consumer to evaluate all the chemical ingredients in, and potentially harmful effects of, cosmetics and personal care products. The Cornucopia Institute’s research on toothpaste uncovered some interesting information:

■ When potentially toxic chemical ingredients are present in toothpaste and mouthwash, they are likely to pass directly and quickly into the bloodstream, even if the product is not swallowed. This is because the membrane lining of the mouth (oral mucosa) has an absorption efficiency of more than 90 percent, according to the Physician’s Desk Reference Handbook.

■ A label containing the word “natural” does not necessarily mean a toothpaste is free of potentially harmful ingredients.

■ Some prominent “natural” brands are manufactured by companies that primarily sell mass-marketed brands. For example, Tom’s of Maine is owned by Colgate-Palmolive, the company that also makes Colgate toothpastes.

■ Toothpastes sold in Europe have different, safer formulations than the same products made by the same companies and sold in the U.S., to accommodate stricter EU cosmetics laws.

■ The American Dental Association is heavily subsidized by the cosmetic industry, creating a conflict of interest. Its seal does not guarantee the safety of toothpastes, or other oral products, or the quality of the ingredients in these products.

■ The drive to maximize profit margins focuses investments in advertising and packaging, rather than safe and high quality ingredients.

■ Many ingredients in toothpastes are synthetics derived from petroleum or from heavily processed and synthesized natural ingredients. In their final formulation, they may differ greatly from the natural parent compound (e.g., coconut oil) or may even become potentially toxic.

■ Toothpaste ingredient labels are often unintelligible, with difficult-to-pronounce ingredients that only a cosmetics chemist could decipher or understand.

■ Some toothpastes may contain contaminated ingredients. In addition, toxic compounds may be formed by the interaction of ingredients under certain conditions or may be released slowly over time.

■ The average American will use approximately 20 gallons of toothpaste over his or her lifetime.

■ Children are at greater risk of exposure, because they tend to ingest more toothpaste than adults; in addition, their exposure will be greater than adults’ in terms of amount of toothpaste used per body weight.

■ Toothpastes specifically targeted to children often contain artificial colors (food dyes), which have been linked to hyperactivity and related behavioral problems in children. Some such ingredients also pose a risk of cancer and allergic reactions.

When it comes to cosmetics, especially the personal care products we put in our mouths, it would be easy to assume that the companies selling them, and the governments regulating them, would ensure their safety. However, the cosmetic industry, aided by a lack of government oversight, has become quite similar to the processed junk food industry—using cheap and potentially toxic ingredients to manufacture questionable products that are marketed under faddish and misleading health claims. Several third-party certifications do exist that help assure the quality of toothpaste ingredients and the safety of certified products.

The report available on the Institute’s website explains how the cosmetics industry is regulated and highlights specific toothpaste ingredients to avoid. It discusses organic brands and provides consumers with recipes to make your own safe and effective toothpastes.
In addition, The Cornucopia Institute has created a web-based scorecard, designed to help consumers determine the safest toothpastes with the least objectionable ingredients.

***

VERMONT DAIRIES USE LOTS OF CHEMICALS

Te following commentary is by Will Allen and Michael Colby, who are co-founders, along with Kate Duesterberg, of Regeneration Vermont, a new nonprofit educational and advocacy organization that is working to halt the catastrophic consequences of Vermont’s adoption of degenerative, toxic, and climate-threatening agricultural techniques. The Vermont Digger posted their report. Here’s an exerpt:

“The great divide between the well-marketed image of Vermont dairy farming and its stark and toxic realities is becoming harder and harder to ignore. The marketing shows healthy cows grazing on lush pastures. But the reality is cows on concrete, being fed a diet of GMO-corn and the toxic residues from the hundreds of thousands of pounds of herbicides sprayed annually on the corn and hay fields.

“Instead of addressing the toxic legacy of the very non-organic dairying that dominates our agriculture, Vermont’s two giant diary corporations, Cabot Creamery and Ben & Jerry’s, and the state’s agricultural agency that acts more as their protector than regulator, continue to hide behind the myth and the marketing. It’s a head-in-the-sand approach that is bankrupting farmers, poisoning our rivers and lakes, accelerating climate change, and producing dairy products that may contain those same toxic residues that are so abundantly fed to the cows.

“Vermont can do better, much better. And it has to start with addressing the cold, hard facts. Thankfully, Vermont farmers are required to report their pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer usage every year to the state’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets (AAFM). And while some in the agency and within the agricultural community still try to spin the numbers to keep the myths alive, the reality can’t be ignored: Vermont is farming with more and more toxic chemicals.

“From 1999 to 2012, according to AAFM data, Vermont’s dairy farmers applied more than 2,533,329 pounds of metolachlor, atrazine and simazine to their cornfields. All three of these chemicals are probable human carcinogens, birth defect progenitors, endocrine disruptors and persistent water polluters. So, at a time when numerous Lake Champlain beaches are being closed because of dairy farm pollution from phosphorus and nitrogen, these toxic chemicals are being used more aggressively, thus contributing to the threatening mix that dominates the northern part of the lake and many of our other waterways.”
***

MONSANTO BUYS UP HEIRLOOM SEED SUPPLIERS

Maddy Harland, writing in Permaculture magazine, reports that Monsanto is buying up heirloom seed companies and trademarks.

The NM Tree and Garden Center located in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, for instance, has discovered that Monsanto is buying seed companies and the trademarks for a number of heirloom seeds. This means that you may think you are supporting an heirloom seed company but in reality the company is owned by Monsanto.

The good news is that the seeds themselves are still non-GMO, heirloom, and open-pollinated so they can be saved at the end of the harvest and sown next season, and they will come true to type. But it raises the question, why would Monsanto buy up seed companies that sell seeds that can be saved and planted out next season? Isn’t Monsanto all about GMO patented seeds, suing farmers why try to save seed, and cornering the market on the world’s farm seed supply?

Could the answer be that pretty soon you won’t find those heirloom seeds and trademarks anywhere? Monsanto’s a company that doesn’t like competition.

###