11/11/2017
So is it? Is “Organic” just a marketing ploy? Is there any truth to the hoopla? Is it better for us? Well, yes and no. Let me explain… no it’s too much, let me sum up.
The first real difference between organic and conventional foods is the root source of the chemicals applied. Organic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides have to be derived from a “natural” source like poison dart frogs, poison sumac, and poison puffer fish, and no, I don't know whether or not these things are actually used. Conventional agricultural chemicals, on the other hand, can be made from stuff like the leftover goop from making gas and propane and diesel.
The second real difference between organic and conventional is the ban on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in organic foods.
Other than that, yeah, they can be pretty much the same. Organic and conventional farmers very often still use the same buildings, equipment and methods. Often it is impossible to tell the difference between an organic and a conventional field of anything, and often it’s the same farmer planting them right next to each other. So y’all will have to arrive at your own appraisal depending on how much weight you put on the parent material of nasty chemicals and how opposed you are to GMOs.
For me a nasty chemical is a nasty chemical no matter where it comes from but GMOs are another matter altogether. I’ll take my food the way God designed it, thank you very much, I don’t want no Frankenfood some mad scientist blasted DNA into with a microscopic shotgun. I am sure GMOs will prove out to cause a whole new set of malfunction and disease for us and our planet but that’s not the biggest threat they pose right now. Currently the biggest threat from GMOs is that a lot of the modification is to make them resistant to, wait for it, wait for it, Nasty Chemicals! Because of this hundreds of millions more pounds of nasty chemicals are being sprayed annually all over our food and our world. To top that off, just like overuse of antibiotics has created super-germs all this use of herbicides has created super-weeds, oh joy.
Choose ye this day what you will eat, but as for me and my house we will eat organic. So then, why don’t we grow organic? Well, let me sum up. Organic doesn’t go anywhere near far enough, hence the new terminology, “Beyond Organic.”
Like I said organic can be indistinguishable from conventional in appearance, value, and production. Worst of all organic does nothing to address the greatest folly of modern agriculture which is where our focus rightly is. Every warm and sunny day a miracle occurs all over the world, the earth gains weight by converting energy to matter. Through the process of photosynthesis plants convert solar energy to matter and subsequently this matter becomes the driving force of living soils.
Living soil is a complex universe within itself and some of the processes necessary take years of undisturbed work. Denuding by overgrazing, plowing, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, chemical fertilizers can and all do re**rd or destroy soil life. For millennia traditional agriculture understood that for plants to have the nutrients they need soil life had to be nurtured, protected, and fed. With the advent of mechanical/chemical farming humanity has decided to force, to mine nutrients from the soil. Unfortunately, like every other thing humanity chooses to force mining agriculture creates more problems than it fixes. Each year we need bigger plows, more chemicals, and new genetic modifications for this biological arms race we cannot win.
I know, I know, the tie-dyed long-hair p***o greenies that have been spouting this stuff for years are really hard to take serious, and they’re sticking their noses in a lot of places they don’t belong, and they are flat wrong about a lot of other things, but still, the truth is the truth and this is the truth. Fortunately there is a whole new group emerging, like us, more and more mechanical/chemical farmers are waking up to the traditional virtues of soil building farming. And, like us, a lot of the dreadlock crowd are coming to understand feeding humanity is a really tough deal physically, mentally, and economically. We're kind of a cross between rednecks and hippies, call us Hipnecks.
Call it what you like, Beyond Organic, Regenerative Agriculture, Soil Building Farming - if we want healthy plants that feed healthy animals that both feed healthy humans we have to build healthy soil. As an added bonus, converting farms to soil building enterprises sequesters carbon. In fact if we convert all our agricultural lands to healthy soil farms these farms will sequester all the excess carbon humanity has put into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution in a matter of decades!
My advice, by all means, eat organic, when you can’t find anything better, but put some real effort into finding a soil building Hipneck farmer near you. Your body and your planet with thank you.
Save the World, Build Soil.
