David R. Montgomery
See book keywords and concepts |
 Long-term studies show that organic farming increases both energy efficiency and economic returns. Increasingly, the question appears not to be whether we can afford to go organic. Over the long run, we simply can't afford not to, despite what agribusiness interests will argue. We can greatly improve conventional farming practices from both environmental and economic perspectives by adopting elements of organic technologies. Oddly, our government subsidizes conventional farming practices, whereas the market places a premium on organic produce. |
Michael Pollan
See book keywords and concepts |
 In this he was not alone: Around the same time, the English agronomist Sir Albert Howard, the philosophical father of the organic farming movement, was also arguing that the industrialization of agriculture—in particular the introduction of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which simplified the chemistry of the soil—would eventually take its toll on our health. Howard urged that we regard "the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Organic fruits have much higher concentrations of phytonutrients (natural plant medicines), vitamins and minerals. organic farming is also better for the environment. But even non-organic superfruits are very good for your health, and in my opinion, the health benefits of the natural fruit juices far outweighs the cancer risk of pesticide residues.
#4: Why do you call apple juice and grape juice "junk juices?"
Many superfruit juice products that claim "pomegranate" or "blueberry" on the front label are actually made mostly with cheaper juices such as grape and apple. |
David R. Montgomery
See book keywords and concepts |
| A number of recent studies report that organic farming methods not only retain soil fertility in the long term, but can prove cost effective in the short term.
In 1974, under the leadership of ecologist Barry Commoner, the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Washington University in St. Louis began comparing the performance of organic and conventional farms in the Midwest. |
| Howard saw intensive organic farming as how to undo the damage industrial farming inflicted on the world's soils. He thought that many plant and animal diseases arose from reliance on artificial fertilizers that disrupted the complex biology of native soils. Reestablishing organic-rich topsoil through intensive composting would reduce, if not eliminate, the need for pesricides and fertilizers while increasing the health and resilience of crops. |
| Over the long run, intensive organic farming and othet nonconventional methods may prove our best hope for maintaining food production in the face of population growth and continuing loss of agticultutal land. In principle, intensive organic methods could even replace fertilizer-intensive agriculture once cheap fossil fuels are history.
Here is the ctux of Wes Jackson's argument that tilling the soil has been an ecological catastrophe. |
| Rothamsted, the estate where John Lawes proved the fertilizing effects of chemical fertilizers, hosts the longest ongoing comparison of organic and conventional agriculture—a century and a half—placing manute-based organic farming and chemical fertilizer-based farming side by side. Wheat yields from con-venrionally fertilized and organic plots were within 2 percent of each other, but the soil quality measuted in terms of carbon and nitrogen levels improved over time in the organic plots. |
Ron Garner
See book keywords and concepts |
 ORGANIC FOOD
Eating foods that have been grown organically is much healthier for the body because the soils they are grown in contain more trace minerals. organic farming is based on a system that replenishes and maintains soil fertility. Using organic matter, compost, or animal manure enhances soil quality. Chemical fertilizers are not used. Studies have shown that organic produce contains significantly higher levels of minerals and fewer heavy metals than conventionally grown crops.13
READ THOSE LABELS! |
David Steinman
See book keywords and concepts |
 His passion for organic farming spurred him to cofound the National Association of Organic Growers in Costa Rica. The more than two hundred acres of fields are not exactly as we might think of farm fields, if our only point of reference were the big farms of the San Joaquin Valley of California. Instead of geometric rows of monoculture crops, the fields are being farmed with an emphasis on permaculture so that forest and farm blend into one and nothing is lost. |
| What's more, this is a story about a family that with reef nets and organic farming puts a value on nature and on the way we obtain our foods. Just like Costa Rica, this is another spiritual experience. In providing us with wild salmon that is reef netted, and flaxseed that is grown organically, the family certainly epitomizes what it is to be kind to animals and, along the way, has captured the market on two of the foods richest in a highly sought nutrient.
So, you say that we don't need wild salmon and that you like your salmon farmed? |
| As part of their organic cotton program, hundreds at the company took tours of cotton fields where they could see the dangers of pesticide use and the benefits of organic farming. According to the company, "Many of us have since become activists on the issue and have shifted to buying organic foods and clothing for ourselves and our families." www.patagonia.com
Timberland
With their obvious interest in the outdoors, it should not be surprising that environmental stewardship is particularly important to Timberland. |
Mike Adams
See book keywords and concepts |
 Over the years, the FDA has similarly attempted to ban or destroy many other publications, including Rodale's organic farming and Gardening magazine, which the FDA claimed was "advertising literature" that taught farmers how to increase the nutritional density of their crops through the use of natural, organic farming methods.
,# J
FDA police state tactics: Searching and detaining senior citizens
The FDA recently conducted a raid on a busload of senior citizens returning from Canada to buy prescription drugs they simply couldn't afford in the United States. |
Jack Challem
See book keywords and concepts |
 Organic produce has higher nutrient levels for a number of reasons. One, organic farming is usually a low-yield operation compared with high-yield commercial farming. Research by Donald R. Davis, Ph.D., of the University of Texas, Austin, has shown that an acre of soil has only so much nutrition to give. High-yield farming dilutes that nutrition among a larger number of plants. Two, pesticides reduce plants' production of vitamins and other antioxidants.
When you can, buy grass- or range-fed meat or fowl, although they may not be organic per se. |
Mike Adams
See book keywords and concepts |
| Over the years, the FDA has similarly attempted to ban or destroy many other publications, including Rodale's organic farming and Gardening magazine, which the FDA claimed was "advertising literature" that taught farmers how to increase the nutritional density of their crops through the use of natural, organic farming methods.
,# J
FDA police state tactics: Searching and detaining senior citizens
The FDA recently conducted a raid on a busload of senior citizens returning from Canada to buy prescription drugs they simply couldn't afford in the United States. |
David R. Montgomery
See book keywords and concepts |
| About the same time that mechanization transformed conventional agriculture, the modern organic farming movement began to coalesce around the ideas of Sir Albert Howard and Edward Faulkner. These two gentlemen with very different backgrounds came to the same conclusion: retaining soil organic matter was the key to sustaining high intensity farming. Howard developed a method to compost at the scale of large agricultural plantations, whereas Faulkner devised methods to plant without plowing to preserve a surface layer of organic matter. |
by Michael Murray, N.D. and Joseph Pizzorno, N.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
| Organic farming practices work to preserve and protect the environment by maintaining a restorative and sustainable biosystem, which improves soil quality, preserves water purity, encourages biodiversity, and, by nourishing the soil, produces plants rich in flavor as well as nutrients.
Water
There is currently a great concern about our water supply. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find pure water. |
Carlo Petrini
See book keywords and concepts |
 It is not just a question of introducing techniques different from the present ones such as small-scale production, organic farming, and biodynamics. Even crops that do not involve the use of chemical agents can be unsustainable if they are part of the agroindustrial system of food production—if they reflect a reductionist and profit-oriented mindset, which takes no account of the environmental costs and which has no respect for the life of the earth and of those who live on it. |
| He spends six months a year in California and the other six elsewhere in the world, especially in South America, where he carries out fieldwork and projects of sustainable, family-based, organic farming. He is a champion of biodiversity, with his theory that agricultural systems, like all ecosystems, ought to have all the necessary capacities for self-regulation, without the intervention of external factors such as pesticides and fertilizers. |
| He replied:
There are many cases of organic farming that are not sustainable, because they create a vast monoculture, one that relies on the use of integrated pesticides which greatly reduce the surrounding biodiversity: vast stretches of vineyards in Chile and in Italy, huge plantations of vegetables in California, hectares and hectares of olive groves in Spain."
Olive groves... I thought of the man I had met that morning. |
| On my way back to town, I pondered those words and the market I had visited. organic farming is undoubtedly a very good thing; it is an excellent alternative to agroindustry, and I do not like to find fault with people—my friends of that morning—who sell products that are so naturally good. But perhaps it is better to have doubts. Reality is complex and resists labels. There is a risk that technocratic thought, when it is deeply rooted, may shape and influence even those tendencies that are opposed to the system, thereby creating other anomalies. |
| This is true even in the case of organic farming: if the monoculture is too extensive, it threatens biodiversity.
In the case of products that are not grown or raised, but simply picked, the same principle of sustainability in the production of raw materials applies. For example, we should sound the alarm about fishing, which must be sustainable and must not irreparably exhaust reserves of fish; the state of the seas is perhaps even worse than that of the soil when it comes to pollution, the reduction of biodiversity, overfishing, and intensive exploitation for food purposes.4 |
by Michael Murray, N.D. and Joseph Pizzorno, N.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
| Encouragingly, crop yield studies support the use of organic farming if the risk to human health of using pesticides is added to the equation.
Waxes
In addition to pesticides, consumers must be aware of the waxes applied to many fruits and vegetables to seal in the water contained in the produce, thereby keeping the produce looking fresh. According to FDA law, grocery stores must display a sign noting that waxes or postharvest pesticides have been applied. Unfortunately, most stores do not comply with the law, and the FDA lacks the manpower to enforce it. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Plus, you're supporting companies who support organic farming. That has a huge impact on protecting the environment. By simply choosing organic food products rather than conventional, you're effectively reducing pesticide runoff by a specific measurable amount. Remember: Every food item you purchase is like an outward expanding ripple in a pond. Your actions impact the whole world, and something as simple as buying a food bar speaks volumes about who you are and what you believe (as well as the kind of future you wish to co-create for your children).
Enjoy! |
Alex Steffen
See book keywords and concepts |
 The Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems (CIKS) in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, works with hundreds of small farmers to form groups, called sangams, wherein farmers work together on programs to maintain organic farming practices, or sell biopesticides to supplement their incomes. These sangams also manage community seed banks. |
James Howard Kunstler
See book keywords and concepts |
 There are plenty of non-Amish people practicing small-scale organic agriculture, and organizations supporting them, such as the Northeast organic farming Association (NOFA), which assists small-scale farmers with local marketing, with the preservation of traditional knowledge and technical help, and with political activism to prepare the public for inevitable change. NOFA farmers are often disparaged by an unappreciative public as "boutique farmers," but their activities are vitally important in keeping knowledge alive. |
Carlo Petrini
See book keywords and concepts |
| My stay in California lasted about a week, and during that period I took the opportunity to find out more about the powerful local organic farming sector, and to interview one of the founding fathers of agroecological theory, Professor Miguel Altieri (see pp. 67-68).
For once I neglected my contacts with the Californian wine world, which were what first took me there in the early 1980s, and concentrated instead on the wonderful results achieved by a largely reconverted agricultural sector which produced excellent raw materials without recourse to fertilizers and artificial manure. |
James Howard Kunstler
See book keywords and concepts |
| The existing literature on small-scale organic farming is vast.
Making a transition out of industrial food production will involve the reestablishment of multiple complex systems on a local basis, including systems of social organization once common in America but surrendered in recent decades. The difficulties of this transition will depend on how rapid the onset of the Long Emergency actually is. I believe that the disorders and instabilities of the post-peak oil singularity will assert themselves rather quickly, long before the world runs out of oil. |
Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
 However, the Organic Trade Association responded by claiming that the survey was not scientific, and that it would "only succeed in sowing seeds of distrust in organic farming and organic products."
Kastel responded that the survey was not intended to be scientific, and that irrespective of the level of compliance with regulations, "organic is still preferable to conventional milk," especially if you are worried about rBGH in your milk. |
Dr. Paula Baillie-Hamilton
See book keywords and concepts |
 Organic Farming, Food Quality and Human Health. Bristol, England: Soil Association, 2001.
Holford, P. The Optimum Nutrition Bible, London: Piatkus, 1998.
McTaggert, Lynne, ed. The Medical Desk Reference. London: What Doctors Don't Tell You Publications Ltd., 2000.
Rea, W. Chemical Sensitivity, Vols l^f. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1992-96.
Teitelbaum, Jacob. From Fatigued to Fantastic!: A Proven Program to Regain Vibrant Health. New York: Avery, 2001.
Glossary adrenaline (epinephrine) One of the most important slimming and energy-giving hormones we possess. |
| Many factors in modern food growth, consumption, and processing have contributed to this change, including:
>¦ "Conventional" farming methods that tend to produce nutrient-deficient foods, as opposed to traditional organic farming methods.
>- Increased food storage and transportation time, which increases nutrient depletion.
> Food processing and refinement that destroys nutrients.
>- An increase in the amount of processed foods consumed by the average American. |
Email this page to a friend
