THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION.... HOW TO FEED THE WORLD

There you have it.... and it was obvious all along but I just couldn't put my finger on the link.... I must be getting old....or something!

Monoculture means growing one thing, usually on a massive scale and killing everything that dares interfere with that one thing, with chemicals.

Then there was organic but often it came to mean growing one thing, on a massive scale and killing everything that interferes with it, with chemicals made from natural substances.

In the organic vegetable garden I always encourage people to make use of every little microclimate, interplanting tall things with short to get shade in the heat of summer; always having flowers and seedlings and mature plants in the same bed; feeding the soil and the plants will feed themselves..... but still I was not quite sure what to say when asked "How can we feed the world this way?"

But then there was "Fresh" the movie.... and I have the answer... its all about food being nutritious and the loop....

Monoculture is like a huge field of wheat; when the crop is taken, there is nothing left. The farmer must get the land ready for next year by fertilising, spraying for pest and weeds, fixing machinery and buying seed. He spends many thousands of dollars on inputs from all over the world, which are trucked and shipped and give me a headache thinking about. Lets say that after expenses, he makes $100 / acre for his wheat crop if it is a good crop and if prices are good.

Then lets look at the kind of farmer shown in "Fresh" who has several fields of mixed grasses which soon self seed every year. First he puts cows on the field. Cows eat grass and grow big. Every few days he moves the cows to the next field, then the next and so on around the property. As the cows go along they fertilise the grasses but they also attract flies which lay their eggs in the dung, and flies carry diseases which can quickly spread through the cows when they come back to this pasture. Eventually he sells the cows for meat, to a local butcher. It is organic and of excellent quality and he might get $100 / acre. His cows had calves and so his next generation is produced.

Second,  3 days after the cows are taken off he lets in the chickens to the first field. The fly and other insect eggs have hatched and the chickens are in rapturous delight and gorge themselves, laying big, healthy, nutritious eggs for the farmer to sell. From these large, organic eggs the farmer receives $100 / acre from the local organic food shop or from the farm gate. Some of the eggs are allowed to hatch and become the next generation.

Third, in come a host of meat birds that eat a different selection of grasses to the cows and the chickens. Once these birds such as geese and turkeys have been through all the fields, they are sold for meat. They are healthy and strong and organic and he might get $100 / acre, sold direct to local shops. These also reproduce themselves.

Fourth, the grass is now well fertilised by cows, chickens and other birds and grows fast. The cows are allowed back in again before the grass dries and goes to seed. Now the farmer cuts it for hay. He uses some for the bedding and winter feed for his animals and sells the rest. He might receive $100 / acre from local people direct from the farm. The grasses self-seed and come up again next spring.

Moreover, some of the fields of the sustainable farmer produce a variety of vegetables at various times and some may have fruit trees under which the chickens graze in their rotation. The system is flexible and is a closed loop, with few inputs from beyond the farm. All his produce is sold locally.

Even with this simplistic view, you can see that he is producing many times the volume of more nutritious food for human consumption than the wheat farmer, whose crop is shipped around the world where it is processed and made into white flour which ends up as items wrapped in plastic bags in supermarkets thousands of kilometres away, adding little but carbohydrate to the diet to those that eat it. And it seems, from the documentary, that the multi-cultural farmer reaps the rewards financially too.

The multi-cultural farmer needs workers to help. He creates employment for locals. Those who may otherwise be driving trucks or ships of wheat, stay home and work on this farm and themselves learn the value of nutrition, raising healthy children who take their message to school and help start a school vegetable garden..... and so the effects go on and on, rippling through every avenue of society.

In this way we not only feed the world but it is sustainable, reducing greenhouse gases, climate change, pollution, medical expenses, unemployment  etc etc etc and generally making the world a happier place for everyone.

Watch a trailer, join the movement, find a screening here. It is American, and I am always sceptical of American things (sorry Pattie!) but this is genuinely good and farmer whatsit who lets his chickens be chickens and develop their chicken-ness is fabulous..... as is the big, ex-basketballer turned urban farmer.

THIS YEAR "EAT, THINK AND BE MERRY"

Why you should avoid eating anything raised in a monoculture.... animal or vegetable

This link was sent to me by Jan Maes, KGI Board Member

Jamie Harvie, PE, is executive director of the Institute for a Sustainable Future, a Duluth, Minnesota,-based not-for-profit research and consulting organization. He is a nationally recognized mercury-reduction expert who provides consulting on toxics reduction both nationally and internationally. His clients included the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, City and County of San Francisco, and the Chinese Environmental Protection Agency.

......Animal feedlot operations may be considered industrialized protein production
facilities. They epitomize the extreme of our industrialized food system. These operations confine large quantities of livestock to a closed area where all food and water inputs are carefully controlled.

A wide variety of feed additives are provided, including growth hormones,antibiotics in feed and water, and arsenic. Arsenic, though banned in European livestock production, is used domestically as a growth promoter to compensate for poor growing conditions and for pigmentation.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), approximately 70 percent of the 8.7 billion broiler chickens produced annually are fed arsenic (Wallinga 2006a). In a recent study, 55 percent of raw, supermarket chicken contained detectable arsenic, and nearly 75 percent of breasts, thighs, and livers from conventional producers carried detectable arsenic (Wallinga 2006a). Arsenic causes cancer and contributes to other diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and decreased intellectual function. Even low exposures to this type of serious toxin are generally presumed to be risky (Wallinga, 2006b).

In many areas of the US, groundwater used for drinking water may be naturally high in arsenic. The application of arsenic-laden manure further contributes to this drinking-water concern (Christen 2006).

Since 1972, there has been a tripling of counties that have more that 55 percent of their plantings in corn and soybeans (Porter, Russelle, and Finley 2000). Corn and soybeans are two of the most overproduced crops. Twenty-five percent of all US farmland—80 million acres—now grows corn (Christensen 2002).

...Petroleum-derived nitrogen and other fertilizers must be added to soils. Poor nitrogen retention by corn and soy rotation results in contaminated surface waters that migrate to the Gulf of Mexico, where nitrogen creates massive annual algae blooms. These blooms metabolize all available oxygen, leaving a 20,000 square kilometer dead zone in the Gulf

Environmental exposures are widespread. For example, concentrations of atrazine, alachlor, and broadleaf pesticide 2,4-D in rainwater have been reported to exceed the safe drinking-water standards (Gilliom, Alley, and Gurtz 1995). A 1994 study estimated that 14.1 million Americans drank water contaminated with the pesticides atrazine, cyanazine, simazine, alachlor, and metolachlor (Wiles et al. 1994).

Extensive herbicide use in agricultural areas (accounting for about 70 percent of total national use of pesticides) has resulted in widespread contamination of herbicides in agricultural streams and shallow ground water. The chance of finding agricultural weed killers in house dust increases by 6 percent for every 10 acres of cropland found within a roughly 800-yard perimeter of a house (Raloff 2006). Farm-worker and community exposures are another concern. Use of agricultural chemicals known to cause cancer in California increased 127 percent from 1991 to 1998.

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All this doom and gloom though is part of an excellent article about why it is no good going on treating illnesses while their causes are ignored.

"REDEFINING HEALTHY FOOD:AN ECOLOGICAL HEALTH APPROACH TO FOOD PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION AND PROCUREMENT"

Jamie Harvie, PE

Paper presented by The Center for Health Design® and
Health Care Without Harm at a conference sponsored by
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, September 2006.

Read more here....

 

 

 

If like me you are lucky enough to be able to go outside and pick vegetables, like these delicious beans, straight from your own garden, then thank goodness you can eat tonight without wondering if your food is related to this article!

 

ps Erica's dog LOVES beans and fruit straight off the plants.... he even climbs trees to pick apricots!

THIS IS OUTRAGIOURS!

I noticed this article in the Hills and Valley Messenger, July 2
Your Garden, Malcolm Campbell
“A global fertilizer shortage has seen bulk nutrient prices soar by up to 200% in the past few months. The price hike, to hit retailers in coming weeks, has been caused by an export tax imposed on Chinese manufactures. Most of our garden fertilizers come from China, so it may be worthwhile stockpiling your favourite supplies at current prices.”

Why do we need to import all our needs from China?
Australia was once isolated and produced most things ourselves.
The miles agriculture inputs travel needs to be added on to the total food miles for produce .I know of certified organic farmers that import kelp from NZ and Canada, how can this be sustainable or the produce local? Many ’organic’ fertilizers have these imported ingredients in them as well as ingredients from all over the country.

Worst of all why do home gardeners need to stockpile fertilizer, let alone use it! If you answered ‘too much fertilizer’ to all the talkback gardening problems you would be right 80% of the time.
Apart from a small amount of fertilizer to start off a garden on a new block, despite our soils being old and worn out home gardens require very little in the way of inputs to be productive and beautiful. Take citrus for example, a shallow rooted feeder .The other day it was recommended to feed these plants in Spring and at 3 weekly periods in the growing season RUBISH that’s about selling fertilizer not growing plants.
Gardeners need to look to producing their own fertility. This can be done by composting both household and garden wastes. In the garden you can grow a range of plants that provide good sources of nutrients, special compost plants like nettles, comfrey and clovers as well as weeds are valuable in building fertility. Add a couple of chooks and you should never need to buy in fertilizer again and your garden will be happier and if you grow heritage plants they generally need less fertilizer. More fertilizer means the plants also need more water.