Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

 I agree, Pat. Here's one part that caught my attention:

"All together the food-processing industry in the United States uses about
ten calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy it
produces. That number does not include the fuel used in transporting the
food from the factory to a store near you, or the fuel used by millions of
people driving to thousands of super discount stores on the edge of town,
where the land is cheap."

And of course that doesn't count the fossil fuel energy to grow those
crops.

The evidence for grow local, eat local is everywhere.

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 6/18/2006 at 3:08 PM Pat Meadows wrote:

>On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 09:58:23 -0600, you wrote:
>
>>
>>http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html is a must read, folks.
>
>Very interesting, thanks.
>
>However, I'll be petty about it, because I disagree with him
>on a few points.
>
>This statement is erroneous:  'Likewise, you can’t eat
>unprocessed wheat.'  You most certainly can, and I often
>have.
>
>Wheat kernels (wheat berries), unprocessed, can be cooked
>(boiled) and eaten like rice, and they are very nice.  If
>you're willing to grind them just a little, you can have
>cracked wheat that cooks faster.  But even the whole wheat
>kernels are eminently edible.  You could sprout them too, if
>you want to, and eat the sprouted wheat grass.  But let's
>say that sprouting is 'processing' them.  You can still eat
>the whole wheat kernels; the only processing required is
>threshing them and cooking them.
>
>I think the following statement is inaccurate too:
>
>'Still, these livestock do something we can’t. They convert
>grain’s carbohydrates to high-quality protein.'
>
>We can certainly get the protein we need from grains, if we
>also eat complementary proteins (legumes being the obvious
>choice, dairy products another good choice, and there are
>others).  We are then 'converting grain's carbohydrates to
>high quality protein'.
>
>It's perfectly possible to be healthy and enjoy a long life
>while eating NO animal foods whatsoever:  I only need point
>to the Jains in India - for many hundreds of years, many
>Jains have been both vegan and healthy.
>
>I'm neither a vegetarian nor a vegan, but it irks me to see
>inaccuracies like this and detracts from an otherwise very
>interesting article, IMHO.
>
>Pat
>
>
>--
>Gardening in northern Pennsylvania.
>
>Eat local food, change the world for the better!
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