Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

"... our food system has major flaws which point to one reoccurring theme:
too much of our food is produced by centralized, industrial concerns...  I
still hold that until we diversify and decentralize our food growing system
and learn to eat locally and seasonally, we only open up ourselves for more
of the same." - Alton Brown

Edible News E. coli 0157:H7
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
http://www.altonbrown.com/adventure/knowledge/edible_news.html

It’s 11:30 pm on Monday night and as of 1pm today 114 persons are
infected with E. coli 0157:H7 in 21 states.  According to the Centers For
Disease Control and Prevention here’s the breakdown:

Ecoli California (1)
Connecticut(2)
Idaho (4)
Illinois (1)
Indiana (8)
Kentucky (6)
Maine (2)
Michigan (4)
Minnesota (2)
Nebraska (1)
New Mexico (5)
Nevada (1)
New York (7)
Ohio (10)
Oregon (5)
Pennsylvania (4)
Utah (15)
Virginia (1)
Washington (2)
Wisconsin (32)
Wyoming (1)

In short, a lot of people are sick and one person has died in Wisconsin.
This is a bad thing.  And yet, it was going to happen.  It was bound to
happen.

I don’t want to sound like some crazy, anti-establishment bio-terrorist
but maybe, just maybe this is a wakeup call.  Truth is our food system has
major flaws which point to one reoccurring theme: too much of our food is
produced by centralized, industrial concerns.  At this hour the continued
suspicion is that the spinach, which may have been infected by irrigation
water in a field, incorrectly composted manure used as fertilizer on
organic crops, or by water used in processing.  It may be quite a while
before we know.

Now look at the states listed above.  21 states affected by spinach grown
not only in one state but in one region of one state.  Had the spinach
stayed near home odds are good this would have been caught sooner.  But
packaging and trucking just gave the 0157:H7 time to grow. (For some reason
I’m reminded of Charlie Sheen in Apocalypse Now talking about “…every
minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger…”.)  What’s my
point?  Had the big chain grocers and restaurant suppliers purchased
locally grown produce, this wouldn’t have happened.  But don’t blame
them.  Nope. Blame us.  By demanding fresh spinach year round (or anything
else for that matter) we create  the monster.  It’s like Dan Akroyd
thinking of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghost Busters.  Our own
unnatural desires and our refusal to consume locally grown foods have
brought us to this sorry state.

And to make matters worse, our ever-wise government has told us to eat no
fresh spinach at all. They could have advised us to eat only locally grown
spinach but Noooooooo.  Let’s shoot every poor farmer in America that’s
doing his or her job in the foot.  And why?  Because we can’t sort out
what went there when and how and what it might have touched or been near.
Here’s the news kids: when the system gets this big and out of whack, all
the king’s horses and all the king’s men (and the USDA and the CDC, and
the FDA) cannot keep us safe.  I want you to think about that a minute.
It’s not their fault.  it simply cannot be done.  It should not be done.

Right now everyone is doing what they have to do and by the looks of it
they’re doing it right.  I’m hoping that ground zero for this outbreak
will be discovered and that something will be learned.  But I still hold
that until we diversify and decentralize our food growing system and learn
to eat locally and seasonally, we only open up ourselves for more of the
same.

And let that be a lesson to us all.