Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

The Invisible Trust Fund: Organic Foods
http://www.organicfamilymagazine.com/Clea_Danaan.html
By Clea Danaan

As a mother of a breastfeeding baby, I am very aware of everything I eat. I
want my daughter to get the best nutrition possible, avoid allergies, and
receive as few pesticides as possible. Eating organic foods, despite the
sometimes much higher prices, feels like a crucial commitment to the
present and future health of my child. Not only does it give her the
highest nutrition, it helps preserve the beautiful planet she now lives on,
and is one little way I can try to assure she has the best future possible.

Organically grown food is much more nutritious than conventionally grown
vegetables. A study in the UK found that organic produce contains much
higher amounts of magnesium, vitamin C, phosphorus and iron than those
conventionally grown. Conventionally grown beans have one-tenth the iron of
organic beans, while conventional spinach contains half the calcium of
organic spinach. Organic lettuce, cabbage, spinach, and potatoes contain
particularly high levels of minerals. We absorb nutrients through food far
better than through vitamin supplements, and vitamin deficiencies can lead
not only to physical health problems, but depression and anxiety as well.

Danish researchers found significantly higher amounts of antioxidants –
from ten to fifty percent more – in organically grown produce.
Antioxidants reduce our risk of developing cancers and coronary heart
disease. A study in Sweden suggests that consuming organic foods may reduce
the prevalence of allergies as well.

Not only does organic food contain more nutrients, but also a lot less
poison than conventionally grown produce. The Pesticide Action Network
North America found when they examined data collected by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that essentially all Americans contain
in our bodies a cocktail of dangerous pesticides. While the EPA and CDC
know some of the ill effects of individual chemicals, there are almost no
studies demonstrating what might happen when these pesticides are combined.
Our bodies have become living chemistry laboratories, containing toxic
levels of dozens of kinds of dangerous chemicals.

The highest amounts of toxic pesticides were found in children, women, and
Mexican Americans. I find it staggering that the average 6 to 11-year-old
studied by the CDC is exposed to four times the “acceptable” level of
the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a chemical known to interrupt nerve development
in humans. The women studied had extremely high levels of organchlorine
pesticides in their blood and urine samples, chemicals that inhibit brain
and neural development in fetuses when they cross the placenta.

Our bodies are not able to pass many of the chemicals, pesticides, and
other pollutants we are exposed to; over time, pesticides build to toxic
levels. We store many of them in our fatty tissue, from which we draw extra
nutrients for breastfeeding. Though it is still the absolutely best food
for our babies, breast milk contains extremely high levels of pesticides
and POPs, or persistent organic pollutants, chemicals that do not break
down easily.

Of course, it is not only humans who are adversely affected by pesticides.
According to the Worldwatch Institute, converting one percent of United
States’ lawns to organic garden space “would reduce the toxic pesticide
exposure to families and wildlife by up to 3.4 million kilograms per year,
while also helping to reduce reliance on energy-intensive commercial food
transport.” What if every fourth household converted their lawn to a
pesticide-free garden? That might be 20% of existing lawn in the United
States; translating to 68 million kilograms less toxic pesticide exposure
in food, soil, and water. That means healthier children, water, and
wildlife. It means living more respectfully toward the natural world –
including us humans.

One study found a strong association between home pesticide use, especially
lawn treatment and pest extermination, and some types of childhood cancers.
The traditional American Dream may include acres of rolling jade-green
lawns and year-round produce selection at the local grocer, but does it
include our children dying young of cancer?

In addition to growing organic fruits and vegetables on our own land, we
can make a big difference by buying organic produce from local sources.
Brian Halweil of the Worldwatch Institute writes, “A head of lettuce
grown in the Salinas Valley of California and shipped nearly 3,000 miles to
Washington, D.C., requires about 36 times as much fossil fuel energy in
transport as it provides in food energy when it arrives.” Take that much
inefficient use of fossil fuel out of the picture, and you end up with less
reliance on ecologically harmful oil drilling and unstable Middle Eastern
nations.

Furthermore, fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide, a molecule that traps
heat on the earth and is largely responsible for the greenhouse effect.
Organic gardening actually helps to reduce and even reverse greenhouse
gases accumulating in the atmosphere by collecting and retaining carbon in
organic soil. The Rodale Institute determined after a twenty-three
year-long study that organic soils help retain carbon, reducing and even
reversing the overabundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Recently Americans have been alerted to our vulnerability from bioterrorism
and the spread of infections, like Mad Cow Disease. By importing our food
from around the world and shipping it across the country in large cargo
containers, we put ourselves at risk for food tampering or delivery
disruption by terrorists. We also bring in foreign pesticides, which may be
controlled even less stringently than in the United States, and foreign
diseases. The 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak in the United Kingdom was traced
to grain imported from China, and it spread rapidly via cows transported to
central slaughterhouses. We can create a better ecological and political
future for our children by buying locally grown organic foods.

Doing so helps our communities as well. In the United States, most people
get their produce from the supermarket. Most of the food in supermarkets
comes from giant agribusiness conglomerates. These corporations control
farms, acting as the only purchaser of the farmer’s produce as well as
the supplier of the farmer’s seed, fertilizer, and other supplies. That
farmer sees very little of the money we pay at the supermarket; most of the
purchase price of food goes to packaging and marketing.

That money, along with additional government subsidy, pays for chemical
fertilizers and pesticides. Agriculture today is the largest polluter and
uses the most petroleum of any industry. Its use of pesticides and
cultivation of monoculture (an entire field of potatoes or broccoli)
reduces biodiversity through habitat loss and accidental or intentional
poisoning of wildlife. Food diversity has also suffered world-wide, because
agribusiness farms grow what is most hardy and least perishable – not
what is healthiest or most flavorful. Those foods can only be grown
locally.

Local foods, grown in your yard, in a community plot, or a local organic
farm, keep money local. Buying locally ensures that small farms can avoid
being folded into the oligopolistic agriculture market and losing control
over their own land. Growing your own food keeps more funds in your pocket
as you do not pay for shipping, packaging, or other extra costs – just
the food and your time spent in the garden. Sharing your garden bounty with
neighbors or shopping at the local farmer’s market builds community;
strong community means lower crime rates and individuals whose needs are
met more efficiently.

Fred Kirshenmann, organic farmer, said, “Food is not like any other
commodity. Food is a community creature. Food has always been at the center
of community celebrations – a wedding, a birthday. So the industrial
giants who want to completely commodify our food and reduce it to roughage
for profit are bucking against a very powerful cultural phenomenon –
hospitably. But true hospitality emerges when we each bring something to
the table.”

When we each bring something to the table, grown by our own hands, we teach
our community and our children about true hospitality. Children who garden
learn the value of cooperation and working with the land. They discover the
joys and sorrows of the life cycle, and of responsibility for their
actions. Children who garden eat more fresh vegetables, reducing their
chances of becoming obese later in life; and gardening together teaches
youth about cooperation, participation, and self-motivation. By sharing
with their neighborhood, especially those in need, they learn about sharing
and peace-making. Eating carrots grown by the old man down the street, they
learn about respect for others, regardless of ethnicity, age, or class.
They learn about compassion. Derrick Jensen writes, “Part of our task as
members of a community is to feed each other.” He includes the non-humans
in his definition of community.

Organic, locally grown produce means less cancer and heart disease, less
obesity, reduced greenhouse gases, lower crime rates, and safer, more
financially robust communities. It makes for healthier breast milk, which
builds a healthier child; my commitment to organic foods feels like an
invisible trust fund for my daughter. I suspect the readers of this
magazine would agree that organic foods are better than those
conventionally grown, but like me might balk at the higher cost. Every time
I purchase organic fruits, vegetables, meats, and other foods, I see past
the sticker price by reminding myself that my choice puts “pennies in the
bank” for my child, the planet, my community, and the future.

Sources

Assadourian, Erik. “Cultivating the Butterfly Effect.” World Watch
Magazine. World Watch Institute, January/February 2003.

Ausubel, Kenny. Restoring the Earth: Visionary Solutions from the Bioneers.
Tiburon, California: H J Kramer. 1997.

Cleeton, James. “Organic foods in relation to nutrition and health key
facts.”
11 Jul 2004. This factsheet is a summary of an article published in
“Coronary and Diabetic Care in the UK 2004” by the Association of
Primary Care Groups and Trusts (UK).
http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/health-benefits.cfm, accessed
December 8, 2005.

Gardner, Gary & Brian Halweil. “Overfed and Underfed: The Global Epidemic
of Malnutrition.” Worldwatch Paper 150. March 2000.

“Globetrotting Food Will Travel Farther Than Ever This Thanksgiving.”
Worldwatch Institute, press release, November 21 2002. Accessed March 25,
2005, at http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/2002/11/21/.

Jensen, Derrick. A Language Older than Words. White River Jct., Vermont:
Chelsea Green, 2004.

Leiss, J.K.; Savitz, D.A. “Home pesticide use and childhood cancer: a
case-control study.” American journal of public health. New York, N.Y.:
Feb 1995. v. 85 (2), p. 249-252.

“Pesticide Residues from Non-Organic Foods Building Up in Our Bodies.”
Pesticide Action Network. May 11, 2004.

Sullivan, Dan. “Organic Gardens Help Fight Global Warming.” Organic
Gardening. Jan/Feb 2004, 51(1).



If you are citing this work, please use the following citiation
information:

Danaan, Clea. 2006. The Invisible Trust Fund: Organic Foods. Organic Family
Magazine 7:5-6
available at: www.organicfamilymagazine.com