Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[<cordalie.benoit@aya.yale.edu>]

I need some simple materials to discourage (or encourage to no till) 
community gardeners in New Haven, CT from wanting to rototill their plots. 
Thanks, Cordalie
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 12:00 PM
Subject: Livingontheland Digest, Vol 90, Issue 6


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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. tastier snow peas (yarrow@sfo.com)
>   2. Re: bees and vegetables (mtncats)
>   3. Re: What do you cook your organic food in? (Ken Hargesheimer)
>   4. Re: bees and vegetables (Claudia & Linda)
>   5. Everything you didn't want to know about Colony Collapse
>      Disorder (Douglas  Willhite)
>   6. Re: What do you cook your organic food in? (BirdWalk)
>   7. Re: tastier snow peas (Dieter Brand)
>   8. Kingsolver Releases New Book on Local Food (TradingPostPaul)
>   9. Certified Naturally Grown (TradingPostPaul)
>  10. Re: Carbon Farmer (Dieter Brand)
>  11. Food preservation and democracy (Douglas  Willhite)
>  12. Health, Justice and Sustainability News Tidbits
>      (Douglas  Willhite)
>  13. Fwd: MODERN MIRACLE MEN (Tradingpost)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 00:56:31 -0700
> From: yarrow@sfo.com
> Subject: [Livingontheland] tastier snow peas
> To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
> <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <f06110403c260960e3189@[66.81.79.153]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
>
> Speaking of brix...I was talking with a fellow community gardener
> today, who was wondering why her snow peas were not sweet. So we
> taste-tested hers and mine; mine were sweet, hers were more bland and
> did have a bitter edge. I grew mine with homemade compost; she used
> an organic fertilizer (EB Stone?). We both watered every 2-3 days,
> and picked them at about the same size. Maybe hers had too much N?
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri,  4 May 2007 07:58:24 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "mtncats" <mtncats@myway.com>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] bees and vegetables
> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <20070504115824.3E24646859@mprdmxin.myway.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
>
> Wow.  I presume that's ususual.  My NW Ohio friends tell me how cold it's 
> been, still haven't put their boat in Erie.  Latest ever.
>
> Spring was very late for most forest plants here this year but I've had a 
> large number of buzzing critters in my garden.  As my wintered-over 
> arugula's going to seed, we had the normal variety/quantity of "bees" (no 
> entomologist here).
>
> Tom (in central Virginia)
>
>
>
>
> --- On Thu 05/03, elderberryjam < elderberryjam@zippytech.com > wrote in 
> part:
>
> Second question: is it still possible to get bees and start home hives; 
> and if so, where is the best place to look? There are others I can ask, 
> but thought I'd ask here also. I went for a walk out in the pasture today, 
> and saw a grand total of 2 bumble bees on the numerous dandelions, in all 
> my walk. It was in the 70's here in Ohio.
>
> _______________________________________________
> No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
> Make My Way  your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 05:08:45 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Ken Hargesheimer <minifarms2@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] What do you cook your organic food in?
> To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
> <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <418967.19190.qm@web36507.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=475
>
>  If this does not scare you, nothing will.
>
>  Ken Hargesheimer
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Bored stiff? Loosen up...
> Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games.
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 09:46:04 -0500
> From: "Claudia & Linda" <dragonhill2@netzero.net>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] bees and vegetables
> To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"
> <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <009601c78e5a$f1dfdf10$07dee204@YOURDC3E0B8F38>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
> Gwen, in answer to your second question--yes, it is still possible to get
> bees and start a home hive.  Your best bet is to see if you can find a 
> local
> beekeeping club; usually beekeepers are a friendly bunch and club members
> will help newcomers get started.  Some members may have "nucs" (frames of
> brood, with a few thousand bees and a queen) to sell you or they can tell
> you where to buy a nuc.  Used to you could buy packaged bees thru the mail
> from Dadant, but now I understand you have to pick them up at one of their
> branches.  I think you can still buy a nuc thru the mail and there are
> places that have those.  I have one source for nucs but I don't have the
> name and address handy.  If you're interested, I'll look it up for you.  I
> used to keep several hives of bees but lost my last one about 3 years ago.
> I just set up a new hive again this spring.  With all the pressure on 
> honey
> bees I figure everyone who possibly can should keep hives.  You really
> should have more than one hive so if a hive becomes weak you can combine 
> it
> with a stronger hive or give it brood from a stronger hive.  You just
> increase your chances of success if you have two or more hives.  My aim is
> to have at least 5 hives eventually but just one nuc was available locally
> to begin with.  Hopefully I can keep the mites under control and avoid 
> this
> new Colony Collapse Disorder and all the other threats to bees and get 
> this
> hive off to a good start.
>
> Claudia
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "elderberryjam" <elderberryjam@zippytech.com>
> To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 10:54 PM
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] bees and vegetables
>
>
> > This year I ordered about $75 worth of seeds from Baker's Creek, and 
> > Seeds
> > of Change. Now I'd like to know, what vegetables are least dependent on
> > bees
> > for pollination? We are late getting our garden in. DH just plowed - I
> > know
> > many of you prefer no-till and all that, but we haven't plowed for 
> > several
> > years, and this was the year. I can't plant everything I bought this 
> > year.
> >
> > Second question: is it still possible to get bees and start home hives;
> > and
> > if so, where is the best place to look? There are others I can ask, but
> > thought I'd ask here also. I went for a walk out in the pasture today, 
> > and
> > saw a grand total of 2 bumble bees on the numerous dandelions, in all my
> > walk. It was in the 70's here in Ohio. A local beekeeper we know,
> > according
> > to my folks, has lost 90% of his hundreds of hives. I don't see he and 
> > his
> > wife often enough to ask them much.
> >
> > Thanks,  Gwen
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Livingontheland mailing list
> > Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 09:40:51 -0700
> From: "Douglas  Willhite" <drwillhite@earthlink.net>
> Subject: [Livingontheland] Everything you didn't want to know about
> Colony Collapse Disorder
> To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <A0FF2AB359B547759AE1F5E64D54B313@DouglasPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> This is the best article I've found to date on Colony Collapse Disorder. 
> Unless there's an important breakthrough I won't be sending more articles 
> about it.  --  Doug
>
>
> Everything you didn't want to know about Colony Collapse Disorder
> By Peter Dearman
>
> It sounds like the start of a Kurt Vonnegut novel:
>
>  Nobody worried all that much about the loss of a few animal species here 
> and there until one day the bees came to their senses and decided to quit 
> producing an unnaturally large surplus of honey for our benefit. One by 
> one, they went on strike and flew off to parts unknown.
>
> Among the various mythologies of the apocalypse, fear of insect plagues 
> has always loomed larger than fear of species loss. But this may change, 
> as a strange new plague is wiping out our honey bees one hive at a time. 
> It has been named Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, by the apiculturalists 
> and apiarists who are scrambling to understand and hopefully stop it. 
> First reported last autumn in the U.S., the list of afflicted countries 
> has now expanded to include several in Europe, as well as Brazil, Taiwan, 
> and possibly Canada. (1)(24)(29)
>
> Apparently unknown before this year, CCD is said to follow a unique 
> pattern with several strange characteristics. Bees seem to desert their 
> hive or forget to return home from their foraging runs. The hive 
> population dwindles and then collapses once there are too few bees to 
> maintain it. Typically, no dead bee carcasses lie in or around the 
> afflicted hive, although the queen and a few attendants may remain.
>
> The defect, whatever it is, afflicts the adult bee. Larvae continue to 
> develop normally, even as a hive is in the midst of collapse. Stricken 
> colonies may appear normal, as seen from the outside, but when beekeepers 
> look inside the hive box, they find a small number of mature bees caring 
> for a large number of younger and developing bees that remain. Normally, 
> only the oldest bees go out foraging for nectar and pollen, while younger 
> workers act as nurse bees caring for the larvae and cleaning the comb. A 
> healthy hive in mid-summer has between 40,000 and 80,000 bees.
>
> Perhaps the most ominous thing about CCD, and one of its most 
> distinguishing characteristics, is that bees and other animals living 
> nearby refrain from raiding the honey and pollen stored away in the dead 
> hive. In previously observed cases of hive collapse (and it is certainly 
> not a rare occurrence) these energy stores are quickly stolen. But with 
> CCD the invasion of hive pests such as the wax moth and small hive beetle 
> is noticeably delayed. (2)
>
> Among the possible culprits behind CCD are: a fungus, a virus, a 
> bacterium, a pesticide (or combination of pesticides), GMO crops bearing 
> pesticide genes, erratic weather, or even cell phone radiation. "The odds 
> are some neurotoxin is what's causing it," said David VanderDussen, a 
> Canadian beekeeper who recently won an award for developing an 
> environmentally friendly mite repellent. Then again, according to Dennis 
> vanEngelsdorp, the top bee specialist with the Pennsylvania State 
> Department of Agriculture, "We are pretty sure, but not certain, that it 
> is a contagious disease." Their comments notwithstanding, most scientists 
> are unwilling to say they understand the problem beyond describing its 
> outward appearance. Perhaps a government or UN task force would be a good 
> idea right about now. (3)(25)
>
> According to an FAQ published on March 9, 2007 by the Colony Collapse 
> Disorder Working Group based primarily at Penn State University, the first 
> report of CCD was made in mid-November 2006 by Dave Hackenberg, a 
> Pennsylvania beekeeper overwintering his 2900 hives in Florida. Only 1000 
> survived. Soon other migratory beekeepers reported similar heavy losses. 
> Subsequent reports from beekeepers painted a picture of a marked increase 
> in die-offs, which led to the present concern among bee experts. (2)
>
> The name CCD was invented by vanEngelsdorp and his colleagues at Penn 
> State. It reflects their somewhat medical view of the situation. The BBC 
> suggested in a sub-headline to a story on CCD that the problem would be 
> more aptly named the "vanishing bee syndrome." This proposal may have 
> merit, considering how mass opinion polls influence policy these days. (4)
>
> News of the CCD problem hit all of the major media networks in February 
> 2006. A widely run Associated Press story said reports of unusual colony 
> deaths have come in from at least 22 states, and that some commercial 
> beekeepers reported losing more than half of their bees. The same story 
> informed that autopsies of CCD bees showed higher than normal levels of 
> fungi, bacteria and other pathogens, as well as weakened immune systems. 
> It appears as if the bees have got the equivalent of AIDS. (5)
>
> An April 15, 2007 story in The Independent reported that the west coast of 
> the U.S. may have lost 60% of its commercial bee population, with an even 
> greater 70% loss on the east coast. The same story said that one of 
> London's biggest bee-keepers recently reported 23 of his 40 hives empty. 
> But, the U.K. Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was 
> quoted as saying, "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK." (6)
>
> One must wonder where the truth lies considering the level of 
> sensationalism prevalent in the British press. Case in point, this same 
> story (among several others, to be fair) attributes a juicy but dubious 
> quote to Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, 
> then man would only have four years of life left." (6)(7)
>
> Einstein, in all likelihood, never said that, but if he did, it is a 
> justifiable exaggeration. Bees certainly are important, and it will get 
> ugly if we lose them. "It's not the staples," said Jeff Pettis of the U.S. 
> Agricultural Research Service. "If you can imagine eating a bowl of 
> oatmeal every day with no fruit on it, that's what it would be like" 
> without honeybee pollination. (8)
>
> The beekeeping industry underpins the American agricultural industry to 
> the tune of $US 15 billion or more. The picture is similar in many 
> countries, especially in the West. Honey bees are used commercially to 
> pollinate about one third of crop species in the U.S. This includes 
> almonds, broccoli, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, 
> raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, and strawberries. Other insects, 
> including other kinds of bees, may be used to pollinate some of these 
> crops, but only bees are reliable on a commercial scale. If the bees go, 
> we will see a change for the worse at our local supermarkets. (1)
>
> Of course everyone is hoping for a quick solution to appear, and 
> tantalizing reports have emerged. Recent military research at Edgewood 
> Chemical Biological Center claims to have narrowed the likely cause of CCD 
> to a virus, a micro-parasite or both. This work used a new technology 
> called the Integrated Virus Detection System (IVDS), which can rapidly 
> screen samples for pathogens.
>
> These virus laden samples were sent to UC San Francisco, where a 
> suspicious fungus was also discovered in them, suggesting the possibility 
> that the fungus is either an immunosuppressive factor or the fatal 
> pathogen that kills the bees. These "highly preliminary" findings were 
> announced in an April 25, 2007 Los Angeles Times story with the headline, 
> "Experts may have found what's bugging the bees." The story called it "the 
> first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause," and even noted that 
> "there is reason to believe this fungus can be controlled by the 
> antibiotic fumagillin." (10) (25)
>
> One wonders why the trade name of a pesticide made it into such a story, 
> but the presence of pathogens in bees should come as no surprise to anyone 
> who has been keeping up to date on bee health. Nearly all beekeepers use a 
> variety of chemical and pesticide treatments on their hive boxes out of 
> sheer necessity. A pantheon of mites, fungi and microbes prey on bees. 
> These pests are predictably developing resistance to the chemical 
> treatments we use to fight them. If the new IVDS results are conclusive 
> and lead to a silver bullet solution, that will be wonderful, but such a 
> simple model of CCD is unlikely to be the real key to saving our prime 
> pollinators. (9)
>
> It is worth noting that, while CCD has been presented to the media as a 
> sudden new problem, these same theories about causative infections have 
> already been presented to explain previous bee die-offs, especially those 
> in the spring of 2005, which were attributed to the now infamous varroa 
> mite, a.k.a. "vampire mite," which began infecting American honey bees in 
> 1987. (31)
>
> About the size of a pinhead, and with eight legs, it feeds on the blood of 
> adult bees like a tick, and even worse, it also eats the bee larvae. 
> Varroa is the bane of beekeepers everywhere except China, where it 
> originated, and the honey bees have local resistance. In a case of sadly 
> ironic timing, Hawaii just reported its first case of varroa a few weeks 
> ago. (26)
>
> LiveScience senior writer, Robert Roy Britt wrote in a May, 2005 story 
> about the mite: "Up to 60 percent of hives in some regions have been wiped 
> out. Entire colonies can collapse within two weeks of being infested. 
> North Carolina fears it is on the verge of an agricultural crisis. No 
> state is immune." (11)
>
> A Science Daily story dated May 18, 2005, and sourced to Penn State, 
> purported to explain why varroa was so bad. Entitled, "Bee Mites Suppress 
> Bee Immunity, Open Door for Viruses and Bacteria," it explained research 
> into levels of 'deformed wing virus,' a mutagenic pathogen that is 
> believed to persist in bee populations because it makes guard bees more 
> aggressive. Bees of a given hive normally carry low levels of this virus, 
> but the Penn State researchers found that virus levels shot sky high 
> during secondary infections if, and only if, the bees also had varroa 
> mites. It should be clear why the varroa mite is on everyone's list of 
> things to examine in the fight against CCD. (12)
>
> Another perspective
>
> Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic 
> beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in 
> Ottawa's House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada's 
> fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her 
> party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:
>
>  I'm on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly 
> Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including 
> commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The 
> problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their 
> hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. 
> They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money 
> with pollination services, which stresses the colonies. (13)
>
> Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site at bushfarms.com. 
> Here, Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world 
> right on the top page:
>
>  Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I'm happy to 
> say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the 
> winter and coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from lifting or 
> better ways to feed the bees.
>
>  This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I've gone to 
> natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long 
> time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what 
> you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker 
> brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. .What most people use for worker 
> brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into 
> three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as 
> large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, 
> I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One 
> cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter 
> post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, 
> and less Varroa reproduce in the cells. (14)
>
> Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us 
> that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a 
> larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, 
> have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the 
> CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? 
> Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?
>
> These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion 
> that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have 
> struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is 
> likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is 
> no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for 
> some time.
>
> "We've been pushing them too hard," Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate 
> professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, 
> told the CBC. "And we're starving them out by feeding them artificially 
> and moving them great distances." Given the stress commercial bees are 
> under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold 
> winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified 
> crops. Maybe it's all of the above. (24)
>
> This conclusion is not surprising, considering how the practice of 
> beekeeping has been made ultra-efficient in a competitive world run by 
> free market forces. Unlike many crops, honey is not given subsidy 
> protection in the United States despite the huge importance of the bee 
> industry to food production. The FDA has hardly moved at all to protect 
> American producers from "honey pretenders" - products containing little or 
> no honey that are imported and sold with misleading packaging. Rare is the 
> beekeeper that does not need pesticide treatments and other techniques 
> falling under the rubric of 'factory farming.' (15)
>
> You might be justifiably stunned to know how little money is being thrown 
> at this problem. A January 29, 2007 Penn State press release (just before 
> CCD hit the big networks) stated: "The beekeeping industry has been quick 
> to respond to the crisis. The National Honey Board has pledged $13,000 of 
> emergency funding to the CCD working group. Other organizations, such as 
> the Florida State Beekeepers Association, are working with their 
> membership to commit additional funds." A quick look at CostofWar.com will 
> tell you that that $13,000 buys about 4 seconds of war at the going rate. 
> Remember, these same scientists had presented the world with a similar 
> threat level two years ago. Apparently they were ignored. (16)
>
> Anyway, breathe easy; Congress has begun talking up the concept of getting 
> involved. On April 26, the Senate Agriculture Committee, perhaps not 
> trusting CNN, heard from representatives of the beekeeping industry just 
> how important a matter this is. Committee Chairman, Senator Tom Harkin 
> (D-Iowa) said the bee decline should be part of the current discussion of 
> a new farm bill. "The U.S. honey industry is facing one of the most 
> serious threats ever from colony collapse disorder," he stated. "The bee 
> losses associated with this disorder are staggering and portend equally 
> grave consequences for the producers of crops that rely on honeybees for 
> pollination. These crops include many specialty crops and alfalfa, so 
> viable honey bee colonies are critically important across our entire food 
> and agriculture sector." (17)
>
> Alfalfa? We should be worried because CCD threatens alfalfa and other 
> specialty crops? He means apples and stuff we can assume, because Mark 
> Brady, president of the American Honey Producers Association, had informed 
> the committee that "honey bees pollinate more than 90 food, fiber and seed 
> crops. In particular, the fruits, vegetables and nuts that are 
> cornerstones of a balanced and healthy diet are especially dependent on 
> continued access to honey bee pollination." Science is always a hard sell. 
> (17)
>
> Even before that committee meeting, on April 16, Senator Clinton wrote a 
> letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Mike Johanns, 
> asking "that you provide us (a bipartisan group of senators) with an 
> expedited report on the immediate steps that the Department is and will be 
> taking to determine the causes of CCD, and to develop appropriate 
> countermeasures for this serious disorder. In particular, we ask for a 
> specific explanation of how the Department plans to utilize its existing 
> resources and capabilities, including its four Agricultural Research 
> Service honeybee research labs, and to work with other public and private 
> sector enterprises in combating CCD." These are fine questions indeed. 
> (28)
>
> Hype or understatement?
>
> Bees are finely tuned machines, much more robot-like than your average 
> species. They operate pretty much like the Borg of Star Trek fame. A honey 
> bee cannot exist as an individual, and this is why some biologists speak 
> of them as super-organisms. They are sensitive barometers of environmental 
> pollution, quite useful for monitoring pesticide, radionuclide, and heavy 
> metal contamination. They respond to a vide variety of pollutants by dying 
> or markedly changing their behavior. Honeybees' stores of pollen and honey 
> are ideal for measuring contamination levels. Some pesticides are 
> exceptionally harmful to honey bees, killing individuals before they can 
> return to the hive. (18)
>
> Not surprisingly, the use of one or more new pesticides was, and likely 
> remains, on the short list of likely causes of CCD. But more than 
> pesticides could potentially be harming bees. Some scientists suspect 
> global warming. Temperature plays an integral part in determining mass 
> behavior of bees. To mention just one temperature response, each bee acts 
> as a drone thermostat, helping cool or warm the hive whenever it isn't 
> engaged in some other routine.
>
> As you might expect, rising temperatures in springtime cause bees to 
> become active. Erratic weather patterns caused by global warming could 
> play havoc with bees' sensitive cycles. A lot of northeastern U.S. 
> beekeepers say a late cold snap is what did the damage to them this year. 
> Bill Draper, a Michigan beekeeper, lost more than half of his 240 hives 
> this spring, but it wasn't his worst year for bee losses, and he doesn't 
> think CCD caused it. He thinks CCD might stem from a mix of factors from 
> climate change to breeding practices that put more emphasis on some 
> qualities, like resistance to mites, at the expense of other qualities, 
> like hardiness. (32)
>
> According to Kenneth Tignor, the state apiarist of Virginia, another 
> possibility with CCD is that the missing bees left their hives to look for 
> new quarters because the old hives became undesirable, perhaps from 
> contamination of the honey. This phenomenon, known as absconding, normally 
> occurs only in the spring or summer, when there is an adequate food 
> supply. But if they abscond in the autumn or winter, as they did last fall 
> in the U.S., Tignor says the bees are unlikely to survive. (19)
>
> A bee colony is a fine-tuned system, and a lot could conceivably go wrong. 
> This is presumably why some scientists suspect cell phone radiation is the 
> culprit behind CCD. This theory holds that radiation from mobile phones 
> interferes with bee navigation systems, preventing them from finding their 
> way home. German research has shown that bees behave differently near 
> power lines. Now, a preliminary study has found that bees refuse to return 
> to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. The head researcher 
> said the result might provide a "hint" of a possible cause. Maybe they 
> should check to see if beekeepers suddenly started using BlackBerrys in 
> 2004.
>
> It should be noted that the CCD Working Group at Penn State believes cell 
> phones are very unlikely to be causing the problem. Nor are they 
> interested in the possibility that GMO crops are responsible. Although GMO 
> crops can contain genes to produce pesticides, some of which may harm 
> bees, the distribution of CCD cases does not appear to correlate with GMO 
> crop plantings. (20)
>
> Honey bees are not native to North America or Europe. They are thought to 
> come from Southeast Asia, although some recent research based on genomic 
> studies indicates that their origin is actually in Africa. (21) 
> Regardless, they represent only seven of the approximately 20,000 known 
> species of bees. Apis mellifera, the most commonly domesticated species of 
> honey bee, was only the third insect to have its genome mapped. These 
> useful, and very prevalent, bees are commonly referred to as either 
> Western honey bees or European honey bees. Although it is a non-native 
> species, the honey bee has fit in well in America. It is the designated 
> state insect of fifteen states, which surely reflects its usefulness.
>
> Apis mellifera comes in a wide variety of sub-species adapted to different 
> climates and geographies. Behavior, color and anatomy can be quite 
> different from one sub-species to another, the infamous killer bees being 
> a case in point. The Native Americans called the honey bee "the white 
> man's fly." It was introduced to North America by European settlers in the 
> early 1600s, and soon escaped into the wild, spreading as far west as the 
> Rocky Mountains. Thus, there are significant numbers of feral hives in 
> North America, though most of the honey bees you will see are working 
> bees.
>
> But you may not have even seen one for a while. These days, many gardeners 
> are discovering that they must hand pollinate garden vegetables, thanks to 
> widespread pollinator decline. It is more than fair to say that the 
> extreme importance of honey bees as pollinators today stems from the fact 
> that native pollinators are in decline almost everywhere.
>
> The pollination of the American almond crop, which occurs in February and 
> March, is the largest managed pollination event in the world, requiring 
> more than one third of all the managed honey bees in the United States. 
> Massive numbers of hives are transported for this and other key 
> pollinations, including apples and blueberries. Honey bees are not 
> particularly efficient pollinators of blueberries, but they are used 
> anyway. We depend on managed honey bees because we are addicted to a 
> monoculture-based managed agricultural sector.
>
> There has been criticism that media coverage of the CCD story, perhaps in 
> its quest to achieve the requisite 'balance,' has been too rosy. Some 
> stories note that other pollinators are more significant than honey bees 
> for many crops. But these stories seldom go on to tell how other 
> pollinators are facing problems too. The BBC recently reported on the 
> Bumblebee Conservation Trust, which is currently enlisting the public's 
> help to catalogue bumblebee populations. The story noted that several of 
> the U.K.'s 25 species are endangered, and three have gone extinct in 
> recent years. (22)
>
> Another recent story in The Register stated that several U.K. bumblebee 
> species are "heading inexorably for extinction." According to scientists, 
> the process is caused by "pesticides and agricultural intensification" 
> which could have a "devastating knock-on effect on agriculture." The 
> disappearance of wildflower species has also been implicated in the 
> British bumblebee decline. (23)(20)
>
> Bumblebees are, however, doing well in one region, Neath Port Talbot, 
> which was declared the bumblebee capital of Wales in 2004 after experts 
> found 15 different species thriving there. This is almost certainly 
> because the local council allows roadside verges to become overgrown with 
> "weeds" and wildflowers. (20)
>
> Surprise - it's an ecosystem thing. As with honeybees and CCD, the root of 
> the bumblebee problem lies in our modern rationalist drive toward 
> endlessly ordering the world around us. The long-term solution is a return 
> to a more natural ecological order. This interpretation needs to be 
> conveyed when mainstream media tell the CCD story.
>
> Of course, with all the parasites, pathogens, pesticides and transit to 
> stress out our hardworking honey bees, they are in peril. Even if some 
> silver bullet saves us from CCD, it is more than obvious that we need to 
> pay more respect to bees, and to nature. This truth may be generalized to 
> most facets of our agricultural existence; the bees are just a warning. 
> Wherever you look, pests are getting stronger as the life forms we depend 
> on get weaker. Adding more chemicals isn't going to help for much longer.
>
> Beekeepers are a busy and underpaid lot, and we should pay more heed to 
> their services. Even now, with the vanishing bee story headlining on major 
> networks, government players appear to have their eyes elsewhere. "There 
> used to be a lot more regulation than there is today," says Arizona 
> beekeeper Victor Kaur. "People import bees and bring new diseases into the 
> country. One might be colony collapse disorder." (30)
>
> "The bees are dying, and I think people are to blame," is how Kaur puts it 
> simply. "Bee keeping is much more labor intensive now than it was 15 years 
> ago. It's a dying profession," he eulogizes. "The average age of a 
> beekeeper is 62, and there are only a couple of thousand of us left. There 
> are only about 2.5 million hives left. .It's too much work." (30)
>
> If CCD proves to be more than a one-time seasonal fluke, the job of 
> beekeeping just got a lot harder. Pollination can't be outsourced, 
> although it isn't too difficult to imagine fields full of exploited 
> underclass laborers pollinating crops by Q-tip. Let's hope we never have 
> to go there.
>
> Perhaps a sensible reaction to the information summarized in this short 
> article would be to write a letter to your government leaders. Insist that 
> they immediately allocate significant funding to combat CCD using a 
> variety of approaches. This must include ecological approaches such as 
> wildflower renewal. Furthermore, insist that our few remaining beekeepers 
> be given the support they deserve and desperately need at this important 
> juncture. Humanity cannot afford to ignore this battle. It's not science; 
> it's common sense.
>
> References
>
> 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
> Wikipedia
> 2 http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/FAQ/FAQCCD.pdf
> FAQ's Colony Collapse Disorder (PDF), Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and 
> Extension Consortium, CCD Working Group
> See also: http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/index.html
> 3 http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Alarm_sounded_over_US_honey_bee_die-off
> Alarm sounded over US honey bee die-off
> Wikinews, February 10, 2007
> 4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6438373.stm
> Vanishing bees threaten US crops
> By Matt Wells, March 11, 2007
> 5 http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/ap_070211_bee_disease.html
> Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
> By Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press, February 11, 2007
> 6 http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
> Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
> By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross, April 15, 2007
> 7 http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?p=137300
> Thread on dubious Einstein quote.
> 8 
> http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/04/22/vanishing.bees.reut/index.html
> Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists
> Reuters, April 22, 2007
> 9 http://www.bushfarms.com/beespests.htm
> Enemies of Bees
> by Michael Bush
> 10 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070426100117.htm
> Scientists Identify Pathogens That May Be Causing Global Honey-Bee Deaths
> Source: Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, April 26, 2007
> 11 http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050517_bee_mite.html
> Bees Wiped Out by Cascade of Deadly Events
> By Robert Roy Britt, May 17, 2005
> 12 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050517110843.htm
> Bee Mites Suppress Bee Immunity, Open Door For Viruses And Bacteria
> Source: Penn State, May 18, 2005
> 13 http://eepicheep.gnn.tv/B21650
> Labchuk's email is reproduced in comments section; authorship was 
> confirmed by this writer
> 14 http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
> Bush Bees Website
> 15 http://agriculture.senate.gov/Hearings/
> Regional Farm Bill field hearing: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, July 21, 2006
> 16 http://www.aginfo.psu.edu/News/07Jan/HoneyBees.htm
> Honey bee die-off alarms beekeepers, crop growers and researchers
> Penn State press release Jan 29, 2007
> 17 http://www.journaltimes.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=12512
> Colony collapse disorder is reducing U.S. bee population
> By Zena McFadden, Medill News Service, April 26, 2007
> 18 http://www.apimondia.org/apiacta/articles/2003/porrini.pdf
> Honey Bees and Bee Products as Monitors of the Environmental Contamination 
> (PDF)
> Porrini et al., University of Bologna,
> In Apiacta, the journal of the International Federation of Beekeepers' 
> Associations
> ( http://www.beekeeping.com/apimondia/apiacta_us.htm )
> 19 http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-04-27-voa3.cfm
> Taiwan Is Latest Country Stung by Vanishing Honey Bees
> By Jessica Berman, VOA News, April 27, 2007
> 20 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_west/3747337.stm
> Secret of bumblebee capital
> BBC, 25 May, 2004
> 21 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061211220927.htm
> Research Upsetting Some Notions About Honey Bees
> Source: Texas A&M University - Agricultural Communications, December 29, 
> 2006
> 22 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/6558973.stm
> Bid to halt bumblebee decline
> BBC, April 16, 2007
> 23 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/17/bumblebee_crisis/
> UK's bumblebees face extinction
> By Lester Haines
> 24 http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/insects/
> In Depth Insects: The plight of the honeybee
> CBC News Online, Updated April 12, 2007
> 25 http://www.thestar.com/article/203818
> Why are Niagara's bees dying?
> By Dana Flavelle, Toronto Star, April 17, 2007
> 26 http://tinyurl.com/2wnyjv
> Bee mite found on Oahu
> Apr 12, 2007 by Katherine Fisher, Hawaii Health Guide.com
> 27 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/
> Experts may have found what's bugging the bees
> By Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II, LA Times, April 26, 2007
> 28 http://tinyurl.com/246o9v
> Senator Clinton Calls on USDA to Respond
> All American Patriots, April 20, 2007
> 29 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/26/taiwan_bee_mystery/
> Taiwan mislays millions of honeybees
> By Lester Haines, The Register, April 26, 2007
> 30 http://tinyurl.com/39a2wk
> Collapsing colonies
> By Joanne C. Twaddell, The Daily Courier, April 23, 2007
> 31 http://tinyurl.com/343f8b
> A Comparison of Russian and Italian Honey Bees (PDF)
> By David R. Tarpy, NC State University, and Jeffrey Lee, Beekeeper, Mebane 
> NC
> 32 http://tinyurl.com/37ax5j
> Tiers bees avoid deadly disease
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 12:54:50 -0500
> From: "BirdWalk" <birdwalk@frontiernet.net>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] What do you cook your organic food in?
> To: "'Healthy soil and sustainable growing'"
> <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID:
> <20070504175609.CBC92180E6F@relay02.roch.ny.frontiernet.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> So...............  is there anyway to remove this toxin from our bodies?
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
>
> If this does not scare you, nothing will.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 12:22:12 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] tastier snow peas
> To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
> <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <443058.28453.qm@web63413.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> That could well be it.  There is no need to use fertilizer for legumes 
> like
>  peas.  A little compost or wood ash won?t do any harm though.
>
> yarrow@sfo.com wrote:
>  Speaking of brix...I was talking with a fellow community gardener
> today, who was wondering why her snow peas were not sweet. So we
> taste-tested hers and mine; mine were sweet, hers were more bland and
> did have a bitter edge. I grew mine with homemade compost; she used
> an organic fertilizer (EB Stone?). We both watered every 2-3 days,
> and picked them at about the same size. Maybe hers had too much N?
> _______________________________________________
> Livingontheland mailing list
> Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 21:16:40 -0600
> From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
> Subject: [Livingontheland] Kingsolver Releases New Book on Local Food
> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <200705042116400880.09656232@mail.lobo.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
> Kingsolver Releases New Book on Local Food
> Starts Book Tour in Washington, DC
> www.animalvegetablemiracle.com
>
> Author Barbara Kingsolver began a book tour for her latest book Animal,
> Vegetable, Miracle in Washington, DC, this week, calling on everyone to
> think about the origins of our food while putting politics aside and
> bridging the "psychic divide" between urban and rural populations. "Eaters
> must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used," she read
> aloud from the book, as she stood at the pulpit of the Washington National
> Cathedral, where the reading took place May 1.
>
> With characteristic charm and wit, Kingsolver talked about the experiment
> behind her book, which describes a year of her family's "eating
> deliberately" -- that is, as much local food as possible, lots of it self-
> produced. Kingsolver said her family "looked at each passing week as
> something like a menu in a restaurant." Her family sourced all their
> produce, meat and dairy from their region in southwestern Virginia,
> although
> they did purchase things like coffee and spices from a great distance, and
> grains such as wheat sometimes came from as far as Pennsylvania. Her
> husband
> baked their bread, she said.
>
> Kingsolver's latest isn't just another book about local food. It's a great
> way to learn more about the food economy painlessly, since she ingeniously
> weaves facts about our food system with vivid tales of everyday life, such
> as why she gave her Bourbon Red turkey hen a "mental health day," or how
> she
> coped with 302 pounds of tomatoes in August. Kingsolver doesn't fail to
> leave out a few heart-wrenching episodes either, like when "mountains " of
> Virginia organic tomatoes were left to rot outside local supermarkets, as
> the stores opted for cheaper California produce instead.
>
> Her storytelling talents, well-known from her novels like The Poisonwood
> Bible and Prodigal Summer, are well intact in this work of nonfiction. 
> With
> this new book, she would like to "invite you to come in and sit down at my
> table for a while," she said. When it's finished, she said, "I'll ask you,
> 'What do you think you should do?'." While she said she prefers not to 
> give
> advice outright, Kingsolver did urge folks to contact Congress members
> about
> food policy.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 21:52:57 -0600
> From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
> Subject: [Livingontheland] Certified Naturally Grown
> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <200705042152570130.0986972C@mail.lobo.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
> There's a page titled Frequently Asked Questions at
> http://www.naturallygrown.org/faq.html
>
>
> paul tradingpost@lobo.net
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 02:03:16 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Carbon Farmer
> To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
> <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <950290.16011.qm@web63415.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> David,
>
>  You said it! ?Nature has done it for eons.? We humans haven?t done
>  it even once, yet we think that we always know best how nature ought
>  to do its thing. The result is the sorry state of affaires we are in 
> today.
>  But we keep on making the same mistake, people come up with
>  one clever idea after the other about how we can trick nature into
>  doing all kinds of things. There is always the next quick-fix to sort
>  out all the mistakes of the past. The bill for that will invariably have 
> to
>  be paid some time in the future.
>
>  Regarding the issue at hand, I have nothing against subsoiling or 
> Keyline.
>  I believe you if you tell me that your soil looks good, your grass is 
> green
>  and your cows are happy. But looking good doesn?t tell us anything about
>  the quality of the humus produced. And the greenness of the grass is not 
> yet
>  an indicator for the additional amount of CO2 sequestered, especially if
>  it isn?t offset against the additional amount of fuel consumed and the
>  amount of methane emitted.
>
>  Even if we admit that Keyline is the greatest thing that ever happened
>  to grassland, we are not going to convert the entire globe to grazing 
> land
>  and start eating big chunks of beef for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 
> There
>  are many places were this is simply not possible and not even desirable.
>  Agriculture has to improve soil fertility and make its contribution 
> towards
>  reducing greenhouse gas emissions by converting to no-till and using 
> cover
>  crops, fewer passes with fuel-gobbling monsters, less synthetic 
> fertilizer and
>  techniques for avoiding methane emissions.
>
>  A one-sided preference for grassland and arguing against the merit of 
> forests
>  is certainly not helpful. Looking at the fragility of the environmental 
> envelop
>  in Australia or at the dust bowl in the US, and comparing these to soils 
> in
>  Northern and Central Europe, which even after generations of deep 
> ploughing
>  are holding up much better, suggests that the quality of the long term 
> humus
>  produced by forests is of a different quality than that produced by 
> grassland.
>  There is a place for both, but I think cattle farmers may also want to 
> think
>  about the introduction of agroforestry trees into their landscape.
>
>  As to me, I don?t have to wait for eons to obtain results. By letting
>  nature have its share of native woody perennials and trees, I can
>  observe a difference in soil and vegetation every year. And regarding
>  CO2 sequestration, I have continuous cover for 12 months a year
>  even without being paid for it. There is nothing more anyone could
>  achieve. On this soil and in this climate, grassland goes dry for 6 
> months
>  a year. My neighbour feeds his cows cabbages and all kinds of stuff
>  because his 50 hectares (over 120 acres) of land aren?t enough for
>  sustaining 11 cows. I don?t know why he bothers, perhaps he loves
>  his cows, or perhaps the subsidies make it worthwhile, I don?t know.
>  Anyway, some of my grassland is still green when his fields have gone
>  dry for months.
>
>  I discovered by chance the importance of combining green annuals
>  with woody perennials. One of my fields, ploughed for wheat
>  production by the previous owner until about 12 years ago had
>  become completely overgrown by brambles, bushes and trees.
>  Clearing this field, I just cut everything (except for the trees)
>  and left the residues on the surface while all the roots remain
>  in the soil which was not disturbed. Grass and weeds now
>  dominate, but the brambles and bushes are still growing back.
>  This may be the only field in the whole region where grass stays
>  green for 12 months a year without irrigation. My neighbour,
>  who has a field with exactly the some soil on his side, ploughed
>  his grazing land every year under the mistaken impression that
>  ploughing increases fertility. His grass looks bad even during
>  the rainy season and goes completely dry in summer. I noticed
>  though, that he didn?t plough last year, he didn?t say a thing,
>  he just didn?t plough. Perhaps he had a look across the fence.
>
>  Dieter
>
>
> David Inglis <mhcsa@verizon.net> wrote:                Dieter,
>  Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of my post.
>  And I don?t know in which way the Keyline
>  marketing is involved with the Carbon Farmers scheme.
>  I don?t know either and I don?t have time to find out but it does not 
> effect my estimation of the arguments anyway.
>  I was just
>  curious about the effect of subsoiling on the permanent humus in this 
> layer.
>  Quite rightly because, in my experience in the absence of  a growing 
> greenmanure or pasture Keyline subsoiling presents a real danger of 
> releasing that OM for a net loss. Also one then embarks on the usual cycle 
> of increased resource usage for diminishing returns, [see below]. I am not 
> against the use of material resources but I am against uses that are 
> addictive and ultimately counterproductive.
>  The Carbon Farmers site even has a page (which
>  I didn?t read) with selected quotes to argue against reforestation.
>  A.Yeoman does too[in Priority One].
>  This seems to be indicative of a narrow commercial focus rather than
>  a broad environmental concern. I have nothing against making money,
>  but we have to be honest about it.
>  It may, but if the solution does not involve making some money I doubt it 
> will be adopted on a large enough scale to have a global impact even if 
> mandated by government. Also I believe that A.Yeomans claims that 
> Grassland sequesters more CO2 than forest. The fact that that grass can be 
> turned into profit is a bonus, not the primary motivation.
>  Anyway, both seem to emphasize grass land as the best way for 
> soil-improvement and
>  CO2 sequestration.
>  Subsoiling [with Keyline] in grassland is optimal because:
>  Roots are poised to take advantage of  newly opened substrata.
>  Top growth and root growth can be ?pulsed? and controlled, and at a 
> profit, initiating the process of soil formation. On bare ground the 
> plough will hasten the demise of the soil as you suspect.
>  A mixed ?sward? will always have some component that will respond to the 
> circumstances be it climatic, grazing or soil management induced or other. 
> I have observed that soil development occurs best when it is uninterrupted 
> and that if it is interrupted the reintroduction of the missing element 
> [typically Warmth/coolth, moisture, light and to some extent fertility ] 
> does not initiate the soil building immediately. In a short season climate 
> like mine [NE USA] that can mean soil building conditions of only 1 month 
> in 12.
>  Large quantities of water can be absorbed by the soil without surface 
> erosion.
>  In my case (semi-arid
>  climate and clay soil), I found that the best way to improve the soil
>  is to feed it a varied diet consisting of green annuals together with
>  woody perennials (including brambles, shrubs, bushes and trees),
>  and let the roots do the subsoiling.
>  This is the natural way that has been done for eons. But we don?t have 
> eons. At the very least we need some approach that in a very short period 
> of time reverses the declines of the soil OM over the past couple of 
> centuries and if land stewards hope to contribute to absorbing the CO2 
> from sources other  than Ag. Something far more radical than that will be 
> required.
>  I commend you for what you are doing. Yeomans point is that the results 
> of what you are doing can be greatly accelerated by the judicious use of 
> simple but thoughtfully applied Human technology. It amazes me how 
> controversial that idea is in some circles that purport to be ?protecting 
> the earth?.
>  Just thoughts.
>  David
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> ---------------------------------
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 11
> Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 06:44:18 -0700
> From: "Douglas  Willhite" <drwillhite@earthlink.net>
> Subject: [Livingontheland] Food preservation and democracy
> To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <33C8FC74714845A08220CC6A23385EA9@DouglasPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Published on 4 May 2007 by Casaubon's Book.
> Food preservation and democracy
> by Sharon Astyk
>
>
> The rhubarb is up. And it has me thinking about democracy, justice and 
> what to have for dinner. We've talked here about how the opposite of 
> poverty is self-sufficiency, and why it is that self-sufficiency is our 
> best bet going into the future. But what does that actually look like? How 
> do you live? What do you do? What do you eat? What is it like to live that 
> way? And what, perhaps most importantly, would change about our culture if 
> we ate that way?
>
> I was lucky enough to know one of the people on the earth who knew the 
> most about this, Carla Emery, author of The Encyclopedia of Country 
> Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book. Before her death in 2005, Carla was 
> traveling the nation trying to help people get ready for a life with much 
> less energy. She'd done almost everything in her book (and it is a big 
> book) at least once, and new more than anyone I've ever met. Here's what 
> she says about how she makes sure her family is fed,
>
>  All spring I try and plant something every day - from late February, when 
> the early peas and spinach and garlic can go in, on up to mid-summer, when 
> the main potato crop and the late beans and lettuce go in. Then I switch 
> over and make it my rule to try and get something put away for the winter 
> every single day. That lasts until the pumpkins and sunflowers and late 
> squash and green tomatoes are in.
>
>  Then comes the struggle to get the most out of the stored food - all 
> winter long. It has to be checked regularly, and you'll need to add to 
> that day's menu anything that's on the verge of spoiling, wilting or 
> otherwise soon becoming useless. Or preserve it a new way. If a squash 
> gets a soft spot, I can gut it out and cook, mash, can or freeze the rest 
> for a supper vegetable or pie, or add it to the bread dough.
>
>  You have to ration. You have all the good food you can eat right at arm's 
> reach and no money to pay...until you run out...
>
>  People have to choose what they're going to struggle for. Life is always 
> a struggle, whether or not you're struggling for anything worthwhile, so 
> it might as well be for something worthwhile.
>
>  Independence days are worth struggling for. They're good for me,good for 
> the country and good for growing children."
>  (Emery, 493-494)
> Her "Independence Days" were the ones in which her family ate from their 
> own land and gardens. She was right in this - independence is worth 
> striving for. Not only is it worth striving for because it is good for us, 
> our nation and our families, but also because someday we may depend on 
> these skills and knowledge - and right now we might have a better country 
> if we did this.
>
> I'm no Carla Emery, unfortunately, although I work at being as much like 
> her as I can. Every spring, I sit down and inventory our food stores, 
> particularly the things I put up the previous year. At the back of my mind 
> is this question: "If we had to live on what I could produce, could we?" 
> And the answer is generally, "not as well as we'd like."
>
> Some years that was because of the CSA - in years when we've been short on 
> a crop, all of it, or the best of it goes to our customers. We eat the 
> tomatoes with the bird pecks, or the two eggplants left over. Sometimes 
> the problem is that I didn't put up enough, or harvest things at the right 
> time, and sometimes there's something else. One year we lost most of our 
> potatoes, all our strawberries and a heck of a lot of other things to 
> heavy flooding (the first two years we lived here were drought, so we 
> didn't discover until year three that one of our large garden patches lays 
> wet), another year Eric accidentally left the door to the storage area 
> open on a bitterly cold night - poof, four months worth of potatoes, 
> onions and apples were gone. I think this last year the problem was that I 
> forgot that four growing boys keep growing.
>
> All of which is just a way of saying that after years of practice, I still 
> don't have the feeding ourselves down to a perfect science. I'm still 
> embarrassed about the year I made blueberry jam and didn't check the 
> seals - every jar was moldy when we opened them. I'm not perfect and I 
> have made every mistake you can possibly imagine. The good thing about all 
> those mistakes is that eventually, you get to the point where it isn't as 
> hard. We still buy some of our grains and beans, and are still grateful 
> that if the potato harvest doesn't measure up, we can go to the local 
> farmer's market and supplement our needs, and we enjoy bananas and citrus 
> as much as the next person, along with spices and seasonings from far 
> away. But we also keep trying to feed ourselves, and we get better at it 
> every year. We're now to the point where most years, we probably could 
> survive, we just wouldn't be eating our preferred diet.
>
> But here's the thing - even if we never achieve perfection - if we never 
> manage to raise every single thing we want to eat, there's a great deal of 
> satisfaction in putting by and getting better at it. Because even right 
> now, every bite of food we don't purchase is a gift - it represents money 
> we don't have to spend on groceries and can devote to other things. Every 
> bite closer we get to feeding ourselves means we eat better.
>
> Americans tend to believe that hunger could never come their way. They 
> forget that just two generations ago, during the depression, as many as 
> 25% of urban school children were malnourished, and people stood in bread 
> lines. They forget that the experience of privilege we've known in these 
> wealthy nations is very odd - a historical anomaly. That pretty much all 
> human beings starting with our grandparents and going back knew periods of 
> food insecurity - and that the majority of people in the world know hunger 
> at some point in their lives. Should we bet the farm on the notion that 
> this magical immunity to the plague of hunger will go on forever?
>
> Growing your own food is only one part of the project - the next is 
> preserving it, and making sure you have enough to eat, and things you 
> like. Most places in the world have a period where you can't grow much 
> food, either because it is too hot or too dry, too cold or too wet. So we 
> have to put up food for those times. And then there's the job of resource 
> management - if I left things up to my kids, I'd have strawberry jam every 
> single day, until there wasn't any more, and then they'd complain until 
> the next year's strawberry harvest. Someone has to be the one to say, "ok, 
> apricot this time - let's save some of that strawberry for early spring 
> when we'll all want something sweet." Someone has to look at the apples 
> and the pears and take the ones that are getting soft off and make them 
> into sauce or dried apples before they rot and spoil, literally, the whole 
> barrel.
>
> The thing is, being involved with your food means being really seriously 
> involved with your food. It means changing the way we've come to think 
> about the world back to the way that we once did - revisiting a life of 
> seasonality, with a time to plant, a time to sow, a time to harvest and a 
> time to rest. It isn't just a song, or a Bible verse, it becomes a way of 
> life. And that's ok, because that link to nature may be the thing that 
> we've been missing in our lives. There's growing evidence that people who 
> work in the dirt, live with the seasons and connect to nature are happier 
> and healthier than those who in more artificial circumstances.
>
> So like all springs, my job now is to figure out how many cucumbers I need 
> to plant next year, so that this time, the pickles (devoured by my three 
> pickle-fiend sons) make it all the way until July, when I can make more. 
> And how many potatoes to grow - and can I grow more of the cranberry 
> colored ones that everyone liked do much? And I want to grow more of my 
> own animal feed this year - the cost of corn is rising, and I'd like to 
> stop buying feed altogether. How much room in my garden do the chickens 
> need? How about the rabbits? Which of those weeds can I dry for hay? What 
> I can I grow for them?
>
> Preserving food is every day work - it begins now, with the first rhubarb 
> that will be dried or canned or made into sauce (and a reminder that I 
> still have a bit left of last year's to eat). Next come the strawberries 
> (I don't bother to preserve asparagus - doesn't taste as good as fresh), 
> and nettles (very nutritious dried in tea), and then the cycle begins in 
> earnest. It really doesn't take much time, once you get into a routine, 
> and is well worth it. There are always some busy days in the summer, but 
> it isn't too hard to put berries in the dehydrator after work or mix up 
> pickle brine while making dinner.
>
> Even if you don't grow your own, preserving what is seasonal and fresh can 
> provide you with a great deal of economic and food security - if you go to 
> the farmer's market at the end of the day, you may be able to get bushels 
> of produce for almost nothing. Then comes the work of dehydration, or 
> canning, or pickling. But the work is worth it - both because it enables 
> you to eat a local diet and frees you from dangers in the food supply, but 
> also because it means you don't depend on corporations or others to 
> provision you.
>
> And that last point may be the most important. Food preservation, and food 
> production are keys to democracy. We accept that a politician who is 
> dependent on the money special interests provides cannot be wholly 
> independent in their thought, and know that no matter how much personal 
> integrity they may have, their intentions are fundamentally corrupted by 
> being beholden to others.
>
> Well the same is equally true of individuals - as long as we depend on 
> large corporations to meet our basic needs, we'll never be able to judge 
> them fairly or recreate our society. That is, we cannot simultaneously 
> call for an end to multinational monoliths and also pay them to feed us. 
> As long as we admit we are dependent on corporations, any attempt at 
> reform or culture change will fail, because we ourselves are corrupted by 
> that dependence. We cannot deplore McDonalds, and then complain because 
> poor people cannot buy their food from the equally troubling industrial 
> organic producers who sell through whole foods. We need to recognize that 
> our food dependence affects not just what we eat, but the fundamentals of 
> our democracy and our political power.
>
> We should not owe our lives to entities we deplore. And the only possible 
> escape from that bind is to declare food independence - to meet as many of 
> our basic needs as possible ourselves, and through small, sustainable 
> farms with which we have real and direct relationships. And that means not 
> just growing food, but ensuring a stable food supply, reasonable reserves 
> and a dinner that depends on no one. Worth struggling for indeed!
>
> I'd best get cracking!
>
> Cheers,
> Sharon
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 12
> Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 06:46:05 -0700
> From: "Douglas  Willhite" <drwillhite@earthlink.net>
> Subject: [Livingontheland] Health, Justice and Sustainability News
> Tidbits
> To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <95E636B6DEC6414AAF8126ED535BEFFD@DouglasPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> ORGANIC BYTES #108
> Health, Justice and Sustainability News Tidbits with an Edge!
>
> 5/4/2007
>
> Written and edited by Craig Minowa and Ronnie Cummins
>
>
>      IN THIS ISSUE
>
>        a.. ALERT OF THE WEEK: TELL CONGRESS WE WANT COUNTRY OF ORIGIN 
> LABELS ON OUR FOOD
>        b.. PRODUCT PLUNDER OF THE WEEK: PET FOOD CONTAMINATION MOVES INTO 
> USA MEAT SUPPLY
>        c.. QUICK FACTS OF THE WEEK: MORE REASONS TO BUY LOCAL
>        d.. WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK: COMEDY CENTRAL PARODIES THE RBGH 
> CONTROVERSY
>        e.. TIP OF THE WEEK: FIVE TOP METHODS TO REDUCE YOUR ECOLOGICAL 
> FOOTPRINT WHEN SHOPPING
>        f.. ALERT: IT'S TIME TO PHASE OUT THE POISONOUS PLASTIC PVC
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
>
>
>
>
>     ALERT OF THE WEEK:
>      TELL CONGRESS WE WANT COUNTRY OF ORIGIN LABELS ON OUR FOOD
>      Concerns over long distance food transportation (food miles) and 
> global warming, compounded by recent food poisoning scandals, linked to 
> contaminated pet, poultry, and pig food ingredients from China, have taken 
> away many Americans' appetites for cheap imported foods. Shocked at media 
> reports that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is inspecting 
> approximately one-percent of all imported food, health-minded consumers 
> are demanding that Congress implement mandatory Country of Origin Labels 
> (COOL) labels on food. Federal farm policy theoretically requires Country 
> of Origin Labeling for food. Reacting to polls indicating that 80% of 
> American consumers want to know where their food is coming from, Congress 
> incorporated COOL into the 2002 Farm Bill. COOL was supposed to go into 
> effect in September 2004. Unfortunately, corporate agribusiness, Wal-Mart, 
> and the supermarket chains bribed an ethically-impaired Congress with 
> millions of dollars to block implementation of COOL l
> abels. As a result, Americans are buying billions of dollars of imported 
> foods without knowing it. In order to promote health and sustainability, 
> and to save North American family farms, we need to restore our right to 
> know where our food is coming from. Tell Congress we want Country of 
> Origin Labels for both conventional and organic food, and we want it 
> now:http://www.organicconsumers.org/rd/cool.htm
>
>
>
>
>
>     PRODUCT PLUNDER OF THE WEEK:
>      PET FOOD CONTAMINATION MOVES INTO USA MEAT SUPPLY
>      The pet food poisoning scandal that has prompted the largest recall 
> of pet foods in history has spread into the livestock and meat sector. 
> This week, the USDA admitted that the contaminated food ingredients that 
> have killed thousands of pets across the U.S. were also used to feed hogs 
> and chickens that have already been processed and eaten by several million 
> Americans. Over three million chickens and pigs have consumed the tainted 
> food. Although there have been no government studies done on the toxicity 
> of this contamination, the FDA claims the risk is low. It's important to 
> note that organic animal feed was not contaminated in this latest 
> incident, underlining the obvious point that pet owners and meat eaters 
> should give preference to safer, more nutritious organic products (find 
> organic pet foods here).
>      Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5017.cfm
>
> __________________________________
>
>
>
>     QUICK FACTS OF THE WEEK:
>      MORE REASONS TO BUY LOCAL
>
>        a.. Each year, the average American consumes 260 pounds of imported 
> food.
>        b.. 98.7% of foods imported into the U.S. are NOT inspected by the 
> FDA for safety.
>        c.. Of the scant 1.3% of imported foods the FDA tests, over 200 
> shipments of grains, fish, vegetables, nuts, spice, oils and other 
> imported foods are detained each month for issues ranging from filth to 
> unsafe food coloring to contamination with pesticides to salmonella. The 
> other 98.7% of untested food is immediately green-lighted for the American 
> diet.
>        d.. The U.S. imports almost twice as much food today as it did just 
> ten years ago, yet the FDA's budget for testing imports has been cut 
> nearly in half since 2000.
>      Source: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4897.cfm
>
>
> __________________________________
>
>
>
>
>     WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK:
>      COMEDY CENTRAL PARODIES THE RBGH CONTROVERSY
>      Comedy Central's Colbert Report takes a hilarious look at the rBGH 
> controversy. Although the synthetic hormone has been banned in most 
> nations, due to its links to endocrine disruption and cancer, it is still 
> widely used in the U.S.. Monsanto recently filed a formal complaint with 
> the FDA demanding that dairies that have banned the use of rBGH should not 
> be able to label their products as "rBGH-free." Learn more at OCA's 
> "Millions Against Monsanto" campaign and watch the short Colbert web video 
> here (Note: Mr. Colbert's humor is irreverent and for adult audiences. 
> Viewer discretion is advised.): 
> http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/
>
> ___________________________________
>
>     TIP OF THE WEEK:
>      FIVE WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT WHEN SHOPPING
>      This month's issue of E Magazine includes interviews with leading 
> advocates for ecological shopping, including OCA's Environmental Scientist 
> Craig Minowa. Here are five quick tips for becoming a green shopper:
>
>        1.. Switch to environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. The use 
> of conventional cleaners exposes your family and our environment to some 
> very nasty toxic chemicals.
>        2.. If you buy only one or two organic items, make them milk and 
> meat. Most conventional milk and meat are produced on factory farms that 
> feed their animals massive amounts of pesticide and fossil-fuel intensive 
> conventional corn, at the same time creating massive manure lagoons that 
> contaminate local ground water.
>
>        3.. Be as conscious about the packaging as you are about the 
> product. The production and disposal of packaging takes a heavy 
> environmental toll. You can eliminate 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) 
> every year by simply reducing your waste by 10%. While you're at it, bring 
> your own shopping bags.
>        4.. Buy local and regional, or at least USA-grown, whenever 
> possible, to reduce energy and pollution from long transportation. But of 
> course some products are not produced in the US.. For overseas products, 
> look for the organic and Fair Trade label.
>        5.. Buy in bulk. If you regularly buy a certain product, consider 
> buying it in bulk. It usually has less packaging, is more affordable, and 
> requires fewer trips to the store.
>      http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5006.cfm
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 13
> Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 08:55:10 -0600
> From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
> Subject: [Livingontheland] Fwd: MODERN MIRACLE MEN
> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <200705050855100986.0BE4E20D@mail.lobo.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
> *********** BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE  ***********
>
> On 5/5/2007 at 2:48 AM Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net wrote:
>
>
> http://www.gotwater.net/senate_doc_264.htm
>
> SENATE DOCUMENT 264 - Unabridged Version
> AN ARTICLE BY REX BEACH
> ENTITLED "Modern Miracle Men", Relating To Proper Food Mineral Balances by
> Dr. Charles Northen, Reprinted From Cosmopolitan, June 1936
>
>
> Presented by Mr. Fletcher June 1 1936 and Ordered to be Printed by the
> United States Government Printing Office Washington: 1936 During the 74th
> Congress, Second Session, Document No. 264
>
>
> This is the Unabridged Version of this document.
>
>
> MODERN MIRACLE MEN
>
>
> Dr. Charles Northen,
> Who Builds Health From The Ground Up
> This quiet, unballyhooed pioneer and genius in the field of nutrition
> demonstrates that countless human ills stem from the fact that 
> impoverished
> soil of America no longer provides plant foods with the mineral elements
> essential to human nourishment and health!.. To overcome this alarming
> condition, he doctors sick soils and, by seeming miracles, raises truly
> healthy and health-giving fruits and vegetables, (By Rex Beach)
>        Do you know that most of us today are suffering from certain
> dangerous diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until the depleted
> soils from which our foods come are brought into proper mineral balance?
>        The alarming fact is that foods -- fruit and vegetables and grains
> -- now being raised on millions of acres of land no longer contain enough
> of certain needed minerals, are starving us -- no matter how much of them
> we eat!
>        This talk about minerals is novel and quite startling. In fact, a
> realization of the importance of minerals in food is so new that the
> textbooks on nutritional dietetics contain very little about it.
> Nevertheless it is something that concerns all of us, and the further we
> delve into it the more startling it becomes.
>        You'd think, wouldn't you, that a carrot is a carrot--that one is
> about as good as another as far as nourishment is concerned? But it isn't;
> one carrot may look and taste like another and yet be lacking in the
> particular mineral element which our system requires and which carrots are
> supposed to contain. Laboratory tests prove that the fruits, the
> vegetables, the grains, the eggs and even the milk and the meats of today
> are not what they were a few generations ago. (Which doubtless explains 
> why
> our forefathers [and foremothers] thrived on a selection of foods that
> would starve us!) No one of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to
> supply their system with the mineral salts they require for perfect 
> health,
> because their stomach isn't big enough to hold them! And we are running to
> big stomachs.
>        No longer does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist merely
> of so many calories or certain vitamins or a fixed proportion of starches,
> proteins, and carbohydrates. We now know that it must contain, in 
> addition,
> something like a score of mineral salts.
>        It is bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99
> percent of the American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a
> marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals actually
> results in disease. Any upset of the balance, any considerable lack of one
> or another element, however microscopic the body requirement may be, and 
> we
> sicken, suffer, shorten our lives.
>        This discovery is one of the latest and most important
> contributions of science to the problem of human health.
>        So far as the records go, the first man in this field of research,
> the first to demonstrate that most human foods of our day are poor in
> minerals and that their proportions are not balanced, was Dr. Charles
> Northen an Alabama physician now living in Orlando, Florida. His
> discoveries and achievements are of enormous importance to mankind.
>        Following a wide experience in general practice, Dr. Northen
> specialized in stomach diseases and nutritional disorder. Later, he moved
> to New York and made extensive studies along this line, in conjunction 
> with
> a famous French scientist from Sorbonne. In the course of that work he
> convinced himself that there was little authentic, definite information on
> the chemistry of foods, and that no dependence could be placed on existing
> data.
>        He asked himself how foods could be used intelligently in the
> treatment of disease, when they differed so widely in content. The answer
> seemed to be that they could not be used intelligently. In establishing 
> the
> fact that serious deficiencies existed and in searching out the reasons
> therefor, he made an extensive study of the soil. It was he who first
> voiced the surprising assertion that we must make soil building the basis
> of food building in order to accomplish human building.
>
>        "Bear in mind," says Dr. Northen, "that minerals are vital to human
> metabolism and health--and that no plant or animal can appropriate to
> itself any mineral which is not present in the soil upon which it feeds.
>        "When I first made this statement I was ridiculed, for up to that
> time people had paid little attention to food deficiencies and even less 
> to
> soil deficiencies. Men eminent in medicine denied there was any such thing
> as vegetables and fruits that did not contain sufficient minerals for 
> human
> needs. Eminent agricultural authorities insisted that all soil contained
> all necessary minerals. They reasoned that plants take what they need, and
> that it is the function of the human body to appropriate what it requires.
> Failure to do so, they said, was a symptom of disorder.
>        "Some of our respected authorities even claimed that the so-called
> secondary minerals played no part whatever in human health. It is only
> recently that such men as Dr. McCollum of Johns Hopkins, Dr. Mendel of
> Yale, Dr. Sherman of Columbia, Dr. Lipman of Rutgers, and Drs. H.G. Knight
> and Oswald Schreiner of the United States Department of Agriculture have
> agreed that these minerals are essential to plant, animal, and human
> feeding.
>        "We know that vitamins are complex substances which are
> indispensable to nutrition, and that each of them is of importance for the
> normal function of some special structure in the body. Disorder and 
> disease
> result from any vitamin deficiency.
>        "It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the
> body's appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals they have
> no function to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system can make some use of
> minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless.
>        "Neither does the layman realize that there may be a pronounced
> difference in both foods and soils--to them one vegetable, one glass of
> milk, or one egg is about the same as another. Dirt is dirt, too, and they
> assume that by adding a little fertilizer to it, a satisfactory vegetable
> or fruit can be grown.
>        "The truth is that our foods vary enormously in value, and some of
> them aren't worth eating, as food. For example, vegetation grown in one
> part of the country may assay 1,100 parts, per billion, of iodine, as
> against 20 in that grown elsewhere. Processed milk has run anywhere from
> 362 parts, per million, of iodine and 127 of iron, down to nothing.
>        "Some of or lands, even unhappily for us, we have been
> systematically robbing the poor soils and the good soils alike of the very
> substances most necessary to health, growth, long life, and resistance to
> disease. Up to the time I began experimenting, almost nothing had been 
> done
> to make good the theft.
>        "The more I studied nutritional problems and the effects of mineral
> deficiencies upon disease, the more plainly I saw that here lay the most
> direct approach to better health, and the more important it became in my
> mind to find a method of restoring those missing minerals to our foods.
>        "The subject interested me so profoundly that I retired from active
> medical practice and for a good many years now I have devoted myself to 
> it.
> It's a fascinating subject, for it goes to the heart of human betterment."
>
>        The results obtained by Dr. Northen are outstanding. By putting
> back into foods the stuff that foods are made of, he has proved himself to
> be a real miracle man of medicine, for he has opened up the shortest and
> most rational route to better health.
>
>
> He showed first that it should be done, and then that it could be done.
> He doubled and redoubled the natural mineral content of fruits and
> vegetables.
> He improved the quality of milk by increasing the iron and the iodine in
> it.
> He caused hens to lay eggs richer in the vital elements.
>        By scientific soil feeding, he raised better seed potatoes in
> Maine, better grapes in California, Better oranges in Florida, and better
> field crops in other States. (By "better" is meant not only an improvement
> in food value but also an increase in quantity and quality.)
>        Before going further into the results he has obtained, let's see
> just what is involved in this matter of "mineral deficiencies", what it 
> may
> mean to our health, and how it may effect the growth and development, both
> mental and physical, of our children.
>        We know that rats, guinea pigs, and other animals can be fed into a
> diseased condition and out again by controlling only the minerals in their
> food.
>        A 10-year test with rats proved that by withholding calcium they
> can be bred down to a third the size of those fed with an adequate amount
> of that mineral. Their intelligence, too, can be controlled by mineral
> feeding as readily as can their size, their bony structure, and their
> general health.
>        Place a number of these little animals inside a maze after starving
> some of them in a certain mineral element. The starved ones will be unable
> to find their way out, whereas the others will have little or no 
> difficulty
> in getting out. Their dispositions can be altered by mineral feeding. They
> can be made quarrelsome and belligerent; they can even be turned into
> cannibals and be made to devour each other.
>        A cage full of normal rats will live in amity. Restrict their
> calcium, and they will become irritable and draw apart from one another.
> Then they will begin to fight. Restore their calcium balance and they will
> grow more friendly; in time they will begin to sleep in a pile as before.
>        Many backward children are "stupid" merely because they are
> deficient in magnesia. We punish them for OUR failure to feed them
> properly.
>        Certainly our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon
> the minerals we take into our systems than upon the calories or vitamins 
> or
> upon the precise proportions of starch, protein, or carbohydrates we
> consume.
>        It is now agreed that at least 16 mineral elements are
> indispensable for normal nutrition, and several more are always found in
> small amounts in the body, although their precise physiological role has
> not been determined. Of the 11 indispensable salts, calcium, phosphorous,
> and iron are perhaps the most important.
>        Calcium is the dominant nerve controller; it powerfully affects the
> cell formation of all living things and regulates nerve action. It governs
> contractability of the muscles and the rhythmic beat of the heart. It also
> coordinates the other mineral elements and corrects disturbances made by
> them. It works only in sunlight. Vitamin D is its buddy.
>        Dr. Sherman of Columbia asserts that 50 percent of the American
> people are starving for calcium. A recent article in the Journal of the
> American Medical Association stated that out of 4,000 cases in New York
> Hospital, only 2 were not suffering from a lack of calcium.
>        What does such a deficiency mean? How would it affect your health
> or mine? So many morbid conditions and actual diseases may result that it
> is almost hopeless to catalog them. Included in the list are rickets, bony
> deformities, bad teeth, nervous disorders, reduced resistance to other
> diseases, fatigability, and behavior disturbances such as incorrigibility,
> assaultiveness, nonadaptability.
>        Here's one specific example: The soil around a certain Midwest city
> is poor in calcium. Three hundred children of this community were examined
> and nearly 90 percent and bad teeth, 69 percent showed affections of the
> nose and throat, swollen glands, enlarged or diseased tonsils. More than
> one-third had defective vision, round shoulders, bow legs, and anemia.
>        Calcium and phosphorous appear to pull in double harness. A child
> requires as much per day as two grown men, but studies indicate a common
> deficiency of both in our food. Researches on farm animals point to a
> deficiency of one or the other as the cause of serious losses to the
> farmers, and when the soil is poor in phosphorous these animals become
> bone-chewers. Dr. McCollum says that when there are enough phosphates in
> the blood there can be no dental decay.
>            Iron is an essential constituent of the oxygen-carrying pigment
> of the blood: iron starvation results in anemia, and yet iron cannot be
> assimilated unless some copper is contained in the diet. In Florida many
> cattle die from an obscure disease called "salt sickness." It has been
> found to arise from a lack of iron and copper in the soil and hence in the
> grass. A man may starve for want of these elements just as a beef 
> "critter"
> starves.
>        If Iodine is not present in our foods the function of the thyroid
> gland is disturbed and goiter afflicts us. The human body requires only
> fourteen-thousandths of a milligram daily, yet we have a distinct "goiter
> belt" in the Great Lakes section, and in parts of the Northwest the soil 
> is
> so poor in iodine that the disease is common.
>        So it goes, down through the list, each mineral element playing a
> definite role in nutrition. A characteristic set of symptoms, just as
> specific as any vitamin-deficiency disease, follows a deficiency in any 
> one
> of them. It is alarming, therefore, to face the fact that we are starving
> for these precious, health-giving substances.
>        Very well, you say, if our foods are poor in the mineral salts they
> are supposed to contain, why not resort to dosing?
>        That is precisely what is being done, or attempted. However, those
> who should know assert that the human system cannot appropriate those
> elements to the best advantage in any but the food form. At best, only a
> part of them in the form of drugs can be utilized by the body, and certain
> dieticians go so far as to say it is a waste of effort to fool with them.
> Calcium, for instance, cannot be supplied in any form of medication with
> lasting effect.
>        But there is a more potent reason why the curing of diet
> deficiencies by drugging hasn't worked out so well. Consider those 16
> indispensable elements and those others which presumably perform some
> obscure function as yet undetermined. Aside from calcium and phosphorous,
> they are needed only in infinitesimal quantities, and the activity of one
> may be dependent upon the presence of another. To determine the precise
> requirements of each individual case and to attempt to weigh it out on a
> druggist's scale would appear hopeless.
>        It is a problem and a serious one. But here is the hopeful side of
> the picture: Nature can and will solve it if she is encouraged to do so.
> The minerals in fruit and vegetables are colloidal; i.e. they are in a
> state of such extremely fine suspension that they can be assimilated by 
> the
> human system: It is merely a question of giving back to nature the
> materials with which she works.
>
>        We must rebuild our soils: Put back the minerals we have taken out.
> That sounds difficult but it isn't. Neither is it expensive. Therein lies
> the short cut to better health and longer life.
>        When Dr. Northen first asserted that many foods were lacking in
> mineral content and that this deficiency was due solely to an absence of
> those elements in the soil, his findings were challenged and he was called
> a crank. But differences of opinion in the medical profession are not
> uncommon--it was only 60 years ago that the Medical Society of Boston
> passed a resolution condemning the use of bathtubs -- and he persisted in
> his assertions that inasmuch as foods did not contain what they were
> supposed to contain, no physician could with certainty prescribe a diet to
> overcome physical ills.
>        He showed that the textbooks are not dependable because many of the
> analyses in them were made many years ago, perhaps from products raised in
> virgin soils, whereas our soils have been constantly depleted. Soil
> analysis, he pointed out, reflect only the content of samples. One 
> analysis
> may be entirely different from another made 10 miles away.
>        "And so what?" came the query.
>        Dr. Northen undertook to demonstrate that something could be done
> about it. By reestablishing a proper soil balance be actually grew crops
> that contained an ample amount of desired minerals.
>        This was incredible. It was contrary to the books and it upset
> everything connected with diet practice. The scoffers began to pay
> attention to him. Recently the Southern Medical Association, realizing the
> hopelessness of trying to remedy nutritional deficiencies without positive
> factors to work with, recommended a careful study to determine the real
> mineral content of foodstuffs and the variations due to soil depletion in
> different localities. These progressive medical men are awake to the
> importance of prevention.
>
>        Dr. Northen went even further and proved that crops grown in a
> properly mineralized soil were bigger and better; that seeds germinated
> quicker, grew more rapidly and made larger plants; that trees were
> healthier and put on more fruit of better quality.
>      By increasing the mineral content of citrus fruit he likewise
> improved its texture, its appearance and its flavor.
>        He experimented with a variety of growing things, and in every case
> the story was the same. By mineralizing the feed at poultry farms, he got
> more and better eggs; by balancing pasture soils, he produced richer milk.
> Persistently he hammered home to farmers, to doctors, and to the general
> public the thought that life depends upon the minerals.
>        His work led him into a careful study of the effects of climate,
> sunlight, ultraviolet and thermal rays upon plant, animal, and human
> hygiene. In consequence he moved to Florida. People familiar with his work
> consider him the most valuable man in the State. I met him by reason of 
> the
> fact that I was harassed by certain soil problems on my Florida farm which
> had baffled the best chemists and fertilizer experts available.
>        He is an elderly, retiring man, with a warm smile and an engaging
> personality, He is a trifle shy until he opens up on his pet topic; then
> his diffidence disappears and he speaks with authority. His mind is a
> storehouse crammed with precise, scientific data about soil, and food
> chemistry, the complicated life processes of plants, animals, and human
> beings -- and the effect of malnutrition upon all three. He is perhaps as
> close to the secret of life as any man anywhere.
>        "Do you call yourself a soil or a food chemist?" I inquired.
>        "Neither. I'm an M.D. My work lies in the field of biochemistry and
> nutrition. I gave up medicine because this is a wider and more important
> work. Sick soils mean sick plants, sick animals, and sick people. 
> Physical,
> mental, and moral fitness depends largely upon an ample supply and a 
> proper
> proportion of the minerals in our foods. Nerve function, nerve stability,
> nerve-cell-building likewise depend thereon. I'm really a doctor of sick
> soils."
>        "Do you mean to imply that the vegetables I'm raising on my farm
> are sick?" I asked.
>        "Precisely! They're as weak and undernourished as anemic children.
> They're not much good as food. Look at the pests and the disease that
> plague them. Insecticides cost farmers nearly as much as fertilizers these
> days.
>        "A healthy plant, however, grown in soil properly balanced, can and
> will resist most insect pests. That very characteristic makes it a better
> food product. You have tuberculosis and pneumonia germ in your system but
> you're strong enough to throw them off. Similarly, a really healthy plant
> will pretty nearly take care of itself in the battle against insects and
> blights --and will also give the human system what it requires."
>        "Good heavens! Do you realize what that means to agriculture?"
>        "Perfectly. Enormous saving. Better crops. Lowered living costs to
> the rest of us. But I'm not so much interested in agriculture as in
> health."
>        "It sounds beautifully theoretical and utterly impractical to me,"
> I told the doctor, whereupon he gave me some of his case records.
>        For instance, in an orange grove infested with scale, when he
> restored the mineral balance to part of the soil, the trees growing in 
> that
> part became clean while the rest remained diseased. By the same means he
> had grown healthy rosebushes between rows that were riddled by insects.
>        He had grown tomato and cucumber plants, both healthy and diseased,
> where the vines intertwined. The bugs ate up the diseased and refused to
> touch the healthy plants! He showed me interesting analysis of citrus
> fruit, the chemistry and the food value of which accurately reflected the
> soil treatment the trees had received.
>        There is no space here to go fully into Dr. Northen's work but it
> is of such importance as to rank with that of Burbank, the plant wizard,
> and with that of our famous physiologists and nutritional experts.
>        "Healthy plants mean healthy people", said he. "We can't raise a
> strong race on a weak soil. Why don't you try mending the deficiencies on
> your farm and growing more minerals into your crops?"
>        I did try and I succeeded. I was planting a large acreage of celery
> and under Dr. Northen's direction I fed minerals into certain blocks of 
> the
> land in varying amounts. When the plants from this soil were mature I had
> them analyzed, along with celery from other parts of the State. It was the
> most careful and comprehensive study of the kind ever made, and it 
> included
> over 250 separate chemical determinations. I was amazed to learn that my
> celery had more than twice the mineral content of the best grown 
> elsewhere.
> Furthermore, it kept much better, with and without refrigeration, proving
> that the cell structure was sounder.
>        In 1927, Mr. W. W. Kincaid, a "gentleman farmer" of Niagara Falls,
> heard an address by Dr. Northen and was so impressed that he began
> extensive experiments in the mineral feeding of plants and animals. The
> results he has accomplished are conspicuous. He set himself the task of
> increasing the iodine in the milk from his dairy herd. He has succeeded in
> adding both iodine and iron so liberally that one glass of his milk
> contains all of these minerals that an adult person requires for a day.
>        Is this significant? Listen to these incredible figures taken from
> a bulletin of the South Carolina Food Research Commission: "In many
> sections three out of five persons have goiter and a recent estimate 
> states
> that 30 million people in the United States suffer from it."
>        Foods rich in iodine are of the greatest importance to these
> sufferers.
>        Mr Kincaid took a brown Swiss heifer calf which was dropped in the
> stockyards, and by raising her on mineralized pasturage and a properly
> balanced diet made her the third all-time champion of her breed! In one
> season she gave 21,924 pounds of milk. He raised her butterfat production
> from 410 pounds in 1 year to 1,037 pounds. Results like these are of
> incalculable importance.
>        Others besides Mr. Kincaid are following the trail Dr. Northen
> blazed. Similar experiments with milk have been made in Illinois and 
> nearly
> every fertilizer company is beginning to urge use of the rare mineral
> elements. As an example I quote from statements of a subsidiary of one of
> the leading copper companies:
>        Many States show a marked reduction in the productive capacity of
> the soil * * * in many districts amounting to a 25 to 50 percent reduction
> in the last 50 years * * *. Some areas show a tenfold variation in 
> calcium.
> Some show a sixtyfold variation in phosphorus * * *. Authorities * * * see
> soil depletion, barren livestock, increased human death rate due to heart
> disease, deformities, arthritis, increased dental caries, all due to lack
> of essential minerals in plant food.
>
>        "It is neither a complicated nor an expensive undertaking to
> restore our soils to balance and thereby work a real miracle in the 
> control
> of disease," says Dr. Northen. "As a matter of fact, it's a money-making
> move for the farmer, and any competent soil chemist can tell them how to
> proceed.
>        "First determine by analysis the precise chemistry of any given
> soil, then correct the deficiencies by putting down enough of the missing
> elements to restore its balance. The same care should be used as in
> prescribing for a sick patient, for proportions are of vital importance.
>        "In my early experiments I found it extremely difficult to get the
> variety of minerals needed in the form in which I wanted to use them but
> advancement in chemistry, and especially our ever-increasing knowledge of
> colloidal chemistry, has solved that difficulty. It is now possible, by 
> use
> of minerals in colloidal form, to prescribe a cheap and effective system 
> of
> soil correction which meets this vital need and one which fits in 
> admirably
> with nature's plans.
>        "Soils seriously deficient in minerals cannot produce plant life
> competent to maintain our needs, and with the continuous cropping and
> shipping away of those concentrates, the condition becomes worse.
>        "A famous nutrition authority recently said, 'One sure way to end
> the American people's susceptibility to infection is to supply through 
> food
> a balanced ration of iron, copper, and other metals. An organism supplied
> with a diet adequate to, or preferably in excess of, all mineral
> requirements may so utilize these elements as to produce artificially by
> our present method of immunization. You can't make up the deficiency by
> using patent medicine.'
>        "He's absolutely right. Prevention of disease is easier, more
> practical, and more economical than cure, but not until foods are
> standardized on a basis of what they contain instead of what they look 
> like
> can the dietician prescribe them with intelligence and with effect.
>        "There was a time when medical therapy had no standards because the
> therapeutic elements in drugs had not been definitely determined on a
> chemical basis. Pharmaceutical houses have changed all that. Food
> chemistry, on the other hand, has depended almost entirely upon
> governmental agencies for its research, and in our real knowledge of 
> values
> we are about where medicine was a century ago.
>        "Disease preys most surely and most viciously on the
> undernourishment and unfit plants, animals, and human beings alike, and
> when the importance of these obscure mineral elements is fully realized 
> the
> chemistry of life will have to be rewritten. No one knows their mental or
> bodily capacity, how well they can feel or how long they can live, for we
> are all cripples and weaklings. It is a disgrace to science. Happily, that
> chemistry is being rewritten and we are on our way to better health by
> returning to the soil the things we have stolen from it.
>        "The public can help; it can hasten the change. How? By demanding
> quality in its food. By insisting that our doctors and our health
> departments establish scientific standards of nutritional value.
>        "The growers will quickly respond. They can put back those minerals
> almost overnight, and by doing so they can actually make money through
> bigger and better crops.
>        "It is simpler to cure sick soils than sick people -- which shall
> we choose?"
>
>
>
>
>
> *********** END FORWARDED MESSAGE  ***********
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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>
> End of Livingontheland Digest, Vol 90, Issue 6
> **********************************************