Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Local, Seasonal, and Organic
http://organictobe.org/index.php/2008/01/08/local-seasonal-and-organic/
>From Jeff Cox

I’ve just finished reading four articles in The New York Times written by 
respected correspondents from around the world reporting on the effects of 
global warming on their environments. Their reports are scary—climatic 
interruptions that decimate crops, shrinking glaciers, melting ice sheets 
that will inundate coastal area, extinction of plant and animal species. But 
the most disturbing report for me comes from China, where the correspondent 
reports that the Chinese, inheritors of a farming system that has served them 
sustainably for forty centuries, is changing. The old system relied on 
recycling every scrap of organic matter into the soil so that seasonal crops 
would reliably grow cabbages in the winter, radishes in the spring, an 
abundance of vegetables in the summer, and even more vegetables in the fall. 
Meat was a small but important contribution to the Chinese diet.

But now, with newfound wealth, the Chinese are demanding more meat, fruits in 
winter, imported foods from around the world—just like North Americans and 
Europeans. This globalization of the food supply is exactly the direction 
that exacerbates global warming by homogenizing the fare in the 
markets—everything available at all times. Strawberries in winter, ripe 
melons in early spring, blueberries all year.

Along with reducing our “carbon footprint” by using renewable energy sources, 
every place on earth needs to be evaluated for its optimum system for 
producing locally-grown, seasonally correct, and nutritious food that’s 
suited to the locality’s climate, rainfall pattern, and heat-cold profile. 
Farmers need to be encouraged to produce environmentally sensible crops in 
their regions with price supports and tax breaks. People need to understand 
how important it is for the health of the planet and for their health 
personally to eat seasonally, locally, and organically.

It’s madness to think that everyone on earth can eat whatever they want at 
any time of the year. In that way, we eat ourselves toward ecological 
disaster, environmental destruction, and world hunger.

We can all start turning this agricultural ship around now by buying locally, 
seasonally, and organically as much as possible—and refusing the blueberries 
in January and the cauliflower in June.