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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Local, Seasonal, and Organic
  • Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:34:54 -0700


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.




  • [Livingontheland] Local, Seasonal, and Organic, Tradingpost, 01/03/2010

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