When I talked to customers about organic lawn and garden products five or ten years ago, they practically ran out the door. Today, there are one million community gardens in the US, many of them organic. In 2009, 43 million households will grow some of their own food -- up 19 percent from last year alone. The first family has planted an organic vegetable garden at the White House and there is now an organic people’s garden at the United States Dept. of Agriculture.
European demand for organic produce is even greater than in the U.S., and sales continue to be limited by supply shortages. European sales of organic vegetables alone were valued at EUR 2.5 billion in 2007.
What has brought this rush toward organics and why are so many people becoming so passionate about going organic, about sustainable agriculture, about backyard gardens, and about local food?
People are passionate because they see us at a crossroads in human development, and they see future generations depending on us to make the right choice. They see loved ones suffering from illnesses caused by poor food quality and exposure to harmful agricultural products. But, they also see a road that leads to a sustainable society, better health for everyone with lower costs, and the bonus of leaving our planet in better shape than we found it.
These people see sustainable methods of agriculture -- both on the farm and in the yard -- as the most important societal issue facing us today. It could be a major weapon against global warming and rising health care costs, while also producing millions of new jobs.
But most of us are still asking -- why is sustainable organic agriculture so important?
It would convert millions of acres that are now a major contributor to greenhouse gas production to acreage that harvests CO2from the air -- buries the carbon in the soil and returns the oxygen into the air.
It would produce food that would better nourish us and drastically reduce our health care costs.
Improved food quality would make our food, once again, desired in world markets. Filling a growing demand for better food would create millions of new jobs through a return to smaller and more intensively managed farms. These agricultural exports would need no subsidies.
It would be of tremendous importance to our water supply with reduction of pollutants, lower irrigation costs, and reduction of dead zones that release methane, a very dangerous greenhouse gas.
It could help energy demand by leading us to sustainable biofuels.
Costs of converting to sustainable agricultural practices could be immediately offset by allowing farmers to sell carbon credits. The long term cost savings to our society would be enormous.
From producing to consuming greenhousegasses
All plants absorb carbon from the air (in the form of CO2) and return it to the soil when they die and decompose. This is called carbon sequestration. Our modern food production system is a major contributor to greenhouse gas production because of its use of fossil fuel based and mined fertilizers-- and because synthetic fertilizers and pesticides lower biological activity in the soil which inhibits carbon sequestration.
Chemical nitrogen fertilizers from our farms and our lawns release nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas 300 times worse than CO2) from our soils. Runoff into our waterways promotes excessive algae growth. When this algae dies, it pulls oxygen out of the water and releases methane, another greenhouse gas more damaging than CO2. This creates dead zones like the ones in the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Erie.
Sustainable organic farming methods would not only eliminate the use of these products -- but also encourage soil organisms that could encase carbon in the soil where it can be held for hundreds of years. According to Rodale Institute's Tim LaSalle -- if we paid farmers for the additional carbon stored by converting from conventional to regenerative, low-chemical agriculture (which his studies put at more thanthree tons of CO2/acre), agriculture could potentially sequester 25 percent of current U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Four countries in Europe have already done this and have been able to reduce their requirements for the Kyoto accords, France may be soon to follow. Sustainable farming practices are now recognized internationally as away of reducing greenhouse gasses.
Organic lawn care practices could eliminate another major contributor to water pollution problems and greenhouse gas production. Millions of acres of lawns that are now contributing to greenhouse gasses could begin harvesting CO2. Lawn and garden products that are now causing major pollution problems and creating dead zones in our lakes and oceans can easily be replaced with organic products. The result would be healthier lawns and soils, lower lawn care costs, and elimination of dangerous chemicals that are causing health problems for our pets, children and wildlife.
Nourishing food lowers health care costs
Modern nutritional science is developing a consensus that the food we are eating today is feeding us, but not nourishing us. It lacks nutrients that our bodies need to stay healthy. Plant science is finding that soils have a dramatic effect on the nutritional value of crops -- and their nutritional value to us. If iron, calcium, or manganese are not in our soils, or are not absorbed from the soil by plants, they will not be in our food.
The soil is for plants what our digestive system is for us. For our bodies to absorb the nutrients in spinach it has to be chewed and treated with digestive enzymes in our mouth, bathed in an acid bath in our stomach, fermented in our large intestine, and still not all the nutrients are absorbed. Soils perform a similar digestive process through a series of steps --including millions of soil creatures and microbes. It is a fragile system that if not fully intact, produces less nutritious food. The damage to soil life caused by chemical fertilizer use has caused dramatic digestive problems for our farm crops.
Over the same period that our soils have deteriorated, we are increasingly becoming ill and dying prematurely from degenerative diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. These are financially and emotionally costly diseases that put a tremendous burden onfamilies and health care costs. Many of our seniors become dependant on assisted living at an early age while in so-called primitive cultures they are still working in fields at ages of over 100.
This past winter, I was talking to a local farmer who began farming organically in the early 1980’s. He talked about how, at that time, his cows would not clean their calves after birthing. He was told that this was normal with Holstein cows, maybe because they were so domesticated. However,after a few years of being fed crops from the now improving organic fields, they began to clean them very vigorously. Why did the same crops grown using different methods affect such a primal behavior in the cows as motherhood? Maybe if we knew, it would help to explain some of our health, including mental health, issues.
Help wanted on the farms
I recently listened to a member of Congress talk about how although we recommend a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, our farmers don’t produce this kind of food. The food that they produce is dictated by market terms and government subsidies. Farmers produce the food that consumers want (meaning cheap), and food that they can grow and sell for a profit. We don’t value healthy food so farmers don’t produce it.
We heavily subsidize production of corn and cows but we give almost no support to farmers producing healthy organic fruits and vegetables, including buying their products. Beef would cost at least ten times more today without subsidies and therefore, these subsidies influence our diet. In other words, we heavily subsidize -- with our tax dollars -- production of food that is making us ill and not nourishing crops like vegetables and fruits. High profit processed foods provide lobby money that continues these subsidies.
We need to support farmers who produce healthy vegetables and fruits by buying their products and offering them at least the same subsidies as those who are producing corn and cows. These products are more labor intensive so increased demand would create more agricultural jobs.
We also need to develop a mentality that working on farms and producing our food is as important as working on Wall Street, or even educating our children -- after all, how well can our children learn if they are malnourished. With our climate and natural resources, we could quickly be producing food that the entire world would want. Instead, periodically we buy organic red peppers from Holland. We need to realize that the rest of the world doesn’t want our genetically modified stuff. However, we could begin to supply a worldwide demand for real food, and this could mean more jobs for Americans.
We export many agricultural products today but these sales are often forced on other countries by deals made in exchange for loans from world banks. Nutritious food is in great demand worldwide, empty calories are not.
Cleaning up and conserving our waterresources
Chemical fertilizers from our farms and our lawns are the major pollutant in our water systems. We pollute our rivers, lakes, and oceans with irresponsible lawn care methods that contaminate our water and contribute to greenhouse gases. There is not a single chemical lawn care product that is irreplaceable, and many of them carry significant health hazards for our families, pets and the environment.
Developing sustainable biofuels
Today’s production of biofuels is simply using fossil fuels to produce biofuels at very low efficiency. Today’s biofuel production carries more environmental and health care costs than fossil fuel use alone, and it is completely unsustainable.
Sustainable farming practices could lead to sustainable biofuel production. This would mean converting sunlight to usable energy instead of fossil fuels to biofuels.
Citizen actions
Organic gardening is the essence of environmental responsibility. How can anyone who uses hazardous lawn and garden products in their own yard criticize others, even large corporations, for doing the same thing? Today, our farms and households pollute more than our businesses.
Support industries and programs that harvest CO2 from the air and put it back into the soil. This is what we are doing when we recycle leaves, and buy fresh cut Christmas trees.
There are 1.7 million trees planted each day by ourpaper industry. If we composted our paper waste, which is almost all carbon, it would make buying paper products a very green thing to do.
Compost our household organic waste and return the carbon to the soil. Organic waste sent to landfills releases methane, a very dangerous greenhouse gas. Organic waste returned to the soil improves the soil,produces healthier food, and the carbon in it can be held in the soil for hundreds of years.
End the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in our yards. Waterways in more highly populated urban areas usually have higher concentrations of fertilizers and pesticides than farm areas.
Lead by example. Buy organic produce and stop the use of dangerous lawn and garden products.
Do your part to reduce medical costs by eating better foods. Organically grown is always more nutritious, and growing your own is even better.
Consumer actions
Start to grow some of your own food organically.This will make hard economic times easier, help you understand the importance of how our food is produced, send a signal to the food industry and politicians, and it will also introduce you to more nutritious and flavorful food so you can see what you are missing.
Make non-processed foods like vegetables and fruits,especially organic, the greatest part of your diet. We pay for so-called convenience foods with increased health care costs and costly environmental cleanup problems.
Support organic farmers by buying their products and creating a demand for more.
Support local farmers, but only if they are growing organically and not using chemical fertilizers. Why do we think it is more important to buy local than organic? Buying organic supports a sustainable food system that nourishes us, our families and helps to heal the planet. Buying local conventional food only saves shipping.
Use locally recycled organic matter like leaf humus and compost, in your yard and garden. Soil conditioners like peat moss are bulky, shipped hundreds of miles and destroy peat bogs. This causes environmental and water quality problems and releases carbon tied up in them.
Political actions
Develop programs to improve the quality of municipal organic waste and return it to our soils.
Expand the municipal leaf recycling programs to include other household organic waste. This will eventually save money in reduced landfill costs.
Reward farmers for returning carbon to the soil by offering carbon credits to all farmers -- especially small farmers.
Encourage farmers to plant cover crops. Clover provides nitrogen needed for crops without the use of chemical fertilizers. Alfalfa reaches deep into the soil and pulls minerals up to the surface where they have been depleted by modern farming methods. When these plants are tilled under, they provide these nutrients to our food crops and make our food better. The added organic matter also holds more water so less irrigation is needed. We seem to have forgotten the lessons of the dust bowl and the importance of cover crops.
Encourage planting of trees and development of wood lots.
Encourage development and planting of perennial farm crops like pastures, fruit and nut trees, asparagus, and berries.
Support biological remedies for treating retention ponds, farm ponds, and municipal storm sewer systems. Pollutants in our storm sewer water can be broken down biologically before they reach our waterways. This is more cost effective and places the cost of cleanup on those doing the polluting. If you want to use chemicals fertilizers, you should have to pay the full cost of their use. This will encourage the use of organic fertilizers,minimize the production of methane and dead zones, and help reduce harmful bacteria levels on our beaches.
Begin to treat dead zones in our water systems. I have been doing this for years in retention basins. These dead zones can be reversed in a few years but it will be costly. The benefits would be improvement in water quality, rebuilding of hatcheries, and reduction of methane gas emissions.
End the cruel and unhealthy practices that we call animal feed lots. Animals kept this way may feed us, but they do not nourish us. These feedlots also produce waste stored in manure lagoons that cannot be used by farmers because it would damage their crops. These lagoons are also exempt from water pollution regulations.
Make subsidies for farmers that produce nourishing crops like vegetables and fruits equal or greater than those given to farmers producing non-nourishing and environmentally damaging crops like commodity corn.
End subsidies for fossil fuel based ethanol production. Using fossil fuels and killing off an estuary like the Gulf of Mexico with runoff from corn fields is not sustainable energy production.
There is an ancient Indian legend that tells a story about a boy finding an injured bird and bringing him home to his father, called man. This happened to be a special bird with the most beautiful song in the forest. When man saw the bird, he told his son that he couldn’t waste the time or food needed to bring the bird back to health. But when the bird died, the song died, and then man himself died.
The bird sang the song of nature, and by letting the song of nature die, man killed himself.
This legend is coming true today. We are killing ourselves -- our children -- and our children's children because we have let die the smallest of creatures -- the life in our soils. Our use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has left farm fields eerily silent, without the songs of our longtime allies like toads, birds, and insects that once protected our crops. Under the soil, conventional farming practices are destroying a civilization of beneficial creatures like earthworms that protected and nourished the plants which then nourished us.
Our generation has made many mistakes. But we have also found answers for many of our problems. We now have an opportunity to create a more sustainable world for future generations. Do we have the courage to do what is needed and whenit is needed?
To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson “We are very near to greatness: one step andwe are safe: can we not take the leap?
