The Soil Association has produced figures, in their Organic Market Report 2016, showing that organic products sales have increased 4.9 % in 2015. During the same period, non organic groceries have reduced by 9 %.
The largest growth sector was in organic health and beauty, up 21.6 % to £54.2 million.
Total organic sales are now £1.95 billion. The total food and drink sector in the UK is worth over £92 billion, which is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK. The organic market is therefore, just over 2 % of this total, but it is expanding fast, in contrast to the rest of the sector, which is declining. A younger age group is increasingly demanding organic products.
According to Organic Farming, Wikipedia, world organic farmland has grown in area by 8.9 % per annum from 2001 to 2011. In 2011, there was 37 million hectares (91 million acres) of organic farmland in the world, representing 0.9 % of the total.
In the UK, the area of organic farmland increased until 2010, when it has since declined somewhat to stand at 548,000 hectares in 2014 (Organic farming statistics 2014 - Gov.uk). 84 % of this organic land was under pasture, with the largest amount devoted to sheep, so perhaps this recent decline is due to other factors of the financial viability of such land rather than whether there is a clearly increased demand for such food. The cost of conversion is clearly an important factor in this.
It is clear from these figures that demand for organic products is outstripping supply, because the costs and declining yields during conversion of the land, can deter producers. It is therefore imperative that more research is undertaken to help defray the costs of conversion and to sustain yields.
One problem has been the damage top ancient woodlands in the UK, which harbour mycelium, or fungal threads, that sustain plant life in and around woods. Along with the vast quantity of microbes and life within each square metre of soil that has not been contaminated by chemicals, clearly it takes some time to regain such healthy soil condition where mycellium and microbes are fully functioning.
Sunday, 24 April 2016
Friday, 22 April 2016
Glyphosphate weedkillers
The EU have been ready to continue the use of Glyphosphate weedkillers, which represents some 20% pf Monsanto's profits, but a petition organised by AVAAZ online with some 2 million signatories, has influenced them to continue discussing a ban. In September this year, the EU, to their credit, will finally ban the most toxic slug pellets, having now acknowledged that it has been killing our thrushes and sparrows. I have been looking forward to such a ban for decades, as I have fruitlessly tried to persuade people how dangerous these were to wildlife. In any case, the most effective slug repellent is to remove them by hand and throw them somewhere the birds can feed on them,, as they are a vital part of the food chain. Wasps eat aphids, surprise surprise, and everything has a place in natures wondrous scheme of things, so please stop treating such creatures as enemies.
Friday, 15 April 2016
Can organic food feed the world ?
For so many years, we have been informed by the so called 'experts', that organic food yields were insufficient to feed a growing world population.
This series of blogs have completely disproved this biased viewpoint. The facts are, as explained in the companion blogs in this series, that chemically produced food has a decreasing nutritional value, a decrease in disease resistance and leads eventually to a drop in yields over the long term, due to soil erosion and soil exhaustion.
Farmers used to be called 'husbands' to the land of Mother Earth, because their good husbandry increased the fertility of their land and animals. In ancient times, if the king became unjust and corrupt, then the Earth, who was in sacred marriage to the ruler, would withdraw her benefice; the land would lose its fertility, milk yields would fall away and the weather worsen.
Well the sorry state of the current world and its many corrupt leaders, has produced a similar scenario; so that TB in cattle is rife and the bulk matter and nutritional content in food has reduced considerably since figures were first compiled about 1950.
We learn that a mother's breast milk will kill 40 different types of cancer cell and that it is pro-biotic, in that a sugar in this milk is not to feed the baby as such, but instead creates the food for the microbes which will grow and inhabit the child's gut. So right from the creation of a new born baby, Mother Nature provides all the protection from illness and disease that a healthy child will require.
The same is true for the soil, which if left to its own devices with the minimum of interference beyond the normal planting and tilling procedures, will be perfectly capable of resisting disease. Even on a large scale, as with Leontino Balbo's enormous organic sugar acreage in Brazil, he found that he alone produced sugar cane that was resistant to yellow virus on land that had once been severely depleted by chemical usage. Doubtless, the jaguar droppings that he benefits from, as they roam within his sugar crops, give that resistance extra feline poke, with all the microbes and worms and insects responding in kind !
With his yields, on his 16,000 hectares, defying all expectations as they have surged to one third more than chemically produced sugar, he has single handedly proven that we can have large scale production of quality organic food, alongside a resumption of native wildlife both supporting each other, as his forest meditation had promised when he despaired from an initial drop in yields.
If we were to analyse the mineral content in his produce, doubtless it would reveal a degree of quality because Mother Earth had shone her guiding light on his good husbandry.
Today, I had the good fortune to meet a farmers wife on a small tenant farm, who told me that they had always farmed the same way. The cows would reach an age of 16 instead of the more normal 6 years and the chickens, glowing with health would live to a ripe old age, rather than the commercial chickens who live only a year or two at best.
All was at peace amongst the animals on her farm as they lived out their natural lifespan. In the high Himalayas, it is normal for such livestock to live long lives and are then consumed when they naturally die. A BBC visitor tasted the meat and confirmed that although the meat was slightly tough, due to the age of the animals as one would expect: it was still the best meat he had ever tasted. Of course, the animals had enjoyed their lives and not had to endure the horrors of the slaughterhouse, which would taint the meat with their fear and panic.
Another respondent on the BBC mentioned a National Park in Southern Africa, where the large animals had reduced to 1000 in total, but by protecting them and leaving them to their own devices, their numbers had increased in a few years to the present figure of 70,000.
Nature abhors a vacuum, they say and is extraordinarily abundant,, provided we trust it to do what it does best; provide us with all our food and materials to create a revitalised healthy world. It now behoves us all to listen to the wise words of King Solomon in Ecclesiastices:
"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever."
One more thing; the alchemists of old used to rave on about the extraordinary and potentially unique nature of the mineral content on this Earth which certainly the Sun and the planets do not share. Mother Earth has all the various elements in the periodic table up to and including plutonium.
Ask yourself how this can be ? What strange history did our Earth pass from before it came to rest by the sun ?
As yet, I have found no physicist who can explain how uranium and plutonium could exist on this planet, because the forces necessary to create it are so huge, that perhaps only the Big Bang was sufficient to begin their existence. Certainly our Sun has only hydrogen and helium, although its interior may have heavier nuclear elements. The old Inca legend that once the Earth was alone, before the Sun and Moon appeared, is thus an extraordinary memory of the complexity of the Earth's component of elements, which we so depend on and where the Earth came from. From these basic minerals, life on earth has grown and thrived; that is until the overpopulation of mankind has caused desert to spread and since the 1840s, with the use of chemical fertilisers and later herbicides on farmland, soil erosion and depletion.
We really urgently need to take stock and reverse these policies of believing that artificial chemical agriculture can feed a growing world population. With the increasing desert land area in places like Spain, this is even more apparent. The rapid growth in the market for organic food reveals that demand is outstripping supply, precisely because consumers wish to be healthier and ensure that animals are treated compassionately. It behoves us all to view our relationship with the Earth, as our ancestors once did, as of total dependence of us, as children, to our ever productive mother. The complexity of life in our soils is best left to nature alone, because all the minerals and vitamins are naturally present within the land using organic means of production.
Or as they used to call it; muck and mystery !
This series of blogs have completely disproved this biased viewpoint. The facts are, as explained in the companion blogs in this series, that chemically produced food has a decreasing nutritional value, a decrease in disease resistance and leads eventually to a drop in yields over the long term, due to soil erosion and soil exhaustion.
Farmers used to be called 'husbands' to the land of Mother Earth, because their good husbandry increased the fertility of their land and animals. In ancient times, if the king became unjust and corrupt, then the Earth, who was in sacred marriage to the ruler, would withdraw her benefice; the land would lose its fertility, milk yields would fall away and the weather worsen.
Well the sorry state of the current world and its many corrupt leaders, has produced a similar scenario; so that TB in cattle is rife and the bulk matter and nutritional content in food has reduced considerably since figures were first compiled about 1950.
We learn that a mother's breast milk will kill 40 different types of cancer cell and that it is pro-biotic, in that a sugar in this milk is not to feed the baby as such, but instead creates the food for the microbes which will grow and inhabit the child's gut. So right from the creation of a new born baby, Mother Nature provides all the protection from illness and disease that a healthy child will require.
The same is true for the soil, which if left to its own devices with the minimum of interference beyond the normal planting and tilling procedures, will be perfectly capable of resisting disease. Even on a large scale, as with Leontino Balbo's enormous organic sugar acreage in Brazil, he found that he alone produced sugar cane that was resistant to yellow virus on land that had once been severely depleted by chemical usage. Doubtless, the jaguar droppings that he benefits from, as they roam within his sugar crops, give that resistance extra feline poke, with all the microbes and worms and insects responding in kind !
With his yields, on his 16,000 hectares, defying all expectations as they have surged to one third more than chemically produced sugar, he has single handedly proven that we can have large scale production of quality organic food, alongside a resumption of native wildlife both supporting each other, as his forest meditation had promised when he despaired from an initial drop in yields.
If we were to analyse the mineral content in his produce, doubtless it would reveal a degree of quality because Mother Earth had shone her guiding light on his good husbandry.
Today, I had the good fortune to meet a farmers wife on a small tenant farm, who told me that they had always farmed the same way. The cows would reach an age of 16 instead of the more normal 6 years and the chickens, glowing with health would live to a ripe old age, rather than the commercial chickens who live only a year or two at best.
All was at peace amongst the animals on her farm as they lived out their natural lifespan. In the high Himalayas, it is normal for such livestock to live long lives and are then consumed when they naturally die. A BBC visitor tasted the meat and confirmed that although the meat was slightly tough, due to the age of the animals as one would expect: it was still the best meat he had ever tasted. Of course, the animals had enjoyed their lives and not had to endure the horrors of the slaughterhouse, which would taint the meat with their fear and panic.
Another respondent on the BBC mentioned a National Park in Southern Africa, where the large animals had reduced to 1000 in total, but by protecting them and leaving them to their own devices, their numbers had increased in a few years to the present figure of 70,000.
Nature abhors a vacuum, they say and is extraordinarily abundant,, provided we trust it to do what it does best; provide us with all our food and materials to create a revitalised healthy world. It now behoves us all to listen to the wise words of King Solomon in Ecclesiastices:
"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever."
One more thing; the alchemists of old used to rave on about the extraordinary and potentially unique nature of the mineral content on this Earth which certainly the Sun and the planets do not share. Mother Earth has all the various elements in the periodic table up to and including plutonium.
Ask yourself how this can be ? What strange history did our Earth pass from before it came to rest by the sun ?
As yet, I have found no physicist who can explain how uranium and plutonium could exist on this planet, because the forces necessary to create it are so huge, that perhaps only the Big Bang was sufficient to begin their existence. Certainly our Sun has only hydrogen and helium, although its interior may have heavier nuclear elements. The old Inca legend that once the Earth was alone, before the Sun and Moon appeared, is thus an extraordinary memory of the complexity of the Earth's component of elements, which we so depend on and where the Earth came from. From these basic minerals, life on earth has grown and thrived; that is until the overpopulation of mankind has caused desert to spread and since the 1840s, with the use of chemical fertilisers and later herbicides on farmland, soil erosion and depletion.
We really urgently need to take stock and reverse these policies of believing that artificial chemical agriculture can feed a growing world population. With the increasing desert land area in places like Spain, this is even more apparent. The rapid growth in the market for organic food reveals that demand is outstripping supply, precisely because consumers wish to be healthier and ensure that animals are treated compassionately. It behoves us all to view our relationship with the Earth, as our ancestors once did, as of total dependence of us, as children, to our ever productive mother. The complexity of life in our soils is best left to nature alone, because all the minerals and vitamins are naturally present within the land using organic means of production.
Or as they used to call it; muck and mystery !
Taste in organic food
The other crucial factor in determining choosing organic food is taste. Unfortunately, most people are so addicted to salt and sugar and white fats, as opposed to brown fats, that they often find they cannot really taste the difference between organic and non organic food.
This is akin to the problem of soil exhaustion, where chemically reduced soils can be compared to our digestive systems, which can get exhausted.
Anyone who produces organic peas in their garden, can tell you that when freshly picked off the pod, the taste is heavenly; provided of course your taste buds are addicted to chemical laden foods. Leeks in the shops taste like mouthwash, compared to my own leeks, which taste soft and creamy. People rave about my potatoes, but it has to be said that organic farms cannot always manage the same degree of taste quality as a small organic garden or allotment.
There are 2000 different compounds in milk, but how much damage is made to these in normal commercial production and through pasteurisation ? Of course, pasteurisation is necessary for the current urban population, but anyone who has tasted fresh milk from a cow will tell you that it tastes like nothing else on this goodly Mother Earth of ours and perhaps in time, we may find organic ways to prevent brucolis in cattle, just as organic food is often far more immune to various diseases over time.
So taste depends on good husbandry of organic soils, its high mineral content and the micro-biology which it supports, so akin to the enormous microbe content of our digestive systems. Taste is therefore, our major guide to the quality of our food and therefore our health. It just amazes me, as it would have my dear late organic gardening grandmother, that anyone could believe otherwise; but the money always finances the most effective distorted propaganda.
This is akin to the problem of soil exhaustion, where chemically reduced soils can be compared to our digestive systems, which can get exhausted.
Anyone who produces organic peas in their garden, can tell you that when freshly picked off the pod, the taste is heavenly; provided of course your taste buds are addicted to chemical laden foods. Leeks in the shops taste like mouthwash, compared to my own leeks, which taste soft and creamy. People rave about my potatoes, but it has to be said that organic farms cannot always manage the same degree of taste quality as a small organic garden or allotment.
There are 2000 different compounds in milk, but how much damage is made to these in normal commercial production and through pasteurisation ? Of course, pasteurisation is necessary for the current urban population, but anyone who has tasted fresh milk from a cow will tell you that it tastes like nothing else on this goodly Mother Earth of ours and perhaps in time, we may find organic ways to prevent brucolis in cattle, just as organic food is often far more immune to various diseases over time.
So taste depends on good husbandry of organic soils, its high mineral content and the micro-biology which it supports, so akin to the enormous microbe content of our digestive systems. Taste is therefore, our major guide to the quality of our food and therefore our health. It just amazes me, as it would have my dear late organic gardening grandmother, that anyone could believe otherwise; but the money always finances the most effective distorted propaganda.
The price of Organic food, can come down in time
Organic food is relatively expensive for hard pressed family finances, but in time it can get cheaper.
In terms of mineral content, as shown by companion blogs in this series, organic food is actually way cheaper than non organic food, so depleted in iron and cobalt, as to be virtually valueless.
As organic demand rises each year, demand can outstrip supply, which causes prices to rise. The answer to this is to increase the supply, so that massive increased production would produce economies of scale leading to cheaper organic food.
If as much research money was poured into restoring our severely depleted soils and micro-biology, bees, worms and so on, as in damaging those soils, so the health of the land and its people, which includes our educational establishments, old people, NHS, prisons etc, will all benefit from a vast increase in the mineral content of their food. Imagine if Macdonalds and KFC began to source organic food, then even Fast Foods would begin to restore some endorphins to our kids, with all the benefits that would bring ?
In Central India, thousands of small scale farmers have rejected GM and chemical food production, as it reduced their income and their yields, so they have gone back to being organic.
The problem in Britain, is that people have been fed the lie that the so called 'Green Revolution' would feed the world; but that has led to a massive crisis in ill health and mental instability in our society. All of us suffer from the use of chemicals, as auto immune diseases rocket and the bees die off. Rachel Carson's classic work, Silent Spring, published back in 1962, has become a sad reality as our thrushes and starlings have disappeared and bees now have to be imported into California; so expensive are the hives now there, that bee keepers steal each others hives which 90% of all the world's almond production in California is solely dependent on.
So what price, chemically produced GM food ? It may appear cheaper, but in reality it is costing us all a hidden fortune in our health, in Mother Nature's health and above all, in our wallets.
In terms of mineral content, as shown by companion blogs in this series, organic food is actually way cheaper than non organic food, so depleted in iron and cobalt, as to be virtually valueless.
As organic demand rises each year, demand can outstrip supply, which causes prices to rise. The answer to this is to increase the supply, so that massive increased production would produce economies of scale leading to cheaper organic food.
If as much research money was poured into restoring our severely depleted soils and micro-biology, bees, worms and so on, as in damaging those soils, so the health of the land and its people, which includes our educational establishments, old people, NHS, prisons etc, will all benefit from a vast increase in the mineral content of their food. Imagine if Macdonalds and KFC began to source organic food, then even Fast Foods would begin to restore some endorphins to our kids, with all the benefits that would bring ?
In Central India, thousands of small scale farmers have rejected GM and chemical food production, as it reduced their income and their yields, so they have gone back to being organic.
The problem in Britain, is that people have been fed the lie that the so called 'Green Revolution' would feed the world; but that has led to a massive crisis in ill health and mental instability in our society. All of us suffer from the use of chemicals, as auto immune diseases rocket and the bees die off. Rachel Carson's classic work, Silent Spring, published back in 1962, has become a sad reality as our thrushes and starlings have disappeared and bees now have to be imported into California; so expensive are the hives now there, that bee keepers steal each others hives which 90% of all the world's almond production in California is solely dependent on.
So what price, chemically produced GM food ? It may appear cheaper, but in reality it is costing us all a hidden fortune in our health, in Mother Nature's health and above all, in our wallets.
Organic Dig for Victory
During the 2nd World War, the UK nearly starved in 1942 due to the German U-Boats sinking the food convoys from the USA. A merchant seaman told me, that in that fateful year one of the convoys was deliberately sacrificed to the U-Boats in order for the others to return to the UK safely, with the sad loss of about 1000 merchant seamen.
Meanwhile, the Dig for Victory campaign in the UK, also fed our embattled troops, at a time when we were alone, apart from the Free-French, Polish, Anzacs, Canadian and no less than 2 million Indian troops; who held the Germans and Japanese back to a remarkable extent.
But get this! The Dig for Victory campaign on so many tiny allotments was probably only partly organic, but was responsible for 10 % of all the food produced in the UK at the time from only 0.5 % of the land.
Yet again, these figures are stark, in underlying the fact that small scale organic production is far more efficient at feeding the world than large scale chemical production could ever be, and as organic production on larger farms over several years is now outstripping the yields on non organic farms, as the depleted soils recover, so any claims to the contrary are simply bogus !
So don't believe Monsanto GM plaudits, including some in the UK parliament, concerning the need for increased commercial non organic GM production of our food. Such a road will only lead to a collapse in our NHS and increasing suicide rates in our young teenagers. Quantity and quality in our food is what we all require and organic food will only become cheaper if more producers enter the field. The demand for organic food is increasing year by year and this year another 320 acres at Dartington Hall Farm has just gone organic among many others worldwide. The problem for farmers, is the initial drop in yields during the 5 year conversion before the soils begin to recover; this requires more research and lots and lots of worms ha ha !
Meanwhile, the Dig for Victory campaign in the UK, also fed our embattled troops, at a time when we were alone, apart from the Free-French, Polish, Anzacs, Canadian and no less than 2 million Indian troops; who held the Germans and Japanese back to a remarkable extent.
But get this! The Dig for Victory campaign on so many tiny allotments was probably only partly organic, but was responsible for 10 % of all the food produced in the UK at the time from only 0.5 % of the land.
Yet again, these figures are stark, in underlying the fact that small scale organic production is far more efficient at feeding the world than large scale chemical production could ever be, and as organic production on larger farms over several years is now outstripping the yields on non organic farms, as the depleted soils recover, so any claims to the contrary are simply bogus !
So don't believe Monsanto GM plaudits, including some in the UK parliament, concerning the need for increased commercial non organic GM production of our food. Such a road will only lead to a collapse in our NHS and increasing suicide rates in our young teenagers. Quantity and quality in our food is what we all require and organic food will only become cheaper if more producers enter the field. The demand for organic food is increasing year by year and this year another 320 acres at Dartington Hall Farm has just gone organic among many others worldwide. The problem for farmers, is the initial drop in yields during the 5 year conversion before the soils begin to recover; this requires more research and lots and lots of worms ha ha !
Mineral content in organic and non organic food
Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, 8th oldest in the USA, has published comparative data for the mineral content in organic and non organic food and the figures are shocking. Of course, the figures may not be so bad in the UK, for example, but they reveal why so many people are suffering from so many ailments caused by such malnutrition.
Thus, lack of boron can increase arthritis, menopausal problems, bone disease, cancer, etc. One shouldn't assume that meat can supply this; if the livestock are fed on similar mineral depleted feed, then they will also lack boron which will reduce their immunity to TB in cattle, for instance. Intensive farming will not necessarily produce quality yields, as more chemicals kills off the bees and the micro-biological of the soils. Lack of cobalt means that Vitamin B 12 is not synthesised; as true for sheep and cattle as for humans. The nil figures for cobalt in non organic food, given below, is extremely pertinent in this regard.
Food Trace Element Parts per Million Dry Weight
Boron | Manganese | Iron | Copper | Cobalt
Snap Beans
Organic 73 60 227 69 0.26
Non organic (Chemical) 10 2 10 3 0
Cabbage
Organic 42 13 94 48 0.15
Non organic (Chemical) 7 2 20 0.4 0
Lettuce
Organic 37 169 516 60 0.19
Non organic (Chemical) 6 1 9 3 0
Tomatoes
Organic 36 68 1938 53 0.63
Non organic (Chemical) 3 1 1 0 0
Spinach
Organic 88 117 1584 32 0.25
Non organic (Chemical) 12 1 49 0.3 0.02
They say statistics can lie, ha ha, but if more studies are made elsewhere, it may be that American soils are more depleted than elsewhere, bur generally, every chemical application that is made depletes world soils more and more. We know this from statistics collected about 1950, which show that soils back then produced food with roughly double the mineral content to UK soils about the year 2000 and doubtless, the figures have worsened since then. I used to sort potatoes on a chemical farm 20 years ago, used for chips and these were so chemical that they would turn top mush, if left too long in the sack. Carrots, too don't keep over winter like they used to, while leeks taste like mouthwash compared to those I produce on my allotment which are creamy and delicious.
The above tables also give comparative figures for other minerals such as potassium, sodium, magnesium,phosphorus and calcium with similar shocking results. I felt it would be much clearer to the reader to keep the table simple. As the cobalt and iron figures amply demonstrate, non organic chemical food is becoming increasingly valueless as a source of nutrition, so the UK Government's call to eat '5 a day', should be amended to organic rather than non organic food.. We now urgently require more comparative figures on the vitamin content in these foods and in the meat and farmed fish as well.
Thus, lack of boron can increase arthritis, menopausal problems, bone disease, cancer, etc. One shouldn't assume that meat can supply this; if the livestock are fed on similar mineral depleted feed, then they will also lack boron which will reduce their immunity to TB in cattle, for instance. Intensive farming will not necessarily produce quality yields, as more chemicals kills off the bees and the micro-biological of the soils. Lack of cobalt means that Vitamin B 12 is not synthesised; as true for sheep and cattle as for humans. The nil figures for cobalt in non organic food, given below, is extremely pertinent in this regard.
Food Trace Element Parts per Million Dry Weight
Boron | Manganese | Iron | Copper | Cobalt
Snap Beans
Organic 73 60 227 69 0.26
Non organic (Chemical) 10 2 10 3 0
Cabbage
Organic 42 13 94 48 0.15
Non organic (Chemical) 7 2 20 0.4 0
Lettuce
Organic 37 169 516 60 0.19
Non organic (Chemical) 6 1 9 3 0
Tomatoes
Organic 36 68 1938 53 0.63
Non organic (Chemical) 3 1 1 0 0
Spinach
Organic 88 117 1584 32 0.25
Non organic (Chemical) 12 1 49 0.3 0.02
They say statistics can lie, ha ha, but if more studies are made elsewhere, it may be that American soils are more depleted than elsewhere, bur generally, every chemical application that is made depletes world soils more and more. We know this from statistics collected about 1950, which show that soils back then produced food with roughly double the mineral content to UK soils about the year 2000 and doubtless, the figures have worsened since then. I used to sort potatoes on a chemical farm 20 years ago, used for chips and these were so chemical that they would turn top mush, if left too long in the sack. Carrots, too don't keep over winter like they used to, while leeks taste like mouthwash compared to those I produce on my allotment which are creamy and delicious.
The above tables also give comparative figures for other minerals such as potassium, sodium, magnesium,phosphorus and calcium with similar shocking results. I felt it would be much clearer to the reader to keep the table simple. As the cobalt and iron figures amply demonstrate, non organic chemical food is becoming increasingly valueless as a source of nutrition, so the UK Government's call to eat '5 a day', should be amended to organic rather than non organic food.. We now urgently require more comparative figures on the vitamin content in these foods and in the meat and farmed fish as well.
Monday, 4 April 2016
Organic food versus inorganic food production
In recent years, many have claimed that only GM (Genetically Modified) and non organic means of production, can feed a growing world population.
That this runs completely contrary to the available evidence, is due to the bias and financial muscle of large agro-chemical and GM companies, who have dominated this argument.
A recent study by Rutgers University, State University of New Jersey, 8th oldest in the USA, has shown that in trace elements and dry weight, organic food is of substantially better quality than non organic food. In the case of cobalt, none was traced in cabbage, lettuce or tomatoes in non organic production compared to 0.15, 0.19 and 0.63 parts per million respectively in the organic production.
Boron, which is essential to prevent illness was between 4 to 12 times more in organic food than non organic, as for instance in tomatoes, where organic was 36 parts per million and non organic was a mere 3.
No wonder that our NHS is collapsing under the strain, when people believe that their five a day, should be healthy and yet it can still be deficient in essential minerals like boron.
Even more scary is iron. Non organic tomatoes are 1 part per million of iron, that is basically nil, while organic tomatoes are 1938 parts per million !
Guess the so called Green Revolution was a con because industrial chemical use has leached the soils so much, that there is virtually no actual soil left; as one can easily observe on chalk soils on the top of the Downs in SE England. The only way to regain the mineral content in these soils, is simply to return the worm content and natural manure and compost content to these soils, which would provide body and prevent soil erosion.
This has been proven by several organic producers, who during conversion back to organic production, found an initial drop in yields, but as the soil recovers like a sick patient, the yields increase above those of non organic production.
This was true of Leontino Balbo Junior in Brazil, who has no less that 16,000 hectares of organic sugar, on previously chemically exhausted soil. At first, everyone laughed at him as his yields dropped; but he had the last laugh when after several years they eventually recovered and now stand at one third higher than the other chemical production. He has also found that his sugar cane is resistant to yellow virus, because his local ecosystem is now in balance and more resistant to disease as the mineral content in the plants has recovered. He is the world's largest organic sugar producer and wildlife freely roams the plantation to manure the ground, so he has proved that if one works in harmony with nature, as Prince Charles has pointed out, then everything in nature will benefit. Prince Charles, has returned a meadow to organic production, and now has 4 species of orchid growing there.
I hope this lays to rest the idea that you can feed the world with more and more intensive farming. Quality food is not just how shiny a tomato looks, but it is the mineral and vitamin content of that food. A German zoo found that when they stopped feeding their chimpanzees commercial bananas, and fed them on their normal wild bananas, they became less aggressive and their teeth were in better condition. Commercial bananas have too much fruit sugar for them, but doubtless have a considerably higher mineral content than farmed bananas, As my grandmother was one of the very earliest (about 30th) founder members of the Henry Doubleday Reseach Organisation founded in 1954 and I was always organic as well, I obviously have an axe to grind, but what an important axe !
That this runs completely contrary to the available evidence, is due to the bias and financial muscle of large agro-chemical and GM companies, who have dominated this argument.
A recent study by Rutgers University, State University of New Jersey, 8th oldest in the USA, has shown that in trace elements and dry weight, organic food is of substantially better quality than non organic food. In the case of cobalt, none was traced in cabbage, lettuce or tomatoes in non organic production compared to 0.15, 0.19 and 0.63 parts per million respectively in the organic production.
Boron, which is essential to prevent illness was between 4 to 12 times more in organic food than non organic, as for instance in tomatoes, where organic was 36 parts per million and non organic was a mere 3.
No wonder that our NHS is collapsing under the strain, when people believe that their five a day, should be healthy and yet it can still be deficient in essential minerals like boron.
Even more scary is iron. Non organic tomatoes are 1 part per million of iron, that is basically nil, while organic tomatoes are 1938 parts per million !
Guess the so called Green Revolution was a con because industrial chemical use has leached the soils so much, that there is virtually no actual soil left; as one can easily observe on chalk soils on the top of the Downs in SE England. The only way to regain the mineral content in these soils, is simply to return the worm content and natural manure and compost content to these soils, which would provide body and prevent soil erosion.
This has been proven by several organic producers, who during conversion back to organic production, found an initial drop in yields, but as the soil recovers like a sick patient, the yields increase above those of non organic production.
This was true of Leontino Balbo Junior in Brazil, who has no less that 16,000 hectares of organic sugar, on previously chemically exhausted soil. At first, everyone laughed at him as his yields dropped; but he had the last laugh when after several years they eventually recovered and now stand at one third higher than the other chemical production. He has also found that his sugar cane is resistant to yellow virus, because his local ecosystem is now in balance and more resistant to disease as the mineral content in the plants has recovered. He is the world's largest organic sugar producer and wildlife freely roams the plantation to manure the ground, so he has proved that if one works in harmony with nature, as Prince Charles has pointed out, then everything in nature will benefit. Prince Charles, has returned a meadow to organic production, and now has 4 species of orchid growing there.
I hope this lays to rest the idea that you can feed the world with more and more intensive farming. Quality food is not just how shiny a tomato looks, but it is the mineral and vitamin content of that food. A German zoo found that when they stopped feeding their chimpanzees commercial bananas, and fed them on their normal wild bananas, they became less aggressive and their teeth were in better condition. Commercial bananas have too much fruit sugar for them, but doubtless have a considerably higher mineral content than farmed bananas, As my grandmother was one of the very earliest (about 30th) founder members of the Henry Doubleday Reseach Organisation founded in 1954 and I was always organic as well, I obviously have an axe to grind, but what an important axe !
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