Blazing Light, Love's Song

網頁版本  |  更新喜好  |  取消訂閱 讚 Tweet 轉寄 http://worldlove333.blogspot.com Ripple 2: “Give me the birds and the bees” Posted by Donna Mitchell-Moniak on 19 November, 2012 In the 60’s Joni Mitchell sang, “Give me spots on the apples but leave me the birds and the bees.” That song was a hippy revolutionary call that birthed an industry and will one day be the rightful demise of a wrong relation to food, our bodies, and the body of our Mother Earth. I wonder if she knew that. Born in 1956, I listened to the 60’s on the radio. Our family got a black and white TV when I was 8 or 9. We watched Walter Cronkite and the news, Ed Sullivan, and Disney by the time I was 10, but not more than that. TV was never on during a meal nor the living room arranged around or focused on it. Additionally, I grew up in a wooded town of Massachusetts on a dead end dirt road. The town was turning from mostly summer cottages along rivers and a lakes (multiples of both in the town) to a bedroom community. Every day, my after school life was the woods, nature, and creative imagination. I could see auras then as now, perceive nature spirits, follow the animal trails, or listen to a plant as it would tell me if I could eat it or not. The mosquito truck would spray clouds of pesticides on summer days and kids would follow the truck thinking that the cloud was fun. Not me; something wasn’t right about it. During the summer that I turned 9, I noticed less bird song in the morning and fewer hawks through the day. Somehow the frogs and toads weren’t as boisterous and the cricket population seemed to be exploding. One day when climbing a tree I saw something I’d never seen before: a nest full of eggs that had crushed and the half formed babies inside all dead. I asked my father if he, too, had noticed these things and asked about the nest of broken eggs. He told me about mosquito spraying. The conversation mentioned the “word” DDT. He said he was concerned and that our small town was no longer going to spray because it wasn’t safe. Joni Mitchell’s song became the anthem of those who started growing apple trees and other produce without pesticides. It wasn’t a movement, just some hippies smoking pot and growing things (including pot). They “dropped out” of main stream society, set up communes, often as far away from society as was functional, and lived off the land. My dad talked about his wish for that too but his practical side kept us where we were. From that summer onward, however, there was a garden in the yard, no chemicals were ever used, and I learned the basics from him. All of Mother Nature is organic, and up until the early 1950’s crops were grown only that way. Natural fertilizers or soil adjusters (bone meal, seaweed, saw dust, manure, etc) were used as was crop rotation, companion planting, and letting fields go fallow in order to renew. But soon after WWII, something happened: a consumer culture was being created. Commercials were flooding the senses of Americans, and traditional farming could not keep up with the demand. At that time supermarkets did not exist yet, but that was going to change quickly and the idea of shelf-life had been introduced to the public as an aspect of a life made easier. The thrifty Depression-era survivors were being replaced by have-it-all Cold War Americans. Education and a white collar were deemed more upstanding and financially rewarding than the farm or a blue collar task, and so federal dollars went away from the farm and the trades and into college education and the skills of the mind and money. A business class was born, and one of its first orders of business was mass-produced grain based foods and a meat based diet. Born right then and there: a grain industry a pesticide industry dairy and meat industries development of processed foods food production (including farming) becoming a process instead of a life style or a relationship with the Earth the health of Americans sold to the cheapest bidder, and the health of the soil, water, and air sold out too. Up until about 60 years ago, almost all produce on the planet was raised organically because that was the only way to grow anything. Up until then, the people of the world ate more vegetables than meat and ate more local cheeses than drank milk. In America, meat and potatoes was becoming the preferred dinner and grains and milk the preferred breakfast. Enter the ’60’s and the troubadours of those times. The songs of the youth of America and Europe sang a different tune. Most were not about the land but enough of them were about being aware and responsible. While commercialism was birthing the industries listed above, other endeavors were also being birthed. Among them: an environmental movement which picked up the baton from the Sierra Club and Audubon Society which had been created during the decades of preserving state and national lands as state and national parks or monuments the Cooperative, or more widely known as “the co-op,” collective of interests being met and services rendered. The world started to get smaller as co-op buyers searched the world for organic or pesticide-free grains and produce for organizing co-op buyers. A “whole foods” market was born giving people not only an alternative to agribusiness produced foods but also offering a vested interested in conscious lifestyle. (the counter culture again) This new co-op need for the produce of the world established world-wide foods into the American grocery store. This is a rare beneficial by-product of competitive market forces. Picture it: in the 1960‘s grocery stores were establishing themselves and giving large-scale alternative to the neighborhood mom-and-pop store or the general store many miles from home. Though it was bigger, stocked with newly processed cereals and packaged meats, the produce section was not what we see today. Potatoes, carrots, onions, and American fruits in local season is what was found. Then the co-operative markets entered the scene, scouring the world for organic or pesticide-free produce and finding not only them but the people growing them, in other words finding the world. For the American consumer the result was new and interesting produce that often rotted on the grocery store shelf because it was different. But at the co-op it was scooped up and tried. Chefs and explorers of the palate would try them, and those who had traveled abroad or haled from other countries cherished the opportunity to eat something that was “different” but quite familiar. Little by little the produce section grew at first including items such as pomegranate, papaya, mango, and kiwi from a variety of world locations. A world food trade industry was being established driven by America’s co-operative markets and being birthed by the hippies of old. Organic farming is today still considered counter culture. Organic, pesticide-free, or small farm farmers are definitely mavericks in the eyes of the system. The costs of organic anything is higher than an agribusiness version of the same because organic farmers are not given subsidies by the US government. Agribusiness is, as well as tax breaks by the millions. On top of that, to be certified organic is a significant and rigorous process. Interesting that healthy is made difficult by the government but unhealthy is also loosely regulated. As a result, it is quite difficult for organic farming to be profitable. Most who farm this way do so because it’s the right thing to do. That’s the counter quality of it: it’s counter to unethical, unhealthy, profit based food production. An organic attitude toward food is counter to selfishness that serves one but harms many. Due to agribusiness and the annual use of tons of pesticides and herbicides, and to the Monsanto driven genetic modification of grain and produce staple foods, the health of Americans has plummeted while profits continue to rise. In the same time frame, organic and herbicide-pesticide free growers have struggled to keep the farm functioning. Thankfully, enough people have. As a result, the counter culture is becoming the conscious culture, not yet a majority but the American mindset is changing. The birds have fared better, the bees are still struggling. (colony collapse disorder due largely to monoculture farming thus the bees are malnourished and pesticides) Organic produce and products require choice which means an educated buyer. Movies such as Food, Inc., Supersize Me, The Colony, and Fresh are only a few generated by the need to get the truth out to a consuming population. Add to these all the blogs, websites, and organizations that have sprung up in the last 20 years and before that newsletters, and organizing groups. CISA and local farmers markets are other children born of the Joni Mitchell’s anthem, little might she know. I think all of these are thanks to the organic faming industry. There are good things that each of us can do that make a significant impact on our health, our lives, and lives of others, and the interdependent One Life that is our world. Eating organically is one simple thing. When we hold two packages of strawberries in our hand, one organic and one not, let us remember that our tax dollars are making the pesticide-laden cheaper strawberries the price they are; let us remember that those pesticides are killing our body just as they kill bugs and weeds thus the cost of health care is part of that cheaper strawberry. If we rolled the real costs into the pesticide-laden strawberries, they would cost double or triple what the organic berries cost. But alas, those costs are hidden to our eye. They don’t have to be hidden from our mind. Thanks, Joni! Thank you all you rebel farmers! Thank you to each person who grows their herbs and tomatoes in their back yard pesticide-free. 修改訂閱 | 取消訂閱

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