Food, Farming and Environment - A Human Connection.

A ragtag group of neighbors recently had a conversation about how farmers get more nitrogen into the soil. The conclusion, gathered from collective memories of childhood, was a rotation of soybean or alfalfa crops, which boosts nitrogen in the soil and eliminates the need for manure, particularly near water sources.


It turns out that, over the past fifty years, the chemical farming industry has thwarted such tried and true farming methods. The chemical companies and their seed divisions cannot make profits if farmers work their fields naturally.

Gardeners know that rotating vegetable plots, helps maintain healthy plants and adds nutrition to the harvested vegetables and fruits. Monocultures, one crop grown repeatedly, deplete the soils nutrient content, particularly nitrogen, and thus, the vitamin content of the crop. Repeated chemical spraying to kill pests or to add lost nitrogen, also kills the microbes, needed to create nutrient rich soil. Crops that will survive being sprayed by weed killer, also must be genetically modified to withstand the plant killing (weeds only, hopefully) chemical. In fact, new weeds are immerging, "super weeds," weeds resistant to many weed-killing chemicals. This is evidence that nature learns from the environment.

If you see the link between today's farming methods, chemical corporations, your food and your health, then you are peaking under the mysterious blanket, which most consumers ignore. Costs (chemicals, seeds, packaging, and advertising) increasingly go up, but government subsidies, which the tax-payer/consumer underwrites, off-set some production costs. Thus, the same tax-payer/consumer is fooled and believes food is less expensive that it really is. When prices increase, they rarely reflect the true value of the food, even for the nutrient-void processed foods and meats from CFO's (Confined Feed Operation). Consumers pay more realistic food prices in the fresh food departments. Mind you, unless the fresh food purchased is "organically grown" the chemical corporations have a fingerprint there as well.

Fish, another one our foods, need oxygen, as we do, in order to live. While nitrogen is good for plants, too much nitrogen in water sucks the oxygen out of the water. When excess nitrogen, sprayed onto mono-crops along the great Mississippi River, and its tributaries in neighboring states, washes into the rivers it collectively flows into the Gulf of Mexico and creates "dead zones" of oxygen-void water. This is another way that chemical farming affects our food source, ultimately decreasing the fish populations and affecting the price of our food. We should remember that the same oil that pollutes the Gulf of Mexico is the basis for creation of chemicals used in many areas, including farming.

It is easy to forget that we are not alone, that we are connected through our food, to each other and to our environment. What we eat, affects many more people other than ourselves. How our food producers treat our land and water, our animals and our environment, directly affects our food and our lives. We need to care and be aware.

Reports indicate there are benefits in today's growing Farmer's Markets. This is evidence that people learn from their environment as well as plants.