As I write these blogs, I am energized from the food out of my organic garden. About 50% of my daily caloric intake comes from the earth that I have nurtured for more than 14 years at my current home.  And before that it was from gardens at my other homes or schools or rented plots from the city that I lived.  I have been doing this so long it is a huge part of my life.  Why do I go through this effort? The number one reason is that I can control what I eat. I know what goes into the soil and I know what comes out of the soil.  I love watching something grow that I started from a seed.  I never got married, and never had children, so I guess I am sort of the Father to my plants and trees and the like.  There is a lot of satisfaction in seeing this growth and all of the verdant colors, smells, bees, butterflies, earth worms, etc. and a working ecosystem in my garden.

Let’s talk about the typical city dwelling American’s journey to the local market.  Did you know that the average American meal travels more than 1500 miles to get to that market? We are so spoiled in the States.  We have to have our apples 12 months a year, but do we realize that for 6 or those months the apples are being shipped from Chile or New Zealand?  And what about all of the cheese products from France, or England?  And so forth and so on.  There is a tremendous waste of fossil fuel to get to our local markets. Those foods have to be transported large distances,  some need refrigeration, most have heavy duty packaging, most have preservatives and/ or are sprayed/gassed, some are GMO sourced (genetically modifed organisms), most are picked very green, and the quality is poor and taste is poor compared to locally grown organic food.  How great is it in the summer time when you pull a big, bright red, ripe tomato out of your garden?  You cut it open and it bursts with juice and a wonderful smell and you know it’s going to taste great.  You grew it  and it is now rewarding you for your nurturing. In Hawaii where I live, we have no apple orchards.  I love apples, but I won’t allow myself to buy them at the local market.  It’s against my principles, and they are old and mushy anyway, so what’s the point?  But above all, they piss away a lot of fuel getting to the Islands, and are laced with chemicals.  So what do I do?  I eat organically out of my garden and purchase locally as necessary as much as possible.  This provides healthier food, promotes sustainable agriculture, supports local co-ops and farmers markets, and reduces the negative environmental impacts associated with commercial farming. If you add the distance that non- locally raised food travels to get to your market, that exacerbates the problem.  Organic food is fresher, has more vitamins and minerals and tastes like it should.  And local local organic is a bonus!

It is a proven fact that organic produce, organically raised livestock, and organically raised grains have more nutrition.  AND the yield from the pastures, and gardens are greater in an average rainfall season, and more than 15% greater in seasons with any significant lack of rainfall.  This is because organic soil has more compost which retains the moisture that it does receive.  And when you combine this with no chemical runoff from chemical fertilizers and pesticides (see table), it is a win-win situation.  Then you add the taste, the health benefits, and satisfaction from eating locally, you have a win-win-win situation.

Globally traded organics?  Sounds good doesn’t it.  Why not help the poor coffee farmer in Nicaragua or Ethiopia?  Now I know that I am hitting below the belt, because even I enjoy a good cup of coffee.  And I enjoy the organic coffee from the places mentioned above, especially a light-medium roast.  But the problem is that most globally traded organic food doesn’t come from the poor farmer you are trying to support.  The multinational conglomerates only want you to think so.  Most of these products come from vast mono-culture farming techniques that completely go against the basic principle of organic farming-diversified agriculture . They take poor rural communities and completely transform a diversified agriculture system into a machine like producer than grows one thing.  Think about coffee, sugar cane, corn, etc.  And then a lot of the time they grow with genetically altered seeds. What is organic now?  You have taken a diversified, working system changed it into a monoculture that now forces the local people go outside their geographic area to buy staples.  And these GMO seeds do not have the ability to reproduce!!! Genetically engineered plants and seeds are sterile!!! (more on that later).

And again what is organic?  This term is a joke now.  In the USA,  for many years, multi-national corporations have lobbied congress to change the definition of organic to allow low levels of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and perservatives.  Your “organic free range” chicken that comes from “Wilma’s Farm”  only has to be given access to the outdoors the last week of it’s pathethic 7 week life. It lives with 20,000 other “free range” chickens on the cement floor of a warehouse where it is soaked in urine and feces.  And if you check with “Wilma” there is no Wilma, she doesn’t exist.  But after more investigation you discover that “Wilma” is actually big agri business.  Now is that “organic”?  Well, friends, that is where we are today and the situation is getting worse not better as the multinational producers gain more power and wealth. And as more and more of the rural population moves into the cities to find work, we will depend more and more on commercial, chemical based farming techniques that produce cancer causing, bad tasting, genetically altered produce and meat products that will literally kill you.  Why do you think that cancer is so prevalent in today’s society? We eat polluted food, we breathe polluted air, and we drink polluted water.  Now ain’t that great? What can you do??? You can start an organic garden in your backyard- a 10′ x 10′ plot of raised beds will produce enough produce for a family of 4, buy from your local farmer’s market on the weekend,  support local organic cop-ops,  and elect representatives that understand this and give a shit and are willing to fight for this.

Here is a table recently published by the US Environmental Working Group (EWG) that based its results from nearly 87,000 tests for pesticide residues in produce grown by commerical, chemical- based farming techniques conducted between 2000 and 2007 and collected by the US Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Administration.  This assumes that all fruit and vegetables were rinsed or peeled.

The research found that people who eat the top 12 of the most contaminated on the list ingest an average of 10 pesticides a day.  And these pesticides are stored in the organs or your body.  What locations in the body do the cancers kill?

Worse to less worse

1.    Peach

2.    Apple

3.    Capsicum (peppers)

4.    Celery

5.    Nectarine

6.    Strawberry

7.    Cherry

8.    Kale

9.    Lettuce

10. Grape

Better to Best (some uncommon omitted)

38. Eggplant

39. Cabbage

40. Kiwi

41. Sweet peas

42. Asparagus

43. Mango

44. Pineapple

45. Sweet corn

46. Avocado

47. Onion

Note:   Almost ALL that are listed for the above  (good) group have thick skins, or layers that will not allow a lot of pesticide absorbtion.

“Organic” Farming- fact or fiction?  Well, I guess that depends on how you “organically” farm.  But if you know your source- know where your food comes from, how it is grown/raised, you will get a better feeling for the “organic” near you…

Or

Aloha Everyone,

As I sit here in the comforts of my home, I often think about not so fortunate people in the world. I have traveled to more than 50 countries in my life and have gotten to know a lot of people up close and personal.
I am not the traveler who goes on the whirl wind tour of 8 countries in 14 days. I am the traveler who stays in one location for an extended period of time (as long as the surf is good…) and makes lifelong friends. What amazes me is that most of the really good surfing spots in the world are located in very remote areas. On my first drive to Central America in 1975, we had no running water. We did have well with a bucket that supplied all of our needs and electricity was spotty at best. On my first trip to South America in 1977, I rented a house on the beach for $40.00 a month and went to a communal water hydrant on the street where we filled up 2 buckets on a stick and then filled up a 50 gallon drum. My traveling buddy Glenn had to return to the states after 6 weeks because he contracted hepatitis from that water in the drum. Electricity came on for 2 hours a night if we were lucky. And that was a light bulb on a wire. On my first trip to Indonesia in the ’80′s we were on an outer island where there was no electricity and water was taken from the river where the locals bathed. That was a long time ago, but the situation is still the same in much of the world today. With a growing world population and industrial pollution of our rivers and water tables, clean, potable water may be a thing of the past in the near future for a large percentage of the world’s population.

Today, more than 35% of the world’s population do not have water for basic sanitation. 1 out of 6 or 17% of the worlds population does not have adequate access to clean water. In fact, about 5,000 children a day die from diarrhea related diseases which are directly caused by dirty water.

What can you do? Financially support any non-profit organization that you feel best addresses this problem. I support “Clean Water for the World”. They are listed as a 501c3 non-profit organization. They provide simple, adaptable water purification systems to communities that do not have access to clean water at no charge.

Thank you.

Jamie

There are now more than 95,000 square miles of our oceans that are “dead”. These dead zones are areas where the bottom water at the sea floor is anoxic. This term means that there is no concentration of dissolved oxygen in the water.

The reason for anoxic water is that there is excess amounts of phytoplankton at the surface of the ocean (algae blooms) that produce excess organic matter. As this organic matter finishes its life cycle, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean where it is broken down by bacteria. This process is known as “bacterial respiration”. Even though the phytoplankton eat up carbon dioxide and produce oxygen during their photosynthetic process, the bacteria produce carbon dioxide and use up this oxygen during their respiration process. The “exchange rate” is not equal and the result is that the bacteria use up all of the available dissolved oxygen in the water. This dissolved oxygen would normally be utilized by other oxygen respiring animals such as shrimp, crabs, clams, lobsters, fish, etc. The ones that can escape to other areas where the oxygen content of the water is normal and can support life, flee, while the slow moving die.

The expansion rate of these “creeping” dead zones is alarming. They now number over 400. In fact, the number of these dead zones has doubled every decade since the 1960′s. This expansion rate is trending towards exponential growth and even though only 2% of our oceans are affected now, this number could be 20% by the end of the century. Most of these dead zones are located near the mouths of major rivers worldwide. The main culprit for this is commercial farming, sewage runoff and emissions from the burning of fossil fuel in factories and automobiles. The runoff from the nitrogen based fertilizer gets into the rivers, flows to the ocean and then mixes with the ocean water adding excess nutrients. The fossil fuel emissions produce airborne nitrogen oxides which rain distributes into the oceans which also accelerates the growth of the phytoplankton. This happens because we are living the same consuming lifestyle with “old” technology that is inefficient. More than 49% of our energy is supplied by “dirty” inefficient coal burning plants in the United States. And we are the king of the consumers on earth where the average American uses more than 100 times more energy per capita than it takes to sustain one life on this planet. Then you bring in commercial, chemical based agriculture and you get the picture. As other developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil to name a few grow and expand their “middle class”, they too want this lifestyle- a piece of the American consumer driven pie. I will have more on this later. Now back to the dead zones…

Other events such as volcano eruptions, hurricanes, and polar cap melting can accelerate the expansion of dead zones as well. Major ecosystems in the worlds oceans are being disrupted and destroyed and the problem is not getting better, it’s getting way worse. Another downside is the commercial fishing industry. There has been a tremendous downturn on production from these areas. When you look at the big picture and remember that we derive more than 70% of OUR oxygen from this very same ocean, you have to be concerned.

What can you do? Support organic farming, drive less, demand green technology incentives from your politicians, live a responsible, sustainable lifestyle. BUT the bottom line is that in the USA we use dirty, inefficient energy, and there is little incentive from the government to the private business sector that would encourage new research and development of clean energy technology. The government of the United States must GUARANTEE that these new technologies will be utilized OR THERE WILL BE NO DEVELOPMENT by this private sector. And without these new, clean sources of energy we will continue down this deadly path until we kill ourselves because we didn’t demand change. We need a green revolution now, not tomorrow. Our future depends on it.