Organic, Local, Seasonal, CSA – All Right Already
Let me break it down.
When we eat organic food, we eat food that’s grown without petroleum-based fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides. Of course –cide at the end of the word means kill as in homicide or suicide: poison marked with skull and crossbones. Everything that falls on the soil is drawn into the roots and feeds the crop. Seed +soil + water + sun = plant. When animals and humans eat this petro built food, these petrochemicals and pesticides harm the eater; they are proven carcinogens. To break that down, they cause cancer. Hence why the cancer rates are devastating.
As for GMO’s, the poison/pesticide, has been spliced into the gene. Now the poison is part of the veggie, fruit and grain. And what’s mind-boggling, even though they are made from poison, GMOs require even more Petrochem products than non-GMO commercially farmed products. They are very dangerous.
Organics are free from all these petro chemicals. They are safe to eat and actually nourish animals and humans with a bounty of minerals and vitamins. They are grown in soil that uses old-fashioned soil building techniques that are nourishing and sustainable. The soil, the acreage, is not destroyed, denatured, and abandoned like a beaten, abused old workhorse. Soil is developed to be richer and more generous. Organics cost more, because they are not given the huge subsidies that agro businesses receive (your tax dollars, eek and mine). Compost and cow manure do not come up Lucky Sevens on Petrochem’s slot machine.
Here’s something I hear a lot.
I refuse to pay more for organics. It’s not up to me to pay more; it’s up to the companies not to grow poisonous harmful crops. It should be on them, not me.
In other words: because I’m mad, I’ll keep giving money to agro business, keep harming my health even though, after fossil fuels, commercial agriculture is the number 2 culprit for greenhouse gases and climate change.
As for Local, the food comes from my region. It lacks the enormous climate changing carbon footprint of being hauled around the world or across the country on boats, trains, and trucks. That also means it’s fresh.
Seasonal produce is harvested now, at this time of year. Apples in autumn. Lettuce, zucchini and tomatoes in summer. Cabbage in autumn and winter. Seasonal food supports our health during that season, as it has since the dawn of farming. Root veggies, winter squash, and cabbage in winter along with world traditions of recipes to eat these all winter long. As for summer’s abundance of veggies, these are preserved, and pickled for winter to be enjoyed when variety and availability are lean.
A CSA is Community Supported Agriculture. A co-op, a group of buyers, purchases a farm’s offerings before the season begins, to support the farm. The farms are assured of a buyer and the buyer reaps the low cost of food going direct to the consumer, no shop or greenmarket in the middle. CSA’s don’t provide bags or packaging, so this also saves costs and boosts sustainability. CSA’s are organic (or in the conversion process so chem-free), local and seasonal. I spend $18 a week and what I get would cost $30-$50 at a green market or a Whole Foods.
I sing the praises of my CSA and proselytize for the conversion of non-CSA folks to go CSA.
Here’s something I hear a lot.
I hear you get all these things you don’t want to eat and you can’t get things you like. It doesn’t seem worth it to me. Plus you have to cook everything and I don’t have time.
When I was a teenager, Jaws the Movie scared every living being away from the beach. Not a toe went in the water. The Jaws theme song is so terrifying and identified with danger that mimicking a few notes is immediately recognized and understood by everyone. Jon Williams the composer said the theme is “grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable.”
Dear Friends, I wish I could program the Jaws theme song to relentlessly track you every time one hand reaches in your pocket, while the other hand reaches to petro poisoned products, foods, lipsticks, body care, cleaning products, baby formula, pet food, plastic, bottled water. That you would recoil from the unrelenting terror of danger. That you just WON’T GO THERE. That your heart races, your throat closes, your knees collapse and your sweat kicks up a stench of near-death.
But lacking that technology…
Um, please, when you don’t have time to cook, just ping me, precisely what it is that you’re doing that is more important than cooking for yourself? Are you on a yacht with Google billionaires? Having sex with models and rock stars? Giving a TED talk? Or noshing a grab-and-go in the car and popping a piece of Dentyne Ice?
Furthermore, please elucidate me to the horrors of a day without broccoli (or Twizzlers), and the hardship of new recipes with bok choi or rutabaga or turnip or collards or kale or kombucha squash.
And if you think getting MAD (GRR I’m a bear or a lion in the jungle) is better than getting EVEN. Ping me then too.
Or pretty please, just GO join a CSA. Breastfeed your babies. Share this post.
And you can still order some Organic Body Oils while using Kiki’s Banyan code for 20% till October 31st. Click here and use FLR104 at checkout.
Seriously, it’s terrifying!
