Monday, May 13, 2013

Food Deserts

It's just amazing to me that "food" is  actually killing Americans while others starve to death and 26 million of our population live in a "food desert."  This news clip really caught my eye when the reporter pointed these facts out.  She interviewed a young man who really caught me off guard when he said raising your own food is like printing your own money!  Now that is a really catchy quote.

The lack of nutrient dense food and healthy diets in this country is appalling.  The land of the free, the home of the brave is slowly becoming fruitless.  This is why I am on this mission of soil health, food quality and how can we help each other do what we should have been doing all along?

Here is a very interesting article on the soil life under our feet.  He does a good job describing the declining biodiversity in our soil but he is not aware or want to touch the problem glyphosate is causing around the world, but particularly in the United States.  Not just poor worn out soils, but rich Illinois farmland now fails the Solvita quick carbon test.

"Forget the term “dumb as dirt.” The complex soil ecosystem is highly evolved and sophisticated. It processes organic waste into soil. It filters and cleans much of the water we drink and the air we breathe by retaining dust and pathogens. It plays a large role in how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. Soil, with all of its organic matter, is second to the oceans as the largest carbon repository on the planet. Annual plowing, erosion and other mismanagement releases carbon in the form of carbon dioxide, and exacerbates climate change. "

Gardening is the best thing I can pass on to our 12 grand children.  Knowing how food is grown and where it comes from has never been more important in my lifetime as it is right now.

What do you think?

Ed Winkle




3 comments:

  1. I completely agree with your post. I like that phrase too, 'growing food is like printing money'. We grow most of ours too. It is very sad what Americans are now eating.

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  2. I remember that TED Talk from not so long ago. I don't know if food is nutrient-poor, but it is definitely flavor-poor, and all these flavor compounds and essential oils have some properties that go even beyond nutrition, like medicinal use. There's no farmers market around here for real produce, some are relegated to the edges of cities and not accessible without a car, whereas in Europe, towns are built around the market place, like Covent Garden in London, a beautiful architecture for a covered market hall. They were the heart and center of each town in old Europe:
    http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2533/4173901629_f0c3d4a219_o.jpg
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Asch%C3%A8res-le-March%C3%A9_halles.jpg
    http://vppyr.free.fr/images/imagespat/05-lagrasse_bourg/p05_04_halles.jpg
    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cZG1yp_CHUg/SaGw5gpNTMI/AAAAAAAAHlg/UE766BQxY-8/s400/35+Halles+.JPG
    http://www.lacharente.com/var/lacharente/storage/images/media/phototheque/les-halles6/148656-145-fre-FR/Les-halles.png

    Funny, that NYT link mentions the fungus responsible for California's valley fever, for which there is no cure, which was featured on NPR this very morning:
    http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/05/13/181880987/cases-of-mysterious-valley-fever-rise-in-american-southwest
    Possibly a consequence of food deserts like vineyards that don't have any green cover crop to protect the soil. One of the guys interviewed is dying of valley fever he contracted while bulldozing a vineyard.

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