Spring. The season of hope and relief. The cold darkness of winter is gradually giving way to longer days and renewed life begins to peek out, tentatively at first and then courageously charging forth. Up north, spring brings thawing and mud, but here in the desert it brings the blooms on the ocotillo, bright red-orange clusters, startlingly beautiful, gracefully swaying atop the long thorny canes.
In my childhood and young adult years, well before the Internet, spring meant anxiously awaiting the order from the seed catalogs. There were classic favorites, but each year also brought the promise of heirloom varieties, colors (purple carrots?!), or unusual plants to “try”. Sometimes it was just that… “try”…because not everything grew well in our damp region with our cool nights and short summers. There were years that the cabbage got worms or that a surprise late frost damaged our seedlings, but we remained optimistic that there would be a bountiful crop of foods and flowers.
Oh, the first glorious days of sunshine that allowed us to work in the soil, amending, preparing, and intimately connecting with it. Was it too heavy? Did it need more compost? Did we have time to work in a batch of manure that could assimilate without being “too hot” by the time we planted? And which manure? The mild horse manure mixed with hay that came from cleaning the barn or the “tea” made from soaking cow “pies” in buckets of water? Some of the old timers buried dead salmon in their gardens each fall, collecting them from the river after they’d completed their spawning cycle, glistening red bodies buried whole to rot during winter and feed the grateful plants throughout the next summer.
And lest this seem too idyllic, let me tell you about one time we tried the “plant the whole dead fish” scheme. In theory it’s a great idea but our reality involved raccoons digging up the rotting corpse and feasting on a portion of it (because apparently they are quite fond of fish, even fermented ones). Then our family dog discovered the remainder, happily rolled in it before coming back into the house, cloaked in a noxious cloud of fish fertilizer and scaly slime.
And, of course, there was The Map. This was a critical step. Where would everything go? Had we planted the beans up front last year? That meant that something else needed to go there and maybe it should be the corn or squash. Our garden required both labor and planning but it was worth every moment, albeit some days of weeding seemed like the only sensible solution was to give this up and just go to the grocery store. This appeared to be a viable alternative until we plucked the early spring peas and ate them pod and all, or made sandwiches from the fresh radishes that only take a month to grow…and remembered that nothing in the grocery store aisles ever tasted this good.
But people forgot about gardens as commercial agriculture started to take over and convenience became more idealized than connectedness and self-sufficiency. Increasing urbanization, heavy industry marketing, and identifying ourselves as “consumers” helped contribute to cultural programming. We became convinced that “value-added” or processed foods, laden with extra sugars, chemicals, and abnormal colors were the way to go and would give us more discretionary free time.
In a span of less than fifty years, as our behavior dramatically changed, obesity has become ubiquitous, chronic diseases affect 60% of adults and 40% have two or more, 100 million people are diabetic or pre-diabetic, preventable cardiovascular disease is our number one killer, followed closely by surging rates of cancers. Our children are expected to have shorter lifespans than ourselves. It is painfully clear that the majority of our “diseases” are lifestyle disorders and our diets play a central role. Big Pharma makes billions of dollars each year from our health crisis and a handful of conglomerates profit extensively from controlling our food chain. We are clearly at a critical junction in human health and wellbeing. (For more about this, read The State of the Onion post)
Our commercial agriculture and mono-cropped food production have decimated our soils, polluted our air and waterways, and are not “feeding the world” but are slowly killing us and the environment. It’s a means to massive financial gains by a handful of international corporations that could care less about creating edible food or harming health. One test project found that 93% of people were positive for traces of glyphosate (a chemical herbicide) in their urine. Studies now show that babies are born with over 250 chemicals in their umbilical cord blood including those from environmental toxins like Roundup and from things like BPA and plastics.
There was a report recently issued which compared the data that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the EPA used when making their decisions on whether glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup are carcinogenic. The IARC found that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans” while the EPA deemed it safe. It’s revealed by comparing exactly which studies were used that the EPA mostly used data that was provided and paid for by Monsanto, the maker of Roundup (now owned by Bayer) and ignored a significant number of independent, peer-reviewed studies that show a clear link to cancer.
Our lifestyles are creating chronic health issues and we know that exposure to chemicals, even those approved by the EPA, exponentially increases the challenges we face. Glyphosate has been shown to reduce fertility, alter our microbiome, bind to minerals and make them unavailable in our food. It’s linked to cancer, it’s an endocrine disruptor, and neurotoxin. Globally, we’re using about 4.4 billion pounds of it per year. One of my concerns is that when they study something like glyphosate, it’s as an individual component and not as part of the blend of chemicals that are in a product like Roundup, which are known as adjuvants. There also isn’t a reliable way to study what happens when we mix our exposure to Roundup with all the other chemicals/toxins that we encounter each day like preservatives in foods, additives in cleaners and body care products, fragrances, air pollution and seemingly innocent things like dryer sheets. Anybody remember high school chemistry? When you dumped a bunch of things in a beaker and bad stuff happened? That beaker is your body… but we’ve lost control of what gets dumped in.
Before I was born, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, an incredible book that led a social movement and revealed the hazards of the pesticide DDT. Rather ironically, it helped to form the idea of the EPA…the same agency that is now ignoring the dangers of glyphosate and other agricultural chemicals. Here are some quotes from her book:
“A Who’s Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones – we had better know something about their nature and their power.”
“How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?”
“Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
It is chilling to read these quotes, 57 years later and realize that they are still monumental statements that apply to our current situation. Read them again. Let them really sink in.
What can we do? One obvious option comes to mind and it could change everything. Literally. It directly impacts our health, our chemical exposure, our soil quality and environment…right down to the microbial levels. It could be an answer to the looming financial crisis that stems from our backwards medical system and skyrocketing healthcare costs. America was a land of revolutionaries, of free-thinkers, and of “We the people” that wanted something better. We’ve become a nation of sick, apathetic, mindless consumers, but we can change. Spring is the time for change, for beginnings, for renewed life.
“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” ― Thomas Jefferson
We can plant organic gardens. We can take back our health and our food system. We can vote with our dollars. Even if we can’t plant a full garden, a few herbs in a windowsill or a tomato on the balcony can still make a difference. Perhaps we can form a neighborhood garden, or become a member of a community supported agriculture program (CSA) that helps to support small local farms in return for a share of the harvest. We can shop at the local farmer’s market and get to know the people growing our food.
Gardening doesn’t have to be back-breaking labor and it’s amazing how much food you can grow in a small area or a few raised beds. Methods like no-till can be great options and help to preserve soil structure while cutting down on weeding and water consumption. No-till means that you don’t even have to dig up all the pesky rocks and it takes away most of our excuses. It’s possible to create usable areas almost immediately by using already composted materials. Organic seeds and starts are a few dollars and the return on investment is hard to monetize. Teaching your children and grandchildren to tend a garden creates amazing memories and the exposure to the outdoors, sunlight, and friendly microbes has a resoundingly positive impact on our health.
As you gaze out your window this season and think about grabbing the weed-killers or chemical fertilizers from the garage, as you put a new spark plug in the mower…consider what you are actually doing. What you are condoning and contributing to, and by doing nothing…you are implicitly agreeing to the status quo…that poisoning of us, our children, and our environment is okay with you. Instead of using chemicals (and massive amounts of water) to create a giant mono-cropped and weed- free lawn…which unless you are playing a great deal of soccer or croquet is largely useless…there is a better alternative. Some of that space could be used to grow food…real food…the kind that makes us healthy.
An organic garden can change our life and perhaps even save it. We’ve become so disconnected from nature and our ability to fend for ourselves that we’re willing to feel awful, suffer daily misery and pain, and watch our children struggle with lifestyle diseases rather than take action. Maintaining a garden takes some time and effort but it’s certainly a lot less than what it takes to go through chemotherapy, diabetes, or heart disease. During the World Wars we were encouraged to plant Victory Gardens as a form of defense. The moment has come to plant them again, and to take back our power, our resiliency, our strength, our leadership to the world.
https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-018-0184-7
https://www.ecowatch.com/glyphosate-found-in-urine-of-93-percent-of-americans-tested-1891146755.html
https://obgyn.ucsf.edu/news/toxic-chemicals-pregnant-women-and-their-newborns
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/newborn-babies-chemicals-exposure-bpa/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5823954/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756530/
https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/food”>Food photo created by montypeter – www.freepik.com</a>
Janice Penberth 