Every Day is Earth Day on an Organic Farm
By Melinda Hemmelgarn, M.S., R.D.
This article was first printed in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service.
If you envision Earth Day as a hoopla for tree-hugging hippies, think again. Former Wisconsin Senator, Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day in 1970 as a way to make environmental protection a major national political and educational issue.
Today, Earth Day is the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated around the globe by more than a half billion people every year. Some wear tie-dyed shirts and sandals, others dress in 3-piece suits and wing-tips. No matter. Regardless of our political persuasion, ethnic background, economic status or faith, we all depend on clean air, pure water, rich soil, and time spent in nature to stay physically healthy and spiritually whole.
As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. explains, "there's nothing radical about clean air and clean water. We want to protect it because it's the infrastructure of our communities." Describing environmental stewardship as bipartisan, Kennedy says: "good environmental policy is good economic policy; if we destroy nature, we impoverish ourselves." (1)
Organic Farmers: Serving Mother Earth, Protecting Public Health with Smart Agriculture
This April 22nd marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and an opportunity to bring organic farmers into the celebratory limelight. With global warming on the front burner, the timing is perfect to recognize organic farmers as super-heroes protecting the environment and combating climate change.
According to the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, nothing transforms the world more than agriculture. The Institute states: "agriculture is the biggest single contributor to climate change, generating 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions." (2) But it's industrial agriculture's heavy carbon footprint that wreaks enormous damage, through soil degradation, erosion, and the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. According to U.K.'s Soil Association, a worldwide switch to organic farming could offset global greenhouse gas emissions, and create a more resilient food and farming system in the face of climate change. (3)
In addition to their heroics in sequestering carbon and safeguarding our precious, live-giving top soil, organic farmers sustain life and save lives by supporting biodiversity (4), and rejecting synthetic toxic pesticides, antibiotics and hormones.
In fact, the staggering increases in childhood allergies, ADHD and autism over the past few decades (5) cannot be fully explained by better diagnostic instruments. We have to ask: what has changed in our environment over the past few decades; and, seriously consider the role of neurotoxins and endocrine disrupting chemicals used in industrial agriculture. (6)(7)(8)
In addition, the antibiotics used in conventional poultry and livestock farming systems contaminate our environment and contribute to antibiotic resistance. (9) Again, we can thank organic farmers for helping to keep the antibiotics in our medicine cabinets fully functioning.
Finally, the same overly-processed, excessively-packaged nutrient-poor 'foods' that contribute to chronic disease, and shorten our children's lives, also poison Mother Earth. Let's give organic farmers our thanks for producing real life-supporting nourishment that protects public health and our planet.
Consumers and Farmers: A Powerful Force for Change
Consumers need to hear organic farmers' voices. Tell us your stories. What led you to organic agriculture? What are your challenges, and how can we help you stay on your farm and produce the food we're hungriest for? Teach us about soil, pollinators and how you protect natural resources. Visit a classroom, write a letter to the editor, take part in local Earth Day events. Help us understand the organic difference, first hand.
Here are some ways consumers can support and advocate for organic farmers (tell your friends and add to the list):
1. Ask questions. Know where your food comes from and how it was produced. Ask your grocer, your waiter, your children's school food supervisor. Request more organic foods in institutions, worksites and schools.
2. Support direct farm-to-consumer commerce. Help connect farmers to chefs, grocers, and institutional buyers.
3. Be a citizen. Use your food dollars as votes that support your values. Reject products that violate your code of ethics. Get to know your legislators as well as your neighbors. Voice concerns, then offer to work collectively on solutions.
4. Host a potluck to build relationships. Label each dish with names of the organic farmer who produced the food and the cook who prepared it.
5. Join local, regional and national organic and sustainable farming organizations.
6. Thank an organic farmer for keeping your food safe.
7. Address cynics with facts. Can organic farming feed the world? Record global hunger proves the industrialized farming model isn't working. We must move to support "agroecological" farming to confront global environmental challenges and growing population. (10) Think organic is too expensive? Ask why and how conventional food can be so cheap. Can we afford to continue to pollute our water and air, and wreak havoc on our children's health? (11)(12)
8. Shorten the distance between farm and fork. Choose local organic food, the gold standard, to reduce fuel-guzzling, greenhouse gas-emitting "food miles."
9. Taste the organic difference.
10. Keep learning. The Earth Day Network offers lesson plans for organics education. http://earthday.net
Melinda Hemmelgarn, M.S., R.D. is a registered dietitian, national award-winning “Food Sleuth” columnist, and 2004-2006 Food and Society Policy Fellow. She is also a member of the MOSES board of Directors. You can keep up with her at http://food-sleuth.blogspot.com/
References:
1. Robert Kennedy Jr. address at Columbia College, Columbia, MO, March 2005.
2. University of Minnesota, Institute on the Environment. http://environment.umn.edu/
3. The Soil Association. http://www.soilassociation.org/
4. “Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity.” Harvard Medical School. Center for Health and the Global Environment. http://chge.med.harvard.edu/programs/bio/index.html
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. www.cdc.gov; http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db10.pdf; http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/index.html
6. Fred vomSaal, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Sciences, University of MO- Columbia, personal communication, December 17, 2009.
7. "Persistent, Poisonous, Problematic: Pesticides," Hemmelgarn, M. http://www.organicvalley.coop/farm-friends/moo/beyond-the-plate/perils-of-pesticides/1/
8. Agribusiness Accountability Initiative. Why Corporate Agriculture is a Problem: http://coc.org/node/6073/
9. Keep Antibiotics Working. http://www.keepantibioticsworking.com/new/index.cfm
10. Agriculture at a Crossroads. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science & Technology for Development. www.iaastd.org; www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=IAASTD%20Reports&ItemID=2713
11. Pesticide Action Network. www.panna.org
12. The Organic Center. www.organic-center.org
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