Organic Farming : National Portal
Monday, 12 June 2017
The Organic Farming Sourcebook
By
CLAUDE ALVARES
Published
by Other India Press in association with Third World Network
ISBN:
81-85569-46-0
Year:
2009 No. of pages: 464
ABOUT THE BOOK
Written
and designed to excite and stimulate your interest in organic farming,
this sourcebook will take you to every aspect of the subject:
•
You will encounter surprising details about the traditions of raising
food in India
and the equally amazing traditions of generously sharing it;
•
You will learn about the techniques through which farmers have maintained
the vitality, fertility and life of the soil over forty centuries;
•
You will have access to hundreds of innovative and pioneering organic
farmers who long ago deserted the ‘green’ revolution and its barbaric
technology of mass-kill;
•
You will get an opportunity to understand and digest the fundamental
principles of various organic farming systems from the best of the class;
•
You will also have access to what the government is now doing to promote
organic farming within the country;
•
You will find addresses of green shops where you can access organically
grown food;
•
For the intellectual there are severe critiques of the ‘green’ revolution
and how it came to be imposed on this country. For the activist, there
is a history of organic farming and addresses of individuals and institutions
that are promoting it as part of India’s efforts to revert to sustainable
agriculture.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
CLAUDE
ALVARES is Director of the Central Secretariat of the Organic
Farming Association of India, located in Goa, India.
Contents
1.
The Food Traditions of India
2.
The Traditions of Raising Food
3.
The Green Revolution: Painful Harvest
4.
Genetic Terrorism
5.
India’s Organic Farming Movement: A History
6.
Principles of Organic Farming
7.
Organic Seed
8.
Go Mata Returns
9.
Directory of Organic Farms, Farmers and Promoters
10.
Organic Stores
11.
Learning Organic Agriculture
12.
Organic Asia
Sunday, 11 June 2017
Why Go Organic – Ten Top Reasons
Why Go Organic – Ten Top Reasons
Why Go Organic
Monday, February 15, 2010 posted by batalionn
Monday, February 15, 2010 posted by batalionn
EFFECTS ON OUR TOPSOIL
The
soil of our earth is the foundation of the whole human and
environmental food chain and thus our survival. The typical organic farm
is teaming with life – from butterflies, to frogs, to bees, to you name
it. Conventional farms have polluted and depleted and thus “dead”
soils. They have been rendered sterile, using herbicides and pesticides
to kill other life forms. Also through the vast degradation of our soil,
we are losing cropland topsoil seven times faster than it is being
replaced naturally. This ties in to the philosophy of raw-wisdom that
the conventional vision of nature is death-centered mechanical rather
than life-centered.
EFFECTS ON OUR WATERS
Nearly 700 hundred toxic chemicals pollute our groundwater, many of them coming from agricutural pesticides and herbicides. These chemicals cause cancer and other debilitating illnesses and are not removed by conventional means. Virtually all the drinking water in the US is polluted and 2/3rds of our own bodies are made up of water.
IMPACT ON ENERGY USE
Conventional farming methods use far more gas and petroleum, both to create chemical fertilizers and to till, cultivate and harvest crops. Organic farms are more labor-intensive. Government subsidized conventional farms use 12% of the US total energy consumption. Ultimately we pay the far, far higher price either in taxes and/or the horrid devastation that yields global warming.
IMPACT ON THE QUALITY OF NUTRITION
US agriculture uses more than 800 different toxic pesticides. Over 3,000 chemicals overall are mixed into our foods directly, and nearly 10,000 are used in the production and storing of foods. Most of these chemicals are harmful to our health. They may engender cancer, birth defects, neurological illnesses, dementia and other serious dysfunctions. According to the EPA, 60% of herbicides, 90% of fungicides and 30% of pesticides are strongly carcinogenic. The National Academy of Sciences estimate as far back as 1987 that pesticides could cause over a million cancer cases in the US alone over our lifetimes. On the positive side, organic produce has repeatedly been proven to have higher levels of essential nutrients, being grow in more living, mineral-rich, composted soils.
EFFECT ON FARM WORKERS
Studies have shown a link between pesticide use and Parkinson’s disease, leukemia and cancers among farm workers. An NCI study found that farm workers employed on conventional farms had 6x higher risk of getting cancer. A California study showed that farm workers in the field had the highest occupational illnesses rates of all California workers.
IMPACT ON SMALL FARMER SURVIVAL
Most organic farms are family-owned with less than a 100 acres. There has been a vast decimation of family farms for the past few decades. At the turn of the 20th century, farming was the primary livelihood in the US. Now it represents less than 1%. Organic farming remains among the last refuges for surviving family farms amid competition from large industrial farms that try to “cut-throat monopolize” the market. Over a million family farms have been lost over the last couple decades.
REAL ECONOMIC COSTS ARE LESS
Amid the illusions of the marketplace created by political forces, again many fail to see that organic foods are actually cheaper overall. First conventional farming is hugely subsidized and has hidden costs that are borne by all taxpayers. If you add the health and environmental costs, organic produce is really and truly the least expensive. We must remember that in the US medical costs have risen from 5% to 16% of the GNP in the last 20 years. Then there is hazardous waste removal costs and that of toxic substance testing and regulation, soil erosion, loss of fertility, wildlife decimation, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. You get the picture.
PROMOTES BIODIVERSITY
Organic farms tend to preserve heirloom varieties while large conventional farms do not and engage in sterile, mechanistic monocropping. The latter requires increasingly more lethal pesticide use as pest become resistant over time and crops become subject to wholesale blights. It was monocropping, followed by a blight, that caused the famous Irish potato famine.
PROTECTS OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE
Children ingest up to 4X the level of toxic residues compared to that of their parents. Tests have shown that exposure in early life, as early as in the womb , reveals residues in the placenta fluids. This often leads to much more cancer latter in life. The damage can be passed on genetically to affect all subsequent generations in a harmful way. This is why we need to detox or help our bodies get rid of lifetime toxic loads. If all-organic food buying seems expensive at first, consider skipping a meal to help your body detox. Or fast for a day. Or shop at a direct farmers market, plant your own organic home garden, work a few hours for your local food coop and/or farm in exchange, and so on. Be creative. Where there is a will there is always a way!
MOVES AWAY FROM AN UNWISE VISION OF NATURE
All living forms have awareness because life’s foundation resides in a presence of consciousness. From tiny nano-bacteria to huge dinasours, living organisms have awareness. This awareness forms, in my experience, the universal relationship ofconnection in all of nature, and ultimately the foundation of oneness that interconnects all living creatures. The mechanical worldview of the 17th century disrupts and destroys this weave. This is because its view is based on universally separative symbols (math symbols used to create the mechanical vision). The mechanical view is thus based on opposite principles to those of life in nature. This is the root reason why when the mechanical vision is deeply (not surface) applied, this unravels the connective weave of ecospheres. Actually the deeper applications threaten the sustainability of life on earth. This is further why toxic pesticides and herbicides are being banned in several nations. Otherwise we follow a death-delivering approach to farming – with carcinogenic impacts on our body and vast disruptions of surrounding nature.
SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR – GO ORGANIC
For these ten reasons and more, let us very wisely GO ORGANIC TO THRIVE.
source:
http://myrighttosafefood.blogspot.in/2010/03/why-go-organic-ten-top-reasons.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Why Go Organic – Ten Top Reasons Why Go Organic Monday, February 15, 2010 posted by batalionn EFFECTS ON OUR TOPSOIL The soil o...
-
The World According to Monsanto http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/
