E. Coli - Yeah that too should make you think of Big Agro, Big Pharma and the Meat Industry

UPDATE: Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalities

Source: Taco Bell and E.Coli

Everytime you hear about a new fancy disease, what do you make of it?
Chances are that you hear the 5 min sound bites on TV, panic and immediately decide you are not going to eat the spinach or the tomatoes or the eggs or whatever the latest source of the disease might be. You quarantine yourself if there is say swine flu. Its like the Dept of Homeland Security flipped the switch from Orange to Red!

If you consider yourself wise, I want you to know that often the first word should not be your first impression. I will just relate to you a few possibilities and then leave you with a few links that make the case.

Here are the possibilities:
- The media is telling you something because they need a story to tell.
- The govt is telling you a story because they need a law to be passed.
- The Big Agro Companies like Monsanto, Conagra and Cargill are making up stories to discredit small farmers so they can run them out of business.
- The Big Pharma have just let lose a new strain of a virus because they need to sell a new drug.

Here are a couple of powerful articles that dig deeper into the most recently alarm around E.Coli. If there is anything you take away from it, I hope it will be that we cannot trust big businesses. Our best hope is to return to living with nature the way nature intended things to be:

- consume less of the planets resources even if you can afford to buy another cell phone, another car or a city and a half.
- take care of your health by eating only organic foods
- Supporting locally grown fruits and vegetables
- Cut down on meat because it carries the most disease and it consumes the most virtual water.
- Tip the minimum wage workers

Now for the readings (homework):

E. Coli: Blame the Meat, Not the Sprouts

Germany: Tests show no proof that sprouts from organic farm are cause of E. coli outbreak

Just How Contaminated Is the Fish and Meat That We Eat?

 

Urban Farming - Its fun!

One of my best friends who works as an IT Security Technologist at one of the world's largest software companies has a P-Patch where he has been growing veggies. Here's his story and then my comments.

"I had fond memories of the Kitchen Garden in my grandparent's house in India. So when my friend told me about growing veggies in a P-Patch smack dab in the middle of my neighbourhood in the Seattle Metro Area, I jumped right in to recreate those memories. I rent a patch of land (400 sq ft) for about $60 per year from the Bellevue Park's Department. It has been a most wonderful experience so far:). This is my second year and I am still in the learning phase and have more misses than hits... I have learnt that in the Pacific NW weather, some things grow better than other and some dont at all :)

The biggest problem out here is the short growing season and lots of happy weeds... it seems there really isnt a perfect solution for weeds other than pulling them out regularly. You can minimise the weeds by covering the soil in the winter with an opaque plastic sheet. You cut small holes and plant in the plants in those holes...


Food prepared by the produce from P-patch tastes much better than what you get from the grocery store ... and thats the reward :) Plus you get to meet lot of people in the patch and get free exercise."
 
 
I have been impressed with my friends who are doing this. They are among a growing tribe of everyday folks who are showing the rest of us the way to wean ourselves off corporate produce that is laced with fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals and often Genetically Modified (GM) to allow for greater output per square foot of land.
 
Some of the other things that you may want to try:
 
Hire-a-Box-Farm
 
"Young Urban Farmers" is a small scale Toronto Business that builds a box farm and delivers it to your backyard. They take care of planting and managing a box full of veggies of your choice that sits in your backyard - everything from carrots and tomatoes, to strawberries and lettuce. And now they are providing franchises as well.

This is especially useful for those who have challenges (time, physical or other) in building and taking care of their own organic garden.
 
Community Farming/Gardening
 
My friend Ambar, in India suggested on another blog post that Apartment Complexes would be a perfect place to build urban farms and build communities. Well, Seattle is already showing the way in this regard through its P-Patch Community Gardening Program .
 
Besides yielding food for the community, in 2009 alone, gardeners contributed over 18,500 hours (equivalent to 9 full time workers) and donated over 12.4 tons of food to Seattle food banks and feeding programs.

Window Farming
 
Dont live in a community that has room for growing a pea patch? Fret Not. Window Farms are vertical, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials. Water consumption is low too. Plus they reuse plastic water bottles that otherwise may(not) get recycled. And we all know Reuse is better than Recycling (which takes energy)

Aquaponics

It is the symbiotic cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a recirculating environment.

Aquatic animal effluent (for example fish waste) accumulates in water as a by-product of keeping them in a closed system or tank (for example a recirculating aquaculture system). The effluent-rich water becomes high in plant nutrients but this is correspondingly toxic to the aquatic animal.

Plants are grown in a way (for example a hydroponic system) that enables them to utilize the nutrient-rich water. The plants take up the nutrients, reducing or eliminating the water's toxicity for the aquatic animal.

The water, now clean, is returned to the aquatic animal environment and the cycle continues. Aquaponic systems do not discharge or exchange water. The systems rely on the relationship between the aquatic animals and the plants to maintain the environment. Water is only added to replace water loss from absorption by the plants, evaporation into the air, or the removal of biomass from the system.

Aquaponic systems vary in size from small indoor units to large commercial units. They can use fresh or salt water depending on the type of aquatic animal and vegetation.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Read about a small business in Milwaukee, WI that has successfully transformed an abandoned industrial shed into a thriving aquaponic urban farm.

A self contained aquaponic system that uses solar power

Vertical Farming

Vertical farming is an upcoming agricultural method that involves large-scale farming in urban high-rises or "farmscrapers". Using recycled resources and greenhouse methods such as hydroponics, these buildings would produce fruit, vegetables, edible mushrooms and algae year-round.


Proponents argue that, by allowing traditional outdoor farms to revert to a natural state and reducing the energy costs needed to transport foods to consumers, vertical farms could significantly alleviate climate change produced by excess atmospheric carbon.

DIY: Buyers Guide to Green Products. Get the most green back for your green(back)

This post is going to be edited from time to time, so bookmark it and check back once in a while.

What I want to do here is provide links to sites that help you decide where to spend your dollars so you get the most green back for your green(back). These sites will help you develop your own standards for sustainable living.

- http://www.goodguide.com/ for safe healthy and green products for the home, health, personal care, food and more

- http://www.eatwellguide.org/ for organic restaurants, stores, farms and more

- http://sfapproved.org/ for products that meet San Francisco's Health and Environmental Requirements

- http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/

LEARN: 6 Reasons to Go Organic

1. Protect your health - You really don't want to ingest hormones, pesticides and other chemicals, do you? Worse, you dont want your children to be eating those toxic cancer causing chemicals. One study showed that 23.4 per cent of farms with caged hens tested positive for salmonella compared to 4.4 per cent in organic flocks and 6.5 per cent in free-range flocks. See the study at http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_9990.cfm

2. Protect soil - In industrial farming, soil structure is not given much thought, leading to depletion of nutrients and erosion. If the soil is not handled in a sustainable way, it eventually stops giving back and you can't use it any more.

3. Protect water - Fertilizers and pesticides used in industrial farming inevitably make their way into ground water and other water bodies.

4. Reduce Energy - Organic farming uses much less of petroleum than industrial farming since it relies on manual cultivation methods.

5. Protect Farmers and Farm Workers - Farmers that do not own farms not only suffer from ailments brought on by inhalation/ingestion of chemicals found in fertilizers and pesticides, they are also at the financial mercy of corporations. With reduced land ownership, economic disparities between the haves and have-nots increases.

6. Organic Tastes Better - Try it, and know the difference!