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Growing Organic Foods the Natural Way

Organic Gardeners Saving Planet Earth

By Jay North www.GoingOrganic.com 

When we look around the world and see our current circumstances, we might consider asking ourselves, “What part does personal responsibility play in all of this?”

A simple thing such as planting a seed may be all that is necessary for people throughout the world to save planet Earth from extinction. And now the addition of  the no-till method to organic gardening and farming promises a future of healthy crops without the normal harmful effects and hard work...

While saving the planet from soil erosion and carbon loss, and also reducing water use, new age gardeners and farmers can reap the rewards of growing and stop the downturn in environmental challenges created by conventional agriculture.

No-till gardening and farming helps soil retain carbon. Healthy topsoil contains carbon-enriched humus – decaying organic matter that provides nutrients to plants. Soils low in humus can't maintain the carbon-dependent nutrients essential to healthy crop production, resulting in the need to use more fertilizers.

The Hopi Indians have used natural no-till methods of farming for thousands of years. No tilling requires no digging up of weeds, no fertilizers added to the soil, and very little water use. The Hopi also believe the simple act of planting a seed will help to insure the survival of planet Earth – An opinion shared by this organic gardener!

In no-till agriculture organic gardeners and farmers plant seeds without using a plow to turn the soil. Soil loses most of it carbon content during plowing, which releases carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. Increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been associated with global climate change. The greenhouse effect is something we all know about today, but with no-till methods, we help reverse the effects of old gardening and farming methods and help insure our children will have a place to plant a seed.

If every organic gardener and farmer who grows crops in the United States would use no-till techniques and adopt management practices such as crop rotation and planting cover crops, we could lessen about 300 million tons of  carbon each year. Not to mention the amount of money saved on no fertilizer use and the water savings - it adds up quick.

Commercial no-till farming has been around since the 1960's, when it was developed to reduce erosion of valuable topsoil from crop lands. Since then, the realization of the method's other benefits – a reduced need for irrigation, less labor for farmers, and increased soil quality – has encouraged its adoption across the U.S. and around the world.

In recent years, however, interest in no-till has risen due to its greenhouse gas benefits, which results in farmers seeing another kind of green, cash...

No-Till Gardening Put into Practice for the At-Home Do-It-Yourselfers.

Special note to all would-be organic gardeners: Saving the planet never got any easier; use the no-till method and save your back too...

No-Till Made Easy: Just Dig a Small Hole!

1)    Plant a seed,
2)    Water it,
3)    Once it sprouts — talk to your new plant with kind loving words,
4)    Don’t weed around it,
5)    Water very little — never over-water. Let the roots go in search of water, and
6)    Once the plant matures to the desired state, consume it fresh. 
7)    Speak kind loving words to the plant—save the world

It works like this: dig out a small hole in the ground. Dig it about 2 feet in diameter and 2 feet deep, refill three-fourths, place 5 or 6 corn, bean, or squash seeds. Put soil back in the hole, but leave a 2-inch area at the top of hole without dirt. This way the plant can collect water easily. Water lightly, wait a few days, and water a little more.

After a sprout appears water lightly once a day for a week. Once the plant starts to mature, cut back watering to once a week or once a month — no need to water far away from the plant you are growing for food.

Once corn, squash or beans are ready, eat them fresh — do not store them. This way you not only get the great taste of fresh, but you also get all of the living enzymes at the same time.

Yes, Save Some Too

Sun dry, can or jar what you do not consume right away — self-sufficiency includes saving food for the winter.

Taking Responsibility

We all certainly have a role in saving Mother Earth, and now the no-till method for the at-home organic gardeners as well as large commercial farmers can help save the planet and add many years to our survival.

Talk To Your Plants As You Would Your Beloved

Change conditions on planet Earth by adopting new ways to live a peaceful life. Plant a seed and speak loving words to it. Speak only loving, positive words to your crops. Sing to them too. They love it!

Organic gardeners are being challenged, and now they have a new opportunity to make an impact on our planet for the better. Reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere by reducing carbon content loss in the soil from plowing; use no-till methods instead. Use no fertilizers; play with your plants like friends — and save the planet, all at the same time.

We have come to find that through natural methods of producing food crops without the use of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizers we get healthy foods and live a longer life, free of the harmful effects of these and other unnatural growing methods. Now add no-till, save your back, save money, and save the planet.

Organic Gardening and Farming never got easier — at the age of sixty, my back loves no-till gardening.

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Please visit www.GoingOrganic.com today; order your copy of Getting Started in Organic Gardening for Fun and Profit now and to find out why thousands of followers have sought North's advice, publications, and consultations for their own healing and fertile future — a future of healthier bodies, healthier minds, and a healthier world for future generations.

ABOUT JAY NORTH – Best-selling author, social activist, entrepreneur, organic farmer, and practitioner of the healing arts, Jay North travels the nation and the world speaking about his spiritual writings and the opportunities and promise of Organic Growing, Green Juicing, and the Healing Arts.  Contact Jay through is website www.GoingOrganic.com

Health Myths in America, by T. Colin Campbell, MD, PhD - Part 2

by Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Part 2

Principals in Practice: Development and Promotion of Diet and Health Policy

Case #2 is an experience I had in respect to the aflatoxin question: concerning whether or not it caused liver cancer. You may recall when I was discussing the experimental animal data showing that rats administered aflatoxin - a potent chemical carcinogen (causes cancer) for rats - and then subsequently fed either 5% or 20% casein (the casomorphine protein from milk/cheese/yogurt).

I'm sure you'll recall that the animals that were given the 20% casein protein in this particular case, they were the ones that developed the tumors. The animals that were given the 5% did not.

There was this observation, and it was the multiple ways that we looked at that observation, that became so convincing that casein had this particular property of being able to increase cancer growth rate that got me going down the track that I eventually did.

It also suggested that maybe antitoxin really is not that important as had been expected back in the 60's. When aflatoxin was first discovered, it being a mold toxin being present in peanuts and corn, when it was first discovered as being so potent in causing liver cancer in rats, there was a lot of concern and rightfully so, about the possibility that it might cause human liver cancer and I know there are a lot of countries where there is a lot of human liver cancer.

In any case, experimental animal studies suggested that maybe low levels of aflatoxin consumed by humans was not the main player in causing liver cancer. Rather, it seemed that nutrition, particularly protein intake and dairy even more particularly, was involved in this. So it remained an open question for some 15 or 20 years.

I think from the time I started this work as to whether aflatoxin was a significant human carcinogen, or whether it was something else like nutrition. I should also add something else that has been subsequently discovered like hepatitis B virus, which incidentally is a very significant factor in causing liver cancer but I won't have an opportunity to get into the details of that.

So, the question remained open: was aflatoxin really important or not? I mean there were huge amounts of money being spent in various countries around the world, especially through international agencies being spent to try and bring under control the amount of moldy peanuts that may be present that were designed for human consumption. Or, the amount of moldy corn that was destined for either human or animal consumption especially animals that may in turn be consumed by humans.

And so this notion had arisen in many communities around the world both regulatory communities and the public was that here we have this aflatoxin compound, the most carcinogenic chemical ever discovered and it could be the answer to why people get liver cancer in areas of the world where aflatoxin consumption was thought to be higher.

We had an opportunity in our China Study to explore this question in more depth and breadth than all the rest of the studies put together... There was already supporting evidence that aflatoxin might be important. In contrast, there was also evidence from chemical studies that aflatoxin was not carcinogenic for humans at all. In fact, there was very strong evidence to indicate that it did not play a role in human liver cancer.

So the question became of great interest, not just to the aflatoxin liver cancer, hepatitis scientific communities, but also it became of interest in terms of just basic cancer itself. What was important? Was it the chemical carcinogen? Was it the virus? Was it nutrition? What was it? So in our study in China we had an opportunity of looking at this question from a rather broad point of view, measuring all kinds of nutritional characteristics as you may recall.

We also measured aflatoxin exposure in 3 different ways and using one of the ways was very precise and a very good method. In fact, it was the best method that was available at the time. We did this study and we had a total of 65 communities to compare as opposed to 17, which was a total of all the other earlier studies. We also looked at hepatitis B virus exposure and a whole host of different factors that may be related to liver cancer.
So, we really had an opportunity to look from a very broad perspective to see whether aflatoxin was involved or not.

I should also point out that in that study, we had a big range of cancer mortality rates for the different communities that we were examining, so we had a big broad range of liver cancer rates, of aflatoxin exposure and of nutritional characteristics. It was ideal to have a fairly careful evaluation of this question.

The aflatoxin analysis was done by a chemist who is now at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine - a chemist who had begun to distinguish himself and his chemical work,and who believed very strongly in the idea that this carcinogen was terribly important for us to bring under control. I basically made arrangements for him to do the analysis of the urine samples that we got from the subjects in our studies. Urine samples incidentally being collected because that's the way we measured aflatoxin exposure simply by measuring how much of the aflatoxin metabolite came out of the urine. So our study was done, we sent our samples to him and he very carefully analyzed all thee urine samples and much to his displeasure, there was no relationship to aflatoxin intake.

In fact, if anything, it almost suggested that the higher aflatoxin intake, the lower the risk of liver cancer. So, I say that, because there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that aflatoxin had anything to do with human liver cancer.

This came at a time when the international and national agencies who determine what's carcinogenic and what's not had already concluded that aflatoxin was a very serious carcinogen and they had regulations being placed around the world about how much aflatoxin should be allowed in food. And there were methodologies being developed and enormous amounts of money being expended just on this question concerning aflatoxin exposure.

What did we find? We found no relationship with aflatoxin; interestingly, we found a highly significant relationship with nutritional exposure and the way we determined that was looking at plasma cholesterol which tends to reflect nutritional characteristics and it turned out the higher the cholesterol levels the higher was the risk of liver cancer. Also, we learned that before in our time, that people who had been predisposed to Hepatitis B virus or had been chronically infected by that virus, that they too also had a much higher risk. So what came out of our study, which like I said was the most comprehensive study ever done, was that cancer was largely a nutritional viral disease, at least in the case of this liver cancer. It was not a chemical carcinogen disease, even with the most potent chemical carcinogen that we've ever had.

So why am I telling you all this? The person who actually did the analysis for the aflatoxin became really quite upset about it. He would not co-op with the paper. He would have nothing to do with this, he said  because it basically countered the popular opinions of the day, it ran right up against the face of a lot of regulations that were being established in international trade as to how foods could be traded across borders; which were largely triggered by how much aflatoxin they had.

In any case, he wanted nothing to do with it. (Dr. Flora: "Don't confuse me with the truth!" he shrieked!" :[ )

Instead, he and his colleagues it turned out later also had an association with a small industry to produce an analytical methodology to analyze for aflatoxin.

So, suddenly we came in with this report that suggested that aflatoxin wasn't nearly as important as it otherwise would be, it certainly brought in his interest in that. But more to the point, that group also had an interest in aflatoxin still being regarded as an important carcinogen because if, in fact, we made the assumption that aflatoxin was important, they had come up with a chemical that they thought could be administered as a drug in order to reduce the risk for people who would otherwise be getting liver cancer when they were consuming aflatoxin. Thus, if aflatoxin's not important, than this drug was not important. And, it turns out that the drug that was being proposed for use was a very potent and a very toxic chemical, at least toxic to the liver.

I raised some objections but unfortunately ran into some difficulties with that group because it involved a group of scientists at NIH as well. I pointed out that if they did that study (they wanted to do it in China) first off, they were running a very high risk of causing more deaths and more health problems than solutions based on the information that we had.

They went ahead and did the study, conducted it for a total of eight years, and finally quit, because according to their report, they ended up with unforeseen health problems in these people and I still, to this day, don't know how serious those "unforeseen health problems" were, but the whole project was abandoned after many millions of dollars were spent to do it.

Now I will tell you once again, that particular episode illustrated something to me quite apart from the personal thing. I don't want to get into that, but it indicated something tome about the way we think about science. Those folks wanted to think that cancer was caused by a very specific chemical and therefore treated or prevented by a very specific chemical.

They did not, under any circumstances, want to consider the possibility that nutrition working its ways might be playing a role.

(Dr. Flora: Later, it was shown by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn that the aflatoxin "seeds" itself in us when we eat something that contains it, like moldy peanuts, peanut butter, flour, grain or corn and their products, and then later, when the dairy casomorphine enters our bodies, the tumors begin to grow. When the dairy is withdraw, the tumors shrink. When it is offered again, the tumors grow once more. It's like the glue that takes two types of chemicals to cause the reaction of bonding. The casein is the major ingredient in Elmer's Glue, seriously!  Mold and Pus...)

[Emphasis added.]

To be continued...

Peace and Love Be With You,

Dr. Flora van Orden III
PhD, Nutrition

[Please post your questions as Comments]

The ecological effects of eating meat

Would you ever open your fridge, pull out twenty plates of pasta and chuck them into the bin, and then, eat only one plate of food? How about leveling fifty-five square feet of rainforest for one lunch or dumping two-thousand-five-hundred gallons of water down the drain? Of course you wouldn't.

However, just eating half a kilo of meat will cause this. Eating meat will cause inefficient use and destruction to our resources and environment, cause immense animal suffering, and have detrimental effects on our health.

So if roasting a dog to complement your mashed potato disturbs you, then why roast any other gentle animal?   

A UN report has identified that “cows not cars, are the top threat to our environment.” It gives evidence that the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle is the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. Farmed animals produce one-hundred-and-thirty times more excrement than the entire human population of the United States and this concentrated slop ends up polluting water, destroying top soil and contaminating our air. Furthermore, their bodily gas and manure emit more than one third of methane, which warms the world twenty times faster than carbon dioxide. Meat-eaters are responsible for the production of one hundred percent of these wastes which is about eighty-six-thousand pounds per second. But, by giving up animal products, you will be responsible for none of these.

Moreover, our taste for meat is taking a toll on our supply of non-renewable resources. A staggering two-thousand-five-hundred gallons of water is needed for the production of each pound of beef, but, in contrast, it takes only twenty-nine gallons to produce a pound of tomatoes and a hundred-and-thirty-nine gallons for a pound of whole wheat bread. Half the water, eighty percent of agricultural land in the United States, almost all the soy bean harvest and over half of the world's grain is used to raise animals for food. While we are doing this, one billion people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition and twenty-four-thousand children die every day alongside fields of grain destined for the West's livestock. However, world starvation would be eliminated if our scarce resources were utilized efficiently by converting land to raising crops for feeding people.

For the rest of the story, click here; http://al.godsdirectcontact.org/your_food/

- Contributed by:  Helen Terry

Everyday pollution we can avoid

Environmental Working Group researchers found 95% of San Francisco Bay Area wastewater samples contained at least one unregulated, widely-used, hormone-disrupting chemical commonly found in personal care and household products.

Male fish exposed to these chemicals can grow eggs in their testes -- so what happens when people are exposed? Birth defects in babies, infertility in women, and reproductive problems in men are among the array of possibilities.

Read the full report: http://www.ewg.org/reports/downthedrain

• The good news? You can take simple steps to help protect your family's health and the environment:
• Make sure your personal care and household products are fragrance-free.
• Pass on the plastic bottles and utensils. Stick to glass and stainless steel.
• Skip the "antibacterial" products and use plain soap and water. It's just as effective.

More steps you can take: http://www.ewg.org/node/21843

A Different Perspective

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books.

Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

http://www.theglobalintelligencer.com/dec2007/arts

- Thanks to Gerald Perry of Phoenix for sharing this with us.

Genetically engineered corn could affect water supply

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A study by an Indiana University environmental science professor and several colleagues suggests a widely planted variety of genetically engineered corn has the potential to harm aquatic ecosystems. The study is being published this week by the journal: Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/email/normal/6507.html

Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast

(NewsTarget) A recent report has enumerated the catastrophic changes that the northeastern United States can expect due to global warming, particularly if local and global greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed.

The report, "Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast," was a joint project of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment, the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 50 scientists and economists. It looks at the likely outcomes of two different climate change scenarios, one assuming a continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions and the other assuming significantly lower emissions due to a shift to cleaner energy sources.

The high-emissions scenario predicts an 8- to 12-degree Fahrenheit increase in winter temperatures and a 6- to 14-degree increase in summer temperatures, while the lower-emissions scenario predicts increases of 5 to 8 and 3 to 7 degrees, respectively. The global sea level is expected to rise 10 to 23 inches under the high-emissions scenario, and 7 to 14 under the lower one.

For the rest of the story: http://www.newstarget.com/022391.html

Water: Use Less, Save More

There are many simple things we can do at home and at work to reduce our consumption of water. Here are 10 of the 100 smart water-saving tips from Water: Use Less, Save More:

1. If you are making a hot drink, fill the kettle with only as much water as you need. You will save energy as well as water.

2. Garbage disposals use a considerable amount of water. Start composting—put vegetable scraps in your compost bin.

3. Use a bowl to wash vegetables or to wash and rinse plates.

4. Don’t keep the tap running when cleaning your teeth.

5. While waiting for shower water to run hot, collect the cold water and use it on your plants.

6. Have a five-minute shower instead of a bath—and save 30 gallons of water.

7. Attach a hose to your washing machine outlet pipe. Collect the used water when the machine is discharging and use it to water the garden.

8. Use a rain barrel to collect the rainwater from your roof rather than using treated drinking water on your garden.

9. Make sure everyone in your home knows where the main water valve is and how to work it. Use it to turn the water off if you have a leak.

10. Keep the telephone number of a plumber handy for emergencies.

Committed to Raising Consciousness,

Dorit, Raw Lifestyle Film Festival Creator and Organizer
Book, Celebrating Our Raw Nature 1 & 2
http://www.serenityspaces.org
 

Consumer complaints CAN make a difference

Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 16:39:21 -0500
From: [email protected]

Free Range Fans,

Remember Sam Suds, the Poison Investigator?

Sam, a bar of soap, is a Free Range creation. He was developed to spread the word about the dangers of PVC and to get this poisonous plastic banned from Target Stores. What can a bar of soap and his friends do to influence a giant like Target? Check this out:

Today, Target stores have just announced the systematic removal of PVC from their stores!

This win is the result of a year-long effort by The Campaign for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), which organized 230 press conferences, protests (some of which included a 25-foot rubber ducky), and events at Target stores across the country.

Over 75,0000 people watched Free Range's film Sam Suds and the Case of PVC, The Poison Plastic, moving thousands of viewers to action. On the day of Target's 2007 annual shareholder meeting, CHEJ ran an advertisement in USA Today calling on the company to "stop ducking the truth about the dangers of PVC."

CHEJ's efforts, along with your support, have led to this critical breakthrough in the case against PVC.  Thanks CHEJ, bravo Sam Suds, and congratulations Free Range Fans!

We urge you to keep up this fight-- watch the movie again and help CHEJ encourage other major retailers to remove PVC from their stores: www.pvcfree.org.

- Free Range Team

2007 Solar Decathalon competitions

Congratulations to everyone - students, coaches, parents, sponsors and The U.S. Department of Energy staff - who participated in the 2007 Solar Decathlon! While some teams finished ahead of others, every person who took up the challenge of the 2007 Solar Decathlon succeeded in meeting the competition’s larger goal: the promotion and advancement of solar energy.

For more on the advancement of solar energy and the 2007 Solar Decathalon: http://www.solardecathlon.org/

- Contributed by Helen Terry.