Lily in bloom
I read an article the other day on Monsanto and the biotech industry. Now for those who know me I have been against this biotech stuff since its inception back in the early 1990s when I found out they were adding fish scale genes and pig skin genes to strawberries so that they would have a longer shelf life and stand up during shipping. My apologies to all my vegan friends who thought strawberries were not an animal.
I have lately become very outspoken about it due to more and more evidence pointing at the products made (I call them products as they are not natural so I will not recognize them as fruit, vegetables or ?) are slowly destroying the world around us. Some of the plants are now producing their own pesticides. How can that be good? The scientists force an animal's genes to accept a foreign one from a different species so that we as a race can improve on something that is already perfect! Here is an article I read that is a few years old but sums up GMO simply so that you know exactly what it is. Go to this link: GMO to find out more.
Like the old adage, if it ain't broke why fix it? Our food system as is can not support us so we have been told, and why is that? 50 years ago we all had our own gardens, many people had chickens and even a few still had cows. One parent, usually the mother, would be home baking bread, making butter and canning for winter. In other words, we produced a lot of our own food. That my friends was our grandparents! Even during war time they only received sugar and flour for the most part from the bread lines. Posters were made telling everyone to do their part and grow their own food. For a great history of posters visit this link that fellow Homesteading site owns that will show you some really neat ones: Boise Backyard Chickens
We have become so lazy as a society that we don't want to have to work for our food anymore. We don't want to get our hands dirty or strain our backs working the soil. We want to be able to go to the store and pay for someone to do all this work for us - that is why our food system can not support us any longer and they - meaning our government and the biotech industry - do not want us to live any other way. Why do you think there are so many stories coming out now about towns and cities restricting gardens or farming in their areas? They want us to be dependent on the industry so that they can keep us eating the Frankenstein food and make tons of money off us! They want us ignorant of how to survive on our own. In this economy why are they not making ads on TV that support local farms, growing your own garden or even having a few chickens to help ease the burden of our already overburdened food production? Again, if you haven't already, check out the link above at Boise Backyard Chickens that show old posters from the 1940s and 1950s begging us to grow our own food from the USDA you will be amazed!
I have lately become very outspoken about it due to more and more evidence pointing at the products made (I call them products as they are not natural so I will not recognize them as fruit, vegetables or ?) are slowly destroying the world around us. Some of the plants are now producing their own pesticides. How can that be good? The scientists force an animal's genes to accept a foreign one from a different species so that we as a race can improve on something that is already perfect! Here is an article I read that is a few years old but sums up GMO simply so that you know exactly what it is. Go to this link: GMO to find out more.
Like the old adage, if it ain't broke why fix it? Our food system as is can not support us so we have been told, and why is that? 50 years ago we all had our own gardens, many people had chickens and even a few still had cows. One parent, usually the mother, would be home baking bread, making butter and canning for winter. In other words, we produced a lot of our own food. That my friends was our grandparents! Even during war time they only received sugar and flour for the most part from the bread lines. Posters were made telling everyone to do their part and grow their own food. For a great history of posters visit this link that fellow Homesteading site owns that will show you some really neat ones: Boise Backyard Chickens
We have become so lazy as a society that we don't want to have to work for our food anymore. We don't want to get our hands dirty or strain our backs working the soil. We want to be able to go to the store and pay for someone to do all this work for us - that is why our food system can not support us any longer and they - meaning our government and the biotech industry - do not want us to live any other way. Why do you think there are so many stories coming out now about towns and cities restricting gardens or farming in their areas? They want us to be dependent on the industry so that they can keep us eating the Frankenstein food and make tons of money off us! They want us ignorant of how to survive on our own. In this economy why are they not making ads on TV that support local farms, growing your own garden or even having a few chickens to help ease the burden of our already overburdened food production? Again, if you haven't already, check out the link above at Boise Backyard Chickens that show old posters from the 1940s and 1950s begging us to grow our own food from the USDA you will be amazed!
Bounty from July 2012
Just think if everyone who had a yard had a garden that they planted how much less food the grocery stores would need. Can you imagine if most people had 6 hens and they produced eggs for the family how many industrial egg farms would close. If everyone had a pig that they raised for meat and fed off of kitchen left overs how many industrial pig farms would close? And never mind the farms what about the land fills? They keep expanding or opening up new dumping areas to hold all the garbage we produce because we make too much! If we fed our pigs and chickens food scraps that would cut our waste in half. Then you add recycling on top of that, we would not need to expand or create new ones at all! Why do we make this so difficult? It is all a cycle and all we need to do to fix it is start a new cycle!
Potatoes in reused tire towers
It is like anything else we do - it is cause and effect. If we change our food and how it is made by manipulating the genes then there will be consequences. We have disturbed the natural cycle of the plant or animal and changed it to fit our needs... we are creating mutant animals and plants that will keep mutating after we have finished messing with it. It is happening already. The corn and cotton that was supposed to be "round up resistant" so the farmers could spray the fields with round up and not have the plants die but all the weeds would die, are mutating. They are producing their own pesticides now inside themselves which is killing the bees and making us all sick with cancers, alzheimers, hormone imbalance and autism just to name a few. The weeds are becoming resistant, the worms are building up a tolerance. Every reason that these plants were manipulated to begin with to make them weed and pest free is back firing. But instead of heeding Mother Nature's warning, they just manipulate the plants more - making them more resistant so they create an even stronger pesticide which ultimately is poisoning us all more.
Mother Nature is already fighting back and she is fighting back with fire, floods, storms and producing things like Quinoa also known as Amaranth or Pigweed. Yes Pigweed is the one weed that is resistant to what ever Monsanto or the other Biotech industries throws at it. And guess what? This plant produces a seed that when we eat it gives us all the Amino Acids, vitamins and minerals we need to live healthy long lives. The Incas call it the Mother of all grains as there is nothing better then Quinoa for us to eat and before corn was grown, quinoa was grown and harvested all over North and South America as food. And we have been told this plant is a weed and we need to kill it! Why is that?
The answers to a lot of our issues we face today in the increase of health issues such as cancers and alzheimers, and the shortage of food is easily fixed if we stop trying to fix it. If we stop depending on someone else to provide us with our food and took the time to grow and make some of our own we would not see a shortage. If more people cared about what they were putting in their mouths and in those of their children we would all be healthier. Get away from the processed, already prepared meals full of GMOS, salt, and chemicals - our bodies are not designed to eat this stuff so our bodies are breaking down. The more we eat of this contaminated Frankenfood the weaker we become. They say now that even our children's children could be affected with sterility from eating GMO products as they see this in the Rats and Mice they are studying. Is that where we want to end up as a society? Where we as adults now outlive our grandkids? Not to scare you but it could happen.
I guess what I am trying to say, is that Mother Nature knows what she is doing. Everything in life has a purpose and specific design for a specific reason. If we alter this natural cycle we are opening up pandora's box to some unknown black hole that we most likely will not be able to get out of if it isn't too late already.
What can you do? Well my only recommendation for anyone would be to do your own research on GMO and the effect it has on our world. But be open minded as there are a lot of USDA and FDA reports out there that are not the whole story. Make sure you read alternative sources as well, like Mother Earth News articles, Organic farming articles, Natural Health articles. These have more factual reports on what is going on and why GMOs are not good for us. There are movies out there like Food, Inc and Farmagedon that show you what our food chain has become and where it is heading if we continue on the path we are on.
If you can't garden or don't have a yard, look for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in your area. This is a group of local farmers who combine their bounty and sell it to local families on a weekly basis and many of these are Organic. Gardens are usually grown depending on the number of families signed up and everyone splits the harvest. So if you buy a Family portion you may end up with enough vegetables and fruit to feed your whole family for the week. Sometimes it can be pricey depending on the area you live, but you are eating healthy local food instead of from an industrial farm in another country like Mexico. A definite win in my book.
So take the first step. Be a spoke in the wheel of change and start to look at alternative ways to living a better way. Stop supporting industrial farms by buying from large chain grocery stores and buy from local farm stands or markets instead. Find a local meat market/butcher who only has local grown grass fed meat. Find a neighbor who raises pigs and see if you can give them your scraps for a ham and some bacon. There is really no right or wrong way to do this. But do it with Mother Nature in mind. She does everything just perfectly and the farther we get away from the Natural way of things, the worse it is for us. Remember this the next time you reach for a box in the grocery store... just where did all of the ingredients really come from and who touched it? I had beans last night from my own garden. No one touched them but Mother nature and Me :)
The answers to a lot of our issues we face today in the increase of health issues such as cancers and alzheimers, and the shortage of food is easily fixed if we stop trying to fix it. If we stop depending on someone else to provide us with our food and took the time to grow and make some of our own we would not see a shortage. If more people cared about what they were putting in their mouths and in those of their children we would all be healthier. Get away from the processed, already prepared meals full of GMOS, salt, and chemicals - our bodies are not designed to eat this stuff so our bodies are breaking down. The more we eat of this contaminated Frankenfood the weaker we become. They say now that even our children's children could be affected with sterility from eating GMO products as they see this in the Rats and Mice they are studying. Is that where we want to end up as a society? Where we as adults now outlive our grandkids? Not to scare you but it could happen.
I guess what I am trying to say, is that Mother Nature knows what she is doing. Everything in life has a purpose and specific design for a specific reason. If we alter this natural cycle we are opening up pandora's box to some unknown black hole that we most likely will not be able to get out of if it isn't too late already.
What can you do? Well my only recommendation for anyone would be to do your own research on GMO and the effect it has on our world. But be open minded as there are a lot of USDA and FDA reports out there that are not the whole story. Make sure you read alternative sources as well, like Mother Earth News articles, Organic farming articles, Natural Health articles. These have more factual reports on what is going on and why GMOs are not good for us. There are movies out there like Food, Inc and Farmagedon that show you what our food chain has become and where it is heading if we continue on the path we are on.
If you can't garden or don't have a yard, look for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in your area. This is a group of local farmers who combine their bounty and sell it to local families on a weekly basis and many of these are Organic. Gardens are usually grown depending on the number of families signed up and everyone splits the harvest. So if you buy a Family portion you may end up with enough vegetables and fruit to feed your whole family for the week. Sometimes it can be pricey depending on the area you live, but you are eating healthy local food instead of from an industrial farm in another country like Mexico. A definite win in my book.
So take the first step. Be a spoke in the wheel of change and start to look at alternative ways to living a better way. Stop supporting industrial farms by buying from large chain grocery stores and buy from local farm stands or markets instead. Find a local meat market/butcher who only has local grown grass fed meat. Find a neighbor who raises pigs and see if you can give them your scraps for a ham and some bacon. There is really no right or wrong way to do this. But do it with Mother Nature in mind. She does everything just perfectly and the farther we get away from the Natural way of things, the worse it is for us. Remember this the next time you reach for a box in the grocery store... just where did all of the ingredients really come from and who touched it? I had beans last night from my own garden. No one touched them but Mother nature and Me :)