maria rodale organic manifesto

Going back to the late 1960's I got my hands on Organic Gardening and Farming. It prompted me to start a compost pile in my backyard. Composting got me to not only process my own leaves and kitchen waste but I had to remove my neighbor's bagged leaves and grass from the curb before it was put in a landfill. After adding manure and lime to the pile it took on a life of its own. In the middle of Winter I would add vegetable scraps from the kitchen by opening up the snow on the pile to find the inside of the compost steaming and still doing its work. J.I. Rodle was on the right track back then but I do remember the Holy Grail of his life was soil conservation. At the moment the 'green" movement now has the blessing of the gentry so it gets a lot of attention these days. I do not drive a Subaru or a BMW. My wife wears make up and does not dress down in taupe, olive and dark clothes. She does not even cut off all of her hair to have her look more like mine. In short we are not of the upper establishment who believes the New York Times is our gospel. In contrast today I find that Organic Gardening has become another corporate entity. It is large, slick; with plenty of room to attract those advertisers with deep pockets. I get the feeling it is more about the movement towards glitz and profit and less about the nuts and bolts of getting people to do the right thing in their farms and gardens. But then I use to work for The Reader's Digest years ago and although they have stayed pretty much the same physical size as your old format was the content has suffered. Remember J.I. Rodal's objectives and turn away from trying to look like Better Homes and Gardens.

Time will come when the food we eat will no longer be healthy for us. It will be so polluted and contaminated it is no longer considered a food, but a toxic matter! People then will be forced to go vegetarian, to go organic and be really a living legend of sustainable living. This is now slowly happening around the globe. Our land are slowing dying. Our water will soon be unusable if we don't get our acts together.

I have read your "Organic Manifesto". I am not terribly surprised, and totally dismayed, at how intertwined chemical companies and chemical farming is with the American government. It may be similar in some other countries. I wouldn't put it past the chemical companies.

I have multiple sclerosis, thanks to Monsanto and their neurotoxin, Equal, which is sold with the blessing of the FDA in every grocery store and is an ingredient in an awful lot of products. I started using it when I became diabetic. Needless to say, I have switched to stevia.

I get all of my groceries by using the SNAP program, which used to be called food stamps. I am gluten and dairy intolerant, and vegetarian. Thank goodness for beans other than soy! And grains other than corn and wheat. They're not cheap, but then I need to lose weight anyhow. hehe.

Given the government's record of failing to look out for the real interests of the human guinea pigs they claim to serve, I have absolutely no trust that the situation can be fixed by political means. That's what got us into this mess in the first place.

I put my hope for the future, not in market economics or politics, but in God. He has promised to "bring to ruin those ruining the earth". (Revelation 11:18) And I am quite convinced that it's going to happen in my lifetime and yours. We are living in "critical times difficult to deal with", (2 Timothy 3:1-5)one area in which it is difficult is finding good, healthy chemical-free food at a bearable price. The earth afterwards will be built up into a true Paradise, where "neither mourning nor outcry nor pain will be anymore" (Revelation 21:4) That will include being totally organic, worldwide! That will benefit everyone! And no human government will be responsible. God's Kingdom, for which billions of people pray, will do this. Worth looking into, don't you think? Jehovah's Witnesses are glad to tell people what else the Bible says about it.

Talk about market economics! Here in Ionia County, Michigan, nobody knows if or where there are any organic farms. How could a local farmer be convinced to switch to organic to meet local needs? How would a local farmer even know how many customers he/she would have and how would he/she reach them? And could he/she be involved with the food stamp program so that poor people could get some decent organic local food? Well, all we can do is go to Meijer and buy the few organic items they carry. Grrrr! Sorry, just had to gripe some more.

i think if the populace were more AWARE of what they were putting into themselves they would be ok with less (quantity) to stuff themselves with. eating organically boosts nutrition intake over mass produced factory boxed or canned food enough that the "too expensive" con - dollar stretching - turns out to be just another marketing paper dragon. every dollar is spent just in the right spot eating organic.

Plants make their own pesticides. Pest resistant varieties and stressed plants make more; natural pesticides are induced by stress. If you test natural plant-made pesticide chemicals in maximum tolerated dose tests, like we do synthetic pesticide chemicals in rodents, half of them cause cancer--same as the synthetic ones. For the synthetics there is a withdrawal period, guaranteeing market basket residues near zero. There is no withdrawal period on the natural ones. But it doesn't matter, because toxicity is dose, and in both cases (though more so with the synthetics) the levels ingested are well below toxic levels. That's what your liver is for.

The toxicity most Americans (and the rest of the over-developed world) need to worry about is calories. Not anything IN food, but food itself. In 2-yr cancer studies in rodents, often the high-dose group lives longer with fewer tumors and degenerative diseases than the controls. The reason is that the high dose, given very high doses of the chemical in question, is a little sick and eats less. Over and over it has been shown that food restriction increases lifespan markedly.

But what we don't want to restrict is access to fruits and vegetables. Organic is more expensive; thus people with limited $ would eat less fresh plant matter if restricted to organic. The public health would be harmed--not by organic food, but by the associated economic stress.

BTW, the world is full of toxic natural "organic" materials. Think botulism, or poison ivy, or snake venom. Natural and organic mean nothing with regard to toxicity.

A veterinary toxicologic pathologist.

A study by the University of Michigan a few years back calculated that if every acre of arable land in the world was converted to organic farming methods, there would still be an excess of kilocalories - in other words, we can feed the world on organic food.

For those who believe organic is no better than conventional, I would challenge you to think about how you'd feel if someone took a few tablespoons of your backyard weed killer or bug spray and stirred it into your water glass. Would you still drink it? That's the net effect of pesticides in our environment.

I want to live in a cleaner world and live the healthiest life I can - and I want that for all of us. Organic is one of a multi-pronged approach that helps us do just that.

As the co-founder of shopOrganic.com, an online retailer of organic and sustainable products, I certainly am biased - but we chose to start the company because we wanted people to have a trusted source for certified organic and sustainable products. Of course, we want to make a positive difference in the world and through each small step we take, we believe we're doing just that.

Not only consume responsibly, compost responsibly! Save the seeds from the organic fruit and vegetables you consume and send them for use in family gardens in the third world. Very responsible, very efficient, very user-friendly way of offering assistance to the third world.
Contact "Seedsforfood.org" for more info.

WTF, it's good that you understand basic chemistry. Do you understand basic semantics? Words mean different things in different contexts.

I'm volunteering with our local solid waste committee on producing a community composting centre. In the solid-waste vernacular, there is a difference between tree limbs and yard waste (which to a chemist, are surely composed of "organic" compounds) and "organic waste," which is defined as food scraps from households, restaurants, and institutions. Separate bylaws regulate "organic" and "non-organic" waste -- even though they are both composed entirely of "organic" molecules!

So I would suggest that you take off your chemist's hat and go with the flow. The vernacular in the food industry is that "organic" means produced without artificial fertilizer, pesticides, or herbicides. Even government regulators can agree on this, why can't you?

Organic farming does not "require more land." It does typically require more labour, but can actually be more productive than chemical farming, because in a well-run organic farm, the "inputs" come locally, generally from the very farm, whereas in factory farming, the fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides come from far away and use some equivalent amount of land to produce.

No person in a third-world country is harmed when I compost my goat manure and put on my organic strawberries. But ask the people around Bhopal, India, who gets harmed from the big chemical companies that produce agricultural chemicals.

Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op.

I agree to a small degree with you, Dave, that buying cheap, industrially-farmed pseudo-organic food from places like Mall*Wart is probably not the most eco thing you can do. Even if grown without fertilizer or chemicals, such industrially-produced foods are dripping with toxic waste from the diesel fuel used to run farm machinery, the fuel used to transport them long distances, and the coal or nuclear used to run the retail centres in which you buy them.

But if you go to a farmers' market or a farm stand that sells "organic" food, you're doing the second-best you can do for the planet, short of growing your own food.

I also take issue with your statement that organic food is not better for you. Do the research. Study after study documents a decline in the nutritional value of industrially-farmed food, especially in "micro-nutrients," such as salvestrols and anthocyanins that fight cancer. Grass-fed, organic beef and raw milk contain huge amounts of healthy Omega-3 fats that are missing from factory-farmed, grain-fed beef and dairy.

So yes, sustain your local economy at the farmers' market, but ask them, "Is it organically-grown?" And walk away if it isn't.

Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op

I really wish that people would get the main point of this "manifesto" isn't to eat better it's to sell her book. This is nothing but a thinly disguised sales pitch.

There is no evidence that organic foods are any better for you or that they do less harm to the environment. In most cases they are actually grown and produced by the same mega-corps that you think you're rebelling against. As you say, these companies are in it to make money and right now there's money to be made in organic food, especially since there is no FDA rule on exactly what it take to get an "organic" sticker.

There are defiantly chemicals (high fructose corn syrup) and the like that are a big problem with the health of us all, but "organic" is hardly the solution. Technically you could have orcanic HFCS, would that magically make it better for you?

Instead of wasting money on a fad why don't you instead find a farmers market and spend your money buying foods that sustain your local economy and that you can personally talk to the people who grew them.

Organic food might be better for you but better for the environment? Organic farming is more inefficient and requires more land. More land use means deforestation and less room for wildlife. Remember, some foods still have to be imported (fruits, coffee, etc.). And despite their claims, fair trade programs don't offer as much oversight as we're led to believe. So enjoy your organic food and nevermind that someone in a third-world country has to go with less or without any food because you thought you were doing a good thing!

Organic does not mean clean, pure, or safe. It means that, except for a few exceptions, it has a carbon atom. Motor oil, gasoline, DDT, pesticides, and plastics are organic materials.

Maria, I would guess, is the product of having to be surrounded by people who have experienced healthy eating habits. And she continues to subscribe to this important culture of eating healthy in her latter years. I'm 74 yrs old and as a young boy (about 6 yrs) my Dad had us kids plant vegetables in the backyard. Cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, etc. I recall one night at dinner time my Dad had cooked a cabbage meal (from the garden) and lo and behold, an overdone caterpillar surfaced on my plate. After a loud yell from my chair, my Dad replied, "that caterpillar is healthy for you, so eat it". End of story and I'm still alive!

Thanks so much for the spread of the word. I have been doing this nealy 7 years now inside and outside my home. I just started to grow my food organically. I been buying organics and I have cleaned out my entire home of all chemicals\. Its seems like alot to do, but your changes can be small but steady. Before you know it, your house is chemically clean . Our old product such as borox, peroxide , baking soda and vinigar are the worlds greatest product along with the use of a few essential oils to bring sent and aroma to your home. Keep on educating and everyone should strive to make our lives a much cleaner place to live. Our sweet animal friends also they really need help too. They were not meant to eat the food we have processed for them, and the health problems are risen along with out children lives. For a healther lifestyle go green..

I m glad that organic food gets more and more into our everyday language.I m now 30 years old and I started to read about it when I was only 14 years old...Back then a lot of people thought that I was weird.....I always told them to look arround; little girls early developed ;physicly becoming women at 8 years old....That is not normal! Organic farming isnt only good for our planet but for us as well. All those chemicals and hormones to "help" growing fruits, veggies and cereals or to raise cows ,chickens or other animals that end up in our plates.We do ingest those chemicals .The body assimilate it and We are genetically affected by it.More cancers, more deseases...We are what We eat!.I want the best for those I love and I do want a familly; a healty familly. Thats why organic food is part of my life. Thank You for spreading the words! Everyone has to know the impact of eating healthy organic food. Let s grow old on an healhy planet!You re doing a great job!Keep the good work!Thank You!

Organic matters to me, because I just want my kids to grow up healthy and strong. Processed food is killing our country! I am trying to learn how to grow more of our foods, but I sadly don't have much of a green thumb. So I am thankful for organic farmers and what they do for our food supply.

Organic matters to me because those foods have been proven to have a higher nutrient density!

A long time ago, organic farming was the only way of life. Commercial pesticides were not invented yet and farmers and non-farmers grew fruits and vegetables as a mainstay in their lives. They ate what they grew, therefore they knew that what they put in their soil and on their tables were what was going into their bodies.

Nowadays, with mass farming both locally and conventionally, and the population growing worldwide, food needs to be grown quickly and delivered to the stores quickly because of competition.

Ofcourse not everyone can go back to the old simple days of organic farming without some sacrifices as it's almost ironic how organic farming 30 years ago was a lot more cost-efficient than organic farming now.

Organic farmers have an intrinsic sense of duty to not only the public but to themselves and their families as well. Their main obligation as agriculturists is to feed the people well and to maintain the earth, whether altruistically or not.

We can thank organic farming by purchasing and supporting organic companies whose model of behavior helps protect Mother Earth and all of her inhabitants - present and future.

I'm not just writing this post to try and win a contest, but I've been toting organic and all-natural living since I was very young. My mother is a good role model of natural and healthy living. When I was young, my parents had mostly organic food on the table as they were able to grow it themselves so it has stayed as a focus in my life and I am also trying to raise my son to eat and live healthily.

Organic matter because we need to keep chemicals out of our bodies...period

As a busy Mama to 5 kids feeding them organic foods is so important! I want my children to be healthy and live long lives and I think the key is to be healthy and learn how to be healthy at a very young age!

I have to go a little outside the usual response to this. Organic matters to me, because we have done HORRIBLE things to our health as a species. In the process of destroying other creatures and 'making grown foods stronger' we have mutated our own immune systems, beaten up or internal systems and drastically altered both our own bodies and the bodies of our children. There are more cases today of asthma, food allergies and sesitivity and birth 'troubles' today than ever before. This is, I firmly believe, due to the chemicals and genetic alterations we use on one of the few things we MUST have in order to live.
For me, this makes organics an absolutely vital move for our nations health, as well as that of our suffering planet.
Thanks for letting me rant,
Gypsy
:D

I'm glad you have done this, and hope you can get it out there with your clout and name recognition. Been around long enough to have been in the forefront, then called a "leftover hippie", and now to see my own daughter involved in many wonderful causes like the "crop mobs" just featured in NY Times. Keep up the good work.

Right on Maria! I am a Mother of three and I whole heartedly agree with you. My goal in life is to learn to grow as much of our own food and medicine as possible (as well as be a good mom and human being).
I appreciate who you are and what you stand for.

That was great! Loved the cue cards at the end.