"Organic Manifesto" by Maria Rodale

I started reading the book “Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe” by Maria Rodale. Maria Rodale is qualified to write a book on the organic movement. Her grandfather J.I. Rodale found the magazine “Organic Farming and Gardening” in 1942. Her parents, Robert and Ardath Rodale, as well devoted their lives to organic farming and supporting local farmers. Her grandfather and father launched Prevention magazine in 1950. And before her father died in 1990, he began the lonest-running scientific study comparing synthetic chemical versus organic agriculture.  So she grew up in among the organic movement and devoted her life as well to the cause.

  (Maria Rodale)

I read half of the book during the week we were on vacation. It was one of those reads that I couldn’t put down! This book explains, as the title suggests, all about organic farming and how it impacts each one of us and our world. It goes into depth beyond just “buy organic” and really explains the reasoning behind the idea.  People can tell you to buy organic and that’s all good and fine. But why? Who cares? And that is why this book was so interesting to me.

But…I couldn’t believe the reaction I received when I started to share some information with some extended family members. 

Sitting in the sand on the beaches of South Carolina I flipped the pages of this book and highlighted what seemed like every paragraph. Alongside me my family laid out as well soaking in the rays. 

 A soft breeze rustled through my hair and the salt air flooded into my lungs as these thoughts filled my mind. The laughter of children playing in the sand broke the silence of my relaxing family. I brought up a point from the book that I found interesting.  

“Recent studies suggest that behavioral and developmental problems may be linked to childhood pesticide exposure. And that exposure begins at almost the moments of conception. Pesticide residues are routinely detected in the amniotic fluid of pregnant women.”

Instantly a defensive conversation broke out. Now I wasn’t pressuring anyone or forcing my opinions on anyone. I’ve learned that those of you who want to know what I think will ask. That’s the same reason I even created this blog in the first place. I know and respect that everyone has their own decisions to make in life in regards to health, nutrition, and overall wellness. And to each his own as I would also hope to be given the same respect in my own opinions, decision, and lifestyle. I was simply just stating a thought that this book had brought out and I found I was met with only defensive reasoning and forceful opinions. I was astounded, especially as I continued to read the book it explained some of the same things I was then experiencing.  On that beach that afternoon, I heard the usual arguments that each news broadcast spells gloom and doom on a new food item. I also heard that you can’t be so crazy about that “stuff”. And again, the thought that everything must be done in moderation. I sort of chuckled behind my distaste of the whole situation. All of this coming from people who eat pizza 3-4 times a week and fast food the rest of the week. Moderation. That’s a funny thought. Moderation is a sensible thought. I encourage it. But I couldn’t help but think, do I want to be ingesting pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, hormones, and antibiotics in moderation? And my unequivocal answer was NO!

This whole situation is explained simply by these two following quotes.

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

“The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.”

-Wayne Dyer

Now I am not the most informed person on all issues. But I am a naturally curious person. And therefore I read, I study, I experiment, I think. But not everyone does. And I know that those who were “attacking’ the cited thoughts are not informed on the issues at hand. Ignorance is dangerous.

How about you? Are you curious about the organic food, farming, and how it impacts our environment and health? This book is a great read! Be someone who is informed, not ignorant. The biggest mistake you can do is to make a decision (really in anything) based on ignorance. And it is ONLY THEN that you should make your own decision about the issue of organic vs conventional (chemical) foods. It is ONLY THEN that you can take a stand on either side and be taken seriously for your opinions. But again to each his own, and opinions should be given and taken respectfully…the complete opposite on how I was met with mine.

**For those of you who want to read this book and don’t want any spoilers stop reading here. But for the others who want samples of some information you can find in the book I took the liberty of including some direct quotes that I found extremely interesting. Of course, there is SO much more that I haven’t included below. But I do recommend this read to those of you who are curious about organic food and what the hype is all about.

The following is some of what you’ll find in this book: (quotes in ITALICS)

Ever wondered what GMO means?

“Most food crops start with a seed. But the seeds today are not like the seeds farmers have used for thousands of years. Instead, farmers are strongly encouraged to choose those that have been genetically modified with the help of a bacterium—perhaps Escherichia coli or salmonella—in order to resist the herbicide they use to keep their fields week-free. (Isn’t it interesting hat those are two of the bacteria that worked?) These bacteria act as a kind of barrier for the DNA being transferred and they create antibiotics in the process (another contributor to our overexposure to antibiotics). Billions of dollars were spent to develop this seed, yet the government required absolutely no health and safety testing before the seeds were planted.”

From my research I’ve noticed, quite obviously, that the food industry runs solely on money instead of ethics. Let’s take a look at India…

“For years the price of cotton was low around the world because there was more cotton than people needed—and most companies buying cotton choose the lowest-priced source. Then US farm subsidies artificially reduced the price of American cotton and suddenly, the cheapest cotton was coming from America, not India. Even though the cost of living in India is a fraction of what it is in the United States, suddenly Indian farmers couldn’t make a living. That was the first blow.

Now you have the follow-up blow. Desperate Indian farmers get calls from companies using Bollywood movie starts and Hindu deities to help sell the farmers on “magic” seeds. Wither literally nothing to lose, Indian farmers borrow money to buy the seeds and the companion chemicals, never realizing that the price will increase each year. After the first year, they find out that it costs much more to maintain their crops due to the ever-increasing prices of seeds and chemicals. Yet they are still plagues by insects and, like all promises of magic, the yields are disappointing at best. Before long, the money lenders are knocking on their doors and there is not enough revenue from the crops to pay the debts.

More than 160,000 Indian cotton farmers have killed themselves in the past decade. The favored method of suicide? Ingesting chemical pesticides.”

People worry about the antibiotics in chicken and other products.

“Believe it or not, arsenic is still used today—even in chicken feed! It’s used to promote growth, kill parasites, and “improve pigmentation of chicken meat,” even though arsenic is strongly linked to many types of cancer and diabetes. In 1999, 318,000 pounds of arsenic were used in California alone.

The US Congress responded to concerns about the food supply by establishing the Federal Trade Commission in 1912 and the Food and Drug Administration in 1927. But then as now, the industry fought standards with lobbying money and lots of advertising. The government usually sided with the groups who were making the most money—industry. Meanwhile, a host of new chemicals hit the market….Methyl bromide, a soil fumigant, was introduced in 1936, and DDT reached the market in 1945 and was widely viewed as a less-toxic substitute for lead arsenate. These are just a few notable examples among thousands. You probably have seen the pictures of trucks with hoses spraying children at play and eating sandwiches to “prove” just how safe DDT really was.

We now know it wasn’t safe at all.”

DDT ended up being banned in the United States in 1972. I actually found some advertisements from the 50s in connection with the use of DDT. It was marketed well to increase trust in the product and to alleviate any concerns.

“But make no mistake, without the farm bill, organic food would cost less than chemical food—far less. Organic foods are already much less than expensive to taxpayers. The funds spent on cleaning up the toxic messes agriculture has made of our soil, water, oceans, and health, as well as the costs of chemical foods, are impossible to calculate.

In Congress efforts to “protect jobs” (mainly at chemical companies) and American farmers, it produced a farm bill that put farmers on an economic treadmill by providing payment incentives to keep growing crops like corn and soybeans chemically and made it almost impossible to switch to  organic or growing other crops…

Myra Goodman, cofounder of Earthbound Farms, has done the math. 

She and her husband sell organic fruits and vegetables grown on 33,000 acres of farmland in California (what the farm bill would call “specialty produce”). They don’t own all of the land themselves. Rather, the group consists of 150 independent, certified organic farmers. They don’t get a single penny from the government. In 2008, these organic farmers kept 10.5 million pounds of chemical fertilizers and 305,000 pounds of chemical pesticides out of the environment and saved 1.7 million gallons of petroleum. The carbon they have sequestered, according to the Rodale Institute’s measurements, is the equivalent of taking 7,500 cars off the road every year.”

These were just some quotes I found interesting and I am only halfway through the book so far. Why not pick up a copy? I got mine on Amazon for a few dollars. I have to admit that it sat on my bookshelf for 2 years before I got around to reading it. I don’t think I was in the right frame of mind then. But now I can’t put it down!