Folks, we are going about agriculture all wrong. We are penalizing organic farmers by charging them certification fees. These fees can run in the thousands, and sometimes natural fertilizers cost more than their commercial equivalents. These make the cost of organic crops that are better for you — since they have less residues in them, and they have about the right amount of protein, since the protein in organic fertilizers are in a protein form — cost more. Commercial fertilizer is in a free form, and a 10-year study by Rutgers found that very little to no actual protein was in the commercially raised crops.
Roundup causes cancer, and yet they are spraying it on wheat to get the grain to ripen, and on rye. Strawberries have been found with 40 different residues in them. Apples have been sprayed 14 times per year and then waxed to make them keep. These are your commercial crops.
What I suggest is that we start punishing the bad things that people do and start rewarding the good things that people do. We need our congressmen to do this also. We could start by taxing herbicides that cause cancer and other health problems. Herbicides destroy the sugar (food) in the ground and then the bacteria die since they have no food. Bacteria is needed to make nutrients available for the crop you are trying to grow in organic farming. The bacteria feed on crop residue and sugar that are in the soil and make more bacteria, then they die and become organic matter. So the better you do at this (feeding bacteria) the more organic matter you can make, the better the soil gets.
We have known for years that our water level is going down, and the government is paying farmers to put in irrigation. What we need to do is grow cover crops and improve our soil by putting all the right amount of nutrients on at high enough levels (plus what the crop needs for the year) in the form of natural fertilizers, manure and bio-activators. This will help, since the increase in crop residue contains more carbon (one pound of biologically active carbon holds four pounds of water). A cover crop covering the ground helps keep water in the ground since there is less evaporation of water than there is from just ground.
We could raise the taxes on the bad stuff every year until they are not done any more. This would provide a better incentive to eat healthy and would lower our medical bills (since we would be healthier) and then would help save our country, since our healthcare costs would come down.
In commercial farming, the fertilizers are highly water soluble, and the nutrients run with the water off the field, down the rivers and into the lake. The same is true for your lawn chemicals. You can get high nitrates in the crop with commercial fertilizer, since it’s not done with the bacteria.
We should reward top-quality (high-Brix) regenerative organic farming, since it is the best way to produce food for the health of plants, animals and people. A way to do this is to buy from companies that produce regenerative organic food. General Mills has the goal to have one million acres into regenerative agriculture by 2030. Top-quality beans have two-and-a-half times as many nutrients as poor-quality ones. Brix is half sucrose and vitamins, minerals and more. A good book to read is Using a Refractometer to Test the Quality of Fruits and Vegetables by Rex Harrill. You can measure Brix with a simple device called a refractometer. They cost about $120 and are real easy to use.
Chris Dietrich
Elmore, OH
