Anyone Can Grow Shit Themselves

Well, not quite anyone. If you've not a patch of land or a balcony or suitable space indoors for growing pots (not to mention the required additional equipment), then you're out of luck.

But otherwise, yea, anyone can grow shit themselves, as Ms Broke-Ass Grouch makes so eloquently clear in this fantastic article.

Here's a snippet:

Listen up, locavores, opportunivores, dumpster-diving fermentation fetishists, and Dave Matthews Band fans: A great many of us live by the same ecologically sound principles that you do. We, however, are not doing so because we nurture an abiding desire to "create choices" for ourselves or to "live intentionally." We don't have any more than a passing interest in "sustaining biodiversity." We are known as poor people.

Now go ahead, read the rest.

[Cross-posted at economicus ridiculous]

Recommend this post

Dinner is Nearly on the Table

Last week I received a query from a pregnant woman who saw a documentary called ' Earthlings'. The video upset her so much that she asked how to embrace a vegan diet.

Her request got me to thinking that others would benefit after viewing this. It may influence them into doing some research. It may aid them in realizing that there IS another way to live respectfully, and in harmony, with all creatures on our little blue planet.

I challenge all carnivores/omnivores to watch the video, in it's un-pretty, cruel, factual, and appetite killing entirety.

Now go eat your dinner.

Recommend this post

NFB Film: Marilyn Waring - Who's Counting?

Amazing film. Will stir you up, make you angry and strengthen your resolve to keep fighting for change.

Synopsis:

In this feature-length documentary, Marilyn Waring demystifies the language of economics by defining it as a value system in which all goods and activities are related only to their monetary value. As a result, unpaid work (usually performed by women) is unrecognized while activities that may be environmentally and socially detrimental are deemed productive. To remedy this, Waring maps out an alternative economic vision based on the idea of time as the new currency.

If you haven't already seen it, I strongly recommend you do so.

Recommend this post

Bossy, The Cow

We all seem to have an image of Bossy, the milk cow, placidly chewing her cud in a field of vibrant green grass. This is the cow we all get our milk from, carefully raised on the local farmer's field. Isn't it?

The reality of cows bred for milking is far different. This video may be an extreme example of cruelty, but it is more common than we want to believe.

The dairy industry's standard forms of cruelty also led to suffering for these cows. In order to make milking easier, cows' tails were amputated by tightly binding them with elastic bands, causing the skin and tissue to slowly die and slough off and leaving the animals unable to swat away flies, which, in addition to tormenting the cows, also led to the spread of disease. Tail-docking is unnecessary and cruel, which is why it has been condemned by the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Milk produced for human consumption comes at a high price: to the cow. First they must breed and produce a calf at least once a year to maintain their milk flow. They are dosed with numerous drugs. They often do not see the light of day, as they are continuously kept in filthy barns. The calves they bear become the tender veal we find in our grocery stores. Torn from their dames almost as soon as they're born, they are put in small corrals in the dark for a short time before they are slaughtered then rendered into human food.

As I haven't had milk since I was a teenager, I am always appalled when I encounter just what takes place in agri-business today.

I choose, instead, to drink an almond beverage, rich in protein, calcium and a small amount of easily digestible fat.

Recommend this post

Tube Steak

Test tube, that is. Coming soon to a grocery store near you, meat that is designed in Petri dishes then transferred into large vats to grow.

Rapidly evolving technology and increasing concern about the environmental impact of meat production are signs that vat-grown meat is moving from scientific curiosity to consumer option. In vitro meat production is a specialized form of tissue engineering, a biomedical practice in which scientists try to grow animal tissues like bone, skin, kidneys and hearts. Proponents say it will ultimately be a more efficient way to make animal meat, which would reduce the carbon footprint of meat products.

Researchers can currently grow small amounts of meat in the lab, and have even been able to get heart cells to beat in Petri dishes. Growing muscle cells on an industrial scale is the next step, scientists say.

So, for all you meat eaters out there, here is a way to eat animal flesh and be able to say that you are no longer contributing to animal cruelty or environmental degradation.

Recommend this post

Mushrooms

It's highly unlikely to see mushrooms in the summer season around here, but the past weeks a few brave specimens have popped up around the boles of a number of the larger evergreen trees. Their arrival indicates that rain is on the way, for reasons still unknown to mycologists.

Agaricus Agustus, also known as 'The Prince' is a highly-prized edible variety, if you can get to the mushrooms before fly maggots invade their tender flesh. They are a relative of the kind you find in some grocery stores, sought by food junkies.

Seeing these large-topped fungi prompted me to grab my camera and put pen to paper.

Woodland Den

The ground surrounding this wee cottage
Are strewn a minefield of mushroom montage
Each step set anywhere must first explore
The delicate condition of the forest floor
For fungi frolic rain plashed and cool
A few pretentious, more yet minuscule

They burst the earth in hues abundant
The odour off them robust and pungent
Therefore, place your feet so gently when
You go strolling in this woodland den.

Recommend this post

Meat-Free Monday

Okay, Okay, I know I go on a LOT about a meat-free diet, but the proof shows up in our bodies. Eating without ingesting animal flesh is definitely beneficial to our health.

[T]he fact that eating meat leads to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and lethargy, I'll skip extended analysis of these facts, other than to say: When Johns Hopkins, Columbia, the American Dietetic Association, and dozens of other health organizations argue that the less meat you eat, the better off you'll be, it's worth listening to them.

To get you started, two well-known Public Health schools in the USA are promoting a Meatless Monday campaign. It is a positive step in the direction of overall health for each individual and the entire planet.

[S]cientists tell us that if all Americans switched from eating chickens and pigs to eating beans and grains for just one day per week, that would stop as much global warming as if everyone in the U.S. shifted to ultra-efficient Toyota hybrids (which is the weekly equivalent of using 12 billion fewer gallons of gasoline). Of course I have to point out the obvious: If we all stopped eating animals completely and shifted to vegetarian foods, that would save 84 billion gallons of gas per week (and all the troubles that go with that kind of consumption).

Today is Monday. Today is the day to eat a meat-free diet. If you have already committed to one-day-a-week of meat-free eating, now is the day to add another. Your body will thank you, Mother Earth will thank you and all the animals that were not slaughtered to supply you with their flesh will thank you.

Recommend this post

Now Grow Some Grain

Yes folks, you too, can grow your own grain. It is happening in a neighbourhood near you.

You don’t need much space to raise at least some grains. A normal yield of wheat grown organically would be at least 40 bushels to the acre. So you’d need only 1/40th of an acre to produce a bushel. That would be a plot of ground 10 feet wide by about 109 feet long. A really good wheat grower with a little luck could get a bushel from a plot half that size. Wheat yields have been recorded as high as 80 bushels per acre and even higher.

Here, in the Cowichan Valley, we have some dedicated farmers growing enough grain to supply not only themselves, but a bakery, with enough wheat for both.

The True Grain Bread bakery, located in Cowichan Bay, produces loaves of Red Fife bread from the local growers for sale to the public.

Read the whole article, roll up your sleeves, dig in, grow your own grain (or find a local farmer who is growing grains) and become part of the solution to food security in your hometown.

Recommend this post

Now Eat Your Greens

Locally grown food is a commodity everyone says they want. People tell me they don't mind paying a few extra coins to purchase freshly harvested, organic produce.

In the Cowichan Valley, there are a burgeoning number of hard working farmers busily raising animals for food, establishing vineyards and orchards, planting beds of luscious edible plants and tending colourful flower gardens. All with the intent of sustaining themselves and providing an alternative to the mainstream food supply.

You'll rarely find this type of fare in the usual places. You may have to seek them out at the weekly Farmer's Market, roadside stands, directly from the farmer, or in special stores that cater to consumers who want only the best locally grown organic produce.

Too much trouble? It is well worth your time and the small extra cost to invest in your health, the environment, in supporting the grower and in encouraging local food sustainability.

Now, eat your greens!

Recommend this post

Agricultural Policies Increase Swine Flu Risk

Two items in today's news point to factory farming - born and fostered by our rampant consumption and others' greed - as the chief cause of outbreaks like swine flu. From Macleans:

The Mexican press is reporting that locals in the hometown of Edgar Hernandez, the four-year-old boy who may be the first person to have caught the illness, say a pig farm is to blame. The town is home to a Confined Animal Feed Operation (CAFO) that is 50 per cent owned by Smithfield Foods Inc., the largest fresh pork and packaged-meat company in the United States. Residents claim that the flies that swarm in the CAFO’s open-air lagoons where the pig manure is stored have caused a high rate of respiratory infection in the town.

Reports of illness in the community have long gone unreported, as Blind Man With A Pistol so eloquently points out in this post. Why, he asks, have so very few articles taken up the cause of the Mexican victims or reflected "the grief shared by the affected communities"?

We must curb consumption. We must change our agricultural policies, such as those in BC, if we are to reduce the risk of widescale outbreaks.

In a media release issued today, the BC Greens make this point, stressing the importance of policies that encourage, not discourage, small-scale, local, organic food production.

“All a pathogen like swine flu needs in order to mutate into a dangerous form is overcrowded conditions. Genetic uniformity found in most industrial agriculture, makes the process more rapid,” said Wayne Osborne, BC Greens’ candidate in the Parksville-Qualicum....

“Agricultural policies that restrict traditional methods have increased the crowding of hogs and poultry. Industrial-grown animals are so genetically uniform, they might as well be clones. For health reasons, we need to move away from large-scale operations that create disease conditions and re-introduce genetic diversity into our food supply."

BC Greens’ Agriculture Critic and candidate in Nanaimo, Dirk Becker added, “This is a prime example of what is wrong with our system on a grand scale - where the health and safety of humans and animals aren’t the most important things, but rather short-term profit.

“Animals are more than just a commodity, and their food and living conditions help them to develop natural resistance to sickness and disease. That includes breeding to maintain genetic diversity, so that when there is disease, only a portion of a population is affected. This current outbreak is not only to be expected, but inevitable when you use such unnatural means of meat production, breeding only the biggest, fastest-growing pigs for rapid profit.”

No one is saying that small-scale farming is devoid of risks. Anything humans do comes with risk, especially where profit comes into play. But certainly supporting local food production reduces risk.

We must move to change our agricultural policies NOW.

Ergo, in this provincial election vote accordingly.

And vote for BC-STV. Only with a system which properly reflects voters' concerns can undercut the moneyed interests which ultimately control our current politics.

Recommend this post