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Memories of my childhood & the importance of organic farming

25/05/2017 0 Comment(s) General News,

What memories do you have of your childhood? I remember a jumper I used to wear as a very young child being put up on a stick in my grandfather’s garden. The jumper had a gorilla eating a banana on it (funny what you remember as a child). Apparently it was a reasonably effective scarecrow. My grandfather farmed this land we farm now as a mixed vegetable farm. He grew vegetables for the kitchen in a small plot behind his house.

 

I also remember a high wire support that the sweet peas grew on. I remember his seat he used to rest on, the scythe he used to cut the grass with.

 

I must have been in the garden quite a bit, as I got older I learned how to dry onions and sow potatoes from my father.
 
Both my dad Michael and my Grandfather Martin grew their food organically; they didn’t think about it or make a big deal of it. It was no big deal it was just the way.

 

 

Why then do we make such a big deal these days of organic food?  Why is it even a thing?  Why talk about it at all?

 

What has happened to our way of growing, of producing meat (we don’t), of treating the farmers who are locked into this system, that has driven us to have to define clean food as something different and special, surely that should be the norm, not the other way around.

 

Today we are told by our own government that the levels of chemicals in our food are safe, they are under the predetermined “limit” of safety. They mimic what the large manufacturers tell them, they are safe for us and our environment, and yet history continually contradicts these safety statements.

 

We have our own government renaming toxic carcinogenic chemicals as PPPs (plant protection products, I was corrected on this matter, just last week, by an inspector on our farm). 

 

All this ducking and diving and changing and justifying and defending and denying should not be necessary.  When you cut through all the layers it comes back to greed and money. There is no altruism here.

 

Here is an excerpt from a recent Guardian article.

 

“Earlier in March, UN food and pollution experts issued a severely critical report on pesticides, arguing that it was a myth they were needed to feed the world and calling for a new global convention to control their use. “Given the failure of the pesticide industry to address, or even acknowledge, the ecological disaster caused by neonicotinoid pesticides, we agree that there is an urgent need for a new global convention,” said Shardlow.”

 

We used to produce food very well without all these chemicals. My Granddad did it, my Dad did it, we are doing it today.

 

So let’s get the chemicals out of our food chain, they are not benign and they are not needed.

 

Kenneth & Jenny 

 

P.S. We now have organic blueberries and honey in stock - perfect additions to your porridge brekkie – delicious and satisfying!