Organics is becoming more than just growing a few vegetables in the back yard or choosing spotty and grotty fruit from the local market: .
As well as growing food plant and animals and sophisticated marketing, organics is moving towards a new phase that is “beyond organics.
In the end organics comes back to responsibility: individual and community responsibility. The organic gardener is one who aims to be responsible, in the first instance, for his own health and well being and that of the soil for which he has stewardship.
Upon a healthy living soil, a soil thriving with micro and macro life forms the plants that feed us depend. The better the soil the stronger, more resistant to disease, and more nutritious are the plants growing from it.
Adding synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and herbicides destroys or severely compromises the health of the soil. The responsibility is to avoid the quick fix take the long way round and use organic methods to preserve the integrity of the soil.
Simple, straightforward ways of doing this have been exhaustively written about but mulching, composting, returning all waste matter and careful design are simple and easy actions to take. Others include companion planting and being aware of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) procedures.
There is ample evidence from serious research (peer reviewed papers) indicating that organic fruit and vegetables have many more vitamins and minerals than their conventionally farmed counterparts. That there is much more vitamin C, for example, has been well attested. Interestingly, reach in the USA has shown that today’s vegetables have but one half of the nutrients that they did in 1963.
Our health will be improved by growing and eating home grown organic food. If not home grown then it should be sourced locally. Think global act local!
Looking after you health reduces costs and the burden on the health system.
We have a responsibility to the wider community and to our neighbours and neighbourhood. The over or casual use of pesticides, as an example, can result in life being killed in local waterways. Herbicides and pesticides allowed to run off your property may land eventually in a lagoon, creek or river and there kill the fish. Just a small disruption to the delicately balanced ecology of most waterways will create a vast ripple effect.
Conventional farming or agribusiness is the largest user of petroleum products but the most impressive point about home organic gardeners and commercial organic gardeners is the comparatively tiny amount of inputs into the food grown. This makes organic growing much more sustainable into the future with the depletion of petroleum stocks.
Purchasing locally produced fruit and vegetables at farmers’ markets or organic stores will mean that those products will be both fresher and will not have the added environmental (as well as dollar) transport and storage costs.
If we do well for ourselves through good dietry choices and do no harm to our neighbour we are being good responsible citizens but responsibility does not stop there. A new trend is known as “Beyond Organics” and this says that as well as growing organically, that we should be considering the total ecological web of the land we have.
Are we supporting local wildlife? Are we growing bird and insect habitats or destroying them and in so doing creating a desert where no birds sing? The removal of the hedgerows in England has resulted in just that. In an effort to maximise field size ancient hedges were ripped out. Farmers were paid to do it. Then the birds that lived in the hedges disappeared but the insects on which they had fed throve. Now farmers are being paid to protect and replant hedges.
A larger question concerns our responsibility for the plant species we select. If we grow some of the new hybrid flowers, are they actually attractive to bees and other pollinators? One can have a bright colourful garden but without bees and other insects. Beyond organics says that we should be making environmental choices with each plant we push into the soil.
