This article is really interesting - written by one of my favorite authors. It does have to do with growing...not hoyas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=2&ei=5070&oref=slogin&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
Carol
Totally OT
Great article Carol. A real eye opener!
Doug
Hi Carol,
this is one that we could email our senators and congressman with. We could also contact the presidential campaigns with this - who knows, if they get tired of slinging mud, troopergate, and telling us to inflate our tires they might whip this one out.
Jackie
GREAT idea, Jackie...let's do it!!!
Here in the islands this is a very critical issue. We 'import' 90% of all our food and it comes from even further!! There is a big movement afoot for 'home grown'...it would not be hard!!! The last egg producing chicken farm just went out of business to make compost and sell it... Something is not right!!! It also means a demise of fast food - which would be the best news yet...unless it came more expensively!!! I believe fervently in 'support local economy'...have planted a huge vegetable garden...perhaps I can trade for stuff I can't grow. But we have to encourage MORE!!! And less convenience foods unless made here....
Have you read Pollans' other books? He is so much fun to read!!!
Carol
What a very Timely and wonderful article! I've printed out copies to share and I'm forwarding it via e-mail to a few folks too!
Carol, Thank you so much for sharing this article with us all. If everybody pitched in we could make our food supply healthy and safe for all in our communities! It's gotten so that whenever I go to the grocery store and I'm looking at produce, I have to know where it came from! So much is imported that could and should be grown right here! We have the means and we should use it.
Too right, Lin. His books have totally turned my way of eating around - and I am thinner, healthier, have more energy and can literally eat anything I want (within reason...quantities are the problem)!!! It is simply going back to 'food' instead of the 'food products'...Of course one of the downsides to his proposal is that food is all we have left to export....!!! It would save oil...to say nothing of the water that is used...and that is going to be the next 'oil' in the world.
I believe that many of our kids could be turned around if they had more of a connection to the earth. I don't mean this in a 'New Age' kind of way. I mean that there is a big disconnect when we don't know how to produce our own food. I also wonder if the explosion in autism, ADHD and other childhood malfunctions has to do with all of the chemical crap we load our food with.
Kids who garden learn all kinds of things - patience and sharing (life skill), science (growing things, water and soil science), social skills and how to appreciate and see the world around them. I've seen a look that kids get when they put their hands in the soil, their amazement when a seed germinates, their delight when they can eat something they've grown... I wish I could get my school to let me start a garden club or a horticulture group... maybe next year.
allgreat - you could start small and get a class (Spanish, math?) interested in growing some hydroponic lettuce in a styrofoam cooler...and then watch it snowball. Some of the gradeschools here are doing vegegardens to supplement the food in the cafeteria, and they can even take it home and/or sell it. Got alot of kids involved.