I just read an article in my Organic Gardening magazine that says that the nutrition content of food that is being produced today is not as high as it used to be. They further said that when they contacted the Dept of Agriculture about it they said that they were aware of this trend but that they had no plans to look into it. That is pretty scary stuff. If the food that is being produced keeps losing its nutrutional value, where will we be twenty years from now. (No us specifically as a lot of us are growing our own, but what about everyone else?) I'm sure the reason that Ag is not looking into it is because the reason is because the feeding of the food plants is coming from chemicals and they are not providing enough of what the plant needs to produce nutritious food but if they study the issue and find this out, guess who is going to come out on the wrong end? THE CHEMICAL COMPANIES. This just convinces me to strive to produce even more of my food. I was pretty much limiting my food gardening to summer but now that we have built our new greenhouse, I am going to raise things through the winter as well. I find this information of how the nutrition level of food has declined to be a pretty serious situation. If the country continues its food raising practices this will only get worse. When the food produced doesn't give the population the nurishment it needs and people start dying it is going to be a pretty scary scenario.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), April 20, 2000

Answers

I heard someone on a talk radio show address this same issue recently. She attributed it more to hybridization than chemicals. If a farmer can buy seed that produces more bushels per acre, and is paid by the bushel, will he really stop to look at the nutritional differences? Hence the push back to 'Heirloom' seeds. She also attributed the lesser nutrients to obesity. Those foods have a lot of empty calories so you need to eat more to satisfy your body's craving for nutrients. Sure makes one feel good about growing your own, but how many of us grow our own wheat for flour? That was this speakers main focus. She suggested community purchasing so one could afford to buy from a grower with better varieties. A call came into the station that we have such a Co-op right here! I plan to call and see if I can get better flour when I run out. Maybe many towns have these. Jill

-- Jill Schreiber (schreiber@santanet.com), April 20, 2000.

This is because farmers are more concerned with feeding plants than feeding soil. The problem is that the farmer can't replace everything that a plant needs with fertilizer. God made the earth so that when a plant grew and took from the soil, plants then also died and gave back to the soil. The problem is the farmer interupts this process. There is no way a chemical can give back to the soil what organic matter can. This is because it is not just the decaying plant matter that contributes. It is all the little microbes and bacteria and insects. When the farmer doesn't continue this natural cycle these soil critters die and the soil becomes sterile. The good news is that on our homesteads we can treat the soil differently. The food we raise can be full of nutrients by feeding the soil. This year the natural clover in my garden was everywhere. I tilled that in and I will continue feeding throughout the year with applications of organic matter. Changes will happen for consumers when farming returns to the small farmer, instead of large corporate mass production facilities.

Little Bit Farm

-- Little bit Farm (littlebit@calinet.com), April 20, 2000.

Little Bit Farm, you and I seldom agree but I have to say you are spot on there!! Agribusiness feeds nitrate and phosphate which makes plants grow but doesn't satisfy all our nutritional needs. Common sense tells you that plants remove the nutrients from the soil and if all that's put back is NO3 and PO4 your veggies are lacking in the vitamins and minerals!

SO Little Bit - our politics may differ but we sure see eye to eye on some problems :)

Kim

-- kim (fleece@eritter.net), April 20, 2000.

I just read recently about a study that had been done, comparing a field that had been grazed on a rotation with one that had the grass mowed regularly and left lay, rather than removing it. The grass in the field that was grazed had higher nutritional value, and higher yield, than the one that was just mowed and the plants returned to the soil. So what is needed is more mixed farming, with livestock contributing their part to the nutritional cycle. And that works best with small farms.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), April 20, 2000.

Maybe irrigation waters the food down so that although it is the same size,it is lacking in both flavor and nutrition? We have all tasted the difference between home grown and store bought strawberries,and tomatoes. Also if the food is not being harvested at the right time,i.e. while it is still green and unripe,a lot of the nutrients that would have been in the ripe fruit never get to the consumer. Of course if the soil is lacking the plants cannot pass on to us what they are not receiving.Also,some viatmins deteriorate rapidly after the food is harvested,so even if it had those vitamins right after it was picked,it may be quite low in nutritional value by the time the consumer eats it. I don't think hybridization has much to do with it. There is nothing wrong with hybridization in plants per se, nature does it all the time, and many of our heirloom varieties are themselves products of either natural or human hybridizing. The problem we have today with hybrids is that the plant breeders are breeding for the wrong qualities,such as a long shelf life,rather than what we'd like,such as flavor. Also,unlike years past,todays hybrids cannot be grown out from seed because they won't come true. You will get all kinds of surprises if you do,because the good qualities have not been fixed. The plant breeders used to breed until they got the qualities that they wanted in a plant, and then they would work with it for several more generations to fix those qualities so that the plant could be grown from seed. Now they breed until they have what they want and stop there. They don't fix the qualities because then we could all grow our own seed instead of buying more seed every year.If you wanted to ,you could take a hybrid that you like,and grow the seeds out every year,saving only the ones that were like the original seed stock, and if you were very selective, that strain would be fixed.This sometimes takes ten or more years though,so breeders today go for the quick and easy way.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@transport.com), April 20, 2000.

Its for sure both chemicals and hybridization. I grew up on pre-agribiz farm in Iowa and can still remember that some older small farmers continued to grow open pollinated corn to feed their livestock after hybrid varieties had long dominated the market as they said the animals did better on it. That mentality died out with them and the rise of fencerow to fencerow agribiz. Quantity at all cost. The chemicals allow the plant to grow fast, but you need the organic matter and soil life to allow minerals to be dissolved and absorbed by the plants. It is interesting that livestock is given mineral supplements to help them along, but people are told we dont need it. Good organic agriculture and we probably wouldnt.

-- Hermit John (ozarkhermit@pleasedontspamme.com), April 20, 2000.

I have to agree about modern agribusiness starving the soil, and outright poisoning it. When we bought our farm 5 years ago, the fields were so scorched by 'modern' farming techniques that even the weeds wouldn't grow. By late August, it started greening in a bit, and after 2 years of resting it, we started farming. I can now look out over fields full of clover, that migrated in from somewhere after we put the goats out to clear the weeds. The land WANTS to be healthy, you just have to stop fighting it.

-- Connie (connie@lunehaven.com), April 20, 2000.

Open pollinated corn is higher in protein than the hybrids; maybe it also has more of other nutrients.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), April 20, 2000.

This is kinda a side note but Consumer Reports had an article last year, March '99, about pesticide residue on produce. Kinda scary, they even tested canned food. Canned spinach was very bad. I'll never buy another can. Prefer my own anyway but had never bothered to can it. Potatoes were also a problem because 1 in 20 (I think) had unacceptable levels and that particular pesticide permeated the potatoe and you couldn't wash it off. I feel leery every time I have to eat a store bought potatoe.

-- Vaughn (vdcjm5@juno.com), April 20, 2000.

Colleen, If you had asked that question 20 years ago people would have pointed to the video footage on TV at how Russians were being forced to eat rotten food, and then tell you it couldn't happen here in the USA. Its here now though itsn't it? I happened to walk into the produce section of a grocery store last year, and I couldn't hold back a sick laugh. People were paying $4.00 to $8.00 and more per pound for rotten vegetables, the type I throw away as unfit to eat. I no longer have exact figures, but roughly 90% of all diseases today are nutritional based. Sure, people can survive without proper nutrition, but walking around like decaying zombies isn't a logical choice. If you have a chance look at my reply under "how much land?" for an idea of why we must maintain a large supply of food no matter how rotten it may be. As long as city folk will put-up with slop, it keeps them in the cities and out of the country (we need city dwellers, their lifestyle of cubicle living provides us with sufficent enough land to properly feed our families). Too, the more sickly a person become, the less they realize their ill health or their subhuman standard of living. Yes, it is going to get worse. Anyone who cares about their family will buy land and learn to grow their own food. Its no longer a mere choice of wanting to live in the country, its quickly becoming a matter of life and death to buy land now while there's still some available. My cent's worth anyway....

Larry

-- Larry (sesquiq@mail.com), April 21, 2000.

A while back i saw a great program were a large lot In a city was farmed by a group of low Income kids and has become provitable for them,Organic gardening had a artical about the same thing so some good is going on even in the citys.

-- kathy h (saddlebronc@msn.com), April 21, 2000.

Just wanted to throw in my two cents. The entire earth is a very balanced and alive system and when we treat it like a factory it gets the same problems that peole do when they are overworked, underfed and exploited. We can't possibly produce as well when we face these types of conditions, but in the name of the almighty dollar and sheer volume we expect the land to give more than it gets.

I find it interesting that in the Bible it talks about how in the last days we will eat and not be filled....Food for thought.

-- Doreen Davenport (livinginskin@yahoo.com), April 22, 2000.

The protein content of wheat grown in the US has been dropping steadily for decades. Farming used to be a nearly closed circle. Very little left the small farms. The animals produced manure which was put on the crop land which produced the feed for the animals and round it went. Most waste produced on a farm was recyclable. Some things took longer than most of us want to deal with in our hurry-up-and-rot compost piles, but garbage pits and the outhouse pit took care of that sort of thing. Seed was kept from year to year, or obtained from a neighbor. Therefore it was optimized for the area's microclimate. The livestock reproduced year after year.

We can't go back to that lifestyle, too many people even just in this country. We also live in a highly regulated and cash-based society now. Taxes can't be paid in bushels of corn. A ham from your smoke-house can't be traded at the grocer. There are benefits to the world as we find it today, as well as severe problems. The reality is we can't stop what is going on agri-biz today. We can do what we can to provide better things (as we percieve them) for ourselves and our families. For many of us that is producing at least part of our food.We all need to realize that we are able to do things, however small, to mitigate the damage. Some of us raise heirloom seeds and livestock, others may only continue to fight the good fight with those #@%$ recycling bins every week. Where ever we find ourselves and whatever we do, we can only take small steps, but without steps, we never reach our goal. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), April 26, 2000.

gerbil you are a wise person and If you are ever In california you are welcome at my house, and brad you can come to if you can not say anything about california for the next week.smile!

-- kathy h (saddlebronc@msn.com), May 09, 2000.