Food, shelter and water. In the big wide world of creature comforts in this material world we forget that the basics of life are very simple. While it would be a hard life concentrating on securing just these essentials, without them we would perish. We take them for granted because they are, for the most part, provided for us. Others grow our food, build our houses, and pipe the water to us. Of course we labor to provide the means to purchase these essentials, but they are nonetheless provided by others. While we trust others to provide clean food and water and a safe house, we also use common sense to determine for ourselves the validity of the claims made by our providers. Of these three things, the food we eat provides us the most opportunity of choice, and on a daily basis.

We’ve all heard the old axiom “You are what you eat”. This rings truer than most of us would like to admit. You put bad gas in your car and it’s going to perform poorly. You build a house on a poor foundation and your walls will crack. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if we’re not nourishing our bodies with nutritional food that our bodies will suffer? Not just physically, but mentally too. Those using the “conventional” approach to farming practices have been very successful at growing more food, but have neglected the quality of our food. Here’s the problem.

When the first settlers started farming the central part of the United States, land was plentiful and very fertile. When the farmer wore out a piece of land, he simply moved his crops to another piece of land. The depleted farmland left behind was often barren and devoid of much plant life to stop erosion or wind-borne damage. In the 1930’s three things came together that almost destroyed the small family farmer. The Great Depression lowered farm prices. There was also a great drought which brought changing weather patterns, which created the conditions that set up the infamous Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. The farmer, who once believed that the “good dirt” went down as far as he could plow, suddenly lost that most valuable commodity, the rich top soil. And he was lost about what to do about it. That is, until WWII brought about changes that presented miracle cures for all that ailed the mid-twentieth century farmer.

Discoveries made in the search for better ways to kill people, oddly enough, also provided the saving grace for the farmer. Ammonium nitrate, developed during WWII to build a better bomb, was converted for use on the farm as a high nitrogen fertilizer. Organophosphate chemicals first developed by Germany, as nerve gases intended to kill people, were easily diverted to the farm as pesticides to kill insects. Where the farmer had been dependent on provisions from Nature in the “old” way of farming, with the “new” way of farming he could synthetically control Nature. But as we’ve since learned, only for a little while and at a very high price.

Beginning with advent of “chemical” farming, also called “conventional” farming, the big three nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium have taken center stage in the fertilizing of our farmland. The biology of the soil and the other 89 micronutrients essential for life were dismissed as playing limited roles in growing our food. Over time, as crops were grown and harvested, year after year, the soil has been mined of its mineral content. If the minerals are not in the soil, they cannot be taken up by the plants. Many of those micronutrients, that we call trace elements in our diet, are no longer available to us in our food in the quantities they once were. Witness the growth of the vitamin industry as an example of us trying to satisfy our bodies craving for these trace elements. While “conventional” agriculture has succeeded in becoming more efficient and increasing harvests, they have robbed us of the quality of our food. Some folks even believe that one of the reasons we are becoming obese as a nation is that we are literally overfeeding ourselves trying to satisfy our cravings for these micronutrients we now lack in our diet. So what’s a person to do?

Pay attention to your food choices. Know where your food comes from. It’s that simple. Produce, organically or conventionally grown, that has traveled for two weeks and 1500 miles has lost much of its nutritional content. Food grown on mineral deficient soils will not nourish our bodies as they need. Remember that one of the main tenets of organic agriculture is to protect and remineralize depleted soils. Locally-grown, organic foods will not only supply you with whole foods, but they taste better too! Better yet, grow some of your own food! While it would be almost impossible in our fast-paced society to grow everything we eat, we can certainly add to our diet that which is either locally-grown or comes out of our own backyards. Your food does not get any more local, fresh and nutritious than that!

Steve Bridges