Forest Gardening; a natural alternative to modern agriculture is something we can all do in our own yards; or even on pots on our balconies. If the labor is done by hand, and the plants are carefully planted the same way they would naturally grow along the edge of a forest in nature, the plants will naturally take care of each other.
A commonly known fact among gardeners is that marigolds will drive off many of the harmful insects that eat your produce. Most annual plants will leave behind the correct soil composition for perennial plants that are growing beside them to take their place in the following year. Those are just two examples of how nature can take care of itself and how we can harvest nature without doing anything unnatural.
Using these methods it possible to feed a family of four in a space no larger than the size of a standard mattress.
It's not that the Earth has too many people, it's not that there are not enough farms...
The issues we face today are due to ignorance.
There are two things we do not know:
1. We do not know what it is that can help save us (forest gardening, a whole food diet consisting of mostly raw foods, peaceful solutions, honor of nature).
2. We do not know what we do that is harming us (shopping at huge corporations and giving our money away to the monsters that destroy our environment, who offer jobs with unthinkable work conditions, who sue innocent people out of their lives and livelihood).
Because we have no understanding of how nature really works, because we have no understanding of how the economy really works, and because we don't know how our bodies really work we go around killing ourselves, our friends, our families, our communities, our countries and our planet one dollar at a time.
I can't say I understand all the ins and the outs of the trade winds or of photosynthesis, but I can say that genetic modification is not only not necessary, but harmful. I've seen rich garden beds in the most unsuspecting places completely filled with edible food. Edible flowers beside edible leaves with edible roots growing in the ground and fruit bushes growing nearby with edible leaves as well. The more we learn about nature, the more amazing we'll know she is. We can't improve upon what nature already does; we can only attempt to harness her strength in ways that are more convenient for us.
There is nothing wrong with building a green house, growing plants on your porch, or planting foods where you want them: this is a natural form of harvesting nature. But there is something wrong with taking down forests to plant mono-crops. There is something wrong with with using thousands of acres of land to plant one strain of one type of edible food. There is something deadly wrong with modifying the genetics of plants, patenting the seeds, and suing anyone who has a yard where those seeds landed after traveling on the wind.
I can't claim to know everything about economics or about business. I can't explain the way the stock market works except in the most basic of terms. But I can explain this: When people buy a product in large numbers they are sending a message to the company. They are saying; "We love your product, we think it's worth our money and time, we want more of this product!" When people do not buy a product, they are saying, "Your product is too expensive," or "We don't need this product," or "There is another product out there we prefer," or "We disagree with your company's policies and we won't buy anything from you until you change."
Think about any of the businesses you shop from. How much do you know about them? How much do they pay their workers? Where are the products manufactured? Is the company environmentally responsible?
Let's say you buy the following for your family every week; $2 worth of napkins, $5 worth of toilet paper, $6 worth of paper towels, and $2 worth of trash bags. Let's say all of these products are made by a company called Delve Gully. That's $15 a week you're spending to support that company and the store that is stocking their products. There are 56 weeks in a year. That's $840 a year, just for those minor products you probably never thought twice about.
Wouldn't it feel good to know that the paper products you purchased were made from 100% recycled paper? Wouldn't it feel good to know the workers had a reasonable work environment to work in? Wouldn't be good to know that no harmful chemicals were used in the production of them?
I invite you to visit the sites I've linked in this post if you're interested in learning more.
Recent Comments