BY GROWING ONLY 3 CROPS – EVER
Time: 10 min 58 s
Time: 10 min 50 s
AREN’T OPTIONS BETTER?
What’s fascinating is that we’ve grown the same 3 crops (corn, wheat and rice) over and over again for the last half century. Unfortunately we’ve forgotten to keep extra varieties just in case something goes wrong — like a bug that figures out how to eat corn for breakfast, dinner and lunch (and then leaves you with nothing). Alas, people have forgotten that putting all your eggs in 1 basket is a bad idea. Guess that ties nicely to our current economic crisis doesn’t it?
Greenfudge.org » Monocrop Farming: Green Revolution or environmental blunder of historic proportions?: “detrimental effects on world hunger, biodiversity, nutrition, food supplies, water toxicity and soil quality. A sweeping change from traditional farming, with its fallow fields, crop rotation and varied selection of produce, monoculture techniques are not just linked to the transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture, but to the widespread shift from family-owned farms to massive industrial farming complexes driven by large corporations.”
LET’S MILL-ET!
You know my mother introduced me to millet not to long ago. It’s a more healthier and in some ways tastier alternative to your straight white rice. Unfortunately it takes a lot of work to grow. In India too much money goes to rice and wheat so millet hasn’t had a chance to come back like the good old days.
Other interesting kinds of food grains people don’t get enough of are sorghum, quinoa, amaranth and teff.
SO HOW DO WE GET CHOICE?
It seems we’re fighting to get back variety and choice these days. Don’t you deserve great food grown with clean water, healthy soil and a lot of “diversity”? Maybe we’ve gone too far for the sake of convenience? As a city farmer here at FoodCycles I see how convenience and cheap food has made doing the right thing (growing food locally and without chemicals or hormones) so hard.
So is there a way to get choice back? Support your local community, food and farmers. Put into yourself a burning desire to try new varieties and new things — like heirloom varieties (the sort grown by FoodCycles and other organic or biodynamic farmers). Most of all don’t settle for being spoon fed limited choice and cheap food.
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