Brian Halweil of the World Watch Institute released the report (which I happen to have). Modern agriculture blasts the land into lifeless dust and then uses drugs to keep it working (i.e. the chemical fertilizers, the pesticides). This was the cause of the Dust Bowl back several decades and the impacts of this agriculture continue to be felt as more and more land is abandoned and eroded.
Nurture the soil and one creates health in all things that stand upon it. The report below can be found at http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/Yield_Nutrient_Density_Final.pdf
****
*Editor’s Note:* A new report from The Organic Centre<http://www.foodnews.ca/index.htm> explains that modern high-yielding conventional cultivars are lower in nutrients than conventional, lower yielding crops. This finding has important implications for public health and agricultural production. First, the decline in nutrient content of foods combined with diets rich in processed, high fat, high sugar diets contributes to growing incidences of obesity and diabetes.
Second, intensive agriculture is not conducive to the development of healthy root systems. Giving up some yield, providing more space and time for crops to absorb nutrients from healthy soils can improve nutrient quality. The perspective offered by this report reinforces Peter Goodchild’s discussion <http://foodnews.ca/> (previous post) on how we might do agriculture in a post-fossil-fuel society.
0 Responses to “Food Less Nutritious? Blame the Farm Method”