Does an apple a day really keep the doctor away? Not anymore, according to soil health experts’€”unless the apple comes from a tree grown in healthy, organic soil.

According to Australian soil scientist Christine Jones, as reported by Courtney White in his book, Grass, Soil, Hope, apples have lost 80 percent of their vitamin C.

And that orange you just ate to help ward off a cold? It’€™s entirely possible that it contains no vitamin C at all.

A study looking at vegetables from 1930 to 1980, found that iron levels had decreased by 22 percent, and calcium content by 19 percent. In the United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1990, copper content in vegetables fell by 76 percent, and calcium by 46 percent. The mineral content in meat was also significantly reduced.

Food forms the building blocks of our bodies and health. Soil forms the basis for healthy food. Unhealthy soil grows poor quality food. And poor quality food means poor health.

Even our mental health is linked to healthy soil, rich in microbes.

So what’€™s happened to our soil? It’€™s been under assault since the advent of modern industrial agriculture, with its monocrops, fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.
Read the essay
Photo Credit: jilleatsapples via Compfight cc

COOK ORGANIC NOT THE PLANET

We’€™ll Be There. Will You?

It’€™s being billed as potentially the largest global climate action in history.

On Sunday, Sept. 21, OCA will join the People’€™s Climate March in New York City. Vandana Shiva is marching with us, under our ‘€œCook Organic Not the Planet’€ banner.

Want to join us? The first 200 people to RSVP will receive a free ‘€œCook Organic Not the Planet’€ T-shirt.

We’€™ll gather Sunday at 10:30 a.m. at Columbus Circle in New York City. Please use this form to RSVP so we can follow up with meet-up details and updates for the march.

On Saturday Sept. 20, OCA will host a track of workshops at the NYC Climate Convergence on topics related to the role organic farming’€”and organic consumers’€”can play in reversing climate change. Workshop speakers and leaders will include Ronnie Cummins, OCA; Elizabeth Kucinich, Center for Food Safety; Anna Lappé, Small Planet Institute; Nancy Romer, Brooklyn Food Coalition; Will Allen, Cedar Circle Farm, and many others.

All workshops will be held at St. John’s University, 51 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003, Room: CNCRSE C06

Sign up to march with Vandana Shiva and OCA

More about the workshops

ACTION ALERT

If we’€™re serious about reversing, not just mitigating, global warming, we will have to address the largest contributor of greenhouse gases to the environment: industrial, factory farm, monocropping, GMO, agriculture.

According to a recent study by the Rodale Institute, if regenerative agriculture were practiced globally, 100 percent of current, annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would be sequestered. That’€™s a compelling statistic, backed up by Rodale’€™s Farming Systems Trial (FST), the longest-running test comparing organic and conventional cropping systems.

That said, we also need to reduce our use of, and dependency on, fossil fuels.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has introduced a bill that would require energy companies to purchase pollution permits at auction. All of the auction revenue would be returned in equal amounts to every U.S. resident with a valid Social Security number.

HR 5271, the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act, calls for CO2 emissions reductions (over 2005 levels) of 20 percent by 2020, 40 percent by 2030, and 80 percent by 2050.

TAKE ACTION: Ask your Congress member to support HR 5271, the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act.

More here

SUPPORT THE OCA & OCF

Trees, Grass, Patience & Persistence

‘€œKnowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.’€ ‘€“ Hal Borland, nature journalist and author

If you’€™ve ever stared up at a giant oak, you can appreciate how long it took for one acorn to produce a tree of such magnificent heights.

If lawns are your thing, you’€™ve witnessed that no matter how cold the winter or how wet the spring, determinedly and persistently those green blades push through the dirt, season after season.

If you’€™ve been a part of the GMO labeling movement, through the narrow losses in California and Washington, the hard-fought win in Vermont, you know how much patience has been required to get us this far.

And how much persistence we’€™ll need if we’€™re going to see this thing through to the end.

Once again, we face critical GMO labeling battles in November’€”in Oregon and Colorado.

Once again, we are calling on all of you, the heart, soul and engine of this movement, to help us support these state campaigns.

The opposition is hoping we’€™ll give up.

We must prove them wrong.

Please help us reach our fundraising goal, so we can get the vote out in Oregon and Colorado in November. Thank you!

Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)

Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund(non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our legislative efforts in Oregon, Colorado and other states)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Inadequate testing. Poorly designed regulations. Assumptions based on out-of-date or non-existent data.

That’€™s the world in which pesticides are sold to the public as ‘€œsafe.’€

In his book, The Myths of Safe Pesticides, André Leu, president of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), exposes the dark side of pesticide testing and regulation.

In his book, and in the article he wrote for OCA, ‘€œFive Myths of Safe Pesticides,’€ Leu reveals how the current regulatory process doesn’€™t specifically test for the effects of pesticides on the human fetus, the newborn or the growing child, even though they are all at special risk.

And that’€™s just the tip of the iceberg.

Read ‘€œFive Myths of Safe Pesticides’€

Purchase The Myths of Safe Pesticides through Net Galley

PODCAST OF THE WEEK

Healthy soil grows healthy food.
Turns out, it’€™s also the key to reversing global warming.
In her book The Soil Will Save Us, writer Kristin Ohlson interviews farmers, soil scientists, and agronomists and concludes that the low-cost, low-tech solution to climate change may be directly underfoot’€”in healthy soil. Crops have an enormous capability to sequester carbon, she writes, but only if the soil is made to thrive with a mix of no-till farming, cover crops, and livestock grazing.

Listen

NEW STUDY

Close to 15 million Americans’€”and one in 13 kids’€”suffer from food allergies. Between 1997 and 2011, food allergies in kids rose by 50 percent. And more and more of those allergies are turning deadly.

A recent study blames the rise and severity of allergies on too little of a common gut bacteria, called Clostridia. Researchers found that Clostridia helps prevent leaky gut syndrome, a condition that allows allergens to enter the bloodstream whey they produce an immune response.

Why are so many people lacking enough Clostridia to prevent allergies in the first place?

Research points to a number of factors, including exposure to antibiotics early in life, consumption of GMO foods and that ever-present poison called glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’€™s Roundup.

More about the study

Read the study