All About Organics

We need to value nature’s biodiversity, clean water, and seeds. For this, nature is the best teacher.

My ecological journey started in the forests of the Himalaya. My father was a forest conservator, and my mother became a farmer after fleeing the tragic partition of India and Pakistan. It is from the Himalayan forests and ecosystems that I learned most of what I know about ecology. The songs and poems our mother composed for us were about trees, forests, and India’s forest civilizations.

The Brave Little State Versus Godzilla. 

We know how that movie ends. 

Vermont is the Brave Little State. 

In this case, Godzilla is Monsanto and the Organic Trade Association.

That is an odd pairing. How did that happen?

For years there was a huge national effort to require labeling for products containing GMOs. And there was an even more intense effort to defeat those labeling requirements. 

Patents on plants and animals derived from conventional breeding can be fully prohibited in Europe. This is the result of a verdict published today by the Enlarged Board of Appeal, the highest legal body of the European Patent Office (EPO). The Board concluded that plants and animals obtained by ‘essentially biological processes’ are not patentable, with the exception of patent applications filed before July 2017.

Thanks to foragers, attendant trending hashtags like #wildfoodlove, and the emerging practice of what I call conservation foraging (focusing on sustainable harvest practices and the collection of invasive species), many weeds that landowners battle on their lawns are the same ingredients appearing on restaurant menus, in CSA boxes, and at the market.