writeaboutwarming

November 23, 2009 – Pesticide use has increased in the United States. Yes, that’s right, I said increased. We’re spraying more poison on our food. Small amounts of that poison enter our bodies when we eat those foods. Small amounts of that poison enter our children’s bodies when they eat those foods. The best news of all? The poisons are getting stronger. Before going further, allow me to relate what I suspect was a case of coming to grips with this very Frankenstein in my own front yard. This year’s crop of dandelions was nearly unprecedented. (One might say they grew like weeds ….) Since we try to treat our yard for them as infrequently as possible, we had a bumper crop. Our yard was a sea of yellow. Then a neighbor came calling, claiming to be speaking on behalf of other neighbors. The short and the long of it was the dandelions had to go. Our front yard isn’t small – nearly half an acre. There could be no question of digging the dandelions up anywhere near as fast as the neighb...

August 2, 2009 – Since I didn’t begin buying organic fruits and vegetables because I thought they were more nutritious, I can’t be disappointed by reports that they aren’t. I’m guessing that buyers who are unaware of the carcinogenic effect of herbicides and insecticides on their food must have assumed that superior nutri- tion was the reason to buy organic. The same would be said, therefore, about buyers who are unaware of the deleterious effect of soil compaction, caused by enormous, very heavy farming machinery being driven over the soil. (Plants grow best when the soil is loose, allowing for air, earthworms, and various microscopic residents of the soil to co-exist with plants.) And the effect of “mining” the soil, i.e., farming it without rest by merely supplying the needed fertility through chemical fertilizers, rather than replacing the lost fertility with the use of organic fertilizers, which not only fertilize the plants, but leave an organic residue that improves both ti...