Grow Organic Food!!

I am really into the idea of people growing their own food. I volunteer at a community garden, and read a fair bit about gardening and farming. I have friends who just bought land and are going to start some sort of research farm/teaching farm/way to grow their own food and maybe make some money, too. My main blog

Thursday, November 02, 2006

I never blogged about the spinach/lettuce crisis, did I

I'm watching an NBC 11 story about E-coli right now. I did write a story about The Spinach Crisis, and people did another one about lettuce...It took me days to finish it, cuz I was trying to figure out what to say in this paragraph:
"It has been difficult for the FDA to discern the exact source of the E-coli. It seems to have been narrowed down to several farms in the Salinas Valley. The E-coli could have gotten into the soil or water in several ways. Cows from neighboring farms could have wandered into spinach fields and defecated. Farm laborers who do not have enough access to bathrooms could have simply defecated in spinach fields. Many organic growers import composted manure to use as fertilizer. "Processed" sewage sludge could have been used as a fertilizer for spinach farms. Many place the blame on the factory farming system. Large dairy farms can yield fecal runoff in rainy weather, and cattle that eat grain instead of pasture grasses can have more acidic stomachs and more E-coli in their manure. Supporters of organic farming methods point out that none of the E-coli cases have been attributed to organic spinach, and that a spread of disease such as this can only occur in an industrial context."

I really enjoyed getting to point out the problems (failings) of industrial agriculture.