Tag: Organic

From the “Evil” Scientist Lab: Killer Corn

Another reason to eat organic food.

The seed treatment on corn seeds is much more deadly than what we realized.

I was shocked the other week when we received an email exposing how the pesticide and fungicide usage on most of our country’s corn crop is killing honey bees. In the early part of May of this year, beekeepers reported staggering losses of honey bees in Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio, after their hives foraged near pesticide-treated corn fields. The seed corn is treated with pesticides and fungicides. The neonicotinoid pesticides are very deadly to honey bees. Just one gram can kill 11 million to 22 million honey bees. When combined with fungicides, they are 10 times more deadly than when used alone! The coated corn seeds are sticky, so talc is added to the seeds to make them flow better in the corn planter. However, the powdery talc is readily carried by the wind to plants and areas beside the corn fields where bees are foraging. The talc is contaminated with these neonicotinoids and fungicides and the dead bees test positive for these chemicals. The source for this information is a new report released by Purdue University this year –
http://www.panna.org/sites/default/files/Krupke_journal.pone_.0029268.pdf

We are used to change in technology and society. But what we are not used to is rapid change behind our backs in our food. Everything appears to be the same as before, but it is not. In the last 15 years there have been significant changes in the way corn and other crops are grown that we are unaware of. Genetically modified plants are only one part of the problem.

From the Huffington Post – “Bee Kills in the Corn Belt: What’s GE Got to Do With It?” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-pilatic/bee-kills-in-the-corn-bel_b_1520757.html

“Over the last 15 years, U.S. corn cultivation has gone from a crop requiring little-to-no insecticides and negligible amounts of fungicides, to a crop where the average acre is grown from seeds treated or genetically engineered to express three different insecticides (as well as a fungicide or two) before being sprayed prophylactically with RoundUp (an herbicide) and a new class of fungicides that farmers didn’t know they “needed” before the mid-2000s.
A series of marketing ploys by the pesticide industry undergird this story. It’s about time to start telling it, if for no other reason than to give lie to the oft-repeated notion that there is no alternative to farming corn in a way that poisons pollinators. We were once — not so long ago — on a very different path.

How corn farming went off the rails

“In the early 1990s, we were really good at growing corn using bio-intensive integrated pest management (bio-IPM). In practice, that meant crop rotations, supporting natural predators, using biocontrol agents like ladybugs and as a last resort, using chemical controls only after pests had been scouted for and found. During this time of peak bio-IPM adoption, today’s common practice of blanketing corn acreage with “insurance” applications of various pesticides without having established the need to do so would have been unthinkable. It’s expensive to use inputs you don’t need, and was once the mark of bad farming.

“Then, in the mid-to-late 1990s, GE corn and neonicotinoid (imidacloprid) seed treatments both entered the market — the two go hand-in-hand, partly by design and partly by accident…

“Then, as if on cue, Monsanto introduced three different strains of patented, GE corn between 1997 and 2003 (RoundUp Ready, and two Bt-expressing variants aimed at controlling the European Corn Borer and corn root worm). Clothianidin entered the U.S. market under conditional registration in 2003, and in 2004 corn seed companies began marketing seeds treated with a 5X level of neonicotinoids (1.25 mg/seed vs. .25). [Each seed has enough to kill 9,000 – 18,000 bees. – Myron]

“… and in the space of a decade, U.S. corn acreage undergoes a ten-fold increase in average insecticide use. By 2007, the average acre of corn has more than three systemic insecticides — both Bt traits and a neonicotinoid. Compare this to the early 1990s, when only an estimated 30-35 percent of all corn acreage were treated with insecticides at all.”

“When I spoke with one Iowa corn farmer in January and told him about the upcoming release of a Purdue study confirming corn as a major pesticide exposure route for bees, his face dropped with worn exasperation. He looked down for a moment, sighed and said, ‘You know, I held out for years on buying them GE seeds, but now I can’t get conventional seeds anymore. They just don’t carry ’em.'”

It used to be that pesticide sprays were sprayed on the surface of plants, fruits and vegetables to kill bugs. But in more recent years, systemic insecticides have been developed and are being widely used. Systemic insecticides and fungicides work by going into the plant and traveling through the entire plant and fruit or vegetable. Any bug that eats the plant is killed. It also keeps insects from eating the fruit or vegetable. There is no way to wash off a systemic insecticide or fungicide from a fruit or vegetable the way it was possible in the past. The insecticide and fungicide has become part of the food.

We found out about the killer corn one day after we had planted some sweet corn we purchased from Southern States. We had planted three different varieties of organic sweet corn seed that we purchased from Fedco.com. The Honey Select variety had basically 0% germination. Being ignorant of what was on the seed coating of sweet corn,  we purchased a pound of the Incredible variety sweet corn and planted eight, 80 foot rows of Incredible sweet corn where the Honey Select had been planted. I thought that the pink seed coating was just something bad tasting to keep the birds from eating it.  I could not read on the package what the seed treatment on the sweet corn seed was, so I went to Southern States to find out. I was concerned that we might have planted something that would kill our bees. It had five different fungicides! – Apron, Captan, Dividend, Thiram, and Vitavax! Apron is a systemic fungicide. I felt disgusted and betrayed. We waited until the corn started coming up and we dug it all up. The picture above shows the pink fungicide loaded seed still there, putting its chemicals into the plant.

One of the things that farmers across the US are complaining about is that they cannot buy bee friendly corn seed. Almost everything is genetically modified and treated with pesticides and fungicides. About the only way to get untreated seeds is to buy organic seeds or for a farmer to save his own seeds.

What this means is that the “All Natural” label on chicken, eggs, and other foods with corn ingredients is probably a bogus or misleading claim on most products. Non-GMO corn is not safe if the seeds have been treated with systemic fungicides and neonicotinoid pesticides.

I wish farmers knew how to grow high brix, nutrient dense corn. They could eliminate the chemicals, lower their production costs and provide a far superior food for their fellow human beings. It can be done. Last year we produced high brix sweet corn that had very few bugs. Instead, legal bio-terrorism on the farm is killing our honey bees, poisoning our food, and giving us poor quality food that is making us sick. Sick Care (Health Care) in America is the #1 industry. We are what we eat. Health begins in the soil and in the seed.

We need to help each other in these changing times and keep each other informed so that things do not unknowingly get changed behind our backs. Ignorance is not bliss when it affects our health or the health of our family and friends. Most people are ignorant about their food. I am amazed at how little most people know. They assume that all food is basically the same and that cheapest is best. The other day, I was getting gas in Pennsylvania, and the man at the pump next to me wondered what I was hauling on my trailer. I told him it was organic protein concentrate for our chicken feed. He asked, “What is organic?” in a way that showed he was clueless to what organic really is and as if organic was just something unimportant and more expensive. I was surprised that a 60-year-old man was so clueless about his food. Times have changed and he is still assuming that they are the same.

Other articles about corn and honey bees:
http://www.panna.org/press-release/farmers-press-access-bee-friendly-corn-seeds
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/mysteriously-disappearance-honeybees-video

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

In our family we eat lots of eggs for breakfast. Broth poached eggs are a favorite of ours.

Broth Poached Eggs

Pour chicken or beef broth into a kettle or skillet to a one inch depth. Bring to a boil. Crack each egg gently into the broth. Simmer till they are the done to your preference.


Broth poached eggs have rich flavor.

Barbeque Chicken
After selling fresh chickens in May, all the chickens that were left were on the smaller size. So we cut them into split halves. We sell them as grilling halves for $5.29/lb. We think they are fabulous grilled with the following recipe.

2 cups vinegar
2 cups water
1 stick butter
8 tsp. salt
4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

Bring to a boil. Marinate the chicken in this sauce for one hour before grilling. Brown both sides of the chicken well on the grill. I recommend grilling each side twice. Put into a hot crockpot on high for two to three hours, until the meat is very soft. You can also bake the chicken in the oven in a tightly closed casserole dish at 300 degrees for one to two hours instead of in the crockpot.

Have a wonderful Spring!

Myron and Cathy Horst and Family

Jehovah-Jireh Farm
https://www.jehovahjirehfarm.com/

Pasture Raised Broilers — Dial-a-size with…

by Myron Horst

When you prepare meals for yourself and those who will be eating with you, do you use your computer to carefully formulate the percentage of protein, calcium, sodium, fiber, available phosphorous, metabolizable energy, vitamin A, C, D, etc, and select the right foods and quantity of each food to fit the nutritional requirements for each person? Unfortunately, for humans we do not know what the optimum amounts or percentages should be for each of those nutrients. When we eat, we focus on what tastes good and what we think is “good for us”. The health care industry basically ignores nutrition and focuses on drugs.

What we eat is very important for our health, strength, and vitality. What we eat has a significant effect on who we are and what we look like. That point was driven home for me this year as we discovered the reason why our broilers had been smaller last year and also the first batch this year. Being a small farm, we do not have a professional poultry nutritionist to carefully formulate our chicken feed. Unfortunately, those who are advising small farmers are basing their advice on the advice of others, who are basing their advice on old research.

What I found is that in the 12 years since we started farming, the poultry industry has been improving the genetics of the broiler chicken each year. They have been shortening the time it takes to grow out a chicken by one day each year. That means that the market weight of a broiler chicken at eight weeks of age 12 years ago can now be reached at a little over six weeks! To achieve proper growth, these chickens need more protein.

I was able to find a broiler manual for the breed of broilers that we raise and discovered that our feed was lower in protein than what was recommended. We got a computer program for formulating our chicken feed and can now accurately adjust our chicken and turkey feeds for the needs of the poultry. We increased the percentage of protein and increased the average size of the broilers by about 1 3/4 pounds.

Going back to the title, I realized that it is possible in raising chickens to “dial-a-size” to a certain extent with — protein! If you want an average of 3 lb chickens, feed them a low protein diet. If you want 7 lb chickens in the same amount of time, feed them a very high protein diet. It is amazing what 3 to 5 percentage points can make on the size of a broiler chicken. Earlier this year, another pastured poultry farmer was having a problem with getting too many 7 lb chickens in eight weeks. She was feeding them an incredible 29% protein the first three weeks (the recommended is 22-25% protein). She was feeding a mixture of something like two scoops of feed and one scoop of fish meal.

Protein is not the only factor in the size and growth of chickens. There are many other challenges for pasture poultry farms – hot weather, cold weather, too wet, too dry, stress from predators, etc. At our first farm, we had to set up “tents” over the feeders that were outside so that the broiler chickens would not be afraid of the huge “birds” (airplanes) that flew over our farm on their way to Dulles Airport.

With the hens, we found that they were getting too much calcium and it was reducing the percentage of protein in their diet. We reduced the calcium and increased the protein slightly. The hens have been laying well and have not dropped off as much in production with the hot weather like they have other summers.

Protein is necessary for new cells to develop and growth to occur. Protein and the growth of chickens is an important object lesson for each of us in understanding the role of protein in human health. It is important that children get the proper protein so that their bodies grow and develop properly. Protein is important when our bodies are repairing from an injury. Protein is important so that the cells in our bodies can be replaced to reduce aging and degeneration and to increase strength and longevity.

We started raising chickens twelve years ago, not because I liked chickens—I had said, “I’ll never raise chickens”—but because God had directed us to raise chickens. A number of years ago, I realized that our farm was a protein farm. Most small farms are vegetable farms, but we don’t sell any vegetables, just protein – eggs, chicken, turkey, and lamb. I thought that having a farm producing protein was interesting, but did not see the significance of it. Now with the example of the chickens, I see the importance of having a protein farm for human health and strength.

Chickens and eggs are an important protein source. Chickens are the best fed farm animal. Because of their short life span and rapid growth, scientists have been able to pinpoint week by week the nutrients that a chicken needs. Our chicken feed is formulated with many vitamins and minerals. Add to that the benefits of pasture-raising chickens and eggs and you get a superb protein source for your dietary needs. So now I know the rest of the story — why we were led to have a protein farm!

The Difference Between our Pasture Raised Chicken and Conventional or Organic Grocery Store Chicken

That organic "free-range" chicken you see in the health food store has probably never seen a blade of grass. The term "free-range" means that it has "access" to the out of doors. It could mean that there is merely a fenced in dirt lot next to the large chicken house where some of the chickens can go, if they are close enough to the door. The typical health food store organic "free range" chickens are raised in concentration, dust and ammonia (from the chicken manure) filled chicken houses very similar to any other grocery store chicken.

Taste

Our chickens are raised in the fresh air on grass pasture and have a much better taste than a conventional grocery store chicken. You might compare it to the difference between a garden fresh tomato and a hot house tomato. Pasture raised chicken has a slightly firmer meat texture (not tough) as opposed to mushy. Even the smell of the uncooked chicken is so different. In addition to pasture, our chickens are also fed a certified organic feed.

Humanely raised

The chicks spend the first three weeks in a sunny brooder where they are kept warm. Then they are moved to a large airy shelter in the pasture. Each morning the doors are opened on the shelter and the chickens go outside to enjoy the fresh green grass, insects, and sunshine. During the middle of the day they usually go into the shade of the shelter to rest and eat a lunch of organic chicken feed. Towards evening as it gets cooler, they again range out in the pasture looking for a tasty "salad". At dusk they again return to their shelter and the doors are closed to protect them from foxes, owls, and other night predators.

Health benefits of eating our organically fed, pasture raised chickens

You receive the health benefits of a chicken that was nutritionally fed organically raised grains as opposed to grains raised by chemical nitrogen stimulation in mineral depleted soils. In addition, the chickens’ feed includes an organic mineral supplement containing 60 trace minerals. From a visual perspective, the processed chickens have a more yellow fat from the grass that was consumed, similar to the darker yolk color of pasture raised eggs. The fat in cooked chicken broth is also noticeably more yellow.

What you don’t get: A chicken that was raised breathing manure dust and ammonia in a conventional chicken house 24/7 its entire life. The chicken will not have received any antibiotics, vaccinations, growth simulators, genetically modified grains, pesticide laden and chemically produced feed, synthetic vitamins or feed ingredients, or arsenic to be passed on to you. Because the chickens have not received any of these things, the chicken livers are not loaded with toxins and are good to eat.

Why Organic?

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We feed our chickens organic feed. With prices of organic feed close to double that of conventional feed, it is easy to wonder, "Is it really worth it?" Nutrient-density tests of organic produce have often shown that "organic" does not equal "nutrient-dense". Sometimes, organic produce will be as bad as—or worse than—conventional produce. Some, therefore, with good reason, start the chorus: "Why pay more for organic if it’s not higher in minerals?" Of course, we all know that organic has not been sprayed with pesticides, and eating food sprayed with substances whose names end in "cide" (from the Latin, meaning "death") does not seem like a good idea. But another, just as important reason is that organic produce must not be genetically engineered.

Companies like Monsanto engineer corn, soybeans and other plants to make them resistant to herbicides (so you can spray Monsanto’s Roundup on the corn field and kill the weeds, but not the corn) or produce their own pesticide (as with Bt corn). Really? Corn with a built-in pesticide? These genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) seem to be everywhere in our food supply. Much of the corn grown in this country is genetically modified (GM). Due to the use of corn for making high fructose corn syrup, many foods that contain corn syrup (from soda pop to ketchup to fruit cocktail to ice cream to "honey" graham crackers) therefore contain genetically modified ingredients.  So how do they modify plant genetics, and what are the results?

Dr. Arden Andersen, speaking at the Weston A. Price Foundation 2006 Conference, tells, in a nutshell, the GMO story:

(BEGIN TRANSCRIPT)
"Now here’s the big issue, really, that you have to understand, it’s even more severe, or as severe, as the immune reaction, that is that absolutely they have proven horizontal gene transfer into our gut bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer. And the problem is, is part of that horizontal gene is an antibiotic resistant gene. An antibiotic resistant gene. So automatically, we become antibiotic resistant to whatever antibiotic that company is using in that genetic technology, because that’s part of the genetic engineering technology…

"So, how is this process happening? Well, what happens is that they have to take cells of this GM crop and they have to culture them, and then somehow they have to get that gene into that cell. But how do they know if it’s in there? They can’t wait for it to grow out and then determine that. So they have to somehow evaluate those cells in culture for the presence of the gene they have randomly shot in. By the way, this is not an absolute technology. It’s very random. They take a plasma gun and they literally just shoot in this plasma into the cells. It’s a random process. And they hope some of them get into the nucleus of the cell. So what they do is they take, for example, the Roundup Ready gene, and they have to attach to that an antibiotic resistant gene, because they have to have some way of identifying whether or not this gene was implanted. Well, then the other thing is  you have to understand is this is a foreign gene. In our body we have switches that turn on our genes, turn off our genes, all right? And they do that at the appropriate times in our development, embryonic development. But this is a foreign gene, so there’s nothing there to turn it on or off, so what they have to do is put an on switch. So they put an activator gene in there. What is that activator gene? Typically that is a virus that they put in there. A virus that our body has never seen before. Great!

"So then what they do is they shoot that in, and then they have to figure out, "How are we going to identify this?" So since they have the antibiotic resistant gene, they then coat all of these cells in culture with that antibiotic, and typically it’s ampicillin — penicillin. So any cell that survives that antibiotic treatment — "Ah, that tells us that gene, then, was accepted. We got that gene into those cells." But the thing about it is, you have an activator gene there. So every cell in that soybean plant is also going to have ampicillin resistance. And as soon as you eat that? Direct horizontal gene transfer to the biology in your gut. So now all of the gut in your body also has ampicillin resistance. Great! We don’t have enough resistance to antibiotics in this country, so I know we need to increase that.

"So think about it a moment. Take identical twins, and let’s say that one donates a kidney to the other one that has kidney failure. Identical twins! Does the recipient automatically accept that kidney from its identical twin? Absolutely not! We still have to give that person anti-rejection drugs, okay? And those are human to human transfer of identical twin tissue. So think for a moment: so you think that an absolute foreign protein, put into a plant and then into our body, is not going to have an immune response?

"The Swiss Federal Research Station–so remember now, all these organizations, these are not fly by night organizations, these are government organizations–the Swiss Federal Station found out that when you take green lacewings and they eat corn borer caterpillars that are feeding on GM corn, 50% more lacewings die than if you actually hit those lacewings with Bt directly. "Ah, but it’s essentially the same." Ladybugs, the same thing. They looked at ladybugs eating aphids that are feeding on genetically engineered potatoes. What did they find? 30% fewer progeny and lived half the normal life expectancy. And then they tell me that there is no issue with genetically engineered food? There’s no such thing as genetically engineered food. It is not food at all. It is poison. Every level of nature tells us that it’s poison. Tell me that we have a placebo effect with ladybugs and green lacewings. Amazing!"
(END TRANSCRIPT)

Does this sound like something that we should consume every day? It more sounds like a wonder that it hasn’t killed us all. I agree with Dr. Andersen. It is poison!

And so, I support organics, if for no other reason than to avoid GMO’s. I cannot believe that I should put antibiotic resistant bacteria and viruses (implanted into the very genetics of the "food") down my throat. It seems risky, if not downright dangerous!

A very good documentary discussing GMO’s is The Future of Food (http://www.thefutureoffood.com/). It goes into detail about just what Monsanto and friends are doing to our food supply. You can see the introduction to it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNezTsrCY0Q

Thanks for Supporting Our Local Farm

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Thank you for your support this year. It is your support that makes it possible for us to provide clean, healthy, nutritious, pasture-raised meats and eggs for you. Now, more than ever, it is important that small local farms have the support of the consumers around them. We have been hearing a lot in the news about the credit crisis and the government’s $700 billion dollar bailout.

What we have not been hearing much about is the poultry industry crisis. Pilgrim’s Pride, the country’s largest chicken producer, is on the verge of bankruptcy. They were not able to meet their financial obligations at the end of September and their lending institution gave them a 30 day grace period. Their stock has dropped to less than $3.00 a share from a high of $40 a share in July of 2007.

The other big poultry producers have also been experiencing huge losses due to the high grain prices and their stocks have been dropping as well. Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson made appeals to the government to ease the ethanol production mandates for this year to reduce the demand and the cost for corn.  The appeals were rejected. The government is more interested in energy production and bailing out Wall Street than in domestic food production!

The supply of cheap imported chicken and a reduced demand and oversupply of chickens has prevented the poultry industry from being able to raise their prices when grain prices went up dramatically this year. Chicken prices should be much higher in the grocery stores than what they are. With the price of conventional grain where it is, the price of conventional chicken should be about the same as what organic chicken was a year ago.

For years I have observed one poultry company buying up another. Then another company would buy up that one. With each buy out, the smaller company was merged to make a bigger poultry company. It was a dog eat dog world. I wondered what would happen when the biggest dog (poultry company) died and there was no one to take its place. We are about to see that happen.

With each year, we are losing more and more of our food independence and have to rely more and more on other countries to feed us. Along with that dependence on other countries for our cheap food is an increased health risk because of the reduced food regulation in other countries. The past two years has seen a huge increase in the problem of food poisonings from Salmonella in tomatoes and other vegetables to melamine in Chinese milk and pet food products. For years, the big factory farm model has been promoted as the best food production method. The big factory farm model is failing as we thought it would. And we see how very foolish it is for us to rely on other countries to provide our food for us. It is important now more than ever to encourage the development of smaller local farms and know where your food comes from.

Global Warming and Climate Change

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Last month I shared with you a perspective of fossil fuels and carbon sequestering from my perspective as an organic farmer. One of the things that I stated is that "It is important for us to try to be independent thinkers, to research facts for ourselves, and to step back and try to look outside the ‘box’ that everyone is looking in." We hear a lot about global warming and climate change. Billions of dollars are being spent to correct the stated problem. However, one of the things that I noticed when I heard things on the news about global warming and climate change is that they did not state how many degrees that the earth has warmed up. This made me curious to find out the facts. I will share with you what I found.

The National Climatic Data Center of the US Department of Commerce has a chart listing the global temperatures from 1880 to the present. The temperatures listed are in hundredths of a degree Celsius. Note that in the past 107 years the global temperature has changed a little over one half a degree Celsius which is less than the statistical margin of error. According to the statistics, global temperatures have remained stable for the last 10 years. The following is an excerpt from that chart:

1900   -0.0281
1901   -0.0974

1997    0.4615
1998    0.5763
1999    0.3947
2000    0.3629
2001    0.4934
2002    0.5573
2003    0.5565
2004    0.5336
2005    0.6044
2006    0.5428
2007    0.5458
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html#anomalies

A similar chart can be found at NASA’s website. Please note, this is the first chart I looked at. At first I thought that there were very significant increases in global temperatures until I realized that the temperatures listed on this chart were not in degrees but in .01 degrees Celsius!

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/ZonAnn.Ts.txt

I never gave it much thought about how difficult it is to measure the actual global earth temperature until I read the following article on NASA’s website. Note, there is no standardized procedure for measuring the temperatures at various locations around the world. I had assumed that there was a standardized procedure. The following article describes how inaccurate a non-standardized procedure for recording the global air temperature can be. Remember, this is on NASA’s website.

The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT)

Q. What exactly do we mean by SAT ?

A. I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.

Q. What do we mean by daily mean SAT ?

A. Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every 2 hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day ? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.

Q. What SAT do the local media report ?

A. The media report the reading of 1 particular thermometer of a nearby weather station. This temperature may be very different from the true SAT even at that location and has certainly nothing to do with the true regional SAT. To measure the true regional SAT, we would have to use many 50 ft stacks of thermometers distributed evenly over the whole region, an obvious practical impossibility.

Q. If SATs cannot be measured, how are SAT maps created ?

A. This can only be done with the help of computer models, the same models that are used to create the daily weather forecasts. We may start out the model with the few observed data that are available and fill in the rest with guesses (also called extrapolations) and then let the model run long enough so that the initial guesses no longer matter, but not too long in order to avoid that the inaccuracies of the model become relevant. This may be done starting from conditions from many years, so that the average (called a ‘climatology’) hopefully represents a typical map for the particular month or day of the year.

To read the rest of the page go to:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html

After reading the above information, I had to wonder if the children’s story of "Chicken Little" has more relevance than just a story for children. Often one of our hens will get excited and alarmed about a perceived threat and get all the other hens squawking about it too. They make a huge racket. It is amusing to watch. After a while they realize that the perceived threat was nothing and they go on about their business.

Are we destroying the global climate as fast as some would lead us to believe? From the actual statistics it does not appear so. However, that doesn’t mean we can pollute the air, spray chemicals on our ground and pollute our water. We do have a responsibility to be stewards of the earth and care for it. As I pointed out last month, sequestering carbon is important, not to correct global warming, but to build the fertility and nutrient density of our soils so that we can be healthy and live productive lives. Farmers have been depleting the soils for generations and it is important that we change that direction. Organic farming is moving in the right direction. Thanks for your support.

Fossil Fuels – From a Pasture Based Farmer’s Perspective

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Global warming and the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels is often in the news. There are two main camps, those who are concerned about the damage to the environment from the use of fossil fuel and those who think that global warming is all hype and not really an issue. It is easy for us to become puppets of the opinions of what we hear from everyone around us, especially from the media. It is important for us to try to be independent thinkers, to research facts for ourselves, and to step back and try to look outside the "box" that everyone is looking in.

One day as I was thinking about fossil fuels, I suddenly realized what the words "fossil fuel" means. "Fossil fuels" means that it is a fuel that came from fossilized plants and animals from years gone by. In other words, oil is soil fertility buried under the earth! The Middle East, which has had some of the richest supplies of oil, is largely desert. Their soil fertility is buried underground! The Middle East at one point must have have had very, very fertile soil (the Garden of Eden?).

Until recently, I had the impression that fossil fuels, being a non-renewable source of fuel, were like a foreign chemical that we shouldn’t be burning, and that we are contaminating the earth with it. However, when fossil fuels are burned, matter is not destroyed. It is changed into a different form. One form is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is necessary for plants to live. Plants take in carbon dioxide and create oxygen. The carbon that existed in the carbon dioxide is stored in the plant tissues and in the roots.

Now, as a pasture based farmer, carbon is a very important element in soil fertility. It holds many times its weight in water. Increasing the carbon in the soil is like making the soil into a giant sponge. The more water that the soil is able to hold means that there is less runoff during a rain storm. That means less soil erosion. It  means that soil nutrients are held in the soil and are not as readily leached out. The more carbon that exists in the soil, the more drought resistant the soil is. Carbon is also important to the many microbes, bacteria, and fungi in the soil.

On a pasture based farm such as ours, carbon is sequestered into the soil from the grasses in the pasture. The grass that we see is only half the plant. The roots are equal in size to what we see above ground. When grass is cut, an equal amount of roots die back. For example, if grass in the pasture is one foot high and the animals eat it down to 3 inches high, 9 inches of roots die off. When those roots die off, the carbon in the roots is sequestered into the soil. Therefore, allowing grass to grow and then mowing it off (preferably with animals)  a number of times throughout the year is an important part of sequestering carbon in the soil.

In observing our farm this year, I noticed that there were two one acre plots where the grass grew the best. One was the chestnut orchard, the other was the broiler pasture. Both of those were mowed the most often last year. This year we are increasing the number of times that we mow the laying hen pastures. First we run the sheep and cows in a pasture. Then, after they are moved to the next pasture, we mow off the weeds and any remaining tall grass. This process increases the amount of carbon sequestered into the soil and increases the soil fertility.

Conventional crop farming releases a lot of carbon back into the air. Conventional no-till is better in that it does sequester some carbon into the soil. However, organic is even better at sequestering carbon. Rodale Institute Research Farm has found that organic crop farming will sequester 1000 lbs of carbon per acre per year, which is about 4 times the amount of conventional no-till.

We are facing a global food crisis. From my perspective, after understanding that fossil fuels are really the soil fertility from years ago buried in the earth and knowing the importance of carbon in the soil, I believe that it was a blessing to mankind that oil was discovered so that we can produce more food now when we need it the most. Much of the oil reserves are in places that can’t be farmed – under the ocean floor, Alaska, and in the deserts of the Middle East. We need that buried soil fertility so that we can feed the world. There may be a better way of transferring the soil fertility from fossil fuels to the soil than by burning them and then trying to sequester the carbon through plants. That is for us to discover. However, there is already a lot of soil fertility that we have put up in the air (carbon dioxide) that needs to be sequestered so that we can clean the air and increase the soil fertility of our farmlands. This is just one more reason why organic and pasture based farming is the better way to go than conventional chemical farming and the confinement rearing of animals and chickens.

The answer to many of our environmental concerns – air pollution, soil erosion, the contamination of our water supplies from farm chemicals and animal manures, the polluting of the Chesapeake Bay, etc. is in developing better ways of sequestering carbon into our farmlands and in making the soil a bigger sponge with greater fertility. As you hear all the negative environmental news, remember, all is not doom and gloom. There is a better way of farming and you are supporting it!

What is the Difference?

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Jehovah-Jireh Farm Chicken Grocery Store Free-range Organic Chicken
True free-range, pasture raised

Large confinement factory farm chicken house with limited or no access to the out of doors.
No Vaccinations Many vaccinations
Practically no ammonia smell in shelter Lots of ammonia vapor in the chicken house
Normal day lighting Artificial lighting 23 hours a day
Small groups (350 or less) Huge groups (10,000 or more)
Low stress in small groups High stress in large groups
Clean air Air hazy with fecal particles and ammonia
Fresh air and sunshine Limited or no access to sunshine
Plenty of exercise Limited exercise
Fresh daily salad bar (pasture) Basically no greens
Local Trucked in from out of state
Promotes family farming Promotes large corporations
Rural revitalization Promotes urban expansion
Consumer/producer relationship Consumer/producer alienation
Environmentally friendly

Same environmental impact as conventional confinement chicken houses

The difference between the two is much more than the "free-range" grocery store label implies. The "free-range" grocery store chicken is not much different from conventional chicken, except it receives organic feed and does not receive antibiotics, or arsenic (fed as a growth stimulator!). A door may be open to let a few broilers out to scratch in the dirt.

Meat is much more than a combination of nutrients that we eat. All meat is not the same. We have been conditioned to believe that all meat is the same and that the main difference is the price. That is not true. Even though the nutrients in a downed cow and the nutrients in a healthy beef may analyze in the lab basically the same, the true nutrition is NOT the same! The same is true in the way chickens are raised. Just as we need sunshine, sunshine is important for chickens too. Just as fresh green vegetables are important in our diet, so fresh green vegetables (grass, clover, etc.) are important in a chicken’s diet. It is important that we get exercise to be healthy. So it is important that the meat we eat had the proper amount of exercise to be healthy as well. It is important that we get plenty of fresh air. In the same way it is important that the chicken meat we eat was not raised in an environment where the air was hazy with with manure dust and ammonia. We are what we eat. The way that the meat that we eat was raised is important. It has an effect on our bodies. That is why we, at Jehovah-Jireh Farm, go to the extra work to produce a product that is raised in the best way possible.

MSG is Being Sprayed on our Fruits and Vegetables!

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    I (Myron) was shocked when I found out that free glutamic acid, the main ingredient in MSG, is being sprayed on some fruit and vegetable crops to make bigger and more attractive produce. It is also used as a pesticide. My father had problems with pain in his shoulders, and the doctor tested him and found that he had a lot of MSG in his body. My parents were surprised, because they have been careful to not use MSG in their food. What we found is that MSG is being used in food and listed under many different names other than MSG. It is in almost all processed foods. In addition, it is being sprayed on some crops such as grapes, celery, cucumbers, navy and pinto beans, green beans, peppers, Iceberg lettuce, Romaine and Butter Leaf lettuce, tomatoes and watermelons, as well as many others.

    Another thing that I found is that "organic" does not mean no MSG.  Autolyzed yeast, natural flavoring and hydrolyzed protein in organic products contain just as much processed free glutamic acid (MSG) as conventional products. Products sold, or labeled as 100 percent organic have to be 100% organic. However, products sold or labeled as organic must contain at least 95% organic material. As much as 5% of an organic product can be non-organic ingredients (most of the flavorings, etc)!

    It is thought to be cheaper or at least easier to buy our fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. However, this is one more reason why it’s time to start growing your own food or to at least purchase it from a trusted source where you know how it was raised. In addition, as more and more of our food is being imported from countries that do not have the regulations on chemical usage that we have here in the US, we become even more vulnerable in the chemical contamination of our food supply.

You may find some of these articles on MSG being sprayed on our crops interesting:

http://www.relfe.com/07/glutamic_acid_glutamate_msg.html

http://www.truthinlabeling.com/organicP.html

http://www.westonaprice.org/MSG-Updates/

The following is from Dr. Jordan Rubin’s recent newsletter:

How to Get Sick: Eat Grocery Store Produce and Processed Foods

"What a mouthful—literally! Pesticides and herbicides are among the world’s most deadly chemical compounds. If a pesticide or herbicide kills one thing, it will probably kill, mutate, or seriously damage a whole host of other things. The problem with these compounds is that they tend to stay on the fruit, vegetable, or plant they were applied to. Toxins from our water, air, food, and buildings only make things worse."