Our World Craves Variety

Glyphosate is not Organic

I’m sick and tired of hearing conflicting opinions. It’s not a matter of being in favor of organic farming, or not; or of being in favor of “conventional farming” or not. In favor of using herbicides, such as glyphosate, or not. Of using “chemicals” or not. One is better, or worse, than the other. And on, and on, and on.

I am addressing this article to those of you who love life, want well-being, happiness, and allow prosperity and variety in their lives.

Could it be a happy, prosperous, healthy life, without variety?

Variety of thoughts, ideas, relationships, environments, food. In company of friends, events, travels, sharing of interests, enjoyment of tasty and healthy food. Variety of cultures, ethnicities, genders, religions, experiences. Do we want variety? and do we want it just sometime, like working working working, and just allow ourselves to open our minds on holidays? or do we want variety as often as possible, everyday, like every single day is a marvellous journey of a rich and colorful travel? What is the difference between having just enough of few things and having a mind-boggling availability of everything imaginable and beyond? Because our world, through ever growing technologies, allows us to reach almost the impossible, and the undreamable.

So, the key is variety.

But then, why on Earth, our environment, the fields, the farms, are getting more and more the same? People love travelling. I love travelling, and I’m sure you do too. Flights are getting cheaper, more convenient, as more and more people travel. Why people love travelling? Because travelling turns on our spirit of the explorer. We love discovering, meeting the new; we love making new friends, socializing. Because travelling is a challenge that makes us grow. It adds value to our lives.

And yet you see huge, almost-infinite looking, fields of the same food (corn, soy, cereals, …), farms of the same food (cows, chickens, pigs, …). When we travel, we are challenged to leave the food that we are used to eat; so you can see, for example, Italians craving for pasta and pizza, like if they were the only food on earth. But what happens when we embrace, fully, the spirit of the traveller? Have you ever experienced that? The moment when we have the courage to break a habit for a while and try something new, taste it, and find out that it’s… awesome!…? Wasn’t that worth? And then we do it more and more while moving in our travel, until we develop the habit of breaking habits! and learn, absorb, taste, experience, do mistakes, correct, improve, … grow and fulfill ourselves!

We have this spirit. Of the explorer, of the traveller. Because we love variety, we crave variety.

But then, again, do we think that our Earth is different? Do we think that huge crops and farms of the same thing do any better to our Earth? How do we feel when we do the same thing over and over again? Richer or impoverished? I’m not saying that the Earth has feelings, but that there are common principles and consequences.

Let’s take for example herbicides based on glyphosate. Herbicides allow us to cultivate and harvest huge amounts of ingredients for food or clothes, etc. It makes famine “starve away”. Herbicides lead to have no more problem to the quantity of food supply. But what about the quality? Are there only pros or also cons?

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine ~Sir William Osler

Glyphosate, you can take a look on wikipedia if you wish, binds to minerals, therefore, the crops have less minerals. Those kinds of herbicides were first produced in the 1970s. Let’s go back then and imagine a field of corn. The first time that crop were sprayed with the herbicide, a certain amount of minerals were bound to it, and taken away from the crop. And what about the second crop, the third, the nth crop? Does the herbicide lead to a remarkable depletion of precious (for human health) minerals in the soil, over time?

Another point is that Glyphosate kills weeds, and other plants that are not the wanted crop, let’s say corn. So the herbicide kills variety. Have you ever heard about the dramatic decline of plant, and animal species, during the last decades? Is it good for us or not?

You see, those questions leads to two main oppositions, like in major political elections. Organic vs. conventional farming, conventional medicine vs. alternative, pharmaceutical drugs vs. herbs. Those pro-conventional (and usually against-alternative), might forget that pharmaceuticals come from herbs (like salicylic acid in aspirin, which is found in willow bark), and those pro-alternative (and usually against-conventional) might forget that pharmaceuticals are very effective, in the short term.

The ideal scenario I imagine for the future is having much smaller farms, with much much more variety. Pharmaceuticals, herbicides, pesticides will be used exceptionally, only for a short amount of time, and they will be cycled. The goal will be to have very mineral-rich soil with many different species of plants and animals. The crops themselves will be cycled, as well the animals will be moved from one field to another. So that, for example, cows will not eat grass from the same field for too long. There will also be much more control on the quality of the soil and health of the animals, so that to have much more feedback if a certain method, or herbicide/pesticide, for example, is actually leading to the goal of variety.

In conclusion, the take-away of this article is enjoy life and live wisely. Technologies are awesome, when used rationally.