Recently I was having a deep and meaningful conversation about
bananas with my mother. A minister and his mother talking about bananas? You
might think that we are literally “going bananas”. Actually, we were wondering
why some people gas their bananas rather than wait for them to ripen naturally.
Obviously a yellow banana is more attractive than a green one, regardless of
the fact that the banana inside is ripe. While this may be practiced because of
shipping of bananas overseas in some cases, what goes into the process of
gassing? What are the effects of gassed bananas?
Often the natural ripening agent of ethylene is used to speed up the
ripening of bananas. However some use other more dangerous materials. According
to Wikipedia, calcium carbide is used for ripening fruit artificially in
some countries. When calcium carbide comes in contact with moisture, it
produces acetylene gas, which is quite similar in reaction to the natural
ripening agent ethylene. Acetylene acts like ethylene and accelerates
the ripening process, but is inadvisable because calcium carbide has
carcinogenic properties. Industrial-grade calcium carbide may also contain
traces of arsenic and phosphorus which makes it a human health concern.
Often we are too hungry, too tight with our budget, too busy or too
lazy to take time to ensure that we are getting the best possible nutrition for
our dollar. Sometimes we only focus on the appearance or taste rather than the
actual quality of what we eat. Our food consumption may be reflective of our
mass production attitude. More fertilizer or artificial nutrients for a faster,
bigger crop. It may be good business for some, but is it really worth it?
An article in the Fiji Times last year
on an organic farm being set up in Sabeto, caught my attention with the
sentence, “Moving to organic farming can help farmers drastically improve soil
quality and ensure the harvest of better and healthier produce.”
A research exercise by the Fiji Papaya
Project concluded that under Fiji conditions organically produced papaya
(pawpaw) is a profitable exercise with demand for organic papaya in the United
States and Japan.
Last year the “Garden Island” of
Taveuni’s Teitei Taveuni partnered with Organic Matters Foundation and
individual farmers to deliver introductory and advanced Soil School to farmers,
and provided a viable, sustainable alternative to chemical agriculture. According to the UNDP, Tei Tei
Taveuni, formed in 2009 by a group of farmers interested in sustainable
farming, food security and environmental conservation, aims to change farmers’
knowledge, skills and attitude towards sustainable farming through innovative
trainings.
UNDP shared the stories of Taveuni
farmers who have made the switch to organic farming:
“I have been blinded for so many years
and now my eyes have been opened,” said 55 year old famer Peremo Nacumu. “A
process that I learnt was how to make plant food from seaweed and guano (bird
dropping). I have applied it on my vegetable farm and during this hot season my
vegetables are green and very lush. A very big difference from when I used to
use fertilizer.”
“One of my biggest mistakes was using
fertilizers and not having any knowledge of what it does to the soil, nor was I
aware of the impact of the overuse of weedicide. The new insights from the Soil
Schools has really helped farmers. After a soil test taken from my farm land I
was told that my soil lacked lime, as calcium is a vital component of the soil.
So now I am using natural lime in the form of burnt crushed dead coral from the
beach and thrown onto the farm. In a couple of weeks the changes were obvious
and I was able to share this knowledge with about 30 farmers in the area,” said
Anil, who has been farming for more than 25 years in Taveuni.
While organic practices in farming are
important, attention to the sources of the plants needs to be given – what
seeds are being used and where are they coming from? Case in point:
Genetically-Modified Organism seeds and Hybrid seeds.
Genetically Modfied Organism (GMO) seeds
are created in a lab using high-tech and sophisticated techniques like
gene-splicing. GMO seeds seldom cross different, but related plants. Often the
cross goes far beyond the bounds of nature so that instead of crossing two
different, but related varieties of plant, they are crossing different
biological kingdoms — like, say, a bacteria with a plant.
Hybrid seeds developed in the
mid-nineteenth century, when Darwin and Mendel discovered a method of controlled
crossing that can create these desired traits within just one generation. This
method produces what’s known as F1
hybrid seeds. These hybrid seeds
are just as natural as cross-pollinating two different, but related
plants.
However according to foodrenegade.com, the biggest
disadvantage of hybrid seeds is that they don’t “reproduce true” in the second
generation. When two dissimilar varieties
are crossed, the result is a hybrid which will often be bigger, brighter,
faster-growing or higher-yielding than either of its parents, which makes for a
great selling point. But it’s a one-hit wonder. Subsequent generations don’t
have the same vigour or uniformity, and the idea is that you don’t save seed
from it, you just throw it away and buy some more. This is bad for the plants,
bad for the garden and bad for you, but the seed companies make a packet out of
it and gain increasing control of what we buy and grow.
While there may not be anything
inherently wrong with this process, it does keep you dependent on seed
companies year after year since you can’t save your seeds and expect the next
generation of plants you grow to be identical to the first. While this is a
small nuisance to a home gardener, it can be devastating to subsistence farmers
around the world.
For me this represents a major security
risk for Fiji – a food security risk.
According to Small Footprint Family: when the peasant farmers grew these new
hybrids, they were indeed more productive, even though they required more
fertilizer and water. But when they collected and saved the seed for replanting
the next season—as they had done for generations and generations—none of it
grew true to the parent crop, little food grew, and these poor farmers, having
none of their open-pollenated traditional varieties left viable, had no choice
but to go back to the big companies to purchase the hybrid seeds
again for planting year after year.
Seed manufacturing companies intentionally disrupt
the traditional cycle of open-pollinated seed saving and self-sufficiency to
essentially force entire nations to purchase their seeds, and the agricultural
chemicals required to grow them. Most of these poor subsistence farmers never
had to pay for seed before, and could not afford the new hybrid seeds, or the
new petrochemical fertilizers they required, and were forced to sell their
farms and migrate to the cities for work. This is how the massive,
infamous slums of India, Latin America, and other developing countries were
created.
There is a danger of taking the
environment we are fortunate to enjoy for granted. When we do so we are
disrespecting nature and the God that created it.
Organic farming is a way of not only
using the land and naturally provided nutrients for producing healthy crops. It
is also a way of protecting the land and our people from unhealthy and
unsustainable lifestyles.
Already it is virtually impossible to
determine what imported oils, grains, nuts and other food products are
Genetically Modified.
The least we can do is ensure that what
we grow and eat in Fiji is organic and in harmony with nature.
We are, after all, what we eat.
“Simplicity, Serenity, Spontaniety”
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