Arivaca Gardens
Hi, we are the youth of the Arivaca Community Garden. Our names are Laura Bush, Seth Johnson, and Joann Tracy.
When we were hired about a year ago we knew that gardens had plants in them. We would never have guess that there is a lot more work put into gardening. Working through out the summer at the gardens gave us any gardening information that we would need outside our work. Not only did they teach us how to grow but they also showed us that there is a market for the plants.
Now that it is Winter and we know more about gardening our supervisors are giving us a chance to grow our own garden. We are planning on growing a variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers. At this moment our south-west corner of the community gardens is bare and grassy. So far we have been clearing out the never ending clumps of tilled grass, then we will start to align the rows for planting. After we have the irrigation in it will be time to start planting. We are delighted that they gave us this chance to experience our own garden, especially since we are the ones doing most of the work. Making it feel like its really ours.
we will be writing a monthly article for the town paper. It will be about our time spent working at the gardens and on our research project. The project we are working on will also be included in our website.
CSA Community Supported Agriculture
When I saw the letters CSA. I had no idea what they meant. I found out shortly after that it meant Community Supported Agriculture. Thinking about it, What is it really? Well after doing more research I learned that CSA is a partnership with many people that have a commitment between a farm and a community of supporters which provides a direct link between the production and consumption of foods.
After reading about what CSA is I started wondering where it all started, When it started, how it started, and why it started. Community Supported Agriculture is a completely new idea for farming. Its roots reach back 30 years to Japan and Switzerland, where people interested in safe food and farmers seeking stable markets for crops joined together in economic partnerships. Basically meaning that the people joined together with the farmers for, stable, safe crops. This idea is gaining momentum in the U.S. since its introduction from Europe in the mid 1980s.
This could initiate a direct growing and purchasing relationships between individuals and local farms, and its great opportunity to get a community of people to support a farm operation!
DID YOU KNOW: In January 1999, there were over 1,000 CSA farms across the USA and Canada. 400 in the USA alone.
Questions about CSA’s, how to join or just questions about the gardens please call Melodee at (520)398-9040
Thank you for visiting and I hope you find what you need to know here. If you don't find what you need to know. you can e-mail me with your questions and I can post more information on this site.
My e-mail is at the end of the page.
WHAT IS GOING ON AT THE GARDENS?
well so far we have raked out a lot of grass but still theres more but its just time to give up. so we started building rows. so far we have built two horse shoe rows in two of the four corners of our area still there is a lot to do.
MYTHS
MYTH 1: INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE WILL FEED THE WORLD.
Truth: world hunger is not created by the lack of food, but by poverty and landlessness, which denies people the access to food. Increased hunger by raising farming costs forced tens of millions of farmers off the land. It was also due to high-export and luxury crops. Industrial agriculture did this.
The existence of hunger is absolutely no myth. In, estimation, nearly 800 million people are hungry each day. Malnutrition and related illnesses kill as many as 12 million children each year.
In Brazil, 70 million people can not afford to eat each day. The problem is even worse in India, where over 200 million people go hungry everyday. The worlds number1 exporter of food, the U.S., even has 33 million women, men, and children that are considered among the worlds hungry. These numbers tell us that world hunger is in fact no myth.
However, there is a myth that no one really knows about. The myth about what is causing this tragic hunger epidemic and what it will take to alleviate it. Did you know that industrial agriculture proponents spend millions on ad campaigns each year? They claim that people are starving because of there not being enough food to feed the worlds current population, much less one that is continually growing.
Companies warn of there being, “growing pressures on the earths natural resources to feed more people.” They claim that low-technology agriculture “will not produce enough food to feed the worlds burgeoning population.”
These types of companies think they have an answer. Their answer is pesticide- and technology- intensive agriculture. This will produce the max outlet from the land in the least amount of time. These Global Food conglomerates say they will have to serve us “saviors” of our worlds hungry.
If you take a look at the root causes of hunger, they will reveal that any claim that hunger in the world is caused by the lack of food is simply a agribusiness myth. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organizations(FAO) conducted studies that clearly indicate that it is abundance, not scarcity, that best describes the worlds food supply.
Every year, there is enough wheat, rice and grains grown to provide every human on earth with 3500 daily calories. In fact, enough food is produced world wide to provide 4.3 pounds of food per person, per day. This would include 3.5 pounds of grain, beans, and nuts, a pound of fruit and vegetables, and nearly another pound of milk, eggs and meat.
Yet there is a question: what about the pace of population growth in the future? Although many say we should curtail population growth for ecologically and socioeconomic reasons, history has not yet borne out the concept that population growth equals people being hungry.
Actually, during the last 35 years per capita food production has actually grown 16% faster then our world population. Those global food giant are filling our heads full of myths about there practice and how reliable they are. World hunger is in fact no myth, but what these companies are trying to do is wrong and pretty unsafe.
MYTH 2: INDUSTRIAL FOOD IS SAFE, HEALTHY, AND NUTRITIOUS.
Truth: industrial agriculture contaminates our fruit and vegetables with pesticides, it puts dangerous bacteria into our lettuce, and it puts genetically engineered hormones into our milk. It is not a surprise that obesity, cancer, and food borne illnesses are at an all time high.
For decades, agribusiness, the U.S.D.A., and the F.D.A. have proclaimed that the United States has the safest food supply in the world.
As with all the other myths of industrial agriculture, things are not exactly how they seem. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that between the years 1970-1999, food-borne illnesses increased more then tenfold. And according to the F.D.A. at least 53 pesticides that are classified as carcinogenic are currently applied in large amounts to our major food crops. While the industrialization of our food supply progresses.
We are seeing an explosion in human health risks and a big decrease in the nutritional value of our meals.
One of the main components of the industrialized food system is the large-scale introduction of toxic chemicals. There is no sign of decrease in the toxic contamination of our food. Since 1989, overall pesticide use has increased about 8%, or 60 million pounds. The use of these pesticides that leave residues on foods have increased. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that over 1 million Americans drink water that contain pesticide runoff from industrial farms. The increasing use of these chemicals has been paralleled by an exponential growth in health risks, to both consumers and farmers.
Cancer is the primary concern associated with this toxic dependency. The EPA has already identified more then 165 pesticides as carcinogenic, with a lot of chemical mixtures that remain untested.
In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration found residue of pesticides in over 35% of the food tested. Many US products have been tested as being more toxic then products from other countries. What’s been more terrible is current standards for pesticides in food do not yet include specific protections for young children, fetuses, of infants, despite major changes to federal pesticide laws in 1996.
There are a lot of scientist that believe that pesticides are playing a major role in the current cancer “epidemic” among children. This cancer risk doesn’t just affect the consumers; it also affects tens of thousands of farmers, migrant laborers, and field hands. A study conducted by the National Cancer Institute found that farmers who used industrial herbicides were 6 times more likely( then non-farmers) to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a type of cancer.
In addition to increased health risks associated with our current pesticide dependency, industrial food production has brought with it a rise of food-borne illnesses. CDC researchers estimate that food-borne pathogens infect up to 80 million people a year and cause over 9000 deaths in the U.S. alone.
Moat meat products now begin in “animal factories” where food animals are confined in shockingly inhumane and overly crowded conditions, leading to widespread disease among animals and creation of food borne illnesses. According to the CDC, cases reported of disease from salmonella and E. coli pathogens are ten times greater then they were two decades ago. Cases of campylobacter have more then doubled, even fruits and vegetables got contaminated by these pathogens through exposure to tainted fertilizers and sewage sludge. In the 1970’s when “animal factories,” where most of the meat was produced, was when the CDC started realizing the pathogens in the meat.
Antibiotics in farm animal production may be accelerating the alarming growth of antibiotic resistance inhibited by dangerous pathogens. The residue of these antibiotics that make way into our food supply may confer resistance upon bacteria responsible for a wide variety of human maladies. Infections resistant to antibiotics are now the 11th leading cause of death in the united states.
People are consuming more calories, preservatives, and sugar then ever in history, while reducing their intake of fresh whole fruits and vegetables. Leading to obesity, type11 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease among Americans. “Twenty years ago, teens consumed almost twice as much milk as soda; today they consume almost twice as much soda as they do milk.” Surgeon general has determined that two out of every three premature diets is related to diet.
In response to the huge increase in food-borne illnesses, the industry promotes the use of irradiation to sanitize our foods. Meanwhile, numerous reputable studies have shown that consuming irradiated meat can cause DNA damage, resulting in abnormalities in laboratory animals and their offspring. Can destroy essential vitamins and nutrients that are naturally present in foods and can make foods taste and smell rancid.
Industrial food is not safe it is becoming increasingly deadly and devoid of nutrition. We can not achieve food safety through simple political fiat or technology quick fixes. The real solution is a return to sound organic agricultural practices. It turns out that food production that is safe for the environment, humane to animals, and based in community and independence is also a food supply that is safe and nutritious for humans.
Myth 3: INDUSTRIAL FOOD IS CHEAP.
Truth: if you were to add the real cost of industrial food-its social, health, and environment costs-to the current supermarket price, not even the wealthiest citizens can afford to purchase it.
In America, the media, business leaders, and politicians repeatedly reassure us that our food is the cheapest in the world. They keep repeating that the more we apply technology and chemicals to agriculture, the more food will be produced and the prices will be lower to the consumer.
Under closer analysis, our “supposedly” in-expensive food becomes monumentally expensive. The myth of cheapness completely ignores the staggering externalized cost of our food, cost that do not appear on our receipts from the grocery store. Analysis of the cost of food completely ignore the exponentially increasing environmental and social cost consumers are currently paying and will have to pay in the future. We currently expend tens of billions in taxis, toxic clean-ups, medical expenses, insurance premiums, and other costs to subsidize industrial agriculture, the real price of this production of food for future generations is incalculable.
* Industrial agriculture’s most significant external cost is its widespread devastation and destruction of the environment. Intense use of fertilizers and pesticides seriously pollutes our air, water and soil. Animal factories in the U.S. produce 1.3 billion tons of manure each year. Laden with chemicals, hormones, and causing death to fish in the tens of millions.
the overuse of machines and chemicals on industrial farms erodes away the topsoil- the fertile part of earth from which all food is grown. The United States has lost over half of its topsoil since 1960, and we continue losing topsoil 17 times faster than Mother Nature can create it. Biodiversity is also a victim to industrial agriculture’s onslaught.
* the U.N. food and agriculture organization (fao) reports that 75% of genetic diversity in agriculture has been lost in this past century. The resulting crops are genetically limited and far more open to insects, diseases, blights, and bad weather than are diverse crops.
there is also downstream pollution (on a large-scale) caused by long- distance transport of industrial food. The food on an average American’s plate now travels 1,300 miles from the field to the dinner table. Vehicles moving this food around the world burn off massive amounts of fossil fuels, exacerbating air and water pollution problems. Currently, consumers pay billions of dollars (annually) in environmental costs connected directly to industrial food production, not including the loss of priceless and irreplaceable biodiversity and topsoil, and the incalculable costs of problems such as ozone depletion and global warming.
conventional analyses also ignore the human health cost/risks of consuming industrial foods, including the hormones, pesticides, and other chemical inputs that are contributing to our current cancer epidemic. Also uncalculated are the expenses and lost workdays of over 80 million Americans who contract food-borne illnesses every year. Industrial food health price tag should reflect the expense, suffering, and pain of the tens of millions who are victims of such diseases as heart disease and obesity caused by industrial fast food diets. Taken all together these medical/health costs are clearly in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
according to the U.S. department of agriculture, farming is among the most accident-prone industries in the United States. For migrant farm-workers, wealth conditions are really bad. Migrant workers, who account now for more than half of all food production in the U.S., are 15 times more likely to manifest symptoms of pesticide exposure than non-migrant farm employees in California, according to Sandra Archibald, who works for the Humphrey institute. The environmental production agency (EPA) estimates that 300,000 farm workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning every year.
the powerful myth that industrial food is cheap and affordable only exists because of all these environmental, social, and health costs are not tacked on to the price of industrial food. When we calculate the real price, it is clear that far from being cheap, our current food production system is creating staggering monetary burdens on us and future generations. If the public could only see the real price tag of the foods we buy, purchasing decisions would be easy. Compared to industrial food, organic alternatives are the bargain-deals of a lifetime.
DANGERS OF GENETIC ENGENERING
a genetic engineer moves genes from one organism to another. A gene can be cut precisely from the DNA of an organism. As a consequence, there is a risk that it may disrupt the functioning of other genes to the life of that organism.
Side Effects—Genetic engineering is like performing heart surgery with a shovel. Scientists do not yet understand living systems completely enough to perform DNA surgery without creating mutations which could be harmful to the environment and our health. They are experimenting with very delicate, yet powerful forces of nature, without full knowledge of the repercussions. (Washington Times 1997, The Village Voice 1998)
Widespread Crop Failure—Genetic engineers intend to profit by patenting genetically engineered seeds. This means that, when a farmer plants genetically engineered seeds, all the seeds have identical genetic structure. As a result, if a fungus, a virus, or a pest develops which can attack this particular crop, there could be widespread crop failure. (Robinson 1996)
Threatens Our Entire Food Supply—Insects, birds, and wind can carry genetically altered seeds into neighboring fields and beyond. Pollen from transgenic plants can cross-pollinate with genetically natural crops and wild relatives. All crops, organic and non-organic, are vulnerable to contamination from cross-pollinatation. (Emberlin et al 1999)
Health Hazards
No Long-Term Safety Testing—Genetic engineering uses material from organisms that have never been part of the human food supply to change the fundamental nature of the food we eat. Without long-term testing no one knows if these foods are safe.
Toxins—Genetic engineering can cause unexpected mutations in an organism, which can create new and higher levels of toxins in foods. (Inose 1995, Mayeno 1994)
Allergic Reactions—Genetic engineering can also produce unforeseen and unknown allergens in foods. (Nordlee 1996)
Decreased Nutritional Value—Transgenic foods may mislead consumers with counterfeit freshness. A luscious-looking, bright red genetically engineered tomato could be several weeks old and of little nutritional worth.
Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria—Genetic engineers use antibiotic-resistance genes to mark genetically engineered cells. This means that genetically engineered crops contain genes which confer resistance to antibiotics. These genes may be picked up by bacteria which may infect us. (New Scientist 1999)
Problems Cannot Be Traced—Without labels, our public health agencies are powerless to trace problems of any kind back to their source. The potential for tragedy is staggering.
Side Effects can Kill—37 people died, 1500 were partially paralyzed, and 5000 more were temporarily disabled by a syndrome that was finally linked to tryptophan made by genetically-engineered bacteria. (Mayeno 1994)
Environmental Hazards
Increased use of Herbicides—Scientists estimate that plants genetically engineered to be herbicide-resistant will greatly increase the amount of herbicide use. (Benbrook 1999) Farmers, knowing that their crops can tolerate the herbicides, will use them more liberally.
More Pesticides—GE crops often manufacture their own pesticides and may be classified as pesticides by the EPA. This strategy will put more pesticides into our food and fields than ever before.
Ecology may be damaged—The influence of a genetically engineered organism on the food chain may damage the local ecology. The new organism may compete successfully with wild relatives, causing unforeseen changes in the environment. (Metz 1997)
Gene Pollution Cannot Be Cleaned Up—Once genetically engineered organisms, bacteria and viruses are released into the environment it is impossible to contain or recall them. Unlike chemical or nuclear contamination, negative effects are irreversible.
DNA is actually not well understood. 97% of human DNA is called ³junk² because scientists do not know its function. The workings of a single cell are so complex, no one knows the whole of it. (San Diego Union-Tribune 2000) Yet the biotech companies have already planted millions of acres with genetically engineered crops, and they intend to engineer every crop in the world.
The concerns above arise from an appreciation of the fundamental role DNA plays in life, the gaps in our understanding of it, and the vast scale of application of the little we do know. Even the scientists in the Food and Drug administration have expressed concerns. (Alliance for Biointegrity)
Dangers of Genetic Engineering information came from
Mothers for Natural Law at www.safe-food.org/
Email: llb810@hotmail.com
