New Tools for Sustainable Farming

Re: "After all, sustainable farming really does benefit everybody: It conserves natural resources, saves energy, reduces the need for pesticides and fertilizers, and fosters a healthier environment, more competitive farms and safe foodstuffs."

Pesticides help in the short-term, but the long-term ill health effects of pesticides are not worth the short-term benefit. Our ancestors became our ancestors precisely because they made certain choices that turned out to be adaptive, not maladaptive. They ate whole foods, not processed foods and fruits covered with pesticides.

The more we maintain certain lifestyle choices that match those of our ancestors, the more our systems benefit, as we are better adapted to those choices.

The more one reads about the mismatch between modern lifestyles and those of ancestral hominids that preceded h. sapiens, the more sense it makes that while advanced civilization can, indeed, be wonderful, we often make maladaptive choices when it comes to taking shortcuts that affect our health.

The movement towards living more in tune with Nature could very well cut healthcare expenditures in half, if not more, for just look at the diet of the East Asian elders of the island of Okinawa, Japan. These people live not only to the ripe old age of 90, or even past 100, but many many Okinawans are relatively disability free in old age. And upon reading about their lifestyle choices in "The Okinawa Program" by Willcox, Willcox and Suzuki (based on a 25 year longitudinal study), it is obvious that fresher whole foods are a large part of the diet.

It's not just about sustainability; it's also about overall human health.

Angie Koutrotsios of IL 10:40PM September 07, 2009