“What is wrong with us? Why do we seem to care so little about our own safety, our own health, and the future of our children?” asks Maria Rodale, farmer, author and CEO of Rodale Inc. “Why are we willing to pay thousands of dollars for vitro fertility treatments when we can’t conceive, but not a few extra dollars for the organic food that might help to preserve the reproductive health of our own and future generations?”
In her powerful and informative new book, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe, Maria Rodale has done all of the thinking and the research about organic farming for us. Yay, we don’t have to think! Following in the path of her grandfather, JI Rodale, who launched Organic Gardening and Farming magazine in 1942 and her father Robert Rodale, who devoted his life to educating others on health and environmental issues, Maria Rodale explains why and how we must immediately begin to undo the damage we have done to the environment and to ourselves.
The ‘Farming System Trial’ that her father, Robert Rodale began in 1990, is now the longest running scientific study comparing ‘synthetic-chemical’ versus ‘organic’ agriculture. After 20 years of experiments, the trial clearly shows that organic farming is not only more productive than chemical farming, especially during times of flood or drought, but that soil farmed organically is a necessary step toward solving our climate crisis. ‘Mycorrhizal fungi’ which grow at the roots of plants, stores carbon. These miraculous fungi build our soil and its health while also sequestering excess carbon and pulling it underground.
(read more) (rodaleinstitute.org)
