An Eco-Warrior’s Sword Is Their Fork

Author: Angus McIntosh | Published: November 9, 2017

All of us have a latent eco-warrior inside us. When we are not exercising that eco-warrior, the eco-enemy is active. My reasoning is as follows:

Agriculture is the worst eco-enemy we have. Every time we eat, we choose a farmer practicing either regenerative agriculture or destructive agriculture. The farmer is either an eco-warrior or an eco-enemy. There are no eco-fence-sitters.

Agriculture: Eco-Enemy No.1

Let’s start by looking at the dire state of our planet and its supposed most intelligent inhabitants, homo sapiens, and then we can see how agriculture is the primary cause of this unsustainable condition of a sick planet inhabited by sick humans. Agriculture is the single greatest contributor to environmental destruction and climate instability, whether it is rain forest removal (36 soccer fields cut down every hour) or carbon emissions.

Agriculture has caused 405 dead zones around the world. The biggest is in the Gulf of Mexico, and it is the size of Gauteng. It is directly attributable to artificial fertiliser runoff that ends up in the Mississippi River. Globally we lose 20 times more kilograms of topsoil than kilograms of food produced. Topsoil is what we grow our food in.

Reduced Value Of Nutrition:

One of the very few statistics agreed on is that the nutritional content of food has been in decline for many generations. In 1950 an apple contained 4,3mg of iron. By 1998 it had dropped to 0,18mg.

What is not explained, though, is that this applies to conventionally produced food, not organic food. In every comparable study done, organic food is more nutrient-dense.

As an aside, apples are the fruit sprayed with the most pesticides. South Africa does not have one organic apple producer, which makes us all Adam and Eve.

As nutrients decline, there is a concomitant increase in diseases. In the US, since 1980, heart diseases are up by 412%, asthma by 4137%, bone deformities by 347%. The list goes on and on. Globally there are equal numbers of people dying of obesity and starvation. The same would apply here if we had the statistics, as we mimic what the US does in farming, diet and obesity.

KEEP READING ON LONGEVITY