Let's raise bar on the American food system and shift to Real Organic farms
Second grade students from Palm Beach Day Academy, Palm Beach Public Elementary and Rosarian Academy help the Garden Club of Palm Beach plant a Gumbo Limbo tree for Arbor Day at Bradley Park January 16, 2025 in Palm Beach. Town arborist Richard Maxwell said, " The Gumbo Limbo is a native tree, that's why the garden club choose it."
-Meghan McCarthy/Palm Beach Daily News
February 1, 2025
Once upon a time, there were local farms that produced our meat and produce and we purchased either directly from them or from our local grocery stores. Vegetables were grown in soils that were nutrient rich from farm compost, not grown hydroponically with chemical supplements.
We mostly ate what was in season, or what could be easily shipped from neighboring climes. Our meat came from cattle grazing grass in fields which their highly evolved digestive systems (rumens) enabled them to do. Poultry was also free range, eating grubs and insects that would otherwise cause disease to cattle and fertilizing the soil with their guano.
I grew up on a farm similar to this, and the taste of those fresh vegetables and the rich orange color of the egg yolks is something we now rarely experience.
Organic blueberries grown in soil, not hydroponically, are bursting with flavor and nutrition.
Our current "conventional" agricultural production is, quite simply, poisoning our soil, polluting our water and adding significantly to the excess carbon in the air we breathe. While we spend years and fortunes trying to find cures for cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and any number of diseases that plague us, we don’t seem to relate their obvious connection to the massive amounts of carcinogens we add to our soil and thus to our food supply. In a world where we admit that everything is connected, we must surely realize that we are what we eat. And if that is true, then we are, as Michael Pollan so succinctly puts it in his bestselling "Omnivore’s Dilemma" — "corn chips with legs."
The U.S. is the largest producer of corn in the world, with 96 million acres of land dedicated to this crop. Corn is fed to everything from poultry to cows to salmon, so it has become the basic ingredient of 90% of the food we consume. Cattle aren’t designed to digest corn; their rumens are specifically developed to digest grass into high-quality protein. They are gradually weaned onto corn after being shipped to giant feed yards where corn becomes their diet staple (because we have such a surplus of it) but with numerous resulting health problems for which copious antibiotics are required. Most of the antibiotics in America today end up in animal feed, which has resulted in the evolution of a new generation of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
We have so industrialized our food chain that the average consumer has little to no knowledge of how or where his meat or fish or produce was produced.
Rows if organic vegetables grown without pesticides or herbicides.
Let’s talk about organic for a moment. Most of us picture small family farms with diverse crops, hedgerows of wildflowers, and manure heaps turning into rich compost. But the "conventional" agriculture farms producing 95% of our food by applying toxic herbicides and pesticides to soil exist right next to "organic" farms applying compost; that organic label on milk and egg cartons only means that the grains the chickens and cows are fed is produced without pesticides. But the animals are still living in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), where they stand (and sleep) by the thousands in feed lots which are simply deep piles of manure, generating numerous strains of intestinal e-coli bacteria which can be fatal to humans. The corn they are fed is treated with antibiotics to prevent infection, and these antibiotics are eventually incorporated into the meat and poultry we consume.
Sadly, most of the "organic" food we buy and eat is "industrial organic," which is a very far cry from what we imagine as organic. As an example, industrial organic farms must control weeds without chemical herbicides. To do so, fields are tilled far more frequently than on conventional farms using herbicides. But this frequent plowing destroys the soil’s tilth, reduces its biological activity, and releases vast quantities of the nitrogen essential to all plants for healthy growth. Therefore, these "organic" farms require much more nitrogen fertilizer in the form of compost, manure, or fish emulsion. But as there are no rules governing where these fertilizers originate, many come from the conventional farms next door, rich in pesticides and herbicides.
Real Organic farms provide their own fertility and manage pests by practicing crop diversification and rotation. Planting many different crops and incorporating and rotating these with fields of cattle and poultry achieves the rich biodiversity and sustainability natural ecosystems require. These Real Organic smaller farms have also proven to be more productive than their enormous industrial counterparts and are far better for the environment. Produce grown in healthy, nutrient rich, compost fed soil is infinitely more nutritious, with higher concentrations of vitamins, polyphenols, and antioxidants which actually fight cancers rather than causing them. The Real Organic project is working to make the USDA protect and verify Real Organic, rather than allowing CAFOs, hydroponic, and disposable plastic farms to be listed under the U.S.D.A. organic label, which is the current situation.
Newly planted rows of organic lettuce and kale.
The time has come to raise the bar on the American food system if we want to preserve the health and integrity of our soil, our produce, our beef and poultry, and ourselves. Twenty thousand "organic free range" chickens living in a barracks-like shed and eating “organic” but nonetheless processed corn should not be considered organic. Small doors at either end of their shed offer the option to step outside, but as the doors are shut until the chicks are five weeks old and well established in their habits, the chickens never use them. Federal regulations stipulate that these "organic" chickens must have "access to the outdoors" so this is provided, and we consumers imagine happy hens pecking in fields of grass. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Organic scarlet runner pole beans pollinated by bees.
Organic does have lower levels of carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and neurotoxins than are routinely found in conventionally produced produce and meat. But USDA organic produce and meat is still allowed to have traces of these poisons, and studies have shown that there is no “safe” level of exposure to these chemicals, especially for children. Atrazine, the second most widely used herbicide in the United States, (Glyphosate is No. 1), is a known endocrine disruptor linked to numerous cancers and birth defects.
Atrazine has been banned in the EU since 2004, while 70 million pounds of it are applied across the United States each year. Primarily used on field corn, sweet corn, sugarcane, and sorghum, the USDA notes that 75% of all corn crops in the U.S. are treated with this herbicide. According to the EPA, this has become one of the most commonly found contaminants in our groundwater and public drinking water. It is also highly toxic to birds and wildlife. In October 2024, legislation was introduced to ban Atrazine, listing its numerous well documented health and environmental concerns. Why then, are we still using it? (Atrazine is manufactured by Syngenta, a Swiss based corporation owned by the Chinese State-owned company ChemChina). Since corn is the primary ingredient in cattle and chicken feed, you can do the math on the atrazine levels you’re consuming.
Let’s all take a closer look at the food we’re eating and reconsider the “organic” label, not to mention all those shrink wrapped cucumbers in the grocery aisles — there’s more plastic in the supermarkets these days than food. Real Organic is making a comeback and it’s out there if you look hard enough.
The gumbo limbo (Brusera simaruba) is a fast-growing, salt, drought, and wind-tolerant tree. It can develop interesting intertwining branch structures.
But getting back to some more positive news, the Town and Garden Club planted a beautiful gumbo limbo in Bradley Park for Arbor Day recently. Gumbo limbo (Bursera simaruba) makes a wonderful specimen tree in South Florida. Fast-growing, salt, drought, and wind-tolerant, it is recognized for its spectacular coppery cinnamon to bronze colored bark that stands out against any background. This bark has earned it the nickname: "tourist tree," as the bark color resembles the sunburn uninitiated visitors often acquire in South Florida.
Happy in sun or part shade, it will reach an ultimate height of 50 feet. It can be semi-deciduous for a short time in winter, but the small white flowers that appear at that time attract numerous pollinators. The dark red berries that follow are relished by birds, including flycatchers, orioles and vireos. Gumbo limbo is not particular as to soil conditions, and is easily grown from seed, branch or stem cuttings. It is recommended as a rugged, hurricane-resistant species, making it is especially valuable in our area.
-Kim Frisbie
Original article on the Palm Beach Daily News is HERE.