I am sorry for going on a never ending rant about this...however, we lost 50,000 farmers in our state alone since 1970. You used to buy a lot more stuff that was grown, processed and sold locally. I don't know what was wrong with that system. It kept people on small farms, it kept a way of life that is totally gone now. We had a lot less poo per square mile.

Website on this issue---I can not vouch for the facts, but they sound pretty realistic in my experience.

Then some one got the idea to centralize production of stuff.

http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/p...ureInWisconsin

Milk used to be picked up and taken to local dairies and cheese factories....to a great extent a lot of that still goes on, for us, but California has taken over a lot of milk production. Milk gets 'made' in one place, mixed and processed with milk from other places, poured in tanks some where else and shipped and bottled elsewhere. The milk from hundreds if not thousands of farms can be in one gallon.

We are not talking about IVIG here....where that IS the concept you are going for.

Meat used to be picked up and killed and processed and sold locally...not so much any more. Now thousands of cows can make up a pound of ground beef. One nasty cow and it is all contaminated in a dozen states or more.

We have a lot of big veggie operations, big canneries with names you know.

But we have lost a quarter of our farmland.

It is all monopolies now....very few companies own everything.

If you live in the city, there is still a lot you can do. You don't need to worry about nitrates. Nitrates are essentially the breakdown of cow manure, or any manure...we get a lot of chicken manure here too. One chicken containment building can contain several hundred thousand chickens in cages stacked one on top of the other with the poor birds pooing on each other and subjected to light 24/7 so they lay more eggs.

Then that poo has to be put somewhere, so they put in on the fields and grow corn in that poo and the poo from the 500-1,000 cows that are milked down the road. That is a lot of poo. Then on top of that they add ammonium nitrate that they spray on and you can smell it...don't go outside on that day....Yes they do crop dust, but not around here anymore----we haven't had much that needs dusting since the veggie operation around here stopped. Hundreds of deer graze on the pooed land. Prions are absorbed more readily and cause disease faster if ingested with dirt, or soil. (which is mostly poo)

That poo ends up in the groundwater, the aquifer.


My old farmer neighbors used to call me and tell me they were spraying and to keep the kids in the house and the windows shut. They had a family farm and it went under....very sad.

There is little that can be done as we all derive our water from aquifers. City water is monitored. Well water is not. If you live in a city, you hope your municipality watches this stuff. You have other stuff like lead you can simply filter out.

Prions are also making their way into ground water.

I would just filter for lead and chlorine if I were on city water.

We didn't get rain for 8 weeks and had 10 foot tall corn...it is genetically modified not to need as much water. This corn is going to the ethanol plant or being fed to the cows down the road....we don't eat feed corn.

You can buy non-genetically altered food.

You can shop at organic food stores, if you can not buy from local farmers who grow transitional or organic food.

If you want organic food fresh all year round you have to buy from foreign countries. We eat more fresh in summer and more of our own canned stuff in winter....

You can if you want do a container garden. Those can be really quite productive. But they only last for good weather....that said, you can plant a lot of stuff right after the first freeze and still plant cold weather crops thru July....some crops still make it thru to the first freeze.

You can buy organic milk....milk is a big one....and milk products. You can get away from the hormones and antibiotics. You can buy free range eggs and chicken.

Every one has these visions of rural areas as family farmers....it isn't like that. To survive, most of these farmers have to have 1,000 acres.

There is an organic movement going here, and we have it pretty nice really. More and more, we see organic products and we have farmer's markets. This time of year, you either pay thru the nose for fresh food, or you eat the stuff you froze, dehydrated or canned all summer and fall.

Organic stores are mostly centered in progressive cities, but a lot of regular grocery stores have at least a section devoted to organic and transitional products.

So, yes, you can do some stuff.....and no, you don't need to know about farming. I have lived most of my adult life surrounded by the industry, had friends that were or are farmers....I see the honey wagon go by, 15 times per day, and smell dairyaire of 500 some cows. I don't need to fertilize, because the rain just washes whatever the farmer applied to higher ground to my lower ground.

Beef is an issue, and will remain an issue for a long time. Prion disease takes a very long time to develop altho 'mad cow' in the classic sense has a quicker onset. Obviously that would mean all dairy products. I still eat them and
I don't fret about it....not much you can do.

You can eat the foods that absorb less chemicals, and stay away from those that do, or buy those organically or transitionally grown.

I think it is a matter of minimizing....you can not get rid of it all.

Oh we need the bugs---they are part of the ecosystem---what would birds eat without bugs? Soil would not break down without bugs....Bugs are essential to the health of the planet....huge profits are not.

Soaking fresh foods in some salt water and rinsing it, gets rid of bugs....bugs on ripe food are not an issue...they are an issue if they eat the food before you get it. Wash the puppies off.