Here's your chance to be an editor, enjoy and please do feel free to critique, my publisher would probably thank you as I thank you now.
Since the 1970's there has been an increase in the number of people who, having rejected the widely popularized “buy all your food at the grocery store” method of feeding one's self and perhaps family, have taken to the old world idea of growing all or as much of your own food as possible. There has also been a resurgence of rejecting all commercialized methods of growing this food. No chemical fertilizers, insecticides or herbicides is the cry of these modern day people starting to farm using old world methodology. Some of the front runners in this movement of healthy food by producing it your self are promoting their methodology with great success but even now the number of people who have been willing to take charge of their own nutritional needs is small when compared to the masses. Those who have chosen to go down this road of self sufficient life stye are knowledgeable about how to farm without using the methods first brought up in the early 20th century by Agricultural companies who promote using their chemicals both to grow food stuffs and to control the insect pests that like to be the thorn in the heel of every gardener in the modern world.
There is sage wisdom in parting ways with the current status quo of modern agriculture. There may even be more to this than just growing food with high nutritional values since if you look at the downward spiral of health in the developed countries that use the modern agriculture model to farm the food the people buy to eat, there seems to be a marked correlation between the advent of genetically modified food plants and the deterioration of peoples health, particularly the increase in numbers of cancer patients, certain mental maladies and growth / development rates. I am not going to prove these anomalies, that is for some health scientist to look into, I am just pointing out that there may be some connection since the time lines match up very well. Several studies have been done since the advent of modern agriculture methods which show a decrease in the quantity of nutrition and the quality of nutrition in the foods being sold at grocery stores. There has, at the same time been an increase in the use of antibiotics and growth hormone use in the production of meat animals mostly chickens, cattle and pigs. Eggs as an example can be observed as light yellow yolked and they taste of sulfur, more so than eggs bought from a farm that lets the chickens roam all over the land, picking out bugs and nibbling grasses, eggs from chickens raised this way are dark yellow to orange and the tested levels of cholesterol and omega three fatty acids are far removed from the pale yolked commercially farmed chickens eggs. Free range eggs also have been found to have more protein and trace minerals than the commercial production eggs, making free range eggs something the savvy buyer, who is interested in getting all the nutritional value per food item that they can seeks out and pays a premium price for. This is one of the reasons Farmer's Markets are on the rise and can be found in increasing numbers across the U.S.A. The other developed countries of the western world are also seeing the modern agricultural movement being rejected and in some instances not allowed to sell their genetically modified seeds or the chemicals that the modifications make attractive to use.
Enter the new age of the farmer, the world of Natural Methodology, where
compost and manure teas take the place of chemical fertilizers. Where the soil is not ripped up and turned over without good cause so that the microbiology living in the soil remains healthy and thrives. Where trees live with berry bushes at their feet which live with squashes, beans, cucumbers and a host of other food producing plants growing at their feet and under their canopy. Harmoniously living together in a nature like setting while the soil bacterial and the mycorrhizal fungi make more nutrients easy for these plants to access and use to grow healthier, better tasting, more nutritious food for the grower and their customers to eat.
More and more people are now returning to the idea of producing their own food, and a lot of those people are determined to do their part to heal the earth of the problems humans have created or helped along. Many methods are being tried, and most of these are succeeding at reaching the goal of growing healthy food through growing healthy soil, some are all natural in what is used to nurture the soil and plants while others follow differing ideology but remain organic in their nature of what fertilizers and pesticides are used. All in all, people are heading back to using the methods of what many consider to be a simpler time, where food was inherently better both in nutritional value and taste. The apex of these methods is probably the planting of a food forest where tall trees give way to shorter trees which give way to bushes,all the understory of the tall trees being populated by a wide variety of food producing plants, each taking up the space that serves its growing habits and needs best. The result is maximum food production for the space used, efficient use of land means less land is devoted to food production. This isn't the Monoculture farm of the Modern Agricultural Movement, this is the poly-culture of the future that may allow the masses to be fed highly nutritionally dense foods that taste like they are supposed to taste and last longer in storage at the home than what comes from the grocery store. It is the beginning stage of a food revolution. Since you are reading this, I invite you to join us and indulge yourself in growing foods that really are good for you.
The food forest is both simple and complex, like most things humans desire to acomplish, they tend to strive to make it more complicated than it really is or should be. So what is a food forest? At the most basic it is a forest where most of the plants produce things we can use for food. At the most complicated it is a forest where most of the plants produce things we can use for food that we already like to eat. When you look at an already established food forest, it looks more like the transition point between the prarie and forest, where grasses give way to bushes which give way to understory trees which give way to the tall, canopy producing forest trees. If you were to catagorize the layers of a Southern USA food forest it would probably have a high canopy of Pecan trees with an understory of Apple, Peach, Pear, Persimmon, Plum and Pawpaw trees. Next down the order you would most likely see Service berry bushes followed by Blue berry and Huckleberry bushes, amongst those and out in front of these bushes you might find Bush Beans, yellow, zucinni, butternut, acorn squashes, pumpkins, watermellons, muskmellons, then there might be turnips, beets, carrots, some pepper varieties and at the rim strawberries. Winding up some of the taller trees you might see muscadine vines, grape vines, pole beans and cucumbers. All these would be planted according to each ones particular needs of sunlight and ground space. If you wanted corn then it would be planted so it had enough long daylight to grow to its maximum height, at its feet you would most likely find beans or squash since these three make up the traditional “three sisters” planting. Now, depending on where on planet earth you live, there are plants that can be used in this manner to create a healthy, vibrant, productive food forest.
To be continued (unless no one likes it, in which case I will throw this draft out and begin anew).
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