There are lots of great reasons to consider adopting a vegan or vegetarian diet, not the least of which is that for the most part this type of diet consists of food sources that are more sustainable than a typical burger-and-pizza diet is.

Over at the Mayo Clinic web site they have a fantastic primer on vegetarian diet and nutrition.  There's no lectures or pictures of abused chickens, just excellent well-written information on how to adopt aspects of vegetarianism into your diet while maintaining a healthy nutritional balance.

Whether you're a hardcore lifelong vegan or just someone considering cutting back on your intake of red meat you owe it to yourself to hit the jump and learn more.

» The Mayo Clinic

I don't know about you but I'm definitely a label-shopper.  I look for those little stickers that contain the buzzwords that differentiate one product from the other.  I think we all do this at one time or another.  Whether you're hunting for "fat free" milk, "no sugar added" cookies or "certified organic" beef, what you're hunting for is that little label that says, "okay buy this."

But what exactly is organic beef?  After skimming the Organic Grass Fed Beef Info home page I saw "natural beef", "grass fed beef", "organic raised beef" and "pasture raised beef" all used to describe some for of organic beef.  So what gives?

According to the USDA guidelines, certified organic beef must come from a system that collects data on the entire history of every animal in the program and must meet the following criteria:

• Born and raised on certified organic pasture
• Never receive antibiotics
• Never receive growth-promoting hormones
• Are fed only certified organic grains and grasses
• Must have unrestricted outdoor access
• Must receive humane treatment

Okay, that all sounds good.  I think the "USDA Certified Organic" label is easy enough to understand. 

Natural beef is a different animal altogether.  All that "natural beef" means is that the beef is minimally processed and has no additives.  Natural beef may not have any antibiotics or hormones in it, but there is no third-party check for this.  Natural beef doesn't mean grass-fed, humanely treated, or anything else from the list above.

There is no current definition for grass-fed beef, so that's one label to look out for.  Organic cattle may munch on tasty organic grass their entire life... until slaughtertime draws near.  Then they're stuffed full of grain like any other cow.  It's called "grain finishing" and it's a little loophole at the end of the cattle's lifespan when they can be fattened up.  Also, you can have beef labelled as grass-fed that has been given antibiotics and growth hormones, so remember that grass-fed does not equal organic.

Pasture raised and pasture finished refers to the stage in life when the cattle graze on pasture.  A pasture raised animal my still be "finished" at a feedlot whereas a pasture finished animal is... well, "finished" on a pasture.  It's important to note that grass-fed and pasture raised can mean different things.  Apparently just because cattle eat a diet of grass doesn't mean they're wandering around in fields.

So is there a conclusion here?  Frankly I'm more confused than when I started, but there are two rules when buying beef that I think are safe to stick with:

1) When the only differentiating factor is a label, I think that the only label it's worth paying for is the one that says "Certified Organic".  As far as any other label goes you really have no clue what the heck has happened to that meat.

2) If you have the option, buy from a small producer like Alderspring Ranch.  These local producers often have excellent web sites with very detailed information on how they operate their ranch and how their cattle are raised, allowing you to make an informed decision.  You don't have to rely on your interpretation of a two-word label to understand the quality of your meat.  Plus, you can either order direct from the site or find their products at your local market which is very handy.

So there you have it.  It is a bit confusing, but if you stick to the labels you know and do some Googling you'll be more informed and you won't pay extra for a label that may mean nothing.

» Alderspring Grass Fed Beef

Last summer CeeBee introduced us to some tips to get started herb gardening, and there are numerous kits available that make herb gardening super-easy.

Growing an herb garden in your kitchen makes green sense in a lot of ways:

1. It's a great way to try your hand at a little gardening without making a big commitment.  The green thumb requirement is pretty low and it makes a great project for kids!

2. With a nice planter they make a great decoration to beautify your kitchen.

3. You can grow one little pot or parsley or a fantastic multi-tiered herb garden like the one pictured.  So regardless of the size of your kitchen you can create an herb garden to suit.

4. The aroma of fresh herbs in your home is fantastic, especially first thing on a lazy Sunday morning.

5. It's so convenient you'll find yourself adding fresh herbs to all of your cooking.  A sprig of parsley here, a little mint there... it's a fun way to jazz up your meals.

6. Herbs aren't just for cooking.  You can also grow your own medicinal herbs or even your own tea garden.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  Now I'll be the first to admit that I would have a hard time keeping a chia pet going, so I'm the type of novice gardener that's looking for some kind of starter set to help me get going.  If you hit the jump you can check out this great site I found called HerbKits.com which carries kits for culinary herbs, tea, medicinal herbs, even kits so you can grow your own salsa veggies or strawberries.

So don't just sit there, get growing!  (oh, haha I crack myself up)

 

» HerbKits.com

Dirt and soil. if you’re an amateur greenthumb you know there is a major difference between these two things.  Dirt is dry and dead and suitable for a cat’s litter box.  Soil is dark, fragrant and alive.  Good soil, along with good weather and TLC is the key to growing good plants.

In your backyard if you really screw-up your garden one year it’s not an impossible problem.  You can possibly bring it back with some help from your backyard composter or even buy some big bags of fresh soil from your local gardening centre.

For farmers - like the ones that grow staple crops like corn, wheat and beans all across the country - the issue of soil management is a bit more complicated.  They can’t just run out to Home Depot for some new soil.  They have to work with the soil they’ve got and it’s in their best interest to have the best and most productive soil possible.  After all, better soil equals better crops.

Now you might ask yourself, “I’m not a farmer so why is soil management important?  Who cares?”

Fair enough.  Don’t abandon this story just yet.  Let me give you two reasons to care:

I’d like to direct you to this opinion piece titled ‘False fears threaten food supplies’ by Dominic Dyer on BBC News.  Here is a quick excerpt:

If farmers' yields were still as low as those of the 1950s, we would need nearly three times as much cultivated land to feed today's global population.

Many people are unaware or uninterested by how the food we eat is grown. Often incorrect perceptions and false assumptions are presented as fact as a result of a lack of familiarity with the countryside.

The truth is that if we enjoy a steady, year-round supply of fresh produce at affordable prices, it's thanks to modern agriculture and well-trained professional farmers.

“Well-trained professional farmers”- keep that phrase in mind.  When you think "farmer" you think overalls, straw hat and pitchfork, right?  There might even be a horse-drawn plow in there?  The truth is Old McDonald is NOT a real person; or at least he didn’t grow anything that made it to your dinner table in the last 50 years.  Sure, there are still lots of family-operated farms and people living that idyllic country life, but they’re doing it with more science, technology and precision than Old McDonald ever could have dreamed of.  

As Dominic Dyer points out in his article, due to our ever-growing population today we would require triple the amount of cultivated land we needed just half a century ago.  In other words, farmers have to get more out of each acre of land than they ever did before.  The popular misconception is that by growing such a high volume of crops that modern agricultural practices are “sucking” the magical goodness out of the soil leaving us with nothing but sand.

It is true that farmers are extremely concerned with maximizing the yield of their crops.  It’s also true that farmers are extremely aware that healthy, rich soil is a key factor in producing the best crops possible.  Why would they purposely destroy their own land?

In a recent article published on CattleNetwork.com, Marcia Gorrell addresses the myth that modern agricultural practices lead to soil erosion and that farmers need to go back to the old way of doing things for the good of our environment.

Another myth has to do with soil erosion. It implies that modern farming is eroding soil when the truth is just the opposite.

Today, we till less and lose less soil than ever before. We also use fewer chemicals and pesticides than we did even 25 years ago. […]

The truth is, organic farming of the "good old days" was responsible at least in part for The Dust Bowl of the 1930s. During that time, a combination of inappropriate farming techniques, drought and depression created the conditions for strong winds to strip large areas of topsoil. We still work today to build up topsoil lost from past farming techniques.

So not only are farmers doing the best they can to not contribute to soil erosion, but many are working to restore the soil to the condition it was in before previous generations of farmers nearly destroyed it in the “good old days”.  Yikes!  Those “good old days” don’t seem too “good” right now!

There are three main arguments against modern agricultural practices involving soil.  Let’s take a closer look:

To address these points I found a great video at RealAgriculture.com featuring Dr. Ross McKenzie, a super-duper research scientist who knows pretty much everything there is to know about soil.

To summarize a bit, here is what the doctor had to say regarding some of the arguments against modern agricultural practices.

Now we’ve heard from a soil expert and learned how farmers are working to improve the quality of their soil.  So how can we apply this newfound knowledge in our backyards?  Let’s follow the example of modern farmers.

So there you have it!  There is a lot more to learn about soil but this isn’t a bad start.  Any thoughts to add or soil maintenance tips to share?  Add a comment and get the ball rolling!

» Real Agriculture

In the developed world we’re accustomed to having the latest and greatest.  Whether it be the latest health care breakthroughs, the shiniest gizmos, or the most advanced communications tools we like to be cutting edge.  And, believe it or not, there are technologies more important than the latest coveted shiny thing from Apple.

For example, consider our food and fibre supply.  For almost two decades farmers in the “rich” world have had access to biotech soybeans, cotton and corn that have been engineered to yield more per acre and resist herbicides and pests.  Still, in twenty years the vast majority of biotech crops available to the public have remained virtually unchanged.  In a culture where more equals better, more crops per acre seems like smart business on the part of farmers.  But still, biotech crops are an eco hot button and the general public remains sceptical of their benefits.  Fair enough.  So let’s take a look at other genetically engineered crops developed for other markets – many of them in the developing world – and see what benefits those crops may have.

Golden Rice

In Southeast Asia a half-million children go blind every year from a simple lack of Vitamin A.  It may sound like a tragedy that would be easy to avoid, but for populations that lack financial resources and medical care the solution is a little more complex than simply reaching for a bottle of Flintstone Vitamins.

In 1999 Golden Rice – a biotech breakthrough – was developed.  Golden Rice is just like regular white rice except that a mere one half cup of Golden Rice can give a person 100% of the Vitamin A he needs in a day.  Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?  Well, it is and the folks who developed Golden Rice have been lobbying to get permission to run test trials of their rice in Asia so they can get it approved.  The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board was recently successful in gaining clearance to run field trials in the Philippines.  Hopefully this breakthrough crop can get approval there and in other Asian countries before more children lose their eyesight to vitamin deficiency.

Tough Rice – Wet or Dry

At the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines scientists are currently testing genetically modified rice strains under tightly controlled conditions to resist environmental conditions such as drought and exposure to salt water.  For most of the world’s human population rice is a staple crop, eaten every single day.  Severe drought can cut rice yields by 99% so the need is obvious.  In low-lying and coastal areas such as Bangladesh, exposure to salt water is also a factor affecting rice quality and yield.

Japanese scientists discovered genes (dubbed “SNORKEL1” and “SNORKEL2”) that causes rice plants to grow long, extended stems (like a “snorkel” –get it?) which allows the base of the rice plant to grow taller while keeping the top of the plant poking out of the water.  In many parts of Asia, the ability to grow extra-tall rice plants means that farmers can produce viable rice crops even in the face of severe flooding and monsoons.

Rice is not just the white stuff underneath your sweet n’ sour chicken.  In much of the world rice is life.  And there is research being done on much more than rice.  How about super anti-oxidant purple tomatoes, corn packed with extra vitamins, bananas loaded with essential nutrients and papayas that are resistant to devastating diseases?

These are just some of the great benefits that genetically engineered “frankenfoods” can bring to the table, but to bring those benefits to the dinner table they first have to be tested, trialed and approved by the countries they are to be grown in.  There are hurdles in getting new crop varieties approved.  You have to educate the public, the farmers, and the government officials who will ultimately decide if the crop is approved and even the greatest scientific discovery can take years if not decades to be regulated by a government.

Ultimately, the development of genetically engineered crop varieties is not the work of mad scientists or evil corporations.  The end goal for most people working on biotech plants is simply to build a better plant: a plant that can survive environmental hardships, resist disease, grow large or plentiful, provide greater nutrition and use less water and natural resources.

As far as science goes, the engineering of crops in its current form has only been around for a few decades.  We’re literally just seeing the beginning of the potential of what can be done to enhance crops in the developing world and in ours.

» The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board

Pragmatism - The philosophy of accepting ideas with practical results as true and rejecting impractical ideas.  In other words: “What works best?”

When it comes to green, Stewart Brand is certifiably as green as it gets.  We’re talking old school true-blue earth lovin’ hippie and counterculture thought leader in the 1960’s type of green.  Today he lives on a boat in California, but back in the days of peace and love Stewart Brand was the editor of a little publication called the Whole Earth Catalog.  The Whole Earth Catalog was originally an American counterculture magazine that was first published in the late 1960’s and advocated everything you would associate with the hippie lifestyle.   As a young man Stuart was all about communal living and rural back-to-the-earth concepts.  

Today, he is still eco-conscious but has focused his energies on solutions instead of ideals.  In Stuart Brand’s latest book Whole Earth Discipline - An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, this member of the old school green generation shifts from the do-it-yourself attitude of traditional eco-thought to a new concept: how can we “do it” together?

Stewart’s new conclusion: “Cities are Green. Nuclear energy is Green. Genetic engineering is Green.”

Bold statements, and certainly out of sync with the typical thoughts of eco-idealists.  After all, treehuggers typically have dreams of self-sustaining organic rural communities off the grid. Nuclear powered cities and genetically engineered food are the opposite of that ideal, aren’t they?

Atomic Ideas

If you’re reading this on a computer screen anywhere on the continent of North America then chances are the electricity that powers the servers, infrastructure and your home or office computer were all generated using the most primal, basic and dirty technologies available: by burning coal.  Three decades ago the U.S. was poised to move into a new energy economy based on nuclear technology with 100 new nuclear power plants on the drawing board.  But eco-conscious Greens demonized nuclear power to the point that most of us think of nuclear power as a punch line on the Simpsons cartoon show.  The result was that the new plants were scrapped and coal consumption in the U.S. skyrocketed by 400,000,000 tons a year!

Brand asserts that most of our fears over nuclear power are due to misinformation and ignorance over new nuclear power technologies.  In comparing nuclear power that produces containable waste to other energy solutions nuclear power seems like an obvious and green solution that is certainly more sustainable than burning millions of tons of coal each day.

Communes and Cities

Back in the 1960’s and 70’s Stewart brand was a huge advocate of living in commune-style villages and experimented in commune living himself.  But today he says “Cities are Green.”, so what changed?

Well, few would argue that the formation of high-density residential and working systems result in logistical efficiencies in concerns such as land use, the shipment and delivery of goods and the centralisation of services.  Further to that Brand believes that the social implications of living in cities have a green take to the as well: less energy use, fewer children, and the liberation of women to name a few.  Brand believes in greening our cities by design and that we need to invest in making our high density living spaces sustainable. Sounds sensible to me.

Engineered Food and an Engineered World

There is a great quote from Stewart Brand from an interview in City Journal: “I daresay the environmental movement has done more harm with its opposition to genetic engineering than with any other thing we’ve been wrong about. We’ve starved people, hindered science, hurt the natural environment, and denied our own practitioners a crucial tool.”

The bottom line is genetically engineered crops - commonly referred to as GMOs – and the modern agriculture practices that often accompany them produce more food on fewer acres of land than non-engineered crops.  And the less land used the less deforestation that’s required to offset the requirements for farmland, not to mention less water and energy required to produce the crops season after season.

If an old school Green like Stewart Brand can break outside his box and think in terms of “what works” and “what’s practical” instead of adhering to Green Dogma, can you? 

Here are three questions for you:
1. Is there a better alternative out there to nuclear energy?
2. Can the Earth’s population sustain a massive drop in food supply if we switch back to 100% traditional agriculture?
3. Is it realistic or feasible for the entire population of the planet to redistribute into semi-rural communal eco-hamlets?

Did you answer “no” to all three questions as well?  Isn’t it funny how so many of us worry that there are no answers to global warming, the energy crisis or the population bomb when really the answers are simple and have been here all along.

» Penguin Books