The fine weather is a welcome blessing, and we are getting loads done of the farm, including, planting lettuce, spinach, rocket and beetroot. We have all our fields ready for planting now and have been working really hard to make the best use of the sunshine.
The downside of both the good weather and Easter is we will see a large drop off on orders, this affects us very much as nothing much changes for us from the cost side. So, if you can at all especially as we head into Easter, don’t forget about your sustainable food 😊 place an order if you can as it makes a massive difference to our small sustainable organic farm and business.
Monsanto spent millions on deceptive communications strategies to convince the public that the world’s most widely used herbicide, Roundup, is “as safe as table salt.” Yet its main ingredient, glyphosate, was flagged as having the potential to cause cancer as far back as 1984 by a scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
We deserve to know what is on our food. I don’t care that limits are set that are supposed to protect us, these are called MRLs (maximum residue limits). Bear in mind that these limits as with Glyphosate can change over time to allow for more of a chemical to be applied.
In 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had established the maximum residue limit (MRL), or tolerance, for glyphosate residues in or on soybeans at 6 parts per million (ppm). During the late 1990s, Monsanto lobbied to raise permitted glyphosate levels in soybeans, successfully convincing both the U.S. and UK governments to increase the MRL to 20 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg), equivalent to 20 ppm. So 6mg/kg was the safe limit we could not exceed in the early 90s, but as the application of the chemical increased the limit was increased nearly 4-fold, and this new level was now the “safe” limit. Of course, this increased limit meant more of the chemical could be sprayed on the crops.
Glyphosate has increased exponentially since the early 90s and it is toxic, does damage our microbiome, and facilitates the production of masses of ultra processed food. The incidence of which would also have rocketed from the 1990s onwards.
But if nothing else, spraying a chemical that kills everything in its path, destroys biodiversity, damages our microbiome, and facilitates large corporations to make billions, whilst contributing to disease in the world, surely that must stop?
As always thanks for your support.
Kenneth