We had a good couple of days in the fields this week, we have cleared most of our parsnips and the quality is excellent, they will be extra sweet too as they have had several hard frosts now, this turns the starch to sugar. This beautiful crop of parsnips has been produced without synthetic chemicals, zero chemicals were used in fact.
We were given this advice when we embarked on our organic journey in 2006, ‘Use just a touch of Roundup for your veg growing’ as if it were a harmless thing. Needless to say, we never took this advice.
There is a misconception that washing your conventional fruit and vegetables will remove traces of pesticides, some it will, others it most definitely will not.
Glyphosate, or Roundup the most applied agrichemical in human history is not one of those you can wash off, it is systemic in nature. This simply means the active ingredient that kills the plant, gets absorbed into the plant and is transported to all parts of the plant and resides there. It cannot be removed by washing. This potential carcinogen stays in the plants it is sprayed on.
2.3 billion kg of glyphosate were applied in 2023, that is an awful lot of chemicals to be spraying on our food. And in the same year the EU approved glyphosate use for a further 10 years.
It is everywhere, in much of conventional foods and soils. Over 59% of people tested at the university of Galway had traces of a chemical found in Roundup and 25% had glyphosate itself in their urine. (Source: https://www.universityofgalway.ie/about-us/news-and-events/news-archive/2023/january/university-of-galway-investigates-glyphosate-exposure-among-families.html)
Many of us are consuming this chemical at some stage in our day, because the crops that are heavily sprayed with glyphosate are constituents of ultra processed foods.
Crops, such as corn, soya, wheat and oats, are all sprayed heavily with Glyphosate, many are bioengineered to be roundup ready. It is a fact that much of the core ingredients in many of the processed products will have been derived from these key crops above or their derivatives.
The panacea of genetic engineering was to make plants resistant to a toxic weedkiller so more of this same toxic chemical could be applied, how wonderful to use science in such a way.
But there is one overwhelmingly positive thing here. When it comes to food, we have all the power, we can choose. We can choose to eat healthier fresh, non-processed foods, such as fresh fruit and vegetables thus reducing our reliance on contaminated processed products. We can take this a step further by choosing only organic products.
As I finished harvesting a line of parsnips the other morning on one of those magical bright January days, I felt blessed to have the opportunity to be in the field, and grateful
to the earth for giving us this amazing food. Don’t we have the responsibility, now more than ever to do what we can to protect this planet and our health?
As always thanks for your support.
Kenneth