search Sign In or Join! HOME DIY ORGANIC GARDENING HOMESTEADING & LIVESTOCK REAL FOOD NATURAL HEALTH RENEWABLE ENERGY GREEN HOMES NATURE & ENVIRONMENT GREEN TRANSPORTATION LAND FOR SALE CONTACT US CUSTOMER SERVICE SHOPPING MAGAZINE NEWSLETTERS BLOGS RSS FAIRS HOT TOPICS >> • Grow carrots • Summer salads • DIY trellis • Cool it! • Compost Mother Earth News Blogs > Organic Gardening ORGANIC GARDENING Get dirty, have fun and grow more food with great gardening tips from real-life gardeners. inShare Russians Prove Small-Scale Organic Can Feed the World 6/6/2013 4:26:00 PM By Natural Society Tags: Russian farming, small-scale farming, how to end world hunger, feed the planet, Russian gardening, Natural Society Photo by Fotolia/Remy Masseglia Reposted with permission by Natural Society. If you’ve already been through an economic collapse, you might know a thing or two about how to feed your family with little money. More importantly, you might know how to do it without pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMO seed. On a total of about 20 million acres managed by over 35 million Russian families, Russians are carrying on an old-world technique, which we Americans might learn from. They are growing their own organic crops — and it’s working. According to some statistics, they grow 92% of the entire countries’ potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of its fruit, and feed 71% of the entire population from privately owned, organic farms or house gardens all across the country. These aren’t huge Agro-farms run by pharmaceutical companies; these are small family farms and less-than-an-acre gardens. A recent report from Agro-ecology and the Right to Food says that organic and sustainable small-scale farming could double food production in the parts of the world where hunger is the biggest issue. Within five to 10 years we could see a big jump in crop cultivation. It could also take the teeth out of GMO business in the US. According to World Watch, we can also farm fish responsibly and feed the planet. Sustainable fish farms along with organic gardening are becoming the new agro-business. “Farmed seafood has certain advantages over wild fish in meeting modern demand. For a global marketplace that demands increasingly predictable products—uniform-sized fillets available year-round, free of the vagaries of weather or open-ocean fishing—fish farming delivers this predictability. Farms are also becoming more productive, raising fish at a lower cost and expanding the potential market.” (Brian Halwell, Farming Fish for the Future). As long as this is done in sustainable ways without GMO salmon, we really can feed over 7 billion people. Unfortunately, not all of us want to utilize organic farming. Purchasing 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock in 2012, Bill Gates is just one key figure who argues that GMOs are an absolute necessity in order to fight global starvation. Of course along with ‘saving the world from starvation’, GMO crops also bring along a large number of unwanted health and environmental effects. This isn’t even considering the fact that long term, we truly don’t know what kind of impact this will have on the earth on a major scale. Though we do know once everything is GMO, it will be virtually impossible to go back to a natural world. Check out Natural Society’s YouTube Channel for some recent videos on the March Against Monsanto event occurring in Philadelphia, PA. The videos offer some educational information along with a look at how people everywhere reject Monsanto and genetically modified organisms. Say goodbye to GMOs. We don’t need them. “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” says Olivier De Schutter. Photo by Fotolia/Remy Masseglia Read more: motherearthnews/organic-gardening/russians-prove-small-scale-organic-can-feed-the-world-zb0z1306zsal.aspx#ixzz2bGdVcnqA
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 07:47:49 +0000