Clean energy from our roof, and climate change…

by Kenneth Keavey

When it comes to growing food we need water, and not too much but certainly not too little, between May and September 2018 we had the direst summer ever. We had a water deficit here on our farm. We had parched ground that went down 18 inches, never in my lifetime or in my dad’s lifetime had we seen such a thing.

Our planet is burning, it seems like we are walking in an alternate universe, there is so little talk about the climate crisis, as today COP29 finishes. Three weeks ago, Spain was devastated by the worst flooding on record, did you see it? A year’s worth of rain fell in less than half a day in some regions, killing at least 205 people.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We have seen Europe burn in two successive summers. The impact that this changing climate will have and is having on our food supply will be immense.

The science is clear, and it makes sense, warming oceans mean more water and energy in the air, hence bigger wind and more rain. Last year I remember swimming in the sea off Galway and the water was hot! Another once off. An unheard-of marine heatwave caused an increase of 5C in sea water temperature. These “once off” events are happening more often, the extremes are becoming normalised.

We are not immune here in Ireland either, thankfully we have been spared the worst, or maybe better to say we have been spared the extremes. But how about the relentless rain? I know there will be many who smile and say of course it rains this is Ireland, but this is on a whole new level. It started raining in June 2023 and it didn’t stop here until the end of August 2024. It prevented us getting into the fields to plant, It delayed harvest, it reduced yields, increased disease, it has had a very serious impact. July 2023 was the wettest July ever recorded here in Ireland, EVER!

Why is all of this change happening so fast? We all know the answer to this, we are putting too much greenhouse gases at too fast a rate into the atmosphere. Of course, there are natural variations in the climate but over the last 11700 years we have been blessed to live in a relatively stable climate. This is all on the cusp of changing, but why? Why must we destabilise a planetary system that has allowed us to prosper, to have such abundance like never before?

There is only one reason when clean energy solutions are staring us in the face: GREED. The fossil fuel companies are determined to keep us on this path of planetary overheating. 57 fossil fuel producers have been responsible for 80% of all global CO2 emissions. Of course we need energy, but we can change to clean energy, and we are.

There is such hope in renewable energy, we have these amazing natural resources that are clean and do not pour warming gases into an already overheated atmosphere, why wouldn’t we do it? What is the downside? There is none that I can see.

In 2018 with the help of a crowd funding campaign we got enough money together to install a 10KW solar panel array. Two years ago, we borrowed to increase this and finally with the aid of a grant from the Department of agriculture we installed a further 20KW array this week. I am so excited to have finally taken this step, which brings us one step closer to creating our energy here locally from the sun and becoming carbon neutral. There are so many sheds on farms all over Ireland, and there is good support from the government, if you are in agriculture, surely it is worth a look?

Producing our food locally and harvesting and being able to store it in fridges that are being run by the sun makes me feel very happy. What makes me feel even happier is that there are people like you who believe that taking these steps are critical to protecting our planet.

I can only say, at this time of great change in the world, you are needed now more than ever.

We can only ever take these steps because you support us.

Thank you.

Kenneth

Our Christmas Shop is OPEN

by Kenneth Keavey

We are delighted to announce that our 2024 Christmas Shop is now open and accepting orders for Christmas week.

We have a wonderful selection of Christmas Veg Boxes, Chocolates, Wines, Gift Vouchers and an array of other Organic Christmas Goodies! Check out some of the highlights of our Christmas offering below and detailed instructions on how to smoothly place your Christmas order through our online store.  If you would like to celebrate local Irish organic food this Christmas, and support local organic Irish farms, and keep chemicals off your Christmas dinner plate, and be blown away my the amazing tastes and flavour of freshly harvested vegetables, then one of our Christmas boxes is exactly what you need. These boxes are jam packed full of as much Irish organic produce as we could get our hands on from our farm and other small Irish organic farmers. From our own amazing parnsips, to organic brussels sprouts grown right here in Galway to fantastic floury potatoes, to carrots that taste like carrots used to taste! These boxes for your Christmas order will be delivered direct to your door anywhere in Ireland on the 23rd of December as fresh as can be and exactly in time for your Christmas preparations. Read on for more info. Please get our order in as early as possible to ensure availability and to help us planning our harvest and harvest from our other Irish farmers. Christmas Order Cutoff & Delivery Days As Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday this year, we’re delivering a little differently so that everyone will receive their organic goodies in time for the festive celebrations!


We will be delivering as normal from Monday 16th December to Saturday 21st December. You can order a regular delivery for this week. CHRISTMAS BOXES WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR DELIVERY ON THESE DATES.
We will be running a dedicated Christmas Delivery run on Monday 23rd December. All Christmas Boxes and regular items can be ordered for delivery on this day. Orders must be placed by 10am on Friday 20th December. Early ordering is advised to ensure we can fulfil your order, and it helps us with harvesting and planning.

 Order Process for Christmas Deliveries

Once Off Orders: You can navigate to our full Christmas selection here. Our four set Christmas boxes can only be ordered for delivery on 23rd December. You can order any items in addition to the Christmas boxes from our regular store for Christmas delivery. There are a few exceptions that are mentioned below.  When placing your Christmas order you will see the Order Type option at checkout for ‘Christmas Delivery 23rd December.’ Make sure this is ticked if you are ordering for Christmas. It will be pre-ticked if you have a Christmas Box in your order. Restricted items – some items such as milk and yoghurt will not be available for delivery on 23rd December. There are also certain seasonal items like Irish broccoli that you cannot order for Christmas week as they will not be in season by then. Any of these items will be automatically removed from your cart at checkout.

Subscription & Repeat Order Customers: If you are due a delivery on the week of 16th December, your order will be shipped as normal. If you would like a Christmas delivery please do not try and place your Christmas order through your account – this will not be possible. Please log out of your account and place your Christmas order as a one-time GUEST order. Even though you will be prompted to log in at checkout with your email address, please do not log in. We are closed from Tuesday 24th December until Monday 6th January. There will be no deliveries during this period so please stock up before then! For repeat order customers, your order will be automatically skipped these weeks and it will restart on the week of 6th January.  If you have any questions about how to set up an order for Christmas week or how to manage your recurring orders over the Christmas period, please send our customer care team an email on info@greenearthorganics.ie or give them a call on 091 793 768 / 01 460 0467. 

I was never going to be a Franciscan monk…

by Kenneth Keavey

I must have been 13 years old when I started working as a helper gardener with the Franciscan monastery in Corrandulla, and no this was not to be my path! It was purely a means to an end for a young lad and to be fair I had an interest in working outdoors and with plants.

The monastery had glass houses and a walled garden, it was amazing and unheard of back then in the mid 80’s. There were tomato plants in those glass houses. I cannot tell you how unbelievable it was to see tomatoes growing in Galway back then. One job I remember in particular was using a knapsack sprayer for the first time. This is a sprayer that you put on your back. The head Gardener filled up the sprayer and I was given the job of spraying the tomatoes, I was told the spray was for the plants and that was it, and off I went to do my job.

The tomatoes were doing really well, so I sprayed the plants thinking I was doing some good. The day finished and I remember it was a Friday, and I went home. On my return to work on Monday I was greeted with a less than happy monk, the plants were all dying, I guess he added the wrong chemical to the mix, it was quite probable it was Roundup. Since Roundup’s introduction in 1974, weeds have out paced the ability of chemicals to control their presence. Superweeds are now well documented such as Palmer amaranth. The chemical company’s response has been to increase the application rate of the said chemical or/and merge two herbicides such as Glyphosate and Dicamba, the second of which is now banned again.

These increased toxic cocktails are not a step in the right direction.

The entomologist Robert van den Bosch coined the term “pesticide treadmill,” a concept referring to the slow escalation in the potency of the chemicals needed to control pests and maintain crop yield. The challenge of course though is in a world now reliant more and more on GMO seeds and heavy doses of one single herbicide, how do farmers in this system produce food when it fails as it is now.

There are different possibilities, but there is little doubt that the years of cheap commodity crops being raised to feed animals may be coming to an end.

The number one reason that organic food is more expensive than conventional food is the labour required to manage weeds. Spraying a field with a chemical is easy and cheap. Having said all of that the potential benefits of moving away from chemical agriculture towards a more holistic approach to food, can be financially viable. The costs associated with less sickness, increased biodiversity, less pollution, clean water, clean soil and healthier food; these hidden costs of the impact of our current approach to agriculture could then be redistributed fairly to farmers to protect our amazing planet. Like the tomatoes in the green house, it was as I know today completely possible to grow these phenomenal plants without any synthetic chemicals whatsoever.

As always thanks for your support.

Kenneth

Over €400 m worth of vegetables imported…

by Kenneth Keavey

Over €400 million worth of vegetables were imported into Ireland in 2023, that is an increase of 17% in value and 6% in volume since 2022.

Last week we reviewed our farm accounts, and the picture painted was not one that brought joy to the heart, it rarely is unfortunately. The fundamentals of growing vegetables means that the price paid does not cover the costs of production, so far this year we are carrying a significant loss on our farm.

Whilst we as a nation seem to be importing more and more fresh produce we are losing more and more of our growers. There is no escaping the fact that as the industry has been left vulnerable and right on the edge by the price paid by supermarket buyers. Smaller growers have exited the industry, and this has been compensated for by the larger grower here in Ireland.

However, this is no longer the case as we all have heard the familiar story at this stage as the cost of inputs has risen over the last number of years and the decline of people wanting to work in the industry is critical. A number of bigger growers have also closed their doors for good. It is not an unreasonable path to take as why would you stay in business when you are losing money, and you have very little control over your income as prices are set by external buyers. These import figures come at the same time as our minister for agriculture states “it is important to consider agrifood imports in the context of corresponding exports.

Ireland recorded a total agri-food trade surplus of more than €5 billion in 2023”. This means we exported lots and lots of meat and dairy and imported lots of vegetables and fruit, but interestingly we also imported lots of cereal based animal feed to generate this trade surplus.

But our high reliance on imports when it come to our vegetable supply means that when there are shortages as a result of drought or other climate shocks which are getting more and more likely due to climate change then we will not be at the top of the priority list when it comes to supply. Right now, we are starting our farm planning for next year. We will also be talking to other Irish growers that supply us with produce and agreeing volumes and prices, for next year, prices that are always fair.

Since 2006 when we sold our first locally grown organic vegetable the planning of our farm has always been something that has been very close to my heart, but after 19 years of growing vegetables with only a handful of those years break even, it does leave you scratching your head when you just can’t make the numbers add up. We have always persevered and will continue to do so, but we can only ever do this and support the nearly 40 people that currently work in our farm and business with your support.

So as always thank you.

we won a national organic award!

by Kenneth Keavey

You have heard the story about the frog in the pot of boiling water? He didn’t even notice, did he? and then it was too late, well it seems at least for now we are not that frog.

Minister of State, Pippa Hackett, Jim O’Toole, CEO Bord Bia and Kenneth Keavey, Green Earth Organics withat Bord Bia’s National Organic Awards which took place today at an awards ceremony this morning in the Bord Bia Global Hub, Dublin. Green Earth Organics was announced as the winner of the Direct to Consumer Excellence Award. For more information visit bordbia.ie

There are few wins in agriculture, it is a tough job, and retail as a small business selling fresh produce, is probably just about as challenging as it gets. But last week we won, and we won on the national level, making us one of only seven companies to receive a national organic award and we are delighted, over the moon in fact. It was amazing to receive the recognition that we are indeed getting some bits right.

It is only through the sheer determination, hard work and dedication of the people that work and support Green Earth Organics that we were able to come top of our category and receive such a prestigious accolade. To be in the same room with some of the big powerhouses of retail and agriculture such as Flahavans and Dunnes Stores and to come away with an award for best in category “Direct to Consumer” was overwhelming. It was a double win. Coming off the back of the two worst growing years in at least our 18-year history, and a retail environment where it is next to impossible to compete and succeed with the backdrop that the supermarkets paint, that we won. It is encouragement that couldn’t have come at a better time. I will forego modesty for this moment, it was an amazing achievement, and one that we are proud of and will relish. It is rare to know that you are not the frog in the boiling water, you know the story.

The awards showed us that we are not that frog. There have been plenty of times in the last 24 months, were we certainly felt like the water was heating, the increased costs of doing business and farming, the ravaging of our climate through man made emissions that is exacerbating our ability to grow crops. The difficulty in competing in a landscape where fresh produce is devalued and used as loss leaders. Throw into the mix six months of other challenges of our own making a new IT system that very nearly broke us, and you have the perfect storm.

For all of that, we have never been more committed to our mission of creating a more sustainable food system, one that respects biodiversity through the elimination of the use of chemicals and through the production of local food, to reduce our contribution to man-made climate breakdown.

It is through your support that we get to do this to stand up for the values: to protect our planet, and our land, and biodiversity, and to reduce plastic pollution and to ensure our food is free from chemicals.

As Margret Meade stated you are those citizens.“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Kenneth

We won a national organic award!

by Kenneth Keavey

This blog has two parts this week, the first bit was an unexpected happy moment that occurred only yesterday:

We won a national organic award! We won the best “direct to the consumer” award and we are delighted. Thank you so much to Bord Bia and to all the judges for looking at our business and for giving us the thumbs up. It is absolutely a credit to everybody who works at Green Earth Organics that we won, the hard work and dedication, innovation and integrity of the whole team on our farm made achieving the award possible.

Against the backdrop of two very challenging growing seasons, and many growers opting to get out of the business altogether, the award couldn’t have come at a better time.

So, thank you to everybody who works here, thanks to all you our customers who keep us in business, and thank you to the judges for recognising it all. We are very grateful.

In Ireland in 2021 there were 3 million kgs of pesticides applied, and in that same year the dept of agriculture tested 1,039 fruit, vegetable and fungi samples mostly imported and found than 60% had detectable limits of pesticides, and 5.3% had higher levels that what was deemed safe.

It has always been clear to me from a young age that spraying chemicals indiscriminately in nature was wrong.  Now I can’t say I understood why I felt this way or why I felt that our planet needed to be protected from ourselves but that is the way I was programmed.

As a scientist I understand the role science plays in our lives and in facilitating the production of food for so many people. But we have been to an extent conditioned to think that we need all these chemicals to grow food, it is not unlike the pharmaceutical industries desire to have us taking preventative maintenance doses of some of their drugs for life.

So here is the thing we have a perfectly amazing way to reduce our chances of getting sick. Being healthy indeed can be our default setting, but it seems that not unlike our natural world we too have developed a deep sense of physical and mental malaise. We are in a word not well.

The common scientific perception is that chemicals in small doses are not harmful to life. There certainly is some validity in this statement and this piece is not about engendering fear, far from it.  It is about increasing awareness about how our food choices can have a remarkable positive effect on our lives and our environment.

So, taking low level doses on a daily basis of chemicals in our diet is not how at least I want to live my life. I get it that the scientists use terms like MRLS (maximum residue limit) to reassure us that our food is are, after all that is their job. But is it really? And how do they decide and who is they anyway? Well, they use all sorts of things like acute toxicity and extrapolations and lifetime consumption assumptions.

Talk of the gut Microbiome is everywhere these days and rightly so, its importance is only beginning to be understood. There is little doubt that the myriad of beneficial bacteria that inhabit our intestines play a major role in our health, from depression to inflammation.

So, it’s with interest that I discovered a couple of articles that link the constant imbibing of pesticides into our bodies not only damage our cells but also all the myriad of microbes that live in our gut and you guessed it it is not a positive feedback loop we are talking about here. You can if you are inclined read the article here.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9279132/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-023-01450-9

It is no coincidence then that these pesticides that kill plants or organisms and damage the microbial life in the living soil also damage and kill the good bacteria in our gut.

As always thank you for your support.

Kenneth

Why are all the Irish vegetable farmers disappearing?

by Kenneth Keavey

I remember distinctly our first year of growing, which was 20 years ago, it was before we officially started our business, it was my first year back in Ireland after spending 11 years in the UK, it was on a small vegetable patch in my grandads back garden, it was amazingly rewarding and to get food at the end of it was a bonus.

We have been growing organic vegetables here on our farm in Galway for nearly 20 years.

We have seen many changes over that time, but something that has never changed has been our commitment to sustainable local food. We are Irish and grow Irish and support Irish and always have since we started delivering our first boxes in 2004.

Something that has changed since then is the price that the supermarket pays for and charges for fresh produce in the supermarket, which has decreased. Since 2007 the average price paid for 1kg of fresh vegetables has decreased from €1.87/kg in December 2007 to €1.46 in August 2020. This represents a 21% decrease in price paid for fresh produce over 13 years when everything else has been going up.

Back in 2007 the minimum wage was €8.65, that has since risen to €13.50 in 2025, representing a 56% increase in the cost of labour alone. This is one cost of many that has increased, fertiliser, energy, packaging, general farm inputs have all increased dramatically over that time, and yet the retailers have consistently and unrelentingly driven down the price paid for produce.

It is also a fallacy to state that the retailer takes the hit on the price promotions in stores, there and it is the added impact of driving down the price a farmer can get for his or her produce elsewhere.

There is a glimmer of change driven by consumer demand for Irish produce, where Irish producers can now demand a little more for what they are producing. The reality when you walk into any of these large supermarket stores is that they are promoting supporting Irish when mostly the produce is imported, have a look at our video or check it out for yourself when you are next in a supermarket.

The pressure and race to the bottom have driven a lot of good growers out of business, and now as the supermarkets feel the pressure from the consumer and sense the marketing opportunities to show themselves as the saviour of the industry, they are promoting with all their vigour the support for the Irish vegetable farmer.

It’s the sad reality that after 20 years of hollowing out the industry they now want to turn the other cheek, but only ever so slightly, not too much, and not enough in many cases. Any increase in price paid must still be fought for tooth and nail, and after years of devaluing the produce it looks like a very poor effort indeed.

But any change in mindset is being driven by one thing and that is completely down to you,

you the consumer demanding more local Irish produce.

We have growers all over the country of Ireland, from Joe Kelly in Mayo, To Padraigh Fahy and Una Ni Bhroin in Beechlawn in Galway, to Enda Hoban and Orla Burke in Galway, Audrey and Mick in Millhouse organic farm, Cameron in Battlemountain organic farm, Philip in Coolnagrower organic farm in Offally, Richard Galvin with his Irish organic apples in Waterford. Banner berries with their amazing blueberries in Clare, Donnelly with his organic cherries in Dublin, then there is Garynahinch mushrooms, McArdles mushrooms, and leeks from Roy Lyttle in Antrim, plus Joachim and Jeanette in Galway also. And of course, our own amazing organic farm where Emmanuel and his team grow a whole range of fresh Irish organic produce. All of these growers are Irish, all are organic, and all are committed to growing sustainable produce. With your support we get to bypass the juggernaut of the supermarket buying machine, and all the damage it leaves in its wake, and we get to support ourselves and all these amazing other growers, but only and very much because of your support.

Thank you.

Kenneth

Only 60 field vegetable growers left in Ireland…

by Kenneth Keavey

In 1998 there were over 400 primary field scale growers in Ireland, now there are less than 60.  I imagine if you went back a further 30 years, this number would double again.

There was a time when a potato or vegetable grower could deal directly with local supermarkets, this allowed local produce to be sold at local supermarkets. But since the advent of central distribution, the flow of produce has been restricted to only three or four large distributors that supply the supermarkets, putting a swift end to local supply chains.

Growers had little choice, either consolidate, increase production and compete or go out of business. But as the supermarket model of procurement was centralised their power increased and there was little power left in the hands of the farmer.

Farmers that scaled up to meet the demand, usually with very significant investment (you need tractors, sheds, washing facilities to grow vegetables in scale), were left at the mercy of unscrupulous supermarket buyers. When farmers were then faced with propositions from supermarkets to drop their prices or to fund promotions to reduce the price of their produce on supermarket shelves they had little choice but to do so.

On a smaller scale but not dissimilar to the bigger growers above, I remember distinctly our experience of dealing with supermarkets. We had spent several years building up business with certain supermarkets and we were selling well in several stores. Customers had gotten used to our shelf in the supermarket, but then bit by bit, own branded supermarket imported produce started to appear next to our produce.

One Monday morning as we called to get our usual order, an order we depended on, we were to discover that the rules of the game had changed. A new fresh food buyer was put in place, and he demanded that we reduce our prices, stock the shelves ourselves, and be responsible for any waste they incurred due to lack of sales of produce they had bought from us.

We never supplied that shop again or for that matter any of the other 12 supermarket stores we used to supply.

The supermarkets continue to put pressure on growers to fund their loss leaders’ campaigns, they expect farmers to shoulder part or all the burden of this cost.

But these cheap prices lead to the perception in the eyes of the consumer that freshly grow produce is of little value. Ironically this can inadvertently lead to food waste, nearly one third of all food produced is thrown in the bin, which in the end will cost us more. If we were to pay a little more for our food, maybe we wouldn’t waste so much and ironically actually be better off.

So, as it stands the supermarkets, the kings and gatekeeps of this seemingly inexhaustible and abundant supply of produce are more to blame for the decline of the Irish vegetable industry than anything else. The bottom line is always the bottom line, and if the farmers had a model that was financially viable, they would still be here, I guess we can safely say they did not.

as always thank you for your support.

Kenneth

We all get sick sometimes

by Kenneth Keavey

We all get sick sometimes, but when something serious comes along how we define what is important to us can change significantly. There is little doubt that without our health we have very little. All it takes is to be laid up in bed with a serious dose of the flu to know that being sick can be serious. The prevalence of chronic disease in our current age is frightening, it is unfortunately a reflection on how we as a society have evolved. Our eating habits, working habits, exercising habits, have steadily changed and not for the better over the last 50 years.


But what has happened to our food is very concerning. Obviously, the ultra-processed
rubbish that is designed to be irresistible is very unhealthy, and we would in all seriousness
be better off eating cardboard. But it is often said that it is not what we do occasionally that
is the problem it is what we do every day that causes the benefit or the damage. Those
things we eat everyday are one of the keys to our health.
Our bodies are amazing machines and when we are young, we can cope at least for a
while with just about anything, but as we grow older things start to take a greater tole on our
health. So it is with our food, at least in my opinion the chemicals on conventional food must
over time do damage, they hurt us on the inside and they do it gradually over years. I
remember years ago my biology teacher telling me if you irritate something for long enough
you will cause cancer.
I know I am fortunate and can afford to consume organic food as I have it all around me, I
don’t take that for granted. Ironically, for health reasons I have a restricted diet and one of
the things I can eat are blueberries. Over the last couple of weeks, we haven’t been able to
source organic blueberries as we do not buy airfreighted produce. So, I bought some
conventional blueberries in a shop. I think they tasted a little odd, I ate them anyway. But I
decided to investigate this a little and here is what I found:
In 2024 Pesticides were found on 90 percent of conventional blueberry samples, compared
to 81 percent in 2014.  80 percent of samples had two or more pesticides, versus 70
percent in 2014. A single sample of blueberries could have up to 17 different pesticide
residues, compared to 13 in 2014. Reference here.

This information is relevant to the US, but many of the blueberries on Irish supermarket
shelves come from all over the world and could have the same residues. The most
troubling pesticides found on blueberries were phosmet and malathion, chemicals known as
organophosphate insecticides. They kill many types of insects and are toxic to the human
nervous system.  

Not only are conventional blueberries on the list of items to source organically if you can,
but green beans, peppers, and kale were also singled out. We have sourced organic
blueberries again, the first new European harvest from Spain. I write this piece to once
again highlight the difference between conventional food production and organic. Don’t we
deserve to known about these unseen extras?
So anyway, I am looking forward to getting the first new season organic non airfreighted
blueberries next week. They won’t be as good as the Irish ones we had a few weeks ago,
but they will be pretty good.


As always thank you for your support


Kenneth

Will you come down the rabbit hole with me?

by Kenneth Keavey

Don’t take this the wrong way but I love chemicals.

So much so that I dedicated nearly 15 years of my life to studying and working with them, I worked for years on trying to figure how to make a new antibiotic, imagine life without antibiotics?

Without chemicals our life would be so much different and not for the better. But here is one other thing I learned whilst trying to develop a selective drug, a drug that would not have any side effects, and it was this: A 100% selective drug was impossible. Impossible as all chemicals taken into the body interact with different receptors in different ways and have side effects. This silver bullet is the holy grail of pharmaceutical research and is still some way off.

Have you heard of polyphenols? If you are interested in your health, you will certainly have heard this term. They are powerful antioxidants found in plants and may have a very positive effect on our health. More on these later.

So, in the super controlled environment of pharmaceutical development a drug that does not have side effects is impossible to produce. So, who in their right mind decided that we should take toxic chemicals and start spraying them indiscriminately on our food?

In the conventional food world now, we have farmers spraying nonselective chemicals on our food to kill insects and other plants. These chemicals kill both the target (ie the aphid) but also other insects flying around, devasting biodiversity.

Then there is the issue of these chemical being that toxic that they harm life, what do they do to us when we consume them on our food? Nothing good for sure, and there is plenty of literature out there on the damage they do.

So, let’s keep going down the rabbit hole now. Take this a step further, as some of these chemicals are “systemic” that means they are absorbed into the plant, brought inside and there they reside until harvest and eventual consumption on our dinner plates. Washing will do little to remove these as they are inside the produce.

So, we have these non-selective, systemic toxic chemicals being sprayed on our food and they are hurting us and destroying biodiversity. But there is an often-overlooked further issue here, and that brings us back to polyphenols.

These amazing compounds are produced by plants to defend themselves against disease and pests, these powerful antioxidants protect the plants, and guess what?  They protect us too, when we consume them. But here’s the issue, when plants are sprayed to remove pests then the plants have little need to produce polyphenols so not only are we getting chemically contaminated food, but the actual composition of the food is also being changed by the application of these chemicals, isn’t that just crazy?

It is so easy to ignore all of the above, as when we see produce on the supermarket shelf it looks amazing (and it is without doubt better to eat fresh produce than not), but if there is an option at all, and I understand for some this is not possible (But you can always try our rescue box, which is always sold at a greatly reduced price) then choosing organic is just always, always going to be better for you, if you can choose local organic then there are all the other benefits also of supporting a local food economy.

So please for your own sake and the sake of our fragile planet, if you can at all choose organic.

As always thank you for your support. 

Kenneth