Page 19 - Living Aloha Magazine March/April 2017 Issue

to overlook this important detail. Joel said it takes a lot
of integrity and a very high ethical standard to grow
crops completely organically on all levels. There are also
certification standards that must be met annually. He
suggested it is beneficial to get to know your farmer and if
you instinctively don’t feel good about the farmer and their
practices, then to shop elsewhere.

Another option may be that each of us plant organic
food in our own back yards and not have to deal with
farmers at all. If everyone planted gardens instead of
having lawns then food would be plentiful. However,
not all of us have the knack for gardening or the time
to garden, as I found out when I helped my daughter
build and plant a large garden last summer. We spent
hundreds of dollars to terrace the land, prepare and enrich
the soil, plant the plants, install irrigation, put up trellises
and compost the garden only to have a tiny yield. Turns
out neither of us had the free time to tend the garden’s
needs such as: watering, weeding, eliminating bugs
and harvesting. There is an art to gardening intuitively
rather than mechanically, and with my busy schedule, I
never mastered that art. I did however, develop a deep
appreciation for farmers and for the care they give to their
crops. Conscious gardening takes both a commitment
to the environment and a willingness to work hand in
hand with Mother Nature as well as a desire to garden
successfully over time. As with any art, it takes practice.

Since most of us rely on farmers to grow our food, it is
important that we educate ourselves on the integrity of
different farming practices and choose to buy our veggies
and fruits from a reliable source. Although there is not
one right way to grow food, the farming practices that
work with sustaining the environment and not polluting
the earth are the most intuitively positive approaches
to growing food. Hopefully over time, more and more
people will be guided to tune into the needs of the
land and find complimentary ways of farming that can
sustain us all in a healthy way, for ultimately each of us is
responsible for the planet and for our ecosystem.
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MARCH–APRIL 2017 | Living Aloha FEATURES 19