Yes, what is food sustainability?
There are things that can and does continue on and on, they simply never stop. The reason it continues is that it is workable, it does not cause problems along the way which later ends up working against it.
Simple examples to make the point would be if you throw wrapping paper and anything else you discard on the street rather than in a proper location such as a dumpster, others would need to clean up after you or the street would end up a mess. Which would eventually lead to attracting rats and other vermin. It would attract more garbage and causing ever more problems.
Or, if you always offered a friendly and helping hand to your community whenever you could, that would lead to goodwill and others helping you when you needed it. It would set a good example and other would follow.
The first example is clearly not a sustainable way, whereas the second is.
When an activity is in harmony with everything else and it is in turn helped by the environment you could say it is contributing to the survival of the environment.
Growing tropical plants in a cold environment would be another example of not being sustainable. They require a hot humid climate which without it, would make it very hard or impossible to grow.
Nature has a wonderful design that when left alone will survive just fine by itself.
We on the other hand wish to conquer our environment, make it just the way we like it to be. Which does not have to be wrong, it’s actually very good to be in control of ones environment. But what does that mean?
Being in control does not necessarily mean you bend things backwards and eventually stress it beyond it’s capability of bending, thereby breaking it. Requiring more and more work to just to keep up.
There is good control and bad control.
Yelling at people who are already listening is normally bad control as force is only needed to get their attention, once you have it you back off. You communicate with a person on their level of reality which would allow you to have positive control. For example, martial arts are mostly based on utilizing the existing momentum and to simply redirect it, not directly stopping it head on. That is an example of good control.
Growing things which naturally grow in that environment makes it easier. But there are more to the equation. When you only consider one very localized thing and ignore everything else it tends to end up not very successful in the long term. In other words something is missing. When things are not working out as intended you can say that there is a lie there, the lie being one or more missing datum. If you had all the data needed and how to do it, it would work, would it not?
So how much is needed?
When we engage upon an activity it is handy to see how that fits into the overall picture. By understanding how the activity does or does not fit, we can predict the success rate of our activity.
When talking about, for example, growing food we have a number of factors that immediately comes to play. As a starter we have climate with temperature, humidity, the soil, it’s pH value, wind, and the directions, animals and insects not to mention other humans and then change and rate of change on each of the above. They can each play a vital role on the outcome of growing food. If the food is an animal then even more factors come into play.
Food sustainable means it can go on and on forever. To reach that type of success you will do well to consider how it affects everything in your immediate environment, the environment beyond that and then on the whole grand scheme of the planet as it will in turn affect you. If all are ignoring others we do it at our own peril as it does come back to bite us.
Are you using something that is not natural part of life? Such as chemicals to help food grow? What is the short and long term impact of those chemicals on your immediate environment and the larger picture? Where does it go when you spray or pour it? What does it affect, maybe your soil, the ground water, other living things? What changes are you actually making when applying those changes?
Thinking very locally, such as just yourself or the tree you are growing is likely to create other longer term problems, as we have seen with things such as DDT, a chemical thought to be very helpful but is now banned due to the high toxic content. It is not usually easy to be aware of, never mind understand all these factors. But they do come into play!
We like to think of ourselves as being more valuable than destructive. We help our neighbors and maybe that stranger who dropped something. However it requires a bit more understanding of how things work than simply following others lead as that will end up with people who don’t know or understand leading others afoul. Kind of like the lemmings that follow each other off the cliff. Neither knowing what is actually going on, but continuing in some direction because everyone else does. Trust me doing something because others do it is not a safe way to go as many can and often definitely are wrong at the expense of their own success and survival.
We need to have a better grasp about how creating and supporting sustainable methods will improve life conditions and avoid following clueless, and maybe unintentional, leaders off the proverbial cliff. Educate our self, be in control of our own future and survival.
Fortunately one such piece of technology is in existence and is called Permaculture, from permanent culture. A way of growing that is based on coexisting with the natural environment that surrounds us.
Go to growpermaculture.com and get in control of your food supply!
