I read this thread in bits a pieces ... But my two cents
Farming has to be integrated ... In the sense you should do agriculture / have cattle Goats included / Poultry depending upon the land you have.
1. Planting Agathi Trees around your field and CO - 3 / CO - 4 will take care of the green fodder requirement for your cattle. Since you are doing agriculture there will be plenty of dry fodder available. 2. The animal waste will take care your bio fertilizer which you are in need of, provided you save all your animal waste for fertilizer rather than using it for Vaasal Thelikkaradhu / Veedu Mozhugaradhu
apeeet...ala vidunga sami. ithukkuthan ara goraya irunthu scientist kooda argue panna koodathungarathu....
does make sense, but genetics....I am not sure....all the other things you mentioned, we dont go against the nature. Just extending it. Medicines are by products of already existing things in nature. Nothing is modified deliberately, right?
And first things first....naan Satish and there is another Satheesh....Okva..
> In one programme, she wandered through the kitchen of the Udupi Sri > Krishna Temple, stirring dal and throwing coriander in sambar - and in > the next segment she was cooking and tasting fish; highly incongruous
> and inappropriate.
You saw that programme. she said she was the first woman to enter the kitchens of that temple. but i enjoyed the programme. and in this spain programme the dish was chicken rice and prawn with a lot of saffron cooked over a open fire in fish and chicken stock. and she kept tasting it in various stages of cooking.
> > Also read somewhere that, it was Robert Clive who, understood this > Indian system and cleverly created 1000's of cow butchering centers > (with capacity of killing 10000 cows per day) and started killing cows > in huge numbers so that modern fertilizers from Europe can be imported > to India. This is a double edged strategy, to increase their business > as well as to break the backbone of Indian (Hindu) system of life.
Sathish where do you here all this. i have collected a huge info on clive of india for a biography but never heard of this stuff. first did he have time for all this. my reseach says he was perhaps one guy here who was fully occupied with foes both on indian and british side trying to get at him his wedding in chennai was one small break in this pandemonium that was his career here.
i finished agriculture degree in late eighties. it was a terrible time. scientists like ms swaminathan who spear headed the green revolution dumped tonnes of urea and dap into the field had made a round about. they got awards for fertiliser based agriculture research and continued getting awards telling what a great mistake it was to have done so.
Sorry Satish :) (and btw, it's Arun .. not Dr. etc :))
In medicine also you are putting in things into your body that are not natural.. chemotherapy, radiation therapy, most drug molecules.. the way drug molecules work is to go and block some protein from doing it's job. So nothing natural about that. It is just in a mindset people have.. when one is sick, one just wants relief.. and doesn't want to ask about what exactly the medicine is.. you DO know that all drugs are tested on mice right? Thousands and thousands of mice are killed before one drug comes onto the market.. I have seen mice with tumor induced in them.. HUGE lumps on them.. that of course will take us into a whole different realm of what is ethical and what is not..
What I am saying is that we have been manipulating nature for a long time... Any cross-breeding or selective breeding is a manipulation of nature.
How many people are aware of a magazine called "Pasumai vikatan" from vikatan group? This magazine is a good place for the learning natural farming(I am not meaning organic farming).
Difference between organic products and natural products is that natural products marketing does not need a certifying authority, but organic products need a certificate from a certifying authority hence making it a costly option.
I am under the impression, cancer is man made - smoking, pollution, radiation - electromagnetic and nuclear; anyway the flavour of the day is 'back to nature'. Most of the diseases we suffer are traced to man made interventions. Everyone - from roof top swamijis to Harvard institute clamour for holistic living. All the cancer patients I know have died of 'pneumonia' and not cancer; the medication and chemotheraphy make them vulnerable to even minor infection; that is why you find in medical journals that cancer is curable and death rate due to cancer is less than 20%. At least in 4 cases I know, the cause of death is given as 'pneumonia'.
Nature can tolerate a small degree of abuse; the rivers got regenerated despite sewage of the villages drained into them. But when the amount of pollution exceded a critical mass, things have gone out of control. Large scale playing with nature will definitely harm the environment. Both quality of technology (and scope for misuse) and quantity of exposure will decide the outcome - whether it is good or bad. Sampath
. Most of the diseases we suffer are traced to man > made interventions.
of course yes and most of our survivals can be traced to human interventions,
lets look at it this way. if there wasnt so much health care or sufficient food the human population wont be so high. a man who lived 40 years at the turn of the century lives to be eighty now. he consumes twice as much food over a life time. we cant double the sown area. we can only increase yield. so green revolution became the greed revolution. venketesh
are
Everyone - from roof top swamijis to Harvard > institute clamour for holistic living. > All the cancer patients I know have died of 'pneumonia' and not cancer; > the medication and chemotheraphy make them vulnerable to even minor > infection; that is why you find in medical journals that cancer is > curable and death rate due to cancer is less than 20%. > At least in 4 cases I know, the cause of death is given as 'pneumonia'. > > Nature can tolerate a small degree of abuse; the rivers got regenerated > despite sewage of the villages drained into them. But when the amount of > pollution exceded a critical mass, things have gone out of control. > Large scale playing with nature will definitely harm the environment. > Both quality of technology (and scope for misuse) and quantity of > exposure will decide the outcome - whether it is good or bad. > Sampath > > --- In [email protected], "Arun Krishnan"
> > Things are changing now I think.. The demand for agri scientists is growing!
Hi I joined agriculture mainly because i was intereted in rural energy. and i think right now the demand for historical novelists is higher.....
anyway went to my college reunion, and though the bulk are teachers and scientists we had a handful in other fields. a parliament member, a police dsp, a top executive in coke etc.( and of course a lot of housewives)
absolutely.. our average life expectancy has grown tremendously over the last century. And that IS because of human intervention.. so I suppose people would still be dying from typhoid and small pox if we had not intervened.. is that ok? Let's not give polio vaccines then ,... why intervene with loving nature?:p
> > Sathish > where do you here all this. > i have collected a huge info on clive of india for a biography but > never heard of this stuff. > first did he have time for all this. > my reseach says he was perhaps one guy here who was fully occupied > with foes both on indian and british side trying to get at him > his wedding in chennai was one small break in this pandemonium that > was his career here. > > venketesh >
ellam internet than...vera enga...I too thought about it, because during Robert clives time, they were fighting for a foothold. May be I got the name wrong or its just another story on the internet... vara vara internetla etha padichalum nammabave mudiyala....
I slipped upon another interesting topic.Not sure whether I will have time to read fully. Will share with the group sometime later today.
Arun/Venkat and all, sorry to jump into this discussion so late but thanks to Hurricane Ike I just got my power back after 8 days. This is a very interesting/close to heart subject for me , am no bio scientist or agri grad but just a foodie and environment conscious person, that is all.
I am not hugely into organic food - or any other fad. But I do care about how my food tastes and what goes into it and must say that I can afford to care. I started caring many years ago when the quality of vegetables (and milk) in Bangalore declined rather obviously. Bangalore is very well known for juicy tasty veggies and fruit. Towards the time when I left the city for good (early 90s) most commercially sold veggies started tasting like plastic. House sparrows disappeared due to heavy usage of some pesticide and weeds that hugely promote allergies became rampant. In fact you cannot even walk a few steps in Bangalore without seeing weeds. I know little to nothing about organic food in India and how much it costs, just that pesticide based pollution and decline in vegetable taste is 100% real, not imaginary.
The taste of produce in US is what led me to adapt organic produce. A commercially grown tomato in America tastes 100% like plastic. Carrots like rubber. Organic carrots and tomotoes are awesome to taste. Yes expensive I don't disagree but getting to be more affordable, defnitely. I compare costs every week at the local commerical and organic food stores. If you shop smart you eat tasty food without spending a whole lot extra. Seeraga chamba..yes perhaps exotic rice. But can give Basmati a run for its money. Too bad nobody really popularized it.
Lastly on social issues..how viable is organic farming, how many people it can feed in long run and so on. To my sittravu, that is a veritable chicken and egg story only. To a starving person definitely a commercially grown tomato is a viable option and commerical farming has saved many from starvation. But would every person eat the same 'basic' that a starving person eats? And how about health effects of eating like that? Do I eat commercial and live with all the pollution caused by producing it, or do I try to do what I can, organic or otherwise?
Dear Malathi, It's taken me a while to realize a little of what you're like; You certainly are knowledgeable on so many subjects. I take it you live in the South USA ? I live in New England, where 'buy local, eat local' is a very popular slogan. Even though our summer growing season is short, we do have wonderful tomatoes, berries, summer squash, carrots, sweet corn & cucumbers. During winter, we have Potatoes, parsnips, winter squash, onions & beets laid up in root cellars. Our soil seems to be good for growing all these. Another slogan is : 'brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh' Farmstands around here are a great treat, and their produce has lots of flavor. People shopping in such places seem to be happier than the folks you see in malls & supermarkets. Many people in this part of the country are very concerned about global warming and are jumping right in to reduce their electricity and oil use. Let me know where you are, if you don't mind, and how organic foods are doing in your area. Let's get to know each other better, Kathie
Dear Kathie, thank you, am sort of a jack of all trades, when you say 'knowledgable in so many subjects' :)) But perhaps not ignorant generally speaking :)
The way you describe your locally grown produce makes my mouth water :) I live in Kentucky, ranked among the unhealthiest states in the nation. When I came here there was only one small local health food store that sold among vitamins and beauty products, a really small quantity of organic produce. After than Wild Oats and Whole Foods came in and now things have changed pretty dramatically. Lots of people shop health conscious, atleast here in Louisville. Although cost remains a fact that has led the Walmarts and Krogers to stock affordable organic produce , so it is actually a good thing!! Our farmers markets do well in summer but dont' somehow have the variety you describe. Or perhaps am too used to whole foods and expect too much :)
To me in many ways eating wholesome food is a journey back home :) We grew up that way in India, atleast in my home my grandmother grew most of our vegetables in the backyard, we had cows and milk/milk products were all home made too. Quite unimaginable in India now.
I have issues with people, lots of people including several indians who think of health food as a 'new age fad' and environmental concerns as 'exaggerated'. It is not at all a 'republican' thing, it is all over as it challenges the traditional beliefs of 'science' and lifestyle itself in a way. To this day you cannot talk to several Indians including my own dad on the ills and side effects of western medicine (just an example).
Am going on and on as always, sorry. Yes we should talk more. Have you read Madhur Jaffrey, Indian cookbook writer's memoir - Climbing the Mango Tree? I'd love to send you a copy. It is a treat on food and home made, healthy cooking and life of olden days.
Whoa.. Louisville eh?:) I was there in February this year for an interview.. got the job but finally decided to move back to India instead :)
Anyway, I understand the need to conserve and be environmentally friendly. I am that way too. I also completely agree with our need to reduce dependence on pesticides etc. The GM crops that are being researched into are mainly for that.. how to reduce pesticides.. how to reduce infection by pests.. how to boost yield/acre.. so unlike what is being made out.. agri-biotech firms are not creating franken-foods.. they are trying to solve a very real problem.
Like I said, organic food is not something everyone can afford.. and with the population exploding, we need to find ways to improve our yield.. there are different techniques being tried including molecular breeding as well as biotech food.