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Very important topic! "Singing frogs farm" and "Ridgedale permaculture" are 2 of the best examples of how to farm commercially without any damage to the soil! Food quality is one of the main reasons why we moved from the city and started growing our own food in our homestead. And we try to follow example of those 2 farms as much as we can.

I will read up about them. Thanks for sharing.

You are incredibly lucky to have that opportunity! I am reasonably certain that there will be a massive trend towards self-sustainability in the future.

I guess it is the only way to really take control of our health.

Good on you! Do you share your daily routines, gardening practices etc? I would be interested to see. Any thoughts on water quality? Our water is pretty much distilled these days, with all the reverse osmosis etc.

You can be lucky too in that regard ;) there's even trend of urban farms in the cities (best example - Curtis Stone, but he's more oriented towards profit, not sustainability, but local food in the city cuts a lot of miles from food travels, so that's certainly helps). Also, i forgot to mention farming superstar - Jean-Martin Fortier. His book is amazing!!! From the practical standpoint. And in the past few years he worked on a "big" small scale farm, which is oriented towards sustainability. The farm is called "Ferme des Quatre-Temps". Curtis Stone (urban farmer) has a few cool videos about that farm in his youtube channel.
I'm not fluent in english, so blogging/vlogging is hard for me, but we do film a lot of stuff, that we put on our facebook page for our clients to see, how we are doing things and what practices we use when we grow food. I will for sure share some stuff in dtube and steemit too. But i want to share original content, so there will be max. 1 post/month with various experiments and thoughts about moving from city to the woods :)
Lithuania has great water! And a lot of it :) even in our capital Vilnius you can drink tap water. And it's quality is very good. In our homestead we have a well. And we mainly use water from it.
Move to Lithuania ;) we have great water, best internet in the world and you could buy homestead with a few acres for a few bitcoins :D

Your vids are looking more and more professional! The beginning sequence is gorgeous. And the animations explain things very clearly, and are laced with the right amount of humor. Very good job!

Thank you so much!! Really appreciate your kind words. I am glad we are on the right track... Hopefully, we will improve even more as time passes.

Yep that's pretty much it... a sort of vicious circle. Crops remove the nutrients from the soil, which we never fully replace with synthetic fertilisers, cause these only provide soil with NPK and in turn our food grows nutrient deficient, which means the quality of our diet declines over time. And we try to fix it by eating more, which has more of an adverse effect on our health actually, but the food market grows, cause farmer get paid by the weight... and our soils become poisoned and depleted of nutrients due to intensive farming practices.

Excellent summary, you are 100% correct. Farm produce should be monitored for nutritional quality. The results should then get factored into the price. Instead of only using weight, they could use Weight x 'Nutritional Score.'

The scores should then be made public on the packaging so people have the choice of purchasing the cheaper 'lower grade' produce or paying a premium for the top class stuff.

This would incentivize farmers to focus on quality as much as quantity as both factors would influence the price equally.

Governments could then also set a minimum nutritional standard in all foods.

The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives

  • His singular achievement, the thing he’ll be remembered for forever, was the development of a strain of high-yield, disease-resistant, semi-dwarf Mexican wheat, an achievement that more or less prevented a big part of the underdeveloped world from starving to death.

Very interesting article, thanks for sharing.

There is no disputing that GMO’s are incredible at producing high yield. The side effect, however, is soil which cannot keep up with that growth rate.

Because the plants derive their nutrients from the soils, we end up with de-nutrified crops.

And we are not even mentioning the toxicity of the herbicides and pesticides which GMO’s are designed to work with.

Everything which is made in a lab, has side effects. Every pharmaceutical drug can verify that. Why should lab designed seeds be any different?

So, while people may not be starving, they are definitely not thriving from these foods.

and yet...one billion people who would have starved to death...didn't.

That ’dwarf variety’ wheat, which that guy invented, is the same one which is subsidised by the Egyptian government.

Egypt happens to have one of the highest levels of obesity (70% in woman) and malnutrition in the same population.

So you have obese people who are also denitrified? The research on ’hidden hunger’ will explain the paradox.

This same population who are simultaneously fat and nutrient deficient, are having babies which are coming out deformed. Studies on the Limpopo in South-Africa and Egypt will verify their rates of abnormal births.

So despite all the subsidised wheat, that population is dying a slow death and the poor new-borns are destined for hardship.

We may keep people on life support with these methods, but, in no way are we keeping them healthy.

Looking at the facts: Non-communicable diseases relating to overweight and obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease etc. collectively, are killing more people each year than anything else. These diseases are not cause by lack of food, but, rather, from poor quality foods.

you seem to think that just letting them starve would have been the better course of action.
seems rather harsh.

No, that is the Assumption YOU have made of me.

I happen to think there are better ways of ensuring food security.

Fact: America Wastes 40% of all their food production per anum, which amounts to a whopping 38 000 000 Tons of produce!! A significant portion of this waste comes from fast-food and restaurant chains. All this waste could easily feed all the underprivileged in this world.

The focus is always skewed towards increasing production, but, never on making current systems more efficient.

Then again, it doesn't pay to sell less, but, instead, to sell more.
The same way, it's more lucrative to print more Dollars and drive inflation than fix the cause.

Don't be fooled; these systems were never put in place to save humanity or better our standards. The motives only go as far as the 'select few's' pockets.

To find the truth, one should stop reading the headlines and focus on the fine print.

That accent... hhahahaha. I think for once I'm actually better at someone at a redneck accent

🙈 It was a win-win for me. I was either going to pull it off and impress, or, fail the accent and make people laugh :)

Amazing production, wonderful shots, digestible information! You keep raising the bar of quality, mister! Keep it up!

Thank you!! Yea, we have decided to focus on quality over quantity. We figured that our work will have longevity this way. Thanks for your support.

I don't know. I have my doubts of the whole nutrient depletion thing. Is there any studies to back up this claim?

I use to believe this but I don't really see a difference when I eat nutrient dense food as compared to mass grown food.

Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?

The Organic Consumers Association cites several other studies with similar findings: A Kushi Institute analysis of nutrient data from 1975 to 1997 found that average calcium levels in 12 fresh vegetables dropped 27 percent; iron levels 37 percent; vitamin A levels 21 percent, and vitamin C levels 30 percent. A similar study of British nutrient data from 1930 to 1980, published in the British Food Journal,found that in 20 vegetables the average calcium content had declined 19 percent; iron 22 percent; and potassium 14 percent. Yet another study concluded that one would have to eat eight oranges today to derive the same amount of Vitamin A as our grandparents would have gotten from one.

The findings are more significant in grains!

My goodness. They are depleting the soil of nutrients. Fair enough. I can justify my use of a B Complex.

It would be worth your while to do a blood panel and see what nutrients you are deficient in. Taking supplements Willy Nilly, may not be the best approach either. The supplement industry also needs to be questioned. There are very few companies which follow strict production protocols to ensure quality products.

I am fond of Metagenics and Thorne, they are top class supplement manufacturers.

I agree with you. I don't trust the supplement industry either, and if one does their research they will see that they are lying here and there, or hiding negatives.

And yes! Thorne Research is a very good company. I just haven't needed to buy anything (because I don't really take anything) lately.

I was taking the b complex when I was on my heart meds because they caused some serious lethargy, and the b's helped tons.

If you drive around New Zealand you can still see a lot of cows in the fields. I'm always telling people that New Zealand food is more healthy since our animals hang out in the field most the time, eating grass instead of processed food. Are ' free range' animals actually a lot more healthy?

I have heard wonderful things about New-Zealand. Being South-African born, I'm not too fond if your rugby team though :)

Jokes aside, you are correct. Pasture-raised grass-fed livestock is far healthier for us.

Logically, it doesn't make sense to keep a chicken locked in a batteat cage, unable to move, eating grains and other feed (it wouldn't usually eat), under a UV light which tricks their brains to thinking it is always day. This artificial environment is designed to speed up production, that's the sole purpose.

So yes, Free range is definitely healthier, for many reasons.

Thanks for your comment. Hopefully I will visit new-zealand some day

Glad to hear that I’ve been telling the truth all these years. South Africans are always welcome in New Zealand, our cricket team has got a lot better since we have had a few South Africans and Zimbabweans playing for us.

Technologies have their merits and demerits, all we need is to weigh the pros and cons and then arrive at a decision. Will you recommend that we jettison GMCs because of their inadequate nutrients? What other alternatives will you now profer to feed the bulging human populace?

To be honest, it depends on many factors. In the States, you can't get away from GMO, unless you grow your own or source out special farms...

If you have access to higher quality goods like grass fed beef, free-range organic eggs, heirloom grains etc., then, obviously these are the best choices. Unfortunately, they come at a premium cost.

It's ironic that the ’original’ foods and processes which existed 100s of years ago, we now pay a premium for.

The ultimate, with time, space and funds permitting, would be to have your own homestead where you grow and raise everything you need. This is my dream!!

Hey @exercisinghealth, I just started following you and I got to say, your videos are brilliant.

I'm currently binge watching them, but for some reason, I can't seem to watch the video about running, the video for some reason just doesn't buffer, and funny enough, that's the video I want to watch the most since I'm currently struggling with runner's knee and need some advice on how to solve this problem.

Hey man,

Thanks for your kind words. Unfortunately, DTube is not very stable at the moment. It is still a young platform. Here is a YouTube link. I post everything in Full HD there as Dtube only accept 480p

How to Start Running Without Injuries | Avoid the pain of 'Runners Knee'

Also, check a blog post I wrote on running. Its packed with info:
Running related injuries are at an all-time high because of shoes!

Also, have this post, specifically on Knee pain
Our relationship with gravity (Part 3)- The Knees

Let me know if you have any questions.

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