Can abandoned food be adopted instead of bought?
When we talk about so-called organic farming, or natural farming, what we seek is food that has not been sprayed with pesticides and is friendly to humans, food from friendly small farmers that helps them escape exploitation in the production and marketing chain, food that protects the land from herbicides and insecticides and is friendly to the environment. We gently place these "burdens" onto our imagination of what real food should be,
But... pesticide-free, small farmers, and ecology: these three are not things that can be achieved simultaneously simply by pursuing organic. In fact, these three can almost be said to be completely independent of one another. So... what is it that we are truly pursuing?
Pesticide-free, small farmers, ecology: what exactly are we pursuing?
If all we want is pesticide-free, chemical-free vegetables, then vegetables produced in plant factories or by hydroponics are more than enough, because the vegetables produced really are very clean and will not be eaten by insects. On the contrary, many crops that have just transitioned to organic will produce toxins within their bodies in order to readjust to fighting pests, and therefore produce toxic foods that appear only in organic environments.
If it is for the sake of friendly small farmers, wanting to help small farmers escape exploitation by middlemen and improve their living conditions, then as long as the distance between producers and consumers can be shortened, it does not actually have to be organic farming. Avoiding buying vegetables at large supermarkets and buying as much as possible from the elderly women who bring vegetables grown in their own home gardens to sell would be enough, while plant factories are completely unworkable, because that is destined to be a solution only capitalists can carry out. Even many organic farms, although they produce vegetables in a very natural way, hire relatively cheap foreign workers or indigenous people to lower costs and increase the competitiveness of organic products, which is also not quite appropriate.
On the mainland there is a very famous organic farm, filled with all kinds of delicious organic vegetables, but the farmers working there cannot eat the vegetables from the farm. Instead, they buy conventionally farmed vegetables from outside to eat. If it cannot help the disadvantaged... then organic products really are just another emerging commodity.
And if it is for the ecological environment, then farmland cannot even drive away insects or birds, and we should just eat in the most natural way the fruits and vegetables left over after the animals have eaten. The best method would even be to give the land back to nature and push farmland as close to the city as possible, whether by turning parks into vegetable gardens or rooftop vegetable gardens, or even by replacing street trees with fruit trees. Perhaps the vegetables would not taste as good as those from the mountains, and perhaps they would be polluted by city air, but we normally let ourselves breathe this air anyway, so why would we mind eating plants that grew up breathing the same air? In short, the agricultural products that can be produced on vacant land within cities are actually far more than we imagine. But, in that case... how are the people who originally lived in rural areas supposed to make a living?
Returning to the beginning,just what is natural farming chosen for?
I began asking my friends around me this kind of question, and tried to explain the difficulties above.At first, I focused on assisting small farmers, supporting buying directly from farmers and opposing organic certification, but several people put the environment first, because they believed that under no circumstances should humans consider themselves more important than nature.
However, for most consumers of organic products, health and being pesticide-free are the first considerations. This is not a bad thing either, since at least people begin to come into contact with natural food for the sake of their own health, and slowly come to understand those things that are actually more important than their own health.
