Assignment5-1: Weekly Post of Popular Culture

The times are changing. Consumers are growing ever more wary about what they put into their bodies, and society is trying to keep up. The new trends of the health conscious consumer can be seen in just about any supermarket. As you look around you will see free range this and antibiotic free that but in the end what their selling is food without foreign intervention in the process. A recent article published on the Buzz Log, and written by Mike Krumboltz has accurately illustrated the far reaching fad of organic farming.

Organic farming in summation is the growing of produce without the use of organic fertilizers or pesticides. In order for produce to be considered organic in nature, it has to be grown in soil that has been free from the use of synthetic chemicals for a length of time often in excess of three years. These synthetic chemicals range from fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, food additives and sewage sludge.

Michelle Obama recently discovered that her desire to feed her family organically grown vegetables from the White House garden would not be possible. Is seems that when the Clintons were living in the White House, they utilized sewage sludge for fertilizer. This matter was not fully realized until an “icky goo” (Krumboltz, 2009) was found in the garden and it would not go away. “The national park service tested the soil in the vegetable patch and found highly elevated levels of lead due to sewage used as fertilizer.” (Krumboltz, 2009)

While the use of sewage sludge may sound like a taboo practice, not to mention a particularly disgusting thing to use on food plants, it is fairly common practice. Whether it is the use of cow manure or human waste, we have been fertilizing our fields with this compost for decades, it not even centuries. The bi-products of human and animal consumption contain potassium, phosphorus and other organic materials, including lead, which plants readily need to grow and thrive. The only thing now is to eat your vegetables without thinking about what was on it before you bought it.

Bibliography
Krumboltz, M. (2009, July 31). The Buzz Log. Retrieved July 31, 2009, from http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/92869?fp=1