Jeff Cox

I saw a headline in the paper today that said people are beginning to question whether to buy organic food because times are getting tough and they don’t want to spend the money on it. So, okay, let’s go back to eating food grown conventionally. And what will you spend on health care for the problems created by the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, and genetically altered and denatured food that results from that way of farming?

Recently, going through some old papers, I found the design for that long-lost garden. It never got built because in 1980, Ronald Reagan became President and appointed Earl Butz Secretary of Agriculture and that was the end of that. No money for organic research, and especially no “teaching garden” for the National Mall. Heaven forbid people learn that there’s an alternative to big chemical ag.

While this misguided attempt to make money off of high gas prices is going on, America for the most part throws its organic garbage into plastic bags that are sent to landfills, where it decays and pollutes ground waters. But what if municipalities across the country passed ordinances requiring homeowners to keep their organic garbage—paper, leaves, yard waste, kitchen scraps, and so on—separate? What if all this garbage was not discarded, but was taken to centers where it was treated with simple enzymes that turn starches into sugars, and those sugars were fermented into ethanol?

A big reason for eating locally — it tastes better.