Growing Your Own Food For Good Health And A Healthy Environment

Planting fruit trees, a vegetable garden, or other food crops is a great way to know exactly where your food comes from. This ensures that nothing harmful was done to it or the environment in the process of growing it.

While it may seem complicated to grow your own produce, starting out with a small edible garden can be a great way to get into gardening and learn how to grow food. With a little bit of time, effort, and care anyone can learn how to garden and reap the benefits of growing your own vegetables.

The Environmental Benefits of Growing Your Own Food

Our food system has managed to produce large quantities of food that have helped to feed lots of people. However, this abundance of food has come with a variety of negative impacts on the environment.

Another impact of the food system is the pollution caused by chemical pesticides and fertilizers used in commercial farming. When a farm uses fertilizer or sprays its crops with pesticide, the harmful chemical compounds within them will leech into the soil and groundwater or get washed away with rainwater runoff and contaminate nearby water bodies.

These chemicals are often highly carcinogenic and cause great deals of soil and water pollution. On top of that, food grown with the help of these chemicals also contain carcinogenic substances. By growing food at home in raised beds, in the ground, or even as potted plants, you can ensure that no harmful chemicals are used on the plants, and won’t wind up in the environment, or on your plate.

Monocultures

A large majority of agricultural activity consists of growing only a handful of commodity crop species such as corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat. These crops often go to make different kinds of animal feeds rather than going straight to human stomachs. But the impact that this system of farming has on the environment is detrimental; many industrial farms consist of vast fields containing only one species of crop called a monoculture.

The most important part of planting a garden is proper planning. Before doing any planting it is important to know exactly what you want out of a garden. How big do you want it to be? How much money and time are you willing to spend on it? What kinds of fresh produce do you want? Once you understand what exactly you want out of your garden, it’s time to start thinking about the logistics of planting.

When going to plant seeds or young plants it is important to know when and where the plants should be planted. Different species of crops will need to be planted at different times of the year depending on what region they are being planted in. In the US, regions are divided into plant hardiness zones. It is important to make sure the plants you want to grow will do well in your zone and climate of the Earth, and to know the best season they should be planted.

Another important factor for gardening and growing food is soil health. Good soil is essential for healthy plants as they rely on it to absorb nutrients and water and stay stabilized. While industrial farming uses harmful chemical fertilizers to enhance their soil, there are different environmentally friendly ways of enhancing your soil and growing healthier crops.

A 2020 Reuters article describes how Cubans were called on to grow their own food during the COVID pandemic and in the 1990s. In the ’90s there was a kind of “green revolution” in Cuba as the Soviet Union collapsed, along with it’s support for Cuba, promoting a deep economic depression. To avoid starvation “Cuba became something of an organic farming pioneer in the 1990s, developing techniques like worm composting, soil conservation and the use of biopesticides, to replace imported supplies and large scale monoculture.”

In 2020, as imports shut down because of COVID, Cubans were called upon to again return to growing their own food as in the 1990s. The article highlights Nelson Piloto, who pulled up the lawn in a courtyard Temple of the Abakua Afro-Cuban religious brotherhood in Havana to “plant bell peppers and cassava in the face of Cuba’s looming food crisis.”

Many religious buildings are surrounded by huge lawns full of grass or weeds. Perhaps more communities should follow Piloto’s example and turn their lawns into gardens. In the words of sustainable agriculture enthusiast Marnia Briones, “It’s great more people are planting but it cannot just be when there is a crisis… It should be fomented as a healthier lifestyle for the whole of humanity.” Don’t wait around for crisis to strike. Call upon your religious community to lead by example and save our future.