The Fruit of Hard Times

Disclaimer: This is taken from Masanobu Fukuoka's book "One Straw Revolution" and is not at all my work.

The Fruit of Hard Times-Masanobu Fukuoka

“Consumers generally assume that they have nothing to do with causing agricultural pollution. Many of them ask for food that has not been chemically treated. But chemically treated food is marketed mainly in response to the preferences of the consumer. The consumer demands large, shiny, unblemished produce of regular shape. To satisfy these desires, agricultural chemicals which were not used five or six years ago have come rapidly into use.
How did we get into such a predicament? People say they do not care if cucumbers are straight or crooked, and that fruit does not necessarily have to be beautiful on the outside. But take a look inside the wholesale markets in Tokyo sometime if you want to see how the price responds to consumer preferences. When the fruit looks just a little better, you get a premium of five or ten cents a pound. When the fruit is classed "Small," "Medium" or "Large," the price per pound may double or triple with each increase in size.
The consumer's willingness to pay high prices for food produced out of season has also contributed to the increased use of artificial growing methods and chemicals. Last year, Unshu mandarin oranges grown in hothouses for summer shipment [this fruit ripens naturally late in the fall] fetched prices ten to twenty times higher than seasonal mandarins. Instead of the usual price of 10 to 15 cents per pound, outrageous prices of $.80, $1.00, even $1.75 to the pound were paid. And so, if you invest several thousand dollars to install the equipment, buy the necessary fuel, and work the extra hours, you can realize a profit.
Farming out of season is becoming more and more popular all the time. To have mandarin oranges just one month earlier, the people in the city seem happy enough to pay for the farmer's extra investment in labor and equipment. But if you ask how important it is for human beings to have this fruit a month earlier, the truth is that it is not important at all, and money is not the only price paid for such indulgence.
Furthermore, a coloring agent, not used a few years ago, is now being used. With this chemical, the fruit becomes fully colored one week earlier. Depending on whether the fruit is sold a week before or after the 10th of October, the price either doubles or falls by half, so the farmer applies color-accelerating chemicals, and after the harvest places the fruit in a ripening room for gas treatment.
But when the fruit is shipped out early, it is not sweet enough, and so artificial sweeteners are used. It is generally thought that chemical sweeteners have been prohibited, but the artificial sweetener sprayed on citrus trees has not been specifically outlawed. The question is whether or not it falls into the category of "agricultural chemicals." In any case, almost everybody is using it.
The fruit is then taken to the co-op fruit-sorting center. In order to separate the fruit into large and small sizes, each one is sent rolling several hundred yards down a long conveyor. Bruising is common. The larger the sorting center, the longer the fruit is bounced and tumbled about. After a water washing, the mandarin oranges are sprayed with preservatives and a coloring agent is brushed on. Finally, as a finishing touch, a paraffin wax solution is applied and the fruit is polished to a glossy shine. Nowadays fruit is really "run through the mill."
So from the time just before the fruit has been harvested to the time it is shipped out and put on the display counter, five or six chemical's are used. This is not to mention the chemical fertilizers and sprays that were used while the crops were growing in the orchard. And this is all because the consumer wants to buy fruit just a little more attractive. This little edge of preference has put the farmer in a real predicament.
These measures are not taken because the farmer likes to work this way, or because the officials of the Ministry of Agriculture enjoy putting the farmer through all this extra labor, but until the general sense of values changes, the situation will not improve.
When I was with the Yokohama Customs Office forty years ago, Sunkist lemons and oranges were being handled in this way. I was strongly opposed to introducing this system to Japan, but my words could not prevent the current system from being adopted.
If one farm household or co-op takes up a new process such as the waxing of mandarin oranges, because of the extra care and attention the profit is higher. The other agricultural co-ops take notice and soon they, too, adopt the new process. Fruit which is not wax-treated no longer brings so high a price. In two or three years waxing is taken up all over the country. The competition then brings the prices down, and all that is left to the farmer is the burden of hard work and the added costs of supplies and equipment. Now he must apply the wax.
Of course the consumer suffers as a result. Food that is not fresh can be sold because it looks fresh…
It is a mistake to try to maintain the mere appearance of freshness, as when shopkeepers sprinkle water on their vegetables over and over again. Although the vegetables are kept looking fresh, their `' flavor and nutritional value soon deteriorate.
At any rate, all the agricultural cooperatives and collective sorting centers have been integrated and expanded to carry out such unnecessary activities. This is called “modernization." The produce is packed and loaded onto the great delivery system and shipped off to the consumer.
To say it in a word, until there is a reversal of the sense of values which cares more for size and appearance than for quality, there will be no solving the problem of food pollution.”

The poor bees

I have recently become fascinated by the honey bee and the shear ignorance that people have towards them. Thought of either a pest or something of a factory, the honey bee has been used and abused for the past, I don't know, 150 years, to the point where they have reached their own tipping point and now we are not sure of their future. The "wild" honey bee hardly exists any more here in the USA. Here in the state of Utah, people are encouraged to report any swarm of bees to the state so that it can be removed. After visiting a local bee store, I realized the industrialization of the bee continues at a great pace. I believe the lady that worked there was a persona of some of those involved in the problem. As I myself am working toward starting a hive using the Top Bar Hive model, I feel that we should turn to maintaining the bees not for their honey but for their existence. Returning to the story of the lady at the store, she informed me that I would fail if I used the TBH design and I would return to her store to purchase the Langstroth hive design which is the current standard. I believe that the hive used in itself is causing a problem with the bees. They are usually kept in large colonies where thousands upon millions are kept in several hives. This encourages disease to spread and decreases genetic diversity. The bees do not even have a chance to naturally produce some type of defense against the many things that are killing them. Whether it be the vorroa mite or the chemical pesticides used in big agriculture today, they do not have a chance to get away from these boxes and try and sort things out themselves. The agriculture practices here in this country today must be changed or we will soon reap the consequences. With the collapse of the bee population, we will become dependent on foreign fruit and vegetables or we will have a diet that consists of rice, wheat and corn. In conclusion and to my amazement, very few seem to care. We will continue life as usual, drive our cars, mow our lawns with fuel powered machines, maintain the four wheelers, snowmobiles and other "toys."