Good people,

December is here and with it the festivities …it is also a time for reflection and introspection:

Some have asked: “Daktari, why this passion for all things organic?”

• Here is the answer: To quote the visionary marine biologist and environmentalist, Rachel Carson, in her book: Silent Spring…”human health is intricately tied to environmental health”… like her i “see” a link between a toxic environment and poor health outcomes…that is what drives my team, at OCA, in contributing to creating Consumer  Awareness…all evidence based.
• Synthetic fertilizers and chemicals(remnants of WWII left over by-products!) are turning the Silent Spring(killing birds) into the Silent Night(killing frogs and other amphibians): https://www.elementascience.org/articles/10.1525/elementa.246/
• Here is evidence that the chemical-industrial model, which embraces GM approaches, has failed to achieve the promised food security: This approach promised to solve the hunger problem but instead has increased hunger and created a new form of malnutrition; Obesity,  which is increasing and with it, an increase in debilitating non-communicable diseases(NCDs), which include deadly diabetes and cancers. http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/
•  GMO technology promised to increase yield and reduce pesticide use but it has achieved the opposite: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29024306
• Here is the Australian experience with Bt. cotton evidencing the failure of this approach to deliver on the promises: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1071/CP17116
• In India, after failed promises, from Bt. Cotton, they are moving away from the failed GMO cotton experiment to embrace local varieties of cotton,  including organic cotton production:  India is currently the leading producer of organic cotton in the world: https://www.soilassociation.org/media/13510/failed-promises-e-version.pdf and here more evidence: http://www.pan-uk.org/cottons-chemical-addiction/
• What is the way forward? The solution includes a paradigm shift to an agro-ecological organic food production system in harmony with Nature.

Humanity has, unwittingly, created an unfolding environmental and human disaster:  the UN, in recognition of these crises has, through the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), put in place mitigation efforts to “heal” the environment and humanity, through concrete strategies to reverse the increasingly toxic environment we live in today. This is largely created by the profit driven unsustainable industrial-chemical model of food production.