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its more fair to say that food cultivated by professional farms who are held to strict safety standards is safer than food cultivated by you in your backyard th
by snickerbockers 4y ago
its more fair to say that food cultivated by professional farms who are held to strict safety standards is safer than food cultivated by you in your backyard that was never zoned for mass agriculture. IIRC, Michelle Obama even had some sort of community-garden project where she was growing vegetables on the White House lawn and giving it to local poor people but she had to quit after it was found out that they had toxic chemicals in them.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> food cultivated by you in your backyard that was never zoned for mass agriculture. The way you turned that around seems similar to "Free speech zones". So now we need official "Health Zones" where children can play safely and ordinary people can grow food as they've done for 12,000 years? Urban soil is poisoned in Australia. Let's not make excuses or try to hide behind fancy interpretations.
- 300bps 4y agoWow, you apparently recall correctly: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/02/michelle-obama-vegetable-garden-lead https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/02/michelle-obama...
- eatonphil 4y agoDumb question: is replacing the soil not an option? Too expensive? But surely that's amortized quickly over the term you use the garden? Or maybe you can't fully replace it because the soil is permeable and the lead comes from somewhere else (lower in the ground, rain, etc.)?
- rightbyte 4y agoI guess it is from leaded petrol and paint which are forbidden now so replacing the garden soil should work to some extent? Unless there is water coming downhill from some neighbour.
- AlanYx 4y agoReplacing the top layer of soil is the most common method of soil remediation, but there are others. For most urban gardeners it's usually more cost-effective to put in raised beds.
- hombre_fatal 4y agoSeems pretty notable that everything is so polluted that people can't have chickens nor grow some backyard tubers without heavy lead ingestion. I think it is news to most people that they should have to care about "zones" just to safely grow a garden. Almost seems like you're saying it's their fault.
- selfhoster11 4y agoI'm sorry, but why exactly should the production of food be professionalised? A far better outcome it seems, would be to make sure that everywhere people live is non-toxic enough that food can be grown safely.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoHow do you propose to remove lead residue from backyard soil?