CRIME AND MICRO NUTRIENTS

Many people working in the field of nutrition must have been puzzled recently by apparently conflicting press reports of an important study in Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution which showed significant reductions in anti-social behaviour, following provision of dietary supplements of vitamins and minerals. Violent offences fell by almost 40% among those who took nutritional supplements, but there was no significant change among those who took a carefully matched placebo.

Similar headline reports of this work were given wide publicity in most national newspapers. The findings were published in the British Journal of Psychiatry and were seen as an important breakthrough in the currently fruitless war against crime, not only in prisons but even, perhaps, among the general population.

Yet within a week or so wide press publicity was given to an apparently contradictory study of anti-oxidants on coronary heart disease, cancer, and other chronic disorders. It was stated inbanner headlines that 'Vitamin pills are a waste of time and money'. Most nutritionalists will be familiar with such views from the conventionally minded So, what is the truth?

In fact, both views may be correct, but they are simply not comparable. (Actually, the conclusions drawn by the authors of the negative anti-oxidant study are at variance with many more positive reports in the medical literature).

In the anti-oxidant study, a connection was sought between dietary levels of three anti-oxidant vitamins (E, C, and â-carotene) and the incidence ofcoronary heart disease etc. No connections were found. And, what is more to the point, no behavioural studies were reported.

On the other hand, the Aylesbury study was concerned exclusively with the effects of diet on behaviour in a prison environment. Moreover, only the three anti-oxidants noted above were studied, whereas over fifteen micro nutrients were used at Aylesbury. It is clear that the negative results from the anti-oxidant project were irrelevant to the strongly positive findings at Aylesbury.

The key findings from the Aylesbury study were that young criminals in jail behave better and commit significantly fewer offences, includingviolence, when their diet is moderately supplemented with essential vitamins, minerals and fatty acids. The effects were found in prisoners who showed no signs or symptoms of malnutrition.

A major aspect of the Aylesbury study is the meticulous attention paid to statistical analysis of the results.Professor Copas, the Home Office's statistical reviewer, stated as follows: ‘This is the only trial I have ever been involved with from the social sciences which is designed properly and witha good analysis'

Follow-up studies are being planned, but it is already evident that the authors of the Aylesbury work may have identified one of the most important yet neglected factors inhuman affairs.

Thus the findings at Aylesbury would appear to have far-reaching implications. Behaviour covers a wide range of human activities beyond crime. This includes education, mental health, economics, politics and the administration of public affairs: and even the perennial philosophical problems of good and evil, right and wrong. You can't get much more fundamental than that!

Nothing in this review should be taken to suggest that faulty nutrition acts on its own. Social and genetic factors would have to be considered in any broader review of behavioural phenomena. It is the past neglect of these to which the Aylesbury findings so compellingly draw attention.

Professor. D. Bryce-Smith
(GGA Honorary advisor)

For further information see C.B. Gesch et al, Br. J. Psychiatry, 2002, 181, 22-28:
New Scientist, 2002, 16th November, PP. 3, 38-41

Winter 2007 Editorial

I can't wait to get started this year for not only a new growing season awaits but also new opportunities are emerging and this is exciting.

Last year was our year for creating business plans and funding applications. What a challenge this was! And oh, what a waiting game we had to play. But much of the agony is over and I am delighted and thrilled to be able to tell you that we have secured some funding to employ a Part Time Education Development Officer. Not only have we got the money to do this but in a mad flurry in the month of December 07 we were able to advertise and appoint an excellent person by the name of Jane Renton to start the work on developing Sowing the Seed at the beginning of January 08.

The money has come from various sources but in particular it is thanks to the Ernest Cook Trust that we are able to begin seriously developing this project. The only condition, which suits us at this stage of development, is that the projects must happen in the Gloucestershire area. Once Jane (a GGA member) has developed the project the plan is to expand beyond the boundaries of Gloucestershire and begin recruiting volunteers to help run Sowing the Seed in their own local schools. I hope that come the next news journal (Spring) she will be ready to begin a regular article to keep every one up to date with its development.

On the subject of Sowing the Seed, I shall continue writing up the lectures I delivered to the Acorn School in June 2007.1 have to say I am finding it hard to take the spoken word and convert it into a written article and harder still to limit the number of words. This issue, I am sure you will notice, is dominated by me. I hope you find it readable and informative. The work I am presenting here will at some later date be used to compile a booklet to help describe and articulate what Moving Beyond Organic is all about. Please comment as you feel fit, it's always good to hear from you and get some feedback.

I have at least found space to run some articles from a few of our usual contributors so you don't just have to listen to me going on.

Alison Ensor shares her experience of crop rotations that she has used systematically each year to clear a little more ground - without digging - to grow vegetables. Alison's permaculture approach coupled with her knowledge and experience of promoting wildlife gardening shines through as usual.

Charles Dowding provides us with some thoughts and inspiration with an article on Winter Gardening. It's that time of year again to make plans, get the soil prepared and start thinking about what you are going to grow this year.

In contrast to Alison's article and contrary to popular advice and opinion about the need for rotation it may surprise you to hear Mike Mason's experience of growing carrots without rotation. In an area where the soil does not best suit carrot growing Mike is now into his fourth year of growing them in the same space with surprising results and in the process has made his wife, who loves carrots, very happy. What a wonderful gift he has created for not just his wife but possibly the life in the soil as well. It's an interesting idea to contemplate that by not disturbing the soil year on year the soil ecology has been allowed to flourish naturally to the benefit of everyone.

Finally, with reference to Moving Beyond Organic, keep your eyes and ears open this year and try to make a mental note of how many news articles and relevant stories you hear to do with nutrition, food quality, health and sustainability. They are all connected and are becoming hot topics rising to the top of many people's thoughts and concerns. As of Jan 08 the new organic standards allowing 0.9% GM contamination are just one issue I am sure you will all hear about. If only we could settle this by growing food to a minimum nutritional standard - would these issues still persist?

Happy New Year!

Matt Adams

The above is taken from the GGA quarterly News Journal. You can join GGA here

Know your Onions

March and April are the great planting months - especially for those, like me, who plant straight into the garden rather than bring on lots of seedlings in the greenhouse (I’m always going to but never quite get round to it in time). Unless the ground has warmed up nicely I find that the effort of early planting is almost always wasted, unless you have cloches or use fleece. There are very few seedlings that enjoy cold wet conditions and, although we are always longing for the new seasons vegetables, as long as it’s not left too late, most plants are not far behind their early, carefully nursed counterparts.

Having said that, don’t leave it much later to plant onion sets. I always cover the onion bed (best in an open, sunny position and just wide enough to be able to reach the middle from either side without treading on it) with fleece as soon as it’s planted to avoid the problem of birds pulling them out as soon as my back’s turned and leave it in place until the shoots are well through. It doesn’t matter if the green shoots get a bit crinkled - they straighten up as soon as the fleece comes off. Or you can clip the tips off the sets before planting so they don’t show. Just be gentle with the sets when you plant them - make sure the soil is soft so the root end doesn’t get damaged when you put them into the ground. Unless you want show sized onions, plant them fairly close together - 3" each way apart, with their tips just showing, in a double row with 12" between each pair of rows is plenty - and once they start to swell put your hoe away and hand weed - the roots are very near the surface and hoeing will almost certainly break some of them off - Bob Flowerdew says a few weeds later in the season will help to take up spare moisture and nutrients, particularly nitrogen and the onions will keep better. If the odd one or two start to flower pull up and use straight away. I used to think that onions had to be ripe before they could be used until I used my common sense and thought about spring onions.

There is new thinking on whether the tops should be turned down when the onions have finished growing - mid August or early September depending on where you are and what sort of summer you’ve had - and it’s time to encourage them to ripen. Since the tops will fall over anyway I like to tidy up the bed and have nice orderly rows. When the tops have wilted well just pull the bulbs up so that air can circulate underneath them for a few days and on a nice dry day bring them in to finish drying. I used to make strings which look very nice but now I keep them on a sunny bench in the greenhouse (since not much else is occupying the space in mine during the winter) and I find they keep much better. If that isn’t an option then keep them in nets or strings in the garage or potting shed.

I started growing autumn sets a couple of years ago and am pleased with those. They mature in June, though I use a few straight from the ground when the previous years’ main crop has come to an end, and now almost never have to buy an onion. This gives me a great deal of pleasure when I see onions in the supermarket that have been flown in from South America though I also feel dismayed. I can’t remember us being onionless years ago before we started jetting in vegetables from all round the world and I’m sure we could be self sufficient again.

Shallots can be treated in the same way, though of course more space needs to be left for them to spread - about 9" between plants. I find it quite curious that although I grow good onions I never manage to start them off from seed, and find spring onions very difficult. They just don’t want to germinate in my ground at any time of the year. Leeks are no problem though. I usually leave some to flower and find by now that I have a nice little patch of seedlings, often in a gravel path, waiting to be transplanted for a summer crop, harvested when they are still quite thin and the flavour gentle. Just cook whole in butter. Next winters crop will be started off in a pot, (a 4" square one will give enough seedlings for most needs) and be ready to be planted out in June.

Though I really think autumn planting is best it’s not too late to plant garlic. The bulbs will be smaller but still worth having. If you are short of space, or even if you’re not, tuck them in near the roses where they will help to ward off aphids. And finally chives, which no garden should be without. Clumps can be divided now and make an attractive edge for a border, especially if they are allowed to flower. They also grow very happily in pots. By the way, don’t try growing anything in the onion family near beans and peas. They hate each other but they’ll be fine with brassicas, beetroot, tomatoes and lettuce and may help to protect these against slugs and snails.

by Barbara Adams
GGA Member

Summer 2008 Editorial

I listen to the news less and less these days but when I do I hear article after article talking about or related to nutrition and sustainable development. The latest and most recent concerns the second generation of GM crops which are to be nutritionally enhanced - The GM community is trying to grow food for nutrition!

We are now being asked to consider accepting crops that have been engineered to increase their content of certain nutrients. This, it is argued, will not only tackle degenerative disease but will also be more sustainable. For example, the omega 3 essential fatty acid helps lower cholesterol and ward off heart disease but it's only found in fish. Engineering a plant to contain omega 3 will help reduce the pressure on already dwindling supplies of fish stock and help decrease the incidence of heart disease. Brilliant - it's a convincing argument that's bound to appeal to many. Heart disease is the No I killer in the West.

Another creation is to enhance the level of flavonoids. This covers a range of micro-nutrients called anti-oxidants that are found to occur naturally in many vegetables. Research is currently underway to increase the production of these tiny nutrients in tomatoes. Apparently we now have the creation of a purple tomato. Again, it's another brilliant and clever piece of marketing because it is linked to the second biggest killer in the West - cancer. But will it ever work?

Despite the issues and campaigning against GM crops in Europe the pressure to accept them is relentless. According to the news on Radio 4 there are now 12 million farmers in 23 countries using GM crops. If we do not join in and help develop this new technology, it is argued, we will simply get left behind and become the poorer for it.

I can't believe the timing of me hearing about this latest development.

In a way it's perfect because it coincides with the completion of my final article on nutrition inspired by Sowing the Seed lectures delivered to the Acorn School a year ago. The aim of this was to understand what nutrition is. From the science of nutrition to spiritual science we have considered the different views and followed them through to the quality of food associated with each. In this concluding article I look at the impact our understanding has on the environment and ask which is more likely to be sustainable. This I believe is the only true test of whether our view of nutrition works or not.

To date many of the claims made to support GM crops have been shown to fail. Increased yields and reduction in the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides have not been delivered. Call me sceptical but whilst the aims of GM nutrition appear to be admirable I can't help thinking that what really lies behind it is economics. This connects to the idea of competing against nature which, I have argued, is creating the problems of degenerating health of both humans and the planet in the first place.

We are only a little charity but with big ideas of Moving Beyond Organic where our aim too - is to grow food for nutrition. It's like David and Goliath. In completing this series of articles I feel I have managed to lay down a platform from which to begin our argument that to grow food for nutrition involves learning how to cooperate with nature and with each other.

This has been the most challenging piece of writing I have ever had to do. But now I am done I hope others will help develop it. I have come to realise that because the subject matter includes a spiritual element which involves feelings and emotions the task of putting it into words, for me, is extremely difficult. I am sure others can do much better and 1 welcome your comments and contributions. I also warmly invite you to attend this year's AGM so we may discuss this face to face and transform thinking into action.

Matt Adams

The above is taken from the GGA quarterly News Journal. You can join GGA here

NO DIG GARDENING. HOW TO GET GOING FROM SCRATCH

Let’s get going! How do you start no-dig growing from scratch is the question I'm most often asked (after the one about why no-dig in the first place, see 'To Dig or Not to Dig?', last issue). Apologies to GGA members who've heard this all before - this is for the more recent readers.

The method described here is a permaculture inspired 'sheet mulch' technique, which has worked very effectively on my heavy Cheltenham clay. This method of 'breaking in' weedy or grassed areas, actually creates good soil above the original level, rather like nature does on the forest floor, without any disturbance to the soil. Worms and micro-organisms are left to do their job, to create healthy living soil, and the electro-magnetic fields of the earth are left undisturbed by metal tools. What's more, this is the perfect time to start planning your no-dig beds since you will need time to gather the following unused resources (otherwise considered 'waste' to the system) before you start planting about April.

What you will need is:

1) Thick sheets of cardboard eg. large brown cardboard boxes

2) Enough manure and home grown compost to cover your bed 6"- 8" (Even half rotted manure or really rough compost will do as you're not digging in. Whatever's free or cheap and local!)

3) Enough straw, garden shreddings or lawn mowings to give at least 6" layer.

4) Seed potatoes

5) Long sharp serrated knife (old bread carvers are perfect)

6) Bucket of good compost

Now before you turn the page, this is a lot easier to gather than you think. The amount of large brown cardboard boxes destined for landfill is criminal. Ask at any retailer, especially appliance shops, look out on dustbin day, put the word out to friends and neighbours, and in a few weeks you'll be inundated!

Manure is cheap and plentiful. Riding stables usually let you have it free if you bag it yourself. You'll need about a large bag or barrow load per metre square, so work out your beds first and guesstimate. If you can get compost, so much the better but that is usually in short supply and expensive. I have emptied my half decomposed heaps to make a sheet mulch bed to good end.

Straw is often for sale cheaply - I think the most I've paid is £5.00 for a large bale, but in the spring we're coming to the end of the season. Alternatives are shredding's and grass mowing's, or I even cut the spring couch for hay (don't let it seed though).

Method

Right, so you find all this stuff and select a suitable warm spring day (not too much wind is helpful when manhandling large sheets of cardboard!) and you make a start. First slash or squash down the weeds a bit if very high, and damp down if very dry. Cover the area of your beds (any shape you like, just cut the cardboard to fit with your serrated knife) with a double thickness of card (ie, boxes folded flat) and at least eight inches overlap to stop the light. If starting on lawn, don't remove the turf just lay cardboard on top. Cover this with compost or manure or mixture thereof to about six inches, eight if you have enough.

You then cut a criss-cross through the cardboard and lay a potato on the soil/weeds underneath, surround with a handful of good compost and cover over with the manure. Place potatoes about 18" apart, there's no need for spaces between rows (or even rows) as you will not be mounding up. The closer you space, the less your yield will be but the greater the light exclusion and weed suppression, which is the primary reason for this sheet mulch technique.

After you've sown all your spuds, cover the whole lot with a good clean layer of straw etc to stop summer weeds setting in the manure and to provide another light barrier to protect the potatoes from going green and allow the worms to do their job. You may want to keep adding fresh mulch in the summer I chuck on anything - weeds, kitchen green waste, mowings to ensure no light gets in.

Results

By end of July/August/September according to your potato variety, you can start pulling your spuds -literally. Pull the haulms and you will find the potatoes nestling in the layer of rich compost that has formed from the good nitrogen/carbon mix of the mulch. Amazingly, I have found that any surviving perennial weeds (some will come through the card eventually, try not to worry but pull off any bind weed as it emerges) will have their roots running along this nutrient-rich layer and can easily be pulled up with the spuds. In my experience best results occur if you sheet mulch areas which have been previously covered in carpet for a whole growing season, but this isn't essential.

Your yield may be smaller than normal (not always I've found) but you will have a lovely dark brown veggie bed ready for planting with winter crop seedlings such as brassicas or leeks, or sowing with autumn broad beans or an over-wintering green manure, rather than compacted lawn or weedy scrub. Potatoes are perfect for breaking in new ground in this way as they love the acidy manure and the tubers help the worms break up the soil, but I have also grown jerusalem artichokes, broad beans, and sweetcorn and courgettes in this way. (Tip - very large transplanted plants help deter slugs which prefer the young fresh growth)

by Alison Ensor

Soul Food

The idea of the development of human consciousness being intimately linked with the availability and discovery of certain foods, as described in Wendy E. Cook’s book Foodwise, is a startling concept, but should it really be? Food is energy, and like the exploitation of slave labour that enabled the creation of the colonial empire, or today’s western industrial world based on the equal exploitation of planet resources in the form of fossil fuel, civilisations can rise and fall as a result of the discovery and reliance on food sources. In the book, Wendy Cook quotes Steiner as saying that the growth in potato consumption corresponded with increased ability for abstract thinking, we became quicker in taking up ideas but they didn’t sink in very deeply! This isn’t as dubious as it first sounds if you think of the nutritional content of the humble potato (Irish peasants managed to survive on nothing else for centuries, to their ultimate misfortune) and in light of research linking delinquent behaviour to poor diet. Why shouldn’t it work the other way too?

How I wonder does our current reliance on so few foods play into our human development? Wheat has been a narrowing staple, with only a few varieties supplying a huge proportion of our diet, so that a child going to school with a couple of weetabix inside them, a cheese sandwich in their lunchbox and a bowl of pasta at teatime is considered to be eating a healthy diet. What on earth the vast quantities of corn syrup and oil saturating the American fast food lifestyle, is doing to the human mind, let alone our bodies, is terrifying to think.

Food as in all aspects of human life at the moment – economics, politics, religion - is splitting into two opposing polarities. On one hand there’s ‘unconscious’ food; highly processed, refined wheat and sugar, high meat and dairy, where the consumer is unaware of the origin, oblivious to the farming methods, unconcerned with the nutritional content or even the taste.

On the other hand there’s a growing awareness about food as seen in the organic movement, but which is much more than just that. It’s a conscious choice towards food with integrity, for ‘authentic’ food. True nourishment is food, not only grown without chemicals, but food with ethical significance. The rise of small local producers, farmers markets selling seasonal quality food, even the likes of TV chefs like Rick Stein, Gary Rhodes and Jamie Oliver esteeming regional quality produce (rather than unseasonal and exotic), this is all part of the growing reaction to the unconscious consumption of the average supermarket shopper.

Food integrity has a huge number of connotations. Here’s a few I thought of but I’m sure you can think of more.

• Traceability
• Accountability
• Animal welfare
• Conservation and wildlife
• Diversity, heritage varieties
• Organic standards
• Fairtrade
• Reduced packaging, waste
• Locally produced, seasonal
• Freshness, vitality
• Vitamin and mineral content
• Cultural/regional heritage
• Low energy input
• Vegetarian, vegan, fruiterian ethics
• Minimised pollution
• Unrefined, additive free
• Food with taste!

Together all these things give food a wholesome authenticity. On the other side of the food polarity is an industry growing, producing and marketing a commodity purely for profit, playing on consumer laziness, addiction and advertising vulnerability (our children!) to maximise gain, whilst calling it market choice.

But here’s the crux of the matter. We do have a choice. And people are choosing authentic food in increasing numbers and in so doing they are choosing a better world to live in because of the social, political, economic and environmental implications of all the ethical standpoints listed above.

Growing your own is often cited here as one of the most environmentally sound practices you can do. Think of the knock-on effect it can have on your own life – fresh healthy food, exercise and fresh air, less shop bought produce with all its fossil fuel additional costs (and depressing time spent in trolley wheeling!), the pleasure of giving away surplus to friends and neighbours, those satisfying taste tests, and that fulfilling feeling when you look at your plate and can say “I grew that…and that…and that!”. The world’s a better place already.

And if you can’t grow yourself, local organic box schemes are flourishing, giving the distributors and local organic farmers a living. That’s an economic and environmental bonus over and above your own family’s healthy diet. Then there’s the growth in community allotments, giving disadvantaged people access back to the land and lost skills, and there’s community supported agriculture. In CSA farms, the local community pays up front for a share in the produce and helps out the farmer on a certain number of workdays each year. Like times of old when everyone helped out with the harvest, or came together to put up a barn. Interestingly the United States is the primary CSA farming country. Suddenly true community, sharing and trust are the knock on effects of food with integrity. Earth care, people care, fair share – the three permaculture principles for sustainability.

We are what we eat is a much used adage, but one that is significant on many levels, as the best words of wisdom usually are. I suppose the conclusion to be drawn is that rather than our food sources being a guiding force behind our human development as perhaps in the past, now it is our consciousness that could be directing the food we will be eating in the future. Food will take on another dimension as more and more people wake up. ‘Not costing the earth’ and ‘part of the solution not the problem’ are inspiring phrases to help us get food with integrity firmly in our psyche.

Soul food is food that nourishes more than our bodies. It warms us with cultural identity, with ‘like granny used to make’ comfort, like ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ spiritual connection to something bigger than ourselves that gives life meaning. Soul food will be our future, our children’s future and our planet’s future. Let’s all make Vegetable Soup for the human Soul.

by Alison Ensor

Water, the basis of all life

What is water and what does it do? In its most simple form is a molecule formed from 2 atoms of hydrogen and 1 of oxygen. At room temperature it is found in liquid form. It is essential to life. If there is no water on a planet then there will be no life there.

Most school children can tell you all this as it is common knowledge as is the fact that humans are about 80% water.

Water is found in all living things. Life is movement and is epitomised by water in a constant state of motion and transformation. Flowing as water, sap or blood, this life molecule is the creator of the myriad life-forms on this planet.

However water is a much more fascinating substance. As a liquid, the behaviour of water differs from all other fluids. While all fluids become consistently and steadily denser with cooling, water, alone reaches its densest state at a temperature of +4 Celsius. This is the so-called 'anomaly point,' which is decisive in terms of its potency and has a major influence on its quality. Below this temperature it once more expands. This anomalous expansion below +4 C is vital to the survival of fish life, for as the water expands and cools further it eventually crystallises as ice at 0 C, thus providing a floating, insulating sheath, which protects the aquatic life underneath from the harmful effects of severe external cold in winter. Water also has unique qualities of electrical and thermal conductivity which cause it to be supportive of life processes.

In the human body water not only forms the basis of blood but also is the main constituent of lymph which bathes all the cells, and of the inside of cells. Imagine each cell as a water filled balloon with the pressure of the water inside being what gives the cell its shape and form. If one further imagines a larger bag of water filled balloons with water surrounding them one is getting closer to an idea of organs in the body. But what if the balloons start to leak and the water runs away. Unless drastic action is taken the balloons will loose their shape and size (and function). This can happen in the human body but usually when we become dehydrated the body has an emergency tactic to stop water loss. This is to produce a waterproofing barrier around the cells and is called cholesterol!

This substance is usually thought of as being very damaging but it seems that no-one has much thought about why the body makes it in the first place. As an emergency protective layer against dehydration it works well but it is not good to have around long term when it leads to thickening of arteries and blood vessels. The way to combat cholesterol is to rehydrate the body by drinking lots of water so that there is no longer a need to produce it.

The cholesterol waterproofing around cells has other untoward effects besides that on arteries. It also limits the transport in and out of the cells of nutrients and waste products producing stagnation and putrification. At the center of nearly all chronic health problems is a situation of dehydration. Once the flow of water is re-established cells can function once more. So how do we become rehydrated and stay rehydrated? Not by drinking coffee and tea. These fluids do contain water but are diuretics and cause the body to loose water exacerbating the dehydration state. Other fluids like fruit juice and squash are treated like food by the body and do not help to re-hydrate. What is really needed is water - at least 4 pints a day and more in hot weather. Water is a free medicine that can help in the treatment of asthma, arthritis, allergies, hypertension, high cholesterol, ulcers, digestive disorders, obesity, constipation, depression and many more.

Do you drink your 4 pints a day?

Helen Cranston
(Nutritional Therapist)

References:
Your body's many cries for water Dr Batmanghelidj
Living Energies Callum Coats

Spring 2008 Editorial

It has been a busy start to the year already and I hope at some point soon I can slow down but that does not look very likely just yet. As I compile this news journal I realise why it's been so busy -we have been doing such a lot. This issue is packed full of those achievements and I hope, like me. you get a real sense that progress is being made.

In the news section you can find out how well Jane Renton is progressing with the new Sowing the Seed projects working with key stage I and 2 in two primary schools. We have a No-dig compost demonstration garden being developed by our Chairman at Capel Manor, London. For publicity and promotion we have produced a new flyer. a copy of which is printed on the back page, and we have a new look website. It is so nice to be developing some projects and even nicer that its not just me who is working on them! My sincere thanks to all those involved.

It's also nice to have the continual input from our regular article contributors. Alison's 'musings on her plot' is full of fresh ideas as she shares with us her thoughts on the world, as you do when working with the soil. Mike Mason is in search of vegetables that contain the minerals and trace minerals we need for health. He has discovered what he calls the 'fab four' vegetables that we should all consider growing and eating. Of course just any old quality of vegetable won't do. If it's not grown for nutrition it may turn out to be missing some essential nutrients. Staying with the 'fab four' Charles Dowding gives us tips and advice on how best to grow them.

Food quality is the major theme for my ongoing Sowing the Seed story. I am sorry if it seems to go on too long but at these early stages of development I feel it necessary to include so much detail. It's all relevant and I hope you stick with it as we consider the nutritional qualities of chemical. organic and spiritually grown food. We look at the issues that surround each in the hope we may get closer to understanding what nutritious food is or would look like if we tried to quantify it. This, of course, is essential to understand if our aim is to grow food for nutrition. It's such a huge topic but as we look at it holistically and think about all the issues that are involved the meaning behind it will become clearer over time.

Finally, I am pleased, no delighted, to print some letters regarding the last Sowing the Seed article. Stimulating debate is a very healthy and positive way forward. After all Moving Beyond Organic is an unknown quantity so please, lets have more letters. Whatever you think we would love to hear what you think.

CORRECTION
In the Winter 07/08 issue 166.1 said in my editorial that 'as of Jan 08 the new organic standards allowing 0.9% GM contamination will be introduced. I slipped up here. I apologise. It is in fact 2009 when these new standards will come into force.

At a recent conference at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester this topic was debated. The event was organised by Elm Farm Research and was led by producers of organic food (meat, milk, vegetables, etc). Also in attendance were representatives from DEFRA, the Soil Association and other certification bodies.

As new standards were discussed a definite split in opinion was felt. On the one side the certification bodies, academics and politicians argued we should fight the new proposals and make them work for us. On the other side many producers felt it was time to move away from the word organic and come up with something new. I stood up and said my 'two penny worth' about Moving Beyond Organic which got some recognition from the audience.

Outcomes of this conference can be found at www.efrc.com follow links or search for 'ORC Conference proceedings'.

Matt Adams

The above is taken from the GGA quarterly News Journal. You can join GGA here