In the early 90’s Dr. Rima Laibow conducted a study on food supplements and their effect, not only on our health, but on the dramatic dollar savings on “after you get sick care” (Doctors, Hospitals and pharmaceuticals DHP) later in life. $40 saving on those big three verses each dollar spent on supplements.

The FDA must not like this idea because…”The FDA does not allow herbs or supplements to be linked to disease-states, else they be considered drugs. This means that even if there’s a new study done that links an herb to curing cancer, reversing arthritis or even preventing memory loss (Alzheimer’s) – we can’t mention that it does this because supplements aren’t allowed to “treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

I brought this up yesterday afternoon at the Idaho Center for Sustainable (regenerative) Agriculture in a panel discussion.

Beyond the not wanting to get sick and having to spend all that money on DHP, why do the people who by supplements, buy them? They have come to understand that those supplements are necessary for a healthy, long life, free from pain and “after you get sick care.” Where were all of these supplements 200 years ago, before diabetes, heart disease, cancer and the rest of the rising tide of new diseases (and the pills that we take for them) that keep popping up were so prevalent in our society?

Vitamins, minerals and enzymes used to be in our soil. Long story short, for one reason or another (rain/irrigation leaching, mining them out by growing crops, etcetera) they are now in very short supply.

NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium-only 3 of the 92 found in nature) won’t fix the problem. As a matter of fact, the reliance on NPK to grow “tons, pounds and bushels “of agricultural crops has gotten us into the problem we find ourselves in today. Einstein once said. “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”

Once those minerals are missing from our diet, disease sets in. Dr Richard Olree co-wrote a book with Charles Walters titled Minerals for the Genetic Code   In that book he states, “Cancer is the wrong expression of the right gene because the wrong minerals were present.” To me that means we get cancer because we don’t have the correct minerals to recreate the cells that die off in our bodies each day.

Barbara Reed-Stitt wrote a book in the 90’s titled Food and Behavior. The following somewhat current graph depicts what she was warning about.

Low mineral food equals more criminals????

If you are talking to a farmer who says I can sell that for five cents less than the ‘other guy’, your first reaction should be, “what is this farmer leaving out that the ‘other guy’ is putting into his product?” Ask YOUR farmer what he is doing to ensure that his products are full of vitamins, minerals and enzymes.

Monsanto and the GMA (Grocery Marketing Association) spent a lot of money (9 times consumers dollars) to defeat bills in California and Washington that would have forced companies to label the GMO’s in our food. Shame, shame, shame as my grandmother used to say.

Well now a Canadian company has invented a little tool to do An end run on this process (we talked about this after the conference yesterday also). It is a hand-held scanner that takes data from the fruit or vegetable you are holding in your hand, beams it up to a satellite and then reports back to your cell phone with the mineral and toxin content of that food. Cool! I want to own one of these before next spring!

There are two options, in my way of thinking, to fix this high-toxin/low-mineral food problem. Either we should stop subsidizing (Whatever you subsidize you get more of. Whatever you tax you get less of.) the production of tons, pounds and bushels, or if we are going to subsidize farming, subsidize food that is verified to be high in vitamins, minerals and enzymes. At least that would stem the tide of increasing rates of spending on “after you get sick” care in America.

If, as a nation, people agree that this is the problem, the question then becomes how do we get the minerals in and industry’s toxins out in a cost-effective manner? Enter the Hokey-Pokey mineral program. “You put the good stuff in, you pull the bad stuff out, you put the good stuff in and you shake it all about. . . . That is what the farm is all about.” Basically I am using sea minerals on the land to resupply those missing elements and I am using a “montmorillonite-bentonite” clay (I believe Redmond Conditioner is the best product for this. There are others.) to pull toxins from animals or to bind them in place in the soil so plants can’t take them up. This is the simplest, fastest and least expensive method I have found. Other methods and products exist that can put vitamins, minerals and enzymes BACK into our food.

There is an old racer’s axiom, “Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?” If you already have cancer, speed is of the essence. A saying from Benjamin Franklin that really sticks with me is, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Now we are back to the 40-1 study (I guess there is inflation in old wives’ tales as well.) Prevention is the key! Without Vitamins, minerals and enzymes, there is no prevention … period.

Rather than visit the Pharmacy, come to the “farm-and-see” what good farmers in your community are doing with their soil, plants and animals to put vitamins minerals and enzymes back into the food you discover there.

A customer at my Farmers Market booth this past summer kept asking very thoughtful and challenging questions about WHY I was doing all this crazy stuff no one else wants to look at. Kind of out of a sense of frustration I said, “If, by the time I die, hospitals are having to rent out entire wings to unrelated businesses because there are not enough sick people to fill all of those beds…I will die a happy farmer.”  

I still feel this way. Farmers are rapidly losing the trust consumers placed in us to grow nutritious food. I have drawn a line in the not-so-sandy soil on my farm. Health starts in the soil and what better time and place to begin to gain back your trust than here and now on my farm?

A friend from Australia wrote back, …

“Hello Steve,