Ecological, Natural, Organic (a Spanish to English Translation)

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Exaggerations aside, the truth is that the health of the planet is one of the things that most worries human kind, along with, of course, personal health; both of these obsessions reflect how we eat, and with regards to ecological practices, “natural” food is a plus that is appreciated more each time. 

Of those effects that we deal with, we now understand “green” products to be— when speaking of organic agriculture—those that have been grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

In the search for organic fertilizers—will they be as popular as the Chilean nitrate fertilizers?—and those that guard against pests without resorting to those insecticides (similar to the prohibited DDT); more than that, they fight off the harmful insects with the introduction of benign insects and specialized farming practices.

In the end, as we pointed out, green practices are a plus and it is normal for them to be so.  The problems begin when the consumer, and we speak of the complete population of big cities, intends to stock up on green products: they have a hard time. 

In the first place this is problematic because those products are not abundant in the shelves of supermarkets or in the greengrocers.  It is true that today you can access some things on the internet, but not many are being made. Additionally, all benefits become muted by the high price of such products.

As logical as it seems, again, it is not that the natural fertilizers are more expensive than the inorganic ones—if you think about it, there is nothing that costs less than the most natural and ancient of the natural fertilizers—but there are indeed organic systems that fight pests, in this case weeds, that come about in the process of growing these plants.

So, the best way to stock up on organic tomatoes or leeks would be to grow them yourself.  Of course, the first problem is to have a place [to do so], to have a plot of land; one can grow tomatoes in a pot, but the resulting fruits will not be sufficient for the whole year.  It needs more soil and [the fact is that] people would much prefer to have a pool and a flower garden than to work in a large scale industrial strength vegetable plantation.  This is an entirely different thing and you have to work very hard at it. Very. Hard.  It takes more dedication than we are able to provide and those urbanites are not usually hard workers.

Man, if you had a farm like that of the British chef Jamie Oliver, and contracted a groundskeeper to take care of and attend to this farm, that would be icing on the cake.  But not everyone in the world is able to do that.

There is always someone who starts a small garden in order to entertain themselves, but little by little, they become absorbed by their work: you have to seed, transplant, fight against the little bugs (like aphids, that think that you have planted the seeds just for them), fertilize, water… This is called WORK (in a nutshell). And hiring a helper is an expense that would only be justified if it were profitable, this is to say, that we are not talking about self sustainability, but rather or exploitation.

But yes, it is beautiful to present guests with a homemade salad and say “this is from my garden” in the same style that a roman patrician, upon serving the wine, would say to his guests, “Thanks to the gods, I did not buy this” in order to covey that it was from their very own crop. There’s the thing: the day when the farmer harvests products of the best quality, in all senses of the word, reaches the same social prestige as the vintners, things will begin to change.  We all like to be recognized for our own work and not only economically.

Finally, while their particular garden grows, they will use, if they consider it to be opportune, “green” products.  But they separate the wheat from the chaff: in the world of green, organic, and natural products there are still plenty of story-tellers: learn to recognize them and avoid them.