Organic Farming Classes Should Be Mandatory For Public Schools.

Oil is Finite.

Most intelligent folks realize that the oil will run out some day, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. There is disagreement among us about just how soon that will happen. I'm one of the growing number that believes it will happen sooner than later. So the question is, what can we do now to adapt gracefully to a world without oil?

Our Options.

There are many options being explored to find alternative fuels, but there is no reasonable evidence to believe that we will be able to come up with a replacement for oil as we use it today. Hydrogen is just a storage medium, and takes more energy to produce than it generates. Bio fuels now take more petroleum energy to grow than they can produce, and growing them in the way that we do now depletes the soil. That is not renewable energy.

Electric cars are great. They don't pollute. Their engines don't need a rebuild right about the time you make the final payment, but currently you have to burn something, dam a salmon spawning ground, or build nuclear reactors to produce the electricity. These are dirty alternatives.

There are clean alternative ways to create the electricity, but we can't seem to get started on using them. Wind power requires a large up front capital outlay to get started, and is only now being utilized on a large scale by the brave and altruistic. There are exceptions like here in Hawaii, where other energy forms are very expensive. Solar has many of the same disadvantages as wind power.

So What Can We Do Right Now?

It's looking more and more like we will have to change the way we will live, instead of hoping that scientists will magically figure something out so we can keep our cars. Living in suburban sprawl and driving miles to work, school, and to the grocery store is a failed experiment encouraged by the automotive industry. It's just too oil intensive to go on forever.

One positive change we can make that doesn't cost much money is to bring the people closer to the food, or the food closer to the people. "Won't that be too expensive and difficult?" You might be wondering. Not if we make small scale organic farming a required course for all public school children. Not just for a single semester, or year, but for 1 class period per day from grades 4-12.

How do we do that?

At some point I believe, home-farming skills are going to be a real survival issue. Right now most school children in America have elective courses as a part of their curriculum. I don't suggest we add a new one. I'm suggesting that we replace one of them with organic farming. Maybe underwater basket weaving, puppetry, or synchronized swimming can be replaced; something our survival doesn't depend on?

Most American schools have areas that could be tilled, and used for this purpose, those that don't probably have a rooftop, or vacant lot near by. Something can be worked out, even if it's the installation of window boxes. We build sports arenas; we can find a way to do this. Teaching kids to cooperate and contribute is as important than teaching them to compete, isn't it?

Creating a functioning organic food garden at home in whatever space is available, could be a requirement for high school graduation. It could be a joint family effort, and a chance to get some of that "quality time" we all seem to need more of. The free fresh healthy foods would make it worth our time away from other activities.

What are the benefits?

• Children who play in the soil have been proven to have stronger immune systems than children who grow up in more sterile environments.

• Organic farming can be a platform for teaching chemistry, biology, geography, history, social skills, and nutrition among other things.

• Children in advanced grades can learn mentoring skills by helping the lower grades. Elderly volunteers from many neighborhoods have organic farming experience that they would be happy to share. They can pass on wisdom we haven't even considered here, and enrich there own lives through personal human contact.

• Free food. Healthy food, which children will be proud to produce. More than they can use. Food they can take home to their families or their neighbors. They can experience being a useful member of a community. They can experience having useful knowledge that they can offer their parents, instead of that being mostly a one-way street.

• More effective recycling and a cleaner environment. Children who must collect organic waist from home for composting projects are going to see the value of things they thought were useless, and just went away. This will remove some stress on the already over burdened landfills.

• New organic farming technologies. Even a blind pig stumbles over an acorn once in awhile. Some child is bound to find something that would have made George Washington Carver proud. Maybe it will be your child? Modern agricultural courses are not pursuing that type of knowledge. They are mostly teaching factory farming skills to a small group.

• Less dependence on large corporations for our daily bread. This allows people to choose a career based on their own choices, and not whatever the wealthy want or need at the moment. People not working so many hours at a job for their food can spend more time at home, opening up more opportunities for those who have no jobs.

• A sense of reverence for the cycles of life, and the balance of nature. This is bound to open deeper philosophical dialogues between parents and children.

• A closer, more grounded relationship with the other species that share the planet. Organic gardening requires manure. That requires contact with animals.

• A reduction in global warming. Modern farming methods burn 10 calories of energy for every calorie of food energy they produce, and that doesn't even include the fuel burned getting it to market.

• Create a niche where children who don't excel at sports or academics might thrive, boosting their self esteem.

In Conclusion

These are only a few of the benefits. When the oil becomes too expensive for the common man, people may not have to starve, or go to war to survive. We could be getting a head start on that now.

Cuba is a good example of a nation who suddenly had to survive without oil. We know from their example that it was a very hard road. Shamefully, they have surpassed us in developing humane alternatives to oil addiction, and we can learn from them. They now practice urban farming, and farmers are among the highest paid of all workers. People there live in communities where everyone knows their neighbors. They also don't fight over health care, because they have a surplus of doctors. They actually export doctors to Venezuela, in exchange for petroleum, because even with the best of intentions, some petroleum use is still essential.

I just hope we as Americans can realize this before we piss it all away living as we do.