How to kick start with Organic Living (3)

Planting potted edible plant
is also part of organic living

Going 100% organic is not quite possible
in Singapore just yet,
mainly because:

i) Singapore doesn't have
big enough land to grow large enough variety of organic produce,
and has to constantly rely on imported food.

ii) there is not sufficient awareness yet to justify larger range of
organic food to be imported

iii) foreign organic food producer may not even
have sufficient quantity to export to Singapore.


When organic food is not accesible,
try the following suggestions:

Suggestion 5:

Go for unpopular local / Malaysian produce

Unpopular produce means
produce that are not quite appreciated by general public
because they are too common,
offer less gastronomical satisfaction or
have less commercial value (from farmer perspective)

For examples:
 .small-and-ugly-easily-perishable local banana,
 .non-Sarawak-cultivar 'siap-siap' pineapple,
 .not-so-sweet fluffy-flesh papaya,
 .course texture wild spinach,
 .mostly-unheard ulam Raja,
 .thought-to-be-poor-people-food sweet potato leaves,
 .sour-tough-texture-seedy guava etc...

All these fresh produce are usually
non-cultivar, traditional wild type crops that don't sell particularly well.
Hence, altho' not organic,
they have less chance from being sprayed or sprayed with less pesticides.
-- pesticides also incur substantial cost to farmers,
hence they need to justify whether to spray by considering the commercial value.

Why local/Malaysian ones only?
Because the distance is relatively short,
and the chance of dipping the produce in strong preservatives is lower.
(e.g. ugly Malaysia banana vs beautiful looking Filipino banana)

Also, because if the produce are native species,
they tend to grow more robustly and attract less pest problem (hence pesticides)


Suggestion 6:

Grow your own favourite edible plants

This is definitely not a solution to suffice the your organic need at home,
but it's a way to 'cut cost' and to minimise purchase of tainted food out there.

Growing a few edible plants at home,
will also reduce the commercial value of that particular type of plants,
and help farmer justify less spraying.

Usually these are small edible plants which are suitable for HDB flat corridors
e.g Basil, Pandan, chilli, sprouts and some TCM herbs.


Going organic isn't just eating organic food.
As you can see so far,
it also involves make-over of one's lifestyle and eating behaviour =)

It's fun!!!

Enjoy organic,
Kee Yew
pureland2012-at-gmail.com


How-to-kick-start-with-Organic-Living

{Learning Holistic Wellness for Wisdom and Compassion}