Vitamin Green

I read about cloches on the You Grow Girl website. A cloche can be thought of as a bell-shaped mini-greenhouse that gardners use to protect plants from frost, insect or rodent attacks, provide additional humidity or general protection for plants until they are able to look after themselves.

I’ve been having trouble with field rats that seem to enjoy feasting on the roots of my baby plants. I thought this was an innovative solution to keeping the rats out till the plants are able to look after themselves. Of-course, these are made from recycled soft drink bottles and have all the positives mentioned in our previous post.

These are really easy to make. Take a pointy-tipped  serrated knife and poke a hole in the bottle about an inch or so above the base. Slide the knife in and cut the bottle all around so that the bottom comes away. Using scissors you can neaten the cut edge to remove all traces of clumsiness. And that’s it! Your cloche’s ready to use. Use larger 5 or 10 litre bottles for bigger plants.

I have to admit that brinjals (or aubergines or egg plant) have never been my favourite food – so I’m a little biased . But a recent development has given me even more reason to distrust them. The clearance of these genetically modified brinjal (Bt Brinjal) for consumption (supposedly no health risks) seems premature and ambiguous.

Why should we care?

Because this is the first GM ‘food crop’ that has been allowed in India, and there’s much more where it came from. GM is being pushed by ‘agro companies’ aggressively, but there is enough evidence that its not the best choice for farmers.

Specifically 3 MAJOR concerns that we need to be very wary about:

Is it healthy? The jury is out on that, with various views on the subject. But Europe seems to have done the smart thing and has a wait and watch policy. We need to study them longer to judge the health impact well.

Can we choose? Will sellers of these vegetables and food processing companies that use them be required to label them clearly, so we as consumers can make a choice? That’s critical. Also, will these ‘infect’ other indigenous varieties and reduce the diversity available to us?

What about liability? Will GM producers be legally liable if their produce or processed food using it, is found to have an adverse health impact? This is critical too.