Our ancient Ginkgo tree shedding its butterfly leaves.

 Balance in Nature

  

Hello Food and Health Enthusiasts,

Our Red Oak reaching for the sky.

Happy Holidays to my friends and colleagues.  My first blog outlined my concerns over several contemporary agriculture practices that affect our health and environment. As promised, my second blog will share thoughts and lessons learned as our sustainable prairie and grassfed beef project has grown.

PROPRIOCEPTION: A neurological sense that lets us know where our body parts are relative to each other without seeing. Internal receptors throughout the body inform the brain and are responsible for maintaining our balance and our coordination of movement.                

Let’s expand this definition to eco-agriculture. Proprioception in nature should also let us know where we are. We are part of nature. We live in harmony with all of nature. Bacteria and fungi make the soil bioactive where plants can grow. Plants take their energy and growth from the soil and the sun—and solar energy is free. Food for animals depends on healthy plants, and plants benefit from hooved animals breaking and fertilizing the soil. Human nutrition is then dependent on both plants and animals—and on the soil and the microorganisms—and on the sun and the rain. All life has worked together in harmony for eons. Interruption of the cycles of nature may simply be unintended, or for speed of production, or just for profit. When humans compromise nature’s beautiful harmony, unintended consequences can occur, and consequences are invariably multiple, self-multiplying, long lasting and unforeseeable.

Interference with nature’s harmony can also result in loss of balance, of coordination, of proprioception in our environment, our food supply, our health, our lives. Police officers test for proprioception when evaluating drunkenness. Shouldn’t we all be active in assuring a healthy, sober, proprioceptive eco-culture? First education and knowledge and then a coordinated groundswell movement to take back control of the health of our families and mother earth.

Dudley Baker, MD

Baker Ranch