The Green Revolution

Article #6: The Green Revolution

The time is rapidly approaching when, if one does not have a plot of ground on which to raise one’s own food, one will be unable to get anything that is suitable for eating. That time has just about arrived. Foods are grown on soils that are improperly fertilized; they are sprayed with poisonous insecticides; they are pulled too green and shipped long distances to market; they are held for some time before they are eaten. They are processed, conditioned, colored, flavored, preserved, cooked, canned, and in many ways rendered less and less suitable for human consumption. Fruits are becoming so poor that one hardly knows the taste of good fruit any more.

We have had a revolution. Farms have been industrialized. They have grown so large and are attended by machinery of such cost that the small farmer is out in the cold. In simple English, the industrial revolution has struck the farm with a vengeance. Conditions are growing worse and bid fair to get much worse before any serious attention to the problems this presents will be given to the matter of correction by the powers that be. Something is needed by the health seeker in the meantime to make it possible to live a healthful life.

A partial answer is the proposed “green revolution” suggested and pushed by the forces of decentralization headed by Ralph Borsodi and Mildred Loomis. The green revolution is being pushed through a recently founded publication entitled The Green Revolution. It is a move to lure the suckers of suburbia away from their rat holes in the cities and back to old mother earth, to the end that they may have a hand in the production of their own food.

The Green Revolution calls to people to get away from the murky atmosphere of the fume-laden cities and out into the wide open spaces and to get their hands dirty in the rich, humus-fertilized soil of their own garden and orchard. Out where the air is pure, the sun shines and the countryside is green. It may be a resurgence of the “back to the land” movement that was started in the early days of this century. As such, it is for the intelligent few and not for the herd thinkers, who are content to rot in suburbia. Give them a television set, a cigarette, a glass of beer, and a hot dog and they are happy and maudlin, while looking forward to that bright day, when, at the age of sixty-five (which few of them will ever reach), the state will take over and grudgingly dole out, from the social security funds that are wasted in a thousand other ways, to them a bare subsistence so that they can retire.

For the intelligent, for the aspiring, for the man and woman of grander view, the green revolution offers a way of escape from the hum-drum existence of city life; it offers a healthier way of living and a higher enjoyment of life. How should a human being live? Certainly not the cramped and confined life of boredom, stimulation, and tranquilization of the cities, where his greatest thrills come from turning on the television set and watching two slaves pound each other’s feeble brains out in the prize ring. Out under the stars, out. where the sun shines, out where the flowers bloom, the trees grow and the grass is green is the place for man.

The Green Revolution is not vegetarian, but it will provide the vegetarian and the fruitarian with an opportunity to live his life in a better way than he now lives it. It does not condemn cruelty to animals, and one of its pioneers has opened a rodeo pen at the gate of his ranch. Rodeos are hotbeds of cruelty. They belong to a bygone period of our country and represent an anachronism, but suburbia’s mobs are thrilled by their sights.

Today’s farm machinery and big farms are driving people from the land and into the cities where they work in the factories. Automation is rapidly robbing them of jobs in the factories. A new feudalism is in the making. Can we reverse this trend by getting back to the land and staging a green revolution? Perhaps not. Man rarely turns back until he has followed each trend to its bitterest end. But for the intelligent members of our population a little land with garden, orchard, and flowers will enable them to live in spite of the mounting evils that we call civilization.

Nostalgia? Perhaps. But not one that it is impossible to do something about. A big tract of land and a warehouse full of machinery are not essential to the life of the green revolution. A few fertile acres, a few simple and inexpensive tools, a little time each day devoted to the tasks of gardening and orcharding and life takes on new meaning while the body is better nourished. What a difference there is between the screech of brakes, the honking of horns, and the sound of sirens in the city and the song of birds in the country! What a difference there is between the life of the cave dwellers of the big cities and the dwellers in a homestead in the great outdoors! It is the difference between being in paradise and in the abodes of the damned.

The Hygienist can take an active part in the green revolution and do so in strictest harmony with the eternal principles of Hygiene. The green revolution should cover the earth as waters cover the seas, but I suggest for the Hygienist a warm climate where fresh food can be had through the whole year. South Texas, Florida, southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, along the southern regions of the Gulf states—these regions offer nearly ideal locations for the Hygienist. It was in the South that Dr. Trall expected Hygiene to flourish in its greatest perfection. He even toured the South in search of a location to establish a Hygienic colony. The Civil (?) War brought that green dream to an unsuccessful end.