Fertile Grounds

I’ve been pondering lately the unique circumstances in which we live. The amount of infrastructure that has been built in recent years to provide services for kidney dialysis and infertility has, for me, been alarming. Right there, just down the street in the local shopping center, these services are available. Not in some tucked away medical office where there’s privacy and only a rare need for such medical interventions. It’s common place for babies to be born prematurely, and for pregnancies to be lost. It’s truly a sad situation.

With all the talk about autism and the causes of its prevalence, especially in California, I found myself considering what is required for a healthy baby to be born. I’m realizing that, as is kind of obvious at this point, that the most important element is the mother’s health and her ability to conceive. Men are also an important part of this picture of infertility. With the incredibly high stress levels, poor nutrition, and pollutants in our everyday environment, its no wonder the body is failing to reproduce effectively.

Testosterone levels in our men has dropped significantly, and women are waiting to conceive which means there are fewer healthy eggs available. So many children, once they’re finally conceived, are born too early and with a wide variety of problems already evident at the time of birth.

It’s been known for many years that the older the mother is there’s a higher possibility of birth defects. With a larger percentage of the female population postponing child-rearing, there is more likelihood of weaker babies being born. Add to that the toxic world we live in, the waning quality of health care, and our sedentary lifestyles, our babies really don’t have much of a chance.

Modern medicine, fitness and wellness industries have all encouraged us to believe that we can keep pushing the body’s clock forward and live longer lives. This has bled over into the perception that we can wait until our 40’s to have children. This is simply inaccurate. With a quick search I found some details:

By the age of 30, 90% of a woman’s eggs have been lost. At 40, only 3% remain. In addition, the proportion of genetically healthy eggs steadily decreases as women get older. Viable sperm count gradually decreases as men age and is fundamentally threatened by high levels of stress, exactly what is happening in our society today.

Has the movement for equality and the feminist agenda actually helped to create these problems? It has inadvertently become the driving factor for women to forsake motherhood to be high earners. The persistent message of “being equal” has somehow, perhaps, disrespected the most sacred role of motherhood. I, too, was wooed by the word equality. In hindsight I realize that what women were, and still are, actually looking for is mutual respect. What an immensely big mistake. Motherhood is one of the richest and most spiritual experiences a woman can have, and certainly most valuable for humanity’s continuation. This role reversal has had a huge impact on everyone.

Significantly worse, however, are the toxic chemicals all around us in every part of our environment. In this recent article, How Everyday Chemicals Disrupt Your Hormones —and How Bioremediation Can Fight Back, there is, yet again, a strong call to reduce all of the chemicals in our world. The thing is, this is not new information. I’ve been hearing about this and making educated choices for most of my adult life. So, how did we actually get here?!

It’s definitely for a wide variety of reasons. One of which is the continuing development of toxic chemicals used as pesticides on our crops. Another recent article, Widely Used Pesticides Linked to Preterm Birth, Birth Defects, Male Infertility — and More, paints a very grim picture. New insecticides called neonicotinoids were put into use as late as the 1990s. These synthetic chemical products were allowed into our food system with the intention of controlling insects that can harm crops. However…

“Neonicotinoids are systemic insecticides. After plants absorb them, the chemicals can travel throughout plant tissues, including leaves, roots, stems, pollen and nectar.

Some neonicotinoids are highly persistent; they can move through waterways, accumulate with repeated use and remain in soil for months or years.

The chemicals kill insects by binding to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs), overstimulating the insect nervous system and eventually causing paralysis and death. These receptors also exist in humans and other mammals.

Although neonicotinoids were designed to bind more strongly to insect nerve receptors, recent studies show that some neonicotinoids and their metabolites also bind to mammalian nAChRs, altering cell signaling in the brain and reproductive organs.”

The claim that these are “highly regulated” products has not resulted in stopping their poisonous progression throughout America and many other parts of the world. In addition to the human population, this is effecting all of our insects, most importantly bees, necessary for the growth of healthy crops for our food.

The fertile grounds of humanity and our Mother Earth is declining rapidly. The original intentions of these pesticides was to protect crops being grown. The problem is that mono-cropping is in itself killing off the beneficial organisms in the soil, sucking it dry. In, Why It’s Time to Stop Punishing Our Soils with Fertilizers by Richard Schiffman, USDA researcher Rick Haney makes a very clear point about how the irrational focus on higher and higher yields is actually causing the severe problems we’re having.

“We see that when there is a lot of tillage, no cover crops, a system of high intensity [chemical-dependent] farming, that the soil just doesn’t function properly. The biology is not doing much. It’s not performing as we need it to. We are essentially destroying the functionality of soil, so that you have to feed it more and more synthetic fertilizers just to keep growing this crop.”

It feels like we’re rolling down a steep hill with nothing in the path to slow down the deterioration. The fact is, though, that there are many solutions to this situation. Get rid of the pesticides altogether. Stop mono-cropping. Plant diverse fields that breed life instead of killing it. Allow animals to graze on cover crops to capture more carbon. What I’m describing is regenerative agriculture, a concept that has been growing since the 1980s when Robert Rodale of Rodale Institute coined the term as the next stage of farming after the sustainability movement.

A new documentary, Groundswell, is the third installment in the filmmakers’ regenerative agriculture trilogy, following “Kiss the Ground” in 2020 and “Common Ground” in 2023. “Groundswell” is directed by Josh Tickell and Rebecca Tickell and executive produced by Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore.

“The film is about food and about how we grow it,” narrator and executive producer Woody Harrelson says in the trailer.

Through the perspectives of farmers, scientists and Indigenous leaders, the documentary explores the growing regenerative agriculture movement and its potential to restore degraded land while producing food in ways that benefit both people and the environment.

At the heart of the film is the sweeping idea that rebuilding carbon-rich soil can help address some of the world’s most pressing challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, declining human health and struggling rural economies.”

All in all, it’s become very clear that the fertility problems in the modern world are directly connected to the poisoning of our environment. Applying regenerative agriculture throughout the United States and the rest of the world is a practical, effective solution that provides benefits to humanity in a wide variety of ways. The only way this will occur is if we stop looking the other way and begin to grow without poisons in our private gardens.

In less than two years time, we have completely revitalized the empty yard we got with our new property. Layers and layers of wood chips, weeding out the invasive plants, growing a wide variety of plants that provide food for bees and other insects year round has proven to be an effective process once again. We’re not even finished yet, and the yard is humming with three types of bees, an equal number of different butterflies and dragonflies, and worms are squirming happily in the compost. We’ve seen ladybugs and praying mantis on some of the plants and there are many bird visitors each day.

Please, I beg you, stop putting poisons in and around the home and garden. Get a little exercise and sweep your leaves into piles for mulch under your plants, and throw away your noisy, air polluting machines. Yes, even your electric ones. Their high pitched whine is even worse on the ears of dogs and other creatures we love. They all cause damage to every living being. Ask your neighbors and friends to do the same.

Choose regeneratively, sustainably, and/or organically grown products at the farmer’s market and grocery store. Throwing in a little political pressure might help, too, if we’re lucky. Hopefully, with a committed effort, we’ll have fertile grounds (and healthy children!) once more.