Fresh Organic Garden :)

Welcome to my second post :D This time, I will share about my field trip to an organic village called Brenjonk, located in Trawas, East Java.  They supply organic vegetables and fruits to some well-known supermarket chains throughout the province. After some hours sitting on a bus, finally the wait was paid off when I reached the destination. The green scenery is very pleasing to the eyes and the air is so fresh. It was a nice short getaway from a busy city life :).

What is an organic village? Basically it is a community where the residents cultivate organic crops. The people there welcomed us warmly and served us their local delicacy called getuk, made from organic cassava of their own garden. For lunch that day, organic free range chicken, organic corn rice, and organic vegetables were on the menu. A variety of fruit juices came along to complete our meal. As these meet the criteria of Guilt Free Delight, I savored all of them without guilty feeling :)

The word Brenjonk  means source of welfare and prosperity. Each family there owns a small organic green house. However, not only  they produce crops for their own consumption, but also to meet the demands from their supermarkets clientele. Although land is quite scarce, they can maximize the yield using simple technology such as the usage of polybag. Some of the products that they produce are red rice, black rice, lettuce, eggplant, tomato, celery, lemongrass, cassava, honey, etc. Most of their organic products have been certified by the formal organic associations such as Biocert and Pamor Indonesia.

What is so big deal about organic foods? World Wildlife Fund (WWF) through Stockholm Convention released a list of 20 chemicals in 2005 to be categorized as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and all of these chemicals should be banned in all parts of the world. Some of the damaging effects of POPs are increasing risk of breast and prostate cancer, decreasing the sperm quality for men, and causing hyperactivity in children. Can you imagine how scary it is?? The pollutants may come from dangerous pesticides used by some farmers,  incorrect disposal of industrial waste, unfriendly waste burning, and irresponsible forest burning.

Now if you care about the health and safety of yourself and the people you love, let’s think twice before eating or providing foods for your family. Organic products may seem to be more expensive now. However, in the long run it is a lot cheaper than reversing the damaging effects when we fell sick. Thus, let us choose our food smartly so we can savor it freely without the fear nor the guilty feeling. Viva Guilt Free Delight! :D