From The Ground Up. What is it?
It’s a local initiative to stop the harmful practice of spreading toxic sludge on our farmland. What is toxic sludge? We’ll get to that. But first, why do I care about this?
I was born and raised in the beautiful farmlands of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My grandparents worked the earth and made their living by farming and gardening, as did their parents before them. I grew up with my hands and feet in the rich earth of this land and I never gave it a thought. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized what a gift soil is. What a gift our soil is.
The soil here is some of the richest soil in the eastern US, and the way the land lies between the hills brings good rainfall. For many years, our dirt has given us lush crops of corn, soybeans, tobacco, and some of the best produce you’ll ever smell and taste.
In the early spring, along with the first buds on the cherry trees there is always the smell of manure being spread on the waiting fields. It is a sign of the coming summer, a harbinger of the bounty to come. It is often a sign of rain in the forecast. It can be a strong smell at times, yes, and perhaps it isn’t always appreciated, but it is always a clean smell. A living smell. I often roll my windows down and tell my boys to smell the growing cycle.
But today, something is different. There’s a new smell in the air. It smells heavy and foreign. It smells of death. It’s called toxic sludge. Sewage sludge. Industrial waste.
These are all names for something that is changing our farmland.
What is toxic sludge?
Toxic sludge comes from two kinds of waste products.
One is wastewater from water treatment plants, also called “sewage sludge.” It is everything that gets flushed down the drains of homes, businesses, and hospitals. Antibiotics and disinfectants. Steroids, hormone replacement therapy, and chemical abortion pills. Pharmaceuticals of all kinds. Chemicals that don’t break down, known as PFAS or “forever chemicals.”
The second item is food processing residuals, or FPRs. This is waste that comes from meat, vegetable, and fruit processing companies. It is wastewater from washing down slaughter areas and rinsing animal carcasses. Disinfectants and cleaning chemicals. Residual chemicals from extracting or refining food. Pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Bones, blood, and pathogens.
The powers-that-be and the business owners that profit from spreading this poison like to say that these chemicals have been safely broken down. They call it fertilizer.
It’s not.
It is a waste product that is being spread on our soil.
If you’d like to read more about toxic sludge, the post What is Toxic Sludge? gives more detail. Also, the United Sludge-Free Alliance is an excellent resource.
This stuff doesn’t disappear, like some magician’s trick. Out of sight is not out of mind.
Everything in this product leaches into the groundwater that feeds our wells and our rivers. It contaminates our crops, our fish, and our animals. It affects our children. And it will continue to build up in our soil.
This practice is not sustainable. Sick soil cannot produce healthy food.
The ecosystem of our life is all connected.
Why does Seed of life care about this?
Because I grew up here. Because I live here. Because I am careful to source my teas and herbs from organic suppliers, especially those who care about the land their plants are grown on, and I can’t look away from this. And because I’m a mom. I am concerned about the world my sons will inherit. I can’t do much. But this is one thing I can do. As the late Wendell Berry said:
The soil is the great connector of lives,
the source and destination of all.
It is the healer and restorer and resurrector,
by which disease passes into health, age into youth,
death into life. Without proper care for it
we can have no community,
because without proper care for it
we can have no life.-Wendell Berry
If you’d like to read the story of how I came to care about this, and the wise woman who inspired me, you many enjoy the post It Began With A Garden And A Grandma.
Want to join me? Follow our Facebook page, From The Ground Up. Together, we can do something. Together, we can protect Pennsylvania’s soil and Pennsylvania’s children.
