Welcome to the Grow for Sustainability podcast By Limitless Growth. I’m your host, Jordan Gagne, and today I’m going to talk about who this podcast is for what you can expect and why grow for sustainability. Now, first of all, since this is the very first podcast, I want to talk about how you can view and listen to this podcast. Yes, that’s right. I said view. So first of all, you can listen to this podcast anywhere you currently get your podcast episodes.
You can also view this video on YouTube. Now, on YouTube, you get the added benefit of having a little bit of visual information as well. Now, who is this podcast is for? Really? This podcast is for everyone in the planet. However, that is a little bit of a broad reach. So what we’re going to say here is anyone who’s looking to create a more sustainable planet, anyone who’s being able to ensure that this planet is healthy for our children and our children’s children, anyone who wants to grow their own organic food, anyone who wants to eat organic.
But the expensive price tag attached. Anyone who wants to save money. And anyone who’s just curious about sustainability and ways we can proactively take the power into our own hands next to why grow for sustainability when we read or listen about or when we watch documentaries that are related to sustainability is quick to see what the main culprit to sustainability issues is. Now, there’s a lot, of course, but when it comes down to it, they all hit the same spot and that’s how we get our food source.
So that’s our starting point. When it comes to limitless growth, we want to change everyone’s mindset around how we get our food. It doesn’t have to be from a grocery store or a farmer’s market, for that matter. Now, farmers markets only see two percent of the population. This is due to the fact that you have to physically go into a farmer’s market and most of the time they are a little bit more expensive than in stores. There are lots of costs associated with being a local farmer.
And part of this podcast is also going to talk about how you can save money as a farmer, make more money as a farmer, and be able to have a more lucrative life doing what you love to do. Now, let’s go over to the grocery store. First of all, we may go over to the produce section. We may not. If we do, we may go and check out the organic produce because we know that conventional produce is sprayed with chemicals.
Now we head over to the organics section. We realize, oh, holy crap, that’s expensive food. So we figure out, well, how much damage can chemicals be causing on our body. So we had over and we just get normal generic varieties. Now we go down to the main aisles, which are all a lot of processed stuff, so a lot of bags and cardboard. We then start filling up our cart and we’re realizing that now our grocery cart is starting to look a lot, just like a bunch of bags and boxes.
Now, our produce was also put in plastic because we don’t want to just throw parties in there. So we’ve got a bunch of plastic bags surrounding the properties. We leave, we go home and we start unloading. Now, the produce bags alone, fill up a whole grocery bag and the boxes now get put into the cupboards for future disposal. If you do have somewhere where they recycle, that’s great. There is still, of course, transportation requirements involved in the recycling process, but it’s better than going into the landfill.
Now, if you’re a grower, you may be able to use this cardboard. Then there’s clamshell boxes that hold our salads and that also either goes in the garbage or goes in recycling. If we have that, the first of all, you can see that this shopping trip was not sustainable by any means. There’s lots of plastic being added to the landfill and that already sucks. Now, let’s look at how the food got to the grocery store in the first place.
Well, it either got transported across the world, which obviously is not sustainable. And if it was local, it’s transported by vehicle or train. So now let’s head over to the farms now. How are the farms looking? Well, since we didn’t go organic in this measure because of the high price tag, these plants are sprayed with chemicals. These chemicals are known to impact our body, impact our gut microbiome, which our gut microbiome impacts our brain health and our mental state.
Now you can see why there are mental issues in this world, because we’re being fed chemicals, which is damaging everything in our body. Now, these chemicals, they’re not stopping at our food. No, the rain is taking it away into the river now. The river is going into the ocean and in the ocean. These chemicals are damaging everything. The water can’t hold as much oxygen and as much carbon as it used to. It’s also damaging the fish.
And that’s not good either. But now let’s look at the fish. How are we getting our fish? Well, the oceans are pretty polluted right now. We’ve done a great job at ensuring that we don’t take care of the oceans. There’s big buildups of plastic along the ocean and well, yes, there are some plastic straws in there. And of course, going paper straws. Sure, we can do it. It’s not the most. A pleasant sucking back on a paper straw.
They say that that makes a big impact. However, a lot of the plastic island is from fishing lines and this is from how we get our fish. Now, if we do grow our own food, we have the ability to be able to grow fish as well. So we don’t need to just have a bunch of produce. We can also grow a delicious protein source that is free from all the chemicals that we find in the ocean. Now, why is the ocean so important?
The oceans are the primary regulator for global climate. Now, as we see everywhere, that is an issue. We have to make sure that the climate doesn’t keep increasing. And the more we damage the oceans, the more we impact that they provide us with the water and oxygen that we breathe. And the oceans hosts a huge variety of diversity. All of this is extremely important and we’re trying to figure out ways that we can capture it. But when we start to put our oceans and the soil first, that we will capture that carbon.
The issue is a distribution issue of the carbon. Now, let’s go back to Len. When people are spraying all these chemicals on the properties, it’s not just ruining our personal health. It’s also ruining the planet’s health. The current farm practices are not sustainable. They tell the soil to be able to make it so you don’t have to manually pull weeds, which then releases the carbon up to the atmosphere and the growing months. There is actually more carbon released into the air than at any other time of the year.
And now let’s go over to the organic sector. Now, the organic sector is hard to even trust. Yes, we can eat organic. And if we have the paycheck’s to be able to support it, yes, we can do it. And it is probably a positive choice to make. However, when I look at the organic groceries, they’re not even coming from my local range. They’re coming from Mexico, which is super far away, so that transportation costs of 2700 kilometers is quite huge.
The average piece produced in Canada travels 2500 kilometers. You can see that that is not a sustainable practice at all. Then there’s a question on what every single country is doing when it comes to organic. Is it really just something you pay for once and there’s no check ups on? We don’t know. And so this brings us to what we can do. We can grow food ourselves, utilizing vertical hydroponics, aquaponics and conventional growing methods. We’re able to do this in any space.
You may think I just have a small balcony. What can I do with that? I can’t do anything in a small balcony. Well, yes, you can. You can utilize vertical systems to be able to grow a good amount of your food source. One square foot is enough to be able to grow 30 heads of lettuce or more. If you utilize vertical space, you can grow 30 herbs in one square foot. There are many things you can do if you have a spare room in your house, you can turn that into your own personal grocery store.
Now, maybe you have no room at all, but there is that little corner of the house that you can fit a four by four square foot tent. You can eat strawberries out of that year round. You can have herbs from that year round. Really? I love Rotten’s for growing my own food. Now, if you have a lawn, the options are limitless. I have a very basic lawn that has just the normal size and backyard, about 20 by 30 feet.
However, I’m able to grow more than what the family can eat throughout the growing month. My bunny is in heaven throughout the growing times. Now, when it comes to winter, I did have a bit of success this last winter, but I’m going to work on it even more this year and we’re going to have future episodes that are going to talk about that. Now, that leads me to what you can expect from this channel. We’re going to cover lots of different ways on how you can grow your own food.
We don’t just stick at the soil. We go to soil vertical. We can go organic hydroponics, we can go aquaponics. There are many different areas that we can go when it comes to this. And even growing our own micro greens, we’re also going to cover sustainability issues that this world currently faces and what we can do to take a proactive approach at it. And we’re going to have interviews of people who are making a huge difference in their own local community.
So if you’re ready, subscribe to this podcast, check us out on YouTube and subscribe there as well. And I will see you in the next one.