Homing Pigeons

Different people have already approached me with a nervous question "is there a problem with all those insecticides and anti-fungals that are being sprayed on our grains in an effort to eliminate all the bugs on our grains"? Won't one or the other ruin the pigeon's kidneys and won't it affect the pigeons racing ability? Pigeon feeds are not the only products being sprayed. Last week I heard of a man who had become deathly ill from eating strawberries. He had "discovered" them while out for a walk. Well "discovered"?

He had walked past a strawberry field and had eaten more than his fill. Well, free strawberries always taste better. Don't they? The farmer had just sprayed the field with an insecticide a day earlier. He wanted to protect his crop of delicious strawberries so that he could sell them later. These would have been picked after several days or perhaps weeks packaged and sent of to the store. Sensible people would have first washed these strawberries and have eaten them without any problems. Delicious! We would not have gorged ourselves on them either, because they sure can be expensive. But, stolen strawberries, well that's another matter!

What about our apples? What about oranges? What about lettuce? What about cabbage? These have been sprayed for many years. We wash all of them carefully and then eat them. Anyone who doesn't want any poison on their vegetables or fruit goes to where they sell organic produce. Even on the organic fields 80 kilos per hectare of chemicals fall from the air, produced by our industries, even our groundwater perhaps is no longer 100% pure, because the farmers spray, don't they? Still, a growing number of people are feeling safer and rightly so. Organic produce and grains don't contain any more minerals or vitamins than those that are chemically sprayed and fertilized. You can ask the consumers' organizations, they can show you research confirming the fact.

But what these organizations did not look for is very important for many. Some British professors discovered an enzyme that was present in fruit and vegetables. These were the salvestrolen. According to their studies, these bitter products seem to kill cancers. These products are present mostly in organically grown fruit and vegetables. Sadly they are lost when using modern growing methods, such as in Brussel sprouts. They used to have a more bitter taste.

Vegetable that are rich in salvestrolen are: spouted soybeans, brussel sprouts, broccoli, celery, asparagus, watercress, peppers, and all of the brassicas. Fruit: raspberries, black berries, apples, strawberries, cranberries, pears, plums, figs and grapes. Herbs: basil, rosemary, thyme, sage, mint, lemon plant, dandelion, plantain, rose hip, hawthorn, camomile and milk thistle. Therefore it would not be wrong to use organic fruit and vegetables. Our bread can also be purchased at an organic bakery.

Washing Pigeon feed.
Now let's address the grains. In order to produce grain economically large areas are planted with just one type of grain or seed. You have probably seen some of these large fields of wheat, corn or sunflowers on some of your trips through the country. Those are the crops we eat. Most of them are ground into flour and are worked into various products that we consume. All these grains are sprayed and are eaten by 98% of the population. Organic crops make up only 2% of the total grains produced. Do we fall down on the ground as is often suggested that our homing pigeons do? I haven't noticed anyone falling down around me. We usually wash our vegetables and fruit before eating them. Perhaps that's an option for out pigeon feed. Tests are being done as I write this; I'll let you know the results when they become available.

Mountains of medicines:
I suspect that the small amount of poison that the farmer uses to spray the grain crops is enough to harm the pigeons. When I read the pigeon papers and magazines it sounds like we all just give our birds' grain and water. But once in a while I am in the pigeon stores and if I ask they all invariable answer the same: we sell mountains of it, that's right, medicines. Vaccines and medicine use or should I say misuse is the order of the day. We don't want to admit it put we stuff it into our pigeons unceasingly. Perhaps they are the main reason that all those poisonous products are present in the pigeon's bodies? Maybe the spray on the grain is just that small drop that overfills the pail? But the main reason I doubt that very much.

In the winter our pigeons always look good. Ask a long distance fancier, one who pairs up later in the year. They always have super healthy pigeons right up to the beginning of the race season. They eat plain grain mixes, sprayed grains not organically produces grains. Organic grains are just to expensive. He doesn't use medicines either. Distance flyers have an aversion to these products, because pigeons need natural resistance. What about our pigeons? What have you just learned?

Is there another way?
Is there another way, a way that would require using fewer insecticides and anti-fungal products? The grain varieties are steadily becoming more refined. The production per square meter has to improve because we have to maximize earnings. The crops density is steadily being increased and this decreases the suns penetration and keeps the crops damp increases fungal growth. We can spray the crop but fungi and insects will eventually become resistant to the sprays. That's how the mycotoxins came into being.

And then there is another problem. The farmer is being prohibited from using certain sprays. Just ask them. At one time DDT was a popular and effective chemical spray. But, today all chemicals being used must be biodegradable and that's only right. But when the grains were sprayed with DDT, in the good old days, did we lose all our pigeons?

A natural balance:
Yes there is another way. When we don't spray than there are more salvestrolen present in the grains and insects hate the taste. The total harvest will naturally be less. Sprayed grains barely contain any of the salvestrolen. What is the other way? We have to stop growing crops on such a large scale. We have to return to some of our past cultivation patterns. Return to a more balanced type of agriculture.

We will have to plant Marigolds, horse radish, corn and potatoes together to create a better biological balance. We will again have to plant strawberries next to French beans, spinach and lettuce, eggplant next to the beans, radishes next to the peas and onions amongst the beets. I just don't see this happening on a large scale again.

Reality:
The reality is regretfully less attractive. We have been engaged for many years (in the name of food security) in destroying the nutritional quality of our food. The label "genetically manipulated" will no longer have to be used on the packaging in the stores beginning in 2010. At least those are the plans of the powerful DFA organization, to which 73 countries belong. This means you will no longer be able to determine which food products contain genetically manipulated soybeans. Have you ever looked to see how many products contain soya? Yes the powerful chemical company that produces Roundup has already gained control over many soybean fields.

Have you ever driven through the soya fields near Buenos Aires; you can drive for hours and hours without ever seeing even a fly on your windshield. How Come? They have disappeared, sprayed to extinction. Even the flycatchers, the frogs, the birds, the birds of prey, the predators have all disappeared; the entire biological cycle of life has been destroyed. All this has been done just to produce cheaper food and in order to produce and sell Roundup to the farmers.

And then there are the phosphates. The power of the pharmaceutical companies is great and is getting stronger because they have a great deal of influence with the DFA. They determine everything for 73 countries. That's how we constantly ingest strange chemicals into our systems. All we can do is wonder where all these new, strange illnesses and allergies come from%u2026 and what do we hear from our politicians? The green ones amongst us have a very small voice. The powerful of this earth do with us what they will.

What can we do?
We shouldn't really even think about it, because if you do you become depressed. By nature I am an optimist and I always try to look at the world from that point of view: can I do something about it? No? Then I won't put any more energy into worrying about it. Then I try to find the right or the best alternative to the problem. So "what can I do to stay healthy?"

What about the pigeons? We must always search for pigeons with strong immune systems and we must have lofts where the birds can remain very healthy. Use medicines as little as possible and select very strongly. Select not only on performance but most importantly select for health. Only homing pigeons a well-functioning immune system can overcome all the troublesome unknown products they are exposed to to-day and in the future. We will have to help them and we can. We can feed them mixes with the right combination of fatty acids (this eliminates inflammation in the intestines and the air passages). What else? We'll talk about that another time.

read on in part 2