Bionutrient Meter - a game changer?
As mentioned in our December 2018 Farm newsletter, I am super excited about the new BioNutrient Meter developed by the Bionutrient Food Association. I first heard about this unique device in a presentation at the ACRES USA farming conference last week by Dan Kittredge, an organic vegetable farmer and head of the nonprofit Bionutrient Food Association.
The reason for my excitement .... I think this tool could change the entire direction of global agriculture in the next 5 years, and for the better. For the last 60 years, "industrial" factory farming has taken over much of the developed world, and the result has been a rapid race to the bottom. The cheap food movement has rapidly depleted our soils, polluted our environment with toxic chemicals, destroyed waterways and wildlife habitat, ravaged our rural farming communities, and greatly contributed to climate change. Not to mention the huge rise in chronic illnesses like autism, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, Crohns disease, etc. All of these diseases can be linked back to the rapid drop in nutrients available in foods today that are produced at the lowest possible cost on today's "factory farms".
But with the Bionutrient Meter, consumers will soon be able to use their smart phone to measure the nutrient density of foods they are shopping for. They can shine a light on the tomatoes at the grocery store and see which ones are produced in real soil and contain all the nutrients a tomato is supposed to have, instead of the hydroponic organic tomatoes that are mostly water and have no real nutritional value. Finally a way for consumers to differentiate real food, produced by real farmers, from the crappy food coming out of our factory farming system. Consumers equipped with this device, which will soon be in smart phones worldwide, will be able to choose the better, more nutrient dense foods. And these decisions will eventually work their way through the global supply chain, rewarding good farmers that grown real food and not the lowest cost, most efficient farmers that don't.
Learn more about the Bionutrient Meter at http://bionutrient.org/site/2018-11-04/bionutrient-meter-now-available-pre-order. You can actually order one, OR contribute to the further development of their open source database with a donation to the BNA. We will be ordering one to test our own products and submit a milk sample for them to test and calibrate their milk database.
Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting development.