Glossaries, lexicons, dictionairies or the art of joining words….
The words of organic food, with a few exceptions, are the same as ordinary words for food. Organic agriculture is the simple and normal continuity of ancestral agriculture, respecting the environment. The deviation from normalcy is intensive agriculture and its corollary, industrial food. There are both dead ends, which if follwed, lead to an end to humanity.
So, these words, sometimes a litte technical, bout mostly savory, appetizing and enriching melt under the clicks of your mouse and let their taste linger without limit.

Local agendas, different for each town, based on the sustainable living rules from the Rio Symposium. Inhabitants, organization members, politicians from each town choose their actions and objectives.
To know more about this topic : http://www.association4d.org/

Who Am I : When I’m not recycled, I pollute. But I need a lot of energy to be recycled. You can find me in toys, clocks, alarm-clocks, flashlights and in many other things which can work very well without me when they are made by creative and responsible designers. Who am I ? You will guess if you put the letters of my name in the right order : a, b, e, r, t,t, y. (Answer : battery)

The nutrients of all cereals are found in the beans, especially in the fresh beans or when the beans have just been ground. When the beans have been ground a long time before and conditionned, there are no nutrients anywhere inside. So if you want to benefit from those nutrients, it will be better to use a cereal –wheel than to buy your flour or your cereal already ground. So you can grind your cereal just before you need to eat it in this form. With a cereal-wheel, you can also grind spices : cumin, fennel, anise, oleaginous seeds : sesame, linseed, …. Cereals need to be soaked a short time in water before being ground, (for at least one hour) except oats, then you have to dry them before grinding.
There are different kinds of cereal-wheels depending the grinding required : steel, ceramic, stone and the form of the grinding : like a cone or like a record. Some are mechanical, some are electric. With them you can get varying levels of ground cereals and flour- from coarsely to finely ground.

As its name shows, it’s a system to transport several people together. This system has to be accessible for the greatest number of people, on a physical and financial level ; it must run frequently, and be safe, punctual and comfortable. You dream about a such system ? Me too. How long have you been waiting ? Oh, really ! And what about walking ? Oh yes, with spike heels ? A scooter, then ? Motorcycle or moto ? With a short skirt…. Bicycle ? Pfffffffft, Oh, I think your tire is flat ! Are you still waiting for an announcement or for somebody to give some information to the poor helpless herd of sheep ; sorry, I wanted to say ; users ? Well, once again, you have to take your expensive car. You’re dry : never mind, you must pay the piper at the pump for your petrol. What ? You bought a transport ticket ?
Like they say in novels : any resemblance to real characters is purely accidental.

In France, independant organizations like Ecocert, Nature et Progrès… regurlarly control the organic products. The ministry of agriculture gives them accreditation. Surprise controls can be done too. The controls concern the entire product : from the beginning until the end : production, transformation, conditioning, place of sale and how the payment is made. If the control is alright, a certification is given and the product is labeled organic.

Each of our actions needs a specific productive element (water, earth, air...), and consumes resources -- I consume water when I take a shower, I consume energy to make this water warm -- and makes waste. Our individual behaviors are different, so we all leave a different ecological imprint. You can calculate yours. Depending on your results, you may want to change your habits... http://www.passerelleco.info/IMG/pdf/Test_Empreinte_Ecologique.pdf

Once upon a time, there was a nice house, full of colors, sweet, cosy and comfortable. In winter and in summer, the temperature was always enjoyable. Outside noise didn’t come inside. When it was raining, the roof bloomed and smelled good. Birds and insects fell in love with this house. It was a nice garden roof house, and inside lived a dynamic family : Ecology, Organic Living, Sustainable Development and protection of the Ecosystem. Sometimes, embittered and jealous neighbours looked upon it with ill-regard, they were the family : Pollution, Greenhouse Effect, and Global Warming. The nice house with a garden roof, without doing anything, just enjoying its wellbeing, engendered so much envy from the others that the whole neighbourhood became a big garden. As for the troublesome neighbors, nobody hears about them anymore. A garden roof, full of flowers and pleasant smells, a paradise for bees… you would like to have one too ? http://www.adivet.net/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

The Grenelle of Environment evokes discussions held a long time ago at a Ministry on Grenelle Street. The meetings will be revived in autumn 2007 in Paris. In theory everything seems on the up and up : the purpose is to discuss what will happen to our poor, polluted, maltreated and disrespected planet. But at last, it seems that undesirable people have forced their way in, so it turns out to be more a masquerade, lobbying and propaganda. But to help you make up your own mind in the face of the official propaganda, here is some reading http://www.univers-nature.com/inf/inf_actualite1.cgi?id=2730 and http://www.legrenelle.lalliance.fr/

A natural product isn’t an organic product. To be specified organic a product has to follow specifications from a rule book, and be controlled by an independant organization. When everything is okay, a food, cosmetic, tinkering, housekeeping… product becomes labeled organic.
The name of the label depends on where it comes from : "organic" in the USA, "AB" meaning "Agriculture biologique" or Déméter in France, "Bio-Gro" and "Demeter" in New Zealand. A product has to been at least on 95 % organic to be called organic.
When you are traveling, on holiday, or writing to friends who live far away, you can collect the different organic labels from everywhere in the world.

This name "biologique" which is french for "organic" comes from Greek : "bio" the Life and "logos" Science. It’s an ethical choice of living and sharing between producers and consumers like, for example, responsible trade.
If you buy organic products just to be fashionable, for the feeling, to do like other people, but at the same time, you continue to pollute : you put your garbage anywhere, you go everywhere in your car, you use nuclear electricity for everything, you’re just stupid. Just because we talk a lot about pollution, weather (global warming), sanitary disasters (mad cow, bird flu….) and others catastrophies and because we think about organic food now does’nt meant that organic agriculture began to exist just yesterday. Some people began thinking this way already in the XIXth century. Energic women among them : the English Eve Balfour (1890-1990), Maria Müller – Bigler (1894–1969) from Switzerland, Maria Thun, born in 1922 from Germany and some other people whose life you will discover as this website continues to develop.

Rarely is residue found in organic food, because neither the fruit’s nor the vegetable’s skin is full of chemicals.
You can do culinary art with peeling. Imagine a gourd like a zebra : peeled in stripes : one strip stays, one strip is peeled.
Peelings nourish your compost or let you do decorative flowers, rolling them on themselves. Peeling art has no other limits other than your imagination.

Photo : © Bernadette NOZARIAN

You use yet plastic when you go shopping ! You even keep your foods in plastic containers ! How old fashioned are you? Go on, be fashionable. Plastic is over. For shopping, in the house. Everywhere. Ask your grand-mother if she has a non-descript old shopping-bag to give you. A bag in net, a basket, a cloth bag ? Organic cloth of course. You can decide. You start to become fashionable …

http://www.foodqualitynews.com/Publications/Food-Beverage-Nutrition/FoodProductionDaily.com/

Plastic and oceans
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/fr/nos-oceans/pollution/le-tourbillon-d-ordures

Getting plastic out of your daily life
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/Out-Of-Diet-PG5nov03.htm

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Alternatives/Alternatives-Plastic-Goettlich3aug05.htm
and
http://www.monpetitpas.com/dotclear/index.php?2007/05/05/15-les-sacs-en-plastique

Diaporama

It’s an honest and balanced relationship between producers who offer good quality products and consumers who pay the right and decent price for those products, so the producers are able to live from their production.

It’s a special machine that lets the seeds germinate. On each different level, seeds germinate. So you can get seeds germinated at different levels of germination or different kind of seeds germinating on different rythmns of germination.

tastelessness, pulmonary illness, illegal workers, fauna disappearing, use of banned poisons, skin infections, poaching, exodus of migratory birds, drought stricken savannah, plastic, globalization: Spain, Morocco, China, 16,000 10-ton trucks, Andalusia, 6,000 hectares of plantations, illegal exploitation, soil depletion, micro-fauna destruction, violent pain.... http://www.passerelleco.info/breve.php3?id_breve=168
Bon appetit !

When the weather is cold, you wear summer clothes because it’s very hot in your home. The water tank runs out, never mind, a bath each day makes you relax, bathtub completely full of course ! You go shopping just here, with your car, you forget something and go again, always with your car. All the lights are on, you water the garden in full sunshine, the garbage is overfilled with unsorted waste and useless packaging. Water runs from the tap while you brush your teeth, you ask for a plastic bag each time you go shopping, you use a lot of useless electric gadgets ; you eat products which used a lot of energy to grow out of their normal season or else they had to make a costly journey from far away.
Your attitude is so extraordinary that the planet is completely sick.
Continue… to change your way of life !

It’s a way of life compatible with an organic life where the most important idea is : "to be" and not "to have". In fact, you choose what you consume or rather you choose to not consume large amounts, so you don’t have to spend all your life waiting for jobs, money and the mirage of an illusion of empty happiness limited by the possession of material things. It’s to get less to live better. To get less material things, less debt but more time, more time for reflexion, more harmony, more human relationships. This way of life is becoming more popular now around the world and you can go to the chat section to share your ideas about this.

To know more : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-549582913854387681&hl=fr

Utensil useful to measure how much humans waste. If your garbage is overfilled with useless packaging, maybe you didn’t buy the right products.
If the garbage can eats better than somebody in a poor country because of the food you throw away, it means that the world is going crazy.

Absolutely useless electric device used to consume nuclear electricity, except in more advanced countries, and to move dust while making noise. To let you know why you had to buy a bag for dust, it eats just a little. You can use a broom instead, so you always have on hand what is absolutely needed to be a witch.