The Irish Department of Agriculture reports an 80% rise in the number of new applicants applying to convert to organic production. How does organic farming benefit the environment and our health?

I am so happy for your country. Congratulations! You have good government, Ben. It’s a nice statistic.

Truly enlightened government. It’s something positive for a change. Yes. I mean, my God, how many countries do this? Ireland is the first one in the region to ban smoking. That’s right, yes! We remember that. And now it seems like it’s the first country to encourage organic farming. You see, it doesn’t just happen from nowhere. It is your government who does this. I remember your government, the Minister of Agriculture, he wrote to all the farmers asking them to consider the organic farming method. Is that right, Ben? Yes! That’s right, yes.

Bless him, bless him, bless your country. I am so glad to hear of this good news for Ireland, and I hope that many other countries follow suit. Yes, so do we all. If you can, please convey – please don’t forget, maybe you can print it out please – my heartfelt thanks to your government’s bright leadership and the Irish people who support it, especially the smart, responsible, organic farmers as well.

I want them to know my appreciation. Could you please print that? We will, we’ll pass that on, absolutely. Yes. People who do good things deserve some feedback so that they know that they are appreciated.

Every one of us is the same, right? Yes. We want to know that we’re doing the things that are pleasing to people and that is very good to hear that. Organic vegan farming is what should be promoted, actually. The so-called organic farming of animals is still cruel and unhealthy and unjust to both animal and human. What I mean is organic vegan farming vegetables, yes? Yes. This one benefits our health because it avoids hundreds of pesticides, as well as insecticide residues in our food, the antibiotics, the unnatural additives which have been linked to countless diseases.

Organic farming absorbs CO2 as well. Compared to animal products, organically farmed fruits and vegetables contain high levels of nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants which protect us from cancer. Moreover, they taste better – everyone will tell us that. For the environment, organic vegan farming protects and even enriches the soil, helps to preserve wildlife habitat, creates much less pollution. The Rodale Institute found that it even helps to overcome greenhouse gases by absorbing 40% of carbon dioxide in the soil if it is practiced worldwide. Forty percent is absorbed already! We don’t need to wait even for solar technology or anything else. We have 40% CO2 absorbed by organic vegan practices – I mean vegetables, yes. That is 1,000 pounds of carbon per acre absorbed and stored. Isn’t that good, Ben? That’s brilliant. That’s incredible. Yes, incredible. So, for our health and for the planet, organic vegan/vegetarian farming is the solution. Well, “vegan” means “vegetarian” already, just to over-emphasize.

Dear Supreme Master Ching Hai, what is the farmer’s role, especially small farmers in poor countries, in this entire spiritual and ecological movement concerning the vegan society? Can we help them so that their life will be more prosperous through this movement? Thank you. Thank you, Madam, for your time and your concern.

Yes, the small farmers have an important role to play. You’re right to be concerned and want to help them, especially during this urgent time and in the future. They have a role in the veg trend to feed the world with nutritious and sustainable plant-based food. And wherever possible, all farmers should become organic vegan farmers to help restore the planet to a healthy balance, while improving people’s health and helping to stop the suffering of both humans and animals. I pray this will be the multifold, noble role of all the farmers of the world. The climate scientists are advising us that we must cut our meat consumption if we want to save the planet.

Because the animal farms are too inefficient, too costly, depleting natural resources, polluting the environment, creating huge medical costs, water shortage, world hunger, and conflicts. In contrast to animal raising, growing organic vegetables, fruits and legumes yields more and better nutrition, is harmonious for humans, animals, and the environment, and is more profitable. Organically farmed soil is also healthy and even absorbs a lot of the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. In fact, if tillable land was globally used for organic farming, it would absorb 40% of all greenhouse gases, at least. Can you imagine? Forty percent would be absorbed by the organic farming method, then we have another 50% that would be cut off by abolishing the animal industry. Then our planet will be healthy. Very simple, logical, scientific and quick. Contrary to some beliefs, organic farming is quite profitable, and especially for small farmers.

We have examples everywhere and we have shown some of these examples on Supreme Master Television, where the farmers just sprinkle the seeds on the land. That’s it. No water needed, no fertilizer needed, not much work to do even. They just sit there and wait for the rain to come – or even not rain much – then they will harvest, and harvest in abundance. Now, we have also multiple studies in the United States, India, and New Zealand.

They all have confirmed this, that some of the reasons for the greater profits are that the production costs are lower than conventional farming. There are more crop varieties that could be rotated, such as corn, soybean and alfalfa. Also, the organic system is naturally more resistant to drought than conventional farm systems. In the United States, crop yields were at least the same and even up to three times higher than normal after the switch to organic, vegetable farming. Can you imagine? We harvest three times more on the same piece of land if we do organic farming. At the same time, the environment is more protected, the produce is healthier and tastier. The good news is more and more people are realizing the many benefits of organic, vegan products, making it a trend in many countries, and many cities, including Indonesia.

Besides, we are facing a food shortage with high food prices. Small farmers can help us develop our economies in a better direction that is no longer dominated and hampered by the meat industry. The United Nations announced that as of 2009 the world is now seeing the highest number of hungry people in four decades.

To be exact, there are 1.02 billion people with not enough food in the world. Hungry. 1.02 billion people are hungry in the world right now. That is one in every six persons, including children, the elderly...women. While we are sitting here in safety and comfort, and have sufficient food for ourselves and our family, our neighboring people, our world co-citizens – more than one billion of them – are living in poverty, in hunger, in thirst. No sufficient water, no clean water, no food to eat. Children are dying every few seconds. Statistically, every five seconds one child dies of hunger.

I’m sorry to inform you of all this bad news, but I guess some of you already know and the truth has to be told. Organic vegan farming is also part of the solution to solve hunger. Small farmers have a spiritual role in veganism as well. The vegan diet itself is a spiritual movement because it is the single most effective way to expand our human compassion and noble quality and loving quality. It can reverse the cycle of violence and bad karmic retribution, “as we sow, so shall we reap,” and it places us within a circle of love, protection, and mercy from any negative happenings in the physical realm.

So, the vegan organic farmer supports countless others to have this great merit by providing them with food that has minimal, or is free of, violence, and through that he surely gains many spiritual merits himself. In many cases, organic farming is not different at all from conventional methods. Not much. So, besides some labor, the technologies to become organic vegan don’t require a lot of investment. But in case the farmers need help, the government can provide, because the government subsidizes the meat farmers anyway. So, instead of subsidizing the meat industry, we subsidize the organic farming industry.

So the government can give them vegetable seeds and training on better ways to farm without using chemical fertilizers, because sometimes the farmers are just not well informed about the harms of livestock raising or the chemicals or the fertilizers or insecticides. They are not informed about a better way to grow vegetables and make more profit. The government can help them implement the measures to conserve the land and improve the quality of their products so that their buyers will have trust in them, etc. The government can also set up a certification and quality standardization system to further promote the organic vegan industry.

Now, regarding your question on how we can help the small farmers, we can ask the government to support them in becoming organic vegan, by letting them know that this is what the citizens want, and this will save the world. We can encourage our supermarkets, our schools, our companies, etc., as well as consider this healthier, more practical way of nourishing people.

Ultimately, as consumers, we, the ordinary citizens, have a lot of power in our hands, and it’s up to us to create the demand for the right foods and boycott the wrong ones – the harmful foods, the dangerous foods to us and to our children, the foods that are leading our planetary home to destruction. Instead, we should choose to buy organic vegetable and fruit products to save our lives and those of our families, save the animals and the planet.

Even if organic vegan is not yet possible or available to you, the most important first step is to stop buying and eating meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and any animal products for you and for your family’s sake, for the natural resources’ sake, and to plant the seeds for a better agricultural system for everyone. In this way, not only can all the farmers prosper – we help them in this way – but everyone will prosper and enjoy a long and thriving life.