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I am big into living green, I do organic gardening, I grow our food, and can it for the winter. I stay away from food with high fructose corn syrup, and when we can we eat grass fed beef. I believe in preserving the planet, and doing what you can for yourself, and keeping things as clean and whole as possible.
However, my husband is a farmer. He is all about roundup-ready corn, and herbacide, and pestacide, and fertilizer made from heaven knows what. He just wants marbled beef and doesn’t care that they were fed corn. He doesn’t think there’s really any problem with HFCS, and while he does believe in eating a healthy diet, he’s definitely not as “green” as I am when it comes to creating that diet.
We tend to just live and let live with our beliefs around here… but now we have a 5 year old daughter. What do we teach her? Who’s beliefs should she be raised with? Green and natural… or farming, agriculture, and making money by growing more corn?
It’s a quandry, and while every family may not have this exact issue going on in their households I’m sure there are many families where the parents don’t completely agree on the “green issue”.
Right now, I just try to talk to my daughter about being green. She helps me in the garden. I tell her the alternatives to spraying, and how natural things can also help the garden grow. She also goes out on the tractor and in the fields with her Dad, and I’m sure he tells her the virtue of spraying to manage weeds, and why corn is a wonderful crop, and how much money it’s going to make us this year.
I guess maybe that’s the best way to do it… at least for right now. She’s getting a full picture of what beliefs are available to her, and I guess as she grows up she’ll get to decide which she believes and wants to live by.
What about your family? How do you manage differing opinions about being greener?
