NAVARRA GOURMET

Josep Pamiés. Bio-organic farmer

“Health is simply not big business, illness is”

“When I realised that my lands were contaminated, as were many bodies, I made up my mind to change my way of working". In this way, farmer Jose Pamiés, aged 61, decided to radically change his production and go into studying medicinal plants "humanity's real store cupboard" and grow them for curative purposes.

“The very same pharmaceutical industry which is not curing us because it is just not profitable, is selling the pesticides which are poisoning us” denounced this Catalan who is head of the movement called Sweet Revolution, defending sustainable, healthy, organic agriculture. The speaker recommended "listening to the old men working the fields" and their experiences with nature, because "pesticides are making us ill".

Pamiés denounced that “the pharmaceutical and agro-food mafias” are extremely powerful and "manage to get governments to legislate to suit their purposes. And the fact is that health is just not big business, whilst illness is". This bio-organic farmer recommended going back to eating traditional foods, in other words "eating local grown produce", as our bodies are adapted to our environment. "Each country must value what it has. Africa ought to grow its own food and not produce transgenic food which is making us all ill", he stated.

As he explained, there are plants like the stevia, with curative properties which have not been studied by the pharmaceutical industries. "I'm fighting against the Aspartame sold by Monsanto by supporting the stevia, a plant which can be grown at home and which can cure diabetes", he declared before going on to ask himself "how is it possible that humanity is so ill now? Why is there so much diabetes and so much cancer?”.

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