The Organic View

One of the best things about winter is being able to sit back, relax and sift through magazines, brochures and pamphlets for the upcoming garden season. Every time I see a new catalog with cool gadgets and varieties of seeds that I have not grown, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling in anticipation of the day when I can til my soil again. During the winter, most gardeners take time out at some point to review and assess everything that worked and did not work in last year’s garden. As exciting as it may be to review new plants, there is a great amount of care that still needs to be given to your current houseplants as well as other plants that are being overwintered. This can wind up being an arduous task that may or may not be worth all the effort by the time Spring rolls around. The psychological, physical and environmental benefits of gardening are year round, and the challenges of growing with your plants are part of the fun. Gardening is like music and dance, never stationary always moving always changing. Gardening indoors or out is not about creating a static tableau but about embracing change, loving life. It could even be equated to cooking. To have a great garden, you need a recipe or plan, proper tools, great organic ingredients that are properly mixed together and are all seasoned with experience. In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer will speak to Horticultural expert, John Peter Thompson, who is President of the National Agricultural Research Alliance (http://www.NARA-B.org ) to discuss the care of winter plants and other plants that you may be overwintering. If you want to learn how the experts organize for the next growing season. Stay tuned!

With over 1 billion people, the idea of having a pet is still a relatively new idea to India. There is no such thing as infrastructure for pet adoption, TNR (Trap-neuter-release) much less how to cope with such a large animal population. Subsequently, India has one of the highest rates of rabies. One of the common problems concerns “community dogs” which are dogs that simply roam the streets is that they are reproducing rapidly and are also being killed mercilessly whether by government animal control or by cars,etc . There is very little concern for these animals as there is such fierce competition for food. Then there is the poaching problem where the illegal animal trade has thrived into almost a $10 billion dollar trade. Anything large enough to be eaten or lucrative enough to be sold is hunted on a massive scale for its meat, skin, fur or feathers, for the pet trade, or as an ingredient in traditional medicines. There are so many animal welfare and animal rights issues that clearly the public needs to be continuously informed. Michelle Buckalew founded AnimalWorldUSA.org in order to create animal welfare awareness for regional issues as well as global issues. Throughout the year, different states and countries are being celebrated with events that are organized and promoted for an entire weeklong celebration. January 14-31st kicks of the 1st annual weeks for the animals in India! The India Weeks for the Animals team http://indiaanimals.org/ is connecting and working with advocates and community leaders across India. They anticipate shining the spotlight on organizations, as well as helping in any way possible promoting life-saving and life-changing events that will help communities in beautiful India. In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer will speak to Eileen Weintraub,President of Help Animals India. Tune in to find out more about this wonderful, 1st time event and how to get involved.

To create a major change in an industry, a great deal of cooperation from large groups of people, willing to move in the same direction at the same time is required. This can take a very long time to make even the smallest difference. What if the concept for starting a business was based upon making a difference in the world by embracing the challenges already associated with a highly saturated market? This is exactly the direction of Fearless Chocolate. FEARLESS is an expression of their company’s approach in life and business. They have an unwavering commitment to honor the environment, honor their employees and honor the integrity of their chocolate. They seek to boldly go where no chocolate company has gone before. Fearless has a commitment to craft bold products in each flavor, design and food politics. They strive to achieve sustainability at every level of sourcing, design and manufacturing, as they aim to populate the visual landscape with a warm and vibrant set of chocolate bars. Their packaging is crafted from 100% post-consumer recycled paper, bio-degrading within 6 months. Fearless also donates 1% of their annual profits to change-making organizations suggested by our customers. In the community of raw chocolatiers, only FEARLESS offers a proprietary source of cacao, independent from the 3 network imported varieties available to the greater market (Peru, Ecuador, Bali). All FEARLESS ingredients are 100% Organic and Kosher certified. Fearless also chooses not to use agave and instead opts to use rapadura. Rapadura is an organic, minerally intact, whole-cane sugar from Brazil. Beyond fresh whole sugar cane, Rapadura is the closest thing to a raw, unrefined sugar on the planet. In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer will speak to Jordan Michael Schuster, CEO, Fearless Chocolate, to discuss the unique process of making gourmet raw vegan chocolate that is good for you while making a positive impact on the environment!

The Federal Ethanol Program is a $6 billion dollar program that is funded by tax payers’ dollars. Recently, Al Gore even changed his position and is now opposing the program because it takes just as much gas and diesel to produce the ethanol and will negatively impact the price of feed. Because of the increase in feed prices, dairy farmers will not be able to afford to keep up with production costs which will result in a milk shortage. This in turn, will impact all food production as prices soar in what is still a very weak economy. The bottom line is that the Federal Ethanol Program does not make sense economically and will contribute to creating a food shortage. Is this really making tax dollars work or making them work specifically for special interest groups? In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer will speak to Joseph Augusto, President of the California Dairy Campaign and Joaquin Contente, President of the California Farmers Union to discuss the crisis dairy farmers are facing and how this is going to affect your wallet! Stay tuned!

Pets are a huge part of our life and as such, pet food is a $53 billion dollar industry. For some people, animal companions are the only family they have. Yet people still feed their cats and dogs anything that they would eat, including fast food. This is not a wise idea. Other people go shopping and simply select the food with the lowest price thinking that their pet isn’t going to mind anyway and after all, they should be lucky they are being fed. Sadly, this is a reality. Animals simply cannot speak for themselves and we are therefore in charge of making the right choices when it comes to feeding our pets. When you feed your pets poor food choices, they may get very sick. Over the course of a long period of time they may even develop diseases such as heart disease to cancer. The loss of a pet is something heartbreaking and prevention is the only solution. However, as consumers, it gets very confusing as far as what you should do because there are so many products on the market that range from pet weight loss to supplements that are supposed to increase the vim and vigor in each step your dog takes, etc., etc.. Sometimes these products will do more damage than good. In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer will talk to world renowned pet food expert, Susan Thixton, Founder of Truth About Pet Food (www.truthaboutpetfood.com) how pet owners can improve the health of their pets in 2011 by making better choices about pet food. She will also explore the weight loss products for pets, how a pet owner can determine if their pet is overweight and what options you really have. Stay tuned!

Love is in the air. With the upcoming Valentine’s Day celebration approaching, people are on the look-out for the latest method in hopes of attracting someone special. Love is something everyone deserves and everyone desires. Often, people will try all sorts of things to help stimulate the natural attraction capacity that human beings possess. Some go to online dating services, some simply light candles. Remember that classic song Love Potion No 9? The quest never ends! Many people feel that aphrodisiacs are a natural way to do this. An aphrodisiac is simply a substance used to increases sexual desire. Often people will consume certain foods such as oysters, strawberries and chocolate in hopes of enhancing the mood. The ancient Egyptians would eat wild prickly lettuce Lactuca virosa and Lactuca serriola to please the God Min (or Pan. It is said that the domestic version Lactuca sativa also has aphrodisiac and even opiate qualities. Cleopatra was known to use rose essential oil to seduce her lovers. There is a custom in Indonesia, in which flowers of Ylang Ylang are laid out on the bed of newlyweds, in an attempt to stimulate passion. So, are these practices simply just a bunch of myths or is there some scientific truth to this? Which is better? Should you eat something in its natural form or use an essential oil? Are essential oils as potent as eating a particular food or smelling a particular scent? In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, Kayla Fioravanti, Chief Formulator from Essential Wholesale Labs (www.EssentialWholesale.com) and also the star of the hit series on YouTube, Kitchen Chemistry with Kayla will discuss with June Stoyer our host, the myths and science behind essential oils and their effects. She will also discuss several do it yourself recipes that you can make at home so you can prepare yourself for this coming Valentine’s Day! Stay tuned!

The handbag is a key accessory that women use not only to tote their essentials but also to proclaim who they are and what they are about. Each woman is different and the style of the bag certainly reflects an individual’s personality. The brand of bag especially signifies a particular affinity for style, taste and financial status. However, most women never give much thought to the amount of waste regarding the production of handbags much less what is done with all of these high end fashion bags once they are no longer in style. One day, Monica Ralli opened her closet door to find that she had quite a collection of handbags and had come to a realization that all of these bags are so extremely wasteful. They are produced from materials that are contributing to the pollution of our earth and the waste is expanding the size of our landfills. So, she decided to do something about it and created UrthBags (http://www.urthbags.com) In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, Monica Ralli will discuss with June Stoyer, how UrthBags has been working with co-operatives around the globe to recycle everything from juice containers, phone books, newspapers, glossy magazines, hand collected shells and packaging waste materials to make some really high end handbags that are now being sold in some of the finest hotels in the world. To find out more about how she started her company, the challenges of reaching a high end market, working with global co-operatives and what it is like to create a successful business model during a very tough economy, stay tuned!

Each week, when you do your grocery shopping, you are almost guaranteed to find certain foods that will be available any time of the day all throughout the year. Whether it is a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, a can of beans or a bunch of yellow bananas, these commonplace foods are expected to be conveniently available. However, most people do not give much thought to what is required in order to make such foods so commonly accessible. In many countries, there are large corporations that saturate the forests and farmland with pesticides as they exploit the labor of the farmers including young children. This is all for the unappreciated luxury of a purchasing a yellow banana at any given time throughout the year. However, there are still some small farmers who take care of the land as though it were an extension of their own bodies and the lifeline of their existence. These farmers truly care for the land in every regard because they always expect to live there. They simply want the land to remain pristine and pure. Unfortunately, these farmers are a dying breed and being forced to sell their land because they are completely unable to compete with the giant corporations that they compete with in the global market. Zak Zaidman, CEO of Kopali Organics (www.kopaliorganics.com) is determined to do something about this. His company supports thousands of sustainable farmers and their communities in nearly a dozen countries around the world. Kopali supports organic family farmers and their communities by connecting them with the growing market of people who care about the quality of the food they eat as well as the social and environmental conditions under which it is grown, produced and traded. In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, Zak Zaidman will discuss how Kopali Organics works towards social justice in which business can and must move beyond being harmful, and even beyond becoming responsible, in order to serve as a healing force in our world.

It is a new year and with new stresses. People have made New Year’s resolutions and failed because they lack balance. They are already off their diets, smoking twice as much, stressing out over the smallest problem, etc. Emotional balance is mandatory in an age where there never seems to be enough time, money or energy. How can you achieve balance and more importantly remain grounded and calm when things are really going out of control? It doesn’t matter if it's work, family or friends. Sometimes, it's difficult to cope. There are ways to achieve emotional balance. In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, Advanced EFT Practitioner and Host of Living La Vida Healthy, Lydia Proschinger will join Author, Ariaa Jaeger, an Executive Life Counselor and Motivational Speaker. They will discuss methods for emotional detoxification, New Year’s Resolutions vs. Resolves, what determines how much energy we "leak" and finding relief. Lydia Proschinger, an expert EFT practitioner, specializes in working with high profile clientele which includes: celebrities, C-level executives, ex-Pats, and other high net-worth individuals whom she assists in their efforts to maintain an energetic balance, which enables them to achieve maximum efficiency. Please visit her site at www.life-procoaching.com . Ariaa Jaeger (http://Ariaa.com)is an Executive Life Counselor, Motivational Speaker, Intuitive and singer who has made a global impact on the masses with her special blend of wisdom, humor & accurate prophecy. Her "Ariaaisms Spiritual Food for the Soul" and "Ariaa Quotes" have significantly impacted millions in social media. She inspires and teaches others to “LOVE OUTLOUD” and has drawn a huge following as a result of living that very message. She is also an animal rights activist, environmentalist and humanitarian. She sang at the UN’s Spirit Awards & has a new CD of covers "Absolute Ariaa".

“People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.” Author Unknown It is amazing how many people become focused when it comes to a particular date or timeframe. Whether it is an upcoming wedding, a vacation in Hawaii or simply to start a brand new year with a resolution to lose weight, people set goals that seem to be great for a while but then peter out. As a society, we have evolved into people that only embrace much needed change when the pressure is on. That is something that needs to clearly change. The thought process is where it needs to begin. Although there are countless workout videos, miracle equipment, muscle gyms and dieting products on the market, none of them seem to accomplish much other than draining your bank account. Lisa Welko, CEO of Ellipse Fitness (www.ellipsefitness.com), the hottest, rapidly growing, innovative fitness and weight loss franchise club, has been determined to change is. Lisa has a different perspective entirely because she educates as she motivates her clients. She has helped so many people implement the right kinds of changes that they need through education and communication. Her team will even call you if you miss a day at the gym to keep the communication flowing and help you move forward to achieve success! In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, Lisa will discuss what is coming down the pike in the world of fitness and why you really need to understand the complexity of your own metabolism in order to stop losing weight and start losing the fat!