The Diggers Club

The Diggers Club
What's in a name? Diggers was born on July 1978 in an old tin shed! Our purpose was to rescue the wonderful old varieties of vegetables, such as Scarlet Runner Beans, that mainstream companies were dropping from their lists.
Due to the buying power of Coles and Woolworths, the only way to reach the keenest gardeners was to set up mail order distribution, bypassing retail shops. Over the past 30 years, a hardware collossus, such as Bunnings, have gained dominance and now control the garden market, just as Coles and Woolworths control the fruit and vegetable market. Buying food, rather than growing it at home, is a greater contributor to climate change than all the CO₂ from coal fired power stations. Multinational chemical companies, like Monsanto, can now introduce chemicals into our food supply (ie: G.M. seeds), which threatens our health and the existence of our best plant varieties.
So to preserve our best plants and garden traditions, and to help solve climate change, Digger's has to become a club for subversive gardeners. We are anti-G.M. and anti-industrial agriculture and pro-organic, as we campaign to increase the growing of food in our backyards.

click here read about The GM debate
Along with avoiding chemicals and seeking better taste and nutrition, one of the top five reasons people choose to buy organic products is because it is one of the only sure ways of avoiding the untested genetically modified (GM) organisms that are slowly and silently creeping into our food supply.
GM is strictly prohibited in the Australian Certified Organic Standard (ACOS).  The GM debate has raged for years and surveys consistently find that the majority of people are very uncomfortable about GM-derived ingredients in their food, yet governments turn a blind eye, fold to the all-powerful lobbyists of the multinational chemical corporations and allow the planting of GM crops.
State politicians come and go rapidly and their privileged position often allows actions that leave lasting and dangerous legacies – like the sanctioning and release of the cane toad – long after the members are forgotten in their local electorate.

 Triple b biodynamic beef
We aim to educate consumers to the benefits both to their health and most importantly to the environment of biological (both biodynamic and organic) farming.  We also hope to raise awareness of animal welfare, food miles and eating local seasonal food.  Since the end of World War II there have been dramatic and detrimental changes to agriculture.  Many people would have heard about terrorists purchasing bomb making fertiliser products from hardware stores, but don’t realise that synthetic fertilisers came about due to what was left over from the bomb making industries of WW1.  Many people don’t understand the enormous problems created by lot fed cattle – not only is it obscene that in a world with millions starving, more grain is grown to feed cattle than people !  Cattle are not biologically designed to eat grain, but worst of all is the cruelty of keeping animals in such conditions.  Feedlots can be seen from space – brown desert-like areas where animals are living in their own waste.   We would urge everyone to read David Suzuki’s latest book “The Legacy” and understand that we need to act locally to save our environment – we can all do something on a local basis and as he comments we must think of the next 7 generations to come, as native people have done throughout history.