On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television - a documentary that Americans won’t ever see. The gigantic bio-tech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.
Back in April, Argentinean embryologist Andrés Carrasco gave an interview with a Buenos Aires newspaper describing his recent findings suggesting the chemical glyphosate, a chemical herbicide widely used in agriculture as well as in U.S. anti-narcotic efforts, could cause defects in fetuses in much smaller doses than those to which peasants and farmers in his country were already being exposed. Loud calls for a ban on the substance were issued by Argentinean environmental lawyers, and the country’s Ministry of Defense banned the planting of glyphosate-resistant soya crops in its fields.
Then came the backlash. An article in an Argentinean paper recently reported that Carrasco was assaulted in a way he described as “violent” by four men associated with agricultural interests:
Two of the men were said to be members of an agrochemical industry body but refused to give their names. The other two claimed to be a lawyer and notary. They apparently interrogated Dr. Carrasco and demanded to see details of the experiments. They left a card Basílico, Andrada & Santurio, attorneys on behalf of Felipe Alejandro Noël.
It’s still unclear who these people are. But the interest in keeping such information quiet or discrediting Carrasco and his findings are strongest with Monsanto, the agricultural company who first patented a glyphosate product (sold as Roundup) and also created genetically-modified crops specifically to resist the herbicide.
GRAIN, an international non-profit supporting small-scale farmers and biodiversity in community agriculture, originally reported the story, evidently before the reports of threats against Carrasco were known. GRAIN has also done extensive reporting on Monsanto’s genetically-modified soya crops in Argentina (which, according to the group, have increased five-fold since their introduction there, and have taken over more than half of Argentina’s farmland) as well as on the use of glyphosate (which has increased fourteen-fold since its introduction, contrary to Monsanto’s promises that its crop would decrease pesticide use). The so-called “Roundup Ready” crops have interbred with other plants, creating “superweeds” which in turn necessitate the use of other poisonous herbicides such as atrazine.
The U.S. military sprays glyphosate from airplanes onto drug crops as part of its worldwide anti-narcotic strategy. The best known example of such an effort was named Plan Colombia by the Clinton Administration and persists today.
But punishment is meted out unequally. Because glyphosate is an herbicide and is not specifically targeted to work against drug crops (as is easily deduced by the fact that it’s used against coca and poppy plants as well as against household weeds in the U.S.), the spray kills legitimate crops, too.
That is, unless you’re growing Monsanto’s specially-formulated “Roundup Ready” crops. The you can spray nearly unlimited amounts of the stuff, which is what it seems farmers (as well as the U.S. military) are doing.
- Standing outside the flourishing guerrilla garden at the base of his council estate block in Elephant and Castle, Richard Reynolds points to some shrubs that were once regularly flattened by a local homeless man who used them as a bed. Fortunately, he adds, “He’s moved on, to be replaced by more natural wildlife.”
- Guerrilla gardening, too, has moved on. Having once been an underground movement, it is now, not mainstream, but engaged in a (sometimes heated) conversation with that mainstream. Its adherents carry out a series of delicate negotiations with councils and transport authorities, trying to win recognition for their work without losing the rebellious spirit that animates them. They are, like their plants, growing up.
- He [Reynolds] admits he makes use of authority when it serves a purpose: the certificate he got for entering the garden in the council’s ‘Southwark in Bloom’ competition made it harder for officials, having (probably inadvertently) recognised his work, to then attack him. Authorities can change their tune, too. A session on the Elephant and Castle roundabout was once halted by the threat of police arrest, but a few months later the cops were waving and tooting their horns as they drove past. “They did ring me up a few months ago on suspicion of seeding some hanging baskets,” he adds, standing by one of the beds, “but I was able to reassure them on that point.”
- …
- Anonymity is the first instinct of the guerrilla gardener. It’s later on that matters get complicated. Official recognition can mean protection; it can also mean interference and a loss of identity. Knowing which path to take and when is one of the challenges now facing the gardeners.
- Not that Reynolds would try to dictate that, despite being the movement’s chief inspiration and standard bearer. “I wouldn’t want to be in control,” he says. To maintain the guerrilla independence, he regularly turns down offers of money and partnership from outside groups. He has also chosen not to turn the movement into a business or a formally recognised charity. And so it retains its anarchic feel, its sense that people are helping out in their own way, because, as he puts it, “Authorities shouldn’t feel they have to do everything.”
- The British people face wartime rations and a vegetarian diet in the event of a world food shortage, a new official assessment on the UK’s food security suggests today.
- Even though the nation is 73 per cent self-sufficient in food production, higher than during the 1950s, the food chain is at risk from global influences such as a worldwide increase in population, climate change bringing extreme weather patterns, higher oil prices and more crops being grown for bio-fuel instead of food.
- Supplies in future may also be disrupted by animal disease outbreaks, disruption of power supplies, trade disputes and interruptions for shipping and at ports.
- The UK however has one of the highest cereal production capabilities in the world with seven tonnes grown per hectare, compared a world average of 3.3 tonnes per hectare.
- In the event of an extreme emergency the most dramatic consequence would be every person eating a predominantly vegetarian diet — more cereals, fruit and vegetables and less meat and poultry. Cereals used to feed farm animals would be shifted into human food production.
- One of the biggest threats to the supply chain would be restrictions in trade of meat and poultry from Argentina and Brazil or of GM soya, the main commodity used to feed livestock in Britain.
This, I can get behind. Earthships:
“These maverick structures are intended to allow homeowners to be virtually self sufficient, providing their own water, heat, electricity, and food, and hence eradicating the need for centralized distribution of the most essential human needs.”
- In the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary and one of the world’s biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national.
- Invisible to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare - spinach, peppers and now cookie dough - ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer - and anything that shelters them - are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.
- In pending legislation and in proposed federal regulations, the push for food safety butts up against the movement toward biologically diverse farming methods, while evidence suggests that industrial agriculture may be the bigger culprit.
- For many giant food retailers, the choice between a dead pond and a dead child is no choice at all. Industry has paid more than $100 million in court settlements and verdicts in spinach and lettuce lawsuits, a fraction of the lost sales involved.
- Galvanized by the spinach disaster, large growers instituted a quasi-governmental program of new protocols for growing greens safely, called the “leafy greens marketing agreement.” A proposal was submitted last month in Washington to take these rules nationwide.
- A food safety bill sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, passed this month in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It would give new powers to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate all farms and produce in an attempt to fix the problem. The bill would require consideration of farm diversity and environmental rules, but would leave much to the FDA.
- Large produce buyers have compiled secret “super metrics” that go much further. Farmers must follow them if they expect to sell their crops. These can include vast bare-dirt buffers, elimination of wildlife, and strict rules on water sources. To enforce these rules, retail buyers have sent forth armies of food-safety auditors, many of them trained in indoor processing plants, to inspect fields.
- The acquisition of farmland from the world’s poor by rich countries and international corporations is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe’s farmland targeted in the last six months, reports from UN officials and agriculture experts say.
- New reports from the UN and analysts in India, Washington and London estimate that at least 30m hectares is being acquired to grow food for countries such as China and the Gulf states who cannot produce enough for their populations. According to the UN, the trend is accelerating and could severely impair the ability of poor countries to feed themselves.
- Today it emerged that world leaders are to discuss what is being described as “land grabbing” or “neo-colonialism” at the G8 meeting next week.
- Some of the largest deals include South Korea’s acquisition of 700,000ha in Sudan, and Saudi Arabia’s purchase of 500,000ha in Tanzania. The Democratic Republic of the Congo expects to shortly conclude an 8m-hectare deal with a group of South African businesses to grow maize and soya beans as well as poultry and dairy farming.
- India has lent money to 80 companies to buy 350,000ha in Africa. At least six countries are known to have bought large landholdings in Sudan, one of the least food-secure countries in the world.
- Other countries that have acquired land in the last year include the Gulf states, Sweden, China and Libya. Those targeted include not only fertile countries such as Brazil, Russia and Ukraine, but also poor countries like Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Zambia.
- De Schutter said that after the food crisis of 2008, many countries found food imports hit their balance of payments, “so now they want to insure themselves”.
- “This is speculation, betting on future prices. What we see now is that countries have lost trust in the international market. We know volatility will increase in the next few years. Land prices will continue to rise. Many deals are even now being negotiated. Not all are complete yet.”
- Alpcot Agro of Sweden bought 120,000ha in Russia, South Korea’s Hyundai has paid $6.5m (£4m) for a majority stake in Khorol Zerno, which owns 10,000ha in Eastern Siberia, while Morgan Stanley has bought 40,000ha in Ukraine. Last year South Korea’s Daewoo signed a 99-year lease for 1.3m hectares of agricultural land in Madagascar.
- Devinder Sharma, analyst with the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security in India, predicted civil unrest.
- “Outsourcing food production will ensure food security for investing countries but would leave behind a trail of hunger, starvation and food scarcities for local populations,” he said. “The environmental tab of highly intensive farming – devastated soils, dry aquifer, and ruined ecology from chemical infestation – will be left for the host country to pick up.”
There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation.
- In a perfectly controlled and totally sterile environment - uncontaminated by dirt, insects or fresh air - Japanese scientists are developing a new way of growing vegetables.
- Called plant factories, these anonymous looking warehouses have sprung up across the country and can churn out immaculate looking lettuces and green leaves 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Every part of the plant’s environment is controlled - from the lighting and temperature, to the humidity and water. Even the levels of carbon dioxide can be minutely altered.
- Rather than the conventional scruffy clothes and dirty fingernails of vegetable growers, the producers wear gloves, surgical masks and sort of dust proof protective suits normally seen in chemical plants.
- Each prong on the fork seen above represents a different countries caloric intake per capita, mimicking the discrepancies of food consumption around the globe.
- Designer Nadeem Haidary is creating fascinating physical objects that are modified to visualize statistics related to the activities that they’re involved in. This revealing of relevant but often unknown information is designed to help change wasteful behaviors.
- Pollan outlined what this recovery for American farmers and food producers should be. First a post-modern food system should be “resolarized.” Right now it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to manufacture 1 calorie of food on average, and 55 calories to produce 1 calorie of beef. If any industry should be solar-based it should be food, which was the “original solar economy.” Instead, right now “we are eating oil.” Cheap oil and farm policies subsidize the 5 main crops (and only those crops), upon which the rest of our cheap food system is based. These main crops are planted as monocultures, which require cheap pesticides and fertilizers and produce wastes that are all problems in themselves. Pollan’s solution is not to dismantle the food system but to redirect it. Because of the long-term planning and learning that stewarding land requires, he believes subsidies of some type are essential for agriculture. Agriculture, he stated, should not be a freemarket. By picking the proper incentives we can re-localize, re-solarize, and revive the healing power of balanced farms and wholesome gardens.
- Governments should reward farmers for diversifying away from monocultures. Pollan gave a few examples of where this has worked at scale. They should be rewarded for growing cover crops with the benefit of reducing erosion. Rewarded for returning animals to the mix. Rewarded for the amount of carbon they sequester in soil. Rewarded for halting urban sprawl by keeping farmland intact. In fact farmland should find a similar status as wetlands; developers and communities get “credit” for retaining farmland. Farmers should be rewarded for localize food provision. If only 2% of government contracts for food (as in school lunch programs, or government-run hospitals) required that the food be produced within 100 miles, it would transform the food system.
