Community Development
Monopoly on Suicide
Published June 08, 2009 @ 05:05PM PT
Via Ian Welsh, Vandana Shiva explains the connection between global seed monopolies and farmer suicides, which Shiva says have exceeded 200,000 in the previous decade:
... [Vandana Shiva] The first suicide that we studied took place in Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh in 1997. This region is a rain-fed dry region and used to grow dry land crops such as millets, pigeon pea etc. In 1997, the seed corporations converted the region from biodiverse agriculture to monocultures of cotton hybrid. The farmers were not told they would need irrigation. They were not told that they would need fertilizers and pesticides. They were not told they could not save the seeds. The cotton seeds were sold as “White Gold,” with a false promise that farmers would become millionaires. Instead, the farmers landed in severe unpayable debt. This is how the suicides began.
... India is a land of varied climates, from rainforests to deserts. Seventy percent of Indian farming is rain-fed (dependent on rain not irrigation). Introducing inappropriate crops and cropping patterns has aggravated the water crisis and precipitated more frequent crop failure. Ecological agriculture needs 10 times less water than chemical farming. Green Revolution varieties, hybrids and GM crops are all bred for irrigation. On the one hand, this puts pressure on farmers in low-rainfall zones to drill tube wells, which fail — on the other hand, it leads to more frequent crop failure. ...
[Ian Welsh] To summarize: first world subsidies on agriculture lead to first world prices that are artificially low, which leads to dumping, which reduces the price of the crops. Something Shiva doesn’t mention is that each time a third world country moves to cash crops, that too depresses the prices as there just aren’t that many cash crops. Having to buy seeds every year, having to buy pesticides and fertilizers and having to irrigate all increase the cost of farming significantly, and also cause drawdown of aquifers. Once those aquifers are gone (and they are being drawn down faster than the water is being replaced) the areas in question won’t be able to grow any meaningful crops at all. ...
It's Farmers Who Don't Like CAFOs
Published June 04, 2009 @ 01:57PM PT
With a hat tip to FarmAid on Twitter, this Columbia Daily Tribune article busts the myth that it's mainly urban transplants that complain about confinement operations:
You know all of those claims by proponents of agribusinesses about how “urban move-ins” are filing the lawsuits against concentrated animal feeding operations because they aren’t accustomed to smelling fresh country air?
It is all made up, a total fabrication, stemming from the fertile imaginations of public relations people in the employ of agribusinesses such as Smithfield/Premium Standard Farms, Tyson, Seaboard and MOARK/Land O’ Lakes.
The lawsuits are being filed — and won — by longtime rural residents, most of them farmers[, ...] those who have lived in the area for a long, long time and know the country air isn’t supposed to smell like thousands of hogs or millions of chickens. ...
What a surprise. Corporate employees who lie for a living convincing the public that the only objections to their extremely unsanitary factory farming practices are transplants who don't like farmers.
How unsanitary?
Regular readers will remember that one of the current H1N1 swine flu virus' publicly identified ancestors came from a factory hog farm in North Carolina in 1998, "where it spread and mutated at an alarming rate. Experts warned then that a pocket of the virus would someday evolve to infect humans, perhaps setting off a global pandemic."
Success!
The World Health Organization is moving closer to classing the current H1N1 outbreak as a pandemic, with the virus circulating in all 50 states of the US and 63 other countries.
Meanwhile, Tom Philpott illustrates the likelihood that no links have been found between this current line of virus and a current factory farming operation because no one is looking, even if those pesky Europeans are demanding further investigation of a possible link:
... Meanwhile, no one with authority seems to be investigating obvious possible links with industrial-scale hog farming. As I reported a while back, the only scientists swarming around La Gloria, Mexico—where the flu evidently broke out in the shadow of massive Smithfield hog operations—are from the biotech industry, not the World Health Organization. And they’re training their testtubes on backyard hog farms, not Smithfield’s huge confinement facilities! ...
And if you don't find any evidence that factory farming is, right now, right this minute, responsible for dozens of deaths and thousands of illnesses in an evolving global pandemic, and if every resident of every rural community doesn't regard CAFOs as an absolute evil, all must be well.
All must, indeed, be perfectly safe and hunky dory. Says so on the label.
(Aerial photography of a typical confinement hog farm with attendant lagoons of pig manure courtesy of friendsoffamilyfarmers on Flickr.)
Global Land Grab Transparency
Published June 04, 2009 @ 11:59AM PT
Countries with limited agricultural land have been buying up the farm land of poorer countries as a hedge against future need. These contracts are going to start getting more attention:
... GRAIN is launching today a new website that offers the most comprehensive information tool on the global land grab for outsourced food production: http://farmlandgrab.org.
This new site is an improved version of the site initiated by GRAIN last year, which provides an open, up-to-date and easy to search library of over 800 articles, interviews and reports on farm land grabs around the world published since the outbreak of the food crisis in 2008.
The global trend to buy up or lease farmlands abroad as a strategy to secure basic food supplies, or simply to get rich, is not slowing down -- it is getting worse. The scale is becoming more apparent now, with researchers counting some 20 million hectares of good cropland already signed off to foreign investors, or soon to be, worldwide. More countries and corporations are getting involved, from Sri Lanka to Congo or Hyundai to Varun. Farmers' organisations, human rights groups and other social movements are agitating against this obscene approach to feeding their countries, while at least one government – the Ravalomanana regime in Madagascar -- has been brought down because of its involvement in such a deal. ...
The site will have wiki-like features, respect the anonymity of whistleblowing contributors who don't want to be identified, and attempt to bring as much information about these deals as possible into the public domain.
Recent postings to the site include a report on statements by an EU official comparing the trend to a neocolonialism that may harm poorer countries and this one examining farm land outsourcing in Africa, with a focus on Saudi Arabia's purchases.
Forces of Counter-Revolution
Published June 03, 2009 @ 09:13AM PT
The anti-Green Revolution is on:
Indian farmer Amarjit Sharma grows wheat and other crops on five acres in the heart of the region known as "the breadbasket of India," the fertile fields of Punjab.
Until four years ago, he was the kind of farmer whom government leaders and agricultural scientists hailed as a model in the developing world.
But now, he has gone organic and is part of a quiet but growing rebellion, which could affect the world's food crisis. ...
The article notes that Sharma initially profited from Green Revolution methods. Until the pesticides stopped working and the soil was stripped so badly that without ever-increasing quantities of fertilizer, he couldn't grow a good crop.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Yet though the article portrays Sharma's story in some detail, including the diversified cropping, nutrient and pest management steps he's taken, I have some quibbles. Such as uncritical inclusion of the statement by "Monsanto's India spokesman, Christopher Samuel, [who] says the company's advances will double the yields of major crops over the next 20 years, while reducing the amount of land, water, fertilizer and pesticides needed."
Because the question that needs to be asked when they make assertions like that is, 'Will they, really?' How do they know that? I'm sure they'd like to, but it isn't clear that they can. Yield gains often come at the price of other essential features of plant chemistry and physiology.
Can they actually produce nutritionally sound crops with doubled yields, from plants that need less water, less nutrients, less pest protection?
No one knows the answer to this question. It's a goal, not a certainty.
The Farmers Market Challenge
Published June 02, 2009 @ 02:02PM PT
Julie Flynn of the On Food Stamps blog was kind enough to send in this guest editorial. Enjoy!
For the past three weeks I have been living on a $31 per week food budget as a vegan in an effort to explore the challenges low income Americans face in the quest for healthful, sustainable, and affordable food. I have found that the only real source of organic or local produce in the low-income neighborhoods of Los Angeles is the Farmer’s Markets.
When I began this project, I was glad to see that there were indeed Farmer’s Markets in neighborhoods like Watts and South Central, even if the markets were relatively small. I was even happier to see that these Farmer’s Markets had large signs announcing that they gladly accepted EBT/Food Stamp benefits. (I am only shopping at places that accept food stamps.) I had some real success acquiring local, pesticide free produce within my budget at these Farmer’s Markets, but it was by no means a perfect shopping experience.
As this month long project has progressed, I have actually found that going to Farmer’s Markets for my food isn’t all that easy, and it can actually be a pain. Apparently, I am not alone.
According to the California Association of Foodbanks and the California Department of Social Services, the percentage of all food benefits spent at farmers’ markets in California in 2008 was 0.0197%. The percentage of benefits spent at Farmer’s Markets for the first four months of 2009 is 0.0227%.
If these markets are centrally located in low-income neighborhoods, and they accept food stamps, why isn’t anyone going to them?
As someone who is living on a very tight food budget, I can tell you that the way our food system is set up, shopping at a Farmer’s Market simply isn’t worth it for me.
Light Supper by Hurricane Lamp
Published May 28, 2009 @ 03:59PM PT
Raiding the internet fridge for your intellectual delectation ...
- Why global warming means more killer storms.
- How gardeners can help food pantries with their surplus produce.
- The bisphenol A in polycarbonate containers "has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans."
- LaVidaLocavore: Dear The USDA, Wendell Berry is relatively harmless. As the food industry is now coming out in favor of safety regulations, it makes the effectiveness of those regulations immediately suspect.
- Civil Eats: Maybe cooptation of language doesn't have to be a one way street. A review of the diary of an urban farmer. Time vs. geography - a chef's meditation on local food.
- The Green Fork: An encouraging update on the success of Farm-To-School programs. The new movie, Fresh, by Ana Joanes, will hopefully make it vastly more difficult for the food industry to convince people that sustainable food advocates want to starve them.
Saturday Brunch: No Breakfast for Old Hens
Published May 23, 2009 @ 06:36AM PT
Raiding the internet fridge for your intellectual delectation ...
- OpenLeft: The one type of claim to global warming skepticism that you will ever see me approvingly link to.
- Civil Eats: Ethical eating means care for the people who grow and harvest our food as much as it means care for how that food was produced. Also, is organic farming a form of activism without land reform?
- The Green Fork: What's the difference between a pigeon and an investment banker? A look at Food and Water Watch's guide to sustainable seafood (go, tilapia!)
- ObamaFoodorama: While California's first lady, Maria Shriver, followed Michelle Obama's lead in starting a garden in Sacramento on state grounds, it isn't organic, which must please some people no end. The USDA hires Rajiv Shah, yet another biotech booster.
- LaVidaLocavore: Vilsack may be pro-biotech, but at least he also likes small-scale, organic farming. The CropLife jagoffs are back at it, with a letter writing campaign encouraging people to tell Mrs. Obama that pesticides are yummy. McDonald's caught McGreenwashing. About not being anti-farmer.
PS - Dear The People Who Run Entertainment Companies: When you disable YouTube embedding of your artists' original videos and live performances, you are preventing me from advertising the music in your catalog for free on my website. A service which, I might point out, is even more valuable to you for music that's older and rarely played on the radio anymore. (Seriously, does anyone profit by my not showing people how cool the Eurythmics were, and hey, maybe they should grab one of their albums or some iTunes for old times' sake? Same for mini-clips from movies that aren't in theaters anymore.) This is moronic and self-defeating. Learn how to use advertising embeds and grow the f* up already. Kissy the face, n.
