GROWING ORGANIC GARDEN

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED 'FOOD'

GMO is short for ‘genetically modified organism’, and for our purposes is equivalent to GE (genetically engineered) foods. While mankind has long ‘modified’ both plants and animals by selective breeding or plant hybridization, GMOs are a whole new ballgame. By splicing genes from completely disparate species (like mice gene segments into tomato plants), companies like Monsanto are creating entirely new species that would have never existed without human interjection. These products are extremely controversial (and even illegal in many countries including the European Union and Japan) due to many factors:

* The lack of studies proving their safety, both as a food source and as an organism let loose in the environment.
* A very urgent concern to farmers around the world, especially in developing countries, is that the manufacturers prohibit farmers from saving their seeds (as they’ve done for 5,000 years!), and force them to purchase new seeds every year.
* Farmers are being sued for large amounts of money for “stealing” these GMOs simply because the seeds have blown onto their farms. And they present a very serious danger to organic farms for just this reason. Organic farmer’s very livelihood is put in danger by the contamination of their fields.
* They are designed specifically so that farmers can heavily spray the company’s matching pesticide in large quantities without damaging the plant. Needless to say, the environment and groundwater do not fare as well as the GMO plants.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

The term "Sustainable Agriculture" may cover a lot of subjective ground, but it is so important to the future of farming here and around the world that we hope our members will take the time to learn more about it. Many people would consider "Organic" to be the pinnacle of agriculture, but organic standards don't really address farm location, water usage, fair labor practices and transportation issues. Sadly, farmers in China and elsewhere burn down rainforests to grown organic products that then require tons of petro-fuels to get to markets in the U.S. The sustainable agriculture movement is trying to address these issues here and around the world. Perhaps someday there will be a "Super-Organic" standard that can ensure consumers that the product they're buying was organically grown on a nearby farm by fairly-paid workers who ensured that the land and water around them was protected while allowing the farmers to make a decent living. Someday! Until then, incremental steps, and consumer enthusiasm, can help bring us towards that bright future.

FOOD AID AS DUMPING

"Some years back, a keynote speaker at the International Famine Centre at Cork, Ireland, detailed how maize was loaded on ships bound for Britain at the height of the great Irish potato famine that killed some 1.5 million people more than 150 years ago. He paused and then lamented: “I wonder what kind of people lived at that time who were not even remotely offended at the sight of millions dying of hunger in the same village where the ships were being loaded.”

A hundred years later, the same class of people were largely responsible for the great Bengal Famine in 1943, in which an estimated 1.5 million to 3 million people perished. As Nobel laureate Amartya Sen explains in his now well-known theory of entitlements, the Bengal famine was not the result of a drastic slump in food production but because the colonial masters had diverted food for other commercial purposes. And if you are wondering whether the same evil class of the elite decision-makers has perished with the collapse of the erstwhile colonies, hold your breadth.

In the last 60 years or so, following the great human tragedy of the Bengal famine, food aid was conveniently used as a political weapon…

Food was then a political weapon. Food aid has now in addition become a commercial enterprise. Famine or no famine, the Shylocks of the grain trade must have their “pound of flesh”.

— Devinder Sharma, Africa’s Tragedy; Famine as Commerce, November 10, 2002

Certain types of food “aid” (when not for emergency relief) can actually be destructive. Dumping food on to poorer nations (i.e. free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices) undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe.

SUGAR

Initially sugar was a luxury item
Historically, around 1000 years ago, sugar was used in a variety of ways, such as:

•For medicinal purposes (because it can be beneficial in limited quantities)
•As a preservative
•As a spice
•As a sweetener, of course.
Yet up to the seventeenth century, it was an expensive luxury item. To be consumed by the masses, this luxury had to be turned into a necessity and be available in abundance to drive prices down.

RISING FOOD PRICES

"The World Bank reports that global food prices rose 83% over the last three years and the FAO cites a 45% increase in their world food price index during just the past nine months. The Economist’s comparable index stands at its highest point since it was originally formulated in 1845. As of March 2008, average world wheat prices were 130% above their level a year earlier, soy prices were 87% higher, rice had climbed 74%, and maize was up 31%."

— Eric Holt-Giménez and Loren Peabody, From Food Rebellions to Food Sovereignty: Urgent call to fix a broken food system, Institute for Food and Development Policy, May 16, 2008