"Good Food For Everyone Forever."

In the wake of the Copenhagen Summit earlier this month it’s obviously not a good idea to wait around whilst governments go away and try to devise new realistic and equitable agreements for the next summit....or not. As for agriculture,it looks like our best hope for the future lies with lots of enterprising people getting their heads together, harnessing their expertise, and providing alternatives to the status quo.. So, (despite the Summit), I’m starting my blog for 2010 with a positive outlook. Colin Tudge, founder of the Campaign for Real Farming, (http://campaignforrealfarming.blogspot.com/) has helped organise a conference for January 5th, entitled "THE OXFORD REAL FARMING CONFERENCE”.
The details and conference description, entitled "Good Food For Everyone Forever" are reproduced below:

"Providing the people of the world with a dependable supply of healthy nutritious foods is perhaps the greatest challenge facing humanity. Our current farming methods are clearly failing. They are over-dependent on fossil fuels; they damage soils and deplete scarce water resources; they degrade everyday foods; they reduce biodiversity and squander precious wildlife; they pollute our global environment. They are part of a global food system that is at the mercy of speculators and is every bit as precarious as the world banking system.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. We, the organisers of the Oxford Real Farming Conference, are convinced that the Earth’s natural resources are easily able to provide a good, healthy diet for everyone living on the planet today – and everyone likely to be living on it 50 years from now and indeed forever. All it will take is an agriculture based on principles of sound biology rather than economic dogma.
Our aim in establishing this conference – which we hope will become an annual event – is to encourage and stimulate fresh thinking on this, the greatest challenge of our time. We don’t believe high-input, industrial agriculture is capable of reform. Rather than feed people, its aim is to serve the interests of global chemical, trading and investment corporations. Far from creating a secure supply of high-quality food, today’s agribusiness can be counted on to obstruct progress.
We believe the people of this country – like the people of the world – are entitled to the best foods our land can provide. Our conference will investigate the most effective ways of achieving this. Though we are passionately committed to good science, we’re not convinced that new technologies are required to feed the world well. The key to securing good food for all is rather the careful management of the world’s natural resources by well tried and trusted methods. What’s needed is the radical re-working of the very best traditional systems.
Among the glittering prizes of a rational farming system are the host of social and environmental benefits that go along with it. As well as fine food, good agriculture will provide clear streams, teeming wildlife and thriving rural communities. It’s a measure of the failure of our present farming methods that the countryside is so depleted of these things.
Our speakers include farmers, academics, writers and business people. We are united by the desire to see the people of Britain and the world provided with better food than they are currently offered. We have no agenda other than to secure a system of agriculture that feeds the world well.
If these are aims that you share please support our conference. Join with us on this adventure. What we’re seeking is nothing less than a renaissance – for farming, for our countryside and for the world."

THE OXFORD REAL FARMING CONFERENCE:
The Oxford Fringe
GOOD FOOD FOR EVERYONE FOR EVER
Tuesday January 5 2010
The Old Library at The University Church of St Mary The Virgin,
High Street, Oxford, OX1 4BJ

Directions
The venue is easy to find in the centre of Oxford, within walking distance of the Train and Coach stations, and well served by buses from the park and rides.
Joining
Admission to the conference will be free, with donations towards running costs welcome at the door.
Organised by the Campaign for Real Farming and the Grass Fed Food Association.
For more information, please contact Ruth West on:
info@\campaignforre alfarming.org
The Programme For The Day
Chaired by: Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO
Speakers include: Graham Harvey, farming writer; Prof Martin Wolfe, agroecologist; George Hepburn, soil fertility specialist; Patrick Holden CBE, farmer and director of the Soil Association; Matt Dale, new dairy farmer; Tim Waygood, farmer and founder of the Agrarian Renaissance; Colin Tudge, biologist and writer; Will Edwards, pasture farmer; Dr Matt Lobley, sociologist and rural policy expert; Ben Mead, dairy and carbon farmer [tbc]
13.30 - 14.00: Registration
14.00 - 14.10: Chair’s Introduction
Sir Crispin Tickell
14.10 - 15.40: Farming That’s Designed to Feed People
15.40 - 16.00: Tea and Coffee break
16.00 - 17.30: The Absolute Importance of Grass and Grazing
17.30 - 18.00: Where Do We Go From Here?
18.00 - 19.00: Drinks [Vaults & Garden Cafe]

EU Faces Deadline on GM Food Ban. The Parasite Crops.

"People who campaign against GM crops are committing a crime against humanity". Not my words. This seems to be the latest ludicrous claim of the GM protagonists in their attempts to conquer the European market. 'Ludicrous' because in view of the problems caused by GM's, described only briefly below, it would be far more accurate to describe the GM corporates as committing a crime against humanity:-

• the contamination of non gm crops and wild plants by gm varieties.



• resistance to pesticides and herbicides of insects and weeds.



• continuous use of herbicides with herbicide tolerant crops leads to serious ecological problems.



• some herbicides effect non target species in the soil such as beneficial predators-spiders, mites, beetles, earthworms, and microfauna and aquatic organisms including fish.



• large scale soyabean monocultures have rendered Amazonian soils unusable. In Bolivia in many areas soils are compacted and suffering severe degradation. In Argentina intensive soybean cultivation has led to soil nutrient depletion.



• The obliteration of traditional crops and horticulture by corporate farming has led to detrimental health effects on local communities, caused by vitamin deficiencies. Eg. monocultural rice, or maize growth (in Latin America) for export as cattle feed is a prime cause of vitamin A deficiency which leads to blindness.



• there are serious legal consequences for farmers regarding contracts that control farming methods and future use, seed purity and its saving for home use, food contamination, the intrusion into non gm crops and wild plants of gm varieties, and the difficulty in obtaining insurance cover should any harm result.


• (The following extract is from "GM soya Disaster in Latin America" by Prof. Walter A Pengue, Univ.of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Prof.Miguel A. Altieri, Univ. of California, Berkley.)....

...."In Brazil soybean cultivation displaces eleven agricultural workers for every one who finds employment in the sector"........."In Argentina.....in 1998 there were 422000 farms in Argentina while in 2002 there were only 318,000, a reduction of a quarter. In one decade soybean area increased 126% at the expense of dairy, maize, wheat and fruit production............For the biotech industry huge increases in the soybean area cultivated and a more than doubling of yields per unit area are an economic and agronomic success. For the country, that means more imports of basic foods, therefore loss of food sovereignty, and for poor small and consumers increased food prices and more hunger.

This brings us back to the GM corporate pronouncement that "anti-GM campaigners are committing a crime against humanity"....a claim made no doubt to deflect from their own blatant exploitation of farmers and consumers.

It isn't just that GM crops act parasitically on the soil and wildlife and the environment. GM's are a parasite on the health and livlihoods of farmers and local populations in many parts of the world. At the most extreme there are suicides among Indian farmers, resulting from the increased seed costs and reduced yields.

Thankfully some communities, eg in Ethiopia have been able to resist the domineering influence of the corporates. They tried growing imported seeds and noticed the detrimental health effects on children. They also recognized that it was easier to mill and cook wheat which was grown from their indigenous seed varieties. The effect on digestion was also noticed to be better after consuming the traditional varieties. And last but not least the crop yields were higher! Happily farmers and local communities are collaborating with their seed scientists to return to growing and improving their traditional seed varieties.

In his article "Feeding People is Easy" Colin Tudge concludes....."In reality then our food problems are of two kinds. The first is to grow food well, get it to people and then cook it properly. That should be straight forward. Far, far harder is to circumvent the corporates and their attendant governments. New Labour has applied the same general strategy to food as to all things: to sell off the assets to the highest bidders and to hand the reins and profits to the corporates, which in this case means Tesco, Monsanto and the makers of agrochemicals. The aim is not to grow good food but to maximize cash. That in all ways is immensely destructive. In short the great threat to humanity comes from our own leaders. Now that really is a problem".

In 1998 the EU introduced a moratorium on new biotech authorizations that lasted six years, due to continuing concerns about GM crops.In November 2007, the World Trade Organization gave the EU an extra two months to comply with its ruling for the EU to end restrictions of imports of genetically modified food. The United States, Argentina and Canada argue that their farmers lost money because of GM bans, and they are now threatening to call for WTO sanctions against the EU.

French anti-globalisation activist, Jose Bove, who was convicted of destroying GM crops in southern France has gone on hunger strike to demand a year long embargo.