Globalisation of non-sustainable industrial agriculture.

There has been a flurry of pro GM/industrial farming proclamations reaching the media recently, and BLIMEY, SAVE US from that agency designed to protect our health -'The Food Standards Agency'!
The FSA has recently published a study, (based on a review of other studies,and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)) saying that their research shows that organic food has 'no health benefits over conventional produce.' A lot of people were bemused by this announcement, because as Geoffrey Lean pointed out,( writing in the Telegraph 31st July) ,"the FSA has an obsession with criticising organic food,( which no one claims to be dangerous),whilst at the same time it has a mixed record on additives that cause hyperactivity, toxic dyes, illegal GM foods, and pesticides.." Despite reviewing other studies, the FSA failed to mention those studies that showed organic produce has significant nutritional advantages in fighting cancer. The report doesn't even touch on the problem of pesticide residues in conventional food.

Alongside its antipathy to organic agriculture the FSA has shown a vigorous support of GM foods. It has dismissed the controlled trials on mice, fed with GM maize, which provide scientific evidence of negative health effects, and cases of damage to health caused by GM's in India are blanked in this country. The website of gmwatch.org describes a study conducted by eight international researchers, which calls into question the reliability of tests of the European Food Safety(EFSA) and the US FDA to assess the health risks of GMOs and pesticides. According to the Research Committee of Independent Information on Genetic Engineering(CRIIGEN) the study brings to light "a significant underestimation of the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others." See http://actu.orange.fr/articles/sciences/Une-etude-met-en-cause-les-tests-menes-par-Bruxelles-sur-les-OGM.html

Despite the fact that in the UK people do not want GM's the government never tires of rejecting the wishes of the people they are meant to represent, to push ahead with GM crop trials.Early in 2009 there was a major organic food and agriculture conference which Hilary Benn was billed to speak at. Instead he chose to address the participants via telephone.
At the conference Gundula Azeez,(who was policy manager for the Soil Association for the past nine years) told Hilary Benn that he was concerned because he had heard that HB was not aware of any scientific evidence of the negative health effects of GM's, and asked why the government is still saying that it is ignorant of the science? (To read the transcript of the exchange between H.Benn and the other participants visit http://i-sis.org.uk/Who_is_Anti-Science.php) Hilary Benn's response was ..."that's not the view that the Food Standards Agency has taken in the past."

In September 2008, Lord Rooker,(who was then UK Farming Minister and is now chair of the Food Standards Agency) hit out at anti-GM protesters, claiming they were on a 'messianic mission' not based on science and that the public were being 'taken for a ride' by campaigners who behaved as if opposition to the technology was a religion.(from Western Morning News,Sept.23rd,2008)......I know, it's a jaw-dropping statement considering the reality of the situation. For an account of the real facts, eg. the effects and consequences of GM's being foisted onto farmers in India, read the accounts by Dr Vandana Shiva, scientist and environmentalist.

Through the programme of 'Navdanya', an initiative founded by Dr Shiva,(

www.navdanya.org) she is working to stop the deaths by suicide of farmers in Vidharbha. More than 150,000 farmers have committed suicide in India due to distortions introduced in agriculture as a result of trade liberalisation. More than 20,000 farmers have committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh alone. Farmers have become locked into dependence on corporate seeds supply for growing cash crops integrated to world markets, which is leading to a collapse in farm prices due to 400 billion dollars subsidies in rich countries.Navdanya also realized that one of the crisis farmers were facing was a seed famine created by Monsanto. Navdanya's initiative was to create GMO free, patent free, debt free and suicide free villages, and seed banks to conserve biodiversity and protect indigenous seed varieties.

In 2000 Dr Vandana Shiva delivered the Reith lecture, and here are a few paragraphs taken from her speech:-

...."The rich diversity and sustainable systems of food production are being destroyed in the name of increasing food production. However, with the destruction of diversity, rich sources of nutrition disappear. When measured in terms of nutrition per acre, and from the perspective biodiversity, the so called "high yields" of industrial agriculture or industrial fisheries do not imply more production of food and nutrition.
Yields usually refers to production per unit area of a single crop. Output refers to the total production of diverse crops and products. Planting only one crop in the entire field as a monoculture will of course increase its individual yield. Planting multiple crops in a mixture will have low yields of individual crops, but will have high total output of food. Yields have been defined in such a way as to make the food production on small farms by small farmers disappear. This hides the production by millions of women farmers in the Third World - farmers like those in my native Himalaya who fought against logging in the Chipko movement, who in their terraced fields even today grow Jhangora (barnyard millet), Marsha (Amaranth), Tur (Pigeon Pea), Urad (Black gram), Gahat (horse gram), Soya Bean (Glycine Max), Bhat (Glycine Soya) - endless diversity in their fields. From the biodiversity perspective, biodiversity based productivity is higher than monoculture productivity. I call this blindness to the high productivity of diversity a "Monoculture of the Mind", which creates monocultures in our fields and in our world.
The Mayan peasants in the Chiapas are characterised as unproductive because they produce only 2 tons of corn per acre. However, the overall food output is 20 tons per acre when the diversity of their beans and squashes, their vegetables their fruit trees are taken into account.
In Java, small farmers cultivate 607 species in their home gardens. In sub-Saharan Africa, women cultivate 120 different plants. A single home garden in Thailand has 230 species, and African home gardens have more than 60 species of trees.
Rural families in the Congo eat leaves from more than 50 species of their farm trees.
A study in eastern Nigeria found that home gardens occupying only 2 per cent of a household's farmland accounted for half of the farm's total output. In Indonesia 20 per cent of household income and 40 per cent of domestic food supplies come from the home gardens managed by women.
Research done by FAO has shown that small biodiverse farms can produce thousands of times more food than large, industrial monocultures.
And diversity in addition to giving more food is the best strategy for preventing drought and desertification. What the world needs to feed a growing population sustainably is biodiversity intensification, not the chemical intensification or the intensification of genetic engineering. "

Defra contributes to Extinction of Honeybees and Birds in the UK.

With disappearing bee colonies in Europe and America, and dwindling oil reserves,what is DEFRA pinning its hopes on for the future of farming in Britain?

Answer.-They are pinning their hopes on the false promises and spurious claims of the hugely rich and powerful biotech corporates. The most persistant claim which holds governments in thrall is that GM crops will solve all our food problems for the future. In fact, GM crops are a failed experiment based on obsolete scientific theory.

Despite the destructive effects of intensive farming (which is driven by biotech companies)and despite the urgency of global warming and other environmental stressors, Defra seems sunk in a catatonic-like state,chanting “science, science, science” as if this word alone has the power to save us from starvation. Perniciously Defra believes that ‘science’ is synonomous with the short-term technical fixes of the biotech industry.

Meanwhile the destructive effects of intensive monoculture farming, are having to be constantly rectified, costing millions of pounds. Precious time is being wasted on a defunct agricultural system when we should urgently be developing sustainable, localised food and energy systems which do not depend heavily on fossil energies and water. GM crops have all the worst aspects of unsustainability, including susceptibility to diseases and climate extremes because of genetic uniformity.

Wherever GM’s are grown in the world, they pose a risk to the environment, to ecology, to the livelihood of farmers, and the health of local communities and livestock. To establish themselves in regions they wish to exploit, GM companies use the carrot and stick strategy. First the carrot, then a lot of stick. The sort of compulsion that biotechs use on farmers varies according to their local circumstances In poorer countries if they do not grow gm crops,or monocrops for export, small family farmers can be driven off their land and local people cannot afford to buy what is grown. Some small farmers attempt to grow gm’s but end up in debt. Rolling out the technology is facilitated by steamrolling policy makers and those responsible for safety regulations….

In Britain
“GM:The Secret Files
Ministers are funding genetically modified crop projects with scores of millions of pounds every year and are colluding with a biotech company to ease its GM tests, the IoS can reveal.
Geoffrey Lean, on a murky tale that Whitehall tried to hide”(Published:28 October 2007-The Independent.)

Last year on July 15, six German apiarists moved their 30,000 bees to Munich city some 500 km south of Berlin. They were trying to save their bees from genetically modified crops near their village Kaisheim. “If our bees were to come in touch with the GM maize, and the honey were contaminated with it, we would not be allowed to sell it.” said Karl Heinz Bablock, one of the six apiarists. In Germany gm crops are legal but their harvests are forbidden for human consumption. Earlier this year Bablock and several of his colleagues filed a protest against the GM crops before a tribunal in Augsburg, but the court ruled in May2008 that because the crops were legal, it was the apiarists who should move their bees somewhere else. Relocation of bees is taking place all over Germany.

In February 2008 Terry Boehm, vice president of Canada’s National Farmers Union warned Australian Farmers against adopting GM crops. By patenting both naturally occurring and GM crops, these companies can use aggressive lawsuits to ward off any potential rival. At the same time insidious forms of surveillance and barely concealed threats are whittling away any options farmers have for getting seeds from other suppliers. He says GM crops are introducing a crippling new form of feudalism where farmers are tied to biotech companies through expensive licence fees, royalties for seeds and commitment to buying the company seeds.(From: 'GM crops a new form of feudalism', by Janet Grogan, Perth)

Greenpeace points out that technological ‘solutions’ like genetic engineering mask the real social,political, economic and environmental problems responsible for hunger. Unfortunately, when the UK government is challenged over its collusion with the Biotech industry, it simply regurgitates the propaganda. This completely abysmal agricultural policy is contributing to the extinction of honeybees,(our main food crop pollinators), and birds.

Intensive industrial agriculture, reasons why not.

What is intensive/industrial farming?

Intensive farming is an agricultural system through which (it is claimed) more food will be produced and the lower the price will be for the consumer.

This system infact generates huge external economic costs and other serious impacts on humanity and the environment:-

• Loss of farmers' livlihoods, and cause of malnutrition in developing nations.


• Severe and chronic illnesses caused by pesticides/fungicides


• Environmental pollution.


• Soil degradation.


• Lack of biodiversity.


• Extinction of crop varieties and gene pools.


• Loss of nutritional value of food.


• Huge external economic costs, involved in production and food-supply chain.

More information on the above included in this post.

• Brief description of farming system below:-
  
  · Monoculture. Large areas of a single crop, often grown year after year on the same land, or with little crop rotation.
  
  · Agrichemicals. Intensive use of pesticides and fertilizers to fight pests and diseases and provide nutrients.
  
  · Hybrid seed. Use of specialized hybrids designed to favour large scale food distribution, eg ability to ripen off the vine, to withstand shipping and handling.
  
  · High mechanization.
  
  · Large scale irrigation- heavy water use and in some cases growing of crops in otherwise unsuitable regions (rice paddies on arid land).
  
  · Genetically engineered crops. Use of genetically modified varieties(GMOs) designed for large scale production (with ability to withstand selected herbicides)
  
  Opponents of the intensive system of agriculture say that politicians, business leaders and the media are misleading the public in their claim which states ‘ the more that chemicals and technology are applied to agriculture, the more food will be produced and the lower the price will be for the consumer.’
  
  Opponents also question the fundamental objectives of the structure of the modern food chain.:-
  
  The Ecologist Magazine, in its article ‘Fatal Harvest’(01/11/2002) says ‘The myth of cheapness completely ignores the staggering externalized costs of the food, costs that do not appear on supermarket checkout receipts. Conventional analyses of the cost of food completely ignore the exponentially increasing social and environmental costs consumers are currently paying and will have to pay in the future. Americans spend tens of millions of dollars in taxes, medical care, toxic clean-ups, insurance premiums and other pass-along costs to subsidise industrial food producers. Given the ever –increasing health, environmental and social destruction involved in industrial agriculture, the real price of food production for future generations is incalculable.’
  
  ‘Around 31,000 tonnes of chemicals are used in farming in yhe UK each year to kill weeds, insects and other pests that attack crops and in 2004, 40% of the fruit, vegetables and bread samples tested in the UK contained pesticides. There is very little control over how these chemicals are used in the non-organic sector and in what quantities or combinations. The Food Standards Agency recocnizes that most people do not want pesticides in their food. Pesticides have a devastating effect on the environment and there are real concerns about the effectiveness of official safety regulations of pesticides, and some risks to human health are unknown.’ (Soil Association)
  
  For information concerning exposure to agricultural pesticides for rural residents in the UK, visit the website pesticidescampaign.co.uk
  
  Summary of Impacts of Intensive Agriculture.
  
  1. Health problems. Vast quantities of pesticides and fungicides are sprayed onto farmland every year- 31,000 tons in the UK. This leads to a range of health problems. Pesticide exposure can happen through skin contact, inhalation, or pesticide residues in food and water. .Studies have shown that a combination of low-level insecticides, herbicides and nitrates can effect our bodies in ways chemicals in isolation do not. ‘Studies have shown that 3 pesticides consumed together equal up to 100 times the effect of any one on its own.(sometimes referred to as the cocktail effect) Along with their cancer risk, pesticides can cause myriad other health problems-especially for young people. For example, exposure to neurotoxic compounds like PCB’s and organophosphate insecticides during critical periods of development can cause permanent damage to the brain and nervous and reproductive systems’(Ecologist Magazine,article Fatal Harvest).
  
  2. Environmental Pollution..
  
  1. Pollution though spraydrift in the air. Spraydrift can be carried for many miles by the wind/air currents..Rain water in parts of Europe contain such high levels of dissolved pesticides, it would be illegal to sell it as drinking water.
  2. Pollution through agrichemical build-ups and run-off.
  3. Carbon emissions. Use of fossil fuels for agrichemical manufacture and for farm machinery and long-distance distribution. Processing and packaging also adds to high energy use.
  
  3. Soil degradation. Heavy use of fertilizers, and lack of crop rotation, causes degradation of soil quality and lack of soil fertility.
  “The overuse of chemicals and machines on industrial farms erodes away the topsoil-the fertile earth from which all food is grown. The US has lost half of its topsoil since 1960, and continues losing topsoil 17 times faster than nature can create it”(The Ecologist)
  
  4.Lack of Biodiversity. Biodiversity can refer to:-
  (1) Genetic diversity in agriculture
  (2) Animal/insect/plant species.
  
  The UN Food and Agriculture Organization report that 70% of genetic diversity in agriculture disappeared in this last century. The resulting monocultured crops are genetically limited and far more susceptible to insect blights, diseases and bad weather, than are diverse crops.
  
  Biodiversity in wildlife. Pesticides and fungicides are toxic to insects, fish and wildlife. Some birds, butterflies and non-pest insects have become endangered or extinct through intensive agriculture. This represents a threat to the ecological system.In addition many target insects and plants which damage crops are becoming resistant to pesticides. 1000 species of insects, plant diseases and weedsare now resistant to pesticides.
  
  5.Loss of indigenous crops. Indigenous crops are going out of production because demand is driven by the global market.
  
  6.Crop varieties and gene pools are under threat from monocropping system. - “The world’s crop gene pool contained in seeds is essential for increasing crop productivity, mitigating environmental stress such as climate change, pests and diseases, and ensuring a genetic resource base for the future. Crop diversity contained in the world’s seed collections is constantly under threat from natural and human-led disasters”(Jacques Diouf, Director of Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations.)

7.Loss of farmers' livlihoods. "The economic pressures of industrial
agriculture have led to a sharp decline in the numbers of so-called 'inefficient' farms with smaller family farms being particularly badly hit. For example in the US there were close to seven million farms in the 1930s, but less than 1.8 by the mid 1990s; in France 3 million farms in the 1960s, yet fewer than 700,000 in the 1990s, 450,000 farms in the UK, in the 1950s, half that number in the 1990s. Over the past 50 yrs the number of actual farmers has declined by 86% in Germany, 85% in France, 85% in Japan, 64% in the US, 59% in Korea, and 59% in the UK." (Food Wars,Tim Lang & Michael Heasman).

"In Brazil soybean cultivation displaces 11 agricultural workers for every one who finds employment.....In Argentina 60,000 farms went out of business while the area of 'Roundup Ready' soybean almost tripled. In 1998 there were 422,000 farms in Argentina while in 2002 there were 318,000. One and a half million Mexican farmers have been put out of work because of the Free Trade Agreement with America in which cheap (subsidized)American corn was imported." (GM Soya Disaster in Latin America, Hunger, Deforestation and Socio-Ecological Devastation.Professor Miguel A. Altieri, University of California, Berkeley and Professor Walter A. Pengue, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina).

8. Impact on nutritional value of food. This includes freshness, flavour and range of products available.
Research at Newcastle University has found that…”organically produced crops and dairy milk usually contain more ‘beneficial compounds’ such as vitamins and antioxidants. The research has shown up to 40% more beneficial compounds in vegetable crops and up to 90% more in milk. It has also found high levels of minerals, such as iron and zinc in organic produce” (Sunday Times, ‘Eat your words, all who scoff at organic food’, By Jon Ungoed-Thomas,Oct.28,2007)
. For a list of research results regarding nutritional value of organic versus intensively produced produce, see Soil Association Press release, 22/2/2008, ‘Soil Association response to Horizon programme’. ·

Genetically modified crops.

.“In the context of agriculture and animal husbandry this technology has far reaching implications as it allows the introduction into plants and animals of entirely new characteristics including genes originally found in unrelated plants, animals or micro-organisms. This is very different from traditional breeding practices”( From-‘How GM Crops Endanger Environment and Agriculture’. (Bharat Dogra, Mainstream Weekly, Saturday 26 January 2008.)

The crucial claim of gm protagonists is - because the world’s population is rising fast, famine and increasing food deficiency is inevitable without GM crops. They also claim that GM crops are good for consumers, farmers and the environment.

Opponents of GM’s point to how arguments for GM’s are based on a misreading of the worlds food problems. They say that the problem is one of distribution, and globalisation, rather than production. Further to this they strongly dispute the claims for GM crops made by corporates.

Further doubts regarding GM technology in agriculture is that they represent potential health hazards, and endanger the environment and agriculture. These issues are outlined in 'Potential Health Hazards of Genetically Engineered Foods’ by Stephen Lendman, -opednews.com March 2008.

In 2003, six principal countries grew 99% of the global transgenic crop area. The US grew 42.8 million hectares, followed by Argentina with 13.9 million, Canada 4.4million, Brazil 3 million, China 2.8 million and S.Africa 0.4 million hectares.

‘Friends of the Earth International’ has recently published a full, fact-based report called “who benefits from gm crops?"(Jan 2008)
The report seriously challenges the claims of GM proponents, and says they have failed to deliver on any of the proposed benefits, these are summarised below:-

• Claim-GM crops will need less spraying of pesticides and will therefore benefit the environment. FAILED


• Claim-Poor farmers will benefit. FAILED


• Claim-GM's will tackle hunger. FAILED
  
• Claim-Higher crop yields. FAILED
  Summary of report:-



• It describes how in the US there was a 15 fold increase in the use of herbicide Roundup between1994 and2004, because pests and weeds are becoming resistant to pesticides.


• Seed prices are on the rise, fewer suppliers means less competition and more market power to set prices.


• Fewer seed choices.


• Since gm cotton was adopted in the Makhatini Flats in South Africa, around three quarters of small farmers have gone out of business.


• Most commercial gm crops are grown for animal feed for western countries and biofuels. None have been used to address hunger and poverty issues.


• Brazilian experience in 2007 proved beyond doubt that gm crops are extensively contaminating conventional and organic soya.


• By the end of October 2007, it has been estimated that there have been over 900 cotton farmer suicides, or an average of three suicides a day (ENS, 3 October 2007;Wide angle,2007; Petition to Indian Prime Minister,Swift, April2007) Despite the increase in adoption of Bt cotton, this trend has not diminished, and farmers' livlihoods are under dire threat. In addition, many reports of poor performances of Bt cotton have been registered in the area ('The Hindu,' 16 February 2007)

Friends of the Earth International states...."in the US the biotech industry has still not introduced a single GM crop that has enhanced nutrition, higher yield potential, drought tolerance, salt tolerance or other promised traits..."

.

Big Bully says, "Disagreements...should be expressed in legal ways".

On March 7th about 300 Brazilian women raided a research unit of the agricultural biotech company Monsanto and destroyed an experimental field of corn. These facilities are located in Santa Cruz das Palmeiras, in Sao Paulo state.
The group of activists protested the Brazilian government's decision last month to give clearance for two varieties of GM corn for commercial use-MON810, produced by Monsanto and Liberty Link made by Germany's Bayer CropScience.

MON810 is the variety which has been banned in France after strong protests in that country.

The claim by Monsanto that small farmers could be among the most who benefit from biotechnology, is by now proven around the world to be disastrously misleading. (see previous posts).

Monsanto condemned the invasion by the Brazilian activists, saying in a statement "in a democratic regime, disagreements, ideological or not, should be expressed in legal ways". The problem with this rather hypocritical statement is that around the world we see that the takeover by biotech companies is impervious to the democratic process, because governments are approving the GM technology counter to public opinion. Big farmers, and governments are attracted by the financial and convenience factors of GM technology, but these are temporary advantages. GM farming involves loss of land and livlihoods for small farmers throughout the world. Even in Canada, US, and Europe, farmers have discovered that GM crops have not delivered on their claims, and pesticide use has had to be increased.

In Brasilia, a protest by another 400 women from an umbrella group, Via Campesina(the Rural Way) was held in front of the Swiss Embassy against Syngenta, A Swiss company that is selling genetically engineered seeds in Brazil. Via Campesina said in a statement that "no scientific studies exist that guarantee that genetically modified crops won't have negative effects on human health and on nature." A spokesperson for Via Campesina also said "The authorization of these varieties shows once more that (President Luiz inacio Lula de silva's) government favors agribusiness and bigforeign companies abandoning land reform and family farming"

GM crops,World Shortage of Wheat and Biotech Industry.

The UK is seen as one of the last bastions to be conquered by the biotech industry regarding GM crops. They aim to establish GMO’s as the only farming system worldwide. At the present time public opinion in the UK and France is standing in the way of this corporate ambition in Europe.
This take-over process doesn’t involve real dialogue with the public about the risks and dangers of GM’s, or the social and moral issues concerning their introduction. It does involve wielding brute economic power. The United States says it could seek compensation for the millions of dollars in lost exports and licensing fees for biotech crops it is suffering because of EU bans.

When the GM industry does attempt to influence public opinion, they often refer to the problems experienced by southern hemisphere countries of food shortage due to crop failure. In answer they claim that GM crops bring higher yields.
John Hillary, Policy Director of ‘War on Want’, supports a safer more sustainable policy for dealing with crop shortages. He points out that as a result of the trade liberalisation packages which opened up new markets, some countries were made more vulnerable to the vagaries of world economy. Because their own domestic supplies are put under more strain as a result of having been opened up to global economy, they are made more reliant to imports of basic staple foods, which they cannot afford. Twenty years ago 90% of all rice eaten in Ghana was grown in Ghana. That percentage is now only 10%. In the last 10 to 15 years, 30 million jobs have been lost around the world because local domestic supply chains have been opened up.
John Hillary says we must support the development of sustainable LOCAL food production systems.

This local control over food production would also mean that communities would be able to grow the most appropriate crops for their own consumption, rather than crops dictated by global trade demand.

Genetically modified crops are not delivering on the promised benefits of increased yields, reduced pesticide use or tackling world hunger.

Last year there was a big increase in the production of crops for biofuels at the same time as an increased demand for wheat (eg from China)

The growing of biofuels last year caused the food prices in the United States to more than double. Tortilla flour, staple food of the Mexicans more than doubled in price.

So one immediate action should be to cease the growing of biofuels.It has been proven that biofuels do not solve the problem of carbon emmissions.