French Farmer Calls Off Hunger Strike.

The following is from Paris 'Associated Press' Jan 11 2008.

..."Militant French farmer Jose Bove and about 15 supporters called off their hunger strike in its eighth day after the government ordered the suspension of the use of genetically modified corn.

France will suspend cultivation of MON810, the seed for the only type of genetically modified corn now allowed in the country, until a European Union review is conducted, Prime Minister Francois Fillon's office said.

The move was based on a recommendation this week by a government-appointed panel calling for "the need for additional analyses on the health and environmental effects of the genetically modified product MON810 in the long term," Fillon's office said in a statement.

Bove and his supporters began the hunger strike Jan 3, saying they hoped to pressure the government to make good on a promise in November to suspend cultivation of MON810. He said they only drank water or unsweetened tea during the protest.

The seed, which resists some types of insects, was authorized before a government-ordered moratorium on genetically modified products took effect in 1999. Last year, it was planted in about 54,000 acres in France-mainly in southern farmland.

Bove rose to fame in August 1999 when he and supporters used farm equipment to dismantle a McDonald's branch under construction in the foothills of France's Massif Central mountains.

He has faced repeated trials and served jail time for destroying genetically modified crops." (End of quote)

France's environment minister Jean-Louis Boloo told the National Assembly that the clampdown on MON810 was a precaution that would only last until the release of an European re-evaluation of the crop in the coming month. Borloo insisted that biotechnologies were crucial for France....."In terms of agriculture it is doubly crucial for us. We have trouble feeding six billion people, nine billion tomorrow, with less arable land and probable less productive soil" Borloss said.

Borloo voices the pro GM mantra here, that 'biotechnology is needed to feed the growing populations.' The more we explore this claim, the more a different story emerges....

I mentioned in a previous post the Ethiopian farmers who have rejected the introduction of foreign seeds, due to the negative environmental and health impacts . The same sort of resistance to the introduction of foreign seeds has recently been expressed by farmers and scientists in Bangladesh. Agents of multinational companies have made a bid to introduce one-time usable foreign hybrid paddy seeds in the Sidr-southern region. (hurricanes have led to a seed crisis in this region.) Local agricultural experts and farmers have said that the introduction of foreign seeds will threaten extinction of local varieties, which have good taste and greater nutritional value. Also production costs will rise as foreign varieties need more care and costly fertilizer, irrigation and pesticides. The Bangladesh Rice Research Institute says that the government should take initiative for collection, preparation development and supply of local varieties of paddy seeds and take measures so that farmers are not lured to use foreign seeds for 'more profit'.

We see here an echo of Jose Bove's warning of how GM crops represent more than a potential risk to health and environment, but also destroy communities as small farmers are forced off the land.

Pesticide Pollution,Farming, the Environment, and Gordon Brown's plans.

This is really about the lack of Gordon Brown's plans for the future of agriculture and the agricultural environment. Given the urgency of the need to create strategies for energy, efficiency and production in all fields(excuse the pun), there is almost a deafening silence from government. There are the occasional suggestions for using low energy light bulbs, but that's about the extent of their creative thinking. Let's have some concerted planning and incentives for really moving away from our dependence on oil!
In relation to farming I wonder if Gordon is going to opt for the environmentally sustainable option, or whether he will cave in to the agri business ,or the GM biotechnology industry.
It's a sobering thought that 75% of the UK is agricultural land and 31,000 tons of pesticides are sprayed on UK land every year......" The toxicity of pesticides used in agriculture has increased by an estimated factor of 10-100-fold since 1975.Despite this, resistence is spreading; POPS (persistant organic pollutants)are becoming less effective: they accumulate in the food chain, persist in the environment and travel by being bioaccumulated (as animals eat each other, so the POP is stored in fat and thus consumed and stored).Pesticides are a key route for POPS,, notably through aldrin, chlordane,DDT, dieldrin, endrin and heptachlor. 1000 species of insects, plant diseases and weeds are now resistant, an environmental impact known as the 'treadmill effect'."
Rain water in parts of Europe contains such high levels of dissolved pesticides it would be illegal to supply it as drinking water.
So, Gordon, what's it to be? Give us a clue.

Text in blue is information taken from 'Food Wars' by Tim Lang and Michael Heasman.

No Synthetic Fertilizers, No Pesticides in Cuban Organic Agriculture.

There is an interesting article by Megan Quinn called 'The Power of Community:How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.' It features on the website of Global Public Media.
I'll just quote a little bit about farming in Cuba, but her article is well worth reading for other aspects of cuban life.

....."Havana, Cuba--At the Organiponico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project, a workers collective runs a large urban farm, a produce market and a restuarant. Hand tools and human labour replace oil-driven machinary. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. Drip irrigation conserves water, and the diverse, multi-hued produce provides the community with a rainbow of healthy foods.
In other Havana neighborhoods, lacking enough land for such large projects, residents have installed raised garden beds on parking lots and planted vegetable gardens on their patios and roof tops.
Since the early 1990's an urban agriculture movement has swept through Cuba, putting this capital city of 2.2 million on a path toward sustainability.
A small group of Australians assisted in this grass-roots effort, coming to this Caribbean island nation in 1993 to teach permaculture, a system based on sustainable agriculture which uses far less energy.
This need to bring agriculture into the city began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than 50% of Cuba's oil imports, much of its food and a percent of its trade economy.Transportation halted, people went hungry and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds.....
....Cubans are also replacing petroleum-fed machinary with oxen, and their urban agriculture reduces food transportation distances. Today an estimated 50% of Havana's vegetables come from inside the city, while in other Cuban towns and cities urban gardens produce from 80% to more than 100% of what they need......"

Please read the rest of the article, it's interesting.

Pesticides versus Set-asides.

Setasides are being scrapped next year to make way for the crazy rush to grow biofuel crops. Biofuel crops are also displacing food crops. Truly crazy in a country as small as Britain.

Setasides are not an escape into bygone times-just the opposite. They have been recognized as vital green arteries for wildlife and biodiversity, which are buffers against the burgeoning pressures of intensive farming and pesticide use. They support a critical eco system for the maintainance of food crops and nature.

Georgina Downs, anti pesticide campaigner, points out that 'despite the increasing costs involved in this process and the decreasing number of active substances on the market, actual consumption and use of pesticides in the EU has not decreased within the last ten years. At the same time, the percentage of food and feed samples where residues of pesticides exceed maximum regulatory limits is not declining, but remains around 5%. In addition,certain pesticides are commonly found in the aquatic environment at concentrations well above the regulatory limit, and there is no sign of any decrease'.

So, I enclose some pictures of fields and wild plants/flowers which are due to disappear forever from Britain.

Farming and Food Supply, Who Owns It?

All the big players are jostling for control of the land and control over how it is farmed. The combined power of agri-business and government has taken away a fundamental human right of the international population to make choices about foods grown in our own nations, geographical regions, and local communities.

They deprive us of choice as to whether we have pesticide residues in our food, or whether our food is genetically modified. Remote corporations tell us that the 'free market' provides consumer choice-but giant corporations have deep pockets and their marketing practices manipulate consumer choice. Supermarkets demand strict 'cosmetic' specifications of colour size and shape of produce from the farmer, which forces the farmer to use even more unnecessary chemicals, harmful to human health and animals and the environment.....Agribusiness refers to this system as 'productive, highly efficient, market focused agriculture.'

Farmers call to scrap set-aside a year early.Set-asides give way to more pesticides.

Set-asides are due to make way for yet more pesticides all over again!

Quote from the Press and Journal:-"cereal farmers are demanding set-aside is scrapped early as floods at home and severe droughts elsewhere in the world increase the prospect of more poor harvests-and potential food shortages."

Ironic isn't it, when it is 'intensive' farming which helps contribute to climate change, and causes soil degradation, which further contributes to the whole environmental problem. But they refuse to abandon the short term policies, and rush towards more environmental destruction-. ".....European farmers' organization Copa-Cogeca now wants a decision on set-aside by September so that growers can plan their 2008 cropping, and bring the land back into production to ensure more grain supplies and resolve problems created by surging demand for wheat to convert into bioethanol for fuel."

There are already big doubts by the experts that bioethanol is going to solve the problem of fuel supply, infact they fear that bio ethanol crops will add to environmental problems, but you can see why farmers and businesses will want to jump on the band wagon.

So, the tiny little vestige of effort that agriculture and DEFRA temporarily made towards stemming the damaging effects of pesticides on the environment and wildlife and livestock, by introducing set-asides, is now going to be abandoned.

Sustainable Farming v. Intensive Farming Systems

One third of everything we eat is pollinated by bees; this includes all fruit and most vegetables. According to many scientists working in this area, we have taken the process of pollination in agriculture forgranted. They say that even in this country, the uk, we have had a narrow vision of agriculture, which has been driven by the economic goal of quick, cheap food.
Quick, cheap food has led to mono-crops, and pesticide use. 31,000 tons of pesticides are sprayed on UK land every year.The photograph shown here is not smoke rising up above the trees, it is pesticide spray.

One example amongst many, of mono-culture in this country is the use of rye grass rather than clover. Mono-crops mean lack of bio diversity for bees as well as humans, which means that their immune systems are weakened. Mites have been cited as another possible cause of ccd (colony collapse disorder)in bees,but some mites are now resistant to two different pesticides, and scientists say there are no alternatives to these two chemicals.

Scientists and others are worried because research into ccd is being carried out by scientists working for the agro-chemical companies. They say that this research should be carried out by independent scientists, for obvious reasons! The agro-chemical industries risk loosing a lot of money if their pesticides, fungicides are found to be responsible. The UK government should be doing more to finance independent research into this serious threat, before colony collapse disorder takes effect here and in Europe.

Sustainable Farming

Global trade in food isn't viable anymore. Lots of reasons why not. Even apart from the problems caused by global warming, there are important reasons for nations to meet their own food needs;
Farmers and communities in the developing world are often exploited by globalization. Deprived of their old diversity of food crops which provided a good staple diet, they have to produce huge acreages of one crop(mono-cropping, or mono-culture) for export, often using vast quantities of pesticides.
If countries were able to meet their own national needs, free from the exploitative stranglehold of supermarkets and agro chemical industries,and market forces,- farming systems would be able to adapt more easily to the changing local conditions brought about by climate change. Closer communication between farmer and consumer would bring about a more democratic system.
Independant scientists(ie independant from agro-chemical companies)make an informed hypothesis that mono-crops are partially responsible for the colony collapse disorder in bees in the United States. Another strong suspect for causing this serious state of affairs, is the use of pesticides. I discuss this in my next post.

Pollution, Pesticides, and Defra decides.

The average western adult contains between 300 and 500 traces of man-made chemicals in their bodies. Before the second world war there were none.



During the war in this country there was a need to increase food production, and so the use of pesticides and fungicides began.

After the war 4000 farmers were disposessed of their land by government because they wouldn't farm in the intensive way that government wanted them to.
The government brought in legislation- 'The 1947 Agricultural Act' to make farmers adopt the use of chemicals and technology for high crop production.

There is no longer any necessity for this sort of intensive agriculture but government persists in their mantra that the more chemicals and technology are applied in agriculture, the more food will be produced and the lower the price will be for the consumer.

The following extract from the Ecologist Magazine, 'Fatal Harvest' 1/11/02 describes the background to this policy:-

..."This myth of cheap food is routinely used by agribusiness as a kind of economic blackmail against any who point out the devestating impacts of modern food production. Get rid of the industrial system, people are told, and they won't be able to afford food. Using this 'big lie' the industry has even succeeded in portraying supporters of organic food production as wealthy eletists who don't care about how much the poor will have to pay for food. Under closer analysis the US's supposedly cheap food supply becomes monumentally expensive.

The myth of cheapness completely ignores the staggering externalised costs of the food, costs that do not appear on supermarket checkout receipts. Conventional analysis of the cost of food ignore the exponentially increasing social and environmental costs customers are currently paying and will have to pay in the future. Americans spend tens of billions 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 this food production for future generations is incalculable".