Ethics in agribusiness?

It probably hasn’t escaped the attention of many that the British Parliament is currently embroiled in an ‘expenses’ scandal. Exposures about individual MP’s expenses claims were leaked to the Telegraph newspaper which is publishing this information by installments and drawing-out the agony for worried MP’s who wonder if they will be the next to be shamed.--( No, I am not digressing from the subject of my blog about the machinations of agribusiness/government, so please bear with me!)
Naturally, the British public are very annoyed about MP's 'misuse' of our money. Some of us are particularly annoyed because ironically enough the Government has the temerity (and hypocricy) to put us, its citizens, under intense (for a so-called free democratic society) and constant surveillance and scrutiny via their video cameras and data bases. Well, the British public are at long last beginning to think ‘what is good for the goose, is good for the gander.’

So,(back to agribusiness) environmental campaigners have decided to introduce their own surveillance, - and this is being used to produce 'witness evidence’. For example, the pesticide campaigner Georgina Downs won a High Court victory in November 2008 against the Government.The judgement concluded that the British Government has been acting unlawfully in its crop spraying policy and failing to protect the health of the public living near agricultural land. G.D's arguments were underpinned by direct witness evidence which included a two-part video together with pesticide-soaked mannequins having a ‘picnic’ during spraying of pesticides in the adjacent field.
This approach by Georgina Downs was resorted to because for years Defra and the Pesticide Safety Directorate refused to acknowledge the inadequacy of the safety regulations when she produced her arguments and evidence to them.

Similarly and possibly inspired by Georgina Downs court case, ISIS (The Institute of Science in Society) has published on its website a post entitled ‘Call for Direct Witness Evidence of GM hazards and Failures’ by Dr Mae-Wan Ho.(14/04/09). ISIS has already exposed deliberately misleading claims about the performance of GM crops, and they say that witness evidence properly documented is taken seriously by the law courts.For this reason ISIS would like people to submit photographic and video evidence to them.
ISIS is categorical that material on its site should not be reproduced in any form without permission, so I strongly recommend you visit http://www.i-sis.org.uk/

Our government keeps us under constant surveillance, it claims, for our own safety and security,(and because it regards us all as potential criminals) On the other hand it is perfectly happy to allow the health of thousands of people to be damaged by pesticides, and to put at risk through genetic engineering the very security of our food supply. The arguments and ethics of many of our leaders should be kept under scrutiny, (even if some of them have returned our money.)

website of Georgina Downs http://www.pesticidescampaign.co.uk/

Honeybee decline and facts which DEFRA tries to gloss over.

At last the mainstream media seems to have grasped the fact that bee die-offs have serious implications for humanity, and the problem isn't going away.
Martha Kearney's documentary on bbc4 last week provided a more in depth analysis than I have seen on the tv before. In the documentary,agricultural pesticides were heavily implicated as a source of the die-offs, but Martha Kearney stopped short of saying this directly. Likewise, the scientists who were interviewed seemed to be pointing to pesticides as the greatest cause of concern and even implicating them as the root of the problem, but avoided claiming this categorically. In the documentary many possible causes were explored.
Some Facts
a) In the UK last year nearly a third of honeybees were lost.
b) 40% of hives died out.
c) The European Honeybee pollinates over 90 crops. In the UK this is worth £190 million and in the US sixty times that amount.
d) The honeybee accounts for 80% of insect pollination.

In the US:-
e) One beekeeper lost 360 out of 400 hives.
f) A big commercial beekeeper lost 200 million bees.
g) 600,000 hectares of almonds in California represent 90% of income for beekeepers.
h) Beekeepers can own around 70,000 hives which are transported huge distances(around 3000 miles) across the continent.
i) Because of the decline of bees, aeroplanes are ferrying bees from Australia to California and back. Australian bees are so far unaffected by ccd.
Environmental Stressors
a) Lack of hedges and set-aside land combined with huge acreages of monocrops, means there are fewer wild plants and biodiversity for bees to feed on.( 100 years ago there were plenty of wild bees and other insects which are now largely eradicated.)
b) In the US hives are transported huge distances accross the continent, sometimes 3,000 mile trips.
c) At the National Bee Unit in York the English Government experts attribute the problem to climate change, and weather patterns. In unseasonal weather the bees will not forage. Viruses which spread at an alarming rate become resistant to chemical treatment.
d) Pests (such as varroa mites) viruses, bacteria and fungi.
e) Genetic narrowing of the species through breeding of bees that are more docile and produce good honey yields, but are more susceptible to pests and disease.

All the above developments are helping to compound what has become a critical situation of colony collapse disorder and massive bee die-offs.Environmentalists, conservationists,ecologists, and many scientists have been expressing their concern for a long time over the lack of biodiversity caused by intensive agriculture.Despite this in 2007 the European Commission decided to abolish set-aside land so that every last strip of land could be used for intensive crop production. Scares over food shortages were exploited to push for the expansion of more intensively farmed agricultural land, and to push for the introduction of genetically modified crops which had previously been banned in Europe. Now, just over a year later we are literally reaping what we have sown,- the extermination of the main crop pollinators-bees.
Although no single event by itself can be identified as a cause of the honeybee decline, scientists agree that something is weakening the bees resilience, and immunity to diseases.
Conflicting Theories.
But scientists seem to be promoting two conflicting theories. On the one hand they say that pesticides are not the single culprit of bee deaths. Something, or a combination of things, is making bees weak and more vulnerable to pathogens which are killing them.( Pathogens are found in dead bees, but in healthy bees too)Alternatively they are saying that bees are subjected more than ever before to contamination by pesticides on food crops. At Penn State University in the US, Maryanne Frazier points out that bees are at risk from a whole cocktail of pesticides.There's no doubt that lack of wild plants and adequate food has a significant impact on bees, and unseasonal weather also effects how they survive, but these elements cannot explain the following:-
Pesticides
Some commercial apiarists in the USA have monitored and described the care of their bees in the months leading up to the wipe-out of their bee colonies. These bee keepers went to great lengths to make sure the bees had adequate nutrition over the winter period. One beekeeper transported thousands of hives a distance of hundreds of miles to spend the winter away from any risk of contamination from already effected bees. The following Spring his bees had disappeared with only a small number of dead bees around the hives.This demonstrates there is no link between the husbandry of individual beekeepers and the death of colonies, or between weather conditions and the bee deaths.. This seems to put pesticides at the top of the list again. Maryanne Frazier (Penn State University) wonders whether "the whole toxic soup is having a long-term effect to push bees over the edge?" Marryanne collected bee samples from a number of beekeepers and found pesticides in every class that are currently being used-insecticides,fungicides and herbicides.In one bee she found 25 different agro chemicals.
This research so far, makes it difficult to understand how pesticides can be dismissed as not being the source of colony collapse disorder, or honeybee decline. Research scientists have no idea what the pesticides in combination (the toxic soup or cocktail effect) are doing to bees, or to anything else for that matter. Given the number of pesticides found in bees, it would take many more years of research to analyze the interraction of the different compounds and their effect on bees and how they effect the immune system of bees.One of the most damaging group of pesticides seem to be the 'neonicotinoids' (nicotine based). They are systemic, meaning they are applied to seeds and distributed throughout the plant.Imidacloprid (sometimes called Gaucho) is a neonicotinoid which it is claimed, at low level or sub lethal doses, effects the brains of growing bees resulting in damage to their navigation system and homing instinct. For this reason the pesticides have been banned in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia.
There is another reason to suspect that pesticides might be at the root of the bee decline. A number of beekeepers in Britain and America have reported that when their bees are put into or near to farmland where there are treated crops, their bee colonies have died. By contrast when their bees have been able to forage on land or woodland which is free of pesticides, the bees remain healthy.

Mike Thurlow, a beekeeper in Britain has described the problem he has encountered since 2002. Hundreds of thousands of dead bees were found around the hives, they weren't disappearing. Mr Thurlow complained that there is a lack of wild flowers for bees to feed on, and consequently his bees are struggling.He went on to describe the difference he saw when his hives were put in farmland. When bees came back from pollination they were divided three ways-one lot into a wood(lime trees) and the other two lots in intensive agricultural areas, where the colonies collapsed.
This account is echoed in the experience of urban beekeepers. In cities there is more food for the bees in parks and small gardens with there diversity of plants.
I think A.Jarvis of the Independent newspaper provides some apt comments on this issue. Referring to systemic pesticides he writes ...."They're supposed to be discriminatory-in the same hopeless way, smart bombs are meant to be-but,like the smart bombs, they're actually pretty dumb. In fact, they're probably worse for the bees than the old-fashioned spray-and-be-damned kind, as they're aimed at the seeds, and the problem has become systemic. Now when the bee pollinates a plant, it picks up a cocktail of drugs along the way.........It does all seem absurb, the idea of an aeroplane ferrying bees from Australia to California and back. How did the simple practice of beekeeping become this convoluted?And how can it be reversed?...."
Finally I think it is important for us all to realize that Colorado beekeeper Tom Theobald is right when he says that "pesticide laws are routinely ignored and disregarded.....new pesticides are not properly evaluated independently to assess the impact they might have on bees....." Orlando Clarke, an urban beekeeper says...."if you've got one creature that's so widespread accross the planet and suddenly it's coming under such an attack that it's almost being wiped out-we've got to be asking how that's feeding further up the food chain and right accross nature."

Police tried to recruit environmental campaigner to spy.

The photos above were taken three years ago on the south coast of Kent, England. They show surveillance of seagulls, beach huts and anyone who might wander onto beach.

This morning John OConnor (former commander of Scotland Yard) was interviewed re the police infiltration of environmantal groups. He said they(the police) "have to police everything". Judging by the photos above the police take this absolutely literally.

With regard to environmental groups, the police were caught on tape trying to recruit a Plane Stupid protestor as a spy. The Guardian newspaper says that undercover police are running a network of hundreds of informants inside protest organisations who secretly feed them intelligence in return for cash. These disclosures were revealed in almost three hours of secretly recorded discussions between covert officers claiming to be from Strathclyde police, and an activist from the protest group Plane Stupid, whom the officers attempted to recruit as a spy after she had been released on bail following a demonstration at Aberdeen Airport last month.

Below-from The Guardian

Matilda Gifford,24, said she recorded the meetings in an attempt to expose how police seek to disrupt the legitimate activities of climate change activists. She met the officers twice; they said they were a detective constable and his assistant. During the taped discussions the officers:
• Indicate that she could receive tens of thousands of pounds to pay off her student loansin return for information about individuals within Plane Stupid.
• Say they will not pay money direct into her bank account because that would leave anaudit trail that would leave her compromised. They said the money would be tax-free,and added: "UK pic can afford more than 20 quid."
• Accept that she is a legitimate protester, but warn her that her activity could mean shewill struggle to find employment in the future and result in a criminal record.
• Claim they have hundreds of informants feeding them information from protest
• Indicate that she could receive tens of thousands of pounds to pay off her student loansin return for information about individuals within Plane Stupid.
• Say they will not pay money direct into her bank account because that would leave an audit trail that would leave her compromised. They said the money would be tax-free,and added: "UK pic can afford more than 20 quid."
• Accept that she is a legitimate protester, but warn her that her activity could mean shewill struggle to find employment in the future and result in a criminal record.
• Claim they have hundreds of informants feeding them information from protest
• Warn her that she could be jailed alongside "hard, evil" people if she received acustodial sentence.
The meetings took place in a Glasgow police station last month and in a supermarketcafe on Tuesday. Gifford used a mobile phone and device sewn into her waistcoat torecord what they described as a "business proposal" that she should think of as a job.
They intimated that in return for updates on Plane Stupid's plans she could receive large sums of money in cash.

....In a statement, Plane Stupid said: Our civil liberties were invaded and our right to peaceful protest called into question simply to defend the interests of big business.

Plane Stupid has pointed out the common theme running through all governments policies regarding agriculture and the environment. The collusion with big business has been noted repeatedly by pesticide campaigners, particularly with DEFRA'S refusal to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence regarding damage to human health and also the bee die offs across Europe and America.

'Taking Charge of who's Destiny?' Agriculture.

Blimey!...Question to Mr Naylor..Where are people who live in cities and do not own land expected to get their food if they do not delegate their food needs to farmers and retailers? Personally I think urban allotments are a good idea, but I don't think this is what Mr Naylor was suggesting.

(J. -Thanks for the comment on previous post- I tried to trace a link to the article but they seem not to have archived this feature which was published on the opinion page. I've reproduced the first half of the article verbatim below, so that I don't quote out of context.)

Sorry I have removed quote because of question-mark over copyright.

At grass roots level people are taking charge of their destiny-agriculture.

It was with interest that I read an article by Farmer Mathew Naylor(a Nuffield Scholar) called “Take Charge of your own Destiny.”(I was flipping through an old edition of Farmers Weekly, 23rd Jan.) It seemed a muddled and contradictory piece of writing to me, but in summary I think the message was that those farmers who are used to ‘mastering the elements’ are those who have an ‘Internal Locus of Control’ and take charge of their own destiny. Those farmers and horticulturists who don’t exterminate all insects with crop sprays are called ‘hippies’ and believe in an ‘External Locus of Power’ and put themselves at the mercy of fate. Mr Naylor concludes his thesis with the thought that despite the increasingly turbulent commodity and currency markets he still ‘holds firm with (his) opinions as a free-trader. Fate isn’t getting its hands on me…”

Well, ummm... thanks for those thoughts Mr Naylor.

Now, to return to the title of Mr Naylor’s article, (the reason it captured my attention in the first place),-"Take Charge of Your Own Destiny”. I had coincidently listened to Helen Kongai on the radio last week, when she had used a similar phrase…that at grass roots level people were…”taking their own destiny in their hands”. She too was referring to farming, and food production. This is where the parallel ends.
Helen Kongai is development officer for sustainable agriculture in Africa. This project was founded in 1988 by a group of UK farmers who sent cows to families in post-conflict Uganda. It now runs sustainable agricultural programmes in nine countries in Africa to help small-scale farmers overcome poverty and malnutrition. It is called the Send a Cow Charity. All those who use the Charity project undertake to pass on the benefits they gain such as livestock and skills to another family, so that the work goes on multiplying throughout communities.
So we see that Helen Kongai’s ideas for agriculture are ethically and in practical terms totally different from those of Mathew Naylor. Her strategy is to grow staple crops which are indigenous to the regions. Her farming methods work with nature and do not try to bludgeon the soil into submission with pesticides and synthetic nitrates.

The International Seeds Day which I mentioned in my previous post demonstrates the like-minded movement across the world for communities to ‘take charge of their destiny’ by producing their own food. This means resisting the attempts by corporates to colonize their land, or pressurize them into purchase of gm seeds.

International Seeds Day

I've just visited Jamblichus's Weblog, and have copied this information(below) from one of his links.... Please visit http://Jamblichus.wordpress.com

Below from http://www.ineas.org/events.htm Institute of Near Eastern and African Studies.

International Seeds Day
Organizations, activists and people from various professional and linguistic backgrounds will observe April 26 as International Seeds Day (ISD) advocating for patent-free seeds, organic food and farmers' rights. ISD will be an educational day for the public to learn about genetically modified food and its health hazardous effects and the agribusiness of major US and European companies and their monopoly over the agriculture in Africa and Asia with emphasis on India, Iraq and Afghanistan. It will be a day of solidarity with farmers in countries devastated by war (Afghanistan, Iraq & others) and of resistance.
Join us to endorse and publicize April 26 as International Seeds Day
and/or organize an event on April 26
Final deadline to endorse and/or organize an event is: April 12

Why April 26?

Order 81 was signed on April 26, 2004 by Paul Bremer, the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq to control Iraq's agriculture. The Order was a declaration of war against farmers. Article 14 of this law states "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties," Order 81 mends Iraq's original law No. 65 on patents, created in 1970. The most significant part of Order 81 is the subject of 'Plant Variety Protection' (PVP), which ensures not the protection of biodiversity, but rather the protection of the commercial interests of USA and European major seed corporations. In order to qualify for PVP, seeds have to be 'new, distinct, uniform and stable'. Therefore, the sort of seeds being encouraged to grow by corporations such as World Wide Wheat Company (WWWC), Monsanto and others will be those registered under PVP.
Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva dedicated to Iraqis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-B1yU278zk
Full text of Order 81 http://www.trade.gov/static/iraq_memo81.pdf
Detailed information on the status of agriculture in Afghanistan and Iraq: http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=217

Partial List of Events:
More details about the events listed will be updated and other events will be added daily.
1. USA: Phone Campaign to Iraqi farmers, farm owners, agriculture experts and women in Iraq to educate about terminator seeds, Order 81 and seed keeping and resistance by the volunteers at INEAS.
Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies (INEAS), Cambridge, MASS
http://www.INEAS.org
INEAS@aol.com and INEAS_1994@yahoo.com

2. Iceland: "Awareness for April 26th International Seeds Day"
University of Iceland Reykjavik - Iceland April 26 3-6 pm
Organized by activists Anouk Petzoldt, Charlotte Ferrier and Oscar-Mauricio Uscategui
Presenting "The world according to Monsanto" film,
Participants, speakers and exact address will be announced shortly
Contact: Anouk at Anoukpetzoldt@gmail.com and, Oscar-Mauricio at seeds@seedsiceland.org 354 845-6178

3. USA: "GMO Teach-In"
Local Food Coop - Albuquerque, New Mexico April 26 10:30 am
Sponsored by La Montanita Coop (www.lamontanita.coop). Cuatro Puertas, Arid Crop Seed Cache and GMO Free NM
Celebrating the 20th Annual Earth Festival
Location: At the Tent on the West End of the Festival Site - on Silver Street behind the Coop.
Contact: Isaura Andaluz at c4puertas@yahoo.com 505-620-5692

ISD Endorsers:

Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies (INEAS), http://www.INEAS.org, (MA, USA)

Navdanya, http://www.navdanya.org, (New Delhi, India)

Institute of Science in Society, http://www.i-sis.org.uk, (London, UK)

Brussells Tribunal, BRussells Tribunal, (Brussells, Belgium)

Grain International, http://www.grain.org, (Bercelona, Spain)

The Green Party of the United States, http://www.gp.org, (DC, USA)

GMO Free New Mexico, www.gmofreenm.com, (New Mexico, USA)

Slow Food Rio Grande, www.slowfoodriogrande.org, (New Mexico, USA)

Dr. Vandana Shiva, http://www.navdanya.org, (New Delhi, India)

Wafaa' Al-Natheema, http://www.INEAS.org, (MA, USA)

Brian John, Ph.D., http://www.gmfreecymru.org, (Wales, UK)

Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D., www.biotechempire.com, (Okinawa, Japan)

Dirk Adriaensens, SOS Iraq, (Brussells, Belgium)

Dr. Maha Alsakban, http://www.nwciraq.org, (Diwaniya, Iraq)

Dr. Souad Naji, BRussells Tribunal, (Baghdad, Iraq)

Yasir Allawi, http://www.dental-tribune.com, (Dubai,UAE)

Garda Ghista, www.worldproutassembly.org, (Kentucky, USA)

Amy Mall, http://www.twinenfp.org, (Chicago, USA)
Anouk Petzoldt & Charlotte Ferrier, http://umhverfi.hi.is, (Reykjavík, Iceland)
Oscar-Mauricio Uscategui, http://seedsiceland.org, (Reykjavík, Iceland)
Paola Pisi, http://www.uruknet.info, (Rome, Italy

Energy Dependence of Modern Agriculture.

Above - fourteen 600kg bags of nitrate.

Way back in 1980 Fritjof Capra (physicist) wrote a critique of Western societies overreliance on the ‘scientific method’. He predicted how a reductionist approach, and obsession with economic growth and production was depleting the planet’s natural resources. He even accurately predicted catastrophic climate change through ozone depletion. Not many people took any notice back then, but we’re paying for it now.

The world’s governments have emerged from the G20 summit claiming to have taken ‘unprecedented steps’ to rectify the global recession. Infact they are stubbornly avoiding dealing with the real issues. Rather than grasping the opportunity to invest in new technologies to counter the effects of climate change and depleted natural resources, our world leaders have instead chosen the same old paradigms that led us to the current crisis.

In his book ‘The Turning Point’ Capra made reference to the work of the geologist M.King Hubbert who as early as the 1950’s predicted the rate of depletion of the planet’s natural resources. There have been decades of negligence by Western governments.

A report by Caroline Lucas(Green MEP)in 2006 cuts through the establishment prevarication. It’s called ‘Fuelling The Food Crisis-The Impact of Peak Oil on Food Security.’

Whilst there is no concencus on how soon global oil will peak(the point at which half of the total oil known to exist has been consumed, and beyond which extraction goes into irreversible decline) many expect it to occur well before 2020.

Caroline Lucas states…..
..."Petroleum has become the lifeblood of both industrialised and developing economies. It would be difficult to find a single product available to us in the UK that has not consumed crude oil derivatives (as well as natural gas or coal) during its production, distribution and retail. Yet there is increasing evidence that days of easy access to cheap oil are fast running out.
The implications of this are vast. Since the first oil crisis of 1973, some of the inevitable consequences of addiction to fossil fuels have been well documented, particularly in terms of its impact on our transport systems. What has been much less analysed, however, is the impact of higher oil prices on our increasingly industrialised food system. This report aims to help address that question, by highlighting the extraordinary dependence of existing food and agriculture policy on cheap oil, and by demonstrating why this will have to change....
In my work as an MEP, I have long argued that the European Union's policies of ever greater free trade and more open markets must change, since they destroy the livelihoods of small and medium sized farmers, jeopardising food security, and increasing our dependence on imports. They also adversely affect the environment, as agricultural commodities are transported ever longer distances,and are processed and packaged to survive the journey. To these social and environmental problems must be added a new imperative - weaning the industrialised food production system itself off its high-energy use....
The priorities are clear. The Common Agricultural Policy must be replaced by a policy framework that minimises fossil-fuel use through the prioritisation of self-reliance, so that Europe can meet this new challenge head on, delivering food security into the future. The current emphasis on ever increasing international trade needs to be replaced by policies to relocalise our food systems.Finally, the EU must urgently refocus its development policies, so that poorer countries can put food security before exports, and replace their dependence on Western markets by much greater national and regional self-reliance. These are ambitious goals. The purpose of this report is to demonstrate why they are so urgently needed.
Higher energy and fuel prices will be a triple blow for the synthetic fertiliser industry, and for those farmers that have become dependent on this quick fix and are unwilling to consider the alternatives.Firstly, because of the large amount of energy required to extract ores and consumed during the manufacturing process; secondly, the use of natural gas as a feedstock, and thirdly, the costs of the fuel required to transport these bulk commodities. The export of fertilisers and their raw materials are a significant constituent of sea-borne bulk trade: the fourth most traded bulk commodity in world shipping trade after iron ore, coal and cereals.
Initially, the energy required to produce nitrogen fertilizer was provided by cheap electricity and derivatives of coal, inputs that were mostly available only in industrialised countries. Trade in fertilisers has increased because the fertiliser industry has gradually relocated plants to countries that have low electricity prices as well as the required natural gas feedstock. These include the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Venezuela. The need to access raw materials forother fertilizers has seen the industry also move into areas that have extensive natural reserves, including Africa, China, the US, and Morocco. Worldwide demand for fertiliser has necessitated significant levels of international trade. Shipping costs are relatively high for these low-value bulk commodities: the lower the value of the shipped material, the greater the incidence of transport in the landed cost.
The fertiliser industry does not see peak oil and natural gas as being a problem for fertiliser producers. According to the International Fertiliser Industry Association"...processes for ammonia production can use a wide range of energy sources. Thus, even when oil and gas supplies eventually dwindle, very large reserves of coal are likely to remain. Coal reserves are sufficient for well over 200 years at current production levels, and their location is geographically diverse. 60% of China's nitrogen fertiliser production is currently based on coal." The consequences in terms of climate change, however, would be catastrophic. Additionally, production of ammonia from coal is 70% more energy intensive than production from natural gas.
Given the high energy input required to produce nitrogen fertiliser, it is inevitable that manufacturing costs have risen as oil and gas prices worldwide have increased. Since 2003, ammonium nitrate costs, for example, have risen from £90 per tonne to over £170 per tonne in early 2006.”….

Even without the Peak Oil situation, Capra describes the damaging effects of fertilizer use in agriculture. Remember he wrote this in 1982.
"...The long-term effects of excessive 'chemotherapy' in agriculture have proven disastrous for the health of the soil and the people, for our social relations, and for the entire eco-system of the planet. As the same crops are planted and fertilized synthetically year after year, the balance in the soil is disrupted. The amount of organic matter diminishes, and with it the soil's ability to retain moisture. The humus content is depleted and the soil's porosity reduced. The changes in soil texture entail a multitude of interrelated consequences. The depletion of organic matter makes thesoil dead and dry; water runs through it but does not wet it.
The ground becomes hard-packed, which forces farmers to use more powerful machines. On the other hand, dead soil is more susceptible to wind and water erosion, which are taking an increasing toll. For example, half of the topsoil in Iowa has been washed away in the last twenty-five years, and in1976 two-thirds of America's agricultural counties were designated drought disaster areas. What is often called 'drought,' 'wind breaking down the land,' or 'winterkill are all consequences of sterile soil.
The massive use of chemical fertilizers has seriously damaged the natural process of nitrogen fixation by damaging soil bacteria involved in this process. As a consequence crops are losing their ability to take up nutrients from the soil and becoming more and more addicted to synthetic chemicals.Because their efficiency in absorbing nutrients this way is much lower, not all the chemicals are taken up by the crop but leach into the ground water or drain from the fields into rivers and lakes".....

Trees

Thanks for your comment J. I liked your article on GM's. The pro GM propaganda machine is pretty repetitive now-'luddite' seems to be one of their favorite insults for the opposition-as opposed to their scientific gravitas I suppose.

David Hockney's experience re the dissappearance of trees shows how blithely authorities can rob us of things that matter. I liked his painting which reminded me of P.Nash.-(one of his above.)

Decades of Inaction over Pesticides.

The Pesticides Safety Directorate(PSD), the key officials advising Ministers on pesticides, receives approximately 60percent of its funding from the agro-chemical industry.

In November last year, Georgina Downs won a High Court victory against the Government over its fundamental failure to protect people in the countryside from pesticides.

Speaking after the ruling, she stated, “The Government’s relentless attempts to protect the industry as opposed to the health of its citizens were abundantly clear in the 2 witness statements produced by the Chief Executive of the PSD. It is striking that, despite such a significant and landmark High Court ruling,that found the Government failing in its legal obligation to protect public health,(particularly rural residents) that neither Witness statement of Mr Wilson displayed any concern whatsoever in relation to securing the protection of public health, nor seemingly any genuine desire to rectify the Government’s policy in accordance with the terms of the judgment.”

The Government’s position regarding pesticides seems to be that they attempt to balance the harm (or risk of harm) to human health with the supposed benefits of pesticides such as cost or economic benefits for farmers and the chemical industry. This doesn’t seem to be a terribly appealing prospect for those people exposed to pesticides from living in the locality of regularly sprayed fields. I doubt if those who are ill with cancer or damage to the immune system caused by pesticides, will comfort themselves with the thought that farmers and agribusiness are benefiting financially.

There have been a number of important European Commission statements that clearly acknowledged the chronic long term impacts of pesticides, including for those living in the locality to sprayed fields. For example, the EC stated that, "Long term exposure to pesticides can lead to serious disturbances to the immune system, sexual disorders, cancers, strerility,birth defects,damage to the nervous system and genetic damage.(Source:http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/06/278&format=HTML&aged=0andlanguage=EN&guiLanguage=en)

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.

Honeybees,Defra dithers, and denies, denies, denies.

.
Top picture-neonicotinoid chemical structure and honeybees.

Second picture-organophosphate chemical structure and honeybees.

BIG QUESTION-

WHY IS THERE NO SERIOUS GOVERNMENT FUNDED RESEARCH INTO THE LINK BETWEEN THE HONEYBEE DECLINE AND PESTICIDES?

The bee die-off has become critical, and after a long period of complacency Defra has at last committed £4.3 million to “safeguard and undertake more research into the health of bees.” Despite this Defra still prefers to stress abnormally wet weather, coupled with the fungus Nosema as being the cause of bee deaths.
Whilst some private companies and beekeepers in Europe are making efforts to address the causes of the alarming bee decline, Defra continues to avoid the issue of pesticides.

Simon Press, the Co-op group senior technical manager, said that “We believe that the recent losses in bee populations need definitive action and as a result are temporarily prohibiting the eight neonicotinoid pesticides until we have evidence that refutes their involvement in the decline." Elliot Carnell, coordinator of Pesticide Action Network, said that the government had failed to recognize that “pesticides could be a contributing factor in the honeybees dramatic decline.” He claims "the government has fought against any attempts to protect bees which pollinate a third of the average diet.”

Last year the president of UNAAPI (the Union of Italian Beekeepers) claimed that a group of comparatively new pesticides, the neonicotinoids, were killing the bees. He said “These substances were irresponsibly authorised by public powers that bowed to pressure from the chemical industry.” (It is worth noting here that Italian beekeepers might feel less inhibited about criticizing their government than our beekeepers might criticise Defra, because they receive no type of aid from the State or the EU.)

A number of studies have linked neocotinoids to die-offs in bee colonies and also found that they are responsible for a breakdown of their navigational abilities. Germany banned the use of all neonicotinoid-based pesticides last year, and France imposed strict limits on their use on bee crops following mass die-offs in the 1990’s.

Despite these problems and the proven link between pesticides and bee deaths, Defra recently opposed the European Commission’s new rules to ban 15 percent of the most hazardous pesticides. Defra secretary of state Hilary Benn has confirmed that the government would be voting against the new pesticide rules when they come before the Agricultural Council for final agreement in March or April.

The president of the Union of Italian Beekeepers reference to pesticides- “These substances were irresponsibly authorized by public powers that bowed to the pressure from the chemical industry.” –could equally accurately be applied to the British government.

A Farmer in Wales has deliberately and illegally planted GM's

In pugnacious mood a farmer told BBC news this morning how he had planted GM's in Wales. He claimed he had not acted illegally.

Farmer Jonathan Harrington has been secretly planting and harvesting two varieties of genetically modified maize on his own land within the Brecon Beacons,-a National Park and protected area.

In 2000 the Welsh Assembly voted to keep Wales a GM free zone.

Mr Harrington said he had been trying to influence the Assembly government's policy on GM's for many years, without success. Consequently he has decided to break the law, saying.."But I wanted to make the point that we should welcome GM crop technology and that Wales could not be described as a crop free zone".

An Assembly government spokeswoman explained that..."However we cannot legally ban GM crops in Wales because we have to work within a European legal framework. Our policy is to take a precautionary and restrictive GM crop policy stance which is in line with our commitment to sustainable agriculture....Anyone growing a GM crop in Wales would need to comply with all relevant legislation. A grower would be required by law to retain documentation for a period of five years, would have to detail the operator providing the product and who the product was sold to."

Pesticide PM continued...

• save our honeybees


• save our insects and birds


• save our wildlife


• save our rivers and watercourses


• save our ecology


• save the health of our children and the general public

BAN THE MOST HAZARDOUS PESTICIDES!-

carcinogens,reprotoxins,mutagens,endocrine disruptors

SUPPORT THE EU PESTICIDE PROPOSALS.

The Pesticide PM, and his toxic policies.

In response to the EU pesticide proposals which aim to ban some of the most toxic agricultural chemicals, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated that impending changes to EU pesticide rules “will damage food production without benefiting human health or the environment”.

The above statement is an outrageous insult to everyone who lives in proximity to pesticide spraying.Rural residents experience first hand the impacts of crop spraying and know that the new EU rules would substantially improve their quality of life by removing the risk of inhaling toxic fumes, or of pesticide poisoning through skin contact.

Gordon Brown’s statements about crop yields are also inaccurate and highlight his economically bullish motivation, and support of the chemical industry, rather than the health of the general public.

Farmers Weekly magazine features a “Save Our Sprays” campaign. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has chosen to support this campaign rather than the campaign which seeks to save
peoples lives and protect our health.

Pesticide poisoning, Gordon Brown couldn't care less.

When Georgina Downs won the High Court case against the government recently, the judge concluded that the government had fundamentally failed to protect people in the countryside from pesticides and has also knowingly allowed residents to continue to suffer from adverse health effects without taking any action to prevent the exposure, risks and adverse inpacts occurring.

The Judgment had concluded that Ms. Downs had produced “solid evidence that
residents have suffered harm to their health”, particularly in relation to acute effects, and
that “a different approach” should have been adopted and accordingly there has “been
both a failure to have regard to material considerations and a failure to apply the
[European] Directive properly.”

In response to this ruling the government has paid lip service only, saying...."The
protection of human health is paramount” and “we will look at this judgment in
detail to see whether there are ways in which we can strengthen our system…”

Later they declared that they will be appealing the High Court decision, and soon after Gordon Brown communicated to the EU that he was not in favour of the EU proposals to ban some of the most toxic pesticides.

Despite all reliable independent evidence relating to the risks of agricultural pesticides, Gordon Brown has explicitly conveyed his support for the interests of big business over the health of ordinary people, not only in his own country, but throughout the world.

New EU Pesticide Proposals.

"These Pesticide Proposals(the Proposal for a Framework Directive on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides and the Proposal for a Regulation Concerning the Placing of Pesticides on the Market) will set pesticide policy throughout the whole of the EU for at least the next ten years and possibly even the next few decades." Georgina Downs warns that serious lobbying by the chemical and farming industry and the UK government itself has meant that the proposals are not as strong as they were.

The agricultural industries and NFU have used the press to push their scaremongering about supposed 'negative impacts on farming and food prices'. The CPA (crop protection association) which represents the agrochemical industry has a vested interest in trying to ensure that all pesticides remain on the market-and they are putting these interests before the health of the people of the EU.

Extremely toxic pesticides include carcinogens, repro-toxins, mutagens and endocrine disruptors. In order for the original pesticide proposals to succeed it is essential for MEP's to vote in favour of the proposals. Please write and ask your local MEP's to support the proposals to ban the pesticides. This is urgent as they vote soon.

Pesticides cocktails.

Since Georgina Downs won her high court battle against the government, she has written a comment on the 'Farming Today' blog to correct any misinterpretations around her message regarding agricultural pesticides. I have recorded below paragraphs from her comments which enumerate the important points:-

……"agricultural pesticides are commonly used in mixtures, often 4 or 5 different products in any one application. Each product formulation in itself can contain a number of different active ingredients, as well as other chemicals such as solvents, surfactants and co-formulants (some of which can have adverse effects in their own right, even before considering any potential synergistic effects in a mixture(s)). Therefore when people are exposed over the long-term to ongoing mixtures and then go on to suffer a chronic illness or disease it will be almost impossible to know which pesticide led to the illness or whether it is as a result of synergistic effects of mixtures of pesticides and the long term cumulative build up in the individuals. The Judge in my case recognised both the point of mixtures and of cumulative effects and therefore it is simply not the case as Elliott incorrectly put it of just getting rid of what he classes as the most "toxic" (which he stated is about 20 pesticides (5% of those currently on themarket)) as a) all chemical pesticides are designed to be toxic, that is their purpose; b) they are used in cocktails anyway and not individually and c) the Ontario College of Family Physicians in its thorough and detailed 2004 pesticides literature review quite rightly concluded that "Our review does not support the idea that some pesticides are safer than others; it simply points to different health effects for different classes of pesticides."The review?s overall message to people was to avoid exposure to all pesticides whenever and wherever possible.

…… It should be noted that the Judge in my case did not say that the UK system could be made lawful by just getting rid of a handful ofpesticides…..

The Judge agreed with my long-standing charge that the Government has fundamentally failed to protect people in the countryside from pesticides and has also knowingly allowed residents to continue to suffer from adverse health effects without taking any action to prevent the exposure, risks and adverse impacts occurring"

Victory of Right over might.

Georgina Downs has won a milestone High Court action against the government, after her seven year campaign to reveal the fundamental inadequacies of the regulation and control of agricultural pesticides.

The High Court has ruled that “people living in the countryside are at risk from crop sprays and must be given better protection.”

In court the Department of Environment,Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) had argued that its approach to the regulation and control of pesticides was "reasonable, logical and lawful in all the circumstances".
But the judge ruled that the result of his judgement was that Mr Benn "must think again and consider what needs to be done".

Georgina Downs said that “the UK government’s relentless and extraordinary attempts to protect industry, as opposed to people’s health, has been one of the most outrageous things to behold in the last seven years of my fight.”

I would like to thank Georgina Downs for her courageous and phenomenal dedication to the campaign in those seven years.

For more information, Georgina Down’s campaign website is called UK Pesticides Campaign.

UK countryside in poor health.

The degraded condition of land and the near extinction of some birds and wildlife is to a large extent due to the bullish attitudes of successive governments.
Hedgerows, woodland, and wildplants, insects and wild animals have been sacrificed to the intensive use of pesticides and industrialised farming methods, in the mistaken belief that this is a realistic or sustainable system of food production for the future post peak oil world.

Last week the House of Commons Environmental Committee published a report which concluded that…” the government needs to do more to halt the dramatic decline in our native landscape and wildlife”

Biodiversity loss and loss of our native landscape is considered by government to be necessary collateral damage in the drive for economic growth. Infact some individuals don’t consider it to be damage at all. They simply don’t recognize or care about their self condoned vandalism, (it is government which sets the policies for agricultural practice). Biodiversity isn’t an optional extra, It is fundamental to our survival on this planet. Culturally and aesthetically it provides more than just a pleasing panomara which is appealingl for the tourist industry.
In a metropolitan setting no government would be allowed to destroy historic buildings or parklands for economic reasons, yet they consider they have the right to allow farmers to destroy the fabric of our rural landscape.

Tim Yeo, who chairs the select committee, stated that the balance of nature is economically important.- that there is a compelling economic case for protecting the environment. …”Environmental gain is conducive to economic growth-prosperity and good environment go hand in hand- they are not conflicting objectives.”

One result of the destruction of the fabric of the countryside is that farmland birds, like the turtle dove, grey partridge and linnet have declined to their lowest level on record, with some species becoming extinct in some regions of the UK. The latest survey by DEFRA shows the number of breeding pairs of farmland birds has now more than halved since intensive farming with chemicals was introduced in the 1960’s.
Some species have declined more than 85% leading to local extinctions, including the corn bunting in Northern Ireland and yellow wagtail in Devon. Other affected species are lapwing, grey partridge, tree sparrow and skylark.

Meanwhile, what exactly is the motivation of the UK government in threatening conservation schemes by cutting budgets to key organizations like Natural England?

Too few frogs, too much Monsanto.

Over half of Europe’s amphibians face extinction by 2050. Climate change, diseases and habitat destruction and urbanisation are blamed. This was an assesment of the Zoological Society of London, in September.

This week the World Conservation Congress is gathering in Barcelona to discuss environmental problems and how to work towards a biodiverse and sustainable world. Thousands of the worlds leading decision makers in sustainable development will be at the conference which is run by the IUCN the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.Valli Moosa, the president of IUCN, said in the opening session that industry, commerce and businesses are significantly responsible for pollution and degradation of ecosystems, and he said there is a clear sense of urgency in stopping the die off of the Earth's animal and plant life which could have dire consequences for humans as well.

The 'Red List' is the global standard for conservation monitoring, and the 2007 edition shows more than a third of 41,000 species surveyed are facing extinction; a quarter of all mammals, one out of eight birds, one out of three amphibians, and 70% of plants.

I don't know whether Monsanto were invited to attend this congress. It is not likely because they have a history of walking out of important meetings when they cannot get there own way. This happened at the sessions held by IAASTD to make decisions on the future direction of agriculture. Anyway Monsanto’s methods are also responsible for loss of farmland wildlife... The government body ‘Natural England’ demonstrated through field based trials on GM crops which were prepared for commercial release in England, that wildlife is damaged far more by the GM process than by conventional methods. Michael McCarthy in his article ‘Hello green concrete, goodbye wildlife’’ wrote… ’It means a landscape in which fields have a crop growing in them but nothing else. No wild plants or flowers of any sort, no butterflies or moths, no smaller insects on which birds and their chicks can feed, and so no birds. Green concrete means a countryside that may still be called the countryside, and may still appear green, but apart from the crop, it will be entirely sterile and lifeless.

I can predict the self righteous response from Monsanto, I have heard it before., along the lines of…they are attempting to solve the world’s food shortage, etc. Monsanto persist in this argument despite the fact that the recent IAASTD report, after four years research, concluded that GM’s and intensive farming methods were not the answer to feeding the world’s population.

They are agreed that the solution to climate change is biodiversity and eco-system management. The problem is that the foundation of sustainable life is disappearing.Meanwhile Monsanto persists in its catastrophic use of Roundup(glyphosate) so called because nothing survives.

Film Documentary, "The World According to Monsanto."

The following information is sourced from GMWatch.eu/

Marie-Monique Robin's excellent documentary film "The World according to Monsanto" will be shown at the European Social Forum(ESF) on Wednesday the 17th September in Malmo Sweden.

After the screening, there will be presentations on the current situation as regards GMO's by guest speakers including Daniel Mittler(political advisor, Greenpeace International) and Benjamin Sourice(Combat Monsanto).

Please join us! The movie is free of charge. Let's make the world free of GM- contamination!

The movie at the ESF is presented by Combat Monsanto, Sherpa France, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace.

Title: The World according to Monsanto
Date: September 17th,2008
Time: starts at 16.00
Place:Cinema Spegein(Stortorget 29, Malmo) TEL:+46-40-125978
http://www.biografspegein.se/

Monsanto is the worlds largest seed company and many are concerned. Troy Roush says "They are in the process of owning food, all food" Paraguayan farmer Jorge Galeano says "its objective is to control all the worlds food production" Renowned Indian physicist and community organiser Vandana Shiva says"If they control seed they control food;they know it, it's strategic. It's more powerful than bombs; it's more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world."

This post will include more info. re this film soon!

GM's, Phil Woolas and the elephant in the room.

GM proponents like to label those who oppose GM technology as ‘Luddites’ or ‘unscientific’. Presumably they imagine that by using these labels on their critics, they confer more gravitas to themselves and their erroneous claims for these agricultural crops. Prince Charles’ recent criticism of GM’s, triggered some bizarre and irrational responses. Because the science is powered by money, many politicians turn a blind eye to the glaringly obvious drawbacks of GM’s. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Phil Woolas, the English environment minister, accused Prince Charles of ignoring the needs of the worlds poorest countries by attacking GM crops, and insisted the government would go ahead with trials unless scientific evidence showed they were harmful. He challenged Prince Charles… “If it has been a disaster then please provide the evidence.” Infact Woolas is stubbornly ignoring independent research, and the actual experience of farmers from across the world.
Vandana Shiva, a physicist and campaigner against privatisation of the world’s croplands, immediately demolishes the cynical argument that the needs of the world’s poorest countries are being ignored by anti GM campaigners.(www.navdanya.org)
In challenging Prince Charles to produce proof of potential disaster, Phil Woolas has reversed the protocol for scientists to produce research to prove that a product is safe.Woolas is condoning the corporate colonisation of areas of British land(within barbed wire and cctv surveillance) to conduct trials of crops which have already been proved to be damaging to human health, wildlife and the environment.

Clare Oxborrow, Friends of the Earth, points to the fact that governments are evading the conclusions of the IAASTD Report. “The UN International Assesment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, written by 400 scientists and backed by 60 governments, found no conclusive evidence that GM crops increase yields. In fact, the scientists were so unconvinced about the role of GM crops in meeting future food needs that the pro-GM US government refused to endorse the report, and the biotechnology industry pulled out of the process, despite having provided substantial funding at the outset.
The report stated that yield gains achieved through industrialised farming have come at an unacceptable environmental and social cost. Prince Charles has identified that GM crops will exacerbate these problems. It is now time for governments to act on the IAASTD’s findings and work for a radical shift towards local sustainable solutions for communities across the world, by combining latest research with traditional knowledge.”

Finally, re Woolas’s attack on Prince Charles, Robin Maynard of the Soil Association pointed out that the Prince of Wales ..”did not say that the problems emanating from overreliance on intensive farming methods during the Green Revolution in Punjab or exacerbating soil salinity in Australia stemmed from GM crops, but that these represented the latest manifestation of industrial agriculture’s overreliance on technological inputs to overwhelm natural resource limits, rather than following sustainable techniques which seek to work in balance with those limits.”

Monsanto's Roundup.

The application of agricultural pesticides to crops across the world has created a huge problem of toxic pollution in our air, soil, watercourses and sea. Monsanto is trying to exploit this problem by promising that GM crops will largely do away with the necessity for pesticide applications. Biotech companies claim that GM crops will provide the magic bullet to feed the world, and that the number of pesticides, and the frequency of applications will be reduced.

'Friends of the Earth' have explored these claims and their analysis is very different. Below(in blue text) I quote from “who benefits from gm crops?” by Friends of the Earth,(January 2008).

…….”As in the past, virtually 100% of
world acreage planted with commercial GM crops have one or
both of just two traits: herbicide-tolerance and insect-resistance.
In the U.S., the world leader in GM crop production, companies are
focusing their development efforts on producing new herbicidetolerant
(HT) crops.Two of the fourGMcrops approved over the past
year and five of 12 new GM crops awaiting commercial approval
from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) are herbicide-tolerant.
Two of these crops in the pipeline are tolerant to two herbicides
rather than one, a new development driven by the spread of
herbicide-resistantweeds.

1.2 gm crops increase pesticide use
Pesticides are chemicals that target weeds (herbicides), insects
(insecticides) or other pests. HT versions of soya, corn, cotton and
canola represent 4 of every 5 hectares (81%) of GM crops
worldwide. HT crops are ‘pesticide-promoting’ – that is they
encourage the development of herbicide-resistant weeds, which
in turn lead to yet more pesticide use.
HT crops allow farmers to spray a particular herbicide more
frequently and indiscriminately without fear of damaging the
crop. They also allow larger, wealthier farmers to cultivate more
acres with less labor, advancing the world-wide trend towards
fewer and bigger industrial-style farms.
Pesticide-promoting HT crops have spawned an epidemic of
herbicide-resistant weeds in the U.S., Argentina and Brazil,
thereby encouraging still greater use of chemicals to control
them. Pesticides have adverse health and environmental
impacts that GM agriculture is exacerbating.
It is no accident that agrichemical-biotech companies focus
development efforts on pesticide-promoting, HT crops: they
lead to increased sales of the chemicals these firms also sell.
Monsanto's Roundup
Ready soya is modified for resistance to the herbicide glyphosate.
It is the world’s most widely planted GM crop and it suffers from
a “yield drag”due in part to reduced uptake of essential nutrients.
Herbicide-tolerant crops are designed to permit “over-the-top”
application of chemical weed killers without killing the crop itself.
Their chief benefit has been convenience: HT crops allow farmers
to spray a particular herbicidemore frequently and indiscriminately
without fear of damaging the crop.They also allowlarger,wealthier
farmers to cultivate more acres with less labor, facilitating the
world-wide trend to fewer and bigger industrial-style farms. It is no
accident that GM soya is most prevalent in Argentina, a country
known for some of the largest soya plantations in theworld.
Just as bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, so weeds have
become resistant to weedkillers. Resistant weeds are not new,
but they have become much worse in the era of GM crops.
Roughly 99% of the world’s GM herbicide tolerant crops are
Monsanto’s Roundup Ready varieties, tolerant to the herbicide
glyphosate (marketed by Monsanto as Roundup). The
dramatically increased reliance on glyphosate with the
Roundup Ready system has spawned an epidemic of
glyphosate-resistant weeds.
In addition, there is increasing evidence that insect resistant
GM crops, which produce a toxin derived from Bt (Bacillus
thuringiensis) bacteria, do not provide a sustainable means of
decreasing the use of insecticides.
Although comprehensive data on pesticide use are difficult to
obtain in most countries, the available data and anecdotal
evidence demonstrate that pesticide use is on the rise:
• the huge increase in glyphosate use in the united states.
In the US, the widespread adoption of Roundup Ready crops
combined with the emergence of glyphosate-resistant weeds
has driven a more than 15-fold increase in the use of
glyphosate on major field crops from 1994 to 2005. In 2006,
the last year for which data are available, glyphosate use on
soybeans jumped a substantial 28% (see Table 1). The
intensity of glyphosate use has also risen dramatically. From
1994 to 2006, the amount of glyphosate applied per acre of
soya rose by more than 150%, from just 0.52 to 1.33 lbs. per
acre per year.
glyphosate is not replacing other herbicides in the united states.
While farmers growing Roundup Ready crops initially used
lower quantities of herbicides other than glyphosate, that
trend has changed in recent years. Increasingly, farmers find it
necessary to apply both increased rates of glyphosate and
large quantities of other herbicides to kill resistant weeds.
From 2002 to 2006, use of the second-leading soya herbicide,
2,4-D, on soybeans more than doubled from 1.39 to 3.67
million lbs.,while glyphosate use on soybeans increased by 29
million lbs. (43% rise). Atrazine, banned in 2006 in the EU due
to its link to several health problems like endocrine
disruption, breast and prostate cancer, is the most heavilyapplied
corn herbicide in the US. While glyphosate use on
corn increased five-fold from 2002 to 2005, atrazine use rose
by nearly 7 million lbs. (12% increase), and aggregate
applications of the top four corn herbicides rose by 5%.
Clearly, glyphosate is not displacing the use of atrazine or
other leading corn herbicides.
steep increase in glyphosate-resistantweeds in the united states.
Of the 58 cases of new glyphosate-resistant weeds identified
in the last decade around the world, 31 were identified in the
US, which has the largest area in the world devoted to HT
crops. Thirty of those cases occurred between 2001 and 2007.
Experts agree that continuous planting of Roundup Ready
crops and over-reliance on glyphosate are to blame.
Documented glyphosate-resistant weeds now infest an
estimated 3,251 sites covering 1 million hectares. This
estimate does not include weeds with suspected resistance,
which are likely to infest a much larger area
rise of glyphosate use and weed resistance in brazil.
Data from Brazilian government agencies show that the
consumption of the 15 main active ingredients contained in
the most heavily used soya herbicides increased 60% from
2000 to 2005. The use of glyphosate increased 79.6% during
this period,much faster than the expansion in area planted to
Roundup Ready soya. In 2005 and 2006, three new weed
species have evolved resistance to glyphosate in Brazil.
Brazilian authorities have already recognized glyphosateresistant
weeds as amajor threat to the country’s agriculture.
• increase in glyphosate use and weed resistance in argentina.
In Argentina, herbicide use has increased dramatically in the
last decade with the progressive expansion in the area
planted to soya, nearly all of it GM Roundup Ready soya. In
2007, Argentine agricultural experts reported that a
glyphosate-resistant version of Johnson Grass now infests
over 120,000 ha of the country’s prime cropland. According to
the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, Johnson Grass is
one of the worst weeds in the subtropics, and resistance to
glyphosate will make it all the harder to control. Experts
estimate that 25 million litres of herbicides other than
glyphosate will be needed to control the resistant weed,
resulting in an increase in production costs of between $160
to 950million per year. Despite this threat, Argentine officials
recently approved a new variety of glyphosate-resistant corn,
which is likely to exacerbate the problem.
• bt cotton does not reduce pesticide use in india. In 2007, the
Agro-Economic Research Centre of Andhra University
published a new study on pesticide use on GM cotton during
the 2004-05 season in the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh.
The study concludes that Bt cotton farmers apply the same
quantity of pesticides, and spend the same amount on them,
as conventional cotton farmers.
• secondary pests increase pesticide use in pakistan and indian
punjab. In 2007, infestation of cotton by secondary pests not
killed by the Bt cotton insecticide in Pakistan and the Indian
State of Punjab have dramatically increased the use of
pesticides and increased input costs for farmers.
herbicide-tolerant crops suffer “yield drag”: ISAAA maintains
that HT crops are neutralwith respect to yield, butmany studies
of Roundup Ready soya, the most widely planted GM crop,
suggest that it has on average 5-10% lower yield than
equivalent conventional varieties. Recent research has identified
at least one cause of this yield drag. Glyphosate hinders uptake
of essential nutrients like manganese in Roundup Ready soya,
both reducing yields and making plants more susceptible to
disease. Moreover, some countries like Paraguay have
experienced record low yields due to drought during 2005 and
2006, corroborating several reports that indicated that RR soya
was performingworse than conventional soya in dry conditions.
Figure 3 confirms stagnating yield in countries that have heavily
adopted Roundup Ready soya”.