Rodale Institute has been running a side-by-side comparison of organic
and chemical agriculture since 1981.
They
report:
After an initial decline in yields during the first few years of
transition, the organic system soon rebounded to match or surpass the
conventional system. Over time, FST became a comparison between the long
term potential of the two systems.
And now comes evidence from the very heart of Big Ag: rural Iowa, where
Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture runs
the Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment (LTAR), which began in
1998, which has just released its latest results.
At the LTAR fields in Adair County, the (LTAR) runs four fields: one
managed with the Midwest-standard two-year corn-soy rotation featuring
the full range of agrochemicals; and the other ones organically managed
with three different crop-rotation systems. The chart below records the
yield averages of all the systems, comparing them to the average yields
achieved by actual conventional growers in Adair County:
Norman Borlaug, instigator of the “green revolution”
of no-till and pesticides, when asked in 2000
whether organic agriculture could feed the world, said:
Continue reading →
Tired of hacking and coughing after cotton fields get sprayed to open their bolls?
Tired of losing your garden or organic crops to Roundup drift?
Now there are two precedents for legal recourse.
Purveyors of conventional and genetically-modified (GM) crops — and the
pesticides and herbicides that accompany them — are finally getting a
taste of their own legal medicine. Minnesota’s Star Tribune has reported
that the Minnesota Court of Appeals recently ruled that a large organic
farm surrounded by chemical-laden conventional farms can seek damages for
lost crops, as well as lost profits, caused by the illegal trespassing
of pesticides and herbicides on its property.
Oluf and Debra Johnson’s 1,500-acre organic farm in Stearns County,
Minn., has repeatedly been contaminated by nearby conventional and
GMO farms since the couple started it in the 1990s. A local pesticide
cooperative known as Paynesville Farmers Union (PFU), which is near the
farm, has been cited at least four times for violating pesticide laws,
and inadvertently causing damage to the Johnson’s farm.
The first time it was realized that pesticides had drifted onto the
Johnson’s farm in 1998, PFU apologized, but did not agree to pay for
damages. As anyone with an understanding of organic practices knows,
even a small bit of contamination can result in having to plow under
that season’s crops, forget profits, and even lose the ability to grow
organic crops in the same field for at least a couple years.
And all most people have done so far is let it slide.
But the Johnsons did something.
Continue reading →
It’s not just the pesticides, it’s the crops themselves.
Gilles-Eric Séralini and colleagues surveyed the state
of research and found
GMOs Linked to Organ Disruption in 19 Studies,
as Jeffrey Smith reports for the Institute for Responsible Technology.
…consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant
organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys.
…9% of the measured parameters, including
blood and urine biochemistry, organ weights, and microscopic analyses
(histopathology), were significantly disrupted in the GM-fed animals. The
kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes. The liver
of females followed, with 30.8%. The report, published in Environmental
Sciences Europe on March 1, 2011, confirms that “several convergent
data appear to indicate liver and kidney problems as end points of GMO
diet effects.” The authors point out that livers and kidneys “are
the major reactive organs” in cases of chronic food toxicity.
And these were the corn and soybeans that people eat.
I recognized them from
Food, Inc.
They get them out of the chicken houses at night.
It was maybe around 8 o’clock in the morning.
(7:51 according to the timestamp.)
According to Food, Inc., they’re put in the cages as little babies,
and they put the sides down.
These chickens have probably never seen daylight before:
Continue reading →
There are only two applications that have been commercialized
in these twenty years of genetic engineering.
One is to make seeds more resilient to herbicides,
which means you get to spread more Roundup,
you get to spread more Glysophate,
and you get to spread more poison.
Not a very desirable trait in farming systems.
Especially since what Monsanto will call weeds
are ultimately sources of food.
It gets even better from there.
These are illusions that are being marketed
in order for people to hand over the power to decide what we eat
to a handful of corporations.
The documentary points out many products in German stores that
include GM soy.
In Argentina, it’s even worse, with increasing numbers of birth defects.
They interview
Prof. Andrés Carrasco about his research on amphibians:
“The hemispheres do not separate, like you can see here.
If you look closely you can see one brain.
Glyphosate can cause this kind of mechanisms, for it is an enzymatic toxin.”
“To human cells glyphosate is already toxic in a very low dose.
A farmer uses a much higher dose on the field.
Roundup is even more toxic than glysophate,
for that is only one of the ingredients in Roundup.”
Roundup says none of this applies to humans and Roundup is safe.
Seralini
says:
Who should you believe?
A corporation repeatedly convicted of deception,
or scientists who say that GM crops
cause liver and kidney damage in animals,
according to research using Monsanto’s own data.
Government officials around the globe have been coerced, infiltrated, and paid off by the agricultural biotech giants.
In Indonesia, Monsanto gave bribes and questionable payments to at least 140 officials, attempting to get their genetically modified (GM) cotton approved.
[1] In India, one official tampered with the report on Bt cotton to increase the yield figures to favor Monsanto.
[2] In Mexico, a senior government official allegedly threatened a University of California professor, implying “We know where your children go to school,” trying to get him not to publish incriminating evidence that would delay GM approvals.
[3] While most industry manipulation and political collusion is more subtle, none was more significant than that found at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The result is humans as guinea pigs:
Since GM foods are not properly tested before they enter the market, consumers are the guinea pigs. But this doesn’t even qualify as an experiment. There are no controls and there’s no monitoring. Without post-marketing surveillance, the chances of tracing health problems to GM food are low. The incidence of a disease would have to increase dramatically before it was noticed, meaning that millions may have to get sick before a change is investigated. Tracking the impact of GM foods is even more difficult in North America, where the foods are not labeled. Regulators at Health Canada announced in 2002 that they would monitor Canadians for health problems from eating GM foods. A spokesperson said, “I think it’s just prudent and what the public expects, that we will keep a careful eye on the health of Canadians.” But according to CBC TV news, Health Canada “abandoned that research less than a year later saying it was ‘too difficult to put an effective surveillance system in place.'” The news anchor added, “So at this point, there is little research into the health effects of genetically modified food. So will we ever know for sure if it’s safe?”[30]
We might better start finding out.
There’s much more in the article, all copiously documented at least with
citations, and often with links to the actual articles.
In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive
director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement
of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds
into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on
biodiversity, on Creole seeds … and on what is left our environment
in Haiti.”
Fortunately, the Haitian government agrees:
For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry
of Agriculture rejected Monsanto’s offer of Roundup Ready GMOs seeds. In
an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of
Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMOs.
Well, who could doubt Monsanto?
Apparently some influential Haitians.
They even get that it’s not just about the chemicals:
Haitian social movements’ concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMOs imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto’s arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.
Maybe people in other countries will also act to preserve what is left of our environment.
…often we feel because of the way we act. So by acting the way we wish we felt, we can change our emotions – a strategy that is uncannily effective.
Second, the world’s reaction to us is quite influenced by the way we act toward the world. For example, in situation evocation, we spark a response from people that reinforces a tendency we already have — for example, if I act irritable all the time, the people around me are going to treat me with less patience and helpfulness, which will, in turn, stoke my irritability. If I can manage to joke around, I’ll evoke a situation in which the people around me were more likely to joke around, too.
This is also the light side of the obesity network.
If we are influenced by our friends to become obese or not,
we also influence our friends.
Which leads, as always, to the same conclusion: that even though it’s tempting sometimes to think that I’d be much happier if other people would behave differently toward me, the only person whose behavior I can change is myself. If I want people to be friendlier to me, I must be friendlier. If I want my husband to be tender and romantic, I must be tender and romantic. If I want our household atmosphere to be light-hearted, I must be light-hearted.
And if we want our spouses, friends, neighbors, community to be health weight,
we can help them become so by doing it ourselves first.
And invite our friends to exercise, to pass up the donut for an orange,
to go outside instead of watch TV.
Gretchen Rubin was writing about happiness, but it’s the same principle.
If you want people to be happy or healthy, start with yourself,
find like-minded people, and eventually maybe it becomes the way things are.
And now comes evidence from the very heart of Big Ag: rural Iowa, where Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture runs the Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment (LTAR), which began in 1998, which has just released its latest results.
