Tag Archives: Politics

Petition: Stop rezoning on Quarterman Road 2023-08-28

Update 2023-08-24: Packet: Two county rezonings, one plainly inappropriate @ GLPC 2023-08-28.

Please sign and share this petition:

https://chng.it/LDW47QsdSd

We the undersigned ask that the request for 2.5 acre lots on Quarterman Road be denied.

The smallest appropriate acreage in our area is the EA minimum of 5 acres.

Rural rezonings like this lead to additional developments in the future. We don’t want it now and we don’t want it later.

We ask the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission to recommend denial in its August meeting.

We ask the Lowndes County Commission to deny in its September meeting.

[Rezoning sign, site, Quarterman Road, Zoning Map, Agriculture/Forestry/Conservation Character Area]
Rezoning sign, site, Quarterman Road, Zoning Map, Agriculture/Forestry/Conservation Character Area

R-A allows 2.5-acre lots, while E-A allows only down to 5-acre lots. That is inappropriate on Quarterman Road, where there is no R-A, and the entire road is in the Agriculture/Forestry/Conservation Character Area. Many of us fought to preserve that Character Area only two years ago. Just last year we fought off a Dollar General on GA-122 at Skipper Bridge Road, in the same Character Area.

Now let’s stop this rezoning in the same Character Area.

According to the Lowndes County Unified Land Development Code (ULDC), Continue reading →

Ms. Gretchen Goes to Orlando

As the only farmer Georgia delegate to the Democratic National Convention, No Farms No Food and the only delegate from Lowndes County and one of the few from rural Georgia, Gretchen Quarterman is off to the Democratic Platform Committee meeting in Orlando today and tomorrow, Friday July 8th and Saturday July 9th 2016.

Remember: No Farms, No Food.

She already knows a bit more about the process than Jimmy Stewart in 1939’s Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Hm, I’d forgotten that movie was about Continue reading →

Short-term profit misusing technical know-how beyond understanding of nature –Cosmos

Another Cosmos script Neil deGrasse Tyson read maybe he should have paid more attention to regarding the situation with short-sighted corporate monopolies misusing cherry-picked science to promote their profits at the expense of all of us and the only planet we’ve got.

Talking about the fall of the ancient Mesopotamia civilization, the script Dr. Tyson read for Cosmos Episode 11, The Immortals, says: Continue reading →

N.deG. Tyson falls for the misuse of the authority of science that he decried in Cosmos

In his recent misstatements about GMO foods, Neil deGrasse Tyson has fallen for what he called the misuse of the authority of science, in Episode 7 of Cosmos, the Clean Room, which recounted Clair Patterson’s discovery of lead pollution by leaded gasoline. That use of lead had been promoted and defended by Robert E. Kehoe’s “scientific” papers.

The script Tyson read (but did not write) said: Continue reading →

Junk food is engineered to be addictive

This is why there is an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in the U.S.: food deliberately engineered to make people eat until they get fat. Georgia is not quite one of the fattest states, but Lowndes County is one of the fattest counties. There is something we can do, even while Big Food continues to act like Big Tobacco.

Michael Moss wrote for NYTimes 20 February 2013, The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food,

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.

James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies.” Getting the company chiefs in the same room to Continue reading →

Science that’s proven safe by not the very same companies that stand to gain by its approval –Rachel Parent

14 year old Rachel Parent destroys a pro-Monsanto-GMO TV host on every point, from science to his ad hominem attacks against her. He twists, he turns, he avoids admitting when he’s defeated, and he loses bigtime. No summary can do this justice.

Mat Agorist posted for Realfarmacy.com 30 August 2013 about the CNBC Lang & O’Leary show of 31 July 2013, 14 Year Old, Rachel Parent, Anti-GMO Activist, Destroys Establishment Shill, Kevin O’Leary, On Air

Meet Rachel Parent, a 14 year old activist, who knows her stuff! This brave girl should serve as a role model for all teens. If 10 percent of children had this girl’s drive and knowledge, we wouldn’t even be having this debate right now.

In this video Ms. Parent braves the establishment hack, Kevin O’Leary, and does outstanding. O’Leary hammers out the industry talking points like the good shill he is and Ms. Parent slams each and every one. Bravo Rachel Parent, thanks for doing what you do.

If you like the work of Rachel Parent and want to help, please visit her website at http://www.gmo-news.com.

Here’s the video:

Continue reading →

Monsanto FUD about seed ownership: Farmer Bowman could win back natural seed rights

Monsanto is always hiding behind something, starving children (while selling their parents crops that fail all at once), the Great God Efficiency, or now, medical research. Will Clarence Thomas recuse himself this time on this Supreme Court seed patent, Bowman v Monsanto? Will Monsanto manufacture enough Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) to win anyway, or will the other SCOTUS judges rule wisely this time?

Andrew Pollack wrote for the New York Times 13 February 2013, Farmer’s Supreme Court Challenge Puts Monsanto Patents at Risk,

Monsanto says that a victory for Mr. Bowman would allow farmers to essentially save seeds from one year’s crop to plant the next year, eviscerating patent protection. In Mr. Bowman’s part of Indiana, it says, a single acre of soybeans can produce enough seeds to plant 26 acres the next year.

Such a ruling would “devastate innovation in biotechnology,” the company wrote in its brief. “Investors are unlikely to make such investments if they cannot prevent purchasers of living organisms containing their invention from using them to produce unlimited copies.”…

The decision might also apply to live vaccines, cell lines and DNA used for research or medical treatment, and some types of nanotechnology.

Yeah, yeah, it could. But it would be quite easy for SCOTUS to say this ruling is about seeds.

Many organizations have filed briefs in support of Monsanto’s position — universities worried about incentives for research, makers of laboratory instruments and some big farmer groups like the American Soybean Association, which say seed patents have spurred crop improvements. The Justice Department is also supporting Monsanto’s argument.

And the American Soybean Association represents big growers who plant Monsanto seeds. Too bad they don’t realize they’d make more profits if they didn’t have to pay for those seeds every year even when Monsanto jacks up the price ( 43% in 2009), plus pay for the expensive pesticides that go on them, and the expensive huge tractor equipment to farm at the scale Monsanto demands. Another group that should know better weighs in:

Continue reading →

John Quarterman on the Withlachoochee (audio)

Back at the end of March at a river conference in Roswell, Georgia, I was interviewed for a podcast. Here’s the audio, and here’s the blurb they included:

John Quarterman on the Withlachoochee
Monday, July 9th, 2012

John S. Quarterman was born and raised in Lowndes County, where he married his wife Gretchen. They live on the same land where he grew up, and participate in local community and government.

NPS talks with Quarterman and his observations on starting and strengthening a Withlachoochee Riverkeeper organization at Georgia River Network‘s 2012 Weekend for Rivers.

The water organization has since been incorporated as the Georgia non-profit WWALS Watershed Coalition:

WWALS is an advocacy organization working for watershed conservation of the Willacoochee, Withlacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River Systems watershed in south Georgia and north Florida through awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen advocacy.

-jsq

PS: They also recorded another podcast which starts out on what may sound like a completely different topic, but which is actually quite related.

Want some 2,4-D with that drifting Roundup and Paraquat?

Got enough Roundup and Paraquat drifting onto you? Want some 2,4-D with that? If not, you can send your comments to USDA now. Hey, what if we all plowed under the mutant pigweed instead of breeding more with poison soup!

Tom Philpott wrote for Mother Jones 18 July 2012, USDA Prepares To Greenlight Gnarliest GMO Soy Yet,

In early July, on the sleepy Friday after Independence Day, the USDA quietly signaled its intention to greenlight a new genetically engineered soybean seed from Dow AgroSciences. The product is designed to produce soy plants that withstand 2,4-D, a highly toxic herbicide (and, famously, the less toxic component in the notorious Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange).

Readers may remember that during an even-sleepier period—the week between Christmas and the New Year—the USDA made a similar move on Dow’s 2,4-D-ready corn.

If the USDA deregulates the two products—as it has telegraphed its intention to do—Dow will enjoy a massive profit opportunity. Every year, about half of all US farmland is planted in corn and soy. Currently, Dow’s rival Monsanto has a tight grip on weed management in corn-and-soy country. Upwards of 90 percent of soy and 70 percent of corn is engineered to withstand another herbicide called glyphosate through highly profitable Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seed lines. And after so many years of lashing so much land with the same herbicide, glyphosate-resistant superweeds are now vexing farmers and “alarming” weed-control experts throughout the midwest.

And that’s where Dow’s 2,4-D-ready corn and soy seeds come in. Dow’s novel products will be engineered to withstand glyphosate and 2,4-D, so farmers can douse their fields with both herbicides; the 2,4-D will kill the weeds that glyphosate no longer can. That’s the marketing pitch, anyway.

There’s more in the article.

It can also get into your well water, and then, according to EPA:

Continue reading →

Hiding the Truth About Factory Farms —NYTimes

In an editorial on 26 April 2011, the New York Times opined:
A supermarket shopper buying hamburger, eggs or milk has every reason, and every right, to wonder how they were produced. The answer, in industrial agriculture, is “behind closed doors,” and that’s how the industry wants to keep it. In at least three states — Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota — legislation is moving ahead that would make undercover investigations in factory farms, especially filming and photography, a crime. The legislation has only one purpose: to hide factory-farming conditions from a public that is beginning to think seriously about animal rights and the way food is produced.
Would people really want to eat CAFO chicken, beef, or pork if they knew it came from animals that are kept in pens so small they can’t move and fed antibiotics constantly to keep them from dying of diseases they give each other from standing in their own feces?

Also, I’m a Farm Bureau members, but this makes me ill:

And they are supported by the big guns of industrial agriculture: Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, the associations that represent pork producers, dairy farmers and cattlemen, as well as poultry, soybean, and corn growers.
Farming used to be something to be proud of, not something to hide.

-jsq