Monsanto's Mythmaking Will Not Feed the World

• GM Watch (Europe), June 11, 2008
  Straight to the Source
  
  

COMMENT from GM Watch: John Gapper's article (below) from the Financial Times is a classic of its kind. It reads authoritatively but when examined carefully turns out to be based on a series of myths. It also tries to adopt an even handed tone while clearly coming down on the side of the US government and Monsanto.

The FT's chief business commentator tells us, for instance, that Monsanto wants countries such as Brazil to raise yields with high-intensity methods: "Monsanto's vision - and that of the US - is that US-style farming needs to spread across Latin America and Asia."

But large-scale industrial farming, making full use of Monsanto's products, is already well established in several Latin American countries. Paraguay, for instance, is now the world's 4th largest exporter of soya, while Argentina is number 3, and Brazil number 2.

And we can see the consequences - massive deforestation, an ecalating use of pesticides and increasing social conflict. Meanwhile, and this is a critical point, people in all these coutries remain hungry. Indeed, food insecurity is also rising rapidly in the US itself, a clear indication that there is something awry with Gapper's analysis.

Another myth that Gapper promulgates is that the current problem of rapidly rising food prices to not just down to "biofuels" but to the fact that "in China and Asia, a middle class is emerging that wants meat from grain-fed animals".

As Daryll E. Ray at the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee, has shown from the US Department of Agricultire's own data on China and India's grain trade, neither country's sucking in grain in the way that's being claimed -China "has remained a net exporter of all grains since the 1996/1997 crop year India has been a net exporter for 15 out of the last 18 years." In short, " there is no demand for feed grains from China and India, and none from Indonesia and Brazil as well." http://www.agpolicy.org/weekcol/409.html

Once this is understood, then the role of "biofuels" comes into much clearer focus. In fact, the very reason that the Bush adminstration, have been working so hard to promote the myth that feed grain demands in India and China are a key factor in the food crisis has been in order to muddy the waters as regards the role of "biofuels", and in particular Bush's massive increase in ethanol subsidies, as a critical catalyst in triggering the current crisis.

What the biofuels debacle should teach us is the danger of rushed policies driven by heavy lobbying - notably by big agribiz and biotech interests - undertaken in a crisis atmosphere (energy insecurity/climate change).

We should be equally cautious about the current campaign - by exactly the same interests - to exploit the food crisis to bounce us into GM crop adoption.
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Bickering will never feed the world
By John Gapper
Financial Times, June 11 2008

The Food, Climate, & Energy Crisis: From Panic to Organic

• By Ronnie Cummins
  Organic Consumers Association/Grassroots Netroots Alliance, June 13, 2008
  
  

Rising food prices and shortages have joined the energy and climate crisis, economic recession, and the war in Iraq, as headline news. While consumers struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland rake in billions from taxpayer-subsidized biofuels. Monopolizing markets, polluting the environment with genetically modified organisms, and hoarding future reserves of crop seeds, wheat, rice, soy, corn, and other grains, the food and gene giants profit from global crisis and misery. Adding fuel to the fire, Wall Street speculators have shifted their greed from sub-prime mortgages to food and non-renewable resources.

The public are becoming aware of the causes of the food crisis: millions of acres of corn and soybeans diverted into biofuels; corporate-driven free trade agreements that discourage nations from maintaining grain reserves and becoming self-sufficient in food production; massive subsidies for industrial agriculture and a misguided export model that have forced millions of family farmers off the land; sharply escalating oil prices, farm inputs, and transportation costs; commodity speculation; population growth; a growing demand for feed grains for meat consumption, and, most ominously, a destabilized climate spawning deadly droughts, pests, floods, and unpredictable weather.

Fortunately, there are hopeful signs that we can move beyond crisis to positive solutions. Connecting the dots in our food-climate-energy crisis, millions of green consumers are voting with their dollars for foods and products that are healthy, locally produced, energy efficient, and eco-friendly. A growing number of politicians, mainly at local and state levels, are also waking up.

Organic food and farmers markets are booming. Chemical-free lawns and gardens, green buildings, solar panels, wind generators, "buy local" networks, and bike paths are sprouting. A critical mass of organic-minded Americans are waking up to the fact that we must green the economy, drastically reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas pollution, re-stabilize the climate, and heal ourselves, before it's too late.

For 10,000 years locally based family farmers and ranchers managed to grow and distribute healthy food, and ample feed and fiber, largely without the use of petroleum-based chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, animal drugs, or energy-intensive irrigation, processing, and long-distance transportation.

In 1945 most of the U.S.'s six million family farmers were still rotating their crops and cultivating a wide variety of fruits, grains, beans, and vegetables organically, fertilizing with natural compost, and generally practicing sustainable farming methods they had learned from their parents and grandparents.

By 1945, as part of the war effort, Americans were growing a full 42 percent of our vegetables and fruits in our backyards, schoolyards, and community Liberty Gardens.

The nutritious, primarily non-processed foods that people cooked for their family meals were purchased from locally owned grocers who stocked their shelves with a wide variety of items - typically grown or raised within a 100 mile radius of our communities.

In the 1950s the average American household spent 22 percent of our household income for fresh, locally produced food. Currently we are spending 13-15%, though low-income households are spending 30-35%.

By today's standards the post-war generation was relatively healthy in terms of low rates of diet-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, food allergies, birth defects, and learning disabilities.

Sixty years later we have a Fast Food Nation, living in denial (at least until recently), gorging ourselves on the industrialized world's cheapest and most contaminated fare, allowing out-of-control politicians, corporations and technocrats to waste our tax money on corporate welfare, destroy the environment, starve the poor, wage a multi-trillion dollar war for oil, and destabilize the climate.

The good news is that there is a solution at hand. Turning back to the time-tested practices of local, eco-friendly, organic food and farming will go a long way toward restoring our health and the health of the planet. Revitalizing democracy and bringing our politicians to heel will guarantee that these organic and green alternatives become the norm.

Organic and local farms dramatically reduce energy use in the agricultural sector by 30-50 percent while safely sequestering in the soil enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. Decades of research have shown that small farms produce far more food per acre than chemical farms, especially in the developing world, and that organic farms outperform chemical farms (by 40-70%) under the kind of adverse weather conditions that are quickly becoming the norm. Buying local and regionally grown organic products means food doesn't have to travel 1500-3500 miles before it reaches your kitchen.

Crisis demands change. We must continue to buy local and organic foods and green products. Patronize farmers markets. Start or expand your garden. Move your diet away from restaurant fare and over-consuming meat and animal products. Buy in bulk and cook your meals at home with healthy whole foods ingredients--vegetables, fruits, beans and grains. If you're going to eat meat or animal products, make sure they're both organic and grass-fed or free range. Most important of all, get political. Demand an end to the war. Demand healthy and sustainable food and farming, energy, and climate policies from your local, state, and federal elected public officials-or else vote them out of office. Don't panic go organic. To press the politicians on these burning issues, go to http://www.grassrootsnetroots.org