GMO Labeling and the continued Battle

[boutons_deux]

here's a much better approach, rid the world's agriculture, food supply of Mega-corp domination

Radical U.N. Report Promotes Democratic Control of Food and an End to Corporate Domination

A new report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council on the “Right to Food” took aim at the entire basis on which food is produced and distributed on a global scale. Reflecting the type of progressive analysis of our food system from experts like Vandana Shiva and Michael Pollan, report author Olivier De Schutter called for an undermining of large agribusinesses and an infusion of democratic control.

Although the report’s recommendations are revolutionary, news of its release went largely unreported in the major U.S. media.

De Schutter, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, spent six years visiting more than a dozen countries and concluded that the world’s entire food system should be rebuilt, starting with the promotion of local, sustainable farming so that ordinary people have control over what they can grow and eat. This certainly does not sound radical to those of us in U.S. cities where there has been a rapid expansion of farmers markets and an explosion in backyard farming. But in poor American communities and in poor countries as a whole, it is a radical notion for food to be grown locally, sustainably and democratically.

The world’s food system is controlled by a handful of giant corporations, the majority of which are based in the U.S., such as ConAgra, Cargill and PepsiCo. These companies are a bottleneck through which most of the world’s food is forced, in order to feed most of the world’s people. Not only is this method environmentally unsustainable given its overreliance on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fossil fuels, but it is also inefficient at actually feeding people. The World Food Programme estimates that there are 842 million hungry people worldwide.

How did it get this way? The “Green Revolution” starting in the 1940s was a promise that a technological fix of high-yielding grains cultivated for mass planting, used in combination with newly developed chemical fertilizers and pesticides, would eliminate world hunger. By some measures the Green Revolution was indeed successful in producing vast amounts of cereal grains that feed a large chunk of the earth’s population. But how did so few companies end up at the top? And why are so many people still hungry today?
In an interview on Uprising, I asked food justice activist Raj Patel to explain what went wrong with the Green Revolution and why De Schutter’s report may provide a panacea. Patel is a writer, activist and academic, and he wrote the book “Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System” as well as the New York Times best-seller “The Value of Nothing.” He teaches a class at UC Berkeley with Pollan called Edible Education and is an adviser to De Schutter. According to him, “the food system is carved out of a history of colonialism, of slavery, of empire.”

....

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/..._food_20140320

[pgardn]

there's NOTHING ETHICAL about BigAgChem enslaving poor farmers around the world to their sterile seeds and poisoning their land and water with BigAgChem x-icides

Did you actually read the report Mr. Bioethics expert?

Did you check out the organization that WROTE the report Mr. Bioethics expert who does not give a about people born into 3rd world poverty? The Corn is not good enough for you... Because you have a choice, what about people that cannot get our ty corn?

Fake liberal I care so much... About me...

The house is ALREADY on fire and you are pondering how the fire could have been prevented. The GD house is on fire, put it out. Then you can meander through your theoretical prevention.

[boutons_deux]

Did you actually read the report Mr. Bioethics expert?

Did you check out the organization that WROTE the report Mr. Bioethics expert who does not give a about people born into 3rd world poverty? The Corn is not good enough for you... Because you have a choice, what about people that cannot get our ty corn?

Fake liberal I care so much... About me...

The house is ALREADY on fire and you are pondering how the fire could have been prevented. The GD house is on fire, put it out. Then you can meander through your theoretical prevention.

babbling, dribbling fool and his naive bull , after getting slapped by The Great Boutons

[pgardn]

babbling, dribbling fool and his naive bull , after getting slapped by The Great Boutons

This is your I have no further argument default.

[Winehole23]

GM study on golden rice retracted due to ethics violations, vitamin A claims still unsubstantiated:

AT LONG LAST, the serious breaches of medical and scientific ethics of the GM golden rice trials on Chinese children appear to have been recognised – in this case, by the journal that published the research paper reporting the experiments.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is reportedly retracting the paper. The main concerns appear to be lack of informed consent on the part of the human subjects – neither the children nor their parents were told the rice was GM, nor were they informed of the possible risks. Ethical breaches are among the valid reasons for retracting a study, according to COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).

While the blame for the fiasco is being placed on the lead researcher, Guangwen Tang of Tufts University, a large part of the responsibility should lie with the Tufts University ethics board that was supposed to be supervising the trial.

International scientists denounced the GM golden rice trials for breaching medical ethics back in 2009. No toxicity tests had been carried out in animals prior to the human trials, or at least none had been published. The scientists said the trials contravened the Nuremberg Code, set up after World War II to prevent a repeat of unethical and inhumane Nazi experiments on humans.

The IRRI, the body responsible for the rollout of GM golden rice, has admitted that no efficacy trials have been carried out to see if GM golden rice actually works in helping solve vitamin A deficiency.

GM golden rice doesn't even perform well in the field. In May 2013 the IRRI reported it had failed in field trials.

Meantime, the Philippines, where GM golden rice was field trialled, has all but solved its vitamin A deficiency problems by applying time-tested, commonsense non-GM solutions.

http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/new...ive/2014/15536

[m>s]

but yet they put kosher labels on all the food. you guys think jews and elites actually eat this ? you're all a bunch of ing clowns because you stuff your faces with this and don't do anything about it like a bunch of nihilistic, lazy pussies. whenever ya'll decide you're ready to get angry and do something about the state of things, call me. because these assholes aren't letting up by playing nice, you want something you're going to have to stand up and take it.

[m>s]

AT LONG LAST, the serious breaches of medical and scientific ethics of the GM golden rice trials on Chinese children appear to have been recognised – in this case, by the journal that published the research paper reporting the experiments.

of course it's ing unethical, and i never gave my consent or was informed of the risks either. i just hope that at some point in our lifetime we live to see the day of the rope finally come to fruition. they treat us like ing animals.

[boutons_deux]

Capitalism and the global food crisis

The global food crisis is the result of capitalism, not shortages or overconsumption, and the solution requires collective responses, argues Elaine Graham-Leigh

The global food system is in crisis. There is enough food produced in the world to feed the entire human population, yet every year at least a billion people go hungry. Food price inflation has been relentless since 2007, sparking protests from Mexico to Mauretania, and forming part of the background to the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. At the same time, the actual food producers are also suffering, as the commodification of the products of subsistence agriculture is impoverishing farmers and driving them off the land. These two short books, Hungry for Changeand Hungry Capital put different aspects of the food crisis at the centre of their analysis, but are united in considering it as created by capitalism’s expansion within the realm of food production. This leads them to similar conclusions about what should be done; conclusions however which are not always sufficient to the nature and scale of the problem they identify.

Hungry for Change’s focus is on the food producers, as Akram-Lodhi structures his analysis of the problems of the modern food system around the experiences of farmers in the developing world in particular, from coffee farmers in Uganda, subsistence farmers in China and Pakistan, to sugarcane producers in Fiji.Hungry Capital starts from the financial markets and the world of commodity speculation, in which food has gone from the stuff of life to just another commodity, indistinguishable from war planes or widgets, with production determined not by human needs but by profit. This might seem a world away from Hungry for Change’s peasant farmers, but both books make clear that the two spheres are in fact linked. The battles which the poor farmers of Hungry for Change have faced to maintain their livelihoods, in the face of increasing corporate involvement in agricultural markets, arise from the financialisation of food described by Russi in Hungry Capital.

This is brought out particularly strongly by the account in Hungry for Change of the Green Revolution and the subsequent development of GM crops. The Green Revolution was the development in the 1950s and 1960s of new disease-resistant strains of food crops, principally wheat and rice, to increase yields in developing countries like Mexico and India. This revolution remains extremely controversial in green circles. For some it is one of the major causes of environmental degradation, while others see those who object to its legacy as preferring to see poor people starve.[i]

Akram-Lodhi does not get bogged down in these debates but points out that alongside the gains in crop yields,

the Green Revolution brought about the introduction of the market into subsistence farming systems, which had hitherto remained effectively outside it. In order to reap the benefits of the new technologies, peasants needed cash to buy the seeds, fertilizer and equipment, and continuing supplies of cash to maintain them. Peasants could not longer exist simply by eating their own produce and selling the surplus; they had to sell their crops if they wanted to continue farming. This effect of the Green Revolution would be continued by widespread adoption of GM crops, which are ‘not about improving small-scale peasant productivity; [but] …about monopolistically consolidating the profitability needs of agro-food transnational corporations’ (HfC, p.95).

Movements like Via Campesina, fighting to take back power from the corporations for the benefit of small producers, are therefore an important part of the answer to the problems of the food system, and Akram-Lodhi in particular is clear about the need for genuinely pro-poor land reform. For both authors, however, what is needed goes beyond the demands of current movements, working as they are within the system as it exists. Both books end with visions of food systems removed from capitalism and based on small-scale, local production.

Akram-Lodhi proposes that ‘some food provision could instead become a kind of “commons” – an area outside the exclusive and untrammelled sway of the market, available to all as a basic right of citizenship.’ This is, as he acknowledges, a return to a pre-capitalist reality: ‘For most of our history, being a member of a community has brought with it a right to an elementary amount of food; this has been true for even very poor communities. It is only in the past four centuries that food slowly became something to be bought and sold to the highest bidder’ (HfC, p.157). The system of communal responsibility described here in fact goes back to the Neolithic and did indeed survive in peasant communities, despite the rise and fall of empires and, in Europe, the imposition of feudalism, until it was destroyed by capitalism. This is certainly a demonstration that there is nothing inherent in human nature which means that co-operative production and distribution of food is impossible. Whether it is possible to turn the clock back in the way Akram-Lodhi suggests is however less clear.

http://www.counterfire.org/articles/...al-food-crisis

[boutons_deux]

more on capitalists, mega-corps buying up, controlling the world's food (and water)

Cash Crops With Dividends: Financiers Transforming Strawberries Into Securities

Hedge funds are not new to farmland. For nearly a decade they have scoured the corners of the globe for cheap land as food prices have soared, positioning themselves to profit from the growing demand. Hedge funds now have $14 billion invested in farmland, according to the data provider Preqin.

But in the latest twist, a small but growing group of sophisticated investors and bankers are combining crops and the soil they grow in into an asset class that ordinary investors can buy a piece of.
Farmland Partners and the Gladstone Land Corporation, two real estate investment trusts that also own and lease farmland, are already trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

For now, American Farmland is a private company, and its founder, D. Dixon Boardman, is pitching the vision to Wall Street. Corn, cotton, lemons, walnuts, avocados: If it grows in the ground and has an attractive income stream, he is peddling it.

“It’s like gold, but better, because there is this cash flow,” Mr. Boardman said. The income stream comes from the rent farmers pay American Farmland and also often includes a share of the revenue from the crops. The company buys farms with permanent crops like almonds and avocados and row crops like cotton and corn.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/deal...to-securities/

and China is buying land all over Africa

[Winehole23]

just possibly, there's already something that works better than GMOs:

What if the agricultural revolution has already happened and we didn’t realize it? Essentially, that’s the idea in this reportfrom the Guardian about a group of poverty-stricken Indian rice and potato farmers who harvested confirmed world-record yields of rice and potatoes. Best of all: They did it completely sans-GMOs or even chemicals of any kind.

[Sumant] Kumar, a shy young farmer in Nalanda district of India’s poorest state Bihar, had — using only farmyard manure and without any herbicides — grown an astonishing 22.4 tonnes of rice on one hectare [~2.5 acres] of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple food of more than half the world’s population of seven billion, big news.


It beat not just the 19.4 tonnes achieved by the “father of rice”, the Chinese agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, but the World Bank-funded scientists at the International Rice Research Ins ute in the Philippines, and anything achieved by the biggest European and American seed and GM companies. And it was not just Sumant Kumar. Krishna, Nitish, Sanjay and Bijay, his friends and rivals in Darveshpura, all recorded over 17 tonnes, and many others in the villages around claimed to have more than doubled their usual yields.

Another Bihar farmer broke India’s wheat-growing record the same year. They accomplished all this without GMOs or advanced seed hybrids, artificial fertilizer or herbicide. Instead, they used a technique called System of Rice [or root] Intensification (SRI). It’s a technique developed in Madagascar in the 1980s by a French Jesuit and then identified and promulgated by Cornell political scientist and international development specialist Norman Uphoff.


SRI for rice involves starting with fewer, more widely spaced plants; using less water; actively aerating the soil; and applying lots of organic fertilizer. According to Uphoff’s SRI Ins ute website [PDF], the farmers who use synthetic fertilizer with the technique get lower yields than those who farm organically. How’s that for pleasant irony?

http://grist.org/food/miracle-grow-i...-without-gmos/

[boutons_deux]

just possibly, there's already something that works better than GMOs:

http://grist.org/food/miracle-grow-i...-without-gmos/

that might work:

1) if there's enough manure to scale up to feed large populations (would probably need human "organic" manure, and almost none is organic)

and

2) there's no BigChem dictating government regulations

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/201...-on-manure-use

[Wild Cobra]

just possibly, there's already something that works better than GMOs:

http://grist.org/food/miracle-grow-i...-without-gmos/

Yep.

Natural fertilizer, man made CO2 excesses...

[sickdsm]

GMO's are loaded with defensive traits. Under perfect conditions non gmo crops will out yield gmo a lot of the time. Taking cherry picked data does not mean anything. I raise both. I am willing to show you real world conditions if anyone is open minded.

[boutons_deux]

Yep.

Natural fertilizer, man made CO2 excesses...

how are you going to fix CO2 into soil? The CCS projects would adore your insight.

[sickdsm]

I've heard of sludge from sewAge plants having very high metal content making it unsuitable for fert.

[boutons_deux]

I've heard of sludge from sewAge plants having very high metal content making it unsuitable for fert.

“In private conversation, farmers that don’t use sludge definitely look down on the guy who sludges,” Dotson said. “It’s kind of like high school, and the people who sludge are the bad kids. But in public, the farmers always have their back. The only person a farmer can trust is another farmer.”

http://america.aljazeera.com/article...geonfarms.html

heavy metals, hormones (eg, birth control pills), anti-psychotic and other drugs unused or excreted down the toilet. and not only in sewage sludge, but in non-potable water dumped in rivers from sewage treatment plants.

[sickdsm]

“In private conversation, farmers that don’t use sludge definitely look down on the guy who sludges,” Dotson said. “It’s kind of like high school, and the people who sludge are the bad kids. But in public, the farmers always have their back. The only person a farmer can trust is another farmer.”

http://america.aljazeera.com/article...geonfarms.html

heavy metals, hormones (eg, birth control pills), anti-psychotic and other drugs unused or excreted down the toilet. and not only in sewage sludge, but in non-potable water dumped in rivers from sewage treatment plants.

How is that adding to the discussion? Article confirmed cities polluting farmland and had some drama added in.

[boutons_deux]

How is that adding to the discussion? Article confirmed cities polluting farmland and had some drama added in.

... which beats the of your "I've heard ..."

[sickdsm]

... which beats the of your "I've heard ..."

So do you feel the need to confirm all conversations via Google at a party also?

[Winehole23]

GMO's are loaded with defensive traits. Under perfect conditions non gmo crops will out yield gmo a lot of the time. Taking cherry picked data does not mean anything. I raise both. I am willing to show you real world conditions if anyone is open minded.

I'm from Missouri. Show me...

[boutons_deux]

So do you feel the need to confirm all conversations via Google at a party also?

"I've heard ...." from our resident expert, degreed agronomist who never reads anyting, "just hears" stuff.

[boutons_deux]

I'm from Missouri. Show me...

what are "perfect conditions"?

We know "perfect conditions" for GMO crops is max revenue and perennial servitude to Monsanto, Syngenta.


Do GMO Crops Really Have Higher Yields?

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/do-gmo-crops-have-lower-yields



Scientists Prove Organic Food More Nutritionally Rich than Conventional, GMO Crops

http://naturalsociety.com/scientist-...#ixzz3Roz8gVNp


The "nutritional value" question arises because (mono) crops saturated with chemicals grow in a dead, sterilized soil, all the bugs, worms, fungi, their droppings, decayed bodies found in naturally enriched soil are absent.

The nutritional value of an apple, tomato, ear of corn, or any food from 100 years ago was vastly superior to today's BigAg/BigChem denatured industrial .

btw, GMO apple (advancing civilization, solving huge problems: GMO apple doesn't turn brown!!) has been approved.

[sickdsm]

This is exactly why I'm willing to show someone first hand. I don't really believe people are interested in looking with an open mind on this topic. A copy/paste war is more appealing to some.

If your in the eastern Dakotas during the growing season I'm near the interstate system if you'd like to see first hand.



I really know very little about Missouri Ag, other than it can be very challenging.

[sickdsm]

"I've heard ...." from our resident expert, degreed agronomist who never reads anyting, "just hears" stuff.

I have no problem with asking questions. I lean on a lot of agronomists, crop scouts, marketing advisers, etc.

When I say I've heard, I don't remember the source only that it was a very knowledgable and trusted person in my contacts. I've had some of them look up the analysis of turkey and dairy manure and it came up in conversation.
They all have many years of both experience and school in the field.

So I'm sorry you feel the need to find an Al-jazeera link to validate.

[boutons_deux]

I have no problem with asking questions. I lean on a lot of agronomists, crop scouts, marketing advisers, etc.

When I say I've heard, I don't remember the source only that it was a very knowledgable and trusted person in my contacts. I've had some of them look up the analysis of turkey and dairy manure and it came up in conversation.
They all have many years of both experience and school in the field.

So I'm sorry you feel the need to find an Al-jazeera link to validate.

mainstream turkey and dairy manure again ain't organic, but loaded with antibiotics, hormones, chemicals, all kinds of . What kind of crop fertilized with factory turkey, chicken, cow would you eat?