Public suspicion of Big Ag growing
The farm and chemical industry may now be as vulnerable as the tobacco industry was in the 1990s. People in the U.S. have finally become suspicious of the safety of the (non-organic) food supply. Millions are wary of home pesticides, weed killers, and synthetic garden and lawn fertilizers. Big agricultural chemical companies are under increasing criticism from consumers, including relatives of those hospitalized and killed by farm chemicals and factory farm contaminated food…
Michael Anderson:
I shudder to think what “conventional” food would cost if it wasn’t heavily subsidized…the cost of petroleum alone would put it in the stratosphere. Can’t afford to have THAT cat out of the bag, can we? Oops—too late…
http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm07autumn/health_pork.html
13 April 2010, 3:24 pmJuannie:
I guess my attitude is now severely jaded. The first thought to come to me as I read the article was “So What?”.
What is or is going to be done about it. Absolutely nothing meaningful. We, or at least I and I know DE have known all this for years. But the cards are in the hands of the corporations and they make the plays through their cronies in the U.S. congress with all but a meaningless minority that are the allowed opposition to create the illusion of balance. Ronnie Cummins, the courageous Organic Consumers Association’s national director, and coauthor of the article, is one of the few voices consistently and daily trying to alert us to all the malfeasance of the corrupt agribusinesses but just recently real food companies Organic Valley and Nature’s Path have been threatened by Whole Foods and United Natural Foods that if they continue to support the Organic Consumers Association they will suffer repercussions in the marketplace and were forced to stop supporting OCA.
So what’s the point of publishing all this here and all the other issues for that matter? It’s not going to make a difference. We readers of this blog can feel smugly informed but what action can or will be taken to rectify these travesties. None. We are just going to wait around until the whole global system collapses and probably all go down with it. I doubt that even by eating my own home grown food and my neighbors real farm products will it make any difference. I’ll just die healthier in the collapse than my fellow Americans who eat the crap from the global aig. gangsters. Big bis. will supply the PR to keep the majority of us blindly speeding toward the cliff’s edge. They just learned from the tobacco losses and are now better prepared with their think tanks and huge PR budgets. Aaggrrrr!
Sorry, I can’t see anything but doom and reading here just doesn’t help but only reinforces my angst tonight.
13 April 2010, 9:48 pmStan:
It’s only this hopeless if you assume that there is only a state solution. There is probably not, though certain policy fights will draw in various social forces… as the article points out, the way big tobacco did.
Dependency is a fact that hides well for a long time in this culture. It is recognized by a few at a time; but the awareness of this dependency is growing. If anything messes that up, it will be our most sectarian impulses. Because food is not a topic that can be evaded indefinitely.
There are now thousands of alternative experiments being done all over to explore ways to minimize grid-dependency. So there are thousands of points of experience, planted like seeds that will grow.
We cannot “defeat” the current system (a war meme), as you point out. But we can continue to unmask it (as people do in public discourse, like blogs), even as we try out practical alternatvies with what’s left of hope invested in the sure-thing… it can’t go on forever.
There’s actually more, a lot more, going on with food system experimentations — practically — than there is, say, in work to stop the war(s). The latter is truly an ideological struggle, without much practical recourse. But there are several people lurking right here who are testing out new ways of doing things with regard to food.
‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin.’
14 April 2010, 6:59 amJuannie:
I appreciate your response Stan. I know you’re correct but last night the weight of state oppression seemed great, probably as great as it actually is in reality but seldom acknowledged. I don’t for a moment assume or expect a state solution. And I know there are thousands of alternative micro solutions being acted out even as I write this. One is right here in our own yard as my wife is at this moment out grooming more growing space to supply our alternative foods, and many flowers as well of course.
My angst arises from my fear, fear that the ubiquitous and avaricious corporate persons will (continue to) despoil anything and everything that cuts into their profits and we’ll all be forced at the point of the gun (courts) to cease and desist. They are not far from “owning” all the seeds and genetics that feed, clothe and shelter us. I don’t see any alternatives unless the entire system continues to break down and crumble back to ashes. The question in my mind is, will any of us be able to survive and carry on. I have to assume yes or I would just quit and drug myself out of existence. Last night I was close to feeling Nay. Today I’m back in my usually optimistic (maybe foolhardy) mode and getting on with it again. But the question looms more and more ominous, where is and when will we reach the Tripping Point for 21st century civilization. Is there any question in any of our minds here that it is inevitable?
Will the thousands of micro solutions weather through? I see it as the only hope. So my maybe rude question for you Stan & DE is what are we here at Feral Scholar really doing about nurturing those micro solutions? We’re quite adept at pointing to even more of the ominous and disturbing social trends but we already know all that. More is just a rehash of the old choir repertoire. I visit here and read on an almost daily basis and find a wealth of intellect and sensitivity that I need and crave and find scant elsewhere. Moving to a more remote and safe environ is an intelligent and pragmatic approach but aren’t there more ideas for those who aren’t able to make those moves? Am I out of line requesting a more solution oriented approach here? I hope not. I think the intellectual horsepower (peoplepower) here would deliver much in this regard. There was one thread started by DE back in January, “The arts of the possible”, that moved in that direction but quickly devolved (in my opinion) back to the problem issues. Unfortunately I was not available to participate or I would have made the attempt to keep it on line. If a similar thread were to start again, I would relish the opportunity to be an active and thoughtful participant.
So I guess I’ve divulged another source of my despondency last night. Il faut cultiver notre jardin indeed but these times require a more concerted effort as well.
John
14 April 2010, 1:36 pmJen:
just a tiny offering of hope – an example of folks doing good things…. i live on the south side of chicago, and there are thriving and new commmunity gardens in and around the area, new and thriving famers markets around the city, and i’m trying to figure out how to create a community garden closer to my home. it’s hard to get a plot at this point because the existing ones are full. there’s also a new alternative, cooperative art space in the neighborhood that has generated support from countless artists, and they’re doing really interesting things with the space including offering cheap compost to gardeners, and hosting a weekly community potluck, and lots of free events and opportunities to gather. i know these are very small things, but they really are not small things. i just thought these were things worth posting here as examples of really positive efforts being made to serve people and community ties instead of corporations. i don’t know where you hail from John, but good stuff is happening here in Chicago. we may still all be doomed, but as long as there are folks doing good things i feel like i must be among them. chin up?
18 April 2010, 1:37 pmjen
Stan:
Hope is good. Many thanks for this post, Jen.
18 April 2010, 6:27 pmJuannie:
Thank you Jen. It is heartening to hear of more local projects and efforts that are growing and thriving around the country, and probably even the world. I hail from VT and we also have a strong local and community ethos here including many practical efforts. In my area we have a local farmers market that was able to sustain itself through the winter this past season and we were able to purchase local grown greens most of the winter. It was a blessing not to have to choose to eat the rocket fuel contaminated greens from CA’s central valley. The commercial dairy industry is losing farms on a regular basis as even the big operations are losing money with the current price of milk but there a lot of small operations that are changing to organic or finding new ways to make it. There is a growing number of small high quality cheese operations in the state as one example. All these are indeed encouraging and hopeful but I don’t believe hope is enough to see us through the ongoing collapse of civilization that any of us who aren’t in denial are presently witnessing.
The article that prompted Stan to initiate this thread at first seems to be a hopeful indicator but upon deeper reflection it’s not quite so optimistic. As I tried to indicate in my first post on this thread, there is a backlash that is happening. The huge vested interests in the ag.business-as-usual camp are not going to lie down and forgo their obscene profits just because a few people are waking up to their malfeasance. The big corporations have the clout to enforce the status quo as happened to the smaller companies Organic Valley and Nature’s Path for example (mentioned in my first post). They also own the politicians who make the laws. An example of this is the pathetic National Organic Standards. As an article in the latest Mother Jones pointed out the USDA rules:
Do not require organic products or the soil it’s grown in to be tested for synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.
Allow 245 nonorganic ingredients in the production of organic foods and livestock.
50 synthetic ingredients are now approved in organic products, e.g. bisphenol A which is linked to developmental problems in infants and children.
Allow organic baby formula to contain the synthetic fatty acids DHA and ARA which may be made using Hexane, a potential neurotoxin.
Allows deforestation so growers can chop down old growth forest to plant organics.
… and the list goes on. The label is meaningless today with respect to the original idea and meaning of “organic” before big gov and big business usurped it to co-opt that share of the market. And so it goes.
Yes Jen, you and I must be among the good folks doing good things but isn’t there more we can do? I don’t believe we have to be doomed even as we participate in these good things. But I don’t know exactly what to do other than to pen these rants and I doubt they offer even an ounce of preventative outcome. I think that small village size communities jointly owning and working toward self sufficiency and social interaction may be a way for some of us to survive civilizational collapse and may become an evolutionary social model for the future. If it was just me, I’m in my autumn years and I could just live till I died and that would be that. But I feel a deeper sense of responsibility to my 25 year old daughter and her’s and succeeding generations. My chin is still up because I’m still looking/searching for alternatives or preventatives. I have my down moments but so far have always managed to bounce back. And I’d love to hear more thoughts and ideas from others.
19 April 2010, 2:17 pmDeAnander:
Public disillusionment with “science” growing?
This poses interesting questions. In the study ref’d above, a sample of people were *more* likely to believe something (all other evidence being equal) when told that the scientific community considered it a debunked myth. The inference by those conducting the study was that the scientific community is viewed with such doubt that their endorsement of a theory or position is enough to devalue it in the eyes of some proportion of the public. This is kinda scary.
I am wondering whether this aversion to science and scientists is the result of the unholy marriages of science with (a) militarism (scientists as bomb-makers, accessories to mass murder, inventors of new and better tools for fascists, etc) and (b) industrial profiteering (“scientific” being the name — inappropriately — applied to all the high-tech profit-oriented dysfunctions inflicted on agriculture, food, education, etc). I suspect that for many people, “science” means military-industrial secrecy, regimentation, reckless toxicity, hubris, overreach, arrogance, etc.
If so, this is tragic and dangerous… since it is the process of scientific inquiry that’s confirming for us, daily, exactly how dangerous and futile all this militarism and industrial fetishism really is…
I can’t help having that Easter Island feeling — that Science with a big S was made into a fetish or idol for a century or so, a mythical cult with mystical powers; and that now in face of the various breakdowns of industrialised society, there is an impulse among the masses to topple the gods who have not delivered on their promises of paradise? (This would be a very big baby to discard with the bathwater. It seems to me that it’s the pseudo-science of “economics” that we should be ditching, since it’s the economic theorists (and the profiteering hyperactivity that they have legitimised, excused, and promoted) who have done most of the damage.)
Anyway, food for thought…
21 April 2010, 10:47 amStan:
Big biz as well as political mountebanks definitely work hard to conceal inconvenient science from the public.
21 April 2010, 4:00 pmcabdriver:
In my view, the most intelligent course is to downscale petro-agriculture concommitantly with reviving the various aquatic ecologies- riparian, riverine, estuary, littoral zone, and deep ocean- so as to increase the production of fish and shellfish resources.
To say that these resources are currently under-performing is a drastic understatement. They’re beleaguered and endangered, and producing harvests that are fractional-to-rudimentary, compared to their potential.
As a food resource, wild fish and shellfish are practically free protein, compared to livestock and poultry. The principal effort and energy has to do with responsible harvest. Wild nature does the rest, given a healthy and unpolluted habitat.
#1 water pollution problem in the USA? “Non-point source” pollution, i.e. runoff from petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides (and to a lesser extent, petroleum products like motor oil.)
#1 “point-source” pollution problem? Inadequately treated municipal waste- sewage, and to some extent the unremoved residues of various synthetic pharmaceutical drugs presently used in large quantities by humans.
That dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico? Petro-ag. The drastically reduced fish harvests in the Chesapeake Bay, the planet’s largest estuary? Petro-ag.
The impairment of the fish resources found in the river systems that transport those fertilizer and pesticide wastes to the above marine environments, via the Mississippi-Illinois-Ohio (Gulf of Mexico), the Susquehanna, the Shenandoah-Potomac-Anacostia, the James River Basins (Chesapeake Bay)? Petro-ag.
Clean up the watersheds and the rivers, and the fish resource will more than make up for the lowered output of crops/animal feed/factory farmed poultry and livestock resources.
23 April 2010, 3:47 amDeAnander:
shellfish are deeply threatened by ocean acidification as well as by hyper-eutrophication (I hope I’m remembering that word right) and by pollution.
but I agree w/cabdriver’s point that the littoral and riparian ecosystems are staggeringly productive, or *were*, before they were stripmined and poisoned.
speaking of which, how stupid is this…
footnote
People all over the affluent N Hemi are singing love songs to the electric car as the Solution, wilfully or passively ignorant of the larger description of the Problem. The Problem is not the tailpipes of individual cars: it’s the industrial/growth/capitalist system that ranks the production of consumer goods (pandering to individualist convenience and status display to ensure a market) over all other human values.
Substituting a new generation of status display objects and convenience-enablers — which must be manufactured using the same entropic, destructive methods, and manufactured in ever-greater quantities to ensure Growth and perpetuate the debt-based (aka Ponzi) financial economy, is not a Solution. It’s just the Problem again, wearing this year’s fashion in hats.
If someone made me Grand Vizier for a week or two, it would be a death-penalty offence (and I’m speaking only partly in jest here) to organise, direct, and profit from any activity which resulted in the poisoning/salination/desertification of viable land (whether it be farm, forest, savannah or whatever). Each hectare of land poisoned by lithium mining to make unnecessary electric vehicles is a number of annual tonnes of food taken out of the mouths of our children. Any activity that “ends farming,” or disables subsistence agriculture, or otherwise destroys the biotic potential of a tract of land, can be viewed as tantamount to murder… or at the very least as directly conducive to an authoritarian state similar to fascism…
In the end it is *not* the permaculturists and susti advocates and “deep greens” who want us to end up hungry and shivering in the dark, or living in regimented impoverishment — it’s the cheerleaders and enablers of this reckless squandering, befouling, and vandalising of the substance and foundation of our life as biological creatures.
23 April 2010, 12:30 pmcabdriver:
I’ve been living in northern California for the last quarter-century. A lot of humans have been added to the population here, and the quality of life is feeling some visible and significant strains.
The top problem is water- but that isn’t a human population problem, although it might appear that way before investigation. The entire human use of California accounts for only 11% of the state’s water resources. Agricultural practices- often wasteful, such as inappropriate crops like cotton, along with inefficient irrigation tech- account for about 43% of the state’s water use.
In my view, where the human population problem is approaching intractability in California is- private automobile use. There are simply too many cars for the roads.
In some locations, traffic jams are an increasing possibility, 50-60 miles from the large population centers. On both freeways and surface roads.
I don’t care if they’re powered by rubber bands. Something has to give.
It’s ironic, of course- most of my working life has been spent behind the wheel of a 4-wheeled vehicle (not at present, but I doubt that I’m out of the Mob forever.)
But some years ago, I learned that taxicabs are actually a fairly eco-efficient mode of transportation. The more often they’re used by one or more passengers, the fewer autos clog the streets. I actually read that the increased subsidization of cabs could make a marked impact on energy use, air pollution, and the amount of traffic on the streets. Not by any means a full solution, but a useful component…
23 April 2010, 3:17 pmcabdriver:
I’ll add my impression that a large percentage of the traffic-jamming auto use that I’m observing is due to work commutes by white-collar office and “knowledge” workers.
This is a case where ephemeralization of technology can have a huge positive impact. Ten years ago, the infrastructure for broadband cable and wireless tech was not in place for computer users. These days, virtual environments are much more doable.
The time for telecommuting to have a huge effect as far as removing the need for physical commutes is long overdue.
23 April 2010, 3:30 pmStan:
In Costa Rica, the public transportation system is a combination of an EXCELLENT and inexpensive bus network,combined with well-regulated, reasonably priced taxis. People will use them, but not for Sunday drives. (Cars are crazy expensive, and I hope they will continue to be so.) We have no car, live about 2 km from town and 1 km from the market, and we can get to anyplace in the country in one day for no more than $10 per person. It can be done. And anyone handicapped or elderly rides for free (in the buses). Plenty wrong here, but this is something that is pretty comparatively right.
23 April 2010, 6:48 pmcabdriver:
I think that we’ll see more of that in the USA, as gasoline prices continue to rise.
In regard to my earlier comments about the benefits of increased telecommuting:
I understand the reservations and objections that might be raised against it, in favor of continuing with a physical office-based model. Residential telecommuting has some problems- it does tend to isolate people; it probably does lead to increased inefficiencies such as lack of concentration and diligence that might give companies second thoughts about relying on it.
Here’s a possible solution: create locally based work campuses in communities, that require only a very short local commute. Groups of people can work and interact with each other, without all of them necessarily having to work for the same company!
And when material products- or people- need to be shuttled back and forth from the telecommuting centers to business headquarters, companies can resort to professional delivery services and cabs to do so.
Believe me, even a 10% reduction in auto traffic would make a noticeable difference in congestion. 30%, and I suspect that the benefits would be obvious.
It’s important to realize just how much money many employees are presently spending for their suburban-urban commuting bills, in terms of gasoline and maintenance costs!
Consider some of the Northern California commutes I speak of, into San Francisco and immediate environs, from places as far away as Tracy, or Vacaville, or Sebastopol. Those are 100-150 miles round trips, typically 5 days a week!
Even in a car that gets 50mpg, that’s around $10 per day. $50/wk. $200/month.
$2400-$2500 per year. At today’s gasoline prices.
I can do a very similar calculation for commutes in the Washington D. C. region, as well.
If that amount could be cut by 60%, by the present suburban-urban commuters only needing to show up at headquarters 2 days per week- that’s a savings of $1500 annually. And so much congestion would clear from the highways that the amount of personal stress and time wasted in traffic jams would be- considerable.
23 April 2010, 10:15 pmStan:
NOTE: Back in states (re-culture shock). Daughter’s in pre-labor, so I could drop off the side of the earth for a few days.
24 April 2010, 6:58 am