The landscape of health has changed. No longer are our families
guaranteed a healthy livelihood, not in the face of the current rates
of cancer, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's and allergies. In the words of Elizabeth Warren,
Harvard University law professor who is head of the Congressional
Oversight Panel, "We need a new model," and we need a new food system.
It's our health on the line.
8 Steps Obama Could Take to Save Food:
KANSAS CITY - The rapid adoption by U.S. farmers of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton has promoted increased use of pesticides, an epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds and more chemical residues in foods, according to a report issued Tuesday by health and environmental protection groups.
The groups said research showed that herbicide use grew by 383 million pounds from 1996 to 2008, with 46 percent of the total increase occurring in 2007 and 2008.
ROME - World farmers are not part of the official delegations at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food summit on food security that opened here Monday. But they came anyhow to express their views, since, they say, it is their communities that are most impacted by the food crisis.
Small-scale producers from the Amazonian rainforest, from Africa, the Pacific islands and the Himalayas gathered in Rome for the Peoples' Food Sovereignty Forum (Nov. 13-17), held in parallel to the FAO meetings, to discuss the serious effects of the crisis in their communities.
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world’s most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse.
Brazil houses the largest expanse of tropical wilderness remaining on the globe, claiming 60% of the Amazon Rainforest. This is a vast and remote stretch which thirty years ago only Indians and wild animals roamed.
Ninety-five Colombian farmers are suing the oil company BP in the high court in London for allegedly causing serious damage to their land, crops and animals.
In the first case of its kind, the farmers are claiming that BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Ltd, which joined forces with Colombia's national oil company and four foreign multinational corporations in a consortium to construct the 450-mile (720km) Ocensa pipeline, caused landslides and damage to soil and groundwater, causing crops to fail, livestock to perish, contaminating water supplies and making fish ponds unsustainable.
A year after America voted for the change-agent they saw in Barack
Obama, advocates hoping for deep improvements in our food system can
point to only a few successes, while other policies that could lead to
food insecurity are brewing in back rooms.
Nearly two years ago, candidate Obama said the following in a speech at the Iowa Farmer's Union:
There is an old
African saying "Whether elephants make love or war, the grass suffers."
The two elephants in the agricultural seed business are now making real
war, although they have been wary of each other for years. Monsanto,
a relatively recent entry into the business, has become the "dominant
male" in the battle after moving to acquire a large number of formerly
independent seed companies. Pioneer,
content for years to be the premiere corn breeder in the world, has
"Let us not talk falsely
now, for the hour is getting late."
Bob Dylan,
"All Along the Watchtower"
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Tomorrow is World Food Day and since I can't invite you all over
for dinner, I thought I'd serve up a smorgasbord of facts and figures about the
way the US
and the world eat or don't eat, as the case may be.
