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Climate Change and Agriculture: Biodiverse Ecological Farming Is the Answer, Not Genetic Engineering
Industrial globalized agriculture is heavily implicated in climate change. It contributes to the three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2) from the use of fossil fuels, nitrogen oxide (N2O) from the use of chemical fertilizers and methane (CH4) from factory farming. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a pre–industrial concentration of about 280 parts per million to 379 parts per million in 2005. The global atmospheric concentration of CH4 has increased from pre–industrial concentration of 715 parts per billion to 1774 parts per billion in 2005. The global atmospheric concentration of N2O, largely due to use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture, increased from about 270 parts per billion to 319 parts per billion in 2005.
Industrial agriculture is also more vulnerable to climate change which is intensifying droughts and floods. Monocultures lead to more frequent crop failure when rainfall does not come in time, or is too much or too little. Chemically fertilized soils have no capacity to withstand a drought. And cyclones and hurricanes make a food system dependent on long distance transport highly vulnerable to disruption.
Genetic engineering is embedded in an industrial model of agriculture based on fossil fuels. It is falsely being offered as a magic bullet for dealing with climate change.
Monsanto claims that Genetically Modified Organisms are a cure for both food insecurity and climate change and has been putting the following advertisement across the world in recent months.
9 billion people to feed.
A changing climate
Now what?
Producing more
Conserving more
Improving farmers lives
That’s sustainable agriculture
And that’s what Monsanto is all about.
All the claims this advertisement makes are false.
GM crops do not produce more. While Monsanto claims its GMO Bt cotton gives 1500 Kg/acre, the average is 300–400 Kg/acre.
The claim to increased yield is false because yield, like climate resilience is a multi–genetic trait. Introducing toxins into a plant through herbicide resistance or Bt. Toxin increases the “yield” of toxins, not of food or nutrition.
Even the nutrition argument is manipulated. Golden rice genetically engineered to increase Vitamin A produces 70 times less Vitamin A than available alternatives such as coriander leaves and curry leaves.
The false claim of higher food production has been dislodged by a recent study titled, Failure to Yield by Dr. Doug Gurian Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was former biotech specialist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and former adviser on GM to the U.S Food and Drug Administration. Sherman states, “Let us be clear. There are no commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield. Similarly there are no GM crops on the market that were engineered to resist drought, reduce fertilizer pollution or save soil. Not one.”
There are currently two predominant applications of genetic engineering: one is herbicide resistance, the other is crops with Bt. toxin. Herbicides kill plants. Therefore they reduce return of organic matter to the soil. Herbicide resistant crops, like Round Up Ready Soya and Corn reduce soil carbon, they do not conserve it. This is why Monsanto’s attempt to use the climate negotiations to introduce Round Up and Round Up resistant crops as a climate solution is scientifically and ecologically wrong.
Monsanto’s GMOs, which are either Round Up Ready crops or Bt toxin crops do not conserve resources. They demand more water, they destroy biodiversity and they increase toxics in farming. Pesticide use has increased 13 times as a result of the use Bt cotton seeds in the region of Vidharbha, India.
Monsanto’s GMOs do not improve farmers’ lives. They have pushed farmers to suicide. 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last decade. 84% of the suicides in Vidharbha, the region with highest suicides are linked to debt created by Bt–cotton. GMOs are non–renewable, while the open pollinated varieties that farmers have bred are renewable and can be saved year to year. The price of cotton seed was Rs 7/kg. Bt cotton seed price jumped to Rs 1,700/kg.
This is neither ecological nor economic or social sustainability. It is eco–cide and genocide.
Genetic engineering does not “create” climate resilience. In a recent article titled, “GM: Food for Thought” (Deccan Chronicle, August 26, 2009), Dr. M.S. Swaminathan wrote “we can isolate a gene responsible for conferring drought tolerance, introduce that gene into a plant, and make it drought tolerant.”
Drought tolerance is a polygenetic trait. It is therefore scientifically flawed to talk of “isolating a gene for drought tolerance.“ Genetic engineering tools are so far only able to transfer single gene traits. That is why in twenty years only two single gene traits for herbicide resistance and Bt. toxin have been commercialized through genetic engineering.
Navdanya’s recent report titled, “Biopiracy of Climate Resilient Crops: Gene Giants are Stealing farmers’ innovation of drought resistant, flood resistant and salt resistant varieties,” shows that farmers have bred corps that are resistant to climate extremes. And it is these traits which are the result of millennia of farmers’ breeding which are now being patented and pirated by the genetic engineering industry. Using farmers’ varieties as “genetic material,” the biotechnology industry is playing genetic roulette to gamble on which gene complexes are responsible for which trait. This is not done through genetic engineering; it is done through software programs like athlete. As the report states, “Athlete uses vast amounts of available genomic data (mostly public) to rapidly reach a reliable limited list of candidate key genes with high relevance to a target trait of choice. Allegorically, the Athlete platform could be viewed as a ‘machine’ that is able to choose 50–100 lottery tickets from amongst hundreds of thousands of tickets, with the high likelihood that the winning ticket will be included among them.”
Breeding is being replaced by gambling, innovation is giving way to biopiracy, and science is being substituted by propaganda. This cannot be the basis of food security in times of climate vulnerability.
While genetic engineering is a false solution, over the past 20 years, we have built Navdanya, India’s biodiversity and organic farming movement. We are increasingly realizing there is a convergence between objectives of conservation of biodiversity, reduction of climate change impact and alleviation of poverty. Biodiverse, local, organic systems produce more food and higher farm incomes, while they also reduce water use and risks of crop failure due to climate change.
Biodiversity offers resilience to recover from climate disasters. After the Orissa Super Cyclone of 1998, and the Tsunami of 2004, Navdanya distributed seeds of saline resistant rice varieties as “Seeds of Hope” to rejuvenate agriculture in lands reentered saline by the sea. We are now creating seed banks of drought resistant, flood resistant and saline resistant seed varieties to respond to climate extremities.
Navdanya’s work over the past twenty years has shown that we can grow more food and provide higher incomes to farmers without destroying the environment and killing our peasants. Our study on “Biodiversity based organic farming: A new paradigm for Food Security and Food Safety” has established that small biodiverse organic farms produce more food and provide higher incomes to farmers.
Biodiverse organic and local food systems contribute both to mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Small, biodiverse, organic farms especially in Third World countries are totally fossil fuel free. Energy for farming operations comes from animal energy. Soil fertility is built by feeding soil organisms by recycling organic matter. This reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Biodiverse systems are also more resilient to draughts and floods because they have higher water holding capacity and hence contribute to adaption to climate change. Navdanya’s study on climate change and organic farming has indicated that organic farming increases carbon absorption by upto 55% and water holding capacity by 10% thus contributing to both mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Biodiverse organic farms produce more food and higher incomes than industrial monocultures. Mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity and increasing food security can thus go hand in hand.
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48 Comments so far
Show AllThis is a key battle area, and while I agree with the basic position, and am very concerned with the mono-culture, corn based American agriculture, we need to honestly talk the economics of agricultural policy. While populated areas can and do often use labor intensive farming to produce a wide diverse agriculture, the developed world has already concentrated their agriculture into highly mechanized mono-culture environments, where large equipment replaces the labor force. Until we realistically change policies to stop this trend, those diverse labor intensive producers will continue to lose their land and profits to the corporate interests.
While this article makes a lot of good points, many statements are absurd or unrealistic. For instance, try this with your kids: " Children eat all your curry leaves!" And then we have: " Pesticide use has increased 13 times as a result of the use Bt cotton seeds in the region of Vidharbha, India." I'm sure this MAY be true, but look a little closer. At one time, bugs and weeds reduced the crop by 50% or more. Now yields are larger. Now farm commodity prices are through the roof because too many people want to eat and live better. My farm yields have gone up a great deal in my lifetime, and the chemicals I use now are, in general, much safer than those of 30 or 40 years ago.
You didn't comment on the number of farmers who have committed suicide. That should factor into the discussion probably.
I suppose they bet the farm and saw no alternative. Bad decisions. Bad bankruptcy law. The Hindu rain goddess took the summer off. (apologies for that last thoughtless remark)
Greg R, this is a shameless post, really. You of all people, an agricultural person, should know better.
First, Monsanto arm-twisted government officials it had paid off, to ensure acceptance among the farmers. The benefits of the new seeds were overhyped. Farmers were assured this would be a lifesaver for them-- the usual propaganda.
In a particularly depraved move, Monsanto convinced the government to withdraw support at seed banks for traditional seeds that would have competed with the bio-engineered seeds.
"Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks." See the url below.
http://tiny.cc/ltd6p
from Vandana Shiva:
Cotton seed used to cost Rs 7/kg. Bt-cotton seeds were sold at Rs 17,000/kg. Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped with food crops. Bt-cotton can only be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the boll worm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. And finally, Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1500/kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average. High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article159305.html
Lastly, there is what Monsanto did in Indonesia, if you're looking for a pattern in their behavior:
On January 6, 2005, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a two-pronged proceeding against Monsanto, accused of corruption in Indonesia. According to the SEC, whose findings can be consulted on the Web, Monsanto representatives in Jakarta had paid estimated bribes of $700,000 to 140 Indonesian government officials between 1997 and 2002 for them to favor the introduction of Bt cotton into the country. They had, for example, offered $374,000 to the wife of a senior official in the Agriculture Ministry for building a luxury house. These generous gifts, it was claimed, had been covered by fake invoices for pesticides. In addition, in 2002, Monsanto’s Asian subsidiary was said to have paid $50,000 to a senior official in the Environment Ministry for him to reverse a decree requiring an assessment of the environmental impact of Bt cotton before it was marketed. Far from denying these accusations, Monsanto signed an agreement with the SEC in April 2005 providing for the payment of a $1.5 million fine.
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/1819/robin_6_15_10/
I expect bad behavior from corporations and a great many rich people. There is a strong devotion to making money, ethics and morals be damned. Millions of people are duped every day. I could easily spend every waking minute railing against this heinous behavior in the world. It would, however, be unproductive. Greed is part of what we all are, sad to say.
"I expect bad behavior from corporations and a great many rich people. There is a strong devotion to making money, ethics and morals be damned."
A comment on the behavior of the biotech industry, is that.
The "it's human nature, we can't do anything about that" argument is probably the most retarded and evil thing ever. It justifies one's own greed by claiming that others are like that too. But please, don't drag other people down just because you're a self-centered, greedy bastard. Not all people are like that.
Claiming that biotech and Monsanto's practices are uncontrollable *by nature* and there's nothing whatsoever one can do about them and they would happen anyway is just rationalisation for your own actions, that's all. It's not true. It's a rationalisation of the status quo by people whom it's good for.
"I could easily spend every waking minute railing against this heinous behavior in the world" Instead, you spend many a waking hour railing against those whom you claim an affinity.
"Greed is part of what we all are" Greed and it's acceptance, is a demonstration of the absence of what we all are as in love and compassion.
Two other factors in the plight of Indian farmers deserve mention. First is the unavailability of credit at reasonable cost to them. This is a policy catastrophe in the Indian government. Second are the policies of the World Bank and other international financial institutions, which allow the price supports US farmers receive, which undercut global cotton prices, and amount to dumping.
Those US price supports haven't amounted to diddly for the last few years. Prices have been well above support. For the last few years farmers in the US just get a small amount of money for their traditional crop land, and for a bit of conservation stuff. The government should continue some conservation funding, but eliminate the silly payments for owning or renting land that has grown commodity crops in the past.
... but we are speaking here of cotton...
from The Washington Post, quoted in a June 2010 blog titled "US Cotton Subsidy Shame":
The federal government has spent more than $50 billion propping up cotton growers since 1991, with subsidies averaging more than $3 billion per year over the past decade. Most of this aid supports large, politically connected agribusinesses in the Sun Belt -- although the Arkansas Department of Corrections' operation, manned by convicts, has also received some of the cash. Thanks partly to the subsidies, U.S. producers can outcompete lower-cost producers on the world market; American farms account for about 40 percent of global exports. In 2002, Brazil complained to the World Trade Organization about this, arguing that the U.S. programs violated international free-trade agreements that the United States itself had championed. It took a while, but the WTO has agreed...
more here
http://reason.com/blog/2010/06/04/us-cotton-subsidy-shame
The blogger goes on to say that the Obama admin now simply sends a check to the Brazilian government to account for the cotton injustice (!).
I don't know the specifics on cotton subsidies, but it would surprise me if they have amounted to much over the last 4 or 5 years. Certainly the biggest subsidies by far are those that kick in with low prices. Since cotton prices are around all time highs, current subsidies don't amount to much.
It isn't at all difficult to research how US corn subsidies, with resultant predatory pricing, are putting Mexican farmers out of business and sending them across our border in search of work, only to become the hated and reviled "illegals". Perhaps the saddest outcome is that the product isn't bought by the public for consumption, but by large multinational processors, like ADM, who snap it up at low subsidized rates and turn it into mega profits.
My dear Greg R,
I fear your position may be impervious to facts, but I am either a fool or an optimist. Here are a few more.
First, there has been no change in US policy regarding price supports for cotton growers. In fact, the US has been ruled by the WTO to be in breach of trade law, and is now paying Brazil $147 million per year to avoid sanctions. So not only are we subsidizing our cotton growers, we are also subsidizing Brazil’s!! Here is a post dated June 23, 2010, from the Economic Times of India:
-------------------------
India, China and Argentina have warned that the ongoing negotiations for a global trade deal could be in trouble if the United States does not give a firm commitment to reduce its high cotton subsidies that harm poor farmers the worldover, especially in Africa.
The US had agreed in-principle to treat distortions in cotton trade, roughly estimated at $3 billion annually, “ambitiously, expeditiously and specifically”, at the Hong Kong meeting of trade ministers from WTO member countries in 2005.
It has now effectively reneged on the commitment saying that the issue of market access and tariff reduction in agriculture need to be settled first before it takes on commitment for reducing cotton subsidies.
http://tinyurl.com/4o9fdfk
--------------------------------
Your contention that since cotton subsidy payouts are decreasing due to higher prices, so it supposedly doesn’t matter, completely misses the point. US farmers don’t have to get subsidies when prices are high. The system is rigged so that US cotton farmers are guaranteed an enormous profit regardless of the price of cotton—that’s a huge advantage. US cotton is price-competitive globally even though it costs more to grow here. Cotton farmers in the US have received billions upon billions of dollars—an average of between 2 and 4 billion per year, in various forms from various programs, according to all accounts I found—over the last ten years. Cotton is favored to a crazy extent—cotton farmers get subsidized more than other crops. Cotton farmers in other countries did not receive any such subsidies. The country of Mali and other African countries, where it makes more sense to grow cotton since it is cheaper and can thrive without irrigation, cannot afford cotton subsidies for its farmers. This hamstrings the economies of entire regions in Africa, and is not only patently unfair, it is unsustainable.
Here is something from the Congressional Research Service, in a report to Congress:
----------------------------
If the price triggers are set too far above market prices, they act as an incentive to encourage greater production (and exports) than what the market would otherwise demand. This results in lower prices than would exist in the absence of these programs. It is this “price effect” that was found by the WTO to cause adverse effects and serious prejudice in the international cotton market, as described below. Indeed, a comparison of relative support prices versus market prices for major U.S. program crops reveals that cotton producers receive payments under these programs far more routinely than do other crops.This would suggest that cotton support prices are set too high relative to general cotton market conditions, as well as to other crop prices.
------------------------
Read more here, this is a great article. There is a graph on page 10 of US cotton price supports:
http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL32571.pdf
The original argument, you will remember, centered about my assertion that US cotton subsidies unfairly damaged farmers in other countries. Since we have established, from the links and posts above, that the US accounts for 40% of the world’s cotton exports, and cotton farmers have been subsidized at between 2 to 4 billion dollars per year, a practice that the WTO has deemed counter to trade law and therefore sanctionable, I think we can say that yes, the US has employed unfair subsidies in its cotton agricultural sector.
Of course, it will be harder to back up my arguments now that the US Ag Department has shut down the farm subsidy database, which it once was required to maintain. The democratic congress removed this obligation in 2008, and now the embarrassing database is gone, though it still shows up in Google searches. This was a great database—gone. Thanks, Mr. Obama, for your “transparency”.
http://tinyurl.com/4u4n9ty
Here are another couple links. Read at the risk to your worldview, I suppose.
http://tinyurl.com/yba289e
http://tinyurl.com/49vuges
Thanks for your time.
First, commodity prices don't only or even mainly rise because people want to eat and live better. A lot of it has to do with waste, most importantly with using 40% of corn grown in the US for ethanol - but of course there are other types of waste, including direct waste of consumable products (ie. throwing away food), overconsumption, not eating local food etc etc. Of course in the long term, a generally rising quality of food eaten would also lead to this pressure, but this is *not* the case now at all.
Anyway, imo the main issues are: long term yield increase, energy efficiency, long term sustainability, health and minimising the very hard human agricultural manual labour. All of these are very important, but a lot of development in agricultural technology, especially genetic engineering, has *nothing whatsoever* to do with these issues, except as a pretext. It mainly has to do with centralisation of control and profits through eliminating smaller farmers, their experience and knowledge and turning agriculture into an automated manufacturing factory-style production. It is a power grab, plain and simple, and any actual real improvement is just a side effect, and often can't even compensate for the bad effects of wasteful production.
Basically, I wouldn't conflate the original Green Revolution with this one. That one was rational - maybe it'll turn out to have been a bad decision in the long run, but it did in fact have tangible results. This one is completely different, and its effects and advantages aren't nearly as debatable.
Your "nothing whatsoever" comment made me smile. I thought of my father rousting me out of bed at daylight to cultivate crops all day, when I'd only had an hour or two of drunken sleep. Then falling asleep and driving kitty-corner across the rows, destroying crops. Now I save time, save fuel, save on increasingly expensive machinery. My crops get the fertilizer instead of the weeds. Now days if I have a terrible growing season, I get the same yields that I used to get if I had a wonderful summer's weather. I realize that there are long-term sustainability issues with modern farming, just as there are with many other things. I don't have any miracle ideas.
Sorry but I have no clue how your post is relevant to what I wrote. I didn't say that none of the developments have helped make farming more efficient, read my post again. I really think you're conflating the advances of the 60's Green Revolution with the current biotech push and imo that's a bit dishonest. I'm not attacking all technology - I just don't like the dumb use of it for short term profit.
I think very often the increase in efficiency etc was a side effect or a pretext for centralisation and concentration, which leads to less democratic control over large scale decisions. So you don't just get minor systemic inefficiencies, you get incredible large scale systemic *waste*, which *cannot* be compensated by efficiency and production gains.
A lot of the efficiency increases are also short term, for example chemical input often continues to increase over the long term after a few years of better numbers. As for your "saving fuel", I think that's superficiality itself - farming overall needs a lot more energy input to produce one calorie of food than it used to, we just (think we) have a lot more energy to waste.
One of the largest problems is that the economic system does not measure the actual real costs of production any more. It is often worth it in money terms to *waste* resources (the best example is ethanol of course). People actually make money, with completely good intentions, by wasting and destroying resources, because the "market" doesn't work at all as it's simply completely incapable (in its current form definitely) to take a longer term outlook.
Basically it's the same as in manufacturing and everything else dependent on human labour. If you're in control, if you're the "owner", it's worth it to make production less dependent on people even if you lose a little (or even a lot) of efficiency. It's worth it to make workers as interchangeable and standardised as possible, it's worth it to destroy all knowledge and know-how distributed to small individual producers (like destroying actual real life *seeds* for made up bullshit intellectual property rights reasons) and transform production into a system that can be operated and managed with knowledge and expertise *that can be bought on the market*. This knowledge comes in the form of vehicles and GM seeds and chemicals and the processes associated with them, and not personal experience and wisdom. Not that I want to idealise traditional forms of knowledge or demonise technology and the modern management/engineering type of knowledge, but there is a social and physical reality in which they are embedded and they have some observeable effects and consequences and that's what we have to base our judgement on, and the observeable realities are very often clearly fucked up. This is clear as day with biofuels for example, but the idiocies are easy to see in everyday life also.
"My crops get the fertilizer instead of the weeds."
I'll bet your weeds get the herbicide.
"I don't have any miracle ideas."
I do. Organic methods that respect the climate and soil where the crop is grown, feeding the soil, companion planting, crop rotations. These are the ways to increase yields without poisoning our planet, though with regard to poisoning our planet, we're a bit late in thinking about it.
GREG: You can always be relied upon to show up to defend Monsanto, a WAR criminal corp, and/or most other pro-corporate, centrist positions. Sell-out...
And you can reliably be counted on to attack any liberal articles on this site that don't go far enough to completely renunciate the capitalist system and pretend your far out ideas have any chance of seeing daylight in our lifetimes. After the Krugman article of a couple of days ago, you attacked Krugman for not mentioning something that he ACTUALLY DID ADRESS. Apparently you couldn't be bothered to read the whole article. For some, their minds are already made up. Facts are of minor use. Let's see what the stars and planets will tell us. Yeah, that will guide you.
Greg, baby, you are full of organic fertilizer.
Before the moronic scientific Europeans came here, the Mayans had perfected 4 crop multiple cultivation which would NEVER deplete the soil. The Mayans taught the settlers from Spain how to grind the corn so all the nutrition was extracted from it, unlike those morons up north that eschewed 'injun' practices and thereby got sick from Pellagra.
Yes, I'm one of those European descendents but at least I recognize the shear arrogance and stupidity of a great deal of modern science in the quest for yield irrespective of soil depletion and/or erosion.
You aren't a farmer. Your are a soil killer.
Hey, since you are the expert, I sincerely hope you enlighten the world. All I've ever heard are ideas of the utmost impracticability, and many (most, all?) still unsustainable. Please do not keep momentous revelations to yourself unless you're truly evil.
When the problem is a grossly over-sized import/export, profit driven system, the correlate is grossly externalized costs. as noted above - suicide of farmers, violent repression of those who have the right to ancestral lands coveted by monoculture; massive population displacement; massive loss of all forms of diversity; unemployment; on and on - think in terms of all the things that are 'problems' and there you have the externalized costs. It is not rocket science.
These are so external to the narrative of the corporatocracy that they are invisible to the system and the 'consumers' who have forgotten that their human voice extends far beyond 'consumption' (used to be the name for a disease', yes? tuberculosis?).
For insight into the 'externalized costs' of the Brazil's Program for Accelerated Growth' Bay Area MST http://www.mstbrazil.org/
Links to research, wicki-leaks on how the US sees the landless movement....
Do remember that things do get complicated. When I was younger there were a great many small farms in our area. We would shake our heads about many of them. Some never seemed able to get their crops planted in a timely fashion. Some let the weeds totally take over. Some let their animals starve because of lack of money, or laziness, or who knows what. Now days those farmers are gone around here. The farmers are bigger and they do their best. We may very well not like all the aspects of farming today, but in many ways there have been improvements.
What a disingenuous paragraph!
Those small farms aren't "THERE" because they were systematically consolidated by wielders of borrowed investment capital which simultaneously DENIED access to credit for small farmers.
It was a set up. Learn some history.
Monoculture destroyed our farms and our soils. You and your daddy helped.
Surely you jest. I lived the fucking history.
One can live the history without being aware of it. Just because you're old and worked in agriculture doesn't mean you understand it. One's biases and preferences can easily have more weight in their arguments than any kind of knowledge or information.
the days of the farmer are numbered...
farming practices are partially responsible for that...
not completely, of course...no, certainly not completely...
financial and legal practices play big...as do others...
one should begin looking local, and planting things...
apologies if I sound alarmist...
maybe I should suggest you get a job and get involved in politics...
our processes around impregnation, reproduction and birth are so vulnerable to chemical devastation and error...
strange that gender may become a gray area...
sterility or impotence, not so gray...
take your life back, take the land back from the banker...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...
a take on migration posted by Witness for Peace - videos
War on drugs - war on people
Free trade Agreement - militarization of the border - inhospitably rejecting those fleeing the usurpation of very basic ways of life
http://witnessforpeace.org/article.php?id=706
An issue not to be shoved aside by environmentalists or "progressives":
All this being said, I think the best way to address poultry welfare issues is by combining an affirmative animal rights-vegan advocacy with efforts to improve conditions for the billions of birds who will never live to see a vegan world. I believe we owe it to the birds to do what we can to make their lives less miserable through legislation and public pressure, and to hold the industries that own them accountable. Left to itself, ANIMAL AGRICULTURE HAS NO MORALITY. Decades of reading agribusiness and farming publications and attending poultry welfare meetings have taught me that people who raise and slaughter animals do not respect or empathize with animals but regard them solely as resources put here by “God” or Nature to feed and glorify humans. I think there is little we can do to help animals trapped in food production; it simply is too vast, hidden, and complicated to regulate or even monitor. Even as we work for welfare reforms such as banning battery cages for laying hens, which I think we should do, but without overstating what can actually be accomplished, the reality of an expanding population of nearly 7 billion people* who are consuming 50 billion terrestrial animals each year and countless billions of sea animals (in 2009 Americans alone consumed 51 billion sea animals) means that the way to animal welfare (to animals faring well) lies in eliminating the demand for animal products in favor of vegetarian – vegan – food.
I think there are lots of things activists can do to get more people to care about animals and hopefully to stop eating them. I think the most important thing for an animal advocate is to stand up for animals and never, ever apologize for them or for caring about them. If there is one theme that has occupied me ever since I became an animal advocate in the 1980s, it is the lack of confidence that often surfaces when advocates face the public. I call this failure of nerve conveyed through anxious, self-deprecating speech, “the rhetoric of apology in animal rights.” Moving beyond the rhetoric of apology to a confident rhetoric of affirmation for animals and a compassionate vegan world is vital. A vegan world is a place without slaughterhouses and animal slavery. It is a place where the fellowship of animals is valued, and the dignity of their lives and feelings is respected. Never say the public “isn’t ready.” Our task is to do our best to make people ready. “Moving Beyond the Rhetoric of Apology” can be read at www.upc-online.org/thinking/rhetoric.pdf.
KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the president and founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. She’s the founding editor of UPC’s quarterly magazine Poultry Press and the author of several books including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry, More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality, and The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities. Karen maintains a sanctuary for chickens, turkeys and ducks on the Eastern Shore of Virginia To learn more, visit www.upc-online.org and www.upc-online.org/karenbio.htm.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
The world population is the total population of humans on the planet Earth. An automatically updated daily calculation by the United States Census Bureau[1] estimates the current figure to be approximately 6,901,600,000. The world population has experienced continuous growth since the end of the Bubonic Plague around the year 1400.[2] The highest rates of growth—increases above 1.8% per year—were seen briefly during the 1950s, for a longer period during the 1960s and 1970s; the growth rate peaked at 2.2% in 1963, and declined to 1.1% by 2009. Annual births have reduced to 140 million since their peak at 173 million in the late 1990s, and are expected to remain constant, while deaths number 57 million per year and are expected to increase to 80 million per year by 2040. Current projections show a continued increase of population (but a steady decline in the population growth rate) with the population expected to reach between 7.5 and 10.5 billion in the year 2050.[3][4][5]
"Ecological Farming Is the Answer, Not Genetic Engineering"
is like saying inside labor camp; "good tools usage is important, not extensive hours". Philosophizing will not replace democracy. And we have only that.
Technological fixes for a planet overpopulated by fat cat rulers and starving mice.
"Fascism is capitalism plus murder."
Upton Sinclair
"Golden rice genetically engineered to increase Vitamin A produces 70 times less Vitamin A than available alternatives such as coriander leaves and curry leaves."
All your life you've heard but one message: That of the global korporation, through the korporate media. That message announces the latest korporate product, e.g. "golden rice", klevery knamed. In the absence of a competing message you're left - in the lurch - to konklude that "golden rice's" increased vitamin A is, on balance, a "good thang". So you invest your life saving in Monosonto stock.
Meanwile, the wisdom of the ages is passed on to your fellow human beings across the planet: The nutrition is in the local fresh wild herbs, e.g. the coriander cited above. You think the idea of starving people around the world harvesting from the wilds these herbs, 70 times more potent than Monosonto produkts, is ridiculous. You placed your chips on the mighty USan korporation. You've ignored your natural roots, you've defied nature, you've konquered nature, you have bekome king of the hill, you are "All-A-Merkan".
I've noticed that many on CD have been bad mouthing Huffington Post since Arianna took the big bucks. I was defending her, but not any more. Right now they have a story up that claims Monsanto's gm technology is causing animal miscarriages. I'm sure no one on CD will believe that or even care, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.
Can you handle the truth about what we have been doing to animals? Do you think we are better than they are?
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/earthlings/
I wish all countries would take a closer look at Duckweed. It grows fast, can grow in waters with animal waste run off and actually cleans the water while using the waste as fertilizer and can be dried, bundled and shipped quickly and safely. It is edible with a higher protein per gram content than soybeans and can also be burned to generate energy.
I know that Bangladesh is working with it.
If it works well in Bangladesh the word will spread.
I wish they'd take a closer look at weed
Get real. "Genetic Engineering" has been practiced by mankind for tens of thousands of years. Without it we would be starving today.
What a catastrophe the Left has become.
Genuinely important issues, like corporate malfeasance, are addressed by "a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist."
On this issue of food and farming, why has the Left ceded the science to the Right? Is it a corporate plot to discredit the Left?
Just one example of sloppy thinking in the article:
"Biodiverse organic and local food systems contribute both to mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Small, biodiverse, organic farms especially in Third World countries are totally fossil fuel free. Energy for farming operations comes from animal energy. Soil fertility is built by feeding soil organisms by recycling organic matter. This reduces greenhouse gas emissions."
This is the height of superstitious thinking. How much MORE land do such methods gobble up? Animals need land, and forage. Organic matter GIVES OFF CO2. How many more people are the result? Farming, by definition, enables population increase and is by definition unsustainable. There is no free lunch.
We are in the teeth of a terrible tragedy, "The Tragic Story of Human Success," according to ecologist William Catton.
Resorting to romanticized views of farming, agricultural myths, is a symptom of how much trouble we're in.
Sorry but this post is completely incomprehensible to me. What exactly are you suggesting? What does "organic matter GIVES OFF CO2" even mean?
How exactly is that superstitious? You might have a point, but I have no fucking clue what it is. Do you mean to say that all civilisation is unsustainable and we should go back to foraging? Or what?
But biodiverse ecological farming is not nearly as financially rewarding as GE - ask Monsanto. What is it going to take to topple this monster?
So many miss the point.
Its not what produces more.
GM or organic.
Current farming / pharming practices.
will never be enough.
We all need to take a hand in the food we eat.
Care for her and all her creatures.
We are embedded in the carbon cycle
We are all food!
The point is even simpler than what you propose:
Humans need to stop reproducing.
But they can't.
Over a billion in India? A disaster.
You forget, just like everyone else bringing up this bullshit argument, that those one billion Indians don't consume and waste nearly as much as 300'000'000 Americans. I get tired of idiots spouting this transparent, fucked up stupidity all the time in response to every single article like this.
Also, this may be relevant http://www.zcommunications.org/online-astroturfing-is-more-advanced-and-more-automated-than-we-d-imagined-by-george-monbiot