Tag: farming

Note: There is a Washington Post review on this movie that opens today in major cities. The positive review points out the government’s treatment of small farms and begins with a question “Why is it so easy to buy cigarettes but so difficult to purchase raw, unpasteurized milk?”

Yesterday on the The Leonard Lopate Show there was a very disturbing interview. It was another story of government being in bed with big business, this time making our food unsafe in the process. Three people try to explain why the government is turning a blind eye to the large corporations that are making us sick while raiding small farms and food co-ops to address problems that don’t even exist.

The outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in recent years, the salmonella in peanut butter and E. coli in bagged spinach have led to concerns about the way the FDA has been enforcing its food safety regulations. Each of those outbreaks has been traced to a factory farm or large processing plants but small farmers who have had little connection to them are bearing the brunt of government raids, searches and product confiscation. A new documentary called Farmageddon investigates the increasingly tenuous standing of small farms in our food system. It opens this Friday at Cinema Village and joining us today are Kristin Canty, the director and co-producer, Linda Failace, the co-owner of Three Shephard’s Cheese in Vermont and Gary Cox, the General Counsel for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund. Welcome to our show….

You can listen here. You should be outraged by those three stories, everyone should.  I have a few details below.  

Dr. Olivier De Shutter, United Nations Envoy, warns that China’s ability to feed its population is waning:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi…

He told the Guardian his main concern was the decline of soil quality in China because of excessive use of fertilisers, pollution and drought. He noted that 37% of the nation’s territory was degraded and 8.2m hectares (20.7m acres) of arable land has been lost since 1997 to cities, industrial parks, natural disasters and forestry programmes.

With climate change expected to increase price volatility and cut agricultural productivity by 5% to 10% by 2030, De Schutter said it was essential for China to wean itself off fossil-fuel intensive farming and adopt more sustainable agricultural techniques, including organic production, and to make even better use of its two great strengths: a huge strategic grain reserve and a large rural population.

He also cautioned against a shift towards industrial-scale farming, which increases economic competitiveness at the cost of natural productivity. “Small-scale farming is more efficient in its use of natural resources. I believe China can show that it is successful in feeding a very large population. ” However, he acknowledged that this may prove difficult in the future as more of China’s 200million farmers move to the cities.

Unfortunately the article in the Guardian UK did not mention the fact that China’s mega- hydro power projects like the Three Gorges Dam are also contributing to massive amounts of loss of the best farmland in the now flooded valleys above the dam site –  62,000 acres – which also forced the resettlement of over a million rural people. http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof…

People who buck the Chinese government and organize protesters over deadly food don’t do so well in authoritarian regimes.  Zhao Lianhai, who complained about melamine contaminated milk formulas, that made 300,000 sick and killed at least 6 babies, was thrown in jail in 2009, convicted and sentenced to two and a half years in prison in November for “inciting social disorder.”  see HuffPo  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/… Zhao’s son was one of the toddlers who became ill with kidney stones after drinking the bad milk.   Melamine was the same chemical that was implicated in the 2006 – 2007 American pet food safety scandal and recall, which sickened and killed thousands of cats,  when it was used to adulterate imported wheat gluten, and spread from an importer – distributor in Las Vegas, ChemNutra,  to all over the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…   Ground up melamine powder, a by product of coal processing normally used in plastics like laminated flooring,  was added not only to increase the volume but to fool the tests done for “protein” content.  

What did Zhao do to warrant Chinese jail time while trying to save sick babies ?

he organized a gathering of a dozen parents of sick children at a restaurant, held a paper sign in front of a court and factory involved in the scandal as a protest, and gave media interviews in a public place.

Schutter:

“I’m concerned this will have a chilling effect on consumers who want to complain,” he said. “You cannot protect the right to food without the right to freedom of expression and organisation.”

     For those of us who often wonder where our food comes from, but don’t exactly want to visit the abattoir, themeatrix.com has the power to open your mind a bit. Before you click the video and take the red pill, I offer you the blue pill if you want to bail out now.

    If you have gone this far, there is no turning back now.

Current Situation: So Blue It’s Purple – Past Critical

Two years ago Governor Eliot Spitzer said that parts of Upstate NY “look like Appalachia”.    He went on to say that he had a plan to fix it.  Well Gov. Spitzer, the farmers are waiting.  I am not a farmer, not yet anyway, but I intend to be one and have been talking with a few and have heard the same thing over and over…I can not afford to just farm, I have to have other avenues of income and the State is not supporting me in those efforts.

Another farm is now up for sale in Joe Bruno’s home town, Bruno and his thugs forced the farmer out by not allowing him to have a second source of income in the winter months on his own property. I asked the farmer what he made per acre of corn that he grew and he just laughed.  So it struck me that we have two major issues facing farmers in Upstate NY.  One, the price they are being paid, and two, not being allowed to do what it takes to keep the farm going.

I stopped to talk with a Dairy Farmer a little further north of Bruno’s town and was told that between the low price of milk on the farmer’s end and the high price of energy that this could be his final year.  He owns the most beautiful property with a stream and waterfall.  He invited me, a stranger, to go and take a dip the next time I was up that way as it might be the last time I’d have access to it.