2007

Back Issues

Table of Contents and PDF downloads
January 2007 to November 2007

Following are the contents of some of our recent issues. Feel free to download the whole issue by clicking on the icon. If the articles pique your interest, and you'd like to see more, please subscribe!

 

#251: November 2007 TOC pdf
Home on the Range: Brewster looks at the woes of cattle ranchers, with a story from Paul Beingessner
Of course, why didn't we think of that before? - a technological 'solution' for beef farmers
Workers Win Damages Against Pesticide Company - Nicaraguan farmworkers win a suit against Dow Food
Non-GM Premium Prices - soy, canola, and lamb
So why are farmers growing more GM crops? - farmer Colleen Ross explains the pressure to keep up appearances
Collusion - BASF sets the rules for field trials in the UK
The Editorial Process - Writing an article on good fats and bad fats
Chicken Soup ... - announcement of hens manipulated to produce pharmaceutical eggs
... With Rice - and announcement of GE rice to 'grow' pharmaceuticals
The "Tortilla Crisis" - the effects of subsidized corn production for ethanol on food prices
US Farm Subsidies for Mega-Corps - cotton supports go to Cargill
Classifying 'Consumers' - Nestle reveals its target demographics
Just in time for Holiday Giving! - Devlin Kuyek's new book, Good Crop/Bad Crop: Seed Politics and the Future of Food in Canada is a great read and available, hot off the press, from The Ram's Horn

#250: October 2007 TOC pdf
Bingo! - Cathleen reports on the food security assembly in Newfoundland
R.I.P. Prairie Agriculture Co-Ops - latest merger clearly ends the farmer-led vision
Minister Supports Organics - Saskatchewan government looks favourably on organics
Persistent Bacterium - new research shows bacterium can transfer into other genomes
"We have no clue..." - Dow spokesperson is unusually candid
Energy and Synthetic Fuels - relating energy policy to other policy areas:
    * Synthetic fuels from slaughterhouse waste
    * Agrofuels not climate-friendly
    * A way to sell more
    * Rising food prices, inflation
Cargill update: (see also Cargill Profile under Resources)
    * Record 'earnings' - revenues for the last fiscal year were $88.3 billion
    * Kitchen Solutions (egg and breakfast products division)
    * Biodegradable packaging - an agreement with Teijin (Japan)
    * Cargill Canada - the grain trade
Healthy information policy - Sweden gives out information to public!
Roundup Ready diplomat - US ambassador pushes Afghanistan to spray poppies
What does 'Natural' mean? - we look at ice cream and what it's made of, including fish genes
    * Technical Background from ISIS

#249: September 2007 TOC pdf
Complexity and Diversity are the Rules of the Game: Brewster challenges biotech's Central Dogma, 'one gene, one protein'
GE Insects Opposed in Southern British Columbia: tree fruit growers challenge new rules for importing GE insects
Raising the Steaks: packing plant woes
Good Ol' Mountain Dew Revisited: ethanol plants and selling the spent grains
Cattle Industry Dying From Ethanol Poisoning: Paul Beingessner looks at the sad state of the cattle industry in Canada
Eggs Are Seasonal, Too: Joel Salatin meets a creative chef
Food Aid: CARE opts out of lucractive aid scheme
Water, Cargill, and Corn: biodegradable bottles are still no better than tap water
Monsanto loses, for once: US court refuses to ban advertising of rBGH-free dairy
Lobbying for Agrotoxins and Biotech: a look at CropLife

#248: July 2007 TOC pdf
Railways for Whom?: -- who controls the agenda of the country's major grain transportation?
Organic farming could feed the world -- new research supports small scale organic
    Pesticides reduce fertility: information from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    Is organic food healthier?: research shows higher levels of anti-oxidants
    Win some, lose some: Britain's largest retailer moves to reduce trucking - and cuts Prince Charles off the supplier list
Control of Livestock Genetics -- excerpt from a publication on centralized control of livestock production
Peruvian Region Says No to GM Potatoes -- in an effort to save the centre of origin for this crop
Banana Wars -- a book review
A NAFTA Precedent -- it's not food, but Canada Post win against UPS is a precedent
Improved Food Safety in Sub-Saharan Africa -- new research results on combatting aflatoxin

#247: June 2007 TOC pdf
Extreme Capitalism: moving from covering sheep issues to the issues of monocultures and equity investment
More than cotton fabrics: genetic manipulation of cottonseed
Corporate power: Agrofuels and the Expansion of Agribusiness - excerpts from a new article from GRAIN
Coke, Cargill, and Bottled Water: a series of items
Websites: recommended, the Bioscience Resource Project; request for suggestions for The Ram's Horn site
Brazil's Landless Break Up with Lula: the MST, Brazilian Movement of Landless Rural Workers, launches a strong critique of the President
Judge Bans Bayer's Transgenic Corn: Judicial disapproval in Brazil
Rigged Vote and Magic Sticks: Canada's Agriculture Minister's manipulation of due process
Big Meat: the game of leveraging and mergers and acquisitions in the global meat business
US needs its illegal migrant workers: how the rich get richer, again.

#246: April/May 2007 TOC
The Tyranny of Economic Growth: Brewster says bio-fuels are neither necessary nor helpful; we need to reduce consumption
Insecurity in the Global Food System: the perils of melamine in
gluten, congestion in seaports may hamper global distribution systems
Railway abandonments continue and service declines: in western Canada
Canada lowers standards on agro-toxins to match US: all in the name of increased food quality, of course
GE Alfalfa: Banned in US, Approved in Canada
Balancing Demands: the industry looks at wildlife versus economic
growth, guess who wins
Prairie Cooperatives: Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and Agricore United
Good News from Brazil: silent attendance by critics at decision panel affects the decisions
Seeds Need to Stay Close to Home: the Fantons are re-localizing the Seed Savers network in Australia
Stopping Short: discussion of the just-in-time system
Where your food dollar goes: update on Cargill's annual profits

#245: March 2007 TOC
Thinking About Food Sovereignty - Cathleen attends the world forum in West Africa
On Subsistence - Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, that contempt for women is central to the modern economy
Bird Flu: A Bonanza for 'Big Chicken' - GRAIN reports how the
industry is using the flu scare to consolidate its hold
Organic vs. Air Miles - arguments about efficiency lead to local and organic
Kenya: Coming Up Roses? - will buying local hurt people in the
developing countries?
Oil News - biggest consumers? ethanol and the Pentagon
Where does the farmers' money go? - a goodly chunk to the CEO of Agricore
Cargill Mill Occupied by Brazil Women - the Landless Rural Workers Movement took over a Cargill facility to protest the distortion of their economy by ethanol; their action is supported around the world on International Women's Day
Chiquita's drug habit - evidence of payoffs to Colombia paramilitary organization
One banana at a time - a new marketing strategy for Chiquita
Monsanto Anti-Farmers Patents - Public Patent Foundation has
succeeded in overturning one of Monsanto's Roundup Ready patents
The confused ideology of neoliberalism - The American Corn Growers Association comes out against Monsanto
Alfalfa : contaminate first - Monsanto seeks approval to spread its
GE alfalfa while it waits for USDA approval
What's a grocery store for? - there's a lot more in a big box than
food (or easy profits)

#244: February 2007 TOC
More ways than one: we examine the case for a diversity of business models
National market share of food sales, 2005 (table)
Not just food and drink: Van Houtte coffee company is looking to break itself up despite profitablity
Cargill: Performing its patriotic duty -- producing ethanol
         Trans-fat free fats -- which are genetically engineered
Big Finance and Bad Ideas: Miguel Altieri and Eric Holt-Gimenez critique the $500 million University of California program on biofuels
Milk without Hormones: Posilac-free milk marketed as 'organic light'
More than just seeds: theological commentary from "Life-giving Agriculture" conference
"Mother-Baby" beats GMOs: researcher-farmer partnership has developed stress-tolerant maize
CWB ... the latest dirt: government appoints CWB Board president but he hasn't been paid yet
Creaming Off the Crop: West African farmers critique Bt cotton

#243: January 2007 TOC
Risks Underestimated -- Brewster looks at what is not know and may not be able to be known about GE
Seed Sector Regulation -- deadline for public input extended -- analysis of the issues
The Gospel According to James -- that's Clive James of the ISAAA
and
Who Benefits from GM Crops -- including an expose of the ISAAA
GM Crops and Labour Saving -- a new study suggests why farmers use GMOs when there is no apparent advantage
Why Precaution Makes Sense -- new facts explain why human guinea pigs almost died
Biofuels, Energy, and the Madness of Economic Growth
Fresh is Best -- keeping broccoli green
Pepsi's Health Food -- and how Whole Foods works

Issue 243: January 2007

Risks Underestimated

 

I have been intuitively, intellectually and morally resisting the advance of genetic engineering (biotechnology) for two decades – not because of what I know, but because I’ve never been convinced that others know as much as they claim to know. My reading of the science tells me the same thing: there is much that is not known, that is pretended to be known, or that cannot, in all honesty, be known. 

I just can’t accept that life is as simple and simplistic as the biotech promoters make it out to be. Their ‘science’ has always struck me as more than a little preposterous and arrogant. Nothing in this world is as simple as the Central Dogma of “One Gene, One Protein” proclaims it to be. There are dialectics and interactions; for every action, a reaction –  somewhere.

One could even say that there is no such thing as a ‘one-way street’ – otherwise, we would never get home again, would we?

If the actual complexities of biology in general, and molecular biology in particular, were fully acknowledged, genetics, genomics, proteonomics, and any other biological ‘omics’ that strike your fancy, would still be the subject of research, but the funding and commercialization might look vastly different. In fact, the chances of GMOs getting out of the lab, past the regulators and onto the market would be about nil. It would be recognized that not enough is known – and may never be known – about what happens when the invasive techniques of genetic engineering are applied to an organism to ever ensure that the resulting GMO is ‘safe’ to release into the environment.

The notion of placing transgenic trees in unrestricted environments would be regarded as insane and/or criminal.

The notion of ‘farming’ transgenic fish or growing a drug-containing canola would be regarded similarly.

And yet transgenic trees are being planted out in Canada virtually without restrictions and with no possible understanding of the forces being unleashed.

boat

“Risk Underestimated” is the title of an incisive collection of interviews with nine scientists on the inherent risks of genetic manipulation, published by Greenpeace International. The following are brief quotes from some of the notable contributors. The initials following each quote identify the contributor.

“Genetic engineering is bound to introduce turbulence in the existing systems.” MB

“A gene can have a lot of different functions – the number of its functions has no upper limit. A gene can also acquire new functions.” MH

“Variation in proteins coded by the same gene may be extremely high like that found in neurexins, a class of proteins involved in neural connections. In that case, more than 2000 proteins can be produced on the basis of the information contained in only three genes.” MB

“How can the environment be encoded in the genome?  We know today that this can be done through gene silencing and gene activation by epigenetic mechanisms.” RS

“Nature, through evolution, has placed between the genome and the phenotype [the outward appearance and characteristics of an organism] a number of complex systems. All of which are context dependent. And these systems together regulate not the gene sequences bu t the pattern of how genes are expressed.  The expression of genes changes when the environment changes.” RS

“Epigenetics is widely recognized in human and animal genetics. Probably also in plants.  But when it comes to practical applications the outdated paradigm of the gene [one gene, one protein] is still dominant.” FK

“The question is, how is it possible that such wrong-headed theories around genetic determinism could be tolerated for so long.? Economic power and, of course, the mixture of the university with the corporations when you cannot tell the difference between the university scientist and somebody working for Monsanto anymore. They are all trained the same way. . . . you have to actually extend to them some sympathy because in some way they actually believe at some level that what they do is correct.” RS

“The study of the composition and the analysis of the substantial equivalence is far below the level of sufficiency to be able to predict any toxicity or any unintended effect of a plant. At least we should introduce mandatory scientific toxicity tests. . . . We should also make it obligatory that a transgene is sequenced after the insertion, not just before the insertion. . . in almost all GMOs the transgenes are no longer the ones published by the companies.” GS

Note: at this time, a url for this document is not available, but we can supply  a paper or electronic  copy on request.

The biotech lobbyists, of course, need not be troubled by the science. They are paid to sell the product, however faulty or dangerous. This is obvious by the following statement from the Argentine Council for Information and Development of Biotechnology (January 2007)

“Economic impact of GM crops in Argentina: Agricultural biotechnology has given the country a $20 billion profit.  During the decade 1996-2005 Argentine agriculture went through a deep transformation. . Biotechnology created 1 million jobs.”

“A study carried out by Drs. Eduardo Trigo and Eugenio Cap for the Argentine Council for Information and Development of Biotechnology, ArgenBio . . .  evaluated the impact of the ten years of adoption of GM crops in Argentine agriculture. Total benefits generated by all three GM crops [soy, maize and cotton] were estimated . . . in excess of 20 billion US dollars. In the case of herbicide-tolerant soybeans, total accumulated benefits for the 1996-2005 period, reached $19.7 billion, distributed as follows: 77.45% to the farmers, 3.90% to seed suppliers, 5.25% to herbicide suppliers and 13.39% to the National Government.”

soapbox

Equally generous benefits are attributed to GE maize and cotton, but there is no mention of the assumptions built into the model that produced these conclusions.  What can be said is that the claims made for GMOs in Argentina far exceed even the most grandiose claims of the biotech industry in the north and bear no resemblance to the reality described by groups such as Grupo Reflexion Rural or the many displaced diversified farmers that used to supply Argentinians with their food.

“Regarding the social impact, the study asserts that the release of herbicide-tolerant soybeans could have contributed to the creation of almost 1 million jobs (whole economy-wide), representing a 36% of the total increase in employment over the period under study.”

Needless to say, there is no accounting for this magnificent figure. Certainly the mega-scale industrial monoculture plantings of soy are not labour intensive and it canot take a million workers to make the small number of tractors required. Just as the biotech industry does not account for all that it excludes from its research results, neither does it account for all its hyperbole. It’s business, after all.;  – B.K.

#243: January 2007 TOC
Risks Underestimated -- Brewster looks at what is not know and may not be able to be known about GE
Seed Sector Regulation -- deadline for public input extended --
analysis of the issues
The Gospel According to James -- that's Clive James of the ISAAA
and
Who Benefits from GM Crops -- including an expose of the ISAAA
GM Crops and Labour Saving -- a new study suggests why farmers use GMOs when there is no apparent advantage
Why Precaution Makes Sense -- new facts explain why human guinea pigs almost died
Biofuels, Energy, and the Madness of Economic Growth
Fresh is Best -- keeping broccoli green
Pepsi's Health Food -- and how Whole Foods works

 

 

Issue 244: February 2007

 

More ways than one

The ruling market ideology is adamant that there is only one way to do business – its way. The “best practices” ideology follows suit. But best for whom? At what cost?  If bio-diversity is essential, why isn’t business-diversity?

Ethanol, produced to fuel North America’s obsession with the private automobile, threatens to reduce the corn-soy ‘rotation’ to the extreme monoculture of corn after corn, at least in the US corn-belt. By the same token, monoculture canola may well push other crops aside to produce biodiesel to keep the trucks on the road hauling industrial food halfway around the world to maintain the appearance of diversity in our supermarkets. (We will not dwell on the fact that these three crops are almost all transgenic!)  Wheat, for the moment at least, retains its primary identity as a food for people.

Use of the term ‘industrial’ to describe North American agriculture seems to be widely accepted these days without protest.  Its practitioners will argue that there is no alternative, however much they may lament the loss of neighbours and the financial precariousness of industrial production maintained only by subsidies.  Monoculture production with massive amounts of purchased inputs – seed, agrotoxins, synthetic fertilizers and credit – is simply assumed to the only real way to feed the world. (The conflict between feeding people and feeding automobiles is only now being noticed, along with the different view of the world and diverse cultural practices offered by organic agriculture.)


truck

A single model for the business of agricultural production as well as for agricultural production itself is not really surprising given the heavily dominant ideology of capital that seeks to rule the world. One could suggest that it all began with Margaret Thatcher in Britain and the slogan, “I’m all right, Jack” with its unspoken “so screw you,” but we actually have to go back a few centuries to understand the origins of this individualism and its capitalist expression in “Western Civilization.” Don’t worry, we’re not going to do that here! We’ll just note the assumption that Western Civilization, with its quaint approach to the world and its inhabitants, is the only reasonable (and to believers, the only possible) world view, which is the context for the notion that there is only one way to do business.

It used to be that businesses succeeded by serving their customers. They provided what people needed and wanted, with advertising functioning primarily as a ‘notice of availability.’ It was accepted that there would be a variety of businesses with similar merchandise, competing with one another, to be sure, but within what one might call a ‘business community’. There were also a large number of effective co-operatives, partnerships and enterprises that provided a diversity of business models. One size did not fit all.

Now the mark of success is getting rid of your competitors, either by buying them out or by forcing them out of business. Quarterly reports, shareholder value, the stock market, mergers and acquisitions (m&a) and absolutely gross executive incomes are now the order of the day.

On the farm front, there were a multitude of sizes and variety of farm enterprises, called simply ‘farms’, not ‘farm businesses’ or ‘operations.’  They were to a great extent self-sufficient and resilient, and not infrequently supported one another in such large tasks as barn-building. Until, that is, the era of corporate growth and greed set in and being competitive became the golden rule of business. Farmers were encouraged, enticed and bribed into thinking of themselves as farm businessmen out to make a profit, even when they were not making a living wage, much less a profit after all expenses were paid. Caught in the cost-price squeeze, farms, like the formerly small and medium-size businesses, began to grow in size, with farmers being encouraged to buy out their neighbours and expand their ‘operations’ in the name of efficiency (for big machinery). Cash flow and the ability to obtain and carry a large debt became the measure of success, not net family income and a healthy diversified community economy. I remember being advised by a local town councillor (himself a farmer) that we should turn our farm into a museum because we had such a variety of activities on our small farm. Never mind that fact that we were one of the largest sheep farms in the east at the time and actually making a living with our farming.

In the view of this farmer-politician, the only valid business structure was one that placed the accumulation of wealth at the pinnacle of achievement. This is deemed to maximize “economic growth” which is the summum bonum, the greatest good. We are not supposed to ask for whom is this the greatest good, but if we read the business press we will quickly notice that it is the greatest good of the shareholders, not the public or the society or even the economy. Henry Ford understood the contradiction between  maximizing short-term profit and the health of the economy as a whole; he insisted on paying his workers enough for them to be his customers as well as his employees. Now globalized capital seeks to utilize the cheapest labour possible, wherever it can be found, including migrant and undocumented workers, in order to maximize profits. The result is a deepening inequity both between and within countries – the unmistakable harbinger of the failure of the economy.

So back to agriculture. Around 1980, when we organized the Northumberland Lamb Marketing Coop, we did not choose the conventional business model for a coop, which was really just another capitalist business model under a different name. Rather, we adopted a business model dedicated to the current welfare of the participants in the business – all the sheep farmers who sold their lambs through the co-op – and not to the welfare of the co-op itself through  capital accumulation.  We did not try to drive anyone out of business but rather to provide service and ‘product’ better than anyone else and provide the best return we could to the farmers. (Northumberlamb is still functioning on the same principles.)

It is unfortunate that today the monoculture of capitalist business structures dominates the agricultural scene just as monoculture industrial agricultural production dominates the landscape. It is even sadder to see the marketing of the diversity of organic foods following the same capitalist model, as if there were no alternative. Farmers, organic included, seem to feel that they have no choice but to follow the dominant business model and buy out or bankrupt their ‘competitors’ if they are to be successful.

What we desperately need are not more capitalist entrepreneurs, but social entrepreneurs, people who have the imagination and skills to put the essential pieces of a business together in a way that actually serves the common good, as Northumberlamb did. As the old saying has it, there are more ways than one to skin a cat.

cat skin

The Northumberlamb story, as told by Brewster and Cathleen Kneen at the Vancouver food security conference in October 2006,  can be heard by going to: www.cjly.net/deconstructingdinner/cfsc.htm  and clicking on the link. Thanks to Jon Steinman for excellent recording

 

#244: February 2007 TOC
More ways than one: we examine the case for a diversity of business models
National market share of food sales, 2005 (table)
Not just food and drink: Van Houtte coffee company is looking to break itself up despite profitablity
Cargill: Performing its patriotic duty -- producing ethanol
         Trans-fat free fats -- which are genetically engineered
Big Finance and Bad Ideas: Miguel Altieri and Eric Holt-Gimenez critique the $500 million University of California program on biofuels
Milk without Hormones: Posilac-free milk marketed as 'organic light'
More than just seeds: theological commentary from "Life-giving Agriculture" conference
"Mother-Baby" beats GMOs: researcher-farmer partnership has developed stress-tolerant maize
CWB ... the latest dirt: government appoints CWB Board president but he hasn't been paid yet
Creaming Off the Crop: West African farmers critique Bt cotton

 

Issue 245: March 2007

Thinking About Food Sovereignty

by Cathleen Kneen

I was honoured to be one of 500 people (and only 8 Canadians) to be invited to the global Forum For Food Sovereignty, held in Sélingué, Mali, West Africa, at the end of February. Most of the participants were people who earn their living by the work of their hands on the lands, waters, and forests of 86 different countries, and for them the language of food sovereignty seemed to come easily. For me it was a bit more of a stretch, as we have spent the last ten years in Canada working with the language of ‘food security’, which we consider to have both short-term (everyone has access to the food they need) and long-term aspects (the food system is both ecologically and economically sustainable).

I was therefore particularly interested to see how this incredibly diverse collection of people thought about food security and food sovereignty. In a nutshell, it appears to be this:

Food security is essential for people to live a healthy life. However, as readers of The Ram’s Horn are well aware, the food system globally is controlled by a handful of corporations which provide agricultural and food production inputs on an industrial scale, control processing from cattle slaughter to cotton gins, and brand and sell food at retail. They are not all the same corporations, of course, but there are strong links (and a common perspective) between them. And while food may be the focus of their businesses, their responsibility is to provide a return to their shareholders on a quarterly basis; feeding the hungry is purely incidental.

Given this situation, we can claim the right to food  and we should continue to do so  but recognize that governments are not in a position to implement it and corporations are not interested. What we must therefore do is assert food sovereignty: the authority of the people (community, nation, region, even state) to maintain, nurture, and protect their food producing capacity, whether it’s seeds, livestock breeds, water sources, shoreline, forests, soil micro-organisms, or traditional knowledge and practices. It is not, for example, that farmers have the right to save seed – saving seed is what farmers do. Nor is it necessarily an assertion that traditional varieties or practices are better, but rather that we recognize that diversity is the best strategy for survival.

I had a lot of conversations about this at the Forum, and afterwards had the opportunity to visit some farm co-operatives in Benin as a guest of the GRAIN staff for francophone Africa. There we saw food sovereignty being built from the ground up, with women growing and processing a variety of foods to eat and also to market – everything from cassava to oyster mushrooms – while at the same time organizing for farmer and regional autonomy, for example opposing the use of genetically modified seeds under the slogan“OGM = Organization Génératrice de la Mort  – Organization pour Mort des Campagnes” (in English, it would be GMO = Death-dealing Organization, Organization for the Death of the Countryside).

traditional maize varieties
traditional maize varieties

The conference was named after Nyéléni, “first daughter” in the Mandé language, and the name of an iconic Malian woman who through her hard work produced food, preserved and developed food crops, and supported the whole family. She stands for women as proud in themselves and their social role.  The meeting place was dominated by a very tall, slender statue of Nyéléni in the traditional West African style. In her shadow (literally) our efforts to develop an action agenda for food sovereignty started with the concrete: We began with the question: What are we fighting for? with special emphasis on what food sovereignty means at the local level; we then moved on to an analysis of the forces and tensions which are preventing food sovereignty under the question, What are we fighting against? Finally, we talked about what we can do about it: how to strengthen our movements, locally and globally. In some ways it was like the World Social Forum but with a strong commitment to come out with an action plan.

A range of actions were proposed: to promote a ban on the ‘Terminator’ technology; to stop dumping of low-price foodstuffs under the guise of food aid; to identify and publicize local knowledge so it cannot be privatized; to share information from research conducted at the very local level so as to counter corporate propaganda (eg. on the health effects of GMOs); to work on direct markets and sharing with urban and consumer groups; to oppose privatization of water and of coastal areas; to protect land access for indigenous communities.

        In Africa, as elsewhere, women are central to this effort, and the Forum began with a Women’s Day to ensure women’s perspectives were included in the later discussions. I had been asked to facilitate the theme on local knowledge and technology for the Forum, so I attended the women’s meeting on that theme as well. This small but diverse group had surprisingly little trouble agreeing to some basic questions to ask of any new technology:

  • do people have a real choice as to how to use it, and whether to use it or not?
  • who controls or owns it?
  • who benefits from it? does it benefit society at large?
  • does it leave space for the practice and teaching of traditional knowledge and methods?
  • does it encourage operation at a human scale?

The women’s group also emphasized the integrated and spiritual aspects of traditional ‘technology’. A woman from Brazil commented “traditional knowledge is in the seed itself” so the loss of plant species through and the imposition of ‘modern’ practices has led to huge losses in terms of both food and medicine. There are illnesses we used to be able to treat, she said, but we have lost both the plants and the knowledge of how to use them, including the appropriate ceremonies. The theft and the destruction of traditional knowledge has to be addressed internationally and we need public access research into traditional medicine and practices.

It is the poor and indigenous communities who suffer most from the imposition of monoculture and the consequent loss of their biodiversity and opportunity for appropriate and balanced diets. This monoculture is imposed in many ways. One technique is food aid, which dumps foodstuffs at prices below what the local producers need for their products, while the population learns to eat foreign foods (eg. wheat instead of millet). Local producers are thus forced into producing crops for the export markets. “Africa’s hunger,” declared one of the women, “is a result of colonialism.” Another example: in Chile there is a traditional breed of chickens which lay blue eggs. Now they have used those genetics to develop ‘industrial’ hens which require special food etc. but produce blue eggs, so people buy them thinking they are supporting the local small farmers.

Nyeleni cooks
Nyeleni cooks

Later discussions continued these themes. As an Indian village woman put it, food sovereignty begins at home. “Food sovereignty for us means that the women have cows,” she said, “and they can sell the milk and get money, or they can barter for other food with their neighbours.”  A Sri Lankan added: “When we visit friends, they can say, ‘Do you want red or white rice?’ and we can eat what we prefer – and the curries that go with it.

“When we have food sovereignty,” a traditional herder from India told me, “we are not dependent on the outside for our food, and we can use our traditional breeds and varieties without threat of contamination.” A young woman from Lebanon noted that this is particularly important in situations of conflict and occupation, while a delegate from Indonesia added that it is also critical to the resilience of communities struck by disaster (such as tsunami) as well as conflict.

“When we go to talk to the government,” said a woman from the Philippines, “they tell us that people in the US have been eating GMOs for 10 years with no ill effect; but our research shows that when GM corn was introduced on one of the island provinces of our country, we documented several health problems.” A delegate from Sri Lanka agreed. The problem, he said, is that there is no money for this kind of research, only for research which shows positive results. His team of academics and peasants found that after the imposition of a GM rice, there was a significant increase in a number of diseases which are also on the rise in North America, including diabetes, cancer, and infertility.

Although the majority of the participants were peasants and farmers associated with the global peasant organization, La Via Campesina, others from consumer groups and urban movements shared the same perspective. “We have to build alliances between consumers and producers,” said a woman from the Netherlands. “We have to insist on the value of food which is grown or harvested in our own regions, to protect the livelihoods of the people who produce and process our food.”

At Nyéléni, this understanding of food sovereignty as being built ‘brick by brick’ was reflected in the daily reality of our conference. The conference centre was a specially-constructed traditional African village of round whitewashed mud-brick huts with conical thatched roofs where we slept, and open-air meeting places protected from the blazing sun with roofs and walls of woven grass mats. A bank of cement cubicles held pit toilets with water taps and cold-water showers (which frequently worked) and after the first day there was even electricity. All this was constructed specially for  Nyéléni and remains as a facility for future conferences. Our food was also traditional, vats of millet, rice, and stews cooked on open fires by a team of local women. Like the interpreters, the administrators, and the medics, they were all volunteers. The result was that even though we often did not share a language (the conference operated in French, English, Spanish, and the local language, Bambara) there was a real sense of community. It is a strong foundation upon which to build our world-wide movement for food sovereignty.

Nyeleni village
Nyeleni village

#245: March 2007 TOC
Thinking About Food Sovereignty - Cathleen attends the world forum in West Africa
On Subsistence - Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, that contempt for women is central to the modern economy
Bird Flu: A Bonanza for 'Big Chicken' - GRAIN reports how the
industry is using the flu scare to consolidate its hold
Organic vs. Air Miles - arguments about efficiency lead to local and organic
Kenya: Coming Up Roses? - will buying local hurt people in the
developing countries?
Oil News - biggest consumers? ethanol and the Pentagon
Where does the farmers' money go? - a goodly chunk to the CEO of Agricore
Cargill Mill Occupied by Brazil Women - the Landless Rural Workers Movement took over a Cargill facility to protest the distortion of their economy by ethanol; their action is supported around the world on International Women's Day
Chiquita's drug habit - evidence of payoffs to Colombia paramilitary organization
One banana at a time - a new marketing strategy for Chiquita
Monsanto Anti-Farmers Patents - Public Patent Foundation has
succeeded in overturning one of Monsanto's Roundup Ready patents
The confused ideology of neoliberalism - The American Corn Growers Association comes out against Monsanto
Alfalfa : contaminate first - Monsanto seeks approval to spread its
GE alfalfa while it waits for USDA approval
What's a grocery store for? - there's a lot more in a big box than
food (or easy profits)

 

Issue 246: April/May 2007

 The Tyranny of Economic Growth

by Brewster Kneen

“Access to an adequate energy supply at reasonable cost is crucial for sustained economic growth.”
 – U.S. Council for Agricultural Science and Technology,
(see RH #243)

That’s the problem in a nutshell: the unquestioned assumption of economic growth with its dependency on high energy consumption. With the imminent demise of endless oil, biofuels are now touted as the saviour of sustainable economic growth, simply compounding the problem.

In previous Ram’s Horns I have noted that many of the problems produced by biotechnology derive from its central dogma of one gene, one protein. In the same way, sustained economic growth is the central dogma of western civilization in general and capitalism in particular. The realization of what fuels this growth has finally emerged from the dark of the coal mines and oil wells, as we observe the depletion of fossil fuels and the relentless consumption of all other so-called natural resources.

After a couple of centuries of this, it has finally dawned on us (or most of us) that these resources are finite in supply and that their extraction and consumption is wreaking havoc on what we refer to as ‘the environment’.

Actually, the words and concepts ‘resources’ and ‘environment’ and the way we use them are part of the problem: both have come to refer to something outside of and apart from us, even something over against us, rather than intrinsic elements of our own lives. ‘Resources’ implies things that are there for us to exploit, particularly for ‘economic growth.’ Just think of the implications of the term ‘genetic resources’ and the attitude toward life forms – plants, animals or humans – that it implies.

In exploiting and consuming ‘natural resources,’ including fossil fuels, to achieve our economic growth, we have paid little attention to the costs we have externalized in the process – the cost to other peoples and their habitat, or the cost to our environment.  It is time to call for a halt to economic growth, to the process of the rich getter richer by depriving others, (what used to be called greed) which is simply bad ecology and worse ethics.

Take Harper & Co. (after a year in office it still insists on calling itself “Canada’s New Government”) which is considerably more closely attuned to US madman Bush than to ecological reality.  Its late-March budget announced the allocation of $2 billion in support of renewable fuel production as well as $1.5 billion in direct subsidies to producers of corn-based ethanol. The renewable fuel fund specifically mentions Iogen, which operates a demonstration plant near Ottawa to convert cellulosic biomass (straw, switchgrass, plantation trees such as poplars) to ethanol.

This may sound like a good thing – certainly for the major ethanol producers such as Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill – but only as long as one does not make the connection with the private automobile and the trucking industry. Ethanol proponents argue that adding 5% ethanol to gasoline in Canada would produce an emissions reduction equivalent to taking 200,000 cars off the road, but of course those cars (not to mention trucks) are not actually being taken off the road, and the highways they require will cost the public unaccounted-for billions, both in terms of taxes and environmental degradation, to say nothing of maintenance and new construction costs.


oil junkie

The competition for biomass to feed the highly subsidized ethanol industry has recently driven up the price of corn/maize, soybeans and canola, and while this may appear of benefit to the farmers, the price of industrial agricultural inputs – nitrogen fertilizer produced from natural gas as well as patented seeds and agrotoxins – has risen as well. Meanwhile farmers are encouraged by the Canadian government to “participate” in the ethanol bonanza by investing their savings in local ethanol plants, only to be told by the big energy companies that they will not be looking for ethanol from small plants spread all over the countryside, but from big ethanol producers, such as ADM and Cargill.

These ethanol producers are, by and large, the grain traders, so as usual they benefit coming and going. Their raw material, maize, is heavily subsidized by the US government, and so is their product, ethanol. Agriculture remains at the short end of the stick as the supplier of raw materials.

“So why the stampede to make ethanol from corn? Because we [the USA] have so much of it, and such a powerful lobby promoting its consumption. Ethanol is just the latest chapter in a long, sorry history of clever and profitable schemes to dispose of surplus corn: there was corn liquor in the 19th century; feedlot meat starting in the 1950’s and, since 1980, high fructose corn syrup. We grow more than 10 billion bushels of corn a year in this country, far more than we can possibly eat . . . We probably can’t eat much more of the stuff without exploding, so the corn lobby is targeting the next unsuspecting beast that might help chomp through the surplus: your car.”
 – Michael Pollan, New York Times, 24/5/06
(see RH #240)

The addiction to fossil fuels induces outrageous behaviour. An illustration of this is the development of the tar sands in northern Alberta, which are sand more or less saturated with bitumen, or very heavy oil. Separating the heavy oil from the sands requires very large amounts of water and natural gas (to heat the sands so that the bitumen is somewhat fluid). Needless to say, the open-pit process is also a disaster for the landscape. However, “The Conservative government has signaled that it won’t let its climate change plan derail aggressive oil sands expansion, exempting new projects from greenhouse gas emission targets until three years after they are up and running.”    (G&M, 27/4/07)  Even then, companies can continue to increase production and pollution emissions while meeting the so-called “intensity targets” set by the government, since “intensity targets” refers not to an actual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but to producing no more pollution per unit of production. Thus more production equals more pollution. Environment Minister Baird said the new plan seeks to balance the environmental goals with the needs of a growing economy, explaining that the government feels it necessary not to impose initial emission limits on new plants in order to allow for economic growth.


feeding corn to cars

If the Canadian government were seriously concerned about the environment, it would address the problems directly rather than offer yet more subsidies to its corporate sponsors, particularly the large oil companies operating in Alberta.

A major issue that must be addressed, for example, is our excessive dependence on the truck and automobile. What is needed is development of public transit and local production. The only way to get the automobiles off the road is with massive improvements in public transit of all sorts, including rail. There is already good (but not adequate) train and bus service between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, so all air travel between these cities could be eliminated immediately.  The resulting increase in demand for super-train service would make it feasible, particularly if the public money (subsidies) currently spent on roads and highways were shifted to the development of public transit.

 The same process could be applied region by region across the country. When we lived in Sorrento, British Columbia, a mainline railway passed our place, but it carries no passengers, so we had little choice but to drive and/or fly the 430 km to Vancouver.  (The trains carry coal and sulfur to Vancouver Port and return with containers full of stuff from China  to fill retail shelves across the country.)

In Brazil, renewable sources account for 40% of total energy use, compared to the world average of 14%.  In 2006, Brazil became self-sufficient in oil production, chiefly because sugar-cane ethanol provides the fuel for 40% of domestic transportation. Ethanol is now produced from more than 500 cane varieties without irrigation; the raw cane is used to produce either sugar or ethanol, and in both cases the byproduct (bagasse) is used to generate heat and power in mills that can produce either. As a result, Brazil’s ethanol is the cheapest to produce in the world.
– Annette Hester, G&M, 7/3/07,www.igloo.org/whesternhemisphere/afreshap

 

#246: April/May 2007 TOC
The Tyranny of Economic Growth: Brewster says bio-fuels are neither necessary nor helpful; we need to reduce consumption
Insecurity in the Global Food System: the perils of melamine in
gluten, congestion in seaports may hamper global distribution systems
Railway abandonments continue and service declines: in western Canada
Canada lowers standards on agro-toxins to match US: all in the name of increased food quality, of course
GE Alfalfa: Banned in US, Approved in Canada
Balancing Demands: the industry looks at wildlife versus economic
growth, guess who wins
Prairie Cooperatives: Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and Agricore United
Good News from Brazil: silent attendance by critics at decision panel affects the decisions
Seeds Need to Stay Close to Home: the Fantons are re-localizing the Seed Savers network in Australia
Stopping Short: discussion of the just-in-time system
Where your food dollar goes: update on Cargill's annual profits
 

 

Issue 247: June 2007

Extreme Capitalism

 

Some of our very faithful readers will remember when The Ram’s Horn was devoted to all things sheep. It’s been a number of years now since a subscriber commented, ‘there is nothing about sheep in this issue!’ That subscriber is still with us, though, as we have expanded our horizons, and increasingly find ourselves focusing on the unrelenting advance of corporate consolidation and control which has come to characterize the global industrial food system. At the same time, of course, people are ‘pushing back’ through small-scale, locally-focused and ecological food and farming systems around the world.

As these two radically different agendas create stark alternatives, both farmers and the public have to make fundamental choices as to which road to take. Via Campesina offers the peasant way of food sovereignty, a subsistence perspective (in the words of Maria Mies), and a clear negation of  industrial production and corporate control, including control via genetic engineering, patenting and identity preserved contracts.

As for ‘the public’, some large environmental organizations seem to find it impossible to recognize the profound contradictions between the two paths. For example, World Wildlife Fund supports corporate monoculture GE soy production in South America, albeit with some qualifications, while the Nature
Conservancy supports tree plantations for biofuel production. Fortunately there are other organizations, such as GRAIN <www.grain.org and the World Rainforest Movement <www.wrm.org.uy> which have a clear head and a clear analysis of interests being pursued and games being played. The International Rivers Network <www.irn.org/> is another, with a critical focus on big rivers and dams.

It is, of course, in the interests of what used to be called agribusiness to mask their manipulations of wealth and power. The promotion of monoculture, GM agro-fuels as the ‘green’ solution to the energy crisis is one method. Another is the move to mammoth equity investment schemes which permit greater and greater concentration of control and profit at a level far removed from ordinary shareholders or the businesses they are assumed to control.

Example: The Amsterdam-based international food-and-beverage retailer Ahold NV sold its subsidiary US Foodservice, to a group of private-equity investors in a deal valued at $7.1 billion. The consortium buying US Foodservice, which supplies food to restaurants and hotels, is comprised of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice Fund VII LP and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. – WSJ, 3/5/07

sheep

Example: Carrefour SA, the world’s second-largest retailer, has agreed to buy Brazilian discounter Atacadao for about $1.09 billion (US). The deal will make Carrefour the largest food retailer in South America’s largest economy.  Carrefour’s total sales in Brazil in 2006 came to $5.16 billion.                   – FT, 24/4/07

Example:
 Emer ÓBroin, Monsanto’s VP Environmental Safety, Health and Human Rights, is the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) of the USA. Monsanto has been involved with WHC since 1989. “WHC is a nonprofit, non-lobbying organization dedicated to increasing the quality and amount of wildlife habitat on corporate, private and public lands. WHC devotes its resources to building partnerships with corporations and conservation groups to create solutions that balance the demands of economic growth [our emphasis] with the requirements of a healthy, biodiverse and sustainable environment.”                            – www.wildlifehc.org

Example:
 Monsanto made its first bid to buy Delta & Pine Land, the world’s largest cotton seed company, in 1998. The deal collapsed amid global controversy over Delta & Pine Land’s Terminator patent. In August 2006, Monsanto announced its second try for Delta & Pine Land; in June 2007 the United States Justice Department gave the green light for Monsanto’s $1.5 billion takeover of Delta and Pine Land (D&PL) contingent on divestiture of its Stoneville Pedigreed Seed Co. and NexGen cotton seed brand.  Monsanto has completed the sale of Stoneville to Bayer CropScience for $310 million and NexGen to Americot for $6.8 million, allowing it to proceed with the incorporation of  the D&PL business into its existing operations and policies.  At the same time, Monsanto has reaffirmed its existing policy not to develop or utilize sterile seed technology, such as the so-called ”terminator” technology, to which Delta and Pine Land has rights.
                      – www.Monsanto.com, 19/6/07

Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, accounts for more than one-fifth of the global proprietary seed market.  Based on 2006 revenues, the top 10 seed corporations account for 55% of the commercial seed market worldwide.  The top 3 companies – Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta – account for $8,552 million, or 44% of the total proprietary seed market. – www.etcgroup.org

Although Monsanto repeatedly insists that it does not hold patents on Terminator, Monsanto was granted a Terminator patent published under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, WO97/44465 “Method for Controlling Seed Germination Using Soybean ACYL COA Oxidase Sequences.” The 91-page patent, published in November 1997, details the company’s research on genetic seed sterilization and offers evidence of the company’s intention to apply for patents worldwide. The Canadian Patent Office granted a patent to Delta & Pine Land and the US Department of Agriculture for the Terminator technology they developed together in October, 2005.

Monoculture - from an art exhibit by Kim Jei-Min, Seoul

Monoculture - from an art exhibit by Kim Jei-Min, Seoul


 

 

#247: June 2007 TOC
Extreme Capitalism: moving from covering sheep issues to the issues of monocultures and equity investment
More than cotton fabrics: genetic manipulation of cottonseed
Corporate power: Agrofuels and the Expansion of Agribusiness - excerpts from a new article from GRAIN
Coke, Cargill, and Bottled Water: a series of items
Websites: recommended, the Bioscience Resource Project; request for suggestions for The Ram's Horn site
Brazil's Landless Break Up with Lula: the MST, Brazilian Movement of Landless Rural Workers, launches a strong critique of the President
Judge Bans Bayer's Transgenic Corn: Judicial disapproval in Brazil
Rigged Vote and Magic Sticks: Canada's Agriculture Minister's manipulation of due process
Big Meat: the game of leveraging and mergers and acquisitions in the global meat business
US needs its illegal migrant workers: how the rich get richer, again.
 

 

 

Issue 248: July 2007

Railways for Whom?

 

The history of Canada and Canadian agriculture is tightly bound up with the history, politics and financial interests of its two railroads: Canadian National and Canadian Pacific. Both played a major role in the colonization of western Canada and the shape of its agriculture as a function of evolving federal policy.  CP was always a private corporation, CN was privatized in 1995.

Great Northern Grain Terminals Ltd. (GNG), a small northern Alberta grain company, lodged a complaint of discrimination against Canadian National earlier this year for its systematic favouring of the largest of grain shippers, such as Cargill, ADM and Bunge, while making it virtually impossible for smaller grain shippers to get any kind of reasonable service from the railroad. In deciding in favour of GNG, the Canadian Transportation Agency said:

“In establishing car supply policies that have restrictive terms and conditions like minimum order durations that exclude significant segments of the shipper community, CN unilaterally becomes the arbiter of which of its captive shippers are eligible for a competitive advantage. Through its virtually exclusive control of rail service in portions of the western Canadian grain market, CN creates an imbalance and, inevitably, as seen in this case, a failure in the marketplace.”

The federal regulator ruled that the railway had discriminated against small shippers by dropping a program that allowed shippers to forward book 50 rail cars at a time and by implementing an incentive program for companies that can load 100 cars for a minimum of 30 consecutive weeks. “The agency finds that CN’s current car distribution options constitute a significant deterioration in the service options previously.”

Under the system introduced by CN a year ago, if a company such as GNG wanted cars, it had to bid on them in an auction and pay a premium. CN argued that in a deregulated system it has the right to offer different programs to encourage more efficient grain movement and the CTA doesn’t have the authority to interfere. . . Despite the deregulation of grain transportation in recent years, the CTA ruling stated, Canada’s railways are still obliged to meet what’s called ‘common carrier obligations’ and a ‘specified level of service’.”                                           – MC, 12/7/07

The CTA ordered CN to accommodate GNG’s shipping needs, make its car allocation process ‘fair, fully transparent and not discriminatory,’ have enough cars to meet its level of service obligations, offer 50% of its cars through general allocation, make 50-car blocks the minimum for advance car orders and allow shippers to trade among themselves. The CTA also ordered CN to stop auctioning cars to the highest bidder (this being important because the railways can influence the price by restricting the number of cars on offer).

fat cat

It’s not just the grain shippers that have problems with the railroads. Pulse Canada (pulses include lentils, beans, peas, chickpeas, fababeans and fenugreek) says that shippers of pulses (“special crops”) face problems such as timely access to railcars and containers, unfair allocation of equipment, dealing with rail cars that are unfit for transporting food items, and inconsistent and unreliable service from the railroads.                           – WP, 12/7/07

How the railroads will respond to, i.e. obey, the CTA decision remains to be seen. One must not underestimate the historic political power of the railroads, which retain an army of lobbyists – 117 of them – in Ottawa. And it was the Federal Government that sold off Canadian National and deregulated the railways  in the first place. 

“The Canadian National Railways (CNR) was created between 1918 and 1923, comprising several railways that had become bankrupt and fallen into federal government hands, along with some railways already owned by the government. . . In 1992 a new management team led by ex-federal government bureaucrats, Paul Tellier and Michael Sabia, started preparing CN for privatization by emphasizing increased productivity. This was achieved largely through aggressive cuts to the company’s bloated and inefficient management structure, widescale layoffs in its workforce and continued abandonment or sale of its branch lines. . . The CN Commercialization Act was enacted into law on July 13, 1995 and by November 28, 1995, the federal government had completed an initial public offering (IPO) and transferred all of its shares to private investors.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_National_Railway

Nor should one assume that the role and responsibility of the railroads is to serve farmers, shippers, or even Canada. A week after the CTA decision concerning GNG the business press reported that a private equity consortium led by Brookfield Asset Management and including Goldman Sachs & Co and Caisse de dépot et placement du Québec was “stalking” Canadian Pacific Railroad. The aim of such a buyout, of course, would be to squeeze greater profits out of CPR for the benefit of its owners. In 2006 CPR reported a profit of $796 million on sales of $4.58 billion, or 17%. That’s a great deal more than any farmer’s GIC or savings account is providing, and a great deal more than the farm itself returns.  It should be noted that Brookfield is not an innocent: until 2005 it was known as Brascan, with a colorful history both in Canada and in South America.

“Brookfield Asset Management Inc., focused on property, power and infrastructure assets, has over US$70 billion of assets under management. We own and manage one of the largest portfolios of both premier office properties and hydroelectric power generation facilities as well as transmission and timberland operations, located in North and South America and Europe.” – <www.Brookfield.com>

As usual, there is probably more in Brookfield’s vision than it appears. In this case, it might just be the money to be made by the railways in hauling potash from Saskatchewan to a deep water port to the west or south – or to the US corn belt.

track and elevator

Global demand, much of it highly subsidized, has enabled the fertilizer companies to substantially increase their prices this year.  Saskatchewan’s potash mining companies (Potash Corp., the world’s largest potash producer  in terms of capacity with 22 per cent of the total), Agrium Inc. and Cargill’s Mosaic Co. are among the beneficiaries. Worldwide, the three crops using the most potash per hectare planted are sugar cane, palm oil and corn, in that order. Saskatchewan sells vast quantities of potash to Malaysia, the world’s biggest supplier of palm oil; Brazil, the world’s second largest producer of ethanol, produced from sugar which requires about four times as much potash per hectare as wheat or soybeans; and the US, for corn production.. This year, farmers in the US have planted the highest number of acres with corn since 1944 as the subsidized demand for ethanol has boomed. Of course, Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta, as suppliers of seed corn, are laughing all the way to the bank as well.

 

#248: July 2007 TOC
Railways for Whom?: -- who controls the agenda of the country's major grain transportation?
Organic farming could feed the world -- new research supports small scale organic
    Pesticides reduce fertility: information from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    Is organic food healthier?: research shows higher levels of anti-oxidants
    Win some, lose some: Britain's largest retailer moves to reduce trucking - and cuts Prince Charles off the supplier list
Control of Livestock Genetics -- excerpt from a publication on centralized control of livestock production
Peruvian Region Says No to GM Potatoes -- in an effort to save the centre of origin for this crop
Banana Wars -- a book review
A NAFTA Precedent -- it's not food, but Canada Post win against UPS is a precedent
Improved Food Safety in Sub-Saharan Africa -- new research results on combatting aflatoxin
 

 

 

Issue 249: September 2007

Complexity and Diversity are the Rules of the Game

 

by Brewster Kneen

Remember the  little slogan – “one gene, one protein”– which laid the foundation for the ready approval of genetic engineering by Agriculture Canada, then the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, to say nothing of the US regulatory apparatus. Since then there has been almost a daily announcement of the discovery of a gene for this or that – obesity, hyperactivity, menopause, baldness, even sexual orientation. Perhaps it’s the gene for skepticism that keeps me saying “Nothing in life is that simple!” Long ago I started to just skip an article as soon as I spotted the word ‘promise,’ or some other conditionality, such as ‘if successful.’

“Biofortified Sorghum: the Promise of Improved Health and Nutrition”
“Sorghum is a dietary staple for more than half a billion people around the world because of its unique ability to grow in dry environments where irrigation is not accessible or affordable. However, it lacks some essential nutrients and is not easily digested.

“Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont business, is partnering with Africa Harvest (Florence Wambugu,CEO & project coordinator) as the scientific lead institution on the Africa Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) Project. The Project, with a budget of $18.6 million over five years, is funded by the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, itself funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

“The ABS project provides a ‘promising long-term solution – using biofortification – to fight hunger, malnutrition, and poverty in Africa,’ according to Pioneer scientist Paul Anderson, principal investigator of the project. . . .

If successful, in the long term, the project could help improve the health of 300 million people in Africa.”
[our italics] – The Africa Journal, USA, 1/7/07

Life was very simple in those days – and incredibly simplistic. The ‘scientists’ assured themselves and everyone else that they really did know what they were doing with their violent genetic interventions. The public remained skeptical, but the world of business and government wanted to believe the promises of the scientists and acted accordingly. So virtually every novel genetic construct devised in the name of ‘improvement’ to nature’s offerings was accepted as ‘safe’ and put on the market, starting about 12 years ago. Now the birds of truth – or genetic consequences – are coming home to roost.

gene
brewster

The Gene for Skepticism

Nothing could be further from the truth than ‘one gene, one protein.’ Diversity, complexity, and constant change (‘evolution’) are the biological facts of life. Of course, lots of  people have known this for a very long time. If  biology followed the rule of ‘one gene one protein’, diversity as we know it, including human diversity, would not exist.

To illustrate:

(1) “In June, a consortium of scientists published findings that challenge the traditional view of how genes function. The exhaustive four-year effort was organized by the United States National Human Genome Research Institute and carried out by 35 groups from 80 organizations around the world. To their surprise, researchers found that the human genome might not be a “tidy collection of independent genes” after all, with each sequence of DNA linked to a single function, such as a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease. Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood. . .

The presumption that genes operate independently has been institutionalized since 1976, when the first biotech company was founded. In fact, it is the economic and regulatory foundation on which the entire biotechnology industry is built. . .  Known as the Central Dogma of molecular biology, it stated that each gene in living organisms, from humans to bacteria, carries the information needed to construct one protein. . .  The scientists who invented recombinant DNA in 1973 built their innovation on this mechanistic, “one gene, one protein” principle. . . Evidence of a networked genome shatters the scientific basis for virtually every official risk assessment of today’s commercial biotech products, from genetically engineered crops to pharmaceuticals.

‘The real worry for us has always been that the commercial agenda for biotech may be premature, based on what we have long known was an incomplete understanding of genetics,’ said Professor Jack Heinemann of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury in New Zealand  . . . Yet to date, every attempt to challenge safety claims for biotech products has been categorically dismissed, or derided as unscientific. A 2004 round table on the safety of biotech food, sponsored by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, provided a typical example: ‘Both theory and experience confirm the extraordinary predictability and safety of gene-splicing technology and its products,’ said Dr. Henry I. Miller, who was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the Food and Drug Administration, and presided over the approval of the first biotech food in 1992.”
– Denise Caruso, NYT, 1/7/07

Now that the consortium’s findings have cast the validity of that theory into question, it may be time for the biotech industry to re-examine the more subtle effects of its products, and to share what it knows about them with regulators and other scientists.

eggs

(2) The complexity and unpredictability of biotech is neatly described in an article in, of all places, Harvard Business Review (Oct 2006), titled “Can Science be a Business – Lessons from Biotech.”  The author, Gary P. Pisano, refers particularly to the drug industry, but his insights apply equally well to plant biotechnology. His thesis is that while “the anatomy of the biotechnology industry looks quite similar to those of other high-tech sectors, such as software and semiconductors,” this anatomy does not work for biotech, because of the  “profound and persistent uncertainty, rooted in the limited knowledge of human biological systems and processes.”

The failure of biotech as business, Pisano writes, is also due to the intuitive or tacit nature of the knowledge in the diverse disciplines required in biotech research and development. In other words, the ‘precision’ that was the marketing hype of biotech for years was so much nonsense.

Pisano’s comments on the biopharmaceutical industry can equally be applied to food. “Whether a drug [food] candidate is safe and effective can be determined only through a lengthy process of trial and error. Despite extraordinary progress in genetics and molecular biology over the past few decades, scientists still find it extremely difficult to predict how a particular new molecule will work in humans.” If this is true, and there is no reason to think it is not, then the regulatory agencies that have been approving genetically engineered food and drugs based on simplistic and erroneous logic are behaving in criminal fashion with their speedy approvals of novel foods and powerful, but mysterious, drugs.

(3) Another illustration of the growing recognition of         nature’s complexity and the unpredictability of biotechnology is the recent publication of the whole genome of  J. Craig Venter. Venter has gained notoriety for a variety of reasons, but mostly for trying to sequence the human genome a few years ago before anyone else so that he could patent it all. John Sulston, working for the Wellcome Trust in Britain and committed to sequencing the human genome and putting all the data in the public domain, got the better of Venter who ended up, in effect, as a collaborator. (For Sulston’s story of the human genome project, read The Common Thread, 2002.) What is fascinating about the sequence of Venter’s very own genome is the revelation – or is it a confession – that his (or anyone else’s) genome is vastly more complex than anyone anticipated.

“Each time we peer deeper into the human genome we uncover more valuable insight into our intricate biology,” said Dr. Venter. “With this publication we have shown that human to human variation is five to seven-fold greater than earlier estimates proving that we are in fact more unique at the individual genetic level than we thought.” He added, “It is clear however that we are still at the earliest stages of discovery about ourselves and only with the sequencing of more individual genomes will we garner a full understanding of how our genes influence our lives.”
– J. Craig Venter Institute, Press Release, 3/9/07

Venter will probably be long gone before “we garner a full understanding,” but such arrogance has been the driver and ‘stuff’ of biotech up to now.

 

#249: September 2007 TOC
Complexity and Diversity are the Rules of the Game: Brewster challenges biotech's Central Dogma, 'one gene, one protein'
GE Insects Opposed in Southern British Columbia: tree fruit growers challenge new rules for importing GE insects
Raising the Steaks: packing plant woes
Good Ol' Mountain Dew Revisited: ethanol plants and selling the spent grains
Cattle Industry Dying From Ethanol Poisoning: Paul Beingessner looks at the sad state of the cattle industry in Canada
Eggs Are Seasonal, Too: Joel Salatin meets a creative chef
Food Aid: CARE opts out of lucractive aid scheme
Water, Cargill, and Corn: biodegradable bottles are still no better than tap water
Monsanto loses, for once: US court refuses to ban advertising of rBGH-free dairy
Lobbying for Agrotoxins and Biotech: a look at CropLife
 

 

 

Issue 250: October 2007

BINGO!

 

There’s a game called “Food Security Bingo” where you can only cross off a square that is called if it fits you. But I had no trouble with the question “Name a culture based on corn” – it’s North America, obviously. Just about everything we eat is based on corn, fractionated (isn’t that a lovely word?) into ingredients for just about every packaged food, and the packaging too.

I was playing the game at the Food Security Assembly of Newfoundland and Labrador, which made the question rather poignant. When I was growing up in St. John’s, there was a saying, “You can’t starve a fisherman” – and I’m sure a DNA sample of the average Newfoundlander would show that we were all made of cod and potatoes. But since the industrialization of the fisheries and the destruction of the Northern Cod, hunger is a reality, Newfoundlanders rely on imported packaged food, and they are now as full of corn as the rest of us.

Happily, however, they are fighting back. The Assembly attracted more than 100 people from all over the province, including a sizeable contingent of Indigenous people (Inuit, Innu, Mi’kmaq) and a smattering of passionate young organic farmers. Behind the registration was a table overflowing with local produce, from berries to lettuce and tomatoes, brought from local farms. In keeping with this, the presentations at the conference focused, not on the crises of hunger and obesity, although they have been important in sparking the food security movement in the province, but rather on the elements of food security which are being built with an East Coast twist.

The young mayor of Branch, a village on the South Shore of Newfoundland, described the ‘Singing Kitchen’ – a community meal designed to bring together isolated seniors for food and a traditional sing. A young farmer argued that since food is medicine, the province should pay for the training of farmers who commit to local agriculture, just as it pays for the training of physicians who commit to two years of practicing in the outports. Perhaps the most powerful presentation was a simple description by a respected elder of the Innu Nation in Labrador of her annual trips “to the bush and country” and two-week annual canoe trips with local youth, to teach them how to live in, and on, the land. It was this vision which I think inspired the spirit of the gathering: to learn to think again in terms of subsistence, to celebrate and learn to use what it is that the land offers.

Newfoundland is not known as “The Rock” for nothing. The growing season is short and the soil is thin. However, Newfoundlanders also don’t give up easily, and they don’t like to be dependent. I was impressed by the willingness I saw at the Assembly to drop their differences and prejudices and work together to find ways to feed themselves. And sing about it.
   C.K.

For more information on the Newfoundland and Labrador Food Security Network, see  <www.foodsecuritynews.com>

Winner of the DNA Cup
Winner of the DNA Cup

 

#250: October 2007 TOC
Bingo! - Cathleen reports on the food security assembly in Newfoundland
R.I.P. Prairie Agriculture Co-Ops - latest merger clearly ends the farmer-led vision
Minister Supports Organics - Saskatchewan government looks favourably on organics
Persistent Bacterium - new research shows bacterium can transfer into other genomes
"We have no clue..." - Dow spokesperson is unusually candid
Energy and Synthetic Fuels - relating energy policy to other policy areas:
    * Synthetic fuels from slaughterhouse waste
    * Agrofuels not climate-friendly
    * A way to sell more
    * Rising food prices, inflation
Cargill update: (see also 'Cargill Profile')
    * Record 'earnings' - revenues for the last fiscal year were $88.3 billion
    * Kitchen Solutions (egg and breakfast products division)
    * Biodegradable packaging - an agreement with Teijin (Japan)
    * Cargill Canada - the grain trade
Healthy information policy - Sweden gives out information to public!
Roundup Ready diplomat - US ambassador pushes Afghanistan to spray poppies
What does 'Natural' mean? - we look at ice cream and what it's made of, including fish genes
    * Technical Background from ISIS

 

 

 

Issue 251: November 2007

Home on the Range

 

In cowboy culture, cattle ranchers are “real men”, while shepherds are ... well, not really. So I couldn’t resist a wry smile as I read an article in Western Producer (1/11/07) about cattle ranchers converting to sheep, even as one sheep promoter admitted, “it’s not easy being a sheep producer in cattle country”. The final paragraph quotes Merrell Dickie as saying, “There is a real need for consistent, year-round supply. All the big stores want lamb every day of the week” –  and every week of the year, I would add.

We built the Northumberland Lamb Marketing Co-op – ‘Northumberlamb” – on this understanding 25 years ago. In those days, the only ‘big store’ in the Maritimes was Sobey’s, and Frank Sobey himself supported our endeavor because he wanted fresh lamb in his stores year-round. It took us – a small group of dedicated farmers  – just two years to achieve that! So I’m glad to hear now that farmers in Alberta have finally gotten the message. Of course, one of the reasons they are able to hear the message is that cattle prices are lower than ever. A few years after taking up sheep on our own farm Cathleen and I sold our 30-cow herd during one of the rather frequent bottoms of the “beef cycle,” but we did not regret it, even though running sheep and cattle together would have been the better practice agronomically. We just could not manage it on our scattered land base. 

Dickie’s singing the praises of Sunterra Meats brings on another wry smile. Sunterra’s sheep business is based on a slaughterhouse/packing plant in Innisfail, Alberta. For a while back in the 80s Innisfail was a big pain in the ass to the livestock farmers because of the huge government subsidies that enabled the plant to be built and subsequently undercut prices. In Nova Scotia we were far enough away, and well enough established, to be unaffected, but the same could not be said for the rest of the country. I would still pick a bone with Sunterra because, according to its website, it guarantees its customers that all its lambs are grain-fed for a minimum of 60 days. Our goal was to maximize grass-fed lamb, with grain being fed primarily because the grass does not grow in a Maritime winter and we were supplying fresh lamb year round. Anyway, we wish Sunterra well, along with the cattle ranchers who have had the wool pulled off their eyes.

Unfortunately we cannot end this little story at this point. Next to the article on sheep was one on the sorry state of the cattle business. Prices are worse than ever, at least for the farmers and ranchers.  Now, the article concludes, the only optimism regarding cattle is that prices have been low before and they eventually bounce back. As the rancher quoted says, “The optimism will come from the fact that it has always corrected itself in the past.” Cargill, of course, as the major cattle processor in Canada, stands to benefit hugely from this naive optimism.  

cowboy
A 6-year-old's Vision of a Cowboy

A more sober, personal report on the cattle scene is provided by Paul Beingessner of Truax, Saskatchewan:

It was the accumulation of bills from a season of sowing and reaping that caused me to sell 25 of my calves last week. Those bills hanging over my head, coupled with a less than average hay crop, put me in something of a no-choice situation. It hasn’t rained appreciably since the end of June here, and dried up pastures and little-to-no regrowth on hay fields added to the need to pare down the number of head chewing on dead grass.

So I took a look at the stack of bills on my desk, eyed the cattle prices in the farm papers, and did a little calculating on how much I needed out of the herd right now. I figured twenty-five calves, topped up with a half dozen cull cows should at put a dent in the credit card balance. I did this, calculating what I figured was a realistic price for those calves. Not a good price mind you, but a realistic one. If they averaged $500 apiece I figured I could get by.

Of course the idea of $500 calves left me pretty glum. Even at the peak of the BSE crisis, I always managed to average better than that. What came out of the envelope from the auction mart left me more than a bit glum. It pretty much reduced me to an incoherent, blubbering mess.

For one thing, the weights were lower than I  expected. That was due to the dry, hot summer and pastures that went prematurely brown. But when weights are down, price per pound is usually up. After all, someone else has the opportunity to put more weight on the smaller calves. Wrong. The sorry truth was that 15 steer calves, averaging a post-shrink 510 pounds, brought an average of only $428. Even worse, ten heifer calves, averaging 490 pounds, brought a dismal $382. It was a far cry from the $500 of my pre-sale fantasy.

The deepest insult came with a 495 pound  red steer that sold for 57 cents a pound, bringing a whopping $274. I checked my records from previous years. A calf from the same cow in 2004, in the middle of the BSE crisis, was somewhat heavier at 530 pounds. However, it returned $538, nearly double this year’s take.

And don’t get me started about those six  cull cows. With an average weight of 1,343 pounds and a price of 18 cents a pound, they brought $243 each. I checked out the dressing percentages of cull cows on several internet sites. I figure those cows were each good for at least 450 pounds of lean hamburger. Of course, the packer likely ripped out the top loins and a few other choice bits, sold the livers, tongues, and other organs, and covered his processing costs just from the offal.

When I got the cheque from my calves, I was furious. The trouble was, I had no idea whom to be angry with. But give me a few months, and I might just figure it out. I wonder if it could be the folks who turn a $243 cow into $800 to $1,000 worth of food?                         – Paul Beingessner

 

#251: November 2007 TOC
Home on the Range: Brewster looks at the woes of cattle ranchers, with a story from Paul Beingessner
Of course, why didn't we think of that before? - a technological 'solution' for beef farmers
Workers Win Damages Against Pesticide Company - Nicaraguan farmworkers win a suit against Dow Food
Non-GM Premium Prices - soy, canola, and lamb
So why are farmers growing more GM crops? - farmer Colleen Ross explains the pressure to keep up appearances
Collusion - BASF sets the rules for field trials in the UK
The Editorial Process - Writing an article on good fats and bad fats
Chicken Soup ... - announcement of hens manipulated to produce pharmaceutical eggs
... With Rice - and announcement of GE rice to 'grow' pharmaceuticals
The "Tortilla Crisis" - the effects of subsidized corn production for ethanol on food prices
US Farm Subsidies for Mega-Corps - cotton supports go to Cargill
Classifying 'Consumers' - Nestle reveals its target demographics
Just in time for Holiday Giving! - Devlin Kuyek's new book, Good Crop/Bad Crop: Seed Politics and the Future of Food in Canada is a great read and available, hot off the press, from The Ram's Horn