GM food

When it comes to evolution, no reputable scientific organisation supported the ploy by creationists some years back to put “intelligent design” on an equal scientific footing with evolutionary biology, however, many in the GMO debate deny and muddy established, consensus science in a similar way as those religious fundamentalists and also climate change skeptics have done by claiming equal access time and for the "right for people to know".

A longtime opponent changed his former position and endorsed the use of genetically modified crops. Mark Lynas is a British environmentalist who helped start the anti-biotechnology movement in the 1990s and who took part in destroying test plantings of GE crops. Lynas realized that he had never done any academic research on biotechnology, despite his strongly held opposition to it. "So I did some reading," he said, "and I discovered that one by one my cherished beliefs about GM turned out to be little more than green urban myths." Lynas said there is "rock-solid scientific consensus" on the safety of biotech food. "We no longer need to discuss whether or not it is safe—over a decade and a half with 3 trillion GM meals eaten there has never been a single substantiated case of harm," he said. "You are more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to get hurt by GM food."

The issue of herbicide resistance is not unique to GMO crops. Whenever a pesticide is used year after year in the same place on the same target populations, resistance to that pesticide will develop. With any pesticide, and with any genetically engineered crop that involves pests, the pesticides must be rotated to prevent any resistance genes that develop from spreading throughout the population. While crops resistant to glyphosate have resulted in a switch away from other herbicides to glyphosate which has resulted in an increase in glyphosate resistant weeds, this is not due to genetic engineering. The problem is a lack of integrated pest management strategies that incorporate a variety of solutions.

The real issue isn't GM technology itself or its safety, but what it's being used to do. Biotech is often used, not to feed people, but to line the pockets of Big Ag Corporations with many companies trying to patent pieces of genome, like Mosanto that copyright seeds, then prohibit the cleaning and re-using of seeds in order to make more money off them. What bio-tech is being used FOR is the much bigger issue than the technology itself.

food for thought

The Green Economy movement is really a greenwashed attempt to create a new model of capital accumulation for global corporate capitalism, based on "the commodification of the commons." Green Capitalism, like the first Industrial Revolution, is based on a large-scale process of primitive accumulation (a technical term Marxists use that simply means massive theft). The primitive accumulation preceding the rise of the factory system in industrial Britain involved the enclosure of common lands. The new green model of corporate-state capitalism partly based on agricultural land-grab but also on enclosing digital information and innovation, heavily reliant on patents and copyrights than the existing version of corporate capitalism. The "green capitalist" model is intended as a response to the primary threat facing corporate capitalism and its model of capital accumulation: the technological potential of abundance. If allowed to operate without hindrance, the free adoption of technologies and freely replicable digital information would not only destroy most existing corporate profits but render most investment capital superfluous. It's this threat, all the "progressive" rhetoric aside, that "green capitalism" is intended to head off. It's a last-ditch effort to rescue an entire system of class privilege and economic exploitation based on artificial scarcity from the revolutionary impact of abundance.

Organic food is riding a surge in popularity; across the globe, sales of organic food are burgeoning. And where consumers go, the multinational food companies follow: everyone from Uncle Tobys to Kraft, Heinz, Kelloggs and even Coca-Cola has jumped on the bandwagon. And developing countries are joining in too: China's organic exports grew 200-fold in a decade to reach US$200 million in 2004. Australia is also a major exporter, and plans to increase its organic produce by 50 per cent by 2012. Popular or not, it's clear that organic food is not necessarily healthier, nor more sustainable or better for the environment. With the Earth's climate changing fast, and the human population heading for nine or 10 billion, we need solutions based on scientific evidence rather than faith and good intentions.

Rachel Carson's  1962 book Silent Spring unleashed public concern about the dangers of synthetic chemicals, not just to birds and animals, but to humans. The incidence of human cancers were rising and suspicion fell on man-made farming chemicals. There's no doubt exposure to high doses of pesticides is hazardous to health: in countless studies, high doses given to laboratory animals have caused birth defects, sterility, tumours, and damaged organs. But as any toxicologist will tell you, most chemicals – natural or synthetic, are toxic at high doses. The question is not, "do pesticides cause cancer?" Rather, do the small traces of pesticide residue we eat in our food really cause a problem?

Organic does not mean “small family farm,” though big agriculture tends to want us to think that.  Many organics are what can be considered industrial agriculture, grown in monoculture, and take quite a bit of fossil fuels to grow. Organic does not mean “whole food” or even “fresh food.”  Many organics are highly processed, including organic cookies, chips, sodas, frozen dinners and mixes.  It’s still convenience food, which is fine in a pinch, but also higher calories and in more packaging. Organic does not mean “local” or “seasonal.”  Many organics are packaged in plastic and shipped long distances.  New Zealand organic apples, anyone?

Organic food is no healthier than ordinary food. There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce. The Food Standards Agency, which commissioned the report, and the researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at all the evidence on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years. Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance. Overall the report found no differences in most nutrients in organically or conventionally grown crops, including in vitamin C, calcium, and iron. The same was true for studies looking at meat, dairy and eggs. Differences that were detected, for example in levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use and ripeness at harvest and are unlikely to provide any health benefit. However, the review did not look at pesticides or the environmental impact of different farming practices.  The FSA was neither pro- nor anti-organic food and recognised there were many reasons why people choose to eat organic, including animal welfare or environmental concerns.

‘Big Food’ may be much criticised, but  large food producers have millions of dollars invested in their brands and reputations. They also have the scale of operation to put in place specialist safety testing and management.Historically, most food-related diseases are due to bacterial and fungal contamination, so in terms of health consciousness, focussing on pesticides is probably barking up the wrong tree. Three people from E. Coli poisoning related to spinach from a farm being converted to organic production, and 25 deaths from listeriosis caused by cantaloupes from a ‘pesticide-free’, family-operated farm in Colorado. A more recent incident, which may have occurred after the book went to press but confirms the point, is the death of 50 people after eating organic beansprouts from a farm in Germany last year. No matter how hard they try, local organic farmers may not be able to compost their manure properly or to control salmonella.

To achieve high yields from food crops requires disturbing nature to deliver just what the crops need. First off, crops need fertiliser, which is often nitrogen in the form of nitrate and ammonia, because most plants can't draw nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. (Legumes are a famous exception – their root nodules hold bacteria that turn atmospheric nitrogen into nitrate.) Second, there has to be a way of stopping all the other robust plant and insect species from competing with or consuming your crop. Non-organic farmers make use of chemicals to achieve these goals. Just prior to World War I, German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch learned to make ammonia synthetically. Their chemical reaction is still used today to produce more than 450 million tonnes of artificial fertiliser per year, and sustains the agriculture which feeds about
60 per cent of the Earth's population.

Organic farmers source nitrate from manures, gradually broken down by soil organisms. They use only naturally-occurring products to control pests, such as the elements sulphur and copper; pyrethrins and rotenone (both made by plants); BT spray and Spinosad (both made by bacteria). However, these natural pesticides are not harmless. For instance, sulphur irritates the lungs, and rotenone has been shown to cause Parkinson's disease in rats.

Scientists are unable to test these chemicals directly on humans, so they use rats instead. To establish the maximum dose considered to be safe for humans, they find a dose that's completely safe for rats. Then they divide it by 100. Testing by Australia's national regulator, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, shows that pesticide levels measured in food are either well below the recommended maximum dose or are completely undetectable. People live about 80 years longer than rats: that's 80 years longer for pesticide cocktails to accumulate and wreak havoc. Even so, it turns out that a lifetime's consumption of synthetic pesticides is a drop in the ocean compared to the natural pesticides we consume from the plants we eat. Plants have evolved a vast pharmacopeia of chemical weapons, and we consume many of these 'weapons' daily: caffeine in coffee, solanine in potatoes and psoralens in celery, to name just three.

Even the freshest organic apples – as well as other plant foods – contain natural compounds which, when extracted and given to rats in high doses, cause tumours. Toxicologist Bruce Ames of the University of California became famous in the 1970s for sounding the alarm on the cancer-causing (or carcinogenic) potential of man-made chemicals. But after testing 'natural' pesticides in rats, he called off the warning. A paper he published in 1990 said it all. Entitled, "Dietary Pesticides (99.99 per cent All Natural)", it reported that in a regular diet, people consume about 10,000 times more natural carcinogens than synthetic ones. According to Ames, a single cup of coffee contains more natural carcinogens than a year's worth of the pesticide residues eaten on fruit and vegetables.

A comprehensive review of some 400 scientific papers on the health impacts of organic foods concluded there was no evidence that eating organic food was healthier. If chemical pesticide use was  hazardous to health, then farm workers should be most affected. The results of a 13-year study of nearly 90,000 farmers and their families in Iowa and North Carolina suggests we really don't have much to worry about. These people were exposed to higher doses of agricultural chemicals because of their proximity to spraying, and 65 per cent of them had personally spent more than 10 years applying pesticides. If any group of people were going to show a link between pesticide use and cancer, it would be them. They didn't. Compared to the normal population, their rates of cancer were actually lower. And they did not show any increased rate of brain-damaging diseases like Parkinson's. There was one exception: prostate cancer. This seemed to be linked to farmers using a particular fungicide called methyl bromide, which is now in the process of being phased out. According to James Felton, of the Biosciences Directorate of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who also chairs the study, "The bottom line is the results are coming out surprisingly negative. It's telling us that most of the chemicals we use today are not causing cancer or other disease."

Agriculture, both ancient and modern, has always been about adapting the landscape and finding ways to get more production out of the same land, as the authors point out. The assumption is that what we are seeing is potentially devastating soil degradation and/or enormous losses in biodiversity. In fact, soil degradation is much worse in poorer countries and among nomadic peoples. Big farmers have maintained soil quality and vastly increased yields. The best method to avoid such erosion is ‘no till’ agriculture, which relies on synthetic herbicides and genetically modified crops that food activists decry. The earthworm-rich soils, so prized by organic farmers, are being achieved through contemporary no-till (or no-plough) techniques. One high-tech solution is known as no-till farming. The plough may be the icon of farming, but it turns out that ploughing actually wrecks the soil. Compared to the bad old days where virtually every part of a field was ploughed, these days the scars are restricted to two-centimetre-wide furrows 30 cm apart. No-till systems also win hands down when it comes to hanging on to soils. An 11-year farming experiment by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland, compared crops grown three ways: conventional tillage, organic methods, or no-till. Compared to the conventional tilled plot, the organic plot was likely to hang on to 30 per cent more soil. But compared to the organic plot, the no-till plot hung on to 80 per cent more soil. (It's possible to combine organic and no-till on a small scale by relying on hand weeding. But that's not practical for large-scale farming. And without tilling, it's difficult to work manures into the soil.) In Australia, most farmers use rotation to get crops out of synchronisation with weeds and to return nutrients to the soil. Natural predators are being used to control pests, and companies such as Dow Chemical are producing safe, short-acting pesticides. In fact Dow's latest pesticide, Spinosad, is also happily used by organic farmers because it is naturally produced by bacteria.

The soil that farmers prize has a structure that resembles a stack of peas with pores running through it. Earthworms and other creatures maintain this structure, and the whole thing is meshed together by the tendrils of fungi and plant roots. In other words – a spongy soil that holds onto water and won't blow away. Too much tillage destroys that structure, so a method of no-till farming had to be developed.  Tillage is used to bury the previous year's crop residue and destroy weeds. But in no-till farming, herbicide removes the weeds and the new seed is sown directly into the stubble of the last crop. Leaving the stubble in the soil means the planet benefits. All that carbon kept in the ground by no-till farming reduces carbon dioxide emissions by up to eight million tonnes per year.

The concept of‘"food miles" and eating local is flawed. Despite its popularity, the concept and its underlying rationale have been convincingly debunked in numerous life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies, a methodology that examines the environmental impact associated with all the stages of a product’s life cycle, from raw-material extraction to disposal of the finished product. Transportation is only one small element of the environmental impact of food production. In the US, for example, researchers have found that the "food miles" segment (the bit from producer to retailer) only accounts for 4% of total emissions, but 83% of a household’s carbon emissions related to food come from the production of the food. Therefore, food should be produced in the most ideal circumstances in order to minimise those emissions. That’s why it makes more sense for British people to eat New Zealand lamb or Spanish tomatoes, environmentally, than eating local, because the efficiency of production more than makes up for the distance travelled. Moreover, buying fresh from around the world makes more sense than storing local production. Indeed, the short hop to the supermarket by car to bring home a comparatively small amount of food may cause more carbon emissions than the shipping - or even flying - of food in bulk from thousands of miles away. You specialise in what you do best rather than being a jack of all trades  , you become more efficient at it and we are all better off. One of the main lessons to be learned from  experience over the last century-and-a-half is that autarkic food policies, relying on their own production or that of their local area can only result in disaster. If improving sustainability and reducing the environmental footprint is the goal, we need to be prepared to use the best tools we have. Going ‘organic’ and/or ‘local’ would mean lower yields and hence more wild land being brought into food production. That hardly seems to count as sane stewardship. Our problem is that we’re not globalised enough. There is one way the world can feed all the billions alive today with organic farming: we all go vegetarian. Half the world's grain is grown for cattle, and this is undeniably a highly inefficient use of soil, farming land and resources. But the reality is that the demand for meat is forecasted to double by 2030.

Modern farming techniques have evolved after decades of pressure from the environmental movement and decades of work by a generation of scientists inspired by environmental awareness. In fact, conventional farming is starting to look a lot like organic farming. For example, organic farmers will use litres of BT spray (BT is a 'natural' pesticide made by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis), yet they often demonise the genetically modified (GM) cotton crops that carry an inbuilt supply of BT, and which therefore require less spraying. However, these GM varieties spare farmers – and the environment – from the risks of pesticide overuse. For instance, according to Richard Roush, the Dean of land and food resources at the University of Melbourne, cotton farmers in India have reduced their use of pesticides and accidental poisonings by 80 per cent since the introduction of genetically modified BT cotton.

The free market is seriously flawed, but the answer is not to tinker around with it but to supersede that system with something better and not retreat into the limitations of the past. The real fact of the matter is that there is already enough food to feed the world's population right now and into the future. The US and Europe wastes millions of tonnes of food each year. Quite simply, GM food is not needed to feed the world. Let's farm along with nature, not against it. The message is clear: develop sustainably and conserve thoughtfully. Agricultural biodiversity is the foundation for all food production and our food security. GM crops which have come up in the recent past are the greatest singular threat for biodiversity. A broad genetic base is vital for healthy agriculture and overcoming new epidemics of pests and diseases and for adapting to climate change. Such a base is immensely reduced in the case of GM crops as they encourage monoculture. What socialists seek is a self-organised, decentralised economy, in which ordinary people take advantage of new technologies of abundance. The beauty of the age we live in is that we possess new production technology. So the question is, which model do we want to follow?  Toiling under the domination of bosses and corporations or a society of self-governance, leisure and mutual cooperation. That said, agriculture - of whatever kind - is there to feed people.

the land grab

Farmland investments may return an average of 8 percent to 12 percent annually as global food demand increases, said the largest U.S. pension manager for teachers and academic researchers with $469 billion of assets. The pension manager buys land and leases it back to farmers, The company has $2.5 billion invested in farmland and owns about 600,000 hectares (1.48 million acres) mostly in the U.S., Brazil and Australia. Returns in the past few years have been at the high end of the 8 percent to 12 percent range.

Farmland values in one of the most-productive regions in the U.S. Midwest soared 17 percent in the second quarter as higher grain prices made real estate more attractive

Shrinking land and water supply in countries including China and India, will limit their capacity to boost food production, creating import demand. That’s going to be met by the major exporting regions in North and South America, Australia, and parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-06/farmland-seen-returning-up-to-12-by-u-s-pensions-manager.html

Myths about GM

Good to see a counter case being presented against those Greens who oppose Genetic Modification.

Myth one: GM is just haphazard, imprecise cross-breeding

In genetic engineering, scientists can very precisely select genes and introduce them into their target species. The wheat we consume today, for example, is a natural hybrid of three different wild species. This has resulted in bringing tens of thousands of genes together in several independent events. It is responsible for wheat being such an important crop. Modern wheat breeders release new varieties after introducing thousands of unknown genes from wild grasses without any regulatory requirements or special testing and with no genetic engineering involved. This is very haphazard and we do not know what genes are being introduced, apart from the target gene we know is present. The irony is that the precise introduction of a single gene is heavily regulated yet the introduction of thousands of unknown genes from wild grasses into a new wheat variety via traditional breeding methods is regarded as being completely acceptable.

Myth two: GM is a cure-all for more efficient land use and food security

GM technologies are just one of the tools that may be useful. Other important contributions to land use and food security come from traditional breeding, agronomy, land management and sustainability research. Breeding new varieties of any species requires multiple selection and evaluation methodologies, and there are a lot of conditions at play when developing better wheat.A new variety has to offer an advantage to the grower, it must have good yields and be adapted to the region where it is grown. It must also have good resistance or tolerance to diseases.GM technologies are generally only suitable for the single gene traits, not complex multigenic ones. Over time, GM may contribute to factors such as grain yield and drought resistance as we learn more about the basic biology underpinning these traits and identify the key genes to optimise. More importantly, it must be beneficial for end users and consumers.

Myth three: GM is harmful to the environment

In fact, there have been many environmental benefits from GM.GM technologies have massively reduced pesticide use in all circumstances where pests have been targeted. For example, the GM cotton varieties that are insect resistant reduce pesticide use by up to 80%. This reduced use of pesticides has other flow-on effects: less greenhouse gas associated with lower diesel use; less pesticide run-off; less residual pesticides; more biodiversity and improvements in human safety.

Myth four: GM means creating Frankenfoods

Often GM technologies don’t involve the introduction of any new genes from another species. Rather they turn the “volume” up or down of a certain gene already present in our crops (rather than introducing foreign genes). Some of them just silence, or “turn off”, a particular gene. Silencing can be important in modifying grain composition. For example, modifying starches can result in grains that have the potential to reduce the incidence of certain cancers. Turning up the volume is used to over express some genes, such as those that detoxify excess levels of aluminium in the soil or solubilise nutrients in the soil to improve the nutrition of plants.

Taken from Richard Richards here ,

The Killing Fields

It is estimated that a billion people go hungry each day. People are hungry today not because there is no food. They are hungry because the food is too costly and because of its distribution. We need food to survive and food is big business and with rising populations fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides and other such chemicals find their way into our systems giving big profits. It is not that big businesses and political leaders do not know that they are responsible for killing people and destroying livelihoods in the developing world, not to mention the destruction of biodiversity and natural resources. Yet they continue their policies and practices.

There are over 1000 million farmers and nearly all of them live in the developing world only around 50 million live in developed countries where agriculture is highly mechanized. Farmers of these developing world constitute half the world’s rural poor but they produce 4/5ths food supplies.

Over the past 40 years approximately 30% (1.5billion hectares) of the world’s cropland had become unproductive due to soil erosion and degradation. It takes approximately 500 years to replace 25mm (1inch) of topsoil lost to erosion. The minimal soil depth for agriculture production is 150mm.

The easy choice to increase food production has been the use of pesticides, fertilizers, insecticides & scores of other chemicals being sprayed across arable land. The concept of pesticides is nothing new and has been used for centuries. It was in the mid 20th century that different types of pesticides came to be used in limited amounts. Today, more than 1600 pesticides are available and more than 4.4million tons costing more than $20billion used annually. Whatever names they come in they are all poisonous and excessive amounts entering one’s system is likely to lead to adverse affects to the entire human system, to biodiversity and to the aquatic environment. Farmers use 4 major kinds of substances on crops and livestock – pesticides and herbicides, contaminated sewage sludge (human waste used to fertilize non-organic crops) which eventually became mixed with chemicals and industrial waste which lead to chronic illnesses in human body, use of hormones, antibiotics and remains of other animals (found in dairy products, meat & eggs) one of the causes of mad cow disease & then irradiation (exposure to radiation likely to lead to many diseases). Every year pesticides kill more than 200,000 people worldwide. Do we really need toxic pesticides when we know they kill humans and upset the entire eco system? The answer to feeding the world’s population is not found in poisoning the earth and waters that grows our food or decreasing the diversity of the seeds with GMOs.

The pesticide industry has today diversified into biotechnology and genetic engineering industry and this is being promoted in lieu of pesticides. Nevertheless, what happens is new pests are created necessitating use of pesticides. Moreover, genetically modified seeds are pushing farmers into debt. How many keep count of the scores of Indian farmers committing suicide? So companies are getting richer because they insist on pesticides and genetically modified organisms. Yet, why has everyone ignored the fact that ecologically organic agriculture produces more food at lower costs than chemical agriculture? Commercial farming has helped only the rich!
All the chemicals being used to grow our food are running into our water and creating dead zones not to mention the harm they are doing to our bodies which all lead to some sort of cancer. We are eating synthetic foods and digesting chemicals and none of us are eating healthy. Genetically modified foods are not sustainable, they only serve to rob poor countries of their natural food while enslaving them to corporations.

Disease and cancers are spreading at alarming rates all over the world and the only plausible conclusion is that most of these illnesses co-relate to the food we take. Most doctors are clueless on how to treat these ailments. Leukemia has increased by 11% over the past 20 years. Brain cancer is up by 30%, bone cancer has gone up by 50% while testicular cancer has gone up by 60^ in men under 30 years of age. Children whose parents work with pesticides are more likely to suffer from leukemia, brain cancer and other ailments. Studies of farm workers who work with pesticides suggest a link between pesticides and brain cancer, Parkinson’s disease, leukemia, lymphoma, cancers of the stomach, prostrate and testes.Studies certainly reveal a close correlation between pesticides and cancers, increase in childhood asthma is also a result of exposure to week killers. We are all exposed to too much of chemicals and that is a major reason why many of us find ourselves plagued with illnesses that even doctors find difficulty in diagnosing. Young children are most susceptible to toxic exposures. The chemicals used by the US and Allied troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya have placed thousands of children’s lives at risk not to mention the damage that is being done to the environment.

Transfatty acids are found in vegetable oils, soy beans, sunflower, palm oils, certain dairy products and increase Visceral fat, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, increase bad cholesterol and decrease good cholesterol, trigger systematic inflammation & affect every cell in a person’s body. TFA in the US averages 2-3% of total energy intake whereas in the developing nations it stands at 4% where items like fried foods, pastries and doughnuts go up to 8%. In the US some states have banned use of TFA’s in restaurants but why are TFAs being used if they are so dangerous. TFAs help to keep food unspoilt, they are cheap and can prolong shelf life and provides easy transport and suitable for commercial frying. When companies say “zero grams of trans fats” they are lying because of loopholes in government laws which allows a certain serving of TFAs. Now you know why obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are increasing at alarming rates.

There are scores of additives like acids that modify flavour and preserve food, acidity regulators, anti-cake agents, anti-foam agents, food coloring and colour retention agents, emulsifiers, humectants, tracer gas that improves shelf life and sweeteners. These additives are dangerous – BHT causes damage to liver and kidneys, behavioral problems, infertility, birth defects and cancers, artificial coloring causes hyperactivity in children, learning disorders and damage to nerves, artificial sweeteners cause damage to central nervous system, menstrual difficulties and affects unborn foetus, brominated vegetables cause organ damage, birth defects while partially hydrogenated vegetable oils cause heart disease, cancer and high cholesterol. Nitrates cause cancer and even death, MSG causes headaches, high blood pressure and allergic reactions. Potassium bromate causes kidney disorders and gastrointestinal issues.

Talking at conferences has not made any changes and it has not reduced the number of people in hunger. The killing fields are in the foods grown to feed us and unless people begin to realise the damage being done it is likely to be too late.

from here

War Communism !!

War had a big impact on the world’s food. Before the Second World War Britain imported approximately 55 million tonnes, or 3/4 of the country's food by ship each year. In England and Wales arable acreage was about 9 million; whereas 16 million acres were under grass and a further 5 ½ million was “rough grazing” (once reasonable pasture). One acre of permanent grass (for animal fodder) fed 1 or 2 people; one acre sown with wheat fed 20 people; and one acre sown with potatoes fed 40 people.

About one million directly employed in the production of food, and most of those part-time, seasonal workers. Increasingly, those men who worked on farms would need to be called up into the armed forces (50,000 skilled farm workers were absorbed by the armed forces in the first two years), so farmers were to be faced not only with enormous challenges in terms of increased food production targets but also a shortage of experienced labour. The Women’s Land Army were established at the beginning of the Second World War with numbers rising to 80000 by 1944.

War Agricultural Committees were formed immediately on the outbreak of war . They were leading farmers and nurserymen, with a good knowledge of local conditions, who had volunteered, unpaid, to help in the campaign to get full production from the land in their particular county. These Executive Committees, numbering eight to twelve members,Ministry of Agriculture propaganda poster predominantly farmers, were given delegated powers by the Minister under the wartime Defence Regulations. There was usually at least one landowner, one representative from the farm workers and one woman representing the Women’s Land Army. They formed Sub-Committees to cover different aspects of work, and District Committees to ensure that there was at least one Committee member in touch with every farmer, up to say 50 or 60, in his area of 5000 acres. Later, some District Committees embraced a representative from every parish. The role was to tell farmers what was required of them in the way of wheat, potatoes, sugar beet or other priority crops, and to help the farmers to get what they needed in the way of machinery, fertilisers and so on to achieve the targets which were set them. The Sub-Committees covered the following concerns: Cultivations, Labour, Machinery and Land Drainage, Technical Development, Feeding Stuffs, Insects and Pests, Horticulture, Financial and General Purposes, Goods and Services and War Damage. The Committees employed paid officers such as the Executive Officer and assistants in each county and District Officers to keep the show running smoothly in every locality. Technical Officers were also employed to advise farmers about such matters as the lime requirements of their soils, the making of silage, the treatments of soil pests, the care of machinery and the improvement of livestock. Farmers could get expert advice free, which contributed enormously to increase the output that farmers achieved.

The writer Laurie Lee, working for the Ministry of Information, summed this up in Land at War, the official story of British farming 1939 – 1944

“From Whitehall to every farm in the country the C.W.A.E.C.s formed a visible human chain which grew stronger with each year of the war. Here, roughly, is the way it worked. The Government might say to the Minister of Agriculture: ‘We need so much home-grown food next year’. The Minister assured himself that the labour, tractors, equipment, and so on, would be forthcoming, and said to the Chairman of a County Committee: ‘We’ve got to plough two million acres next year. The quota for your county is 40,000’.
The Chairman said to his District Committee Chairman: ‘You’ve been scheduled for 5,000 acres’.
The Committee-man said to his Parish Representative: ‘You’ve got to find 800 acres, then’.
And the Parish Representative, who knew every yard of the valley, went to the farmer at the end of the lane.
‘Bob,’ he said, ‘how about that 17.acre field – for wheat?’
And Farmer Bob said, ‘Aye’’.”

The idea of having County “War Ags” was to make the task of mediating central dictates from national government more palatable by using well-respected local farmers to convey the war needs to farmers who knew them. Even so, when particular farmers failed to co-operate with this more democratic system, Orders were served on them requiring them to plough up their grassland, or to grow given acreages of various crops, to clean out their ditches and drains, or apply adequate quantities of fertilisers. In the worst cases, recalcitrant or incompetent farmers – after first attempting to encourage and help them with advice and expertise – could be removed from their farms, by the dictate of the Minister of Agriculture, and their land farmed by someone else who would use the land to better advantage.

In addition to the supervision of work done by private farmers, the County Committees, known colloquially as “War Ags”, farmed areas of land themselves, particularly those farms and areas of derelict land which no individual was willing to tackle properly. The clearing of derelict land and the drainage of wet lands were two of those difficult jobs on which many land girls were employed, particularly from 1942 onwards, when conscription brought in increased numbers of young women members of the Women’s Land Army. Many of these were employed directly by the “War Ags” and housed, as mobile labour gangs, in hostels located around each county. In addition, summer work camps set up by the “War Ags” accommodated thousands of men and women, industrial and clerical workers from Britain’s towns and cities, who volunteered to do paid work during their summer holidays, to help bring in the harvest.

Nationally, some 6 ½ million new acres were ploughed up between 1939 and 1944. Harvests of wheat, barley and potatoes increased by over 100%; milking cows increased by 300,000; other cattle by 400,000. This was at the expense of fewer sheep, pigs and poultry but enabled the country to completely reverse its reliance on foreign food. In terms of calories, the net output had been quadrupled by 1943-44. By the end of the war, food imports had been reduced from 22 million to 11 million tons and Britain was producing well over 60% of its food. This was despite losing nearly 100,000 skilled male farm workers, who went off to fight, and thanks to the 117,000 women who replaced them. From 815,000 allotments in 1939 the number rose to 1,400,000 by 1943. allotments were estimated to contribute some 1.3 million tonnes of food produce.

Consumer goods of all kinds became scarce and shortages were inevitable. To ensure an equitable distribution of basic essentials, rationing was imposed through a ‘points’ system and prices were controlled. Ration books and clothing coupons were issued to all, with adjustments to meet special needs, like pregnant women, young children and vegetarians. By and large the public supported rationing as ensuring fair shares for all, and though a black market developed it never seriously threatened the system. It is generally accepted that food rationing improved the nation’s health through the imposition of a balanced diet with essential vitamins. Meat, butter and sugar were rationed from early 1940, other foodstuffs, including tea, were added later, and entitlement varied at different times during the war. Bread, potatoes, coffee, vegetables, fruit and fish were never rationed, though choice and availability of the last three were often limited. Clothing was rationed, and fuel was subject to restrictions from early in the war. Meals eaten away from home, whether in expensive West End restaurants were ‘off ration’. The conspicuous ability of the rich to enjoy almost pre-war levels of gastronomy at top hotels led to such resentment from Londoners at large that the government prevented restaurants charging more than 5/- a meal from 1942. This curbed the most ostentatious examples, though it did not completely solve the problem. British Restaurants supplied an almost universal experience of eating away from me. Here a three course meal cost only 9d. Standards varied, but the best were greatly appreciated and had a large regular clientele. British Restaurants were run by local authorities, who set them up in a variety of different premises such as schools and church halls. They evolved from the LCC’s Londoners’ Meals Service which originated in September 1940 as a temporary, emergency system for feeding those who had been bombed out. By mid-1941 the LCC was operating two hundred of these restaurants. British Restaurants were open to all, but mainly served office and industrial workers.

LAND GRABBING 2

Further to an earlier blog we read:-

Large-scale land acquisitions for agricultural use by both local and foreign commercial entities – often dubbed “land grabs”- are on the rise worldwide. The rush to acquire land is driven by four factors: food price volatility and unreliable markets; the energy crisis and interest in agro-energy/biofuels; the global financial crisis; and a new market for carbon trading. Often touted as a form of economic development, these investments could have profound negative effects on the environment and rural livelihoods. While precise details are hard to come by, it is clear that at least 50 million hectares of good agricultural land – enough to feed 50 million families in India – have been transferred from farmers to corporations in the last few years alone, and each day more investors join the rush. Some of these deals are presented as a novel way to meet food security needs of countries dependent on external markets to feed themselves, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea or China. Others are bluntly exposed for what they really are: business deals and hot new profit opportunities. Despite the involvement of states, most of these transactions are between host governments and private corporations. Firms involved estimate that US$25 billion have already been committed globally, and boast that this figure will triple in a very near future. Land grabs, which target 20% profit rates for investors, are all about financial speculation. This is why land grabbing is completely incompatible with ensuring food security: food production can only bring profits of 3-5%. Land grabbing simply enhances the commodification of agriculture whose sole purpose is the over-remuneration of speculative capital. These agribusiness projects – from the 100,000 hectare Malibya deal in the Office du Niger, Mali, to the 320,000 hectare Beidahuang Group deal in Rio Negro, Argentina – do great harm and are profoundly illegitimate. Trying to compensate for this absence of legitimacy by getting investors to adhere to a few principles is deceitful. Land grabs, either through economic or physical means, are, as Teo Ballvé from University of California, Berkeley put it, actually the "last step in a long chain of violent events" perpetrated against small farmers and pastoralists. The commodification and privatisation of land and the dispossession of farmers and herders is seldom taken into account in the boardrooms of corporations or in high-level meetings with governments.

The violation of international human rights law is an intrinsic part ofland grabbing through forced evictions, the silencing (and worse) of critics, the introduction of non-sustainable models of land use and agriculture that destroy natural environments and deplete natural resources, the blatant denial of information, and the prevention of meaningful local participation in political decisions that affect people's lives. No set of voluntary principles will remedy these facts and realities. However, even if done "transparently," the transfer of large tracts of land, forests, coastal areas and water sources to investors is still going todeprive smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and other local communities from crucial, life sustaining resources for generations to come. In many countries, there is an urgent need to strengthen systems that protect land tenure of peasants and small-scale food producers, and many social movements have been fighting for recognition of their rights to land for many years. In many developing countries, however, local peoples’ rights to land are not recognized or enforced by governments. Often times, governments make decisions about how land and natural resources will be used withoutconsulting the people who depend on those resources for their livelihoods. People who rely on customary or traditional rights are particularly vulnerable to losing their land because there is little or no official documentation of their rights to protect them from their land being taken by someone else. This is a serious problem in Africa, where formal tenure covers only some 2 – 10% of all land.

In Ethiopia official government data in five of its nine regions indicate that a total area of at least 1.2 million ha – roughly 8.6% of the country’s cultivated area – were transferred to domestic and foreign commercial entities between 2005 and2010. Although production data are scarce, media reportsindicate that land acquired by Saudi Arabian companies in Ethiopia willbe used to produce vegetables, flowers, and rice for export to nations in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Ethiopia is due to receive food aid for 5.7 million people in 2011 from the United Nations World Food Programme. The size of individual deals can be staggering – in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), aChinese company has reportedly acquired rights from the central government to some 3 million ha of forest land across three provinceswhere indigenous people and other communities still rely on forests fortheir livelihood and culture. This transaction represents roughly two-thirds of the entire area in DRC that is potentially suitable for growing oil palm but not yet cultivated.

A broad consensus has grown over the past several years around the real solutions to hunger, the food crisis and climate chaos, namely that:

- peasant agriculture, family farming, artisanal fishing and indigenous food procurement systems that are based on ecological methods is the way forward toward sustainable, healthy and livelihood-enhancing food systems;
- production, distribution and consumption systems must radically change to fit the carrying capacity of the earth;
- new agricultural policies that respond to the needs, proposals and direct control of small-scale food producers have to replace the current top-down, corporate-led, neoliberal regimes; and genuine agrarian and aquatic reform programmes have to be carried through to return land and ecosystems to local communities.

This is the path to food sovereignty and justice, quite the oppositeof "responsible" land grabbing.

FROM HERE

land grabbing

“Nothing will bring a government down faster than hungry people,” says Robert Thompson, former director of rural development at the World Bank.“If a country can’t supply its food domestically, it wants assurances that supplies will be there through thick and thin and that exporting countries will allow trade to flow,” he says.

India’s government is considering buying or leasing millions of acres of land in Central and South America. The purpose: to grow crops that will help feed India’s 1.1 billion people. North of Buenos Aires, Argentina, a Japanese company is growing corn and soybeans for shipment back to Japan. In Africa, a Japanese aid agency works with partners from Brazil and Mozambique to convert part of Guinea’s vast savannah into corn, soybean and cotton production. A leading Malaysian palm-oil producer is looking at plans for a 300,000-hectare (720,000-acre) palm-oil plantation in Cameroon. Bahrain currently produces bananas on 2,400 acres in the Philippines. Kuwait is interested in another 2,400 acres there for rice production. Saudi investors are negotiating for an additional 2,400 acres for aquaculture and are already pumping money into a 12,000-acre project to grow basmati rice, corn, bananas and pineapple. In Mongolia, South Korea has bought more than 800,000 acres to develop “an overseas food base” to procure more food resources. In Romania, nearly 2.4 million acres of farmland are now foreign-owned – about 12% of the country’s base farmland. Most examples involve richer countries with large populations and limited agricultural resources attempting to improve their food security by controlling land and agricultural production in poorer, less developed nations. The growing trend is fueling concerns that the purchases are another form of colonialism.

China is looking to buy 200,000 hectares of farmland in Russia, Australia, Argentina and other countries, the Des Moines Tribune reported in March. In Venezuela and Zimbabwe, they provide machinery and laborers in return for 20% of the harvest. In Australia they buy local land and in Brazil and Argentina they tend to rent. They also rent in Russia and Mongolia. China has already invested $85 million since 2005, the Register adds. “In Venezuela and Zimbabwe, they provide machinery and laborers in return for 20% of the harvest. In Australia they buy local land and in Brazil and Argentina they tend to rent. They also rent in Russia and Mongolia,” the Des Moines Register reported.

Demand for good agricultural land has exploded around the globe. Before 2008, global farmland expanded on average by fewer than 10 million acres annually, but expansion plans in 2009 totaled more than 100 million acres, according to the World Bank. More than 70% of the demand has been in Africa, where Ethiopia, Mozambique, Sudan and other countries have transferred millions of acres to investors. In the food prices crisis of 2008 a number of exporting countries went to either taxing or banning exports, and many food importers like China began to get nervous about food availability. With the erosion of confidence in the ability of world markets to assure supplies, they are thinking that if they own the farms, they have a better chance of getting the food out.
Jay O’Neil, senior agricultural economist at Kansas State’s international grains program, argues that big investments in foreign farmland don’t do much to solve nations’ food security fears. “In countries like China, the leaders get up each morning and ask ‘How are we going to guarantee food security for the coming years?’” says O’Neil. “They don’t realize that buying land doesn’t solve the question. It has zero effect on domestic price inflation, and it doesn’t guarantee that the grain will go to whoever owns the land. It doesn’t mean governments wouldn’t slap on export controls as Russia did in 2010. Probably when they most need grain is when they would be at the most risk of restrictions,”

Taken from here

A Green and Unpleasant Land

The Agricultural Wages Board was the only wages board to survive the abolition of wage regulation by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. This was because even the Thatcherites recognised how "sweated" agricultural work was, namely, it was exceedingly low paid, dirty, dangerous and often seasonal, and thus merited some basic form of regulation. It has now been abolished.

The national minimum wage covers only minimum hourly pay rates (categorised by age) and nothing else.But under the Agricultural Wages Act 1948, the AWB enforces much more through a legal instrument called an agricultural wages order. So among the terms of the orders – which are reviewed and raised annually – is a raft of allowances including:
• Accommodation (where living at or on the work premises is necessary)
• Overtime (at time and a half)
• Sick pay
• Food and care for dogs (where a dog is needed to do the work)
• Rest breaks of 30 minutes for every five and a half hours of work
• Bad weather payments (so that workers are not penalised for not being able to work because of the weather)

On top of this, the orders set minimum hour wages by grade rather than just by age. So the 2009-2010 national minimum wage is £5.80 for an adult over 21 years of age while the rates for those above compulsory school age range from £5.81 to £8.64 under the AWB. For 2010-2011, the national minimum wage will rise to £5.93 while those in agriculture are due to rise to between £5.95 and £8.88.
Furthermore, the method of enforcement is far more lax under the national minimum wage than the AWB, and there are still loopholes by which employers can avoid paying the minimum wage.

With market forces now more fully unleashed, farmers will do away with many of the compulsory terms and conditions that the AWB provided for. They may do this because they are greedy and capricious. If they are not, they may still do it because gangmasters (despite some minimal regulation) can provide workers more cheaply than they can or because the big buyers of agricultural produce such as Tesco decide to ask for ever tougher terms in supply contracts.

The abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board will be damaging to the industry, All-Party Parliamentary Gardening & Horticulture Group (APPGHG) secretary Brian Donohoe has warned. "People on the lowest wages will suffer..."

The decision does not affect the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board, with a government spokesperson stating: "The Scottish Government reviewed SAWB as recently as last year and decided to retain it, with a further review in 2011. This position is unaffected by Defra's decision to abolish the AWB in England and Wales."

Capitalism is the problem - socialism is the solution

Continuing my doom and gloom , the end is nigh , contributions .

Famines affecting a billion people will threaten global food security during the 21st century, according to a leading US scientist. Nina Fedoroff, the US State Department chief scientist, is convinced that food shortages will be the biggest challenge facing the world as temperatures and population levels rise. Food security in the coming years, she said, is “a huge problem” that has been met with little more than complacency. “We are asleep at the switch,” she said.

Dr Fedoroff said famines that strike a billion people are quite possible in a world where climate change has damaged food production and the human population has risen to nine billion. Even wealthy countries like Britain and the United States will struggle to feed many of their citizens, with the poorest in society likely to suffer the most.

Temperatures, which are rising as a result of climate change, are expected to cause savage reductions in productivity in vast areas of the world’s most fertile lands. During the 2003 European heatwave crop yields fell by 20 to 25 per cent in France and this is a pattern likely to be repeated on a much wider scale in the future.

feeding the world

President Bush in an interactive business session had argued that while prosperity in countries like India is good, it triggers increased demand for better nutrition, which in turn leads to higher food prices.The comments came close on the heels of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's controversial statement that 'apparent improvement' in the diets of people in India and China is among the causes of the current global food crisis.

The Truth

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil. Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. The report confirms a British finding that t the rush to develop biofuels has played a "significant" role in the dramatic rise in global food prices. And an estimates their impact as 20-30% rise .

"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam.

Production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

"It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser.

However , the Indian apologists for capitalism should not feel too smug .

More than 1,300,000 tonnes of food grain rotted in storage stock-piles over the last decade in India according to a recent report .

"This amount of food grain could have fed over 10 million people in a year," said activist Dev Ashish Bhattacharya.

can't pay , can't eat

GRAIN , an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge reports on the food price crisis .

Farmers across the world produced a record 2.3 billion tons of grain in 2007, up 4% on the previous year. Since 1961 the world’s cereal output has tripled, while the population has doubled. Stocks are at their lowest level in 30 years, it’s true,but the bottom line is that there is enough food produced in the world to feed the population. The problem is that it doesn’t get to all of those who need it. Less than half of the world’s grain production is directly eaten by people. Most goes into animal feed and, increasingly, biofuels – massive inflexible industrial chains.

The price of wheat has gone up by 130% over the last year. Rice has doubled in price in Asia in the first three months of 2008 alone,and just last week it hit record highs on the Chicago futures market.For most of 2007 the spiralling cost of cooking oil, fruit and vegetables, as well as of dairy and meat, led to a fall in the consumption of these items.The UN World Food Programme estimates that recent price hikes have meant that an additional 100 million people can no longer afford to eat adequately

We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining. The perverse logic of this system has come to a head. Today it is staring us in the face that this system puts the profits of investors before the food needs of people.

With wheat, export bans or restrictions in Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Argentina mean that a third of the global market has now been closed off. The situation with rice is even worse: China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, India and Cambodia have banned or severely restricted exports, leaving just a few sources of export supply, mainly Thailand and the US. Countries like Bangladesh can’t buy the rice they need now because the prices are so high. For years the World Bank and the IMF have told countries that a liberalised market would provide the most efficient system for producing and distributing food, yet today the world’s poorest countries are forced into an intense bidding war against speculators and traders, who are having a field day. Hedge funds and other sources of hot money are pouring billions of dollars into commodities to escape sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, putting food stocks further out of poor people’s reach. According to some estimates, investment funds now control 50–60% of the wheat traded on the world’s biggest commodity markets. One firm calculates that the amount of speculative money in commodities futures – markets where investors do not buy or sell a physical commodity, like rice or wheat, but merely bet on price movements – has ballooned from US$5 billion in 2000 to US$175 billion to 2007.

The truth about who profits and who loses from our global food system has never been more obvious. Take the most basic element of food production: soil. The industrial food system is a chemical-fertiliser junkie. It needs more and more of the stuff just to keep alive, eroding soils and their potential to support crop yields in the process. In the current context of tight food supplies, the small clique of corporations that control the world’s fertiliser market can charge what they want – and that’s exactly what they are doing. Profits at Cargill’s Mosaic Corporation, which controls much of the world’s potash and phosphate supply, more than doubled last year. The world’s largest potash producer, Canada’s Potash Corp, made more than US$1 billion in profit, up more than 70% from 2006. Panicking now about future supplies, governments are becoming desperate to boost their harvests, giving these corporations additional leverage. In April 2008, the joint offshore trading arm for Mosaic and Potash hiked the price of its potash by 40% for buyers from Southeast Asia and by 85% for those from Latin American. India had to pay 130% more than last year, and China 227% more.

While big money is being made from fertilisers, it is just a sideline for Cargill. Its biggest profits come from global trading in agricultural commodities, which, together with a few other big traders, it pretty much monopolises. On 14 April 2008, Cargill announced that its profits from commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were 86% higher than the same period in 2007. “Demand for food in developing economies and for energy worldwide is boosting demand for agricultural goods, at the same time that investment monies have streamed into commodity markets,” said Greg Page, Cargill’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Prices are setting new highs and markets are extraordinarily volatile. In this environment, Cargill’s team has done an exceptional job measuring and assessing price risk, and managing the large volume of grains, oilseeds and other commodities moving through our supply chains for customers globally.”

Indeed, all of the big grain traders are making record profits. Bunge, another big food trader, saw its profits of the last fiscal quarter of 2007 increase by US$245 million, or 77%, compared with the same period of the previous year. The 2007 profits registered by ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, rose by 65% to a record US$2.2 billion. Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods, a major player in Asia, is forecasting revenue growth of 237% this year.

The world’s big food processors, some of which are commodity traders themselves, are also cashing in. Nestlé’s global sales grew 7% last year. “We saw this coming, so we hedged by forward-buying raw materials”, says François-Xavier Perroud, Nestlé’s spokesman. UK supermarket Tesco reports profits up 12.3% from last year, a record rise. Other major retailers, such as France’s Carrefour and the US’s Wal-Mart, say that food sales are the main factor sustaining their profit increases. Wal-Mart’s Mexican division, Wal-Mex, which handles a third of overall food sales in Mexico, reported an 11% increase in profits for the first quarter of 2008.(At the same time Mexicans are demonstrating in the streets because they can no longer afford to make tortillas)

It seems that nearly every corporate player in the global food chain is making a killing from the food crisis. The seed and agrochemical companies are doing well too. Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, reported a 44% increase in overall profits in 2007. DuPont, the second-largest, said that its 2007 profits from seeds increased by 19%, while Syngenta, the top pesticide manufacturer and third-largest company for seeds, saw profits rise 28% in the first quarter of 2008.

Such record profits have nothing to do with any new value that these corporations are producing and they are not one-off windfalls from a sudden shift in supply and demand. Instead, they are a reflection of the extreme power that these middlemen have accrued through the globalisation of the food system. Intimately involved with the shaping of the trade rules that govern today’s food system and tightly in control of markets and the ever more complex financial systems through which global trade operates, these companies are in perfect position to turn food scarcity into immense profits. People have to eat, whatever the cost.