PDF Okay … just one rant this week and after that I’ll be good, I promise. Revelation 11:18 promises “ to bring to ruin those ruining the earth”. When it was penned, humans hadn’t 2% of the ability to ruin the earth that they now have … and exercise.
Yes, I am hot and worked up and this post is nearly all writing with precious few pictures. This ain’t no sound bite. Sorry about that, but if you are short on brain cells at the moment, it’s okay to click the back arrow on you browser. That’s the one near the top of the page pointing to the left. No, no … I’m not pushing you away … just warning you that what comes next can’t be called light reading. If that’s what you’re here for, try another page. But first, I owe you a quote so that you can see the source of the steam:
“We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people,” Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing “wild lands”, and in particular water supplies.
Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: “There are probably already too many people on the planet.”
Okay … I’ll buy that. Way back in the early 1970’s, my wife and I made the conscious decision to cap our child-bearing at two … the replacement number. Now, three wives later, I still have not added to that number … although she later bore two more by another man.
Statistics show that first world countries have done a fairly good job in capping their populations, especially among their better-educated citizens. Third world countries? Not so good. In first world countries work is done by what Buckminster Fuller called “energy slaves” … appliances such as vacuum cleaners and dishwashers that plug into the electric mains and do the work of one or more people. In less developed lands with fewer electric mains, you simply need more people. This is not complicated. If you ever get the chance, read Fullers’ “Utopia or Oblivion”
Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.
This woman has face-time access to some of the most powerful and influential people on the planet. You’ll find Ms. Rice prominently – and unfavorably – mentioned in the recent Wikileaks data dump.
Here is where Dr. Fedoroff and I part company eternally:
A National Medal of Science laureate (America’s highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods.
“We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven.
“We’re going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops,” she told the BBC.
A part of the problem with GMO crops being forwarded as part of that “inventiveness” is that GMO crops tend to require more water to grow, not less. In the case of cotton, it requires fully twice as much water. Coupled with ill-considered irrigation projects, literally thousands of Indian farmers who were convinced to plant GMO cotton have committed suicide, unable to pay their debts. Sadly, Dr. Federoff, as a molecular biologist, is galloping toward an irredeemable future with pinhole glasses and jackass blinders on. From the perspective of molecular biology, she is right. But ONLY from that perspective. From the perspective of a hammer, all problems look like nails, too.
Her science, she seems to feel, and ONLY her science has “the answer” to food production.
Yet there is another answer, a better one, and it doesn’t call for either GMO’s or their corporate dominance on the germ plasm of the planet. Whether you’ve been following along or not, Monsanto and Dow Chemical have been acquiring a planet-wide strangle hold on seed production. These two companies, alone, now produce greater than 50% of all the crop seed on the earth. This does not bode well for anyone reliant on those seeds … in other words, roughly 1/2 the planet is potentially in their thrall.
Today.
The other answer is called ‘sanity’.
What happened to our agricultural soils in the 1900’s was insane. Soil science had discovered synthetic fertilizer and, coupled with the organic material already in the soil, American soil productivity took a wholesale leap forward. It was amazing … really.
So, with bags of miracle dust (industrial waste, actually, from smelting iron into steel) in the back of the truck, farmers stopped manuring their fields, stopped rotating crops, stopped tilling stubble back to the soil, stopped letting fields lie fallow, and paid little attention as the winds blew away the topsoil. The government agricultural experts, lulled by the fertilizer manufacturers, reassured the farmers that everything was under control and science would prevail. Until, finally, the soil would no longer produce even stubble, no matter how much fertilizer was applied. If a soil is lacking in the necessary micronutrients, which soil biota will gladly supply in a healthy soil, it doesn’t matter how much of the macronutrients you pour on top of it.
As the wonder yields dropped, at first, the answer seemed to be “more fertilizer”, but gradually it dawned on the world agricultural community that “more fertilizer” was less an answer than a problem. The winds came and stripped the topsoil. In some distant day geologists are going to wonder how so much of the good dirt from the American Midwest came to be layered in the trenches of the Atlantic.
Little farmers left, driven off by debt and the need to feed their children, and their fields were gobbled up by corporations at bank auctions until the small farmer had dwindled nearly to the point of extinction. This process continues today.
The most productive soil in America has always been, and likely always will be, in its backyard gardens. Right now I have lettuce growing over where the asparagus will be in a couple of weeks. When the asparagus arises, it will find a living mulch over head … and no compaction to fight against. As summer advances and the lettuce finds its way to sandwich and plate, it will be replaced by a thick layer of compost and leaf mold. And maybe some herbs.
Commercial agriculture simply cannot do that.
In this corner, organic farming and in the other corner, GMO’s.
This is not a ‘battle royale” fit for television; this is an ordinary fight to the death. If GMO’s are granted even a toehold, they will win.
Commercial scale organic produce is economically viable, in large part, because of an implied contract with the consumer … that the producer has taken extraordinary care for the safety of the food in exchange for an increased price in the market. This is something that the corporate-owned factory farm cannot compete with.
Unless, of course, they can pollute the fields of the organic farmer (and gardener, too) with the pollen of their Genetically Modified crops. Then the (otherwise organic) crops lose their premium value in the market but retain their premium costs of production.
They are doing it. Today. If you plant a GM crop of cucumbers next to a field of non-GM cucumbers, pollen from the fields will intermingle. The GM crop will not be lifted up, but the non-GM field will be reduced in value. Right now, the law favors the GM planter and will even support a suit against the non-GM farmer for, in effect, stealing the GM pollen in order to ruin his own crop. These are laws that need to be overturned and existing judgments that need to be reversed.
“We accept exactly the same technology (as GM food) in medicine, and yet in producing food we want to go back to the 19th Century.” (Dr. Federoff)
A molecular biologist might think that splicing a fish gene into food is exactly the same process as splicing a fish gene into a pill, but that is a grievous error because the pill in the bottle does not contaminate the pills in the bottles around them.
If memory serves me correctly, it was a molecular biologist who introduced the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus into the human population through polio vaccine. It mutated. Now it’s called Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV.
Such are the consequences of trusting scientists who hold press conferences. Dr. Fedoroff included.
The pollen of the GMO is carried, by wind and insect, great distances — silently inseminating the fields of others and destroying their value. This completely subverts the organic goal, causing the (formerly) organic crop … the one on which expensive care has been lavished … to be useful only in the markets that will tolerate such pollution and not in the market which was willing to pay for such care.
And it’s not just a matter of economics.
It’s also a matter of our right to choose what we put in our mouths. A person taking a pill has the right to know how that pill was obtained and then to make an informed choice about ingesting it. But, by law, there is no labeling, no chain of custody, by which even the most pro-active of consumer might trace his dinner back to its source without driving to the address on the label. The sticker on the apple on my desk says, simply, “Fuji” “USA” and a logo also has the word “Washington”.
The state is 71,342 sq. miles and is known for its apple orchards. If I’m going to find out how my apple was grown, I guess that I’d better fill up with gas and pack a lunch before I go.
“We wouldn’t think of going to our doctor and saying ‘Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century’, and yet that’s what we’re demanding in food production.”
That’s because the food production methods of the 19th century worked but the food production methods of the 20th century do not.
Increasing amounts of fertilizers are being met with decreasing yields because the soil itself has been abused. Restore the soil and the fertilizers will work again. I promise.
Evidence is mounting that claimed yields for GMO’s are fictitious, that genes are not reliably transmitted between generations (up to a 25% failure rate) and that the research into the safety that was supposedly done with GMO’s was ‘cooked’ . More than that, GM crops are now seen as requiring more, not less, pesticides and herbicides. Already thousands of acres have been abandoned to Roundup ready pigweed and pesticide resistant weevils are infesting cotton fields safe from their former predators.
Nina Fedoroff needs to get out into her backyard, get a shovel in her hand, and reconsider the health of this fragile place we call home. It seems that she is considering GMO’s in isolation, where, in the sterile environment of the laboratory and petri dish, they may make perfect sense. But she wants to release them from that isolation and impose them on the rest of us and that’s where we draw the line.
Ms. Fedoroff might also ask herself if there might be someone smarter than her.
And if there might be a kernel of truth to Revelation 11:18.
