Food, Inc.

[hikerchick]

I think the only way problems of this magnitude are solved is one book, one documentary, one changed mind at a time.

I remember Rosa Parks.

Now we have a black man in the White House.

Change CAN happen. It just takes time.


The book that did it for me was "Harvest for Hope" by Jane
Goodall. It just touched a nerve, for some reason and suddenly it all made sense.

 

[Davaroo]

Quote:
Okay, so what's your solution? If you have one that's better than documentaries and other attempts to inform people via the media, and you're opposed to governmental measures, then what's left? How is one to "woo the mob" ethically? And if the mob is not wooed, then how is anything to be changed?

A Reply, in Four Movements

My solution? I don't really feel qualified to have one, as I'm just average and not all that smart. I certainly don't know all the details so that I may formulate one. If I've learned one thing, its that often enough, things play out in their own way and time.
I do have an idea or two, though, about what is, at root, a global population issue.

The first simple answer, of course, is to keep doing what you're doing - raise consciousness and awareness. I agree that we can do things better - we can always do things better.
If there really is a problem in our methods that needs changing, then something will happen as a result of steady effort; cause and effect.

Persistence is it's own reward, after all.
Case in point, we were force-fed such a diet of "Change" in recent times that we got a (kinda) black president. Forget, as inconvenient truth, that he is just another politician, with others of his kind surrounding him and the supporters of his kind pushing from behind...

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The second idea I have is to continue to invest in more and better ways to produce food. We have only scratched the surface when it comes to exploiting the available food production area of the planet. We can do much, much more.

When we get our sundry 'cause celebres' all cranked up, we assume no one is listening. It's one of the pitfalls when one adopts the pariah's hood.

But, we forget that we as a nation CAN and DO accept some problems as real and act on them. We have an immense technological machine that can go a long way to meeting our needs in the foreseeable future. So I say, don't pull back from it in rebellion, but rather, dive in and quit pussy-footing around!
Growth hormones were removed from poultry farming decades ago because people rallied against them. In response, they developed ever faster growing hybrids. SO change can be effected.

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But, there are few starving philosophers.

Here in the well fed world, we have the time and leisure to absorb messages of this kind and become enraged by them. We go to movies about them, we get emotionally invested in them and we 'forum' them while we sip tea and down whole grain muffins. We are unique in that.

I have been fortunate enough over the years to travel to Africa, South America and Asia, among others. Having viewed their lives, if but briefly, I find things, well, er - different.
I find that I am reluctant to tell the hungry, burgeoning masses around the world to stop trying to increase yields... to stop logging their native forests to grow food or earn money... to stop using fertilizers... to stop wanting to rise from the mud... or to buy locally and stop hoping for handouts of succulent Kansas wheat.

Closer to home, I find it hard to tell people they must work 12 hour days to make ends meet (if they even have a job)... That on top of that, they must also sacrifice and 'bite the bullet', raising their own food... even though they live in the most affluent nation in the history of the world?
I find it hard to tell them they must stop wanting an elevated standard of living and affordable food, and instead they must go spend their time plowing their back yard or a vacant lot?
(I want them to do these things, but for wholly different reasons.)

Are any of us then so pristine that we can call them guilty for taking benefit from scientific agriculture? Can we now insist they rise up in noble sacrifice, and work even harder to make a change...?
Sounds like Lenin, doesn't it?

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This has been absorbing a small kernel of my thought for the last few days. SO, instead of listening to my own internal dialogue, or preaching to the choir, I have asked Joe Citizen what he thinks. His answer?
"Hey, man, people gotta eat!" Little more to add, really.

There are geo-political forces at work here that are vastly bigger than conditions down at corporate McDonalds, whether chickens are mistreated or that someone gets a handout subsidy. In short, people haven't stopped breeding last I looked... and to quote Joe C., "People gotta eat."
Ethics fly out the window when the belly is empty.
'Ever see "Soylent Green?"

So my solution, in summary, is that agri-technology is going to have to assist us here - that's what it's there for. We, in turn, must embrace it and massage it and get the most from it.
The worst thing we can do is denounce it or run from it, wringing our hands in worry.
Will this be well received? I dunno, you tell me...

But I stick by it. That's my stand. I believe we still have time to marry "right morals" and ethics with what is fast becoming a desperate need.

 

[mom'sfolly]

I think there is a place for these types of books and movies, simply because they can make people more aware of where there food comes from. Most Americans have never set foot on a farm. Many have never grown vegetables, almost all have never interacted with an animal that is raised for meat, dairy or eggs. They simply do not know. They think all the food comes from idyllic green pastures with animals running free.

I think for most ignorance is bliss, if people knew about food production, then they would have to make decisions about where and what they eat. People don't like to have to make active ethical decisions. The companies that produce GMO foods are very aware of this, and have prevented labelling on milk, soy and corn products. Intellectually, most people know that GMO products are in their food, but they don't have to make a choice to avoid it because they can willfully ignore the fact. In polls, almost everyone opposes GMO food, but the lack of labelling makes it easy to ignore. Very savvy on the corporations part. The companies have even lobbied so well that producers can't label milk as rBST free without saying that the hormone produced milk is no different, and packing companies are not allowed to say that every cow slaughtered is tested for mad cow.

I've changed my buying habits. I buy locally, reducing my carbon footprint, getting quality, in season produce and meat. I know the farmers (surprisingly, mostly women) who raise my pork, beef and veggies. I rarely eat chicken because the only local producers I can find are selling for around $8/lb. This is an active choice made for many reasons, both ethical and edible.

However, I do think that overall these books and movies are preaching to the choir. The people who read the books and watch them are interested in the topic and have an interest in changing their buying habits and the production of food. The books and movies can change minds, but the people have to read or see them for that to happen.

 

[Rillion]

Hey Davaroo, ever hear of Norman Borlaug? That agronomist guy who developed new strains of wheat for Mexico, Pakistan, and India and got the Nobel Peace Prize for saving an estimated 1 billion people from starvation?

1 billion.

Sounds like he oughta be your hero. He certainly is mine.

 

[Davaroo]

Quote:
Never heard of him until now. Like I said, I aint all that smart.
For those who dont know:

"Norman Borlaug has continually advocated increasing crop yields as a means to curb deforestation. The large role he has played in both increasing crop yields and promoting this view has led to this methodology being called by agricultural economists the "Borlaug hypothesis", namely that increasing the productivity of agriculture on the best farmland can help control deforestation by reducing the demand for new farmland.

According to this view, assuming that global food demand is on the rise(?), restricting crop usage to traditional low-yield methods such as organic farming would also require at least one of the following: the world population to decrease, either voluntarily or as a result of mass starvations; or the conversion of forest land into crop land.

It is thus argued that high-yield techniques are ultimately saving ecosystems from destruction.
On a global scale, this view holds strictly true ceteris paribus, if all land either consists of forests or is used for agriculture. But other land uses exist, such as urban areas, pasture, or fallow, so further research is necessary to ascertain what land has been converted for what purposes, in order to determine how true this view remains.
Increased profits from high-yield production may also induce cropland expansion in any case, although as world food needs decrease [if they do - David], this expansion may decrease as well.

And as always, there are critics:

Borlaug's name is nearly synonymous with the Green Revolution, yet environmentalists, nutritionists, progressives, and economists have mounted many criticisms of this Green Revolution. Borlaug's programs often faced opposition by people who consider genetic crossbreeding to be unnatural or to have negative effects.
His work has been criticized for bringing large-scale monoculture, input-intensive farming techniques to countries that had previously relied on subsistence farming.
These farming techniques reap large profits for US agri-business and agrichemical corporations such as Monsanto Company and have been criticized for widening social inequality in the countries owing to uneven food distribution while forcing a capitalist agenda of US corporations onto countries that had undergone land reform.
There are also concerns about the long-term sustainability of farming practices encouraged by the Green Revolution in both the developed and developing world.

Other concerns of his critics, and critics of biotechnology in general include: that the construction of roads in populated third-world areas could lead to the destruction of wilderness; the crossing of genetic barriers; the inability of crops to fulfill all nutritional requirements; the decreased biodiversity from planting a small number of varieties; the environmental and economic effects of inorganic fertilizer and pesticides; the amount of herbicide sprayed on fields of herbicide-resistant crops.

Borlaug has dismissed most critics, but does take certain concerns seriously. He states that his work has been "a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia". Of environmental lobbyists he has stated, "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".

Hey, I like him...

 

[Davaroo]

One thing Ive been pondering lately is waste land. I don't mean 'wasteland' as in devoid deserts, but rather, land that is wasted in its usage.
One example was just noted by me on my way back from the local reclamation center. As I was driving up hwy. 1 here in Aiken, I noted immense stretches of power line easement along the side of the road - we're talking a strip of land at least 30 ft. wide that runs for miles and miles. Guess whats growing there.... weeds.

Could we put that to cultivation and grow some super-duper drought tolerant wheat, corn or tomatoes? Maybe we could fence it, install solar powered electic wire and raise 6 week meat chickens there? Or why not rotate both? Follow the chickens with a nitrogen fixing green-manure cover crop and rotate in tomatoes two seaons later? Simply leapfrog this cycle the entire length of the highway.
Can you tell I like tomatoes? Talk about your local food production!

And what if we did it to all our roadways, even interstates? We already plant wildflowers there....
Our new motto could be, "Medians Feeding Mankind."





P.S. You may all be happy to note that while at the reclamation center, I found a whole pile of lovely metal pipe - material that will make superb tomato and garden trellises for years to come!

 

[mom'sfolly]

About three blocks from my MIL, in the Minneapolis suburbs is a large power line right of way. This area is used by many of the adjacent homeowners for gardening. It is also used as park-like area for people walking. It is so tempting not to sample some of those raspberries growing there.

I think this is a great use of "waste" land. In the Twin cities area these power line strips and the large amount of interconnected park lands act as wildlife corridors in a very urban area. I've seen fox, otters, mink, deer, turkey, raccoons, rabbits, and other animals all in south Minneapolis.

 

[Crusty McPottydoodle]

Quote:
Davaroo - welcome to the guerrilla gardening revolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

 

[Kismet]

There are some sheep farmers around here using the power lines to pasture sheep. They are able to do it because of portable electric fencing (the netting). Power companies like it because they don't have to mow.

if you have ever been to China, you will have seen every nook and cranny boasting food crops. Less in the big cities like Beijing and ShangHai, because they are trying to look sophisticated and cosmopolitan, even to the point of getting rid of bicycle lanes, sadly. Everyone wants a car. You made a point earlier: Who am I, we, to say that you can't try to be like us, even though we know now that many of our decisions were wasteful and wrong.

 

[Wifezilla]

I am a guerilla gardener and I didn't even know it!!!

I have a neighbor with a black thumb. I have been tossing surplus hollyhock seeds in her yard for a while now. I have a nice flower screen between my yard and her barren wasteland