Over the past month, there has been much talk about why California's Prop
37, the mandatory labeling of foods containing GMO's, failed to pass.
Both sides were using fear tactics. Proponents cited numerous
studies of the dangers of genetically modified crops, while the argument that food prices would rise considerably was the mantra of opponents. The big
difference of course being that the side against labeling have large amounts of
money to draw from. So, it's no surprise that the opposition outspent
advocates about 5 to 1. Also, people tend to think about their bank
accounts before they think about their health, as is evident in our overwhelmed
health care system. Trying to legislate change through policy is very
difficult with those odds. Still, almost 6 million people voted for the
proposition. Many were educated around some of the dangers posed by
GMO's. That's important as we move forward. One of the lessons of
Prop 37 is that the fight may be best waged through continuing to develop and
link sustainable food communities around the country, as suggested by Kristin Wartman and Erika Lade. The actions of many
brought together to create one voice may be the best weapon to start to disenfranchise
the influence of large food companies in our government. It will have to
be quite a loud voice though. The biotech industry has spent millions of
dollars over the past decade to secure their position. It's possible we
have reached the tipping point, as discussed by noted scientist, Jeffrey Smith.
That remains to be seen as the information around GMO's becomes more
widespread through mass media coverage. In a movement without leadership
it is imperative to educate the public through the many sources available.
It will take time, but if we truly believe in the power of the
people in our democracy then the alternative food economy must transform itself
into a serious, hard line political voice.
A veteran
farmer raised an important question to me many years ago: "Why is it
necessary to label healthy food as organic or natural? We should be
labeling the stuff with chemicals." If there is a cost to labeling, small
farmers and companies have certainly paid it. That Big Ag refuses to is a
clear sign that there is fear of the public being educated. Yet labeling
is only the tip of the iceberg. The fight goes much deeper to the power that
corporations wield over our food supply. There are serious ethical
questions about the patenting of food plants and how a corporate entity, let
alone an individual, can claim rights to something that is a part of
nature--even if it started out in a laboratory. The drawbacks of these
crops and their companion chemical inputs are becoming clear. Weeds have
evolved to become resistant to Roundup. Its widespread use has also
caused a rise in plant diseases and obliterated soil. Insects are
developing resistance to Bt corn and cotton. Farmers are seeing alarming
rates of infertility and spontaneous abortions in their livestock.
Addressing the latter, Dr. Don Huber, an expert on Roundup, sent a letter
to USDA Secretary Vilsack concerning high concentrations of a new microscopic
organism being found in Roundup treated crops. The same organism found in
analysis of aborted fetal tissue and the animal feed. Inevitably there
are consequences when we tinker with nature. Now we are starting to see
what those consequences are. Certainly, more will be discovered.
Food is critical to human existence in so many ways. If we continue
to treat it as a mere commodity, then as a result we end up treating ourselves
as one.
Excerpts
from these two articles, written years apart, perhaps best represent the
ignorance that exists in today's biotech industry, which has lost sight of
generations of knowledge in stewarding the land. While this shift
actually began in the late 1800s at the beginning of the industrial
economy, it has reached a critical point in its evolution. We have long
since forgotten the ways of peasants that Rudolf Steiner said understood
the "breathing of the earth". Instead, we foolishly believe we
can use something we can control--science, to control something we
cannot--nature.
“Modern agriculture is driven by
diminishing biological diversity and relentless consolidation, from the farms
themselves to the processors and the distributors of the crops and livestock.
But you cannot consolidate the soil. It is a complex organism, and it always
responds productively to diversity. The way we farm now undervalues and
undermines good soil. Our idea of agricultural productivity and efficiency must
include the ecological benefits of healthy soil. The surest way to improve the
soil is to remember what industrial agriculture has chosen to forget.”
Did Farmers of the Past Know More Than We Do?
Published: November 3, 2012 in the
New York Times
“Perhaps
more than any other realm of activity, agriculture has been torn forcefully and
irrevocably from the culture from which it originally came. But it is, in
another way, only one of many activities upon which our lives depend that now
exist in a manner that is light-years apart from the cultural matrix in which
they originated.”
Rudolf Steiner: A Biographical Introduction for
Farmers By Hilmar Moore
Originally published in Biodynamics No. 214
(November/December1997)
