NPR Misses Real Story, Plants Wrong Seeds

Too bad.

I depend a lot on NPR, so my heart sank as I listened to Morning Edition's recent series on the world hunger crisis. Using Honduras as its case study, the four-part series reinforces dangerous myths that actually block us from seeing the real solutions to hunger all around us.

We're told that "across the globe .... [f]ood is expensive and there's not enough food to feed empty stomachs." No. In fact the world produces enough to make us all plump. True, today an estimated 100 million additional people are, or will soon be, facing hunger as food prices exceed their budgets, but the deeper lack they're experiencing is not food itself. It is power.

Drawing the distinction between lack of food -- a symptom -- and lack of power -- a cause -- is essential to seeing solutions. Yet this series portrays as progress examples that do nothing to correct, and in fact worsen, the underlying power imbalances at the heart of hunger.

In the broadcast, we hear that Wal-Mart is a solution because it provides a market for poor Honduran farmers who otherwise would have no way to sell their produce. But if access to a market is, in itself, farmers' salvation, here at home each year more than 10,000 farmers would not be going under. The question is who controls a market: Where the answer is a few monopsony buyers -- what Wal-Mart represents in the NPR case study -- power remains with them. They set the terms and they decide whether to stay or to leave.

Fortunately, in Latin America and elsewhere some rural communities are beginning to free themselves from distant, monopoly power. Imagine this: In what may be the pesticide capital of the world, the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, pests developed insecticide resistance and genetically modified (GM) cotton failed to live up to Monsanto's promises. Farmers faced catastrophic losses, triggering thousands of suicides, and many then began to move in another direction. Now, almost two thousand villages are embracing community-managed sustainable farming using natural pest controls, not purchased chemicals, and are enjoying improved incomes and health.

Yet, the NPR series ignores such hopeful examples. It notes gloomily that most small Honduran farmers will cut back on production this year, despite higher prices for their crops, because "prices for fertilizer and pesticides have gone up even more than food prices."

In a disturbing disconnect, the series still promote as solutions not only purchased farm chemicals but genetically modified seeds; yet the cost of these seeds puts them out of reach of many poor farmers, as acknowledged at the tail end of the second piece in the series. Worse, and not acknowledged, are the documented, serious environmental and health risks linked to GM seeds.

NPR misses the real story: On every continent one can find empowered rural communities developing GM-free, agro-ecological farming systems. They're succeeding: The largest overview study, looking at farmers transitioning to sustainable practices in 57 countries, involving almost 13 million small farmers on almost 100 million acres, found after four years that average yields were up 79 percent.

NPR chose to reinforce the myth that the only hope for poor rural people is dependency on concentrated economic power when, all over the world, poor farming communities are discovering their own power to work with each other and with nature to build healthier, more secure, and more democratic lives.

What a lost opportunity.

Frances Moore Lappe of the Small Planet Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the author of sixteen books, most recently Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad.

Comments

[edis]

How do you get FSTV and LINK TV? And thanks for the suggestion.

[hrhodes]

I still listen to NPR's Morning Edition every morning, but I find that more and more they are echoing the mainstream media. I recently complained about their pre-coverage of the Olympics, which was constantly negative. Hopefully if enough of us speak out they will listen.

[HeatherBooth]

Frankie Moore Lappe, again, helps us remember that we need and can achieve a sustainable diet for a small planet. And that sustainable means all the parts are connected. What we grow, how we treat people, what we pay them as employees, what and who we reward. Walmart destroyes not only the agriculture, but robs from the employees by not paying them their fair share. There are food alternatives and sustainable alternatives, if we have the political will to achieve them.

[nadinesellers]

Once again Frances Moore-Lappe uses her global vision to correct the lenses of near perception in the myopic eye of opinion.
In the current food crisis,values are split across the map. Developed countries seem to forget the inherent merit of small and natural. Farms of all sizes had once subsisted and thrived, using local means of fertilization and harvesting. A return to de-centralized markets and outlets would benefit such producers today.

[DD2008]

Albert Einstein said that "the problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." I'm disappointed with NPR for falling back into the old paradigm and failing to see the underlying reasons for world hunger and poverty. We cannot solve our current global problems with the level of thinking that created them. Now, more than ever, we need the creative vision of people like Frances Moore Lappe.

[FrictionSoul]

Follow the money? How about following the producers of this nonsense? With 70% of all news actually being created by PR firms, why would you expect Wal-Mart as an answer to be from an independent source?

And then you're forgetting about the Farm Bill, how it pays subsidies to American farmers that determines what grows and how it is grown. So you're ignoring the fact that we the people subsidize industrial farming to our detriment, and to the detriment of sustainable farming practices.

[cooperativeintelligence]

Telling a story and leaving out important facts is very similar to telling a lie. Why is NPR telling this lie? Who benefits from this lie? Could it be the agro-giants like Monsanto? Why would NPR give into pressure from corporations? Has someone followed the money?

Maybe if we shine a little light on the situation NPR can get back to the business of serving the public interest.

[EatMoreGreens]

It is extremely disheartening that NPR had the chance to do some real good here, and not only blew it, but possibly made the situation even worse by proliferating so many false beliefs.
Carol Anne Wasserman
www.GetHealthyWithCarol.com

[BassMonk]

NPR is already a lost cause, as is PBS. They are not independent. Try Pacifica, FSTV and LINK TV.

[research]

sad but true. ever since the republicans corrupted it.

[zizyphus]

Is there any corner of the federal government that the Republicans haven't corrupted yet?