With a click of her mouse, EatingLiberally's Kerry Trueman, aka kat, corners Dr. Marion Nestle, NYU professor of nutrition and author of Feed Your Pet Right, Pet Food Politics, What to Eat, Food Politics, and Safe Food:
KT: Now that the Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people, too (happy birthday, Citizens United!), Monsanto is apparently out to put a friendly, slightly weatherbeaten, gently grizzled face on industrial agriculture (see above photo, taken at a DC bus stop just outside USDA headquarters.)
This guy looks an awful lot like Henry Fonda playing Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, which seems only fitting since Agribiz may be helping to create a 21st century Dust Bowl.
After decades of boasting about how fossil-fuel intensive industrial agriculture has made it possible for far fewer farmers to produce way more food, Monsanto is now championing the power of farming to create jobs and preserve land. Does this attempt by a biotech behemoth to wrap itself in populist plaid flannel give you the warm and fuzzies, or just burn you up?
Dr. Nestle: This is not a new strategy for Monsanto. Half of my book, Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (University of California Press, 2010), is devoted to the politics of food biotechnology. I illustrated it with a Monsanto advertisement (Figure 17, page 182). The caption may amuse you:
In 2001, the biotechnology industry's public relations campaign featured the equivalent of the Marlboro Man. Rather than cigarettes, however, this advertisement promotes the industry's view of the ecological advantages of transgenic crops (reduced pesticide use, soil conservation), and consequent benefits to society (farm preservation). In 2002, a series of elegant photographs promoted the benefits of genetically modified corn, soybeans, cotton, and papaya.
Last year, Monsanto placed ads that took its "we're for farmers" stance to another level:
9 billion people to feed. A changing climate. NOW WHAT? Producing more. Conserving more. Improving farmers' lives. That's sustainable agriculture. And that's what Monsanto is all about.
That's sustainable agriculture? I'll bet you didn't know that. Now take a look at the Monsanto website--really, you can't make this stuff up:
If there were one word to explain what Monsanto is about, it would have to be farmers.
Billions of people depend upon what farmers do. And so will billions more. In the next few decades, farmers will have to grow as much food as they have in the past 10,000 years - combined.It is our purpose to work alongside farmers to do exactly that.
To produce more food.
To produce more with less, conserving resources like soil and water.
And to improve lives.
We do this by selling seeds, traits developed through biotechnology, and crop protection chemicals.
Face it. We have two agricultural systems in this country, both claiming to be good for farmers and both claiming to be sustainable. One focuses on local, seasonal, organic, and sustainable in the sense of replenishing what gets taken out of the soil. The other is Monsanto, for which sustainable means selling seeds (and not letting farmers save them), patented traits developed through biotechnology, and crop protection chemicals.
This is about who gets to control the food supply and who gets to choose. Too bad the Monsanto ads don't explain that.
Follow Kerry Trueman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrytrueman
Maria Rodale: We Stand in Opposition to GE Alfalfa
Not only that, but the hostility of the townspeople who have to drink the "blue baby" water that runs off our fields, anger from neighbors whom get pushed out by the need to ever-expand in size just to get that extra subsidy dollar, and rage from everyone who is becoming aware of the real gap between our QUANTITY of food and the QUALITY. Besides... over 65% of corn is used to feed livestock for meat. Is that really "FEEDING THE WORLD" or just the gluttinous bellies of those consumers well-off enough to purchase said meat?
A better, healthier future IS possible. We may not be able to switch everything in a single day, but there is a more efficient, economically and ecologically feasible way to do these things where everyone - farmers, consumers, businesses, animals, environment - gets treated fairly and with respect.
We are all consumers; even us farmers. We all deserve to know what's in our food, and how it will affect us in 20 years.
I was thinking about this particular article last night, and pondered what would happen if the US government suddenly mandated only organic farming, and absolutely no food imported that wasn't organic. The two main results I can think of is Americans would be much, much thinner, and I would be an instant millionaire, because food prices would sky rocket. Maybe that isn't such a bad scenario.
but don't underestimate the ability of Organic big business to scr*w growers just as well as Conventional big business does.
A question for you... If the worst case scenario happens, and GM crops cause a chain reaction that destroys life on Earth as we know it, will it have been worth it? Will the lives of all of our children and grandchildren have been worth it? Anyone who says that they can be certain that that won't happen is blatantly lying to you. We don't know the longterm consequences, but we do know is that if history is any indication, we have a whole lot to be worried about. There is no question that GM is a gamble. There are reasonable people who think the gamble is worth it, and there are reasonable people who think the gamble is not worth it. I side with the latter, which is ironically, the truly conservative stance. To me, avoiding poison and genetically modified biotechnology in our food is just good plain sense.
I do find it funny the left wingers against any modern ag methods are so old fashioned that they even make Amish look too modern since they too have now adopted GMO.
The think the right wingers=left wingers these days.
That said if you want to sweep conventional to the dustbin, it starts with the consumer, you have to change his habits. You have to convince him he doesn't need a 60 inch tv and spend more on food. You need to convince something like 100 consumers to switch to convert a farm to organic. That is the challenge.
Can you anti-technology zealots come up with ANYTHING original? Can you say ONE thing that's your own thought? Please.....just one.
.
Maybe you should come up with something original yourself.
I am asking because this is the question grumpyfarmer said no one was asking.
My question in regard to this would be: if you stop using chemical fertilizers, will I be able to come by in five years and find a rich humus full of healthy organisms to grow more food, or will it be a bare field full of weeds? I know it can't happen overnight, but can't there be a transition to more sustainable, more soil nourishing techniques?
Libertarians like myself believe much of government intrusion can be avoided by eliminating the need for it through better nutrition, and the environmental aspects of organic, sustainable, locally grown and sold produce and meats are obvious.
The common ground is high and plenty. Anybody who tries to highjack the issue for political advantage should be drummed out of the corps. "The Gourd" vs. "The Shoe" is the last thing needed if we are to prevent the GMO catastrophe from occurring.
I would like to see some of the folks who like to criticize anything and everything about modern agriculture make their living farming, it would be eye opening I think for all of us.
I don't blindly trust Monsanto. What they are selling is legal though, and I am not in a position to turn my back on legal technology.
If the reasons for not farming organically are economic, it is definitely important for people to recognize that. If a system of food production isn't economically viable, it isn't sustainable. I have quite a few friends who make a decent living raising animals sustainably and growing vegetables with organic methods, though it's certainly tough for some. Of course, just because they can do it, it doesn't mean everyone can. It is a good sign though.
For better or worse, it is true that anyone who eats, not just farmers, has a right to an opinion about how they would like their food to be grown. And a vote with how they choose to spend their money. That said, I think most everyone, eaters and farmers included, benefit from learning more about the issues.
Or the recent rulings against Monsanto by the courts: http://www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/lloc_news?disp3_l205401626_text
Or the slide in Monsanto stock price due to poor sales of new generation of GMO seeds: http://www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/lloc_news?disp3_l205401626_text
For the farmers commenting on this topic, you have to understand that most organic farmers. like myself, used to be chemical farmers. We stopped using chemicals when we got sick of poisoning the farm workers, the earth, water table, etc. We know how you farm and we know that you don;t need chemicals to bring in a bumper crop.
GMO exist in the market place due to regulatory capture, they were exempted from standard regulatory review by Dan Quayle in his capacity as head of the Council on Competitiveness. GMO's have never been through the rigorous review process, they were given a pass and now the courts have discovered that USDA failed to follow their own approval process when granting approval for GMO sugar beets.
GMO's are the poster child for government corruption.
Wait a minute..why should I listen to you since you are obviously trying to convince me of something? Therefore I must be cynical and not listen to you.
http://www.wrkf.org/multimedia/index.php?id=1
"I believe consumers have a right to know what is in the food that they consume"---Jeff Kleinpeter, CEO Kleinpeter Farms Dairy