In Dhading province in central Nepal, most people are farmers, who depend on rain-fed agriculture for food and income. But erratic rainfall and natural disasters in recent years, including widespread drought and recurring landslides, are threatening the livelihoods of the region's farming communities.
Great news! India put a hold on Bt eggplant (which they call brinjal) due to safety concerns. This one has been on my radar for about a year, ever since I met an Indian woman who was quite upset about the impending destruction of the genetics of India's 4000 varieties of eggplant. The decision sounds like it was made due to public outcry, as government scientists gave Bt brinjal the okay in 2009.
"Public sentiment is negative. It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary, principle-based approach," Mr Ramesh said.
He said the moratorium on growing BT brinjal - as the variety of aubergine is known in India - would remain in place until tests were carried out "to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals".
The minister said "independent scientific studies" were needed to establish "the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment".
Imagine that. Using the precautionary principle and obtaining independent studies. Hooray!
I recently met up with one of the masterminds of the Green Revolution - a man who was mentored by Norman Borlaug himself for decades. He told me that when the Green Revolutionaries first got to India, they found that the Indians were growing all of the wrong crops and crop varieties in all of the wrong places. Oh, those stupid Indians! You have to wonder how an ancient civilization managed to make it to present day without starving into oblivion if it can't feed itself.
As it turns out, once upon a time, India could feed itself. The book Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis tells the story of how the British robbed the Indians of their wealth, wrecked their agricultural system (in order to serve the needs of industrial Britain), and then watched as millions of Indian people starved. The book also covers other countries - mainly China and Brazil, but also African nations, and the Philippines. Each nation has a similar story to tell, but for this diary I am going to focus on India.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, there was a series of abnormally strong El Nino cycles. Famine erupted around the world, in each of the places I named above. Some of the disaster is due to El Nino, but the magnitude of the disaster - the difference between a drought and a famine - is manmade.
This story is very relevant now, sadly. Except now it's the U.S. (on behalf of multinational corporations) who is plundering the developing world.
Why are artisan producers so important? Read this article on a local salumi company and you'll begin to understand. From the age, breed, and feed of the pigs to the lack of nitrates to the unique recipes, Knight Salumi produces a product that just cannot be obtained through our corporate food system.
"Three wise men" made a pilgrimage to DC last week: Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and Fred Kirschanmann. Here's a Q&A with the trio. I sure hope the politicians who met with them valued their input.
Organics grew 118% (by acreage) worldwide between 2000 and 2007. Organics are still less than 1% of global agriculture, however. 97% of spending on organics occurs in the U.S. and E.U. I think this is probably only looking at CERTIFIED organics - who knows how much uncertified land is managed organically in developing countries by people who never converted to industrial techniques.
Hillary Clinton thinks Indian farmer suicides are due to a need for loans. Well, sort of. If you want to take a really shallow view of it, then yes. But there's a lot more to the story than just that, and I doubt Hillary wants to "go there" because it might involve questioning free trade and industrial agriculture.
Food stamps are getting easier to use at farmers' markets, says the NYT. GOOD. This is a very hot topic near where I live. We had no markets that took food stamps a little over a year ago. Now we have several, and it really wasn't that difficult to set up (so I'm told). Yet, most markets around here STILL don't take food stamps, because those in charge haven't taken the steps to do so (and presumably either haven't thought about it or don't want to).
What's going on in California's Central Valley? Well, it's not good. As the water dried up, so did the paychecks. This article calls Fresno "California's Detroit."
Chronic health effects are increasing in the world such as cancers, hormonal, reproductive, nervous, or immune diseases, even in young people. During regulatory toxicological subchronic tests to prevent these on mammalian health, prior commercialization of chemicals, including pesticides and drugs, or GMOs, some statistically significant findings may be revealed. This discussion is about the need to investigate the relevant criteria to consider those as biologically significant. The sex differences and the non linear dose or time related effects should be considered in contrast to the claims of a Monsanto-supported expert panel about a GMO, the MON 863 Bt maize, but also for pesticides or drugs, in particular to reveal hormone-dependent diseases and first signs of toxicities.
Rice is daily food for half of the world's population. Genetically modified (GM) rice, on the other hand, is a threat to our agriculture, our biodiversity and a possible risk to our health.
At present, GM rice is not grown commercially anywhere in the world. But Bayer, the German chemical giant, has genetically manipulated rice to withstand higher doses of a toxic pesticide called glufosinate, which is considered to be so dangerous to humans and the environment that it will soon be banned from Europe.
In just a few weeks, the European Union will decide whether or not this GM rice can enter EU countries, appear on supermarket shelves and end up on our dinner plates. If the EU approves the import of Bayer GM rice, farmers in the US and elsewhere may soon start planting it.
Since AAF is on hiatus until September, I guess he won't mind if I pick up water issues in the meantime...
India can coordinate a nationwide election for over 700 million eligible voters, yet "the world's largest democracy" doesn't seem to be too concerned with the fact that it still can't ensure access to clean water for its rural poor -
That incredible coordination doesn't translate to the treatment of water. India still lacks sanitation facilities for about 700 million people. On top of that, 200 million don't have access to drinking water. Those that do have no guarantee it is actually safe.
Great piece from my old hometown paper, The Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, on the federal crackdown on oceangoing cargo and cruise ships that use our oceans (because they do belong to all of us...) as their illegal waste dumping grounds.
The Center for Biological Diversity has filed suit against US EPA under the Clean Water Act for failing to recognize the impacts of ocean acidification.
A "voluntary" (uh-oh...) plan has been struck amongst six Asia-Pacific nations to protect the threatened Coral Triangle.
I just listened to a fantastic podcast of a speech by Indian journalist Palagummi Sainath. He talks about the inequality around the world, including both India and the United States. And he is, in some parts, extremely funny, but he is always extremely poignant. This speech moved me to near tears.
Here is a story he ends with, and I will share it with you as a way of encouraging you to listen to the full speech. Back in ancient Rome, the Emperor Nero held a great party. To provide light for the party (as this was before the age of electricity), he hauled prisoners out of the jails and set them on fire one by one. Sainath points out that it's not terribly impressive that Nero was so cruel - we already knew that - but he wants to know "Who were Nero's guests?" Who were the guests at the party that could sip their wine, glass by glass, as human beings were burned alive? And as he makes the point that extreme wealth does not exist without extreme poverty, he encourages each of us, don't be one of Nero's guests.
If you are interested in more information from Palagummi Sainath, I recommend his book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought, and I also recommend another book referenced in this podcast, Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis.
In Punjab, India, cancer rates are worse in farming villages that use more pesticides, researchers found. This is according to NPR's fantastic continuing coverage of the failure of the Green Revolution (the introduction of industrial ag around the world).
A farmer named Jarnail Singh noticed a connection between pesticides and cancer and he got a university to research the issue:
Singh says he noticed one of the first troubling clues in the late 1980s and early '90s: Peacocks - India's national bird - disappeared from the fields. Over the years, seven people in his family got cancer - and three of them died. People in Jajjal and surrounding villages got cancer, too.
The researchers confirmed his hunch. Areas with heavy pesticide use have significantly higher rates of cancer. That does not yet prove that the pesticides are to blame, but it is enough of a link to make you worry. In the meantime, the rural Punjab population continues to line up to ride the "cancer train" - the train that takes them to the area's regional cancer center.
In light of the diary about the failure of the Green Revolution I posted earlier today, I'd like to also examine the farmer suicides in India. And I think, as you'll see below, that perhaps saying that the Green Revolution was bad because of the suicides is misleading. The Green Revolution was bad because it was bad. It didn't work. It replaced one unacceptable situation (starvation) with another (a few years of plenty followed by a crisis). But the suicides? They are the result of a perfect storm that particularly affected one region of India worse than the rest of the country. The Green Revolution was a part of that, but so was the climate, the political and economic environment, and the lack of other career options in the area.
My source for this information is: "Farmers' Suicides In India: Magnitudes, Trends And Spatial Patterns" by K. Nagaraj, Madras Institute of Development Studies
NPR recently did a 2-part series on what the Green Revolution was and why it didn't work. Given that Senator Lugar is calling for a second Green Revolution, now is a good time to discuss why the first one was a bad idea.
Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, recently gave a talk about the global food crisis at the 2009 Ecological Farming Conference. Raj is not someone I've met, nor have I read his book. Reading his (paraphrased) words from his recent talk (entitled "Food, Financial Stability and Democracy in Crisis") makes me think that he's someone I should pay more attention to. (I received notes on the talk from Ethan G and I'd like to say a big thanks to him for the time he took typing everything out.)
The farmer suicides continue in India, and it's an awful lot more real when you see the picture at the link of two women - a daughter who found her father's body after he killed himself, and her mother, holding his picture. He had a debt equal to $20,000.
That man's younger brother may also commit suicide. He farms 2 acres of land and he's got a debt equal to $15,000. He's only 35. Currently, his wife is watching him around the clock to make sure he doesn't kill himself.
Each year before the harvest, the small farmers of Punjab, who make up nearly 85% of the state's farming community, borrow from local rural moneylenders at exorbitant interest rates to meet production costs, including fertilisers and electricity for irrigation.
Defaulting on payment increases the rates of interest and a farmer is publicly humiliated in the local panchayat (self-governing rural body) if he fails to pay up.
According to the article, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves in India since 1997 - mostly in a handful of states. As our Monsanto friends pointed out, the immediate cause of death was frequently debt:
Amarjit Singh, another small farmer from Barnala whose father committed suicide a few years back, says: "My father could not read or write, so he could not calculate the amount of loan he had incurred.
"Once it reached a staggering sum, he was publicly threatened by the moneylender and committed suicide.
"If I am asked to pay my father's debt, I will also have to commit suicide," says Amarjit, who has also taken on loans to meet rising production costs.
However, debt alone cannot be blamed. What caused the debt? Lack of credit and lack of education, clearly. But what else? Trade liberalization and industrialized farming techniques. The former led to lower prices, the latter to increased costs.
Monsanto's blog has a post up about Indian farmer suicides. Naturally, they say it isn't their fault. Well... since they brought it up, I decided to listen to Vandana Shiva on Democracy Now from December 2006 when she spoke on the subject. She kinda thinks it IS their fault.
I've attempted to transcribe the Vandana Shiva interview below, although I'll admit that I only got about half of it so I do recommend listening to the interview yourself. And - please - drop a line to your Senators telling them about the Indian farmer suicides and citing them as a reason to oppose S.384.
Here's some nice distractions to help you get through your Monday:
Ezra Klein got his reservations to celebrity chef Mario Batali's restaurant Babbo far in advance, awaited the day, and... it was just okay. Which makes me wonder if I should just keep my fantasy of dining at the French Laundry as a fantasy so I can assume it's really as good as I think it is.
Mark Bittman weighs the value of the organic label. I like his conclusion that some day we should produce food as if animals and the land mattered. He says:
Some of that food will be organic, and hooray for that. Meanwhile, they should remember that the word itself is not synonymous with "safe," "healthy," "fair" or even necessarily "good."
Obama Foodorama makes a profound point about the White House garden: The White House itself was built by slaves, and now Michelle, descended from slaves, is its First Lady. That adds a layer of meaning to those pics of her digging in the dirt at the groundbreaking.
Spain's got a new plan to give free fruit to school children. So do we, in our Fresh Fruits & Vegetables Program, but it's still in a pilot phase in only a few schools per state. Weak!
Check this out: 100 Blogs for the Frugal Gourmet. Just what I need right about now, although I don't think I need a blog to tell me that my staples of oatmeal, whole wheat toast, spinach omelets, yogurt, roasted veggies, and fresh fruit are cheap and delicious.
We might not be nuking anyone with a bomb these days, but we're nuking them all the same. We're just doing it quietly. Vandana Shiva, an Indian activist trained in nuclear physics, just published a book called Soil Not Oil in which she provides an absolutely DAMNING description of nuclear power AND of the Kyoto Protocol.
Now that I'm reading it, I'm utterly depressed. We just spent the last 8 years bemoaning the fact that we aren't signed onto Kyoto, and now that we have a president who would gladly sign onto it (or onto whatever comes next), I find out that the whole thing is a bunch of BS anyway. We SHOULD HAVE spent the last 8 years calling for real solutions to global warming, not debating whether or not global warming exists.
Thank goodness we're back to business with a leader who gets that our energy problems are real and we need something other than oil. Follow me below so you can hear Vandana Shiva's arguments on why nuclear is unjust and unsustainable and so is Kyoto.
