competing world views collide

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by heuristics, Mar 16, 2006.

  1. heuristics

    heuristics Junior Member

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    Article from The Land newspaper march 9, 2006.

    Growing organic demand indulgent
    by Jennifer Marohasy

    What does the future really hold for Aust enthusiastic organic farmers?
    Last week former NSW Democrat MP Richard Jones from Possum Creek in the far north coast complained in a letter to The Land mar 2 p12)
    that a new Federal Government report featured a whole section of why the State Govt bans on genetically modified crops should be lifted yet there was no discussion of the organic food market.

    I agree with Mr Jones the report Creating Our Future should have included information about organic farming and this growing niche market.

    But in the end, and despite the emotional attachment to organics, it is only modern high yield agriculture that can secure the world's future food needs.

    Thirty years ago, concerned about the exponential increase in the world's populatio, Prof Paul Ehrlich of Standford University wrote in a best-selling book that the battle to feed all of humanity was over.

    He predicted that by late 1970s the world would undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people would starve to death.

    He also predicted that life expectancy in the US would drop to 42 years as a consequence of the use of pesticides.
    Interestingly, life expectancy has continued to increase. In fact we now live to more than twice the age we did just 100 years ago.
    Technological innovation – including the use of pesticide, high yielding crop variables and irrigation has enabled the world's farmers to produce about double the amount of food from essentially the same area of land.

    Australian producers – including rice, cotton and sugar growers – are among the most efficient in the world on a tonnes per hectare basis.

    In the early 1980s, about 30 per cent of people in developing countries were malnourished

    By the year 2000 this figure had reduced to 18pc, even thought he world's population continued to increase, passing the 6 billion mark in 1999.

    This massive population is not due to women having more babies, but rather to a dramatic fall in the death rate as a result of improved access to food, medicine and clean water.

    So people are in general better off than ther were 20 years ago, but more people in places more stress on the environment and still many people go hungry every day.

    Against this reality, I find it hard to reconcile the increasingly strong demand for organic food and even harder to accept the claim that the organic market is for the “intelligent consumer”.

    As the founder of a new chain of organic supermarkets in Syd and Melb recently explained, organic food is more expensive because organic farmers have smaller yields.

    Typically organic agriculture yields around 30 to 50pc less crops than crops grown on conventional farms.
    This new organic supermarket chain even sells organic toilet paper.

    Given more than 6 billion people wake each morning needing to be fed, and given the pressure this already places on the world's limited natural resources, I find the growing demand for organic food in places like Syd and Melb extremely indulgent.

    Jennifer Marohasy is the Brisbane-based environmental director of the Institute of Public Affairs.
    [email protected]
     
  2. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Oh, Heretic!

    What depressing drivel, and wrong on too many points to enumerate.... but indicative of the general mindset of people.

    We could all send her an email telling here how wrong she is!

    C
     
  3. Tezza

    Tezza Junior Member

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    I dont know weather to Laugh Or Laugh

    :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


    Tezza
     
  4. heuristics

    heuristics Junior Member

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    worlds collide

    well, see I did wonder if that wouldnt be exactly the reaction of some here!
    I was just a wee bit worried that some might think cause I posted it I might have gone over to the dark side.
    by serendipity, i immediately found this i a small community volunteer-run newsletter in west Syd: Living Heritage:
    "Does organic food cost more? ....

    "In some cases yes, however the price of conventionaly grown food doe not represent the true cost contained in the hidden increase in health care, environmental clean-up adn the permanent loss of our precious topsoil.
    The complete management system of organic farming requires more skill and ahrd work than simply spraying a field with poisons. We need to give organic farmers fair return for their hard work to encourage them to continue farming organically.
    (author unknown)
     
  5. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Heuristics,

    An article here in the paper had a typically misinformed shit head equate organic agriculture with genocide. He challenged anyone to refute it, saying those who eat "green apple" were in favor of genocide, so I did, with force, but the paper declined to print it....

    Brainwashed dimbulbs like this vacuous nitwit Jennifer spread their stupidity widely, since many people read but are incapable of thinking critically. Shame on her.

    Here is my letter to the paper, which they refused to print, in it's entirety:

    Dear XXXXX,
    I wrote the below in an email immediately after your incredible statement regarding organic production. Amandala apparently decided not to publish it, and if you got it, you did not respond, either. Perhaps BTLs email service messed up, again. I am sending my letter to you directly. I am sure you will be offended, that is perhaps unavoidable, sadly, but what you wrote was so stupid that it needs to be refuted absolutely, which I think I have done.

    You may disagree with what I say here, but this is an issue I know a lot more about than you or your brainwashed “agriculturist” buddies. If you bother to read the books I suggest, you will have more information to make an opinion with than you had when you made your absurd statement. Unfortunately, you obviously have no clue at all regarding what you are talking about in this instance.

    And, it is not you that is wrong, it is all the brainwashed agriculturists who kept repeating the same stupid lies that prompted you to say what you said. You just repeated the same lie the chemical companies have been saying for 60 years. I always enjoy your column, with this small exception, and I look forward to reading more of it.

    Original letter to Editor, dated October 22nd, 2003:
    In the Tuesday October 20th edition of Amandala, I read in XXXXX, which I usually enjoy reading, a ridiculous statement equating organic food production with genocide. As Smokey Joe might say, that is pure shit. Anyone who equates organic food production with genocide is either uninformed, willfully ignorant, brainwashed, or a paid agent of the multinational chemical corporations. Period.

    I cannot believe that anyone would say such an absurd thing, and that Amandala would waste ink and print something so obviously wrong.
    I am an organic farmer, and I will say that I believe that there is a place for chemical agriculture, especially for large acreage monocultures geared for export, but it is not the model that I choose to follow, and I know that I am not alone.

    I think the writer has some misconceptions about what organic farming is. Organic farming is not merely the absence of chemicals, it is the conscious fostering of healthy soil, resulting in healthy food. Food has been grown “organically” for thousands of years, in every part of the globe where agriculture is practiced, and has only been displaced by chemical agriculture in the last 60 years.

    I missed the article about locusts in Africa, so I am not sure what was said regarding organic production and how it related to locusts, but whatever was said does not apply to all organic production everywhere. Locusts and other plagues are not caused by lack of chemicals, (in fact, use of chemicals often makes the problem worse by poisoning the predators that feed on pests) locusts and plagues are caused by monocultures and growing crops in locations that are inappropriate for their production.
    Africa in particular has been the target of aggressive extension programs designed to convince farmers to convert from traditional crops to crops more suited to other locations, or for export. Whether the end beneficiary is a country selling seed, chemicals and expertise, or a government that sees these crops as a source of revenue, African farmers have been the unfortunate recipient of many, many, many disastrous and poorly thought out “development” projects, many of which do more to benefit the “donor” nation than the Africans.

    Turning farmers from growing millet to rice and corn, encouraging wheat to be grown in regions where wheat has never been grown, convincing farmers that cassava is not suitable food for humans, but imported wheat flour is, mandating coffee or cacao production at the expense of food crops, growing mangos in the desert while depleting the watershed, this is what has led to famine and starvation in Africa, not the organic farming Africans have always engaged in. Famine results from dependency on a limited number of crops, especially introduced crops promoted for the export market at the expense of food production for domestic consumption.

    Healthy, diverse farms will never find themselves susceptible to any single plague. If something affects one crop, there are others to provide calories. Traditional African farms have often been well-designed stacked polycultures. The sad thing is that over the last 60 years, traditional African agroforestry systems have been systematically displaced by chemical monocrops. This is well documented in “Trees and Multistory Agriculture in Africa” by Hugues Dupriez and Philippe De Leneer as well as Peter Huxley’s “Tropical Agroforestry” and in many other books and periodicals related to development and agriculture.

    The organic sector of agriculture is one of the fastest growing markets today. In the humid tropics, the organic production of export market crops including pineapple, mango, papaya, citrus and other fruits, spices like cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and beverages like tea and coffee, and cacao, as well as herbs, legume and grain crops has increased every year for the last thirty years.

    Every single country in Central and South America produces organic food, both certified organic for export and back yard organic for domestic consumption, including Belize.

    Looking at Costa Rica, which has an enviable thriving and well-developed (and well-promoted by the government) organic sector, we see mango, pineapple, banana, ginger, coffee, cacao, oranges, citrus, guava, various fruits, vegetables and sugar all being produced organically, primarily for exportation. Costa Ricas organic sector has been expanding very rapidly, making them extremely competitive in the market for organic food, and there are excellent schools there that train agronomists in organic production, including CATIE and EARTH. There are graduates of these schools here in Belize.

    There are many valid reasons to grow food organically here in Belize:

    1. Belize doesn’t produce any chemicals, so every quart of pesticide used in Belize represents a loss of foreign currency to Belize. The same applies to chemical fertilizers.

    2. The international market for organic food is a multi-million dollar market that has been expanding for many years. Premiums for organic food can be up to %75 of the cost of the chemically produced foods. You can find some certified organic foods selling here in Belize at Save-U, where I saw organic soymilk and breakfast cereals for sale the last time I was up in the city. Belize can produce many of the same crops Costa Rica produces organically and enjoy access to the same markets.

    3. Many crops don’t need chemicals. There is a chemical that calls itself “the chemical machete”. I prefer the real steel machete. This requires an input of more labor, but costs less than herbicides, I can’t accidentally poison myself, and I only leave filings from my file and my sweat on the soil.

    4. Many of these chemicals are not used where they are manufactured, and are made just to export to other countries. Why the hell should we use them here if they aren’t using them there?

    5. Studies have shown that organic food contains more nutrients than chemically produced food’s.

    6. Organically produced foods do not have pesticide residues. Pesticide residues are known to constitute a threat to human safety. Threshold levels for toxicity are routinely passed.

    7. Our grandparent’s generation produced all their food organically. It can be done.

    8. The use of chemicals further erodes the traditional bank of knowledge regarding “organic” production and fosters continued dependency on imported inputs, requiring a growing percentage of the farmers income to buy chemicals.

    9. For food security in Belize. What happens if the economy goes bad and no one can afford to purchase imported chemicals?

    There are organic producers in all the countries of the world. I have seen their farms or met with them in the United States, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela and Belize. The percentage of certified organic foods on the shelves in the European Union is %25-30.

    We have organic cacao being grown right here in Belize in south Stann Creek and Toledo by the members of the Toledo Cacao Growers Association, who have had a stable market of ten years, and who have enjoyed prices up to three times the world market price. The “agriculturists” of the TAMP-VITA project also said cacao couldn’t be grown organically, but yet, there it is.

    Within the last year Belize also exported organic rice from Toledo and Mayan King in south Stann Creek exports organic citrus.

    There exists an organization called Belize Organic Producers Association, (BOPA). Founded in 2000, it is comprised of farmers and “agriculturists” from Citrus Growers Association, Toledo Cacao Growers Association, the Interamerican Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture, Janus Foundation, Ministry of Agriculture, Cooperatives and Fisheries, and some farmers and others who support organic agriculture in Belize.

    BOPA is working hard to expand organic agriculture in Belize, and I support them.

    You insult the thousands of Belizean organic farmers who grow all of their own foods, and produce excess to sell to people, like you, who do not produce any food. They manage to do this with out any chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers at all. Farmers like Saul Garcia, Pablo Cal, Auxibio Sho, Tanya Tuss, John Spang, Eladio Pop, Lucio Sho and Burton Caliz, (a small sample of organic farmers in Toledo,) all produce their own foods as well as food for the market without the use of chemicals. There are many other organic farms in the country, including Mario up in Mullins River, the garden at Blancaneux Lodge (which is incredible as it is pine ridge, and the transformation from pine ridge to productive garden took a very good understanding of soil, and hard work), the composting at Janus Foundation, and the organic farm at Chaa Creek, and those are just a few of the farms I have seen with my own eyes. There are many, many others I have not seen.

    Lucio Sho was Farmer of the Year last year. Last I checked, he didn’t use any chemicals. Auxibio Sho was Junior Farmer of the Year a few years back, he also doesn’t use chemicals, so there is proof that farming can be done organically. (inserted for this post, Burton Caliz, also an organic farmer, was farmer of the year in 2005)

    The problem is that farming organically takes thought, and requires more work. Instead of simply dumping the right chemicals, the correct fertilizers, an organic farmer looks closely at the soil, the plants, and adjusts soil nutrients judiciously using organic components. Crop residues are often composted with animal manure, which increases soil biota and raises nitrogen levels, and dolomite, which is produced here in Belize, can be applied to the soil to add calcium or magnesium or to buffer acidity, or the farmer might make strategic interplantings with legumes or tree legumes to increase nitrogen in the soil and mine nutrients from the sub soil, and this takes thoughtful, protracted, observation. Unfortunately, many farmers and “agriculturists” have been trained/brainwashed to believe that such things are impossible and been sold on the “easy” way.

    You cavalierly equate organic agriculture with genocide, but I think genocide is more like when indigenous agricultural systems, developed over millennia, full of knowledge about how to use the lunar and solar cycle, how to cultivate and retain healthy soils, what plants are good for creating organic, natural and safe pesticides at home, how to increase fertility through fallow rotations, and how to increase fertility and resistance to pests through creating biological diversity in the cropping system, thereby establishing complex predator/prey guilds, are dismissed when “agriculturists”, most of whom are not farmers, return from their studies abroad in the countries that produce all of these agricultural chemicals, armed with books full of theoretical “knowledge”, say that these systems are “archaic” and “don’t work”.

    Genocide, to me, is when an entire vast knowledge of how to grow food naturally without having to purchase inputs from large multinational companies is nearly wiped out world wide in one generation of concerted effort by ostensibly well-intentioned extension programs in favor of chemicals that present a danger to the user applying them, the communities where they are manufactured, the consumer eating the resultant food, and all the biological communities down stream for the direct economic benefit of multinational chemical.

    Genocide is exporting chemicals that are illegal where they are produced to developing countries like Belize, where understanding of the dangers of chemical use has not reached most of the end users, and application tools and allegedly safe techniques to use them, including the use of chemical suits, gloves, masks and goggles, are unavailable, or too costly for the farmers to obtain. If a chemical is too dangerous to use in the US and Europe, they are too dangerous to use here in Belize.

    Displacing traditional knowledge and hooking the world on the chemical dependency of herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and chemical fertilizers, all for the profit of the share holders of companies like Bayer, Monsanto and the like is closer to genocide, if you ask me (and you did!).

    As a result of this concerted effort, much of this indigenous knowledge has been lost, recklessly and deliberately discarded in favor of these more modern and “efficient” systems. The “agriculturists” you refer to who “know” that the old system “doesn’t work” because they learned this while studying abroad, again, in the countries that produce these chemicals we import. Imagine that!

    I know plenty of “agriculturists” who “know” that organic agriculture “can’t work”, but yet, despite the belief of the delusional “experts”, I know plenty of organic farms here in Belize that are working quite well.

    I won’t bore you with a list of what we ate for lunch, but it was nutritious, and everything except the sugar in our lime juice was from our farm and organic. This is typical of many farmers. It isn’t just that people used to farm organically, many still are.

    We grow over 300 species of plants, with well over 200 of them providing food. Your agriculturist buddies who believe organic agriculture can’t work are probably citrus farmers, or cane farmers, and buy their food.
    Chemical use not only damages the soil biota needed to maintain soil fertility, chemicals also pollute down stream from where they are used. You could drink the water in Monkey River 40 years ago, but if these chemicals are so safe, I invite you to take a cool glass now.

    Some marine biologists think that the massive die offs out at the reef are a direct result of chemical and silt run off from cultivated areas.

    In addition to the unintended contamination and sterilization of waterways, there is the problem of production. Manufacturing biocides creates millions of tonnes of unwanted byproducts every year, which are difficult to dispose of, and often become “inert ingredients” in other products. They are also dumped at sea, or illegally buried, or shipped to developing countries.
    What about chemicals that are illegal or tightly controlled in the countries where they are produced that anyone can buy here?

    My favorite example is 2,4,D. In the United States, where they make 2,4,D, a private citizen cannot buy it without a special permit. While it is easy to get Round Up and Gramxone, you just can’t get 2,4,D in the country where they make it without a special permit.

    Here in Belize, anyone with cash, and a pesticide license that is issued with no training for a fee of BH$5, can buy all the 2,4,D they want. For a bit of historical perspective, 2,4,D was a %50 component of the infamous Agent Orange, with an equal part 2,4,5,T. Used to defoliate areas that the Viet Cong might use for refuge from the American forces, Agent Orange has resulted in many thousands of cancers developing in veterans of that conflict on the American side, and uncounted numbers of cancer and other serious illnesses on the Vietnamese side. That sounds like genocide, to me.

    Many of these biocides are known carcinogens, or cancer causing agents, and many are known mutagens, which can cause birth defects. While there is a theoretical “safe level” of residue for these chemicals, routine testing by the USDA has shown that a significant percentage of food imported into the US has residue levels many times higher than are considered safe. USDA tests less than %.01 of all incoming produce. The irony is that many of the chemicals in question are unavailable or prohibited in the US, but produced there.

    Epidemiologists believe that many cancers are not started by massive doses of carcinogens, but are caused by years of accumulated exposure to low levels of random carcinogens, especially agricultural chemicals. Many biologists do not accept that there is a safe threshold for carcinogens.
    The scope of this letter is too short to adequately respond to your statement, I have tried to outline some of the concerns, but I will offer some reading material that would better educate you on all of the issues involved if you are truly interested.

    If you would really like to know more about the science behind the issues, and not entrench yourself firmly in your position, I suggest you open your mind and read “Silent Spring”, by Rachel Carson to better inform yourself of the dangers of pesticides.

    Rachel Carson was a scientist, a marine biologist who wrote eloquently on the unintended consequences of chemical use to soil biota and aquatic systems, as well as the dangers to humans and animals the use of such chemicals represent.

    Published in 1962 the book “Silent Spring” was attacked by media representatives of chemical companies when it was released. The chemical industry spent a quarter of a million dollars US, which was a great sum of money in those days, to discredit her research and malign her character. In the end, the worst they could say was that she told only one side of the argument.

    “Silent Spring” is very well researched, and is a scary book. The contents of the book have been verified in the subsequent 40 years since it was first published.

    For her work and the writing of the book, “Silent Spring”, Rachel Carson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously, in 1981, by Ronald Reagan, who, incidentally, made sure only organic food was served at the White House at the same time the USDA was busy working on discrediting organic food production and USAID was busy promoting chemical use (need to sell those American chemicals to somebody somewhere) and inappropriate crops world wide.

    For more about the political, social and economic issues involved, you would do well to read “Stolen Harvest, the Highjacking of the Global Food Supply” and “Monocultures of the Mind” by the Indian writer, Vandana Shiva. I suggest Stolen Harvest, the Highjacking of the Global Food Supply” would be best to read first because you need more of a foundation in agricultural science and politics to understand “Monocultures of the Mind”. She deals less with the science of chemistry than the important issues of food security, the capture of the world food supply by the chemical companies and the consequence of the intentional dismantling of millennia of indigenous knowledge on food production in favor of chemical food production.

    Vandana Shiva is the director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, Dehra Dun, India.
    You can get these books at Amazon.com as they are all in print.
    If you would like to have a better perspective on what organic agriculture is, read anything by Wendell Berry. A good starter would be "the Gift of Good Land”, which is comprised of essays about agriculture. I think his essay, “the Economics of Subsistence” would be of great value to you to gain some real understanding on agriculture, but this book is overflowing with information. The copy I have was printed in 1981, so I don’t know if it is still in print.

    For more information about the specific politics of chemical agriculture, you should read just about anything by Miguel Altieri. He is a professor at UC Berkley and involved with the oranization “Food First”. You should go on line and look into them as they will also school you on where your thinking is wrong.

    Lastly, for a historical perspective, I suggest you Read F.H. Kings “Farmers of Forty Centuries, Organic Farming in China, Korea and Japan”. This was written in 1911 and has been republished in 2004.

    For years stories have been planted in the media, over and over again, “proving” that organic agriculture can’t work. I have read many of them. Many of these articles have been written by mercenary writers working on paid corporate disinformation campaigns, hired out by chemical companies who feel a real threat to their livelihood from the expanding organic market.

    I am not accusing you of that, it is easier to think of you as a witless patsy, but if you hear the same lies over and over again, the lies take on the patina of truth. If enough people repeat the lies, eventually the lies become the orthodoxy of thought on organic agriculture, the dominant paradigm. The lies become the “truth”. You can believe something strongly, based on hearing it repeatedly said by “experts”, along with many other people, and still be wrong. That is how cults brainwash their followers. I think that is the case with your demonstrably inaccurate statement that organic production is equal to genocide.

    You do your readers a grave disservice with your patently absurd yet authoritative equation of genocide with organic food production. You and the editors at Amandala have an awesome responsibility to your readers to get your facts straight, and in my opinion, you dropped the ball on this one, big time. You definitely dissed our thousands of Belizean organic farmers.

    In closing, what we have now is not colonialism or imperialism where one country dominates another, we have neocolonialism and neoimperialism of the capitalist system, where large multinationals convince the world that what they produce and need to sell to survive is indispensable. It isn’t countries exploiting countries, in this case it is large multinational companies controlling the thought process regarding food production, and thriving, producing and exporting chemicals and the mind frame that needs chemicals all around the globe. Belize is just a small client state to this system, and, believe me, they don’t give a damn about you, your family or our country. All we are is a potential buyer of their chemicals. Period.

    By writing the sort of nonsensical gibberish you wrote, you have unwittingly become a tool of the neocolonialism and agro-imperialism that is enslaving most of the world.

    You can eat all the chemical apples you want. Watch out for the Alar contaminated apples the USDA won’t allow to be imported in to the US though; they aren’t safe enough for Americans. (BTW, Alar was made in the US and exported to many countries. Chile lost its market for apples when their apples were discovered to be contaminated with Alar) Me? I am not only into Green Apple, I am producing it, selling my excess production to people like you who don’t produce any food at all, and eating it everyday. And I am not alone.

    Don’t tell me I need to use chemicals for you. That ain’t gonna happen.
    If you feel like responding, my particulars are below.
    All power to the farmers!
    Yours in development,

    Christopher XXXX
     
  6. Tezza

    Tezza Junior Member

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    :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)


    All hail Assistant Emperor Chris



    Tezza
     
  7. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Okay, this really has gotten on my nerves. How stupid can someone be? Organic agriculture, apparently misundersood a lot more than I thought, fosters good soil health and allows for sustainable production without heavy chemical and synthetic fertilizer subsidies (all dripping in petroleum).

    What kind of paper would be so stupid as to print this garbage?

    If, perhaps, we stopped feeding grain to cattle, then we would have enough food for everyone, right? So, maybe a burger is more indulgent even if you ignore true cost models, which show that this "cheaper" chemically produced food is more costly, because of factors like persistent toxins building in the atmosphere, and other very serious issues including endocrine disruptors, which we will be hearing more about in the years to come as the problems they pose to reproductive health start to emerge in humans (takes four to six generations of exposure in frogs and rats to see the worrying problems).

    What an idiot.
     
  8. Tezza

    Tezza Junior Member

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    Geeeeeee......Sounds Like chwis is Pumped up a bit today.....

    Wanna chat Chris? chat now ok


    Tezza
     
  9. Ichsani

    Ichsani Junior Member

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    Whoa Chris! Seriously long post!

    Jennifer Marohasy, the Brisbane-based environmental director of the Institute of Public Affairs............whose main financial contributer is.........wait........... wait for it.........take a deep breath Chris.....oh I don't know if I dare say it........Monsanto. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :wink:


    On the letters page of the same issue of 'the Land' is a letter from somebody important in the enviro sector of Australia (sorry the paper went out in the recycling yesterday!).....that letter was in response to a previous article by Marohasy (apparently equally as offensive).....in which the author revealed the origin of the Institutes funding............

    So if anyone has that edition still....it should be pretty close to said article, (for some reson I remember it being on the opp. page!).have a look!

    Also saw a BioAg product write up, sounded pretty good in context.

    More importantly now, sugar is emerging as a potential application to remediate heavily weed-infested paddocks........has to do with reducing the nitrate levels available in the soil (eaten by all those little microbes).....this gives native pasture a chance to outcompete nutrient loving weeds.........
    first heard about it from a fish farmer up near Narrabri (on the edge of the Pilliga, yes Joel, THAT aquaculture venture) and today read an article on it in "Small Farms" (March 2006 ed.)

    ......take that round-up......

    Hope all are well :D

    Ichsani
     
  10. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    OOOOOH! I KNEW IT!

    Ichi! Thank you! Noone could be that stupid for free! You have to be paid to be that stupid.

    Well, another journalist prostitute is revealed..... what an ascrupulous, immoral, stupid (I said stupid already) and clueless idiot.

    Oh, sorry for the long post. It was an unpublisghed letter to the aper here. No wonder it wasn't published. People would suspect that I need a leash and a muzzle if they read it.... but... I think I'm right. I just hate bull shit, and that article was dripping with it.

    No wonder Monsanto pays her. It must feel dirty to be a paid journalist prostitute for Monsanto....

    C
     
  11. PeterM

    PeterM Junior Member

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    Hidden Agenda

    If you read anything written by Jennifer Marohasy, you'll soon discover she is pro-logging, pro GM crops, pro chemical based argriculture and extemely anti-environmentalist. And as far as I can tell, she never reveals the source of her funding.

    People like Jennifer Marohasy are part of an extensive and well funded campaign by large multinationals to discredit competing views of thought. The holy grail of such corporations is to have the competition made illegal, and this certainly has happened in the past. (The well known example is Dupont and other companies lobbying US congress to make hemp illegal so that synthetic petrochemical based products could replace hemp in the market place.)

    Here's a typical Jennifer Marohasy quote from an article in The Land: "When is Greenpeace going to find something more useful to campaign on? Perhaps this multinational corporation could call for a ban on organic crops?" Read that carefully; she subtley implies that Greanpeace is really just a big bad "multinational", playing on people's negative feelings towards these types of corporations, and then implies that if Greenpeace really cared about the environment, they would ask for a ban on organic agriculture.

    Jennifer Marohasy is just a mouthpeice (one of many) for the well-funded propaganda campaign attempting to build a groundswell against the growing popularity of organic, non-GM foods amongst the general public.

    I wish anyone publishing her articles (actually paid propaganda) would add a disclaimer like "Note, this contributor is funded by Monsanto." or "Note, this was a paid editorial by Monsanto/The Logging Industry/etc".
     
  12. macree

    macree Junior Member

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    Re: Hidden Agenda

    Ironic isn't it - wasn't that wat 'cash for comment' was all about? Maybe it only applies to radio - and only when someone wants to push some political buttons. What a joke!!!

    The thing that really gets me hot under the collar is that the MN's with the money behind them have more ability to get their bs into mainstream media - so that those that don't look outside the square, tend to not only accept it, but blindly repeat it.

    Chris - your passion both amuses and inspires me!

    Cheers

    Ree
     
  13. Tezza

    Tezza Junior Member

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    Does Anyone realise that these multinationals are run mostly by the same directors office people etc etc...Same names different companies...


    Does anyone know any Lawyers big nough to take a clas action against the OZ subsideries not the company but the Directors maybe...

    Thered probly be a 100 multi nationals on planet, mostly run by same peoples......say each company has 20 boared members thats approx 2,000
    people Heck their has just gotta be more then 2000 Permies in Aussie..

    Surely we must outnumber them by many times that number we could even be far surprised by our numbers even non permies cn join in the class action
    Why are we so stupid to allow several Dozen people to cause so much misery and mayhem on this planet...Im sure thre isnt a sane person on the planet who wants War and Poverty,But how come the same few (Term is used Loosley) People keep getting elected


    Tezza
     
  14. Mike_E_from_NZ

    Mike_E_from_NZ Junior Member

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    More madness in the press

    This article in Newsweek claims that because pig shit contains phosphorous and scientists have created a pig that shits less phosphorous, GM is good for the environment, and nature is bad.

    We don't need no handbaskets to take us where this train is going

    Why GM is Good for Us
    Genetically modified foods may be greener than organic ones.
    https://msnbc.msn.com/id/11786176/site/newsweek/


    Mike
     
  15. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Another half picture sort of rationelle. The problem is the scale of pig production, not the pigs them selves.... And there are now a few hundred thoudand half clued in people who have had a paradigm shift over this supposed benefit. How utterly stupid, but seductive. Ugh. Enough to make me sick.
     
  16. Ichsani

    Ichsani Junior Member

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    Here's the thing that gets me about that pig article..........why does it seem more logical to genetically engineer a pig to secrete an effective phosphorus uptake enzyme that is produced naturally in humans by gut microflora? Since pigs and humans are quite close (enough to substitute pigs for humans in drug trials anyway, not to mention organ transplants) wouldn't it make more sense to isolate the human variety microbes that secrete said enzyme and find varieties that are suitable to introduce into pig intestinal flora? That way, the pigs are able to access P at a higher efficiency level via microbial association from their food, meaning lower P requirements in food. (This is a good thing, allowing different crops to be utilised for feed, and corn put to human consumption instead). This also means less P in the gigantic piles of pig poo generated. By no means does this logic negate the need for effective re-integration of said 'big piles' into productive systems rather than flushed, sewer style, out to sea.

    Having said that, the high level of fossil P supplementation into pig feed, with the majority subsequently flushing into water ways, can also be seen as a massive waste of P reserves. Poor conversion rates of a limited mined geologcal/biological resource, an issue in itself.

    So everybody wins. Cleaner water, better efficiency in feed conversion, no violation of GM free status, less public unnerving, a better time for all......... Oh, except for the geneticists. Pity there isn't a bit more lateral thinking going on. But that's not their area of expertise.

    Like der. :wink:

    I.
     
  17. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Ichsani,

    I've said this before, and, inevitably I will say it again, but, here I go, once more: You know you are awsome, right?

    Respectfully, and with admiration

    C
     
  18. PeterM

    PeterM Junior Member

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    Enviropig and anti-organic propaganda

    Apologies in advance for the long post, but there is a lot wrong with that Enviropig article...

    Irrespecive of the pros and cons of the EnviroPig, did you notice the article didn't miss a chance to take a swipe at the "evils" of organic foods and push the anti-organic agenda. The author himself, Lee Silver, is a geneticist at Princton University and has some rather "interesting" views, but more on that later. First take a look at an extract from the news story:

    Wow! I bet if you followed the money trail you'd find something fishy. I wonder if there is some sponsorship involved by those with a vested interest in destroying organic food industry? As I said in a previous post, there is a well funded anti-organic propaganda campaign by the big multinationals like Monsanto who'd like nothing better than government regulation to restrict organic agriculture and the growing popularity amongst consumers for organic produce. Expect to see many more articles like this in the future. In fact, I found Lee Silver's draft for the Newsweek article and he made his agenda clear by giving it the title How Dangerous is Organic Farming? https://128.112.44.57/teaching/586/02 Food and phil/15 OrganicFoodDangers2.pdf (warning, PDF doc).

    What do others have to say about the article author? Here's a few paragraphs from https://www.wildduckreview.com/interviews/hayes.html

    Finally, if you've got this for into my post, I'd just like to mention that there are a number of alternatives to the Enviropig. Here's a couple I found:
    But I guess those alternatives wont make some company as much profit as selling the Enviropig.
     
  19. Coruba

    Coruba New Member

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    What a great (and passionate) topic of discussion! It feels mighty good to know that in the middle of a very gullible, niave public that see McDonnalds as a 'god send' to their food intake, there is a few of 'us' in the crowd...kinda a nice reality check...I was getting a little lonely!! LOL

    Brigitte
     
  20. frosty

    frosty Junior Member

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    this seems a place to post this there are some very frightening world view out there

    https://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_200 ... index.html
    frosty
     

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