Remembering Elizabeth Harris on Riverdale Farmers Market opening day

Elizabeth Harris

Today is the opening day of the 2013 season for Riverdale Farmers Market in Toronto. I find myself at home on the farm. A gentle rain is falling on the lush spring greenery all around. Feeling slightly guilty not to be at market as the rain falls in Toronto, I find myself remembering fondly Elizabeth Harris, the founding market manager, on this her breakout day of the year. It is not possible to imagine not being at market were she still with us, marshalling her farmers and cajoling.

Honouring Elizabeth, here is an excerpt from my newly-published book, High Up in the Rolling Hills:   

It was the irrepressible Elizabeth Harris who had given me my big break as a certified organic grower all those years ago. Then as vice-president of Quinte Organic Farmers Co-operative, I approached Elizabeth to apply for the co-op to be a vendor at her flagship organic farmers market at Riverdale Farm in Cabbagetown, Toronto. She sized up what we offered, 12 small certified-organic family farms pooling their produce to market direct to the customer, and she voiced her doubts. She was used to allowing only single farms to join her family of vendors. But she sized me up too and found something she liked or trusted, so she said, “Okay, but only as long as you bring all the farmers in to sell at your stand through the season.” “Sure,” I promised having gotten a foot in the door. It wasn’t to be, of course; only one or two farmers bothered to come in at all, but the first season was a roaring success for the co-op as a fledgling sales organization. I made sure we stayed on Elizabeth’s good side—as one had to—and, over several years, Elizabeth and I developed a wonderful mutual respect. I was awed by her tight control of the market, her fairness, her discipline with slack vendors, her amazing vision in holding it all together and bringing people together.

“Peter, I’d like you to meet Jamie Kennedy.”

“Peter, can any of your farmers supply three bushels of romano beans for a dinner for seventy-five this Friday?”

She would often call up and tell me about the latest new vendors that she was excited to have visited. She had such respect for farmers and for food produced honestly and in a fresh way. And she would ask my opinion and advice. Early on at market, I incurred her wrath. She had strong rules and enforced them. Vendors were not allowed to sell before the bell rang, right at 3:00 p.m. As I tried to sneak in a sale for a customer who was running off to work, a booming voice bellowed out from the other side of the park: “Mr. Finch, the market opens at three o’clock, and not before!” Last year, held up in traffic and running late in setting up, I upheld her rule when an impending storm told her to ring the bell early. “No, Elizabeth, that’s not fair; I’m not ready,” I pleaded. She agreed to wait, and for weeks after, she deferred to me to see if I was ready before ringing the bell. A softening, maybe? I feel deep down that she truly respected her senior farmers, and I was lucky enough to have been in that number.

Elizabeth slipped away from us, succumbing to cancer, but her amazing energy, drive and spirit would remain with us as we tried to honour her legacy and continued to provide for the table she set for us so passionately. It had been an honour and a privilege to know her; hard to believe that she wouldn’t be shuffling along on a glorious spring afternoon on opening day of market in May and that her voice wouldn’t be greeting me across the park: “Peter, who do you have helping you today? I’d like to introduce you to …”

BREAKING: European Commission to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with government

As I wrote in my newly-published book High Up in the Rolling Hills:

“Imagine a world in which nature were privately owned. Well, that world is increasingly upon us now—with the overzealous regulation and restriction of natural products, the patenting of crops, the corporate ownership of seeds and food, the escalating genetic modification of foods, the killing of the bees. It really is the end of nature as we have known it.”

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor 

View online at http://www.naturalnews.com/z040214_seeds_European_Commission_registration.html

(NaturalNews) A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to "grow, reproduce or trade" any vegetable seeds that have not been "tested, approved and accepted" by a new EU bureaucracy named the "EU Plant Variety Agency."

It's called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law.

The draft text of the law, which has already been amended several times due to a huge backlash from gardeners, is viewable here.

"This law will immediately stop the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic growers, and small-scale market farmers," said Ben Gabel, vegetable breeder and director of The Real Seed Catalogue. "Home gardeners have really different needs - for example they grow by hand, not machine, and can't or don't want to use such powerful chemical sprays. There's no way to register the varieties suitable for home use as they don't meet the strict criteria of the Plant Variety Agency, which is only concerned about approving the sort of seed used by industrial farmers."

Virtually all plants, vegetable seeds and gardeners to eventually be registered by government

All governments are, of course, infatuated with the idea of registering everybody and everything. Under Title IV of the proposed EU law:

Title IV Registration of varieties in national and Union registers
The varieties, in order to be made available on the market throughout the Union, shall be included in a national register or in the Union register via direct application procedure to the CVPO.

Gardeners must also pay fees to the EU bureaucracy for the registration of their seeds. From the proposed law text:

The competent authorities and the CPVO should charge fees for the processing of
applications, the formal and technical examinations including audits, variety denomination, and the maintenance of the varieties for each year for the duration of
the registration.

While this law may initially only be targeted at commercial gardeners, it sets a precedent to sooner or later go after home gardeners and require them to abide by the same insane regulations.

Government bureaucracy gone insane

"This is an instance of bureaucracy out of control," says Ben Gabel. "All this new law does is create a whole new raft of EU civil servants being paid to move mountains of papers round all day, while killing off the seed supply to home gardeners and interfering with the right of farmers to grow what they want. It also very worrying that they have given themselves the power to regulate and licence any plant species of any sort at all in the future - not just agricultural plants, but grasses, mosses, flowers, anything at all - without having to bring it back to the Council for a vote."

As a hint of the level of insane bureaucracy that gardeners and vegetable growers will be subject to under this EU law, check out this language from the proposed EU law:

Specific provisions are set out on the registration in the Union variety register and with regard to the possibility for the applicant to launch an appeal against a CPVO decision. Such provisions are not laid down for the registration in the national variety
registers, because they are subject to national administrative procedures. A new obligation for each national variety examination centre to be audited by the CPVO will be introduced with the aim to ensure the quality and harmonization of the variety registration process in the Union. The examination centre of the professional operators will be audited and approved by the national competent authorities. In case of direct application to the CPVO it will audit and approve the examination centres it uses for variety examination.

Such language is, of course, Orwellian bureaucraticspeak that means only one thing: All gardeners should prepare to be subjected to total government insanity over seeds, vegetables and home gardens.

RealSeeds.co.uk warns about any attempt to actually try to understand the law by reading it:

You cannot just read the first 5 pages or so that are an 'executive summary', and think you know what this law is about. The executive summary is NOT what will become the law. It is the actual Articles themselves that become law, the Summary has no legal standing and is just tacked on as an aid to the public and legislators, it is supposed to give background information and set the proposed legislation in context so people know what is going on and why.

The problem with this law has always been that the Summary says lots of nice fluffy things about preserving biodiversity, simplifying legislation, making things easier etc - things we all would love - but the Articles of the law actually do completely the opposite. And the Summary is not what becomes the law.

For example, the Summary of drafts 1, 2 & 3 talked about making things easier for 'Amateur' varieties. But the entire class of Amateur vegetables - which we have spent 5 years working with DEFRA to register - was actually abolished entirely in the Articles right from the start. Yet the Summary , and press releases based on it, still talked about how it will help preserve Amateur varieties! The Summary is completely bogus. Do not base your views of the law on it!

So, be warned. By all means, read it yourself. But you have the ignore the Summary as that is not the Law, and does not reflect what is in the Law. 

As you might suspect, this move is the "final solution" of Monsanto, DuPont and other seed-domination corporations who have long admitted their goal is the complete domination of all seeds and crops grown on the planet. By criminalizing the private growing of vegetables - thereby turning gardeners into criminals - EU bureaucrats can finally hand over full control of the food supply to powerful corporations like Monsanto.

Most heirloom seeds to be criminalized

Nearly all varieties of heirloom vegetable seeds will be criminalized under this proposed EU law. This means the act of saving seeds from one generation to the next - a cornerstone of sustainable living - will become a criminal act.

In addition, as Gabel explains, this law "...effectively kills off development of home-garden seeds in the EU."

This is the ultimate wish of all governments, of course: To criminalize any act of self-reliance and make the population completely dependent on monopolistic corporations for their very survival. This is true both in the USA and the EU. This is what governments do: They seize control, one sector at a time, year after year, until you are living as nothing more than a total slave under a globalist dictatorial regime.

An online petition has already been started on this issue and has garnered nearly 25,000 signatures so far.

NOAH'S ARK and 240 other organizations from 40 European countries have also initiated an "open letter" appealing to Brussels bureaucrats to stop the insanity. Click here for a translated version of their petition.

I saw this coming

By the way, I am on the record predicting this exact scenario. Read Chapter Three of my fiction book, "Freedom Chronicles 2026." (Read it FREE, online.) It depicts a seed smuggler living in a time when seeds are criminalized and people earn a living as professional seed smugglers.

In my book, a woman uses a specially-crafted breast prosthesis to smuggle seeds to "underground gardeners" in full defiance of laws crafted by Monsanto. A vast underground network of grassroots gardeners and scientists manage to put together a "seed weapon" to destroy GMOs and take back the food supply from evil corporations.

Mark my words: Seeds are about to become contraband. Anyone who grows their own food is about to be targeted as a criminal. The governments of the world, conspiring with corporations like Monsanto, do not want any individual to be able to grow their own food.

This is about total domination of the food supply and the criminalizing of gardeners. And this is what big government always does after centralizing sufficient power. All governments inherently seek total control over the lives of everyone, and if you don't set boundaries and limits for government (i.e. the Bill of Rights), it eventually runs roughshod over all freedoms and liberties, including the freedom to grow your own food.

Additional sources:
http://open-seeds.org/bad-seed-law/
http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw.html

My Book is Published!

High Up in the Rolling Hills is now officially “live” and published. This, my first book, is available first in the Bookstore at www.iuniverse.com. Within a few weeks it will be available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and, in Canada, through Chapters Indigo. It will also be available to order here through Paypal.

In his youth, Peter Finch wove his way through a series of exploits and adventures. Travels took him to Canada, where a fateful encounter in the Rocky Mountains opened up new horizons. In midlife he and his wife Gundi made the shift to country living, ushering in a new phase in their life, as they set down roots in the hills and settled into a deliberately simplified lifestyle.

Peter relates how he and Gundi immersed themselves in ways guided by nature. As she created and sold glass sculptures, he sunk his hands and tools into pure glacial-till soils, sowing, planting, and growing culinary and medicinal herbs, heirloom vegetables and salad greens to take to farmers markets and restaurants in and around Toronto. Invigorated by the pleasures and health benefits of growing, selling, and eating fresh organic food, Peter reveals how he became a passionate advocate of traditional, small-scale, chemical-free farming.

High Up in the Rolling Hills shares the personal journey of an independent couple as they explore the vital role of nature, creativity, and healthy food in life.

The soft cover version retails for US $17.95.

The hard cover version retails for US $27.95.

The e-book retails for US $3.99.

Why Certified Organic?

Unitarian Allen Goldfeder came by our stand at Brickworks Farmers Market a few weeks ago and told us about a talk he was organizing. He picked up on my passion for organics and invited me to talk about my experiences as an organic grower of food. An audience of some fifty or so First Unitarian Church attendees in Toronto came to hear a discussion on “Why Consumers Are Choosing Organics”. I was one of four speakers, the others being Sarah Dobec of The Big Carrot, Jodi Koberinski of the Organic Council of Ontario, and Tanmayo Krupanszky of the Toronto chapter of Canadian Organic Growers.

Allen introduced me:

Peter Finch runs Rolling Hills Organics, a small farm that has been certified organic for twelve years. The farm grows local fresh pre-washed salad greens and mixes, specialty vegetables, garlic and other herbs. Peter sells Rolling Hills Organics produce on Tuesdays and Saturdays at two Toronto farmers markets. The farm also supplies a handful of Toronto and local restaurants.

The following is the basis of the speech I delivered.

How did you get into farming?

I emigrated from England in 1983 – hard for me to believe, this is some 30 years ago now! I met my wife Gundi on the train, in Lake Louise in the Rocky Mountains, and that was that. It changed the direction of my life and brought me to Canada. For 16 years, we lived in Toronto and then on the Niagara Escarpment outside the valley town of Dundas, near Hamilton. We were always renting, and always having to move on.

So, 13 years ago, we made the big move, out to the country, to buy a home. We cast our net and purchased a house and land in the Northumberland Hills, an hour and a half east of Toronto, north of Cobourg, Port Hope, near Rice Lake. We were looking for a couple of acres, maybe four or five. What we found was an open-concept house heated by wood and passive solar, with a good water supply from a deep well, and 55 acres of tucked-away land. We have come to love the rolling hills, so much so that I have just finished writing a book called High Up In The Rolling Hills, A Living on the Land! Soon to be found in a bookstore near you. Gundi is a glass artist, and I was a map publisher at the time. I do not hail from a traditional farming family, but Dad was a part-time market gardener. It’s in the blood.

What is the history of your farm?

We didn’t think of it as a farm as it was mostly neglected fields and mixed woodland.

There were never any chemicals on this land. For 20 years or so, a fellow called Carman Atkinson had worked up these fields and always farmed them organically, even before the term became widely used. Now, after a dozen years of working up the fields, it’s more of a farm! We have 20 acres of pastured fields, three acres of market fields, 2000 square feet of greenhouses which extend our growing season by three months. We also love the semi-wild  8 acres of creek and wetland (conservation lands), 25 acres of mixed woodland.

Why did you decide to go organic?

For years, wherever we lived, we had had a small vegetable garden and loved the produce from it. Though we hadn’t always bought organic seeds, we grew naturally without chemicals, fertilizer. It was all aboutfood quality, health, flavour, freshness, and nutrition for us. At first, I hadn’t planned on growing at a scale to sell. The land was already organic in nature, and it was our chosen natural lifestyle that made us react against chemical farming, industrial food system. We started out with garlic, perennial herbs, a few veggies, sunflowers.

Why did you decide to go certified organic?

After a year, decided to sell oour produce at our local farmers market, in Campbellford.

A year of transition and we were certified organic. Starting out as a grower, I wanted to sell locally, at farmers markets, transition out of map publishing into make a full-time living at farming. Going organic partly a political decision: customers have a right to know what is in their food. Food labels, claims should be crystal-clear. Too often, they are deceptive and opaque. We see labels that claim natural, organic, ecological, chemical-free, and farmers that claim organically-grown, naturally-produced. Certified organic produce is your guarantee that a farmer has consistently adhered to a valid set of guidelines and been annually inspected. He or she has invested in healthy produce.

Even at the mostly organic markets we sell at, unfortunately still too easy and maybe tempting for farmers to claim to be organic, and to buy in produce from conventional sources. This, I believe, is wrong and should be better monitored and labelled than it is.

Why does the Canadian farmer choose to pay and fill out a lot of paperwork to become certified?

Yes, why do we set ourselves up for questions like

What initiatives will be undertaken this year to improve and/or maintain soil and water quality in the operation?

What steps are being taken to reduce the effects of wind and water erosion?

Are you currently using compost on the farm?

What forms of animal manure do you use?

For the crops to be sown this year, what are your seed sources?

These are all good questions that farmers should be thinking about and addressing. I believe the certification process teaches us how to be better farmers. It’s about transparency. We are all accountable for what we do, how we live. It helps our  customers to trust us as farmers and the food we produce. Certification keeps us honest. We rotate crops, use cover crops, green manures, certified organic compost from our own or local farms. Farming organically is all about the soil, working it up, constantly improving it. At our farm, we buy only certified organic seed. We encourage birds, bees, butterflies, insects, frogs. The aim is to create a holistic bio-diverse ecosystem on a small farm in harmony with nature and the land. We gladly share our space with deer, wild turkey, foxes, wolves, coyotes, raccoons, skunks, rabbits…

What is used in certified organic farming to deal with “pests”?

Certain natural substances are authorized, like diatomaceous earth, insecticidal soaps.

But I myself use no treatments, relying on entirely natural practices, such as moving crops around all the time, using floating row covers to protect against flea beetles which are a nuisance early in the season (eating holes in the arugula, for example). We have learned to see this as a marketing opportunity, labelling it “Holey Arugula”! We rely on help too from birds, ladybugs, praying mantis, etc. Interplanting with calendula, nasturtium is beneficial. Only in extremes (heat, cold, wet, dry, strong wind) when plants get stressed do we experience problems, like aphids moving in, blight on tomatoes. We ride out these extremes. We may suffer a poor harvest or crop failure, but we get over it!

We focus on building a healthy environment for the soil. Then healthy harvests take care of themselves. A mineral and nutrient-rich soil fends off disease, just as a strong immune system keeps our bodies in good health.  

Which markets do you service?

We sell our produce at Evergreen Brickworks in the Don Valley on Saturdays, Riverdale Park in Cabbagetown on Tuesdays farmers markets in Toronto, at a few Toronto restaurants through a friend and colleague who also works the markets with me, and  at a few local restaurants in our locality. This combination is enough to make a healthy livelihood for a small farm.  

How do customers respond to certified organic?

We have regular, very loyal customers who come back for what we bring. They want to know more about their food and how we grow it. They want to be healthy through food. They get the connection. Many customers want fresh, local organic, GMO-free, rightly so. Certified organic, along with bio-dynamic, are the gold standard in natural farming practice. Other customers are price-conscious, trust their non-certified farmer, are unaware or unconcerned about GMOs in food. 

Why is it important for customers to seek out certified organic?

There are GMO risks. There have been no independent, long-term studies on their effect on human health, only some on animal health. It does not look good. Only certified organic produce is guaranteed to be GMO-free. Genetically-modified ingredients should be labelled on all foods, but our governments are letting us down in this. We have a right to know what is in our food. We don’t have to buy food laced with chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and synthetic fertilizers. In seeking out certified organic, we are making the best choice for regulated, verified health in food, honestly produced, without shortcuts. It is hard to trust labels on food. Processed/packaged foods in particular are almost certain to contain GMO ingredients. Watch out for industrially-produced items especially heavily processed meats, seafood. Most come from a long way away, sometimes halfway around the world. Only 1% of all foods – even certified organic, I hate to say – is inspected on import into Canada.

So, it’s a minefield out there. It’s important for our health to be vigilant in our food choices. Know where your food is coming from. Build a relationship with your food growers. Ask questions of your farmer, your supermarket, the labels on your food.

Local fresh in-season certified organic is your best guide to maintaining good health.

Let Them Eat Horsemeat

http://news.discovery.com/animals/20-animals-you-could-eat-130222.htm

We now know that most processed foods are loaded with genetically-modified organisms. With their massive mobilization against any kind of labelling that would reveal their presence in packaged goods, mega-corporations are pulling the wool over our eyes in the food choices we make. Complicit in this are government agencies like Health Canada and the FDA who perpetuate myths about the safety of GMOs, even in a staggering void of independent scientific research on them. Is the salmon on your plate genetically-engineered? Not yet, but in all likelihood, it soon will be. The FDA is set to give the green light to monster fish engineered on Prince Edward Island and grown on in Panama (yes, Panama!), to be shipped back for consumption across North America. And no, you will not be able to tell whether the fish you purchase and eat is such a denatured monster or not, as authorities say it doesn’t need to be labelled as genetically engineered.

Across Europe, authorities that regulate our food are all in a frenzy over the widespread presence of horsemeat in processed food. Not only horsemeat, probably donkey too. Who knows what else festers in our food? My bet is that – if it is ever to be revealed to us – there is a ton of gross unmentionables right through the industrial food chain. Researchers at Stellenbosch University in South Africa have just announced in a study that they found that 99 of 139 samples of processed meats contained species not declared in the product label, among them donkey, goat, and water buffalo. While this mis-labelling is not inherently dangerous to our health, it is certainly deceitful. Eating donkey meat may not be harmful to humans, but it is harmful to donkeys. Just tell us what’s in our food, please! "Our study confirms that the mislabelling of processed meats is commonplace in South Africa and not only violates food labelling regulations, but also poses economic, religious, ethical and health impacts," one of the researchers, Louwrens Hoffman, is quoted as saying.

It is almost certain that such misleading or inadequate labelling is rife across North America and Europe, as lack of proper regulation allows all manner of deceptive practice to go unchecked. My hope is that authorities now make strenuous efforts to get to the bottom of  the abuse, punish the perpetrators, and bring in sweeping new laws that enforce full, transparent labelling of all food products. Instead, I fear that a lot of the dodgy undeclared meat will continue to be swept under the carpet and into burgers and sausages. Where does this stuff come from? How did it get into the food chain? We might not want to know, but we have a right to know.

The only real recourse we have in shopping is to buy our food close to home, from sources we can trust. Who can we trust? Our local farmer and food producer of whom we can ask questions, or our supermarkets that have no answers?

The New Environmentalist and the Old Ideologies

Bill Gates look-alike, think-alike Mark Lynas delivering his speech in Oxford

Posted on Jan 9, 2013 in Ontario Organic Blog

In response to Margaret Wente’s article on “Environmentalist” Mark Lynas, “An activist recants on GM foods”

by Jodi Koberinski

Margaret Wente announces the arrival of a new, balanced kind of environmentalism that is “science” based rather than “ideology” based in Mark Lynas. Yet Mr. Lynas’ speech at Oxford on GMOs is riddled with ideology masking as fact.

Let us be clear about the main thesis: GMOs are not about “feeding the world”. They are about controlling the seed. Continuing to attempt to divide the global north and the global south on this notion that anti-GMO people are pro-hunger is ridiculous.

We have a confrontation of world views: the old reductionist, mechanistic world view tied to commodity-focused, corporatist assumptions associated with capitalism, and the world view great thinkers like Vandana Shiva posit of collective responsibility, the primacy of the commons, and the centrality of the seed to evolution and survival.  Her concept of “Earth Democracy” is steeped in honouring diversity and requires life-oriented, scientifically sound, philosophically rigorous approaches to policy and regulation where our ecosystems are concerned. Where the economy serves life, not the other way around.

All Ms. Wente admires in an environmentalist is there in Dr. Vandana Shiva: Dr. Shiva thinks technology can be a force for good. Dr. Shiva teaches that environmental responsibility is completely compatible with human betterment and economic progress. The methods employed at Navdanya, Dr. Shiva’s research farm, yield twice the nutrition per acre over mono-cropped systems.  Is this not both better for people and the economy?

And therein lies the rub. What exactly does Ms. Wente mean by “human betterment” and “economic progress”? The way she writes it, these are self evident.  She uses those terms like I would use “ocean”. I think we can agree what an ocean is, but I can assure you what Ms. Wente thinks “betterment” looks like and what Dr.Shiva’s millions of supporters think “betterment” looks like are worlds apart.

Where are conversations about our assumptions and what we believe the problems are that need solving taking place? Rather than responding to disinformation, we need to look at root assumptions to reach some understanding if we are to act responsibly as global citizens. Just because Dr. Shiva’s ontological framework is different from Mark Lynas’ doesn’t mean Mr. Lynas speaks “truth” and Dr. Shiva speaks “ideology”. Its just that Ms. Wente and Mr. Lynas share a framework. That is why it is invisible to them both.

The reason we reject GMOs in our food system is not because we are anti-science: biotech is anti-science, that is why they won’t allow experimentation or inquiry or proper regulation as a novel food. We reject GMOs in our food system because good science requires us to.

One thing Ms. Wente got spot on? GMOs are a moral issue. Brewster Kneen wrote Farmageddon to assess GMOs from a place of morality: just because we can gene splice, ought we do it? What problem is biotech the solution to that agro-ecological approaches can’t solve?

In her article, Ms. Wente takes issue with Dr. Vandana Shiva’s recent tweeted “rapist” comment, which dealt with GMOs as a moral issue. “To seize and take away by force; an outrageous violation”. Rape. Dr. Shiva suggesting allowing farmers to plant GMOs is akin to permitting rapists to rape is accurate. The GMO farmer can impregnate his or her neighbours’ seed crops with offending GMO materials that the assaulted farmer did not choose to grow. There is no consent. It is an act of force, a violation. How is this so outrageous? Let us not pretty it up with words like “cross contamination”. It is only outrageous if one doesn’t understand farming.

The myths being reinforced through Mr. Lynas’ oratory are almost worthy of The Rick Mercer Report, not a podium at Oxford.  Does Ms. Wente buy Mr. Lynas’ apparently straight-faced assertion that the cost of developing biotech and corporate concentration are due to green opposition? Really? Guess who wrote that talking point for Mark Lynas? EuropaBio wrote it, that is who, along with the other 20+ fallacious claims Lynas makes.

In late 2011, EuropaBio, the trade association for big biotech firms, sought spokespeople for its PR campaign to try and re-educate Europeans on GMOs. They book the engagements, the interviews, they write the bylines, the letters to the editor. There isn’t anything wrong with having spokespeople – it’s the attempt to be covert that is troublesome, as was revealed in EuropaBio’s recruiting letter dated October 2011 painstakingly describing the effort to distance speakers from EuropaBio despite the campaign being entirely funded and coordinated by the group.

Let us be clear: GMOs are about controlling seed, not about feeding the world. Trotting out the ideologically-based 2050 Myth is becoming tired. Loblaw Sustainability Chair Dr. Ralph Martin’s analysis shows we could feed 9 billion without adding any “productivity” to yield or acreage by dealing with our underlying issues: post harvest handling and food waste (40% of what is grown is wasted), appropriate protein sources and ratios of calories, emancipation of women, and geo-political will to distribute food equitably, apply appropriate technology and share responsibility for climate-change induced hunger. FAO itself states that agro-ecology and not “biotechnology” is the way to meet the demands of the next 100 years.

Indian farmers watched the price of cotton increase by as much as 8000% since bT cotton was introduced. We’ve also seen a quarter million farmer suicides – most from consuming the very pesticides they went into debt to buy – in India’s cotton belt as a result of farmers crushed by debt created through the GMO seed-chemical dependence cycle and the failed promises of yield and quality Monsanto made. GMOs are not about helping poor farmers or feeding the world. If we can do no more to educate ourselves on the real issues of control and ownership at stake with this “technology”, let us at least stop repeating this lie.

Jodi Koberinski is the Executive Director of the Organic Council of Ontario. She has over 15 years experience as an activist, entrepreneur and food systems analyst. Ms. Koberinski also sits on the Organic Value Chain Round Table.

Dr. Oz Flip-Flops as High-Profile Attacks on Organic Food Intensify

In the ongoing struggle to uphold and communicate the true benefits of organic food and farming, here is a response by Katherine Paul [2], Ronnie Cummins [3] to the latest onslaught from the mainstream corporate agenda.

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)

December 5, 2012   

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org [4].

 Photo: http://blackgirlchefswhites.com/wordpress/2012/06/01/support-your-local-farmers-market/

“So you’re being told organic food is no more nutritious than conventional and it’s not worth your extra money. Well I’m here to say that it is worth the investment. Why do I say that? Pesticides.” -- Dr. Oz, Oct. 19, 2012

Less than two months after telling [5] millions of TV viewers that organic food is “worth the investment,” America’s most popular TV doctor is singing a different tune. In the December issue [6] of Time magazine, Dr. Oz described organic foodies as “elitist” – part of the 1% - and claimed that conventional foods are nutritionally equivalent to organic foods. According to Dr. Oz:

The rise of foodie culture over the past decade has venerated all things small-batch, local-farm and organic - all with premium price tags. But let's be clear: you don't need to eat like the 1% to eat healthily.

Suddenly, the pesticides Dr. Oz was so concerned about a couple of months ago, the ones he warned viewers were “one of the greatest threats to your kids’ health,” no longer matter. What’s more, if you’re spending extra money to avoid them, you’re a food snob – instead of a responsible, health-conscious parent.

Dr. Oz’s flip-flop is just the latest in a series of highly-publicized mass media attacks on organic food and farming. It follows on the heels of a much-ballyhooed, controversial Stanford University study [7], released in September. The Stanford study concluded that fruits and vegetables labeled organic were, on average, no more nutritious than their conventional – and far less expensive – counterparts.

Ironically, it was this same study that Dr. Oz bashed on his October 19 television show [5] for ignoring the obvious: Conventional food is loaded with toxic pesticides, which makes it not only less healthful, but downright dangerous. Especially for children.

At a time when the health of Americans is rapidly deteriorating – skyrocketing obesity, childhood diabetes, ever-increasing cases of asthma, allergies, autism, and cancer – there appears to be a concerted and insidious effort to smear organics, to convince consumers that there’s no connection between their poor health and the low-grade chemical food on their plates. Food routinely grown in nutrient-deficient soil, sprayed with toxic pesticides, pumped full of antibiotics and hormones, and genetically modified in Monsanto’s laboratories.

Instead, anti-organic forces are pushing the message that cheaper food is better for your wallet. And just fine for your health. Both the Stanford Study and Dr. Oz’s Time article focus on cost to consumers at the checkout counter. Neither addresses the long-term cost of poor health caused by toxic chemicals, or the long-term cost to the planet of chemical-intensive, climate-disruptive, unsustainable agricultural practices.

That Stanford study, which was highlighted by major media outlets including the New York Times, Associated Press, and CBS News, didn’t address pesticides and their proven link [8] to health problems, especially in children. It didn’t address waterways polluted by tons of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The study was limited to fruits and vegetables, so it didn’t have to address the growing public health crisis of antibiotics and hormone residues in meat and dairy, nor the millions of annual food poisoning cases attributed to filthy meat and animal products coming out of the nation’s factory farm feedlots and slaughterhouses.

The Stanford study also completely ignored the horrendous damage to the environment [9] by non-organic industrial farms and feedlots, including the devastating consequences to the planet of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions from chemical fertilizers and huge factory farm operations. Recent statistics [10] indicate that the direct (greenhouse gas pollution) and indirect (tropical deforestation) impacts of industrial food and farms are the largest contributor to global warming.

What the Stanford study did, thanks to a huge public relations push, was spread the message that organic fruits and vegetables are expensive, and conventional fruits and vegetables are just as good but cheaper. No doubt, the authors hope that consumers will carry over that message from fruits and vegetables, to all things organic.

It’s no surprise that the Stanford study would focus on cost. As it turns out, the study was produced by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, which gets millions in funding from agribusiness giant Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural business enterprise, and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which have deep ties to agricultural chemical and biotechnology corporations like Monsanto. These giant corporations are all part of the same cabal that contributed at least half of the $46 million spent between October 1 and November 6 to defeat Prop 37 [11], the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. Just a coincidence that the Stanford study and the mass media propaganda barrage that accompanied it was released during the election season, when voters were still weighing their options on the high-profile California GMO labeling law that was making national headlines?

The motives behind the Stanford study and the Freeman Spogli Institute are obvious. What caused Dr. Oz to flip-flop is anyone’s guess – and just might make for a good story someday. Informed sources behind the scenes have told us that Dr. Oz is under tremendous pressure from the biotech industry after airing a segment earlier this fall that supported GMO labeling. He’s also getting pressure from Big Pharma and federal regulatory agencies for his previous exposures of industry malpractices.

Consumer demand for organics is rising steadily. Last year, organic foods accounted for $31.4 billion in sales, according to a recent Obama administration report. Compare that with just $3.6 billion in 1997, and it makes sense that multinational junk food companies, like Pepsi, General Mills, Coca-Cola and others, are buying up organic brands. But these companies also know that there’s more money in the $50-billion “natural” foods market, an unregulated market with higher profit margins and lower barriers to entry, than there is in certified organics. That explains why these same multinational companies pitched in the other half of the $46 million to defeat Prop 37. After all, if passed, the initiative would have banned the use of the word “natural” on any product containing genetically modified foods. That would have forced companies to use more expensive, certified organic ingredients in their highly profitable “natural” products.

Estimates are that if Prop 37 had passed, it would have triggered a multi-billion dollar increase in the sales of organic and non-GMO foods, and a corresponding decrease in the sales of so-called “natural” foods. Could it be that Big Ag and Big Pharma, who supply the drugs for non-organic factory farms, are feeling threatened by the fact that the market for organics is growing ten times faster than the market for conventional foods? The bottom line is that the real 1%, America’s giant food processors and supermarket chains, are alarmed by the fact that consumers are wising up - and rising up - in greater numbers than ever before to demand transparency in labeling, and greater access to organic, locally-sourced, humanely-produced, nutritious food.

In a struggling economy, the quickest way to grab the attention of consumers is to promise them short-term savings. Messages like the ones transmitted by the Stanford study and Dr. Oz’s recent article grossly oversimplify the issue of organics versus conventional foods, while propping up an unsustainable but highly profitable factory farm and processed food industry. They miss the point, intentionally, that pesticides, drug residues, and filthy factory farms damage public health and raise U.S. medical costs, which are already the highest in the world.

But no matter how hard Big Ag and the mass media try to misinform consumers, they are fighting a losing battle. There is mounting scientific evidence [12] that genetically engineered foods are hazardous to human and animal health, and are severely damaging the environment and the climate. This is the reason why millions of Americans are turning to certified organic food, which bans GMOs, synthetic pesticides, and animal drugs. The big lie is that cheap chemical and GMO food isn’t really cheap, if you take the long view.

Shame on you Dr. Oz, and the rest of the mass media for perpetuating this big lie.

No matter how many universities pump out however many studies, no matter how many famous TV personalities - including those wearing scrubs - try to tell us otherwise, our current systems of food and agriculture are unsustainable. That’s why the organic food and farming movement is growing by leaps and bounds. That’s why organic foods and agriculture will soon become the norm, just as they once were for thousands of years, not just the alternative.

About the authors:
Katherine Paul is director of development and communications at the Organic Consumers Association.

Ronnie Cummins is founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association. Cummins is author of numerous articles and books, including "Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers" (Second Revised Edition Marlowe & Company 2004).

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038242_Dr_Oz_flip-flopper_Organic_Consumers_Association.html#ixzz2ENYZcOJa

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/food/dr-oz-flip-flops-high-profile-attacks-organic-food-intensify

Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/katherine-paul
[3] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ronnie-cummins
[4] http://globalpossibilities.org/
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_9Z3gjA-DI
[6] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2129811,00.html
[7] http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/september/organic.html
[8] http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_26402.cfm
[9] http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_24772.cfm
[10] http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20200.cfm
[11] http://www.carighttoknow.org/
[12] http://www.organicconsumers.org/gelink.cfm
[13] http://www.alternet.org/tags/food-0
[14] http://www.alternet.org/tags/organic
[15] http://www.alternet.org/tags/biotech-0
[16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/dr-oz-0
[17] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B