Good Food is Everybody's Business
Deep in the heart of Capitol Hill, behind closed doors, national corporate bully Monsanto is working to ensure its world dominance by pressing President Obama and Congress to fast-track trade deals that force other countries to treat GMOs with the same lack of caution we in the U.S. currently do. Should this come to pass, countries could lose their right to regulate factory farms and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
US industrial agriculture has turned the Central Valley of California from a natural paradise of biodiversity into a desert waste land. It’s sad for everyone. The Valley was one of Americas most beautiful places; today it has become a demonstration of the worst agricultural practice in the US over time and a standing model of bad public food policy.
Chances are your family’s daily bread is just another item on your list when you shop at your favorite supermarket. Let’s take a closer look at what you’re bringing home; your bread may be “in disguise.” It’s pretty clear that fluffy loaves of mass-produced soft, damp, nutritionally deficient, chemical-laced bread made in large industrial “bread factories” and sold in tightly sealed plastic bags contain additives and preservatives to make them easy to process and to give them a long shelf life. But what about the rest of those loaves lined up just asking to be dropped into your shopping cart?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” Dickens was talking about London and Paris in his novel published more than 150 years ago, but he might have been describing 21st century farming. We’ve recently taken a clear look at two farms serving Puget Sound, Nash’s Organic Produce and Jubilee Biodynamic Farm, and now it’s time to ask, What’s next?
Erick and Wendy Haakenson, and their son David and his wife Kristin, are farming in a floodplain skirted by the Snoqualmie River. An active farm nearly for 25 years, Jubilee Biodynamic Farm is home to one of the largest and oldest Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs in the state. Jubilee is an intensively managed, diversified farm comprised of 14 acres of fruits, vegetables, and grains and around 35 acres devoted to beef cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, and ducks.
It’s very strange to hear the FDA and food safety people talking about outlawing manure on organic farms. I grew up on an organic farm where I rolled around with my dog on the manure pile (well composted, of course) and, you know, my brother and I were the healthiest kids in school. It may turn out that all this manure may actually be worth a lot of money!
This is an important presentation I think most for its honesty. And because it is being delivered by an authentic Iowa farmer, not some fabrication on contract hauled out to speak the corporate line because of the special interest of the parties involved.
You won’t find a lot of Big Ag in Suriname; in fact, you won’t find a lot of big anything there. With a population that barely eclipses the half-million mark — most living along the northern coastal area — the largest venture in South America’s smallest country is bauxite mining. And while there are some export food crops, primarily rice and bananas, start heading deeper into the Amazon Jungle and soon the scale of farming operations shrinks.
