Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (Maine-D) has a lot to say about local alternative farming, small farms, farmers markets and restaurants serving local produce. She has a lot to say and a lot to do with its resurgence. She believes the answer to current top-heavy industrialized problems lies in reviving local agriculture.
How does she know so much about food, farming and food politics? Let her tell you in this little-known TEDx talk – she’s been through it all. Let’s just say she has a reason to be passionate about farming. She remembers how a small percentage of local food provided Maine’s necessities – even Boston’s.
I still don’t feel guilty. It’s intolerable today to be forced to hide and to be frightened for taking a stand. –Emmanuel Giboulot
Last year I wrote about a major pesticide problem in French wines. One that had unfortunate results. For instance, 90% of those wines, even vintage, were contaminated with unsafe pesticide chemical levels. One farmer died from exposure, and wine farmers there were shown to have much higher rates of brain cancer and dementia.
One would think organic wines would be the way to go. French labels depict organic with the words Vin Biologique. But now, with a new directive that completely undermines “organic” – it is uncertain. That is, if this normally very American, Canadian and English trend on choking out organic small farm freedom continues in France.
Outrage erupted in the health world after China’s Ministry of Education recently announced that it does not serve genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to diners at its cafeteria. GMWatch.org and others report that the government agency has a sign currently posted at the doorway of its cafeteria stating that GMOs are not served to government employees or members of the public who might visit the facility, and yet these same transgenic derivatives continue to be served to China’s public schoolchildren.
The sign, which clearly states that the safety profile of GMOs is questionable at best, was designed to dispel fears about the inadvertent consumption of unlabeled GMOs in the cafeteria. With no verifiable or legitimate consensus on whether or not GMOs are safe for the environment, let alone human consumption, the government agency has chosen to take the precautionary approach by eliminating them altogether in the best interests of government employees and others who dine at the canteen.
When it comes to regulations, it’s all in the wording. Not all organic producers take advantage of the huge loopholes in the USDA’s National Organics Program (NOP). There are those who really care, and those who are owned body and soul by GMO pushers. It is a matter of being able to trust your grower/manufacturer to be honest about it. This is one reason why I distrust anyone who promotes coexistence. By promoting coexistence, they support the continued proliferation of GMOs, which will eventually take over all natural seeds if allowed to continue at the rate they are being planted. This is a war, make no mistake about it.
Question:
How can you trust an agency that promotes GMOs to be in charge of a program that supposedly is against GMOs?
If the extreme drought in the western half of the country keeps going, the food supply problems that we are experiencing right now are only going to be the tip of the iceberg. As you will see below, the size of the U.S. cattle herd has dropped to a 61 year low, and organic food shortages are being reported all over the nation. Surprisingly cold weather and increasing demand for organic food have both been a factor, but the biggest threat to the U.S. food supply is the extraordinary drought which has had a relentless grip on the western half of the country. If you check out the U.S. Drought Monitor, you can see that drought conditions currently stretch from California all the way to the heart of Texas. In fact, the worst drought in the history of the state of California is happening right now. And considering the fact that the rest of the nation is extremely dependent on produce grown in California and cattle raised in the western half of the U.S., this should be of great concern to all of us.
Steve Marsh lives and farms at Kojonup in Western Australia. In 2010 he lost his organic certification when GM canola from next door jumped the fence and contaminated 70% of his farm. In a world first, he is sueing his GM neighbour for damages and if he wins he not only protects his right to grow clean GM free organic food, he also protects our rights to eat GM free foods.
It’s not Spago, nor Per Se. It isn’t located on Rodeo Drive or in Columbus Circle. The restaurant with the longest waiting list, five-years to be precise, is a small, nondescript, 12-table basement located in Earlton, N.Y., named simply enough Damon Baehrel after its owner and chef. Its guests come from 48 countries and include such celebrities as Jerry Seinfeld, Martha Stewart and Barack Obama himself. However what makes Baehrel’s restaurant the most exclusive restaurant in the world is not the decor, nor the patrons, some who fly overnight from Manhattan to pay $255 for dinner (before wine and tip), nor the hype (although all the advertising is through word-of-mouth), but the food, which is all cultivated, grown, prepared, cooked and served from and on the property, and where Baehrel is literally the only employee. “I’m the chef, the waiter, the grower, the forager, the gardener, the cheesemaker, the cured-meat maker, and, as I will explain, everything comes from this 12-acre property.”
In this world that we have created everything is toxic even (less toxic) organic food.
If I were to count all the toxic garbage that we are exposed to then that would take me a very looong time indeed and the list will never be complete because every day we humans are adding more toxic stuff to the list.
I’d like to thank all the Natural News readers for your support as I’m engaged in intensive laboratory research and not posting very many stories right now. This will continue through early January up until we break our big announcements on food science.
You may have heard some rumors that I discovered I’ve been exposed to a chronic, accumulative, low level of toxic elements (poisons) over the last couple of years. This rumor is true, and over the last several months, I have been able to identify the sources of those poisons and remove them from my diet and my environment. Some of these poisons are still coming out of my hair and urine, but overall levels have dropped dramatically. At no time were the exposures acute. I’m talking about an ongoing low level of exposure that builds up over time, not an emergency level at any one time.
What’s shocking is that I was being exposed to these toxic elements even though I thought I was living a pristine lifestyle with an incredibly clean “organic” diet rich in superfoods and supplements. It turns out that many organic foods are a total myth because they’re incredibly contaminated. More on this point in future articles…
What’s also shocking is that you, too, are almost certainly being chronically poisoned in the way I was being poisoned, and details on all this will be forthcoming as part of our announcements in 2014. I can assure you that you are being exposed to surprising levels of cadmium, lead, mercury, copper, aluminum and even uranium — another element that I am now finding at trace levels in nearly all food. (And yes, I will report more details on that later, too… we are all eating FALLOUT!)
When most Americans think about organic meat or eggs, they picture animals on small farms, allowed to root in the soil, feel sun on their backs, and engage in their species-specific desires. What they don’t picture is tens of thousands of hens crammed into massive sheds with no access to soil and extremely limited outdoor access.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture just stamped its seal of approval on the latter scenario by refusing to implement its own advisory board’s animal welfare standards, which would have created a level playing field for hundreds of small organic farms by requiring animal welfare improvements from the five massive “organic” egg farms that provide the worst hen welfare.
The USDA’s decision doesn’t just violate our moral intuitions and the expectations of organic consumers; it also violates the department’s legal mandate in at least two distinct ways.
The increasing use of SWAT teams across these United States is completely and totally incompatible with a free and civilized society. As I mentioned in my recent article about how there are now 50,000 SWAT raids in America annually, many of these military-styled operations target nonviolent offenders, and are often merely money making rackets for local police departments.
It appears the trend is getting even worse. Just like cops will pull you over on the highway and claim to “smell marijuana” as an excuse to violate your 4th Amendment rights, this claim of drugs being present is now being used to SWAT raid organic farms. Or perhaps it’s just because your neighbor thinks your yard is untidy. The story below is nothing short of a complete and total disgrace and we should not stand for this sort of behavior any longer.
Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized “17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants … native grasses and sunflowers,” after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said.
Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises,” Smith’s statement said. She said the police didn’t produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn’t be identified.
The system is constantly conjuring up ways to nickel and dime you. Americans have become incredibly naïve, far too trusting of a system which proves over and over on a daily basis that it most definitely cannot be trusted. Conversely we have become far too cynical of the people, who do heroic things every day. We must reverse this dichotomy. Trust the people, do NOT trust the matrix. Be generous to friends, family, the people and the natural world, but learn to be stingy in your dealings with the system. This is another one of those dogmas which must be examined.
The programmers are constantly sending out their message that frugality is a bad thing. That’s not because they want you to buy your friend the next beer. You should. It’s because they want you to recklessly open your purse strings and donate all your hard earned grubstake to the matrix shopping complex.
So, take it a step further. The best defense is a good offense in any sport. Rather than being led around by the nose by the matrix ad department, be audacious and proactive. While you make it a practice to spend as little of your freedom on their stuff, take advantage of opportunities you come across to nickel and dime the hell out of the matrix. It changes the whole power equation. Your grubstake savings will grow. And it’s fun!
Little things add up when it comes to getting the grubstake necessary to bolt the matrix. Most people have some kind of space they can use to grow a garden. So get planting.
BARCELONA — Sustainable entrepreneurship — a buzzword in an increasingly eco-conscious business world — is often described as a balance between profit and environmental impact.
It’s a subject that Douglas Tompkins seems to have thought a lot about. He founded Esprit and The North Face, two of America’s most iconic clothing and fashion brands, only to quit the business world to become a staunch conservationalist, environmentalist and critic.
“Remove ‘sustainable’ from your dictionary, there is no sustainable business. Only biological sustainability counts,” he told a room full of business students at the IESE business school Doing Great and Doing Good conference on responsible business. (Disclosure: I moderated a panel at the same conference).
“Economic activity has impact and we are just now doing a better job of measuring what those impacts are,” said Mr. Tompkins in an interview.
A strict conservationalist, he rejects the idea that big business can reform itself and thinks the answer lies outside what he calls the “techno-industrial culture.” He thinks measuring biodiversity is a yardstick for how society is doing.
“Healthy biodiversity is at the base of everything,” he said, with species extinction being the ultimate catastrophe. “We’ll be living on a sand heap with a Norwegian rat and a few cockroaches at the end.”
Despite having co-founded ESPRIT, the multinational clothing giant, and The North Face, the maker of outdoor equipment, in the 1960s and having earned millions of the sale of the former, Mr. Tompkins is critical of business’s paradigms.
“We have an economy that’s based on growth without limits,” he said. “How is that possible?”
“To grow and grow and grow without limits is out of the question,” he said.
Even the companies that he is famous for launching do not escape his disapproval.
Do you really know what’s in all the food you’re eating that’s imported from China? If you don’t, you’re actually in good company: The FDA only inspects 1% – 2% of all the food imported from China, so they don’t know either. Even when they inspect a shipment, they rarely test it for heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs or other toxic contaminants.
Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute, added emphasis to this point as he testified this week in The House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, saying, “We don’t trust, for good reason, the Chinese to supply ingredients for our dog and cat food. Why should we trust Chinese exporters for the food that we are feeding our children and families?”
It’s a good question. Especially when, as Kastel adds, Chinese food is being routinely found to contain “unapproved chemicals, dyes, pesticides and outright fraud (fake food).”
You may not be aware of it, but every time you bite into that crisp, organic apple or succulent, organic pear, you could be exposing yourself to two different antibiotic drugs that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) has quietly allowed to be used on these two fruits since the organic program’s inception back in the 1990s. And unless the health-conscious community makes its collective voice heard on this important issue, the deceptive practice will continue to play a role in the growing antibiotic-resistance epidemic that is sweeping modern society.
If there was ever a nation that could see the purpose behind organic, sustainable farming, it would be a nation that is composed mostly of farmers. Such a place does exist, and it soon may be the first nation to go 100% organic, paving the way for others to do the same on a global scale.
The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is known for a high level of citizen happiness, but it is doing something even more noteworthy in the near future. With Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley making a major announcement regarding the organic farming project at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development which took place last month, the move has made national headlines. It’s called the National Organic Policy, and it is fueled by the simple concept that working ‘in harmony with nature’ will yield the most powerful results — all without sacrificing human health or the environment.
What this comes down to is no GMO, no pesticides, no herbicides, no fluoride-based spray products, no Monsanto intrusion at all, and a whole lot of high quality food available for the 700,000 citizens of Bhutan. Food that, at one time, was simply called ‘food’. In the statement to other policy makers, Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley explained the move:
This statement presents the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics on pesticides. Pesticides are a collective term for chemicals intended to kill unwanted insects, plants, molds, and rodents. Children encounter pesticides daily and have unique susceptibilities to their potential toxicity. Acute poisoning risks are clear, and understanding of chronic health implications from both acute and chronic exposure are emerging.Epidemiologic evidence demonstrates associations between early life exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function, and behavioral problems. Related animal toxicology studies provide supportive biological plausibility for these findings. Recognizing and reducing problematic exposures will require attention to current inadequacies in medical training, public health tracking, and regulatory action on pesticides. Ongoing research describing toxicologic vulnerabilities and exposure factors across the life span are needed to inform regulatory needs and appropriate interventions. Policies that promote integrated pest management, comprehensive pesticide labeling, and marketing practices that incorporate child health considerations will enhance safe use.
Dr. Oz’s recently article in TIME Magazine — entitled “The anti-snob diet” — has created something of a firestorm across the internet. In his article, Dr. Oz refers to people who buy organic foods or who frequent farmers markets as “snooty” “elitist” and “snobs.” He promotes feedlot beef, conventional ice cream and canned foods while implying organic foods are “elitist” foods only for the “1%.” He even says these organic, farmers market foods are “not very democratic.”
You can’t actually read the original article, as TIME Magazine doesn’t publish it online. So you’ll have to pick up a copy of the December 3rd issue of TIME in order to read the full text of the article. But I assure you that Dr. Oz has put his name on an article in TIME that contains the quotations I’m citing here.
Nowhere in his original article does he warn his readers that conventional foods are heavily laced with chemical pesticides and GMOs, nor does he mention the mercury risk from eating tuna. His message to America? If you care about what you eat, you’re a snob!
The mainstream media is invoking déjà vu with their latest laughable attempt to frame yet another study that actually highlighted the benefits of organic into a hysterical anti-organic news frenzy. This time, however, some publications are actually publishing the truth on the matter. Why? Because last time that the mainstream media conglomerate decided to smear the last organic foods study’s findings and proclaim how great pesticides and GMOs are for you and your family, it ended in a major apology by the New York Times.And it was this piece, a response to the uproar from the public following the alternative news media’s response to the mainstream media spin (including my piece first released on the night of the study with a video breakdown), that signified the final nail in the coffin for the mainstream media’s previous assault on organic foods. In the apology piece, New York Times columnist Mark Bittman states:
“That was dumb of me… I’m sorry. This junk science deserves a response. Ignoring it isn’t enough. I apologize.”
But now, once again, some sources such as CBS have begun spinning the latest organic food study. In this study, just like the last one, it was found that organic food contained less brain-damaging pesticides, has higher concentrations of antioxidants, doesn’t contain GMOs, brain-tumor-linked artificial sweeteners, mercury-containing high-fructose corn syrup, and so on. However many sources don’t seem to care about the facts. Instead, they title something like ‘Organic Same as Conventional Say Docs’. Meanwhile, some are erring on the side of the truth to avoid backlash.
But don’t take my word for it, just look at the below image from Google News. Notice the difference in titles? You can clearly see instances of nutritional doublespeak, in which news agencies title an article something wildly incorrect and then go on to say the opposite inside the content of the story. Considering that many — if not most — news readers glance at the title and keep reading onward, this is highly effective.
Media Blackout on GMOs, Real Issues Surrounding Conventional Food
Titles such as ‘Organic food no better than conventional for kids’ ultimately lead to content explaining that organic food contains less pesticides and less antibiotic-resistant bacteria (that can result in resistant diseases like the white plague), but that it’s not ‘entirely conclusive’ whether or not this matters. Peer-reviewed research may argue otherwise, with pesticides linked to over 60 negative conditions including:
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