On Wednesday, as Linds and I sat at the Coffee Roastery in Fairfax working on my first blog post, I was thinking about all the people who inspire me. It’s been an incredibly auspicious trip, and even before I left Boulder, I began making more connections and reconnections with folks who are on similar paths that I'm hoping to collaborate and work with on future projects. I also started watching a ton of documentaries and listening to different podcasts and NPR clips, hoping to continually inform myself of issues that are sure to come up in many conversations I have on the road, during my class, and while talking to people in the field. (See the end of this post for some interesting films and clips to watch and listen to.)
At a moments pause, I looked up at the community bulletin board in the shop and saw a flyer for a talk by one of my most cherished idols, Dr. Vandana Shiva. The talk was happening in just a few hours time and Linds and I both knew that we couldn’t say no to such a serendipitous opportunity.
Shiva is a physicist and an activist, most prominently known for her books and moving lectures. In 1984, she founded Navdanya, an organization based out of India that is committed to local and global food integrity, seed saving, and many other ecological farming methods. Through her own work and the work of her organization, she is notoriously known for her persistent legal action against enormous agrochemical corporations like Monsanto as well as others like BP that have been responsible for just as severe environmental destruction, as well as numerous government authorities. To my knowledge she has written twenty books including Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. Her work highlights the connections between human rights and environmental degradation, also referred to as environmental justice. I was introduced to her work in a class I took at CU in my sophomore year that went by the same name. In that class, which was taught by an amazing professor by the name of Kendy Hess, I was not only introduced to a multitude of inspiring and subversive activists and authors, but I met other students in the class who are still some of my closest friends today.
Dr. Shiva spoke for nearly three hours at a talk hosted by Dominican University in San Rafael and sponsored by Marin Organic and Point Reyes Books. She was welcomed by the audience who offered a standing ovation at her entrance and exit from the stage, many of us brought to tears by her presence. Shiva has been greatly influenced by Gandhi’s teachings on non-violent action and protest and his influence is obvious in her discussion of human rights and food/farming issues. She was named one of the seven “most influential women in the world” by Forbes magazine, and in her talk, she indubitably lived up to this honor.
Some interesting facts she spoke about in her talk:
Navdanya has created and helped support 60 community seed banks, hosted numerous eco-training programs, and saved thousands of heirloom varieties of vegetables from extinction through their seed-saving and education programs.
Industrial global agricultural systems (i.e. those that use heavy petroleum and nitrate based chemicals) account for around 40% of climate change damage.
The US is still calling itself a "food surplus country" although 70% of the (industrial) corn being grown here is being used to feed cattle and 30% is being used to create biofuel (corn based ethanol). Consider the millions of barrels of oil used to grow corn for a moment...it's entirely inefficient to produce a biofuel that requires more fuel to grow that it itself is able to provide, especially when we have other more viable options such as wind and solar. And think of how many mouths it could feed if we didn't grow the corn to feed cows or make fuel.
Evoking images of hundreds of tractors lined up in a row, spraying out chemicals over thousands of acres of crop land she said, “Farming should not have been turned into war.”
Many of the most violent bombings were caused by bombs made from ammonium nitrate fertilizer, including those in Norway, Oklahoma City, Thailand, Mumbai...the list goes on.
In 1995, 75% of plant varieties grown were extinct because of methods used in industrial agriculture.
Golden Rice, a GMO rice put on the market by Monsanto, whose claims that it can alleviate common deficiencies in Vitamin A that lead to blindness in the Third World, are not entirely accurate.
Let me expand on this a little bit, because Golden Rice is something you are sure to see on the news someday if you haven’t already, perhaps in an advertisement showing it being fed to a child in a third world country...
The entire Golden Rice debate is infuriating to me because simply put, these corporations continue to ignore the fact that unpolished or what we know as “brown” and other wild rice varieties naturally provide some vitamin A. These traditional varieties have been nearly pushed to extinction in many parts of India and Asia already. Unpolished rice varieties are now being seen as the healthier choice for many western consumers as well, because they are unprocessed and more “whole” as a food. Rice has never been seen as a great source of Vitamin A because a person can get most or all of their RDA of vitamin A from commonly grown vegetables; a medium sized carrot, a serving of sweet potatoes, a serving of dark leafy greens, even some spices like chili powder and paprika offer a whole lot. Yet, Monsanto, sponsored by many philanthropic entities supportive of initiatives that would beneficially target the poor and hungry, continues to spend millions of dollars trying to re-inject the ß-carotene back into polished rice. Another argument commonly used by GMO proponents is that polished rice simply lasts longer. But Shiva said it succinctly when she commented, “food is meant to perish”, and producing mass quantities of a genetically modified food is not going to help people have a more balanced diet for less cost. It will only make them favor one seemingly low-cost, easy to find food handed out by aid organizations, making them deficient in other very important vitamins and minerals, deficiencies that could lead to many other diseases anyway. One ISIS article suggests that rations of unpolished, whole heirloom rice varieties simply be saved in smaller rations and dispersed out to hungry families, thus saving on the true cost of producing something like Golden Rice, including the severe cost that farmers must pay for patents to grow it every year (if they earn more than a certain amount of income) and most of all, the environmental cost of producing the GMO.
In my own research, it’s been nearly impossible to find the actual reported nutritional value of Golden Rice, as the majority of Google hits provides GMO sponsored sources, government pages, or other sources that provide unspecific and vague information regarding actual studies done. Unfortunately, many proponents against world hunger (including The Rockefeller Foundation) are fooled by the argument that the rice could help alleviate blindness and anemia in millions of children a year, even though there is still no solid evidence to support this. More so, one source said that once the rice is cooked, it could change or decrease the nutritional value completely.
A few good sources I’ve found pertaining to the GMO rice debate:
Vandana Shiva is one of the many advocates of small scale ecological farming methods as solutions to the overwhelming dilemma of world hunger and poverty. People can be empowered and fed by the work being done on organic family and neighborhood farms. Additionally, for those of us needing more profound evidence against industrial farming methods, it has now been scientifically proven that organic farming methods produce a higher yield of crops than do industrial farms laden with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. You might have switched to organic food in an effort to avoid ingesting chemical residues on conventionally produced food, but think about the fossil fuels you're not consuming by making the switch, or more so, the erosion you're helping prevent. If you haven't visited the website www.commondreams.org, it offers some pretty amazing and valuable information. An article titled, "Approaching the Collapse: Don't Panic, Go Organic" highlights some stunning evidence:
"A growing corps of organic farmers and gardeners are producing increasing amounts of healthy, nutritious foods without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered seeds, or animal drugs. At the same time, these 21st Century organic stewards of the land are consuming far less (50% or more) fossil fuels and water. Study after study has demonstrated that organic small farms in the developing world out-produce chemical and genetically engineered farms by a factor of two to one; while in the industrialized nations, sustainable organic yields are comparable in “normal” weather to industrial farms; but far superior (up to 50-70% higher) in times of drought or torrential rain, the types of extreme weather that have become the “new norm.” In other words, not only can organic farming feed the world, but it is in fact the only way that we are going to be able to feed the world in this 21st Century era of energy, water, and climate crisis."
There is hope! Yes, now it's time to educate, cultivate, and expand on these amazing practices, that are already being reinvigorated all over the planet. Be inspired. Be hopeful. Be healthy! It is not too late to make the change. The worst thing we can do is give up just because it might take a little brain power, or maybe a little time and effort, to make the switch. My job isn't to preach, it's to educate and inform in a way that makes sense to me. No one should feel like they're being patronized or alienated from this movement towards a more sustainable way of growing food, because food and nutrition are the most basic of human rights. We should be deciding what we want to eat, to put in our bodies, and our children's bodies. It is not up to the corporations, Wall Street, or the government. It is up to you.
Here are some awesome links to documentaries and other sources that discuss an array of interesting topics related to food politics. Gorge yourself on info and feel empowered!
