Food For Thought

Most people have something to say about food. Today the meaning of "simple, wholesome, healthy, and nutritious" food is changing fast. To many, it appears that our food and agricultural system has been compromised, and is on the brink of falling into a severe crisis; then, there are those who say wakeup and smell the Fair Trade Coffee. Truly, a distorted and conflicting time is upon us. We consumers have purses enough together to force mega-corporations to listen to us and to get them to stop trying to force genetically modified foodstuffs down our throats. Corporations will listen to us when we speak collectively, telling them that we want them to work on creating sustainable, organic, healthful agricultural and industrial practices. And further, we want to see an end to corporations taking ownership of our basic food sources - seed and making many of them null in their quest to proliferate genetically modified substances as a means of ensuring their control. How many thousands of years of lost genetic food diversity? Consider it. This control extends to water and other essential commodities, which we cannot live without. It is quite disturbing, once it is realized, how little these corporations care for the farming/agricultural workers, and consumers, or the devastation created through petrochemical fertilizing systems.

We must maintain the rights to grow open pollinated seed varieties controlled by farmers and gardeners; otherwise, we will be (are) in trouble. (See the follow-up article on the Iraq Seed debacle.) Find out what percentage of open pollinated seed and other food varieties once maintained in catalogs by the USDA in the early 1800's are currently available in our National Seed Banks. In the early 1980's, the Graham Center estimated it at less than 3%, saying that most of that was in tomatoes.

Our time and resources will speak for the future we want for ourselves. What we do, and what we allow to be done in our names, will determine how we can develop inclusive and sustainable communities. Local food is a resource for focusing on building local food networks, supporting sustainable agriculture and building awareness on living in harmony with nature. Truly, a band of folks who stand hand in hand can create more of what we collectively dream.

Help Local Food see more clearly the road we are all traveling upon. Send your news, articles, etc., if you have time, drop a quick note on the Local Food Bloomington Blog at www.localfoodbloomington.blogspot.com. Keep us informed about your local food discoveries and adventures.

Now is a good time to take steps, regardless of how small they might appear to us, toward creating the world desired? You can help to support this work, with your generous financial donations, gifts of time, information, and stories. Your contribution is a step toward creating a peaceful and sustainable society.
Local Food Fairy

Eat Where You Live: Five Reasons to Buy Local Food
The Bloomington Farmer's Market starts in April this year. Even if I weren't a vendor, I'd be there, buying as much of my food as possible from my Indiana neighbors. I believe in buying and eating local foods as a powerful political, environmental, health-supporting, and life-enhancing act. Here are some of the reasons I think it's important that we consider not just what we eat, but from where we eat.

1. Conserving fossil fuels and reducing pollution. Commercially produced fresh food travels a long way to get to your table. One study found that tomatoes consumed in the eastern U.S. had traveled an average of 2,786 miles. That's a lot of diesel. Compare this to the food you can buy at the Bloomington Farmer's Market, which must be grown in Indiana. That's a maximum travel distance of less than 250 miles--usually much less, and sometimes just a few blocks.

2. Fresher is better. Most produce begins losing nutrients (as well as flavor) as soon as it is harvested. Local farmers can bring you the freshest, most nutritious foods, sometimes only hours post-harvest. Commercial crops are bred for long shelf life, sturdiness, and uniform size. Small, local growers, who use hand labor and don't ship their product, can choose varieties for taste.

3. Trust. Buying organic at the store usually means relying on a certification agency you've never heard of to verify that Dole or General Mills is telling the truth. The people who sell food at the Farmer's Market are the people who grow it. You can ask the grower exactly how the food was produced, and get detailed answers; you may even be able to visit the farm. I believe local farmers are more likely to tell the truth than are large corporations, because they rely on you, personally, for their income--not on giant pools of anonymous consumers. Word of mouth is a local farmer's best advertising, and his or her good name is an irreplaceable resource.

4. Building Community. When you buy local, you do more than exchange money for goods. You invest in a local economy and help to shape its course. Your money supports the livelihood of your neighbors, not shareholder profits for people who will never see either you or your food. And you participate in creating the world you want to live in: For example, when you ask a local farmer about spraying and request organic produce, you aren't just influencing the residues on that day's salad. If that farmer chooses more natural growing methods to please the local market, his or her decision affects our air and water quality. If that farmer is able to stay in business by selling direct to you, many acres may stay in fields and woodland rather than urban sprawl. When the farmer buys mulch hay, hauls manure, or hires the neighbor kids to pick hornworms instead of buying industrial agricultural products, your dollar enriches our community even more. By supporting and encouraging sustainable agriculture at the local level, you can shape the future of this place.

5. It's also fun. Come to the market--find out what is in season each month, each week. Try something new, or something your grandparents would remember. Say hi to your friends, sign a petition, give a dollar to the guitar player. Buy some plants and get some advice for growing your own local food. Let your kids play in the fountain and meet the adoptable dogs. We'll see you there!

--Denise Breeden-Ost raises vegetables and a son with her husband, Sean, in and near Bloomington, Indiana.

Iraq's Crop Patent Law A Threat To Food Security
By GM Free Cymru Countercurrents.org (This is a follow-up on the Seed Patent law the U.S. has inflicted upon the Iraq people published in the last issue of Green Dove - see http://www.greendove.net/foodnews.htm)

Aid agencies and NGOs across the globe have been reacting with horror to the news that new legislation in Iraq was carefully put in place last year by the US that will effectively bring the whole of the country's agricultural sector under the control of trans-national corporations (TNCs). This will be a disaster for the Iraqi government and especially for the country's farmers, since companies like Monsanto and Syngenta will be empowered to control the food chain from planted seed (1) to packaged food products, thus extending economic colonialism into every walk of life.

The new Iraqi Government is now being urged as a matter of priority to revoke Order 81, the offending piece of legislation which was signed and brought into force by Paul Bremer (the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority) on 26th April 2004.

The Order has been described by NGOs as "cynical and wicked", since the section relating to the registration and protection of plant varieties was slipped in almost as an appendage to an Order dealing with patents, industrial design, disclosure of information and integrated circuits (2). "The manner in which this Order was imposed on the people of Iraq is an outrage in itself," says Dr Brian John of GM Free Cymru. "There was virtually no Iraqi input into the wording of the Order, since the country and its people were on their knees following the Iraq War (3). The Preamble to the Order justifies its provisions as "necessary to improve the economic condition of the people of Iraq", as desirable for "sustainable economic growth" and as enabling Iraq to become "a full member of the international trading system known as the WTO." That all sounds laudable, but when one looks at paragraphs 51 to 79 of the Order it is clear that they have been designed simply to facilitate the takeover of Iraqi agriculture by western biotechnology and agribusiness corporations."It is not surprising that Order 81 was written as "enabling legislation" for American corporate interests. The US Agriculture Department, which aided Bremer in writing the Order, was headed by ex-management of the huge US seed and biotech companies, such as Monsanto and Cargill (4). Ann Veneman, who recently resigned as US Secretary of Agriculture, had a long career working for large US agribusinesses (including Calgene) before going to work for the government. She appointed Cargill's Dan Amstutz to head Iraq's agricultural reconstruction. The Order fits in neatly into the US/TNC vision of future Iraqi agriculture - that of an industrial agricultural system dependent on a small number of cash crops, with large corporations selling both chemical inputs and seeds. It also arises naturally from the USAID programme in Iraq, which unashamedly confirms the thesis that foreign aid programmes are primarily "commercial opportunity" programmes designed for the benefit of American companies (5).READ ARTICLE

Go to http://www.greendove.net/iraqpatent2.htm for the complete article.