GMO Rice Won't Fix a Broken World

After witnessing first hand the evidences of a frail and collapsing food system in parts of Asia, my ears perked up at the mention of another GMO rice debate. Anna Lappé shared the video below in her Facebook feed yesterday, and I couldn't help but watch (skip to 3:36 for the GMO rice exchange):

It's refreshing to hear a fourteen year old armed with a bit of knowledge intelligently counter the feel-good, save-the-world-with-technology arguments from GMO proponents...

"Let's say you weren't as lucky as you are, you were born in an Asian country, you're 14 years old, your only food was rice that had no Vitamin A in it, you're going blind and then you died," O'Leary said. "Five-hundred-and-fifty-thousand people your age die that way every year. And a company like Monsanto could come along and offer you a genetically-modified rice that includes Vitamin A that could save your eyesight and your life."

Parent was unfazed.

"Golden rice was scrapped because it didn't work. And in order for the average 11-year-old boy to get enough Vitamin A from rice he would have to eat 27 bowls of rice per day," she said. "The reason there is blindness isn't because there is a lack of Vitamin A in the rice, it's because their diets are simply rice."

"Rachel Parent Debates Kevin O'Leary About GMOs" - Huffington Post Canada 

I'm offended when I hear how easily people brandish "save the starving" arguments in the same breath as praises for genetically modified foods.

Let's be honest: bypassing holistic solutions is better for big business' bottom line.

Let's market foods fortified with artificially increased levels of nutrients so that we won't have to solve the bigger picture of a broken food web.

Let's capture developing nations' farmers in a net of loans, seed contracts, and indebtedness to the Monsanto-moneymakers of the world so that we won't have to come alongside and help them truly break cycles of poverty and oppression.

Let's let our technology to save us. If we can pay scientists to alter the fundamental genetics of a plant and then patent and sell that source of salvation, why not pocket a few extra million and wear a shiny halo of pseudo-philanthropy?

Fishermen of the Tonlé Sap:
"The inland fisheries supported by the Tonle Sap Lake system
form the backbone of Cambodian food security,
however the people of the Tonle Sap Area experience
the highest incidence of poverty in the country…" -Read More

Traditional Rice Noodles

Fresh Cambodian Market Produce

My blood pressure's up.

It's time for me to re-listen to Deconstructing Dinner's "Biotechnology Myths."

---

More Information:

Kevin O'Leary - Canadian Businessman
Rachel Parent - Founder of Kids Right to Know Club

Can GMOs Help End World Hunger?

...I also found it interesting that Monsanto and cohorts spent $50 million on the golden rice ad campaign. That’s more than they spent on developing the rice in the first place. Imagine if that money had been spent on irrigation projects in sub-saharan Africa. Or given as microloans to start-up farmers in Southeast Asia. At the end of the day, Monsanto’s main objective isn’t solving world hunger. It’s making money. They invest millions of dollars in developing GM crops so they can patent them and recoup their investment. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that desire. It’s the goal of any business... But don’t let a snazzy PR campaign fool you. “Despite the PR, Monsanto’s goal is not to make hunger history. It’s to control the staple crops that feed the world.”

The Golden Rice: An Exercise in How Not to Do Science

...In conclusion, the ‘golden rice’ project was a useless application, a drain on public finance and a threat to health and biodiversity. It is being promoted in order to salvage a morally as well as financially bankrupt agricultural biotech industry, and is obstructing the essential shift to sustainable agriculture that can truly improve the health and nutrition especially of the poor in the Third World. This project should be terminated immediately before further damage is done. 

Mama Natural: How to Avoid GMOs (For Real)
A quick guide to sourcing non-GMO foods (including "On A Budget" recommendations).

No, Really. Listen to Deconstructing Dinner's "Biotechnology Myths" podcast.

Lastly, a few (semi-)related stories from my time in Southeast Asia:
Visiting the Floating Villages of Cambodia
Frogs and Eels and Pig Heads

All for now.
Enough drama for one day.
xx Bethany

GMOs and Labeling

Food Renegade published a must-read article today about GMO labeling. Check it out...

Do you believe in the Whole Foods fairy?

She used to be your garden variety woodland sprite, but times are hard and sorting mountains of corn and soy for Whole Foods is a sweet gig. Just sprinkle a little magical fairy dust and VOILA! The genetically modified feed separates from the conventional feed in a snap.
Continue reading at Food Renegade...

Enjoy,
Emily

Aubergine, Monsanto, Vilsack & The Future of Food

Who can resist those perfectly plump, purple brinjals (eggplants!) when they're piled high on the farmer's market table or dangling between leaves like summer jewels? But what about the semi-squishy, slightly browned imports heaped in the produce aisle during - say, an Oregon February? Or March?

The rubber meets the road when I am faced with choices on sustainably produced, nourishing food, and as much as I love eggplant, I'm given the opportunity to turn it down in the dead of winter in favor of holding out for the quality crop come August.

And apparently, the rubber has met the road in SE Asia, where only just this last month the Indian government formally rejected the genetically modified version of the popular crop.

Eggplant in India
That's right, Bt Eggplant ("Bt" for “Bacillus thuringiensis” -- a soil bacterium incorporated into the GMO crop which is toxic to certain targeted insects that often feast on the plants in the fields) now stands as banned in the country of India.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh stated, "It is my duty to adopt a cautious precautionary principle-based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt-Brinjal until such time as independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and the environment.”

Hooray for India and their 26% portion of the worldwide production of eggplant!~

There's related insidious news afoot: If you're curious about the ex-Director of Monsanto India's admission that the corporation provided "fake scientific data" to regulators, see here and hunt around some more on your own... It certainly isn't a surprise.

USDA Environmental Review of GMO Alfalfa
Interestingly, on home soil this past week, many activists including Food Democracy Now have been rallying the American people in an effort to contact our Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, about Monsanto's newest US push -- GMO alfalfa. Let's have that seed blowing freely across our fruited plain - contaminating conventional and organic fields and working its way into the food web supplying many of our meat and milk producers and thwarting the efforts of organic operations.

GMO Sugar Beets in Oregon
For more on Monsanto's GMO cross pollination risks hitting close to home, see this past week's developments on the lawsuit hoping to halt use of Roundup Ready sugar beets. Some of you may remember when, last May, uninvited sprouts of the beastly crop made an unannounced appearance in a batch of compost sold at a Corvallis, Oregon garden center.

From the Capital Press:
"Organic vegetable seed grower Frank Morton looks over red chard in a field on his Philomath-area farm. Morton was an instigator behind the lawsuit that put in question the future of Roundup Ready sugar beets."

Searching for Wisdom
It is interesting to wade through the myriad online sources of information about Bt technology, Monsanto's worldwide workings, and our very own situation with the USDA.

You may find the State of Oregon's simple fact sheet explaining Bt as a harmless, naturally occurring soil bacteria. You may find a flip side report on the effects of aerial application of similar Bt substances.

You may find Monsanto tooting it's own horn and promoting the work such people who would sidestep the issues and say "...the marketing strategy of the tobacco companies, of a known carcinogen, in developing countries makes the biotech companies look like saints," (emphasis mine). Or you may find a sanely, rationally presented response to the questionable marketing hype of "saving the world with GMOs."

You may find the government's rosy bio of Secretary Vilsack. You may find others' more cautionary views of the man.

Ultimately, we'll each be held accountable for the truths we learn and the choices we make.

Food For Thought
Three of my highly recommended resources for learning more about seasonal eating and GMOs -- just the iceberg's tip for insightful books, movies, and podcasts:

Full Moon Feast, Food and the Hunger for Connection - A beautifully written and compiled book and series of recipes for food throughout the year...

"When we begin to heal the broken relationships in our food system, the nutrition of our food begins to improve... Ultimately, it is not something any one of us can do in isolation. Once we begin to acknowledge our interdependence with others, it becomes absurd to think I am healthy but my community is sick, or I am healthy but the world is sick. We are too much a part of our community and our world is too much a part of us for that to be viable."
~Jessica Prentice, Full Moon Feast

The Future of Food - An eye opening documentary about the "unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled the grocery store shelves for the past decade."

Deconstructing Dinner - A fabulous podcast out of British Columbia, Canada. In particular as it relates to these topics, try "The GMO Trilogy - Unnatural Selection" featuring Vandana Shiva, Andrew Kimbrell, Percy Schmeiser, Marc Loiselle, Martin Pratchler and others...

My Two Cents in the Produce Aisle
Excerpt from an interesting (albeit pro-GMO) paper on Bt Brinjal:
"The brinjal fruit and shoot borer (FSB) is the most destructive insect pest in South and South East Asia. To control this insect pest, farmers all over the world use large quantities of chemical insecticides singly or in combination to get blemish free fruits. In the district of Jessore, farmers spray pesticides 140 times during a cropping season of 180-200 days. As a result farmers suffer numerous health problems (including skin and eye irritation, nausea, and faintness), resulting from direct exposure to pesticide during handling and spraying (Rahman, 2000; and Wilson, 2001)."

The issue is large and complex, and no quick two sentence summary can do it justice. But my thoughts at present are these:

-There are men and women farming fields of crops (eggplants and otherwise), putting their health and safety on the line because we, the demanding market, want blemish free, Cosmo-girl vegetables.

-There are enormous industries built on the broken model of "fresh" food on my kitchen table - NOW. No regard to season, to locale, to the natural systems of life and death, winter and summer, springtime and harvest.

-There are companies clamoring to push their biotech pills on farmers around the world, trying desperately (and quite effectively, I might add) to convince them that a quick tamper here, a fast lab experiment there, and boom! "Botox-produce and profits in your pockets."

-And some...some are standing up to this cunning trickery and crooked world-view. Props to India for going head on with one of the titanic forces of biotech industry. Props to the Montavilla Farmer's Market for hosting local growers just a few blocks down from my home... Props to Territorial Seed for providing me with cute little eggplant starts last springtime and the subsequent little purple crown jewels of my garden that made their way to our dinner plates.

My hope is for health and wholeness of life in India, in the USA, in Oregon, and around dinner in my own home... Thanks for coming along on the journey...

~Bethany