Agriculture

First in a three part series, The Erie Wire interviews innovative farmer, Joel Salatin, who was the silver-lining featured in the sobering documentary Food, Inc., released in 2008. Joel’s production practices and clever marketing methods have attracted a large consumer following – his farm serves more than 1,500 families and 10 retail outlets – and even Chipotle, a billion dollar fast food chain dedicated to serving sustainably raised food. Joel was sponsored by Chipotle to be a keynote speaker at the 2010 OEFFA conference that took place in Granville, Ohio. In his speech titled “Everything I Want to do is Illegal” he discussed the local food movement challenge – from zoning to food safety to insurance, and regulatory hurdles designed and implemented to benefit industrial food models – and called for guerrilla marketing campaigns and other solutions to grow access to nutritionally-superior, sustainably raised food.

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Listen to Part 2

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Listen to Part 3

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Joel Salatin Part 1

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HURON COUNTY, OH – High School Student Farms Sustainably

Sustainable Agriculture is often a term reserved for universities or used by organizations to explain their relationship to an expanding agricultural industry; an industry edging ever-closer to a polarized practice: farming with or without chemicals. For most conventional farmers using chemicals to fertilize the soil, manage weeds, develop chemical resistant seed strains and to stabilize yields is an everyday way of life. But for some, the everyday use of chemicals on the farm is seen as a way to reduce life and propagate a false sense of safety.

Racheal Pitsinger, 16, alongside her father Rick Pitsinger are developing their own system of sustainable farming. Racheal, who holds a second degree black belt and is active throughout high school programs, disagrees with the claim that chemicals are necessary to “feed the world” and sees their everyday application as harming the wildlife.

In this weeks podcast of “On The Wire” listen to Racheal and her father, Rick, discuss how they got started farming, the methods they adapted to farm organically and how sustainable farming has given Racheal the chance to become financially viable while protecting the environment.

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ERIE COUNTY, OH – Agriculture in 2010: Issues & Agendas for Erie County (Interview)

Agriculture is the backbone of Erie County, OH; yet, few reports concentrate on the significance this industry generates. In Ohio agriculture contributes 98 billion to the economy each year according to the Ohio Department of Agriculture. Food consumption alone hovers around 35 billion.

The following interviews discuss this profession and what to expect from organizational branches in 2010.

Listen to the full interview through our podcast “On The Wire” available below; wherein Erie Soil and Water (ESWCD), the OSU extension and OEFFA discuss challenges and their 2010 forecast.

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Source(s):

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Tim White

Wildlife Specialist for Erie SWCD and ODNR Division of Wildlife

Erie Soil and Water Conservation District

Erie Soil and Water Conservation District
2900 Columbus Avenue, Room 131
Sandusky, OH 44870
Hours of Operation:
Monday – Friday
8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Phone: (419) 626-5211
Fax: (419) 609-9707

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Julia Woodruff

OSU Extension

Agriculture and Natural Resources

email: woodruff.94@osu.edu

phone: 419-627-7631

2900 Columbus Avenue, 3rd floor
Sandusky, OH 44870
Hours of Operation:
Monday – Friday
8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

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Renee Hunt
Program Director
41 Croswell Rd.
Columbus, Ohio 43214
phone: 614.421.2022 x205 Fax: 614.421.2011
e-mail: renee@oeffa.org

Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association

41 Croswell Rd.

Columbus OH 43214

email: oeffa@oeffa.org

phone: 614.421.2022 fax: 614.421.2011

The Transgenic Community | Editorial

This editorial is the first, in a series, The Erie Wire has published to address genetically engineered foods.

Editorial: Amidst the roadside attractions of Erie County blooms a threat to our food security.

It is a plant, engineered to withstand chemical saturations and, soon, turn seeds sterile. In its blossom, a biotech mixture waits to pollinate a neighbor’s biotech-free crop. Once pollinated, a new crop cycle develops a GE seed foreign to the land.

The following year the GE seed will germinate, the cycle will continue, and soon all biotech-free plants will begin to take on the features of a “Transgenic Food Community”.

“Some 200 million acres of the world’s farms grew biotech crops last year, with over 90 percent of those crops coming from genetically engineered seeds patented by U.S.-based Monsanto.” wrote Shawn Dell Joyce, reporting for The Times-Herald NY. Monsanto, producer of the herbicide RoundUp, is the company who spearheaded the development of genetically engineered (GE) crops. The GE seed was made to resist the powerful herbicide, while weeds, and everything but the GE crop, die upon the application of RoundUp. Monsanto’s patented GE seed brands, meant to withstand the herbicide, are known as “RoundUp Ready”, and are available as soy, corn, canola and cotton.

In a Transgenic Food Community, GE crops “cannot be contained” nor coexist with non-GE crops, according to Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian canola Farmer fighting for the rights to save seeds from biotech contamination.

For centuries, Farmers have been cross-pollinating different varieties of seeds in order to secure desirable traits in our food supply. Once a farmer produces a good crop he or she feels is strong enough to grow annually, seeds from that harvest are kept to plant the following year. Multigenerational farming families often will pass along the seed, giving it the nickname ‘heritage’ or ‘heirloom’ seed. In the modern day of agriculture, seed companies also use cross-pollinating techniques to produce patented hybrids. The hybrids have strong first generation yields but poor second generation yields, meaning the seed from the first year’s crop cannot be saved for the following years planting. This enables the companies to sell their seed year after year.

However, GE crops are cross-pollinating on their own using a dominant gene, sourced from a bacterium, which is foreign to the evolutionary development of a GE-free crop’s genome. A GE gene that pollinates a heritage seed, heirloom seed, or any seed will erase the work and research conducted by a farm to increase that seed’s performance. The plant that grows from the next generation of this GE pollination will produce the patented GE seed and have a decrease in nutritional value, due to its irregular growth and harmful chemical dependence. This new GE seed becomes the right of the company who owns the patent. Therefore, that patent holder can steal all of the generated revenue from the new GE crop that the Farmer unknowingly grows.

To the Farmer: no genetic drift insurance is available to a farm that is contaminated by a neighbor’s crop.

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/CaAB541PR9_28_08.cfm

GE crops are chemically dependent. Monsanto claims these two chemical herbicides to be safe for your health and the environment, when managed.

In 1945, the original Monsanto Co. began producing and marketing agricultural chemicals, including 2, 4-D. The 2, 4-D formula used on GE crops, by various companies to control herbicide resistant weeds, is 70% Agent Orange, according to Schmeiser. Agent Orange, also invented by Monsanto, was used to kill off the enemy’s food supply and clear out land for battle during the Vietnam War. It’s still known to be mutating Vietnamese newborns: citing, from the documentary “The Corporation”, babies being born without eyes. The application of 2, 4-D occurs after traditional herbicides, such as RoundUp, fail to control weeds. Today, already eight Synthetic Auxin resistant weeds have adapted to 2, 4-D spraying. This begs the question, “What are these chemicals for?”

The infamous RoundUp spray is viewed by the general public to be safe for weed control.

RoundUp spray is not biodegradable. Monsanto lost in court twice to false advertisement suits because of the company’s original claim, that RoundUp is a biodegradable product. The falsification of biodegradability caused RoundUp to become the most commonly used weed killer in the world. Its molecular structure is environmentally hazardous. It will soften eggs of birds and fish and affect other species reproduction, causing dysfunctions and mutations of the animals.

A study by professor Robert Belle, at the Oceanographic Observatory in Roscoff France (a GE free country), found cell division is affected by RoundUp. When met with RoundUp, a cell begins to malfunction or dysfunction. This cellular disruption is part of the first stages to cancer (though cancer will take another 30 to 40 years before it fully develops). This time-span can be shortened when cellular division is hit with a high concentration of the mutagenic chemicals.

In other words:

• RoundUp Ready spray is potentially a cancer health risk.
• The use of GE crops requires RoundUp Ready spray to grow, with an increase of 3 to 5 times as many chemical applications.
• GE patents prevent farmers from being able to own and generate their own seed production.
• The use of GE patented seeds will dominate/contaminate a gene pool of neighboring crops (“domination”, in this sense, is more associated with the domination of growth in cancer cells, than with any positive side-effects).
• The result, is the “Transgenic Food Community”: a production of food and food related products which cannot be controlled or operated independently of the company who manufacture their existence, forcing farmers and consumers to be completely dependent on a product that knowingly increases health risks and removes profits from a Farmers salary. A place where the farmer does not own the rights to seeds.

It’s worth mentioning that now in the United States there are 9 Glycine Resistant weeds. These plants have adapted a resistance to RoundUp’s active ingredient, glyphosate. Plants evolve and adapt to survive, and science tells us more of these resistant weeds are efflorescing. These patterns translate to stronger chemicals, further genetic modifications and higher costs for the Farmers.

The first documented cases of weed resistance to glyphosate were found in Australia, involving rigid ryegrass near Orange, New South Wales.^[69] Some farmers in the United States have expressed concern that weeds are now developing with glyphosate resistance, with 13 states now reporting resistance, and this poses a problem to many farmers, including cotton farmers, that are now heavily dependent on glyphosate to control weeds.^[70][71] Farmers associations are now reporting 103 biotypes of weeds within 63 weed species with herbicide resistance^[70][71]. This problem is likely to be exacerbated by the use of roundup-ready crops ^[72].  (wikipedia)

Why worry? This video — The World According to Monsanto —  reveals the position Monsanto is developing.

Why worry? This video — GMO Trilogy – Hidden Dangers In Kids Meals: Genetically Engineered Foods (1 of 3) — reveals the public health threats to GE production.

As of January 12, 2009 the EU has taken this position.

As of December 2009 Bayer Crop Science has taken this position.

As a small community we have the opportunity to respond to transgenic developments. Using our size we can effectively communicate a way to resist transgenic crop production, and keep our soil free from the bottom line of corporate contamination. Organic farming is one alternative that’s practiced by area Farms, which demand is rapidly rising for in the retail market. Heirloom agriculture can be an effective tool to preserve generational seed developments. This, again, is a successful practice among area Farms. Though, the real solution will come from demand: from a conscientious change in the power of purchase.

To the Public: Erie County, Ohio — is backboned by agriculture. In a Transgenic Food Community agricultural integrity takes a backseat to shareholder profits, and seed savers lose out to be cross-pollinated by the ever-invasive GE patents. Does this mean Erie County will lose its agricultural history due to the profit of one company? Or, can consumers begin to see the demise of purchasing genetically altered foods and begin talking to local farms for a different setting? To voice your concerns we ask you to write or email any of the farms listed on the right hand side of the page, and begin returning the voice about healthy foods to those with their hands in the soil.

Reference

http://www.monsanto.com/pdf/products/techpubs_BtCornAug07.pdf

http://www.cls.casa.colostate.edu/TransgenicCrops/current.html

http://www.cls.casa.colostate.edu/TransgenicCrops/how.html

http://www.cls.casa.colostate.edu/TransgenicCrops/defunct.html

http://www.monsanto.com/pdf/pubs/2007/pledge_report.pdf

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-941843495534321496&ei=Oap7SOzGE4b04AL99ZWfCw&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-941843495534321496&ei=qqx7SIKKNYXA4QKf8ZmJCw&hl=en

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujZHrR1mro8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFNtTfhhQ70&feature=related

http://www.weedscience.org/Summary/UspeciesMOA.asp?lstMOAID=24

http://www.isb.vt.edu/articles/jan0702.htm

http://www.netlink.de/gen/Zeitung/1998/980825.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/25/10609/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3015279868041217732&q=hidden+dangers+in+kids+meals+genetically+modified+foods&ei=2mOXSNHWD43O4gKJlY2lBQ

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/CaAB541PR9_28_08.cfm

Complimentary: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/13/10335/

Archive: http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=the%20world%20according%20to%20monsanto&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv#q=the%20world%20according%20to%20monsanto%209%20of%2010&sitesearch= http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=the%20world%20according%20to%20monsanto&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv#q=the%20world%20according%20to%20monsanto%2010%20of%2010&sitesearch=

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/13-3