Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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And All We Get Is the White House Garden?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/24-3
by Alexis Baden-Mayer
  Published on Saturday, October 24, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

I'll admit it. I'm an unabashed fan of the First Lady. I read every article 
about the White House organic garden and I go to Michele's farmers' market 
every Thursday. I'm a fan and I'm a little jealous, too. She's managed to 
educate DC school children and provide farm fresh food to state dinners. The 
garden I started at my daughter's DC public school this spring was abandoned 
to the office and maintenance staff this summer, then plowed under in a 
schoolyard renovation before school started in the fall, and has yet to feed 
any students.

Because I admire the First Lady's good example, I am shocked by the chemical 
agribusiness and biotech cheerleading of her husband's administration. From 
USDA and FDA appointments of biotech and chemical industry insiders, to 
support for the preposterous idea that genetic engineering can feed the 
world, it is obvious that the Obama Administration is happy to assist 
agribusiness in its quest for world domination.

World domination sounds a little histrionic, doesn't it? But, there's no 
other way to describe the profit-at-any-cost business model of companies like 
Monsanto that seek to patent and control access to seeds and food and decide 
for the world what we can eat. The question that faces humanity today is, 
"Shall we let Monsanto, Cargill, McDonald's and a handful of other 
multinational corporations decide the future of food?"

Proponents of the so-called Second Green Revolution, led by the chemical, 
biotech and industrial biofuels lobby, are spending millions each year on 
advertisements and donations to politicians, universities, and non-profits to 
convince us that the only way to feed the world and survive climate change is 
through high technology-relying on factory farm animal production, genetic 
engineering, toxic pesticides, nitrate chemical fertilizers, and compliant 
farmers, farm workers, and consumers.

With far fewer resources, the organic movement is generating the science to 
support an alternative view. Organic agriculture can feed the world, turn 
back climate change and make food production more resilient to droughts and 
floods. Organic agriculture can do it with biodiversity instead of biotech, 
greenhouse gas sequestration instead of emissions, integrated pest management 
instead of toxic pesticides, humus-rich compost instead of fossil fuel 
fertilizers or sewage sludge, more family farmers and better conditions for 
farm workers.

The question of which agriculture model will dominate food production is a 
question we only have one opportunity to answer. Once a seed or animal 
variety is extinct or contaminated with foreign genes, we will never get it 
back. In an age when a billion people are stuffed while a billion people are 
starved, most people on the planet suffer from either poor nutrition, 
exposure to toxic ingredients, diet-related diseases, or all three. 
Agriculture is a life and death issue for all of us.

So, which side is the Obama Administration on? The first answer to that 
question is, well, who's in the Obama Administration?

Let;s start with the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack. While Iowa 
Governor, Vilsack was a leading advocate for Monsanto, genetic engineering, 
and factory farming.

The senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food 
safety is Michael Taylor. The Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto 
Corp. from 1998 until 2001, Taylor exemplifies the revolving door between the 
food industry and the government agencies that regulate it.

Rajiv Shah is the USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics 
and Chief Scientist. Agricultural policy experts initially expressed concern 
that Shah, Director of Agricultural Development Programs at the Bill & 
Melinda Gates Foundation, lacked real experience in agriculture. Shah was the 
founding director of the Gates Foundation's agriculture program, which has 
donated $37 million to GM research.

Directly under Shah is Roger Beachy who is steering the direction of US 
agricultural research at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. 
Beachy is a long time Monsanto collaborator who directed an institute 
established by Monsanto and academic partners with a $70-million pledge from 
the corporation. It's effectively a Monsanto front.

Shah's senior advisor for energy and climate is Maura O'Neill. O'Neill ran a 
public-private life sciences venture called Explore Life, dedicated to 
drawing biotech companies to the Seattle area where the Gates Foundation is 
based.

Shah has brought in Rachael Goldfarb to work for him as counselor. At the 
Gates Foundation, Goldfarb was special assistant to Tachi Yamada, president 
of the foundation's global health program.

Shah's team has already awarded $11 million in Coordinated Agricultural 
Project grants to four research universities to study "plant genomics and 
ways to improve the nutrition and health values of important crops." Expect 
more GMO tomatoes, potatoes, barley, soybean, and trees. And be on the 
lookout for new, GMO legumes embedded with cholesterol and diabetes drugs.

According to a USDA press release on the awards, "Because humans consume more 
legumes than any other crop, this research has the potential to reduce 
cholesterol and sugar levels, which in turn can prevent or alleviate certain 
types of cancer, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases."

The irony is that there's a GMO legume already on the market, soy, that has 
found its way into just about all processed and fried foods in the form of 
partially hydrogenated soybean oil (a.k.a. trans fat). Will the result of 
this research be a new GMO trans fat that treats diet-related diseases caused 
by other GMO trans fats? It would certainly be a first for the field of 
genetic engineering. In fact, any new GMO crop that actually improved the 
nutrition and health value of an important crop would be a first. Contrary to 
popular belief, to date, there is not one health or nutritional benefit 
associated with any GMO crop. They're all genetically modified to either 
withstand or produce pesticides (usually manufactured by the chemical company 
that genetically engineered the crop).

Islam Siddiqui has been nominated as the Chief Agricultural Negotiator for 
the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. If Congress confirms him, he 
will use the post to continue the lobbying he has done for CropLife (a front 
group for chemical agriculture), promoting chemical-intensive, genetically 
modified products that undermine local food security in developing countries. 
CropLife didn't like the First Lady's pesticide-free garden.

Jill Long Thompson has been nominated for a seat on the Farm Credit 
Administration Board. After a political career, she became CEO of the 
National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, a non-profit founded to 
research biotechnology, pesticides, U.S. farm and food policy and 
international trade and development. The National Center produces a yearly 
"Update On Impacts On US Agriculture Of Biotechnology Der... that attempts to 
make the case that biotechnology-derived crops increase yields, reduce the 
use of chemicals and improve economic conditions for farmers. National Center 
trustees include university administrators, a former cabinet secretary, and 
representatives of agribusinesses including Altria, Blythe Cotton and ConAgra.

Jim Miller is Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign 
Agricultural Services. He was the President of the National Association of 
Wheat Growers, which has taken a pro-biotech position, but his term was in 
the 80s, before GMOs were an issue. In 2002, while Miller was the National 
Farmers Union's chief economist, NFU asked the government for a moratorium 
that would temporarily discontinue granting patents on GMOs. The organization 
wanted to prevent large companies from gaining control of genetically 
modified products. So, Jim Miller can't be characterized as a biotech 
booster, but one of the divisions he oversees, the Foreign Agriculture 
Service (FAS), always has been and that doesn't seem to have changed with new 
appointments.

Michael Michener, a former lead Iraq policy officer at the State Department 
who was a foreign policy adviser to Vilsack during his brief presidential 
campaign, now heads the FAS. On May 26, 2009, the FAS posted a pro-GMO report 
titled, "The Unexplored Potential of Organic-Biotech Production." After 
thousands of angry letters from Organic Consumer Association activists, the 
agency was forced to pull the report and print a retraction explaining, 
"[T]he report does not represent the policy of the United States Government." 
Nevertheless, the USDA, along with 3 of the world's top 5 seed companies 
(Monsanto, Syngenta, Land O' Lakes) and a host of other multinational 
agribusinesses, sponsored the 2009 Borlaug Dialogue. On the agenda was 
"Harmonizing Organic and Sustainable Agricultural Practices with Modern 
Technology and Genetics."

Edward Avalos is the USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory 
Programs, which includes the National Organic Program. This uncontroversial 
figure worked for 29 years at the NM Department of Agriculture. In 2008, he 
named Sunland Peanut, the largest producer of organic peanut butter in the 
country, the New Mexico Agricultural Marketer of the Year. I'm not expecting 
anything particularly exciting to happen in the organic industry under his 
watch.

Even with organic advocate Kathleen Merrigan as the USDA Deputy Secretary and 
a new batch of organic advocates on the National Organic Standards Board, 
Bush Administration policies that weakened organic are unlikely to be 
overturned quickly. Concentration is increasing in the organic dairy 
industry, with bad-actor brands like Horizon expanding feedlots and dropping 
farmers that have their cows on pasture. And, Dep. Sec. Merrigan says she has 
no plans to address blatant fraud in the organic cosmetics industry where 
brands like Jason: Pure, Natural & Organic advertise themselves as "organic" 
without being USDA certified.