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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Agribiz: Food or the Environment But Not Both
  • Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 16:33:04 -0700

Agribiz: Food or the Environment But Not Both
January 13, 2011
http://beyondgreen.weaversway.coop/2011/01/agribiz-food-or-environment-but-not.html


In a piece on the EPA's attempts to save the Chesapeake Bay as well as USDA's
new policy of acknowledging risks of genetic contamination or organics by GMO
crops, Tom Philpott has a key insight about industrial agriculture:

In both the case of the Chesapeake Bay watershed's vast chicken factories
and that of GM alfalfa, industrial agriculture is admitting that it needs to
trash its neighbors and the surrounding landscape to thrive. It wants us to
believe that there are no alternatives if we want to feed ourselves
plentifully.

The idea that protecting the environment is a luxury we can't afford is a
standard defense for corporations in many sectors -- though typically only
trotted out by the dirtiest industrial polluters (e.g. coal and oil
companies).

This argument tends to be more effective when the environment that's being
trashed has already been depopulated by economic forces (as in the sad
decline of rural America). And as the natural gas drilling industry has
discovered, it's a lot easier to steamroll the widely disbursed residents of
West Texas than it is when you're drilling near population centers in New
York or Pennsylvania. Still, the thing agribusiness has going for it is that,
by and large, it has moved its biggest operations away from media and public
attention.

But I do wonder in the two cases Philpott addresses, if agribusiness is using
this threat as more an act of desperation than clever strategy. In the case
of the Chesapeake, for which it is the primary cause of pollution at this
point, industrial agriculture is mostly benefiting now from the unwillingness
of local governments to take responsibility for the mess created by overuse
of fertilizer and under-treatment of factory farm waste.

In fact, the "sky is falling" rhetoric is a direct response to the EPA's move
to penalize state and local governments for polluting the bay. As this WaPo
article documented, the actual desire is to force farmers to pay, not
consumers. When faced with the continued death of an eco-system from which
millions of residents of several states benefit, claims of falling skies may
not quite be enough.

As for the new USDA policy that supports protecting organic agriculture from
contamination by genetically modified crops -- on this point, agribusiness is
all bluster. The USDA is partly doing this out of good intentions, but mostly
because the science, and far more importantly, the courts, are demanding this
policy shift. Even the Supreme Court, packed as it is with an
industry-friendly majority, had to acknowledge the real risks of genetic
contamination to other, legitimate forms of agriculture. And the series of
losses in court over GM sugar beets has forced the USDA to bend, if not
break, the law to maintain any plantings.

This fight is one to be welcomed. It represents the coming of age of organic
ag. It doesn't mean the reign of agribusiness is anywhere near over -- but it
does mean that organic agriculture is big enough and financially successful
enough to represent a sector worthy of legal and policy protections. After
all, there's now real money at stake!

Look at me getting all sunny. Must be something in the water... Too bad
agribusiness doesn't want to clean it up.




  • [Livingontheland] Agribiz: Food or the Environment But Not Both, Tradingpost, 01/17/2011

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