June 13-15, 2008
Shortages and Rising Food Prices
Don't Panic; Go Organic
By RONNIE CUMMINS
Rising food prices and shortages have joined the energy and climate
crisis, economic recession, and the war in Iraq, as headline news.
While consumers struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table,
Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland rake in billions from
taxpayer-subsidized biofuels. Monopolizing markets, polluting the
environment with genetically modified organisms, and hoarding future
reserves of crop seeds, wheat, rice, soy, corn, and other grains, the
food and gene giants profit from global crisis and misery. Adding fuel
to the fire, Wall Street speculators have shifted their greed from sub-
prime mortgages to food and non-renewable resources.
The public are becoming aware of the causes of the food crisis:
millions of acres of corn and soybeans diverted into biofuels;
corporate-driven free trade agreements that discourage nations from
maintaining grain reserves and becoming self-sufficient in food
production; massive subsidies for industrial agriculture and a
misguided export model that have forced millions of family farmers off
the land; sharply escalating oil prices, farm inputs, and
transportation costs; commodity speculation; population growth; a
growing demand for feed grains for meat consumption, and, most
ominously, a destabilized climate spawning deadly droughts, pests,
floods, and unpredictable weather.
Fortunately, there are hopeful signs that we can move beyond crisis to
positive solutions. Connecting the dots in our food-climate-energy
crisis, millions of green consumers are voting with their dollars for
foods and products that are healthy, locally produced, energy
efficient, and eco-friendly. A growing number of politicians, mainly
at local and state levels, are also waking up.
Organic food and farmers markets are booming. Chemical-free lawns and
gardens, green buildings, solar panels, wind generators, “buy local”
networks, and bike paths are sprouting. A critical mass of organic-
minded Americans are waking up to the fact that we must green the
economy, drastically reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas
pollution, re-stabilize the climate, and heal ourselves, before it’s
too late.
For 10,000 years locally based family farmers and ranchers managed to
grow and distribute healthy food, and ample feed and fiber, largely
without the use of petroleum-based chemical fertilizers, toxic
pesticides, animal drugs, or energy-intensive irrigation, processing,
and long-distance transportation.
In 1945 most of the U.S.’s six million family farmers were still
rotating their crops and cultivating a wide variety of fruits, grains,
beans, and vegetables organically, fertilizing with natural compost,
and generally practicing sustainable farming methods they had learned
from their parents and grandparents.
By 1945, as part of the war effort, Americans were growing a full 42
percent of our vegetables and fruits in our backyards, schoolyards,
and community Liberty Gardens.
The nutritious, primarily non-processed foods that people cooked for
their family meals were purchased from locally owned grocers who
stocked their shelves with a wide variety of items — typically grown
or raised within a 100 mile radius of our communities.
In the 1950s the average American household spent 22 percent of our
household income for fresh, locally produced food. Currently we are
spending 13-15%, though low-income households are spending 30-35%.
By today’s standards the post-war generation was relatively healthy in
terms of low rates of diet-related diseases such as cancer, heart
disease, obesity, diabetes, food allergies, birth defects, and
learning disabilities.
Sixty years later we have a Fast Food Nation, living in denial (at
least until recently), gorging ourselves on the industrialized world’s
cheapest and most contaminated fare, allowing out-of-control
politicians, corporations and technocrats to waste our tax money on
corporate welfare, destroy the environment, starve the poor, wage a
multi-trillion dollar war for oil, and destabilize the climate.
The good news is that there is a solution at hand. Turning back to
the time-tested practices of local, eco-friendly, organic food and
farming will go a long way toward restoring our health and the health
of the planet. Revitalizing democracy and bringing our politicians to
heel will guarantee that these organic and green alternatives become
the norm.
Organic and local farms dramatically reduce energy use in the
agricultural sector by 30-50 percent while safely sequestering in the
soil enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. Decades of research have
shown that small farms produce far more food per acre than chemical
farms, especially in the developing world, and that organic farms
outperform chemical farms (by 40-70%) under the kind of adverse
weather conditions that are quickly becoming the norm. Buying local
and regionally grown organic products means food doesn’t have to
travel 1500-3500 miles before it reaches your kitchen.
Crisis demands change. We must continue to buy local and organic foods
and green products. Patronize farmers markets. Start or expand your
garden. Move your diet away from restaurant fare and over-consuming
meat and animal products. Buy in bulk and cook your meals at home with
healthy whole foods ingredients--vegetables, fruits, beans and grains.
If you’re going to eat meat or animal products, make sure they’re both
organic and grass-fed or free range. Most important of all, get
political. Demand an end to the war. Demand healthy and sustainable
food and farming, energy, and climate policies from your local, state,
and federal elected public officials—or else vote them out of office.
Don’t panic go organic.
To press the politicians on these burning issues, go to
http://www.grassrootsnetroots.org
Ronnie Cummins is director of the Organic Consumers Alliance. He can
be reached at: ron
...@organicconsumers.org.
The onions, garlic and leeks in the foreground and row covered crops (carrots, broccoli, beets, etc..) in the background. This is what you see first going up to the garden from the barn or store
Early tomatoes, about 2 weeks from being ripe. We transplanted these into a hoop house April 15th and it looks like we will have ripe tomatoes by July 4th. I believe these are Yellow Taxi, an heirloom that we have been saving seeds from for over 12 years
The raspberry beds looking north. we have around 300' of these things. two kinds latham (which is pictured in the fore ground) and heritage which you can kinda, sort of see in the distance. the latham are loaded with berries. I have never seen as many raspberries as we have. this is scary and exciting. as long as nothing major goes wrong (disease, hail, large flocks of fruit eating birds) we should have a bumper crop of berries to sell. The berries have been very very good so far this year and they have just started to ripen and the weather has been about perfect the past 5 days or so for raspberries and strawberries to develop the best flavor they can.
