ConsumerismGMOsHealth & DiseaseSoil Erosion & ContaminationWater Contaminaton & Loss

A GMO Promoter Didn’t Like My Article

So I’m back in my favourite little trendy organic cafe in Melbourne as I write this, but for those who missed the point of why I would eat here last time I wrote about it I’ll drop the ironic humour. It’s not about being trendy. It’s about being stuck in a food desert devoid of any solid guarantee that what I eat will actually be what I consider to be food.

Today I’m writing to address an ‘article’ from Paula Fitzgerald from Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited. A colleague recently forwarded me her attempted rebuff to my article “10 reasons to go organic beyond being trendy”. Ms. Fitzgerald’s response to my article was titled “Serious about sustainability or terrified of not being trendy” (PDF). Take a look. I can understand where the author is coming from, as it would appear her role is to protect the interests of the organisation and its founding members – CropLife Australia, Grains Research and Development Corporation and the National Farmers’ Federation, as well as the sugar industry which supports their activities and the red meat industry who it partners with.

Their disclaimer:

Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited gives no warranty and makes no representation that the information contained in this document is suitable for any purpose or is free from error. Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited accepts no responsibility for any person acting or relying upon the information contained in this document, and disclaims all liability. August 2010. – Agrifood Awareness (PDF)

It would be a shame if more farmers were given poor information that led them to “voting with their feet” and going GM when the real rewards for them and their family’s future could be in regenerative agriculture. My advice to the aforementioned partners, supporters and funders: find or form an organisation that produces credible information that is suitable for at least some purpose. My advice to farmers: stop and think before going GM. It’s so important that information about the way we grow food is as accurate as possible and not clouded by vested interests, as we’re playing with lives here.

The truth hurts

To my surprise the author has accused me of unscrupulously disregarding science, data and evidence. But as anyone with a PDC would know, permaculturalists start with the best evidence available to them and go from there.

Evidence

There is overwhelming evidence that conventional mono-cultural agriculture is a damaging process and that GMOs are one of the most frightening things we’ve ever unleashed on ourselves, and they are not a solution or even a short-term fix. There is so much evidence against GMOs that I couldn’t possibly list the lot but here are a few good reasons not to touch the stuff with a continent-long pole.

1) Economics and the Environment – We’re running out of topsoil.


Overgrazed, mismanaged, degraded land in Jordan
Photo © Craig Mackintosh

You’d be forgiven for thinking the picture above is of the subsoils of rural Australia. It’s actually what I saw while studying in Jordan, where the effects of long-term human settlement and destructive land management practices can be easily seen.

It’s a commonly held belief that nothing grows here without huge inputs of dwindling resources such as fuel, polytents, chemicals and fertilisers. In fact this is rapidly becoming a belief about degraded land across the globe. From that perspective you could easily make GM look attractive with the flawed argument that it’s a more sustainable solution. However when you look closer, it’s more of the same stuff that got us here in the first place. GM is a continuation of a system that disregards natural processes – favouring instead unsustainable practices that continue soil damage and only make the repair work harder in the long run.

How did we get to a point where nothing grows without help from artificial inputs? The story of soil will give you the full scoop, but basically soil is a habitat for the micro-biology that holds minerals and nutrients. The practice of regular ploughing kills that life which eventually leads to pest and fungi problems. Then by poisoning anything that tries to hold that soil together, any life that was left ends up eroding away along with chemical residues and the farmer’s income, heading out to sea where dead zones rivalling the impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are created.

All this and yet Geoff Lawton’s greening the desert project proves you can re-green the desert sustainably and restore fertile soil without reliance on anything toxic. Subsequent to this project, one of the local schools has taken up farming the Permaculture way with amazing results and national attention.

2) Yield

It would seem that GM crops aren’t even delivering what they promise causing "The largest wave of farmer suicides [in India] and an ecological nightmare… Dr. Mae-Wan Ho exposes the “fudged” data and false claims of ‘successes’ that have perpetrated the humanitarian disaster.”

But here is the gem in scientifically-controlled yield data and evidence – the longest-running scientifically controlled comparison of organic vs. conventional crop production systems shows yields of conventional corn only beat organic corn for the first four years. This was followed by a long 8 year phase of yield parity before organic won with a slightly higher yield for the following 12 seasons. The study also revealed that the organic corn was more resilient to extreme weather events including drought.

3) Health & Safety

Are GMOs safe for consumption? This well-referenced article reveals a growing number of doctors are prescribing GMO free diets because of links to “infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, [faulty] insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.”

The article also says:

When sheep grazed on Bt cotton plants after harvest, thousands died. Post mortems showed severe irritation and black patches in their intestines and livers. Investigators said preliminary evidence “strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin. . . . most probably Bt-toxin.” In a small feeding study, 100% of sheep fed Bt cotton died within 30 days, while those grazing on natural cotton plants in the adjoining field had no symptoms.

Unfortunately this stuff may only scratch the surface. With very few human trials, the apparent ban on real scientific discussion and questionable methods in studies, it may be years before we find out the full effects. In fact it would appear that even Monsanto are still working out the effects.

Worse still, Bayer has admitted it can’t control the spread of GMOs and when asked how a trial rice strain that hadn’t been through any kind of food safety test could make it to the dinner table in over 30 countries world-wide, they blamed God! Was that based on a scientific study of God’s interaction with rice? I wonder.

First discovered in January of that year, tests of neighbouring farmers lead to the discovery that this rice had already been unknowingly cultivated across several U.S. states, and worse, it was then found on dinner tables and on fields in more than thirty countries worldwide… This contamination caused an almost overnight collapse of the U.S. rice export market in 2006, bankrupting farmers. – Bayer Admits it is Unable to Control Spread of GMOs

So there’s just a glimpse of the evidence, data and science supporting the move to organic food and bio-diverse farming systems.

I won’t even begin on public health, deforestation, pollution, biodiversity, peak oil & climate change except to say that the people pushing GM products as a solution to our agricultural mess are the same people that have been involved in causing the mess. While GM crops offer little real benefit to the farmer, consumer and the environment, the companies that make them have billions of rea$on$ to push them.

4) Is GM organic?

No. That’s the truthful and indisputable answer. But then spin is a wonderful thing isn’t it? With carefully placed words and figures you can cloud the issue by implying ‘no’ means ‘yes’ even when it still means ‘no’.

Back to the Agrifoods article, the author states the Law Society Journal defines organics as “The use of renewable resources, conservation of energy, soil and water, recognition of livestock welfare needs, and environmental maintenance and enhancement”.

She then states that under that definition “one could claim that GM crops meet the organic definition.” But then rather than substantiating that claim, she jumps to the uptake of GM canola by Australian farmers saying that “says it all”. Maybe I’m missing the point or I looked at the above evidence wrongly but the only thing it indicates to me is that there are a lot of farmers out there that have been let down by the trappings of conventional farming methods and are desperate to keep their properties running. The bad news for them is GM is proving itself to be less than a short-term fix which will only cause pain and suffering for them and the rest of humanity down the track.

Farmers are now being backed into a corner with a barrage of marketing propaganda. Websites, articles and key-note speakers are telling them that the only way we can feed a burgeoning population, the only way we can eradicate poverty and the only way we can stay in business and turn a profit is by turning to a patented system that’s designed to use the same company’s pesticide combination. This is a system that is designed for profit, not the good of humanity.

What if we could actually feed ourselves using nature?

Despite all the clutter of questionable data and misleading science, let’s never forget nature provides all our needs. As Craig Mackintosh wrote:

People have been safely ‘engineering’ plants for millennia, without the need to bypass plants’ natural defenses and bombard their cells with genes from entirely unrelated species. GM crops have failed to deliver on their promises, and are an expensive distraction from the faster, localised natural plant breeding techniques that can quickly optimise plants for specific locales.

Whichever way you look at it, permaculture principles, organics, bio-dynamics and regenerative agriculture are solutions-based approaches to the economic, health and environmental challenges of modern food production. No Spin.

Finally a personal note to farmers: I don’t want chemically grown and/or genetically modified goods mixed in with my food and I will happily pay a premium for clean foods if you grow it, even under a voluntary organics standard. But it’s not just me. I’m only one of a rapidly growing number of people that vote with their dollar while continuing to apply pressure for a compulsory organics standard, better labelling and ultimately the banning of GMOs, and the re-localisation of food. Why not hop onboard early and reap the financial benefits?

10 Comments

  1. Great work Pat. It’s great that we’re making Big Agri uncomfortable. Paula, if you’re reading this, I’d highly recommend when you get the chance to spend some time looking at information linked to in the post above, and at other material easily found on the internet. I can assure you that if you can make the connections between the many issues we face and actual holistic solutions, you’ll find a new deeply meaningful purpose for your life.

    We cannot continue with the approach of making war with nature and expect the planet to suffer us. And we’re running out of time. We don’t need GMOs, we don’t need pesticides. We must deal with root causes – not sell ‘patches’ for symptoms to capitalise on people’s ignorance.

  2. This link is NOT FOUND at my computer: “the longest-running scientifically controlled comparison of organic vs. conventional crop production systems”

    Can you please check if it’s just my computer, or if the link is actually broken?

  3. Big Agriculturals taking notice is certainly a good thing. I took a read of some other articles on the Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited website. Interesting statements like Americans would accept GM wheat. That statement is based on a survey of 750 people….how is that ever going to be representative of the 300 odd million that live there? I guess it’s easy when you can pop it into foods and but not mention it on the label. How are people ever going to be able to make the choice then?

  4. You are too polite to this Paula ,there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity.
    She is obviously well enough informed to be able to make the right call.
    She chooses instead to defend her pay check,her argument is bunkim.
    I know we should practice “people care”,but this ones an idiot of the highest caliber.
    p.s
    Great article Pat,it’s high time you started to take a packed lunch with you,still not sold on that cafe;>)

  5. I should guess this woman is indirectly supported by the Norwegian Oil Found, which has bought stocks in Monsanto for 2,5 billion Norwegian Kroners. This way I indirectly feel responsible for this attack at PRI Australia, as a Norwegian citizen. Please forgive me!

    Anyway, I’ll be careful not to give my vote to any political party supporting the introduction of GMO in Norway, which by now is completely banned here.

    Also the Norwegian Governments speak with two tongues, banning GMO here while still filling up with stocks in Monsanto. For the time our oil found owns about 2 % of the world’s stock shares.

    I’ll do my best to make this known for the Norwegian public.

  6. Good article Patrick. And you are spot on. More and more are voting with their wallet. My two local organic shops are thriving. I made the decision to switch to organic almost three years ago and there is no looking back. At home we eat pretty much close to 100% organic.

    And it is not about being trendy. It is about health and supporting local farmers who grow food without a cocktail of chemical.

    And thanks for the article.

  7. Hi guys, thanks for the comments.

    Fernando you do make a good point, 10 mins in the morning before I leave and I’d have two egg and lettuce sandwiches ready to eat with the filling coming from the garden. I do try to do that when I’m home!

    An interesting point.. I’ve never once had a problem growing lettuce organically but after reading Paula’s article I’m wondering if Agrifood Awareness Australia has a better solution for me? Maybe they have a seed that is resistant to the pesticide I don’t need or use.. or one that kills the bugs that do very little damage to most of the leaves :)

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