I am a Food Activist!
I believe Farming (now Pharming) is one of the biggest issues of our time. Food has always been used as a weapon. He who has the food, has the power. The way food is being grown now by a small handful of pharmaceutical and chemical companies is all about power and greed. Big pharming's agenda is to get rid of small farmers all over the planet so that they have the monopoly on food. Whatever else you might read about trying to feed the planet is an outright lie. This is all about money.
Big pharming uses GMO varieties of food. A GMO is when 2 organisms that would never mix DNA in the natural world, say a fish and a strawberry, are combined in laboratories producing a new variety of frankenfood. Because these organisms would never come together naturally, unnatural, invasive means are necessary to produce these experimental foods- like by injecting viruses and bacteria. Does adding a virus or a bacteria to your food sound like a good thing? A GMO is produced for only 2 reasons: to either allow the plant to eat poison or to produce poison. Neither reason is beneficial for the consumer ONLY for the chemical and pharmaceutical companies. The GMO variety of crop can take in more pesticides without killing the plant so that farmers can use more and more pesticides which we then eat. (And which are sold by the Pharming Companies!) Or the plant produces its own pesticides which we then eat.
Many of the "weeds" that the use of more and more pesticides around the world kills are greens that poor people eat and medicinal plants that the whole world uses.
Big pharming in the past tried to use the excuse that GMOs were being cultivated to produce larger harvests in order to feed the world. Even they no longer use that excuse because one of the crops that GMOs are being created for is Alfalfa. Alfalfa is a crop that does not currently even need pesticides!! The only reason to create GMO alfalfa is to contaminate the world's organic dairy farms. If an organic milk cow eats contaminated alfalfa, it will no longer produce organic dairy products and then GMO technology can move into the dairy aisle and make more money.
The FDA is relying on the companies that sell these foods to do the appropriate testing on these foods- remember when we were told DDT was safe? What we often find is that animals will refuse to eat these foods, but we are eating these foods daily without even the requirement of labeling on the food that lets us know that it is a GMO (genetically modified organism.) If you eat anything with corn or soy in it ( and corn and soy are in EVERYTHING, read labels!) you are eating GMO varieties of both corn and soy. I picked up some tea bags the other day and looked at the ingredients and soy was on the label. GMO technology has only been around about 10 years or so. We have yet to really see what the long term consequences are for a lifetime of eating GMOs with pesticides.
GMO varieties of food are biological and genetic pollution on the planet. But, unlike chemical pollution which diminishes over time, GMO pollution is self generating and only gets bigger and bigger. It simply cannot coexist with the other natural varieties- it invades and destroys until it is the only one around- like we have seen with corn, soy and canola plants- the first phase of the experiment. Unbelievably, the FDA has allowed these new varieties of GMOs to be patented so there are cases in court now where GMO crops have been carried by wind to organic crops and contaminated the organic crop. Big pharming is actually suing the organic farmers for patent infringement!!! And, big pharming is using patented "terminator technology" on seeds. This means the seed will only produce once so that contrary to the way farmers have farmed for thousands of years, now they need to purchase new seed every single year from the pharming co's. The seeds are made sterile. Does this sound like a good idea- to make the natural world sterile?? (The US govt is one of the patent holders on terminator technology by the way.) This has put many farmers out of business all over the world- which is part of the plan.
Food should be affordable but not cheap. The US, in relationship to income, pays less for their food than most of the world and our health care costs are the highest in the world. It seems we can either pay money for great, local, organic produce or we can pay the doctor.
As a Yogi and Tantrika, food is energy. I am very picky about the energy that I allow in. Food creates tissue in the body 40 days after we eat it, according to Ayurveda. We are literally made of the food that we eat. I want food that is alive and vital, farmed in a way that does as little harm as possible in the world.
Support your local CSA- community supported agriculture- you pay a share to the local farm and then get weekly produce throughout the growing season. Good healthy food should be a right in this country and we are letting that right slip away by letting local, organic farmers go out of business. Sign up this season for local organic produce from KYV Farms:
