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POPSBack to the East India Company Imperialism Future A combination of giant agricultural firms from the US, Malaysia, China, Gulf oil states, Korea and others are leading the charge to gobble up farmland and forests to grow whatever gives them the highest profit and if it means destroying natural forests - so be it and damn the consequences downstream!
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POPSIt Has The Stench Of Opportunity By reducing the amount of the potent greenhouse gas released into the air, the projects also potentially could turn cow dung into dollars, if a climate bill before Congress becomes law. "Agriculture and agribusiness is what Greeley is all about," Biggi said. "We needed to take that strong traditional economic base and ... merge it with emerging renewable energy and technology." Waste may be the new energy crop in these parts. But elsewhere, communities are looking anew at power sources such as the sun and wind that may exist in their own backyards.
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POPSU.S. style feedlots and the death of the Argentinian Gaucho More: General manager of the Argentine Feedlot Chamber, Troncoso has a master's degree in agribusiness and travels to other major cattle-producing countries, including the United States, to study their latest techniques. Troncoso said he expects that more than 60 percent of Argentina's cattle will pass through feedlots in five years. "I'm not a romantic," he said, referring to those who pine for the old days in cattle country. "Argentina sold this image to the world to position itself -- that was the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s. But the reality is all the rest of the world went the other way." From Australia to the United States, the world's top cattle producers have been penning up cattle for years. Troncoso said that if Argentina wants to take advantage of the world's growing appetite for meat, then it, too, must become a more efficient producer of beef. Me: How sad.
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POPSNon-Organic Organic Food
Likewise, the program was supposed to set uniform standards for how organic foods are produced. Yet 65 of the standards recommended by the board since 2002 simply have been ignored by the administrator. For example, the board proposed specific rules to ensure that organic dairy farmers provide "access to pasture" for their cows, but Robinson's team has refused to implement the proposal. Thus, a giant milk purveyor such as Dean Foods (Horizon dairy products) is allowed to sell "organic" milk from cows that are confined in factory conditions rather than allowed to graze in open pastures. By failing to set rules that apply to everyone, the USDA is permitting private, for-profit organic certification firms to create their own standards, which means corporate interests can shop around for the most lenient certifiers. You might think that the USDA would see the organic labeling program as a way to earn consumer trust in the integrity of these products. But, no. Robinson told The Washingto
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POPSAgribusiness and British Government Pull GM Food Trick They will always have a good reason for trying to fool the public and nature with profit of their bosses, not the public or farmers at the root of their experiments. They may be able to fool the public but not nature - and therein lays the problem. When the incentive is profit, rather than safety, sustainability and system impact, then the risk of unexpected and perhaps crop killing consequences goes up!
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POPSFood, Inc.: How factory farming affects you (movie trailer on site)
But despite the factory-farm scenes, some of the most thought-provoking moments were these statements that were spoken or flashed on the screen. According to the filmmakers: In 1972, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration conducted 50,000 food safety inspections. In 2006, the FDA conducted only 9,164. In 1996 when it introduced Round-Up Ready soybeans, Monsanto controlled only 2 percent of the U.S. soybean market. Now, over 90 percent of soybeans in the U.S. contain Monsanto's patented gene. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was an attorney at Monsanto from 1976 to 1979. After his appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion in a case that helped Monsanto enforce its seed patents. 70 percent of processed foods have some genetically modified ingredient. (Genetically modified crops are not labeled in the U.S. even though 90 percent of consumers have said they want labeling.) 1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will contract early onset diabe
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POPSNAIS – it's not about food safety, it's about favoring big agribusiness
More: Producer objections to NAIS involve issues of cost, privacy, and liability. Some producers are worried that meatpackers would transfer liability for bacterial contamination of processed meat back to the farm of origin. Others see NAIS as a threat to the confidentiality of producer records; they're concerned that foreign governments, packers, or other buyers might gain access to those records for their own benefit. Tags that remain on an animal throughout the supply chain could be scanned, and the data retained by buyers to build a database of a producer's products and values. Some worry that packers might use the information they gain from RFID tags for an unfair advantage… Owners of independent livestock markets are concerned about the bookkeeping and reporting burden NAIS creates for them. Some states have already required FFA members to comply with NAIS before they're allowed to participate in livestock projects.
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POPSWhy Unfettered Capitalism Is Bad for Your Diet These are the companies that are trying to efficiently process tens of thousands of cows per day -- cows that have been lined up in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and fed grain (more efficient than using land to feed them their natural diet of grass), pumped with hormones and antibiotics to keep them from dying, which means a glut on the market of cheap (antibiotic-filled) beef. And these are the companies that are creating the seeds -- those seeds that the farmer can't even save for fear of litigation -- to grow the crops that require the use of their pesticides and which produce a proliferation of fast food. Yes, efficiency is the bottom line in our current agricultural system. Not safety, not health, nor least of all, taste. No, for a corporation that is beholden first to it's shareholders, its all about the quickest way to get to the bottom line.
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POPSHog Giant Smithfield Transforms Eastern Europe The Virginia-based pork giant has squashed small-scale hog farming in Romania and Poland, just as it did in the United States in the 1990s. Smithfield says pork prices dropped by about one-fifth, saving consumers about $29 per year. While this is good news for us, farmers are run out of business forced to seek employment elsewhere and the new Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are creating vast open disease ridden cesspools. Unbearable stenches, and wrecked communities. They used high-level cronyism to move through the maze of the Romanian political system. This is a prime example of the poisonous downside of corporate globalization.
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POPSThe “NAFTA Flu” Critics Say Swine Flu Has Roots in Forcing Poor Countries to Accept Western Agribusiness Swinefluweb
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POPSGoodbye farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands. Those are things we not only all want, but things we are actively getting involved in, and things we very much need. And where they are truly good, they are growing. The international financial corporations which have wreaked havoc around the world with astounding nonsensical "solutions" that are destructive of everyone but them, are brothers to the international agribusiness giants (Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc.) which are just as aggressively after their own form of "taking." Just seeds, animals, water, land. And freedom.
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POPSShould Farm Animals Receive Antibiotics? Here's a controversial issue for you: as resistance to antibiotics grow (see MRSA), should we stop giving antibiotics to farm animals as a prophylactic measure? That's the subject of a new bill proposed by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D) and Sen. Kennedy. Opponents of the bill argue that without antibiotics, industrially raised farm animals will be more likely to get sick, thus raising the price of meat. They also argue that there's no conclusive evidence that antibiotics in farm animals is causing widespread resistance. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof recently wrote a compelling op-ed about this very subject here: http://tinyurl.com/bc82va. What do you think?
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POPSYard Sale Nation (2) If they nationalise the banks, will they nationalise the farms next? It would be ironic if the US adopted a Soviet-style economy where people pretended to work and the government pretended to pay them. The problem is that people are willing to believe anything to begin with, but finally they catch on. Remember Lincoln's other great statement was "You can lie to all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't lie to all of the people all of the time." The new president has not quoted that one. Maybe he forgot.
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POPSImmigrants drive private prison profits Read and find out why undocumented immigrants are being treated as felons rather than people who broke regulations and ordered to leave and monitored until they left as was the case - it's money, money, money!
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POPSA Food Agenda for Obama Regarding GM Food If you care about being able to choose if you eat GM food or reject it, go to the whole article. I certainly would not accept this guy as Agriculture Secretary for Obama if I lived in the US!!!
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POPSSouth Korea leases 3.2 million acres in Madagascar
"For African governments, the incentive to sign deals such as the one between Madagascar and Daewoo is equally clear. Millions of African farmers lack money for fertilizer, basic tools, fuel and transport infrastructure to efficiently grow crops get them to market. While international organizations have plowed billions into health and education, agriculture in Africa has lagged badly, hugely exacerbating the food crisis of the past year. "These governments are desperate to get capital into agriculture," says von Braun, who believes the drive by giant companies to lock up land deals could benefit poor African countries whose governments negotiate wisely. Although Daewoo plans to export the yield of the land it is leasing in Madagascar, it plans to invest about $6 billion over the next 20 years to build the port facilities, roads, power-plants and irrigation systems necessary to support its agribusiness there, and that will create jobs thousands of jobs for Madagascar's unemployed. Jobs
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POPSToo Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter
This text was from Norman Solomon. Look closely at the lower left of the pic.... The leverage for the U.S. Treasury to subsidize Wall Street is too big to fail. The leverage to subsidize mothers and children kicked off welfare is too small to matter. The political momentum for bailing out corporate America is too big to fail. The political momentum for funding adequate payment rates from Medicaid to reimburse healthcare providers is too small to matter. The oil conglomerates are too big to fail. Global warming is too small to matter. The prison industry is too big to fail. The need for preschool is too small to matter. Corporate power is too big to fail. The ordeals of working people and want-to-be-working people are too small to matter. Human worth as maximized by dollars: too big to fail. Human worth as affirmed by humanistic values: too small to matter. The current odds of pumping at least several hundred billion taxpayer dollars into corporate America: too b
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POPSToo Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter
(cont.)The leverage for the U.S. Treasury to subsidize Wall Street is too big to fail. The leverage to subsidize mothers and children kicked off welfare is too small to matter. The political momentum for bailing out corporate America is too big to fail. The political momentum for funding adequate payment rates from Medicaid to reimburse healthcare providers is too small to matter. The oil conglomerates are too big to fail. Global warming is too small to matter. The prison industry is too big to fail. The need for preschool is too small to matter. Corporate power is too big to fail. The ordeals of working people and want-to-be-working people are too small to matter. Human worth as maximized by dollars: too big to fail. Human worth as affirmed by humanistic values: too small to matter. The current odds of pumping at least several hundred billion taxpayer dollars into corporate America: too big to fail. The current odds of launching a massive federal jobs program: too sm
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