Putting the Culture Back in Agriculture: Reviving Native Food and Farming Traditions

by Tory Field and Beverly Bell / Toward Freedom

A family on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners area of the Southwest makes kneel down bread, a traditional food made with blue corn. Photo: Brett Ramney.

“At one point ‘agriculture’ was about the culture of food. Losing that culture, in favor of an American cultural monocrop, joined with an agricultural monocrop, puts us in a perilous state…” says food and Native activist Winona LaDuke.[i]

Her lament is an agribusiness executive’s dream. The CEO of the H.J. Heinz Company said, “Once television is there, people, whatever shade, culture, or origin, want roughly the same things.”[ii] The same things are based on the same technology, same media sources, same global economy, and same food.

Together with the loss of cultural diversity, the growth of industrial agriculture has led to an enormous depletion in biodiversity. Throughout history, humans have cultivated about 7,000 species of plants. In the last century, three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops have been lost. Thirty crops now provide 95% of our food needs, with rice, wheat, maize, and potato alone providing 60%. Eighty-five percent of the apple varieties that once existed in the US have been lost. Vast fields of genetically identical crops are much more susceptible to pests, necessitating increased pesticide use. The lack of diversity also endangers the food supply, as an influx of pests or disease can wipe out enormous quantities of crops in one fell swoop.   

Monsanto Says Opponents May be to Blame for GMO Wheat Escape

by John Upton / Grist

A week after word got out that unapproved GMO wheat was found growing on an Oregon farm, Monsanto has announced the results of an internal investigation into the mysterious outbreak. The results can be summarized thusly: “Nothing is wrong at our end and everybody’s crops are safe. Maybe our opponents planted our freak wheat to try to hurt us.”   

Oh Damn, Chuck Norris Fights Monsanto and GMO Crops

Better watch out Monsanto, the Golden Haired Dragon has his sights on you!

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

Ok, weird but true: Say you wanted to know real, real bad what ole Chuck Norris, the black belt actor that once fought Bruce Lee, thinks about genetically modified foods. You can actually just ask him. That’s right, you can “write to Chuck Norris with your questions about health and fitness.” Some guy named Tobias D. from California raised the question with Chuck thusly:

Chuck, did you hear about the 2 million people who marched around the world against genetically modified foods? And what’s the truth about genetically modified organisms, seeds and crops?

And I’ll be damned if Chuck (despite being a Republican hack from time to time) didn’t give it some thorough thought and a pretty darned decent response condemning GMOs, which you can read below.  But first, a few gratuitous Chuck Norris facts.

Monsanto Set to Halt GMO Push in Europe

The march against Monsanto, Germany. (Image from twitter user@@HarvestPM)

from RT

Monsanto plans to halt lobbying for its genetically modified plant varieties in Europe due to low demand from local farmers, a representative from the US agricultural giant told a German daily.

“We are no longer working on lobbying for more cultivation in Europe,” Brandon Mitchner a representative for Monsanto’s European branch, Tageszeitung, said in an interview set to be published on Saturday.

“Currently we do not plan to apply for the approval of new genetically modified crops. The reason is, among other things, low demand of the farmers,” he continued.

A spokeswoman for Monsanto Germany, Ursula Luttmer-Ouazane, admitted that Monsanto recognizes that GMO crops were currently not embraced on the European market.

Just a Timelapse Toon on “Man” and the Industrial Nightmare

Follow “Man” beginning 500,000 years ago, through his discovery of nature, snake skin boots, fried chicken, classical music, biotechnology, factory farming, rush hour traffic, all the way into his cozy seat at the glorious throne of a boring and dead planet.

Three Arrested Protesting GE Tree Conference

by Global Justice Ecology Project / Climate Connections

Police use pain compliance holds as they wrestle a protester to the ground. Activists were attempting to wrap a bus departing from the industry conference in GMO caution tape.

A local organizer with Katuah Earth First! is thrown to the ground and arrested in front of the bus.

Unapproved Monsanto Crop Found Growing in Oregon

from RT

A genetically modified strain of wheat that was never approved by the United States Department of Agriculture as been discovered growing in Oregon, triggering a federal probe that is now spanning several states.

Investigators with the USDA want to know why the GMO crop, made by biotech company Monsanto but never approved for use, sprouted up in a field in the Pacific Northwest.

Get Apocalyptic: Why Radical is the New Normal

Published on Sunday, May 26, 2013 by YES! Magazine

Feeling anxious about life in a broken economy on a strained planet? Turn despair into action.

by Robert Jensen

In December 2008, Tim DeChristopher attended a protest at a federal auction of drilling rights to Utah wilderness lands. He found a better way to disrupt the auction when he picked up a paddle and began bidding on the leases as “Bidder 70.” He won $1.8 million worth of parcels and inflated the price of many others. When it was discovered that he had no money to back his bids, the auction had to be shut down.

Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for his actions, but his boldness stopped the sale of 22,000 acres of scenic wilderness and highlighted government misconduct. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar scrapped a rescheduled auction because the Bureau of Land Management had skimped on its environmental analysis and inadequately consulted with the National Park Service. In January 2013, a federal court denied an energy industry appeal to reinstate the leases. DeChristopher was released from prison in April. Photos by David Newkirk

Feeling anxious about life in a broken-down society on a stressed-out planet? That’s hardly surprising: Life as we know it is almost over. While the dominant culture encourages dysfunctional denial—pop a pill, go shopping, find your bliss—there’s a more sensible approach: Accept the anxiety, embrace the deeper anguish—and then get apocalyptic.

We are staring down multiple cascading ecological crises, struggling with political and economic institutions that are unable even to acknowledge, let alone cope with, the threats to the human family and the larger living world. We are intensifying an assault on the ecosystems in which we live, undermining the ability of that living world to sustain a large-scale human presence into the future. When all the world darkens, looking on the bright side is not a virtue but a sign of irrationality.

GM Salmon Would Wreak Havoc on Natural Ecosystems, Say Researchers

The genetically modified fish can breed with trout and take over

A genetically modified salmon next to a much smaller non-genetically modified salmon of the same age. (AquaBounty Technologies , The Canadian Press)

by Jacob Chamberlain / CommonDreams

Genetically modified (GM) salmon could have a catastrophic impact on natural ecosystems if they are introduced into the wild, a team of scientists warned this week.

The study, published Tuesday and conducted by scientists from Newfoundland’s Memorial University, shows for the first time that GM salmon would quickly become an invasive species if they bred with similar species such as the brown trout—a likely crossbreed that would wreak havoc for other fish.

Starvation? Pshhh. There’s an App for That

by Rabb!t / Earth First! Newswire

Good news! Anjan Contractor, Senior Mechanical Engineer at Systems and Materials Research Corporation (SMRC), has a plan to save humanity from overpopulation and unsustainable agriculture.

Besides such humanitarian efforts as “address[ing] the major challenges that need to be overcome to send humans to Mars by 2030,” SMRC is developing technologies to end world hunger and sustain a healthy estimated peak population of 12 billion people, which, Contractor predicts, we’ll reach at the end of the century.

As reported by Christopher Mims at qz.com, Contractor just received a $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype universal food synthesizer. Similar to the 3D printing technology that allows us to torrent guns (currently available on The Pirate Bay), these 3D printers will make complete meals out of nutrient rich powders and oils.

But it’s not just the mouth-watering prospect of synthesized powder-based delicacies that drives Contractor’s work. No, these 3D printers are going to save the humans from our bad habits, making the unsustainable meat industry obsolete by powdering insects and algae for our protein, and creating meals with specific nutritional profiles (powdered insects and algae) for each family member.

More importantly, Contractor is tackling overpopulation. Mims reports that Contractor “sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store.” Thankfully, Contractor also sees a future global society where all the starving people will have printed themselves out 3D kitchens.

For more on the audacious plan to end hunger with 3-D printed food, check out Christopher Mims’ article