Hey folks-
The following is a letter I emailed to the French farmers after their
Novartis action. I was inspired by their action and disgusted by the
megacorps(e). I thought you might find it interesting considering the
rising boil in Europe, Asia, India; and slow simmer in the U.S.
Savoir-
I am writing in support of the farmers who protested the introduction of
transgenic maize into France's ecosystem. I am a consumer, organic farmer,
regional director of the Missouri Organic Association, Board member of the
Columbia Farmers' Market, Vice-President of the Heart of Missouri Master
Gardeners, Executive Director of the Community Garden Coalition, and
Planning Committee member of the Columbia Area Food Circle. So, I think it
is clear that I care a lot about food quality and the environment. From
each of these perspectives genetically engineered organisms (GEOs) are
unacceptable.
As a consumer, I have no desire to partake of food that has been tinkered
with by scientists working for corporations whose only motive is profit;
and who have no respect or connections to the people of any country, and no
commitment to any community.
As an organic farmer, I have chosen to use the best of traditional
stewardship practices AND the best of modern technological advances,
provided that they fit my underlying holistic understanding of organic
agriculture. GEOs do not fit in this system. Yes, they may enable the use
of less pesticides, arguably, but it is a moot point because I will not use
ANY pesticides.
As Regional Director of the Missouri Organic Association, I have been
involved in the process of evaluating the proposed National Standard for
Organic Agriculture. The USDA has attempted to sneak in GEOs by directly
violating the authority given to the National Organic Standards Board
(NOSB) under the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA). The NOSB ruled
them to be synthetic substances by their very nature. I have the
responsibility of educating producers AND consumers about the quality of
their foods so they can make informed purchasing decisions. The only way
this is possible, is if all foods are clearly labeled with the inputs used
in their production.
As proprietor of Fertile Crescent Farm, seller at the Columbia Farmers'
Market and new board member, I have witnessed growing concern and rising
outrage from consumers who live in fear of the food that our wildly
out-of-scale agricultural system provides for them. I was a vegetarian for
8 years and so learned the value of reading labels closely; and the amount
of research necessary to find out what some of those 8 syllable substances
really were. I now hear average people complaining about the confusing
nature of the labels on the foods they buy at the grocers. They need
clear, full-disclosure labeling to help them decide when purchasing.
As a Master Gardener, I help to educate people about gardening and soils.
It is hard to keep up with all the information coming out of scientific
circles. I subscribe to 14 garden magazines and newsletters, but still I
fall behind. There has been an orgy of takeovers and mergers in the
agricultural/ pharmaceutical "industries" and this has led to less and less
choice for farmers and gardeners. But, at least in the U.S., it has led to
the proliferation of seed saving and research to save heirloom varieties.
I hope we can eventually stop buying from these purveyors of greed and
polluted products. These developments have led to plant patenting in the
U.S. which denies the importance of thousands of years of research by us,
the growers, all for the short term profit margin of a handful of already
rich corporations. Some of the contracts forced upon growers of GEOs
returns farmers to serfdom.
As Executive Director of the Community Garden Coalition, I work to provide
land, seeds, tools, water, and even labor to lower-income, elderly,
persons-with-disabilities, immigrants, and children. These groups are most
at risk of not getting enough fresh produce in their diets and have the
least flexibility in their purchasing decisions because of limited funds.
I only buy seeds from companies which categorically refuse to carry GEO
modified seeds, and further only from companies which only carry untreated
seed. Children are especially placed at risk by contaminants in the
environment such as pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, fungicides,
radiation, heavy metals, and GEOs. The argument will be made, I am sure,
that GEOs reduce the need to use these other toxic substances, but the
genie has only been out of the bottle for a few years and we have no idea
what its temperament will be. In time we will find, like so many other
times in the past, that the treatment is worse than the disease, that we
have destroyed the village in order to save it.
As a member of the Planning Committee of the Columbia Area Food Circle, I
have worked hard to connect local consumers to local producers. We are
trying to build regional food systems. Consumers can only truly know the
quality of their food if it is purchased from farmers whose faces they can
see, whose farms they can visit, whose desires and processes they can
question. I think this is true in France too. But the introduction of
GEOs is like any other pollutant, it does not honor property lines,
national borders, continental boundaries, or species lines. It is borne
through the air onto other farmers' property, into other countries, to
continents downwind, and to neighboring weeds in the same genus and maybe
even family.
The governments and multi-national corporations are guilty of hubris for
believing they know that these substances are safe. We only need list
their past assured safe substances and processes: DDT, Silicon Breast
Implants, Nuclear Power, Then-Phen, etc. ad nauseum. It is like the Nazis
assuring death camp prisoners, "It's only a shower". In fact, it is more
like them saying as the people entered, "It's okay Zyklon B is good for
you."
I hope that this action will prove to be the agricultural equivalent of
the storming of the Bastille. There comes a time when the power of our
oppressors becomes too much to bear; we are entitled to revolt in these
instances.
As Jacques Ellul said:
Technique always supposes centralization....For its own centralization,
technique requires interrelated economic and political centralization.
"The Technological Society" pp. 193-194
This is the battle we are all fighting to protect ourselves from this
centralization, to reject the all encompassing "advance" of technique, of
capital, of greed. Good luck in your case.
Namaste',
Guy Clark
310 Hartley Court
Columbia, MO 65201
United States of America
573.449.4769
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
