Food as an overarching issue - Michael Pollan

[Sepp]

Bill Moyers at PBS interviews Michael Pollan, author of the book In Defense of Food.

Pollan makes some very important points here about our health and what we eat, and about the movement that is springing up all over the place to actually start growing our own food again.

A very interesting talk.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11282008/watch.html

I am linking directly to PBS. Their video quality is soooo much better than what's been uploaded to YouTube, and it streams just fine.

[Arun]

Sepp.
An excellent discussion. This needs to be circulated far and wide. Everything that we have been talking about and exchanging over the years. 'Connecting the dots'...I liked that phrase.
Thank you.
Arun

[Sepp]

Yes indeed, it's an important piece as it gives us a glimpse of an emerging global trend towards local food, away from the brink of control over the food supply by the mega corporations and the contamination by genetic modification.

I have alerted some more people to this and maybe others will also spread the word ...

Wish more people in this forum would chip in - even just with a comment here and there

:-)

[Sepp]

Former Iowa State Legislator Fallon Applies for Job as 'White House...

In a letter sent to President-elect Barack Obama, former state legislator Ed Fallon officially threw his hat into the ring for the job of "White House Farmer."

Currently no such job exists.

Fallon said he first came across the term in an article in the New York Times Magazine, which advocated that Obama "tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden."

"Though leaving Iowa would be difficult, I would be honored to serve in this capacity and believe I am well qualified," Fallon said in his letter to Obama. "As I see it, the challenge involves both managing a successful fruit and vegetable garden (and a small chicken coop for eggs!) and promoting greater food security across the country."

See the rest of it, including Fallon's letter to Obama, here:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15921.cfm

[Northerntracey]

Thanx for this Sepp. This guy talks a lot of sense. We have many farmers markets here in England and I've been trying to get my garden started for a while now. I'm determined to plant veggies this year. I already have an abundance of fruit but the veggies are coming soon!! Everyone should do it if not just for your own health but to stick one in the eye to the huge monster corporations. Booyaaaah!

[Sepp]

Rome also has many farmers' markets. Each part of the city has a permanent market place where farmers (or those buying from them) rent stands and supply fresh produce to a lot of people.

About planting our gardens, you're reminding me to go out and get some fava beans to stick in the ground ;-)

[Arun]

That is the question, Friend,
How would any farmer grow nutritious food if GMOs contaminate all our natural seeds and foods.
GM seeds. already planted over 100 million plus acres around the world, with 39 countries facing serious contamination problem including the US, would eventually contaminate all lands and all natural food system.
Sticking one in the eye of the monster may not help now. Unless, they are banned and the corporations made to pay heavily for cleaning up....I don't know if any technology exists to clean up the mess.
Arun

[Sepp]

Yes, GMOs are a serious issue, because the traits can escape and become incorporated into other similar plants growing in the wild or being grown by farmers, through the simple act of pollination. And we know that bees can fly long distances in search of nectar, spreading the pollen on the way.

There are no technologies for putting the genie back into the bottle, once it's escaped. Our only hope is that Nature will de-select, with time, the artificially introduced traits.

And before that, of course, we will have to realize that what is being done with GMOs has ultra-destructive potential for our health and the environment, and get broad agreement to stop doing it.

[Northerntracey]

I also suggest everyone start their own seedbanks too. I started collecting seeds from organic fruit and veg last year. If we all save some we can do swapsies.

[Arun]

Friends,
Savings seeds alone may not help, much as I wish too. When GM seeds are planted, the "living exchange" between roots, sloughed out root hairs, and the billions of microbes, bacteria-micro, meso and macro fauna-all would exchange the same lethal engineered genes. So would the bird and the bees, and lants of the same species...where would the buck stop?
Where would the gene stop? Gene flow is simply uncontrollable.
That is what worries me.
Sincerely,
Arun

[Northerntracey]

Yes I understand that GM is all pervasive but we have to store seeds for future use. Hopefully GM will be outlawed in the future when the world sees sense. We will need seeds that have not been contaminated then. If enough people do it we should have enough to start again.
Fist and foremost we have to stop GM crops however we can. Burn em (like recently happened here in Britain) if needs must.

[Sepp]

As discussed in email, there may be a way of reverting seeds to their "original" state that could be used to de-contaminate once we see that the GM experiment has gone wrong.

All indications are that it WILL indeed go wrong.

Here is the method of operating a reversion, for anyone interested. It is contained in an old Ciba-Geigy patent.

[Arun]

Sepp,
This technology sure gives some hope.

I have no idea what level of contamination the complex natural world can sustain and achieve perhaps another balance.

Kind regards
Arun