oh well, it's your world too. so power on. know this tho'. i think it might be pertinent to future generations, if that is in the cards. Dead zones not only reside in the oceans. they are every where, least notably--in the human brain, nestled as it is in it's cocoon of cholesterol.
peace, love, and remember this: if they discover a candidate for prez we would like, they'll kill her.
so. who is they?
Farmers who go organic and strive to sell local oufght to be exempt from all taxes. (I realize some rather big turkeys will slip through this web of goodness, butit's worth it. and we can refine the qualifications: whole family. Mom and Dad on site. No pesticides.
A Gandhian modus operativo...
below is taken from great article found on COUNTERCURRENTS:
drinking water it is often contaminated by pesticides, and more babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure. Chemicals are so prevalently used, they show up in breast milk of mothers. Illnesses are on the rise too, including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and several types of cancer. Sarich says that their connection to pesticide exposure becomes more evident with every new study conducted.
Moreover, pollinating insects have been decimated by chemical herbicides and pesticides, which are also stripping the soil of nutrients. As a result, for example, there has been a 41.1 to 100% decrease in vitamin A in 6 foods: apple, banana, broccoli, onion, potato and tomato. Both onion and potato saw a 100% loss of vitamin A between 1951 and 1999.
And elected politicians and ‘public servants’ are allowing this to happen. In 2014, the authors of the report ‘The record of a Captive Commission’ (by Corporate Europe Observatory) concluded that the outgoing Barraso II European Commission’s trade and investment policy revealed a bunch of unelected technocrats who cared little about what ordinary people want and negotiate on behalf of big business. For agriculture, the Commission had a one-sided relationship with agribusiness on GMOs and pesticides. Far from shifting Europe to a more sustainable food and agriculture system, the opposite had happened, as agribusiness and its lobbyists continued to dominate the Brussels scene.
The report continued by saying that Consumers in Europe reject GM food, but the Commission had made various attempts to meet the demands from the biotech sector to allow GMOs into Europe, aided by giant food companies, such as Unilever, and the lobby group FoodDrinkEurope. The authors noted links between these concerns and the top echelons of the Commission.
Aggressive lobbying by BASF had led to authorisation for GM Amfora potato commercial cultivation. According to the report, conflicts of interest in favour of the biotech industry within the European Food and Safety Agency (EFSA) had led to disputed and heavily criticised scientific advice being offered on the matter. The report noted that the industry had also been exerting strong pressure to prevent action by the EU on endocrine disruptors and pesticides.
These problems are not confined to Europe and the US; they are global. Spiralling cancer rates in Argentina linked to the use of glyphosate spring to mind. In Punjab, India, pesticides have turned the state into a 'cancer epicentre'. Moreover, Indian soils are being depleted as a result of the application of ‘green revolution’ ideology and chemical inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility. Assmallholders the world over are being driven from their land and the chemical-industrial farming model takes over, the problems continue to mount.
The environment, the quality of our food and our health are being sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit. The solution involves a shift to organic farming and investment in and reaffirmation of indigenous models of agriculture as advocated by the International Assessmentof Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology (IAASTD) report.
Ordinary people want officials to uphold the public interest and be independent from commercial influence. They do not want them to serve and profit from commercial interests at cost to the public’s health and safety. However, what they too often get are massive conflicts of interest (see here the 'revolving door' and here 'the EFSA's independence problem') and governing bodies that are beholden to massive corporate lobbying [see here 'the fire power of the financial lobby' and here 'who lobbies most').
Regulators turn a blind eye to the deleterious effects of products that pose a serious systemic risk to the public (see here 'the glyphosate toxicity studies you're not allowed to see' and here 'case closed by EFSA on Roundup, despite new evidence') and also give the nod to products based not on independent research but a company’s statements or secretive studies taken at face value and then deliberately keep the public in the dark (see here 'Roundup and birth defects').
What people get are public institutions that serve a corporate agenda (see here 'the black book on the corporate agenda of the EC' and here about the conflicts of interest that beset decision making and regulatory bodies in India concerning GMOs) and which appear to be setting the stage for the further extension of ‘green revolution’ ideology via the acceptance of corporate-patented GMOs, which spell disaster for soil, environment and health.
As Western junk food and the chemical-intensive agriculture and food processing model that accompanies it destroys health across the planet (see the impact of NAFTA in Mexico here), it is worth bearing in mind what Stuart Newton says (in the report in the link, read from page 9 onwards). Although discussing India, his concerns apply as much to the US, Europe and elsewhere as they do to the subcontinent:
“The answers to Indian agricultural productivity is not that of embracing the international, monopolistic, corporate-conglomerate promotion of chemically-dependent GM crops… India has to restore and nurture her depleted, abused soils and not harm them any further, with dubious chemical overload, which are endangering human and animal health.” (p24).
Newton provides a wealth of referenced data and detailed insight into the importance of soils and their mineral compositions and links their depletion to the 'green revolution'. In turn, these depleted soils cannot help but lead to mass malnourishment. This in itself it quite revealing given that proponents of the green revolution claim it helped reduced malnutrition. Newton advocates a well-thought out approach to agriculture based on agroecology, a sound understanding of soil and the eradication of poisonous chemical inputs.
Such an approach is required globally if we are to move towards a nutritional, healthy food system that respects soil balance, environmental integrity and ultimately people. Failure to do so will result in the continued destruction of soils, environment, food and human health. And failure to expose and challenge the corruption, lobbying, back-room ‘free trade’ deals and revolving door that exists between agribusiness and decision-making/regulatory bodies will result in these corporations continuing to prosper at everyone else’s expense.
Colin Todhunter is an independent writer originally from the UK. http://www.colintodhunter.com/p/about_7.html
