Posted on 07/18/2007 7:12:29 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
I wish I could show you my nine tomato plants growing in their pots along the east wall of my house.
How I long for the days of mom and pop truck farming and stands along the country roads. If the government wants to subsidize anything, it should subsidize those little farms and stands. (I know, I know . . . incurable romantic.)
China can defeat us without firing a shot.
Poisoning our medicine, food and air, all with the approval of our very own FDA, USDA and other government agencies who are supposed to be protecting us.
I use whiskey for a mouthwash, but it’s made in Kentucky...I think.
Buyer beware.
You’re pretty much right about the *marketing* campaign but, my Wife and I have switched to several *organic* products (coffee, milk, meats, etc) and have notice an increase in quality.
The coffee we use to drink made us jittery, and somewhat nauseous in the morning. (I’m thinking pesticides) The meats are more tender and flavorful. (no hormones or additives) The milk is flat out better than any I’ve had in the past.
Bottom line; not all *organic* products are any better than regular ones but, it pays to switch to the ones that are.
If it’s hard to achieve *organic in this country, you can bet it’s nearly impossible for a third world chit hole like China. BOYCOTT CHINESE GOODS!
“How I long for the days of mom and pop truck farming and stands along the country roads. If the government wants to subsidize anything, it should subsidize those little farms and stands. (I know, I know . . . incurable romantic.)”
I am so fortunate. There is a business here in the suburbs of Chicago that consists of a small group of farm stands each called “The Farm”. These are located in the Northern, Southern, and Western Suburbs. There is one located less than a mile from where I live. Takes me 5 minutes to get there. All local produce. It’s almost tomato season, and I’m licking my chops in anticipation. I gorge on tomatoes for 2 months and then alas, they are gone until next year. Store bought tomatoes are so bad in the off season, so bad. So, no Chinese produce worries until the Fall when forced to go to the grocery stores again.
Actually, Illinois being so rich in farmland (we’ve got great black soil here), there are lots of mom and pop farm stands around. Many of the more outlying suburbs of the city aren’t that far from where farmland is located. There is still a fair amount of it where I live, DuPage County (still a bastion of conservatism). I only buy conservative tomatoes, heh, heh.
And if even the Lefties are disturbed by the state of “organics” then something is definitely afoot!
Has Big Business Turned Organics Into “Yuppy Chow”?
By Michael Valpy
The Globe and Mail
Wednesday 30 May 2007
Saskatoon - Organic food is being taken over by big business, marketed as “yuppy chow” for the privileged, and increasingly packaged with as little concern for the environment as conventional food production, says a York University academic researcher.
In a paper to be presented on Friday at Canada’s largest gathering of social sciences scholars, Irena Knezevic says that most of the major organic brands on the North American market are now owned by large corporations such as ConAgra, Cargill, Kraft, Coca Cola and Pepsi.
She says their products - along with those sold by retail giants such as Loblaws and Wal-Mart - are turning organic agriculture into product brands that are becoming “a marketing tool more so than an assurance of quality, let alone an assurance of a fair and sustainable production process.”
Officials from Loblaws and Wal-Mart were unavailable for comment last night.
This trend, says Ms. Knezevic, is driven by consumer demand, with the food industry’s eager willingness to jump on the bandwagon and make organic consumption efficient and slightly less expensive by mass-producing - creating only a slightly “greener” version of the dominant industrial food system but separating organic agriculture from its central concepts.
She says consumers are demonstrating a phenomenal enthusiasm for organic products - the Canadian organic industry is growing by 15 to 20 per cent annually - and a readiness to pay premium prices for the products.
But what research shows, she says, is that organic products are becoming what she describes as a food fetish associated with individual health and body image - status food linked to high disposable income and the leisure time to shop - but ignoring “the heart of organic agriculture.”
“Organic agriculture is by definition intertwined with environmentalism, resistance to corporate globalization and the ‘back to the land’ movement,” she says.
Organic food is conventionally defined as free of chemical inputs - pesticides and artificial fertilizers - and genetically modified organisms, produced with sensitivity to the land, the crops, the animals and the surrounding ecosystems, and providing a fair economic return to small growers who produce food as an alternative to mass commodity production.
It is the environmental and social-justice issues that Ms. Knezevic says are being ignored by consumers and government regulators.
“Most of the organic food supply in Canada travels to consumers from California and includes convenience foods like individual-sized and single-serving granola bars. Transportation and packaging involved result in environmental consequences comparable to those of conventional food production.”
In her paper, she quotes George Siemon, the founder of the largest North American co-operative organic producer, California’s Organic Valley - a non-corporate grower - as wryly telling a recent conference: “We expect any day now that our consumers will ask for organic Twinkies. Individually wrapped, of course.”
Ms. Knezevic says the Canadian federal government’s proposed national labelling for organic foods will tell consumers little about how organic food is produced - little about who produced it or the farmers’ environmental and sustainable stewardship of the land, whether the food was locally produced or what economic return farmers got for their labour.
The proposed labelling, she says, will only continue to distance consumers from their food and are mainly aimed at encouraging both mass production and exports into a globally harmonized market.
Indeed, she says, the regulations will encourage corporations to take over more and more of organic agriculture because government subsidies favour large producers over small ones.
Achim Mohssen-Beyk, an organic farmer from Picton, Ont., said that big companies may meet the basic standards for organic certification in Canada, but the consumer will never know about the environmental or social footprints they leave.
“All the food mileage and mass production, the organic certification doesn’t talk about that. You can have certified organic coming from China and people being exploited there and nobody’s talking about that,” said Mr. Mohssen-Beyk, who is also a regional spokesman for the Canadian Organic Growers. He said small, local farmers can’t compete with the price-point advantages of big companies, even though they maintain the highest of standards.
“We are losing farms, we are losing farmland, we are losing rural economies because everything is being imported.”
Ms. Knezevic quotes a National Farmers Union study that says small-farm income in Canada is now at the lowest point since the Depression.
Ms. Knezevic is a doctoral candidate in the joint York-Ryerson Universities communication and culture program. Earlier this year, she was given a major teaching award by York and cited for her research skills and commitment to the mentoring and academic success of her students.
She will present her research to the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences being held this week at the University of Saskatchewan. There are 5,500 scholars attending.
She writes in her paper: “Organic foods have less and less to do with the ethics of environmentalism, anti-globalization and social justice, indeed less to do with organic agriculture as a concept, but more and more with hip consumerism, cultural and economic capital and the moral pedestals of those who have the luxury to make such purchasing choices.”
What is being created, she says, is “a system in which organic products are more and more removed from the actual problems with food production and incorporated into the dominant agricultural model. The core problems of the global food system, mainly distancing, remain unaddressed.”
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/053007HA.shtml
As if we will get a choice. When every readily-available brand is sourced from China, people will buy the Chinese product rather than go without.
The free market is dead.
Holy mackeral. Thanks for the ping!
“This food organic. Bug come, we spray motor oil. Motor oil come from ground.”.
“As if we will get a choice. When every readily-available brand is sourced from China, people will buy the Chinese product rather than go without.The free market is dead.”
you need to get out once in a while.
Try finding some shrimp or crab that isn't sourced from China. I could find nothing but Chinese shrimp in 3 major chains (Bloom, Safeway, Giant), and the only crab that wasn't from China was sourced from Venuzuela. Keep in mind that I live within 20 miles of the Chesapeake Bay!
As for dry goods, don't get me started. Just TRY to find shoes down at the shoe store that aren't from China.
Without consumer choice, there is no free market.
“Try finding some shrimp or crab that isn’t sourced from China. I could find nothing but Chinese shrimp in 3 major chains (Bloom, Safeway, Giant), and the only crab that wasn’t from China was sourced from Venuzuela.”
Yep. I went to the supermarket the other day and was looking at seafood products. I could not find a single brand that was NOT produced in the Far East.
At least the store had the decency to label it as such.
The only reason you are seeing source labels on seafood is because of the COOL act-eeeeevil federal regulation that hinders Free Trade and the American Way. (/s) Without COOL, you would be none the wiser as you bought Chinese seafood pond-raised in sewage marinade.
Exactly. Free Trade can go byebye immediately, give me safe food.
But where are the candidates who will ensure the food supply? Who will bolster the FDA? Who will make sure country of origin is listed for every single ingredient? Whoever comes up with that platform will get my attention, and if they guarantee walls on every border, they'll get my vote. I'm through with voting by party labels, just as the parties are through with my wellbeing.
Most of us don't think in all-or-nothing terms, but apparently the FR free traders do.
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