And there are plenty of stories of workers loading sacks of wheat onto trains that would end up in Bombay and would then go on to circle the world. Those workers died of hunger as they loaded the grain onto the trains. And they died of hunger not because there was a shortage of food. There was more food produced than ever before in history. They didn't die because they were unable to access the food. The food was right there, on their backs. The reason people starved is that the way that we distribute food is through the market, and those people were too poor to be able to afford that food.
And that's a lesson for today because, in the United States today, according to one survey over Christmas, one in five Americans - sixty million Americans - went hungry. Now you can't say that's because America's overpopulated. You cannot say this is because America lacks food. Go into any supermarket and you will see aisles of food. The reason people go hungry in the United States - as anywhere else in the world - is not for a shortage of food but because the way we distribute food is through the market and the poor are too poor to be able to afford it.
THE BACKGROUND
OF THE IMPENDED FOOD CRISIS IN AMERICA
We will soon become aware that the only remaining healthy food
in America is Super Organic Health Food. Due to years of
no label laws that do not mandate telling people
the foods that have GMO ingredients,
we now have Food Unsafe for Human Consumption.
An increasing percent of our commercially grown
conventional foods have GMO ingredients. Many
foods contain soy and corn. 80% of these crops
have are grpwn by Biotech methods of GE manipulation.
THE IMPENDING PASSAGE OF
THE #s-510, the (FDA) FOOD SAFETY MODERNIZATION ACT
With a month or so, if all goes according to plan
we will have the long awaited #s-510 (FDA)
Food Safety Modernization Act being heard and passing
the Senate within a few days. It's counterpart, #HR 2749
passed the House of Representatives within a matter of
days within intense radar of small organic growers and
out of the radar of most people last July.
The passage of #s-510 will give the FDA increased funding to regulate
big ag and local farming as well.
PRESS BRIEFING NOTESS on #s-510
from the 2010 Cultivating Food Justice Conference
To date the Food and Drug Administration is highly
supportive of the science that says that GMO food are safe.
At the same time, others in government, including
the FDA do not want to see GMO food labeled.
One of the reasons for this is that they are concerned
that this might infer to people that something is wrong
with GMO foods. They do not want to cause a panic
over regulations, based on FDA and
USDA accepted Science, that say there is no difference
between organic and conventionally grown foods.
More and more conventionally grown foods are now
being grown by GMO methods.
Much of this accepted science is based on
techniques called Risk Assessment, a method of
Science that allows for GMO foods to appear credible.
In recent months, there was an extension to allow
GMO beets to be planted.
OTHER RECENT USDA OPINIONS
The USDA position is that GE (Genetically Engineered foods,
conventionally grown foods, and organic foods can co-exist.
The USDA basically concluded in a recent 1500 page environmental
report that even thought GE alfalfa would contaminate organic
growing of alfalfa, there were not enough people who
actually cared.
There are organic standards on the books to protect
organic foods, so basically as the FDA gains more regulatory
powers, and if they accept that there job is to enforce
current Food Safety laws, then they could be asked
to spend billionsto protect the $23 Billion
organic industry.
Of course, this is not likely to happen.
WHAT IS THE WRITING ON THE WALL
So what is the writing on the wall?
Education will continue. More and more reports
will be forthcoming indicating that the FDA science
that allows for GMO foods have faulty science
behind them.
More and more reports will be fothcoming that
suggests that indeed organic foods are the cornerstone
of a healthy farm economy.
More and more reports will be fothcoming that
suggest that GMO foods are unhealthy.
There will be increased demand for food labeling
raising public awareness of the pressing need.
There will be a groundswell of rejection of GMO foods.
Note that also for many years GMO Foods, once regulated in Europe
due to citizen protest, will be increasingly grown due to pressure
to allow them to be grown.
In our country, more and more people will come to see
that only super organic foods are safe. True Food Safety
will be redefined to accept that local, organic food is
are foods that can can prevent disease.
The limited amount of organic food will become
more and more apparent.
Without our knowing, there is an intense and unseen
war of foods in place. Food is treated as a commodity to
bear profits rather than as a tool for "prophet' making.
Food, by its very nature, is here to promote full self expression.
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
The solution is to begin to grow some of your own food
now.
The solution is to make sure that where ever possible
that every local organic farmer be supported.
Our local organic farmers are the foundation of
a healthy economy. 1000's more of them are needed.
Every community, wherever possible, needs to
begin immediate to have community gardens.
Every school needs to have urban gardens and farms.
Every student needs to understand what is being asked.
As in China, new laws need to be passed that allow
people to grow more and more food on public land.
During World War 2, the US was growing 40% of its
own food in Victory Gardens.
We will survive the crisis, but it is important to see
how that we are in a crisis of epic food emergency.
Issues of Cultivating Food Justice at home and abroad
will become widely known.
Corporations and multi-national corporations, faced
with the writing on the wall will increasingly invest
in organic growing methods to not only survive but
thrive in the new economy that will restore the
American Dream.
I personally would offer a pardon to all corporations
that get behind the new mandate. I would pardon
those who are legally guilty, from one point of view
of committing crimes against the public good.
We simply as a nation did not know what we were doing.
It is time now to accept the errors of our ways, as we
are attempting to do in the economic sphere.
What is being asked of the U.S. is enormous shifting
of agricultural methods back to systems of sustainability
that were commonly understood and practices for
thousands of years.
Over population will have to be addressed.
We will simple have to accept that there are limits
to growth and the solution is not applying methods
of agriculture that will worsen the potential of survival
for all of us.
Many stakeholders in corporations now making massive
profits in the world other than organic systems of agriculture
will come to their senses.
They will recognize there is no profit in living on a planet
that has become increasingly uninhabitably due to methods
of good growing that cause pain and suffering.
The planet itself will continue to survive and thrive.
We will increasingly become aware that human behavior
does in fact influence natural phenomena, not only
climate change due to pollution, but we will come to see
that earthquakes and other natural disasters have are
influenced by human behavior. We will increasingly
become aware that living as an earthquake waiting
to happen, and living our lives as natural disasters
does influence natural disasters. Science will come
to explain the connections as the dialogue between
science, ethics and food evolves. Arts and Letters
will draw out these connections as well in ways
the will enter the popular imagination. Hollywood
will carry the ball as the errors of our ways
are portrayed on the big screen.
FREEDOM AND ENPRISONMENT
Our current food practices set an accepted FDA standard where what
we call food keeps adults and children in the prison of limited thinking.
More and more people are breaking out through being exposed
to Real Food. At the same time, some of the people who
have brought forth the accepted Science we back now
will be more clearly seen for manipulating science.
In other words there are people today in prison who
need to be set free, and others free now, that deserve
jail time
..To be continued...
Let Food Be Thy Medicine.
USDA Know Your Farmer. Know Your Food program.
USDA Codex Alimentarius office and its programs
HOW MUCH FOOD DO WE HAVE NOW IN STORAGE?
Scott Murray, local organic farmer and San Diego EarthFair
board member for many years speaks here from The Bright Green Future Conference Fall 2009. We once had a practice of storing food. We no
longer store food. We have less than a week's supply now
to survive a famine in America.
WORLD WAR TWO
NOW
RECORDED AT
THE 2010 CULTIVATING FOOD JUSTICE CONFERENCE
April 24-25, 2010
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