2nd National Sustainable Food Summit, Sydney, Australia (April 2012)
Conferences, Consumerism, Courses/Workshops, Deforestation, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Cheryl Samarasinghe February 14, 2012
Editor’s Note: I would encourage all well-spoken permaculturists who can make it to Sydney for this event to go along and contribute your thoughts — to help show how permaculture can shift our planetary orbit onto a safer trajectory….
What: 2nd National Sustainable Food Summit
When: 2-4 April, 2012
Where: Dockside, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Last year, in April 2011, over 340 delegates including public health, primary producers and members of the business, government, education, community and not-for-profit sectors came together in Melbourne to share ideas that could inform a vision for Australia’s food system in 2030.
The Inaugural National Sustainable Food Summit generated extraordinary consensus for the need to collaborate and continue the conversations necessary to transform Australia’s food system.
The 2nd National Sustainable Food Summit has been designed to progress the discussion from 2011 — which focused on the limits and challenges to our current system — to begin to examine what new frameworks and emerging solutions will help support a sustainable and resilient food system for Australia now and in the future.
Comments (1)Under Industry Pressure, USDA Works to Speed Approval of Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered Crops
GMOs, Health & Disease — by Mike Ludwig January 25, 2012
by Mike Ludwig, Truthout
For years, biotech agriculture opponents have accused regulators of working too closely with big biotech firms when deregulating genetically engineered (GE) crops. Now, their worst fears could be coming true: under a new two-year pilot program at the USDA, regulators are training the world’s biggest biotech firms, including Monsanto, BASF and Syngenta, to conduct environmental reviews of their own transgenic seed products as part of the government’s deregulation process.
This would eliminate a critical level of oversight for the production of GE crops. Regulators are also testing new cost-sharing agreements that allow biotech firms to help pay private contractors to prepare mandatory environmental statements on GE plants the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering deregulating.
The USDA launched the pilot project in April and, in November, the USDA announced vague plans to "streamline" the deregulation petition process for GE organisms. A USDA spokesperson said the streamlining effort is not part of the pilot project, but both efforts appear to address a backlog of pending GE crop deregulation petitions that has angered big biotech firms seeking to rollout new products.
Comments (0)Anonymous Took Down Monsanto Website
Biodiversity, GMOs, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor
It’s not as good as seeing all of Monsanto’s plants and chemicals getting taken ‘offline’, but at least I can get a little mischevious pleasure from learning that Monsanto has been on the hit-list of the Anonymous team. The following video apparently shows how Monsanto was taken offline (Note that I’m a bit slow on the uptake on this one — as the video is from the middle of last year — but since I’m in an anti-GMO mood today, I thought I’d run it anyway):
Anonymous DDOS attack on Monsanto.com
Here’s an Anonymous message to Monsanto, with transcript below:
Comments (4)Question What’s Inside – Anti GMO Music Video
GMOs, Health & Disease — by Rob Herring
Download for iTunes here
(50% of the 99 cent fee goes to support the Institute for Responsible Technology’s
work to battle the GMO takeover of the world.)
The Hidden Epidemic Destroying Your Gut Flora
GMOs, Health & Disease — by Dr. Mercola December 24, 2011
by Dr. Mercola
Dr. Don Huber is an expert in an area of science that relates to the toxicity of genetically engineered (GE) foods. (Alternative terms for GE foods include genetically modified (GM), or "GMO" for genetically modified organism.) His specific areas of training include soil-borne diseases, microbial ecology, and host-parasite relationships. Dr. Huber also taught plant pathology, soil microbiology, and micro-ecological interactions as they relate to plant disease as a staff Professor at Purdue University for 35 years.
Comments (4)Argentinian Report Identifies Major Medical Problems Associated with Roundup Ready Soy
GMOs, Health & Disease — by GM Watch December 8, 2011
Note: An important report by Argentine physicians has just been published in English. It arose from the 1st National Meeting Of Physicians In The Crop-Sprayed Towns, at the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the National University of Cordoba.
The report can be downloaded here (PDF).
It points once again to a big rise in birth defects, up in parallel with expansion of GM Roundup Ready (RR) soy. It also contains a lot of detail about DNA damage, confirming laboratory research on glyphosate and its breakdown product AMPA — and neurological development problems.
Extracts:
Comments (4)Inspiring Story Shows Shortcut to End GMOs
Consumerism, GMOs, Health & Disease — by Jeffrey M. Smith December 7, 2011
by Jeffrey M. Smith, Institute for Responsible Technology
11 minutes
It took the audience just 11 minutes to give up food brands they had grown up with and to commit to seek healthier non-GMO food. Of course this group had already been against genetically modified organisms as a concept. This was Greenfest after all; and in San Francisco no less. But when I asked them to honestly rate themselves on a scale of 1-100 how vigilant they had been at avoiding GMOs, the largest number of hands went up for the lowest category — 1-20. That’s typical of most US audiences. And so is what happened next….
Comments (2)Farmer Suicides Rising in India as GM Bt Cotton Crops Fail
Food Shortages, GMOs — by Jeffrey M. Smith December 5, 2011
by Jeffrey M. Smith, Institute for Responsible Technology
The record suicide rate among farmers in India continues to rise, with one farmer now committing suicide every 30 minutes. Many media reports blame failed GM Bt cotton crops for the crisis.
More than a quarter of a million farmers have killed themselves in the last 16 years in what is the largest recorded wave of suicides in history. An article for Sky News reports that one farmer who committed suicide "had been persuaded to use genetically modified seeds by the possibility of a better harvest. What he wasn’t told was that they needed more rain than the region provided."
Comments (3)Monsanto Defeated by Roundup Resistant Weeds
GMOs — by I-SIS December 1, 2011
An explosion of glyphosate resistant weeds forces Monsanto to run away from farmers’ rising weed control costs
Monsanto is surrendering to glyphosate resistant weeds [1], according to a new briefing by UK based GM freeze. They are spreading at ‘exponential’ rates in US farms and are increasingly documented in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Europe and South Africa.
While Monsanto grandly claims that its GM technologies help the environment by reducing pesticide use, resistant weeds springing up across the world paints a different picture. Glyphosate resistance has developed as the result of large-scale use of their pesticides. Glyphosate is the active ingredient of Monsanto’s world best-selling herbicide, Roundup.
And now, Monsanto aims to combat this serious agronomic, environmental, socio-economic, and health problem with even further increases in pesticide use.
The company is refusing to accept responsibility for rising weed costs, stating that [2] “Roundup agricultural warranties will not cover the failure to control glyphosate resistant weed populations.” Rising costs are burdening farmers across the globe.
Comments (8)Monsanto Versus the Beetle
GMOs, Health & Disease, Insects — by Ecofilms November 17, 2011
 Monsanto versus the Corn Rootworm Beetle in a dangerous game of tit for tat. |
This story is almost a parable of two worlds, a battle between the natural and the man-made.
Like a boxing match, in the one corner we have Monsanto – a large company aided by big money and big investment, tinkering away in the science labs, discovering even more devious ways to develop the perfect pest resistant strain of GM corn that can be easily marketed and harvested to a massively large, over-subsidized monoculture industry.
The one aim is to develop the perfect foodstuff that can’t be attacked by pests or disease. Sounds good.
One the other side we have Nature, in the form of a humble beetle — the corn rootworm beetle — eying off all those wonderful acres of unblemished genetically modified corn, with their silk corn heads waving gently in the breeze signalling “C’mon over here little guy – come on over and eat me!”
The system is out of whack and out of balance. But pesky nature likes a balanced system.
So let the battle begin.
Comments (8)Maarten Stapper: “Biological Agriculture – a Third Way?” (IPC10 Presentation – Video)
Animal Forage, Biodiversity, Commercial Farm Projects, Compost, Conferences, Courses/Workshops, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Fungi, GMOs, Health & Disease, Plant Systems, Presentations/Demonstrations, Rehabilitation, Seeds, Soil Biology, Soil Composition, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Structure, Trees, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor October 25, 2011
If you didn’t catch it already, be sure to check out the previous post with Dr. Maarten Stapper’s first IPC10 convergence presentation. And, after several attempts, I finally managed to get his second presentation uploaded — you can click play above to watch this as well. With decades of experience in the farming industry, Dr. Stapper has a great deal to share, and a lot of insight to go with it.
Comments (1)The Rodale Institute’s 30-Year Farming Systems Trial Report
Compost, Conservation, Demonstration Sites, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Irrigation, Land, News, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Society, Soil Biology, Soil Composition, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor October 13, 2011
 The Rodale Institute’s 30-year Farming Systems Trial report (1.3mb PDF) |
The Rodale Institute has been, for a full 30 years now, conducting a long-term comparative Farming Systems Trial. Starting in 1981, when it was already abundantly clear that industrialising nature was creating far more problems than it solved, the Rodale Institute began documented research comparing organically fertilised fields and conventionally fertilised fields on its 330 acre farm in Pennsylvania, USA.
It’s the longest running comparative study of its kind in the world.
In time for their trial’s 30-year anniversary, the institute has put out a report outlining its documented observations. You can download this report via the link at right.
This report is one of several well-researched reports that have come out in recent years, including the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Failure to Yield report (which proves GMOs do not perform as claimed) and the IAASTD’s 400-scientist-strong, 3-year worldwide study (which concluded we need to quickly transition back to relocalised, diverse, agroecological methods).
Comments (6)Major Agribusinesses Competing with Organics on the Cheap – “Natural” Food Products with Toxic Chemicals and GMOs Deceiving Consumers
Consumerism, GMOs, Health & Disease — by Cornucopia Institute October 12, 2011
A revelatory report released by The Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry watchdog, has stirred controversy in the natural foods marketing arena by highlighting abusive marketing practices by some of the nation’s largest breakfast cereal manufacturers. In some cases, companies such as Kellogg’s, Quaker Oats (PepsiCo), Barbara’s Bakery and Whole Foods Market are selling products contaminated with toxic agrichemicals and Monsanto’s genetically engineered organisms while promoting them as “natural.”
The new report, Cereal Crimes: How “Natural” Claims Deceive Consumers and Undermine the Organic Label—A Look Down the Cereal and Granola Aisle (PDF) explores this growing trend of marketing conventional foods as “natural” to lure health-conscious and eco-conscious consumers and their shopping dollars.
Unlike the organic label, no government agency, certification group, or other independent entity defines the term “natural” on processed food packages or ensures that the claim has merit.
Comments (2)And, the GMO T-Shirt Design Contest Winner is…
GMOs — by Jeffrey M. Smith
by Jeffrey M. Smith, Institute for Responsible Technology
After more than 40,000 votes on 139 designs, here is the winning design chosen by Threadless – and we love it! It makes people laugh, tells a story, raises questions, and starts a conversation.
Wear it for GMO rallies! Buy them as holiday gifts! Give one to your favorite teacher!
The Institute for Responsible Technology Facebook t-shirt contest photo gallery:
Take a picture of yourself in this winning design and upload it to our Facebook page!
Our gratitude and thanks!:
So many talented designers entered, we can’t thank you enough for your energy and passion!
Our work:
Threadless donates 25% of each sale to the Non-GMO Campaign of The Institute for Responsible Technology.
Thanks for your support!
Comments (2)Biotech’s Dirty Tricks Exposed in New Documentary – Scientists Under Attack
Consumerism, GMOs, Health & Disease — by Jeffrey M. Smith October 8, 2011
Trailer: Scientists Under Attack
Get the full DVD to show during October’s Non-GMO Month — invite all your friends and encourage them to spread the word! To make it easy to share this great film during Non-GMO Month, we’ve reduced the cost of buying the film in 6-packs to only $79.95 (individually priced at $19.95). We hope you’ll enjoy this new film, and share it with all those who care about the safety of our food supply.
DVD review by Jeffrey M. Smith
"One question means one career." This was the harsh warning of UC Berkeley Professor Ignacio Chapela for those daring to conduct independent research on genetically engineered foods and crops. "You ask one question, you get the answer and you might or might not be able to publish it; but that is the end of your career." Both he and biologist Arpad Pusztai dared to asked questions and do the research. And then all hell broke loose.
Using stunning visuals filmed on three continents, veteran German filmmaker Bertram Verhaag tracks the fate of these two scientists at the hands of a multi-billion dollar industry that is desperate to hide the dangers of their genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
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