So it comes as no surprise that First Lady Michelle Obama decided to take the lead on this effort in her own home by introducing Americans to the joys of organic gardening. I only wish that she had have done more research, she might have been able to use it as an opportunity to introduce Americans to a very important issue.New Jobs and Economic Opportunities
Source: The Global Horticulture InitiativeHorticultural crop production creates jobs. On average it provides twice the amount of employment per hectare of production compared to cereal crop production (Ali et al., 2002). The move from cereal production towards high-value horticulture crops is an important contributor to employment opportunities in developing countries (Joshi et al., 2003). The horticultural commodity chain is also longer and more complex than the cereal crop one and as a result job opportunities are more abundant (Temple, 2001).
Women have the most to benefit from the increasing importance of horticulture in rural economies. Women, in general, play a much more significant role in horticultural crop production compared to starchy staple crops. For example in Bangladesh, women account for 48% of all labor in vegetable production compared to only 11-20% for cereal production (Rahman, 2000). Similar findings were made in Latin America and Africa (Weinberger and Lumpkin, 2005). Throughout the developing countries of Africa, women play a dominant role in the production of horticultural crops and cultivate more than half of the total smallholdings.
Besides creating jobs on the farm, the horticultural sector also generates off-farm employment, especially for women. This is the case for export and value-added processing industries, which are important sectors of the economies of Latin America and Africa. In Mexico, for example, 80-90% of people engaged in packing operations are women, and even higher percentages of women workers are involved in fresh produce field operations. Evidence from Africa reflects a similar trend: women comprise 91 % of horticultural employees in Zimbabwe (Dolan and Sorby, 2003). Since horticultural production is very labor-intensive, landless laborers also benefit from the new employment opportunities created by horticultural crop production. These jobs usually provide more income than jobs obtained by the laborers in most other sectors (Weinberger and Genova, 2005; Weinberger and Lumpkin, 2005).
Michelle Obama's organic garden goes to waste thanks to Bill and Hillary. Ewww! The White House "organic" garden isn't because the Clintons tainted it with sewer sludge.
White House organic garden isn't organic because of sewer sludge
July 31, 7:16 PM
by David Kuhns
Source: Seattle Green Living Examiner
Poor First Lady Michelle Obama. How is she ever going to get Malia and Sasha to eat their veggies now? Not to mention Prince Charles and Camilla?
First Lady Obama's noble effort to grow an "organic garden" failed after the National Park Service tested the soil in the veggie patch. They found "highly elevated levels of lead" from sewage used as fertilizer.
A bigger question? In the video below, the First Lady told a bunch of children that veggies from that garden would be served "at State Dinners".
But only to heads of state we don't like?
The culprits? Former President and First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton, who evidently used treated sewer sludge as compost. They didn't learn from Twilight, the movie that shows the benefit of worm tea / compost tea.
King County "GroCo" would help ...maybe?
Dozens of public wastewater facilities around the country take sewer "sludge", dry it, compost it, mix it with other ingredients (King County's "GroCo" BioSolids Recovery program mixes in 3 parts sawdust to 1 part sludge, then composts the mixture), and sell it. GroCo claims the compost is safe to use on gardens. Could it help the White House garden?
Evidently the stuff the Clintons used had too much lead, so Michelle's highly-touted "organic garden" will never "attain organic status." The certification process doesn't allow "the use of sludge as a fertilizer substitute."
White House associate chef Sam Kass said the garden has produced lettuce, snap peas, beans, kale, collards and chard. Yummy. "Here, your majesty. Have some collard greens grown on sewage!"
In certain parts of the world, food is hard enough to come by --ironically caused by conventional agricultural methods and other forms of land degradation. By creating systemic disadvantages, through the development of toxic chemicals, contamination of soil through harmful fertilizers and toxic genetically modified seed, or fixing food prices through the reduction of food surplus or limiting the types of food sold to consumers within specific income brackets, it becomes virtually impossible to end the problem of poverty and food injustice that takes place all over the world. And yet, when it happens in our own back yard, it becomes an issue that we simply overlook and sweep under the rug.
Systemically, we are fighting a very huge battle over what kind of foods we allow to sit on our tables and how the impacts of what is in that food impacts the way that we are feeding our minds. Most people are completely unaware of the issue either because they haven't been given the access to this issue, or even worse, because they choose to live in ignorance of the issue because they'd rather not have the seriousness of something so fundamental to their health --neglecting a very vital component of their lives. It doesn't sound smart, or healthy, which is what leads the rest of the world to question not only our lifestyles, but our sense of ethics and values as well.
Are We Choosing to Be Too Unhealthy To Be Intelligent or Too Ignorant to be Healthy?
Do you find it compelling that as the issue of soil contamination in the organic garden at the White House becomes news worthy gossip for the tabloids that the press continues to turn a blind eye to how this same challenge impacts agriculture in the United States, even as the issue hits the president's own back yard? Not to make a mountain out of --well a mountain; but rather than giving up the initiative to teach America's youth about the benefits of growing and eating healthy, organic foods, it seems as though the president and his wife could have used this opportunity to address a very large and looming issue. There are many soil contamination issues; including sewage contamination, pollution caused by synthetic fertilizers [made from petroleum], and soil erosion that can threaten the amount of nutrients that can be taken in by the food that we grow as well as transmit numerous diseases and dangerous mutations through the soil. While a considerable portion of the food that is grown [mostly corn] to feed cattle and make biodiesel oil for manufacturing and transportation, the small amount that makes it into the food supply is suspected by many researchers to be one of the primary sources of many inherited health defects and illnesses transmitted from organism to organism through the contamination of America's soil. According to the site GoVeg.com,
The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth.19 About 20 percent of the world's population, or 1.4 billion people, could be fed with the grain and soybeans fed to U.S. cattle alone (GoVeg).
Unfortunately what many Americans don't realize is that the problem doesn't just exist with the factory farming used in meat production, but also stems from the production of the food we grow as well. Sustainabletable.com reports, what is assumed to be common knowledge, that:
Although compost contains nutrients, its greatest benefit is in improving soil characteristics. You should consider it as a valuable soil amendment rather than a fertilizer, because additional fertilization may be necessary to obtain acceptable growth and yields.
Healthy soils are essential for the production of crops used to feed humans and livestock. In addition to providing a stable base to support plant roots, soils store water and nutrients required for plant growth.Not that everything has to be a political issue, but I do think that this particular challenge could have brought about an important opportunity for the president to raise awareness of the issue and how it affects all Americans civil rights --and then do something about it. There is all of this money now being allocated toward creating jobs and providing education about alternative forms of energy, and yet part of that education includes learning about where the energy is wasted and how to reduce the consumption of it. Conventional Agriculture, one of the most inefficient uses of petroleum and highest producer of carbon emissions, is also the root of one of the biggest issues to affect domestic and global poverty since corporate greed.
Unfortunately, industrial agriculture practices continue to damage and deplete this valuable natural resource. While intensive plowing and monocrop agriculture systems have caused nutrient depletion and wide-scale soil erosion, over-application of fertilizers and pesticides have contaminated our soils and polluted our waterways.
Fortunately, many farmers are choosing to use sustainable agricultural techniques such as conservation tillage, crop rotation, and organic fertilization in order to protect our valuable soil resources (Sustainable).
Soil contamination comes from many sources and reduces the amount of available land that can be used for producing safe and healthy food. (click the image to enlarge)
Unfortunately, the issue of soil erosion and contamination caused by development, construction, mining and the current conventional system of agriculture seems to be the root of one of the most major threats that affects food security all over the world. It's a bigger threat to the world's food security than terrorism, and yet there's almost no coverage of it. Why is that?
But if we're asking questions like that, why are surplus crops burned by farmers in order to keep agricultural prices competitive? [Click here to read more about the Agricultural Adustment Act.] Why don't most Americans know who Monsanto is? Why does one company get to hold the monopoly on food seeds in order to genetically modify them to work with ONE fertilizer without having to release an environmental impact statement when their food has been scientifically proven to contaminate the soil? [Read about the federal law suit against Monsanto producer of Round Up Here.] Why are we still so dependent upon using toxic petroleum based fertilizers when it is such an inefficient use of oil and food-- and then wonder why gas prices are so high, why food costs so much? Why has the world become so fixated by climate change but won't take the necessary steps to change the agricultural system, which produces the most carbon and methane emissions and keeps the rest of the world poor? Why don't Americans know what peak oil is? Why haven't we changed our agricultural infrastructure to generate more energy efficient ways to produce safer food? Why don't we know what's in our food? Why do we fight for equal access to health care but not for equal access to safe food? And better yet, why don't we have a better understanding of which foods can make us sicker? Why don't we know which foods we can eat that will make us feel well? Why won't we eat healthier so that we won't have to pay as much for healthcare, making it more accessible to those who need it? Why don't we care about the hunger and poverty of others? --and if we do care, why aren't we doing more to deal with these issues so we can at least eliminate the disparities that exist between the impoverished and those who control our food?
Indian Physicist and Eco-Activist Dr. Vandana Shiva began to ask questions like this after a succession of large scale suicides that took place from farmers in India back in 2006 after their crops failed. Because she did take the time to ask those questions and further investigate the issue, Shiva has become one of the leading activists to challenge the Monsanto and various governmental agencies for not protecting the economic interests of local farmers who have been exploited by these agencies and the safety of the people exposed to their contaminated food.
Shiva has
"consistently and eloquently over her career – warned about the increasing dangers of industrial agriculture, genetically modified crops and seeds, and the burgeoning monopoly of the world’s food system by transnational corporations. “The monopolies are killing diversity, and killing farmers,” she said. “Food is not a commodity for speculation and profit. It is our essential source of nutrition that life may continue.
You can read more about Shiva here:
Vandana Shiva: Seeds of Self-Reliance
By Meenakshi Ganguly/New Delhi
Source: Time Magazine
Vandana Shiva will never forget a lesson she learned at the age of 13. Her parents, who like many educated Indians had supported Mohandas Gandhi's struggle against colonialism, insisted on wearing clothing made only of homespun cotton. One day Vandana, having returned from a boarding school to her home in the Himalayan foothill town of Dehra Dun, demanded a nylon dress, the fashion adopted by her rich friends. Her mother, a teacher turned farmer, agreed. "If that is what you want, of course you shall have it," she said. "But remember, your nylon frock will help a rich man buy a bigger car. And the cotton that you wear will buy a poor family at least one meal."
Now 50, Shiva still chuckles when she tells the story. "Of course, I did not get that frock," she says. "I kept thinking of some poor family starving because of my dress." True to her upbringing, Shiva has made it her mission to fight for social justice in many arenas. With a doctorate in physics from the University of Western Ontario, she has been a teacher, an ecologist, an activist, a feminist and an organic farmer.
Her pet issue these days is preservation of agricultural diversity. It is under assault, she says, from global companies that encourage farmers to grow so-called high-yielding crops that result in a dangerous dependence on bioengineered seeds, chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides. As a result, hundreds of traditional crops are disappearing. Too many farmers, she contends, purchase expensive seeds that cannot adapt to local conditions and require more investment in chemicals and irrigation. Hundreds of debt-ridden Indian farmers, Shiva points out, have committed suicide during the past five years because of failed harvests.
But there is hope. Many farmers are returning to traditional methods promoted by Navdanya (Nine Seeds), an organization based in New Delhi that Shiva helped found 11 years ago. Navdanya encourages farmers to produce hardy native varieties of crops that can be grown organically with natural fertilizer and no artificial chemicals. The group works in an area for three years, helping local farmers form their own self-supporting organization and seed bank. Navdanya has spread to some 80 districts in 12 states and has collected more than 2,000 seed varieties. It has set up a marketing network through which farmers sell their organic harvest. Farmer Darwan Singh Negi, with Navdanya's aid, switched to organic methods five years ago and grows six types of rice on his three-acre farm in the state of Uttaranchal. His farm's productivity is similar to that of his neighbors' nonorganic farms, but he spends almost 70% less for fertilizers, pesticides and seeds.
Shiva's many detractors call her naive, pointing out that chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetic engineering rescued India from its eternal cycles of famine and huge debts from importing food. She responds that high-tech agriculture is a short-term solution that will ultimately destroy the land....
Dr. Shiva said we must move from ‘suicide economies’ to ‘living economies’ She told of how in India some villages have established themselves as safe zones – free of agricultural chemicals and genetically modified seeds and food. “If governments won’t ban this stuff and protect the people,” she said, “then the people and the villages themselves will do it…No law is high enough to override the ethical duty we have to the Earth and to future generations. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is our survival imperative (Call).”Shiva has been responsible for the development of 54 community seed banks to protect the variety and diversity of plant species that enables us to meet a variety of different nutritional needs. She is responsible for the founding of the organization Navdanya, a network of seed growers and organic producers that have trained over 500,000 farmers in seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture over the past two decades, and helped setup the largest direct marketing, fair trade organic network in the country (Navdanya).
Shiva's organization has also
- established a learning center, Bija Vidyapeeth (School of the Seed) on its biodiversity conservation and organic farm in Doon Valley, Uttranchal, north India.
- Navdanya is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering, defended people's knowledge from biopiracy and food rights in the face of globalisation and climate change.
- Shiva has also worked actively upon fighting for the civil rights and economic self sufficiency of women and small farmers in the third world by fighting to increase access to key inputs; such as safe seeds and organic soil that can be used to provide access to healthy and safe food for their communities.
Shiva believes that it is our responsibility to teach women and small farmers in the third world how to sustainably plant the seeds for change through the farming of biodiverse yields to improve the abundance of nutritional options that can be obtained through permaculture and organic gardening.Rural women constitute the majority of the 1.5 billion people who live in absolute poverty. Even though women head about one fifth of rural households -- and in some regions more than one third -- women only own around 1 percent of all land (FAO).
In a BBC lecture series given in May of 2000, Shiva states:
the myth of creation presents biotechnologists as the creators of Vitamin A, negating nature's diverse gifts and women's knowledge of how to use this diversity to feed their children and families.The most efficient means of rendering the destruction of nature, local economies and small autonomous producers is by rendering their production invisible.
Women who produce for their families and communities are treated as `non-productive' and `economically' inactive. The devaluation of women's work, and of work done in sustainable economies, is the natural outcome of a system constructed by capitalist patriarchy. This is how globalisation destroys local economies and destruction itself is counted as growth.
And women themselves are devalued. Because many women in the rural and indigenous communities work co-operatively with nature's processes, their work is often contradictory to the dominant market driven `development' and trade policies. And because work that satisfies needs and ensures sustenance is devalued in general, there is less nurturing of life and life support systems.
The devaluation and invisibility of sustainable, regenerative production is most glaring in the area of food. While patriarchal division of labour has assigned women the role of feeding their families and communities, patriarchal economics and patriarchal views of science and technology magically make women's work in providing food disappear. "Feeding the World" becomes disassociated from the women who actually do it and is projected as dependent on global agribusiness and biotechnology corporations.
However, industrialisation and genetic engineering of food and globalisation of trade in agriculture are recipes for creating hunger, not for feeding the poor.
Everywhere, food production is becoming a negative economy, with farmers spending more to buy costly inputs for industrial production than the price they receive for their produce. The consequence is rising debts and epidemics of suicides in both poor and rich countries.
Economic globalisation is leading to a concentration of the seed industry, increased use of pesticides, and, finally, increased debt. Capital-intensive, corporate controlled agriculture is being spread into regions where peasants are poor but, until now, have been self-sufficient in food. In the regions where industrial agriculture has been introduced through globalisation, higher costs are making it virtually impossible for small farmers to survive.
The globalisation of non-sustainable industrial agriculture is literally evaporating the incomes of Third World farmers through a combination of devaluation of currencies, increase in costs of production and a collapse in commodity prices.
Farmers everywhere are being paid a fraction of what they received for the same commodity a decade ago. The Canadian National Farmers Union put it like this in a report to the senate this year:
"While the farmers growing cereal grains - wheat, oats, corn - earn negative returns and are pushed close to bankruptcy, the companies that make breakfast cereals reap huge profits. In 1998, cereal companies Kellogg's, Quaker Oats, and General Mills enjoyed return on equity rates of 56%, 165% and 222% respectively. While a bushel of corn sold for less than $4, a bushel of corn flakes sold for $133 ... Maybe farmers are making too little because others are taking too much."
And a World Bank report has admitted that "behind the polarisation of domestic consumer prices and world prices is the presence of large trading companies in international commodity markets."
While farmers earn less, consumers pay more. In India, food prices have doubled between 1999 and 2000. The consumption of food grains in rural areas has dropped by 12%. Increased economic growth through global commerce is based on pseudo surpluses. More food is being traded while the poor are consuming less. When growth increases poverty, when real production becomes a negative economy, and speculators are defined as "wealth creators", something has gone wrong with the concepts and categories of wealth and wealth creation. Pushing the real production by nature and people into a negative economy implies that production of real goods and services is declining, creating deeper poverty for the millions who are not part of the dot.com route to instant wealth creation.
Women - as I have said - are the primary food producers and food processors in the world. However, their work in production and processing is now becoming invisible (Shiva).
To read more on this article click here.
According to the United Nations primary food agency, The World Food Programme,
So it may be reasonable to ask that if these leaders and activists believe that it is imperative that impoverished women and single mothers in the third world to understand the importance of their role in food security toward providing access to food within their communities, then why aren't more efforts like Shiva's being used to ensure that these women have access to safe and affordable agricultural inputs?It is estimated that:
- Eight out of 10 people engaged in farming in Africa are women and six out of 10 in Asia.
- In one out of three households around the world, women are the sole breadwinners.
Experience also shows that in the hands of women, food is far more likely to reach the mouths of needy children. So when WFP drafts new operations, both for emergencies and development, women are top of its priority list (WFP).
I raise this issue to help you stop and think for a moment. Seed modification appears to be at the heart of the issue of why food in the Americas and the Third World has been much more difficult to access in recent years. But there are a whole body of other infrastructural issues that also contribute to the issue of food security such as soil contamination, erosion and the availability of arable land.
The first global survey of soil degradation was carried out by the United nations in 1988-91. This survey, known as GLASOD - for Global Survey of Human-Induced Soil Degradation, has shown significant problems in virtually all parts of the world. The yellow line in each panel shows the global cropland area per person. Obviously, this indicator is a function of two factors: human population and cropland area. It has shown a steady decline in the 30 years from 1961 to 1991, amounting to a decrease of between 20 and 30%. The figure illustrates the regional changes that have accompanied this global change. North and central America and the former USSR are regions with significantly higher cropland areas per capita. However, all regions, including these, have shown decreases. South America croplands have declined at a rate that is slower than the global average, while African per capita croplands have declined at a greater than average rate.What are the causes of this degradation?
The loss of arable land has been caused by a number of factors, many or most of which are tied to human development. The primary causes are deforestation, overexploitation for fuelwood, overgrazing, agricultural activities and industrialization.To Read more about land degradation click here.
Our food security relies upon the availability of clean water, clean soil and healthy nutrient rich land to provide the natural resources to produce this food. Unfortunately, the way that the current agricultural system is designed, we are losing more and more of this precious resource each and every day. It doesn't do any good to teach women and children in the third world how to continue to farm with expensive and inefficient farming techniques that degrade the soil to the point that they can't even grow contaminated food. In future posts we will be talking about the benefits of indoor urban horticulture, such as the development of the hydroponic window farm in which this based as a means to combat this form of bio terrorism and provide an alternative and revolutionary way to provide access to safe and affordable food.
As African Americans, if we are to aid each other in ending the roots of poverty in our own community and help share this gift with the rest of the world --like our brothers and sisters in Haiti, we are going to have to start educating ourselves on these issues so that we can re-establish our connection back to the earth the way our ancestors have.
Ethically speaking, there are certain aspects of our culture that seem lost, not because of slavery or the painful aspects of our history, but because we continue to make choices that pull us away from the parts of our history that precede this dark period of our lives --before we were slaves. In her work, Women Who Know Things, reknowned educator Dr. Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie writes
From their earliest contact with African people, Europeans posited that the African’s closeness to nature meant distance from God. To tame, domesticate, civilize, de-nature,and de-spirit Africans became the mission of American plantation owners and the process to affect control over an African population, which in many southern states outnumbered their European-Americans enslavers. These attempts at religious acculturation also occurred in the North as well. However, early written records attest to African people’s maintenance of a spiritual connection with the land and the power they derived from these associations (Zauditu).In fact there are many African folklorists and narratives that have preserved remnants of African's spiritual connection to the land which African Americans, through their suffering have abandoned and discarded in their eagerness to be rid of the historic roots of their oppression. But this is not the Europeans fault --and no one can blame those who live in the stigma of their own suffering for not wanting to remember the horrific atrocities that still affect them even today.
But eventually healing comes, and we have not healed this spiritual connection because we have forgotten about it --for generations. When we look at the land of our origins, a land we now see as full of poverty-stricken and famished people, we see what our pain allows us to see and we bury it. Is it because we feel powerless to do anything about it? Is it because we don't see it as part of our responsibility? Or is it because throughout these stages of our survival we were simply ignorant of the gifts that we squander that our buried within our history? --and better yet, when does this ignorance end?
The Seeds of Change
In the sidebar of this blog site, I posted a story about a young artist by the name of Mikuak Rai who once said something that forced me to really take a look at whether or not I was connected to my own gifts and sense of purpose, and also whether I was using the gifts that I was aware of well. The piece of knowledge and inspiration that Rai gave to me was this,
"We're not here to dwell on the the things that other people are out doing in the world. Anybody can believe and let themselves get discouraged by that. We're here not because of what was written in the Book of Revelations. I'm here, because I believe that there's a book written after the Book of Revelation called the Book of Restoration!!!It was the single most important thing that I have heard anyone say to me ever in life. And as naive as it sounds, I feel as if I experienced a very spiritual connection to this individual and to the others who appreciated what it was that he had to say in that room. Because it is something that I HAVE to believe in if I am ever to be able to see the world around the way that it is around me and still find the will and the courage to heal. I don't believe in what Rai told me because I am just grasping around looking for something to believe in. I believe in the process of restoration because I understand that it is necessary for me to believe that a new future is possible if I am ever going to be able to move forward --and this belief, whether it is warranted or not has carried me further than I could ever have progressed living in a poverty ridden, crime stricken neighborhood, settling for the minimum because that's what the system felt I was entitled to have.
And right now, while the rest of the world is falling into darkness, is falling into sleep, we are HERE. We are alive and we are getting ready, because the world needs us now more than ever... and we don't have to wait. We are the future. And we can begin, each and every one of us, to begin the process of healing and restoration right NOW!"
Each and every day constitutes a new challenge to my sense of ethics, my understanding of how the world works and I will admit that every day it gets a little easier to make that change. But, I also have learned that healing begins with first learning what is necessary for the process of holistic restoration, and the way to cure the societal ills that generate poverty and hunger is first by beginning to learn the safest and most efficient methods to learning how to repair and restore the land.
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