Organic Integrity

One of the early ‘miracles’ of genetic engineering was the Flavr-Savr tomato.  The edited gene enabled the tomatoes to be picked at peak ripeness and then the ripening process would be stopped and the tomato would be yummy. As always with genetic engineering, there were unforeseen complications. When the first year Flavr-Savr tomato crop in 1994 was shipped to supermarkets across the USA they arrived in terrible condition.  Nobody had tested them on a road journey. The slightest vibration on the truck journey and the tomatoes became inedible mush.  What to do?

The entire tomato crop was harvested, pureed and canned in an attempt to cut the horrendous losses.  Now who would buy the cans?  No American supermarket would touch the stuff, but Safeway and Sainsbury’s bought the lot.  The cans were proudly labelled ‘Made with Genetically Engineered Tomatoes’ and sold at 2/3 of the price of Italian non-GMO tomato puree.  It was great PR for GMOs: ‘Wowser! thought the consumer - these GMO tomatoes are going to knock loadsamoney off my grocery bill, so I’ll have more to spend on necessities like beer, fags and cheap disposable clothing!’  

Calgene, who launched the Flavr Savr, went bust and taken over by Monsanto.   Around the same time the introduction of GMOs into Europe was a done deal.  Directorate General Agri, or ‘DG Agri,’ the EU Commission department (who really decide what the rules are in the rotten and corrupt Common Agricultural Policy) had already promised the biotech barons they needn’t worry. 

When we realised what was happening Richard Austin of Rainbow Wholefoods organised the wholefood wholesalers and retailers to dig in their heels against GMOs.   With the Soil Association we lobbied to require that GMO ingredients be labelled.  As Safeway and Sainsbury’s had already proudly done it on front of pack, this was a relatively easy win and DG Agri let it pass, not realising it was a fatal strategic mistake until too late.  GMOs were dead in the water.  If a consumer saw ‘Genetically Engineered’ on the label they would put it back on shelf, no matter how cheap.

In September 1999 Patrick Holden and I met with the top people of Monsanto under the auspices of the Environment Council. Monsanto wanted to understand how everything had gone so horribly wrong with their planned GMO blitzkrieg into Europe. 

Patrick and I explained organic principles and how they were at total variance with the ideas of genetic modification.  I kept a note of the meeting that included this line:

This opening exchange was the first and most fundamental revelatory experience for them.  They had never really understood these most basic organic principles.

It was appalling how little they understood about organics.  Once they realised what an obstacle to the rollout the organic world represented they took us seriously.

Subsequently there has been an extended campaign of disinformation about organic food running with various fallacious arguments: we would have to cut down rain forests to get the extra land to grow organically; e.coli O157:H7 in lettuces is higher in organic food; organic farmers use terrible pesticides; GMOs are safer than organic; you can’t trust organic certification.

Forbes Magazine was a good vehicle for this kind of crap.  Dr. Henry I. Miller has written about how organic food is a ‘deceitful, expensive scam’ and ‘the colossal hoax of organic agriculture.’  Forbes finally fired him when they found out one of Miller’s articles was written by Monsanto.  Miller helped Philip Morris organise a global campaign against tobacco regulations and wrote that nuclear radiation is good for your health.  He wrote a blistering attack on the World Health Organisation when they pronounced Roundup a ‘probable carcinogen.’

Burson Marsteller are the PR company that Monsanto use whenever they have an environmental disaster - they are expert at making bad stuff look ok.  And at making good stuff look bad.   When there was an anti-GMO demo in Washington they hired, for a $25 honorarium, counter-protestors with signs saying: ‘Biotech Saves Children’s Lives.’  

There’s a well organised misinformation campaign out there about how you can’t trust organic certification.  Meanwhile the Soil Association has been asked by China to certify organic producers there because of its globally-respected integrity.  A leading oats supplier sued the Soil Association, backed by Defra and another certification body, because the Soil Association refused to accept documentation on oats that tested for pesticide residues at levels well above ‘spray drift.’  Now all certification bodies must sample for pesticides and have the right to reject products that fail the test.  Belt and Braces. Food You Can Trust.   

Agribusiness

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When a business sector sees a rash of mergers and acquisitions, it's for one of two reasons, growth or decay. The organic food industry has seen a lot of acquisitions by companies anxious to get in on the ground floor of the 5% annual growth rate in organic food and regenerative farming. Meanwhile, on the dark side, Monsanto is facing takeover by Bayer, not for any positive reasons, but because they are both looking into the abyss. Merger is one way to survive when the farmers they are competing for are spending less. Farmers aren't stupid - they can do the maths. When they see diminishing returns on their investment in seeds and agrichemicals, they reduce their spending. Normally in a situation like this the agribusiness operators would go to the EU or Washington and just wheedle more subsidies out of the national purse, bleating about food security while encouraging biofuels to prop up soy, rapeseed and corn prices. Who cares if you're destroying the earth's precious farmland at 30 football fields a minute? If you were a big landowner, you'd feel entitled to being paid to do this. That's what us mugs are here for. Now that the EU even subsidises grouse moors you'd think the gates were wide open. But the money is running out. Half the EU budget goes to farmers, much of it British money going via Brussels to France. The US spends $350 billion a year propping up agriculture in the US, channeling money through farmers to agribiz.

Let's take a look at who's eating whom. The potash fertiliser price has halved in the past 3 years, from $450 a tonne to $219. So in Canada, Agrium and Potash, two of the world's biggest potash producers, are merging in a desperate attempt to keep afloat while they wait for a bounce in price that may never happen. Bayer and Monsanto are both facing plunging sales and profits. Monsanto have the seed and Bayer have the pesticides to go with them. But again it's desperation. They hope that innovation will save them, but innovation is not something you find in mega corporations.   GMOs are losing support - US farmers never wanted them but were denied choice after Monsanto bought up all the seed companies and forced GMOs down their throats.

The whole ethanol biofuels scam is blowing up, too. It was never even vaguely 'carbon neutral' - it takes more energy to produce a litre of ethanol than the energy you get by burning it. It's more energy efficient to just mix corn with coal and shovel it into a power station, but that would be too obvious and repulsive.

Chem China has taken over Syngenta. They make the herbicides that Syngenta's GM seed can resist. Nobody in China will eat GMO rice but they'll tolerate pork or chicken fed on GM maize. But the real prize for Chem China is Syngenta's strong presence in US market: they're after Bayer/Monsanto's piece of the diminishing pie. Their US competitors are suddenly bleating about food security.   Two other agrichemical giants, Dow and DuPont, also merged recently. They're all like a bunch of drunks spilling out of the pub after a good night out, trying to keep each other from falling down.

If you're a farmer, what do you do? You used to be able to play off one agrichemical giant against the other, but soon you'll just take what you're given. Or look for an alternative and boy, what an alternative is on the horizon!

When the French '4 per 1000 initiative' succeeds at the Marrakech COP22 climate conference in November every hectare of organic farmland will be set to get over €150 a year in carbon credits. A hectare of chemical-dependent farmland will have to pay for its carbon footprint and that could cost close to €100 per hectare.   It won't happen overnight but the French have fixed a price of €56 per tonne for carbon, to take effect by 2020. The world will probably follow, even the US.   If you were a government that was facing huge annual costs to subsidise farmers with money that flows through their bank accounts to Dow/DuPont, Bayer/Monsanto and Chem China/Syngenta and you could instead just let the carbon markets transfer the money from fossil fuel power stations direct to organic farmers, what would you do? Keep on propping up a dying industry or finally recognise that organic food, when the carbon is priced in, is actually cheaper than the degenerative kind that is destroying our available soil at the rate of 30 football fields per minute? (I can't repeat this often enough)

Governments have been holding back for quite a long time because of the immense political power of the agrichemicals industry and of the landowning fraternity. They passionately hate socialism in all its forms, until it comes to their welfare payments.

It's time for a change. We need to bring freedom to farming. Carbon pricing that encourages regenerative farming instead of degenerative farming is the way forward. Organic is good for you and the climate, too.

End of the road for Monsanto?

When we lived in Omaha we’d drive through the countryside up to Sioux City past endless fields of corn.  Along the roadside were signs with the name of the seed company who supplied their seed, mostly ‘Pioneer’ or ‘DeKalb.’   The seed company salesmen were local guys who had gone to school with the farmers and were known and trusted.  They’d buy you a cup of coffee and a piece of pie and arrange to take you on a fishing trip to Canada.  So in1996 when Monsanto paid a fortune for the DeKalb seed company it bought all that intergenerational love and trust.   In 1997 Monsanto bought Holden’s Foundation Seeds, who produced the parent seed that most of America’s corn is bred from.  At Iowa State University, Professor Neil Harl took a look at the prices Monsanto was paying and calculated that they were paying 2 to 3 times market value on the basis of sales and profits.  His conclusion?  Monsanto’s strategy was to gain monopoly control of the seed supply in order to increase their prices and profits.  Monsanto’s patent on Roundup ran out in 2000, so they needed to lock farmers into using it before cheaper alternatives flooded the market.

Sure enough, by 2000 US farmers had no choice – their favourite seed varieties were now only available Roundup Ready and could only be grown with Roundup.  Monsanto had America’s farmers by the short and curlies.

Once they had America under their thumb they went to work on Argentina, where they grow their seed corn to sell in the US, as well as soybeans.  This year in Argentina 30,000 doctors called for Roundup to be banned because of the horrific epidemic of disease  it had triggered in farming regions.  More recently the WHO rated Roundup as a ‘probable carcinogen.’  Within days not a garden centre in Holland or France stocked Roundup.

In their latest  financial statement, Monsanto reveals that it is losing $5 million a day.  You don’t need a degree in Economics to know that’s not sustainable for very long.  Their world seems to be falling apart rather quickly.

In the US, for all the crap about ‘feeding the world’ things are going pear-shaped. 40% of America’s GMO corn gets converted to ethanol to be compulsorily mixed with gasoline, feeding Fords instead of people.  The oil industry hates ethanol – they are being squeezed enough by the Saudis without having to compete with subsidised bio-fuel.  But without ethanol, half of America’s farms would go bust. Corn prices are currently 50¢ a bushel below break even.  Farmers can’t afford to pay inflated prices for Monsanto’s GMO corn and Roundup, so sales are dropping.  Roundup-resistant ‘superweeds’ are now infesting half of America’s farms, refusing to die despite a huge increase in herbicide applications and the bringing out of retirement of pesticides like 2,4-D that had been removed from the market because they cause cancer.  What an unholy mess.

Monsanto recently ambitiously tried to take over Syngenta, their main competitor, but that deal fell apart – both companies face the awful reality that their R&D isn’t coming up with new products that work – like drug companies they depend on patented medicines to protect inflated profit margins.

In September the New York Times revealed that Monsanto bribes scientists to make claims for GMOs that are unsupported by evidence.  Nobody will believe a man in a white coat again who touts the benefits of GMOs without wanting to check his bank account. 

In 1999 Patrick Holden and I had a meeting with Hugh Grant (Monsanto’s CEO) and other Monsanto executives under the guidance of the Environment Council, who sought to reconcile our views on GMOs.  My notes of the meeting show Patrick and I actually had to explain what organic farming meant.  Monsanto had no idea of organic principles and asked us to repeat this as they felt they needed to understand it properly.  They knew we opposed GMOs but just thought we were stupid Luddites.

Monsanto is running out of road:  hired liars in white coats can’t fool anyone any more; tobacco-style Roundup poisoning lawsuits beckon; farmers can’t afford to pay high prices for seed and chemicals that don’t work;  resistant weeds and insects refuse to die; country after country worldwide is declaring itself GM-Free; the demand for labelling of GMOs in the US is reaching a climax and now Wall Street is losing interest in phoney biotech claims.

Genetic engineering was the great hope for industrial agriculture – it would solve all the problems that pesticides and chemical fertilisers had caused.  It didn’t happen.  Instead, smart companies like Rijk Zwaan in Holland are using genomics to naturally breed stronger, healthier plants than anything from Monsanto or Syngenta. 

E F Schumacher wrote: “Modern man…talks of the battle with Nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle he would find himself on the losing side.”   Nature’s allies have fought for 20 years against the GMO takeover attempt – let’s hope that we are finally on the winning side.

War and Peace

Back in 1993 when the world was waking up to the market potential of organic food Simon Wright put together a technical book called The Guide to Organic Processing and Production that cost £75 (a lot of money for a book in those days) which was essential reading for anyone who wanted to cash in on the coming organic boom.  I wrote the Introduction, a long explanation of what organic was, where it came from and why it was the future.  I wrote "The difference between conventional farming and organic farming is the difference between war and peace.  Conventional farmers wage war on nature using their armoury of chemicals to keep her at bay while they take as much as they can get. Organic farmers attempt to apply a creative process of conflict resolution whereby nature volunteers her bounty in return for a balancing contribution towards her well-being.  E.F.Shumacher wrote: 'We speak of the battle with Nature, but we should do well to remember that if we win that battle, we are on the losing side.'"

So when I read Maria Rodale's recent open letter to President Obama I was 100% behind her.  Maria is the granddaughter of J.I. Rodale, the man who convinced Lady Eve Balfour to call their enlightened way of farming 'organic' and who founded Rodale Press. It's the world's leading health and wellness publisher (Organic Gardening, Prevention, Women's Health, Men's Health and books like The South Beach Diet) and Maria is CEO.  Her letter refers to a cartoon of a little girl speaking to Obama - his speech bubble says "We are going to war with Syria because they poison little children" and the kid replies "So why don't you bomb Monsanto?"

Like many people in the organic movement, Maria Rodale campaigned in support of Obama's election campaign.  She was subsequently dismayed at his unthinking support of Monsanto's interests.   Now she is horrified to see that he seems no more than a puppet of the military-industrial complex that needs wars in order to use up the weaponry that keeps arms factories going.  With 3500 cruise missiles at $2 million each, the US is well-stocked, but that means that Raytheon, who make Tomahawk cruise missiles, will have to shut their factory if they don't get more orders.  So the military has to use them up.  Sound familiar?  Monsanto needs to sell herbicide, that's where their profits come from.  If farmers make peace with nature and find non-poisonous ways of dealing with weeds, coexisting with them and protecting biodiverity, then the bottom falls out of Monsanto's market.  It's the same with GM - designed to allow increased use of ever more deadly herbicides and to contain poisons that kill insects on contact... until the weeds and bugs develop resistance.  Then they use stronger poisons.  Now Wall Street is pouring money into pesticide companies as their sales boom to farmers for whom the GM crops no longer work.

The Organic Trade Board and the Pesticide Action Network have shown that the amount of pesticide residues we and our kids consume has doubled in the past decade - unless we choose organic.  We know that pesticides can trigger adverse health reactions and that long-term exposure is undesirable.  But the fact is that American and British kids are 'collateral damage' in the war against weeds and bugs just as Pakistani kids are 'collateral damage' when a drone blows up a village because a terrorist might be there.  In Vietnam a US officer famously said: "We had to destroy that village in order to save it."   

Our 'village' is the global community.  It is being torn apart by unnecessary wars fought for fictitious reasons but leaving behind real corpses, devastated landscapes and psychologically damaged ex-soldiers whose suicide rate exceeds their death rate in battle.  The war against nature using pesticides and genetic modification, leaves behind devastated landscapes and (in India) devastated farmers whose suicide rate exceeds any historic comparison.  

It's time to stop the killing and to fight on the side of nature.  Instead of making imaginary enemies let's all fight together against global warming, which no amount of genetic modification or explosive weaponry can stop.  We only have one planet to live on and we are destroying life on every level, from the tiniest microbes in the soil to entire communities of people in whose lives we have no business to interfere.  Living organically means being committed to peaceful coexistence with nature - it's in everyone's ultimate best interest to shut down the arms trade's endless war against people and to shut down the pesticide industry's endless war against nature.   Let's use the trillions they waste each year to make the Earth safer for future generations by waging war on carbon dioxide emissions instead.