Food and Faith

Food Films Galore

Thanks to friends in the sustainable ag world for the list below of films on the ever-popular topic of food. There are some additional ones on the Presbyterian's Food and Faith site. Plus, at the bottom of this post are some media databases and other film and book resources to choose from.

Remember. Consuming good food is not enough, help yourself and others to consume a healthy dose of good media too!

FILMS

THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN
A film that charts Farmer John’s astonishing journey from farm boy to counter-culture rebel to the son who almost lost the family farm to a beacon of today’s booming organic farming movement.

KING CORN
This is a twofold journey: the story of how two college buddies learned about their agricultural heritage, and the tale of how kernels of corn have insidiously worked their way into America's diet.

DECONSTRUCTING SUPPER  (PHP has this to lend out for church and community events)
A journey into the billion-dollar battle to control food production.

Why organic will feed the world - Final 9 & 10

This morning, Ginger Martin, entered the hall to the chanting of an elder along with 20 women holding woven plates like suns shining on the first day of the world. Small boys with antler-like sticks brought up the rear. The Pima leader welcomed the 550 of us gathered from all parts of the U.S. to this Food and Society Conference and talked about their victory in gaining control of the precious water of the Gila River which had been damned and stolen away over the decades. The Pima/Maricopa people had gained "ownership" of 52% of the water in Arizona through a recent ruling. Now, they were planning a resurrection of a proud and prolific farming culture.

Ginger mentioned the amazing development of four varieties of 60-day (not 90-day) corn that the Pima/Maricopa people had bred over time, and spoke of the tepary beans that represent the stars in the heavens. These traditional foods are part of the solution to dealing with the rampant diabetes that is found among the Pima ever since food rations were brought in and the diet shifted. The Pima/Maricop face great challenges, but they are full of hope and ambitious plans for a healthy farming future for their people.

Following are the two last reasons why organic, not GMOs, will feed the world.

9. Seed-saving

Seeds are not simply a source of food; they are living testimony to more than 10,000 years of agricultural domestication. Tragically, however, they are a resource that has suffered unprecedented neglect. The UN FAO estimates that 75 per cent of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost over the past 100 years.³⁶

Traditionally, farming communities have saved seeds year-on-year, both in order to save costs and to trade with their neighbours. As a result, seed varieties evolved in response to local climatic and seasonal conditions, leading to a wide variety of fruiting times, seed size, appearance and flavour. More importantly, this meant a constant updating process for the seed’s genetic resistance to changing climatic conditions, new pests and diseases.

Sacred Risk

I do not have (to the best of my knowledge) any DNA links to the Chinook people of the Pacific Northwest, nor to any other Native American peoples. I am, however, a daughter of Oregon where I spent over 4/5th of my life. Perhaps because I drank the water or perhaps because I camped and played and hiked in the fern-rich Douglas Fir forests and slept beside rain swollen streams or perhaps because I have for years numbed my feet when standing the cold Pacific Ocean swell that I have some understanding of Salmon as a sacred food. Not a complete understanding, not like the knowledge that the Chinook and others have – but enough to know that Salmon is indeed sacred.

King Corn

Coming soon are the final installment of Organic Versus GMO and more on the food crisis. In the meantime, KING CORN rules.

Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting the co-producers and stars of the documentary, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, at a pre-release showing at a Kellogg Foundation conference. (Don't you love the not unintentional irony of the King of Corn Flakes showing King Corn?) Not only is the film highly entertaining, it educates about the aristocratic status corn maintains in our U.S. and global food system.

A colleague from the Community Food Security Coalition, which is a PC(USA) partner and grantee of the Hunger Program, has written a great review of King Corn on her blog.

You can also visit the great King Corn site (with trailer, reviews and action items), the Corn Association Refiners Statement on King Corn, and the You Tube of King Corn. (PCUSA employees have had their You Tube and Web 2.0 sites blocked, so you are on your own with that last link. But know that your donations to the PC(USA) are not going for employees social networking habits!)

Feed the world? Organic will; GMO won't: 7 & 8 of 10

Ten and ten are a lot! I'm combining the last few so we can hear from other authors about the growing food crisis - what some have called "peak food," because of some parallels to Peak Oil. On that note, Anitra wrote a great piece about rising food prices last week with references to related articles.

Having lived in East Asia, where if you don't eat rice at a meal you don't feel like you've really eaten, I was distressed to find out that rice has increased in price by 74% between January and March of this year. On BBC (for those in Louisville, I don't mean the Bluegrass Brewing Company!) you can view video snapshots of the global rice supply and the impact on various countries.

At the same time, whether farmers employ organic and sustainable agriculture or corporate-owned and manufactured GMO approaches will greatly impact our world, in this case, the health of our bodies, the soil and our ecosystems. So, good luck with the UK spelling and read on!

Organic YES #7. Ecosystem impact

Farmland accounts for 70 per cent of UK land mass, making it the single most influential enterprise affecting our wildlife. Incentives offered for intensification under the Common Agricultural Policy are largely responsible for negative ecosystem impacts over recent years. Since 1962, farmland bird numbers have declined by an average of 30 per cent. During the same period more than 192,000 kilometres of hedgerows have been removed, while 45 per cent of our ancient woodland has been converted to cropland.

By contrast, organic farms actively encourage biodiversity in order to maintain soil fertility and aid natural pest control. Mixed farming systems ensure that a diversity of food and nesting sites are available throughout the year, compared with conventional farms where autumn sow crops leave little winter vegetation available. Organic production systems are designed to respect the balance observed in our natural ecosystems. It is widely accepted that controlling or suppressing oneelement of wildlife, even if it is a pest, will have unpredictable impacts on the rest of the food chain. Instead, organic producers regard a healthy ecosystem as essential to a healthy farm, rather than a barrier to production.

Feed the world? Organic will; GMO won't: 6 of 10

Get real! The profit motive MUST NOT be a rationale for poisoning ourselves!  So say thousands all over the country who are calling for a ban on Endosulfan. On February 19, U.S. groups sent a petition signed by 19,000 to the EPA calling for a ban to this nasty pesticide that is already banned by many countries. See the article on the Pesticide Action Network online magazine.

Also, find out how free trade agreements increase pesticide use on the PC(USA) Just Trade site. Plus there is a downloadable poster with 20 ways to protect yourself and your family from pesticides.

YES Organic #6. Pesticides

It is a shocking testimony to the power of the agrochemical industry that in the 45 years since Rachel Carson published her pesticide warning Silent Spring, the number of commercially available synthetic pesticides has risen from 22 to more than 450. According to the World Health Organization there are an estimated 20,000 accidental deaths worldwide each year from pesticide exposure and poisoning.
More than 31 million kilograms of pesticide were applied to UK crops alone in 2005, 0.5 kilograms for every person in the country.

A spiraling dependence on pesticides throughout recent decades has resulted in a catalogue of repercussions, including pest resistance, disease susceptibility, loss of natural biological controls and reduced nutrient-cycling.

Organic farmers, on the other hand, believe that a healthy plant grown in a healthy soil will ultimately be more resistant to pest damage. Organic systems encourage a variety of natural methods to enhance soil and plant health, in turn reducing incidences of pests, weeds and disease. First and foremost, because organic plants grow comparatively slower than conventional varieties they have thicker cell walls, which provide a tougher natural barrier to pests. Rotations or 'break-crops', which are central to organic production, also provide a physical obstacle to pest and disease lifecycles by removing crops from a given plot for extended periods. Organic systems also rely heavily on a rich agro-ecosystem in which many agricultural pests can be controlled by their natural predators. Inevitably, however, there are times when pestilence attacks are especially prolonged or virulent, and here permitted pesticides may be used. The use of organic pesticides is heavily regulated and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) requires specific criteria to be met before pesticide applications can be justified.

There are in fact only four active ingredients permitted for use on organic crops: copper fungicides, restricted largely to potatoes and occasionally orchards; sulphur, used to control additional elements of fungal diseases; Retenone, a naturally occurring plant extract, and soft soap, derived from potassium soap and used to control aphids. Herbicides are entirely prohibited.

NO GMO #6. Breeding resistance

Nature is smart, and there are already reports of species resistant to GM crops emerging. This is seen in the emergence of new 'superweeds' on farms in North America - plants that have evolved the ability to withstand the industry's chemicals.

A report by then UK conservation body English Nature (now Natural England), in 2002, revealed that oilseed rape plants that had developed resistance to three or more herbicides were 'not uncommon' in Canada. The superweeds had been created through random crosses between neighbouring GM crops. In order to tackle these superweeds, Canadian farmers were forced to resort to even stronger, more toxic herbicides. Similarly, pests (notably the diamondback moth) have been quick to develop resistance to BT toxin, and in 2007 swarms of mealy bugs began attacking supposedly pest-resistant Indian cotton.

10 reasons why organic can feed the world
By Ed Hamer and Mark Anslow,The Ecologist, March 2008

10 reasons GM won't feed the world
Mark Anslow,The Ecologist, March 2008

Feed the world? Organic will; GMO won't: 5 of 10

One conclusion from Anitra's reflections below is that food sovereignty, including greater self-reliance on one's own region and country for food security, is critical. Poor rice yields in places like Vietnam and China force those countries to limit exports. This translates into higher prices and less rice reaching the hungriest people in sub-Saharan Africa. In farming, these things happen. And so, countries must increase their food sovereignty (what is food sovereignty?) and oppose trade rules that treat food like any other commodity to limit the damage from inevitable weather or disasters. The issue of 'localization' below speaks directly to this and the danger of relying on long, fossil-fuel dependent supply chains.

YES Organic #5. Localisation

The globalisation of our food supply, which gives us Peruvian apples in June and Spanish lettuces in February, has seen our food reduced to a commodity in an increasingly volatile global marketplace. Although year-round availability makes for good marketing in the eyes of the biggest retailers, the costs to the environment are immense. Friends of the Earth estimates that the average meal in the UK travels 1,000 miles from plot to plate. In 2005, Defra released a comprehensive report on food miles in the UK, which valued the direct environmental, social and economic costs of food transport in Britain at £9 billion each year. In addition, food transport accounted for more than 30 billion vehicle kilometres, 25 per cent of all HGV journeys and 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2002 alone. The organic movement was born out of a commitment to provide local food for local people, and so it is logical that organic marketing encourages localisation through veg boxes, farm shops and stalls. Between 2005 and 2006, organic sales made through direct marketing outlets such as these increased by 53 per cent, from GBP95 to GBP146 million, more than double the sales growth experienced by the major supermarkets. As we enter an age of unprecedented food insecurity, it is essential that our consumption reflects not only what is desirable, but also what is ultimately sustainable. While the 'organic' label itself may inevitably be hijacked, 'organic and local' represents a solution with which the global players can simply never compete.

NO GMO #5. 'Frankenfoods'

Despite the best efforts of the biotech industry, consumers remain staunchly opposed to GM food. In 2007, the vast majority of 11,700 responses to the Government's consultation on whether contamination of organic food with traces of GM crops should be allowed were strongly negative. The Government's own 'GM Nation' debate in 2003 discovered that half of its participants 'never want to see GM crops grown in the United Kingdom under any circumstances', and 96 per cent thought that society knew too little about the health impacts of genetic modification. In India, farmers' experience of BT cotton has been so disastrous that the Maharashtra government now advises that farmers grow soybeans instead. And in Australia, over 250 food companies lodged appeals with the state governments of New South Wales and Victoria over the lifting of bans against growing GM canola crops.

10 reasons why organic can feed the world
By Ed Hamer and Mark Anslow,The Ecologist, March 2008

10 reasons GM won't feed the world
Mark Anslow,The Ecologist, March 2008

Everybody Look What's Going Down

The headline that grabbed my attention was posted on March 29th, 2008, High Rice Cost Creating Fears of Asia Unrest (New York Times).

The author, Keith Bradsher, writes from Hanoi, “The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world’s population, has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months. That has pinched the budgets of millions of poor Asians and raised fears of civil unrest.”

Reading this article I was reminded of another story also written by Bradsher several months earlier: A New, Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories. Bradsher highlights on how the price on cooking oil – oil in which to cook food – has also risen to levels beyond the reach of many who really do need the calories in their already short-changed diet. The switch to palm oil from trans-fat for cooking in the United States hasn’t helped. The price of palm oil alone has gone up 70%.

Anyone reading this blog, even us Americans, knows that the price of food is going up because we see it on the shelves for ourselves. Those who are involved with food banks also know that the prices of stocking the shelves is going up along with the need to fill in the growing gap between what food stamps can cover and the price totals at the head of the checkout line. But none of us are starving… (so far).

Feed the world? Organic will; GMO won't: 4 of 10

Water and climate are already huge challenges and they will likely be the central issues for this century. Organic farming can reduce water use tremendously, which also lessens the need for fuel for irrigation. Read on to learn about other links to climate...

YES Organic #4. Water use

Agriculture is officially the most thirsty industry on the planet, consuming a staggering 72 per cent of all global freshwater at a time when the UN says 80 per cent of our water supplies are being overexploited. This hasn't always been the case. Traditionally, agricultural crops were restricted to those areas best suited to their physiology, with drought-tolerant species grown in the tropics and water-demanding crops in temperate regions. Global trade throughout the second half of the last century led to a worldwide production of grains dominated by a handful of high-yielding cereal crops, notably wheat, maize and rice. These thirsty cereals - the 'big three' - now account for more than half of the world's plant-based calories and 85 per cent of total grain production. Organic agriculture is different. Due to its emphasis on healthy soil structure, organic farming avoids many of the problems associated with compaction, erosion, salinisation and soil degradation, which are prevalent in intensive systems. Organic manures and green mulches are applied even before the crop is sown, leading to a process known as 'mineralisation' - literally the fixing of minerals in the soil. Mineralised organic matter, conspicuously absent from synthetic fertilisers, is one of the essential ingredients required physically and chemically to hold water on the land. Organic management also uses crop rotations, undersowing and mixed cropping to provide the soil with near-continuous cover. By contrast, conventional farm soils may be left uncovered for extended periods prior to sowing, and again following the harvest, leaving essential organic matter fully exposed to erosion by rain, wind and sunlight. In the US, a 25-year Rodale Institute experiment on climatic extremes found that, due to improved soil structure, organic systems consistently achieve higher yields during periods both of drought and flooding.

NO GMO #4. Reliance on pesticides Far from reducing dependency on pesticides and fertilisers, GM crops frequently increase farmers' reliance on these products. Herbicide-resistant crops can be sprayed indiscriminately with weedkillers such as Monsanto's 'Roundup' because they are engineered to withstand the effect of the chemical. This means that significantly higher levels of herbicide are found in the final food product, however, and often a second herbicide is used in the late stages of the crop to promote 'dessication' or drying, meaning these crops receive a double dose of harmful chemicals. BT maize, engineered to produce an insecticidal toxin, has never eliminated the use of pesticides, and because the BT gene cannot be 'switched off' the crops continue to produce the toxin right up until harvest, reaching the consumer at its highest possible concentrations.

10 reasons why organic can feed the world
By Ed Hamer and Mark Anslow,The Ecologist, March 2008

10 reasons GM won't feed the world
Mark Anslow,The Ecologist, March 2008

A Decent and In Order Pantry

I was recently overcome with a need to organize the pantry in our kitchen. And by organize, I mean go out and buy a bunch of matching, attractive containers to store a range of staples.

The Official Reason was to try and control the brown flour moth infestation I’ve been struggling with off and on over the past few years. I call them brown flour moths – at least when I’m in a reasonable mood. I have other names for them but we need not repeat them here. Turns out there are about three different kinds, Indian, Mediterranean and plain old brown. They have three slightly different ways of doing the same thing: getting into flours, raisins, oats, nuts, etc, laying eggs which hatch larvae which eat the food and leave behind webbed clumps of stuff and then taking to flying around the kitchen again. Its more than startling to open a box or sack of something to discover their webbed presence. I’ve been known to scream.