Category Archives: genetically modified

Saving the local farm

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This posted from the organic farmers group:

From: “Lindsey Lusher Shute, National Young Farmers Coalition” <info@youngfarmers. org>
  Date: September 24, 2013 12:51:34 PM CDT
  Subject: National Day of Action to Save Local Farms
  Help us mobilize to change FDA food safety rules.
 
 
  Dear Supporter,
 
  The FDA’s proposed food safety rules—written for large, corporate farms—threaten to shut down small farms and cut off America’s access to local food. Think: waiting nine months to harvest after manure application or grazing; water testing once a week; spending $5k-35k extra to comply. The list goes on and on.
 
  We have only a little over a month to submit comments to the FDA and win new rules that will protect food safety, local farms and organic agriculture.
 
  On Sunday, October 20th, we ask you to join a National Day of Action to Save Local Farms. To make it a success, we need you to sign up to host a letter writing party, tell us how the new rules will affect your farm and help us spread the word! Get started now:
 
  The FDA will only consider personal responses to their draft rules – no form letters or petitions – so we need you to help us deliver a huge stack of hand written letters to DC.
 
  Sign up now to host a letter writing party! All you have to do is gather your friends and neighbors to sit down and write to the FDA on or around October 20th. When you sign up to host we’ll mail you posters, plain language summaries of the rules for reference, ideas about how to respond, and some party planning advice. We’re also available to help you troubleshoot, reach NYFC’s network and talk through the details on two upcoming Google Hangouts.
 
  Visit the Food Safety action page or contact Tracy at tracy@youngfarmers. org to get more info and to sign up.
 
  To help NYFC respond to the FDA as a network and to help everyone understand how the rules will affect real farms, we need your input.
 
  Please take a few minutes now to take our farmer survey.
 
  Let’s work together to ensure the Food Safety rules protect a healthy food system, not compromise it.
 
  Events
 
  PROVIDENCE, RI: Young Farmer Nights Farm Tour – September 24th
  Join other young farmers for a tour of City Farm in Providence, RI. Contact youngfarmernight@ gmail.com for details.
 
  ARUNDEL, ME: Southern Maine Young Farmers Coalition Kick-off Mixer! – September 28th
  Come learn how to build a high tunnel at Frinklepod Farm at 12pm and join us for a potluck celebration with Allagash beer, Green Bee Soda, live music, a bonfire and fellow young farmers! 5pm at Neverdun Farm in Arundel. Click here for more info.
 
 ATLANTA, GA: Southeast Young And Beginning Farmer Alliance Lunch Mixer – September 28th
  Join us for a series of monthly post-market lunches on Saturdays. The first one is at the Wrecking Bar Brewpub in Atlanta, GA.
 
  FRANKFORT, KY – Kentucky Beginning Farmers Conference- October 5th
  A one-day statewide event for beginning farmers, including workshops, great food, and networking opportunities. Stay tuned for more details!
 
  OKANOGAN, WA: Washington Young Farmers Mixer – October 6th
 Fourth annual WAYFC Mixer, to be held at Filaree Farm, in Okanogan, WA. Details to be released soon. Visit the Washington Young Farmers Coalition website for more information.
 
  BURLINGTON, VT Vermont Young Farmers Coalition Tractor Maintenance Workshop and Mixer at the Intervale Center – October 6th
  Join VYFC in gathering for a tractor maintenance workshop and mixer. Starts at 3pm. Email Brittany at bdooling@uvm. edu to get involved.
 
  SEBASTOPOL, CA: North Coast Young Farmers Guild Meeting – October 8th
  Join other farmers from the North Coast for the monthly Guild meeting at GrowKitchen, 245 Ferguson Rd. Sebastopol, CA.
 
  JOHNSTON, RI: Young Farmer Nights Farm Tour – October 10th
  Join other young farmers for a tour of Tour of Freedom Food Farm in Johnston, RI. Contact youngfarmernight@ gmail.com for details.
 
  PALISADE, CO: Beginning Farmers and Ranchers of Mesa County Hoe Down and Harvest Party – October 13th
  An end of season celebration with the Beginning Farmers and Ranchers of Mesa County! Food donated by Field to Fork CSA and Roan Creek Ranch. Wine provided by Mesa Park Vineyards. Apples for bobbing, pumpkins for picking. Live music, fun and games. Contact Brooke at pricebrooker@ aol.com for more info.
 
  WILLITS, CA: Mendocino County Young Farmers Guild Meeting – October 15th
  Get together with other young farmers in Mendocino County for this inaugural guild meeting! At the Willits Grange Hall.
 
  AUSTIN, TX: Texas Young Farmers Coalition Meetup – October 16th
  Blackstar Coop. Come join us for our monthly- 3rd Wednesday farmer meetup! Beers and conversations abound. Contact info@texasyoungfarm ers.org for more info.
 
  AUSTIN, TX: Texas Young Farmers Coalition Farm Tour – October 19th
  Join us as we head to A+S Farm and Ranch for a skill building workshop on sheep. Sean will cover grazing,processing and shearing topics among others. Contact info@texasyoungfarm ers.org for more info.
 
  JAMESTOWN, RI: Young Farmer Nights Farm Tour – October 22nd
  Join other young farmers for a chicken processing training with Pat’s Pastured at Windmist Farm, Jamestown, RI. Contact youngfarmernight@ gmail.com for details.
  CONNECTICUT: Farmland Access and Affordability Forum – October 25th
  The purpose of the forum is to brainstorm strategies to address farmland access and affordability in Connecticut and to engage an expanded coalition of key individuals, businesses, organizations and agencies in developing a common agenda around these issues. For more information contact Susan Mitchell, New Connecticut Farmers Alliance, at smitchell123@ yahoo.com.
 
  SOUTH CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA: Young Farmers Mixer – October 26th
  In the Harrisburg area, details TBA. Contact Emily at emilycgb@gmail. com to get involved!
 
  SONOMA COUNTY, CA: Sonoma County Young Farmers Guild Meeting – October 27th
  Get together with other young farmers in Sonoma County for this inaugural guild meeting!
 
  FALKVILLE, AL: Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network Young and Beginning Farmer Potluck – October 27th
  Join other young and beginning farmers for ASAN’s potluck! Click here for more info.
 
  AUSTIN, TX: First Annual Moontower Agricultural Coop Harvest Party – November 9th
  Grab your ticket and join farmers and farmer friends alike for a dinner and homebrew beer feast. Other events include Farmer Olympics and a panel discussion involving inspiring people in the Texas farming and food community. Contact info@texasyoungfarm ers.org for more info on tickets.
 
  In Solidarity,
 
  Lindsey, Wes, Sophie, Kate, Eleanor, Tracy & Debbie
 
 
  follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | follow on Google Plus
 
  Copyright © 2013 National Young Farmers Coalition. All rights reserved.
 
NATIONAL YOUNG FARMERS COALITION
  PO BOX 292, Tivoli, New York 12583

Pregnant mothers, mercury, and toxins

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Well, this   sounded refreshing by the title.  But I’ll hold my applause until they actually put their money where their mouths are and get off their duffs.

This sentence is why I have my doubts:

“What we’re trying to get is the balance between awareness and alarmist,” said Dr. Jeanne Conry, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

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We are waaaay past alarm.  If you’re not alarmed, you haven’t been paying attention.  This is decades past due!  They knew this back in the sixties, so spare me the tender steps and get on it already.  And don’t act all concerned with women’s health when you’re willing to poison them with vaccination….and of course, you’re not willing to treat poor women with whatever they can pay you.

I cannot believe they are recommending fish, especially catfish, tuna and salmon.  This report states catfish are okay, but I have read in other reports that they are high in mercury.   Fish can be high not only in mercury but toxins from pesticides [PDF} and other farm run off.  I don’t go along with the statement that this is good news in regards to standards for drinking water.  I cannot drink tap water because of the contaminants. Note that they are STILL finding DDT decades after being banned.   And because of “budgetary restraints” glyphosate (Monsanto’s RoundUP)  was not measured.   This should alarm everyone.

…and they’re asking the American Chemical Society for its input? A group that makes its living off of chemicals that are toxic to us and destroy our immune systems?  Seriously??

And in the we-are-our-own-worst-enemy category–the report states there are high concentrations of chemicals from home lawn and garden use in streams, etc. in the urban setting.  I’ve told the story before, but it bears repeating–there was a couple who had the perfect yard–grass was unnaturally green and not a “weed” in sight.  They sprayed for weeds frequently, I’m told.  They had not one but two dogs die of cancer.  Yep.

So…yeah, we have our own culpability for contributing to the toxic soup in pursuit of a perfect yard.  And perfect looking vegetables and fruits…who cares if they’re nutritious or not….kind of like our state of society right now, eh?  We judge more by the outside packaging than by what is on the inside….

Okay, I’m off my soapbox.  For now.

 

 

Monsanto bulldozer keeps on rollin’

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While we’re looking the other way at issues that should be non-issues….another sneaky thing in the House version of the Ag part of the funding of the government is to continue the Monsanto Protection Act.  Yep.

From Organic Consumers:

URGENT: House Passes Monsanto Protection Act. Ask Your Senators to Stop It!

Dear Supporter,

On Friday, September 20, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the Continuing Resolution (H.J.RES.59), a bill to keep the government running through December 15. The bill will force a showdown with the Senate because it includes a provision to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

But the Continuing Resolution is controversial for another reason. It extends the Monsanto Protection Act, officially referred to as the Farmers Assurance Provision, a law that gives biotech firms immunity from federal prosecution for illegally growing GMO crops.

Please call your Senators today and ask them to pass a clean version of the Continuing Resolution, one that doesn’t extend the Monsanto Protection Act.

You can call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected with your Senator. Or find individual senators’ phone numbers here.

You can say:

“I’m calling to ask the Senator to oppose the Farmers Assurance Provision, sometimes referred to as the Monsanto Protection Act, and to vote no on any bill, including the Continuing Resolution, which includes the provision.”

If you want to go into more detail, you can add:

“New GMOs aren’t regulated enough as it is. Even the American Medical Association complains that the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t safety test new GMOs for human health risks before allowing them on the market for human consumption. The AMA last year recommended that GMOs undergo mandatory premarket safety testing.

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture does conduct a mandatory review of new GMOs, but not for human health risks.

“The USDA is notorious for ignoring the impact new GMOs will have on organic and non-GMO farmers who experience serious economic losses when their crops are contaminated.

“In recent years, the courts have had to step in and stop the planting of new GMOs. The courts did this by requiring that the USDA complete a thorough Environmental Impact Statement before approving a controversial crop. The Monsanto Protection Act strips the court of its constitutional power to review executive branch decisions, which means the courts can no longer intervene in order to protect the public. Now, the USDA can rubber-stamp new GMOs and, even if serious harm could result, the court can’t stop them from being planted.

“I hope the Senator will work to stop the Monsanto Protection Act from being extended past September 30 and vote against any bill that includes it.”

Background
The Monsanto Protection Act was first passed in March, when it was quietly and without debate slipped into the earlier version of the Continuing Resolution, a bill to fund the government through September 30. As Politico reporter David Rogers explained in his Monsanto Protection Act exposé, “Big Agriculture Flexes its Muscle,” the Monsanto-friendly rider was never voted on. Rogers, a seasoned political reporter, described how the Monsanto Protection Act became law “with little or no floor debate and in a period of turmoil.”

The backroom deal that made the Monsanto Protection Act law generated a public backlash. It was the subject of a Daily Show episode. And it helped spawn a worldwide March against Monsanto, reported on by the New York Times.

Because the Senate never voted on the Monsanto Protection Act, we don’t know where all of the senators stand on the issue. But here’s what we do know:

•    Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) conspired with Monsanto lobbyists to write the law.

•    Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), chair of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, publicly apologized for letting the Monsanto Protection Act slip through. But, she said, she had a responsibility to avoid a government shutdown.

•    Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), tried for a vote to repeal the Monsanto Protection Act during the Senate Farm Bill debate.

•    Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) blocked Merkley’s amendment.

•    Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D- Mich.) promised Merkley that the amendment wouldn’t be renewed without a vote.

Can Sen. Stabenow keep her promise? We’ll find out this week when the Senate debates the new Continuing Resolution. While the focus will be on the House’s provision to defund Obamacare, we need every senator to know that it is not acceptable to include the Monsanto Protection Act in the new bill.

Please call your senators today. Ask them to reject extending the Monsanto Protection Act and vote no on the Continuing Resolution unless this blatant giveaway to the biotech industry is removed.

Thank you!

— Alexis and the team at OCA

Organic Consumers Association

6771 South Silver Hill Drive – Finland, MN 55603 – Phone: 218-226-4164 – Fax: 218-353-7652

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Environmental stuff

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Minke whale washes ashore in Portuguese Cove, Nova Scotia.  Why on Earth are they not taking the whale to someone who can analyze why it died?  They’re more worried about the smell of the carcass than finding out what caused its death. Mercury?  Runoff from chemical farms? Genetically modified organisms? Oil? Pharmaceuticals washed out to the ocean?

Greenpeace protests with mechanical polar bear. Pretty cool exhibit, eh?

 

When is a public forum not a public forum?

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When it involves ag committees who don’t allow the public to speak, but allow a corporate representative to spew their biased views.

Note how the Monsanto rep said she wanted a discussion but opponents to GMO’s were not allowed to speak.  They were characterized as “emotional”….now, how can they preemptively dismiss them if there has been no discussion?    From what I saw on the video, these folks were being respectful.  There were no reports of them disrupting the meeting, or interfering with the Monsanto toadie, so where do they come off saying these folks were emotional?

…and what, exactly, does “emotional” mean?  A definition, please…

Grandmothers to Grandmothers

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This story covers the non-coverage of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.  The question of diet and gluten intolerance and poor immune response popped into my head, naturally…and I have to wonder about it with what is going on with these folks.

Why are the grandmothers okay?  That is, why are they healthy while the younger generations becoming ill? It struck me while watching the move “Philadelphia” with Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks that Tom Hanks’ partner in the movie, Antonio Banderas, was not infected with AIDS.  Why?  Why were some becoming ill and others not?  What weakened one’s immune system?  What strengthened the others?

I see this over and over with each passing generation.  Our DNA is altered by chemicals/toxins in the environment, becoming weaker with each generation.

Here’s a really good piece on AIDS in Africa and all the devastation.  It’s an older piece, but lots of good background here.   The first video on here is only six minutes, but wow does it pack a lot in.  The second video is equally informative about the TB connection.

It is disheartening that vitamins are dismissed in this article.  Granted, the person pushing them might have been looking for profits, but without extra vitamins, I would not be recovering.  When the body is toxic and the immune system is under attack, the ability to absorb vitamins is seriously impaired, making it imperative for the person to take extra amounts to counteract it.  Diet probably has more do to with recovery than any drug.  The body performs miracles every day with chemical-free food, chemical-free water, and chemical-free air.  To dismiss these factors does a grave disservice to the ill.  Drugs alone cannot cure someone.  This approach by Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) bothers me in that they are pushing Western medicine which places little importance on diet and promotes vaccination.  I also wonder about the genetically modified food in Africa and its impact on the gut and therefore, their health and ability to fight off AIDS.

So…I couldn’t shake the feeling of the stealth push for more drugs from Big Pharma…and I started getting that “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” feeling…

….so I went searching to see if there was a link….yup.

My first thought was to delete everything I had written…but no, there is good info here, but I just ask my dear readers to keep the drug pushing stuff in perspective.

Here’s a piece by greenpeace on warning the Africans of GMO’s.

There was plenty of non-GM food available including surpluses in other parts of Africa, but the White House ignored appeals by the World Food Programme and the EU to donate cash to African countries to buy surplus food from the region which would have supported local farmers rather than US-based GM multinationals.

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At the time Dr Chuck Benbrook, a leading US agronomist and former Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture for the US National Academy of Sciences said: “There is no shortage of non-GMO foods which could be offered to Zambia by public and private donors. To a large extent, this ‘crisis’ has been manufactured – might I say, ‘engineered’ – by those looking for a new source of traction in the evolving global debate over agricultural biotechnology. To use the needs of Zambians to score ‘political points’ on behalf of biotechnology strikes many as unethical and indeed shameless.”

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As  a side note~~I was watching TV recently where they talked about a huge white diamond taken out of Africa, worth I think he said $35 million.   I cynically told my sister, “and that money went right back to Africa, didn’t it….?”

David Vs. Goliath

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….or in other words, everyday farmers versus Monsanto.

It makes no sense whatsoever that farmers who want nothing to do with Monsanto are being charged with patent infringement when their fields become contaminated.  If anything, they should be able to sue Monsanto for trespass.

 

Forcing chemo

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This is outrageous.  The child does not want it.  The parents do not want it.  But a gov’t bureaucrat has once again decided they know what’s best for someone else better than they do.

I would want to know their genetic background–most Amish came from Dutch/German stock…so it is possible that this family has the dreaded gluten intolerance and her immune system might be unable to fight off the cancer due to an inflamed gut.  Not to mention whatever chemicals she has been exposed to from industry and farming.

But…no…the medical nazi’s will force her to take a highly toxic chemical that may or may not cure her of cancer.  And they will turn their heads if by chance she is cured of this cancer, but later on develops yet another, more aggressive form of cancer due to the toxic chemicals they are putting into her now.

Like I have said many times–if I am stricken, I won’t go the chemo route, but try to fight it naturally and let nature take its course.

No one should be forced to take any medical treatment.  Ever.

 

The Letter

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This has to be one of the hardest blogs I’ve written to date….

I saw this in the Canadian news….but didn’t read it…just reading the lead-in made me want to skip it.    It hits a little too close to home because this is more prevalent than people understand.

I’m not sure if this boy has been stricken because of vaccines/heavy metal poisoning, but given how many children are affected after receiving vaccines…I’m wondering…

…hatefulness towards the vulnerable/different is  a phenomenon we mercury poisoned folks have noticed.  At our sickest, we are very vulnerable and people pick up on that subconsciously.  Now, there are good folks who realize you’re not well and they may or may not help, but they don’t make things worse by taking advantage of your situation.  I think of them as angels walking the Earth.  Truly, I was becoming sicker from mercury as I dealt with the aftermath of the bitter divorce…a very confusing and stressful time…and when I thought I couldn’t put one foot in front of another, one of these angels would say or do something kind…

Others, however, whom I characterize as feeding the dark, also pick up on that vulnerability …and attack.  It’s kicking someone when they’re down.  It is the most vile, hateful thing I’ve ever experienced or hope to experience.

Many members of the group have remarked on being abandoned by family.    Their families don’t believe they have mercury poisoning, and they just need to “snap out of it”.   It’s a sad and bewildering time for them.   You might recall  the mercury poisoned young lady whose family had abandoned her and she ended up living out of her car.  She lost hope of ever getting well and committed suicide.

As you will see with the article’s comments, some put forth that the woman who wrote the letter is sick herself.  Perhaps.  It wouldn’t surprise me.

I hope that if this child is mercury toxic (and possibly Celiac) that his mother will be led to that as I was….

…and that the letter writer, if also stricken, will find it, too.

But something tells me that she will not…