Barren Spring
- added August 03, 2008
- 11 responses
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- Vierotchka
- added this
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- related topics
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- Environment (6326)
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- GMO (64)
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- GM Foods (38)
- Book Recommendations (7)
- Transgenic (5)
By Bonnie Azab Powell
01 Aug 2008
One of the most encouraging things about the sustainable-food movement is how effortlessly it crosses traditional political-party, religious, ethnic, and other lines. The right to good, clean, and fair food, to borrow Slow Food's shorthand, seems to unite people who'd never otherwise find themselves chatting at the same party: Home schoolers and dreadlocked hippies, libertarian DIYers and heartland moms.
But there are little pockets of polarization where brawls can break out. One of them is the so-called elitism of such food. The biggest hot-button issue by far, though, is that of transgenic crops. The food movement's Christian wing opposes it for religious reasons, the Berkeley brigade for dogmatic ones, the moms out of health fears. Those with science or technology backgrounds, however, tend to see genetically modified organisms as just another tool in the how-we-are-going-to-feed-the-world toolbox -- and tend to get pretty impatient with those who fear them.
In her new book, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, Claire Hope Cummings marches through the middle of these often reflexive con and pro positions in search of a more nuanced big-picture view. An environmental lawyer for 20 years, including four spent with the USDA, Cummings now reports regularly on agriculture and the environment. She has also farmed in California and in Vietnam. These experiences inform her book, which chronicles how transgenic seeds came to market; how their corporate backing has affected farmers, biodiversity, and agricultural sovereignty; and what their unfettered spread may mean for humankind.
It's not a happy picture. Just as Rachel Carson opened Silent Spring with the allegory of a town that woke up to find all the birds gone silent, Cummings said she considered starting Uncertain Peril with a scene in which everyone goes out to check their spring gardens, only to find that nothing has grown. Recently Cummings stopped by my house in Oakland, Calif., (yes, on the Berkeley border) for a chat conducted at her usual breakneck pace.
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Click on the pic for the rest of the article and for the in-text links.
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- Vierotchka
- 4 months ago
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As she said, "We were never given a choice.", when it came to "GMO" output and consumption.
You can't possibly get more criminal than that...unless, of course, you start wars under false pretense. -
Fake food effects us all regardless of politics, religion, etc. and our right to know what we are eating is at the core of Democracy.
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I don't know how the crops are doing this year? Just observing my own back yard it looks pretty bleak for nature to me. We usually have birds all over the place. Our neighbor feeds and houses them, and we have trees everywhere. Even the grackles are gone. The barn swallows that torment my pets aren't there? Every summer we have a half dozen big brown and yellow spiders build big webs in the yard. There are none. When our wisteria bloomed we usually have honey bees all over it. This year you could count on one hand the honey bees we saw then. We have a street in our town named yellow jacket. They build nests all over and are a nuisance. NONE. My husband planted a butterfly garden. We have seen maybe a half dozen butterflies since spring. We don't use pesticides. Where have the bugs, and birds gone? We have four huge tomato plants that produced four tomatoes this year, they bloom and nothing happens after that. Are we going to see famine up close and personal? I blame HD TV signals as the final insult to our environment. The GM foods poison them but those signals are finishing them off. Are we next?
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- Marilynn_Murray
- 4 months ago
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looks like a great book. I have a list of people I should get this for in my family.
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Thanks for sharing about this book. I intend to read it. It is terrifying how much is changing and how rapidly. I am not giving up and books like this make environment and organic food a #1 priority.
It isn't me I fear for but my 6 granddaughters all under the age of 11.
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Same here, I have been on a reading frenzy.
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The Dallas area is not really a farming area. Does anyone live in an agricultural area, can you check and see how the farmers, bee keepers, etc., are doing? I'm wondering if we are having crop failures as well as the loss of the birds and bees? Will we not know until it is absolute disaster?
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This sounds like a must read. This is what starts educational movements. We have to start with our grocery store managers. Tell them that we will not buy GMO food . If they want to play games with labeling then it's up to us to find out where our representitaves stand. Hopefully, not in the pockets of big corpooate lobbiest.
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- bluestranger
- 4 months ago
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Thanks for the post. I can't wait to read the book..
hope everyone had a wonderful weekend , -
GMO seems to be a big lie. It usually always yields LESS than good old mamma nature ever did, and it only seems to give control to whatever greedy corp. is putting it out there. BAN GMO! Well, maybe not "ban" since there may actually be benefits that aren't known, or just aren't being tapped out of greed. Maybe just MANDATORY LABELING is the answer.
