Organic Farming Gains Momentum with New OFRF Report and Growing Congressional Support

Today's Thursday stock market has crashed 371 at 1:25pm we're sliding into the depths of economic hell. Rush Limbaugh says Everything's OK. Carry on.

Finally, some Good news. :-)

This be goin' on the Facebook. Thank you for posting.

We needed a report for this?! Most of us with any sense have been practicing this for a long time.

This is actually good news and gives me hope for a better Farm Bill in 2012. And it is greatly needed because sustainable agriculture (agroecology, biodynamics, permaculture) has been greatly destroyed over the last decade due to industrial agriculture, mainly the GMO seeds of chemical turned “bio ag” company Monsanto and other companies like them. And this is a clear and present threat to the rich biodiversity of this planet that has sustained all life for centuries.

Saving seeds is the cornerstone of civilization. It is what makes farming and agriculture such a miraculous action, in that from a tiny seed can spring forth hundreds to thousands of varieties of rice, potatoes, peas, corn, etc. that provide the world with sustainable choices. GMOs do not do that. Genetically modified organisms are manmade laboratory organisms that combine genes from different species to be inserted into the genes of plants to produce certain traits these bio ag companies merely use to make profit. In the case of Monsanto, its “BT” corn and cotton is a combination of a bacteria forcefully inserted into the gene of the plant’s cell wall in order to invade it or “make it sick” in order to force it to combine with that bacteria in order to make the corn or cotton resistant to their Round Up pesticide which you must purchase with their patented seeds yearly as you are prohibited from saving them.

This has led many farmers across America, South America, and Europe into debt, including farmers in India who are committing suicide due to the high debt they incur to purchase seeds and pesticides from banking loan sharks only to see their crops fail. This is a game of genetic roulette using humans and other species as guinea pigs for profit that we cannot afford to allow to go any further as its process has no set guarantee of these organisms they genetically mutate expressing those desired traits everytime or not mutating into something harmful to the planet.

Over the last decade since these organisms were let out into our environment this technology has proven to be very destructive to the biodiversity of our planet through transgenic contamination of traditional crops, yields that have not proven to be significant in comparison to organic crops and current independent testing that has proven it has also been destructive to ecosystems and health as well. Currently, these unregulated GMOs are found in 60-70% of the processed food in America and are unlabelled as to their GMO ingredients due to the FDA giving them the distinction of GRAS (generally regarded as safe) and using the term “principle of substantial equivalence“ as politicaleze to say, we are letting these organisms slip through the cracks to please Monsanto even though tests coming out now show that BT corn (a registered pesticide) causes adverse behavioral effects in bees, immune system problems, infertilit, and cell damage from Round Up pesticides.

The developing world is now also at the mercy of being forced to accept this unproven technology due to the fact that resistance in Europe is so high and American markets have already been saturated. However, countries in the developing world are standing strong on the whole regarding non acceptance of GMOs and hopefully that will hold. Freedom to speak out is also at stake in this and environment and democracy go hand in hand as well in leading us to a sustainable future.

Our population is rising, resources are becoming scarcer and climate change looms large across the globe. Feeding people of the world under these conditions is becoming harder and harder in part due to the fact that sustainable agricultural methods that are endemic to specific parts of the world that farmers know best are disappearing under the shadow of corporate domination from the seed to the plate. This is indeed a dire warning to all of us that if we do not pay more attention to what is most important we will lose our freedom and control to grow what we want and need in a natural way. A way that brings carbon and nutrients back to the soil instead of depleting them and does not take away our ability to feed the world due to overexposure of our environment to herbicides and pesticides that kill waterways and toxify our food.

We have a fight on our hands to not only preserve our environment but our very way of life. A life made rich by the biodiversity of a beautiful, amazing, natural world. And it is a fight that is now taking place in countries all over this world and in the U.S. it is is just as much a battle for food sovereignty as anywhere else. And now we know it can be won.