Waaaaa Waaaaaaaaaa
The material in this post references a short article in Rural Papers (Mar.-Apr. 2009), the publication for the Kansas Rural Center. This article, in turn, cites an article in The Nation (May 4, 2009) which quoted from a document produced by the Mid American CropLife Association (MACA). MACA represents Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Crop Protection, and Monsanto. If you're tuned in at all to the state of affairs in agricultural chemical companies, seeing that list of names provokes a hackle-rising response. (Read a synopsis of the Nation article at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090504/noted )
I'm too cheap to subscribe to Nation magazine and too suspicious to sign in to read the free article in its entirety, but the gist of it is that MACA sent Michelle Obama a letter asking her to re-think the decision to plant an organic garden on the White House lawn. The prospect of this happening causes them to "shudder."
"Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family's year-round food needs. "
Can't you feel MACA's pain? They really care about all the nation's overworked parents.
What's obvious to people without an agri-chemical sales agenda is that a significant resurgence of interest in food quality and economy has unleashed a home gardening movement that leaves MACA companies out of the loop. These out-in-the-open shenanigans to try to interfere with a perfectly sensible idea-that of growing one's own food--don't look any more reassuring than the behind-closed-doors ones do.
If they're willing to take on the first lady of the United States of America, what chance does a poor farmer in India have?--whose former seed supply has been eaten-up by the likes of MACA companies, and who now must buy expensive seed from these same companies. The seed he buys does not produce well without expensive chemical inputs--fertilizers and pesticides--products these same companies are the sole source for. Suicides among farmers in India are up significantly.
Thinking about the chemical fallout of gardening gives me one more good reason for planting a big food garden this year. Not that any agri-chemical company will know about my garden. But they are smart enough to know that Michelle Obama's symbolic gesture is significant, and marks a trend that will challenge any company's sights on establishing a food production monopoly.
My little garden is really for us--not for Michelle Obama or against Monsanto and the like. But if some of the pain these companies have inflicted on others comes back to haunt them, than I consider home food gardening a well-directed effort for more reasons than I was aware of initially. And if it makes Michelle Obama happy, that's OK too. Kudos to her for having part of the White House lawn dug up for a garden. And kudos to MACA for publicizing the letter to Mrs. Obama--in all its reprehensible glory. In the light of day, the small-mindedness (at best) of their position will be obvious to sensible people everywhere. I can't believe they don't see this, and hide their maneuvering as they have often done in the past.
Several months ago I lay awake nights pondering food security issues. I think it's genetically programmed into wives and mothers to think seriously about this. Then, I concluded that productive home gardens utilizing locally adapted open-pollinated varieties and on-site fertility sources are as close as we can get to food security. If we can't grow a garden, we should actively support those living near us who do so, buying from them whenever possible.
I haven't gotten there yet on the on-site fertility sources, although I've done some of each of the things that I know to do to bring this about. Cover cropping, animal manures, and massive composting projects seem necessary for this to work well. But for now, I'm depending more on fertility in a bag than may be most ideal.
Seed companies in the US are becoming more consolidated all the time, some of them, as in foreign countries, bought out by Monsanto and its allies. I'm not sure that we will always have access to affordably-priced, suitable seed varieties. Hence the emphasis on open pollinated varieties from which to save seed.
Seed saving looks like a Herculean effort to me, and I am making only a small beginning this year by planting Super Sioux, an open pollinated tomato variety that sets fruit well in hot, dry weather. It seems like a good start for developing a locally-adapted tomato. My plan is to save seeds from the best of the Super Sioux tomatoes in several categories--earliness, size, flavor, resistance to disease, etc. and replant them next year. If a person does this repeatedly, eventually, the variety should be progressively better adapted to our local climate. I've chosen tomatoes because they have self-fertile flowers, unlike flowers in the cucurbit (vining crops) family that have separate male and female flowers and are pollinated by insects. In this process, all sorts of cross-pollination occurs, so that the following year's crops may produce some strange specimens combining the characteristics of a summer squash and a pumpkin, for example.
The seed saving effort seems made to order for a cooperative community effort. For example, one family might plant summer squash for two families, and share the produce and the seeds, while another family does the same for winter squash or pumpkins.
Meanwhile, because many good hybrid varieties are still readily available and reasonably priced (debatable, perhaps) I plant a lot of those varieties as well.
Think about it, and let me know if you have additional ideas or interest in a cooperative seed-saving effort. Seeing such an effort thrive would be sweeter than revenge.
I'm too cheap to subscribe to Nation magazine and too suspicious to sign in to read the free article in its entirety, but the gist of it is that MACA sent Michelle Obama a letter asking her to re-think the decision to plant an organic garden on the White House lawn. The prospect of this happening causes them to "shudder."
"Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family's year-round food needs. "
Can't you feel MACA's pain? They really care about all the nation's overworked parents.
What's obvious to people without an agri-chemical sales agenda is that a significant resurgence of interest in food quality and economy has unleashed a home gardening movement that leaves MACA companies out of the loop. These out-in-the-open shenanigans to try to interfere with a perfectly sensible idea-that of growing one's own food--don't look any more reassuring than the behind-closed-doors ones do.
If they're willing to take on the first lady of the United States of America, what chance does a poor farmer in India have?--whose former seed supply has been eaten-up by the likes of MACA companies, and who now must buy expensive seed from these same companies. The seed he buys does not produce well without expensive chemical inputs--fertilizers and pesticides--products these same companies are the sole source for. Suicides among farmers in India are up significantly.
Thinking about the chemical fallout of gardening gives me one more good reason for planting a big food garden this year. Not that any agri-chemical company will know about my garden. But they are smart enough to know that Michelle Obama's symbolic gesture is significant, and marks a trend that will challenge any company's sights on establishing a food production monopoly.
My little garden is really for us--not for Michelle Obama or against Monsanto and the like. But if some of the pain these companies have inflicted on others comes back to haunt them, than I consider home food gardening a well-directed effort for more reasons than I was aware of initially. And if it makes Michelle Obama happy, that's OK too. Kudos to her for having part of the White House lawn dug up for a garden. And kudos to MACA for publicizing the letter to Mrs. Obama--in all its reprehensible glory. In the light of day, the small-mindedness (at best) of their position will be obvious to sensible people everywhere. I can't believe they don't see this, and hide their maneuvering as they have often done in the past.
Several months ago I lay awake nights pondering food security issues. I think it's genetically programmed into wives and mothers to think seriously about this. Then, I concluded that productive home gardens utilizing locally adapted open-pollinated varieties and on-site fertility sources are as close as we can get to food security. If we can't grow a garden, we should actively support those living near us who do so, buying from them whenever possible.
I haven't gotten there yet on the on-site fertility sources, although I've done some of each of the things that I know to do to bring this about. Cover cropping, animal manures, and massive composting projects seem necessary for this to work well. But for now, I'm depending more on fertility in a bag than may be most ideal.
Seed companies in the US are becoming more consolidated all the time, some of them, as in foreign countries, bought out by Monsanto and its allies. I'm not sure that we will always have access to affordably-priced, suitable seed varieties. Hence the emphasis on open pollinated varieties from which to save seed.
Seed saving looks like a Herculean effort to me, and I am making only a small beginning this year by planting Super Sioux, an open pollinated tomato variety that sets fruit well in hot, dry weather. It seems like a good start for developing a locally-adapted tomato. My plan is to save seeds from the best of the Super Sioux tomatoes in several categories--earliness, size, flavor, resistance to disease, etc. and replant them next year. If a person does this repeatedly, eventually, the variety should be progressively better adapted to our local climate. I've chosen tomatoes because they have self-fertile flowers, unlike flowers in the cucurbit (vining crops) family that have separate male and female flowers and are pollinated by insects. In this process, all sorts of cross-pollination occurs, so that the following year's crops may produce some strange specimens combining the characteristics of a summer squash and a pumpkin, for example.
The seed saving effort seems made to order for a cooperative community effort. For example, one family might plant summer squash for two families, and share the produce and the seeds, while another family does the same for winter squash or pumpkins.
Meanwhile, because many good hybrid varieties are still readily available and reasonably priced (debatable, perhaps) I plant a lot of those varieties as well.
Think about it, and let me know if you have additional ideas or interest in a cooperative seed-saving effort. Seeing such an effort thrive would be sweeter than revenge.
posted by Mrs. I at
4:49 AM
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