Cook Organics, Not the Planet
Considering the upcoming battle to keep GMO crops out of the Rogue Valley and save the long established organic farmers, consider this site for in-depth information on the subject. I haven't done much writing on Southern Oregon issues of public concern lately. I live here and want to rectify that. I have had a hard time letting go of my interest in not letting the 'big box boats' get all the fish in Alaska and destroy what they don't want or can't legally catch. It's a mess for coastal communities, who are loathe to fight back. There are more people fighting back again Sygenta, and the head of the Farm Bureau here in the Valley.
Folks in the Rogue Valley and adjacent valleys have been innovating in agriculture for a hundred and fifty years, and with Washington D.C. speaking the words, 'austerity measures,' the movement needs more attention. Look at the flight of city folks in Greece to the country, to their agrarian roots, to food security. And one company and a single farm "expert" can undo the whole process? We all know how easily one 'expert' can be influenced by a big rich self-interested corporation.
Sygenta is a bio-tech ag company and had been buying up farm land in the Rogue Valley to plant GMO sugar beets to sell to the likes of Hersheys to put in their candy bars. Except for sale in England, that is, where consumers and farmers demanded and got laws to disclose GMO ingrediants in food products. Read the articles in the link above to discover how 21 big food companies met secretly to defeat the GMO labeling Bill in California. And I definitely don't like the tone of one Jackson County Commissioner who when asked about his thoughts on letting GMO crops be grown in the County said, "Now, we don't want to pick a fight with the big boys."
That's the same kind of logic that now has 70% of the Bering Sea king crab, snow crab and white-fish being processed and marketed by the Japanese. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens famously said on the Senate floor, "You have to understand that Japan is a lot closer to Alaska than Washington D.C." Forget the growing jobs, the big money is in the processing and marketing. If you let the big companies in, they will buy up all the land, grow whatever they want and send the products out of state, along with the value and the higher paying jobs that value pays for.
A friend of mine in Kodiak, Alaska was about the first organic farmer in Montana at one time and says when sugar beet production started up in the are where he was, everything else stopped. It's nothing but GMO sugar beets now. (I've learned recently that the Sygenta was forced to plough under it's sugar beets in Jackson County, Oregon until the referendum in 2014. Of course, their hit men in Salem have introduced legislation to make County referendums on this subject junior to State regulations.) Those pesky locals don't know how much money they are standing in the way of earning for a couple of big corporations.
The fight will be carried, by the organic farmers though, since they suffer immediate and visible loss when they have to plough under their crops like thy have been. Even if corporations are people, they don't have a right to abridge their rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in such a blatant fashion. What isn't so blatant is the malise that settles on a region later as the value is extracted from it and sent afar as only a collonial mentality can do. I'm very sensitive to and knowledgeable about this kind of thing, being from Alaska, the great colony of far flung interests since the Russians owned it.
Besides the economic holocaust that could follow approval of GMO crops in Southern Oregon, evidence is mounting that the European studies are correct. Which is why Europe, like most of the rest of the world, either disallows growing GMO crops, or makes food producers label their products accordingly. The big bio-engineering firms are headquartered in the U.S. and have pulled rank on the public to date. But here's the other thing. The GMO crops have a built in virus.
If the Jackson County Commissioners have some information that nobody else does, to give them the confidence that these viruses won't mutate or directly cause harm, then God bless them. But if they are wrong and they allow GMO crops in like they are doing, I'll be praying for their souls when all hell breaks loose. Or even if one fragile old lady or sick child succumbs to the assault on his or her system.
This discussing wouldn't be complete without a mention of my health improvements after giving up on gluten. Wheat is not the wheat of "amber waves of grain" that we might think it is. It has been hybridized so many times in the last few decades that it is like a grain field with a crew cut. Wheat stalks only grow to about 18 to a little over 20 inches tall now. Granted, wheat will grown in a drought and produces 10 times more edible grain. But what did we get really? There was tiny amount of a chemical in heirloom wheat that acted on the opiate center of the brain to make you feel good. After countless hypridizations that timy amount is a huge amount and caused the average wheat eater to consume 440 more calories a day. I've heard people say they just cant stop eating a loaf of french bread until it's all gone. There ia a scientific reason for that that's not all about their willpower.
They say there are over 200 symptoms of gluten intolerance, like it turns to fat directly, passing go and most other beneficial effects that powered the Roman army to march all over the 'known world.' It's even linked to schizophrenia now. Pass the Ritalin please. The point is that you aren't going to hear from the medical community on GMO crops, just like they don't weigh in on gluten intolerance in humans. I admit I'm a little sensitive on these subjects since I was diagnosed as gluten intolerant by a Naturopath two years ago, and I'm 63 years old.
Pisses me off a little that no MD ever suggested a link between my skin conditions and wheat consumption. Since I've cut out the wheat my acne acne and boils disappeared, my guts work like clockwork, I sleep through the night, and my mind is clearer, Well, I think I'm thinking clearer anyway. Hard to tell with all that wild Viking blood floating around in me. Another malady of wheat eating is peripheral neuropathy, or numbness of the skin. This came on me much more noticeably three years ago in Alaska when we were restoring a ship out on anchor in the winter. we were baking a lot of bread on-board. That's what got me going to Dr. Popp in Woodburn for a nutritional screening.
I might as well relate, also, that a cardiac physician wrote a book called 'Wheat Belly' on wheat and the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Guess what, there is a connection. His research started because of the stress on the heart by all this. The word is getting around pretty good now. Just like there are 17 states enacting banking regulations to allow state banks like North Dakota has. And yeah, don't rely on the the major media for news that will help YOU.
The last item of business for now is the citizens' initiative forcing a vote on allowing GMO crops in Jackson County. The vote will be in the primary election the spring of 2014. What we don't want is a repeat of the Proposition 37 debacle in California. We may not be able to prevent a well timed flurry of advertising by bio-tech companies, greatly benefiting the local media, but we can make sure a county clerk or other official isn't part of the problem for democracy.
The Organic Consumer's Union reports: "Washington may be getting a lot of buzz for its GMO labeling bill, but Oregon is also a hotbed of activity in the fight against GMOs. Citizens in Jackson County have completed their signature-gathering drive for a countywide GMO crop ban. The initiative will be on the May 2014 ballot. Citizens in four other counties are hard at work on similar county-level GMO crop bans.
But if Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry have their way, those local bans may be moot. Lawmakers have introduced two bills in the Oregon legislature (SB633 and HB3192) that would take away the rights of Oregon citizens to act at the county level to control their local food economies. SB633 and HB3192 would make the regulation of "seed-related" matters the sole prerogative of the state. Counties would have no say.
The good news is that most of the GMO-related legislation introduced this year is positive. One particularly important bill would restore needed protections for seed and vegetable farmers in the Willamette Valley whose businesses are vulnerable to contamination from genetically engineered canola production.
You can support the fight against GMOs by using our action alert system to send letters to your state legislators or, if you have time, by traveling to Salem on Monday, March 18, to attend a lobby day. Here are the details:"
Folks in the Rogue Valley and adjacent valleys have been innovating in agriculture for a hundred and fifty years, and with Washington D.C. speaking the words, 'austerity measures,' the movement needs more attention. Look at the flight of city folks in Greece to the country, to their agrarian roots, to food security. And one company and a single farm "expert" can undo the whole process? We all know how easily one 'expert' can be influenced by a big rich self-interested corporation.
Sygenta is a bio-tech ag company and had been buying up farm land in the Rogue Valley to plant GMO sugar beets to sell to the likes of Hersheys to put in their candy bars. Except for sale in England, that is, where consumers and farmers demanded and got laws to disclose GMO ingrediants in food products. Read the articles in the link above to discover how 21 big food companies met secretly to defeat the GMO labeling Bill in California. And I definitely don't like the tone of one Jackson County Commissioner who when asked about his thoughts on letting GMO crops be grown in the County said, "Now, we don't want to pick a fight with the big boys."
That's the same kind of logic that now has 70% of the Bering Sea king crab, snow crab and white-fish being processed and marketed by the Japanese. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens famously said on the Senate floor, "You have to understand that Japan is a lot closer to Alaska than Washington D.C." Forget the growing jobs, the big money is in the processing and marketing. If you let the big companies in, they will buy up all the land, grow whatever they want and send the products out of state, along with the value and the higher paying jobs that value pays for.
A friend of mine in Kodiak, Alaska was about the first organic farmer in Montana at one time and says when sugar beet production started up in the are where he was, everything else stopped. It's nothing but GMO sugar beets now. (I've learned recently that the Sygenta was forced to plough under it's sugar beets in Jackson County, Oregon until the referendum in 2014. Of course, their hit men in Salem have introduced legislation to make County referendums on this subject junior to State regulations.) Those pesky locals don't know how much money they are standing in the way of earning for a couple of big corporations.
The fight will be carried, by the organic farmers though, since they suffer immediate and visible loss when they have to plough under their crops like thy have been. Even if corporations are people, they don't have a right to abridge their rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in such a blatant fashion. What isn't so blatant is the malise that settles on a region later as the value is extracted from it and sent afar as only a collonial mentality can do. I'm very sensitive to and knowledgeable about this kind of thing, being from Alaska, the great colony of far flung interests since the Russians owned it.
Besides the economic holocaust that could follow approval of GMO crops in Southern Oregon, evidence is mounting that the European studies are correct. Which is why Europe, like most of the rest of the world, either disallows growing GMO crops, or makes food producers label their products accordingly. The big bio-engineering firms are headquartered in the U.S. and have pulled rank on the public to date. But here's the other thing. The GMO crops have a built in virus.
If the Jackson County Commissioners have some information that nobody else does, to give them the confidence that these viruses won't mutate or directly cause harm, then God bless them. But if they are wrong and they allow GMO crops in like they are doing, I'll be praying for their souls when all hell breaks loose. Or even if one fragile old lady or sick child succumbs to the assault on his or her system.
This discussing wouldn't be complete without a mention of my health improvements after giving up on gluten. Wheat is not the wheat of "amber waves of grain" that we might think it is. It has been hybridized so many times in the last few decades that it is like a grain field with a crew cut. Wheat stalks only grow to about 18 to a little over 20 inches tall now. Granted, wheat will grown in a drought and produces 10 times more edible grain. But what did we get really? There was tiny amount of a chemical in heirloom wheat that acted on the opiate center of the brain to make you feel good. After countless hypridizations that timy amount is a huge amount and caused the average wheat eater to consume 440 more calories a day. I've heard people say they just cant stop eating a loaf of french bread until it's all gone. There ia a scientific reason for that that's not all about their willpower.
They say there are over 200 symptoms of gluten intolerance, like it turns to fat directly, passing go and most other beneficial effects that powered the Roman army to march all over the 'known world.' It's even linked to schizophrenia now. Pass the Ritalin please. The point is that you aren't going to hear from the medical community on GMO crops, just like they don't weigh in on gluten intolerance in humans. I admit I'm a little sensitive on these subjects since I was diagnosed as gluten intolerant by a Naturopath two years ago, and I'm 63 years old.
Pisses me off a little that no MD ever suggested a link between my skin conditions and wheat consumption. Since I've cut out the wheat my acne acne and boils disappeared, my guts work like clockwork, I sleep through the night, and my mind is clearer, Well, I think I'm thinking clearer anyway. Hard to tell with all that wild Viking blood floating around in me. Another malady of wheat eating is peripheral neuropathy, or numbness of the skin. This came on me much more noticeably three years ago in Alaska when we were restoring a ship out on anchor in the winter. we were baking a lot of bread on-board. That's what got me going to Dr. Popp in Woodburn for a nutritional screening.
I might as well relate, also, that a cardiac physician wrote a book called 'Wheat Belly' on wheat and the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Guess what, there is a connection. His research started because of the stress on the heart by all this. The word is getting around pretty good now. Just like there are 17 states enacting banking regulations to allow state banks like North Dakota has. And yeah, don't rely on the the major media for news that will help YOU.
The last item of business for now is the citizens' initiative forcing a vote on allowing GMO crops in Jackson County. The vote will be in the primary election the spring of 2014. What we don't want is a repeat of the Proposition 37 debacle in California. We may not be able to prevent a well timed flurry of advertising by bio-tech companies, greatly benefiting the local media, but we can make sure a county clerk or other official isn't part of the problem for democracy.
The Organic Consumer's Union reports: "Washington may be getting a lot of buzz for its GMO labeling bill, but Oregon is also a hotbed of activity in the fight against GMOs. Citizens in Jackson County have completed their signature-gathering drive for a countywide GMO crop ban. The initiative will be on the May 2014 ballot. Citizens in four other counties are hard at work on similar county-level GMO crop bans.
But if Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry have their way, those local bans may be moot. Lawmakers have introduced two bills in the Oregon legislature (SB633 and HB3192) that would take away the rights of Oregon citizens to act at the county level to control their local food economies. SB633 and HB3192 would make the regulation of "seed-related" matters the sole prerogative of the state. Counties would have no say.
The good news is that most of the GMO-related legislation introduced this year is positive. One particularly important bill would restore needed protections for seed and vegetable farmers in the Willamette Valley whose businesses are vulnerable to contamination from genetically engineered canola production.
You can support the fight against GMOs by using our action alert system to send letters to your state legislators or, if you have time, by traveling to Salem on Monday, March 18, to attend a lobby day. Here are the details:"
posted by Alaskacafe at 12:15 PM
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