Do Cowboys eat organic?

This weekend is the Pro Rodeo in Jackson County, just across the Freeway from us here in Central Point. The heavy favorite in the bronco bareback riding is the current World Champion cowboy. Heady stuff, at least for that culture that focuses on animal husbandry. For the rest of us that focus on other things like car repair, fishing, airplanes, wood products, or farming, not so much.

The rodeo sector advertises for our attention to support their fun, and hence for the chance to make $2.3 million like the ringer in this year's Pro Rodeo has in the past. And organic farmers advertise their Customer Supported Agriculture program to deliver fresh healthy produce right to your door. So how doth the twain meet? Do organic farmers sell anything to cowboys, and do organic farmers pay to see a rodeo?

This is a microcosm of some of the fundamental problems with using elected leaders decide very fateful issues such as the make-up of our food supply. Until recently, and after watching a video called 'Back to Eden,' I didn't know much about organic farming either. I'm a researcher of hot button issues too. So I'm thinking the average Joe or Jane doesn't really think about the bio-chemistry of food, unless they fall ill, and even then tend to just go the cut and medicate alopathic medicine route.

So I guess it does boil down to that we as a society need adults to decide things for us good little children. The next problem is that these adults are no different than the rest of us in that they have only decided to focus on the attaining of power. We really shouldn't expect them to seriously embrace any other ideology than their own. As a consequence, exhibitions such as the March on Monsanto across the Globe, and the Fishing Rebellion of 2012 on the Kuskokwim River in Alaska are just harbingers of things to come.

The following comments are from a correspondent in an area of Alaska that is seeing the runs of salmon seriously being depleted while factory trawlers throw tens of thousands of king salmon overboard dead every year. We recently discussed how organizations seek and groom employees that think like the corporate bosses: in all cases it is getting to be a particular ruthless type of individual they seek to promote their ends. The means become meaner all the time, with no end in sight.

"Organic produces more per acre at less cost and 100% more value.
http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/feb10/organic_corn_soybean_yields_exceed_conventional.php

People generally, outside the organically grown economy, are in the dark about viable alternatives to Monsanto.The fear of mass starvation in an overpopulated world has been an effective driver. Part of the economics of fear that are eroding our civil society.

Genetic crops are an idea, a belief system, that are best countered with another, scientifically sound path, with a lot of historical resonance."



And in another letter he said:

"I was thinking about "nutrasweet". If I recall correctly there were studies that made the FDA lean against giving it a pass for sales to the public. Turned into formaldehyde in your body, perhaps triggering autoimmune disease etc.

It gave Rumsfeld an early opportunity for a crime against humanity. He personally lobbied, & managed against all odds to get it approved.

Stevia,discovered & long used by native Americans, the dominant low calorie sweetener in other parts of the world,like Japan, was suppressed at the time in this country. Why? It couldn't be patented and nutrasweet could.

Now we're starting to see Stevia in supermarkets. Why? Nutrasweet's patent has elapsed?

The same principle applies with GMO's. You can't patent organic methods that don't require patented seed, herbicide, and fertilizer.

No agribusiness royalty payment. And unlike nutrasweet, and with the genetics of seed being constantly altered, no danger of patents lapsing. It would be interesting for a food economist to calculate the per capita cost of royalties on patented staples in our diet"

We don't have to be surprised that the bureaucrats, politicians, and researchers for both the food industry, whether it be food from the sea. or food grown on land, is  controlled by the money made by the dominant players in those sectors. The only question is what are we who eat from the earth, all the now and future CSA customers, or the sea, like the Western Alaska subsistence fishermen, going to do about it. How far can these dominant industry executives push the rest of us. How long can they hide behind the facade of "I'm just doing my job to maximize my company's profits." Well, there are tomes written about this, so I won't dwell on that. Getting back to the more local issue.

I once was a bank economist/loan officer in a food oriented commercial bank, so when I saw a similar institution  here locally I couldn't resist walking through their door to find the loan officer. Turns out he has been lending to farmers and ranchers in Southern Oregon for 33 years. That job, and the success of the borrowers, depends on good information. When at my bank in Alaska I was put in as 'Discovery Task Force' chairman to 'discover' more precisely the risks the borrowers, and hence the bank, faced in that lending environment. The local guy was no different, an eager student of risks and benefits. 

When I mentioned that the first organic farmer in Montana had sent me a clump of comfrey root to play with, he was all ears. Especially when I said there was an English Comfrey Association promoting the use, since they say it is 15 times more nutritious than alfalfa, especially when used for chicken feed. And that the plant flourishes here and tiny bits of root will turn into a mature several foot tall plant in mere months. 

So we got around to talking about the GMO controversy, which he said he couldn't comment on in an official capacity, since the Farm Credit System finances farmers of all stripes, all across the country. That system is about the size of Bank of America. We used to get our money to lend from the same place he gets his, the Spokane Bank for Cooperatives. Anyhow, he said he personally feels the Rogue Valley should stick with organics to pursue the niche market they already have a good foot in the door of. And that this region is too small to compete in the U.S. market with 'traditional agriculture' commodities.

About the same time, this guy had offered an accurate synopsis of the value of the organic sector of the local economy at a Rotary Club meeting in Ashland. But the plot takes a darker turn. It appears that some politician had been invited to address a weekly meeting of the GMO Free Jackson County Steering Committee. When they called the pol's office, a staffer said that they had a conflict with a previously promised appointment with "John Enge's Group."  

That was sure news to me, being one and the same person. The GMO Free Jackson County guy was really confused when I told him I had no group or any knowledge of a meeting with someone I had never had contact with. The caller was a seasoned Navy vet and visitor to 50 countries to look at agricultural production methods, but had missed the fact that the greed for power could come up with a 'phantom meeting' to get out of meeting real concerned citizens. In fact he was a little repulsed at the idea of 'black  ops.' Most of us are, but this is the politician's stock in trade. It sure appears that we are in a season where this trade is being turned against us in a most profound way. Mostly because we just rubber-stamp incumbents because nobody can learn anything concrete about any of the candidates from the newspaper or news programing for television.. 

This is all very serious stuff, especially when rats that eat GMOs develop tumors, and now GM wheat has been slipped into Oregon illegally. Oregon "is going to investigate;" by the same folks who allowed Syngenta, the Swiss bio-tech company, to plant GM sugar beets in the Rogue Valley with out anyone knowing about it.

You can't expect farmers to all automatically "work it out" like one local politician suggests. Just like fishermen, they will divide along economic planes and stay firmly rooted there. One of the reasons the Western Alaska Natives are losing all their salmon runs. And of course the Alaska State PR has it that all the salmon runs in the state are sustainable. Not.

To wrap up this rambling road, the organic folks can't depend on anyone but themselves. It's them against the bio-tech companies and their paid politicians, pure and simple. The odds are on their side with the possibility of educating untold numbers of people with hard facts, like this article on blood cell damage by GMOs. They already have over seven million page views on the Internet. One commentator said, the the bio-tech companys' greed is their vulnerability. 

The liability exposure for the biotechs is mounting now with Oregon wheat crops being illegally genetically modified. The growing of sugar beets in the Rogue Valley was illegal too: There was no public notice and the crops were planted within four miles of organic crops, against federal law. And our politicians and Farm Bureau people are cheerleading all this? Well, it certainly opens the door for many other candidates to enter public service.