- Details
- Hits: 1670
July 25th 2021
Clark Johnson’s film Percy stars Christopher Walken as Percy Schmeiser, the real-life Canadian farmer falsely accused by Monsanto of growing their patented seeds. This slow burning thriller recreates the real events based around the 1998 court battle between Percy and the multinational corporation in true David and Goliath style
In his insightful and intelligent portrayal of the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, Christopher Walken plays up the personal moments of his life: his intimate relationship with his carefully cultivated seeds, his wife, his son, his grandchild and his community.
Percy Schmeiser’s problems began in 1998 when Monsanto claimed his canola harvest (rapeseed) was grown from patented seed containing a genetically modified gene which makes the plant resistant to their powerful pesticide Roundup. Tests on canola samples obtained from Percy’s fields without his permission confirm his crops are contaminated with the gene. According to Monsanto, the money from his harvest and all his painstakingly saved seeds belong to them.
Percy tells the court he has not had a failed crop in fifty years because he always saved and planted his own seeds, like his father and his father before him. His witnesses say a split sack containing Monsanto’s seeds could have blown from his neighbour’s truck as it passed Percy’s fields. Or, that during a raging storm, he inadvertently took in windblown plants containing the patented seeds from his neighbouring fields. The court’s verdict is that no matter how the company seed got into Percy’s crops, he is obliged to pay Monsanto the money from his harvest, his saved seeds, and legal fees totalling $105,000.
- Details
- Hits: 3592
13th May 2017
Jane Goodall, a leading primatologist, conducted a 50 year survey of chimps in Tanzania. Now a Dame and recently named one of the world’s top 100 important scientists of all time, she has turned her attention to the Genetic Engineering debate.
Jane Goodall is concerned about the effects of genetically modified crops, dedicating a chapter to the subject in her books Seeds of Hope (2005) and Harvest of Hope (2013). Her concerns intensified when she saw farmers in Africa and Asia experiencing problems with a bacteria called “bt” (bacillus thurungenesis) inserted into a gentically modified crop.The crops were failing because the insect pests developed a resistance to the insecticide inside the plants. But non-target species of butterflies and bees were being harmed instead. And, there are other problems on farmlands in Africa, Asia and USA plagued by superweeds caused by the horizontal transfer of genes from GM crops to native weeds, growing out of all proportion and impossible to control or contain. Dr Goodall condemns the plight of farmers like Percy Schmeiser http://samburcher.com/articles/gm-food/39-who-owns-life-not-monsanto.html who was intimidated for taking legal action against GM crop manufacturers Monsanto when contaminated crops and superweeds spread onto his land.
At the launch of lawyer-turned-activist Steven Druker's book, Altered Genes and Twisted Truths for which Goodall has written the introduction, she recalled the independent scientific studies on rats that developed tumours as well as kidney and liver malfunctions when fed a diet of GM crops (See the independent studies of Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini, Irina Ermakova and Arpad Pusztai). She expressed her concern about Roundup, the world's top selling herbicide, also used in agriculture as a crop drying agent and an over-the-counter garden weedkiller. Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides and spray-resistant crops have played havoc with the physiology of lab rats as well as sows and piglets on farms. (See Farmer Pederson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZYiEsPVLTw) Glyphosate is banned in several countries, including Sri Lanka, because of high rates of kidney disease in farmers. Glyphosate was recently the subject of an International Tribunal at the Hague and found to be harmful to human health and the environment. http://samburcher.com/articles/agriculture/128-roundup-facing-its-judges.html
- Details
- Hits: 2994
1st February 2015
Seedy Sunday festival is the UK's biggest and longest-running community seed swap event [1]. This year as many as 3000 people came along and about 10,000 packs of seed crossed the seed swap tables. Given the boom in growing your own, it’s understandable that so many people are expressing concerns about a proposed new EU law that threatens swapping seed, growing heritage varieties and even saving your own seed from year to year.
Caroline Lucas MP for Brighton Pavilion and Britain’s first Green MP, has raised this threat to civil liberties with the Environment, Food and Farming Minister several months ago. She asked George Eustice to oppose the obligatory registration of seed varieties and to support voluntary rather than compulsory registration and testing for all seeds that are not GM, patented or hybrid. Since then the EU’s proposals have been amended, but not for the better. In fact they now represent an even greater threat to sustainable biodiverse agriculture and consumer choice [2].
In particular the plans further concentrate the EU’s seed market into the hands of just a few corporations, whilst exemptions from the regulations for small scale seed swaps wouldn’t protect Brighton’s Seedy Sunday. Caroline Lucas has written to DEFRA to stand up for gardeners and farmers that want to grow heritage varieties and exchange seeds.
- Details
- Hits: 2107
10th January 2015
As it entered its 6th year this week, the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) brought together 650 farmers, growers, scientists and economists from across the globe for two days of talks, debates and hands on workshops, demonstrating a growing demand to challenge the status quo in agriculture.
Over recent years, the conference has steadily been gaining a reputation amongst the farming community for its strong practical, grassroots focus, but this year represented a real “coming of age” for the event. With science playing such a key role in every aspect of today’s food production, each of the major farming themes was underpinned by the presentations of research experts from both the UK and abroad.
Dr. Elaine Ingham, world renowned microbiologist and soil scientist, opened the conference by highlighting the vital importance of the life of the soil. She demonstrated how, through paying careful attention to key factors that influence “good” soil biology, farmers can reap the benefits of healthy plants by reducing their fertilizer and crop protection bills.
She made explicit the distinction between farming soil and farming dirt. The difference being that soil is a complex web of micro-organisms that protect plants from disease by maintaining aerobic bacteria and alkaline pH. The presence of living organisms keeps nutrients in the soil and builds structure. Farming dirt means that the chemicals are doing all the work; the pesticides are killing all the beneficial bacteria, and the soil quickly becomes compacted. “It’s about getting the biology back into the soil,” she said.
Livestock took centre stage on the second day of the conference, with Mark Eisler (Professor of Global Farm Animal Health at Bristol University) presenting a fascinating analysis of key reports such as “Foresight” and the UN’s “Livestock’s Long Shadow” which have strongly influenced the Government’s Sustainable Intensification policy. Eisler highlighted the role that pasture plays in sequestering carbon concluding that there is a good case for supporting extensive livestock systems such as pasture-based ruminant production as one of the foundations of sustainable land and resource use.
A lively debate between George Monbiot, journalist and author, and The Sustainable Food Trust’s began with its Director Patrick Holden asking humanity’s ultimate question, “What is our higher purpose on this planet?” He answered from an organic farmers’ perspective by saying we must replace chemical farming and preserve biodiversity by producing food through mixed farming, crop rotation and ruminants to build the soil, which he described as “a vast organ of digestion.”
Patrick Holden recommended reducing the amount of grain fed to cattle for red meat production and asserted their essential role is digesting cellulose in the grass phase of crop rotation. Beef and lamb are the most sustainable livestock using the Alan Savory method, he said and mooted putting the cow at the fulcrum of farming, a suggestion suited to the city of Oxford, which has the Ox at the centre of its’ coat of arms.
Next up was Richard Young, policy director of the Sustainable Food Trust who went further with his soil analogy by calling it “the stomach of humanity,” and tying it to collapse of civilizations. He said that soils are degraded everywhere and in 160 countries 52% of all soils have moderate to severe degradation and one third of topsoil is already washed away. Every minute 23 hectares of soil are lost to crop production, much of it taken by large corporations for short term profit.
Richard Young warned that we may only have enough soil for between 60-100 harvests in the UK unless we radically re-think our use of oilseed rape (the spuriously sunny looking yellow fields at the side of the motorway) which is eroding soil and insect populations. In a proper crop rotation there should be grass instead of oilseed rape. He prescribed two fields of wheat and one of grass, not two fields of wheat and one of oilseed rape.
Scientists have overestimated the carbon in our top soil. Only grass can put carbon back into the soil and only compost and deep root systems can stabilize it, Young explained. We rely on ancient humus for healthy soils: one gram of humus can hold twenty grams of water. Therefore, a no-till system dependent on genetically modified crops and herbicides that depletes soil humus is a false hope for production.
George Monbiot, campaigner and author, brought up the rear with an eloquent attack on the multiple crises in agriculture exacerbated he said by the ridiculous number of livestock. He cited the uplands of Wales as an area being shagged to within an inch of its life by the white plague of sheep, and supported by Government subsidies. I do not believe that our entire uplands should be reduced to a monoculture of sheep especially when Wales imports seven times more meat than is exported, he said.
Referencing radical re-wilding ideas from his latest book Feral, the former Oxford Zoology student suggested that there are places where farming is not appropriate. For example, in the Cameron Mountains and Snowdonia, where the sound of insects and birds is no longer heard. It is in empty ecosystems like these that wolves, lynx, wolverine, bison, brown bears and beavers could be re-introduced. Monbiot rightly bemoans our poor animal conservation record in comparison to our ambitious European neighbours and even suggested the return of the elephant to these shores!
- Details
- Hits: 1787
23rd October 2014
Britain is a nation of bird lovers, or so it claims. However, a report authored by ten top NGO’s has recently revealed that we have lost 44 million breeding pairs over the last fifty years. In relation to the relatively new understanding of ecological webs; species interdependence, and ever expanding diversity, our plummeting bird numbers have highlighted Britain’s broken and unsustainable agricultural system.
According to the Square Meal report (1), the fracture in food production and supply is manifesting itself in several other key areas:
1. Health - 33% of under 18’s in the UK are overweight or obese. The NHS predicts a £50 billion bill for diet related illnesses by 2050.
2. Food poverty - 913,138 people in crisis across the UK were provided with three days emergency food at the the end of March 2014. Rising food prices are set to continue.
3. Reliance on imported feed - 75% of the protein fed to our livestock in the EU is imported. (The US is actively pushing GM feed through the new Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)).
4. Farmer inequality - 25% of all UK farmers live in poverty.
Who gets the money from farming?
The most striking inequality of the food system is the profit made by the small farmers and the share-holders investing in big corporations. Of the £196 billion generated annually by farmers, who provide the most important service for sustaining life, only £5.4 billion or 4.6 % goes to farmers. One of the biggest challenges for mending the food and farming system is reassessing our values.
Change is never easy. And in regard to the vested interests within the broad economic picture of food production, there is going to be resistance. So, it is down to the people to enact a movement of food change and to put pressure on our politicians to provide a clear strategy and policy towards promoting living wages for farmers, more diversity, and to prioritise healthy, equitable, local and affordable short chain diets instead of fat corporate profits.
Steps to reconnect people with nature and to the land must include a return to horticulture. Currently, the UK produces only 5% of its fruit and 50% of vegetables. We also need to stop wasting so much food – in the fields, in the supermarkets and in our fridges. The upside is that the UK has had a bumper harvest this year, but more safeguards need to be put into place to ensure long term food security.
There is widespread agreement that there is enough food on the planet to feed the projected 2 billion people if we can just get our heads around sustainable and equitable food production.
Hope for a healthy food system
So there is much that is positive to be gleaned from the Square Meal report despite the looming additional problem of climate change. The combined efforts of the RSPB, Friends of the Earth, the National Trust, the Food Ethics Council, Sustain, the Wildlife Trusts, the Soil Association, Eating Better and Compassion in World Farming in the Research Collaboration’s has provided a healthy starting point for the much needed conversation about how our food is produced and how public money is used to support farmers.
- Details
- Hits: 2964
29th April 2013
Sam Burcher reviews a spate of meetings at Westminster to protect the bees.
Campaigners are celebrating the EU’s decision at the end of April to ban neonicotinoids on flowering crops for two years, starting this year. The decision comes on the back of some vigorous campaigns and protesting by various UK groups concerned about protecting bees from this type of pesticide.
Several meetings about the detrimental effects of neonicotinoids on bees have taken place at Westminster over the past few months. Most recently the March of the Beekeepers swarmed on Parliament Square in late April to protest the UK Government abstaining to vote for the EU ban.
Dame Vivienne Westwood and Katherine Hamnett CBE, pioneers of British fashion, marched with angry beekeepers to Downing Street to deliver the Save the Bee petition of 2.6 million signatures calling for the UK government to take action. Three days later, a second vote in Brussels banned neonicotinoids with the support of 15 EU countries. The ban will not apply to winter cereals and crops not attractive to bees.
Owen Paterson, the UK’s Environment Secretary, abstained from the EU vote both times in favour of supporting the makers of neonicotinoids, Bayer and Syngenta. In defence of the Government’s abstention, DEFRA has said they await results of their own further studies. Consequently, it’s view that the risk to bee populations from neonicotinoids, as currently used is low, ignores the Precautionary Principle, the scientific research that demonstrates that neonicotinoids harm bees and the fundamental flaws in the pesticides regulatory system.
- Details
- Hits: 2653
October 20th 2008
The paradigm of food security has shifted back to self-sufficiency and local food production; celebrated organic gardener Monty Don says we must grow our own food to save us from the global economic and food crisis that no governments can fix.
A back garden food revolution
Monty Don is the new president of the Soil Association. In a recent lecture in London, he said he was appointed because of his passionate belief that everyone can reconnect to nature through gardening and growing [1]. The skills, knowledge and resources of British gardeners can transform, rebuild and stabilize our food systems and our society, he insisted. It's about food security, an entire cultural approach to food that can harness horticultural skills as a serious part of our national food supply and integrate into our whole approach to life. In that way we can feed ourselves healthier food in the face of social and economic crisis, and if we do not, we will suffer as a nation.
Monty understands that nowadays gardens are smaller, fewer people are growing, and the production of food has gone increasingly into the hands of bigger growers and industry. He blames governments for the most part of the problem and for the crisis of trust that has spread and undermined community relationships. He sees the food industry as a greedy giant in league with the oil and chemical industries against the garden potterer whose skills and relationship to food production have been relegated to a hobby. And, in response to the multiple global crises that apparently no government can fix, there is more that we can do as small groups and individuals to mobilize small scale food production in gardens, allotments and common land to reclaim our power.