At TPMDC, Brian Beutler explains why the U.S. does not have enough money to pay for food assistance programs, safety regulation, better school food, or support for sustainable agriculture.
Every now and then, Eating Liberally’s Kerry Trueman, aka kat, writes an “Ask Marion,” this one titled, “Let’s Ask Marion Nestle: Is Monsanto’s Warm & Fuzzy Farmer Campaign Just A Snow Job?”
KT: Now that the Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people, too (happy birthday, Citizens United!), Monsanto is apparently out to put a friendly, slightly weatherbeaten, gently grizzled face on industrial agriculture (see above photo, taken at a DC bus stop just outside USDA headquarters.)
This guy looks an awful lot like Henry Fonda playing Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, which seems only fitting since Agribiz may be helping to create a 21st century Dust Bowl.
After decades of boasting about how fossil-fuel intensive industrial agriculture has made it possible for far fewer farmers to produce way more food, Monsanto is now championing the power of farming to create jobs and preserve land. Does this attempt by a biotech behemoth to wrap itself in populist plaid flannel give you the warm and fuzzies, or just burn you up?
Dr. Nestle: This is not a new strategy for Monsanto. Half of my book, Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (University of California Press, 2010), is devoted to the politics of food biotechnology. I illustrated it with a Monsanto advertisement (Figure 17, page 182). The caption may amuse you:
In 2001, the biotechnology industry’s public relations campaign featured the equivalent of the Marlboro Man. Rather than cigarettes, however, this advertisement promotes the industry’s view of the ecological advantages of transgenic crops (reduced pesticide use, soil conservation), and consequent benefits to society (farm preservation). In 2002, a series of elegant photographs promoted the benefits of genetically modified corn, soybeans, cotton, and papaya.
Last year, Monsanto placed ads that took its “we’re for farmers” stance to another level:
9 billion people to feed. A changing climate. NOW WHAT?
Producing more. Conserving more. Improving farmers’ lives.
That’s sustainable agriculture.
And that’s what Monsanto is all about.
That’s sustainable agriculture? I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Now take a look at the Monsanto website–really, you can’t make this stuff up:
If there were one word to explain what Monsanto is about, it would have to be farmers.
Billions of people depend upon what farmers do. And so will billions more. In the next few decades, farmers will have to grow as much food as they have in the past 10,000 years – combined.
It is our purpose to work alongside farmers to do exactly that.
To produce more food.
To produce more with less, conserving resources like soil and water.
And to improve lives.
We do this by selling seeds, traits developed through biotechnology, and crop protection chemicals.
Face it. We have two agricultural systems in this country, both claiming to be good for farmers and both claiming to be sustainable. One focuses on local, seasonal, organic, and sustainable in the sense of replenishing what gets taken out of the soil. The other is Monsanto, for which sustainable means selling seeds (and not letting farmers save them), patented traits developed through biotechnology, and crop protection chemicals.
This is about who gets to control the food supply and who gets to choose. Too bad the Monsanto ads don’t explain that.
I’ve collected a few video bits and other such things. Can’t wait to share them:
Enjoy! Happy Mother’s Day!
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who is clearly serious about sustainable food issues, just issued a new report: FoodNYC: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Food System.
Here are some of its goals:
If Manhattan can do this, other boroughs (and cities) can do this too! Let’s do what we can to help Mr. Stringer make these work!
I’m catching up on my reading and have just gotten to the special 2009 issue of the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition on food systems and public health. If you – like most public health people – don’t usually think of agriculture as a major factor in health status, the papers in this journal will come as a revelation. They demonstrate tight links between agriculture and public health issuees such as childhood obesity, food safety, and environmental health. Best, they are downloadable at no cost, which means they can be easily shared with students. I will use them in my food policy class next fall.
This week’s must read: Time Magazine on what’s wrong with industrial food production systems and all the good things lots of people are doing to make it better.
August 26 update: The American Meat Institute didn’t like the article much:
It’s dumbfounding that Time magazine would take one of the great American success stories — the efficient agricultural production of an abundant variety of healthy, safe and affordable foods for consumers in the U.S. and throughout the world — and turn it into an unrecognizable story of exploitation, manipulation and greed.
I’m just back from a long trip to Alaska where I gave a talk at the University of Fairbanks. Fairbanks, in central Alaska, is 200 miles from the Arctic Circle and has a short growing season from the end of May to the beginning of September, but those few weeks are brightly lit. The sun set at midnight in mid-July and it never really got dark.
As for the food revolution, it is booming. Even the local Safeway has gotten into locally grown foods, although not always accurately.
When I saw the pineapples, I asked what “locally grown” meant. Somewhere in Alaska. Oh. But Safeway really does have locally grown food, mostly cabbages and root vegetables. Where were they grown? Someplace around here.
I saw vegetables growing everywhere, even in small urban spaces such as the entryway to the hotel where I was staying. The long daylight makes for big vegetables and this plot sported a two-foot long zucchini. Alas, it had disappeared by the time I got back to photograph it.
And yes, Fairbanks has a farmers’ market, and it was in full swing.
And then to the organic farm at Rosie Creek. It was full of summer interns visiting from the nearby Calypso Farms.
Calypso Farms has a terrific garden program in five schools in the area.
And here a few first-time tourist remarks:
Where is the most entertaining food? That had to be at Bigun’s Crab Shack in Skagway. Bigun is the chef, spelled that way, not Big-‘un (He’s the one that didn’t get away, according to his mom). What Cajun cooking is doing in Skagway is beyond me but it was wonderful to have it on a hot summer day.
And what was the best off-beat museum? It has nothing to do with food, alas, but I still vote for the Hammer Museum in Haines. Not to be missed.
When it comes to food, defining “healthy” is a major preoccupation of food companies these days. Marketers are falling all over each other trying to label food products with numbers or symbols to convince you that their products are better-for-you choices. These, as I keep saying (see posts under “Scoring systems”), are about marketing, not health.
Now, the Strategic Alliance, the component of the Oakland-based Prevention Institute devoted to “promoting healthy food and activity environments,” has produced a working definition of a healthful food. Its report, Setting the Record Straight: Nutritionists Define Healthful Food, applies three principles: Healthful food should be (1) wholesome, (2) produced in ways that are good for people, animals, and natural resources, and (3) available, accessible, and affordable.
This is a food system definition that makes scoring systems unnecessary. “Wholesome,” says this document, means foods that are minimally processed, full of naturally occurring nutrients, produced without added hormones or antibiotics, and processed without artificial colors, flavors, or unnecessary preservatives.
I wonder how many of those highly processed products in supermarket center aisles can meet this definition?
