Poisoned Food, Poisoned Agriculture: Getting off the Chemical Treadmill
A peer-reviewed study published last year in the British Journal of Nutrition,
a leading international journal of nutritional science, showed that
organic crops and crop-based foods are between 18 to 69 percent higher
in a number of key antioxidants such as polyphenolics than
conventionally-grown crops. Numerous studies have linked antioxidants to
a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular and
neurodegenerative diseases and certain cancers. The research team
concluded that a switch to eating organic fruit, vegetable and cereals –
and food made from them – would provide additional antioxidants
equivalent to eating between one and two extra portions of fruit and
vegetables a day.
Moreover,
significantly lower levels of a range of toxic heavy metals were found
in organic crops. For instance, cadmium is one of only three metal
contaminants, along with lead and mercury, for which the European
Commission has set maximum permitted contamination levels in food. It
was found to be almost 50 percent lower in organic crops. Nitrogen
concentrations were also found to be significantly lower in organic
crops. Concentrations of total nitrogen were 10 percent, nitrate 30
percent and nitrite 87 percent lower in organic compared to conventional
crops. The study also found that pesticide residues were four times
more likely to be found in conventional crops than organic ones.
The
research was the biggest of its kind ever undertaken. The international
team of experts led by Newcastle University in the UK analysed 343
studies into the compositional differences between organic and
conventional crops.
The
findings contradict those of a 2009 UK Food Standards Agency (FSA)
commissioned study which found there were no substantial differences or
significant nutritional benefits from organic food. The FSA commissioned
study based its conclusions on only 46 publications covering crops,
meat and dairy, while the Newcastle University-led meta-analysis is
based on data from 343 peer-reviewed publications on composition
difference between organic and conventional crops.
There
has been for a long time serious concerns about the health impacts of
eating food that has been contaminated with petro-chemical pesticides
and fertilisers. Over the past 60 years, agriculture has changed more
than it did during the previous 12,000. And much of that change has come
about due to the so-called ‘green revolution’, which has entailed
soaking crops with petrochemicals. Coinciding with these changes has
been the onset and proliferation of numerous diseases and allergies.
The
global agritech/agribusiness sector is in effect poisoning our food and
the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other
chemical inputs. Journalist Arthur Nelson has
written that as many as 31 pesticides could have been banned in the EU
because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on
hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon.
Christina Sarich recently
reported that there are currently
34,000 pesticides registered for use in the US. She states that drinking
water it is often contaminated by pesticides and more babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure. Chemicals are so prevalently used that they show up in breast milk of mothers.
Illnesses are on the rise too, including
asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and
reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases
and several types of cancer. Sarich says that their connection to pesticide exposure becomes more evident with every new study conducted.
Important pollinating insects have been decimated by chemical herbicides and pesticides, which are also stripping the soil of nutrients. As a result, for example, there has been a 41.1 to 100 percent decrease in vitamin A in 6 foods:
apple, banana, broccoli, onion, potato and tomato. Both onion and
potato saw a 100 percent loss of vitamin A between 1951 and 1999.
In Punjab, India, pesticides have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘, and Indian soils are being depleted as
a result of the application of ‘green revolution’ ideology and chemical
inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to
soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers,
insecticides and pesticides. The Indian Council of Agricultural
Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and
fertility.
We can carry on down the route of
chemical-intensive, poisonous agriculture, with our health and the
environment continuing to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate
profit. Or we can shift to organic farming and investment in and
reaffirmation of indigenous models of agriculture as advocated by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology (IAASTD) report.
In this respect, botanist Stuart Newton’s states:
“The answers to Indian agricultural productivity is not that of embracing the international, monopolistic, corporate-conglomerate promotion of chemically-dependent GM crops… India has to restore and nurture her depleted, abused soils and not harm them any further, with dubious chemical overload, which are endangering human and animal health.” (p24).
Newton
provides insight into the importance of soils and their mineral
compositions and links their depletion to the ‘green revolution’. In
turn, these depleted soils cannot help but lead to mass
malnourishment. This is quite revealing given that proponents of the
‘green revolution’ claim it helped reduced malnutrition. Newton favours a
system of agroecology, a sound understanding of soil and the
eradication of poisonous chemical inputs.
Over the past few years, there have been
numerous high level reports from the UN and development agencies
putting forward similar arguments and proposals in favour of small
farmers and agroecology, but this has not been translated into real
action on the ground where peasant farmers increasingly face
marginalisation and oppression.
According to Vandana Shiva, for
instance, the plundering of Indian agriculture by foreign corporations
is resulting in a forced removal of farmers from the land and the
destruction of traditional communities on a scale of which has not been
witnessed anywhere before throughout history. On a global level, not
least because peasant/smallholder farming is more productive than industrial farming and because it feeds most of the world,
this is undermining the world’s ability for feeding itself. It is also
leaving to denutrification: not only in terms of specific items
containing less nutrients than before, as described above, but because
people are being forced to rely on a narrower range of foodstuffs and
crops as monocropping replaces a biodiverse system of agriculture.
The
increasingly globalised industrial food system is failing to feed the
world but is also responsible for some of the planet’s most pressing political, social and environmental crises - not least hunger and poverty. This system – not forgetting the capitalism that underpins it -
and the corporations and institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) that fuel
it must be confronted, as must the wholly inappropriate and
unsustainable urban-centric model of ‘development’ being forced through
at the behest of these corporations in places like India.
Organic farmer and activist Bhaskar Save describes how this urban-centric model has served to uproot indigenous agriculture in India with devastating effect:
“The actual reason for pushing the ‘Green Revolution’ was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government. The new, parasitical way of farming… benefited only the industrialists, traders and the powers-that-be. The farmers’ costs rose massively and margins dipped. Combined with the eroding natural fertility of their land, they were left with little in their hands, if not mounting debts and dead soils… Self-reliant farming – with minimal or zero external inputs – was the way we actually farmed, very successfully, in the past. Barring periods of war and excessive colonial oppression, our farmers were largely self-sufficient, and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.”
Even
if proponents of the ‘green revolution’ choose to live in a fool’s
paradise by ignoring the ecologically and environmentally unsustainable
nature of the system they promote and merely mouth platitudes about
organic being less productive, they might like to look at the results
Bhaskar Save achieved on his farm. They might also like to consider this analysis which questions the apparent successes claimed by advocates of the ‘green revolution’. And they should certainly consider this report based
on a 30-year study which concluded that organic yields match
conventional yields and outperform conventional in years of drought.
That report also showed that organic agriculture builds rather than
deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system.
But
why let science get in the way of propaganda? These proponents have
already paved the way for extending the the corporate control of
agriculture and the ‘green revolution’ with their GMOs and further
chemical inputs – all underpinned of course by endless deceptions and neoliberal ideology wrapped up as fake concern for the poor.
Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Global Research, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment