This edition of the MADGE Digest talks about Steve Marsh from WA and his contaminated organic farm, the Queensland floods and the kindness of others and a roundup of the work they have been doing! Read on…
Steve Marsh is an organic farmer in WA. His neighbour’s GM canola was cut ready for harvest when it blew onto Steve’s land contaminating it. 70% of his farm lost organic certification. He has lost years of hard work, local and export markets and his community is divided.
John Snooke, of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, said Steve should take the matter up with his organic certifiers rather than the GM farmer who contaminated him. John Snooke stated the zero threshold for GM in organic food is unreasonable, irresponsible and imposing unnecessary regulation on the GM grower.
In August 2009 John Snooke hosted a Monsanto organised field day on his property. The event promoted Monsanto’s GM canola to farmers and agronomists.
The organic certifying body, NASAA, states that zero tolerance is reasonable as their customers do not want to eat GM. Steve Marsh has a serious problem as the tiny GM canola seeds on his property will germinate and cause on-going and increasing GM pollution. A site has been set up to raise funds for Steve’s court case against his neighbour and to inform people on the contamination issue.
Steve Marsh’s case and the issue of contamination has been picked up in a US blog.
The biotech industry implies that organic, non-GM and GM farming can exist happily together. Their word for this is “co-existence”. MADGE attended a conference in Nov 2009 on co-existence between GM and non-GM supply chain. Monsanto and Cargill were among those giving presentations. It was made completely clear that industry knows it cannot effectively segregate GM crops. The message was that people wanting GM free crops will have to pay extra for the cost of keeping GM out. As GM crops increase, the pollution they cause will also increase until it will become too expensive and difficult to provide GM free crops to anyone at any price.
It is clear that “Co-existence” is the GM lobby’s term for irreversible contamination. (Full report of this conference available here)
One of the attendees MADGE met was an employee of the WA government who was there because the lifting of the WA GM canola ban was under consideration. Therefore WA agriculture minister Redman must have known that GM crops would pollute WA crops and devastate farmers. Perhaps he should resign.
In the US Monsanto’s GM alfalfa was approved for release by the USDA despite 200,000 submissions against it. Alfalfa is a feed for livestock and is the fourth largest crop in the US. Alfalfa is bee pollinated and spread by the wind. What is the advantage of GM alfalfa? It can be sprayed with Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup and not die. Currently over 90% of alfalfa in the US is grown without herbicides. The Centre for Food Safety is continuing its litigation to try and stop this crop.
Meanwhile Mexico has banned any further trials of GM corn by Monsanto to remove the threat of GM contamination.
Silver linings – people make all the difference
In the recent floods in Queensland a group of people had their food delivered with only one day’s interruption. They were the customers of “Food Connect”. “Food Connect” buys directly from local farmers and delivers boxes to their customers. The big Brisbane market at Rocklea was closed but “Food Connect” had excess food and so ensured local shops had supplies. Chefs transformed what was left into 3000 meals, some of which fed the volunteers cleaning up the city.
Food Connect got food into Bellbowrie when the military couldn’t. They also made it through the landslide on Mount Nebo. They managed this because they have local knowledge, creativity, use word of mouth and understand the importance of keeping people fed. Their farmers are chemical free, most of them are organic and they earn far more than other farmers. Yet customers of Food Connect pay 10-20% less than elsewhere and prices haven’t risen since May 2009. Food Connect is setting up all over Australia. (Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney) (Melbourne). Listen to this inspiring podcast that details the unique ways Food Connect were able to help during the floods.
Creative local actions aren’t just a success in Australia. In the slums of Nairobi Kenyan women are feeding their families and their neighbourhood through “sack gardens“. Other women farmers in Kenya have rejected the expensive high input crops provided by the west to use ecological management and local knowledge. Their methods were able to produce food throughout the height of the drought while neighbouring farms dependent on chemicals and ‘improved’ seed struggled. Strangely enough a new report has found that world hunger is best solved by small scale agriculture.
For more inspiration read how a marine sanctuary reversed destructive fishing in the Philippines, how restoring local forests in Thailand rebuilt the land and economy and how community food gardens in New York City turned urban decay into nourishment for body and soul.
In the midst of difficulty and hardship many people are working together to create much needed change.
What has MADGE been up to?
- We put in a submission on Monsanto’s application to release high Omega 3 GM soy. This soy contains genes from a primula and a fungus to produce SDA, an omega 3 oil. Non-GM sources of omega 3 oil include: fish, grass fed meat, flax seed, chia seed and walnuts.
- We put out a press release on the Labelling Review
- MADGE was interviewed for 3Cr’s Food Fight summer series a couple of times between 30th December to 13th Jan . Food fight is a great show and covers many extremely relevant topics including what floods and cyclones mean for our food, how farmers markets got started and a report from a farmer friend of Steve Marsh.
- Fran Murrell of MADGE will be speaking at the Canadian Organic Growers Conference in Toronto on 19th February.
This is a guest post from the brilliant hard working folk over at MADGE Australia.
MADGE is a network of individuals interested in how our food is grown and the effects it has on our health. We are concerned about the lack of adequate labelling and testing of GM foods.
We advocate on behalf of consumers for the right to know what is in our food. We promote information on natural foods and healthy farming practices.
