Civil Eats

The first of the much anticipated agricultural competition workshops began last Friday in Iowa. Hosted jointly by the USDA and the Department of Justice, the workshops aim to explore the question of consolidation in agribusiness. The workshops themselves have already come under scrutiny for initially excluding actual farmers on the panels–and have come in for continued criticism that the farmers who have been put on are more representatives of corporations than real farmers.

It’s hard not to be somewhat cynical about our government’s claim that they’re shocked, shocked to discover there’s anti-competitive behavior in agriculture. On the other hand, for the last twenty or so years, consolidation has been–in Washington at least–the crime that dare not speak its name. So the fact that it’s the USDA and DOJ running these workshops is nothing short of astonishing. Read More

Since the first commercial cultivation of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in 1996, Monsanto and the rest of the big six Biotech seed companies, (Pioneer/DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Bayer) have become masters at the art of story telling. Farmers looking for the next big technology fix have loved their stories: the promise of better yields, less chemical need for weed control, higher profits and of course, a solution to the elusive goal of feeding the world.

Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops. GM was the wave of the future, bankers encouraged planting GM crops to guarantee a “profitable harvest”. Crop insurance premiums were lower for farmers planting GM. Everyone bought the story. Read More

Farmers in India grow more than 4,000 varieties of eggplant, making it one of South Asia’s most important staple vegetables. According to the BBC, Indian farmers produce more eggplant than anywhere in the world.

Late last year, the government-controlled Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) approved the commercial cultivation of a genetically modified variety of eggplant, called Bt brinjal, that was engineered to be resistant to some of the pests that plague eggplant crops. Bt brinjal would have been the first ever GM crop approved for widespread human consumption (small amounts of GM papayas are grown in Hawaii).

But farmers and activists across India registered their disapproval and, due to the widespread opposition, Environment Minister Jairam Remesh put the cultivation of Bt brinjal on hold indefinitely. Read More

On January 14th Monsanto received some unwelcome news – the U.S. Justice Department was opening a formal investigation of its business practices surrounding its Roundup Ready soybean, the most popular genetically modified (GMO) crop. For the many farmers and seed cleaners who have lost their livelihoods fighting Monsanto, it was surely bittersweet news after years of ignored pleas and support from the Justice Department. Read More

Beginning in 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) took legal action against the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) illegal approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa. The federal courts agreed and banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impacts of the plant on the environment, farmers, and the public in an environmental impacts statement (EIS).

USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009. A 60-day comment period is now open until February 16, 2010. CFS has begun analyzing the EIS and it is clear that the USDA has not taken the concerns of non-GE alfalfa farmers, or organic dairy farmers seriously, for example, having dismissed the fact that contamination will threaten export markets and domestic organic markets. You can review the EIS here and supplemental documents here.

This is the first time the USDA has prepared an EIS for any GE crop and therefore will have broad implications for all transgenic crops, and its failure to address the environmental and related economic impacts of GE alfalfa will have far-reaching consequences. CFS is spearheading a campaign to make sure all affected parties know and are involved in the public process and have the opportunity to comment. Read More

What would you say if I told you that one company is making decisions about what you eat? As it turns out, a new report [pdf] released last week by the Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering reveals that Monsanto controls the genetic traits — and thus the seeds — of most of the corn, soy and cotton grown in the US; and that they are using their control of the market to raise prices on their products and limit access to non-genetically modified (GM) seed.

This means that farmers are unable to make decisions about what they grow, and also that they grow more to make ends meet, pushing more corn and soy on the market to be processed into a proliferation of packaged foods — making up most of what is available to eat. This report details the history of seed consolidation (including excellent visuals mapping larger chemical companies’ acquisitions of smaller seed companies), provides recommendations, and importantly, gives a voice to some of the affected farmers from all over the United States. Read More

This morning, I woke up to an NPR report that began like this:

Since the 1980s, American agriculture has become increasingly concentrated. Today, less than 2 percent of farms account for half of all agricultural sales. The new antitrust division of President Obama’s Justice Department has said that scrutinizing monopolies in agriculture is a top priority.

That shift is giving hope to independent farmers, who have complained for years that agriculture giants are shrinking the marketplace and paying farmers less for their products.

Naturally, this got me right out of bed, as I have been reporting on the role competition plays in agriculture of late here on Civil Eats, and because the media barely batted an eyelash when the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent out a press release a week ago about the public workshops that will be held all over the US beginning in early 2010 to find out from farmers about possible anti-competitive behavior in agricultural markets. Read More

Grinnell Heritage Farm is 152 years old. Andrew Dunham is the fifth generation of his family to work this land about 50 miles east of Des Moines. He is a direct descendant of Josiah Grinnell, founder of the town and the man Horace Greeley once famously quoted as having said, “Go west, young man, go west.” Andrew and his wife Melissa are a few months shy of receiving their formal certification as an organic farm.

Across the road, due north of their land, is a field of corn that is managed by the nearby Monsanto seed corn plant. In Iowa and anywhere commodity corn is grown, it is common practice around this time of year to use chemicals to control fungus. Often this is accomplished via the use of aerial application, commonly referred to as cropdusting. On July 6th, a rustic-looking old biplane swooped in to spray Monsanto’s field. To put it mildly, the pilot’s bombardiering skills were not what one would hope. Read More

Today, the Group of 8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy pledged 20 billion dollars in agricultural aid, responding to a request made yesterday by President Obama. For the first time, instead of being given directly as food aid, these funds are set to be allotted for building an agricultural economy in nations in need, specifically in Africa. Just what this agricultural infrastructure entails (the fine print mentions fertilizer and seed, grain storage vessels and plant variety research) could be the key to whether the plan actually seeks to feed many of the billion people on earth who are now hungry, or whether the U.S. and other nations will, instead, further fuel the food crisis. Read More

Robyn O’Brien is the best-selling author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It and a “reluctant crusader” for cleaning up our food system. A Houston native from a conservative family—not the most likely candidate to be found on the frontline of the battleground for the American food supply—Robyn’s advocacy began when the youngest of her four children had a violent reaction to eggs. In a quest to find answers and solutions to what seemed to be a personal problem, she used her MBA and background in finance to uncover and report on the relationship between Big Food and Big Money and unearth how a flawed federal policy has allowed hidden toxins in our food that she argues could be contributing to the alarming recent increase in allergies, ADHD, cancer, and asthma in our children. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Robyn about her book and her work, specifically focusing on the recent engineering of patented chemical and proteins in our food. Read More

I have to hand it to Monsanto. A company representative on Twitter recently engaged me in a dialog about whether labeling products containing GMO food would do any harm, and, if so, to whom.

While the dialog felt like another cut-and-paste debate between me and previously published Monsanto paraphernalia, it offered just enough information about how Monsanto defends against mandatory GMO labeling. Clearly, anyone informed about consumer sentiments regarding GMO food knows that such labeling would devastate Monsanto and other GM seed companies’ bottom line. Which explains the vigorous, even suffocating effort by Monsanto to control the conversation. Read More

Today, Food, Inc. debuts, with more cities to follow in the coming weeks, and almost every major media outlet has weighed in: it is certainly not a film to miss, it offers a view into the food system you’ve never seen before, and you will leave the theater changed.

Big Ag realizes that the tide is turning on the corporate control of our food system, and that their message is in jeopardy. This is why most of the corporations and corporately supported groups from Monsanto to the National Chicken Council (now tainted in light of the newly-released CDC report about chicken as contamination’s numero uno) have created special sections of their websites dedicated to the film, in an attempt to mislead the public on the facts Food, Inc. is bringing to light for the first time. Read More

Beyond the thirty-year experiment in free-market ideology having been judged a failure in financial markets, one thing is clear: as Kerry Trueman reminded us in a recent post, unfettered capitalism has also been bad for our health, and indeed the safety of our food.

Last week, The New York Times reported that this administration has said it will take a harder line on anti-trust legislation, in diverse sectors of the economy including agriculture.  Perhaps its premature to tell what this will look like, but enforcing the laws that we already have on the books would be a great start to building a better food system. Read More

Scientific American recently published an article called How to Grow a Better Tomato: The Case against Heirloom Tomatoes. The author details how plant breeders are going about saving heirloom tomatoes from their own fatal flaws. The article was written in a combative tone with the author seemingly intent on provoking a knee-jerk reaction from lovers of good, real food not managed under laboratory conditions. It worked. Read More

Seed and chemical giant Monsanto and friends have lately been conducting all-out re-branding campaigns, seeking to present themselves as the answer to world hunger and the actualization of sustainability.  As an extension of this tight message control, Oxfam is hosting a panel discussion at the Asia Society in New York tomorrow at 8:30 am called “The Global Food Crisis – Time for Another Green Revolution?“  But the discussion seems like it will be rather one-sided. Read More

Yoplait yogurt, the 19th largest dairy processor in the country, announced today that by August of this year, all Yoplait branded products will be made with milk that is 100 percent farmer certified to come from cows not treated with rbGH (or recombinant bovine growth hormone) an artificial hormone also known as rbST (recombinant bovine somatotropin). Read More

For months, I’d been planning to see the French television documentary The World According to Monsanto (Le Monde selon Monsanto, also to be released in spring 2009 in book form), made for the French-German network Arte by the journalist Marie-Monique Robin, which premiered in France March 11, 2008.  Having plenty of reasons to despise Monsanto (Agent Orange, PCBs, global food domination) I thought that this film would only confirm what I knew about the giant agribusiness firm, which controls between 70%-100% of the GM market share for various crops.  Well, I was wrong.  There was more to fear, and seeing it all on film made it more concrete. Read More

Last week, I opened my copy of the New Yorker, and stumbled upon an ad for agricultural seed and chemical giant Monsanto.  “How can we squeeze more food from a raindrop?” the ad asks, above photos of corn and soybean seeds.  Then below, “Our goal is to develop seeds that significantly increase crop yields and can help use 1/3 less water per unit produced.  Producing more.  Conserving more.  Improving farmer’s lives.  That’s sustainable agriculture.  And that’s what Monsanto seeds are all about.” Read More