Biotech in Sustainable Ag & Nutrition - FAO Symposium in Sept 17

[tammois]

There is an alarming new development in the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN to push the use of biotechnologies in ‘sustainable’ agriculture. A push from member states such as Australia and the US got this discussion started early this year in Rome, and there is a regional meeting coming up in KL where civil society has a chance to be heard before it progresses too quickly… I’ll be attending for AFSA with an opportunity to speak on a panel defending the need for locally-adapted biodiverse breeds of livestock and putting/maintaining control of genetics across agriculture in the hands of peasant farmers.

I’ll post more specific questions in this topic when I have time, but for now if anyone has a chance to look at the proceedings from the Rome symposium and offer feedback that would be great.

@frances you’ll be particularly interested and your input would be very welcome, as would Bob’s if he’s available!

http://www.fao.org/about/meetings/agribiotechs-symposium/en/

[frances]

Hi Tammi,
It is breathtaking that Australia is pushing GM. It’s failures are huge
and it has sucked up endless money and time and caused genetic pollution
and numerous harms, including birth defects and cancers. Here is an article
from the Conversation talking about the "post-truth’ world of agriculture,
talking especially about GM, pesticides, over production of food and the
corporates claiming to be climate smart:

Growing food in the post-truth era

The GM industry and associated scientists, bureaucrats, and technophiles
remain wilfully blind to:

• The latest GM crops resistant to Dicamba, harming 2.5million acres of
  non-GMO-dicamba proof crops in the US.
  http://hppr.org/post/dicamba-damage-estimate-tops-25-million-acres
  If organic crops had caused this sort of disaster (including one farmer
  shooting and killing his neighbour) I think it would have been all over
  Australian media. Background to this is that most GM crops are designed to
  be sprayed with Roundup but the weeds no longer die and are 'superweeds".
  This is what the situation looked like years ago in the US - weeds so big
  they break machinery and even hand hoes:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-cka5s4AqE
  To deal with these superweeds they developed GM crops that could be sprayed
  with Dicamba as well. Of course this will only be a short term fix and
  eventually will need even more poisons. This is not food, it is death.

• Monsanto Tribunal heard from 30 people whose lives have been harmed by
  Monsanto especially by the use of Roundup and other chemicals on the GM
  crops:

• Timothy Litenzenberg - lawyer for farmers and others who developed
  cancer from using Roundup https://vimeo.com/189144039 If you haven’t been
  following this lawsuit it has been dynamite and showing evidence of
  Monsanto colluding with regulators and corrupting science to keep Roundup
  on sale.
  https://usrtk.org/pesticides/mdl-monsanto-glyphosate-cancer-case-key-documents-analysis/
  Farmers poisoned by Roundup in Sri Lanka: https://vimeo.com/188616422
  Impact on animal health https://vimeo.com/188688575 and
  https://vimeo.com/188706001
  Report from a University doctor who sends his students out to check on the
  health of people and who discovered the huge ill health resulting from GM
  soy growing: https://vimeo.com/188787219
  There are also videos of two mothers whose children has birth defects due
  to Roundup.

• Evidence coming out of the extreme harm caused by pesticides and the
  complicity of government agencies in helping companies cover this up:
  https://bioscienceresource.org/the-poison-papers-expose-decades-of-collusion-between-industry-and-regulators-over-hazardous-pesticides-and-other-chemicals/

A more accessible story of this is here:

100,000 Pages of Chemical Industry Secrets Gathered Dust in an Oregon Barn for...

• The recent UN report saying pesticides kill 200,000 people a year and
  aren’t necessary and that we only have them due to the underhand activities
  of the companies:
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/07/un-experts-denounce-myth-pesticides-are-necessary-to-feed-the-world

Anyway, this may all be too much as basically you are right - we need local
and locally developed food systems using seed that suits the climate and
the farmers and eaters. I could go on and on but want to make things
targeted for you. In my view industrial/chemical/GM ag is like the
producers of Thalidomide. That is why I liked the Monsanto Tribunal
approach of showing they breech human rights and need to be brought to
account. They can get away with it, in my view as there is a ‘story’ that
without this ag we will starve. Hard to take seriously as we can see the
poisoning and death caused by this system. I feel we need to show the harms
of the system and say we need the sort of ag you do. Of course the
extraction of profit will not be the same as it will stay in local areas.
The emergence of the behemoths of ag (and corporations in general) cannot
happen without mass extraction of profit from the serfs of the system.

Maybe this is no help whatsoever however I’m happy to further discuss. Do
you want me to go through the whole doc and do a critique?

Hope all is well with you
Fran

[tammois]

This is amazing, Fran, thank you! Very helpful. If you find you have time to read the proceedings from the Rome symposium and want to offer any comments that would be incredibly helpful. I can also send you the proposed program for the Sept meeting so you can see the diversity of topics we’ll be fielding over the three days.