Em issue 12 final 06 12 2013

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ISSN 1179-5298 (print) ISSN 2253-5780 (online) Earth Matters is a New Zealand-based Journal for the Renewal of AgriCulture through science, art and spirituality. It is a notfor-profit publication and proceeds will be used to help fund The Land Trust, registered charity CC37781 Earth Matters PO Box 24-231 Royal Oak Auckland 1345

contents

Editor: Elisabeth Alington

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Editorial.

Assistant Editor: Mary Vander Ploeg

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Seedlines.

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The rhythm of the land. Witi Ihimaera.

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Community farm pioneers. Robert Karp.

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The really big questions.

Administrator: Paula Kibblewhite Layout: Karl Grant Earth Matters is published three times a year; April, August and December.

Subscriptions of $NZ 35.00 local / $NZ 45.00 overseas may be purchased on-line at www.earthmatters.co.nz or by direct credit to Earth Matters Kiwibank account 38 9010 0519122 00 or by sending a cheque to the above address.

Please make sure you supply postal details and notification of payment to info@earthmatters.co.nz.

All material published in these pages is Copyright Earth Matters 2010. For permission to use material from this publication, in any form, please contact the editor info@earthmatters. co.nz Opinions and statements expressed in this journal are the responsibility of the contributing authors.

The Journal accepts no responsibility for results arising from advice offered in good faith through its pages. Readers who wish to contribute articles or express views are invited to submit content for consideration to the postal address above or via Word document to: info@earthmatters.co.nz

10. Independence traded for highrise. Gene Logsdon.

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Animal agriculture versus animal welfare. John Ikerd.

14. Of Star … Libra.

19. … and Flower. What is a tree?

20. Zoo. Accompanied by sparrows. Karl Koenig.

22. We’re all peasants.

23. Carbon trading won’t generate food sovereignty.

24. When loss means progress. Ronnie Cummins.

26. Is biodynamic-organic food healthier?

27. When old becomes new. Biochar for regenerative gardening.

Sarah Smuts-Kennedy.

28. Make the Earth Glad.

30. Taking root – How the simple act of planting trees changed a nation.

31. A stable for the distressed earth. Hartmut Borries.

FRONT COVER SPARROWS IN CRAB APPLE TREE. CREDIT: Wikipedia Commons.

AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

PHOTO:D Baker.

editorial LIS ALINGTON

We’re thoroughly enjoying the company of a community of sparrows living under the eaves behind the house. Every morning we’re awoken by their domestic going’s on; at coffee break we listen to their gossip and squabbles; at lunch time we watch them happily enjoying the bird bath. Although we thrill to the tui and grey warbler in the nearby puriri tree, it’s the sparrows who have captured our hearts with their neighbourliness. That sparrows are particularly close to humans is the subject of this issue’s Zoo article.

But before you read that far, Earth Matters has a Christmas present for you. One of my favourite authors, Witi Ihimaera has captured a relationship with the earth that we will surely want to reclaim. Articulating what we have lost, his gifted words reawaken a memory of what the earth still needs from us. An example of how the spirit of the land is heard and responded to by young people can be found in the tale of Temple Wilton farm. Gene Logsdon flags how Chinese farmers are being paid to swap life on the land for high-rise city dwellings. That must surely unnerve many readers. Looking to what all these trends could mean for NZ; in February we’ll have an opportunity to explore Joel Salatin’s pragmatic, highly productive, and financially viable solutions for putting high quality food on your table. Given these trends, NZ communities might want to start sharing responsibility for land care and food production, rather than leaving it all to farmers and agribusiness interests. With that in view, Earth Matters hints at what lies ahead – plans

are afoot to launch The Land Trust at Salatin’s workshop in Auckland, see pages 16-17 – and we will keep you fully informed on how it develops in the forthcoming International Year of Family Farming.

John Ikerd’s thoughtful article on putting aside differences of opinion for the sake of animal welfare could be widely shared with others, especially people opposed to eating animals for food. Earth Matters isn’t about to say yay or nay to meat consumption – apart from suggesting we cut down on quantity while spending more on quality. For that, we want animals properly cared for, based on their intrinsic value as opposed to their commercial value. I’ve often thought farmers should be obliged to provide summer shade for livestock. It’s tragic to see sheep huddled in the slim shade of fence posts during a hot Canterbury nor’wester, or deer kept in treeless landscapes, just because trees get in the way of ‘maximising dry-matter production’(ie) growing grass.

Typhoon Haiyan has more than hinted at what Nature has up her sleeve. While Earth Matters doesn’t presume to try to change the world, it does want to help people change their minds about what really matters in life. That world and humanity belong together; that the outer world does not exist independently of our actions and our thinking; that the sparrows in our gardens also live in our thoughts – all this can help to open up paths of understanding which can bring fresh energy to our lives, renew the love in our hearts, and lend wings to our will to work in common unity – that life may be improved for Earth and all her dependents.

May we celebrate this Christmas, not with a burst of consumption reliant on environmental destruction, but by exploring the spiritual experience of rebirth and becoming. Earth Matters very much to us all.

If you are a FB user please like and share us. We’re at: https://www.facebook.com/ earthmattersjournal?ref=hl

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“A description of possible future hardship does not induce people to change their way of life.

The change to a self-supporting agricultural life must be preceded by the corresponding training and education…the first essential thing is to awaken in people a feeling for the forces of growth, for the eternally creative forces of Nature. The next step is to awaken in them a sense of responsibility towards these forces of growth, towards the health of the soil, of plants, of animals, and of humanity.”

Ehrenfried Pfeiffer PhD.

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DIGGING POTATOES CREDIT: httpwww.crowvalley.com

the rhythm of the land WITI IHIMAERA

Have you experienced the loneliness of the land, bereft of human laughter and energy? We need the Earth, that’s clear.

But what about the Earth’s need of us? Will we rediscover what it means to the Earth that people work with the land in common-unity? NZ author Witi Ihimaera evokes the spirit of the past, reminding us what is needed for the future.

Rongo stopped the ute at a corner of the paddock. He got out and took some sacks from the back. The paddock was planted with long rows of potatoes, a few rows of pumpkins, kamokamo and marrows, and tall maize glistening yellow and green in the sun. A big paddock, stretching back to the road. One of four paddocks in the village which was all that was left of the Mahana land. ‘May as well get started,’ he said to nobody in particular. But he couldn’t help remembering that not many years ago Riripeti got all the Mahana clan together at a family meeting, organised the buying of seed

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then, blessing them, sent them to do the planting. She fixed the time the old way, calculating by the shape of the moon and the position of the stars in the night sky.

The planting was a good time. A family occasion. The men would be in front, planting the seeds. The women would follow, watering the seeds. The younger members of the family would come after them, folding the seeds into the earth. Although it was hard work it didn’t seem to take long, because everybody was too busy laughing and gossiping and chucking off at each other to think of how strenuous it was. ‘Hey, Cissie, cover that seed properly with the dirt, eh?’ ‘Worry about your own seed, cuz, and while you’re at it, don’t you know how to plant in the straight line?’ ‘Who says I’m not planting straight? It’s the furrows that are crooked.’

‘Don’t blame furrows, eh? Blame the drinking last night.

And tell that son of yours he only has to dig a small hole for the seeds. Does he think he’s digging all way to China?’

So it used to go on all day. The laughter, the light-hearted exchanges, sweat flowing healthy and well. The constant bending into the planting. At smoko times, the clan rested beneath a willow tree and ate bread and drank clear water.

Then back to work again until night fell.

Sometimes, the planting would take a whole week, depending on how many paddocks the clan had decided would be planted with seed. One week among the very few weeks that all the Mahana families became one family. A happy week of shared muscle and sweat.

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Afterward would come the waiting time. The waiting for the maize and potatoes to grow. The Mahana clan was rostered by Riripeti to work in the paddocks, weed the growing plants and water them. Once the crop was ready, it was all hands to the work and the fulfilment of family reaping the riches of shared labour. And Riripeti would come among the workers, praising and blessing their work, and leading all in karakia ‘Kororia ki to Ingoa Tapu, Amine.’ [‘And so we praise His holy name, Amen.’]

That was then.

This was now. Today, Rongo Mahana had come for the year’s harvest. He came with spade in hand to the paddock. Last planting season, Rongo Mahana planted the paddock by himself. On this day he had come alone to the harvest. There was no sense of fulfilment.

‘Times are changing,’ Rongo muttered. He threw the sacks on the ground. He sat on one of them and unlaced his shoes. He put his boots on. With the spade gripped in his hands he pushed into the earth to uncover the potatoes. They clung to the roots of the upturned plants. He bent and pulled at the potatoes, his fingers searching the soil for any others which had not been exposed by the cleaving spade. He piled them in the furrow between this row and the next before thrusting the spade again beneath the next plant in the row. Spade turning earth, body bending and fingers scrabbling in the dirt. Spade cleaving earth, body attuning itself to the rhythm of the work. Plant after plant being upturned. ‘Good spuds, these,’ he said, praising his work. Losing himself to the rhythm of the spade. Trying to forget being alone in the digging. Moving up the row, leaving potatoes strewn in the furrow. His heart was racing, the sweat beginning to bead his face. An aching began in his bending body. Alone in the paddock.

A solitary speck amid the expanse of furrows cut into the earth. Alone under the hot sun.

MAORI WORKING IN GARDEN CREDIT: httpnzetc.victoria.ac.nz

THE SOLITARY NATURE OF AGRIBUSINESS. CREDIT: httplethbridgeherald.com

The spade slipped. It cut into the roots of a plant and sliced into the potatoes beneath. Frustrated, Rongo grasped them and flung them at the sky.

He cursed the sun for being so hot, so all-seeing, so unyielding in that bright sky. ‘Damn you,’ he shouted to nobody and nothing in particular.

The rhythm of this man to the land was destroyed. …Rongo chastised himself. ‘Can I really put all the blame on the Pakeha life? Nothing lasts forever. The gate to the way we were is already shut behind us and we cannot get back in. We just have to make the best of it.’ He thrust the spade into the earth again, looked for an example of self-blame — and found it in the planting. ‘After all, Teria promised to come to help me. But did she? No. And did Pita? No.’ AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

FRESHLY DUG POTATOES

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On that first day of the planting there had been no sign of either his brother or his sister. Rongo couldn’t wait any longer.

He had felt the earth crying out for seed, the womb of the land waiting to receive its seeding. He had felt the yearning of the land for peace, for it had become accustomed to the rhythm of the yearly work. There was a crying out of his blood too.

The rhythm of the land and the rhythm of his blood were one and the same and had to be appeased. And he had started the planting, thinking that maybe Teria and Pita would turn up eventually. He got going because when the time came for planting you had to plant before it was too late. No good planting late — it put the growing out of rhythm. There was a time for everything: for planting, for harvesting, and if you missed it you were done for. In the old days people died of starvation if the kumara did not come to crop. Unplanted land did not bear fruit.

The sun sprang quickly in the sky. Still nobody, And Rongo realised that it was all over, all over. He couldn’t blame the others for moving from the village and destroying the rhythm of the land. …No, nobody to blame but himself for waiting, for being so stubborn. For hoping.

On that planting day, something had nagged at Rongo and wouldn’t leave him alone. Something about the way things were supposed to be. The ancient gods of the Maori — Tane, God of man, forest and birds; Tawhirimatea, God of the winds, Rongo ma Tane, God of peace and agriculture; Tangaroa, God of the oceans and all therein — had not given unto man their bounty without strictures. Everything was connected. Man had a reciprocal responsibility with his world. There was a cycle of birth, death and replenishment which had to be maintained. There was also an implicit contract with the soil, with all things animate and inanimate, that had to be respected and honoured. It was

not a contract given either to abuse or to play with. Arrogant man had set himself above nature; the relationship was not something about which either had any choice. They were contracted to each other. Man, by not respecting the contract, was in danger of killing both his world and himself.

Rongo Mahana had made a promise to the land that day.

‘When the time comes for harvesting, I’ll be back,’ he said.

‘And here I am,’ Rongo smiled, patting the land. He had fulfilled his promise. The time for harvesting had come — and here he was. The belly of the land was swollen and ready to deliver.

He was the midwife, the orchardist, the agriculturalist, come into the bountiful garden, Rongo looked back over the rows of potatoes he had harvested. Not too bad for an old man, and the spuds were good this year. How many sacks should he fill today? Better dig up as much as he could before he switched across to that part of the paddock where pumpkins, kamokamo and melons were wasting. ‘Better keep working,’ he laughed.

‘Times may have changed, eh, land! Me and you are getting old. But pae kare, we’re not giving up yet, eh? Let’s see what else you have for me.’

And when you are dead, Rongo Mahana? the land asked. Who will maintain the contract which Riripeti made and which is for the benefit of all? Who will maintain the cycle of life between man and nature? Who will render unto me?

Rongo plunged his hands into the earth.

‘Oh, Riripeti,’ he said, ‘forgive us.’

SOURCE

From: Witi Ihimaera, Whanau II, Reed 2004 used with kind permission of the author and Penguin Group (NZ) Ltd.

HARVEST ROW CREDIT: Public Domain

One of NZ’s finest writers, Witi Ihimaera has published many award-winning novels and collections of short stories. His marae is the family house of the Pere family, Rongopai, in Waituhi, near Gisborne. Without being strictly autobiographical, much of Ihimaera’s fiction is based on fact, making it richly authentic.

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FAMILY FARMS CREDIT: httpnewfarm.rodaleinstitute.org

community farm pioneers ROBERT KARP

‘Friends, this is not Community Supported Agriculture as a trendy addition to one’s lifestyle, this is CSA as a core commitment to one’s health, to the health of one’s local community, and to the health of the planet.’

Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire is one of the first and most innovative community supported agriculture (CSA) farms in North America. I had the great pleasure to visit the farm this past October and wanted to share a report of the growth and progress of this beautiful and important farm.

Started by biodynamic farmers Trauger Groh, Lincoln Geiger, Anthony Graham, and a host of community members in the AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

mid-1980s, the farm is known for pioneering a unique – some would call it ‘archetypal’ – form of CSA. At Temple-Wilton, for example, there is not an equal, evenly distributed share price. Rather, members attend an annual meeting each year to review and discuss the farm’s total budget and decide what amount they each feel they can contribute to that budget. Each member writes down his or her proposed financial offering on a piece of paper; if those sums don’t add up to meet the annual budget, then the members go around again and offer additional sums until the budget is met. The process, in other words, is highly participatory, communal, and transparent.

This model of CSA has so many benefits. First of all, it liberates everyone, farmers and eaters alike, from the notion that they are buying and selling produce. Instead, it fosters the consciousness among the members that they are making gifts to support the continued existence of the farm as a whole and that the produce they receive in return is a gift.

But it also models transparency, through the fact that the farm finances and the plans for the farm each year are made completely transparent to the members, who have a chance to give input and raise questions. A true gift economy is thus being developed that harmonises the different interests and need of the farmers, the land, and the community.

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By accepting responsibility for the agricultural use of the land, all members of our Community Farm become ‘farmers’. Either they enact their right to farm directly, by actually planning and doing the farm work, or they let those members who have the time and skills to do so, farm in their name. Those members who do the planning and farm work on an ongoing basis and as a main occupation, are called the Active Farmers.

I was thrilled to discover on this trip that Temple-Wilton has more and more become a year-round CSA that can meet the bulk of a family’s food needs, offering their members everything from pork, beef, chicken, eggs, raw milk, and cheese to vegetables throughout the year, not to mention fruit, bread, and other products from local affiliated farms.

Members can stop by the farm at any time to pick up the food they need.

And consider this: the average contribution to the farm per household of two adults is $200 a month to the farm. Friends, this is not CSA as a trendy addition to one’s lifestyle, this is CSA as a core commitment to one’s health, to the health of one’s local community, and to the health of the planet.

The farm made a strong impression on me. The animals and the fields looked extraordinarily healthy and the whole place smelled wonderful: the perfect balance of the earthly and the cosmic, like fine wine, wonderfully made compost, or fresh-baked bread. How amazing it would be, I thought, to get the majority of one’s food from one vital, self-sustaining biodynamic farm organism. Imagine the impact on one’s health after seven years of nourishing one’s body from such a farm organism and renewing all one’s cells thereby.

It was also wonderful to see how the farm has grown over the last decade. Many new parcels of land have been acquired, making the farm ever more self-sufficient in terms of fertility and feed. All this land has been purchased with gifts from the local community and is secured long term by easements and/or land trust ownership. There is a new café on the farm, which fosters a wonderful social element. The farm is also growing its commitment to farm-based education of children and youth from local schools.

CREDIT: Temple Wilton Community Farm

The following formula has allowed the farm to operate smoothly since its inception: All unprocessed farm produce (vegetables and milk) is available to members free of charge, if they meet the proposed budget through contributions over the course of one year. This enables us to sever the direct link between food and money.

Pledges are based on the ability to pay, rather than on the amount of food to be taken. Having made a contribution, the member is free to take as much food as is needed, depending on availability.

Processed goods (yogurt, cheese, meat, bread, etc.) and eggs, are sold at a price that will enable the processing costs to be covered.

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New farmers have also found a home on the farm or in the surrounding community, and this younger generation appears to be playing a stronger and stronger role—starting new enterprises and holding out new visions for the future. I had wonderful meetings, for example, with Brad Miller, who works for a local Waldorf board high school, who is working to secure key additional parcels of land that would allow High Mowing to strengthen its farm-based education programs and provide important additional land for the growth of Temple-Wilton Community Farm.

The impression of the farm and community is thus one of growing maturity—evolving from high-integrity food production through innovative social arrangement to becoming more and more a centre for community life and cultural renewal.

You can find out more about their unique approach to CSA at http://templewiltoncommunityfarm.com/ See also Farms of Tomorrow Revisited by Trauger M. Groh and Steven McFadden Robert Karp is Executive Director of the American Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Assn. and a long-time social entrepreneur in the sustainable food and farming movement. This article comes from the Assn’s. Biodynamics Blog http://biodynamicsbda.wordpress.com/ AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

"We can produce way more," Salatin says. "Look around the world, look at the farms surrounding us here. The pastures are worn out, the water cycle is kaput. When you think of all those grazing acres in the world that are being terribly under-utilised and abused because they’re not mimicking these mobbing, mowing, moving patterns of nature – when you take that into consideration, the production just triples through the roof without the addition of any petroleum. All it requires is a change of management."

the really big questions Labeled ‘The World’s Most Innovative Farmer’ by Time Magazine, Joel Salatin wows packed audiences from all walks of life, wherever he goes, with his version of what he calls ‘Agritainment’.

One of the world’s best farmers, Joel Salatin communicates a means by which consumers can engage with farmers and a way for farmers can take control, not just of production but also succession, processing, distribution and marketing.

He returns to Oceania in February-March 2014 for a six-city seminar series and book tour themed on his latest book ‘Fields of Farmers’. Joel is joined by his son, Daniel Salatin and daughter-in-law Sheri. 31 year old Daniel manages Polyface Farms. Sheri is Polyface Farm’s Marketing Director, a role she manages alongside raising their three children.

Together they farm the 550 acre Polyface Farm in Virginia, USA that services more than 4,000 families, 10 retail outlets, and 50 restaurants. They supply salad bar beef, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, pigaerator pork, forage-based rabbits, pastured turkey and forestry products through ‘relationship marketing’ via on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs.

The Salatin’s story & Polyface Farms’ proven techniques have inspired many thousands of Australian and NZ farmers and consumers to understand that you don’t need a lot of capital to get farming and that it’s entirely possible to farm while helping to regenerate families, farms, landscapes and the food system.

The well-documented issues of aging farmers, poor terms of trade and declining numbers of young people taking on the wonderful opportunity that lies before them with an everincreasing population needing to be fed and clothed, along with landscapes and communities that need stable and regenerative stewardship for generations to come – these are fundamental issues that must concern us all.

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For a clearer idea of what’s possible take a look at Salatin’s bottom line. Salatin runs five times more cows on his land than the county average. Together with revenue from laying chickens, turkeys and meat chickens all being fed from the same land area he grosses something like $2 million a year. His small, previously unproductive and rocky farm has become a deep-soiled powerhouse – all without a single bag of fertiliser.

Now just imagine the total food yield if all our grazing properties produced according to the Polyface model. While Salatin hasn’t tried to calculate that figure, he’s certain that when people say organic agriculture can’t feed the world, they haven’t studied the productivity of his place.

And to those who advocate giving up meat-based diets because a vegan diet has a smaller ecological footprint he suggests they’re making false comparisons. You can’t just compare the modern industrial system to badly managed alternatives; you need to look outside the square to what Polyface Farm shows is possible.

So what are the Really Big Questions?

• Do you want to have our agricultural landscapes bereft of multi-generations of families?

• Do you want to see agriculture become a mostly corporate, non-family pursuit?

• Do you want a truly regenerative and invigorating future for agriculture in Australia, New Zealand and across the world?

When: Sunday 23rd February from 9am to 5pm.

Where: Auckland Grammar School Centennial Theatre Cost: $220 Per person (includes the book "Fields of Farmers") $180 for subsequent family members or those working on same farm (no book), $120 under 25 years old Ticket holders to the ‘Fields of Farmers’ series will receive a copy of Joel’s latest book of the same name and Joel will be available for signings throughout these events.

To register for the workshop go to http://thefamilyfarm. co.nz/ and sign up to their RegenAG newsletter.

Read a recent article ‘Greener Pastures’ featured in ‘The Age’ & ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’ by Mark Whittaker. http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/greener-pastures20121112-2974z.html#ixzz2joVFqV5C

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CHINA HIGH RISE CREDIT: http://wodumedia.com

independence traded for highrise GENE LOGSDON

Millions, yes millions, of Chinese rural people (by definition, small scale farmers) are being uprooted from their land and moved to high-rise apartments. The smallholders are being paid to move and supposedly provision is being made to supply them with jobs and security in future years but when I see pictures of the forests of high-rises that are going up for these country people to live in, I am horrified. I can’t imagine how the government can afford the cost of such fast-paced, large-scale urbanisation and I definitely don’t believe it is sustainable, trading in self-sufficiency for utter dependency on urban economics and fossil fuel energy.

shift from 90% rural to 90% urban. We saw government, influenced by books like Wheeler MacMillan’s 1929 book, "Too Many Farmers," embrace the kind of economics that supports the uprooting of small landholders. At least with so-called capitalism, the change came more gradually so that people had a generation or two to adjust. But more and more people are saying that what has happened as a result is not good. We are learning that a nation of consumers, which China seems so anxious to establish in a great big hurry, is not sustainable. What wonderful books will eventually be written about this great irony. While a revolution is going on to uproot independent farmers in China, a revolution is going on in the United States to root a viable local food and farmer society back in the ground again.

I quote from the NYTimes of June 16: "If half of China’s population starts consuming, growth is inevitable," said Li Xiangyang, vice director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of a government research institute. "Right now they are living in rural areas where they do not consume." To an old country boy, this is terrifyingly wrongheaded thinking. All the new high-rises going up, and not just in China, are to me the modern version of the pyramids, an example of yet another society gone berserk with what it thinks is infinitely available cheap energy. The pyramids did it with cheap human labour, we do it today with cheap fossil fuel.

Why does rural society inevitably gravitate into the cities, either by force or by choice? It appears that in this case, some of the peasant farmers in China like the idea of moving into high-rises. I can’t figure it out for sure. Can you? My best bet so far is that the lure of cash money is more powerful than the lure of independence when independence can only come with what seems to be unpleasant physical labour. Food independence means someone has to do the work and only a small portion of the human race seems genetically programmed to like that work. The rest choose money and the promises of ease that it seems to offer. By the time the labouring classes figure out that it just ain’t so, they are trapped, often in jobs far more uncomfortable than hoeing corn rows. Yet parents and teachers continue to educate children to go to the city "to make something of themselves." That is an awful mistake especially now when electronics brings the whole world to our doors. A landscape of high-rises will become the new ghettoes.

Or, with just a slight drop in the amount of electricity available, they will turn into high rise mausoleums.

One can argue that the Chinese are only trying to do in a few years, what it took the United States to do in a century with so-called capitalism. We saw our population

Gene is the author of numerous books and magazine articles on farm-related issues. Article from his blog http:// thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com used with kind permission.

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CREDIT: httpwww.celsias.co.nz

animal agriculture versus animal welfare

JOHN IKERD

I have been a reluctant warrior in the war against CAFOs for more than 20 years – CAFOs being large-scale Confinement Animal Feeding Operations. I didn’t join this battle by choice but rather out of a sense of duty. While working on sustainable agriculture at the University of Missouri, I was asked by a constituent group to explore whether CAFOs were a logical economic development strategy for rural areas. I had worked for a large meat packing company early in my career and had worked with CAFO operators during my years as an extension livestock marketing specialist at North Carolina State and Oklahoma State University. I came into this controversy without any preconceived ideas about whether CAFOS were good or bad for farmers, rural communities, or society as a whole. After carefully researching the initial question, I concluded they were not a logical strategy for rural economic development – and I reported my conclusions to my constituents. I then found myself in the midst of the ‘CAFO war.’ have been a reluctant warrior ever since.

The NZ Government is prepared to modify the Animal Welfare (Dairy Cattle) Code of Welfare 2010 and thereby pave the way for factory farming within our dairy industry.

Professor Ikerd outlines what we’re in for in terms of environmental and health run-off and suggests putting aside our differences – whether we believe eating animals for food is appropriate or not – in order to address the serious threat posed by factory farming.

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that CAFOs are the epitome of everything that’s wrong with largescale industrial agriculture, completely lacking in socially redeeming qualities. CAFOs pollute the air, streams and groundwater with noxious odors, toxic chemicals, and a host of biological contaminants. They provide ideal breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as the deadly MRSA. They incubate dangerous food contaminants such as E-coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella. They are documented threats to public health.

SETTING ASIDE DIFFERENCES OF OPINION TO DEFEAT CAFOS

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WILL NEW ZEALAND TRADE THIS………

CREDIT: Public Domain

……….FOR THIS? CREDIT: Public Domain

In addition, any economic benefits of CAFOs accrue to a few local contract producers and the giant corporations for whom they produce. The rural neighbors of CAFOs bear the negative health and environmental consequences without realising any of the economic benefits. CAFOs invariably displace more independent family farmers than they replace with low-paid workers who move into CAFO communities. Consequently, CAFOs often rip the social fabric of rural communities asunder, essentially destroying any hope for real economic development.

Furthermore, retail prices of meat, milk, and eggs continue to rise as processors and retailers extract ever-larger profits from the food system.

socialisation. They have been fighting to reduce and remove restrictions to animal movement in confinement facilities and to allow farm animals access to the out-ofdoors. Animal welfare concerns include painful practices such as de-beaking chickens, castrating pigs, and bobbing tails of milk cows. They are also concerned about the practice of breeding animals for maximum production, which often places animals under tremendous stress.

For example, the lifespan of high-producing milk cows has been cut to less than half of normal. However, many animal welfare advocates believe the ultimate solution to mistreatment of animals is the elimination of animal agriculture.

Advocates of ‘sustainable’ animal agriculture and advocates of humane treatment of animals have been fighting parallel battles.

The solution is not to fix specific problems but to eliminate the industrial farming system as a whole.

Finally, animals in CAFOs are raised under conditions that are intrinsically inhumane, which brings me to the main topic of this paper. Advocates of ‘sustainable’ animal agriculture and advocates of humane treatment of animals have been fighting parallel battles against CAFOs. Sustainable animal agriculture is committed to farming systems that are environmentally sound, socially responsible, and economically viable. Sustainable farmers understand that they must maintain the health and productivity of the land and of rural communities in order to be economically sustainable. Sustainable animal producers are also committed to humane treatment of animals.

Advocates of sustainable agriculture and humane treatment of animals tend to disagree on the legitimacy of animal agriculture, although they agree on virtually everything else. There are logical arguments on both sides of this contentious issue. How can any production process possibly be humane if its ultimate purpose and intention is the slaughter of sentient, living beings? How can any system of production possibly be sustainable if it denies the basic fact that all living things survive and thrive by eating the dead carcasses of once-living beings, including sentient beings? There are reasonable, logical answers to each of these questions; the answers are just not acceptable to those who ask them. Thus, the division between animal agriculture and animal welfare continues.

Sustainable farmers produce grass-based meat and milk and free-range and pastured pork and poultry, and use deep-bedded housing systems that allow free movement of animals when confinement is necessary. Sustainable producers understand that animal welfare is an ethical and social responsibility. They understand also that animal welfare is not an economic necessity, as CAFO advocates proclaim. In fact, mistreating can be profitable.

Nonetheless, many sustainable farmers are committed to animal agriculture – just a very different kind of animal agriculture: a humane animal agriculture.

Most animal protection advocates share sustainable farmers’ concerns about the negative environmental, social, and economic impacts of CAFOs. However, the humane treatment of animals is their primary concern.

They are working to create conditions where animals are allowed to exhibit their innate, natural behaviors, to diminish the inevitable stress of being confined in spaces that restrict movement and opportunities for

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The basic problem with this division is that CAFO advocates have been able to use this philosophical divide to weaken and obscure public opposition to CAFOs. They label proponents of new animal welfare legislation as ‘animal rightist’ who care more about the comfort of animals than the welfare of people. They warn those in animal agriculture that regulations related to treatment of animals are a ‘slippery slope’ leading to the ultimate elimination of all animal agriculture. As a result, sustainable agriculture advocates tend to avoid taking positions on animal welfare issues, not willing to oppose humane treatment of animals and not willing to support those who oppose animal agriculture.

On the other side of the issue, many advocates of animal welfare see sustainable animal agriculture as a ‘slippery slope’ leading to strengthened public acceptance of the legitimacy of agriculture, or at least delaying its ultimate rejection. They see free-range chickens, pastured pork, and AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

grass-based dairies as the equivalent to ‘greenwashing’ an inherently inhumane and immoral system of food production to make it publicly acceptable. Thus, many advocates of animal protection avoid taking positions on sustainable animal agriculture issues, not willing to oppose systems that treat animals more humanely and not willing to support the continuation of animal agriculture.

The proponents of CAFOs have been able to use this ‘wedge issue’ very effectively to confuse the issue and splinter public opposition to CAFOs. Advocates of sustainable agriculture and animal welfare too often become unwitting collaborators with their common enemy. They are skillfully driven into separate camps because they are unable or unwilling to work together on this important issue, even though they obviously agree in their opposition to CAFOs. Advocates of sustainable agriculture and animal welfare too often become collaborators with their common enemy. It’s like they’re unwilling to agree to oppose murder because they can’t agree about abortion.

If we are to win the war against CAFOs, we must seek and find common ground on which to fight the battles. First, we need to focus on the fundamental problem; not on specific environmental, social, or ethical consequences.

The industrial farming system as a whole is the source of all these problems linked to CAFOs, and the solution is not to fix specific problems but to eliminate the system as a whole – to eliminate CAFOs. Second, we need to find and focus on our areas of agreement. Both advocates and opponents of animal agriculture agree animals must be treated humanely, with dignity and respect, which is impossible in CAFOs. We also agree that public health is a major concern in the U.S., and CAFOs are major contributors to public health problems in both rural and urban areas.

We must be willing to set our philosophical differences aside, at least for a time. If we can’t work together to eliminate CAFOs, we are not going to be able to defend and protect public health, family farms, rural communities, or farm animals. We must be willing to allow time and further human enlightenment to evolve toward a deeper understanding of relationships between humans and farm animals. Disagreements about the legitimacy of eating the flesh of animals are as old as human history. Some people equate animal agriculture to slavery, suggesting that eventually animals will be freed. However, slaves were not freed from the necessity of work; they were simply freed from working under oppressive and inhumane conditions.

Every living thing, including humans, eventually dies.

What is the work of animals; under what conditions should they be allowed to work, live, and die? Or should animals be free to reproduce, live, and evolve as they will, without human intervention? Perhaps in another century or two, people will either become comfortable killing and eating animals or they will quit killing and eating animals.

But that issue will not likely be resolved in the lifetime of anyone here today.

I like to compare our inability to join forces in the war against CAFOs to people being unwilling to agree to oppose murder because they can’t agree about abortion.

Some people believe abortion is a form of murder, just as some people see animal agriculture as a form of murder.

But, virtually everyone agrees that we should oppose AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

and have laws against murder. They know that murder is ethically and morally wrong, even if they don’t agree about every possible form of murder. They know we are not likely to erase differences of opinion about abortion anytime soon, so they agree to continue disagreeing, while they willingly join forces in opposition to murder. Advocates of sustainable agriculture and animal protection need to agree to continue disagreeing about the legitimacy of animal agriculture, while joining forces to defeat their common enemy: CAFOs. The negative consequences of CAFOs are inherent in their specialised, standardised, consolidated, industrial structure. Any economic efficiencies result from reductions in costs of management and labor – which mean fewer quality employment opportunities in rural areas, not more. The negative public health, environmental, and animal welfare consequences of CAFOs are inevitable consequences of concentrating too many animals in spaces that are too small to accommodate the basic health needs of animals and to assimilate or neutralise their inevitable wastes. Community conflict between the few who benefit economically and the many who bear the environmental and social costs is inevitable. The proponents of CAFOs know if they are sufficiently regulated to eliminate their unacceptable consequences, they will not be economically competitive; they won’t be able to exist. This is not a war to make CAFOs tolerable; this is a war to eradicate CAFOs. I personally dislike military analogies, such as wars, battles, and warriors. On rare occasions, our human failings unfortunately leave us no apparent alternative.

I’m old enough to remember World War II. There was nothing great or noble about it at the time, but I am still convinced it was necessary, even if not just. America faced significant risks in forming alliances to help fight and win the war, but the risks of losing the war were far greater.

Some of those alliances had unpleasant consequences.

However, I remain convinced that the consequences were well worth the risks. Just think what the world might be like today had we had lacked the courage to form alliances to fight World War II. Then think what agriculture might be like in the future if we lack the courage to risk joining forces to fight CAFOs. I believe our respect or lack of respect for other living things, including farm animals, is a reflection of our basic ethical or moral character. A lack of respect for farm animals reflects a fundamental flaw in the character of global agriculture. Let’s join forces and do what we know in our hearts is the right and good thing to do: let’s join forces to defeat CAFOs. The consequences of our failing to do so would extend far beyond farm animals and agriculture, extending for decades into the future. Let’s set aside our divisions and eradicate CAFOs. SOURCE:

This article has been lightly edited; it can be accessed in full at http:// web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Columbia%20--%20CAFOs%20Bridging%20 Differences.htm

John Ikerd is Professor Emiritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri.

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of star…

LIBRA

Between the Virgin and the Scorpion lies the constellation, Libra, the Scales. In Ancient Rome li-bra was a unit of weight, equivalent to about 12 ounces or 340 grams.

However, in earlier times, the imagination of Scales did not exist. These particular stars were experienced as belonging either to the Virgin or Scorpio. Only much later, in Julius Caesar’s time, did they come to be seen as Scales or a balance.

However, there are indications suggesting that the Sumerian civilisation of 3000BC represented this constellation as an Altar. So while the Virgin stands to one side of Libra as the representation of the ‘Eternal Source’ of all existence, on the other side lies the cosmic imagination of Death, the Scorpion. Therefore the Balance between the two appears as a place of reconciliation between the images of the Cosmos and the depths of the Earth.

In the myth of Persephone, daughter of Demeter (the Virgin), we learn how Hades abducted Persephone to his underworld from which she was allowed to return for half the year only (ie) Spring and Summer. This mystery of the sacrifice of life-sustaining forces is represented by the stars of Libra,

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suggesting that everything be held in balance..

Original star wisdom had a deep effect on the cultural development of humanity, even into relatively recent times. For instance, we still find its influence in the grandeur of Greek mythology from where most of the names of constellations known to western culture have originated. Yet for many, these names mean little.

Generally, modern people have lost any understanding of the deep spiritual wisdom of our mythological heritage.

We no longer know how to look ‘through’ the visible starry world into the creative Life realm. But the vision held by the Ancients was that the heavens were the co-ordinating link between divine will and human evolution. As we learn to understand the role of myth in shaping our minds or our ‘heavens’ we may find that Greek sidereal mythology no longer appears as the invention of ‘primitive minds’.

Rather, it becomes a means of describing profound spiritual truths of human evolution.

SOURCE:

Sucher, W.O. Isis Sophia an outline of a new star wisdom. Floris Books 1974

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The Moon Gardener:

A Biodynamic Guide to Getting the Best from Your Garden

By Peter Berg Packed with practical tips for both novice and experienced gardeners this fine book clearly summarises the basics of lunar and biodynamic gardening, together with in-depth sections on: activating and enlivening the soil; biodynamic preparations; making good compost; crop rotation and green manuring; cultivation work and care of the garden; practical plant protection; rich harvesting; saving your own seed. Explaining how the subtle influences from the cosmos work on the plant world, Berg distinguishes between root, leaf, blossom and fruit days in the working calendar. Together with the practical knowledge described in this book productive, chemical-free gardening is achievable leading to healthy plants and abundant harvests.

128 pages * 240 x 160 * Paperback * Temple Lodge Publishing * $42.95

Thinking Like a Plant – A living science of life

By Craig Holdrege Who would imagine that plants can become master teachers of a radical new way of seeing and interacting with the world?

When we slow down and turn our attention to plants then our transformation can begin – our thinking becomes more fluid and dynamic; we realise how we are embedded in the world; we become sensitive and responsive to the situations we meet; and we learn to thrive within a changing world. While it is easy to talk about new paradigms and to critique our current state of affairs, it is not so easy to move beyond the status quo. This book is crafted as a practical guide to developing a life-infused way of interacting with the world.

218 pages * 229x210mm * paperback * Lindisfarne Press 2013 * $39.95

Lord of the Elements – Interweaving Christianity and Nature

By Bastiaan Baan In this unique book, Bastiaan Baan, seminary leader and priest of The Christian Community characterises the four classical elements of earth, water, air and fire and their meaning for ancient Celtic and other indigenous spiritual steams. He then explores their significance, including the role of nature spirits, from a modern context and offers insight into a renewed Christianity that is intimately at one with nature.

A fascinating and original work on the connections between Christianity and the natural world.

244 pages * 229x210mm* paperback * Floris Books 2013 * $34.95

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Tomorrow, who will own our farmland?

Would you like more of a say in how your food is grown?

Would you like to share the care of organic-biodynamic farms so that your grandchildren can also eat well?

Watch this space‌.

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…and flower WHAT IS A TREE?

Let us look at a tree with an eye to what it is within the whole of nature.

If we look at it with understanding, the only parts that we can consider plant-like are the thin green stems, which bear leaves, flowers, and fruits. These shoots grow out of the tree in the same way that herbaceous plants grow out of the soil.

The tree is really ‘earth’ for what is growing on its branches.

It is mounded-up soil, albeit soil that is in a more living condition than that in which our herbaceous plants and grains are growing. To understand a tree we must consider, on the one hand, its thick trunk, limbs and branches and on the other hand, the leaves, flowers and fruits growing out of it – these are the real plants, rooted in the truck and branches of the tree just as other plants are rooted in the earth.

cambium layer is the actual growth region; it can create new cells, whereas the other layers of the tree aren’t able to do that.

Thus, in the tree, we can see how the solid, earthy element has in fact raised itself up, how it has grown up into the air, and why it therefore requires more internalised vitality than ordinary soil, which only has ordinary roots in it. Now we begin to understand the tree! We begin to understand it as a remarkable entity that exists in order to create a separation in the ‘plants’ that grow on it. It separates their stems and flowers and fruits from their roots, retaining only an invisible, spiritual connection. [that human beings ‘make sense of’ through thinking. Ed] As a result of this, trees become home to vast gatherings of insects and birds.

This is an example of the macrocosmic approach we need to take in order to better understand the growth of plants.

SCOURCE:

Steiner, R. Agriculture, a course of eight lectures.

The question is, are these plants – these more or less parasitic growths on the tree, really rooted?

Since there are no actual roots to be found in the tree, we must say that these plants that unfold their leaves, stalks, and flowers up there, have lost their roots. But plants are not complete without roots, they must have roots. So where are they?

In fact, the roots are there — they are just not visible to our coarse outer perception. In this case, we must not want merely to see the root, we must understand it. Perhaps this comparison will help: suppose I plant a lot of herbaceous plants very close together in the ground, and suppose that their roots start to grow together, twining around each other until they merge into a single mass of roots. You can well imagine that such a complex array of roots would not allow itself to remain a mere tangle. It would organise into a single entity, and the sap of the different plants would start to flow together down below. In this newly unified root mass, you would not be able to distinguish where the roots of the individual plants stopped or started. They would have developed a common root system. This may not happen in reality, of course, but it does give us an idea of what is going on.

What I have sketched here hypothetically is the tree’s cambium layer. The only way to look at the roots of these plants is to imagine that they have been replaced by the cambium. Although the cambium does not look like roots, it is the layer that constantly produces new cells for continued growth of the foliage just as herbaceous plant-life grows from its own roots. The AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

TREES ARE UPLIFTED EARTH.

CAMBIUM LAYER

MOSSY TRUNK SIMILAR TO THE FOREST FLOOR. CREDIT: www. kristinwalldesigns.com

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zoo ACCOMPANIED BY SPARROWS

KARL KOENIG

We can learn to read the book of Nature using methods that penetrate beyond outer appearances to what is essential. Karl Koenig introduces a bird we all take for granted yet rarely ‘see’.

In the middle of the nineteenth century sparrows were unknown in North America. Towards the end of the 1860s they were brought to various East Coast cities, and in a few decades they spread across almost the whole continent. By the end of the century they had penetrated as far as San Francisco. In 1889 W.B. Barrow wrote: ‘From this time (1875) to the present, the marvellous rapidity of the sparrow’s multiplication, the surpassing swiftness of its extension, and

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the prodigious size of the area it has overspread are without parallel in the history of any bird.’

By the end of that century South America - especially Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia - was conquered in a similar way. In Australia and New Zealand the coastal districts were populated at the same time by all kinds of sparrows. Today one can truly say that (except for Antarctica) all continents and with few exceptions - all countries and regions are densely colonised by house-sparrows and allied species.

Their adaptability is astonishing. They are not bound to definite climatic and environmental conditions, as are many other birds. They can maintain themselves in subarctic districts just as well as in tropical regions and deserts. They are as much at home in northern Sweden as in central Brazil.

They live and nest also in barren Yemen and in tropical Burma.

There is obviously an intimate connection between sparrows and human settlements. In America one could observe that they pushed forward with the construction crews along new railway lines that were being built, from one inhabited place to the next. They always favoured settlements which had streets and squares, not isolated houses.

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When empty houses stand free for nest-building, they avoid this opportunity, for the house sparrow ‘will normally only nest in unoccupied buildings, if they are close to inhabited ones.’

During the Second World War sparrows moved with the British Eighth Army through the North African desert and settled in their camping places. In 1956 a whole colony of sparrows had settled deep under the earth in a coal-mine in Northumberland, England, and were being fed by the miners.

But this intimate connection between people and sparrows is optional, since we find sparrows also living, for example, on the uninhabited islands around New Zealand and in the deserted plateaus of northern India.

In spite of these exceptions - or perhaps just because of them – the connection of these birds with human beings is so astonishing as to be of a quite special kind. What is it that links the sparrow to man? Is it human beings themselves, or something else connected with them?

The connection of these birds with human beings is of a quite special kind.

Sparrows always remain shy and wary towards people. Very seldom do they become tame and trusting, and attempts to get them to breed in captivity have not worked well. They lay only a few eggs and go about the business of bringing up their young in a dispirited way. They remain always on their guard when someone approaches them.

They can indeed be cheeky and will intrude boldly into kitchens and living-rooms to fetch food that appeals to them. But they stay for seconds only and fly off as quickly as they came. They live near, but by no means with us.

It is rather as if they like to dwell in the shadow of our human activities. Where we have worked and built, where traffic rolls and machines operate - in railway halls and factory buildings, in streets and houses - there sparrows like to live. There, in the refuse of our activity, in dust and soot and smoke and sand, the sparrows find a world which suits them.

This cannot have been always so. For only in the last hundred years has this progressive industrialisation of human

existence taken place. Where were the sparrows earlier?

Their history and gradual development is unclear. Some believe that they have pushed forward gradually from Asia to Europe; others believe that their origin is to be traced in Africa, whence they advanced north along the Nile valley.

The various kinds of sparrows (rock sparrows, Italian and Spanish sparrows) which intermingled in many parts of the earth have concealed their previous history.

But one thing is clearly to be seen; the gradual spreading of sparrows occurred in earlier millennia along the paths of farming peoples. Wherever people settled down to till the land, the sparrows who had come with them settled too. They became the farmer’s companion, without ever coming close to him.

Perhaps we may outline the following history of the sparrows on earth: first they went with the farmers and the bounty to the harvest. Then they accompanied people into larger settlements and towns; and finally they have even gone into the industrial world that people have built.

The report from a Northumberland coal-mine indicates a further step. Accompanying man, the house-sparrows dip into the depths of earth-substance. Yet they remain an independent species that has not lost its merry artlessness, its liking for play and pleasure, its spontaneous chatter and its trust in the world. They carry their bird life into the depths of the earth and yet retain their own nature.

Dr. Karl Koenig founded the Camphill Movement in Scotland in 1939, a specialised form of education for children and adults with special needs, now well established world-wide. As a medical doctor he had great compassion for the suffering of people living on the margins of society. That same empathy he also felt towards animals.

Article reproduced with the publisher’s permission, from his book Animals, An Imaginative Zoology, Floris 2013.

If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for something. The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.

African Proverb

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CREDIT: The Millton Vineyard

we’re all peasants!

First used in the late 15th Century, the word peasant comes from the Anglo-French paisant, from pais, country and from Latin pagus district. We are all peasants.

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carbon trading won’t generate food sovereignty

Farmers produce food, not carbon. Yet, if some of the governments and corporate lobbies negotiating at the UN climate change conference to be held in Warsaw in November have their way, farmland could soon be considered a carbon sink that polluting corporations can buy into to compensate for their harmful emissions.

"We are directly opposed to the carbon market approach to dealing with the climate crisis," says Josie Riffaud of La Vía Campesina. "Turning our farmers’ fields into carbon sinks – the rights to which can be sold on the carbon market – will only lead us further away from what we see as the real solution: food sovereignty. The carbon in our farms is not for sale!"

Carbon trading has failed to address the real causes of the climate crisis. It was never meant to do so. Rather than reducing carbon emissions at their source, it has created a lucrative market for polluters and speculators to buy and sell carbon credits while continuing to pollute.

Now the pressure is increasing to treat farmland as a major carbon sink which can be claimed as yet another counterbalance to industrial emissions. The governments of the US and Australia, the World Bank and the corporate sector have long argued for this, and for the creation of new carbon markets where they can purchase land-based offsets in developing countries. Agribusiness is well positioned to profit from these, and some developingcountry governments hope that by offering their forests, grasslands and farmland to polluters they can increase revenue.

crisis. Rather than promoting this with carbon markets, the world’s leaders should support peasant farming and agroecology as the solution." GRAIN’s research has shown that a sustained focus on peasant-based agroecological practices oriented toward restoring organic matter to soils could capture 24-30% of the current global annual greenhouse gas emissions.

A week after the climate negotiators have flown home from Warsaw, the World Bank and governments of the Netherlands and South Africa will convene an international conference in Johannesburg to promote "climate smart agriculture", and set up a new alliance to achieve it.

But a look at the proposals on the table shows that it entails nothing more than business as usual: new genetically modified seeds developed by biotechnology corporations, more chemical fertilisers and pesticides by the agrochemical giants, and more ‘bio-intensive’ industrial plantation farming. "Climate smart agriculture has become the new slogan for the agricultural research establishment and the corporate sector to position themselves as the solution to the food and climate crisis,"says Pat Mooney of the ETC Group. "For the world’s small farmers, there is nothing smart about this. It is just another way to push corporate controlled technologies into their fields and rob them of their land."

Agriculture’s central role of feeding people and providing livelihoods to smallholders around the world should be defended, says Elizabeth Mpofu, from Vía Campesina.

"Rights over our farms, lands, seeds and natural resources need to remain in our hands so we can produce food and care for our mother earth as peasant farmers have done for centuries. We will not allow carbon markets to turn our hard work into carbon sinks that allow polluters to continue their business as usual."

SOURCE:

Media Release, La Vía Campesina | GRAIN | ETC Group | 07 November 2013 La Via Campesina is the global movement of peasant farmers struggling for food sovereignty. GRAIN and ETC Group are international organisations that oppose the industrial food system and support peasant based alternatives.

They have formed a partnership to advance peasant-based agroecology.

The November United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Warsaw risks pushing us deeper into this carbon market mess. A look at the official list of contributors to the conference shows that they are amongst the most polluting industries of the world.

Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, but Henk Hobbelink of GRAIN points out that: "It is the industrial food system – with its heavy use of chemical inputs, the soil erosion and deforestation that accompanies monoculture plantation farming, and the ever-growing drive to supply far away export markets – that is the main culprit behind the climate AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

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CREDIT: Urban Graffiti, Public Domain

when loss means progress RONNIE CUMMINS

A critical mass of educated consumers, food, and natural health activists are organising a powerful Movement capable of overthrowing North America’s GMO and junk food Empire. And they’re doing it by zeroing in on the achilles heel of Food Inc.: misleading and outright fraudulent labeling and advertising. Here, down-under, we can take heart - and strategy - from these developments.

Twelve months after narrowly (51-49 %) defeating our organic and natural health movement in an expensive and bitterly fought California ballot initiative to label genetically engineered foods, Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) are publicly bragging that they’ve beaten us again, 52-48 %, in a similar ballot in Washington State.

But at what cost? Thanks to increased consumer awareness and resistance against GMOs (genetically modified organisms), the biotech and junk food lobbies were forced to spend twice as much money per capita in Washington State as they spent in California. They stooped to laundering $12 million in funds from Big Food companies to hide their identities in the hope of avoiding another round of bad publicity. They had to launch the

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same scurrilous barrage of TV, radio and direct mail ads, falsely claiming that GMO food labels as prescribed by the labeling bill were ‘confusing’ and ‘limited,’ would significantly increase food costs, hurt family farmers, and benefit special interest groups.

The biotech and junk food lobbies also understand that public concern and anger are likely to increase in 2014, given that a new generation of hazardous Frankenfoods and crops, including GE salmon, apples and Agent Orange(2,4 D)-resistant corn, are about to be approved by the Obama administration. This is why the GMA blatantly broke the law in Washington, trying to conceal $12 million in campaign donations from some of the world’s largest and most profitable junk food companies, including Coke, Pepsi, Nestlé, General Mills and Kellogg’s. it’s also why the food giants and biotech bullies are now lobbying the federal government to take away states’ rights to pass mandatory labels on GMO food.

As Monsanto and the GMA understand, their dirty tricks campaign in Washington has backfired, stimulating another consumer backlash, galvanising an even larger and more radical anti-GMO grassroots movement than before. For the next 12 months the proponents of ‘no labels’ on GMO foods will be facing legislative battles on labeling in no less than 30 states, with Vermont likely to pass mandatory labeling in early 2014.

Yes, at the end of the day, Monsanto and Big Food confused enough Washington voters to scrape out a narrow victory in a low-turnout election.But just as in California, Big Food and Big Biotech privately acknowledged that it was a hollow victory, another expensive, brand-damaging battle in a fruitless war against consumer choice, a war they will inevitably lose.

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McDonald’s and Gerber have announced that they won’t use arctic apples, the world’s first genetically-engineered apples. the move, by two major food suppliers, suggests that despite any political wins the biotechnology industry has had in the ongoing fight over the products, consumer opposition is gaining ground.

After spending $70 million in California and Washington and reaping tons of bad publicity in the process, large food corporations and biotech companies understand the enormous risk of fighting high-visibility battles defending a technology that 40% of the population believes is unsafe, with another 40% unsure.

Some major food companies including Unilever and Mars, bruised by bad publicity and consumer boycotts, have broken ranks with the GMA and the biotech industry, arguing that GMO food labels are inevitable and must be accepted. Just as they’ve had to accept them in Europe and dozens of other countries.

But what is perhaps most threatening to the national $800-billion food and factory farm industry is the fact that the organic and natural health movement appears to be growing more popular and more radical. A majority of today’s organic and local food activists, supported by the powerful natural health movement, are no longer just mobilising to label or ban GMOs. They are also speaking out against industrial food and farming practices in general—pesticides, animal drugs, junk foods, antibiotics, growth promoters, climate disrupting nitrate fertiliser, and inhumane, polluting and disease-ridden factory farms.

They are speaking out against the destructive practices of Big Pharma, which increasingly works hand-in-hand with Big Biotech and Big Food to supply the dangerous drugs, vaccines and growth promoters that make factory farming and genetic engineering profitable.

Millions of Americans are aware that chemical-and energy-intensive industrial food and farming as a whole, not just GMOs, pose a fundamental threat to public health, the environment and climate stability.

“But the ground we gained in Washington, in the form of votes, is nothing compared with the ground—in the form of soil and farms and fields—we plan to take back from Monsanto in the months and years ahead.

Watch out, Monsanto. We have plans. And

the achilles heel of Food Inc.: misleading and outright fraudulent labeling and advertising.

We need to know if our foods are tainted with GMOs because there is mounting scientific evidence that genetically engineered foods are dangerous to human health, animals and the environment. If anyone has any doubts about this, you can point them to the respected website, www.EarthOpenSource.org where scores of independent, peer-reviewed scientists sound the alarm.

Polls indicate that another reason we narrowly lost in California and Washington was the ‘exemption issue.’

The biotech industry incessantly broadcast its message, designed to confuse voters, that these GMO labeling laws would apply only to a limited number of foods, mainly processed foods, while ignoring others, including meat, eggs, dairy, restaurant and takeout foods. We need to take on this issue, head-on, not evade it. Millions of people want to know whether their food is genetically engineered or whether it comes from an inhumane, chemical-intensive, drug-intensive factory farm—whether they’re shopping in a grocery store or sitting down in a restaurant.

Our job, now and in the future will be to carry out public education, marketplace pressure and legislative campaigns designed to provide all of this information to consumers. In the future we will press for GMO or Factory Farm labels on all foods, whether they are purchased in grocery stores, restaurants, or school cafeterias.

We narrowly lost the first efforts to label GMO foods in California and Washington in 2012 and 2013. As we gain momentum and deliver a more radical and comprehensive message in 2014 we will gain the upper hand. But we must be prepared to fight, not only for the right to know whether the food we are eating is genetically engineered or factoryfarmed, but for democracy and sustainability on all fronts.

Without campaign finance reform, without breaking the stranglehold of large corporations and the wealthy over the media, the federal government and the judiciary, there can be no democracy.

Without a balance of powers between the federal government, states and local home rule, there is no republic, but rather a Corporatocracy, an unholy alliance between indentured politicians and profit-at-any-cost corporations. Without changing our food system will we not be able to address the climate crisis. The battle for non-GMO, non-factory farmed food and farming is a battle we cannot afford to lose.

those plans include taking back our seeds, our food, our farms, our rights. Our health.

We will keep gaining ground. Until we reclaim it for the people."

- "GAINING GROUND," KATHERINE PAUL, ORGANIC CONSUMERS ASSOCIATION, NOV. 7, 2013

Monsanto and Big Food’s greatest fear is materialising. A critical mass of educated consumers, food, and natural health activists are organising a powerful Movement capable of overthrowing North America’s GMO and junk food Empire. And they’re doing it by zeroing in on AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

Ronnie Cummins is the international director of the Organic Consumers Association and its Mexico affiliate, Via Organica. OCA, Nov.13, 2013

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Research into the interrelationships between agriculture, nutrition and health can help to define better health promotion and disease prevention strategies. Therefore the issue of whether food produced by organic farming systems is healthier for people is of significance.

Organic food is produced without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. Organically grown crops have to be inherently robust to keep pests and diseases at bay.

The same applies to organically raised livestock which only occasionally (rather than systematically) are given antibiotics. If research shows that organic products promote human health, this could be used in marketing.

As for animal health, organically grown feed has previously been shown to positively affect the immune system of chickens.

The Netherlands-based Louis Bolk Institute studies the effects of diet on allergies, diabetes, asthma and obesity. With extensive experience in researching the health effects of lifestyle and complementary medicine, their systems-approach enables them to take a broader view of nutrition and health. Health related charities, pharmaceutical companies as well as governments seek their advice and make use of their findings. They also work in close collaboration with Wageningen University and other Dutch research institutions.

In the Koala project (2008-2012), funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs within the framework of the Organic Agriculture policy programme, the Louis Bolk Institute collaborated with Maastricht University to investigate whether organic food has a positive effect on child health.

The study focused on children aged 7-8, particularly the development of obesity and allergies in this age group.

Results were compared with data collected during an earlier phase of the project (2000-2007).

BETTER FOR BABY - HIGHER LEVELS OF BENEFICIAL FATTY ACIDS WERE FOUND IN THE BREAST MILK OF WOMEN CONSUMING BIODYNAMIC PRODUCTS THAN IN WOMEN EATING A CONVENTIONAL DIET.

is biodynamicorganic food healthier?

The first part of the Koala cohort study started in 2000.

In that year, comprehensive data were collected on the lifestyle and diet of more than 2800 pregnant women.

The children born to these mothers have participated in annual health screenings since birth. This is the only study in the world investigating the effect of organic diet and other specific lifestyle factors on the health of growing children.

Two-year old children consuming chiefly organic – rather than conventional – dairy products were shown to have a 30% lower chance of eczema.

Furthermore, the content of the rumenic acid and transvaccenic acid, (beneficial fatty acids) in breast milk was higher in women consuming biodynamic products than in the women on a conventional diet. This and various other conclusions have been published in scientific journals such as the British Journal of Nutrition, Organic Agriculture and Allergy.

SOURCE:

http://www.louisbolk.org/research-2/health-and-nutrition/nutrition/Koalaresearch/

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AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

when old becomes new BIOCHAR FOR REGENERATIVE GARDENING.

SARAH SMUTS-KENNEDY

Using biodynamic and permaculture principles for the past three years, artist and gardener Sarah SmutsKennedy and her husband are creating a resilient and regenerative garden at their property, Maunga Kereru.

On Maunga Kereru, near Puhoi, we have been transforming our challenging clay soils into a fertile and extremely productive garden with the help of biodynamic and permaculture methods. Recently we’ve been introduced to another unique approach. Terra preta de Indio was originally used by Pre-Columbian Amazon Indians.

Renamed Biochar, the product is not a fertiliser that delivers nutrients but a man-made, stable form of carbon that can remain in the soil for many hundreds of years, unlike organic carbon which cycles through soil every few years. Behaving much like a coral reef in the sea, Biochar provides soils with a semi-permanent medium in which masses of micropores give shelter to microorganisms.

When integrated into your soil, Biochar offers a home for soil microbes and provides an exchange surface for nutrients passing from microbes to plants. Considering that the presence of microorganisms is what makes the whole garden tick, this has got to be pretty good news.

Making Biochar involves changing the unstable carbon in organic materials – plant matter, animal waste or bones – into a very stable form. When organic matter is heated in an oxygen-deprived environment, many of its substances turn into gases and are expelled, leaving the carbon lattice intact. This creates a massive surface area, made up of zillions of tunnels called galleries. The tunnels and galleries created when volatile materials gas-off are what make Biochar so effective. These stable carbon tunnels provide a permanent home for the millions of microorganisms that you want in your garden. One gram of Biochar has a surface area of one acre. Imagine what permanent surface area is available for unimaginable numbers of microorganisms in one bucketful!

Making Biochar, however, is only the first part of the story.

Before you can use it, inoculating with microorganisms is essential. The presence of carbon does not ensure the presence of microorgainisms. Terrible stories of people putting Biochar straight onto their gardens and having nutrients sucked up by it like water into a sponge can make you a bit wary. However, inoculation is easy and properly done once, it never has to be done again.

Two easy ways of ensuring thorough inoculation are to include the Biochar as an ingredient in your worm farm or compost heap. Both are extremely mineral-rich and loaded with microbes. Both take 3-4 months to decompose AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

BEFORE AND AFTER –COFFEE TO BIOCHAR (L); WOOD TO BIOCHAR (R)

properly which makes either a safe way to ensure full inoculation. Use one bucket of Biochar for every cubic metre of hot or cold compost and sprinkle a little Biochar every time you feed your worms. This way, you’ll get an even spread throughout the worm farm.

Making Biochar in small quantities for your own garden is relatively simple. All you need is a tin can, with a few holes punched in it, that will fit into your fireplace and some dried organic matter. For first-timers, dried coffee grounds are good as they’re already in powder form and therefore easy to use once burning is complete.

Fill the can with coffee grounds, replace the lid tightly and put the can into the centre of a fire. After about 5 minutes, steam from any residual moisture in the coffee grounds will start to pour out of the holes in the side of the can.

Soon after this, the volatile matter in the coffee grounds gets forced out through the holes and catches fire – quite beautiful. The holes need to be large enough to let the gases out without pressurising the can, and small enough to prevent oxygen re-entering the can. This ensures that the inside of the can remains oxygen-deprived so that the organic material (coffee grounds) turns into Biochar and not ash. If hot carbon encounters oxygen it becomes carbon dioxide and disappears into the atmosphere.

When the gases are no longer exiting through the holes in the can, the flames go out. The Biochar process isn’t complete until the can and its contents have cooled down.

If you open the can while it’s still hot, you will end up with a spoonful of ash. Putting a can into the fire overnight is an easy way to incorporate the task into your weekly schedule.

Biochar is a medium through which beneficial microorganisms may be housed in your soil for a thousand years or more. It improves moisture retention and soil texture and, if used in conjunction with fertilisers, will mean that you won’t need to apply so much fertiliser – Biochar holds the fertiliser in the soil, preventing it from leaching.

We have yet to make some here at Maunga Kereru but others in our group are well down the track with inoculating some in a compost heap with biodynamic preparations, as well as soaking some in a complex liquid fertiliser brew. We look forward to using another old agricultural practice to assist us in creating a resilient and regenerative garden here at Maunga Kereru.

You can read more about gardening at Maunga Kereru at Sarah Smuts-Kennedy’s blog: www.maungakereru.blogspot .com.

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make the earth glad

Did you miss out? Come and stir with us next time!

Stirring biodynamic hornmanure preparation brings life to the land as well as to the local community.

Spain, Germany, USA, Australia, Tonga, and NZ were represented in this particular group, lending a global flavor to an Auckland-city stir.

EACH TO HER OWN STYLE………………

SOME VOW TO STIR TOGETHER – FOR LIFE…………

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AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

SOME COME FOR A YARN………

Whatever inspires you to work with the biodynamic preparations, the Earth will be glad of your good-will.

If you would like to be informed of biodynamic happenings in Auckland send an email with Subscribe in the header to aucklandbd@gmail.com AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

SOME COME TO SERVE……………

AND OTHERS JUST TO STIR TEA.

AFTER STIRRING, THE MIX IS EASY TO APPLY TO A HOME GARDEN USING A HEARTH BRUSH.

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“It is the people who must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. So we must stand up for what we believe in” WANGARI MAATHAI

taking root HOW THE SIMPLE ACT OF PLANTING TREES CHANGED A NATION TAKING ROOT 2008 DVD TAKINGROOTFILM.COM

Taking Root tells the dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy—a movement for which this charismatic woman became an iconic inspiration.

Planting trees for fuel, food and timber is not something you’d imagine would be the first step toward winning the Nobel Peace Prize let alone uprooting a political dictatorship. Yet with that simple act, Wangari Maathai of Kenya started down the path that helped to reclaim her country’s land from a century of deforestation while providing new sources of livelihood to rural communities.

She gave previously impoverished and marginalised women the tools to participate for the first time in the political processes of their communities and the growing movement to end Kenya’s twenty-four-year dictatorship.

A must-see doco, (you can watch it online) Taking Root weaves a compelling and dramatic narrative of one woman’s personal journey in the context of the turbulent political and environmental history of her country. Wangari Maathai was born and raised in the rural highlands of Kenya. She went to University in the United States during the 1960s civil rights era, and was the first female to receive a doctorate in East and Central Africa. Maathai discovered the core of her life’s work by reconnecting with the rural women among whom she had grown up. When she learned how their daily lives had become intolerable: they were walking long distances for firewood, clean water had become scarce, the soil was washing off the hillsides, and their children were malnourished she thought to herself, "Well, why not plant trees?" Trees provide shade, prevent soil erosion, supply firewood, building materials, and produce nutritious fruit.

With this seemingly innocuous idea, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organisation encouraging rural women and families to plant trees in community groups.

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Soon they discovered that tree planting had a ripple effect of empowering change. In the mid 1980s, Kenya was in the grip of the repressive regime of Daniel arap Moi under whose dictatorship group gatherings and the right of association were outlawed. In tending their nurseries, women had a legitimate reason to gather outside their homes and discuss their problems. These grassroots women soon found themselves working against deforestation, poverty, ignorance, embedded economic interests, and political oppression. They became a national political force.

As the trees and the Green Belt Movement grew, a spirit of hope and confidence also grew in ordinary citizens – especially amongst rural women. However, Maathai and her colleagues soon bore the brunt of President Moi’s violent political oppression. In response, Maathai’s political activism grew. At great risk she led numerous confrontations in defense of the environment and social justice, all of which brought her country closer to democracy.

Through TV footage, newspaper headlines, and chilling first person accounts, Taking Root documents these dramatic confrontations and captures Maathai’s infectious determination and unwavering courage.

Kenya’s fight for democracy finally prevailed. In 2002, a democratically elected coalition government replaced Moi, and Maathai became a member of the new Parliament and Assistant Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources.

Maathai died of cancer in 2011, aged 71, but the trees have kept growing. Today there are more than 6,000 Green Belt nurseries throughout Kenya that generate income for 150,000 people, and thirty-five million trees have dramatically altered the physical and social landscape in various regions of the country. Cinema verité [truthful] footage of the tree nurseries and the women and children who tend them brings to life the confidence and joy of people working to improve their own lives while also ensuring the future and vitality of their land.

Taking Root makes it clear that Britain’s quest for resources and its systematic oppression of the diverse ethnic communities resulted in massive deforestation.

It disconnected Kenyans from their land and from themselves, creating long-standing issues over unequal resource distribution and social unrest that exist to this day. At heart, Maathai’s work is about solving these social and environmental issues by getting to the root of this deep wound. Through intimate conversations with Maathai, whose warm, powerful, and luminous presence imbues much of the film, Taking Root captures a worldview in which nothing is perceived as impossible. The film presents an awe-inspiring profile of one woman’s thirty-year journey of courage to protect the environment, ensure equality between women and men, defend human rights, and promote democracy – all sprouting from the achievable act of planting trees.

AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

a stable for a distressed earth HARTMUT BORRIES

Our distressed planet has seen many catastrophic events in recent months. Thousands of people have lost homes, possessions and lives in a single typhoon, earthquake, tsunami or nuclear catastrophe. When people lose their livelihood they can only be helped by others who volunteer to do for them what they can no longer do for themselves. Many thousands rally from around the globe, gifting donations of money, goods and time. Emergency relief enables the victims to make a new start. But afterwards, while most of us carry on with our normal lives, for those who survived a catastrophe, life will never be the same. There will always be a ‘before’ and ‘after’.

It’s a bit like when we lose someone dear to us; a friend, child, sibling, parent or grandparent. Until the event, we also take life’s predictability for granted. But who can foresee an event in which everything they owned and loved would be lost in one fell swoop? It all seems too big to grasp, which leads to feelings of hopelessness – we feel we cannot make a difference.

And yet, there are things we can do to make a difference.

What has been imposed on many by outer circumstance, we might choose voluntarily. When victims of catastrophe lose their homes and incomes we may respond by choosing to offer ours. Out of freedom, because of empathy, compassion and love, we can find opportunities to help as and where possible. We can host guests in our homes, welcome strangers at our tables; our life does not have to continue as usual.

When Mary and Joseph left their neighbourhood to go to Bethlehem they had to let go of the security of home, income and friends. Theirs was a journey of voluntary simplicity.

And in a simple stable, at the journey’s end, the Christ-child was born in their midst. Every year, we celebrate Christmas so that Christ can find a home in our hearts. But often we don’t notice his presence for, like that first Christmas when the inn was full, so are our souls full to the brim. We overflow with anxiety and stress, information-overload, the noise and images of entertainment. Our inns are full and there is precious little space in our stables for any new birth. What can we do about that?

Intense soul experience leaves us with a ‘before’ and ‘after’ but it doesn’t always come from illness or catastrophe. It can happen through spiritual insight and practice. People of all times have known about the mystery of sacrifice. Through the practice of offering we make space and time for the new to be born; we create the possibility for transformation. So we AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

might ask, is there any way I can simplify my life? Can I learn to do without, rather than be persuaded to buy and consume even more? How do I use my time, gifts and talents? ‘Letting go’ is the name of the road to Bethlehem. It creates an inner space; a stable.

The English language beautifully expresses the connection between stable and stability. What is stable in me, the stability within my soul develops through inner practice.

In the past, people were used to a daily rhythm of prayer.

With the rising and setting sun, before and after meals, at the beginning and end of work – people prayed, expressing gratitude and their intention to do the will of God. We can make our lives more reverential when we come to a new understanding of our relationship with spiritual beings. For this, we can begin with our human relationships.

The Divine spark is hidden within each of us. When I listen to your heart; when I gaze into your eyes; I am looking for this Divine spark. The word ‘person’ comes from the Latin per-sonare which means ‘to sound through.’ The divine Word wants to sound forth, to ring out through every human being. Therefore to have faith in God means to believe in one another. To love God is to love one another.

In loving each other, we learn not merely to react but to respond in ways that allow future development and growth.

Transformation becomes possible, even to the last breath.

There is hope for us all when we learn to see, in the other, whom s-he might become. In this seeing, we offer support and strength beyond imagination.

These three spiritual activities – faith, love, hope – transform our relationships with one another and with angels. They build stability in a world of dramatic change; they build the stable for Christ’s birth in us.

CREDIT: Public Domain

Within us, there must live a shepherd and a king if we want to celebrate Christmas.

The shepherd will hear what others don’t hear and because he lives with all his powers of devotion under the starbright sky, even the angels will reveal themselves to him.

The king, guided solely by the star in the heights, is on a path of offering all that he owns to the child in the manger.

Beyond shepherd and king, there must be a child within us waiting to be born.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer Rev.Hartmut Borries works for The Christian Community in Auckland www.thechristiancommunity.net

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Eating is an agri-cultural act…. your health, economic and cultural wealth start with seeds sown in the field, the ‘ager’ 3 issues a year. Subscribe on-line at www.earthmatters.co.nz for $NZ 35.00 [$45.00 o’seas] or by direct credit Kiwibank account 38 9010 0519122 00 or by cheque to P O Box 24-231, Royal Oak, Auckland 1345.

Download a free 15 page sample

Available on request. Send an email to: info@earthmatters.co.nz “I am not an experienced gardener but since I started using your biodynamic preparations on my garden, the plants seem to ‘come alive’! The garden seems more radiant.” YW

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Holy cow – small farmers are feeding half the world’s population!

From Soil to SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical) to Society – the quietest revolution is growing.

Learn how gardeners and farmers can rejuvenate their soils, grow the best-ever food and gain independence from the agri-corporates.

Subscribe a friend to Earth Matters* and receive a FREE dvd of One Man, One Cow, One Planet. *Offer applies - to print version; while stocks last; one dvd per subscription. Contact info@earthmatters.co.nz

AUGUST 2013 ISSUE 11

Enjoy the benefits of a cow in your garden ‌

GROWBIODYNAMICS

Cow Pat Pit 500 gram pack. Makes 40 Litres (enough for 4 applications for an average home vege garden)

$15 per pack Available from www.growbiodynamics.co.nz Or post cheque with order to Growbiodynamics, PO Box 8226, Havelock North 4157 Product made by Rachel Pomeroy and Peter Proctor