The Barley Mow

The wettest autumn since records began, followed by the coldest spring in 50 years, has devastated British wheat, forcing food manufacturers to import nearly 2.5m tonnes of the crop.

 

"Normally we export around 2.5m tonnes of wheat but this year we expect to have to import 2.5m tonnes," said Charlotte Garbutt, a senior analyst at the industry-financed Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. "The crop that came through the winter has struggled and is patchy and variable. The area of wheat grown this year has been much smaller."

 

Analysts expect a harvest of 11m-12m tonnes, one of the smallest in a generation, after many farmers grubbed up their failing, waterlogged crops and replanted fields with barley. According to a National Farmers Union poll of 76 cereal growers covering 16,000 hectares, nearly 30% less wheat than usual is being grown in Britain this year.

 

Britain is usually the EU's third biggest wheat grower but it will be a net importer for the first time in 11 years. "Our poll is a snapshot but it is extremely worrying. If this plays out nationally, we will be below average production for the second year in a row," said NFU crops chair Andrew Watts.

Britain is to push the European Union to relax restrictions on the licensing of genetically modified crops for human consumption amid growing scientific evidence that they are safe, and surveys showing they are supported by farmers.

 

While they are widely grown in North and South America, GM crops are effectively banned in the UK and Europe where they are considered on an extremely strict case-by-case basis.

 

Since the first GM food was produced in 1994 – a delayed-ripening tomato, which had a longer shelf-life - the EU has granted just two licences to cultivate GM crops, neither of them grown in the UK. One was for plants engineered to resist corn borers and the other for a starchy potato used to make paper.

 

Apart from that, Europe’s exposure to GM products has been confined to imports of genetically modified animal feed, while much of the meat, eggs and milk comes from animals that have been reared on engineered grains.

In the past, drug resistance was countered by a steady flow of new antibiotics on to the market. Over the past 60 years, the pharmaceutical industry released three generations of drugs, starting with natural penicillins, then synthetic penicillins, and most recently the carbapenems. But the supply has dried up. The number of new drugs in the pipeline is at an all-time low as research was shelved in favour of more profitable drugs in the 1990s, coupled with the difficulties in discovering new medication.

 

Meanwhile, other experts are warning that increasing use of the drugs on farms poses a threat to people. Recent studies have shown that the overuse of antibiotics in intensive livestock farming could lead to the evolution of strains of dangerous bacteria, including MRSA, E coli and salmonella, that are resistant to some of the strongest antibiotics. An increasing body of evidence shows they can spread from farms to farm workers and their families as well as to consumers through affected meat.

Every year, roughly 150 million cattle and pigs are slaughtered in our nation's slaughterhouses, and the one measly law that attempts to ensure some small decrease in their abuse is all-but-ignored by the agency charged with enforcing it.

 

Two weeks ago, the USDA's Office of the Inspector General released a report that, once again, proves that our food system is broken: First, FSIS doesn't meaningfully attempt to stop repeat violations of food safety laws. Second, it has allowed a 15-year-old pilot program with faster slaughter and fewer inspectors to proceed without review. Third, it all but ignores its humane slaughter mandate. Remarkably, unless you read Food Safety News or the agricultural media, you will have missed this extremely damning report.

Monsanto’s “Bee Summits” and Bayer AG’s “Bee care centre” are the latest examples of how pesticide makers are competing to showcase their goodwill to policymakers in Europe and the US that they are taking the necessary steps to protect bee populations. The companies say their pesticides are not the problem, but critics say science shows the opposite.

“I haven’t washed my hair since 1965,” says Craig Sams, who, when we met at the August 2012 Biochar Conference at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California, sported a clean-looking, thick shock of Euro-style, longish white hair. The reason is that there’s a healthy ecology of microbes up there that he doesn’t want to scrub off by using soap. And so a rinse with warm water and olive oil is all he uses.

 

Protecting microbes is what he does these days as founder of Carbon Gold Ltd., a biochar company in Bristol, England. Biochar is plant matter, wood mostly, roasted until it’s black and crumbly. It’s not burnt to ash but is a form of charcoal that has some of the same characteristics as humus, plus one very important other function: When it’s buried in the soil, it stores carbon so it doesn’t enter the air as carbon dioxide and contribute to global warming.

 

We reported on biochar in our December 2010/January 2011 issue. But let Sams himself describe what’s happened with biochar since then:

While industrial livestock production involves a remarkably wide array of bad practices, a few manage to extend beyond mere imprudence into the realm of Total Insanity. For instance, the reckless abuse of antibiotics for growth promotion. Or the construction of uncovered multimillion-gallon cesspools for storing livestock manure in residential areas. Or, of course, feeding arsenic to animals raised for food.

 

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future published a study in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives that provided further evidence of the risks associated with the use of arsenicals in animal agriculture. Just in case anyone still needed convincing (Ahem! FDA, Pfizer and industrial chicken magnates). The study, which involved analysis of chicken breast samples purchased at grocery stores in 10 cities across the U.S., revealed that chickens likely raised with arsenic-based drugs yield meat that has higher levels of inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen that has also been associated with cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cognitive deficits and adverse pregnancy outcomes.

If you have a feeling that genetically modified (GM) foods are being forced upon the population by a handful of business interests and vociferously defended by the scientists that work in the agriculture industry or at the research institutions it funds, you might be onto something.

 

The zeal with which GM proponents evangelize transgenic seeds (and now, transgenic food animals) is so extreme that they are even pouring vast sums of money to defeat popular efforts to simply label GE foods – like the nearly $50m spent to defeat the popular 2012 ballot measure to label GE foods in California, Proposition 37. What's more, it's not just happening in the United States. I am the head of Food & Water Watch, and we have spent months looking at the extent to which the US State Department is working on behalf of the GM seed industry to make sure that biotech crops are served up abroad whether the world wants them or not.

The number of lambs born in the United Kingdom has fallen to a 30-year low after a year of bad weather, culminating in blizzards.

 

Rain and snow led to undernourished ewes – which are less likely to have multiple births – and extreme weather conditions and disease killed tens of thousands of sheep.

 

About 15.8 million lambs are expected to be born this year, a drop of nearly 1.4 million on 2012; and 2.7 million fewer than a decade ago. It is thought that the British lamb crop has not been so small since the early 1980s.

Dorienne Robinson explores the relationship between land carrying capacity and human dietary requirements in an attempt to answer her own question - could the UK feed itself?
 

Sometimes it’s impossible to see the ‘elephant in the room’, particularly if that room is full of likeminded, convivial folk all pulling in the same direction, chipping in and working collectively with similar motivations. The room, in this case, could be the times that we live in and the global problems that we and all other species sharing this planet with us are facing.

Climate change, post peak oil and a relentlessly burgeoning population with life style aspirations, well beyond that which nature can sustainably provide, combine to bring us all either to our senses or to the brink of a place and time that could be our undoing. ...

A team of scientists from France and the United States has attempted to improve understanding of growing resistance amongst insect pests to genetically modified insecticidal crops.

 

Research released on Tuesday has examined the development of resistance amongst insect pests to insecticidal genetically modified crops grown around the World.

 

One of the most persistent criticisms levelled at deeply controversial GM crops is the issue of resistance. Although their existence wasinitially denied by the companies developing GM crops, insect pests resistant to modified crops, which have been engineered to produce insecticidal 'Bt' toxins, have been discovered in a number of countries since the early 2000s.

 

A groundbreaking new study [1] shows that pigs were harmed by the consumption of feed containing genetically modified (GM) crops.

 

GM-fed females had on average a 25% heavier uterus than non-GM-fed females, a possible indicator of disease that requires further investigation. Also, the level of severe inflammation in stomachs was markedly higher in pigs fed on the GM diet. The research results were striking and statistically significant.

 

Lead researcher Dr Judy Carman, adjunct associate professor at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia,[2] said: “Our findings are noteworthy for several reasons. First, we found these results in real on-farm conditions, not in a laboratory, but with the added benefit of strict scientific controls that are not normally present on farms.

 

“Second, we used pigs. Pigs with these health problems end up in our food supply. We eat them.

 

“Third, pigs have a similar digestive system to people, so we need to investigate if people are also getting digestive problems from eating GM crops.

 

“Fourth, we found these adverse effects when we fed the animals a mixture of crops containing three GM genes and the GM proteins that these genes produce. Yet no food regulator anywhere in the world requires a safety assessment for the possible toxic effects of mixtures. Regulators simply assume that they can’t happen.

A widely used insect nerve agent has been labelled a "high acute risk" to honeybees by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). A similar assessment by the EFSA on three other insecticides preceded thesuspension of their use in the European Union.

 

"The insecticide fipronil poses a high acute risk to honeybees when used as a seed treatment for maize," the EFSA said in a statement. "EFSA was asked to perform a risk assessment of fipronil [by the European commission], paying particular regard to the acute and chronic effects on colony survival and development and the effects of sub-lethal doses on bee mortality and behaviour."

Farmers’ markets are hot business nowadays. The number of markets shot up 17 percent last year, and in a recent survey from Mintel market researchers, 52 percent of people said it’s more important to buy local produce than organic, which will likely drive the growth even more.

 

And that’s great—if you’re more concerned about where your food comes from than how it was grown. People tend to equate farmers’ markets and “local” food with clean, wholesome food. That’s true in many cases—but not all of them. Farmers’ markets have become so popular that they’re being co-opted by wholesalers, retailers, and farmers who may be local but not so committed to a sustainable food system. If you’re looking for farmers’ markets that sell the kind of healthy, down-on-the-farm food most of us equate with farming, arm yourself with this info to ward off farmers’ market fraud.

The problem with farm-to-table restaurants, so far as the farmers are concerned, is the difficulty of getting those tables sat during a recession. While chefs may wholeheartedly support locavorism, they only buy as much product as their customers demand – and if their restaurants close, they don't buy any product at all.

 

That's why farmers are increasingly promoting their wares to the institutionswhich don't have the option of shutting down or moving to a faraway city where the economy's healthier.

“Institutions are anchors in our community,”Northwest Agriculture Business Center's marketing coordinator Emma Brewster explained at last week's Planning for Agriculture in the Puget Sound Region conference, sponsored by the American Farmland Trust.

Organic produce is a given in a lot of shops in Germany. But while demand is increasing, cultivation is lagging behind. Since Germany is failing to turn out enough organic products on its own, many of the products must be imported.

 

Organic apples from Argentina, tomatoes from Spain – when looking at the assortment in German organic supermarkets, consumers are easily confused. Even though one might want to make ecologically correct and sustainable decisions when shopping, many of the fruits and vegetables have travelled a long way, leaving a considerable carbon footprint. German grocers are not just importing the exotic produce such as bananas and mangoes that are impossible to grow in Germany, but also potatoes, apples and cucumbers, as well as pork and dairy products.

At 50 years of age, Sherry Medina didn't expect to be on disability, seeking early retirement. Committed to bringing awareness to consumers and others working in her sector, she recently made the courageous decision to blow the whistle on Big Ag's liberal and unrestricted application of hazardous chemicals in poultry processing.

 

Like others in her position, Sherry takes pride in her work as a USDA poultry inspector, where one of her primary duties is to protect the public from foodborne illness. But since she became seriously ill as a result of heavy chemical use in the plant where she is stationed, she worries that her days of looking out for consumer wellbeing are numbered.

 

According to Sherry, the chemicals used in the plant where she inspects poultry have seriously impacted her health. An affidavit she released to GAP (made public last month) details the extent of these health problems, including asthma attacks, sinus problems, and even organ damage. Her failing health has seriously impacted her lifestyle and may have ended her 16-year career as an inspector.

Temperatures in the Ottawa region fell to 28F (-2C) at about 3am local time early on Tuesday morning.

 

Phil Lyall of Mountain Apple Orchards, about 37 miles south of Ottawa, told public broadcaster CBC he paid thousands of dollars to have a helicopter fly all night over his 10,000 trees in order to push rising warm air back down and keep temperatures on the ground above freezing.

 

It was the second time in two years that he tried it, after hearing that fruit growers in Argentina, New Zealand and elsewhere were doing the same in similar circumstances when their crops were threatened by cold.

Thirty years ago, scientists figured out how to directly modify the genes in our food crops. No more of that inefficient and slow breeding! Farmers would grab plant genes by the horns nucleotides and bend them to their will!

 

Now, the preeminent science journal Nature has devoted an entire issue to the question (to paraphrase that legendary IBM ad), where are the magic seeds? We were going to get seeds that would grow faster, yield more, save the environment, and be more nutritious. What we got were seeds for a few commodity crops such as corn, soy, and cotton that made their own pesticide or resisted herbicides, but otherwise provided little, if any, benefit to consumers.

European commission vote highlights threat to the world's food supply from the decline of bees and other pollinators ...

 

Spread across 800,000 acres, California's almond orchards typically require 1.6 million domesticated bee colonies to pollinate the flowering trees and produce what has become the state's largest overseas agricultural export. But given the widespread bee losses to so-called "colony collapse disorder" this winter, California's almond growers were able to pollinate their crop only through an intense, nationwide push to cobble together the necessary number of healthy bee colonies.

"Other crops don't need as many bees as the California almond orchards do, so shortages are not yet apparent, but if trends continue, there will be," said Tim Tucker, vice-president of the American Beekeeping Federation and owner of Tuckerbees Honey in Kansas, which lost 50 percent of its hives this past winter. "Current [bee] losses are not sustainable. The trend is down, as is the quality of bees. In the long run, if we don't find some answers, and the vigor continues to decline, we could lose a lot of bees."