This Applies Only to Those Who Eat Food...
WHO is controlling the food in the U.S.? If we, the EATERS have no idea what we are eating, and Big Agriculture gets truckloads of our TAXPAYER dollars in SUBSIDIES, why can't we get GMOs (genetically modified organisms, AKA: GE, which are not long-term tested or regulated) labeled, like 30 other nations mandate? Geneticist Barry Commoner describes these genetic manipulations in the United States and Canada, the largest genetic experiment in the history of mankind.
Small, subsistence farmers are 50 percent of the planet's population and they are being driven out by high tech, failing, deadly technologies of biotech (including Agent Orange 2,4-D — half life of 500 years and does NOT decompose — proposed for GMO insertion into corn, and sprayed on the fields, most of which leeches into air, water and soils) and CAFO's (confined animal feedlot operations). U.N. Special Rapporteur on Food Olivier De Schutter has reported for years that Big Ag food technology will NOT adequately feed the world's population and is, in fact, destroying much of the Earth.
From The Opinion Pages of the NY TIMES: "The Farm Bill, Beyond the Farm"
Debaters
- Untangle This Messy, Unfocused Bill
Walter Olson, Cato Institute - Feed the World’s Hungry, for Less
Ruth Messinger, American Jewish World Service - End Subsidies and Treat Animals Better
Tyler Cowen, author, "An Economist Gets Lunch" - Cut the Debt, and Focus on Health
Craig Cox, Environmental Working Group - We Need an Organic Farm Bill
David Murphy, Food Democracy Now! - Shrink Spending and Focus on Basics
Gretchen Hamel, Public Notice - Overhaul the Direct Payment System
Roger Johnson, National Farmers Union - A New Commitment to Food Stamps
Jim Weill, Food Research and Action Center
The farm bill, being debated in the Senate this month, can be read here.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/02/21/the-farm-bill-beyond-the-farm
see: "We Need an Organic Farm Bill" author, David Murphy is the founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!
Excepted are a few of his items on his wish list:
• $25 billion transition to organic food/farming production: 75 percent of U.S. farms are U.S.D.A. organic certified by 2025.
• Feed organic food to all public school lunch programs by the year 2020.
• Beginning Farmer and Rancher Bill: a million new farmers on the land by 2020.
• Link conservation compliance with government-subsidized insurance programs
-Clean Food Earth Woman http://cleanfoodearth.blogspot.com
