Dear President Trump

Dear President Trump

Now that you have been elected on a platform of freeing the world from the grip of monopolies, lobbyists, bankers and their ilk I submit herewith my 7 proposals on how you can come good on your promises to make America great again

1.   Make America Healthy Again.  This will save you a fortune on whatever modified form of Obamacare you come up with.  It will upset Big Pharma and the American Medical Association, but so what?  Stop autism by honouring your promise to give people freedom to choose vaccination or not, or do it slowly, like you did with Baron.  Scrap restrictions on alternative therapies and nutrient supplementation and let people engage fully with preventive medicine. “Prevention is better than cure”. 

2.   Legalise all Drugs and Medicines – now more than half of US states allow marijuana use, why not go all the way?  Bayer marketed heroin in the 1900s as the non-addictive alternative to opium.  Now the epidemic of legally prescribed opioid addiction is killing far more Americans than heroin.  2 million Americans are addicted to opioids prescribed through Obamacare and it costs them twice as much money as less addictive heroin.  Let the free market prevail over which painkillers people use.

3.   Make America’s Soils Great Again. Stop the ethanol racket.  It was encouraging to see biofuel shares dropping and staying down after your election.  Why on earth is half of America’s corn crop subsidised and forcibly converted to ethanol to be burned? Our pioneer ancestors plowed the rich fertile soils of the Midwest and trashed them.  You are a builder.  Help America rebuild its soils by stopping the huge waste of resources involved in growing corn and then burning it.  If you took away the subsidies then farmers would diversity and grow real food for real people.  They could grow trees for the new technologies of wood-based architecture.

4.   Get Independent Advice on Climate.  The French proposal of ‘4 per 1000’ says that if you rebuild soil organic matter by 0.04% each year that is enough to completely offset the annual increase in greenhouse gas.  Organic farmers increase soil organic matter by 7 per 1000.  Let the carbon markets pay farmers to rebuild soil for future generations and use farm subsidy money to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure.  You can keep on burning oil and gas and still see greenhouse gas levels drop.

5.   Crush ISIS.  This monster was created by an unholy alliance of the CIA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to fulfil Hillary’s stated goal of supporting Israel by weakening Iranian influence in Syria. It has backfired. The easiest way to stop ISIS is to stop financing them.  In the debates you were clear that your priority is to stop ISIS, while Hillary prevaricated.  Make sure that no more American money or NATO money goes to fund terrorist organisations.  Let people of the Middle East get back to normal life. The refugees from this meaningless conflict would rather go home.

6.   Make Nice with Russia.  Gorbachev opened the doors to a new era of peaceful relations with the United States but now they’re the enemy again. President Putin has banned GMOs and announced that he plans to make Russia the world’s most organic nation.  He’s no dummy.   Ask him why he’s doing this. We don’t need to create more enemies, best to make friends, as you said in your victory speech.

7.   Make War on Poverty and Decay.  You promised to rebuild America’s infrastructure, its highways, bridges, tunnels, airports and schools.  You have 2 million men and women in the armed forces who aren’t particularly busy making America great.  Put them to work rebuilding infrastructure. That’s what China’s 2.3 million army do.  President Roosevelt created the 3 million-man Civilian Conservation Corps that built America’s dams and highways in the 1930s and planted 10 billion trees that helped restore the Dust Bowl land.  Get the missile and bomb factories to reconfigure to make something that people want instead of picking fights with faraway countries in order to use up their output. Make forests not deserts.

You are the only politician who can give the finger to the lobbyists from the military, pharmaceutical, oil and financial industries who called you a jerk and your supporters ‘morons’ and ‘deplorables.’ They all supported your opponent.   You owe them nothing.  You owe it to the American people to cast off the baleful influence of these parasites and let people freely choose if they want peace, good health, clean air and economic stability.

1960s Rebels: Craig Sams, Health Food Pioneer from Victoria & Albert Museum

In conjunction with their exhibition You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966 – 1970 (10 September 2016 – 26 February 2017), the Victoria and Albert have uploaded a series of videos interviewing 1960s Rebels including myself.

The late 1960s saw progressive ideas emanate from the countercultural underground and revolutionise society. Challenging oppressive, outdated norms and expectations, a small number of individuals brought about far-reaching changes as they sought to attain a better world. Their idealism and actions helped mobilise a movement which continues to inspire modern activists and shape how we live today.

Agribusiness

xorganic-farming-640x426-jpg-pagespeed-ic-thzrqz2irq

When a business sector sees a rash of mergers and acquisitions, it's for one of two reasons, growth or decay. The organic food industry has seen a lot of acquisitions by companies anxious to get in on the ground floor of the 5% annual growth rate in organic food and regenerative farming. Meanwhile, on the dark side, Monsanto is facing takeover by Bayer, not for any positive reasons, but because they are both looking into the abyss. Merger is one way to survive when the farmers they are competing for are spending less. Farmers aren't stupid - they can do the maths. When they see diminishing returns on their investment in seeds and agrichemicals, they reduce their spending. Normally in a situation like this the agribusiness operators would go to the EU or Washington and just wheedle more subsidies out of the national purse, bleating about food security while encouraging biofuels to prop up soy, rapeseed and corn prices. Who cares if you're destroying the earth's precious farmland at 30 football fields a minute? If you were a big landowner, you'd feel entitled to being paid to do this. That's what us mugs are here for. Now that the EU even subsidises grouse moors you'd think the gates were wide open. But the money is running out. Half the EU budget goes to farmers, much of it British money going via Brussels to France. The US spends $350 billion a year propping up agriculture in the US, channeling money through farmers to agribiz.

Let's take a look at who's eating whom. The potash fertiliser price has halved in the past 3 years, from $450 a tonne to $219. So in Canada, Agrium and Potash, two of the world's biggest potash producers, are merging in a desperate attempt to keep afloat while they wait for a bounce in price that may never happen. Bayer and Monsanto are both facing plunging sales and profits. Monsanto have the seed and Bayer have the pesticides to go with them. But again it's desperation. They hope that innovation will save them, but innovation is not something you find in mega corporations.   GMOs are losing support - US farmers never wanted them but were denied choice after Monsanto bought up all the seed companies and forced GMOs down their throats.

The whole ethanol biofuels scam is blowing up, too. It was never even vaguely 'carbon neutral' - it takes more energy to produce a litre of ethanol than the energy you get by burning it. It's more energy efficient to just mix corn with coal and shovel it into a power station, but that would be too obvious and repulsive.

Chem China has taken over Syngenta. They make the herbicides that Syngenta's GM seed can resist. Nobody in China will eat GMO rice but they'll tolerate pork or chicken fed on GM maize. But the real prize for Chem China is Syngenta's strong presence in US market: they're after Bayer/Monsanto's piece of the diminishing pie. Their US competitors are suddenly bleating about food security.   Two other agrichemical giants, Dow and DuPont, also merged recently. They're all like a bunch of drunks spilling out of the pub after a good night out, trying to keep each other from falling down.

If you're a farmer, what do you do? You used to be able to play off one agrichemical giant against the other, but soon you'll just take what you're given. Or look for an alternative and boy, what an alternative is on the horizon!

When the French '4 per 1000 initiative' succeeds at the Marrakech COP22 climate conference in November every hectare of organic farmland will be set to get over €150 a year in carbon credits. A hectare of chemical-dependent farmland will have to pay for its carbon footprint and that could cost close to €100 per hectare.   It won't happen overnight but the French have fixed a price of €56 per tonne for carbon, to take effect by 2020. The world will probably follow, even the US.   If you were a government that was facing huge annual costs to subsidise farmers with money that flows through their bank accounts to Dow/DuPont, Bayer/Monsanto and Chem China/Syngenta and you could instead just let the carbon markets transfer the money from fossil fuel power stations direct to organic farmers, what would you do? Keep on propping up a dying industry or finally recognise that organic food, when the carbon is priced in, is actually cheaper than the degenerative kind that is destroying our available soil at the rate of 30 football fields per minute? (I can't repeat this often enough)

Governments have been holding back for quite a long time because of the immense political power of the agrichemicals industry and of the landowning fraternity. They passionately hate socialism in all its forms, until it comes to their welfare payments.

It's time for a change. We need to bring freedom to farming. Carbon pricing that encourages regenerative farming instead of degenerative farming is the way forward. Organic is good for you and the climate, too.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

I was delighted to give the keynote speech at a dinner to mark the opening of a new exhibition about the '60s - 'You Say You Want a Revolution?' at the Victoria and Albert museum.

Let’s hear it for the Jimi Hendrix (and brown rice rissoles) experience

It’s 1967. The Summer of Love. Jimi Hendrix is blaring from the speakers – and Craig Sams is serving up brown rice rissoles to his sensorily-enhanced patrons

The other day someone posted on my facebook page: You hippies have a lot to answer for. My response was: You’re absolutely right and the answer is ‘you’re welcome’.

The belated recognition of how, in 1967, society moved from dull, grey post-war monotony to the bright, enlightened world we now inhabit is becoming a bit overwhelming. When everyone from Atom Retro fashions to the V&A is pumping my memory for details about 1966/1967. I begin to wonder what’s going on … oh, yes, it’s 50 years since All You Need Is Love came out of the speakers of a record shop on the King’s Road and me and my hippie pals all dashed in to buy the single.

Victoria Broackes, curator at the V&A, is putting together a new show called You Say You Want a Revolution. With a series of ‘immersive experiences’ she aims to recreate the heady atmosphere of those times. With your Sennheiser headphones GPS-sensing where you are in the exhibition hall, you’ll get the sound to go with the sights and environment. Imagine being in the UFO Club with Pink Floyd jamming Interstellar Overdrive while patrons munch on my brown rice rissoles and the light show blobs illuminate a Larry Smart mandala painting, and you might get a sense of one of the seven spaces.

The message of the V&A show is that the fundamentals of our culture were irreversibly changed by the revolution in consciousness that happened in the 1967 Summer of Love, mostly in London, San Francisco and Amsterdam, but anywhere LSD was legally available. The way people thought about everything changed. Music reached parts of the brain it had never previously dared to. Exhibit A: Jimi Hendrix. Artists popularized Art Nouveau and Aubrey Beardsley and went all wishy washy – you had to study a gig poster to find out who was playing when and where. People realized that we were delicate human beings that should not be living in a deteriorating environment, and Friends of The Earth, Greenpeace and the Brundtland report all came from that awareness. Fashion broke out of the mould – I imported Afghan coats, kaftans, Tibetan bags and other ethnic fashion and, with Aedan Kelly, produced blobby dyed silks that were used for shirts and dresses. Everybody wanted one of my Afghan coats when The Beatles walked out of Granny Takes a Trip boutique on Kings Road wearing them.

“Everybody wanted one of my Afghan coats when The Beatles walked out of Granny Takes a Trip boutique on Kings Road wearing them”

We realized that war was an ineffective way of resolving differences. The Vietnam War was an entirely stupid and unjustifiable massacre of innocent people on all sides, but it sharpened awareness that peace, love and understanding were the key to a better world. ‘Normal’ sexual barriers dissolved. The pill helped, but repressed gays discovered their inner selves, inhibited women became sexual dynamos and polyamorous relationships were just one example of the resulting experimentation. People who grew up with alienation in soulless suburbs sought community and shared experience.

Religion was rediscovered as a seeking of a spiritual state of consciousness and energy flows that manifested in yoga, meditation and Buddhism, particularly the Zen variety. So we got Zen Macrobiotics, which married a libertarian oriental philosophy with a way of eating that supported the unity of mind, body and spirit.

People saw beyond the hamburger on their plate to the animal, its death, the hormones, antibiotics and whole horrible origin of something they once took for granted. ‘Ugh!’ They thought – ‘I’ll eat something else.’ But what was something else? That’s where we had the answers with Yin Yang Ltd and a macrobiotic restaurant that enabled people to eat in harmony with their consciousness.

Yin Yang became Harmony Foods, the first to offer organic brown rice and foods like miso, seaweed and tamari.
Renamed Whole Earth Foods it focused on healthy processed food, as brown rice and beans became commoditized. Private Eye quoted our price list direct in Pseuds Corner and its readership chuckled at our perceived pretentiousness. To paraphrase Nigel Farage and Ronnie Barker, we can now say “You laughed when we said that diet was the key to mental, spiritual and physical health, but you aren’t laughing now.”

Come and see us having the last laugh at the V&A from 11 September.

Dark Act

We have Sainsbury’s and Safeway to thank for the fact that there are no GMOs in our food, (though still in animal feed).

One of the first GMO foods to hit the market, back in 1995, was the Flavr-Savr tomato, created by a company called Calgene.  The idea was that that tomato would stay fresh on the supermarket shelf for longer.  Nobody checked how it travelled and the first shipments to American supermarkets ended up soggy and bruised due to some unforeseen aspect of genetic engineering and despite all the research showing no evidence of health risks. 

Tomato growers in California weren’t happy but the huge planting of tomatoes in 1996 got turned into tomato puree and was sold in tins at Sainsbury’s and Safeway at a considerable discount to the normal tomato puree price.  In other words, it was dumped on the British market to try to salvage a GMO disaster.   The supermarkets proudly labelled the puree as ‘Made with Genetically Engineered Tomatoes’ and consumers, who had never heard of GMO, just bought them because they were so much cheaper.  Then in 1998  Dr. Arpad Puztai, one of Britain’s most renowned and trusted experts on food safety,  spoke out on TV about his research on the dangers of GM potatoes.  The rats had shrinking brains, livers and hearts and he said he wouldn’t eat a GM potato unless more research into its safety was completed.   Puztai was promptly sacked from his job at the Rowett Research Institute and gagged, with the threat of losing his pension.  Then they sacked his wife. This happened allegedly after Monsanto phoned Clinton who phoned Tony Blair who phoned the heat of Rowett Professor James and told him to gag Puztai.  Puztai’s career was ruined, he had a couple of heart attacks and continued to campaign for his research to be duplicated, which has never happened.  The Government set up a ‘Biotechnology Presentation Group’ to try to mask the reality about GMOs.

But it was too late.  The Soil Association and its European counterparts lobbied strongly for labelling of GMOs and got their way.  After all if it was good enough for Safeway and Sainsbury’s customers, what about everyone else?   Labelling was agreed at an EU level and nobody ever tried to sell a GM product again.  The public were on high alert after the Puztai scandal and weren’t going to be duped.

In the USA it was different.  Americans didn’t know what GMOs were, although they were in their corn chips and other staple foods.  When the realisation came the Organic Consumers Association campaigned for labelling so people could choose.  Eventually, after heavily contested votes in California and Washington the little state of Vermont (Bernie Sanders’ home state) passed a law saying GMOs needed to be labelled.  Some food manufacturers complied.  Then came the DARK Act.  (Denial of Americans Right to Know). This was introduced in Congress to prescribe that any GMO information can be reached via the QR code on the packaging and shoppers could simply check the QR code to find out what GMOs were in their prospective purchase.  Hmmm…so this is how that would work. Well, you scan the QR code and go the manufacturer’s website, where you are greeted with an array of products you might like to know about, then you choose the produce you are scanning and get to a list of ingredients and more advertising, then you can click on each ingredient to see which one is a GMO.  Then, after about 10 hours of shopping, you have a basket full of food that is GMO free.  Or you just buy organic.

The new law was signed into effect by Barack Obama who, as a presidential candidate, promised that he would bring forward GMO labelling.   He has the support of 93% of American consumers, who a respected ABCNews poll recently showed want labelling. 

Here in Britain and in Europe we take GMO labelling for granted.  In the world’s beacon of freedom and democracy the will of 93% of can be blocked by the resistance of a handful of companies with political influence that dwarfs that of the citizenry.  I wonder how the 93% of Americans who thought they were on the way to having GMO labelling, 20 years after we secured it in Europe, must feel now.   Where there were referendums on GMO labelling, as in California, more than $30 million was spent with scare advertising to deter voters

La Vialla - an ancient Tuscan farm that shows the way to the future of food

Pax Anglica

Not everyone agreed with my analysis. Interpretations of history may vary, but the rule of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Friesians and Vandals was accepted by many Britons. Many also moved to Wales, Cornwall or Brittany

How to regenerate organic – privatize it

How can we free organic from its self-imposed bureaucratic box? We could always ask Brussels to privatize us, says Craig Sams

Q. What do Slow Food, LEAF, Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, Cosmos, Marine Stewardship Council, Red Tractor, Vegan, Vegetarian, Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) and Woodmark all have in common?

A. They all operate trusted authentication symbols that are 100% independent. They can decide what they can certify and how they can certify.

Q. What do the Soil Association, Ecocert, EKO, KRAV, Nature et Progres, OCIA, QAI, OFF, OF&G and 400 or so other organic symbols have in common?

A. They operate trusted authentication symbols that are 100% Government-controlled. They cannot decide what they can certify and how they can certify.

This ‘nationalisation’ of organic certification didn’t happen by accident or by force, we actually asked for it. The independent symbols have grown organically to global respect and stature while the organic ‘brands’ have been stifled in their self-imposed bureaucratic box.

“This ‘nationalisation’ of organic certification didn’t happen by accident or by force, we actually asked for it”

Back in the late 1980s I got to know key players at the Soil Association (up till then we were OF&G licensees). When I heard they were seeking to get the EU to enforce organic standards I was dismayed. Francis Blake of IFOAM and the Soil Association told me that if I wanted to have any influence I should stand for the Soil Association board. I did and didn’t get elected. Boo Hoo. But the Council wanted me anyway and appointed me Treasurer In 1990. I argued from within against letting our precious organic standards go under the control of the agricultural departments which subsidised industrial farming and were 100% behind GMOs. Regrettably the train had already left the station and, short of tying myself to the tracks, there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The infant organic industry was stressed about fraudulent claims and thought calling in big brother would stop that. In fact the opposite happened. When the Soil Association sampled a licensee’s oat flakes a few years ago and found chlormequat residues at quite a high level they told the licensee to take them off the market. Defra and UKAS and the oat processor who supplied them all cried foul. The paperwork was in order, that was all that mattered to the enforcers. The Soil Association came close to being banned from certifying but luckily the horsemeat scandal broke out and the EU said lab sampling of products should be permitted.

Not long ago the most venerable players of the organic world came together, along with the new-kid-on-the-block Regeneration International, to call for “Organic 3.0,” a nice term for evolved organic standards that combine elements of Slow Food, Fairtrade and a less oppressive certification regime for small farmers or farmers who regularly perform well on inspections. It’s a great idea and just the breath of fresh air that the organic movement needs. Meanwhile the EU organic officials are mired in endless delays just to bring about a much-needed update of existing organic standards. The latest review should have been completed long ago and is still years away. The consensus of Organic 3.0 hasn’t helped move things along in Brussels.

Regeneration International and IFOAM are setting their sights on the COP 22 convention in Marrakech in November 2016. This is the follow up to the Paris COP 21 climate talks last November. More than 170 countries have signed up to the Paris agreement, but the detail is still fluffy. Marrakech will focus on how farming and sequestration of carbon in the soil can stop global warming. We are losing 39 football fields of soil every minute thanks to farming – not one of those football fields is organic. The French will be promoting ‘4 per 1000.’ They say if we could increase soil organic matter by 0.04% each year it would offset ALL of our annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Organic farming increases soil organic matter by 0.1% per year, or ’10 per 1000.’ So organic’s the easy route to compliance with the Paris agreement and it regenerates soil for future generations instead of stealing it from them for cheap food today. With composting, crop rotation, fallowing, agroforestry, permaculture, biochar and other organic inputs farming could easily be 100% of the solution to global warming instead of 30% of the problem. But the Governments that control farming are hostages to the agribusiness lobby. If we can’t beat them can we go around them?

All those other independent organisations need the organic movement to join forces with them, indeed lead them. Organic agriculture is at the heart of the drive towards our shared environmental goals. Can we just ask Brussels nicely to privatise us? It works for everything else. Might be worth a go. The existing regulations cover claims like ‘organic,’ ‘biological, ‘økologisk’ or ‘Ecological’, so if privatization was off the menu and we wanted our freedom we’d need to find a new name to break free of Brussels and Washington.

Regeneration International, born out of the Organic Consumers Association, applies organic principles to food, climate, biodiversity, small farmers and health. So, how about ‘Regenerative?’

Brexit – should we stay or should we go?

As the nation ponders the Brexit question, Craig Sams reflects on the EU’s inglorious record on food and health

I was around when we joined the EU in 1973. What was the impact on food and health? Here’s my summation of the good, the bad and the ugly – well the last two anyway.

The first thing was that land prices shot up. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) guaranteed subsidies favouring larger landholdings. Overnight land became an investment asset, its value underpinned by the EU. City money poured in, paying contract farming companies to operate monoculture on vast tracts of land. They cut down the hedgerows, drained the wetlands and sprayed out biodiversity. Pesticide and fertilizer use shot up. In the early 1970s Exchange and Mart listed smallholdings in Britain. When one came up for sale City money would buy it, consolidate the 15-50 acres into an industrialized landholding and sell off the house as a second home. The deck was stacked against small farmers in favour of large chemical-dependent enterprises. The ads for smallholdings disappeared.

Jam could no longer be called jam. The EU list of permitted sweeteners included white sugar, brown sugar, ‘sugar syrup containing not more than 0.2% sulphur dioxide preservative’, glucose syrup and another ten industrial sweeteners. Despite our urgent representations to include ‘fruit juice and fruit juice concentrates’, the EU refused to put them on the list. So Whole Earth had to rename our healthier jam ‘pure fruit spread.’ Lobbyists in Brussels had made sure the deck was stacked in favour of EU-subsidized sugars.

The ongoing suppression of herbal and natural medicine began. The HFMA fights doughtily to protect people’s right to VMS and herbal remedies, but it can be a losing battle with the EU banning much-loved products for obscure reasons, not unrelated to pharma pressures on unelected commissioners.

Hydrogenated fat got a major shot in the arm. It popped up everywhere as a replacement for naturally hard fats like coconut oil or palm oil. This plasticky heart-destroying material was made from rapeseed oil, subsidized to the eyeballs by the CAP. EU levies on imports of palm oil and coconut oil guaranteed that hydrogenated fat was always £50-60 a tonne cheaper than natural fats. Then the medical industry weighed in, encouraging consumption of transfat-rich margarines. By the late 1990s, when the evidence against hydrogenated fat was overwhelming, the EU still wouldn’t budge until Bantransfats.com and the Danish Government finally made transfats unmarketable. So the EU brought out the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation which required member states to mix rapeseed oil with diesel to burn up this food that nobody wanted.

The EU took over organic regulation in 1993 and bogged it down in bureaucracy. In the US if you want an organic no-calorie sweetener, processed from organic raw materials, to be permitted in organic food, you apply to the National Organic Standards Board which looks at the evidence and decides in a matter of weeks. In the EU you have to go to the Soil Association which consults other certifying bodies, then makes a representation to DEFRA, who makes a representation to Brussels who then consults with the other 25 ministries of agriculture in member states, who consult with certifying bodies who consult with licensees and then feed back to Brussels after a few years, usually with someone dissenting and deadlock. Organic food in the EU has to be full sugar because regulatory constipation bars safe organic sweeteners. US makers of low-calorie products can sell in the EU due to the US-EU equivalence agreement, where minor differences in organic standards are just overlooked.

I live in Hastings, where the fishermen operate small boats. The EU gives 97% of the fish quotas to the big trawlers that destroy the sea bed and 3% to the small boat fishermen who are responsible for 50% of employment of fishermen. Our fishermen have to throw fish overboard or buy extra quota from the trawler operators to whom Brussels lobbyists have given more quota than they can possibly use.

For 19 years the EU Court of Auditors has refused to give the all clear to the EU’s accounts because of money that just disappears out of the CAP, which eats up half the EU budget. Unelected and unaccountable, they just laugh at any attempt to stop the corruption, most of which is in farm subsidies.

I’m not saying that Brexit would be any better, mind. Given the level of competence at Westminster, it could be argued that things would be even worse if we let power and responsibility reside there rather than Brussels. Nonetheless, it’s unfortunate that our food and farming are being held hostage by unaccountable bureaucrats, be they in Brussels or closer to home

Soil and Gut

Q, What's the functional difference between a carrot and an intestine?

A.  Nothing.

One is the mirror image of the other.  One is outward looking and the other is inward looking but they do the same things.  The parallels between how we eat to sustain good health in your bodies and how we farm to sustain good health in the body of the earth have never been so clear.   The digestive system is just a root turned inside out, but the functions are the same.

When you grow organically you are supporting a system of food production that is biological, using the marvelous intelligence of the trillions of microorganisms in the soil - when you eat organic whole foods you're supporting a system of food digestion that is biological, using the marvelous intelligence of trillions of microorganisms in your gut.

When we eat food it becomes soil-when we grow in soil it becomes food. 

Plants consume sun energy, carbon dioxide and water to make carbohydrate-we consume carbohydrate and to make energy, carbon dioxide and water. 

Soil is comprised of ‘soil biota,’ trillions of microorganisms that digest every bit of nutrient that comes their way- our gut is composed of 'gut biota,’ trillions of microorganisms that digest every bit of nutrient that come their way.

The soil microbes do 'transmutation' - they are little chemical factories that can convert stuff into other stuff – the nutrients that make plants healthy.  Our gut microbes transmute our food into whatever our bodies need, including manufacturing stuff like vitamins such as B2, B12 or C and essential minerals from the raw materials of the food we eat.

When we put chemical fertilisers on the soil plants that are making the carbohydrates that feed the soil microbiota stop sending them down.  Why should they?  The farmer is giving the plants soluble nutrients for free.  So the microorganisms that nourish the plant and defend it from disease are exterminated by disease-causing bacteria and fungi that attack the plant.  The resulting disease can be controlled with toxic pesticides, which end up in our food, but the soil sickens and cannot support healthy plant growth anymore. 

When we put excessive junk food and sugar into our digestive systems the microorganisms in our gut are not needed and die off or are exterminated by fungi like candida.   The result is that the microorganisms that support our immune system no longer support health and vitality.   The resulting disease can be controlled with toxic medications, which end up in our bodies,  but the gut sickens and cannot support health any more. 

The only real difference between a carrot and the gut is the that carrot looks outwards, sending its root hairs away from the carrot to collaborate with the friendly microorganisms and the food and immunity they bring.  The gut looks inwards, sending its root hairs into the intestine to collaborate with the friendly microorganisms and the food and immunity they bring. 

Not farming organically is shortsighted - you waste precious living soil microbiota in order to get temporary crop yield increases that leave you with degraded sickened soil that can't support healthy life and is dependent on drugs like fertilisers and biocides.   Not eating healthily and organically is shortsighted - you waste your precious living gut microbota to get temporary energy increases that leave you with a degraded, sickened digestive system that can't support healthy life and is dependent on drugs and antibiotics.

When you add charcoal to soil it helps protect the microbes in the soil from dying off so they can cure soil degradation and plant disease.   When you add charcoal to your diet it helps protect the microbes in the gut from dying off, curing gut degradation and disease.

A healthy soil is full of mucus, a sticky substance called glomalin that holds the soil particles together to ensure that nutrients and soil microbes all stay happily in the upper layers of soil

A healthy gut is full of mucus - sticky material made by gut flora that helps ensure that nutrients and gut microbes stay happily in the upper layers of the gut lining. 

The parallels go on. Whether you grow organically or eat organically, you are following the road of biology.  When you don't you're following the road of chemistry and drugs.  Chemistry creates addictive behaviour.  We have to kick the habit, in growing and in eating.  

 (Craig Sams will elaborate on these parallels at NOPE.  He will discuss the implications and opportunities of this emerging awareness for vitamin and supplement manufacturers, natural food processors and growers and farmers)

Cheer up, we just reversed humanity’s decline

OK, reversing humanity’s decline took 40 or 50 years longer than we thought. But let’s celebrate it anyway, writes Craig Sams

Could this be the Big Lifestyle Turnaround that we’ve been dreaming about and waiting for?

Every year for decades there has been an annual increase in new cases of Type 2 diabetes, which correlates with comparable figures for obesity, which is a factor in cancer and heart disease. That’s the bad news. What’s the good news?

Over the last 6 years (averaged to avoid ‘blips’) research shows there has been a significant DECLINE in incidence of diabetes in the US. Diabetes is still happening, but less and less each year. That means that, going forward, there will likely be less cancer, less obesity and less heart disease. The endless upward graph is going into a downturn.

The researchers, at the US Governments Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), took a shot at what might be behind this encouraging news. Their studied conclusion? People are more health conscious than hitherto and this is reflected in healthy and informed food choices and greater commitment to regular exercise and bodywork, including yoga and pilates. In other words, the message of healthy living is getting through. More people than ever are shopping at natural food stores or Whole Foods Market. Supermarkets are giving more and more space to organic and healthy foods. We’ve always said that this could happen and now the evidence is in that a healthy lifestyle prevents degenerative disease.

So where does that put Coca Cola? Their sales are down in the US, with the international market also weakening.

And MacDonalds? For seven straight quarters up to the middle of last year, their sales have been dropping with no evidence of a turnaround. Big Macs and Coke once seemed invincible – the obesity epidemic and resulting diabetes soared in parallel with their sales. Now their growth has stalled.

So where is the money going? Last year yoga and pilates studios in the US had sales of $9 billion, up 7.5% year on year. There are 30,000 businesses employing 95,000 people, about three per business. It’s a horde of small enterprises that are capturing people’s longing for physical wellbeing, core strength and flexibility. The yoga bunnies and pilates enthusiasts are alive to nutrition, healthy eating, the gut microbiome and anything else that points them towards a longer, healthier and happier life. There’s little opportunity for scale in this market – there are a few big gym chains but most of this healthy stuff is run by sole practitioners or a small local group that might also include nutritional advice, massage and counseling. In the caring, sharing economy of the future there is a lot more peer-to-peer and a lot less corporate-to-consumer relationship.

It’s not going to be easy to get humankind back on track, though.

The junk food decades from the 1950s to the 2000s meant that a lot of kids were born who inherited the epigenetic legacy of their parents’ poor diet and environment. We know that what you eat affects your health – now we also know it affects your genes and is an undesirable legacy to your children. I won’t go into the detail of DNA methylation and transfer RNAs, but suffice to say that if a father or a mother eats too much sugary and industrial food and is exposed to environmental contaminants such as pesticides, food colouring and preservatives their baby’s start in life is clouded and the kid is more likely to suffer impaired insulin tolerance that could lead to diabetes. The good news is that epigenetics cuts both ways. A lot of the crap that used to screw up our genes is now out of the system – things like DDT, lead, hydrogenated fat, toxic dyes and preservatives and high levels of pesticide, fungicide and herbicide residues in our food are all non-existent or much lower. So going forward we could be passing on healthier and more robust genes.

When we launched Yin-Yang Ltd, the macrobiotic food company that would morph into Whole Earth, Vegeburger and Green & Black’s, we thought the healthy eating revolution would be over by the early 1970s. It was so obvious. We naively thought everyone would go for it – after all, who didn’t want to live a long and healthy life? As my brother Gregory said, we were looking at the future through the wrong end of the telescope. We saw the future, we were just out by 40 or 50 years. Boo-hoo about the ruined lives along the way, but hip hip hurrah for the coming reversal of humanity’s decline.

 

Rhythm 'n' Bliss - Thomas Cohen Single

When Victor Gutierrez asked me to front the video for Thomas Cohen's debut single 'Bloom Forever' it was a pleasure to agree.  The actual shoot, like all shoots, demanded an unboreable brain that can ride out the repeated performing of the same stuff until eventually Victor was happy to do it in one run.  

'Bloom Forever' has a haunting melody that, not just because I've heard it 100 times now, is embedded in my brain and pops up uninvited but welcome quite often.  It's hard to classify, not lounge, not chillout, not a lullabye - not quite sure what to call it... but imagining Thomas writing this in the maternity ward having just 'had' his child, a son, in the bliss of first parenthood, helps explain the quality of the song that I just can't quite nail. "Rhythm 'n' Bliss" perhaps?

Food and friendship without frontiers

Craig Sams celebrates the role of the natural food industry in helping to nourish refugees in Calais camps

In 1911 Karim Aboud Saba faced a dilemma – stay at home in his Christian hillside village in Syria or go to an uncertain future in America? He had a wife and 2 kids. The Turks were in the throes of the run up to World War 1 and were rounding up men up to the age of 55 to be cannon fodder for their Ottoman Army. The French and the British were already squabbling about who’d get which parts of Syria and Palestine after the coming war. It was most definitely not his fight. So Aboud left his home behind and took his family to America. At Immigration they took one look at his name, written unintelligibly in Arabic, and handed him a piece of paper marked ‘SAM.’ ‘That’s your American name, buddy.’ If you had asked him for an opinion about organic food or the stuff called chocolate his grandson would be marketing he wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. If you would have told him that his great-great grandson Mars Aboud Sams 100 years later would be in a place called Calais in France working 12 hours a day feeding Syrian and Kurdish refugees he would have smiled ruefully – it was the vision of such endless chaos that had driven him to emigrate.

The refugees in Calais and Dunkerque are just a small fraction of the millions that have died or been displaced by the manipulation and exploitation that started in the 1900s with the British, French, Turks, Russians and Germans manoeuvring over who would control the lucrative oil wells of Iraq. Now these lucky survivors are just across the water and living in dreadful conditions in the hope of finding a new life in Britain or joining their relatives here.   Many are starving, having spent all their money to pay smugglers to get them this far.

Mars Aboud Sams, my 18-year old grandson, is on his way back to the Refugee Community Kitchen in Calais after a stint in December. He’s now experienced in field kitchen catering and able to supervise the many volunteers who come over with vans and cars laden with food, willing to work for a few days or weeks cooking, cleaning, serving and washing dishes to keep the canteen going.

“The role of the natural food industry in supporting this field kitchen is admirable”

The role of the natural food industry in supporting this field kitchen is admirable. Wholesalers willingly act as aggregation and distribution hubs for food. Riverford Farms have sent several van loads of fresh organic vegetables to be prepped and cooked by the chefs there. Abel & Cole are offering milk and ongoing support. Infinity Foods have sent over quinoa, Brazil nuts, rice and other dry goods. Suma have supplied a pallet of washing up liquid, rice, oats and catering tins of tomatoes. Gusto have sent over a pallet of Gusto Cola. Organic Lea have come up with a palletload of kale, cabbages, leeks, rocket and other green vegetables. Zaytoun, the distributors of Fairtrade organic food from Palestine, have sent medjool dates. This is just a snapshot of what’s going on.

Most of the volunteers are the kind of people who are committed to eating organic food, to eating less meat and emitting less carbon dioxide. They understand the deep humane connection between the food they choose and the kind of world they’d like to live in. That’s a world where our shared humanity is more important than the opportunistic manouevring that is the most we can expect from politicians. The destruction of stable communities of Christians, Muslims, Jews and other minorities that had lived together in peace for a thousand or more years drove my grandfather to America 100 years ago. It is still going on. The only difference is that America is now part of the problem where, after WW1, people idealistically hoped it would be part of the solution.

We are all people with a shared interest in prosperity, good health and well-being.

The words of Marianne Satrap sum it up perfectly and explain the deep instinct of common humanity, sharing and caring that drives so many people from the organic movement to try to help relieve the suffering of their fellow human beings:

"The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other but we talk and understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same."
Marianne Satrap, author of Iranian graphic novel Persepolis, now a film.

https://www.youcaring.com/refugee-community-kitchen-474904

Is Agribusiness a 'stranded asset' class?

Is it time for investors to dump Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer?

The UNFCC has launched its '4 per 1000' initiative based on data from the French National Institute for Agronomic Research that shows that just by increasing overall the carbon-rich organic matter of soil by 0.4% per annum we could completely and totally offset all our annual GHG greenhouse gas emissions.  The farming methods that can take carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it in the soil include big reductions of nitrate fertilisers and fungicides.  Just doing that will make a difference as they represent a 15% contribution to annual GHG emissions.  The rest comes from 'agroecological' practices, mostly pioneered by organic and biodynamic farmers, that are now tested, refined and proven to be competitive in yield with industrial methods of farming.  They do not deliver high revenue streams to agribusiness companies and they also do not externalise all sorts of other costs onto society.  These biggest cost is greenhouse gas emissions as that's the planetary existential threat.  But the personal and social costs are pretty costly, too: pesticide residues in food, soil erosion, dust storms, water pollution, flooding, biodiversity loss, toxic algal blooms and an archaic subsidy system that has the hard-working poor subsidising rich landowners in the name of 'cheap food.'.  But forget about that, just concentrating on the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from farming is enough.  There are plenty of untested technological solutions like mirrors in space or the delusion of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) that you can pump carbon dioxide into old oil wells and somehow convince yourself and everyone else that it will stay there.   The beauty of what I should like to call Soil Carbon Capture and Storage (SCCS) is that with soil carbon, what goes in the ground stays in the ground.   All it needs is the right price signals.  If carbon has a value then the farmer who reduces emissions and increases sequestration will be rewarded. When carbon has a value it will be traded and there is no need for complicated and inequitable government farm subsidy policies that punish environmentally responsible behaviour.  SCCS farmers will sell their carbon right alongside their corn and beans.

Ideally a SCCS farmer would receive three carbon-related payments per annum,  as well, of course as their normal income and profit from growing wheat or carrots or alfalfa or eggs or whatever .  There would be a capital payment and an interest payment and an avoided emissions payment.  Here's how it could work:

1. Capital Payment: This is a payment to a farmer for the net annual increase of carbon in the soil. Rodale's research has shown that an organic farm can sequester 2.5 tonnes CO2 per hectare per year. There are 1.5 billion hectares of farmland and 3.5 billion hectares of pasture. For farmland alone, 1.5 billion ha. times 2.5 tonnes is 3.75 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum. Conversely, a farm that continues to reduce its soil carbon annually would have to pay for that reduction.

2. Soil Interest Payment - This would be an 'interest' payment of the market price of carbon based on the amount of carbon that is already in the soil, the 'deposit' so to speak.

3. Avoided emissions payment - emissions include fossil fuels and the emissions involved in the manufacture and application of fertilisers, pesticides and agricultural equipment.

How does it work in practice?   Let's say a farmer has 100 hectares of land.   The carbon price is $50 per tonne CO2.  There are already 60 tonnes of CO2 as soil organic matter per hectare.  The farmer adds 2.5 tonnes in one year.  What is the annual carbon payout?

Capital Payment: 100 hectares x 2.5 tonnes x $50 =   $ 12,500

Interest Payment: 100 hectares x 60 x 0.5%            =   $    3,000

Avoided emissions payment:  1 tonne $50  x 100     = $    5,000

So the farmer can sell carbon credits to gain an additional $20,500 of revenue on 100 hectares

What about the  industrial farmer?

Capital Payment: 1 tonne p.a. soil CO2 decrease, $50 x 100   =   - $5,000

Interest Payment: 100 hectares x 60 x 0.5%            =                        $ 3,000

Emissions Payment:   .5 tonne CO2/ha =                                         -$ 2,500

(a fee for nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide emissions from the soil due to the use of nitrate fertiliser and pesticides and fungicides)

Total carbon cost of farming as usual:                                          $4,500

Total 'spread' between SCCS farmer and industrial farmer 100 hectares:

$20,500 + $ 4,500  =  $25,000

If yields are equal and input costs are comparable then this is a significant edge in competitiveness in favour of the agroecological or organic farmer.

That's $250 per hectare.  About what a farmer gets nowadays by way of government subsidy but, instead of it coming from the taxpayer and the farmer acting as a conduit that channels it to agribusiness the payment is funded by the carbon markets and most of the money stays in the farmer's pocket.

Michael Pollan's made a lovely video that tells the story of soil carbon.  And Deborah Garcia's film 'Symphony of the Soil' is certainly worth watching to get a full understanding of the real underfoot magic of our existence.

And the Financial Times published my letter on December 18th 2015 that was a warning to investors not to get caught in a meltdown of agribusiness shares similar to what's been happening with fossil fuel company shares - the writing is on the wall for businesses that generate high greenhouse gas emissions - there's no hiding place any more.  The Paris talks have tipped the balance.

Carbon sinks will tip the market balance in favour of sustainable agriculture

Sugar - All They Want is the Tax, Man

Before everyone stampedes into a sugar tax, may I just try to shine a small beam of light of sanity into this increasingly hysterical ‘debate?’ I’m no sugar lover and have fought the good fight to keep my consumption as low as possible for many decades. In 1971, in my book About Macrobiotics I wrote: “If sugar were discovered yesterday it would be banned and possibly handed over to the Army for weapons research.’ But at the same time, without sugar we’d all be dead. It's all about how much we consume and in what form - simple or complex. But when even the Financial Times editorialises about ‘The Compelling Case for a Sugar Tax’ it’s time to dig a little deeper into the obesity and diabetes epidemic before rushing out to slap a tax on drinks containing sugar.   What have taxes on booze, fags and petrol ever done to reduce consumption? Governments will always love the tax option, it’s so much easier to make money out of a problem than to solve it.

To begin with we need to understand about blood sugar. I am going to oversimplify. Life depends on glucose, the simplest sugar. When we eat or drink sugar, the glucose element quickly tops up our blood sugar level because blood sugar is glucose. The fructose element follows a different metabolic pathway and ends as fat or stored glycogen in the liver, which can then be converted into glucose when it is needed.

When we eat too much sugar the blood glucose level rises to dangerous levels and the pancreas pumps out insulin to bring it down. But it overshoots, so the insulin keeps taking glucose sugar out of the blood and before you know it, the blood glucose level is too low. The body panics as sugar is vital to cell function and brain function, so it tells the liver to release some of its stores of glucose, which helps. But the liver only has a limited supply and struggles to keep up with the demand, so the craving for sugar eventually becomes irresistible. It’s a natural inbuilt survival mechanism to crave sugar when blood sugar levels are low.

In our gut there are 10,000 different types of microbes, including useful candida yeasts, which help with the breakdown of sugar. When there’s a lot of sugar those candida multiply like crazy and outcompete the other gut flora. Worse than that, they mutate into a resilient and greedy fungal form that demands more and more sugar. Candida gets a lock on your brain and remotely controls your appetite to deliver more sugar. You can’t tax candida, you have to kill it. By starvation. Once candida is put back in its box the cravings for sugar diminish. Probiotics can help to suppress candida, as will berberine, grapefruit seed extract, garlic and oregano. But the key is to cut off its food supply.  But starving candida ain't easy.

How does candida get such a grip? Candida’s takeover of our digestive process is much easier when the other gut flora, such as lactobacilli or bifidobacteria, are dead or dying.

This happens when you take antibiotics or regularly consume food that contains antibiotic residues, particularly non-organic chicken and pork. Other medications that kill off the digestive system microbial community and clear the path for yeasts and candida include birth control hormones, hormone replacement therapy, acid-suppressing drugs and steroids. Doctors who dish out antibiotics for common cold are helping drive the obesity epidemic.  Maybe we should tax doctors who dish out antibiotics willy-nilly?

Caffeine plays a role, too. Ever notice how many people piously say ‘no’ to sugar in their tea or coffee, and then have a brownie or a big cookie? A brownie can contain twice the sugar of a can of Coke.   Caffeine increases the flow of blood to the brain, where ¼ of our sugar consumption takes place – thinking is hard work and uses a lot of glucose. Drinking a double espresso accelerates your brain and the rate at which you burn glucose, leading to low blood sugar and sugar cravings. The liver just can’t keep up with converting glycogen to glucose. People ingest a lot more caffeine nowadays than ever before. In Britain there has been a dramatic fall in scone and teacake consumption too, with a corresponding rise in consumption of cookies, muffins and brownies. Drink it or eat it, sugar is sugar.

Alcohol also creates sugar cravings. Especially on an empty stomach. Alcohol increases insulin output, which reduces blood glucose levels and it inhibits the liver from producing glucose to top up those levels. Result? Uncontrollable urges to consume sugar.

How about a glass of milk? Milk contains 5% sugars, about half what you’d get from a can of Coke. Tax milk at half the rate of soft drinks? Tell that to the NFU.  Is giving kids milk instead of water doing more harm because of the sugar than good because of the calcium?

If you’re going to tax sugar, then ALL sugar should be taxed, regardless of whether it’s in a brownie or a glass of apple juice or a cup of tea or a can of Coke. Whether sugar comes from a cane, a root, a bee, a cactus, a coconut tree, a maple tree, a cow, a goat, a camel or a grape or an orange or an apple or a pineapple it should be taxed equally. Otherwise you just move sugar consumption around based on pricing. Taxation never stopped people smoking but education and bans in public places has helped.

So what’s the answer? There are organic natural sweeteners such as stevia, licorice and erythritol that can provide a sweet taste without the glucose impact of sugar. But ultimately there are 3 words that sum it up: education, education, education. The Soil Association’s massively successful Food For Life school meals programme supplies 2 million school meals a day that commit to be freshly prepared, with local and organic ingredients. Jeannette Orrey, the legendary autobiographical author of “Dinner Lady” told me recently that Food For Life school meals now often have puddings made with half the sugar than usual and some participating schools are no longer serving pudding at all and the kids are cool about it. Time builds up bad habits. If kids grow up with minimal exposure to excesses of sugar, fruit juice, milk, cookies and other sugar sources and are helped to restore healthy probiotic conditions in their gut after exposure to antibiotics or other medications then they will be healthy adults with sensible appetites and a much lower predisposition to obesity and diabetes. For the rest of us, particularly those who have overdosed on sugar from an early age, the path to health is much harder and, for some, impossible. A tax will never solve this, education and behavior change will.

My Salad Breakfast

This morning, for breakfast, I went into the garden with a couple of slices of bread slathered with mayonnaise and a rice cake smeared with Jersey butter. Then I proceeded to pick from my winter salad garden: lamb’s lettuce, French parsley, various Japanese winter veg including mizuna and two frilly but intensely hot mustardy greens, land cress (a thicket self seeded from a single plant earlier this year), lettuce, winter purslane and, for a touch of the bitters, artemisia – wormwood. I added a leaf of radicchio from plants that have sprung up through the brickwork of a path. Just as we think of ‘food miles’ there is a parallel concept of ‘food days’ from harvest to consumption. In this case it was ‘food seconds’ – the leaves barely knew they had been plucked before they disappeared into the welcoming warm darkness of my esophagus, still brimming with vitality as they headed for the acid bath of my stomach.  The garden owes everything to Rocket Gardens Winter Salad Collection, a superb collection of cold-tolerant plants that were delivered to me back in September, to get established before the cold set in. They haven’t been tested by frost (well, a very light one a few weeks ago) but my experience has been that my biochar-rich soil has such an active biology that the warmth it gives off acts as underfloor central heating for the plants. Soil is everything and I am lucky to have Carbon Gold at my fingertips, continually discovering new aspects of the joys of biochar gardening.

But enough about the soil, it’s the variety that gets me every time I have my salad breakfast.

Here they are, sharing a plate with a buttered rice cake and the lamb’s lettuce growing just behind.   But read on for the individual varietals and pictures.

Salad plate notated.jpg

Purslane.jpg

I love the light mucilaginousness of winter purslane, with its spade-shaped leaves that look like they’ve escaped from a deck of playing cards.

Then there are the red chicories – radicchio and rosso de Treviso, both squeezing through the brick path. These provide a crisp bitterness.

radicchio.png

The Japanese Red Frills Mustard leaves are hot and mustardy and satisfyingly crunchy. Here are the purple ones, finding space between the turnips and the spring onions.

IMG_1264 (1).jpg

And here are their green cousins, the Green Frills Mustard

Frilly Japanese greens.png

The land cress is easily as peppery as its aquatic cousin

cress.jpg

The Lamb’s Lettuce miraculously replaces removed leaves almost, it seems, overnight. Light in flavour and texture.

lamb\s lettuce.png

French parsley does the same, endlessly offering up new leaves to replace those plucked earlier.  Here it is in the foreground, with emerging Babbington’s leeks just behind.

parsley.png

Mizuna rounds it out, though it seems to be struggling more with the cold than the others.

Mizuna.png

A dab of Artemisia is always a good digestive tonic, but very bitter, so I get that down first and then follow with the sweeter and more pungent leaves.

YUM!

eating breakfast.jpg

Room for profits in organic shopping baskets

End of the road for Monsanto?

When we lived in Omaha we’d drive through the countryside up to Sioux City past endless fields of corn.  Along the roadside were signs with the name of the seed company who supplied their seed, mostly ‘Pioneer’ or ‘DeKalb.’   The seed company salesmen were local guys who had gone to school with the farmers and were known and trusted.  They’d buy you a cup of coffee and a piece of pie and arrange to take you on a fishing trip to Canada.  So in1996 when Monsanto paid a fortune for the DeKalb seed company it bought all that intergenerational love and trust.   In 1997 Monsanto bought Holden’s Foundation Seeds, who produced the parent seed that most of America’s corn is bred from.  At Iowa State University, Professor Neil Harl took a look at the prices Monsanto was paying and calculated that they were paying 2 to 3 times market value on the basis of sales and profits.  His conclusion?  Monsanto’s strategy was to gain monopoly control of the seed supply in order to increase their prices and profits.  Monsanto’s patent on Roundup ran out in 2000, so they needed to lock farmers into using it before cheaper alternatives flooded the market.

Sure enough, by 2000 US farmers had no choice – their favourite seed varieties were now only available Roundup Ready and could only be grown with Roundup.  Monsanto had America’s farmers by the short and curlies.

Once they had America under their thumb they went to work on Argentina, where they grow their seed corn to sell in the US, as well as soybeans.  This year in Argentina 30,000 doctors called for Roundup to be banned because of the horrific epidemic of disease  it had triggered in farming regions.  More recently the WHO rated Roundup as a ‘probable carcinogen.’  Within days not a garden centre in Holland or France stocked Roundup.

In their latest  financial statement, Monsanto reveals that it is losing $5 million a day.  You don’t need a degree in Economics to know that’s not sustainable for very long.  Their world seems to be falling apart rather quickly.

In the US, for all the crap about ‘feeding the world’ things are going pear-shaped. 40% of America’s GMO corn gets converted to ethanol to be compulsorily mixed with gasoline, feeding Fords instead of people.  The oil industry hates ethanol – they are being squeezed enough by the Saudis without having to compete with subsidised bio-fuel.  But without ethanol, half of America’s farms would go bust. Corn prices are currently 50¢ a bushel below break even.  Farmers can’t afford to pay inflated prices for Monsanto’s GMO corn and Roundup, so sales are dropping.  Roundup-resistant ‘superweeds’ are now infesting half of America’s farms, refusing to die despite a huge increase in herbicide applications and the bringing out of retirement of pesticides like 2,4-D that had been removed from the market because they cause cancer.  What an unholy mess.

Monsanto recently ambitiously tried to take over Syngenta, their main competitor, but that deal fell apart – both companies face the awful reality that their R&D isn’t coming up with new products that work – like drug companies they depend on patented medicines to protect inflated profit margins.

In September the New York Times revealed that Monsanto bribes scientists to make claims for GMOs that are unsupported by evidence.  Nobody will believe a man in a white coat again who touts the benefits of GMOs without wanting to check his bank account. 

In 1999 Patrick Holden and I had a meeting with Hugh Grant (Monsanto’s CEO) and other Monsanto executives under the guidance of the Environment Council, who sought to reconcile our views on GMOs.  My notes of the meeting show Patrick and I actually had to explain what organic farming meant.  Monsanto had no idea of organic principles and asked us to repeat this as they felt they needed to understand it properly.  They knew we opposed GMOs but just thought we were stupid Luddites.

Monsanto is running out of road:  hired liars in white coats can’t fool anyone any more; tobacco-style Roundup poisoning lawsuits beckon; farmers can’t afford to pay high prices for seed and chemicals that don’t work;  resistant weeds and insects refuse to die; country after country worldwide is declaring itself GM-Free; the demand for labelling of GMOs in the US is reaching a climax and now Wall Street is losing interest in phoney biotech claims.

Genetic engineering was the great hope for industrial agriculture – it would solve all the problems that pesticides and chemical fertilisers had caused.  It didn’t happen.  Instead, smart companies like Rijk Zwaan in Holland are using genomics to naturally breed stronger, healthier plants than anything from Monsanto or Syngenta. 

E F Schumacher wrote: “Modern man…talks of the battle with Nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle he would find himself on the losing side.”   Nature’s allies have fought for 20 years against the GMO takeover attempt – let’s hope that we are finally on the winning side.