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Big Agriculture Takes Umbrage at Mrs Obama’s Organic Garden
Times Online by: Philippe Naughton
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6146396.ece
America’s powerful agribusiness lobby has hit back at Michelle Obama’s decision to make her new White House kitchen garden entirely organic, urging her to consider the use of appropriate “crop protection products”.
Wearing her finest Jimmy Choo boots, Mrs Obama broke the ground on her vegetable plot on the White House lawn last month, enlisting the help of local schoolchildren to help make a point about the need to tackle childhood obesity.
The kitchen garden is White House’s first since Eleanor Roosevelt “dug for victory” in the Second World War, and pictures of the photogenic First Lady getting to work gained massive worldwide coverage.
To the anger of Big Ag, however, Mrs Obama has aligned herself with the growing movement of “locavores”, people who grow their own fruit and vegetables at home or try to buy only locally-grown food. The principles of organic gardening, which focuses on building healthy soil, mean that she will not be able to use chemical products to tackle pests or give her plants a boost.
Shortly after she got to work on the plot, Mrs Obama received a letter from the Mid-America CropLife Association (MACA), which represents the companies producing the pesticides and fertilisers underpinning “conventional” American agriculture.
Addressed to “Mrs Barack Obama”, the letter congratulated the First Lady on “recognising the importance of agriculture in America”. Farming is America’s largest industry, generating 20 per cent of GDP and directly or indirectly employing 22 million people.
The letter does not mention the word “organic”, nor even “pesticide” or “fertiliser” but highlights the role played by farmers in preventing soil erosion and the massive yields achievable thanks to technological advances – technologies that can see a single acre produce almost 20 tonnes of strawberries of 110,000 heads of lettuce in a season.
“Today, an average farmer produces enough food to feed 144 Americans who are living longer lives than many of their ancestors. Technology in agriculture has allowed for the development of much of what we know and use in our lives today,” MACA wrote.
“If Americans were still required to farm to support their family’s basic food and fibre needs, would the US have been leaders in the advancement of science, communication, education, medicine, transportation and the arts?
“We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and ageing parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family’s year-round food needs.”
The letter “respectfully” encourages Mrs Obama to recognise the role played by conventional agriculture in feeding America’s growing population and is carefully worded not to be provocative.
But Bonnie McCarvel, the MACA executive director, was not so diplomatic in an e-mail forwarding the letter to MACA supporters and members, in which she said: “While a garden is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made (us) shudder.”
More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition supporting Mrs Obama and asking MACA to stop its “propaganda about pesticides”.
“Stop asserting that the First Lady is somehow disserving our nation’s citizens by encouraging them to grow their own food locally, sustainably and without your industry’s chemicals,” the petition says. “We know better and you should, too.”
Thank you Mrs. Obama for your support of organic gardening. MACA needs to STOP it’s propoganda about pesticides and bring food back to it’s natural order. If they want to drink pesticides and poison, that’s their business. Let people eat NATURE the way we were intended to. We, THE PEOPLE, have the right to know what we are eating. We have the right to full disclosure of harmful pesticides and ingredients and full disclosure of genetic modified foods. Thanks again Mrs. Obama! A hopeful garden we need now more than ever. Just visit earthjustice.org and see the devastation genetic engineering and pesticides have caused the indigenous people and their food supply. Horrifying. They’ve completely disrespected enough farmers and their communities. BIG GE’s must be stopped!
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You go, girl! Mrs. Obama, you know and understand about the health of your family and MACA simply must stop their harassment of a noble, caring mother! Eating organic produce (and going cold turkey on sugar)has eliminated every single condition that kept my own health from being perfect at age 75.
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Thank you, Mrs. Obama for helping to bring awareness to our Nation’s need to reconnect with nature. Your organic garden teaches Americans about the need to understand from where their food derives and the importance of pure, chemical-free food. For too long Americans have been buying their food packaged in boxes and plastic – far removed from their natural state. They do not know that food grows in soil and is healthiest when the soil is healthy and free of toxic chemicals. Perhaps America has had their time freed up by having their food, mass produces, sprayed with chemicals, packaged, chemicalized further and dyed, but it has also given us chronic illness, Cancer, Obesity, and low energy. After decades of eating this toxic food, are we still making advances in technology or has our food created far too many lazy, lethargic, and addicted people who would be a whole lot healthier if they spent time outdoors, working their garden and eating healthy chemical-free food? Every person on this planet has a right to healthy food, free of additives, pesticides, herbicides, genetic modification, and irradiation. I have great hopes that you and Mr. President Obama will put an end to the greedy industries that push genetically modified food and unsafe additives and other chemicals into our food and that their connections to the FDA, USDA and Congress be dissolved.
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I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Margaret
http://howtomakecompost.info
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Big Ag is destroying farmland, sacrificing Mother Earth for short-term gain; if we incl. all the envir. destruction and diseases from horrible, abuses of Big Ag, then there would be an entirely different outlook…if you didn’t destroy the soil, you wouldn’t need chem/artificial additives, if you didn’t destroy nature, Monsanto wouldn’t need to force-feed Americans soybeans that are constantly sprayed with weedkiller where the soybean has been genetically bred for resistance, it is sickening….Monsanto and others have legions of lobbyists who destroy independent farmers….and our govt. looks the other way, despite Michelle Obama having a small organic garden…individuals cannot fight gigantic multinational corporations…get real!!!
Every single American needs to buy local, sustainable and organic in order to secure our own national defenses, not be beholden on special interests, multinational corporations, which do not care about our health…companies such as Beef Products International use left-over fatty parts of beef which used to be THROWN AWAY and grind them up as meat by products and are now in close to 100% of all burgers consumed in mcds, bk, and now our public schools, all for school district to save a few cents a pound, our children are treated worse than junkyard dogs….and people willingly go along….the ONLY power we have left is through our shopping habits…you ALSO do not save any money buying dollar menu, etc…there is absolutely no nutritional value…walmarts etc suck jobs from your community, lower avg. wage, etc…one state yesterday lowered min. wage for the first time in history…NOBODY IS PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT IS HAPPENING!!!watch Food, Inc.; read the “Omnivore’s Dilemma”, frequent local businesses, organic stores, farmer’s markets, avoid walmart at all costs until they change business practices; even if we are old and gray and don’t have a vested interest in the future well-being of this country, our children’s lives depend on it….change will happen, whether we like it or not, whether good or bad change happens, and our control over any part of it, depends upon our indiv. consumer choices NOW!!!
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also, as somebody recently awakened from a long slumber or coma, I just realized the immense difference in drinking local raw milk, local eggs, and local free-range chickens (usually vegeterian) from my local farmers..when I lived in the Deep South, being literally surrounded by farms, I would go to Walmart, and eat a lot of dead animal flesh, mostly fried; happily, there is STILL literally a whole WORLD other than Walmart…but it does take individual effort, meaning that I have to actually go to the farm, sometimes with a friend and get enough to last a week…there is an ENORMOUS difference, and you never have to buy separate cream for coffee, you use reusable container every time….etc…in my case, currently, they are different farms for each item, I also go to my local green store, which also advertises local farms’ products…and frequent farmer’s markets..a new emerging trend, which I will partake of SOON, are CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture, whereby an indiv. or family buys a share or two in a local farm….and gets parts of bounty on regular (usually weekly) basis…I HAVE to think that there are positive trends, and that people will wake up soon!!!! If you become attuned to vibrations, you will never, ever go to walmart etc…since it is literally enveloped in seriously angry, negative vibrations……they will have to change a lot and in a hurry….perhaps in several years I will go back…but I recently tried and turned around at the door…..otherwise, I haven’t gone in several years….if you have a small yard, you can easily grow a garden, in colder climates, we need to start canning, preserving food, using root cellar, it is very easy, we have all just forgotten or been persuaded to forget, for instance all containers do not magically disappear when we throw in trash…we are just now becoming aware of our closed-system fishbowl…we all live in….I am not religious, but I am spiritual…and I pray for us all….
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