• From
Earth Policy News, “Oil and Food, A Rising
Security Challenge” (www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2005/Updates48.htm): As food undergoes more processing and travels farther,
the food system consumes ever more energy each year.
The US food system uses over 10 quadrillion BTU
of energy each year. Growing food accounts for only
one-fifth of this. The other four-fifths is used
to move, process, package, sell, and store food
after it leaves the farm. Some 28 percent of energy
used in agriculture goes to fertilizer manufacturing,
7 percent goes to irrigation, and 34 percent is
consumed as diesel gasoline by farm vehicles. Crop
production now relies on fertilizers to replace
soil nutrients, and therefore on the oil needed
to mine, manufacture and transport these fertilizers
around the world.The use of mechanical pumps to
irrigate crops has allowed farms to prosper in the
middle of the desert. It also has increased farm
energy use, allowed larger water withdrawals, and
contributed to aquifer depletion worldwide. As water
tables drop, ever more powerful pumps must be used.
Processed food now makes up three-fourths of total
world food sales. Processing breakfast cereals requires
7,125 kilocalories per pound—easily five times
as much energy as is contained in the cereal itself.
Processed foods…are often individually wrapped,
bagged and boxed, or similarly overpackaged. …
Almost all of it ends up in our landfills.
• A related story comes
from Yahoo News, written by Juliana Barbassa of
the Associated Press: Farmers are paying
higher prices for diesel for their farm equipment,
fertilizer, and transportation of crops to market,
and they have no one to pass their higher expenses
on to. “Farmers across the country will spend
about 10 percent more this year, or about $3 billion…even
as the price consumers pay for produce remains relatively
stable.”
• The following information
comes from Issue 12 of Amberwaves: One of
the hundred orders enacted by the US Provisional
Authority in Iraq made it illegal for farmers to
save their own seeds. They are now allowed to plant
only “'protected' crop varieties brought into
Iraq by transnational corporations in the name of
agricultural reconstruction. …The new patent
law also explicitly promotes the commercialization
of genetically modified seeds.” Iraqui farmers
have traditionally saved their own seeds and exchanged
planting materials among communities. This is now
illegal.
• From an Internet article
sent to us by Sandra Mardigian: The first
Soil Atlas of Europe was published at the end of
May. It shows that more than 16 percent of the European
Union's land is affected by soil degradation , with
more than a third of the land in the newly-accessed
countries being degraded. “The chief threats
to soil are identified by the atlas as erosion,
degradation from the overuse of fertilizers and
pesticides, the loss of organic content, contamination
from industry, the loss of biodiversity, salinity,
the compacting of soil by agricultural vehicles,
landslides and flooding.”
• The following is taken
from Organic, Inc, by Jason Mark in the San Francisco
Chronicle: “According to figures supplied
by the Organic Consumers Association, a significant
and growing percentage of the organic food market
is owned by conventional food processors. General
Mills owns the organic brands Cascadian Farms and
Muir Glenn. Heinz holds a 20 percent equity share
in food distributor Hain, which owns Rice Dream
soy milk, Garden of Eatin', Earth's Best and Health
Valley, along with 15 other brands. Kellogg owns
Sunrise Organic, while Philip Morris' Kraft makes
the popular vegetarian Boca Burgers.The largest
organic seed company, Seeds of Change, is controlled
by M&M/Mars, and just five farms are consolidated
to market half of the organic produce sold in California.
Your morning Odwalla juice is brought to you by
Coca-Cola.”
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