Ya know folks, when I go to a new town or country I usually ask if the water is drinkable. If I find out it isn’t because the reservoir is downstream from a plastics factory, or you can simply see it is filthy, I don’t drink the water. I don’t whine that only ponces drink bottled water back home.
I wish I hadn’t said anything.
That’s just beautiful. I’m not sure if it was the wit, the intelligence, the slicing through bs like a samurai sword through butter, but it certainly made MY day better! For shame, naysayers. Your precious kidneys DO matter and I, for one, salute that!
“O brave new world, That has such people in’t!”
I’ve seen some lists out there about which organic foods actually are safer/better than the alternative – Runner’s World magazine had one not too far back. If I remember rightly, with fruits and veggies if you eat the skin of something (like a peach or an apple) then it’s more likely to be worthwhile to go organic than with something that you wouldn’t eat the skin of (like an avocado).
Of course, there’s stuff out there that is still high quality but doesn’t meet all the requirements – for instance a dairy farm near me does everything the old fashioned way and has extremely high quality products, but can’t guarantee everything the cows consume fits the standard so they don’t get the organic label.
I do kind of agree that “organic” isn’t the best word – after all foods that aren’t “organic” are still organic in the ordinary meaning of the word. What can you do though, that’s become the accepted usage, even if it doesn’t quite make sense.
oh my gosh…just watched KentuckyFriedCruelty…how they debeak and declaw chicks so they dont kill each other in the overcrowded cages…chickens with broken legs grown back the wrong way because they are too fat…struggling to breathe because they are too fat…Chickens that don’t get their necks sliced and then get dumped into the hot water while still alive…
and worse…how they pick the chickens up 5 at a time and throw them into tiny cages when they are ready to be killed. How they get electricuted and stunned so they don’t go crazy while hanging upside down.
It isn’t KFC self doing this, but they get their chickens from the people who do this. Also saw a video of workers jumping on chickens and throwing them against the walls. Many male chickens are useless so they kill them for fun. (of course not all…but this did happen)
sigh.
Speaking of clean streams MM, from the pics of Muzha you take I have an idea that I just live a few blocks from you so I must ask you, is the Jingmei river that runs through our backyard clean?? I have always wondered this since it looks fairly clear on most days and I see tons of fishermen keeping their catch.
Our general rule is to buy meat from Costco, and veggies from the housewife’s union.
Speaking of clean streams MM, from the pics of Muzha you take I have an idea that I just live a few blocks from you so I must ask you, is the Jingmei river that runs through our backyard clean?? I have always wondered this since it looks fairly clear on most days and I see tons of fishermen keeping their catch.[/quote]
It is reasonably clean (a lot of clean feeder streams pour in from the mountains) but I wouldn’t swim in it or eat the fish. It will become cleaner when the sewage system is fully up and running and Taipei County starts to put in their system further upstream.
So we are neighbors?
[quote=“redandy”]I’ve seen some lists out there about which organic foods actually are safer/better than the alternative – Runner’s World magazine had one not too far back. If I remember rightly, with fruits and veggies if you eat the skin of something (like a peach or an apple) then it’s more likely to be worthwhile to go organic than with something that you wouldn’t eat the skin of (like an avocado).
Of course, there’s stuff out there that is still high quality but doesn’t meet all the requirements – for instance a dairy farm near me does everything the old fashioned way and has extremely high quality products, but can’t guarantee everything the cows consume fits the standard so they don’t get the organic label.
I do kind of agree that “organic” isn’t the best word – after all foods that aren’t “organic” are still organic in the ordinary meaning of the word. What can you do though, that’s become the accepted usage, even if it doesn’t quite make sense.[/quote]
This is a good post. The key point, and one I often make, is find out about the food you eat. How it’s grown and where. Organic is not necessarily best, or in many cases the advantages are too slight to matter to overall health.
Just don’t make assumptions based on random mental events. I remember being mocked 6 years ago in Canada for telling people not to eat any foods or medicines from China. Same old tired thinking that many people are using here.
[quote=“Buttercup”]It’s easier to see the ‘organic food’ crew as a bunch of ****s in the UK, because they usually are. Google ‘Jamie Oliver’ for information. I detest them and their ilk. Kind of like mike_ says; self-preserving middle-class oiks with no brains and grey faces. I have to remind myself that people have the right to make whicheever consumer choices they wish, however much I want to trip trip these people up on the bus, and force feed them like foie gras geese with Wotsits (For our non British brethren, ‘Wotsits’ are a cheesy snack akin to Cheetos, only lighter, puffed through with the delicious democratic air of personal choice). The same ‘health freaks’ who drive a car everywhere, and gorge themselves on ‘fairtrade’ Pinot Grigio.
Britain is no longer the land of William Blake.
It’s more understandable that people are weird about it in Taiwan: things are regulated less, people have ‘melamine’-style corruption in thee back of their minds, run-off from pig-farms, etc. They don’t have a relatively short lifespan in Taiwan for no reason.[/quote]
What’s an “oik”?
Do you have any stats on life expectancy in Taiwan? I’m curious to see what the numbers are; the Taiwanese in my company seem to drop like flies, but not sure why.
Stats from the CIA factbook:
male: 74.89 years
female: 80.89 years (2008 est.)
Pretty much comparable to any western country.
UK:
male: 76.37 years
female: 81.46 years (2008 est.)
CANADA:
make: 78.65 years
female: 83.81 years (2008 est.)
Fengshui?
Fengshui?[/quote]
If you mean middle aged and older men who work long hours, heavy drinking and smoking for socialising, yes, they are high risk, often liver cancer is the one that gets them (from hepatitis virus also).
Organic food should be graded and the chemicals applied in the food production process should be listed on the package, then people can choose according to their budget and desires.
Great article from Foreign Policy Magazine. Basically it hits the nail right on the head. Organic food has very limited benefits compared with genetically modified foods. And yet, as we see with discussions over global warming, people religiously believe that organic food will somehow help the environment and make people healthier. If anything can’t we say that genetically modified foods have helped save more lives on a global scale (by helping countries towards agricultural self sufficiency) than organic foods could ever help developing nations? And couldn’t we say that massive use of organic food would be an ecological nightmare?
As the article suggests, widespread use of organic farming would have a very adverse affect on the environment. To deal with the loss of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, the US would need 5X the cattle. Imagine all the deforestation that would need to occur and how that would impact the environment.
It is crazy to think that organic agriculture will solve the world wide food crisis. Being sustainable means using the correct amounts of fertilizers for a good yield, only using them when there is an economic need to, and grow crops that don’t damage the environment they are in. In all aspects, conventional farming wins IMHO.
Furthermore, I like the ‘class struggle’ element of this article. 
The author states that ‘food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.’ Isn’t that selfish in many respects? 
Why is that, I wonder? I only ask because you brought it up, but it seems to be a favourite theme of yours.
After the collapse of aid from Russia, the poor old Cubans had no more support for their industrial farming techniques nor a market to supply so farming as an industry basically collapsed. They still had to feed themselves, however, and focus turned to organic farming, almost zero monoculture with a lot of mixed planting to protect against bugs because they had no fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. They also had no fuel so transport was a big problem so they started growing urban farms. Presently they have an abundance of food – climate wise they are lucky of course, except for hurricanes.
I hope you like the ‘class struggle’ element of this one.
[quote]Castro Topples Pesticide in Cuba
Renee Kjartan, Washington Free Press
August 7, 2000
Organic farming – often considered an insignificant part of the food supply –
can feed an entire country concludes a report by the Oakland, CA-based
Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, a group advocating
sustainable farming.
In Cuba, many of the foods people eat every day are grown without synthetic
fertilizers and toxic pesticides, the report, Cultivating Havana: Urban Agriculture
and Food Security in the Years of Crisis, found.
Cuba’s organic food movement developed in response to a crisis. Before the
revolution that threw out dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, and to some extent
during the years of Soviet support for Cuba, the island followed a typical pattern
of colonial food production: It produced luxury export crops while importing
food for its own people. In 1990 over 50% of Cuba’s food came from imports.
“In the Caribbean, food insecurity is a direct result of centuries of colonialism that
prioritized the production of sugar and other cash crops for export, neglecting
food crops for domestic consumption,” the report says. In spite of efforts by the
revolutionary government to correct this situation, Cuba continued in this mold
until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989.
The withdrawal of Soviet aid meant that 1,300,000 tons of chemical fertilizers,
17,000 tons of herbicides, and 10,000 tons of pesticides, could no longer be
imported, according to the report.
One of Cuba’s responses to the shock was to develop “urban agriculture,”
intensifying the previously established National Food Program, which aimed
at taking thousands of poorly utilized areas, mainly around Havana, and turning
them into intensive vegetable gardens. Planting in the city instead of only in the
countryside reduced the need for transportation, refrigeration, and other scarce
resources.
The plan succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams. By 1998 there were over 8000
urban farms and community gardens run by over 30,000 people in and around
Havana.
Urban agriculture is now a “major element of the Havana cityscape,” the Food
First report says, and the model is now being copied throughout the country,
with production growing at 250-350% per year. Today, food from the urban
farms is grown almost entirely with active organic methods, the report says.
Havana has outlawed the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture within city
limits.
Martin Bourque, Food First’s program director for sustainable agriculture, said
the goal of the National Urban Agriculture program is to produce enough fresh
fruits and vegetables for everyone, and that some cities have surpassed this. He
added that farmers are some of the best-paid people in Cuba, and “organic foods
are for all Cubans, not just for the rich.”
Autoconsumos, or self-provisioning gardens, are found at schools and work-
places, with 376 in Havana today. The produce usually goes to the lunchroom
of the host institution, and the rest goes to the workers at low prices.
There are 451 organoponicos, raised container beds with a high ratio of compost
to soil and intensive planting, in Havana, growing and selling vegetables, herbs,
and spices directly to the public.
The rest of the farming is done in huertos intensivos, or intensive gardens, city
plots planted for maximum yield per area and incorporating organic matter
directly into the soil. There is almost no pest problem because of the “incredible
biodiversity” of the gardens. “We are reaching biological equilibrium. The pest
populations are now kept under control by the constant presence of predators
in the ecosystem. I have little need for application of any control substance,” the
president of one huerto intensivo said.
There are other programs aimed at increasing small-scale urban and suburban
production of everything from eggs to rabbits to flowers to medicinal plants to
honey, Bourque said. Many rural homes now raise their own staples, such as
beans and viandas (traditional root and tuber crops), and small-animal raising
has also spread dramatically, especially in the suburban and rural areas.
At first, Bourque said, sustainable agriculture was seen as a way to “suffer
through” the shock of the Soviet withdrawal. “When they began this effort,
most policy-makers could not imagine any significant amount of rice being
grown in Cuba without the full green-revolution technical package (e.g. high
off-farm inputs). But by 1997 small-scale rice production had reached 140,000
tons, 65% of national production. Today everyone agrees that sustainable
agriculture has played a major role in feeding the country and is saving Cuba
millions of dollars,” that would otherwise go “to the international pesticide cartel,”
Bourque said.
According to official figures, in 1999 organic urban agriculture produced 65%
of Cuba’s rice, 46% of the fresh vegetables, 38% of the non-citrus fruits, 13%
of the roots, tubers, and plantains, and 6% of the eggs, Bourque said.
He noted that food is “still very expensive in spite of rationing programs designed
to make sure everyone has access to the basics, but Cuba has clearly grown itself
out of the food crisis of the mid-1990s.” In the last year Food First has taken
dozens of farmers, researchers, academics, and activists from around the world
to learn from Cuba’s organic agricultural experience.
[/quote]
The whole debate is flawed anyway. There are simply too many people on the planet to feed. Even if organic food is healthier, the fact is that in no way can it be produced in sufficient quantities to feed the present population. And I actually prefer the idea of organic foods as they require no licence or payment in order to produce. They are also less ravenous and have less of a spread affect on other farmer’s lands.
Presently the U.S. imports at least twenty percent of its food to feed its own population. It is also responsible for exporting food too. I was just doing an impact study on this very phenomenon and the agribusiness’s impact on fuel consumption. It turns out that by 2025 at the present rate of population rise in the U.S. then they will be forced to stop food exports and by 2050 the U.S. will reach critical with not having enough food to feed its own population. The population needs to be controlled and reduced before debates on global warming prevention and organic foods are even bothered with. And I’m not just referring to the U.S. but simply using this one place as an example. One key to population control is that governments must realise they cannot simply fix their balance sheets by encouraging population growth all the time. Be done with fictionalised banking already! It has failed as it has reached the end of its usefulness.
While it is evident that there is a food supply issue; the question is whether GM can solve world hunger problems. Several scientists argue that in order to meet the demand for food in the developing world, a second green revolution with increased use of GM crops is needed. Others argue that there is more than enough food in the world and that the hunger crisis is caused by problems in food distribution and politics, not production. Recently some critics have changed their minds on the issue with respect to the need for additional food supplies.
Food for thought:
You can grow MORE food with organic farming than you can with conventional farming with pesticides, herbicides and so on. Farmers just don’t do it, because it’s more labour intensive and less convenient, especially for hauling things to market.
You’ve obviously never heard of permaculture?