From: Debra_Kinsinger_at_mail.fws.gov
Date: 04/15/97
From: Debra_Kinsinger_at_mail.fws.gov Date: Tue, 15 Apr 97 19:48:05 MST Message-Id: <9703168612.AA861205945@mail.fws.gov> Subject: Re: North Korea
You are absolutely right Cath. High yield crops in the United States
are now back to the yields they produced 80 years ago without any
fertilizer at all! This is because of soil microfaunal disruption.
Basically the entire soil ecosystem has been disrupted and without
these microfaunal farmers in our soil, "high yield" agriculture has
become an oxymoron for a form of hydroponics in sand, silt clay
matrix. You could harldy call it soil. (This from a wildlands soil
scientist) I read a GREAT book about a man who gave up his job as as
government agricultural geneticist in Japan to grow rice in a natural
way and find God (he is in my opinion sort of a modern Lao Tzu).
REMIND ME TO GET THE TITLE FOR YOU! I remember the one story he told
about how he left a few ounces of lime out near his field that he
intended to dispose of the next day. That night the wind blew the
dust over his crops and pH of the lime destroyed the spider's webs
that silked the fields, the spiders died and the insects that they ate
started multipling and destroyed the crop. Completely screwed up the
ecosystem for a long time.
I remember reading an elementry social studies text from my childhood
that explained how the US was "helping" farmers in South America and
particularly in Columbia by offering low rate loans for them to clear
and farm land. It was going to help them because they would "easily
repay their debt with their profits." That's where the text ended,
but what really happened is that the farmers found there was either no
market or no way to transport their coffee crop to a market, and they
were not able to pay their debt.(We now refer to this as the World
Bank's subsidy of tropical deforestation)
We sent collectors down to Columbia to recover the debit, so the
farmers started growing a crop with a higher profit yield per ounce of
product, Coca = Cocaine! They made low grade bricks called Crack
right there in the field, sort of a "value added commodity". Then we
were happy for a while as our debt got paid, until we started the war
on drugs, which wasn't really a war on drugs at all, it was a war
against leftist land reform which was going to take away the property
of multi-national industries like Dole pineapple and bannanas and give
it to peasants. But as you may or may not remember, depending on how
old you are, we (the Ronald Regan administration) sent arms to these
S. American countries to overthrow the "corrupt" yet fairly elected
government and we had the Jesuit preists who started the land reform
movement murdered in huddled clusters.
Meanwhile, the Columbians used money gained from selling Cocain to
suppliers in Cuba who sold the drug on the US blackmarket to buy arms
that the US sold to Iraq for export and their own national security
YES IRAQ! Then the Columbians loaded their Cargo from Iraq in San
Diego and flew in a US registered plane to Nicaragua with the arms to
support the Contras (Regan called them Freedom fighters). But somebody
got shot out of the sky and much to the dismay of the US, he didn't
die. And the whole can of worms was open. And then we run in to the
CIA cover up by Oliver North who, bless his soul, doesn't have to
worry about a security system for Heaven's Gate (excuse the pun).
You know that whole era is just absolutely fascinating, perhaps you
remember Regan's famous quote, "All the arms we sent to them
[Nicaragua] could have fit in single plane." What? The Serengeti
plain? The Siberian plain? What plain?
Perhaps you have heard about the Swainson's Hawk die off in Venezula?
Biologists in the US noticed declining numbers of this migratory bird
and heard rumors of a die off but untill only FOUR years ago, no one
knew exactly where this bird wintered. They eat insects and normally
forage from trees but the trees are all gone now and the plains that
they once hunted from are covered with crops. They use a pesticide
that is banned in the US to kill grasshoppers. It also kills the
birds, thousands at a time. The pesticide company has now stopped
selling their product there and is doing education to help farmers
find alternatives.
It is utterly laughable to think that in colleges that you are still
being fed the crock of s**t that we "saved" Asia with "high yield"
crops. We robbed their soil with those crops and then made them
dependents on US trade, is a more likely story. Remember the book the
"Ugly American" about the US introduction of milk formula by Nestle in
third world countries (was it Burma)? The mother's milk dried up, she
got pregnant much sooner and couldn't afford to buy the formula to
feed her baby and then both mothers and babies starved to death.
As I already mentioned (but haven't seen my post yet) read Barry
Commoner's the "Poverty of Power" for a challenging and provocative
paradigm of development issues in first world countries as they relate
to third world countries. Also "Small is Beautiful" and "Silent
Spring". These are old books but they are what the contemporary
environmental community assumes you already know and the wisdom is
somewhat forgotten. A sequal to Silent Spring is "Our Stolen Future"
by Theo Colborn. You may be able to find "Developmental Effects of
Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in Wildlife and Humans" by Theo
Colborn, Frederick vom Saal, and Ana M. Soto, Environmental Health
Perspectives 101:378-384(1993) on the internet.
We used to be worried about pesticides and cancer but have come to
reacognize the malevolent sister is pesticides and feminization.
Sound crazy? In a nut shell, pesticides mimic estrogenic hormones,
are fat soluable, collect in species high on the food chain (yes
humans too), prevent masculinization, and cause sterility in both male
and female offspring.
Thanks for bringing your thoughts to this forum. Challenge your
teachers and find history professors who can direct you toward a
critical analysis of what you "are being taught". Question authority,
especially mine. Everything I said is probably wrong. Don't trust me,
read. I hope I have given you some good references. Stay in touch.
Most sincerely,
Debbie
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: North Korea
Author: domesteading_at_sculptors.com at 9DE~INTR
Date: 4/11/97 3:38 PM
It's so hard to imagine subsisting on 5 oz of rice a day, when you've had
meat and veg for tea, and half a bottle of wine.
I was talking to a farmer friend last night about maize crops here in New
Zealand. High yield maize needs a lot of (expensive) inputs to produce and
then they turn it to silage to feed cattle - so we can have mince and steak
- if they altered the seed stock to produce maize for flour etc it would
feed untold times more people. But I can't see the restaurants doing a
roaring trade in maize flour pancakes ...
I'm a full time university student, extramural so I don't get to talk to
other students about stuff that comes up, which makes the internet great.
One of the papers I'm doing this year is 'Development Issues and the Third
World'. Patrick said about the food crisis in North Korea. That really
scares me - our readings so far suggest high yield 'green revolution' crops
have 'saved' Asian rice-dependent subsistence farmers. I realise that what
we read is very selective but I got the honest impression that green rev
high yield had failed only in rain-fed marginal areas where the people need
much more complex, risk-aversive techniques.
Are the 'experts' ignoring a new problem? Apart from the on-going crisis in
marginal areas - is there a new one developing in areas where the Green Rev
had seemed to be a success? I wonder too about the environmental impact of
high yield crops given their increased need for inputs like fertilizer and
insecticides - are they sustainable - or merely averting the crisis for
another future generation to cope with.
I'd like to hear more about your ideas for assisting the Third World -
there is so much knowledge about that if only it could be all put together
things might start to change.
Here's to planning for a better world ...
Cath