Food Justice Newsletter - August

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In this issue: CHURCHES GLOBAL WEEK OF ACTION ON FOOD | Our Government Pushes Local & Culturally Appropriate Food! | Event | News Picks of the Month Welcome to this month’s Food Justice E-Newsletter from the Presbyterian Hunger Program. It is way longer than ‘they’ say it should be, but I believe that those seeking justice are unique and will appreciate all the juicy announcements and news below. Shorter next month; I promise! Warmly, Andrew CHURCHES GLOBAL WEEK OF ACTION ON FOOD A.K.A. Food Week of Action! October 13-20 As in past years, the Presbyterian Hunger Program, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, interfaith working groups, and others in the United States will be joining with groups around the world to raise up life and death issues related to our global food and farm systems. The Food Week of Action will take place this year from October 13 to Sunday, October 20, spanning the two Sundays that surround World Food Day on October 16. The theme this year will be “Seeds for Life”. Access to and control over natural resources, including seeds, is an essential aspect of supporting small-scale food producers, maintaining the health of our soils, safeguarding biodiversity and, ultimately, addressing hunger. The Week of Action on Food is a time to advocate for policies and practices – locally, nationally and internationally – that tackle the injustices which cause almost a billion people around the world to be hungry and malnourished while over a billion suffer the unhealthy consequences of obesity. The week of action incorporates the International Day for Rural Women (October 15), World Food Day (October 16) and the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (October 17). Please join us! What can you do? Here are just a few actions that individuals, community groups and congregations might do (just to get the ideas flowing…): Organize a church service during the week. The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance will provide worship material on “Seeds for Life” in September, or you can draw from past worship materials available at http://www.e-alliance.ch/en/s/food/food-week-of-action/   Gather your local traditional farmers and gardeners to build a seed bank in your local library by ‘checking-in’ your most successful breeds and ‘checking-out’ the champions among fellow breeders. For inspiration, see the partnership between Basalt Public Library and the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute and learn how it’s done.   Organize a community and/or church group to study local plants and indigenous seeds and then write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper to reinforce the need to safeguard these varieties.   Prepare a meal for your family using heirloom varieties and discuss the nutrient value of wild species versus their domesticated varieties. Would you believe that Peruvian Purple potatoes have 171milligrams of phytonutrients compared to the Yukon Gold variety (5.45mg) or the standard white potato (1.03mg).   Consider hosting a screening of Seeds of Freedom.   Schedule a study group to read the articles on Seeds and Peasant Sovereignty in the 2013 Right to Food and Nutrition Watch, which will be launched on October 16.   Launch a 'Seed Keepers' network. Learn more by joining the US Food Sovereignty Alliance's Rights of Mother Earth Team. (contact Andrew for additional information)   Plan awareness-raising events on World Food Day. Support local food markets that return fair prices for small-scale agricultural and food workers and promote a broader use of agricultural biodiversity. Better yet, lobby policy makers and businesses to create a stable demand for local and seasonal produce through school meal programs and hospitals. For more information on the issues and opportunities for food justice, plus ideas for action, see the resources at www.e-alliance.ch/en/s/food/food-week-of-action/ , or contact Christine Campeau, EAA Food Campaign Coordinator, at ccampeau@e-alliance.ch or Andrew Kang Bartlett, Food for Life Strategy Group Member, at andrew.kangbartlett@pcusa.org Our Government Pushes Local & Culturally Appropriate Food! Farmers Market Directory The Farmers Market Directory, a voluntary online database, identifies new farmers markets, the states with the highest number of markets in operation, and the total number of farmers markets that have registered throughout the United States. Enjoy Foods from Many Cultures with MyPlate Enjoy Foods from Many Cultures highlights ways to maintain a healthy diet while preparing and enjoying the food we love. Check out these MyPlate-inspired recipes on ChooseMyPlate.gov: Asian Mango and Chicken Wraps Fruity Thai Pita Pockets Grilled Lamb Salad, and more recipes here

Event Presbyterians for Earth Care Conference Register before September 30 to get the early bird rate for “Ethical Earth Care: Keeping Creation Sacred”

News Picks of the Month Turf war: In the battle for our crops, superweeds are winning It’s fair to say that the story is no longer about the rise of superweeds and superbugs. It’s now about their dominance. As this chart from a recent Food and Water Watch report shows, in 2000 — only a few years after the introduction of GMO crops — superweeds were barely a blip on farmers’ radar. But now the picture is different: http://grist.org/food/turf-war-in-the-battle-for-our-crops-superweeds-are-winning/ Science Shows Gardening Makes You Happier and Smarter Researchers reported in the journal Neuroscience that contact with a soil bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae triggers the release of serotonin in the brain. This type of serotonin acts on several different pathways including mood and learning. Lack of serotonin in the brains is related to depression. In addition to increasing happiness and reducing anxiety, serotonin has positive effects on memory and learning. Read more: http://www.realfarmacy.com/science-shows-gardening-makes-you-happier-and-smarter/ McDonalds Tells Workers To Budget By Getting A Second Job And Turning Off Their Heat The site includes a sample “budget journal” for McDonalds’ employees that offers a laughably inaccurate view of what it’s like to budget on a minimum wage job. Not only does the budget leave a spot open for “second job,” it also gives wholly unreasonable estimates for employees’ costs: $20 a month for health care, $0 for heating, and $600 a month for rent. It does not include any budgeted money for food or clothing. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/15/2300321/mcdonalds-buget-low-wage/ Why Do Americans Live Lives So Short? None of these determinants matter more, these researchers contend, than the level of a society’s economic inequality, the divide between the affluent and everyone else. Over 170 studies worldwide have so far linked income inequality to health outcomes. The more unequal a society, the studies show, the unhealthier most everyone in it — and not the poor alone. Japan may offer the most encouraging precedent. In the middle of the 20th century, Japan ranked as a deeply unequal and unhealthy nation. But since the 1950s Japan has become a much more equal society, one of the world’s most equal, and, on life expectancy, Japan now ranks number one globally. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17618-why-do-americans-live-lives-so-short The Charitable-Industrial Complex! New York Times Op-Ed by Peter Buffet! Provocative and well worth your time and thought. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-industrial-complex.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130727 ----------------- Food Sleuth Radio   August 22nd, Elizabeth U: author of “Raising Dough: the Complete Guide to Financing a Socially Responsible Food Business.” August 29: Don Davis, Ph.D., U. of TX researcher who discovered nutritional decline and dilution with the rush for higher yields and bigger crops. Join Food Sleuth on line: www.kopn.org on Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. (EDT).

Please consider giving a donation to the Presbyterian Hunger Fund. Together we can end hunger!

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) | 100 Witherspoon Street | Louisville, Kentucky | 40202-1396 (800) 728-7228 | (502) 569-5000 | Website | Email

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Resources about GMOs

                From:

• Andrew Kang Bartlett  PHP
• 
  

GMO Goodies  (with crazy numbering)

Urge Congress Not to Fast Track the Trans-Pacific Partnership – This enormous Free Trade Agreement would further strengthen corporations, including biotech corps, while likely hurting family farmers and workers in dozens of countries. Read more here

1. PCUSA on GMOs (below) 
2. Barbara Kingsolver on Genetic Engineering ~ "A Fist in the Eye of God" http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/SmallWonders.cfm
3. Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops – Impt report on productivity of GMOs!  http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html
4. One Million More for the Right to Know What We Eat; Bal­lot Ini­tia­tive: Label Genet­i­cally Engi­neered Foods or GMOs A Let­ter from Andrew Kang Bartlett http://justiceunbound.org/action-alerts/one-million-more-for-the-right-to-know-what-we-eat/ 
5. LINK to DropBox Folder on Genetic Engineering AKB, full of many good resources! - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gxcziu5ne2d32en/Ma4uI6Mnqo

10 Reasons to Avoid GMOs (this has the reference about the animal studies mentioned on the webinar) - http://www.responsibletechnology.org/10-Reasons-to-Avoid-GMOs 

1. 10 Apps to Help You Eat GMO Free - http://www.foodrevolution.org/blog/non-gmo-apps/

Hey, Non-GMO Activist: Monsanto's CEO Thinks You're an Elitist, by Anna Lappe - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-lappe/hey-nongmo-activist-monsa_b_3421674.html      

What's for Dinner? (Radio airdate: 07-22-13) Amber Heckelman is documenting climate resilience of rice varieties developed by Philippine rice farmers and scientists to reverse negative results of Green Revolution practices.

1. Monsanto http://www.pcusa.org/blogs/foodfaith/2010/10/8/monsanto/
2. World Food Day, Monsanto http://www.pcusa.org/blogs/foodfaith/2009/10/19/world-food-day-update-monsanto-monopoly-peasants-f/ 

1. 
   

   Italy Prepares to Ban Monsanto’s GM Corn - http://www.foodrevolution.org/blog/italy-gmo-corn/

1. MONSANTO: Who Benefits from GM Crops: http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/who_benefits_from_gm_crops.pdf 
2. 
   

   India says N0 to Bt Brinjal-But the fight must go on http://www.relufa.org/partners/jhnewsletter/archives/india13.htm 
3. 
   

   Monsanto Protection Act - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/monsanto-protection-act 

1. Surge in Corporate Patents on “Climate-Ready” Crops Threatens Biodiversity and Signals Grab on Land and Biomass - http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/crop-patents-biodiversity-zb0z10zarc.aspx#axzz2bsYcTpOR 

Presbyterian Church USA on GMOs

The PCUSA has strong cautionary policy on GMOs/genetically engineered food in the Just Globalization report. 2006 General Assembly Resolution on Just Globalization, Justice, Ownership, and Accountability - http://www.pcusa.org/resource/resolution-just-globalization-justice-ownership-an/  

2. Concerning Agricultural Technology

a. Call upon governments, including ourown, to enforce restraints on commercial activity in genetically modified foods until these crops are certified as safe by appropriate international, science-based organizations and in the United States, to include such “GM” food products under the Food and Drug Administration’s jurisdiction for testing and approval.

b. Call upon governments, including ourown, to ban the development and marketing of “terminator seeds” because of the genetic and economic risk they entail for the food production system and the livelihoods of farmers.

Genetically modified (GM) foods have become a great divide in economic globalization. Genetic modification is achieved by combining genes from different plants, animals, or bacteria to attain an organism with a set of desired characteristics. The potential benefits touted by some scientistsand corporate developers are of staggering significance: the quick improvement of crop yields, pest resistance, or herbicide tolerance to a degree not attainable by traditional methods. Even more far reaching are claims that GM crops can be manipulated to produce synthetic substances. For Africa, that could mean sweet potatoes bred resistant to a virus threatening to decimate this basic food of the poor. Rice might be genetically engineered to carry increased iron and vitamins helping to end chronic malnutrition in many Asian countries. “On the horizon are bananas that produce human vaccines against infectious diseases such ashepatitis B; fish that mature more quickly; fruit and nut trees that yield years earlier; and plants that produce new plastics with unique properties” (Human Genome Project information, August 4, 2005). 

However, GM techniques may also threaten human health, the environment, and the economy. New substances from combining the DNA of different organisms may create new and dangerous allergic responses to the genetically new foods and products. Plants bred to be resistant to pests or herbicides may see those characteristics transferred to wild plants with disastrous consequences for the delicate balance of local and regional ecosystems. There is also the risk that the complex science and expensive technology involved will increase the control that a small number of biotechnology corporations already have over the world’s agriculture.

The development and growth of GM crops has been largely a Western  hemisphere phenomenon with 63 percent of world plantings in the U.S., 7 percent in Canada, and 25 percent in Argentina and Brazil together. In Europe there has been a huge public outcry opposing “Frankenfoods” and the European Union has created high bureaucratic hurdles to receiving approval for member countries to grow and market such crops. Corporate developers and their political backers hoped that a large British field test of GM rape seed would convince the public not only that GM food is safe for human consumption butthat it would also benefit wildlife in the growing area because of a lower utilization of herbicides. The final report issued in early 2005 proved just the opposite, concluding that both birds and plants would suffer if the newseeds were grown widely in the United Kingdom (UK) (The Guardian Unlimited, June 14, 2005). Still, even in Europe GM foods are making inroads. More significantly, China, which currently plants only 4 percent of the world’s GM crops, may be ready to set a new course. A member of the Chinese Academy ofScience says that half of the country’s agricultural produce will be genetically modified by 2015 (Ibid.).

A related issue of great concern is thedevelopment of so-called “terminator seeds.” By a numberof technologies, seeds can be produced that grow plants to maturity but whose seeds will not germinate when replanted. The result will be to end the centuries-old practice of saving a portion of a crop as seed for next year’s planting. Farmers who intentionally or accidentally plant such seeds would become annually dependent on the purchase of seeds from suppliers. No convincing arguments have been made that such a system will result in more or better food. Its sole purpose appears to be increased profits to the seed industry. While “terminator technology” has not yet been commercialized, and some companies have disavowed the intent, firms continue to obtain patents for the technology.

Internationally, the 1995 Trade-RelatedAspects of Intellectual Property Rights  agreement (TRIPs) requires that all inventions be patentable. The World Trade Organization (WTO) does allow member states to exempt animals and plants from patenting, but this exemption does not extend to new plant varietiesincluding those produced using GM technologies (Genetically Modified Food–General Principles: Approved by the 38th General Council of the United Church of Canada–August 2003).

Best,

andrew

Andrew Kang Bartlett

Associate for National Hunger Concerns, Presbyterian Hunger Program

Presbyterian Mission Agency * (502) 569-5388 or (888) 728-7228 x5388 andrew.kangbartlett@pcusa.org

Photo: Tom Hampson/CWS I see people, not problems Our work has an impact because of the energy, insight and feisty determination of the people we serve. People like Gordona in Belgrade, Serbia. Read more. Water fuels Stella's future A new well in Stella's village opened the door to a stable source of food, an opportunity to learn to read and a new life as a businesswoman. Watch here. The short- and long- term benefits of breastfeeding Breastfeeding is the world’s most effective tool in reducing early childhood deaths. Learn more. Final report on CWS's Haiti earthquake response In the last three years, you've helped CWS to save lives, promote recovery and have lasting impact on communities. Download the report. Snakebites: a forgotten hazard CWS staff in Southeast Asia are working on innovative approaches to prevent snakebites, a common threat to farmers and villagers in rural areas. Watch here. AUGUST 2013 GET INVOLVED Back to school shopping While you are throwing folders, pencils, a ruler and erasers into your cart, add a few extra supplies to help another child. Stand with the immigrant Join us Oct. 7-8 in Washington, D.C., for the CWS Global Summit on immigration reform. Courtesy Jefferson City Area CROP Hunger Walk Walk to end hunger More than 1,100 CROP Hunger Walks will take place in communities across the U.S. this fall. Sign up for a Walk near you! Image: IIC Signs of change The Interfaith Immigration Coalition is hosting a photo sign contest this month. Get your congregation involved!
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