[AGL] A good time to consider FOOD

[michele mason]

Gerry, I will remember to thank the very real hands who grow and pick. 
I think I will call the family to this screen and read what you have 
written. It will save me trying to tell them myself.
Thank-you (and Bill, too), mm

On Nov 21, 2006, at 2:01 PM, Bill Irwin wrote:


> Gerry:

> The growing dependence on foreign food producers is worrisome.  I 

> travel often to Hong Kong and South China so kind of keep up with 

> their problems.  Hong Kong imports most all their food, most of it 

> from S. China, their neighbor.  They have a extensive system of 

> inspecting their food imports because they know they need to.  They 

> find frequent contamination with pesticides to the extremely dangerous 

> levels.  The problem is that the farmers have no training in the use 

> of these chemicals and are mostly illiterate so can not even read the 

> label.  Some think that pesticides are fertilizer and the more they 

> use the better.  The result is frequent contamination of the food 

> supplies so they put a lot of effort into checking.  Meanwhile, the 

> same foods from the same farmers are coming into the USA with no 

> testing.  About the only thing we can do is shop for vegetables with a 

> little insect damage figuring that they didn't use enough pesticide to 

> kill all the bugs.

> Aloha,

> Ewie

>  

>> ----- Original Message -----

>> From: Gerry

>>

>> From Krebs, The Agribusiness Examiner

>>  

>> Now that we are totally dependent upon foreign oil, how long will it 

>> be before we are totally dependent upon imported food? Have a happy 

>> Thanksgiving and while you are giving thanks, thank the trabajeros 

>> who put the food on your table.

>> G

>>  

>>  

>> COMMENTARY:

>> THANKSGIVING, 2006

>>

>> "Bless us O'Capitalism that these food products we are about to 

>> receive through the bounty of agribusiness, our corporate lord. Amen"

>>

>> It is not far-fetched for us to imagine that for millions of 

>> Americans this "prayer" prior to our annual Thanksgiving dinner might 

>> be apropos.

>>

>> For decades after, since the first celebration at Plymouth, 

>> Massachusetts, the idea of Thanksgiving was to celebrate the bounty 

>> that the land in conjunction with the local farmers had yielded for 

>> the community.

>>

>> Today that land is rapidly disappearing under pavement, tract homes 

>> and strip malls, while the farmer has become simply a raw materials 

>> provider for a giant food manufacturing system which provides profits 

>> for the men and women who sit in our giant corporate boardrooms.

>>

>> At the same time, our politicians, obedient to their corporate 

>> paymasters, seek to assure us that we have a safe and secure food 

>> system in this age of post-September 11 terrorism, despite the fact 

>> that our daily headlines tell us differently.

>>

>> We have become bombarded with increasing numbers of food poisonings, 

>> unsafe and unsanitary conditions in our meat processing plants and in 

>> our fields of plenty, the continued overuse of chemical poisons in 

>> our fields and orchards and the miniscule amount of food safety 

>> inspection that is conducted relative to the ever-larger number of 

>> food imports that are entering into our food system.

>>

>> While our relation to the food we eat is being increasingly 

>> quantified in terms of convenience and in cheaper-the-better terms we 

>> have become disconnected not only with the land, but the men, women 

>> and children who grow and harvest our food.

>>

>> As the recently returned ex-sailor who has no interest in maintaining 

>> the family farm ruminates in Douglas Unger's novel Leaving the Land 

>> (Harper & Row: New York, N.Y., 1984): 

>>

>> "All that was lost to me, as lost as a cherry orchard in which people 

>> no longer knew the meaning of cherries, as lost as the unwritten 

>> language of a long-expired race of men. All that mattered was food, 

>> the wheat on the hill, the hay in the meadow, the mutton under my 

>> boot. Whatever method could raise them best and most efficiently 

>> would win the prizes of the earth.

>>

>> "There was little beauty to it, in my mind. There was only sweat, and 

>> maybe a certain sense of unspeakable smallness in my soul in that all 

>> the generations behind me, of all the lost tribes of my forefathers 

>> who had dug potatoes, milked cows, sown grain, picked fruit from 

>> primeval gardens, it had all come down to me in a knowledge I only 

>> wished to lose."

>>

>> Before all that "knowledge" is lost, both farmers and consumers, need 

>> to recapture that "beauty" of food, so when we sit down with family 

>> and friends to celebrate our Thanksgiving Day feast it is not just 

>> another corporate provided meal, but rather a purposeful 

>> acknowledgment of giving thanks to our God for the land and the rich 

>> bounty it provides.

>>

>>

>> "OUR FOOD IS KILLING US"

>> By Joe Bollig        Catholic Online

>> November 17, 2006

>>

>> OVERLAND PARK, Kansas --- Mike Callicrate is a straight-talking 

>> plainsman with a blunt, hard message: Your food is killing you, and 

>> your food system is killing your community and nation.

>>  

>> Callicrate, a cattle rancher from St. Francis in the northwest corner 

>> of Kansas, was one of the keynote speakers at the National Catholic 

>> Rural Life Conference's annual meeting November 10-11 in Overland 

>> Park. About 100 people attended, including farmers and ranchers, 

>> advocates, food industry professionals, and workers in Catholic 

>> social justice and rural life ministries.

>>

>> The theme of the event was sustainable food, business and agriculture.

>>

>> "Our food is killing us, literally," Callicrate, a member of St. 

>> Francis Parish, said in an interview after his address. "The 

>> industrial model of food production that has been forced upon us has 

>> given us food that is very unhealthy."

>>

>> It's not just the food --- loaded with chemicals and hormones, and 

>> produced in unhealthy ways --- with which Callicrate has problems. He 

>> also doesn't like what the industrial model of food production is 

>> doing to society.

>>

>> "The model of the industry --- the industrial model, the business 

>> model --- is very, very abusive," he told The Leaven, newspaper of 

>> the Archdiocese of Kansas City. "It concentrates power and wealth in 

>> the hands of a very few, which has always been a serious threat to 

>> human societies throughout time, and is now unprecedented.

>>

>> "That great concentration ... hurts our society. And another thing is 

>> that farmers are being driven from the land," he said. "We are 

>> eliminating agriculture in this country in favor of imported food, so 

>> it threatens the survival of our country from an economic and social 

>> perspective."

>>

>> Although news of the ongoing crisis in food and agriculture was a 

>> part of the conference gathering, so too was optimism, according to 

>> Holy Cross Brother David Andrews, executive director of the rural 

>> Catholic conference, based in Des Moines, Iowa. One reason for this 

>> is that the church remains committed to justice in the areas of 

>> agriculture and food production.

>>

>> "We need to construct an alternative to the corporate-controlled food 

>> system that we have in place right now," he said.

>>

>> That message, he added, "resonates quite well with the messages of 

>> our Catholic bishops' conference in their last publication 'For I Was 

>> Hungry and You Gave Me Food: Catholic Reflections of Food, Farmers 

>> and Farmworkers,'" a 2003 document in which they expressed concern 

>> about the growing concentration in the food system and called for an 

>> alternative in sustainable agriculture.

>>

>> Brother David said he could sense a lot more optimism than at 

>> previous conferences.

>>

>> "I think we know that we're on the cusp of change," he said. "It will 

>> still be uphill. It will still be challenging, but the people here 

>> are committed to changing the food system and changing the 

>> opportunities for farmers so they can get a more fair food dollar."

>>

>> Some of the speakers and workshop presenters offered a look at those 

>> alternatives and change.

>>

>> Callicrate talked about Ranch Foods Direct, a meatpacking and retail 

>> meat business he founded to sell directly to consumers. Maizie 

>> Ganzler, with the Bon Appetit food service company in Denver, offered 

>> an alternative business model for socially responsible food systems.

>>

>> Sister Lyn Szymkiewicz, a Sister of St. Joseph, presented a workshop 

>> on how religious communities can use their own land to promote 

>> locally grown food and create a market for such food through 

>> purchases by affiliated institutions.

>>

>> Arlen Wasserman, a food company consultant from the Minneapolis-St. 

>> Paul area, gave a brief luncheon address about the Sacred Foods 

>> Project. An interfaith movement, the project seeks to bring together 

>> Jews, Muslims and Christians to improve the social and environmental 

>> conditions of the nation's food system.

>>

>> Bishop Ronald M. Gilmore of Dodge City, president of the National 

>> Catholic Rural Life Conference and a consultant on agriculture policy 

>> to the U.S. Bishops' Committee on Domestic Policy, said his fellow 

>> bishops are not only concerned about the quality of food and justice 

>> within food systems, but also about the spiritual condition of those 

>> involved.

>>

>> "I visited with a group of bishops just a week ago, and we had 

>> considerable discussion over dinner about the rural question," said 

>> Bishop Gilmore. "I think I asked, 'How can otherwise wonderful people 

>> --- even religious people --- totally block out the ethical 

>> implications of what they are doing?'

>>

>> "We know these are not demons. They are good people, but this 

>> question of how we treat workers is off their radar," he added. "How 

>> do you get through to people? We share the same faith with many of 

>> these people, and they just don't seem to get it.

>>  

>>

>>

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