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ICPPC Manifesto for 21st Century Food and Farming

ICPPC Manifesto for 21st Century Food and Farming
Weston A Price Foundation (WAPF)
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Manifesto for 21st Century Food and Farming

The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC)
held their Anniversary conference this past weekend. Here is the
Manifesto circulated at the conference. It was submitted to Hartke is
Online! by their co-director, Sir Julian Rose.

ICPPC Anniversary Conference Statement

Manifesto for 21st Century Food and Farming
“Farming for the People with the People”

The global food economy, served and shaped via state and corporate
control of the food chain, has resulted in unquantifiable levels of
pollution, destruction and exploitation in every dimension of
agriculture, from soil to seed, to plant, to animal and to man. In
other words: our existence.

As we approach the second decade of the 21st century, it is becoming
abundantly clear that an entirely new vision, understanding and
implementation is required in order for agriculture to truly serve its
original purpose of feeding humanity (all peoples) with good quality,
affordable and mostly local foods in ways that do not harm the
environment.

In order to make this wholesale shift it is necessary to entirely step
aside from State and corporate control of the food chain. No
compromise is possible here. Maintaining and re establishing the
genuine independence of farmers throughout the world is a prerequisite
for our survival as sentient, healthy human beings.

Non participation in the corporately controlled global market place
must, in order to be effective, be accompanied by the widespread
implementation of localised, quality food production and consumption
practices. Practices that bring into close proximity the food grower
and the food consumer; at the same time – by-passing entirely, the
corporate multiple chains that profit by keeping them separate. This
is the only way that genuine accessibility of optimum condition foods
and medicinal plants can be ensured for billions of people throughout
the World.

Continuing to adhere to the present corporate and state controlled
food and farming regimes means that:

Farmer’s time honoured right to save their seeds and to cultivate,
distribute and trade the produce resulting from these seeds will
continue to be subverted, curtailed and stolen.
People’s right to perpetuate the biodiversity of locally adapted
native plants, herbs and animals for culinary, medicinal and general
environmental health will be denied.
People’s rights to gain lawful access to unused or barren land for the
purpose of growing food for their own consumption in ways that do not
harm the environment will be blocked.
People’s time honoured right to carry on the daily operations of good
farming practice unhindered by state and corporate power structures,
will be denied.

It is the obligation of head’s of state to consult the people, in
advance, about any new laws or alterations of the current law and any
political questions concerning agriculture.

“Farming for the People with the People” therefore calls for all
farmers, growers and sympathetic citizens, to take back control over
their destinies and to join together to free our agricultural
practices from the corporate treadmill of destruction and despair to
which they now are tied.

At the same time, we call upon the Polish government, and all national
governments, to act NOW on the demands of the vast majority of their
citizens to:

Ban all forms of genetic engineering in agriculture, horticulture,
silviculture and fisheries.

Withdraw all financial support for factory farming regimes that
dehumanise agriculture and debase the animal kingdom.

Prohibit, without exception, any and all patenting of plants, animals,
their traits and genes, as well as patents on breeding methods.
Thereby making it unlawful to attempt to exercise control over
biodiversity.

Every Country should have the right to protect its food sovereignty.

We call for a people led and people owned renaissance of agriculture.
One which will liberate the creativity and ingenuity of man and draw
inspiration from the time honoured peasant and family farming
practices that still form the foundation of self sufficient,
sustainable and ecological agricultural production throughout the
world.

ICPPC Anniversary Statement, November 2010.

Please feel free to use and adopt in your Country!

Sir Julian Rose

Sir Julian Rose is now co-director of the International Coalition to
Protect the Polish Countryside, co-launching a highly successful
Campaign for a GMO Free Poland, as well as, leading a high profile
defense of native farmers, whom he holds-up as the true guardians of
biodiversity and quality of food throughout the world. Julian
contributed to BBC Radio Four’s Farming Today during 2007 with his
monthly broadcast, ‘Letters from Poland,’ passionately highlighting
the crisis from forcing corporate globalization into traditional
farming communities.

Sir Julian Rose was the Chair for Wise Traditions, UK, the first
London conference of the Weston A. Price Foundation, to be held on
March 21, 2010. For more details about this event, visit
http://westonaprice.org/london.
 
My 2c.

From the quick glance, my only issue with it is the phrase "genetic engineering" is too broad.

Any selective breeding of a plant/animal is a form of genetic engineering... what they are probably after is the commercial synthesizing of plant/animal materials.

Monsanto breeding a sterile, weedkiller resistant plant-seed, and Farmer Joe selectively breeding a stronger and healthier plant, are two ends of the same thing.
 
My 2c.

From the quick glance, my only issue with it is the phrase "genetic engineering" is too broad.

Any selective breeding of a plant/animal is a form of genetic engineering... what they are probably after is the commercial synthesizing of plant/animal materials.

Monsanto breeding a sterile, weedkiller resistant plant-seed, and Farmer Joe selectively breeding a stronger and healthier plant, are two ends of the same thing.


My 2c
From my way of thinking Genetic Engineering conjures up a totally different picture to selective breeding. Technically maybe you are right but it doesnt take away from the fact that that someone, somewhere is actually trying to do something constructive to end the suffering inflicted by multinationals. Apathy in the general public is the biggest weapon that they (the multinationals) have, falling just in front of compliant lobbied govts.
 
I'm all for the view you hold, mine is similar, but anything calling for a "ban on genetic engineering" needs to be carefully worded, they might get what they asked for, and realise it is more than they thought.

Artificial genetic engineering, or artificial gene modification, is a bit more accurate.

I'd hate to be banned from attempting to cross-breed plants, or having to prove that "the bees did it, not me" ;)
 
I'm all for the view you hold, mine is similar, but anything calling for a "ban on genetic engineering" needs to be carefully worded, they might get what they asked for, and realise it is more than they thought.

Artificial genetic engineering, or artificial gene modification, is a bit more accurate.

I'd hate to be banned from attempting to cross-breed plants, or having to prove that "the bees did it, not me" ;)

too true , I would change the wording too myself but a complete ban against anyone NOT AUTHORIZED is what the big co's are after. They would even like to stop us growing our own food. Now days in Oz it is pretty much illegal to raise your own animals with out the use of traceable eartags, purportedly for safety reason. Over here you cannot take an animal to the abbatoirs to get it slaughtered withot a NILS tag and you are prohibited from slaughtering it at home.
Home food production will be next. That means vegies etc. It is a sad time that we live in.
 
The Super Market
Julian Rose

Supermarkets present a very seductive picture to the consumer, but just under the surface it is a different story.

Research carried out in the UK some 15 years ago revealed that the average distance travelled by the food in a typical supermarket trolley is more than 3,000 kilometers. Most”fresh” produce is at least 4 days old and has passed through a number of processing and storage plants, involving subjection to very different temperature fluctuations, before getting onto the shelves. In the process, there is a loss of between 40 and 50% of the nutritional value of these foods.

„Sell by dates” are routinely altered in many chains, to keep fresh looking produce longer. Staff are paid very low rates and, in more than one known chain, have to wear nappies, as they are not given sufficient breaks to go to the toilet.

Huge power requirements are needed to maintain freezer and cold storage facilities, drawing heavilly on the national grid and thereby encouraging wasteful practices that increase already critical global warming patterns. They use excessive, non biodegradeable packaging and contribute significantly to Britain’s vast saturated rubbish tips.

Being able to buy “anything at any time” comes at a high price to our environment and farmers. The large supermarket chains buy their supplies from wherever it is produced at the lowest cost on the world market. Organic and conventional. This involves contracting large agrichemical oriented farms to mass produce “cheap” food. Because the price paid is very low, the farmer has to compensate by maximising production and minimising employment.

The result is the huge monocultural prairies that dominate US agriculture and have now established a significant foothold in Europe. These ‘food factories’ are entirely dependent upon chemical inputs: herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, nitrate fertilizers and increasingly, genetically modified seeds/plants. Their soils are so barren that they care incapable of producing any crops at all without heavy doses of agrichemicals.

The same applies to meat production. The great majority of farm animals, in order to be raised to strict supermarket specifications and time lines, are housed is vast sheds with very little room to move freely or express their natural physiological needs. Electric lighting is kept on night and day and most animals never see real daylight or indeed, the outside world. Pigs and chickens are routinely fed antibiotics in their heavilly processed and genetically modified feed, in order to speed up their rate of growth and prevent them from becoming sick. Inspite of this, mortality rates are high.

All chickens routinely have their beaks clipped in order to stop them pecking each other in the overcrowded cages in which they are raised. The feed of egg laying hens contains chemical colours to make the yolks look red. The farmer can choose from a wide variety of orange colourings.

When I kept hens (free range) I was sent a yolk „colour chart” by the manufacturers hoping I would buy their products!

Without these colours the yolks of hens kept in these conditions would be grey and conequently completely unacceptable. Hens require access to green foods (ie grass) to have naturally orange yolks. The hens that supply the supermarket chains never get outside. They live for an average of just 3 months before being culled and put on display on polystyrene dishes in supermarket chillers, as quick chill chicken dishes and dog/cat food. The same goes for birds specifically grown for meat: they are fed 24 hours a day on genetically modified maize and soya plus antibiotic growth promotors in vast indoor air controlled (no windows) sheds often containing upwards of 30,000 hens. They are slaughtered at an average age of 2.5 months, their under – formed leggs barely able to hold their exaggerated weight.

Pigs suffer in similar conditions as chickens. They are housed on concrete and metal slatted floors and in large artificially heated and lit sheds. They are fed on mostly antibiotic laced GM soya and the piglets are fattened and slaughtered in less than half the time of piglets raised on free range outdoor systems.

On average, dairy cattle are culled (slaughtered) after just 3 lactation cycles, because they cannot maintain the peak volumes of milk demanded by the supermarkets in their thirst for profit, beyond the age of 4/5 years. Many suffer severe mastitis inflamations of the udder and hoof rotting due to the unnatural conditions in which they are kept.

On my organic farm in the UK, my diary cattle averaged 14 years before they ceased commercial milk production. I then kept them on as nurse cows for raising calves.

Each large supermarket that gains planning permission acceptance leads to the subsequent loss of an average of 250 local jobs through the closure of local businesses (Rural Development Commission, 1992). Money which used to circulate in the local economy is lost to the global economy, thereby draining the community of its life blood.

Supermarkets and hypermarkets require special road structures to cater for their large transportation vehicles and equally large concreted delivery areas. They are major contributors to CO2 emmissions, largely because of their vast and power hungry refrigeration units, but also because they encourage families to use cars to get to them – instead of shopping locally.

Tesco’s profit margins increase every year – and are now regularly in the 3.5 billion pound area. The other large competing chains are not far behind. They are all leading exponents of a cetralised market economy and have no interest in supporting local communities or stocking local food, inspite of requests to do so from their customers. Their representatives often claim that they will take an interest in purchasing locally – to placate any critics – but in reality they source 98 percent of their produce wherever it can be purchased most cheaply and most easily on the national and world market: via farming ’sweat shops’.

All in all supermarkets and hypermarkets are at the front line of contributors to a degraded food growing environment on a global scale; inhumane animal welfare practices and the undermining of the integrity of local communities.

Any community that wishes to encourage a robust local economy would be well advised to steer well clear of such marketing practices. Individuals should think three times before spending their money in support of such irresponsible and market dominating monoliths.

Julian Rose

2010
 
Just to sell seed in the US "legally" you have to get a permit from EVERY state individually. I tallied up just about 15 of the 50 states and it would cost over $1000 in annual fees just to sell SEED. That is crazy. I understand paying taxes and all on whatever profits you make but to charge me a fee simply to have the "right" to sell seed is BS in my opinion. Farmers and growers of ANY size should be able to freely distribute their product free and clear of any state or federal agency.
 
A lot of these laws make even less sense once you cross a countries borders.

The law in the US might be different (in a big way, or just a few words) and thus needs to be treated as a separate entity.

Cross another border, and that adds another layer of laws.

Some of the seed-trading done here could tie up lawyers for years.
 
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