The Wave of Eating ( Part 2 )
The aim of this post is not to be contentious, but to brain dump a few years of research and thinking about food and where it is positioned in our society currently.
We are about to begin development of a destination that wants to talk about healthy food and deliver it at a reasonable price whilst inspiring kids and adults to look at their diet from a "healthy body - healthy earth" perspective.
In my minds eye, this food will be locally sourced, ideally grown where possible on site and raised as a community of organic growers. Excess food goes to local communities and food banks, deficiencies are bought from other local growers. Sounds simple doesn't it?
With the imminent arrival of Genetically Modified Organisms to our food in the coming years, I have taken some time to look at the real impact that this would have on food choices both as a family man and as a person looking to educate and feed tens of thousands of people through The Wave developments. It's a fricking big responsibility all of a sudden!
This week I went to the showing in Bristol of GMO OMG. This was a very endearing film which followed a family man going through a journey to discover how GMO was infiltrating USA food and, as you can imagine, it had the stark reality of several super powered corporations dominating, manipulating and monopolising farmers and growers through shady, profit driven business practice. Shocking....yes Surprising......sadly not.
So what is the issue with GMO?
GMO is altering and splicing together DNA in crops to make them more resistant to certain "stresses" and make them more resilient. Is this bad......there is little to prove it either way due to a lack of independent, unbiased research.....(sound familiar?)
What instinctively feels and sounds appalling, is that various seed manufacturers have manipulated grains to be resistant to pesticides and herbicides so that, when being grown, the crops can be sprayed with Round Up (insecticides) and Herbicides to increase their crop yields. Consequently, the crops get smothered in these toxic chemicals and MAY end up in our food chain. (Again....little evidence to suggest either way).
The shady practice in my eyes is the lack of substantive research either way. I have thumbed through a number of research papers and it seems flawed on both sides of the fence. However, in the interest of public safety, you would hope that regulators would not release anything to market without long term research studies being evidenced. This has not been the case.
The argument for mass crop production is the 1billion starving people on the planet. I simply cannot stomach this. We have 1billion overweight, overeating people and 1billion starving. That tells me (my maths is not that strong) that there is enough food being produced globally, but distribution and sharing of resources is poorly organised and dominated by the rich developed countries.
Am I against science and development of new GMO technology? I'm honestly not sure.
Am I against the use of these technologies to poison our crops and soils which have unknown impact on our health and the health of the planet?........darn right until proven independently otherwise!
Am I against the monopolising of the agriculture/growing/seed industry? .......when has it ever worked well to have a few companies leading ANY industry?
So, in the meantime, should my family and The Wave become strict organic vegetarians? Here is a quote from Cyrus Sutton, a passionate thinker about agricultural practice and sustainable agricultural methodology:
The role of myself as a parent and as the founder of The Wave is putting knowledge and therefore power into peoples hands.
We allow monopolies to develop by consuming their produce. If we, the consumers, change our habits of eating and methods of farming, the big corporations will have to adjust to market demands.
The same is true of all things really, just needs a bit of thought and then acting upon. Education is the key.
Less: Dependence, exploitation, idealism, fear.
More: Cooperation, respect, integration, hope.
At The Wave we will reflect this in all our thinking, bits we will get right, bits we will no doubt get wrong, however we will try to continually improve and make waves of positive change....
Here is my view for what it is worth:
We are about to begin development of a destination that wants to talk about healthy food and deliver it at a reasonable price whilst inspiring kids and adults to look at their diet from a "healthy body - healthy earth" perspective.
In my minds eye, this food will be locally sourced, ideally grown where possible on site and raised as a community of organic growers. Excess food goes to local communities and food banks, deficiencies are bought from other local growers. Sounds simple doesn't it?
With the imminent arrival of Genetically Modified Organisms to our food in the coming years, I have taken some time to look at the real impact that this would have on food choices both as a family man and as a person looking to educate and feed tens of thousands of people through The Wave developments. It's a fricking big responsibility all of a sudden!
This week I went to the showing in Bristol of GMO OMG. This was a very endearing film which followed a family man going through a journey to discover how GMO was infiltrating USA food and, as you can imagine, it had the stark reality of several super powered corporations dominating, manipulating and monopolising farmers and growers through shady, profit driven business practice. Shocking....yes Surprising......sadly not.
So what is the issue with GMO?
GMO is altering and splicing together DNA in crops to make them more resistant to certain "stresses" and make them more resilient. Is this bad......there is little to prove it either way due to a lack of independent, unbiased research.....(sound familiar?)
What instinctively feels and sounds appalling, is that various seed manufacturers have manipulated grains to be resistant to pesticides and herbicides so that, when being grown, the crops can be sprayed with Round Up (insecticides) and Herbicides to increase their crop yields. Consequently, the crops get smothered in these toxic chemicals and MAY end up in our food chain. (Again....little evidence to suggest either way).
The shady practice in my eyes is the lack of substantive research either way. I have thumbed through a number of research papers and it seems flawed on both sides of the fence. However, in the interest of public safety, you would hope that regulators would not release anything to market without long term research studies being evidenced. This has not been the case.
The argument for mass crop production is the 1billion starving people on the planet. I simply cannot stomach this. We have 1billion overweight, overeating people and 1billion starving. That tells me (my maths is not that strong) that there is enough food being produced globally, but distribution and sharing of resources is poorly organised and dominated by the rich developed countries.
Am I against science and development of new GMO technology? I'm honestly not sure.
Am I against the use of these technologies to poison our crops and soils which have unknown impact on our health and the health of the planet?........darn right until proven independently otherwise!
Am I against the monopolising of the agriculture/growing/seed industry? .......when has it ever worked well to have a few companies leading ANY industry?
So, in the meantime, should my family and The Wave become strict organic vegetarians? Here is a quote from Cyrus Sutton, a passionate thinker about agricultural practice and sustainable agricultural methodology:
"A lot of people think vegetarianism is the most sustainable diet for the planet. They are dead wrong. In tropical environments it's possible to subsist off of fruit and tubers but in most climates in the world animals can convert calories from plants that are inaccessible to our stomachs. Animals are a powerful force on the land that work with plants to create thriving ecosystems. To rely on vegetarianism in all climates often demands large monoculture farms producing the staple nuts, beans and grains to feed the demand. If you visit small scale farms around the world or look at the diets of indigenous peoples you will see a deep relationship between people and animals going back thousands of years. In modern permaculture farms goats eat brush and invasive vines, their milk and meat providing sustenance. Chickens tear up the soil, process compost and deposit nitrogen rich droppings, giving their meat and eggs . Intensively grazed cows eat the tops of grass, and poop their nitrogen and bacteria rich gifts which they massage into the earth with their hooves building deep soils that can planted in the future. Many environmentalists believe that soil loss this the largest problem in the world right now. The fastest way to restore soils is to get cows and other livestock back on the land. If cows populations are left unchecked they will multiply and destroy what they could protect. Many vegetarians over the decades are reacting to feed lot models of meat production where animals are put in concentration camps and fed pesticide laden grains and pumped full of antibiotics to be kept alive till slaughter. The result is a chemical and antibiotic laced cesspool of nitrogen that pollutes the land.We don't need a lot of meat to survive but we need to be tolerant of those who choose to ethically include it into their diets. We have forgotten what making food really looks like and have come to fear death (our own and that of animals). "
We allow monopolies to develop by consuming their produce. If we, the consumers, change our habits of eating and methods of farming, the big corporations will have to adjust to market demands.
The same is true of all things really, just needs a bit of thought and then acting upon. Education is the key.
Less: Dependence, exploitation, idealism, fear.
More: Cooperation, respect, integration, hope.
At The Wave we will reflect this in all our thinking, bits we will get right, bits we will no doubt get wrong, however we will try to continually improve and make waves of positive change....
