Because one of the leaders of Lao’s fragile civil society, Sombath Somphone, has been abducted (video above) and the government has refused to act.

Find out more about Sombath here. And then, please, drop a line to your nearest Embassy, sign this Avaaz petition, and spread the word. It won’t take long, and it’s an action that his supporters in Lao feel will make good change happen.

What’s the quickest way to get thrown out of a Publix supermarket? Is it a) to run naked through the aisles, b) to point and yell ‘horsemeat!’ at the deli counter or c) to query the manager about whether workers picking tomatoes are treated as well as she’d like. In my case, it was option c). As soon as I broached the question, I was told to leave immediately or security would be called. I was swiftly ushered out.

I wondered whether, perhaps, I’d committed a faux-pas. I speak English with a British accent, and feared that ‘tom-ah-to’ might mean something horrible and offensive in Florida. Further investigation suggests that I’d have been kicked to the curb whether I’d said tomahto or tomayto. There are some things one just isn’t allowed to do in a Publix supermarket. Asking politely about tomato farmworker justice is one of them.

Yet there’s good reason to wonder. Farmworkers have long faced brutal working conditions. Rampant violations of minimum wage laws, below-poverty annual incomes, pesticide exposure, sexual harassment, long days without overtime pay, and retaliation for reporting abuses aren’t just plot points from a Steinbeck novel. They’re a common part of agricultural labor today.

Agricultural and food corporations have successfully lobbied for farmworkers to be stripped of the workplace laws that protect most other Americans, and there’s little enforcement of the few legal protections that farmworkers are meant to enjoy. The result has led to actual cases of ‘modern-day slavery’ in which farmworkers have been threatened, chained, beaten, and held against their will in debt bondage.

There is, however, change in the fields. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is an internationally renowned farmworker organization based in SW Florida — where most of the winter U.S. tomato crop is harvested. They’ve worked with some of Florida’s growers to develop a ‘Fair Food Program.’ Workers and growers collaborate, under the eyes of third-party monitors, to make sure that rights for everything from overtime to bathroom breaks are respected. Buyers reward those growers who uphold the rights with business and withhold business from the growers who fail to.

Sound like some hippie plot? Hardly. Currently, 90 percent of the Florida tomato industry and 11 major food corporations, including McDonald’s, Subway, and Whole Foods, are currently part of the Fair Food Program. Few would consider McDonald’s a refuge for the great unwashed.

Publix’s polished advertisements laud their deep concern for their community. But if you’re a Floridian who picks tomatoes for a living, you’re clearly not part of that community. And if you’re a customer wanting to ask about this, it seems Publix don’t want you around either.

Yet here’s the irony. The Fair Food Program is all about building community. It enshrines the rights of farmworkers never before seen in the agricultural industry in partnership with buyers and grower.

Publix refuses to join the program, claiming that the Fair Food Program is a “labor dispute” and that the company will not get involved. Yet the Fair Food Program is a growing partnership that brings together various levels of the supply chain to overturn decades of sub-poverty wages and abuses that were, until recently, the norm. In fact, the Washington Post recently dubbed the Fair Food Program, “one of the great human rights success stories of our day.”

Why then does Publix still refuse to join some of the leading food retailers in making life better for the worst paid people in America? Publix spokesperson Dwaine Stevens provided a surprisingly frank answerafter a protest at a Publix in Alabama saying, “If there are some atrocities going on, it’s not our business”

In other words, Publix maintains the ability to buy from farms even if human rights abuses are rampant, no questions asked. It appears, the Publix solution to human rights abuses is to plug their fingers firmly in their ears. Workers rights will come second to a cheaper tomato, or more accurately, are not part of the equation at all.

Since they couldn’t ask for justice inside a Publix, 1,500 people arrived in Lakeland, home of Publix corporate headquarters, after a 200 mile march through Florida this weekend. Farmworkers like the CIW’s Gerardo Reyes will be there to insist that “though we are indeed poor, we too are human beings and we deserve respect and dignity.”

They weren’t asking for special treatment. They’re only asking to be treated like human beings. And surely that deserves our support. So, please, voice out your support when you next visit a Publix. And, take it from me, you can say tomahtoes or tomaytoes. Either way.

This essay first appeared in The Earth Island Journal special issue on The Anthropocene. More here.

My first earthquake happened at four in the morning, when some small god picked up my apartment building and shook it lightly before setting it down like a Christmas box that would, soon enough, be torn apart.

At the emergency preparedness class I took soon after, our instructor told us: “Some people get to learn of the storm hitting their town just a few days out. Too late! Not enough time to find water, board up, and make a plan. The good thing about an earthquake is you’ve got plenty of warning. Here’s yours: With certainty, you’ll be hit by a major earthquake in the next 30 years. It’s an ideal disaster.”

Let’s run with this for a moment. An “ideal disaster” has three characteristics. First, it needs to be small enough to do something about. So the sun exploding is not an ideal disaster. It’s paralytic, too big to do anything about.

Second, an ideal disaster is one that is sufficiently far in the future to be able to mitigate. When I was growing up in England we had something called the Three Minute Warning – the time between the detection of Soviet nuclear missiles and the moment when London would be incinerated. This, too, was not ideal.

Beyond being sufficiently clear and insufficiently present, the final and unspoken quality of the ideal disaster is that it be narratable as a disaster. Before we can set about mitigating the worst, we need to be able to tell stories about what “it” is.

There are plenty of avoidable things about which we have advanced warning. Consider the diabetes epidemic that will affect one-in-three children in the US. Although there will be millions of premature deaths, billions of dollars of cost, plenty of warning, and much that can be done, kids dying of diabetes does not have the narrative force of an apocalypse.

Which brings us to the Anthropocene and, more importantly, what we do with the idea. The Anthropocene is a way of telling a story about how humanity has affected the planet so profoundly that we’ve punted ourselves from one geological era to another.

As disasters go, the Anthropocene isn’t ideal. It feels too big. We can’t undo the mistake, somehow pulling the Holocene back over us. Nor is there a decent warning, for the Anthropocene has already happened. In that sense, it’s like being told the sun has exploded, and that the light you see is old news, to be updated as soon as the corona expands to boil our planet.

The worry about the Anthropocene is that it announces a catastrophe of solar proportions. We’re screwed, and there’s not much to be done about it. Perhaps the only response is the kind that the characters in J.G. Ballard’s Crash embrace – looking at the mangle of the modern world and shagging on the roadside while the world burns.

What would be a better way to meet this disaster? It’s a question that Sasha Lilley and collaborators explore in a recent book of essays titled Catastrophism. The outlook isn’t rosy. In Western politics, catastrophe has been used by the left and right as an alibi for misanthropic, racist, and cold-blooded policy. Stalinists and survivalists unite behind the idea that, before things get better, society has to hit bottom. After that, the guardians of post-apocalyptic knowledge can come to save the day. Impending catastrophe has been an alibi for everything from Year Zero to cult suicides.

Herein lies the danger. We’re surrounded by catastrophic narratives of almost every political persuasion, tales that allow us to sit and wait while humanity’s End Times work themselves out. The Anthropocene can very easily become the Misanthropocene.

Read more in our special issue exploring the consequences of a new geologic epoch: the Anthropocene.
If there’s good news, it comes from those who have lived in the new era for a while already: farming in greater harmony with natural systems, saving biodiversity, reducing their reliance on fossil fuels, creating more localized economies, recognizing the need for adaptation plans and resilient social systems. For those pioneers, the new geological age still comes with seasons and generations, just as the previous age did. The work of those seasons makes the task of change more manageable than a story of geology. Through a more human-scale conception of time and space – and through ecological invention – the Anthropocene is rendered more ideal.

We need those pioneers’ stories to be told in the metropolises that try to hide from ecology. The wisdom of peasants and Indigenous people can narrate an Anthropocene that tells the story of this disaster as one that we can, with rhythms and processes far from late capitalism, survive and from which we might even emerge better.

At the very least, we know this: We have been warned.

Second, again with thanks to DBS, is this piece, following up on a series of emails leaked to the Guardian from the innards of the EU biotech industry, suggesting that Lynas’ recent conversion may have something to do with his being recruited as a GM ‘ambassador’.

The last word goes to Anthony Flaccavento, who offered these responses to Lynas’ speech.

1. The consistent equating of organic farming as “anti progress”, unscientific, pre-modern. He uses the frequently employed stunt of using yields from 1961 as a proxy for “organic” in order to show that it is “40% to 50% less productive” and would therefore require far more land for the same yield. In fact, published, peer-reviewed studies of many different cropping systems – rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, several different vegetables – show that organic production can meet or exceed modern chemical production on a per acre basis for most if not all major crops. Organic production systems are particularly strong – and superior to conventional systems – during periods of drought, something which is becoming increasingly commonplace.

2. Far from being unscientific, organic and sustainable farming has been at the forefront of innovation and research in agriculture. When you realize that until about 10 years ago, most major universities, USDA and Cooperative Extension largely ignored organic production, it is actually quite amazing that organic research and practices have advanced as much as they have. Perhaps that is why, in my experience, a far greater proportion of organic and sustainable farmers hunger for and read the latest research on new varieties (or breeds), practices, equipment and farming systems.

3. There is an unstated premise throughout that GM technology has significantly increased production of many major crops and is therefore an
utterly essential weapon against hunger and famine. If fact, studies of GM corn and soy production – the two GM crops with which we have the most experience – show minimal if any increases in yield per acre, at best in the 5% range and often not exceeding the latest hybrid varieties. He mentions how production increases have leveled off in recent years, somehow citing that as further reason to expand and accelerate the use of GM crops, yet this is the very period where GM corn and soy varieties have become utterly dominant in the major grain producing countries (US and Canada in particular). If GM technology were so effective in increasing output, we should have seen major yield increases over the past 15 years, but instead, yields have largely plateaued.

4. His statement that glyphosate (Round Up) is “completely harmless” is contradicted by studies of both health impacts and the impact on soil biology, a critical part of soil fertility and yield potential.

5. While using GM to impart pest fighting capabilities into a crop – for example Bt corn or Bt cotton – has reduced the use of some chemical
insecticides, there are serious problems with this. First, evidence is growing that it propels the development of resistant pests much more quickly
than when used selectively. Enabling a corn plant to produce its own Bacillus Thuringensis (Bt) is analogous to doctors prescribing too many
antibiotics, speeding the development of resistant strains of bacteria. This resistance is beginning to show up in the lepidoptera pests of corn and
cotton; it is already widespread as weeds now immune to glyphosate. So, farmers have responded by using more, not less, Roundup, and now Monsanto is working on a new GM corn that can withstand much more potent herbicides than glyphosphate. There is no doubt that weeds will also become resistant to these, more toxic herbicides, and far more quickly and pervasively than if farmers were using them selectively.
He also dismisses concerns about GM crops pollinating other farmers’ crops, as though this was some sort of elitist issue. This is ludicrous.
Monsanto and its ilk, whom he casts as farmer advocates, routinely sue farmers whose crop is pollinated by a neighboring farm using one of their GM varieties. Several hundred farmers have been sued by Monsanto, with the majority settling out of court and losing a great deal in the process.

6. His statement that scientific studies prove that organic is no better nutritionally than conventional, is at the very best a gross overstatement.
In fact, the studies present a mixed picture with some (peer reviewed) showing organic with significantly higher levels of various minerals,
vitamins and anti-oxidants, while others showing no significant differences. Logically, organic almost has to improve overall nutrient density for this reason: The nutritional value of a specific leaf or fruit is partly determined by its own genetics – a tomato has different nutrients than
broccoli – and partly by the mineral and micro nutrients of the soil in which it is grown. The steady decline in soil organic matter over the past
60+ years of “modern agriculture” is well documented. Along with that has been a decline in available nutrients for plants, leading both to greater
dependence on fertility inputs and to an overall decline in the vitamin and mineral content of the produce we eat, estimated to be about 25% (the
decline). Organic farming or using organic practices restores those nutrients by building up the organic matter and improving soil microbiology
(also a critical component of plant health and nutrient uptake).

7. The greatest advantage of organic and sustainable farming, whether for crops or livestock, over industrial and GM methods is that over time you can achieve comparable productivity, sometimes greater, while becoming more self-reliant. This is no small thing, for any farmer, and certainly an enormous and critical need for the farmers and people in developing countries the author claims he wants to help. Organic farmers build their own fertility by building up the organic matter, which serves as a “bank” for nutrients and water, and by increasing the biological health of the soil, ie the beneficial fungi, bacteria, worms and other organisms that then both provide and recycle nutrients. Livestock farmers using management intensive grazing and multi species systems end up with far more productive pasture land (that is, they can support more animals per acre), with dramatically fewer inputs, whether fertilizer or herbicide or corn for feed.

Numerous studies show that ecologically diverse, organic or sustainable farms have lower levels of pests and disease, reducing the need for
interventions of whatever type. You don’t have to be certified organic to employ such practices, but most larger scale, conventional farmers, become reliant on inputs to a much greater degree, a dependence that eventually becomes both financial and agronomic.

I don’t know anything about the author, but in my assessment – based on experience and a pretty extensive reading of the research over the years – it was much more of a rant than a thoughtful contribution to the debate. It certainly was not science-based, and the author’s obvious exasperation with what he considers to be an emotionally driven, irrational group of people – environmentalists and organic advocates – led him to his own semi-hysterical tone and poor quality analysis.

(Maputo 14th January 2013) – During the month of November last year, the world watched farmworkers strikes, particularly those working in vinyards, in the Western Cape Province, in South Africa. They were protesting against exploitation and poor working and living conditions on farms, demanding an increase in minimum wages. In many cases, South African police responded to the demonstrations with violence and intolerance and showed no respect for laws. Many farmworkers and activists were arrested, including peasants of The Agrarian Reform for Food Sovereignty Campaign, a member of La Via Campesina.

After dubious negotiations that halted the strikes in December, the South African government has refused to make any change to the minimum wage and the situation has remained unchanged. Early this January farmworkers resumed the strikes and are being heavily repressed by police.

Since the strikes began, South African civil society organizations have denounced the fact that owners of the farms and the police were acting in close concertation to repress the striking workers; they benefited from a high level of impunity. It also appears obvious that the owners of the farms are continuing to pour racist and sexist insults on farmworkers.

The farmworkers strike in South Africa has to be seen as an African movement of the rural poor protesting against injustice and explotation.The agricultural sector in South Africa employs not only South African citizens. Many of the farmworkers working in bad conditions are migrant workers: men and women from neighboring countries such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. These farmworkers are sometimes the most affected by the owners of the farms, who take advantage of the fact that they are in many cases working illegally and without social protection. South African commercial farming is the most powerful on the continent; it flourishes at the expense of the oppression and exploitation of agricultural workers.

These strikes are also the result of government’s failure to implement land reform in South Africa. The 30 per cent of land distribution that was promised by 2015 is very far from being implemented. In fact, in 2013 it is now 100 years since a Land Act that dispossessed millions of people from the land and turned them into the super-exploited farmworkers and the South African proletariat, was constituted in 1913. These strikes are a cry of ”Enough is enough!” of 100 years of rural slavery.

The African region of the International Peasant´s Movement, La Via Campesina, declares their support and solidarity with the farmworkers in South Africa and condemns all forms of violence perpetuated by the South African Police and government against all farmworkers and activists. We join the voice of South African civil society organizations and demand that the South Africa government take active steps to listen to and act on the call of the agricultural workers who are demanding a living wage and a life of dignity.

Globalize the Struggle, globalize the Hope!

Contacts for more information and solidarity

Petrus Brink, Agrarian Reform for Food Sovereignty Campaign
(+27) 761 534 627 – Mobile
Cape Town, South Africa

Via Campesina Regional office for Africa
(+258) 21 327 895 – Landline
E-mail: vcafrica@gmail.com
Maputo, Mozambique
–

La Via Campesina
Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers. We are an autonomous, pluralist and multicultural movement, independent of any political, economic, or other type of affiliation. Born in 1993, La Via Campesina now gathers about 150 organisations in 70 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

Follow us on facebook | twitter | vimeo
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International Operational Secretariat:

Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV no 5 Jakarta Selatan, Jakarta 12790 Indonesia

Tel/fax: +62-21-7991890/+62-21-7993426

Email: viacampesina@viacampesina.org

Frankly, there’s not much to read. Mark Lynas opposed GM crops because he thought they were bad but now he has ‘discovered science’, and that makes him a better environmentalist and a supporter of the pesticide industry’s sale of genetically modified crops and it possibly makes him regret studying politics and modern history.

In general, it’s a good thing that people discover science. It usually means they’ve left behind dogma in favour of peer review and data. In this piece, scientist John Vandermeer welcomes Lynas to science, and looks forward to Lynas’ reading more science in the future. After all, some of the most reasoned arguments against GM crops come from those who have embraced science for far longer than Lynas. GM Free Cymru and The Union of Concerned Scientists note, though, that Lynas hasn’t really given up on the dogma, seeming to have swapped his old prejudices for the kind of pro-business platform that’ll keep him flush with industry conference honoraria for the next year or two.

There’s really not much more to be said. It could be that Lynas will, like Bjorn Lomborg, noisily muddle from one position to another, trailing the scientific debates by a decade, but anticipating the winds of conservative thinking by a month or two. Ultimately, though, it matters little. While Lynas embarks on his journey from knee-jerkery to scientific neophyte to, we hope, scientific sophisticate, science and sustainable farming are demonstrating both that GM crops are irrelevant in feeding the world, and that they’re the worst among many far better alternatives. Which is a far more interesting story to report than that Mark Lynas has read a book.

Councilman Gary Brown is tripping too! In the same article, referring to the vocal opponents of the land grab, he was quoted as saying “very few of them talked about the Hantz Farms project. It was mostly about a dysfunctional city government that makes it hard for them to buy” land. There have been many arguments waged against the scale and type of farming that Hantz proposes. There have been calls for an environmental impact survey. There were pleas to hold off on this deal until after Detroit’s comprehensive urban agriculture ordinance is passed by the city council (which is expected to be next month). There were major concerns raised about pesticides. It is disingenuous for him to suggest that residents were only concerned about the broken process of selling city-owned land, although those concerns are also real and valid.

Unfortunately, most of Detroit’s political leadership lacks real vision. They are locked into an obsolete worldview where justice takes a back seat to “development.” Cockrel, Jenkins, Tate, Brown and Pugh need to be spanked!

Pugh needs to be spanked twice, because he is rude to citizens! His referring to an angry citizen at last night’s public hearing as “the lady in the orange wig” is deplorable. Can you imagine a school principal saying that to an irate parent at a school meeting, or a court official saying that to an angry plaintive? Leaders and public servants have to be held to a higher standard than the general public.

To add insult to injury, on a day when not only the precedent setting Hantz deal was being voted on, but other issues critical to Detroit’s ability to maintain home rule were being decided, Council President Pugh held the meeting in the council chambers that only has seats for 40 citizens. This left more than 100 people unable to get into the proceedings. Just like two weeks ago, many gave up and left. Right down the hall is a council auditorium that can seat hundreds. Similarly, at last night’s hearing, more than 200 people could not gain entry. This is not democracy!!!

Detroit’s political leaders should be thrilled that so many citizens want to be engaged in defining what our city will become. Instead, they box us out, and hold the people in contempt! The people have legitimate dreams and aspirations. Perhaps our elected leaders need to re-read the famous poem Harlem by Langston Hughes. The title Harlem could just as easily be replaced by the name of our beloved city Detroit.

Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Malik Yakini is the Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.

In this video Raj speaks out against the marketing of junk food to children in order to combat the underlying problem of childhood obesity.