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Thank you Richard for posting the link. I plan to do the whole crash course now. This should be required viewing for everyone to get a full grip on what is happening on this planet and get things in perspective.
Also thank you for acknowledging Hawaii Community College's role on the Big Island. I am an instructor there and am always happy when Hawaii CC gets recognition!
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Aloha Kani-Lehua;
You are registered on the E Malama 'Aina website.
Mahalo
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Hold the phone...
The Irish would have benefitted from GMO????????
The disease that caused the 1840's potato famine was so devastating largely because all the potatoes in Ireland descended from just a few individual plants brought there from Peru. The effects of crop failure were intensified by unusually cold winters, a typhus epidemic and a land use system that crippled the poor.
"Jeremy Rifkin, in his book Beyond Beef, writes "The Celtic grazing lands of...Ireland had been used to pasture cows for centuries. The British colonized...the Irish, transforming much of their countryside into an extended grazing land to raise cattle for a hungry consumer market at home.... The British taste for beef had a devastating impact on the impoverished and disenfranchised people of...Ireland.... Pushed off the best pasture land and forced to farm smaller plots of marginal land, the Irish turned to the potato, a crop that could be grown abundantly in less favorable soil. Eventually, cows took over much of Ireland, leaving the native population virtually dependent on the potato for survival. (from Wikipedia)"
Much of the land previously dedicated to traditional crops beans, barley, rye and oats had been turned into potato fields and resulted in a monoculture.
That Ireland remained a net exporter of food during the 5 year blight when 1.5 million died of starvation is evidence that famines are primarily political inventions.
In an earlier famine 1782-1783, Irish ports were actually closed to prevent export of food. Because of this food prices dropped and the poor felt some relief. Merchants lobbied bitterly against this and so in the 1840's potato famine ports were open and grain, beef, pork and other foods were exported to England while the Irish starved to death.
(Read Christine Kinealy, The Irish Famine: This Great Calamity )
The biological cause of crop failure in the Irish famine was caused by late blight, from Central Mexico. Infected potatoes were inadvertantly carried aboard ships from the U.S. to Belgium, England and Ireland and the blight spread by wind borne spores. The disease quickly spread and decimated crops which were genetically very similar and had developed no resistance.
The Inca and other indigenous peoples have cultivated over 300 varieties of potatoes in Peru and Chile. To this day they have never experienced a wide spread crop failure, such as the Irish famine, because there is sufficient genetic diversity among species to successfully adapt to new pathogens and environmental changes.
I believe the key to food security is preserving species diversity, traditional knowledge about cultivation, and fertile lands for agriculture - not GMO's.
There are simply too many irreversible mistakes we could make with GMO's that would have far reaching effects on our food supply and environment. Also, GMO's are items of commerce - patented life forms. GMO's put control of the world's food supply in the hands of a few private corporations in a way that has never before been conceiveable. The "terminator" or "suicide seed" that prevents production of viable seeds in GMO crops makes me think of the starving Irish watching ships laden with food leaving their ports.
The underlying causes of famine are always political - and so are GMO's.
Final thought: our lifestyles NEED to change.
We need to redefine our idea of a good "standard of living".
What we have been doing is not "sustainable" for our ag land, our environment and the people living on the rest of the planet.
Aloha,
Mitzi
Uluhe Design
Native Landscape Design
uluhedesign@yahoo.com
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quote:
Originally posted by Richard Ha
Aloha Kani-Lehua;
You are registered on the E Malama 'Aina website.
Mahalo
mahalo for the verificaion.
it seems that biotechnology is here to stay. MONSANTO HAWAI'I entered into a 99 year land lease for long-term agriculture on moloka'i in 2007. just recently, they acquired land in kunia, o'ahu and have other operations in kihei, hanapepe, haleiwa and lahaina.
as quoted from their website:
"Are most of the fruits and vegetables I eat biotech plants?
No. The most commonly grown biotech crops today are corn, soybeans, cotton and canola. Many of these crops are processed into oils commonly used in a wide variety of food products, or into animal feed."
"In Hawaii, some growers raise a variety of papaya that was developed with the help of biotechnology after the papaya ring spot virus threatened to devastate the Hawaiian papaya industry."
i'm not sure how safe gmos are, but do know that i've eaten the rainbow papaya--the variety that is referred to in their statement.
"chaos reigns within.
reflect, repent and reboot.
order shall return."
microsoft error message with haiku poetry
"a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
w. james
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That is an excellent question Damon. We are thinking of ways to get away from "over packaging". We are looking into a netted bag to replace that plastic clamshell.
We did move away from clamshell packaging for our lettuce. Instead we use a thin plastic sleeve, like flowers come in. We can squeeze more product into a box and customers find this allows them more usable refrigerator space.
We mentioned to Foodland Supermerkets that we were very interested in avoiding plastic packaging costs. And, we wanted to take advantage of any opportunity we could.
Wholefoods just opened their first store in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago. They buy and sell in bulk quite frequently. Hopefully this can influence other supermarkets.
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Hi Mitzi:
That was a very interesting description about what happened during the potato famine. You really know the subject well. I did not mean to imply that GMO's would be used exclusively. I do agree with your thoughts that diversity gives us safety. Since, we started into agriculture by growing bananas, I thought a lot about what the Hawaiians were thinking when they brought Maia Maoli and Maia Popoulu on the canoe with them. I came to the conclusion that I would have chosen those varieties too. And, walking through the Amy Greenwell collection of Hawaiian banana nearly 20 years ago, I found it very interresting that the Hawaiians kept the banana "sports" for it's contribution to diversity. I know from experience that "sports" occur very, very infrequently. The Hawaiians had all kinds of Maia Maoli with very slight differences that they named specifically. I admire the way Hawaiians approached agriculture. They did not waste anything. So, I look upon GMO's as just one more tool that we can use to help feed ourselves in the future.
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quote:
Originally posted by Richard Ha
So, I look upon GMO's as just one more tool that we can use to help feed ourselves in the future.
there are a lot of kanaka maoli who view kalo as sacred and will not budge on the idea of a genetically modified version.
"chaos reigns within.
reflect, repent and reboot.
order shall return."
microsoft error message with haiku poetry
"a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
w. james
as an addendum to the Irish famine subtopic -- as I understand from my studies (having focused on Irish writers and subjects in grad school), the Irish continued to export food because they were tenant farmers who owed the bulk of the farm production to English landlords. If they didn't fork over the crops, they would be evicted, which also meant starvation.
The potatoes were what the tenants were accustomed to growing for themselves, and yes it was a terrible thing to be reliant on one crop and a disaster never to be forgotten.
The problem could have been solved were it not that many English thought it would be a good thing if there weren't any Irish peasants. They set up soup kitchens with soup that had no nutritional value whatsoever, and allowed disease to pass via chained to the pot spoons used by everyone. It was grim and inhumane.
OK, back to Hawai'i, where one hopes that humanity to others is not in short supply.
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Hi Kani-Lehua
I am very aware that many Hawaiians have strong views against GMO Kalo. I respect that.
