Michelle Obama's organic garden angers US farming companies

Michelle Obama's organic garden angers US farming companies

www.telegraph.co.uk

Michelle Obama's decision to make her new White House vegetable garden entirely organic has angered America's powerful agribusiness lobby who are urging the First Lady to consider the use of appropriate "crop protection products".
Mrs Obama started work on the kitchen garden with a gang of schoolchildren last month. Media coverage of the first White House food plot since Eleanor Roosevelt "dug for victory" in the Second World War garnered media coverage across the world.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I say bravo for Mrs. Obama. I hope that she does not give in, to the pressure of MACA, the organization that sent this letter to her:

Shortly after the digging began, Mrs Obama received a letter from the Mid-America CropLife Association (MACA), which represents the companies producing the pesticides and fertilisers underpinning "conventional" American agriculture, the paper said.

Addressed to "Mrs Barack Obama", the letter congratulated the First Lady on "recognising the importance of agriculture in America". Farming is America's largest industry, generating 20 per cent of GDP and directly or indirectly employing 22 million people.

The letter avoiding the term "organic", highlights the role of technological advances - technologies that can see a single acre produce almost 20 tonnes of strawberries of 110,000 heads of lettuce in a season - in modern agriculture.

"Today, an average farmer produces enough food to feed 144 Americans who are living longer lives than many of their ancestors. Technology in agriculture has allowed for the development of much of what we know and use in our lives today," MACA wrote.

"If Americans were still required to farm to support their family's basic food and fibre needs, would the US have been leaders in the advancement of science, communication, education, medicine, transportation and the arts?

"We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and ageing parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family's year-round food needs."

The carefully-worded letter also "respectfully" encourages Mrs Obama to recognise the role played by conventional agriculture in feeding America's growing population.

www.telegraph.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Mod Edit: Added external source tags.

[edit on 4/23/2009 by maria_stardust]

Brava for First Lady Obama leading by example!

She is standing up for what she believes in by simply doing without bombastic political rhetoric.

She is also setting an example by creating a kitchen garden which is something more Americans should consider and a more satisfying way to fill in quality family time than sitting around hypnotised by television.

Great Post, Starred & Flagged!

Kudos to Michelle Obama! Imagine that nerve to ignore MACA!
I hope she does not cave...I would love to see some corp snit from
Monsanto fuming about this!

But MACA, which represents agribusinesses like Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and DuPont Crop Protection, is rather less thrilled about the fact that no chemicals will be used to grow the crops. The group is worried that the decision may give consumers the wrong impression about conventionally grown food.

I think MACA is worried that people would even have a reason to THINK!

and here is another interesting letter...

"Even at Monsanto, many in-the-know employees won't consume the company's own GM creations."
By Jeffrey Smith > April 1, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

If President Obama's new Food Safety Working Group dedicates all their time and credentials to prevent future food recalls, they will have saved thousands of people--but forsaken millions.

Over the last decade, our radically changing diet has ushered in the explosive growth of food-related ailments, such as allergies, asthma, obesity, diabetes, autism, infertility, gastro-intestinal disorders, and learning disabilities. Of all the changes in our food, the most dangerous transformation was the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops.

When these gene-spliced concoctions, such as GM soy, corn, canola, and cottonseed, came on the scene in 1996, the proportion of Americans suffering from three or more chronic ailments. After just 9 years, that nearly doubled to 13%. GM foods are the prime suspect. > > Government policy at odds with science

Until now, the government has sidestepped the controversy by hiding behind FDA policy, which asserts that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are "substantially equivalent" to natural foods and therefore don't require any safety studies. But as Obama acknowledged, "many of the laws and regulations governing food safety in America" are outdated.

In truth, the FDA's GMO policy was not even up-to-date when it was implemented in May 1992. FDA documents made public from a lawsuit revealed that virtually all the agency scientists asked to comment voiced strong warnings that GMOs may cause serious health problems. But the FDA was under orders from the White House to fast track GM foods, and the person in charge of FDA policy was the former attorney of biotech giant Monsanto--and later become their vice president. The scientists and the science were ignored.

Now that animals fed GMOs--in labs and farms around the world--have exhibited symptoms related to the growing list of diseases in the US population, the President's Food Safety team, including Dr. Margaret Hamburg as FDA Commissioner, must update GMO regulation. A scientifically sound regulation would translate into an immediate ban of current GM crops, and the implementation of rigorous safety testing requirements before any GMO was put back into the food supply. And certainly mandatory labeling, as promised by President Obama during his campaign, must accompany any GM food approval.

Presidents and industry insiders avoid GMOs . The Obama family has wisely opted out of exposing themselves to GM foods by requiring organic--and therefore non-GMO--foods served at the White House. They are even planting an organic garden on the south lawn of the White House, to feature 55 types of vegetables. > > The Bush family also had an organic kitchen policy. Laura Bush was "adamant" about it, but kept it all quiet. > > Even at Monsanto, many in-the-know employees won't consume the company's own GM creations.

Back in 1999, the management of the cafeteria at Monsanto's UK headquarters in High Wycombe, England wrote: > > "In response to concern raised by our customers . . . we have decided to remove, as far as possible, genetically modified soy and maize (corn) from all food products served in our restaurant. . . . We have taken the above steps to ensure that you, the customer, can feel confident in the food we serve." And one former Monsanto scientist told me that his colleagues, who were safety testing milk from cows injected with the company's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, decided to stop drinking milk--unless it was organic.

It's now time to let us all opt out of this dangerous and failed GM experiment. If Obama's team is serious about food safety and public health, they must take GMOs off our plates and put them back into the laboratory.

© 2008 Jeffrey Smith - All Rights Reserved > >

One of the lies in the MACA letter is this one:

Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and ageing parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family's year-round food needs."

Well, we have a garden which supplies us with 80% of our vegetables for an entire year. We jar and freeze, and it is totally organic. Our children and grandchildren have all the fresh vegetables they can take during the spring, summer and fall season, and we know that our family is not getting any GM products or chemicals into their system.

Stick by your guns, Mrs. Obama. Don't let these agents of poison change your mind.

Those companies need to shove it. A person chooses not to poison themselves and they write a letter asking them to? They don't care about health at all, all they see is a threat to their products.

reply to post by spinkyboo


Good post. Even the research animals fed GMO products show how detrimental they are to animals.
Maybe PETA can get involved and stop the GMO and Monsanto.

The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family's year-round food needs.

Yeah, tending to ones home garden could cut into your typical couch potatoes' TV time, huh.

Michelle needs to come back with some kind of slam dunk response to this article.

The nutritional value of most of your commercial grocery store foods today is horrible. I mean, what in the heck food group does xanthan gum belong to, and why is that crap in so many foods today? Why would a jar of commercial tomato cause need water and xanthan gum added to it? I'll tell you why, because that jar of (so-called) tomato sauce likely has no more than half a tomato in it, and all that other junk is just filler and thickeners to thin out that half of a tomato that is actually in that crap.

American foods are just horrible, so much of it is just fake junk foods. I don't even buy any of that commercial grocery store stuff any more. It's all horrible, of little nutritional value, filled with substances with names I can't even pronounce, and way over priced. The only stuff I pick up at the grocery store now is things like dish soap and garbage bags. I buy everything raw and original from other sources and prepare everything from scratch now. I've been doing so for a while now, and I feel both physically AND mentally better because of it. Yeah, it takes extra time for this, but I don't do teevee, I don't even own one, and I don't even work and slave for others any more, so I've more than enough time to do the right things the right way now.

Look carefully at the ingredients list on those foods you buy, try to figure out what food group some of those things belong to. Really, someone tell me, why do I need to eat xanthan gum every day? What food group does BHA and BHT belong to, and how nutritional is that stuff anyhow? American commercial food is JUNK! CRAP! And, ya'll know YOU ARE what you eat, so beware!

reply to post by ghaleon12

Those companies need to shove it. A person chooses not to poison themselves and they write a letter asking them to? They don't care about health at all, all they see is a threat to their products.

Everyone that can, should start a garden, no matter how small. Even just one tomato plant can produce 30 to 40 pounds of juicy, non-cardboard tomato.
Imagine Monsanto trying to get a law to outlaw organic gardens if 100,000,000 Americans have an organic garden.

It is time for us to stop the poisoning of our children by these greedy corporations.

reply to post by Divinorumus

Michelle needs to come back with some kind of slam dunk response to this article.

Does anyone know how to email Mrs. Obama? I'd like to email her and tell her how much I support her effort.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


I would imagine you could probably do it on facebook, Michelle is on there and I am sure her garden is too...

Imagine that this story takes root and grows and helps to end the horrors like this:

An estimated 16,625 farmers across India killed themselves in 2007, the last year that was reported. The numbers are horrifying, and they indicate the sense of despair that the poorest people in the world are facing today....
...The current fate of farmers in India is a tangled hierarchy that involves politics, agro-business, multinationals, trade liberalization, global subsidies, the environment, water, ethics, and human rights. Activists point out the role of agrochemicals, particularly genetically engineered seeds, that have been aggressively marketed to Indian farmers by companies like Monsanto--an American multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation that also wields a powerful influence on the farming practices in America

www.organicconsumers.org...

Monsanto has created the horror of GMO seeds that do not even grow, sold them to India and is trying to creat a planned world famine!
If Americans only knew the truth, would they care?

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


Yep. They need to make sure that NO ONE has to eat Monsanto foods -
This is the next step. Health for all.

reply to post by burntheships

An estimated 16,625 farmers across India killed themselves in 2007,

That is horrible. Monsanto has those deaths on their filthy hands.

BTW, great pun concerning the story "taking root and growing".
Stars to all on this thread for your contributions.

Glad to hear that is doing that more people should grow gargen instead of complaining about the food. My wife and I grow all of ours by hydroponic or aeroponic for years, with no pesticides used, it simply doesn't get any better than that. Way to go for the first lady!

not all genetically modified food is bad.

"crop protection products" ...yeah, like the "crop protection product" ingredient that tragically affected the Bhopal, India, citizens in 1984. Bhopal disaster


And PETA...hell, they've got a "terrorist" label nowadays.

Organics are the way to go. Those that can, should grow organically. Those that can, should buy organically as much as possible. So much more organic/GM-free food is available in grocery stores nowadays, even organic store brands. Consumer demand. Demand!
Support organic farmers and green corporations.

Originally posted by ruckus49
not all genetically modified food is bad.

Now how can you say that? Have there been any long term studies to determine that any of it won't cause you to go blind 30 years from now or give you cancer? Can we say for sure that our great great grandchildren won't be growing tails and extra arms or suffer some new disease or mental impairment a couple generations from now because of these chemicals and unnatural alterations to our foods?

Sorry, but I'll stick to what nature has provided as food for me. Monsanto can go to hell, along with all those companies that, in the name of the high and almighty fiat dollar, serve that stuff up as what we should all be eating. And, I hope all those that are genetically modifying this world of ours choke and die on their highly profitable strawberries or whatever.

The next thing you know we'll all end up as frankenhumons, and you'll have to fork over more $$$ to these bastards if you want to seed and conceive a child, and then even more money for medications for them so they won't freak out and kill everyone around them in school.

And you know, they sure lie about these numbers of their too. When they say a farmer can feed 144 families, it's only because of all those unnatural food fillers and food substitutes that make that number what they claim it to be too.

Food is an important part of our lives, along with exercise and other important factors. Most people just shove whatever they think tastes great into themselves without even knowing what in the heck they are really eating. Spend the next few days learning about what they call food these days and read the ingredient list on everything you eat. You be surprised to find that the majority of those ingredients aren't even food and don't even belong to any of the basic food groups. Most people are eating trash these days, and just by looking at them you can see that IT SHOWS!

reply to post by truskeptic

My wife and I grow all of ours by hydroponic or aeroponic for years,

That's quite interesting. Do you use a greenhouse? How difficult is it to grow hydroponically, and how expensive is the equipment?

Wow so big agribusiness can actually have the dangles to say to people how and what they should grow... I mean are they in some way living in a parallel world to the rest of us?

I think this is the last straw with this kind of thing for me, I mean.. ahck speechless, and to say this to your supposed countries leaders wife?

My main question is, is there anyone in the general public who would actually agree with them on this? I just dont see how anyone could unless they where actually tied to the whole business themselves.

Gardens dont need alot of effort, I mean plants do grow for the most part by themselves. Weeding once a week, along with some proper use of natural pest deterrent plants. Watering when its needed, and if a slug has a go at your silverbeat so what, the leafs still edible as long as its not like a lace curtain

I dont know i thought id heard it all, bu this just makes my head spin...

Truskeptic:- Aeroponics? (goes to google it) wow didnt realise you could do that, heck that makes the whole population issue even more moot, turn skyscrapers into giant vegetable farms, farming space solved

[edit on 23-4-2009 by BigfootNZ]