Sen. Kerry Asks About Organics, Gets Shot Down

Yesterday the Senate Foreign Relations committee held a hearing about global hunger in Africa. I wrote the whole thing up here but I want to pull out a few highlights to discuss them with you. The Senators involved were Kerry (D-MA), Lugar (R-IN), Casey (D-PA), Risch (R-ID), and Shaheen (D-NH). Lugar and Casey sponsored a bill to "help" starving people in the third world (somehow from the hearing I got the sense that Monsanto might be getting more help from the bill than Africa and S. Asia) and the hearing was to discuss the bill.

On its face, it sounds nice, right? Hey, let's help out starving people in Africa! Great idea! Not so much. The whole hearing was about selling chemical ag to the developing world. For me the most newsworthy part of the hearing was when Senator Kerry brought up organics. He toured the country in 2004 on his campaign and he's very aware of what's going on. He recognized that the hearing ONLY represented proponents of chemical/GMO agriculture. Shouldn't we find out what the organic proponents have to say and respect their opinions? he wondered.

Unfortunately, Kerry was shot down with a resounding "NO." Lugar grew up on a 600-acre farm in Indiana and from what I gathered, I believe he grew corn. He bragged again and again how he saw yields triple in his lifetime, and said that the presence of deer and even bald eagles on his farm were proof that his pesticides, fertilizer, and GMOs did no harm to the wildlife. If I were there, I would have told him that the wildlife harmed the most were the species you can't see: the ones in the soil.

Senator Risch - the Senator elected to replace Larry "Wide Stance" Craig - also farms, and he said that you NEED ammonia fertilizer. (And, as noted in the hearing, organic agriculture bans this kind of fertilizer.) So he was another vote for chemicals.

But the most idiotic response of all came from one of the speakers, a man named Paarlberg. He said that Africa currently has no chemicals so they are "de facto" organic and it's not working. Their yields are 1/5 of what ours are. Oh boy. To start, their farmers are often uneducated - you think that plays a role in yields? And they have no machinery or electricity very often - could that be part of the problem too? Most of all, we need to get rid of this myth that organics means simply a lack of chemical inputs. Organic doesn't mean that you put the seeds in the ground and then do nothing. It means you nourish the microbes in the soil so they can nourish the plants. You cultivate habitat for birds, bats, and beneficial insects so that they will eat your pest insects for you.

The hearing totally ignored a recent UN report calling for Africa to use organic agriculture to feed itself. They also did not explore the current problem India has with farmer suicides. We've already exported our chemical ag to India and we need to examine what role, if any, it has played in their suicide epidemic among farmers before we export it elsewhere. And last, they didn't even note that there already IS enough food to feed the world. Believe it or not, there is. Now, there are 800 million starving people too, but that's because we have a democracy problem and, thus, a distribution problem. These starving people do not have enough of a vote or a voice to speak up for themselves, to get the rest of the world to share its food with them. Simply put, we'd rather let food go to waste or use it to fuel cars than to give it to people who can't pay for it.

I've sent a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations committee with my thoughts on this. If anyone else wishes to do the same, I recommend either calling Senator Kerry's office or calling the Foreign Relations committee at 202-224-4651. (In this particular case, don't send an email because Kerry might only read emails that come from Massachusetts residents.)

(Photo credit: Cliff1066 on Flickr.)