For years we’ve been seduced by low prices and artificially produced food like “Dark Tater, who’s now more chemical than vegetable” he is, of course, father of ‘Cuke Skywalker, that bushy blonde haired produce product.
The US Organic Trade Association has made a mock-up ‘Grocery Store Wars’ video where vegetables and fruits battle whilst teaching viewers the ‘Ways of the Farm’.
Of course, using puppets made from Ham “Ham Solo”, Beans “Tofu D2″, and vegetables “Chewbroccoli”, is a silly way of getting the point across that Organic is good and that our current food sources are not always actually as good for us as they could be. With all the hormones (milk) and waxes (fruit) and pesticides (fresh vegetables) in our diet, organics is really an obvious way to go.
My question is this; over the last few weeks we’ve seen a huge amount of debate over the EU budget, largely because of the British Rebate (we get back 2/3 of the amount we put into the fund that doesn’t return to us), and the Common Agricultural Policy reform. These have both create vast quantities of press coverage.
The total CAP budget of £30 billion (43bn euro) will remain in place until 2013 – that is a further decade of more subsidies. The largest farmers will continue to be given very large amounts of money and the basic shape of the CAP will remain grossly damaging to development.
The EU’s support for dairy farmers amounts to around £11 billion per year, which works out as about £1.40 per day for each cow. Put another way, the average EU cow now receives more than the income of half the world’s population.
If the CAP is now used to subsidise dairy production and the delivery of unwanted foods, why shouldn’t we reform it to promote the production of organic food? By moving the money, 40% of the EU’s total budget, away from traditional farming to more sustainable methods we do a variety of things. Food is produced for a growing and popular market that is, at the moment, perceived as expensive because it is competing with subsidised food. Were the EU governments to shift from paying out to intensive farmers to organic farmers, the poor quality food would become more expensive than the organic food. At the same time as doing this we would reduce the number of additives in our raw and basic food staples like wheat and grains, fruit and vegetables, likely influencing the behavior of children in classrooms across the 25 member states and the 450 million living inside the EU. We would promote the growth or regrowth of a proper countryside untinged by the deaths of natural flora and fauna due to pesticide and fertilizer use.
The question here is really, why shouldn’t we do this? It would be hard on the traditional farmers at first because there would be a transition period in which farms couldn’t be certified as organic (it takes three years), but during that time subsidies could be phased out rather than directly cut, potentially mitigating some of the blow. In addition, the consumption of meats, especially cow meat, would decrease because we would be paying out less per cow. This is a much needed move because people in the west are eating too much meat, which with the fats associated with these foods can lead to heart disease and the clogging of arteries.
With fat come “diseases of affluence”. In the UK, 165,000 people a year die from heart disease - which, so one report suggests, would go down by 40,000 if everyone were vegetarian. Worldwide, 150 million are now diagnosed with adult-onset (type 2) diabetes. The World Health Organization says this will double by 2025. The world’s diabetics will exceed the total population of the US today.
Tell me, is this idea crazy, or is it just that there’s little political will from the European leaders to actually take on the status-quo and institute some real change to the system?
Yap, there is political issues. But don’s think too much. It is jusn a joke.
Oh yeah, I know the grocery store wars are a giggle, but CAP is still deadly serious, and to some people it really means life or death. I just went into a bit of a deep think, and perhaps went too far. Who knows!