Hidden Connections

Published by the Center for a New American Dream

November 26 1999

A quarterly report on consumption, quality of life and the environment No. 9, Fall 1999

Page 3 Letter from Betsy Taylor

Hidden Connections: Crops, Cows, Cola and the Demise of Diversity

Page 4

By Dave Tilford

Page 5 Readers Respond

Page 6 Online Discussion: Kids and Commercialism

Page 8 Goodwill Hunting

Page 10 The Bad, the Good and the Truly Ridiculous

Page 11 Buying Green: Milk Enviro News

Page 12 Resources

Page 13 Fun Box

Page 14

W

e know that consumer behavior affects the environment. We just don’t always know how. Some choices are obvious (choose a cleaner mode of transportation over a gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle and you have a direct, positive impact on global warming). Other impacts are less easily demonstrated. Consumer goods come to us via a convoluted global resource network, and the environmental histories of the things we buy are not always apparent. The right choice is sometimes hidden from view. We must constantly remind ourselves that everything connects back to the planet. Tracing this connection to its point of origin can sometimes lead to surprising discoveries. It can also clarify the seemingly muddled choices we must make as we strive to remain part of an integrated ecological system—rather than attempt to live outside of it. Take food for instance. How would a person know that a can of cola is tied to the fate of monarch butterflies? Or that a fast-food burger could be instrumental in reducing the genetic diversity of the crops we depend upon?

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Plight of the Butterflies

Page 15

Monarch butterflies make their annual migration from Mexico to Minnesota through the heart of the Midwestern Corn Belt. Last May, the scientific journal Nature reported that over 20 percent of American corn fields—including much of the Corn Belt—are planted in varieties toxic to the butterflies. This toxicity results from the fact that the corn has been bioengineered to contain a gene from the bac-

Orwell’s Corner

terium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Applied externally in small quantities, Bt is used by organic farmers as a relatively benign, natural pesticide. When the Bt gene is spliced into the corn plant, however, the toxin disperses with the corn pollen onto neighboring plants, including milkweed eaten by monarch caterpillars. The corn was not bioengineered to kill butterflies. It was an unforeseen side effect discovered after the corn was released into the environment. Another foreseeable side effect: Heavy use of the Bt corn—as well as other geneticallyaltered Bt crops on the market, such as cotton and potatoes—will make organic application of Bt virtually useless. Overdosing on Bt accelerates an evolutionary process by which only those genetic strains of pests resistant to the toxin will survive and breed. Corn is a major American crop and U.S.-produced grain helps feed the world, so the decimation of the monarch population may seem a small price to pay. Perhaps the extinction of a butterfly species is nothing compared to famine and hunger, but the butterflies may be an alarm bell—a signal that we are tinkering with a process we know little about and may not be qualified to govern: the creation and release into the environment of dramatically new life forms. Europeans, in fact, have begun to rebel against such genetic tinkering. Public opposition to genetically-altered foods led the European Union to require labels on all genetically-altered products imported from the U.S. American corn, in particular, has been continued on page 2 ANNA WHITE

Sports for Sale

Hidden Connections continued from page 1 singled out by Europeans. According to a recent article in the New York Times, “There have been virtually no corn exports from the United States because the geneticallymodified corn cannot be separated from the rest of the crop, costing American farmers about $200 million a year.” Some of the largest U.S. exporters have told producers they will no longer accept genetically-altered corn for export. Within the U.S., the biotech industry vigorously opposes labeling to identify genetic modifications. American consumers feel otherwise. A survey of consumers conducted by a Swiss drug company found that 90 percent of Americans favored such labels. Half a million people signed a petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demanding mandatory labeling. Meanwhile, the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit against the FDA to reclassify genetic modification as an additive that would require labeling.

Tw e n t i e t h C e n t u r y A g r i c u l t u r e : P r o d u c t i o n Ve r s u s D i v e r s i t y Transgenics—species altered in the laboratory to contain the genes of unrelated species—are only the latest in a series of 20th century “miracle” crops developed and marketed partly in response to a burgeoning human population. It is indeed critical that food production remain ahead of population growth, and thanks to some of these crops, it has. But these modern crops—from early corn hybrids to Green Revolution wheat and rice varieties to transgenics—are also responsible for tremendous amounts of environmental damage. Most of these “high-yields” are actually “high-responding”—to enormous influxes of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers that disrupt ecosystems, pollute waterways, and cause unsuspecting humans to

Organic Tips ✪ To learn more about genetic engineering, contact the Center for Food Safety (a project of the International Center for Technology Assessment) at www.icta.org, or call 202-547-9359. ✪ Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) connects local farmers with local consumers, helping to develop a regional food supply and stronger local economy. To find a source for locally-grown produce in your area, check out the Community Supported Agriculture of North America website at www.umass.edu/umext/csa, or call 717-264-4141 (ext. 3247). ✪ In the Winter 1998 edition of Enough!, we encouraged you to sign a petition for mandatory labeling of genetically-engineered foods. It’s not too late. Call 877-REAL-FOOD, or visit the Mothers for Natural Law website at www.safe-food.org to sign the petition online.

ingest chemicals with harmful side effects. These miracle crops have also undermined their own genetic base by displacing traditional, genetically-diverse varieties developed over thousands of years that were used as the foundations for the high-yield varieties. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 75 percent of our agricultural diversity has been lost in the past century. Farmers’ fields that once harbored genetically-diverse crops now brim with patented varieties, precisely tailored and genetically specific. While pests evolve to figure out these chemically-supported monocultures, breeders have fewer and fewer places to go for fresh genes. As demonstrated with Bt corn, looking outside the species for genetic materials can be risky business.

Losing Contact with Our Life Force At a recent environmental conference in West Virginia, the leader of a discussion group on food issues held up an unopened cola can. He asked if anyone in the group knew where it came from. He wasn’t asking for the location of the nearest mini-mart. He wondered if anyone knew the organic content of this sealed aluminum cylinder. Opening the can, pouring the dark brown liquid into a glass, you still couldn’t discern the cola’s organic makeup. If you read the label, however, you might discover that a primary ingredient (besides carbonated water) is corn, in the form of corn syrup. Most likely, the corn came from the same Midwestern Corn Belt planted in Bt corn. The average American, according to the authors of Stuff, consumes about 48 pounds of corn syrup a year. We drink more sodas than we do water from the tap. Corn syrup, in fact, is the second-largest use of American corn. The primary consumer of corn in this country? Livestock. Livestock, mostly cows, eats 60 percent of the U.S. corn harvest, and 70 percent of the total American grain harvest (40 percent of the harvest worldwide). Converting grain to meat is an inefficient use of croplands. According to Lester Brown in Tough Choices, a 10 percent reduction in grain-fed livestock consumption by the world’s affluent would free 64 million tons of grain for direct human consumption, enough to cover 27 months of population growth.

Regaining our Hold So what does this have to do with butterflies? Simply this: the compromises made to maintain global food security might be viewed as a necessary Faustian bargain (sacrificing our genes rather than our souls), but for the fact that much of current food production represents misdirectcontinued on page 13

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◆ FALL 1999

Hidden Connections continued from page 2 ed effort—designed not to improve supplies but to cater to manufactured wants, like sodas and fast-food burgers. Some argue that if we lived in closer contact to and with greater awareness of the food we eat—its origins, its life cycles, its hidden costs—we would scale back on some of the more damaging and less logical aspects of modern agriculture. And we might be less eager to populate the world’s agricultural fields with life forms ingeniously manufactured, but not fully understood. We can make better choices. The Consumers Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, published by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is a comprehensive “how to” guide for consumers looking to reduce their environmental impact. “The production of food for household consumption is a very significant cause of environmental problems,” note the authors. Two pieces of advice are offered: 1) eat less meat; 2) buy certified-organic produce. According to UCS, “[C]utting the average household’s meat consumption (both poultry and red meat) in half and replacing it with the nutritional equivalent of grains would cut food-related land use and common water pollution—two of the three most serious environmental consequences of food production—by 30 percent and 24 percent, respectively.” On organic farming, UCS explains the difference in impact and philosophy to modern industrial agriculture: “Unlike industrial agriculture, which looks at the farm as an outdoor factory, with inputs entering one end and outputs exiting the other, sustainable agriculture views a farm as an integrated system made up of elements like soil, plants, insects, and animals. Farmers who take a sustainable approach reduce or eliminate traditional inputs, such as pesticides and fertilizers. Rather than concentrate on a single crop, they use crop rotations and other adjustments of the agricultural system to manage problems such as pests, diseases, and poor soil quality.” To take advantage of this “integrated system” of organic agriculture, we must employ the same system in our own lives. The factory model of farming may boost production, but it does not examine inputs and outputs, and does not question the reasons behind the effort. Boosting production to feed the world is one thing. Boosting production to feed our appetite for unhealthy food is quite another. Not only does it lead us away from a sustainable system of agriculture, it leads us away from a sustainable relationship with the Earth. —Dave Tilford is Special Projects Director for the Center for a New American Dream

FUN BOX

MORE FUN, LESS STUFF! It’s easy to lose touch with simple pleasures — like working with your hands. Creating something from wood is rewarding and fun!

Cr e a t i ve Ca r v i n g here’s a timeless art and beauty to the craft of woodworking, from a carpenter shaving a plank with two hands, wood curls feathering to the floor, to the rich gleam and sturdy quality of the finished product. But today’s manufacturers, in an effort to meet the surging demand of American consumers, have often forgotten their legacy of craftsmanship and art, speeding goods off production lines that are identical and cheap. Product quality has also suffered in the modern, frenetic world. With rock-bottom pricing for many goods, repairing doesn’t make economic sense, and consumers feel little attachment to the item—making it easier to simply toss in the dump if it breaks. But there are ways to beat the “buy and chuck” mentality. Creating something with your own hands can be a truly rewarding experience. Durable, beautiful items can be crafted right at home through the art of woodworking—using time-honored traditions like turning, whittling and carving. From the warm, rich hues of cherry to the clear grains of maple, wood offers a beauty and function for everyone’s taste and purpose. Wood can be salvaged from a variety of sites, and more and more places are selling sustainably-harvested, certified wood, which eschews clearcutting and other destructive forestry practices. Look for logos from the Forest Stewardship Council, Scientific Certification Systems, or SmartWood for eco-friendly options, and have fun! Embracing woodworking doesn’t mean you have to invest in loads of power tools or fashion a bedroom suite, either. If you’re new to the art, start out small. How about whittling a custom key chain? When your friends and relatives are sick of receiving key chains for their birthdays, maybe you could move on to wooden spoons. And if you don’t own tools of your own for the project, you probably have a friend that does. For the woodworking novice, here are a few resources to get you started.

T

Basic Bowl Turning, by Judy Ditmer ($12.95), offers tips and more

for beginning woodworkers. The Woodworking Catalog (www.woodworking.com) features discussion forums, links to related sites, and an online magazine. www.sculptor.org/wood.htm offers information on supplies and links to local carving and wood-sculpting guilds. —Pete Byer is a Research Associate at the Center for a New American Dream FALL 1999 ◆ 1 3