The debate over whether genetically modified food should have to be
labelled as such has heated up recently with Proposition 37 coming up
for a vote in California. Proposition 37 would require that all food
sold in California as grocery (as opposed to restaurant food) be
labelled as GMO if it either is a GMO crop or contains GMO crop
ingredients. If Prop 37 passes and survives the court challenges that
would follow, then it will likely be the model that federal and other
state GMO labelling laws would try to follow.
It may sound like the kind of idea that farmers like us would be all
for, but even though we're altogether opposed to GMO's, we think it's
pretty ambiguous whether a law like Prop 37 would even be a good thing.
The thing that we find most troublesome about Prop 37 is that it
effectively defines the fight against GMO's in terms that disregard most
of the GMO crop acreage in the country. There are currently only 8 GMO
crops being grown commercially, although they include a few of the most
widely grown crops. Corn is the most planted crop in the US, and its
leading use is for fuel ethanol. Its second leading use is animal feed.
Soybeans are similar. Cotton falls even further outside the Prop 37
definitions (although cottonseed oil is used as a food ingredient.)
Alfalfa is strictly an animal feed, so it falls entirely outside the
Prop 37 definitions. The other four crops are relatively minor: sugar
beets (granulated sugar, etc.), rapeseed (canola), summer squash
(zucchini/yellow squash), and papaya. So our biggest concern is that
Prop 37 gives GMO's a free ride for their most significant uses
(particularly in terms of acreage): animal feed and non-food uses.
Meanwhile we wonder what good the law might achieve. People that care
about the GMO take-over of our farms can easily find out what
ingredients (i.e. the 8 crops we just listed) are GMO. If they haven't
even done that are they going to change their shopping habits when its
on the label? And if folks really cared about where their food came
from or what went into growing it, then they probably aren't buying
fossil fuel- and chemical-intensive, corporate-industrial food from
supermarkets, whether it's GMO yet or not. In other words, if they're
already growing their own and buying from local farms that they know and
trust, then the law can't help them any further.
So that forces the question on us: what then should those of us
opposed to GMO's do? Here's something we wrote in answer to that
question for another purpose:
Insofar as we're opposed to GM crops, we think we should all be
trying hard to get away from the whole commodity crop system. Relying on
the commodity crops that haven't been genetically modified yet is
perhaps better than nothing, but it's a hopeless strategy for the
long-term (even the "medium-term.") If we want to continue having
non-GMO options, we think we need to take responsibility for starting to
develop those markets and sources and growing methods/know-how, etc. now.
What's most important to us are the issues of what -- if we
understand the term correctly -- people are calling food sovereignty.
If farming communities in North Carolina can't control what they grow
and how they grow it (and therefore also what they eat), then I think
all the other kinds of problems (GMO's, chemical dependency, fossil fuel
dependency, exploiting laborers, loss of farmland and soil erosion,
etc.) are bound to follow, so we believe any real solution needs to
start with wrestling control back from the global powers to which we've
given control of our food supply.
Those of us that would voice opposition to GMO's have developed a
pretty good alternative model through farmers markets, CSA's, home
gardens, etc. when it comes to in-season garden crops, but we think
field crops are our neglected step-children. There are something like
382 million acres of crops grown in the US. Only 3.3 million of those
acres are vegetables or 4.6 if you include Irish potatoes. We're always
disappointed when customers come to us and suggest that they're going to
fight the GMO tide by buying vegetables from us. If we're really going
to make a difference in how the land in our communities is farmed -- and
we think that's one very important way to look at things -- the other
99% (besides vegetables) is what really counts. (Our numbers, by the
way, came from more than one source, none of which we kept track of, but
we're assuming they're nonetheless accurate enough to make the point
we're making here.) Field corn, soybeans, and wheat apparently make up
198 of the 382 acres of cropland in the US. Hay (59.9 mil) is right up
there. (Land for hay is apparently counted with cropland, but grazing
land isn't.) Cotton is about 4 times as significant as all vegetables
combined in terms of acreage. Grain sorghum has a little over twice the
acreage of all vegetables combined. So the point we're trying to make
is that we think the local-organic food movement should be giving a lot
more attention to field crops.
So to talk about answers, we see two kinds of solutions. One,
obviously, is for the local-organic movement to take more responsibility
for growing the field crops it consumes, for human consumption but
especially for animal consumption (and then also non-food uses like with
cotton.) We'll come back to that. The second kind of solution we see
is finding ways to raise animals without depending (or depending so
much) on field crops (on corn and wheat and soybeans and North Dakota
peas and alfalfa pellets, etc.) for feeding our animals. It seems to us
the easiest answer on that front and one which is available enough
already to customers that want to seek it out is grass-fed beef.
On the other hand, if we wanted to go out and buy it, we wouldn't
know of any North Carolina milk or cheese we could buy from comparably
grass-fed cattle (or goats.) And so far as we know including organic
(certified or otherwise) grain feeds wouldn't open up any more options.
There may be an exception or two that we don't know about, but the rule
seems to be that the small dairies making cheese are feeding
conventional grain to their animals and the large, certified organic
dairies producing liquid milk are depending substantially on organic
grain (much of which, in addition to the hay, we'd guess isn't at all
local) and then sending their milk out of state. So when it comes to
local-organic (certified or otherwise) dairy, we feel like there's a lot
of catching up to do just to get to where we're at with grass-fed beef.
Replacing grain with grass does seem to us like the most realistic path
to dairy food sovereignty in the face of GMO's, perhaps made more
feasible by lower producing genetics, longer dry periods, more seasonal
milking, and/or multiple species grazing. Whatever the technical
solutions, we don't mean to suggest, though, that the problem is
fundamentally technical. The fundamental reason for the absence of
local, grass-fed dairy in North Carolina markets, we believe, is simply
that farmers and consumers don't care enough to want to take on the
inevitable expense and trouble.
From a food sovereignty perspective it appears to us that things
only get worse when we consider pork, poultry, or eggs. At least
pasture plays a significant part in the macro-nutrition equation of a
lot of small-scale/unconventional (and even some conventional) dairy
animals. There are plenty of producers that pasture poultry or pork for
reasons of animal welfare, etc., but little if any of the pastured pork
or poultry movement seems to be doing anything to redefine the macro
feed equations. What we mean by that is that these producers are
depending every bit as much, both in degree and quantity, on the same
sorts of dry feed mixes as confinement producers. It would be
theoretically possible for farmers or communities to grow their own
grains and oilseeds (and possibly even press oil and generate oilseed
meal) and peas/beans to produce substitutes for the standard feed mixes,
but we think that would more than likely demand a scale of production
incompatible with the amount of pork/poultry the farmer could find any
way to sell, especially when most customers don't ever take any concern
for where the feed comes from (so long as they see the happy image of an
animal in a natural-looking setting, if they're even educated enough to
realize that chickens and hogs are being fed any purchased feeds at
all.) So the best hope we see would have to lend itself to a smaller
scale of production, i.e. entry-level for a very marginal enterprise.
We think that would most likely need to be some kind of low-input,
low-production, extensive acreage system. We'd see relying heavily on
extensive forage, possibly planted forages, but more likely forest floor
kind of stuff (grubs, mast...) and maybe some crop gleaning. We think
just a simple grain feed (like straight corn) that a farmer could
conceivably grow himself could then suffice to fill the gaps and make
the whole system come together. The chief challenge would be that a
"pastured pork" producer could sell his pork or poultry so much cheaper
-- we'd guess on the order of 1/2 to 1/3 the price -- if he just took
advantage of the economies of scale that come with the large grain
production systems. (Those economies of scale have, of course, nothing
to do with ecological economy.) The main point here, though, is that
accepting those dollar savings of the large-scale systems leaves us
without any footing to resist the GMO tide.
No matter how much the kind of strategies we've been discussing can
reduce our consumption of GMO field crops, we're still surely going to
depend on field crops at least for supplementing our animals, and we're
also going to want to consume field crops directly (i.e. human
consumption), so there's still the hugely significant, terribly
neglected question of actually growing local-organic (certified or not)
field crops. Suggestions that we can "close the local food loop by
feeding locally milled, organic grain" -- and such comments seem
commonplace, as do the even weaker assertions that simply feeding any
kind of feed to local farm animals offers a real alternative agriculture
-- say to us that we as the local-organic movement haven't even looked
at the huge hole in our "local food loop," let alone begun the huge task
of closing it. ("Locally milled"? That's nice, but is that as deep as
our local agriculture goes before we happily abandon responsibility to
the global economy? Can't we, if we're really any kind of local food
movement, at least aspire to have some community control of the actual
agriculture, of soils and photosynthesis?)
There are, of course, some genuine alternative efforts being made in
North Carolina toward local-organic grain, at least for human
consumption. We're too far away to know much about the rice grown in
Chatham County last year, but we read about it, and that's remarkable.
We know there are slightly larger things happening with local-organic
corn and wheat and soybeans (and not just a byproduct of
global-organic.) There seems to be potential with malting barley, if
efforts haven't begun in North Carolina already. We think the fight
against GMO's demands that we particularly embrace efforts to grow
heirloom varieties of these crops. And we think it demands that
consumers learn how to use more of the crops that can be and are being
grown locally with whatever the local processing limitations are.
One upside of the small scale we would say is necessitated by
local-organic field crops is that large backyard growers should have it
within their means to do a lot of what would otherwise have to be left
to larger farms. A 50 foot square garden space could produce a bushel
or two of wheat (60-120 pounds) for a family and be harvested, threshed,
and winnowed by hand, ready to grind, in an afternoon. It's an
encouraging sign that a second edition of Gene Logsdon's book,
Small-Scale Grain Raising, just came out. We think it's quite
conceivable, for example, to keep a few laying hens on a large backyard
scale with just hand-harvested field corn, as much forage as possible,
plus kitchen byproducts and whatever else can be locally scavenged for
feed.
