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Food Waste

This post is part of the series EU Agriculture 2020.

Lots of discussion, even fake news, on the topic of food waste.  This is a serious problem, but not in the way it’s often presented in the media.

The way our food is produced and distributed is horrendously wasteful.  Food that’s processed (including meats), transported long distances or grown with wasteful pesticides and fertilizers is not only often of very poor quality, but horrendously wasteful if it’s thrown away.  Is the answer to this to accept foods past their use by or expiration dates?  Should supermarkets just throw this food away or give it to the homeless?

A large portion of what supermarkets sell also just isn’t really necessary, like fruits and vegetables out of season or a lot of the processed foods.

Almost every food with a nutrition label is a processed food, and these labels often trick people into buying things they don’t need.  Rather than think about the quality of the food, and if it was produced locally or in a healthy way, these labels make you think you should buy according to ingredients.  The best place to buy food is one that doesn’t label their food this way.

I think the answer lies in reforming production and distribution systems.  Buying food at farmers’ markets, or local produce shops, not only often results in higher quality food, but much less inherent waste.  When people pay more for higher quality food, they tend to think more about wasting it.  It’s also really useful if people grow a portion of the food they eat.

One of the best ways everyone can waste less food is to avoid supermarkets entirely, or only use them for very basic food like seasonal vegetables, potatoes, rice and so on.

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The Segmented Society

This was the title of a book written by my late father.  You can buy it on Amazon here, if you’re interested.  It’s not my intention to say what this book means, or what he thought.  In fact not many people like it when others say what they think, and I don’t think he would have either.  If you want to know what he thought, you should read the book and come to your own conclusions, or maybe talk to some of his former students or colleagues.  His thoughts are his, and mine are mine.

The purpose of this post is to talk about what I think the relevance of segmentation in our society is, both to this blog as well as the seed movement and democracy in general.

Information Bubbles

We all live in our own information bubbles.  We all choose what information to read and acquire, according to our interests and the people we trust.  Reading this blog, and this article, identifies you with one particular bubble.  If you also listen to Fox News in the US, or the BBC in the UK, these are also information bubbles.  Your profession, religion, education, ethnicity and many other factors play a role in the information bubbles you participate in.  There are countless information bubbles all over the world, and seemingly more developing all the time.  Perhaps more important, is what you choose to exclude from your information bubbles.

Labour is an important political party in some European countries, comparable to the Democratic Party in the US.  Here in The Netherlands, the Labour party had similar problems to the US Democratic party, and is struggling to find relevance with voters.  It was once a somewhat left leaning party, but in recent times has mostly capitulated to the more conservative parties, and no one knows what they stand for any more.

The Labour party commissioned a study into their recent electoral losses.  One of the conclusions of the study was that society is becoming more fragmented, and they aren’t doing enough to stay sufficiently relevant, so people aren’t continuing to include them in their information bubbles.

The Rise and Fall of Television

The declining importance of TV, and the rising relevance of the Internet, has played an important role in the segmenting of society.  It used to be that TV was a major influence in people’s lives, all over the world, and being a part of everyone’s information bubbles was as simple as paying for an advertisement.

Cigarette advertising also played a major role, because the money the tobacco industry invested in advertising paid for a great deal of public advertising infrastructure.

Now, everything from ad blocking software, open source software, downloading TV programs with the advertising removed, and the ability to choose which internet sites we look at (often based on advice from others), give us all a lot more control over the information we choose to let into our bubbles.

We still have companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google and so on, which all play major roles in our news, choice of websites and what we choose to buy.

Bubbles as Membership and Labels

Participating in information bubbles can have very tangible consequences.  For example, when you read this blog, link to it, comment on it, talk to others about what you’ve seen, mention it on Facebook, put it in your own words elsewhere on the Internet and so on, it can have a cascading effect.

Initially, I will see it in my log files if you read this site.  This allows me to tell others how many readers I have, and if you leave comments others can see my readers are active.  If things I write about become topics of discussion, others will find my original post in Google, and may become more active or long term readers of this blog.  Even very passive participation can have a big impact on this blog.  If you get in touch with me, and tell me what you think, you even have a chance to participate in the contents of the blog.

But also, once you identify yourself as a reader of this blog to others, then they know something about you.  Just like if someone tells you they watch Fox in the US, you know something about them.  You can like or dislike this blog, tell others, and allow them to develop their own opinions about you.  You become a part of the community of this blog.

The same thing happens with every other blog or news site, or TV station.  The same thing happens when you join or support other organizations or groups.  I think this is an important way democracy works.

Importantly, you allow this blog to speak on your behalf!  If you identify yourself as a member or participant, you generally support the positions of this blog, and I sometimes make assertions based on this blog’s topics and size of readership.  This is true of any traditional media source, or any other organization.

Identifying Opponents

As well as finding friends within your information bubbles, and other like minded people, you can also use these bubbles to identify people who are working against things you believe in.  Sometimes this is intentional, perhaps because of commercial interests, and other times it’s just people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Sometimes the issues are very complicated, and people make the wrong spur of the moment choices.  It often requires thought and discussions with others to straighten things out, and above all it requires depending on people you trust.

This is a very important tool of information bubbles, and in my opinion as a society we are just learning how to do this.  This is an important part of this blog, and related to my discussions recently on fake news.

It often requires resisting the temptation to pay attention to famous or well known people, who are possibly trying to turn their notoriety into money.

Tool of Democracy

Effectively controlling and manipulating your information bubbles are a very important part of Democracy.  It allows you to filter out untrustworthy information, and to see the truth in situations.  It allows you to identify and resist advertising, and prevent being manipulated by the wealthiest 1% who continue to have the power to pay for providing you with fake news and misleading information.

I’m going to post more about this in the future.

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Glyphosate ECI — Democracy Stolen

The organizers of the Glyphosate European Citizens’ Initiative issued a press release today claiming victory. Here’s a snapshot of the campaign page for future reference.

Activist Organizations as Proxies

This is a battle of Monsanto and Bayer against small farmers, plain and simple.  The patents on glyphosate have long since expired, and the sale of the product doesn’t result in high corporate profits any more.  Bayer is in the process of acquiring Monsanto, and wants to sell farmers new solutions for controlling weeds, that are more expensive and patented.  This is a similar situation as the banning of old TVs and light bulbs.

Glyphosate is an emotional issue.  Many activists have been against it for a long time now, and in general against all use of pesticides.  Glyphosate is particularly emotional for many of us, because we have come into contact with it through other gardeners, farmers and it’s even been used by local governments in urban areas.  It’s a horrendous health and environmental issue, but for better or worse, it’s also a critical tool for many farmers.

There’s been very little direct news from Bayer of Monsanto on this issue.  We hear things like ‘analysts say this ECI will cost Bayer millions of euros in Europe alone’ — but no confirmation from Bayer on this.  Neither Bayer nor Monsanto seem the least bit opposed to this campaign.  They are just sitting back and watching everything unfold.

Instead of involving themselves directly on the issue, these big companies are using a combination of fake activist organizations, together with other paid or tricked organizations, to promote their message and pretend this is some sort of activist issue.

There is no democratic control of this campaign, no way for participants to voice their opinions and influence the outcome.  I believe many of the people and organizations that gave their name and reputations in support of this measure, are aghast at how this has become a vicious attack on Europe’s farmers, small and large, but have no real way to voice that opinion.

Unrealistic Amounts of Money

There was a time, as recently as 5-10 years ago, when some of these health and environmental organizations were credible.  In particular, here in The Netherlands, for many people giving significant amounts of money to charitable organizations was an important part of their life.  Some of these organizations became obscenely wealthy as a result.  These days are gone, and people today realize if you give money to an environmental organization, your money is dwarfed by large corporate or philanthropist contributions, and as an individual donor you have no possibility of influencing them.  In the end, your contribution often doesn’t support the kinds of causes you think it should.

On the other hand, corporations and the wealthiest individuals have become particularly adept at using these organizations for their own purposes.

To put things in perspective, one of the most important seed initiatives right now, the Open Source Seed Initiative, after several years of fund raising, mentioned recently on their web page they had raised on the order of tens of thousands of dollars.  This isn’t really enough to hire a single person for an entire year.  The glyphosate ECI on the other hand is clearly involving millions of euros, and tens, hundreds or even thousands of people, many of whom are very skilled and highly paid lobbyists.

No Evidence of Real Signatures Being Collected

Signatures on a petition are understandably low on the radar in terms of considering forgeries.   At the same time, they are very susceptible to being manipulated with large amounts of money.  You can for example pay a student minimum wage to collect signatures from their friends, but you can also pay thousands of students to do the same thing.  You can also collect signatures at workplaces, under the watchful eye of their employers.

If you spend a lot of money this way, it can be visible, and people can ask questions about where the money is coming from.  If you copy signatures from an earlier ECI, probably no one would notice.  The same thing is true if you happened to have a list of people’s personal data, for example dates of birth and address, and forged the signatures as a sort of identity theft.  Who would notice this, and who would investigate?

What I can say with respect to this blog is that it is visible in Google, shared on Facebook and very visible to anyone researching this ECI.  Of the million plus people who signed it, only a few hundred were interested enough to research it on the Internet, and have ended up on this blog.

There’s no convincing publicly available evidence that any real persons have signed this initiative of their own free will.

Fake News, Fake Blogs and an Orchestrated Campaign

The Internet is swimming in fake and inconsequential news articles and blog posts on glyphosate right now.  Very few of them are real news outlets, and certainly very few big name papers or news sites.

They all repeat the same stories over and over, just slightly rewritten from site to site.  There’s no real debate, and very few offering different opinions or the perspective of farmers.

There have been very few announcements of events or promotional activities.  No real compelling news has emerged during this campaign.  The signatures have just appeared out of nowhere, without any reason or explanation.  In addition, the signatures appeared just in time, as the organizers planned, right at the end of June.

Fake Science with Changing Rules

The debate over science is almost laughable.  First all science has to be published articles, but most patent holders can block studies on their own products.  At the same time, loads of unpublished studies and unsupported facts emerge from anonymous sources, and they are supposed to be considered by the Commission.

The EU is supposed to only use ‘real’ science, but all of the science available is funded by industry.

The ECI itself even includes language that could possibly force all future science to be paid for and approved by the pesticide manufactures themselves.

It’s all just a catch-22 and all the arguments and debates are looping back on themselves.

Farming Crisis

There is and has been for a long time now, a farming crisis in Europe.  In the Netherlands, a tiny country of 17 million people, 10,000 farms are for sale now.  Many farmers report their children are not interested in becoming farmers themselves, or taking over the family business.  Not enough young people have the interest or financial means to start farming.  There is land grabbing which is driving the price of the most desirable land sharply up, while farming communities are reeling from the collapse of the family farming economy and the unprecedented numbers of farms on the market.

Banning glyphosate is all that’s needed to drive many more farmers into bankruptcy.

This is a very serious situation.

No Compromise

The organizations behind the glyphosate ECI are relentless in where they stand.  No compromises.  Glyphosate must be banned.  No sympathy for farmers.

The Real Solution

The real solution is extending the glyphosate license for 15 years, like the farmers are asking for, then highly regulate glyphosate.  It should only be available to farmers, and it should not be used in public spaces or near people’s homes.  Appropriate safety measures should be taken to avoid accidental contamination and contact with farm workers.

Genuine effort should be taken to encourage farmers to stop using glyphosate or any other pesticide, through education and incentives, rather than an absolute ban.

Consumers should have more information about what their food has been treated with, and have more opportunity to buy it from trustworthy sources.

Failing Europe

If the Commission accepts this ECI, and the arguements given for banning glyphosate, they are ignoring all their critics of an undemocratic Europe that ignores the wishes of the people.

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Food Industry Fake News Roundup

There are a number of interrelated campaigns coming from the food industry at the moment.  Here are some which have my attention, and some of my thoughts.

Food Waste

I think any time you see an issue appearing as supposedly ‘real news’ as often as this, it should set off your fake news alarm.  Of course food waste is an issue, and something every one should care about.  It’s nice of course that free food is often made available from this waste.

I also hope the prospect of supermarkets removing the expiration dates on foods is enough to make everyone want to buy their food elsewhere.  This is a plain violation of consumers rights.

While it’s true there’s a lot of waste in our food distribution systems, the real issue is how our food is produced.  If you buy an organic apple from a local farmer at a farmers market, then throw it away, preferably on a compost pile, there’s very little waste.  The only thing wasted is a little bit of the farmers time, and the energy used to transport it to the market and to your house.  If the farmer has some crops he can’t sell, and disposes of them on his farm, then there’s almost no waste.

On the other hand if you buy an out of season apple, from the other side of the planet, there can be an enormous waste if you throw this away.  This apple has probably been treated with resource intensive and environmentally destructive pesticides and fertilizer.  It has to be transported a long distance.  If you buy it in the supermarket, it will probably come with excessive packaging and shipping materials you never see.  It probably won’t taste good, and will need a wax coating to keep it looking fresh.

Meat of course tops the list in terms of wastefulness, together with animal products in general.  The amount of energy, water use and environmental destruction involved in producing the meat commonly sold today is astonishing.  It’s not impossible to buy responsibly raised animal products, but these are in short supply and it’s not possible to meet world wide demand with these.  Becoming vegetarian or vegan is the most important thing you can do to fight food waste.

The best food to buy is locally produced and distributed, grown without chemicals, from a farmer you know and trust, but not necessarily certified organic.  Even if you throw some of what you buy away, there’s almost no environmental cost with this type of food.

What’s certain is demanding that supermarkets selling industrially produced food somehow become less wasteful is a silly thing to do.  At best this is a short term solution until you can find a better source of food.

Glyphosate European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI)

I’ve written about this before.  At best this ECI was poorly written, but the idea of banning a single pesticide by name is seriously flawed.  There are a number of other problems which I talked about before.

The other thing to be concerned about is democracy in general.  At the time I posted the article linked to above, there were about 350,000 signatures on the ECI.  Now there are nearly 700,000.  The article could be what some people call ‘click bait’.  That is, it has a very provocative title, and is very visible to anyone searching Google on the ECI.  If 350,000 people were actually interested in this ECI, logic suggests they would research it and follow developments on the Internet, and a large number of them would end up reading my article.  This hasn’t really happened, and to date only a few hundred people have found the article via Google, and some may have read it more than once.

Somehow, the ECI is being signed by large numbers of people who don’t seem to care about the issue.

The good thing is a healthy discussion seems to be underway in Brussels.

I don’t think a complete ban of glyphosate is the solution, nor do I think trying to change the current industrial system by phasing out the chemicals they use is very practical either.  I certainly think there are many useful ways to restrict the use of glyphosate and other pesticides, for example: only selling them to people licensed to use agriculture chemicals;  requiring farmers be equipped with protective clothing, equipment and safe workplace practices; and prohibiting use in cities and other public spaces.

The reality is the current system of farming is the result of many billions of euros in investment over decades, and a similar investment is probably necessary in a replacement system based on agroecology.  I think the European institutions need to come to grips with the idea that the current system needs to be phased out, and a long term, massive and sustained investment is needed to create a new system.  This needs to address many issues like land grabbing, distribution systems, rural development and so on.

No Patents on Seeds

This issue is simple.  It’s very important to end patents on seeds, but the people running the campaign on this issue are not doing what they say.  They are only trying to end patents on conventionally bred seeds, leaving the door open to patents on GMOs.  This is flawed, and would make the situation worse than it is now.

Monsanto Tribunal

Campaigns are all about the people behind them, and this is a classic example of the wrong people with the wrong ideas.  This is not unlike the No Patents on Seeds above.

We would all like to see Monsanto tried and convicted of their crimes, but this idea almost seems lost by the organizers.  The very unremarkable verdict in the trial came out the other day, and it seems unlikely they’ll be able to bring the matter forward in a useful way.

What was the Monsanto Tribunal all about?

Silencing Opposition and Controlling the Message: I was there, and I certainly felt my opinion wasn’t welcome.   I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Lobbying for Industrial Agriculture:  Brussels based lobby group CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory) was prominently featured, as was the No Patents on Seeds and the Ban Glyphosate group.

Organic Consumers Association:  I hope just the name of this organization rings alarm bells in most people.  Think of it, an ‘activist’ organization that demands organic standards be improved?  This is a bit like teaching us all to eat industrial organic food from the supermarket.  This goes together with lobbying for industrial agriculture above.

Dutch Racist Groups: Only ethnic Dutch people were featured as speakers or relevant parts of the organization.  At least one group well known for their racism was a prominent part of the organization.  This is very typical of the food industry in the Netherlands, which is often family run going back generations, and often like to portray their products as ‘clean’ and ‘pure’.  Not a single food movement from the immigrant community of the Hague was featured in the organization or speakers, a city rich in ethnic diversity and culture.  In a comical way, seemingly to cover up this racism, the presence of a large number of people from Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries was imported by the organizers.

We just had elections here in the Netherlands, and I think the outcome is proof that most people here don’t like this sort of ethnic division and exclusion.  I hope the organizers are listening.

 

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What is Fake News?

Fake news can take many forms.  In broad terms, fake news is a lie someone publishes in order to influence public opinion.  For the purposes of this blog, fake news is usually one or more corporations or super-wealthy persons, who are trying to promote a product or industry.  The basic form this fake news takes is often very predictable, and fundamentally hasn’t changed in decades.

Fake news often originates from corporate lobby efforts.  The largest lobby groups in the world now, in order of size, are the food industry, the tobacco lobby and the oil industry.  Of course there are many others.  Nearly all fake news come from these groups, sometimes more than one of them combined, and you can often recognize fake news by associating it with these groups.

Fake news rarely comes directly from one of the above mentioned groups, but rather a seemingly unrelated organization.  For example, health and environmental organizations are frequently used to spread the fake news message.  These are often well known or generally trusted organizations, who put their names behind the message.  These organizations often have names or stated goals, that have nothing to do with what they really do.

Fake news is almost always a one-way message.  It often seemingly appears out of nowhere, and there’s no way to discuss or influence the message.  For example, a TV ad is just presented, and there is no direct way to respond.  Another example would be a public rally or meeting, without any real advanced warning on the material to be discussed, and no way to give your opinion.

Fake news often attacks a particular product or groups of products, that compete with a commercial product belonging to the source of the fake news.  This is often some cheap alternative they wish to have removed from the market.  An example of this would be standard light bulbs or square TVs, which compete with newer and more expensive alternatives.

The message also is often presented together with cited and published scientific research.  The reason is to intimidate the average person, who won’t have access to the means of generating such research on their own.

There is often a really emotional side to fake news, with very strong imagery.  It sometimes has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but is just intended to shock you.

Fake news often doesn’t come out of the blue, but rather there has been some ongoing effort to make the topic familiar with other activities.

Your Brain on Drugs

This American TV ad from the 1980’s is a very good example of many of the points I made above.  At the time, the Tobacco Lobby was the most powerful lobby force in the US, and it was later confirmed the sponsoring organization Partnership for a Drug Free America accepted money from tobacco companies.

The strategy tobacco companies take, then and now, is to make all alternative products as unavailable as possible.  For example, they were behind prohibition in the US, where the sale of alcohol was banned.

After prohibition, they established a sort of partnership with the alcohol industry.   This resulted in drinking and smoking ages, smoking always the same or lower than alcohol and little or no enforcement.   The goal here was to see young people first become addicted to tobacco, then reinforce this addiction with an addiction to alcohol.

So in this video you have an organization, Partnership for a Drug Free America, who’s name doesn’t have anything to do with what they actually promote.  Their real goal is to get young people addicted to cigarettes.  As an organization, they gained trust through ties with right-wing conservative Christian groups, who were very influential at the time, especially with parents of young children.

So if you were a parent at the time, were afraid your children might be using drugs, and tempted to give this organization money.  What you would actually be supporting was efforts to get your children to start smoking.

At the end of this video, “Any questions?”, is an example of the one-way nature of the message.  There is no way to talk back to or influence this message or organization.  They have one goal, to promote tobacco.  Their message is tobacco is okay, and everything else is drugs.

What Can You Do?

If you are a supporter or a part of an organization that promotes fake news, you can talk back and make others aware.  You can post about it on the Internet, social media or just tell others.  The more the truth about fake news gets out, the less effective it is.

If you’re an activist, and an organization you support publishes fake news, you should be very suspicious of anything else they ever tell you.  People sometimes make mistakes, but organizations generally don’t, and publishing fake news is an indication they are careless or being influenced.

Most large and wealthy organizations are not what they seem to be.  The world’s wealthy 1% often exert their power and control over us through these organizations and fake news.  You are often better off participating in a smaller organization that is more democratic in their way of thinking and working.  Any organization that doesn’t care about what you think, isn’t worth paying attention to.

Other Example of Fake News

Once you find a fake news story, one of the best ways of finding others is to look for something related.  For example the BBC is full of fake news, and it’s one of my favorite places to look.

If one environmental organization has a fake news campaign, look at the other organizations that are also promoting the same thing, and look at some of their other messages.

There are currently campaigns trying to phase out diesel engines, because they are old technology, and promote newer more expensive electric vehicle technologies.  Gasoline/benzine/petrol is also a more profitable fuel for the oil industry than diesel.

The food industry is trying to get people to pay attention to ingredients in food, rather than the quality of food itself.  This helps them promote their processed foods.  They are also trying to phase out common and cheap ingredients, like salt and sugar, in order to promote more profitable alternatives.

This blog has a Fake News category, with other examples of fake news.