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Linked To!

I’ve been linked to by a blog that’s obviously much more popular than mine, Michael Rivero’s What Really Happened? Thank you Michael! This has resulted in some additional places linking here, and generating even more traffic!

He linked to my recent post on the possible link between the disappearing bees and GM crops. This is causing a tenfold increase in traffic to this blog, and generating a discussion unlike any other here. Regular readers of this blog may want to go over and have a look.

To all new visitors, welcome! Please have a look around. I hope you add this blog to your bookmarks or RSS readers, and come back soon. You are just the kind of people I would like to have here, and I will try to write some more posts soon along similar lines as this one. This is not just a gardening blog!

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You Are What You Grow

Michael Pollan of Omnivore’s Dilemma fame explains just how important the upcoming debate on the Farm Bill is to all of us, here in this article for the New York Times Magazine.

The Farm Bill determines the subsidies and national priorities for food production in the US. To a large degree, it determines how half of the land in the US is used and if priority will be given to environmental issues or to high volume food production. It will determine where the massive farm subsidies go. For Americans who can’t afford to buy any food they want, regardless of price, it will to a large degree determine what they eat.

For those of us who live outside of the US, it is nearly as important, because what results from the Farm Bill will put pressure on governments all over the world who will need to harmonize their own food policies with those of the US.

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Link Between Disappearing Bees and GM Crops?

For some time now bee keepers in the US have noticed their bees have been disappearing, the so called Colony Collapse Disorder.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of this problem. The vast majority of our food crops are pollinated by insects, and quite simply without the insects there can be no harvest. Bees are among the most important pollinating insects.

A Pennsylvania bee farmer has a theory why this is happening. He thinks it’s because of GM crops engineered to produce Bt, a naturally occurring pesticide.

I say naturally occurring, because it’s present in small quantities in the environment. In these GM crops however, it’s another story. Crops engineered to produce Bt do so in very large quantities. It’s produced by every cell in the plant including roots, stems, leaves and flowers. It’s also present in the pollen of these plants. The amount of Bt in these plants is enough to trigger allergies in some people, and irritate the skin and eyes of farmers who handle the crops. In India, when sheep were used to clear a field of left over Bt cotton, several sheep died after eating it.

Even if this farmer’s theory turns out not to be true, it should really serve as a wake up call. The genetic contamination from these GM crops has long ago left the fields where they were grown, and if it is necessary to clean it up, it could prove to be enormously difficult. GM contamination is after all the only self-replicating contamination human beings have ever released into the environment.