CA SB1381 GE FOOD LABELING BILL Senate vote count:
19 AYEs - 16 NOs
IS A WIN - YET DEFEATED
19 AYEs - 16 NOs
IS A WIN - YET DEFEATED
Friday, May 30, 2014
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
CA POISED TO PASS SB1381 GE Food Labeling Bill THIS WEEK IN STATE SENATE
Viewpoints: Consumers want labeling on GMO foods
By Elisa Odabashian
Special to The Bee
Published: Tuesday, May. 27, 2014 - 12:00 am
California has often led the nation in passing landmark legislation in the public interest. This week, the California Senate could once again be a leader by passing Senate Bill 1381, introduced by Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, which would require the labeling of genetically engineered, or GMO, foods in the state. Consumers Union, the policy arm ofConsumer Reports, urges the Senate to support transparency in the food system and to stand up for consumers’ right to know how their food is produced. Labeling genetically engineered food will give consumers the ability to make more informed choices about the food they purchase.
This week’s vote in Sacramento comes as a larger movement is underway in 26 states and in Congress to seek mandatory labeling of foods made from genetically engineered crops. California could follow in the footsteps of Vermont and become the second state in the nation to label genetically engineered foods. Connecticut and Maine have already passed labeling legislation, but the enactment of those laws is contingent upon other states passing similar legislation.
Last week, residents of the Oregon counties of Jackson and Josephine overwhelmingly voted for a ballot initiative that bans the growing of genetically engineered crops, thereby protecting their organic crops from genetically engineered contamination – despite the fact that Monsanto, Dupont and other giant chemical companies poured about $1.3 million into defeating the initiative in these small, rural counties.
In 2012, California’s Proposition 37, a ballot initiative requiring labeling of genetically engineered food, narrowly lost. Agribusiness and food corporations spent nearly $50 million in advertising to drown the airwaves and defeat the measure. Now, a groundswell of support by average citizens who are fed up with companies deciding what they should and should not know about their food is making it clear that the public wants to know how their food is produced. Thousands of calls and emails from the public are pouring in to California lawmakers in support of SB 1381.
States are moving ahead of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has indicated that it will support only voluntary labeling of genetically engineered foods, despite receiving nearly 2 million public comments urging mandatory federal labeling. The U.S. is far behind the 64 countries around the world that already require genetically engineered foods to be labeled. Unlike most other developed countries – such as 15 nations in the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia and even China – the U.S. has no laws requiring labeling of genetically engineered foods.
While opponents claim that there is no mainstream scientific evidence of a health risk of genetically engineered foods, this obscures a more complicated reality. There is wide acknowledgment in the scientific community that genetically engineered foods may contain new allergens or increased levels of naturally occurring allergens, of plant toxins and changes in nutrition, in addition to unintended effects, which is why the European Union, unlike the U.S., requires not only labeling, but also pre-market safety reviews of genetically engineered foods. Even the FDA agrees that such problems can arise and urges companies to conduct safety reviews voluntarily.
The American Medical Association in 2012 recommended mandatory pre-market safety reviews of genetically engineered foods. Without labeling and pre-market safety reviews, consumers have no way of knowing if negative health impacts are tied to genetic modification of their foods. And that’s exactly what the biotech industry wants: to keep consumers in the dark about genetically engineered foods.
Whether or not a food is genetically engineered is a simple and clear fact. National polls show that a large majority of consumers want genetically engineered foods to be labeled. Foods that are frozen, irradiated, homogenized or from concentrate are labeled. Similarly, genetically engineered foods should be labeled so that people can make informed choices for themselves and their families.
By Elisa Odabashian
Special to The Bee
Published: Tuesday, May. 27, 2014 - 12:00 am
California has often led the nation in passing landmark legislation in the public interest. This week, the California Senate could once again be a leader by passing Senate Bill 1381, introduced by Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, which would require the labeling of genetically engineered, or GMO, foods in the state. Consumers Union, the policy arm ofConsumer Reports, urges the Senate to support transparency in the food system and to stand up for consumers’ right to know how their food is produced. Labeling genetically engineered food will give consumers the ability to make more informed choices about the food they purchase.
This week’s vote in Sacramento comes as a larger movement is underway in 26 states and in Congress to seek mandatory labeling of foods made from genetically engineered crops. California could follow in the footsteps of Vermont and become the second state in the nation to label genetically engineered foods. Connecticut and Maine have already passed labeling legislation, but the enactment of those laws is contingent upon other states passing similar legislation.
Last week, residents of the Oregon counties of Jackson and Josephine overwhelmingly voted for a ballot initiative that bans the growing of genetically engineered crops, thereby protecting their organic crops from genetically engineered contamination – despite the fact that Monsanto, Dupont and other giant chemical companies poured about $1.3 million into defeating the initiative in these small, rural counties.
In 2012, California’s Proposition 37, a ballot initiative requiring labeling of genetically engineered food, narrowly lost. Agribusiness and food corporations spent nearly $50 million in advertising to drown the airwaves and defeat the measure. Now, a groundswell of support by average citizens who are fed up with companies deciding what they should and should not know about their food is making it clear that the public wants to know how their food is produced. Thousands of calls and emails from the public are pouring in to California lawmakers in support of SB 1381.
States are moving ahead of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has indicated that it will support only voluntary labeling of genetically engineered foods, despite receiving nearly 2 million public comments urging mandatory federal labeling. The U.S. is far behind the 64 countries around the world that already require genetically engineered foods to be labeled. Unlike most other developed countries – such as 15 nations in the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia and even China – the U.S. has no laws requiring labeling of genetically engineered foods.
While opponents claim that there is no mainstream scientific evidence of a health risk of genetically engineered foods, this obscures a more complicated reality. There is wide acknowledgment in the scientific community that genetically engineered foods may contain new allergens or increased levels of naturally occurring allergens, of plant toxins and changes in nutrition, in addition to unintended effects, which is why the European Union, unlike the U.S., requires not only labeling, but also pre-market safety reviews of genetically engineered foods. Even the FDA agrees that such problems can arise and urges companies to conduct safety reviews voluntarily.
The American Medical Association in 2012 recommended mandatory pre-market safety reviews of genetically engineered foods. Without labeling and pre-market safety reviews, consumers have no way of knowing if negative health impacts are tied to genetic modification of their foods. And that’s exactly what the biotech industry wants: to keep consumers in the dark about genetically engineered foods.
Whether or not a food is genetically engineered is a simple and clear fact. National polls show that a large majority of consumers want genetically engineered foods to be labeled. Foods that are frozen, irradiated, homogenized or from concentrate are labeled. Similarly, genetically engineered foods should be labeled so that people can make informed choices for themselves and their families.
Elisa Odabashian is director of the West Coast Office and State Campaigns of Consumers Union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports.
Source: Sacramento Bee http://www.sacbee.com/2014/05/27/6433985/viewpoints-consumers-want-labeling.html
BIG AG KILLS SOILS AND WATER UPTAKE BY PLANTS
We Are the Soil
'Creative work in being stewards of the land and co-creators of living soil is not an “input” into a food system, but the most important output of good farming,' writes Shiva. (Public domain)We are made up of the same five elements — earth, water, fire, air and space — that constitute the Universe. We are the soil. We are the earth. What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves. And it is no accident that the words “humus” and “humans” have the same roots.
This ecological truth is forgotten in the dominant paradigm because it is based on eco-apartheid, the false idea that we are separate and independent of the earth and also because it defines soil as dead matter. If soil is dead to begin with, human action cannot destroy its life. It can only “improve” the soil with chemical fertilisers. And if we are the masters and conquerors of the soil, we determine the fate of the soil. Soil cannot determine our fate.
"The claim that the Green Revolution or genetic engineering feeds the world is false. Intrinsic to these technologies are monocultures based on chemical inputs, a recipe for killing the life of the soil."
History, however, is witness to the fact that the fate of societies and civilisations is intimately connected to how we treat the soil — do we relate to the soil through the Law of Return or through the Law of Exploitation and Extraction.
The Law of Return — of giving back — has ensured that societies create and maintain fertile soil and can be supported by living soil over thousands of years. The Law of Exploitation — of taking without giving back — has led to the collapse of civilisations.
Contemporary societies across the world stand on the verge of collapse as soils are eroded, degraded, poisoned, buried under concrete and deprived of life. Industrial agriculture, based on a mechanistic paradigm and use of fossil fuels has created ignorance and blindness to the living processes that create a living soil. Instead of focusing on the Soil Food Web, it has been obsessed with external inputs of chemical fertilisers — what Sir Albert Howard called the NPK mentality. Biology and life have been replaced with chemistry.
External inputs and mechanisation are imperative for monocultures. By exposing the soil to wind, sun and rain, monocultures expose the soil to erosion by wind and water.
Soils with low organic matter are also most easily eroded, since organic matter creates, aggregates and binds the soil.
Soil is being lost at 10 to 40 times the rate at which it can be replenished naturally. This implies 30 per cent less food over the next 20-50 years. Soil erosion washes away soil nutrients. A tonne of top soil averages 1-6 kg of nitrogen, 1-3 kg of phosphorous, 2-30 kg of potassium, whereas soil in eroded land has only 0.1-0.5 per cent nitrogen. The cost of these nutrient losses are $20 billion annually.
"Soil, not oil, holds the future for humanity. The oil-based, fossil fuel intensive, chemical intensive, industrial agriculture has unleashed three processes which are killing the soil, and hence impacting our future."
Fertile soils contain 100 tonnes of organic matter per ha. Reduction of soil organic matter by 1.4-0.9 per cent lowers yield potential by 50 per cent. Chemical monocultures also make soils more vulnerable to drought and further contribute to food insecurity.
Further, eroded soils and soils without organic matter absorb 10 to 300 mm less water per ha per year from rainfall. This represents 7 to 44 per cent decrease in water availability for food production, contributing to a decline in biological productivity from 10-25 per cent.
No technology can claim to feed the world while it destroys the life in the soil by failing to feed it on the basis of the Law of Return. This is why the claim that the Green Revolution or genetic engineering feeds the world is false. Intrinsic to these technologies are monocultures based on chemical inputs, a recipe for killing the life of the soil and accelerating soil erosion and degradation. Degraded and dead soils, soils without organic matter, soils without soil organisms, soils with no water holding capacity, create famines and a food crisis, they do not create food security.
This is especially true in times of climate change. Not only is industrial agriculture responsible for 40 per cent of the Green House gases contributing to climate change, it is also more vulnerable to it.
Soils with organic matter are more resilient to drought and climate extremes. And increasing organic matter production through biodiversity intensive systems, which are in effect photosynthesis intensive systems is the most effective way to get the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, into the plants, and then into the soil through the Law of Return.
Soil, not oil, holds the future for humanity. The oil-based, fossil fuel intensive, chemical intensive, industrial agriculture has unleashed three processes which are killing the soil, and hence impacting our future.
Firstly, industrial agriculture destroys living soils through monocultures and chemicals. Second, an oil-based paradigm intensifies fossil fuel inputs and creates a false measure of productivity which presents an unproductive system as productive.
The trick lies in reducing creative productive work to “labour “ as a commodity, counting people as labour as an “input”, and not counting fossil fuels as an input. Intensive fossil fuel use translates into more the 300 “energy slaves” that work invisibly behind each worker on fossil fuel intensive industrial farms.
People as an input means the less people on the land, the more “productive” agriculture becomes. Farmers are destroyed, rural economies are destroyed, the land is emptied of people and filled with toxics. The creative work of farmers as custodians and renewers of soil and biodiversity is replaced by deadly chemicals.
Creative work in being stewards of the land and co-creators of living soil is not an “input” into a food system, but the most important output of good farming. It cannot be reduced to “labour” as a commodity. Land, too, is not a commodity. Creating, conserving, rejuvenating, fertile and living soil is the most important objective of civilisation. It is a regenerative output.
Third, displaced farmers flood cities. This is not a natural or inevitable phenomenon. It is part of the design of industrial agriculture. The explosion of cities buries fertile soil under concrete. The equivalent of 30 football fields are consumed by cement and concrete every minute.
The Save our Soils (SOS) movement, of which I am a patron, has been started by many organisations including FAO, IFOAM, Nature and More, to wake humanity to the soil emergency, which is also a human emergency.
We need to measure human progress not on the basis of how much cement buried the soil, but how much soil was reclaimed and liberated. This is what “saugandh mujhe is mitti ki” should mean. Living seeds and living soils are the foundation of living and lasting societies.
© 2014 Asian Age
Sunday, May 25, 2014
CA 1381 IS ON THE MOVE
SUNDAY, 25 MAY 2014 01:11 EDITOR
California consumers, environmental and food safety groups celebrated on Friday as the Senate Appropriations Committee passed SB 1381 (Evans) with a 5-2 vote.
The bill now goes to the floor for a full Senate vote by May 30.
“California is on its way to joining several states and 64 countries by labeling GMOs in our foods,” said Senator Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa). “Overwhelmingly in California and the nation, consumers simply want to know what is in the foods they eat and feed their families. This bill responds to those concerns.”
Senate Bill 1381 would require GMOs to be labeled in all foods produced for human consumption.
The bill has faced strong and well-funded opposition from large biotech corporations and industrial food manufacturers like Monsanto and Hershey’s.
The issue has garnered massive attention and support in the last few years with 93% of Americans polling in support for labeling protections in 2013.
Last week, Russia banned the import of GMO products likely harming US farmers seeking to sell their crops on the international market.
"We congratulate Senator Evans for championing consumers' right to know if their food is genetically modified,” said Elisa Odabashian, West Coast Director of Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports. “We urge the Senate to pass this measure so that Californians can make more informed choices about the food they purchase for their families."
The news from California is the latest development in a string of successes that show momentum is building across the country for the right to know about GMOs.
On May 9, Vermont became the first state in the nation to label GMOs. On Thursday, in the US Senate, a bipartisan amendment to label GMO salmon passed the Appropriations Committee and will be voted on by the full US Senate. And Oregon just announced efforts to collect signatures for a November ballot initiative to label GMOs.
“This bill is a straight-forward, common-sense approach to empowering consumers,” continued Evans. “If the product contains GMOs, label it. We shouldn’t be hiding ingredients. Moreover, consumer choice is the cornerstone to our free-market society.”
Evans is the chair of the Senate Banking & Finance Committee and represents the Second Senatorial District, including all or portions of the counties of Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Marin (caretaker), Napa, Solano and Sonoma.
Source: http://www.lakeconews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36906:california-gmo-labeling-bill-advances-to-senate-floor&catid=40:business-news&Itemid=294
California consumers, environmental and food safety groups celebrated on Friday as the Senate Appropriations Committee passed SB 1381 (Evans) with a 5-2 vote.
The bill now goes to the floor for a full Senate vote by May 30.
“California is on its way to joining several states and 64 countries by labeling GMOs in our foods,” said Senator Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa). “Overwhelmingly in California and the nation, consumers simply want to know what is in the foods they eat and feed their families. This bill responds to those concerns.”
Senate Bill 1381 would require GMOs to be labeled in all foods produced for human consumption.
The bill has faced strong and well-funded opposition from large biotech corporations and industrial food manufacturers like Monsanto and Hershey’s.
The issue has garnered massive attention and support in the last few years with 93% of Americans polling in support for labeling protections in 2013.
Last week, Russia banned the import of GMO products likely harming US farmers seeking to sell their crops on the international market.
"We congratulate Senator Evans for championing consumers' right to know if their food is genetically modified,” said Elisa Odabashian, West Coast Director of Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports. “We urge the Senate to pass this measure so that Californians can make more informed choices about the food they purchase for their families."
The news from California is the latest development in a string of successes that show momentum is building across the country for the right to know about GMOs.
On May 9, Vermont became the first state in the nation to label GMOs. On Thursday, in the US Senate, a bipartisan amendment to label GMO salmon passed the Appropriations Committee and will be voted on by the full US Senate. And Oregon just announced efforts to collect signatures for a November ballot initiative to label GMOs.
“This bill is a straight-forward, common-sense approach to empowering consumers,” continued Evans. “If the product contains GMOs, label it. We shouldn’t be hiding ingredients. Moreover, consumer choice is the cornerstone to our free-market society.”
Evans is the chair of the Senate Banking & Finance Committee and represents the Second Senatorial District, including all or portions of the counties of Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Marin (caretaker), Napa, Solano and Sonoma.
Source: http://www.lakeconews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36906:california-gmo-labeling-bill-advances-to-senate-floor&catid=40:business-news&Itemid=294
Saturday, May 24, 2014
WHO PAYS FOR THESE "STUDIES?"
y Marion Nestle
GMO labels cost families $800/year: Guess who paid for the study? May 23, 2014
Yesterday, Food Navigator reported that Cornell economists calculated that GMO labels
would cost the average family of four a whopping $800 per year.
This seemed so improbable that I immediately wondered: Who paid for it?
I clicked on the link to the study: Bingo!
The work on this report was supported financially by the Council for Biotechnology Information.
You won’t find the list of companies and groups that support the Council on its website, butSource Watch fills the gap.
I am increasingly alarmed by the increasing extent of industry research sponsorship—it’s become a huge issue in studies of nutrition, diet, and health.
The influence of funding source on research outcomes is so predictable—many studies have now shown that industry-funded studies almost invariably produce results that favor the sponsor—that I’m batting nearly 100% on conflict-of-interest checks, of which this GMO study is a particularly blatant example.
It’s not that industry pays investigators to find the desired answers to questions. It’s more complicated than that. It has to do with the way investigators ask and try to answer the research questions. The industry favored biases get built into the study’s assumptions and controls, often (I think) unconsciously.
This study, for example, is based on an elaborate set of assumptions leading to the $800 per family estimate. Other assumptions might give different results. The authors do not discuss the limitations of their estimates, nor are they required to in this type of report.
But I’m willing to hazard a guess that independently funded studies would come to considerably lower estimates.
Moral: if a study produces surprising results that favor an industry position, look hard to see who sponsored it.
Source: http://www.foodpolitics.com/2014/05/gmo-labels-cost-families-800year-guess-who-paid-for-the-study/#disqus_thread
Friday, May 23, 2014
CA SB1381 MOVES TO SENATE FLOOR!!!
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Folks…WE MADE IT OUT OF APPROPRIATIONS!! Now it’s on to the Senate Floor for a vote sometime between Wed the 28th and Friday May 30th, 2014. I’m sure that this Saturday many of you will all be marching in one location or another around the state. I’m hearing that there are 450 marches around the world! Very cool. How can we best leverage the Marches?
A short message from Pamm Larry for all Marchers across California As you all probably know by now, this has been an amazing week for our movement! It started on Tuesday. Jackson and Josephine Counties both banned growing GMOs by a landslide!! These two counties in OR sent a very loud message to large corporations that more and more of us are waking up to what they are doing to the planet and all living beings on it. Josephine and Jackson counties did it by uniting on the ground and educating their communities. It took time, effort, guts, commitment and tenacity. It wasn’t easy. They got discouraged at times, but they kept on going. In the end, they showed us what WE can do if we unite, commit and do what it takes to get the job done. Their victory is our victory as we are One. Around the world, we are joining together to put Biotech on notice that the veneer of their lies is crumbling. When people know the truth of their lies, we overwhelmingly say NO to their unproven chemical- laden, contaminating agriculture. Our own Humboldt County is next in the fight to ban GMO crop cultivation. Jackson and Josephine won with help outside their county. Humboldt needs our support as they carry that torch for all of us. But there’s MORE! Yesterday, California has achieved monumental victory by moving SB 1381 to the Senate Floor for a vote next week. Will we make it out of the California Senate? It will be a full on fight, but I believe our chances are high IF we unite and do what it takes to get the job done. CT, VT, ME, Jackson and Josephine victories all have ONE thing in common- WE THE PEOPLE took a strong stand and stayed the course. We marched but continued with more work- we tabled, we educated our communities, we visited our reps to educate them and their staffers. We called our representatives and each other to spread the word of our power and our need to unite. We put in hours of our time to protect our rights and the future of food seeds and food sovereignty. WE CAN MAKE SB 1381 LAW IF WE UNITE!! And now, to close out this amazing week, we are uniting with people all around the globe to march for our futures. Marches are a great celebration and statement but the work to change things is ongoing. Please join us and unite with us in our work to get labeling and support local food movements of all kinds. This work isn’t always easy. It isn’t often convenient. But it’s the most important, satisfying work I’ve encountered. Please sign up to stay in touch, then remain active. Step by step we are making huge headway, but we need YOU with us. Thanks and see you on the streets! |
PERMACULTURE TO PERMEATE PRISTINE PLANTING PRACTICES
Published on Friday, May 23, 2014 by Inter Press Service
Permaculture Poised to Conquer the Caribbean
No fertilisers, herbicides, or pesticides but a bold vision to save a region from climate change and resource scarcity
Erle Rahaman-Noronha cutting produce on his farm. (Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS)FREEPORT, Trinidad and Tobago - Erle Rahaman-Noronha is not a revolutionary, not in any radical sense at least. He is not even that exciting. In truth, Rahaman-Noronha is merely a man with a shovel, a small farm, and a big dream. But that dream is poised to conquer the Caribbean.
Rahaman-Noronha wants to see ‘permaculture’ – short for permanent agriculture – take root and spreads across the Caribbean, and he is doing his part by teaching anyone who will listen about its benefits.
Joining him is a fluid group of permaculturalists working from their home islands and sharing the same goal: to harness permaculture as a solution to climate change, food and water insecurity, and rising costs of living.
“You can start in your backyard, so there’s no cost. You can implement certain parts of it in your apartment...If you have a porch with some sunlight, you can plant something there and start thinking about permaculture.”
-- Erle Rahaman-Noronha, permaculturalist
-- Erle Rahaman-Noronha, permaculturalist
Author of the manual, Australian Bill Mollison, first used the term nearly four decades ago and since then the idea has spread to Europe and the U.S. Now, the developing Caribbean is beginning to embrace the philosophy of permaculture, especially since 2008’s global recession.
Born in Kenya, Rahaman-Noronha – whose work was recently highlighted in a TEDx talk – fulfilled a keen interest in the environment by studying applied biochemstry and zoology in Canada.
“I’ve always had a strong passion for the outdoors and conservation, but just doing conservation doesn’t make money,” he says with a chuckle. “Permaculture allows me to live on a site, produce food on a site, produce an income, as well as practice conservation.”
Wa Samaki is Rahaman-Noronha’s permaculture farm, and it has been his workplace, classroom, grocery store, and home since he relocated to Trinidad in 1998. Meaning “of the fish” in Swahili, Wa Samaki covers 30 acres in Freeport in central Trinidad.
Although he uses no fertilisers, herbicides, or pesticides, Rahaman-Noronha is able to make a living off the farm’s fruit, flower, lumber, and fish sales. His newest addition is a large aquaponics system, a closed loop food production system in which fish tanks and potted plants circulate water and sustain one another.
With his partner John Stollmeyer, Rahaman-Noronha works to spread awareness of permaculture across the Caribbean, home to nearly 40 million people who are particularly susceptible to climate change.
The pair consults Trinidadian businesses, teaches permaculture design courses (PDCs), and holds workshops everywhere from Puerto Rico to St. Lucia. “How are we going to create sustainable human culture?” Stollmeyer asks. “Discovering permaculture for me was a wake up call.”
Where environmentalism meets savvy economics
The need for conservation is in no small part a result of climate change, especially when the Hurricane Belt covers nearly all of the Caribbean.
Trinidad and Tobago continues to compound the issue as both a major exporter and consumer of fossil fuels. The country produced more than 119,000 barrels of oil per day in 2012 and 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that same year, all the while boasting the second highest rate of CO2 emissions per capita in the world, more than twice that of the United States.
United Nations data dating back to 2005, the last time such statistics were compiled, indicates that industrialised agriculture accounts for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In this environment, Rahaman-Noronha’s goal is to become an incubator of conservation start-ups that cannot secure necessary bank loans. Currently, he houses beekeepers and a wildlife rescue center on the farm for minimal rent, and he hopes that list will grow.
One such entrepreneurial mind that passed through Wa Samaki was Berber van Beek, a native of Curaçao who recently moved home after years of wandering the world. Before returning to the Caribbean, she practiced permaculture across Europe and Australia, but when van Beek wanted to develop her skills in a tropical climate, she came to Rahaman-Noronha.
“He gave me a lot of freedom on his farm to make and create a design,” van Beek says, describing a garden of banana trees she planted at Wa Samaki.
In Curaçao, van Beek uses permaculture as more than simply a food source. She realises its social potential and is working to start after-school programmes for at-risk youth who can learn useful gardening skills and the responsibility and respect for nature that come with caring for their own gardens.
In addition, she is soon opening her first large-scale organic gardening class, closely resembling a PDC.
Such initiatives are urgently needed in Curaçao, which is facing a stagnant economy and is currently nursing a youth unemployment rate of 37 percent.
According to van Beek, shifting global climates and markets have major effects on her own island in which nearly everything must be imported. “If you go to the supermarket, look where your food is coming from. Is it coming from Venezuela or is it coming from the U.S. or is it coming from Europe?” she says. “People could be more aware of what to buy and what not to buy.”
The problem, experts say, is regional. According to the Food Export Association of the Midwest USA – a group of nonprofits focusing on agricultural issues – around 80 percent of food consumed in the Caribbean is imported.
The beauty and purpose of permaculture is that it is a system of solutions that can be practiced at any level to combat environmental issues.
“You can start in your backyard, so there’s no cost. You can implement certain parts of it in your apartment if you really need to,” Rahaman-Noronha explains. “If you have a porch with some sunlight, you can plant something there and start thinking about permaculture.”
Naturally, van Beek took his message to heart, keeping a perfectly groomed permaculture garden in her own tiny backyard, using dead leaves as fertiliser and recycled rain and shower-water to sustain the plants.
“Seeing is believing,” she says. It’s her own quiet mantra, spoken when she describes her approach to spreading permaculture, and vocalised when she needs the energy to keep pressing on and to convince others that this is the right path.
Rahaman-Noronha, too, has worked to convert non-believers. From schools who tour the wildlife center and his farm to the several thousand people who watched his TEDx talk online, he is adamant that he has traded in misconceptions for progress.
“I think [the reason] I don’t get challenged…is that I’m not just preaching permaculture,” he says. “I’m actually practicing it.”
© 2014 IPS North America
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