Fight fire with fire ?

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
focussing so much on the "militant" vegans shows about the same level of maturity, sophistication & understanding of the situation as did the sausage debate :facepalm:

as said earlier, vegans actually make up a tiny portion of the buying public. I know a vegan, full on vegan, wont eat honey because she thinks its exploiting bees. Lovely, lovely kind girl ( don't know what she'd think about the Mathew Evans post above though ). Doesn't push or force her ideas ( however misguided ) onto others.
The point is, she has to work REALLY hard to stay vegan. It ISNT EASY. It requires a hell of a lot of discipline & self control & a lot of effort to source vegan food. Looking at all the lifestyle & diet related health issues affecting western society ( I don't know figures for here, but I read recently that in the UK more than 30% of the population over 50 yrs old is on regular medication. I find that shocking . . . ) including obesity & heart disease, it is obvious most people don't have that same level of commitment or discipline

No - the REAL threat, the one you SHOULD be countering, such as @Clive suggested, is public perceptions & the slow subliminal messages that we are all receiving.
Look at gluten. Yes, some people are gluten intolerant ( including my wife. Ironic for a grower of milling wheat ), but somehow now people perceive "gluten free" as some sort of healthy choice, like "fat free" or "sugar free", rather than information for people with a dietary intolerance. I even saw "gluten free" ice cream advertised the other day ? WTF ? I cant even think how any ingredients containing gluten are in ice cream ? The perception of this is that gluten is bad. Just like "low fat" of "fat free" is giving the message that all fats are bad, when research now shows that animal fats are not only healthier than vegetable oils, but some are essential to human health. Animal fats have been demonised for 50 years or more & there is another whole story of politics, greed, corruption behind the reason for that - but a LOT of it revolves around the sugar industry & INDUSTRIAL FOOD PRODUCERS

The REAL push behind "fake meat" isn't vegans. They have made that difficult lifestyle choice, they don't want meat substitutes or products that resemble meat.

The REAL push behind fake meat is the massive global industrial food companies, that want to own & control every aspect of food production. Look at the above example someone provide with Quorn ( I never knew that stuff )

There are so many messages out there, from loud militant vegans to subliminal, that present a negative image of meat - from health to factory farms to environmental concerns etc etc etc , that form a part of the consumers sub conscious
When that consumer goes into the supermarket tonight or their way home from work looking for something for dinner, they will be confronted with a mind staggering array of choices & decisions.
They may well choose those vegan sausages NOT because they want to be a vegan, but because they are thinking of all these issues of pigs in cages on factory farms, of cutting down on animal proteins because they've heard it is bad, or animal fats for the same reason. They might think the vegan sausage is more environmentally friendly because they've heard things about pig slurry & nitrates in rivers . . .

So, farmers NEED to get a positive message out there

NOT a lecture

simple, quick, positive

Social media

Look at how farmers in other western countries engage with their consumers.

Establish "connections" with the public

You have a MASSIVE domestic customer base. USE that . . .

It is difficult, the problem wont go away.

I never said it was easy
 
Last edited:

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
I like that, assuming he has his facts correct of course.(y)
Something that makes you think 'I never thought of it that way' is more likely to get people thinking/talking than just repeating the same lines all the time, which people often have their own same set answers for.

well, his facts are based on a study by the University of NSW, so probably as good as any

the thing is, do precise facts really matter ? As in the sausage debate ?
does anyone in the general public bother to fact check anti farmer slogans ? I doubt it.

The thing is, it just has to make people think & to question other things they are told
It is what I was saying above about perceptions, subliminal messages & how they ultimately affect consumers buying choices

to us it may be obvious that many animals are killed in the production of grains, pulses, fruit & vegetables - but to people living modern western lives completely cut off from the natural world, it probably just doesn't occur to them . . .
"plant based" just sounds so natural & healthy & not causing any harm to animals or the environment

it is very easy to grow beef completely free of chemicals, synthetic fertilisers, with minimal fossil fuel use & even the potential to actually be carbon negative, if used in conjunction with a fine tuned holistic regenerative grazing system - all the while supporting plant, animal & biological diversity on those grazing lands

it is very difficult to grow soybeans with out inputs of insecticides, herbicides, fossil fuels & the related carbon footprint that goes along with it, not to mention the complete loss of local biodiversity

neonics
bees
canola
vegetable oil
animal fats

no need for bee harmful insecticides if we were all happy to eat butter & dripping . . .

or, look at Palm Oil & the MASSIVE criminal eco disaster that is . . .
Vegans don't want to destroy rainforests & wipe out primates - but global multi national industrial food producers do . . .
the push for more plant based foods is DIRECTLY responsible for massive reductions in insect populations, which WILL have serious implications on all life on earth

Vegans - YOU are bee killers . . .
 
Last edited:

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
@Farmer Roy , with just how bad the weather is treating you over there, have you ever considered a career change?

If we could get you the top job at our AHDB would you take it? - I'm sure our farming industry here would be much happier if a bloke like you was in charge of spending our £16 million of levy money.

Haha - if you could get me the job I'd take it, as long as the salary was good enough :)
My wife keeps pressuring me to take the family to the UK :)
 

yellowbelly

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
N.Lincs
I'd take it, as long as the salary was good enough

CEO Remuneration
The Chief Executive and Accounting officer of AHDB, who joined the organisation on 1 February 2015, is paid an annual salary of £133,000.

Currently held by the former editor of the Farmers Weekly - I wouldn't be sure, but I think that's about as near to a farm as she's ever been :(
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
You have to wonder is this thread a snapshot of how the NFU manages to be so behind the curve ? Does every good idea get picked to pieces by dissenters counting angels on a pinhead ? And what eventually emerges is so watered down and out of date . Whatever happened to a united voice ?

Sadly I suspect you are right

That’s the problem they have when trying to represent a industry that has differing and often conflicting agenda

Impossible when you think about


It makes us an easy target
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
CEO Remuneration
The Chief Executive and Accounting officer of AHDB, who joined the organisation on 1 February 2015, is paid an annual salary of £133,000.

Currently held by the former editor of the Farmers Weekly - I wouldn't be sure, but I think that's about as near to a farm as she's ever been :(


Just playing devils advocate here but maybe we need to pay more to get someone better ?

That’s actually not a lot for a CEO these days - a school headmaster gets 70 plus I believe


I would say the downfall of FW over the last decade is hardly a great selling point on you CV however !
 

Treg

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cornwall
Sadly I suspect you are right

That’s the problem they have when trying to represent a industry that has differing and often conflicting agenda

Impossible when you think about


It makes us an easy target
It must be difficult to represent a industry so diverse. I would complain the NFU doesn't stand up for Organics enough & there's other farmers complaining the NFU doesn't do enough to keep certain sprays , BUT maybe we need to promote our diversity as actually isn't that how the countryside looks fantastic a patch work of different farms all adding something different to the farming community & beyond.
 

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
How diverse are we?

At the end of the day we're all producing food. Many farmers seem to forget this.

Not a huge range of different products coming off farms beef/lamb/pork/chicken/eggs/milk
Wheat/barley/oats/osr

I'll have forgotten some im sure
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Just playing devils advocate here but maybe we need to pay more to get someone better ?

That’s actually not a lot for a CEO these days - a school headmaster gets 70 plus I believe


I would say the downfall of FW over the last decade is hardly a great selling point on you CV however !

I just went on their website & looked at "careers"
sadly no CEO position available, but TBH I thought the wages for the jobs advertised seemed pretty sh!t.
I then had a quick look at exchange rates & decided they were sh!t . . .
 

delilah

Member
Sadly I suspect you are right

That’s the problem they have when trying to represent a industry that has differing and often conflicting agenda

Impossible when you think about


It makes us an easy target

Which is why I keep banging on about localisation and food miles. You wont find many UK farmers who would be unhappy to see the emphasis being on promotion of home production, and crucially it is an argument that the mainstream of the environmental movement will support.
 

farenheit

Member
Location
Midlands
Which is why I keep banging on about localisation and food miles. You wont find many UK farmers who would be unhappy to see the emphasis being on promotion of home production, and crucially it is an argument that the mainstream of the environmental movement will support.
Local food is such a false economy though. What is better for the environment, wheat grown 5 miles away from you on average land that gives you 6t/ha, or 200 miles away on the wolds at 11t/ha? Transport is not necessarily bad for the environment
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Fake Food, Fake Meat: Big Food’s Desperate Attempt to Further the Industrialisation of Food
by Jonathan Latham
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to FacebookFacebook12.5KShare to TwitterTwitterShare to MoreMore458
Dr Vandana Shiva
The ontology and ecology of food
Food is not a commodity, it is not “stuff” put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life. Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life. Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed. Food is therefore the living currency of the web of life.
As an ancient Upanishad reminds us “Everything is food, everything is something else’s food. “
Good Food and Real Food are the basis of health .
Bad food, industrial food, fake food is the basis of disease.
Hippocrates said “Let food be thy medicine”. In Ayurveda, India’s ancient science of life, food is called “sarvausadha” the medicine that cures all disease.
Vanadana Shiva
Vanadana Shiva
Industrial food systems have reduced food to a commodity, to “stuff” that can then be constituted in the lab. In the process both the planet’s health and our health has been nearly destroyed.
75% of the planetary destruction of soil, water, biodiversity, and 50% of greenhouse gas emissions come from industrial agriculture, which also contributes to 75% of food related chronic diseases. It contributes 50% of the GHG’s driving Climate Change. Chemical agriculture does not return organic matter and fertility to the soil. Instead it is contributing to desertification and land degradation. It also demands more water since it destroys the soil’s natural water-holding capacity. Industrial food systems have destroyed the biodiversity of the planet both through the spread of monocultures, and through the use of toxics and poisons which are killing bees, butterflies, insects, birds, leading to the sixth mass extinction.
Biodiversity-intensive and poison-free agriculture, on the other hand, produces more nutrition per acre while rejuvenating the planet. It shows the path to “Zero Hunger” in times of climate change.
The industrial agriculture and toxic food model has been promoted as the only answer to economic and food security. However, globally, more than 1 billion people are hungry. More than 3 billion suffer from food-related chronic diseases.
It uses 75% of the land yet industrial agriculture based on fossil fuel intensive, chemical intensive monocultures produce only 30% of the food we eat. Meanwhile, small, biodiverse farms using 25% of the land provide 70% of the food. At this rate, if the share of industrial agriculture and industrial food in our diet is increased to 45%, we will have a dead planet. One with with no life and no food.
The mad rush for Fake Food and Fake Meat, ignorant of the diversity of our foods and food cultures, and the role of biodiversity in maintaining the our health, is a recipe for accelerating the destruction of the planet and our health.
GMO soya is unsafe for the environment and the eater
In a recent article “How our commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soyPat Brown, CEO & Founder of Impossible Foods states that:
“We sought the safest and most environmentally responsible option that would allow us to scale our production and provide the Impossible Burger to consumers at a reasonable cost”.
Given the fact that 90% of the monarch butterflies have disappeared due to Roundup Ready Crops, and we are living through what scientists have called an “insectageddon”, using GMO soya is hardly an “environmentally responsible option”.
In writing this, Pat Brown reveals his total ignorance that weeds have evolved resistance to Roundup and have become “superweeds” now requiring more and more lethal herbicides. Bill Gates and DARPA are even calling for the use of gene drives to exterminate amaranth, a sacred and nutritious food in India, because the Palmer Amaranth has become a superweed in the Roundup Ready soya fields of the USA.
At a time when across the world the movement to ban GMOs and Roundup is growing, promoting GMO soya as “fake meat” is misleading the eater both in terms of the ontology of the burger, and on claims of safety.
The “Impossible Burger “ based on GMO, Roundup sprayed soya is not a “safe” option, as Zen Honeycutt and Moms across America just announced:
“that the Impossible Burger tested positive for glyphosate. The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible Burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11 X higher than the Beyond Meat Burger. The total result (glyphosate and it’s break down AMPA) was 11.3 ppb. Moms Across America also tested the Beyond Meat Burger and the results were 1 ppb.
“We are shocked to find that the Impossible Burger can have up to 11X higher levels of glyphosate residues than the Beyond Meat Burger according to these samples tested. This new product is being marketed as a solution for “healthy” eating, when in fact 11 ppb of glyphosate herbicide consumption can be highly dangerous. Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to destroy gut bacteria, which is where the stronghold of the immune system lies. I am gravely concerned that consumers are being misled to believe the Impossible Burger is healthy.”
Recent court cases have showcased the links of Roundup to cancer. With the build up of liabilities related to cancer cases, the investments in Roundup Ready GMO soya is blindness to the market.
Or the hope that fooling consumers can rescue Bayer/Monsanto.
There is another ontological confusion related to fake food. While claiming to get away from meat “fake meat” is about selling meat-like products.
Pat Brown declares “we use genetically engineered yeast to produce heme, the “magic” molecule that makes meat taste like meat — and makes the Impossible Burger the only plant-based product to deliver the delicious explosion of flavor and aroma that meat-eating consumers crave.”
I had thought that the plant based diet was for vegans and vegetarians, not meat lovers.
Big Food and Big Money is driving the Fake Food Goldrush
Indeed, the promotion of fake foods seems to have more to do with giving new life to the failing GMO agriculture and the Junk Food Industry, and the threat to it from the rising of consciousness and awareness everywhere that organic, local, fresh food is real food which regenerates the planet and our health. In consequence, investment in “plant based food companies “ has soared from near 0 in 2009 to $600m by 2018. And these companies are looking for more.
Pat Brown declares, “If there’s one thing that we know, it’s that when an ancient unimprovable technology counters a better technology that is continuously improvable, it’s just a matter of time before the game is over.” He added, “I think our investors see this as a $3 trillion opportunity.”
This is about profits and control. He, and those jumping on the Fake Food Goldrush, have no discernible knowledge, or consciousness about, or compassion for living beings, the web of life, nor the role of living food in weaving that web.
Their sudden awakening to “plant based diets” , including GMO soya, is an ontological violation of food as a living system that connects us to the ecosystem and other beings, and indicates ignorance of the diversity of cultures that have used a diversity of plants in their diets.
Ecological sciences have been based on the recognition of the interconnections and interrelatedness between humans and nature, between diverse organisms, and within all living systems, including the human body. It has thus evolved as an ecological and a systems science, not a fragmented and reductionist one. Diets have evolved according to climates and the local biodiversity the climate allows. The biodiversity of the soil, of the plants and our gut microbiome is one continuum. In Indian Civilisation, technologies are tools. Tools need to be assessed on ethical, social and ecological criteria. Tools/ technologies have never been viewed as self referential. They have been assessed in the context of contributing to the wellbeing of all.
Through fake food, evolution, biodiversity, and the web of life is being redefined as an “ancient unimprovable technology”, ignorance of the sophisticated knowledges that have evolved in diverse agricultural and food cultures in diverse climate and ecosystems to sustain and renew the biodiversity, the ecosystems, the health of people and the planet.
The Eat Forum which brought out a report that tried to impose a monoculture diet of chemically grown, hyperindustrially processed food on the world has
a partnership through FrESH
with the junk food industry, and Big Ag such as Bayer, BASF, Cargill, Pepsico amongst others.
FRESH's Junk Collaborators
FRESH’s Junk Collaborators
Fake food is thus building on a century and a half of food imperialism and food colonisation of our diverse food knowledges and food cultures.
Big Food and Big Money is behind the Fake Food Industry. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are funding startups.
We need to decolonise our food cultures and our minds of Food imperialism
The industrial west has always been arrogant, and ignorant, of the cultures it has colonised. “Fake Food” is just the latest step in a history of food imperialism.
Soya is a gift of East Asia, where it has been a food for millennia. It was only eaten as fermented food to remove its’ anti-nutritive factors. But recently, GMO soya has created a soya imperialism, destroying plant diversity. It continues the destruction of the diversity of rich edible oils and plant based proteins of Indian dals that we have documented.
Women from India’s slums called on me to bring our mustard back when GMO soya oil started to be dumped on India, and local oils and cold press units in villages were made illegal. That is when we started the “sarson (mustard) satyagraha“ to defend our healthy cold pressed oils from dumping of hexane-extracted GMO soya oil. Hexane is a neurotoxin.
While Indian peasants knew that pulses fix nitrogen, the west was industrialising agriculture based on synthetic nitrogen which contributes to greenhouse gases, dead zones in the ocean, and dead soils. While we ate a diversity of “dals” in our daily “dal roti“ the British colonisers, who had no idea of the richness of the nutrition of pulses, reduced them to animal food. Chana became chick pea, gahat became horse gram, tur became pigeon pea.
We stand at a precipice of a planetary emergency, a health emergency, a crisis of farmers livelihoods. Fake Food will accelerate the rush to collapse. Real food gives us a chance to rejuvenate the earth, our food economies, food sovereignty and food cultures. Through real food we can decolonise our food cultures and our consciousness. We can remember that food is living and gives us life.
Boycott GMO Impossible Burger. Make tofu. Cook Dal.
 

delilah

Member
Local food is such a false economy though. What is better for the environment, wheat grown 5 miles away from you on average land that gives you 6t/ha, or 200 miles away on the wolds at 11t/ha? Transport is not necessarily bad for the environment

Wont argue with that, we could discuss that particular equation of t/ha v's miles travelled until the cows come home.
The argument put forward needs to be no more specific than this: That a profitable, diverse UK agriculture is best for the environment, given that food miles and the associated pollution are minimized when compared to reliance on imported produce.
 

delilah

Member
Fake Food, Fake Meat: Big Food’s Desperate Attempt to Further the Industrialisation of Food
by Jonathan Latham
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to FacebookFacebook12.5KShare to TwitterTwitterShare to MoreMore458
Dr Vandana Shiva
The ontology and ecology of food
Food is not a commodity, it is not “stuff” put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life. Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life. Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed. Food is therefore the living currency of the web of life.
As an ancient Upanishad reminds us “Everything is food, everything is something else’s food. “
Good Food and Real Food are the basis of health .
Bad food, industrial food, fake food is the basis of disease.
Hippocrates said “Let food be thy medicine”. In Ayurveda, India’s ancient science of life, food is called “sarvausadha” the medicine that cures all disease.
Vanadana Shiva
Vanadana Shiva
Industrial food systems have reduced food to a commodity, to “stuff” that can then be constituted in the lab. In the process both the planet’s health and our health has been nearly destroyed.
75% of the planetary destruction of soil, water, biodiversity, and 50% of greenhouse gas emissions come from industrial agriculture, which also contributes to 75% of food related chronic diseases. It contributes 50% of the GHG’s driving Climate Change. Chemical agriculture does not return organic matter and fertility to the soil. Instead it is contributing to desertification and land degradation. It also demands more water since it destroys the soil’s natural water-holding capacity. Industrial food systems have destroyed the biodiversity of the planet both through the spread of monocultures, and through the use of toxics and poisons which are killing bees, butterflies, insects, birds, leading to the sixth mass extinction.
Biodiversity-intensive and poison-free agriculture, on the other hand, produces more nutrition per acre while rejuvenating the planet. It shows the path to “Zero Hunger” in times of climate change.
The industrial agriculture and toxic food model has been promoted as the only answer to economic and food security. However, globally, more than 1 billion people are hungry. More than 3 billion suffer from food-related chronic diseases.
It uses 75% of the land yet industrial agriculture based on fossil fuel intensive, chemical intensive monocultures produce only 30% of the food we eat. Meanwhile, small, biodiverse farms using 25% of the land provide 70% of the food. At this rate, if the share of industrial agriculture and industrial food in our diet is increased to 45%, we will have a dead planet. One with with no life and no food.
The mad rush for Fake Food and Fake Meat, ignorant of the diversity of our foods and food cultures, and the role of biodiversity in maintaining the our health, is a recipe for accelerating the destruction of the planet and our health.
GMO soya is unsafe for the environment and the eater
In a recent article “How our commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soyPat Brown, CEO & Founder of Impossible Foods states that:
“We sought the safest and most environmentally responsible option that would allow us to scale our production and provide the Impossible Burger to consumers at a reasonable cost”.
Given the fact that 90% of the monarch butterflies have disappeared due to Roundup Ready Crops, and we are living through what scientists have called an “insectageddon”, using GMO soya is hardly an “environmentally responsible option”.
In writing this, Pat Brown reveals his total ignorance that weeds have evolved resistance to Roundup and have become “superweeds” now requiring more and more lethal herbicides. Bill Gates and DARPA are even calling for the use of gene drives to exterminate amaranth, a sacred and nutritious food in India, because the Palmer Amaranth has become a superweed in the Roundup Ready soya fields of the USA.
At a time when across the world the movement to ban GMOs and Roundup is growing, promoting GMO soya as “fake meat” is misleading the eater both in terms of the ontology of the burger, and on claims of safety.
The “Impossible Burger “ based on GMO, Roundup sprayed soya is not a “safe” option, as Zen Honeycutt and Moms across America just announced:
“that the Impossible Burger tested positive for glyphosate. The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible Burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11 X higher than the Beyond Meat Burger. The total result (glyphosate and it’s break down AMPA) was 11.3 ppb. Moms Across America also tested the Beyond Meat Burger and the results were 1 ppb.
“We are shocked to find that the Impossible Burger can have up to 11X higher levels of glyphosate residues than the Beyond Meat Burger according to these samples tested. This new product is being marketed as a solution for “healthy” eating, when in fact 11 ppb of glyphosate herbicide consumption can be highly dangerous. Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to destroy gut bacteria, which is where the stronghold of the immune system lies. I am gravely concerned that consumers are being misled to believe the Impossible Burger is healthy.”
Recent court cases have showcased the links of Roundup to cancer. With the build up of liabilities related to cancer cases, the investments in Roundup Ready GMO soya is blindness to the market.
Or the hope that fooling consumers can rescue Bayer/Monsanto.
There is another ontological confusion related to fake food. While claiming to get away from meat “fake meat” is about selling meat-like products.
Pat Brown declares “we use genetically engineered yeast to produce heme, the “magic” molecule that makes meat taste like meat — and makes the Impossible Burger the only plant-based product to deliver the delicious explosion of flavor and aroma that meat-eating consumers crave.”
I had thought that the plant based diet was for vegans and vegetarians, not meat lovers.
Big Food and Big Money is driving the Fake Food Goldrush
Indeed, the promotion of fake foods seems to have more to do with giving new life to the failing GMO agriculture and the Junk Food Industry, and the threat to it from the rising of consciousness and awareness everywhere that organic, local, fresh food is real food which regenerates the planet and our health. In consequence, investment in “plant based food companies “ has soared from near 0 in 2009 to $600m by 2018. And these companies are looking for more.
Pat Brown declares, “If there’s one thing that we know, it’s that when an ancient unimprovable technology counters a better technology that is continuously improvable, it’s just a matter of time before the game is over.” He added, “I think our investors see this as a $3 trillion opportunity.”
This is about profits and control. He, and those jumping on the Fake Food Goldrush, have no discernible knowledge, or consciousness about, or compassion for living beings, the web of life, nor the role of living food in weaving that web.
Their sudden awakening to “plant based diets” , including GMO soya, is an ontological violation of food as a living system that connects us to the ecosystem and other beings, and indicates ignorance of the diversity of cultures that have used a diversity of plants in their diets.
Ecological sciences have been based on the recognition of the interconnections and interrelatedness between humans and nature, between diverse organisms, and within all living systems, including the human body. It has thus evolved as an ecological and a systems science, not a fragmented and reductionist one. Diets have evolved according to climates and the local biodiversity the climate allows. The biodiversity of the soil, of the plants and our gut microbiome is one continuum. In Indian Civilisation, technologies are tools. Tools need to be assessed on ethical, social and ecological criteria. Tools/ technologies have never been viewed as self referential. They have been assessed in the context of contributing to the wellbeing of all.
Through fake food, evolution, biodiversity, and the web of life is being redefined as an “ancient unimprovable technology”, ignorance of the sophisticated knowledges that have evolved in diverse agricultural and food cultures in diverse climate and ecosystems to sustain and renew the biodiversity, the ecosystems, the health of people and the planet.
The Eat Forum which brought out a report that tried to impose a monoculture diet of chemically grown, hyperindustrially processed food on the world has
a partnership through FrESH
with the junk food industry, and Big Ag such as Bayer, BASF, Cargill, Pepsico amongst others.
FRESH's Junk Collaborators's Junk Collaborators
FRESH’s Junk Collaborators
Fake food is thus building on a century and a half of food imperialism and food colonisation of our diverse food knowledges and food cultures.
Big Food and Big Money is behind the Fake Food Industry. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are funding startups.
We need to decolonise our food cultures and our minds of Food imperialism
The industrial west has always been arrogant, and ignorant, of the cultures it has colonised. “Fake Food” is just the latest step in a history of food imperialism.
Soya is a gift of East Asia, where it has been a food for millennia. It was only eaten as fermented food to remove its’ anti-nutritive factors. But recently, GMO soya has created a soya imperialism, destroying plant diversity. It continues the destruction of the diversity of rich edible oils and plant based proteins of Indian dals that we have documented.
Women from India’s slums called on me to bring our mustard back when GMO soya oil started to be dumped on India, and local oils and cold press units in villages were made illegal. That is when we started the “sarson (mustard) satyagraha“ to defend our healthy cold pressed oils from dumping of hexane-extracted GMO soya oil. Hexane is a neurotoxin.
While Indian peasants knew that pulses fix nitrogen, the west was industrialising agriculture based on synthetic nitrogen which contributes to greenhouse gases, dead zones in the ocean, and dead soils. While we ate a diversity of “dals” in our daily “dal roti“ the British colonisers, who had no idea of the richness of the nutrition of pulses, reduced them to animal food. Chana became chick pea, gahat became horse gram, tur became pigeon pea.
We stand at a precipice of a planetary emergency, a health emergency, a crisis of farmers livelihoods. Fake Food will accelerate the rush to collapse. Real food gives us a chance to rejuvenate the earth, our food economies, food sovereignty and food cultures. Through real food we can decolonise our food cultures and our consciousness. We can remember that food is living and gives us life.
Boycott GMO Impossible Burger. Make tofu. Cook Dal.

Every single post made by Farmer Roy drives home the point:
The environmental movement and UK agriculture are each others greatest allies.
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Every single post made by Farmer Roy drives home the point:
The environmental movement and UK agriculture are each others greatest allies.
Ive said that a few times on TFF but never had any favourable reactions . . .

over here, agriculture is under threat in many areas by the fossil fuels / resources industry.
A lot of our best land and water supplies are sitting above coal & gas resources.
In Australia, mineral rights belong to the State, not the land owner.
Open cut coal mining & Coal Seam Gas Fracking are two major threats not only to agriculture, but our underground water aquifers, our environment & are MAJOR contributors to climate change. OUR agriculture is already feeling the effects of climate change & we realise that worse is yet to come. We also realise that we can be a major part of the solution.
My very own area is one such under threat, we have been battling State Government & the coal & gas industries for well over 10 years now

The ONLY positive thing to come out of this is that 3 very diverse groups - farmers, environmentalists & indigenous peoples have realised they had more in common than they thought & have come together, joined forces to fight this threat.
With the growing adoption of more regenerative agricultural principles & practices, those ties will hopefully only get stronger.

this clip ( & all the following ones ) is about a proposed mine 7km upstream from me on a floodplain
 
Last edited:

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,290
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top