The Tyee — They're Recharging Democracy

The Tyee — They're Recharging Democracy

CBC News - Consumer Life - Canada expands recall of flavour-enhanced foods

CBC News - Consumer Life - Canada expands recall of flavour-enhanced foods

Taste of Summer-Organic Okanagan Festival

by the Okanagan Green Society hosted by Summerhill Organic Winery
The Organic Okanagan Festival is the Okanagan's finest green living expo! Okanagan and eco-conscious, natural and thought provoking, the Organic Okanagan Festival is your community-based event showcasing our growing green choices.
The Organic Okanagan Festival has proven impact; we have seen three years with annual attendance by 40-45 exhibitors and a total of over 2000 guests. We have raised more than $3000 for the Kelowna Community Food Bank, and $8000 for the Okanagan Greens outreach programs.

Check out the new video released from Summer 2009:

http://www.vimeo.com/channels/okanagangreens

5 inspiring examples for worldwide Maptivism

by Christian Kreutz

But the maps provided something that the narrative and statistics lacked [...] We could articulate the case in words. [...] But when you’d put up the maps, they’d stop listening to you and look at them [as if to] say, ‘Is this really possible?’” Reed Colfax in an interview by Bob Burtman (water distribution example below)

There are a growing number of cases of Maptivism (Maps + Activism) around the world. I wrote about the great potential for engagement and transparency before. Although it is not a new method, it is certainly still quite different from the old school maps – because of the easiness to use digital maps. There are also more and more tools offered to either get geodata or to use existing data to visualize it more easily. GeoCommons is one such service for open geospatial data.

Western Africa

The West Africa Trade Hub, a USAID funded project did an interesting project. They questioned truck drivers in Western Africa about their experiences with checkpoints. The results were long delays and high bribes at region’s worst checkpoints (mapped below). A recent interview I did with Mark Davies indicated also some interesting insights from African trade and the potentials of social networks.

Courtesy of the West Africa Trade Hub project.

China

The China Real Time blog has highlighted an initiative by the Chinese blogger Guo Baofeng for a China Pollution Map:

“The chart (developed on Google Maps) allows viewers to mark spots associated with high levels of pollution or incidents of contamination, based on publicly available information. Since it was open for public participation last week, the number of views has more than doubled to about 5,000 compared to a week earlier, when it was first displayed online.”

Due to the recent move of Google to re-think its engagement in China, hopefully this map will not be censored any time soon.

China Pollution Map

(Hat tip to Giulio Quaggiotto)

USA

Bob Burtman highlights intriguing mapping work in his article by the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities. Through surveys and public available data, they were able to produce the map below, which shows the partial distribution of water in city of Zanesville. Read the full article about fascinating ways to combine data and mapping.

Courtesy the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities

Brazil

Mapping can be particularly helpful for community development. Corinne Ramey reports form a project to map slums in Brazil through mobile phones. “By uploading information to the phones, the reporters are mapping the unmapped, one road and cafe at a time.” Once places are mapped they can be used for multiple purposes

Courtesy of wikimapa.org.br

Kenya

A similar, but more extensive project has happened in the biggest informal area in Nairobi: Kibera. A team of mappers trained cohabitants of Kibera to map the largest slum in Africa.

OpenStreetMap

Some of you probably know that I am particularly amazed about the OpenstreetMap project. Often, people ask me why we need such an open map, if we already have Google or Yahoo maps? Because it is not only about maps, but more importantly, about what we map and that we can use the data freely to use it the way it is needed. Or as Mikel Maron nicely puts it:”But the point is that with open source and open data, people everywhere don’t have to wait for Santa Google to gift them with new features ..”

When do you start mapping?

Mapping is really easy. I walk around in Mexico these days, during my free time and map streets and buildings with a GPS enabled mobile phone – a cheap GPS device is enough and costs under 100 Euro. That way you can already participate in tracking streets worldwide and upload them to OpenStreetMaps. Here is more information on how to participate.

Lastly, there is a great initiative by the tactical tech collective called Ten Tactics: “Exploring how rights advocates use information and digital technology to create positive change.”

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http://www.crisscrossed.net/2010/01/15/5-innovative-examples-for-worldwide-maptivism/

Why Organic? Watch why rural communities in France are making the case.

http://nosenfantsnousaccuseront-lefilm.com/bande-annonce.html

Ontario farmer not guilty of selling raw milk

From the Canadian Press

An Ontario farmer who operates a raw milk co-op was found not guilty Thursday of 19 charges related to selling unpasteurized milk.

Michael Schmidt, from Durham, Ont., defended himself in 2009 against the charges for dispensing milk straight from the cow.

While raw milk is legal to drink, it's illegal to sell in Canada.

Schmidt's legal battles sparked a heated debate over the safety of raw milk. Advocates have extolled its flavour and health benefits, while health officials and the province's milk marketing board, the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, have argued raw milk isn't fit for widespread distribution.

The farmer argued the charges laid against him under the Health Protection and Promotion Act and the Milk Act are unconstitutional and infringe on his rights and freedoms.

Schmidt operates a 150-cow share raw milk co-operative venture, which allows members to own a portion of the cow to acquire raw milk.

At trial in Newmarket, Ont., earlier in the week, Schmidt argued that government officials and food scientists cannot guarantee the safety of any food, and suggested informed consumers should be able to buy raw milk.

Schmidt has stood by his actions since health officials carried out an armed raid of his farm in November 2006 and seized his milking equipment.

"The rich and sweet taste of unpasteurized milk would blow most people away," Schmidt has said. "I bet that 90 per cent of the people who would have the choice by blind tasting would all go for raw milk because that is the taste of milk and not what you buy on the shelf."

A private member's resolution to create an all-party task force to examine the issues surrounding raw milk was debated but not passed in the Ontario legislature on Dec. 7.

Food For Thought: Avoid These 7 Foods and You're Off To A Healthier New Year

Posted by: Dr. Mercola

1. Canned Tomatoes
The expert: Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A

The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Acidity -- a prominent characteristic of tomatoes -- causes BPA to leach into your food.

2. Corn-Fed Beef

The expert: Joel Salatin, co-owner of Polyface Farms and author of books on sustainable farming

Cattle were designed to eat grass, not grains. But farmers today feed their animals corn and soybeans, which fatten up the animals faster for slaughter. A recent comprehensive study found that compared with corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

3. Microwave Popcorn

The expert: Olga Naidenko, PhD, a senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group

Chemicals, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in the lining of the bag, are part of a class of compounds that may be linked to infertility in humans. In animal testing, the chemicals cause liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancer. Studies show that microwaving causes the chemicals to vaporize -- and migrate into your popcorn.

4. Nonorganic Potatoes

The expert: Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board

Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes they're treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they're dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting.

5. Farmed Salmon

The expert: David Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany

Nature didn't intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT.

6. Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones

The expert: Rick North, project director of the Campaign for Safe Food at the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

Milk producers treat their dairy cattle with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST, as it is also known) to boost milk production. But rBGH also increases udder infections and even pus in the milk. It also leads to higher levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor in milk. In people, high levels of IGF-1 may contribute to breast, prostate, and colon cancers. [both are banned in Canada, Europe and Australia]

7. Conventional Apples

The expert: Mark Kastel, codirector of the Cornucopia Institute

If fall fruits held a "most doused in pesticides contest," apples would win. And increasing numbers of studies are starting to link a higher body burden of pesticides with Parkinson's disease.

Thinking Outside the Box

An interview with Helena Norberg-Hodge on the need for a
"systemic shift toward localizing economic activity"

January 2010 By David Barsamian

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/23524

Helena Norberg-Hodge is a native of Sweden, a leading critic of conventional
notions of growth and development, and the recipient of the Right Livelihood
Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. She is also the founder and
director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture and the author
of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh.

BARSAMIAN: The existing economic model of globalized capitalism is reeling,
but there is really no alternative that we can turn to and say, "Okay, tried
that, didn't work. Let's try this."

NORBERG-HODGE: I disagree. I think there is a systemic alternative that is
being discovered and actually developed at the grassroots. But this
alternative, which is a systemic shift toward localizing economic activity
instead of globalizing it, has received almost no air time. It's a sort of
invisible growth, but it's happening nevertheless. Fundamentally, what that
shift is about is recognizing that this global economic system has its roots
from 500 years ago, when elites in the UK and Europe started sending people
across the world to gather wealth for themselves.

Structurally, they were destroying more self-reliant, localized economies
where people were meeting their own needs and producing a range of things for
home and regional needs. Trade was in the hands of smaller communities and
groups exchanging with each other. When they were forced into the mines or
onto giant cotton, sugar, coffee, and tea plantations, there was a shift
towards not only an economy that was very exploitative and unjust, but also
ecologically unstable because monocultural production inherently works against
the diversity of the natural world. Diversified production in localized
economic systems works with nature.

You don't think advocating localization opens you up to claims that it's
quaint and romantic, but not realistic?

It's a tragedy that often people can't conceive of smaller-scale
units—particularly in places like America. In Europe it's a little bit
different. In Europe you have a fabric of smaller towns, smaller farms, more
localized economies. But there, too, the corporate pressure has shifted
everything in the wrong direction. We have to do what we can to get people to
see that many small can be more efficient and more productive than one big. If
you take the number of McDonald's restaurants around the U.S. and imagine what
they would be like if, instead of being owned by a giant corporation, they
were family-owned in that locale. Why couldn't that work? Why is that
unrealistic? So many people who have had the experience of going into a
family-owned restaurant know how much more delightful it is, how much higher
the quality is.

I remember hearing José Bové, the farmer in France who was one of the
resistors to the World Trade Organization, using the term McDominacion, the
French term for McDonaldizing the world.

It's similar to another term being used, Coca-Colonization. This large-scale
production and consumption controlled by giant corporations means enforcing
bigger and bigger monocultural production on the land. The only block between
improvement and what we have today is what's in our heads. There is a huge
amount of propaganda against the notion that more localized, diverse food
systems can feed the world.

But the so-called efficiency of modern economics creates unemployment. To
deprive people of the opportunity to work and to shove them into giant slums
is probably the major human rights issue today.

The ideal farm is an Old MacDonald's farm, where you have a range of animals
as well as grains and vegetables. What you get are cycles of production and
reproduction that are completely self-sustaining. In order to really make them
productive, we need more labor on the land. If we labor is freed up to do the
really important work that's needed, we would be able to reduce our ecological
footprint while simultaneously increasing employment and productivity. This is
a magical formula.

The local food movement is growing around the world. You have CSAs
(community-supported agriculture) in many parts of the world. But in the long
run, we need local shops and local permanent structures where food and even
processed food can be produced and sold to local communities.

In this process we're finding that on the farm, as farmers shift away from
producing for the corporate long-distance market, they are increasing the
diversity on their land. I was talking to a farmer in Australia and he was
saying basically he felt like a serf, serving anonymous bosses that were
always demanding more and more of the same thing in a standard size, which, of
course, goes against nature. You don't produce exactly the same size bananas
or apples if you work with nature. He said that, after only two years of
selling in a farmers' market, his work has become enjoyable and he is having
contact and exchange with the consumers. He's gone from 2 products to 20 in
just a couple of years. This is a typical story. If people could both imagine
and, ideally, take the time to visit some farms, I think we could see a really
powerful movement for policy change in this regard.

There is an attendant crisis in the U.S. of contamination. There have been
tomato scares, spinach scares, beef has been recalled. Does that go on in
Australia as well?

Absolutely. We know from our research that the long distances inherent in this
corporate globalized system mean that food poisoning has escalated
dramatically. You have food that's been prepackaged in plastic and then
reheated in microwave ovens. This way of preserving food is a disaster, and
it's known to increase the bacterial activity.

When you study almost any production in this global food system, you end up
feeling that you can't eat it. Strawberries get sprayed with 26 different
types of pesticides. The mercury in fish is a huge threat. Fish farming is
responsible for poisoning the life in the sea to such an extent that, exactly
as with the industrial farming on land, it kills everything around it.

I can understand the localization applicability in the global South where the
growing season is much longer. What about the North where the growing season
is very short?

It's remarkable how much can grow and how the growing season can be expanded
with smaller-scale greenhouses. You can extend the growing season from 4
months a year to 11 months and do it in a very healthy and sustainable way. We
introduced solar greenhouses in Ladakh [India] and now you can have fresh
greens in the middle of winter. Because you can start seedlings earlier, you
can have tomatoes and artichokes, asparagus, virtually everything you can imagine.

Almost everywhere I go in the world, even in the industrialized world, people
have a memory of how there used to be orchards of the most delicious fruits
and berries, black currants, raspberries, and strawberries. That wealth of a
diversified production, incredible richness, could still be re-established.
You can make fruit leathers, just drying the fruit and preserving it, which
will preserve a lot of vitamin content.

It seems in order to achieve the outcome that you've been outlining we need a
kind of decolonization of the mind.

We now have a centralized, top-down system that is essentially rewriting
histories. We have a propaganda system that extends into our schoolbooks, even
the kindergarten books that are being produced, scientific research, media.
Almost every access that we have to information is being shaped by for-profit,
corporate interests. Many scientists who are now enlisted in what has become
industrial scientific production of food have no idea of the end result: dead,
colored, irradiated food that has no nutritional value. So the inability to
see the impact of what we do is one of the biggest tragedies of this system.

In villages in the Third World, people have the opportunity to build a house
from local materials, to produce food from the land, and, through community
relationships, to have a very rich culture. But in the communities that are
among the richest in that way, for instance, Bhutan and Ladakh, these
countries, on paper, will be described as the poorest of the poor.

And going in and giving someone a loan and getting them to produce fashion
clothes for an elite, even if they're only earning a dollar a day, will look
like progress, because we've become totally illiterate about understanding
what constitutes real wealth.

Ladakh, although part of the Tibetan plateau, is part of India politically.
You've been tracing Ladakh's evolution since you first went there in 1975.
What can people learn from Ladakh?

In a way, the most important lesson is that rebuilding the community fabric is
a prerequisite for a healthier and happier society and for healthier and
happier individuals. As it turns out, it's also a recipe for healthier and
happier economies that are truly sustainable, because they're adapted to the
living world and to diversity.

We all want to be seen, recognized, heard, connected to one another. The
tragedy of the modern economy is that it has succeeded in separating us from
one another. It's doing that in a multitude of ways. One of them is that the
modern media presents children with completely unrealistic role models.
They're comparing themselves to these one-dimensional images of perfection.
This is having this enormous effect in the global South. In places like
America the demand from young children for plastic surgery is skyrocketing.
The self-rejection and self-hatred is translating into bulimia, anorexia, drug
abuse, antidepressants. In most industrialized countries now there is talk of
an epidemic of depression. In the UK in 2008, 36 million prescriptions for
antidepressants were made out. That's in a country of 60 million people.

Tell me about your film, The Economics of Happiness, and the International
Society for Ecology and Culture.

The International Society for Ecology and Culture (isec.org.uk) is my NGO. We
are unusual because we've been working internationally for about 30 years. We
have small offices and branches in France, Germany, the U.S., Australia, and
Ladakh. We are working with other groups, especially in Thailand, Korea, and
Japan. Our main focus is to try to raise awareness about how we can shift from
this globalizing path to localizing one.

We developed something called a local food toolkit, which was a way of helping
to train local food activists. We have had programs where we sponsor reality
tours to the North so they can see that this life is not what it looks like in
the media, that there are serious environmental and social crises.

Equally, we have a program where foreigners come and live in a village in
Ladakh for a month in the summer and we do workshops on these issues. That's
also been very effective for training activists in the West. We also put
together about 20 years ago a curriculum that we call the Roots of Change that
examines what's happened over the last 500 years at this fundamental level,
again, of the globalizing versus the localizing path.

The film lays out these arguments in an hour-long documentary. We've tried to
show it from a global point of view. We have voices from every continent, and
we hope that it will be a useful tool for communities around the world.



David Barsamian is the founder and director of Alternative Radio. He is the
author of numerous books with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, and Edward
Said. His latest books are What We Say Goes and Targeting Iran.


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