[News] US produces 66% of the world's genetically modified foods

map via GOOD magazine and ISAA

I went to a really interesting seminar last night on food politics in San Francisco, which was hosted at CounterPulse. The panel included Iso Rabins, the dude who started ForageSF, Antonio Roman-Alcalá, a sincere and unapologetic food activist who started the SF Urban Agriculture Alliance, and Leif Hedendal, a not-so-vegan, sustainable chef who puts on dinners for the movers and shakers in the SF food activist/art world.

The talk made me insanely hungry, but it also helped me see beyond my own kitchen. Pretty much every time you buy/forage/trade food, you're committing a micro-political act that could one day have macro-level consequences.

So I was shocked this afternoon (or maybe not shocked, maybe just pissed off) to see that the US is actually responsible for the vast majority of the production of genetically modified crops. Now, I'm not a huge proponent of organics or anything like that. In fact, as a side note, I think eating organic is sort of missing the entire issue since there is hardly any oversight to what is even considered "organic" and eating organic is still not going to ensure that people have access to fresh food where it is most needed. 

But that's beside the point. What is really troubling about this is our lack of knowledge about the long-term effects of such modification to our ecosystems and food chains, and that developing nations are rushing towards producing more and more of these GM foods without regard to their sustainability. It also begs the question of why the US is producing so much modified food when we have plenty of space and viable land to grow things in a more sustainable fashion. If peaches don't want to grow in Nevada, then stop growing them there, dammit! And stop adding chemicals that preserve fruits for worldwide shipments. If blueberries don't want to grow in California in October, stop buying them from Chile. 

And then you sort of have to wonder how the big seed and chemical producers, like Monsanto, are playing into this and profiting off of it, and what areas of the world these foods are being sent to. When I was working on farms in New Zealand, I was always so surprised how beautiful the kiwis were in the orchards, and how those beautiful kiwis never made it to NZ grocery stores. The ones at the stores would never ripen, were smaller (and not because they were organic), and never tasted as sweet. Where did all the amazing, juicy kiwifruit go? The United States, someone told me. Here, we eat kiwis in the summer, even though they're ripe for the picking on the California coast in November. Sheesh. 

It's all such a mystery, and food is the last thing I want to be mysterious in my life. The food you eat shouldn't raise this many questions. And that's why I'm planting my own little victory garden this weekend, signing up for a CSA box, only eating eggs from Marie (haha, by the way, I'm buying eggs off of you, Mer), and only purchasing necessities from Good Life. Not that that solves the problem either, but it's one small step forward for me.