Book Review: Bad Samaritans

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From THOM HARTMANN
BuzzFlash.com

The fundamental myth of the Milton/Thomas Friedman neoliberal cons is that in a “flat world” everybody is not only able to compete with everybody else freely, but should be required to. It sounds nice. America trades with – and competes with trade with and for – the European Union. France against Germany. England against Australia.

But wait a minute. In such a “free” trade competition, who will win when the match-up is Canada versus the Solomon Islands? Germany versus Bulgaria? Zimbabwe versus Italy?

There are two glaringly obvious flaws in the so-called “free trade” theories expounded by neoliberal philosophers like Friedrich Von Hayek and Milton Friedman, and promoted relentlessly in the popular press by (very wealthy) hucksters like Thomas Friedman.

First, “infant” economies – countries that are only beginning to get on their feet – cannot “compete” with “mature” economies. They really only have two choices – lose to their more mature competitors and stand on the hungry and cold outside of the world of trade (as we see with much of Africa), or be colonized and exploited by the dominant corporate forces within the mature economies (as we see with Shell Oil and Nigeria, or historically with the “banana republics” of Central and South America and Asia and, literally, the banana corporations).

Second, the way “infant” economies become “mature” economies is not via free trade. It never has been and never will be. Whether it be the mature economies of Britain (which began to seriously grow in the early 1600s), America (late 1700s), Japan (1800s), or Brazil (1900s), in every single case, worldwide, without exception, the economic strength and maturity of a nation came about as a result not of governments “standing aside” or “getting out of the way” but instead of direct government participation in and protection of the “infant” industries and economy.

Why Small Organic Farming Is Indeed Radical (and Beautiful)

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From ELIOT COLEMAN
Four Season Farm

The radical idea behind by organic agriculture is a change in focus.

[This post was adapted from an address given at the recent Eco-Farm conference in California.]

When a friend told me of two of the proposed discussion topics for a major agricultural conference — “What is so radical about radical agriculture?” and “Is small the only beautiful?” — I told him that I thought both questions had the same answer. Let me see if I can explain.

The radical idea behind organic agriculture is a change in focus. The new focus is on the quality of the crops grown and their suitability for human nutrition. That is a change from the more common focus on growing as much quantity as possible and using whatever chemical techniques contribute to increasing that quantity.

None of the non-chemical techniques associated with organic farming are radical or new. Compost, crop rotations, green manures and so forth are age-old agricultural practices. What is radical is the belief that these time-proven “natural” techniques produce food that is more nourishing for people and livestock than food grown with chemicals. What is radical is successfully pursuing that “unscientific” belief against the counter-propaganda and huge commercial power of the agrochemical industry.

The initiators of this new focus were a few perceptive old farmers from the 1930s and ‘40s who had not been taken in by commercial pressures and saw clearly the flaws of chemical agriculture. The popularizers of the new focus were the young idealists of the 1960s and 70s who were attracted to the idea of food production based on non-industrial systems, even though most of them had no previous connection to agriculture.

Author Michael Pollan on eating ‘real food’ in moderation

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From JOANNE CAMAS; photo by Alia Malley
MSNBC

It can be complicated to simplify things, but sometimes we need to be reminded of the essentials. Michael Pollan’s done just that with his new book, “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual”. After researching “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” (2006) and “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” (2008), Pollan came to an important realization: “The deeper I delved into the confused and confusing thicket of nutritional science, sorting through long-running fats versus carb wars, the fiber skirmishes and the raging dietary supplement debates, the simpler the picture gradually became,” he writes in “Food Rules.”

The simple picture, he says, can be distilled into two facts that will lead to a sensible diet: First, the Western diet leads to Western diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. “Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases that can be linked to this diet,” Pollan claims. Second, people throughout the world who eat a range of traditional diets, even those heavy in fats, carbohydrates, or protein, don’t suffer from these diseases. Thankfully, Pollan offers a third fact derived from these two: If we get away from the Western diet, we can see dramatic improvements in our health and reduce the risk of chronic diet-related diseases.

Epicurious spoke with Pollan about “Food Rules” and how its prescription for eating “real food” in moderation and sidestepping the Western diet developed naturally from the author’s mantra in his “In Defense of Food”: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Epicurious: If “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is an eater’s manifesto, did you write “Food Rules” as a guide to putting the manifesto into practice?