From The New York Times a piece on a farmer who is taken no lesser a monolith multi-national than Monsanto. And the beneficiary could be all of us......so that we can eat food uncontaminated by chemicals.
"Jim Gerritsen lives a far piece from New York City, in a remote part of northern Maine that what was once known as the Potato Empire. But there he was on Sunday — at age 56 making his first trip to the city — to speak at the Farmers March on Wall Street.
Mr. Gerritsen, who grows potatoes, corn and wheat, is president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, a national organization that supports (among other ideas) resistance to big agriculture’s control of seeds for farming. The march, from the East Village to Zuccotti Park, was a co-production of Occupy Wall Street’s food justice committee and Food Democracy Now.
I first met Mr. Gerritsen in 2006, when he and his wife, Megan, drove 13 hours to deliver ingredients for an all-potato dinner at a restaurant in Portland, Me. (And after dinner, they turned around and drove back, because they couldn’t leave the farm for any longer.) For this trip, he flew, while Mrs. Gerritsen tended the farm.
In an interview on Monday as he prepared to get on the plane home, he explained why he had made the journey: “I have not spoken to one farmer who doesn’t understand the message of Occupy Wall Street, the message that so many people keep saying is nebulous. It’s very clear. Because of business and corporate participation in agriculture, farmers are losing their livelihoods.”
He said farm gate prices — wholesale prices for farm products, excluding transportation — were the lowest he had ever seen. ”Metal prices are high, so we’re paying higher prices for farm equipment — like $200,000 for a tractor,” he said. “And the price of food in supermarkets is higher than it’s ever been. So, farmers are hanging on by their fingertips, and consumers are paying through the nose.”
“The money that gets made in between,” he continued, “is going to companies, and the government isn’t doing anything about it. We have fifth- and sixth-generation farmers up where I live being pushed out of business, when all they want to do is grow good food.
“And if it goes on like this, all we’re going to have to eat in this country is unregulated, imported, genetically modified produce. That’s not a healthy food system.”
"Jim Gerritsen lives a far piece from New York City, in a remote part of northern Maine that what was once known as the Potato Empire. But there he was on Sunday — at age 56 making his first trip to the city — to speak at the Farmers March on Wall Street.
Mr. Gerritsen, who grows potatoes, corn and wheat, is president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, a national organization that supports (among other ideas) resistance to big agriculture’s control of seeds for farming. The march, from the East Village to Zuccotti Park, was a co-production of Occupy Wall Street’s food justice committee and Food Democracy Now.
I first met Mr. Gerritsen in 2006, when he and his wife, Megan, drove 13 hours to deliver ingredients for an all-potato dinner at a restaurant in Portland, Me. (And after dinner, they turned around and drove back, because they couldn’t leave the farm for any longer.) For this trip, he flew, while Mrs. Gerritsen tended the farm.
In an interview on Monday as he prepared to get on the plane home, he explained why he had made the journey: “I have not spoken to one farmer who doesn’t understand the message of Occupy Wall Street, the message that so many people keep saying is nebulous. It’s very clear. Because of business and corporate participation in agriculture, farmers are losing their livelihoods.”
He said farm gate prices — wholesale prices for farm products, excluding transportation — were the lowest he had ever seen. ”Metal prices are high, so we’re paying higher prices for farm equipment — like $200,000 for a tractor,” he said. “And the price of food in supermarkets is higher than it’s ever been. So, farmers are hanging on by their fingertips, and consumers are paying through the nose.”
“The money that gets made in between,” he continued, “is going to companies, and the government isn’t doing anything about it. We have fifth- and sixth-generation farmers up where I live being pushed out of business, when all they want to do is grow good food.
“And if it goes on like this, all we’re going to have to eat in this country is unregulated, imported, genetically modified produce. That’s not a healthy food system.”
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