The emerging two-tier food system and Dr.

Mercolas write up on How GMOs and

Glyphosate Impact Soil Biology
by Chandre Dharmawardana (posted: October 2015)

October 26th, 2015

The fear that what you eat is poisoned and it is not good for you have produced a
two-tier market with the top tier, made up of organic foods catering to the rich, while
the poor have to eat the food from the large warehouse sales centers, US examples
being Costco and Wall-mart. The clout of the rich social segment is such that its
campaign is likely to endanger the food market of the poor, especially in developing
countries where safe pesticides and fertilizers have been banned by frightened
politicians who are faced with various illnesses whose origins are often ill-understood,
and hence simply blamed on poisoned farming. In Canada, a small group of people
from Sri Lanka were trying to sell their traditional rice packets, and also collect
money for their NGO, claiming that normal Sri Lankan rice is contaminated with
arsenic (although there is no evidence to support such a claim).

I decided to write this some what general article after reading some of Dr. Mercolas
write ups on GMOs and Glyphosate. Dr. Mercola is known to have glibly swallowed
the article by Anthony Samsel and Dr. Stephanie Seneff, published in the pay-andpublish anything (PPA) journal named Entropy (see
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/09/monsanto-roundupherbicide.aspx). This can be taken as a companion to my article about Glyphosate and
its alleged capacity to cause Kidney disease that I put out as a response to Dr. Jeff
Rittermans article on the mis-normed truthout.com publication (see http://dhweb.org/health/RitterTruthout.html) claiming that a group of Californian scientists have
provided credible evidence that glyphosate causes kidney disease. Ritterman based
himself on another speculative article published in another PPA journal, where the lead
author was not Californian, but Dr Jayasumana, of Sri Lanka. An account of these
predatory for-profit PPA journals which are not peer-reviewed, and not run by learned
societies, seehttp://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.summary.

Object 1

Recently, when the WHO classified Glyphosate (in the same class as cell-phone
radiation) as an agent that can probably cause cancer, there has been a flurry of
public activity, with internet writers like Dr. Mercola cashing in on public
apprehensions. An excellent, valid scientific discussion of all this can be fond in a TVOntario discussion (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE_vjC0z-z4 ) which
involved some of the leading researchers working on the toxicity of Glyphosate. The
new write up by Dr. Mercola adds nothing new. He says that Glyphosate inhibits
protein synthesis needed for plant growth, and suppresses mineral uptake by plants.
Indeed, the plants concerned are the weeds that we wish to eliminate, and we dont
eat the weeds, so to argue that When minerals are bound to glyphosate in the plant,
they will not be available to your body when you eat it is misleading . If Dr. Mercola
and others are worried about the parts-per-billion amounts of Glyphosate residues
found in the environment, they should first of all worry about the parts per million
amounts of petroleum, diesel, plastic toxins and coal-burning emissions found every
where, and we should begin by banning the motor car. When you have cholera, you
dont worry about an in-growing toe-nail.

Dr. Mercola is well-known for his writings about health, and matters that impact on
human health, usually espousing a view favoured by the Californian alternative
lifestyle movements. This readership tends to be somewhat idealist, antiestablishment urbanites who have little experience with the realities faced by the
farmer, or feeding the 7.3 billion people crowded on a planet with finite resources.
Ranjith Mulleriyava has been writing to the Island Newspaper, and arguing with Dr.
Ranil Senanayake on this very topic ( Island article ).

Much of the problems in modern agriculture arise due to the incorrect, un-informed
use of agro-chemicals. The soil is a living eco-system teeming with micro-organisms
vital to the health of the soil. However, even these organisms need the minerals inputs
for their existence, but an excess will kill them. The solution is not going back to outdated methods which were discarded because they failed, but learning modern
agricultural and chemical science. You cannot rely on the village general store to sell
the agrochemicals and also provide the safe technical know how, while working under
free-market conditions. Agrochemicals must be sold in the same way as medicine is
sold by prescription, where a farmer gets the chemical prescription after soil tests by
an agricultural scientist. Instead of using informed agriculture and setting up the infrastructure for it, we have activists who want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Many who oppose modern agricultural practices consider it fashionable to be

skeptical about the green revolution and the fruits of technological progress. They
are likely to regard main-stream medicine and psychiatry in the manner that such
practice is depicted in the movie One flew over a cuckoos nest, based on Ken
Keseys novel. They view atomic energy within the China syndrome paradigm, and
want organic food totally free of contaminants! They blame big agri-business,
Monsanto being a typical target. India, Sri Lanka and other Asian countires have their
share of the prophets of doom and gloom who have no real solutions. Sarath
Fernando of MONLAR used to claim that Poisoned agriculture will slowly kill the
world, while Shiva Vandana in India has made herself a career by protest action
against GMO foods in India, preventing the introduction of golden rice (engineered to
contain Vitamin A sources), that could have saved millions.

However, while the California activists are worried about the activities of the food
industry and agri-business, they insist on market competition and getting the best
value for their dollar. Today they want milk in the US at less than a dollar per litre, an
egg at less than a quarter (25 cents), a kilo of beef at less than $10, and a kilo of
potatoes at less than $3! This has to pay the retailers, middlemen and finally the
farmer, ensuring that the small farmer is dead!

The consumer and the current model of free markets are forcing on us industrial mass
production. The same consumer has a lifestyle where s/he wants his/her fruits extra
sweet, food well salted, flavoured and delivered extra fast, with extra ketchaup and
pickel. That the uncontrolled consumption of salt and sugar is largely poisonous is
ignored. So a vast industry has arisen to carter to them, where we see even traditional
Asian cultures embracing the fast-food franchises of the industrial nations they imitate.

However, unlike in the West where the population is stable or even dwindling, the

developing countries have population growths which usually exceed their rates of
economic growth. Even more explosively, developing nations have aspirations of lifestyles acquired from glamor TV shows which depict families living in 5000 sq. ft homes
with designer toilets, swimming pools and multi-car garages, consuming vast amounts
of water and energy. Naturally, the developing nations also want highways, fly-overs
and the convenience of plastic wrap. They will consume vast amounts of energy within
the next decades.

Today, every persons blood contains significant amounts of gasoline (petrol)

residues, pharmaceuticals and plastic residues from the use of automobile and
plastics. Each discarded computer, cell phone or fluorescent light adds arsenic,
mercury and other toxins to the environment. The pharmaceuticals consumed by
individuals to control cholesterol, hypertension, fertility and so on end up in sewers
discharged into the water table, becoming toxic to the biosphere. No government
insists that the manufacturers take back their used products, as each nations market
wants to be competitive against other nations. This frenzied human activity is reflected
even in our climate which is just giving up. The developing nations blame the West
for high consumerism per capita, while the developed nations blame the poor but
highly populated nations for high consumption in toto. Nobody really obeyed the Kyoto
accord.

Those familiar with any Asian capital will remember how leisurely houses with large
gardens in residential areas have been replaced by rabbit warrens of flats and
apartments that now teem with humans. Palm trees and forest cover and even
marshes have disappeared and taken over for human habitations. Wild animals have
no place to go and are threatened with extinction by loss of habitat and poachers. If
human populations and their greed have grown to the bursting point, and if the
governments, usually run by men who care only for the vote do nothing, the only
option is to look for the best technological solutions that will provide a solution to the
existing mess caused by human greed and excessive fecundity.

One of the great successes in this sense was the discovery of a method of converting
atmospheric nitrogen into Ammonia by Fritz Haber (Nobel laureate, 1918) enabling us
to make synthetic fertilizers.
Most of the modern Nitrogen fertilizers are made via the Haber process, and this is a
chemical reaction which absorbes some heat. Thus the energy cost of this fertilizer is
minimal compared to the energy costs of production of most alternative fertilizers,
contrary to the claims of some writers who write that fossil fertilizers require a lot of
energy to produce them (The phosphates needed in fertilizer mixes has to be mined,
be it manually or using modern methods).

It is this single advance by Haber that has enabled the human kind to feed itself in the
face of the phenomenal rise in human population since the discovery of the origin of
many diseases, and their control by vaccines, antibiotics and the increasing availability
of clean water and hygiene.
The human life span has more than doubled compared to the 19th century, infant
mortality dropped, and most dreaded diseases of our grand-parents are now a matter
of memory. All this adds to the rapid rise in populations.

Then came the Green revolution of Borlaug (Nobel laureate 1970, and World-Food
prize), and modern varieties of high-yield rice, followed by methods in genetic
engineering. Ignoring that that these advances are the main stay of our food supply
that feeds billions (while a lot of people in Africa who use traditional agriculture still
remain hungry), we now have the organic lobby wanting to go back to traditional
agriculture using traditional seeds.
Organic farming
Proponents of organic farming want to use compost as their fertilizer. Of course,
compost and the labour force needed are hard to find. Compost pits are notorious for
emitting green-house gasses injurious to the climate. As plants accumulate metals and
other toxins, the re-use of plant matter in compost needs to be done in tandem with
chemical analysis. Different soils need different fertilizer mixtures, and this cannot be
easily done except by high-tech methods. Furthermore, traditional seeds need more
water, more land, longer periods of growth, more manual work, and finally give poor
yields. I remember a series of articles in the Island Newspaper, Colombo, where Dr.
Ranil Senanayake, when asked to present data on yields and profitability, presented
some theoretical computer-model estimates from a group in California
(http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=articledetails&code_title=87824). If I understand him right, Dr. Senanayake went on to argue
that traditional agriculture can feed the world and that there is no other choice.

However, Sri Lankan agricultural scientists have made actual field studies giving a
clearer picture of the present situation. For instance, Dr. KMC Bandara from the Rice
research Institute in Batalagoda and colleagues from the Peradeniya University
(GRMD. Gunawardane and LHP. Gunaratne) published an Evaluation of relative
performances of organic rice cultivation based on experimental evidence
(Proceedings of the Peradeniya University Research Sessions, Sri Lanka, Vol. 14, 3rd
December 2009, p403), where they used a traditional variety known as Sudu
Heenati as a comparison against the popular hybrid seed BG360, with compostfertilizer and mineral-fertilizer approaches used in the comparison. They conclude that:

Both traditional and improved varieties had better performances with inorganic
fertilizer compared to that with organic practices. The highest yield was
recorded by conventionally grown improved variety which was 6.93 t/ha whereas
the lowest yield was given by organically grown improved variety which was 3.39
t/ha. Conventionally grown traditional variety recorded a higher yield than
organically grown traditional variety (5.30 t/ha vs. 4.45 t/ha).

The breakdown of the total cost of cultivation revealed that the highest cost
component was the labour, irrespective of the variety or fertilizer applied.
The organic practices were more labour intensive than modern practices due to
organic inputs, transportation costs, and use of buffaloes in land preparation.
The analysis further revealed that conventionally grown improved variety
outperforms all with respect to the yield, revenue and the profit thus
rejecting the claims of organic rice promoters. Analysis of benefit-cost ratios
and break-even prices corroborate the same. Organically grown improved
varieties did not perform well due to inadequate supply of nutrients as these
improved varieties are unable to grow well under organic fertilizers which
release nutrients slowly.
Although these are the facts, various organizations, often sphere-headed by respected
Buddhist monks, Hindu Kururals or evangelicals operate in Sri Lanka, India and other
Asian countries, pushing the agenda of traditional seeds. Mnay NGOs do contract
planting for niche markets. A few scientists, often without any training in agriculture,
chemistry or any such relevant disciplines come forward as Champions of these
causes, and provide credence to beliefs which are often only a little better than urban
myths. We see this phenomenon even among some electrical engineers who have
come forward to oppose the setting up of cell-phone transmission aerials, claiming
that the strong radiation will cause cancer in the neighboring populace. In
electromagnetic waves, the energy or strength is determined by the frequency, and
not by the power of the signal, as Einstein proposed in 1905 in his theory of the
photo-electric effect. No exception what so ever to this law has ever been found,
except in the minds of those who believe that the use of cell-phones will give them
brain cancer. There are always PPA journals willing to publish such claims. Even the
WHO was politically influenced to classify cell-phone radiation as a possible cause of
cancer, as it takes off their responsibility from the issue, even though over 10 billion
Wi-Fi devices have now been used in the world for over a decade, with not one
properly substantiated case of cancer caused by Wi-Fi radiation.
Our Conclusion

The concern over glyphosate, pesticides etc is totally mis-directed given that much
more serious environmental threats at some three orders of magnitude higher in
intensity exist in our environment, our food and water. It is similar to the red-herring
concerns about Wi-Fi and cell-phone radiation. On the other hand, the use of gasoline
vehicles, many types of plastics, glues, fire-retardants and paints have to be curtailed,
and better methods for the disposal of electronic waste have to be developed, long
before we worry about parts per billion presence of glyphosate in the environment. A
push to severely restrict the intake of sugar and salt, roughly on the lines of the antitobacco effort has to be launched. Consumption of meat is ecologically hard to defend,
and technology has solutions to feed those carnivorous individuals and save the
ecosystem.

The push for organic agriculture is largely a movement catering to the worried wealthy
social strata who want custom-made design food, organic beef (and perfect
bodies at any cost, including cosmetic surgery). These can provide niche markets for
specialized agriculture and specialized services, but it cannot ever serve the whole
populace. Sustainable agriculture has no meaning in a world where even the existing
population has rapidly increasing insatiable demands due to unsustainable aspirations
for greedy life-styles. This earth, with its limited supply of water, phosphate and other
crucial minerals cannot ever support these demands via traditional agriculture,
unless we have a method of reducing the worlds population back to what it was in the
19th century.
ome to forward this mail to anyone interested.)
Posted by Thavam