Carrots in all shapes and sizes

Carrotmob is a startup company that unites consumers and businesses with common goals, enticing a business to do something environmentally or socially responsible with the reward of shoppers. I think it is a wonderful idea, or at least one that appears to be newsworthy, as their actions have appeared in rags like Time and The Guardian. On a more individual level, I’ve always been a fan of “voting with my dollar”. When I eat at a non-chain restaurant that serves local produce, I’m essentially saying “your practices are more in line with my ethical principles” and at the same time telling the places I choose to avoid that they are not. Similarly, I choose products that have ingredients and standards I agree with. I know that the parent company isn’t 100% in line with my ideals, but that isn’t as important as telling the company what sorts of products I will buy and which I will not by voting with my dollar. For example, I choose GreenWorks products from Clorox, even though I won’t buy most of their other products. Not everyone has time to hand make their bath products or to preserve food, and not everyone has access to small businesses that do these things. I am lucky to have Prairieland Herbs about an hour away, but that’s an hour away, so I only go occasionally with a friend as a luxury. I can bike to the HyVee (grocery store) and pruchase items that aren’t quite as awesome as those at Prarieland Herbs, but that are reasonably good and still conform to my ethics. This obviously isn’t fool-proof (particularly for me because I want products that were produced with low or no pesticides which means organic, but that don’t specifically say GM-free, which is rare now-a-days), but I think it’s a logical way to interact with corporations in our capitalistic democracy. That’s why I was so confused by an AlterNet article that was emailed to me by a Iowa State Associate Scientist affiliated with the Sustainable Agriculture department a while ago (it’s clean out the blogging inbox time). The theme of Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine, Naked Juice: Your Favorite Brands? Take Another Look — They May Not Be What They Seem is that evil corporations bought all of the wonderful little brands that used to be your favorite, but you’re not allowed to buy them any more because they are evil. The author laments the loss of these brands in amusing ways:

Upon first meeting someone, I can usually tell a quite a lot about them by the contents of their bathroom. The brand I see most often behind medicine cabinets of people I consider to be environmentally conscious is Tom’s of Maine. What Tom’s says to me about the person is that they are willing to spend a little bit of extra cash in order to take proactive steps to help green the Earth. Well, no more. My bathroom assessments will never be the same. Tom’s of Maine is owned by Colgate-Palmolive, a massive, tanklike company with an estimated 36,000 employees and revenue of approximately $11.4 billion. Its big products include: Ajax, Anbesol and Speedstick. I am only left to wonder, is Trader Joe’s, popularly known to showcase Tom’s of Maine in its hygiene department, just as much in the dark about all of this as I have been? Or is Joe’s simply another conduit for big corporate products?

A few questions to the author before I progress to my point: How many people’s bathroom cabinets do you see upon first meeting them? Wouldn’t the people be more environmentally conscious if they used simple baking soda for tooth brushing rather than expensive products that require packaging? Why pick on Anbesol – do you know of any locally produced oral pain remedies that work anywhere near as well? Are you really so naive as to not know that Trader Joe’s is actually a huge corporation in it’s own right? Ok, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest… I’ll stick with the Tom’s example because it’s a good one. I just don’t understand what the problem is, and that might very well be why I often have difficulty communicating with people who are anti-capitalism. Local and small is nice, but I think it is very significant that a huge corporation like Colgate-Palmolive would find Tom’s to be lucrative enough to make an offer, purchase it, and mass market the products. The result is that many many more people have access to a relatively natural alternative that hasn’t been tested on animals. Granted, there is little transparency that a small company has been purchased by a larger one. It isn’t usually on the products, or if it is there, the print is small. Sadly, they have to do this because so many consumers that consider themselves organic or natural are very superficial in their determination of what is worthy. Tom’s website does have their parent company disclosed in their FAQs, along with an assurance that nothing has changed (aside from their ability to reach into more stores). It would be entirely different if Colgate purchased Tom’s, changed everything behind the scenes, but continued to sell it as if nothing had changed. Some companies simply slap on a “natural” sticker – I think we can all agree that is wrong – but that isn’t the case in these friendly take overs. The shining quality of capitalism is that producers follow the demands of customers. It’s a lot easier to work with the system than to fight it. People demand organic, natural, fair-trade… and they get it! I particularly think it is fabulous that Hershey’s owns Dagoba. With all of the money (power) that Hershey’s wields, they can push this sustainable fair-trade bone-char-free chocolate into places that it wouldn’t have been found before. Consumers that have access can then choose Dagoba over a normal Hershey’s bar. People can choose Burt’s Bees over more chemical laden bath and body products, Kashi over the dyed and sugared alternatives… the result is exactly what a conscious consumer wants! Well, if that conscious consumer is like me, caring more about the people who grow the chocolate, the watersheds that have less pesticides running into them, the animals that do not suffer in unnecessary tests… but thinks “evil capitalism” is a cliche that we should put to bed.

Shameful Shiva

Every time I read something Vandana Shiva has written, I become more convinced that she is either 1) willfully ignorant on the subject of farming or 2) willfully ignoring a whole swath of problems in order to focus on a pet peeve. She is another sad example of a self-styled celebrity who plays games with people’s lives because she is unwilling to move from her ideology. One would think she would at least adapt her diatribes to fit peer-reviewed research or the numerous surveys of the people she claims to protect. Unfortunately, she’s still using the same old talking points and flat out lies that have accomplished nothing.
Case in point: Shiva writes about the plight of Indian farmers in the Huffington Post article From Seeds of Suicide to Seeds of Hope: Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy? in April of 2009. Instead of focusing on real solutions or the real source of the problems, she points a lazy finger at the boogeyman Monsanto. I don’t have any particular love for big M (or for capitalism in agriculture in general), but it’s wreckless to ignore all of the other issues, as she does in this article (and many others). Shiva writes:

Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.
Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity.
The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture. The district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh used to grow diverse legumes, millets, and oilseeds. Now the imposition of cotton monocultures has led to the loss of the wealth of farmer’s breeding and nature’s evolution.

The majority of “corporate seed” is hybrid. If farmers save seed from hybrids, the resulting plants will not have the benefit of hybrid vigor. That’s biology, and has nothing to do with corporate greed, patents, or genetic engineering. Hybrids can be grown without fertilizers and pesticides, but they will then yield less. Local varieties yield less without fertilizer and pesticides as well. In other words, hybrid seed grown in farming methods that de-emphasize chemical inputs will do as well if not better than saved seed, assuming that the hybrid is appropriate for the environment (wet or dry soil, etc). Sadly, no one is researching the use of improved seed in alternative farming systems. This is not physics, it’s crop science – which might be why she doesn’t seem to understand it. Some activists argue that we shouldn’t be using hybrids at all, but removing hybrids of all types from the food supply would spell starvation for a lot of people.
There is no corporate monopoly of the seed supply in India. Ironically, things might be better if seeds there was such a monopoly, but seed is often bought from cut rate dealers selling counterfeit (mislabeled or fake) seed. To solve this problem, India would need to adopt some sort of seed certifying system. It would also be useful to have more government research into crop varieties including genetically engineered traits, then distribute them to farmers at low cost, as China does.
Farmers are welcome to continue using local varieties; there is no legal requirement for them to take out loans they can’t afford to buy fertilizers, pesticides, and seed (or larger houses, extravagant weddings, etc). One of the biggest problems plaguing farmers and small business owners all over the world is credit – absurdly high interest rates are a bigger problem than Bt could ever be.
Shiva never asks why “corporate seeds” were snapped up so quickly by farmers (perhaps she thinks they are stupid). Farmers all over the world are buying Bt seed of various species because it works. Bt decreases pest damage without increasing pesticide use. It isn’t a silver bullet, though. Bt only controls certain pests, and the specific varieties the trait is in may or may not be suited for the local environment. The best way to use traits like Bt are to integrate them carefully into an Integrated Farm Management Plan and to put the trait in locally adapted varieties. To solve the existing farm problems in India – including eroded soil, misuse of fertilizers and pesticides, monocultures, and misuse of Bt – India needs farm extension and price regulation. The farmers surely remember how to grow millet, legumes, and oilseeds, but why would anyone choose to grow those if they could get a higher price for cotton?
Some of these and many other issues surrounding the problem of farmer suicides and Bt cotton in India can be found in a report by IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) in October of 2008. I wrote about the report in November of 2008 in Bt cotton and suicides in India.
h/t Luigi.