01 Agriculture – Page 32 – Public Intelligence Blog

For Immediate Release

October 3, 2011
Contact: Glenn Turner, 917-817-3396
glenn@ripplestrategies.com

Corn vs. Sugar Industries Legal Battle Heats Up Over “High Fructose Corn Syrup” Name Change

New Website FoodIdentityTheft.com Provides Background for Reporters and Consumers

Expert Legal Spokesperson Available For Interviews

WASHINGTON, October 3, 2011 High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a man-made sweetener used in thousands of grocery store products and it has a serious image problem. Consumers are avoiding it. Food companies are taking it out of the products they make. Some supermarkets have banned it. Demand for this highly-processed ingredient is falling fast.

The Corn Refiners Association comprised of corporations that make HFCS -decided that changing the name was a way to fix this problem. They are petitioning the FDA so that HFCS can legally be called “corn sugar” and ultimately just “sugar². An official decision hasn¹t yet been made, but in 2008 the Corn Refiners Association began a $50 million dollar marketing campaign labeling HFCS as ³corn sugar². They are now being sued by a group of sugar farmers and refiners who believe the name change will confuse consumers and harm the sugar industry.

Continue reading “John Steiner: US Government to Rename Corn as Sugar?”

2011/09/28

Reference: Land and Power, the new wave of investments in land

01 Agriculture, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

Published: 22 September 2011

Author:Bertram Zagema, Senior Lobbyist (OxFam)

The new wave of land deals is not the new investment in agriculture that millions had been waiting for. The poorest people are being hardest hit as competition for land intensifies. Oxfam’s research has revealed that residents regularly lose out to local elites and domestic or foreign investors because they lack the power to claim their rights effectively and to defend and advance their interests.
Summary | Full report | (PDFs)

2011/08/062011/08/06

Robert Young Pelton: America in Afghanistan 1951 –

01 Agriculture, 02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, IO Impotency, Peace Intelligence

A tale of two countries…

In Afghanistan, the rise and fall of ‘Little America’

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Washington Post, 5 August 2011

Paul Jones arrived in a Chevy pickup, dust clouds billowing as he crossed the desert. He had set out soon after first light from his base in southern Afghanistan, an encampment that, thanks to his employer’s logistics savvy, had an ample supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Almost everything there had been sent by sea from California or Oregon, and then trucked up from Pakistan.

The 63-year-old, khaki-clad engineer came that February morning to observe a massive development project aimed at transforming the valley along the Helmand River into a modern society.

Irrigation canals would feed farms that would produce so much food that the country would export the surplus for profit. New schools, modern hospitals and recreation centers would rise from the sand. So, too, would factories, fed by electricity from a generator at a dam upriver. Jones had seen a similar transformation near his home on the outskirts of Sacramento, and he was certain it would materialize here, too. In the desert expanse, he saw “the beginning of a new civilization — a new way of life abounding in the riches of worthy endeavor.”

It was 1951.

Read full article….

2011/08/04

DefDog: Doing the Wrong Things–Agriculture, Defense

01 Agriculture, 10 Security, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military

Industrialized agriculture, and industrialized corruption in defense. Nobody is serious about creating safe, affordable, sustainable solutions for anything, from agriculture to defense.

Antibiotic resistance is a common feature of Cargill Salmonella outbreaks

Drew Falkenstein

Food Poison Journal, 3 August 2011

Competition for Military Contracts Doesn't Lower Costs

Joshua Foust

The Atlantic, 3 August 2011

Phi Beta Iota: Holistic strategic analytics with embedded full life cycle “true costs” is a non-negotiable first step toward global hybrid governance, with or without governments.

Review: Betrayal of Trust–The Collapse of Global Public Health

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Dereliction of Duty (Health)

1961-2011: 50 Years of The Military-Industrial Complex

Review: Prophets of War–Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex

Why Boeing is Imploding–Spinney, Sprey, & Reality vs Political Engineering & Government Spec Cost Plus

What’s Wrong with America? Let Me List the Books….

2011/07/24

John Robb: Economy Cashes, Farm Crime Skyrockets

01 Agriculture, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Law Enforcement

Farm thefts in California. From copper to iron to avocados to bees to solar panels. Combo of economic depression/financial collapse (a loss of legitimacy) that continues to ravage CA and legal decay (budgets to protect against this are down by 50% in three years

EXTRACT

Like many lawmen in vast agricultural areas, Sheriff Anderson said a major challenge was the remoteness of farms and the lack of witnesses. “It’s not like breaking into the neighbor’s house and the dog barking,” he said. “These things are just sitting out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Phi Beta Iota: This one quote is gripping, because it describes the insanity of what the US Government is trying to do with Homeland Security: “It’s difficult to lock up 1,400-plus acres,” he said. “The value of the fences would be worth more than I’m worth.”

2011/07/172011/07/24

Koko: Aqua-Culture is Rocking….

01 Agriculture, Earth Intelligence, YouTube

Gorilla Kitten on Top — Koko the Reflexive

1 MILLION pounds of Food on 3 acres. 10,000 fish 500 yards compost

Growing power seem to have a winning combo going. I underestimated what they are doing. If the information in these videos is true then on 3 acres they are producing 1,000,000 pounds of food each year! How are they doing this?

10,000 fish
300-500 yards worm compost
3 acres of land in green houses
Grow all year using heat from compost piles.
Using vertical space
Simple 1 pump aquaponics

A packed greenhouse produces a crop value of $5 Square Foot! ($200,000/acre). That is if the whole acre was under greenhouse.

Phi Beta Iota: Just under six minutes of REALITY that industrialized mega-agriculture has sought to bury.

All Agriculture Entries

2011/06/122011/06/12

Worth a Look: Peak Soil, Food Shock, Biodynamics

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Environmental Degradation, 11 Society, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, IO Deeds of Peace, Methods & Process, Worth A Look

Peak Soil

Oil is what most of us think of as a strategic resource, yet in the long run it is soil which is the more important. Even so, people’s eyes tend to glaze over when talk turns to soil conservation, maybe because it’s so much easier to see the immediate relevance of rising gas prices and climate change in these days of peak oil. So while public attitudes on climate change have shifted dramatically over the past few years, a crisis in global agriculture remains hidden: we are, and have long been, using up the supply of topsoil we rely on to grow our food.

Food Shock

New “Food Shock” Report Released by OffTheGridNews.net Reveals Disturbing U.S. Food Supply Trends

THOMSON, IL–(Marketwire – April 2, 2011) – The world's food supply is shrinking and as it does the price of food continues to climb, reaching record levels and leaving most of the global population in a state of emergency. This isn't an opinion created out of thin air; it's a strong message that has been researched and delivered by the United Nations. In an article published on Bloomberg.com on March 31, 2011 a representative from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization surmised that world food production would have to increase by 70 percent by 2050 to meet the increasing demand from an expanding global population that is expected to eclipse the 9.1 billion mark by 2050, a dramatic rise from the 6.9 billion that make up today's world population.

Biodynamic Agriculture

Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms,^[1] emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants and animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs^[2] insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food.^[3] As in other forms of organic agriculture, artificial fertilizers and toxic pesticides and herbicides are strictly avoided. There are independent certification agencies for biodynamic products, most of which are members of the international biodynamics standards group Demeter International.