The Guardian piece on farmer suicides in the US raises more questions than it answers.
Nathan Rosenberg, on the show recently discussing the modern myths that beset American agricultural policy, outlines some of his concerns about the recent report on US farmer suicides.
Unrolled thread from @rosenblawg – 9 tweets
Are people still blaming farmer suicides in India on genetic engineering, I wonder?
First let’s decide what kind of food supply system we want, then use that to bring about a renaissance in real farming.
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“Plenty of plants, not much meat and maximum variety.”
The best advice for a good diet I’ve ever heard. It’s a maxim devised by Colin Tudge, long before anything similar you may have heard from more recent writers. Tudge, more than anyone else I know, has consistently championed the idea that meat ought to be seen in a supporting role, rather than as the main attraction, a garnish, if you will.
Tudge has been thinking and writing about agriculture and food systems for a long time, and we’ve been friends for a long time too. In fact, it’s fair to say that knowing Colin has influenced my own thoughts about food and farming quite a bit. As far as Colin is concerned, we’ve been going about farming in completely the wrong way for the past 100 years or so. Instead of asking how can we grow more food, more cheaply, he thinks we should focus on what we need – good, wholesome food that doesn’t destroy the earth – and then ask how we can provide that for everybody.
He’s expanded and built on those ideas in many books since Future Cook (Future Food in the US), which contained that pithy dietary advice and which was published in 1980. And rather than reform or revolution, neither of which will do the job he thinks needs to be done, he advocates for a renaissance in real farming.
Further proof that antibiotic use on farms harms humans
Ampicillin was introduced to the British market in 1961. By 1962, there were outbreaks of disease caused by strains of Salmonella typhimurium resistant to the antibiotic. A new study shows that the use of penicillin on farms from the 1950s gave the bacteria a head start. A team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, looked at samples of S. typhimurium collected from people, livestock, food and feed between 1911 and 1969. From the announcement:
“Our findings suggest that antibiotic residues in farming environments such as soil, waste water, and manure may have a much greater impact on the spread of resistance than previously thought”, says Dr Francois-Xavier Weill, who led the study.
When are we going to see real action on this?
