Patenting Autonomy

Firstly I want to thank you all for coming out to see us at the farmers markets. It was great seeing you all and we are happy to be back.

Secondly, sorry in advance folks, I was going to move on but I think I have one more post to make on the subject of the centralization of the food system (well all things). Thank you all for reading these, and hopefully after this one I’ll move on to more actionable thoughts rather than just critiques. But here I go again…

When we left off I was making some connections to the industries around Big Food. Big farms relying on big pharma relying on big oil all relying on regulatory agencies to allow them to rely on our money.

You might say, free market capitalism yada yada to which I’d say government subsidies are not free market. You might say, well people have the freedom to choose to eat unhealthy foods. To that I agree, however if we are allowing large corporations to put carcinogenic food dyes into widely accessible cheap food, we should probably go ahead and lower the barrier of entry into food processing for cottage industry businesses who are likely using locally sourced raw ingredients (otherwise what is the point of competing with conventional processed food?) and a much smaller scale eliminating a lot of risk of food contamination. You might even say, how could we feed the world without GMO food and highly processed shelf stable calorie bombs? To that I laugh because in 50 years the amount of farmers in the US dropped in half. It would be incredibly easy to increase food productivity if there ever was a desire to diversify from corn for ethanol and high fructose corn syrup (maybe not subsidizing the whole industry would help?).

But, if I didn’t sway you by the curiosity of what the FDA allows into the food supply, or the connection between poor diet and health, or the hazards of genetic modification… may I try one more point.

Oh boy, another conspiracy theory, here we go.

What is such a conspiracy about rich people wanting to get richer? One protects ones self interest. When your self interest is enriching yourself and furthering your potential for enrichment, you will do anything to protect yourself and the company you keep helping you further your goals.

When it comes to food, all fruits and herbs were given the ability to bare seed of like kind, therefore anyone who grows a crop to seed now has the autonomy of creating many from one. This my friends, is big trouble for the powers of consolidation. People having the ability to feed themselves, and freely create a profitable self reliant business model without relying on outside resources doesn’t allow for the monopolies to get their cut from every step of that business, and we just can’t have that now can we.

So what does one do?

Well, how’s about we do some good ole patenting? You can patent plants species which are created by asexual production, so cuttings or totally new genetic creations via gene splicing. So as we have read in previous posts, a majority of broad scale monoculture crops are GMO varieties, which would be patented leading to legal ramifications for anyone selling seeds and contracts disallowing farmers to save seed.

Oh, what do you know? The monoculture farmers love to use the “patented technology” because the seeds are clean and consistent which works great for their machines. You’d really hate to have to visit your field more than just driving over it to sow seeds, then spray chemicals, then harvest wouldn’t you? I mean, the government isn’t subsidizing it THAT much.

So, here in the states the farmers love their serfdom to their lord of the seeds. How about the rest of the world?

Oh, woops. Farming isn’t very profitable when you are dependent on inputs for fertility, pest and weed control, and seeds especially when you’ve been farming naturally for centuries. But that’s just some of the collateral damage needed to further the agenda of consolidation. Some people will become food addicts, some will be ill with diet related chronic disease, and some people will become so despondent at their newly realized servitude they can’t think of any other options… we just need better optics around the whole biotechnology merging with the food system mhmm that’s all we need.

Am I reading this headline right? Give up organic and embrace sustainable agriculture? When did organic agriculture become unsustainable? Will we finally reach sustainability when we are in flying cars and our refrigerator orders food to be delivered by drone from Amazon as soon as we even finish the last slice of bread?

Womp womp. Looks like the king will be giving into the biotech food movement after all. What do you know. Even less sustainable than that lowly organic produce, is meat. Icky, meat is going to kill us all so we should probably just let scientist grow meat in petri dishes for us so we can save the planet.

Good news! The lawyers told us we could go ahead and patent our genetically engineered cultured meat food stuffs before anybody gets any ideas of trying to recreate these wonderful advancements we’ve made.

I left us off with a few questions last post. “What is a bioeconomy even? Why do we need to manufacture biology? Why do we need to merge biology with technology?”

Ah, of course. The bioeconomy is a term used by the non elected officials who run the world, I mean regional development agencies and international organizations, to describe… the economy? It’s just that they are so dead set on merging every single thing into the cloud they had to rename it to normalizethe influence of biotechnology on our lives.

Why do we need to manufacture biology? Well, for the patents of course! I mean, because we can improve on nature.

Why do we need to merge biology and technology? Well how are we going to spy on you and collect data to more easily enslave you to consumerism if we can’t use technology to observe, track, study and manipulate biology? I mean, uhh for your safety and protection of course.

And I left you with one more question, what is the merger of corporate and state interests? Well, here it is from the horses mouth:

Oh. The guy who invented fascism defined it as “corporatism” because it was “a merger of state and corporate power”. That… isn’t at all concerning…

So, this whole biotech thing is definitely for you know… fighting hunger and curing disease right? Well let’s see what that there executive order is funding shall we?

Oh, so we’re going to do some more subsidizing I see. That’s okay it’s all for good right? Oh… I see… we’ll be working on hypersonics and submarines? Are they going to be transformers? What is biological about the technology of submarines? Okay, that’s fine. I’m sure the department of defense has some other good uses… oh, chemicals… of course. Ah, there it is. Biosecurity and cybersecurity. They want to make sure that our biology is secure, by manipulating it from every direction…

I don’t think vaccine means what you think it means…

Woah woah woah now you conspiracy theorist… where would you get that whole idea that mRNA technology is in the food supply? Oh, that article about how we’re totally working on that? Well fact check false! We are working on it, not doing it! Nah nah nah boo boo. Anyway… medium risk because yes we will. What is this all about? Why are they so hell bent on feeding us GMOs? Why are they experimenting on the whole global population with these novel technologies? What is this?

This study thinks the toxicity of the mRNA they are experimenting with through “vaccines” and food needs to be evaluated for potential interference with human DNA. Ah, couldn’t be, the fact checkers said it just isn’t so!

Don’t be a crazy conspiracy theorist. The Associated Press says mRNA doesn’t effect DNA, those scientists know nothing. Not to mention, anything found in nature can’t be patented… see what google says….

Unless they are defined by a DNA sequence created by any person… I’m not saying they are. I’m just saying… they probably can. At what point do we lose our humanity? At what point is this no longer the earth we once knew? Will we allow ourselves to become patented? Will we become a society of asexually propagated serfs to the corporate state?

If we don’t become genetically modified cyborgs linked via brain chip to the cloud, we’ll surely continue to become further from nature and our food production. The corporations, states, and international agencies will continue consolidating production, resources, and regulating small businesses out of the market. The growing power structure will do whatever it takes to preserve itself and its image of philanthropy and justice. I see right through all the pandering. We are but dollar signs which are but a symbol of our servitude to the few. The only way we can change our circumstances are by supporting good small local businesses. Better yet. Become a good small local business owner. Produce whatever you can. Show them we don’t want to rely on scientists to feed ourselves. We don’t want to be experimented on.

Organic is sustainable. You are organic. Don’t let them alter you. You are uniquely you. You have a purpose. You are loved. We must create and produce before it becomes illegal. Be organic while you still can.

And for suffering through that, I surely owe you some farm pictures…

Bottom Tunnel left to right (Lettuce/spring onions. Tokyo Bekena {coming soon to your spicy mix}/spinach. Spicy mix/peas/radish. More lettuce)

Top tunnel left to right (arugula. baby carrots. radish/peas/radish. baby spinach)

Everything has grown significantly since this was taken a week ago

The Cost of Convenience

As a preface, I am the biggest hypocrite on this. We do a decent job at shopping consciously, our most important stops are the farmers market and the local Kimberton Whole Foods, but I am certainly guilty of eating processed foods and fast foods. Sometimes after a 12 hour day in the field, the best thing for you is a pizza and that’s just life. However, consumption has always been one thing that I have a love hate relationship with. As much as I demonize processed foods and fast food I once read a critique that enlightened me to some of the benefits of these evils. Mainly in poor urban and rural communities there are food desserts, where getting whole food ingredients is much more inconvenient than getting something at the gas station or drive thru. Not only do these foods supply cheap easy calories, these places also tend to offer entry level jobs that can help people further working careers.

However accessible and cheap these foods are, we all know they are in no way nutritious. A suspicious person might find it quite devious the amount of time, money, and resources spent on researching how to make foods more crave-able taking advantage of our own evolution by exploiting our bodies response to sugar, salt, and fat. An even more suspicious person might link the food system to the pharmaceutical and medical system which are all under “regulation”. Where might we find one such suspicious person? Possibly you after reading this…

I’ll try to start at the beginning of processed foods and grocery stores. To clarify, I will be referring to processed foods in the context of large corporations making food on mass scale, not your local pickler or baker. Grocery stores will be considered chain brands after the 1930s when you could find everything in one location complete with a freezer section. People used to shop from many different vendors for raw ingredients to cook meals at home. Finally one could just take one loop around one store and even buy ready made frozen foods. By the ‘50s you have microwaves and tv dinners at your convenience.

I’m sure the main argument against all of what I will be putting together will be that since the 1930s the average life expectancy has risen from 60 to almost 80. The Social Security Administration claims the biggest factor in the low life expectancy of the early 1900s was due to infant mortality. Most of the health impacts I’ll be referring to happen after decades of eating so babies will be of little impact. When one considers that it wasn’t until the end of 1800s people realized the importance of hygiene on health it could be argued washing your hands and having clean medical facilities plays a good role in modern day life expectancy.

If we are mass producing “food” for chains of box stores where everything needs to be consistent in every way, we had better come up with a way to color all these scientifically created stuff the same way. Certainly we could obtain these from the multitudes found in nature, but that would be inconsistent and costly. So, petroleum it is!

https://www.acs.org/education/resources/highschool/chemmatters/past-issues/2015-2016/october-2015/food-colorings.html

Critics argue eating coal and petroleum by products aren’t great, aye? Where would that get such an idea? Ah, here is some great info from Trish Shea at https://www.foodnerdinc.com/blogs/food-for-thought/artificial-food-coloring-no-thank-you

She already did some great research for us below:

Nice, nice. Everything has a good cartoonish color, that is nice and appetizing. Now, if only everything was sweet enough to be considered dessert… but sugar from beets isn’t cheap. Along comes the popularization of high fructose corn syrup in the 1970s. Perfect, another crop we can subsidize for broad scale monoculture to further incentivize small diversified family farms to scale up or sell out. Shouldn’t be too big of a problem to be consuming a lot more processed sugar, certainly not for the bottom line of big food profiting off of peoples sugar addictions.

Now that we have all these box stores and we have them filled with every color of sugary sweet food stuffs, we really needed to vamp up the agricultural output. In 1974 came glyphosate, a convenient spray that worked as a pesticide and herbicide saving farmers tons of labor and increasing yields. If you look, the regulators and salesman will tell you gyphosate is more safe than what is under your kitchen sink, but is it so? Take a look at the abstract for this study:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.763917/full

Oh, what’s that about urine? Associated with intestinal and neurological disease?

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/oncology/cancer-causing-herbicide-found-in-80-of-us-urine-samples.html

Things are going great. Farms are growing and putting out more than ever, but farmers are noticing weeds are becoming resistant to the pesticides. The crops can no longer handle the strength of chemicals needed to keep the weeds down. How can we possibly solve this issue? These chemicals are great. Well, science of course. In 1994 GMO foods hit the scene. The first was a tomato modified at its inception to ripen and soften more slowly so large producers could ship all these consistently sized and shaped and colored tomatoes to all of the consistently sized shaped and colored grocery stores. Where would one find a tomato in the summer otherwise? Gosh.

Anyway, now that we can design plants how WE want, not how they evolve in nature we can go ahead and make them resistant to petrol chemicals and we can even splice insecticides to be produced by the plant itself.

https://ejbpc.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41938-018-0051-2

What could be the risk of modifying the genes of the plants we consume? We’ve already been told its relatively benign to be consuming petrol chemicals, so I’m sure when they tell us eating lab designed foods are safe they mean it for real guys. So what is cancer?

See guys, it’s fine. Cancer is just a genetic disease. Based on… changes… in… genes? Wait, what!? Hold on, hold on. How are they doing this gene modification anyway? Well it is very complicated and I am not a scientist but here is what I gathered. They use a bacteria for a culture and what is known as a Ti plasmid to cut and splice DNA. The Ti plasmid comes from the plant tumor causing pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The Ti plasmid is used to splice the new DNA to the original. The bacteria is just to culture the new genetically engineered DNA only to be killed off by antibiotics. Let me pick my jaw off the floor as I’m just a moronic laymen but are we relying on a plant pathogen that literally causes tumors in plants, to the point they found it useful for “changing genes”? Tumors… changing genes? And we all have heard of antibiotic resistance have we not? So at one point do these bacteria cultures become antibiotic resistant and enter the food chain? Maybe I’m just a highly suspicious person but that sounds sketchy. Is it sketchy?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271656390_Agrobacterium_a_potent_human_pathogen

So, I guess that is kind of sketchy. But why on earth would they allow something so questionable to be used so widely? Well, a lot of the world doesn’t…

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-ban-gmos

So, we got all these stores owned by a small handful of people. All these farms have grown in size, and shrunk in ownership. The pharmaceutical companies and big agriculture now all rely closely to the petrol chemical industry. We have these very unfortunate studies to our bottom line coming out about the dangers of synthetic agriculture and drugs… I guess we better spend some of these boat loads of profits on lobbying the government of the USA since Europe and much of the world has really put the ixne on the old eneticge odificationme.

https://www.sparklinecapital.com/post/investing-in-influence

Well that was easy. Let’s see how that worked out for us.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/09/12/executive-order-on-advancing-biotechnology-and-biomanufacturing-innovation-for-a-sustainable-safe-and-secure-american-bioeconomy/

And just like that. We went from getting whole, organic, local ingredients from a variety of vendors supporting a whole heap of farmers and shops along the way to the government by executive order furthering us into a post organic world run by monopolies owned by fewer and fewer. What is a bioeconomy even? Why do we need to manufacture biology? Why do we need to merge biology with technology? What is soylent green!?

“Conspiracy theories” aside. It is not healthy for us to be consuming large amounts of sugary highly processed foods, it is proven. Artificial flavorings and dyes are unsafe for human consumption. Herbicides and insecticides are bad for people and the environment. Genetically modified, genetically engineered, genetically enhanced, whatever name they are calling it currently it is still relatively new to the scene and should be met with the same scrutiny here as most of the world. And maybe these things would be under scrutiny if the regulatory agencies weren’t bought and paid for by corporations.

What is the merger of state and corporate interests? I’ll let you look that one up for yourself.