YOUR HEALTH

 

Organic is not the way

 

Today more and more educated and young people in the North America are embracing eating organic.

 

The organic movement -- which rejects pesticides, insecticides, man-made fertilizers and any genetic modifications (GMO) -- is no longer ‘fringe thinking’ but high profile, receiving space in regular green grocers, supermarket stores and the exclusive Whole Foods chain.

 

General Mills has blinked as well and is going to ensure all ingredients in its Cheerios cereal are GMO free -- to bolster declining cereal sales in an overcrowded market.

 

Yes, organic farming methods go back thousands of years, but today, as in the past it:

 

·        involves intensive labour due to constant manual weeding and hand or simple machine planting and crop collection 

·        has limited success at controlling bugs and disease attacks -- ongoing challenges with few ‘natural’ remedies

·        relies on crop rotation and leaving 1/3 to 1/2 of one’s fields fallow each year or planted with clover or other so-called ‘green manure’  which are left to die and be buried in the soil (See Wikipedia) -- to prevent depletion of soil nutrients

·        and, of course, any scientific genetic modification of food (GMO) is strictly verboten and shunned.

·        Finally, it uses traditional ‘organic fertilizer’ extensively; namely, 'poop' -- mostly from cows, sheep and pigs.

 

The above characteristics automatically result in reduced crop yields by over 1/3, increased spoilage and waste, and higher consumer prices of 10% to 30%. 

 

And the reliance on traditional animal ‘poop’  has revived the incidences of deadly animal E. coli bacteria, a harmless and common bug in animals, but a serious threat to human health and life: when ‘animal manure’ gets in direct contact with crops, vegetables, berries,  or leaks into nearby streams, rivers or wells and contaminates the water supply.   Just Google Walkerton Ontario or check out your local 'food poisoning outbreak' at some banquet hall offering organic fruits or vegetables to hundreds of guests.

 

 
While those who are affluent can afford the much higher food costs; can ignore the waste of arable land; can ignore laboratory tests that have proven organic and non-organic foods have the same nutrients and nutrition levels; and that some 70-80% of all foods sold in North America contain GMOs and have done so for well over a decade without harm ( Time magazine, Jan. 20, 2014, p.15) , the poor and low income of America, and the vast majority of the planets 7 billion people cannot.

 

The very scientific, modern farming improvements that are being shunned -- carefully designed pesticides and insecticides and precision man-made fertilizers (all of which come from natural ingredients), and GMOs (which are tailored to resist drought or excessive rain or bugs or disease) all have greatly increase crop yields and have allowed the West to become abundant in food -- so even our poor can eat.  And these western innovations have transformed food production (See Wikipedia “Green Revolution”) since the 1960s across India, Africa and now China -- so that billions no longer face starvation.

 

Yet educated Westerners are turning their backs on this progress.  They buy into the misguided belief that ‘natural’, ‘old-fashioned’ food is better for our health than foods with human intervention – despite no evidence to support this except, maybe, a placebo effect.

 

If this mindset spread around the world and ‘organic’ returns as the agricultural norm, three things are certain:

 

1. regular famines and starvation would return as has been the case for millennia under the vagaries of nature: drought, pestilence and crop disease

 

2. the world’s population would have to return to numbers that allowed organic farming at best to meet the food needs of the population:  no more than the 1.5 billion as at the start of the 20^th century. 

 

Today, there are 7 billion people.

 

3. and while most people today live in cities and towns and no longer tend the ‘organic’ fields as of old – the manual labour needed for traditional organic food production would require well over 50% of the population to go back to the farm.

YOUR MONEY

CANADA – USA  merger

No, I am not talking about a complete union making Canada another US state, but rather a financial union or at least a fixed rate peg.

In the last 3 months or so the Canadian dollar has dropped from par to some $0.90 cents US and the valuation fluctuates daily by a ½% to almost a full 1% - rarely up and overall falling downward.

In fact, I foresee a freefall to that ridiculous range of some $0.65 US as was the case during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.  The chart below – which ends with 2011 – highlights this fluctuation insanity.

The graph covering 2002 through 2011 found at  http://www.nbforestry.com/issues/the-dollar/   is a wild sea-saw ride    from $0.62 to over $1.10 Canadian and then falling again.

Canada does some 80% of its exporting with and importing from the USA and to allow the exchange rate to radically and uncontrollably fluctuate makes no sense for business, international corporations or individual citizens.

Yes, analysts hype the reduced dollar as ‘giving us an edge’ in exporting to the US but this ignores the equally important importing side: for machinery, goods and especially food that come from south of the border.

A reduced Canadian dollar causes our prices to rise – i.e., inflation – for a wide range of essential and irreplaceable imports.   It hurts the average consumer at the supermarket, Home Depot, Walmart and Target chains let alone more pricy retail.

If this was a government strategy (and one explained to the public) it might be valid, but governments and central banks have not really controlled their currency exchange rates for some 40 years: the last time the gold standard was removed.

Currency traders make these ‘decisions’ and ‘calls’ based on ‘perceived’ future strengths of any given economy, and all central banks can do is waste money to stem a freefall – if they so wish – by buying back their own currency and giving currency exchange companies a ‘handling’ profit.

It does not take a genius to recognize currency volatility is bad for business and individuals.  You cannot plan ahead because what you think makes sense and is a ‘good deal’ at $0.95 USA or $1.00 US exchange rate makes no sense when the bill comes in months later at a different rate – say $0.80 US. or $0.65 US!!   

While Canada’s employment numbers and bank stability have been the envy of the world throughout the Great Recession (2008 onward), and our debt to GDP is far better the US’s,  with ample farmland, forests, mining resources and huge tar sands/oil and natural gas reserves,  Canada’s dollar should be at or near par with the US if not higher.

But that is not what the currency traders say as they manipulate and speculate on their computers destabilizing and harming the overall economy and individual finances of Canadians.

In conclusion, we are too closely connected with America in trade, business, foodstuffs and travel to allow such shenanigans that are really beyond government control.   We should either peg the Loonie to the Greenback as some other countries do, or, like Europe, create a common North American currency – a EURO type GREENLOON.

OUR NEW WORLD

 

India’s star rising

 

The recent announcement - mentioned in a previous blog (Dec. 16/13) -  that India has successfully launched a probe to Mars was covered in a detailed segment on WNED Buffalo TV PBS news this Saturday evening.

 

The notable points:

 

1. India has had a space program for almost half a century, building and launching India made rockets and state of the art weather, communication (and military) satellites for decades.

 

2. India’s space program budget is a mere $1 billion dollars US and represents less than 1/3 of one percent of the country's total budget.

 

3. The probe to Mars mission cost a mere $72 million dollars US and this is a small fraction of what similar probes cost in the West.

 

4. The probe to Mars is a purely scientific exploration activity and it is hoped the new technologies and skills used in the mission will benefit Indian scientific and technological industries in general. 

 

5.  India has first class engineers and scientists and is adding thousands more to their numbers through its extensive university programs.

 

6. The mission has been a great source of national pride and raised India’s prestige and technological reputation throughout the Far East, Asia and beyond.

 

7.  India’s space exploits put it on par with neighbouring China -- as the two competitors rise to become world leaders in space and modern technology.

 

So, with the Russian and American space programs in decline due to budget cuts, with the two superpowers relying on ‘past laurels’, the real future of space exploration seems to be in India and China's courts -- with their far lower costs for the production of rockets and space technology, and their determination to be the number one nation on the planet: not only in population but in technology and scientific progress.

 

Put simply, the East is rising while Russia, Europe and the USA are treading water.

 ***  For more details on the full India space program, see Wikipedia "Indian Space Research Organisation"