Poa pratensis. Most of us know it as Kentucky bluegrass. It’s the tiny seed that feeds America’s obsession with the great trans-continental lawn. Is there any other genus in the plant kingdom that even comes close to inspiring such deep and enduring passion or such quiet but insistent community pressure and controversy? The monochromatic lushness, the dream of velvety carpet-like perfection, the ideal manicured height, the unspoken demand for maintaining the appearance of shared community. Pity the poor patch of grass weighted down by so many expectations.

Just think about the countless hours of mowing. The money spent season after season on grass seed, fertilizer, and the unfortunate, heedless application of gallons of toxic herbicides. The truth is, though, the great green American lawn represents something greater than the sum of its parts. That something is the Arcadian dream first imagined by the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted when he imagined a green expanse stretching from sea to sea, symbolizing as it crowded out every other plant in the kingdom a shared vision of community with a sprinkling of democratized aesthetics.

Let me be clear. Right now—less than two weeks before the most divisive election this country has experienced in modern times—I think all of us could use a soothing dose of shared community spirit.

However, if the perfectly greened, perfectly mowed, weed-free American lawn is the be-all and end-all of community spirit—the sine qua non of the American illusion of social cohesion—count me out. Don’t bother traveling to my patch of lawn world. You’ll find that that particular brand of community spirit has gone missing.

For when it comes to the topic of lawns and the great American carpet of unblemished perfection, I must admit I inhabit a place somewhere far off the beaten path, somewhere out there in libertarian land. Where my lawn is concerned, live and let live is my motto. Dandelions, crab grass, ground ivy, Dutch clover, chickweed, broadleaf plantain, henbit, oxalis, prickly lettuce, common purslane, wild violets – my lawn’s got biodiversity up the wazoo. Of the fourteen most common lawn weeds in the Northeast, my property scores a thirteen—with all of them scrambling to find the perfect niche or self-propagating dominance in what could be seen by the cynic (me) as the botanical equivalent of lebensraum. (Crab grass, you devil on earth, you know it’s you I’m talking about.) The fact is my lawn resembles the United Nations of weeds.

My lawn areas – front, side, and back– represent an in-gathering of the weeds that most patriotic Americans fight to the death, acting as if lawn weeds represent an enemy as threatening to the American way of life as hordes of illegal immigrants pouring across the borders or embedded terrorist organizations. And the weapon of choice in America’s lawn war? That would be glyphosate – more commonly known to the lawn perfectionist as Round-Up. You heard it here first: my embrace of the United Nations of weeds is really not a signal of my love of the color, the shapes, and the mingling of the diversity of the plant kingdom. My embrace is a quiet campaign to demonstrate my opposition to the slow and steady poisoning of those things we pretend to hold dear and truly depend on: the land that feeds us, the waters that sustain us, and our very bodies themselves.

And if you think my symbolic act of protest against this particular expression of community spirit appears a bit unhinged, the next time you purchase your weed-killing arsenal, consider this:

• Glyphosate is the most heavily used weed killer in human history.
• Glyphosate has been found in the urine of 93% of Americans tested for the pesticide.
• Seventeen of the world’s top cancer researchers voted to elevate the cancer profile of glyphosate on behalf of the World Health Organization.
• The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

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We are in love with our morning coffee. What could be more American? Coffee more than pie? Just possibly! What if our morning caffeine were illegal? What would we do? Hoot and holler. I imagine we would do our best to drink our morning brew in whatever way we could. Coffee for many of us is our way, at a minimum, to start our day. We would do whatever we might do to have our daily caffeine. You want to illegalize my morning intake of caffeine? Get out of my way.

But in fact, attempts have been made to regulate caffeine.

Those who are married to a present day cocaine use may encounter a similar contemporary landscape. What if cocaine use were illegal? Oops, it is!

Put another way, How to come to terms with America’s affection for cocaine? The question has befuddled the country for decades, yet the attraction of cocaine continues unabated. Officially banned in the U.S. in 1922, by 2008 cocaine was still being used by almost 2 million U.S. citizens according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).

The Incas of Peru once used coca leaves to help adjust to altitude in the Andes; Americans do the same more or less seeking help in an adjustment to exactly what? Unknown.

Drug Free World reports that in the United States cocaine continued to be the most frequently mentioned illegal drug reported to the Drug Abuse Warning Network by hospital emergency departments in 2005 and that there were 448,481 emergency department visits involving cocaine reported in that year.

Have things changed since 2005? Statistics are vague. But over and beyond the larger parameters, the question remains, what is it exactly that Americans are looking for in their use of cocaine? It’s a tough question.

We drink our caffeine in the morning to help us energize our day. And we need our cocaine exactly why? To balance our lives? To understand what fate has dealt us? To calm down? To attempt to reorganize? To stop and take measure? These are possibilities, openings for discussion.

On the other hand, our government has looked at our needs and thought, “Well, the best way to deal with our citizens’ dependence on cocaine is to fumigate with glyphosate,” a pesticide manufactured by Monsanto among others, in Colombia. Let’s eradicate the source plant! What?

In an effort to address drug consumption in the United States, the official US policy in Colombia, a major US ally in South America, has been to invest large amounts of money to drop uncountable quantities of glyphosate onto the Colombian countryside. Glyphosate is a weed-killer most familiarly known in the US as Roundup. In Colombia, for decades, the US has promoted the dumping of huge amounts of glyphosate in sensitive areas of Colombia in an attempt to eradicate the cultivation of the cocaine plant.

As a consequence, have our needs changed in the U.S.? Nope. Because? Because the solution offered is so out of whack with the problem presented.

Americans are using cocaine exactly why? What is it that drives us to cocaine?

Colombia, thank goodness, has just in these past weeks decided to terminate the use of glyphosate within its borders in the eradication of coca. Citing a World Health Organization report that links glyphosate to cancer, the country has, according to the New York Times, defied the United States and ordered an immediate cessation to the fumigation of coca with glyphosate.

So, are we any closer to understanding why Americans use cocaine? I don’t think so. Have we looked at the incubating sources of our drug use problem? I don’t think so. Have we possibly contributed to the development of cancer in populations in outlaying areas in rural Colombia? Possibly yes.

Are some lives more dispensable than others? Possibly yes.

What is the underlying problem? Why this continuing need for cocaine in our society? Let’s open this debate.

The post Addictions: Coffee, cocaine, and U.S. policy in Colombia appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You’re familiar with the classic situation of somebody who gets hoodwinked because they didn’t read the small print. Well, it looks like we’ve got some purveyers of very, very small print (so small that it’s not even there) here in Missouri. These are the folks who devised and are promoting the proposed Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1 (House Joint Resolution Nos. 11 & 7). This is the August 5 ballot language that voters will see:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure that the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed?The potential costs or savings to governmental entities are unknown, but likely limited unless the resolution leads to increased litigation costs and/or the loss of federal funding.

However, the Linn County Reader informs us that :

… although the official ballot language voters will see when they go to the polls next month gives no indication of this, the Fair Ballot Language that voters won’t see when they go to the polls on Aug. 5 states, “A ‘yes’ vote will amend the Missouri Constitution…subject to any power given to local government under Article VI of the Missouri Constitution.” Instead, the voters will see official ballot language that reveals nothing about the impact of Amendment One on the ability of local government to regulate CAFOs.[…] If Constitutional Amendment One passes, you will be left without any ability to provide reasonable health and welfare safeguards for neighbors living in the rural areas of your county.”

If you doubt that all is not what it seems, note that Missouri GOP Senator Roy Blunt, a.k.a. Monsanto’s man in Washington, came out recently for the Amendment, dubbed yet another “Montsanto Protection Act” by one writer who is concerned about the proliferation of genetically modified foods and the dominance of the biotech sector in agriculture.  Blunt straightaway set about trying to assuage fears that rather than protecting the “family farms” that supporters are piously evoking in their pro-Amendment 1 TV ads, the bill is intended to protect powerful corporate factory farms whose questionable agricultural practices might be vulnerable to regulation and so-called “nuisance” suits that threaten the bottom-line for the Blunt-friendly big-guys.

The fact that Blunt is the latest pro-Amendent 1 batter up speaks for itself, as does the likely source of the amendment:

A year ago, the North Dakota [right to farm] measure was a topic for discussion as legislative agriculture chairmen from across the U.S. gathered for a conference in Vancouver, Canada. The event by the State Agriculture and Rural Leaders Association was financed by dozens of agriculture businesses, including Archer Daniels Midland Co., Cargill, DuPont Pioneer, Deere & Co. and Tyson Foods. Among those present was Missouri Rep. Bill Reiboldt, a farmer who sponsored the right-to-farm amendment referred to this year’s ballot by the Republican-led state Legislature.

If you’re interested in why one would oppose what seems on the surface to be an almost meaningless reiteration of support for farming, this video of former Missouri Lt. Governor Joe Maxwell speaking against the bill spells out the ways that Amendment 1 not only threatens the family farm, but the safety of our food supply:

Among other points Maxwell makes, he  suggests that Amendent 1 could result in weakening the protections for the family farmer that were spelled out in the 1975 Family Farm Act. As he noted elsewhere:

This amendment is about ensuring the largest multi-national corporation constitutional rights here in Missouri so they can do whatever THEY want to us neighbors out in the country. […]. What other industry has constitutional protections to do whatever they want and strips the local voice, either at the local level, the county level or even at the statehouse from being able to put in safeguards for neighbors out in the country?

Not only will supporters of this stealth legislation not answer these questions, they would prefer that you not even realize that anyone is asking.

The post “Right to farm” amendment in MO: The invisible small print appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Have you heard the one about a fetching New England state and the big, bad wolf?

Let me fill you in a bit. Last month, that fetching state, more often referred to as Vermont, passed the first comprehensive, mandatory GMO (genetically modified organisms, for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym) labeling law in the United States.

As expected, as quick as you can say Monsanto and the packaged food industry, one short month later, Vermont is being stalked straight into court by the Grocery Manufacturing Association, as well as by three other heavily financed packaged-food groups.

It certainly didn’t take long for the members of the pack, including St. Louis’s very own homegrown big bad wolf—that’s Monsanto for you non-Missourians—to start baying at the moon. The lawyerly wolves among the group quickly sat down on their haunches and developed a two-pronged attack. The first side of the attack claims that Vermont’s law violates the free-speech rights of corporations. (Who can forget how that cuddly wolf Mitt Romney famously intoned that “corporations are people too”?) The second side of the attack claims that the labeling law is inconsistent with FDA findings that there’s no evidence that GMOs are harmful to humans.

Poor, gentle Vermont. Its voters certainly scared the fur off of the big bad wolves. It’s easy to imagine the giant food corporations pacing and howling in their wounded state. After all, today gentle Vermont. Tomorrow brawny Oregon and Maine and after that tony Connecticut. There’s no question that a majority of consumers clearly back labeling for GMOs—reflecting a slew of unanswered questions about the lack of controlled, independent studies concerning the health effects of GMOs.

What kind of teeth, you may ask, does Vermont’s labeling law display? Not many, unfortunately. The fines for failure to label are a paltry $1,000. But the sharpness or the quantity of teeth is beside the point. As the herds of GMO-labeling advocates know, once the genie is out of the bottle, there may be no stopping it.

To be clear: The range of foods covered by the law is narrow. And the law, if left to stand in the courts, will have to wait until 2016 to kick in. According to Vermont’s attorney general, “the labeling requirement wouldn’t apply to many food categories, including meat, milk, restaurant fare and raw agricultural commodities that aren’t grown with genetically modified seed.”

It’s going to be interesting to watch the wolves gnash and gnaw as the fight heats up. After all, there’s a pile of money and an entire industry at stake in this fight. Remember that almost the entire crop of U.S. soybeans and corn grown in 2013 came from GMOs. Are you surprised by that chapter in this story?

Still you never know, do you, how fairy tales are resolved. The heroes sometimes lose, and the villains, the smelly wolves, sometimes win. Even so, I say it’s time to thank courageous Vermonters for standing up to that big bad wolf. We’ll just have to wait and see how this one ends.

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