Fancy a pizza the new biotech?

Gerald Miles, GM-free campaigner, organic farmer and Do speaker, posted this interesting snippet recently:

Agrimoney.com [UK], 18 January 2010:
http://www.agrimoney.com/news/italy-is-weak-point-of-europes-anti-gm-defences--1227.html

Italy is the Achilles heel of the campaign to maintain Europe's defences against genetically modified crops, a US report has said, adding that the region's consumers are not as opposed to the technology as is portrayed.

With 65% of Italians supporting biotechnology, and the Vatican a "vocal advocate" of GM crops as a way of easing hunger in Africa, the country was a "good place to start" a campaign to "educate" Europeans about GM crops.

"Italy may present uniquely valuable opportunity for improving public opinion about biotechnology in the EU," her report said

Read this in conjunction with the piece about pesticide resistance in weeds over-fed Roundup in GM fields

Time to get gardening

The money and commercial interest behind GM crops can steamroller some things - Percy Schmeiser for instance - but unsurprisingly, it can't steamroll the weeds that - can you believe it - have evolved to cope with the Roundup herbicide provided by Monsanto.

The GM giant started by blaming farmers for using too much Roundup, or not enough, and have promised to have an alternative in place by 2015, which must be comforting for the farmers who have been using it.

This interesting article, posted by Madge in Australia, highlight a few of the problems that we may be getting in other places further down the line.

Gene amplification confers glyphosate resistance in Amaranthus palmeri; Gaines TA et al; Click here

2    After years of GM crops the US is now suffering an outbreak of un-poisonable pigweed. The weeds are affecting nearly a million acres of soy and cotton crops. This TV news clip  shows some farmers in the US can no longer use their combines or cotton pickers their crop may have to be picked by hand.

Join the Do Lectures

The Do Lectures are around 6 weeks away. The speakers are preparing their talks, and ticket holders readying for inspiration. We're offering a crowd-sourcing membership of the Do Lectures this year to raise money for the talks and help reach 1 million people next year. Here's why in words penned by Do founder and co-pilot David Hieatt

Why The Do Lectures matter?

And why becoming a member matters too?

We live in interesting times.

And we live in important times.

Most of the important business models have yet to be written.

Most of the ‘why didn’t I think of that’ answers for climate change have yet to be dreamt of.

Most of the important scientific or technological breakthroughs are just doodles on a notepad.

As well as interesting times, these are exciting times.

Necessity will make a good taskmaster. Crisis will make a good editor. Having finite resources will make us infinitely more creative with how we use them going forward.

Yup, interesting times.

And if consumers will have to change how they consume, and if business will have to change how they do business, then so will Government have to change how they govern.

Our system of having a four-year government for 100-year problems means tough decisions are rarely made. A manifesto designed to win votes isn’t the same as a manifesto designed to do what needs to be done for the safety of future generations.

And how we have treated this planet in the past will have to be different to how we treat it in the future. A tree helps produce oxygen, rain and sucks in carbon dioxide. Yet we only put a value to it once we cut it down. At the very same time as when it stops producing rain, when it stops producing oxygen and stops sucking in carbon dioxide.

Indeed these are interesting times.

We have to fill in a 3-page form to start an account with Fed Ex. Yet a badly run bank has to only fill in a 2-page form to get billions from the Government to shore up their bank.

Interesting times, indeed.

But rather than being a time to be down or despondent, this is the time for great change. And yes, there is much that needs changing. There is much to do.

But reassuringly the human mind is more creative than any computer will ever be. The answers will come from the brightest, stubborn-nest, and oddest of people.

And the thing that brings this oddball bunch together is that they are all stubborn dreamers. Brilliant enough to have the idea. Stubborn enough to make it happen.

Buckminster Fuller described the importance of vision best when he said, “ There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly”. But as well as the vision, you need that grit determination to make your idea live.

That is what The Do Lectures is here to Do. It is a platform for the Doers of the world to tell us their stories. So they can inspire the rest of us to go do something amazing too. In simple farming terms, it is just manure for the field. It is here to help grow ideas.

The Do Lectures is not a business, but it has to pay its way in the world. Appropriately a set of talks with sustainability at its heart needs to be, well, yes, sustainable.

To that end, we sell tickets for the event so the rest of the world can see them the talks for free. Our aim this year is for a million people to see the talks. To me, that is a lot of ‘mind manure’ being spread around the world.

So does the Do Lectures matter? I believe they do. And maybe they matter more in these interesting times than any other time.

I believe that ‘mind manure’ sure needs spreading around.

So my last question today is would you become a member of The Do Lectures?

Memberships costs £50. You will receive 4 newsletters a year. Have the inside track on choosing speakers and be able to make suggestions too. Have first refusal on future tickets. Receive a Do Lectures 2009 T-shirt that has a chance of coming with a golden ticket to this years Do lectures.

But the biggest thing of all is just to feel part of it. To feel like you are doing something to make this happen. To become a doer too.

So if this is crowd funding in its truest form, we need the crowd to put their hands up and say ‘I’m in.’ ‘I think The Do Lectures matter. Here’s my £50.’

A simple email to Claire@thedolectures.co.uk will be enough to start this off

new economics

Adbusters put out a call for short pieces on economic insights, so I posted this off to them. It was fun to write, and remember what's important:

The experiment nearly worked, and could have done, with its simple elegance. Providing that people were glued to the meme of ‘how much can I manage to spend?’, they were easy to control. As most folk drove air-conditioned cars, there was no talking on street corners, and little conversation through the car window. Processed food and eating watching TV reduced the chance of people talking over the dining table or the kitchen, and the shop assistants in the food store didn’t gossip. Managing the almost continual flow of material from the shops to the house to the dump took much time, and people didn’t seem to mind that the rubbish they threw had only been paid for hours before. Tiring commuting patterns and long hours at work ensured that few had the time to talk at home, or over long walks in the park or the country. As Mark Vernon wrote, ‘That's the genius of so much human exploitation: it can be taken for progress’. Mind control was strong, and nearly complete.

It would have worked except that, just in time, a few people started asking the question ‘how little can I live on, by choice?’ Is it £10,000 a year for my family, or five times that? At last, realisation. Fresh, cheap food cooked slowly tastes good, and allows space for words. Talks over walks have a magic that seeps deep into the conversation. Cycling and walking around community makes connections between people, hearts, minds and smiles. When the question of ‘Do I really need that?’ started to kick in, people realised that mind control was happening, but this time around, it was their own minds. At last.

Chicken a la Carte

Another short film about food, filmed a couple of years ago, and still highly relevant. Watch the FoE film and this one to get a shot reason for change.

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com