Heavily-armed, masked paramilitary forces descended upon the Gogebic Taconite mining site in Wisconsin over the weekend, much to the chagrin of local residents and elected officials.
“I’m appalled,” state Sen. Bob Jauch (D) told The Wisconsin State Journal on Monday. “There is no evidence to justify their presence.”
Jaunch sent a letter to Gogebic President Bill Williams on Monday demanding the company remove the guards, which he called “common in third world countries,” but stressed that “they don’t belong in Northern Wisconsin.”
The company brought in the paramilitary forces after being confronted by a group of about 15 protesters in June. At least one of the demonstrators, a young woman, was hit with misdemeanor charges for trying to take a camera away from one of the company’s geologists. Gogebic claims they’ve since caught several people illegally camping on their property and did not want to take any chances.
The company hired by Gogebic is Arizona-based Bulletproof Securities, which boasts that many of their employees are ex-military and many of their clients are celebrities and government officials. They certainly look the part, too: photos of Bulletproof guards at the Gegebic site published by the Wisconsin progressive blog Blue Cheddar show men who look very much like special forces soldiers, complete with assault rifles and black masks.
“Do they have the authority to use those weapons? If so, on who?” Jauch asked the Journal. “I don’t know if there’s a hunting season right now except maybe for rabbit, but you shoot a rabbit with that, all you’ll end up with is fur. What would you use those weapons for except to hurt somebody?”
The mining site they’re protecting in the Penokee Mountains is highly controversial and critics say in violation of a treaty with Native Americans.
Video shot by Wisconsin-based website Indian Country TV over the weekend featured at least one of the paramilitaries wearing full camoflage and a military-style net over his face — an image that would have been completed by an assault rifle, if he hadn’t left it sitting on the passenger’s seat of his vehicle, right next to a cameraman.
“What happened to your fancy guns?” the cameraman asked. “Look at that. Very close by. Who are you going to shoot?”
“It’s a security protocol,” the guard replied, refusing to provide his name or his employer’s name.
“You’re being caught up in a national phenomenon,” the cameraman informed the guard. “We’ve got reporters calling from all over the country wondering about the occupation of Penokee Mountains Heritage Park by people who’ve got automatic weapons. And the question is, ‘Why?’”
A spokesperson for Gogebic told The Cap Times on Tuesday that they’re considering restricting their drilling sites from public access, which wouldn’t be an option until December when the state begins accepting applications.
This video is from Indian Country TV, published July 7, 2013.
By Vincent Kelley / Deep Green Resistance Great Plains & Eugene
Civilization’s continuance requires widespread denial among the populace of civilized nations. The denial of the inherent unsustainability and violence of civilization is, for example, pivotal in the conventional understanding of civilized existence as the most “advanced” or “highest” form of societal organization. While denial of the egregious material consequences of civilization is the most blatant example of this culture’s sickness, there’s an intuitive sense among those who are aware of civilization’s destructive nature that there are deeper socio-psychological problems in the substratum of civilized life. Although often undetected, the denial of impermanence is one of the strongest underlying forces behind civilization’s rapacity and attendant destructiveness.
Impermanence is inherent to existence regardless of sociocultural arrangements, present in cyclical indigenous cultures and contemporary linear industrial civilization alike. Despite this undeniable fact, the way a culture relates to impermanence plays a large part in determining its sustainability, the level of violence it perpetuates, and the internal well-being of its members.
One option is to accept and even embrace the basic uncertainty of an impermanent world. We may get sick at any time. We will certainty grow old. And, incontrovertibly, we will experience the most conspicuous and mysterious of impermanences: death. Another option is to tell ourselves that impermanence doesn’t exist. We can decide to fear old age, illness, and death. [2] as the greatest of horrors and center our morality around what historian Faisal Devji calls “life as an absolute value.” [3] Since death is an impermanence that cannot be avoided, it is worth reflecting further on its place in society and, in turn, our individual psychologies.
Just as patriarchy is viewed by some feminist philosophers, such as Ynestra King, as the root hierarchy from which all other forms of domination in society flow [4] a fear of fluidity, change, and passing away in life can often be traced back to a deep fear of death itself. Indeed, we sometimes speak of something “dying” in our life as it fades away. The civilized response to death, and all impermanence for that matter, is to resist it with all of one’s might. As activist and philosopher Charles Eisenstein notes, “[t]his is most obvious in our medical system, of course, in which death is considered the ultimate ‘negative outcome,’ to which even prolonged agony is preferable.” [5]
But if impermanence is part of life, and death is the paragon of impermanence, why can’t death also be seen as a part of life? Some cultures—clearly not our own—have understood death in this light. Indigenous scholar Jack Forbes points out that “'[s]oil fertility’ is, in large part, nothing but a measure of the extent to which a particular bit of ground is saturated with our dead ancestors and relatives,” and concludes that “[d]eath, then, is a necessary part of life.” [6] More concretely, we can observe this phenomenon when a nurse log facilitates the growth of burgeoning seedlings as itself decays. Going even further, Yaqui nagualli Juan Matus invites us to conceive of our death as a sort of gift for another, even if this other is only a micro-organism. [7]
So, as we can see, death—and impermanence more broadly—is inevitable personally and is even inextricably linked to life itself. However, attitudes towards death can be radically divergent, and, as I hope to demonstrate, tremendously consequential in our relationship to ourselves and the natural world.
One of the repercussions of the denial of impermanence is the privileging of preservation over experience itself. One need not look far to see the copious examples of this obsession in our culture. Often, taking pictures on a hike, for example, takes precedence over the experience of hiking itself. And, in some cases, the picture taking can even set up a wall of separation between “us” and “nature,” commodifying the latter while attempting to preserve a static conception of the former as a rigid identity. What about music? Do you ever find yourself at a concert thinking more about purchasing the band’s CD or looking them up on the internet than experiencing the music as it manifests around you? It’s not that these efforts to capture a fleeting moment are inherently wrong; they do become constricting, however, when they take priority over present-moment experience itself.
Indeed, when we valorize creation and preservation over decay and ephemerality—failing to see their inseparability—we are left in an existential bind where “making our mark,” so to speak, in an often physical manner, seems like the only sensible and worthwhile course of action. The drive to make a mark springs from a cultural belief that our value is dependent upon leaving something behind that will make us worthy in the eyes of society after we die, or at least place us in the category of people who worked for the cause of civilizational progress—bowing at the alter of the off limits idol of “human innovation.”
Hence, to have our very existence affirmed we are compelled to create something “permanent” as a testament to our worth. This mark-making often takes the form of environmental degradation and imperial conquest. We create toxic chemicals that will outlive us all, erect dams that alter the Earth’s orbit [8] and are more concerned about the future strength of the United States military, and the propagation of Western Civilization to “backwards” parts of the globe, than the availability of clean air and potable water. The paradox of all of this is that, in an effort to preserve, we destroy. Our fear of the impermanence inherent in existence has led us to create that which destroys and fail to realize the consequences as the pattern plays out time and time again.
Eisenstein writes that “[t]he whole American program now is to insulate oneself as much as possible from death—to achieve ‘security.’” [9] Concomitant with this false sense of security is a false sense of control. The desire for control is a result of denying impermanence. As an alternative to this denial, we can acknowledge that the world is full of ever-changing, largely unpredictable, and, above all, endlessly developing then decaying phenomena. Only then can the control imperative fall away, relegated to history as the ignorant, destructive, and ultimately self-defeating ideology that it is. Take technology. One of the alluring aspects of technology is the ability to control previously uncontrollable phenomena. But for us to be able to control something through technology, it’s presupposed that we have control over technology.
This is a misconception. Indeed, philosopher Tad Beckman asserts, in his reading of Martin Heidegger’s writings on technology, that technology is not merely “a complex of contrivances and technical skills, put forth by human activity and developed as means to our ends,” but instead is, in essence, “a vast system of organization which encompasses us rather than standing objectively and passively ready for our direction and control.” It is “an autonomous organizing activity within which humans themselves are organized.”[10] And, as Heidegger himself points out in The Question Concerning Technology, “the will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.” [11]
The same can be said of civilization as a whole. With its growth imperative it takes on an existence in itself within which humans must function. Our desire to control increases, paradoxically, in proportion to the increase of civilization’s control of our very existence. As cities grow and encompass the globe, dictating the terms of our existence, the surveillance state and the extirpation of biomes become all the more essential—two examples of this culture’s rapacious crusade of domination. In the process, the fallacy of infinite growth on a finite planet is implanted into our worldview, further reinforcing our denial of impermanence. In other words, the avariciousness inherent in the structure of civilization is matched by that of civilized humans, who have created a way of living which provides the illusion of control as it uncontrollably metastasizes across the planet.
The denial of impermanence is not only toxic to our individual selves, but also to those beings with which we enter into relationships, human and nonhuman, and the planet as a whole. At the root of our insecurity with impermanence is a fear, and, in the end, a misunderstanding of death, which is, in reality, a part of life. This leads us to devalue present-moment experience as we grasp at preservation and replicability. Finally, our faith in the religion of civilization has led us to become inextricably ensnared in civilization’s controlling trap, unable to see through the shadow of its edifices. Reflecting on the impermanence in our lives, and in the life of the decaying culture within which we live, is therefore critical in our struggle to engender a way of living that is free from the greed, exploitation, and devastation of civilization.
Notes
[1 ] See Derrick Jensen, Endgame: The Problem of Civilization (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006), 40-41 for a discussion of cyclical vs. linear cultures.
[2] My invocation of the “old age, illness, and death” example is derived from Buddhist teachings. See for example the Upajjhatthana Sutta (AN 5.57): http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.057.than.html.
[3] Faisal Devji, The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence (United States: Harvard, 2012), 186.
[4] Andrew Brenna and Yeuk-Sze Lo, “Environmental Ethics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/ethics-environmental/
[5] Charles Eisenstein, “The Ethics of Eating Meat: A Radical View,” Weston A. Price Foundation (June 30, 2002), at http://www.westonaprice.org/health-issues/ethics-of-eating-meat.
[6] Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and other Cannibals (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008 (1979)), 10-11.
[7] Ibid., 10.
[8] Malcolm W. Browne, “Dams for Water Supply Are Altering Earth’s Orbit, Expert Says,” New York Times (March 3, 1996), at http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/03/news/dams-for-water-supply-are-altering-earth-s-orbit-expert-says.html.
[9] Eisenstein, loc. cit.
[10] Tad Beckman, “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics,” Harvey Mudd College (2000).
[11] Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper, 1977 (1954), 5. I should note that Heidegger was critiquing technology as a “mode of Being-in-the-world,” not in the sense of “the machines and devices of the modern age,” per se (Michael Wheeler, “Martin Heidegger,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/heidegger/.
People laugh at anything and everything these days, and they expect you to laugh along. In this age of utter cynicism, little is sacred, little is off-limits from humor, little is safe from the cultural tide of callous abuse. What’s worse: you laugh along. You may not want to, but you do.
Laughter is a beautiful thing—until it meets abuse. Like a spoonful of sugar with a stab in the back, it attempts to cover for abuse. Or like pouring salt in the wound, it can be the abuse itself. “Come on, it’s just a joke,” say abusers, as they mock you to the core, as they target any trace of sensitivity—read: humanity—for utter ridicule.
As a friend says, “cruel humor is the humor of sociopaths.” Any boundary set by another, any boundary placed on humor, will be broken. And to them, that’s what makes it funny.
Far from “just jokes,” this is a serious social problem. As psychologist Lundy Bancroft writes, “[H]umor is . . . . one of the powerful ways a culture passes on its values.” What does this say about a culture in which, from the most personal level to the mass one, abuse is merited funny; in which there exists so-called “gay jokes” and “rape jokes” and “race jokes”; in which humor is rated congruently with the scale of oppression or atrocity it invokes?
Not laughing is an act of protest. Some things are funny, of course, and some things are absolutely not. Boundaries do exist and they must be respected. Abusers live to breach them, using humor as one vehicle, one excuse. They want us to laugh along. With most everyone else joining in, it can be hard not to. But we mustn’t; we can’t give in. We may feel alone as the tide washes over us, but we’re not: we share the turbulence with all those whom the jokes are made at the expense of, the ones whose boundaries are under siege.
I can hear the chorus of apologists now, red-faced and shouting their mantra: “politically correct, politically correct, politically correct.”
This sentiment is not new to me. For my first group of so-called radical friends, “P.C.” was enemy number one. They were against the state, the authorities, and, above all, anyone who put a damper on their fun.
These friends just wanted a laugh. So they called African-Americans “niggers” and tattooed swastikas on their arms. So they called women “sluts” and watched torture porn. So they called lesbians and gays “faggots” and formed a punk band specifically to mock the suicide of a local 15-year-old gay boy.
All this was done in the name of irony and shock value, which is, as one of these friends put it, the point of being radical.
If it makes me politically correct to say out loud that this is just wrong, that this is in fact fucking sick, so be it. But I’m not concerned with being “correct.” I care about stopping injustice, whatever form it comes in. I am politically opposed, never mind correct, to these heartless attacks on the physical and emotional boundaries of others.
Those so quick to make accusations of “P.C.” rarely bother to learn what it is they’re saying. It has a history, notes Sheila Jeffreys: In the 1980s and ‘90s, “the feminist and anti-racist policies that had been adopted by education authorities and universities in the UK and the USA were being denounced as ‘political correctness’. The term ‘politically correct’ was a term of abuse used automatically and unthinkingly by many, whenever challenges were raised to practices which entrenched the rights and interests of rich white men.”
That’s the point, isn’t it? All pretenses of joke aside, abusers have one basic aim: to preserve the existing hierarchy which allows them to abuse in the first place. With iron boots already pressing down on the necks of the oppressed, humor serves as but one tool to that end.
The pursuit of irony makes for sad, miserable, ugly lives. Those who grasp for it do so in the absence of any real human emotion and human relationship. This is the ultimate irony: their hearts and minds are too dull to participate in the world without pretending it is one long joke.
“Lighten up,” they say. We all want to think of ourselves as good people, even if we have to convince ourselves that being abusive is not a disqualifier. As social beings, it hurts to be told we’ve done wrong, that we’ve acted unacceptably, even though we may know deep in our bones that it is true: the joke went too far.
In his book, The Heart of Whiteness, Robert Jensen recounts the story of a friend looking for some sympathy after being called out for a racist joke. The friend is wary to accept responsibility and seems to ask for advice only in the hope of strokes to his bruised ego. Writes Jensen: “Before he even tells me the joke, the answer is obvious: of course the joke is racist. He understands that because he knows enough to form the question. Though he is struggling to understand why, his gut tells him it is a racist joke. At some level he knows that he told a racist joke to a group of white people. Why is he asking me? Is it the hope that I’ll tell him it wasn’t so bad after all? Or does he need someone to confirm what he knows in his gut and tell him that he is still a good person?”
Humor is worthless without an audience. Like children testing their parents, one person can crack jokes all day long, but unless there others around, and unless these others are willing to laugh, he’ll soon bore of talking to himself.
There would be no audience to abusive humor if our culture as a whole wasn’t based on abuse. But it is; it manufactures and encourages sociopathy. To protect the boundaries of individuals, we need to dismantle the dominant culture. We need to dismantle the oppressions that become the fare of laughter.
Let us now deprive the cruel of an audience and deprive the culture that supports them of its capacity to exist. Let us insist that, yes, it is so bad after all and, no, they are not good people. Let us laugh when it is right to do so and stand firmly when it is wrong.
When abuse is eradicated, when the sacred is defended, when boundaries are protected absolutely, when justice is wrought, we can look to the abusers writhing in their lack of joke material and ask: Who’s laughing now?
Beautiful Justice is a monthly column by Ben Barker, a writer and community organizer from West Bend, Wisconsin. Ben is a member of Deep Green Resistance and is currently writing a book about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance. He can be contacted at benbarker@riseup.net.
Over the past few decades, our food system has become increasingly globalized [10]. With the rise of agribusiness, the ability to transport food cheaply over long distances and the development of food preservation techniques have enabled the distance between farm and market to increase dramatically.
Recently, such practices have been questioned for the damage they cause to the natural environment, their high energy consumption, and their contribution to climate change. In addition, the quality of the food available to residents is subject to increasing concern.
In fact, the trend toward increasing distances between producers and consumers has prompted many to question the environmental and social sustainability of our food choices [10]. The question of how to feed the urban population, particularly during crisis, is becoming urgent every day. Concerns about health and the loss of tradition and culture that began to take hold in post-modern society, the spread of the ‘food desert’, especially in poor urban areas [4], where there is no easy access to affordable food, food banks and soup kitchens, demonstrated that the urgency of access to food and food security for everyone must be confronted.
To note here, the modern movement for LFS (local food systems) as an alternative to the conventional agricultural system is not new. It started in Japan in the 1970s with the teikei, which means ‘putting the producer’s face on the product’ [10]. The teikei were organized around consumer cooperatives, whose members would link up with producers and even helped with the work on the farm [13]. A similar model was also adopted in Québec by Équiterre in 1995 where consumers, organized into groups, pay up front at the beginning of the season and receive deliveries of food baskets each week, thereby sharing the risk inherent in agricultural production [1].
Agriculture is a major driver of human-caused climate change, contributing an estimated 25 to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. However, when done sustainably it can be an important key to mitigating climate change [12]. The sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity is likely to be particularly beneficial for small-scale farmers, who need to optimize the limited resources that are available to them and for whom the access to external inputs is lacking due to financial or infrastructural constraints [19].
Benefits on a large-scale can also be achieved by focusing on improvements relevant to large commercial farmers and conservation agriculture has already been effective in this respect. Inevitably, there is considerable skepticism over the practicality of the widespread adoption of agricultural production practices that embody a greater use of biodiversity for food and agriculture and a greater emphasis on ecosystem functions [19].
Two major geopolitical realities have a constraining effect on peoples’ thinking. Firstly, modern, intensive farming in developed countries receives very large levels of financial support and all sectors of the agricultural and food industries are linked to this highly subsidized system. Secondly, there is a continuing commitment to ensuring that food prices remain low and that basic foodstuffs are affordable by all sectors of society including the poorest. These both tend to lead to a disinterest in the nature of agricultural production systems and present a very real barrier to the development of new approaches to production [19]. However, it is increasingly recognized that an appropriate policy framework can largely overcome these constraints and, indeed, must be developed .
In the last few years, more localized food supply chains have been proposed as a vehicle for sustainable development [5]; [6]; [9]; [15] and [21]. We can note here that the term ‘local’ is still contested and its definition varies from one local market development organization to the next. Literally, the term ‘local’ indicates a relation to a particular place, a geographic entity.
However, as our literature review has uncovered, most organizations have a more elaborate definition of what is local, often incorporating specific goals and objectives that an LFS ought to deliver into the definition itself.
There are three aspects of LFS, which are proximity (geographic distance, temporal distance, political and administrative boundaries, bio-regions, and social distance), objectives of local food systems (economic, environmental and social objectives), and distribution mechanisms in local food systems (farm shops, farmer’s markets, box schemes, community-supported agriculture, institutional procurement policy, and urban agriculture).
Besides the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), there is a growing interest by the public sector for local food, which is mainly linked to the idea of food sovereignty – a global movement that aims to transform food systems into engines of sustainable development and social justice. To note here is La Via Campesina [21], which was the first organization to develop the concept of food sovereignty in 1993 in Belgium [13].
Thus, the pursuit of food sovereignty implies that work should be done in international treaty negotiations and human rights conventions in order to allow state sovereignty over food policy—that is, to prevent interference from foreign powers in the policy-making process, lift restrictions placed by international trade agreements, and eliminate dumping practices [1].
In 2007 in Montreal, a definition of food sovereignty was developed by a Québec-based coalition for food sovereignty that included producer organizations, civil society groups, food distributors, and development organizations. The definition states that “food sovereignty means the right of people to develop their own food and agricultural policy; to protect and regulate national food production and trade in order to attain sustainable development goals, to determine their degree of food autonomy, and to eliminate dumping on their markets. Food sovereignty does not contradict trade in the sense that it is subordinated to the right of people to local food production, healthy and ecological, realized in equitable conditions that respect the right of every partner to decent working conditions and incomes” [1].
Over the last 60 years, Canada‘s overall food system has become more geared to large-scale systems of production, distribution and retail. In Quebec, the agricultural, food processing, and retail sectors account for 6.8% of GDP and 12.5% of all jobs. The province produces fresh and processed food worth $19.2 billion, while only consuming $15.4 billion (a 25% surplus), and retailers imported $6.9 billion worth of fresh and processed foods last year. About 44% of Quebec’s raw and processed food production finds its way into Quebeckers’ plates, the rest being exported to other Canadian provinces (30%) and overseas (245) [20].
We can note here that since 1941, the evolution of Quebec’s agricultural landscape is characterized by the decrease in the number of farms and a market concentration dominated by few producers. And this is very similar to what we see in other Canadian provinces and other industrialized countries [8].
As it was already mentioned in this report, local food systems are proliferating in Quebec [8]. There is now a growing interest in the production, processing, and buying of local food. New “local food systems” are being set up to organize the various components that will meet the needs of all the stakeholders in the community or region [7].
The initiatives that are helping in this process in Quebec are: organic and other specialized agriculture ((316 certified organic livestock production units, 341 organic maple syrup producers, and 585 certified farms [18]), farmer’s markets (network of 82 open markets, seasonal or permanent, daily or occasional), community- supported agriculture (CSA) and solidarity markets (a new phenomenon, solidarity markets allow consumers to order through a web portal) [8].
Despite the growth of these initiatives, there remain several obstacles inhibiting their expansion. The three main obstacles are: lack of financing (for example, banks are not willing to issue micro-loans at competitive rates), economic power (in fact, the food retail sector is marked by high rates of market concentration; supermarkets have been able to achieve economies of scale because they do not have to pay for the social and environmental costs of their business practices), and knowledge (the lack of demand for local food attributed to a lack of information about where to procure it, and a lack of information about prices).
Now, identifying every obstacle, policy and existing initiative related to the nodes in the value chain in the literature of [1], we notice there is a dilemma between land protection and land access. This is mostly attributed to the case of zoning policy.
In 1978, and in the context of rapid economic development, speculation on land, fragmentation of the land, and non-agricultural use, the government of Quebec passed agricultural land protection legislation, the second in Canada. This law reflected a desire to plan and regulate in this area and an overseeing agency was also created – the Commission de protection du territiore agricole du Quebec (CPTAQ). This law effectively organized the use of agricultural land over the years. However, today with greater concentration of ownership and fewer people in the business of food production, the zoning law is causing problems since it acts as barrier for entry for smaller and more value-added producers who need smaller plots [8].
In fact, the zoning law is one of the laws that facilitates industrial long-distance agriculture at the expense of small-scale sustainable agriculture and short supply chains (e.g. zoning laws that favor big farms, subsidy systems that favor big retailers, funding schemes targeted at large producers, and so on) [1]. At the same time, we can see this on an international level – the pressure for city expansion, speculation and non-agricultural use is still strong.
Moreover, beyond the provincial level, municipalities have authority over certain zoning laws and by-laws that can facilitate or inhibit the development of LFS, particularly regulations concerning the use of agricultural zones for commercial purposes [1]. Though aimed at protecting agricultural zones from industrial development and other forms of encroachment, such by-laws effectively prevent on-farm direct sales or the use of farmland for farmers’ markets or farm shops [17] and organizers of such initiatives typically have to negotiate with municipal authorities for special permits or designated spaces [3].
However, agricultural zoning per se (designations for tax purposes) falls within provincial government jurisdiction or a land management agency, such as the Agricultural Land Reserve in British Columbia or the Commission pour la protection des terres agricoles du Québec [1].
To conclude, to achieve this vision of food sovereignty, LFS have to go beyond the distance traveled by food products before they reach the final consumers (food miles) and integrate social, economic and environmental benefits. Also, Farmers’ markets, CSAs and other initiatives are becoming increasingly present in industrial countries in recent years, but they still only represent a very small part of the food market [1].
For example, in Quebec, Équiterre’s CSA went from 1 to 102 farms between 1995 and 2006. It contributes to 73% of the average turnover of the farms, and yields an average annual profit of $3,582 annually when conventional agricultural produces an average annual loss of $6,255 [2] . In addition, regarding the zoning law, there are some good possibilities.
In fact, within the existing law, new initiatives are emerging elsewhere and new possibilities can be developed in other provinces. These include cooperative land trusts and the collective buying of land and green belts [8]. However, other aspects require reform. CPTAQ should be more flexible to LFS needs.
For example, in one case, the CPTAQ has agreed to allow municipal authorities in Ste-Camille to take management over a large farm that was for sale in order to help new young families establish small farms. In order to do this, the CPTAQ de-zoned the land, thus technically empowering municipal authorities to develop it however they chose; however, there was an understanding that the municipality would keep the land for agricultural use.
If this case is inspiring, there should be a formal way to make such arrangements without necessarily de-zoning the land and placing it at risk. The main and remaining question is how to allow the creation of small farms without endangering land protection for the future of agriculture in Quebec, especially in the context of rising non-agricultural activities in farming areas (e.g. shale gas exploitation) [8]. Even though there is no national policy to promote LFS, provincial governments have been active with various programs in this area.
There is much variations from one provinces to another, but the existing programs tend to cluster on the demand side, focusing on consumer education and marketing projects, even running some themselves (the origin labeling and promotion programs). To a lesser extent, there are some programs to support organic farming (transition programs) but very few focusing on processing and distribution. Moreover, it is important to provide knowledge for policy action on food sovereignty given the gap which exists in understanding the impact of existing public policy initiatives [1].
Agriculture is a globally occurring activity which relates directly and powerfully to the present and future condition of environments, economies, and societies. While agriculture has provided for basic social and economic needs of people, it has also caused environmental degradation which has prompted a burgeoning interest in its sustainability [17].
Moreover, like the concept of ‘sustainable development’, the term ‘sustainable agriculture’ has been interpreted and applied in numerous ways. At the broadest level there is some consistency in definition [17]. Most analysts and practitioners would probably accept that sustainable agriculture has something to do with the use of resources to produce food and fiber in such a way that the natural resource base is not damaged, and that the basic needs of producers and consumers can be met over the long term [17].
Despite this, it seems that there is little agreement on the meaning of ‘sustainable agriculture’. There is a little agreement on the meaning of ‘agriculture’, let alone the stickiness of a word like ‘sustainable’ [17].
References:
[1] Blouin et al. (September, 2009). LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS AND PUBLIC POLICY: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE. Équiterre &The Centre for Trade Policy and Law, Carleton University.
[2] Chinnakonda, D., and Telford, L. (2007). Les économies alimentaires locales et régionales au Canada: rapport sur la situation. Ottawa: Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada.
[3] Connell, D.J., Borsato, R., & Gareau, L.( 2007). Farmers, Farmers Markets, and Land Use Planning: Case Studies in Prince George and Quesnel. University of Northern British Columbia.
[4] Cummins, S. and Macintyre, S. (2002). Food Deserts – Evidence and Assumption in Health Policy Making.” British Medical Journal Vol. 325, No. 7361: 436-438.
[5] Desmarais, A. (2007). La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants. Halifax, London, and Ann Arbor, Michigan: Fernwood Pub. Pluto Press.
[6] Halweil, B. & Worldwatch Institute. (2002). Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market. Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute.
[8] Lemay J-F. (2009). Local Food Systems and Public Policy: The Case of Zoning Laws in Quebec. Retrieved from
[9] Lyson, T.A. 2004. Civic Agriculture. UPNE. Available at:
[10] MacLeod, M., and Scott, J. (May, 2007). Local Food Procurement Policies:A Literature Review. Ecology Action Centre For the Nova Scotia Department of Energy. Retrieved from
[11 ] Mundler, P. (2007). Les Associations pour le maintien de l’agriculture paysanne (AMAP) en Rhône-Alpes, entre marché et solidarité. Ruralia 2007-20. Available at: http://ruralia.revues.org/document1702.html [Accessed July 15, 2009].
[13] Pimbert, M. (2008). Towards Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomous Food Systems. London: International Institute for Environment and Development.
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[15] Rosset, P. & Land Research Action Network. (2006). Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform. Oakland, California & New York: Food First Books.
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More than a third of all women worldwide – 35.6% – will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, usually from a male partner, according to the first comprehensive study of its kind from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The report reveals the shocking extent of attacks on women from the men with whom they share their lives, with 30% of women being attacked by partners. It also finds that a large proportion of murders of women – 38% – are carried out by intimate partners.
“These findings send a powerful message that violence against women is a global health problem of epidemic proportions,” said Dr Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO. “We also see that the world’s health systems can and must do more for women who experience violence.”
The highest levels of violence against women are in Africa, where nearly half of all women – 45.6% – will suffer physical or sexual violence. In low- and middle-income Europe, the proportion is 27.2%. Yet wealthier nations are not necessarily always safer for women – a third of women in high-income countries (32.7%) will experience violence at some stage in their life.
Of the women who suffer violence, 42% sustain injuries, which can bring them to the attention of healthcare staff. That, says the report, is often the first opportunity for violence in the home to be detected and for the woman to be offered help.
Violence has a profound effect on women’s health. Some arrive at hospital with broken bones, while others suffer pregnancy-related complications and mental illness.
The two reports from the WHO – one on the prevalence of violence, the other offering guidelines to healthcare staff on helping women – are the work of Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno, lead specialist in gender, reproductive rights, sexual health and adolescence at WHO, and Professor Charlotte Watts, an epidemiologist who specialises in gender, violence and health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“For the first time we have compared data from all over the world on the magnitude of partner violence and sexual violence by non-partners and the impact of these sorts of violence on health,” said Garcia-Moreno. These included HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, depression, women turning to alcohol, unwanted pregnancies and low-birthweight babies.
There were variations in the rates of violence against women in different regions of the world but, said Garcia-Moreno, “in whatever region we looked at, it is unacceptably high”.
Even in high-income countries, 23.2% of women will suffer physical and/or sexual violence from a partner in their lives, their data from 81 countries shows. The global figure for women attacked by partners was 30%.
More sexual assaults and rapes by acquaintances or strangers are reported in high-income countries than elsewhere – the report says that 12.6% of women in wealthy countries will be sexually attacked by a non-partner in their life, which is higher than the African rate of 11.9%. But the data on such crimes is not well collected in all regions.
The authors say that their previous research shows that better-educated women are less likely to suffer violence, as are those who have jobs, although not in all regions.
There is a need to tackle social norms, said Watts. “What are society’s attitudes concerning the acceptability of certain forms of violence against women?” she asked. “In some societies it is not OK – but not all.”
“I think the numbers are a wake-up call for all of us to pay more attention to this issue,” said Garcia-Moreno. Over the past decade there had been increasing recognition of the problem, she said, but “one has to recognise that it is a complex problem. We don’t have a vaccine or a pill”.
The new WHO clinical and policy guidelines recommend training for healthcare staff in recognising the signs of domestic violence and sexual assault, but they rule out general screening – there is not a case for asking every woman who arrives in a clinic whether she has been subjected to violence.
“But if you see a woman coming back several times with undisclosed injuries, you should be asking about domestic violence,” said Garcia-Moreno. “When I was training in medical school, it wasn’t something you learned or knew about. Years later, I was sometimes in a situation where I could tell there was something else going on in the woman I was interviewing, but didn’t have any sense that domestic violence was the issue. Now I think I would handle the interview very differently.”
“We can’t sow our fields, which they have rented for next to nothing. What good do we get out of it?” Guadalupe Ramírez complained about wind farms operating in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Ramírez said, “the governments play favourites with big business; our land produces more than what the companies are offering … They said they would come to help us, but that’s a lie,” this 62-year-old Zapotec Indian told IPS when she and other campesinos came to Mexico City from the municipality of Unión Hidalgo, 560 kilometres to the south, to protest the situation.
The Piedra Larga I wind farm, which has been operating in the town since October 2012, comprises 145 wind turbines producing 90 MW of power. It is the property of Desarrollos Eólicos Mexicanos (DEMEX), a subsidiary of the Spanish company Renovalia Energy and the private U.S. investment firm First Reserve.
In 2007 DEMEX approached local people and began to sign rental contracts with members of the “ejido” or communal land, treating them as if they were independent smallholders and not communal rights holders, and setting an average monthly rental of 20 dollars a hectare. The campesinos of Unión Hidalgo farm between three and four hectares each.
But in other municipalities wind energy companies are paying up to 80 dollars a hectare. Moreover, land tenure in Unión Hidalgo is collective, and all decisions pertaining to ejido land have to be made by the entire assembly of the ejido members, so the contracts signed are not actually valid – a fact that at first was not noticed by those who rented out their land.
Ejido members farming communal land in the municipality accuse DEMEX of tricking them by not explaining the clauses of contracts that were written in Spanish rather than Zapotec, of not calling the obligatory assembly of the ejido members, of polluting their land and of denying them freedom of movement on their land.
In 2014 the company will begin operating the Piedra Larga II wind farm, occupying 300 hectares in Unión Hidalgo, which has a population of 13,970, mainly native Zapotec people. A Resistance Committee against the Wind Farm Project has been created, several of whose members came to the capital to protest on Wednesday Jun. 12.
Their protest shows the increasing discontent of Mexican communities with wind energy projects because of their economic, environmental and social consequences. The future of the sector is turning cloudy, just when Global Wind Day was celebrated on Saturday Jun. 15.
The energy ministry estimated on Wednesday Jun. 12 that wind energy generates 1,304 MW in Mexico, followed by geothermal power with 812 MW, biomass and biogas with 581 MW and mini-hydropower projects with 450 MW. Without including large hydroelectric power stations, renewable energy sources contribute five percent of the total national energy supply, and the proportion is increasing.
The strong winds in the isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest part of Mexico which includes parts of the southern states of Oaxaca, Tabasco, Veracruz and Chiapas, have made it an epicentre for several wind farm projects. Land ownership in this area is primarily collective and communities are governed by traditional custom.
To date wind energy exploitation occupies 11,000 hectares nationwide, with investments since 2007 totalling five billion dollars, according to the Mexican Wind Energy Association (AMDEE).
The energy reform of 2008 allows individuals and businesses to generate their own electricity from renewable sources, supply it to the national grid and be rewarded with preferential feed-in tariffs.
As a result, many companies are buying cheap wind energy to become self-sufficient in energy and reduce their electricity bills. However, critics of this strategy argue that the communities where wind parks are installed have the least to gain.
“There is a pattern of human rights violations in the communities. Wind energy companies advertise themselves well, offering money and jobs, but the jobs are temporary. The companies’ actions are not transparent, nor do they meet established standards,” Alejandra Ancheita, the head of Proyecto de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales (ProDESC – Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project), told IPS.
Following the wind energy boom in Oaxaca, activists fear the negative aspects of the model will be repeated in wind farm projects in other states.
“They have brought no benefits. The energy companies violate collective property rights, agrarian laws and the traditional laws of indigenous peoples,” Bettina Cruz, the founder of the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Defence of Land and Territory (APIIDTT), told IPS.
DEMEX has denied the allegations against it, saying that the contracts are valid and that it has the necessary authorisations for construction and operation of the wind park.
“Conditions in the communities have not improved,” said Benjamin Cokelet, head of the Project on Organising, Development, Education and Research (PODER), an NGO for corporate accountability. In his view, the companies may be in violation of international conventions.
In the towns of San Dionisio del Mar, Álvaro Obregón and San Vicente, close to Unión Hidalgo, local people have blocked similar wind energy projects through direct protests and legal appeals.
In the towns of San Dionisio del Mar, Álvaro Obregón and San Vicente, close to Unión Hidalgo, local people have blocked similar wind energy projects through direct protests and legal appeals.
For instance, in San Dionisio, the Spanish company Mareña Renovables is planning a 392 MW wind park with 75 million dollars of financing from the Inter-American Development Bank. But the project is at a standstill due to legal action.
On Tuesday Jun. 11 the Unión Hidalgo Resistance Committee presented a lawsuit to the agrarian court, which deals with land rights, seeking to invalidate the contracts that have been signed and suspend the working of the wind farm and its expansion, with immediate effect.
In April, they presented a complaint to PROFEPA, Mexico’s federal agency for environmental protection, against pollution caused by the wind park.
“It’s not right for the government to negotiate with the companies over our land. We have been badly off ever since they arrived. They say it’s clean energy, but that’s not true: lubricating oil from the turbines is contaminating the soil and the groundwater, the blades are killing birds, and the turbines are noisy,” Esteban López, a 55-year-old Zapotec Indian who grows maize and sorghum, told IPS.
The three private banks financing the project are signatories to the Equator Principles, a set of voluntary guidelines for assessing social and environmental risk in credits, adhered to by more than 70 international financial institutions since 2003.
Cokelet said PODER is considering lodging a grievance under the Equator Principles over irregularities in Unión Hidalgo.
“We are not smallholders, we are community farmers with collective tenure, and the company ignored that. They didn’t explain what they were going to do on our land. The contracts are unfair and one-sided,” Ramírez said.
By 2020, Mexico expects to generate some 12,000 MW from wind power.
