Over the last nearly 20 years, we’ve also witnessed the increasing push towards genetically modified grains, which now provide the added financial advantage of patent protection: seeds must be purchased from the patent holder (Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences or Syngenta) every year, since farmers are prohibited from saving seed, as they have done every year since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago. While wheat has not yet been converted to genetically modified strains, corn, rice and other crops have. But GM wheat is surely coming, public outcry be damned. The seed market now stands at around $22 billion worldwide. Agribusiness sees this as a great opportunity to cash in on the world’s diet by selling GM seed and then strictly and aggressively enforcing patents. We’ve already seen this in Monsanto’s courtroom tactics in prosecuting the ‘unauthorized’ use of GM seed that inadvertently gets mixed into a field of non-GM crops.4
The enemy of large-scale, commoditized grains-as-food is small-scale, locally produced food, since such relatively tiny and disparate operations cannot be controlled by one centralized corporate entity and are beyond the financial reach of the big players. If domination of the world market for food is your goal, then the seeds of grasses are your game.
The Blurred Line Between Government and Agribusiness
The agribusiness multinationals of our time that control the flow of commodity crops around the world wield an astonishing amount of clout in government circles. Staggering sums are spent, year in and year out, by agribusiness companies to influence public policy in their favour. Recent efforts to oppose labelling of GM foods show us just how badly these companies want to keep the public in the dark about which foods contain GM ingredients. Opposition to Proposition 37 in California, which would have required labels on products containing GM foods, drew $45 million in financial support from Monsanto, Syngenta, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, General Mills, Kraft, Nestle, the Corn Refiners Association and the American Bakers Association – a virtual Who’s Who in agribusiness and food processing. Those who opposed the bill outspent proponents (mostly supporters of organic farming) five to one, resulting in defeat of the legislation in 2012.
One typical tactic of agribusiness over the past century has been to employ players who know how to play both sides of the game, as regulators and as the regulated. Consequently, high-level executives and attorneys have seamlessly bounced between, for instance, a post at the USDA, an executive position at Cargill and another post at the USDA. To a surprising degree, the roll call of key personnel in government regulatory agencies and that of key personnel in agribusiness overlap over time. I believe there is a saying about foxes and henhouses that applies to this sort of situation.
There is some logical justification for such ‘golden revolving doors’, as they are known, between government and industry. After all, these are experts in specific fields that often require deep knowledge that’s held by relatively few people. But with virtually no checks and balances over the process, it also means that such appointments can potentially be used to manipulate policy.
The list of questionable appointments is too long to recount in full, but among the many agribusiness executives who’ve held high-level positions in government was Charles Conner, appointed by President George W. Bush. Conner, former head of the Corn Refiners Association, was appointed Special Assistant to the President for Agriculture, Trade, and Food Assistance and then, in 2005, became Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. In an especially notorious instance of these ‘henhouse’ appointments, Michael R. Taylor, an attorney for agribusiness giant Monsanto and the firm’s vice president for public policy, became the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Policy and helped draft the FDA’s policy for bovine growth hormone, the Monsanto product given to cows to stimulate milk production. This policy not only paved the way for unrestricted use of the drug, but also prohibited any producer from labelling dairy products as not containing bovine growth hormone. And in one of the most recent golden revolving door exchanges, Carol Browner, who led the EPA under President Bill Clinton and then served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy under President Barack Obama, left her post for a high-level position at Bunge, a company whose history has been marred over the years by allegations of environmental crimes.
Lobbyists on the agribusiness payroll working at the federal and state government levels supplement the golden revolving door of agribusiness-friendly key executives. The agribusiness lobby is among the most powerful and well-funded of all lobbying groups, making the motor and education industries look like mom-and-pop businesses. Agribusiness rivals the spending of lobbying giants that include oil, gas, defence and communications. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that in 2012, agribusiness spent $139,726,313 on its lobbying efforts – nearly double the amount spent a decade earlier. Similar sums are spent year in, year out, to wine, dine and curry favour with politicians and policymakers to make sure that government policy remains friendly to agribusiness. One hundred million dollars can buy an awful lot of favourable treatment. Similar vigorous lobbying efforts are focused on the USDA, which is among the most lobbied of government agencies. The USDA receives more than three times the lobbying aimed at the US Securities and Exchange Commission and more than 20 times that aimed at the Social Security Administration.
Political contributions are another way agribusiness influences policy, donating millions of dollars every year to congressmen, senators and other elected politicians friendly to the agribusiness agenda. In 2011, agribusiness contributed nearly $92 million.5 In 2012, more than $60 million was donated to the 435 members of Congress alone. Perhaps all of this should come as no surprise, given the impressive size of these companies: Syngenta’s 2012 revenue was $14.2 billion, Monsanto’s was $13.5 billion and General Mills’s was $17.8 billion. Other operations of similar magnitude populate the agribusiness and processed food landscape, as well, commanding considerable financial power that can be used to muscle public opinion, legislation and marketing in their favour.
Grains are therefore the darlings of agribusiness, as they are the favourites of government agencies that provide dietary advice, such as the USDA, which emphasizes grains in its MyPlate and (previously) MyPyramid recommendations. ‘Eat more healthy whole grains’ is therefore not just advice purported to increase health, but advice that increases the commoditization of the human diet. Combine this with the growing worldwide appetite for inexpensive meat that is increasingly a grain-derived product, and you understand how the human diet has become a virtual grainfest.
Your Ass is Grass
When viewed from the perspective of governments and big agribusiness, the current dietary status quo makes perfect sense: this is how to make a lot of money on a gargantuan scale by shifting the worldwide diet towards high-yield, commoditized grain products, while ensuring that the government will offer advice and policies favourable to this system.
So what’s wrong with a situation that allows more people to eat, reduces starvation and happens to allow some enterprising companies to profit, all while allowing congressmen to have an occasional nice dinner or all-expenses-paid weekend in Barbados? Well, what’s wrong is that it ruins your health.
Let’s shift our discussion towards that line of thinking. In Chapter 4, we’ll talk about what happens to humans who have been encouraged to obtain 50 per cent or more of their calories from the seeds of grasses.
Your Bowels Have Been Fouled: Intestinal Indignities from Grains
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you’re like most people, you were persuaded that grains, in all