Shill or False Prophet?

Al Mussell of George Morris Centre has some alarming ideas as recently quoted in  Better Farming.

The Better Farming articles specifically mentions Al Mussell's paper Four Fallacies in Agricultural Sustainability, and Why They Matter: Part 4- Technology Will Solve All Problems

However, I cannot find the alleged quotations attributed to Al Mussell by Better Farming in Al Mussell's Part 4 paper.  The quotations in Better Farming also seem to be at odds with the general theme of Al's paper.  Assuming that Dave Pink (Better Farming's reporter) did a 1-on-1 interview of Al Mussell, and the quotations are accurate statements taken from that 1-on-1 interview, then here are my comments on the Better Farming version of events.

Perhaps we should start with the definition of sustainability  "Environmental Science: the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance" (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sustainability ).

Mussell seems to have distorted the word when he said "Sustainable agriculture – a philosophy that essentially calls on farmers to not take any risks with new technologies".  Mussell then adds that sustainability is undesirable and unobtainable.

First of all, sustainability is not the rejection of change.  Sustainability does not require being a Luddite.

In fact, sustainability calls for huge change, away from our recent deviation into unsustainable practices, calling for a return to a path of more and more sustainability.

If Mussell is against sustainability, where does Mussell's proposed path eventually lead?  If his recommended path is one of unsustainability, then his path eventually leads into a blind alley, a cliff, or a swamp of infinite quicksand.  Either way, if we  follow Mussell's path, we will eventually face severe consequences.

Who in their right mind would follow a False Prophet who recommends the path of unsustainability?

Is Mussell proposing that it's OK to be unsustainable now, provided we suddenly swerve back onto the righteous path of sustainability just before the arrival of the natural consequences of our folly?

To me, that's a recipe for disaster.  Humans develop habits that are hard to change.  Think, what was the last issue on which all of the world agreed?  When it came time to turn the steering wheel at the last second, everybody will be grabbing for the steering wheel simultaneously.  We'll crash for sure.

Is it OK to go on a murderous rampage as long as we eventually stop the rampage, then start behaving ourselves at the last possible moment that will avoid disaster?

Sustainability calls us to think about all of the consequences for our actions, not just the benefits immediately before our face.

Sustainability means that we and the 7 or more generations who come after us will be able to continue doing as we propose to do today.

If we are raping the planet today while dumping the cost for our wayward actions onto future generations, then this is not sustainable.

How can Al Mussell get so confused on such a simple issue?

I can only assume he gets so confused because someone pays him to confuse himself and mislead others.

Glenn Black
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada

Food Fight

Al Mussell, Food Guru at the soon to be defunct George Morris Centre of University of Guelph has started another Food Fight ( #CBCFoodFight ) on CBC's show "The 180".  While Al may have started this Food Fight, just as Bluto did in the movie Animal House, we plan on finishing it.



Before I start my rant against Al's foolish support of greater and greater intensification for farming, I want to congratulate and pay homage to the multi-generations of farmers who worked the long nights and endless days on their farm by tried and true methods.  They made some significant improvements along the way after looking beyond the slick salesmanship of Big Ag and seeing it was the right thing to do.  They guarded their soils as a sacred trust, to maintain optimum fertility while protecting the land, water, and air of their farm and their neighbours.  They struggled with doing what was right, rather than what was most profitable.  These farm families didn't gobble up more farms and more acreage, past the point that could be effectively managed.  They quietly and carefully did their job; likely scorned by their more and more intensified neighbours.  First Nations people have tried to teach us that we are all stewards for the next 7 generations to come.  So too the multi-generations of farmers who refused the temptations of Big Ag and their intensification snake oil.  We owe them all a big hug and our heart-felt thanks.

Now, let's get back to Mr. Al Mussell and his controversial viewpoints.

Al proposes that the world can only be saved by even more intensive agriculture, both greater intensity and greater share of the total market.  Al thinks small farms and low intensity farms need to go the way of dinosaurs and Dodo birds.

No wonder the George Morris Centre is shutting down, likely due to the bad advice and slanted viewpoints that have been coming out of there; viewpoints that support their Billionaire Big Ag clients no matter what (see Blog posting George Morris Centre:   Facts or Rhetoric? ).

Al says that if we don't buy into intensive factory farms, we are forced to chew up more rain forest to convert it to arable land, and that's a bad thing.

That's it?  That's his justification for intensive agriculture?  Al claims that the alternative to intensive agriculture is even worse, so we have no choice but embrace factory farms and soul-less billionaire trans-national agricultural corporations.

As usual, fallacious arguments rely upon unannounced assumptions, smoke and mirrors, and slight of hand.  Al has honed all those skill to be close to perfection.  Fortunately, there are a few people who don't fall for this trickery, and can point out the logic bomb.

Al dismisses the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization ("FAO") 2011 report Save and Grow which said:

“The present paradigm of intensive crop production cannot meet the challenges of the new millennium.”

In the more recent UN report Smallholder, Food Security, and the Environment, the UN says that investing in small-scale farmers (not intense farming as Al would have us believe) can help lift over 1 billion people out of poverty.  The UN estimated that 2.5 billion people who manage 500 million smallholder farm households provide over 80 per cent of the food consumed in much of the developing world.

Agriculture, as it is done today, is responsible for a full third of the green house gasses produced by all forms of human activity.  Intense agriculture is responsible for the lion's share of those climate changing gasses.

Al wants to double and re-double on a system that is the #1 source of climate change.  Has Al not heard that continuing to do the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the definition of insanity?

The organic humus content of virgin forests is generally 25% to 30%.  Under intensive agriculture (especially N. America, but similarly around the world), that humus level has dropped to just 3.5% or below.  That's desertification, 1930's Dust Bowl territory, where on most farms, commercial crops will no longer adequately grow and yield without the application of chemical fertilizers.  High humus soils are drought and flood resistant.

Those depleted soils were caused under the banner of intensive agriculture, mainly during the last 50 years.  Al wants more of the same, and even more intensified ag?

Give me a break!  Give the planet a break.  We need a better way, not more and more of the same.

As National Geographic says in its special eight-month Future of Food series:

"But in the long run, it's small-scale farmers in the developing world, using low-tech but sustainable agricultural techniques, who may be best poised to lead the way in adapting to a warmer world and ensuring the security of the global food supply."

"There are more than 500 million family farmers who produce at least 56 percent of the world's food."

Kelly Hodkins, doing her Masters at University of Guelph adds some excellent points and summaries at the challenges of feeding 9 Billion people, and seems to conflict with Al's knee jerk solution in favor of a few millionaire farmers acting as the henchmen of the billionaire ag industry conglomerates.

I've previously Blogged (see Buried Alive In Chicken Manure ) how intensive chicken farming in Delmarva Peninsula, USA has caused or contributed 94% of the nitrogen that pollutes Chesapeake Bay and many of the streams and estuaries in that region.

Al wants even more intensity?  Will Al be satisfied when 100% of the nitrogen pollution comes from CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) chicken factory farms?  In that case, Delmarva chicken factories need only push for that last 6.38% "improvement" to get from 94% of the nitrogen pollution to a full 100% market share on the nitrogen pollution and the resulting algal bloom and dead waterways.

A recent report by UNCTD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), Trade and Environment Review 2013: Wake Up Before it is Too Late, included contributions from more than 60 experts around the world (including a commentary from IATP (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy). The report includes in-depth sections on the needed shift toward more sustainable, resilient agriculture.  Resilient agriculture is the opposite to intensive, mega factory farms.

Intense chicken factories in Canada have produced less and less affordable chicken, hurting the poor, the middle class, and the majority of Canadian consumers (see Blog postings LICO Chicken = "Let them Eat Cake" and Unaffordable Chicken In Ontario and Affordable Chicken for the Average Ontario Consumer

Michael Pollan, a world expert in sustainable and industrialized food production, and author of The Omnivore's Dilemna and many other books, says:

"The question of whether you can feed the world sustainably needs to be flipped around."

"The real question is whether you can feed it industrially. What we’re learning about climate change is raising real questions about how long that agricultural model can survive."

"The power of industrial agriculture comes from this paradigm: you start with a very productive seed that under ideal circumstances can produce higher yields than those species ever could before. It’s really impressive. But for those seeds to do their thing and realize their full potential they need lots of water. They need lots of fertilizer. And they need to be defended against pests really vigilantly. Another way of saying that is: you need to protect the environment in which they grow, which farmers have been able to do. But that system depends on consistency. If all we can count on now is that the climate will be variable, that system becomes very brittle."

Pollen has also shown that food in grocery stores that was sourced from intensive agriculture required 10 times more energy to produce than what is in the food on the store shelves.  For example, an adult needs about 2,200 kcalories of energy every day to survive and be in good health.  Intensive agriculture takes 10 times that food energy, mainly oil and natural gas, to produce that food (ie. 22,000 kcalories of oil and gas consumed to make 2,200 kcalories of food).  For the first time in human history, our food production is at an energy deficit.  What does this mean, you query?  Consider a large salmon chasing a small minnow for supper.  What happens to that salmon if it expends 10 times more energy trying to catch that bait fish, than the total energy the salmon can gain if it catches the bait fish and eats it.  Every time the salmon does that, it moves rapidly towards starvation.  How in good conscience can Al recommend the defunct, non-sustainable, energy deficit system of intensive agriculture?  It boggles my mind.

If the intensive factory farmed food isn't riddled with growth hormones, chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics, and Superbugs (see Choose:  Frankenstein Chicken, or Naturally Raised Chicken?), then it may be depleted of all or most of what goodness, vitamins, and nutrition it used to contain; all thanks to industrialized factory farming.

For an example of depleted food, let's talk about potatoes, the #1 vegetable in North America.  Potatoes used to be an excellent dietary source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, B6, potassium, copper, manganese, phosphorus, B3, fiber, and pantothenic acid.  Over the last 50 year, potatoes have lost 100% of their Vitamin A, lost 50% of their Vitamin C, and lost 30% to 60% loss of most of the other trace nutrients (see Globe & Mail  and UK's Guardian).

Big Ag has sold the farmer new varieties of potatoes that have bigger yields (ie. kg of potatoes per acre of land), so that is what high intensity farmers planted.  The vitamins and minerals drop as the carbohydrate content goes up; the Dilution Effect.  Excess dietary carbs cause or contribute to a host of diseases; including diabetes, obesity, Metabolic Disease, etc.

It isn't just potatoes that have been depleted.  Broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, and most other expensive fruits and vegetables have suffered similar fates.

Jo Robinson, author of Eating on the Wild Side, has shown that heirloom varieties of corn have up to 64.6 times more anthocyanins (ie. a type of phytonutrient that's good for us to eat) than the standard white corn of today.

More and more intense agriculture produces pseudo-food that is similar to undigestible and inert sand plus a spoon of starch and/or sugar; empty calories that fail to satisfy our need and search for nutritious food.  No wonder people overeat; their bodies keep seeking the nutrients that are never there in adequate quantities and/or quality.

Read Wheat Belly and Grain Brain for even cheerier news about toxic grains we are duped into buying and eating courtesy of Big Ag and intense agriculture.

Most farmers who practice intense agriculture use chemical fertilizers derived from oil, natural gas, or mines.  Manure, which adds organic matter and nutrients back to the soil, is generally regarded by Big Ag as old fashioned, too much work, and less efficient.  Of course, Big Ag has huge profits from selling all those un-natural inputs to the farmer, while there is no profit for Big Ag in manure.

While farmers and farming certainly played a major role in reaching the sad state of affairs for intense agriculture of today, not all of the blame sits at the feet of farmers.  Where has the Federal & Provincial government bureaucracy been for the last 50 years?  What about politicians, farm organizations, doctors, nurses, dieticians, nutritionists, scientists, University professors, ag. consultants like Al Mussell, agrologists, consumer advocacy groups, main stream media and their investigative reporters, and consumers?  There is more than enough blame to go around for everybody on how we got here. To get out of this mess in a reasonable period of time, all of these stakeholders (and everybody else) will have to better understand the problems, listen to each other, and work co-operatively to get a solution ASAP.

What more proof does Al need to convince him of the abject failure of intensified agriculture?

Al is obviously a very smart man with decades of education, skills, and experience in agriculture; far more than me.  How then, do we explain such a wide gulf between what Al says and the other points of view?  Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), author of "The Jungle" (1906) exposing the corrupt US meat packing industry said,

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Perhaps that is true in Al's case too.

I hope CBC The 180, Jim Brown, and his Producers gives adequate airtime for alternative viewpoints than the trash talk of Al Mussell.

George Morris Centre: Facts or Rhetoric

George Morris Centre says that it is "Canada’s leading economic agri-food research centre."  Is George Morris Centre the leader in agri-food research, or the propaganda centre for Big Food or Supply Management ("SM") rhetoric?

Rhetoric is defined as:

"language that is intended to influence people and that may not be honest or reasonable."

George Morris Centre ("GMC") used to be part of the University of Guelph.  Today, it is registered as a non-profit charitable organization.  According to its 2013 financial report, it is operating at a $475,000 deficit on a $1.8 Million annual budget; a 26.4% deficit.

GMC writes research reports, puts on seminars, and provides speakers.  They have a significant number of talented people who don't work for peanuts.  Finding the revenue each month to keep GMC going is likely not an easy task.

To help fund GMC, they sell memberships (Individual $250/yr, Association $1,000/yr, and Corporate $2,500/yr).  Are the opinions, needs, and desires of these GMC members influencing, controlling, or tainting the research and opinions of GMC?

Is GMC an independent, unbiased, and authoritative source than can be relied upon, or a shill and propaganda mouthpiece for Big Food and Canada's Supply Management sector?

GMC recently released a new research report, titled Is Food Really More Expensive in Canada Than the US?  This report was written by GMC Staff Members Al Mussell (Senior Research Associate), and
Kevin Grier (Senior Market Analyst).  Al has a background in US dairy, while Kevin is more into meat and retail grocery.

It takes brave individuals to write about something that just about everybody "knows" to be obvious, ubiquitous, and long ago assumed to be consistently true.  What could you possibly say other than re-hash the same facts over again?

However, these two GMC researchers dove into the deep end, and produced this report.  It seems that this GMC paper was prompted by the May, 2014 Commentary by the CD Howe Institute "Sticker Shock: The Causes of the Canada-US Price Differential" by Nicholas Li.  The CD Howe report found that consumer prices are broadly higher in Canada, and Canadian food prices purchased for consumption in the home was about 57% more expensive in Canada than in the US in 2011.

GMC's comments on the CD Howe report were:

"Meats and the milk, cheese, and eggs group were observed to have the largest cost differential, at 76-77% more expensive than in the US.  [Nicholas] Li comes to a familiar conclusion- blame supply management."

GMC appears to be great friends with Canada's Supply Management system.  Perhaps GMC has a majority of its members in the SM system.  When CD Howe complains about SM in Canada, what should GMC do to help its members who use SM proceeds to buy GMC memberships?

I wonder how much in charitable donations does GMC receive each year from the Supply Management sector?  Since all of those $ eventually come from Canadian consumers of SM products, it is easy to be generous with other people's money, so I bet SM is very generous to GMC.  If I am wrong, let GMC and SM disclose the truth so that we all know.

Exactly how many consumers, poverty activists, small flockers, affordable food supporters, and local food groups buy GMC memberships?  I doubt it's a large crowd.  My guess is that GMC has significantly less than one person in this large group who buys a GMC membership.  Also, I doubt any of these people attend GMC seminars.  If I am wrong in my assumptions, let GMC disclose the GMC membership data so we all know for sure.

So GMC has an easy choice:   support GMC members, and find some way to lessen the blow from the CD Howe report.  If you can't fight it with facts, perhaps GMC can muddy the waters so that there is confusion where clarity previously existed on the US-Canada food price differential.

CD Howe used OECD data to prove its case (data that originated from each government, likely Statistics Canada in our case).

GMC used data from US Department of Agriculture- Economic Research Service and an unspecified Canadian source (I assume USDA Table 97_2012, but that hole in GMC's paper is worrisome).  GMC determines that in 2012:

"in the US, food and non-alcoholic beverage purchases consumed at home were 6.6% of consumer expenditures. Canada came in with expenditures of 9.6%. This appears close to the 57% spread from the OECD data quoted by Li."

Let's see, 6.6/9.6= 68.75% and 9.6/6.6= 145% and (9.6-6.6)/6.6= 45.45% and (9.6-6.6)/9.6= 31.25% so we have something between 69% and 31% difference, depending on how you calculate it.  Oh oh.  GMC seems to support CD Howe and their conclusion that Supply Management likely results in higher food prices.  GMC goes on to explain it away:

"According to the USDA, US household consumer expenditures were $US 34,541; For Canada it was $US 27,761. This gives total expenditures on food for a US household of $US 2,273 and a Canadian household of $US 2,679. The implication is that, over the course of a year, Canadians spent about $US 406 more on groceries than Americans did. This is just under $US 8/week, or about 18%.  The implication is that when we factor in observed differences in consumer spending for all goods, apparently the difference in food expenditures is not quite so egregious."

GMC says Canadians pay 18% more, but doesn't say 18% of what.  It is incorrect to use percentages unless you clearly state what the percentage refers to.  GMC muddies the waters, again.  Taking a guess, I find that the US$2,679/yr that Canadians pay for groceries is 17.8419% more than the US$ 2,273/yr that a US family spends on groceries; close to the 18% figure stated by GMC.

Now that we know where GMC gets its numbers from, we can look at GMC's magical thinking more carefully.

The average US household earns 24.4% more than the average Canadian household.  In spite of the average US household earning more, it spends less on food, whether in absolute US$ (15.2% less) or as a % of household income (31.25% less).  Either way, Canadians earn 24.4% less and pay 31% more for food than our American neighbours.  The combined whammy of these two factors produces a 63.3% greater impact of food purchases on Canadian family budgets (ie. 1.244 * 1.3125= 1.633).

Whenever a propaganda pusher wants to create rhetoric (ie. propaganda), changing the basis of comparison, or taking percentages is a favorite ploy.  CD Howe says Canadians pay 57% more for food that US households.  To disguise this sad fact, GMC changes the basis of comparison and takes percentages.

GMC goes on, in its Table 1, to look at 2009 expenditures for food cooked and eaten at home vs. food eaten outside the home.  Here, Canadians eat out less than our US neighbours (6% for US, 3.7% for Canadians, for a 61.7% difference) .  Everybody knows it is more expensive to eat out.  Most restaurants charge a 200% to 300% markup (eg. if the food ingredients cost the restaurant $10.00 then that meal will sell for $30.00 in a restaurant if a 300% markup is used).  If Canadians can't afford the food they need, they certainly won't be maximizing their dining out experiences.  For this 2009 data, in-home and out-of-home food is 14.6% for the US, and 15.3% for Canadians, so Canucks pay a grand total of  4.79% more that our US neighbours.

GMC then concludes,

"In other words, it suggests that what Canadians and Americans spend on food in total as a share of consumer spending is about the same."

There is still a 4.79% difference in this 2009 data, which is dismissed by GMC as a triviality, so close to equal that GMC dismisses it as zero.

A 4.79% price difference to frugal Canadians is far from zero.  Have you seen how far Canadians will drive to buy gasoline at just 0.1 cents per litre cheaper (ie. 0.1 cents is a 0.069% price savings at 140.0 cents per litre)?

Of course, the data in GMC's Table 1 is 2009 data, 5 years old.  Does the CD Howe data of 2011-2012 suggest that things have gotten a lot worse for Canadians in those 3 intervening years?

Graph from Page 4 of GMC's Report, showing price trends in US and
Canada for food and all items purchased by households

Above is a graph taken from GMC's report.  We can see that all prices were indexed as of 2002 (ie. set equal on the index as of 2002).  From that starting point, US food prices increased the most, followed by Canadian food prices.

When you start with a small number (ie. US food prices), the same increase creates a huge percentage increase, as we see here for the US food price index.  For example, changing from 1 to 2 is a 100% increase, but to change from 100 to 101 is just a 1% increase.  This is just another propaganda trick.  I'm not fooled by GMC's slight of hand.  Were you?

Let's look at something that GMC exposed by their graph, but didn't discuss.  Since 2002, Canada's all item prices increased by about 22.5%, but Canadian food prices went up by about 32.5%.

I assume that "all items" includes food, so if we were to compare "All items except food" with "Food", we would get even a bigger price differential.  We will ignore this effect for now, but realize that the magnitude of the screwing revealed below is even worse than we state here because of this issue.

When we look at the relative price changes, the 2013 Canadian indexes 32.5% (Food) vs. 22.5% (All) is a 8.16% difference for Food Vs. All.  For the US in 2013, the price indexes are 34.8% (Food) vs. 29% (All), which is a 4.5% difference Food Vs. All.

In summary, everything was set equal in 2002, then US food went up 4.5% more than all other US consumer prices.  For the same period, Canadian food went up 8.16% more than all other Canadian consumer prices.  Therefore Canada has had double the price inflation rate differential (ie. Food Vs. All) of what the Americans experienced.  I would suggest this is an apples to apples comparison that clearly shows Canadians are being screwed for food prices.

Just as CD Howe reported, I agree with CD Howe that chicken, eggs, dairy, and turkey represent the leaders in the screwing of Canadians for food prices.  That means Supply Management causes or significantly contributes to the screwing of Canadians for food prices.

How can the same data be used to draw totally different conclusions?  I would suggest it is because a twisted tale is being created by a propaganda shill mouthpiece in one case.

Is this example enough to clearly show GMC's bias?  Are we done here?

Perhaps GMC is in a funding crisis because they are on the wrong side of the issues.

Perhaps if GMC was seen as a protector and defender of all Canadians, then all the governments, citizens, and the entire agri-food industry would support them and take them seriously.

GMC has done great works for Canada and Canadians in the past.  Perhaps the Board of Directors of GMC should re-read the bio of their namesake, George Fletcher Morris (1910-1999)  and determine if he would approve of this GMC report and its obvious bias against the 38 million Canadian consumers, and in favor of GMC's friends, the Supply Management millionaires.