Big AG: Destroying

our land, water and our farmers




August 5, 2013
Marti Oakley (c) copyright 2013 All rights reserved
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The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) estimates that the waters in 27% of the southern half of Minnesota have reached critical levels in nitrogen contamination and that overall 41% of all lakes and streams have far higher than accepted and so-called “safe levels” of nitrogen contamination in addition to atrazine and glysophate contamination.
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Industrialized corporate farming Chemical Footprints

Our family farms have virtually disappeared. In their place are massive, squalid industrial farming and ranching operations. The result of this industrialization is low quality food contaminated with vaccines, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides and hundreds, if not thousands of chemicals we are not even allowed to know about.
The conversion, predominately over the last thirty years, from traditional farming to chemical farming is devastating the land and water, especially in agricultural states such as those in the mid-west. The result is chemical contamination and toxicity of land and water, now reaching critical levels and accumulating in our rivers and streams. Many of these same rivers and streams are emptying into the Mississippi, Cedar and Missouri Rivers and end up in the Gulf of Mexico contributing to the “dead zone”; an oxygen depleted area in the Gulf where nothing grows or lives. This area is enlarging each year. Much of our historically productive agricultural land and our water is on the verge of being reduced to a chemical laden soup unfit for use.
While the carping continues by vested interests regarding our so-called carbon footprints, and while the government continues its already debunked “global warming” scam, may be its time someone looked into the toxic chemical footprint being imprinted on our land and in our water by industrialized corporate farming. The promises of bigger more valuable crops, capable of feeding the world have been dismissed as the reality of agricultural monopolies protected by government, produce less than desirable crops, severely lacking in nutritional value.
With global demands for genetically modified grains dropping dramatically, participants in the global markets reject as unfit for human consumption genetically modified and heavily chemical laden gmo crops. The push here in the states to continue using toxic chemicals to produce grains and other crops with the promise of bigger profits, goes on unimpeded exposing the public to the silent poisoning of land and water.
The public has been diverted into worrying about carbon footprints, while ignoring the critical issue of land and water contamination due to industrialized corporate farming. Our agricultural land is being contaminated beyond reclamation along with our water sources and supplies.
Atrazine:
United States farmers apply an estimated 60 to 80 million pounds of atrazine’s active ingredient annually.
As a result, atrazine is the most commonly detected pesticide in U.S. waters, present in more than 75% of stream samples and 40% of shallow groundwater samples in agriculture areas across the United States. It is an endocrine disrupting chemical, meaning that it can disrupt normal hormone function in a wide variety of organisms, including people.
Glysophate:
Add the massive use and overuse of glysophate containing herbicides, such as Roundup, and the contamination of well, ground and municipal water supplies becomes dangerously toxic. The Environmental Protection Agency, exhibiting its usual pro-corporate stance, never required that neurotoxicity studies be done prior to Monsanto registering its glysophate based product, Roundup.
The glysophate can never be totally removed from food products. Washing, peeling and processing cannot remove all of the gysophate from the food because it is absorbed systemically by the plant.
Hiding behind the tried and trued loophole provided to corporate producers of toxic materials, the Monsanto’s of the world (at least here in the US) are allowed to claim listing of the toxins (inert ingredients) in their products would reveal trade secrets. It does make one wonder what kind of trade they are really engaged in.
From: Mercola
Now, results from a German study shows that people who have no direct contact with agriculture have significant concentrations of glyphosate in their urine. It’s becoming quite apparent that genetically engineered crops are a source of multiple toxins, in addition to having been found to contain far lower levels of nutrients. So much for saving the world from starvation.
Add nitrogen/nitrate into the mix
Cropland sources account for an estimated 89 to 95% of the nitrate load in the Minnesota, Missouri, and Cedar Rivers, and Lower Mississippi River basins.
Nitrate moves primarily through through groundwater and because it does, it pollutes available drinking water initially in the areas where it is first used. As it moves through the groundwater, eventually it ends up in rivers and streams and at some point may end up coming out of your tap.
Where does nitrate come from?
More than 70% of the nitrate is coming from cropland, the rest from regulated sources such as wastewater treatment plants, septic and urban runoff, forest, and the atmosphere.
Municipal wastewater contributes 9% of the statewide nitrate load.
Nitrate leaching into groundwater below cropped fields and moving underground until it reaches streams, contributes an estimated 30% of nitrate to surface waters,
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) estimates that the waters in 27% of the southern half of Minnesota have reached critical levels in nitrogen contamination and that overall 41% of all lakes and streams have far higher than accepted and so-called “safe levels” of nitrogen contamination in addition to atrazine and glysophate contamination.
Cropland sources account for an estimated 89 to 95% of the nitrate load in the Minnesota, Missouri, and Cedar Rivers, and Lower Mississippi River basins. Application of nitrogen exceeding the needs of the crop allows excess nitrogen to enter into ground and surface waters in addition to the known leaching that occurs upon application. There are also variances in soil and to some extent weather, which can affect the differences in nitrate absorption and dispersal.
Blood cancers and industrialized agriculture

The Mid-west has an inordinate number of blood research centers, and centers that treat those diagnosed with various blood cancers. This is no accident or coincidence. The clusters of lymphoma’s in highly agricultural areas is well known and is not confined to the farms. There are 30 various cancers under the label of lymphoma, but most are categorized as Hodgkin or Non-Hodgkin lymphoma’s.
More than ten years ago SUSAN OSBURN RESEARCH DIRECTOR, LYMPHOMA FOUNDATION OF AMERICA reported to the Senate:
America’s farmers, who produce our nation’s food, are at highest risk for lymphoma. They are exposed to pesticides in their work in the fields and also in their drinking water, as the chemicals leach into the groundwater that feeds their wells. Some studies have also suggested that exposure to nitrates, which enter groundwater and drinking water after heavy fertilizer use, may also be a factor in the high rates of lymphoma and deaths from lymphoma which we see in Midwestern farmers.
What was the governments response?

The EPA appears to be studying the relationship between the high levels of atrazine contamination and possible ill effects on human health. Of course, they have been studying this for more than a decade and despite numerous independent studies showing the dangers of these massive annual applications, just have not concluded that atrazine is all that bad.
The EPA has no actual response to nitrate contamination other than a statement that it will do a review no less often than every six years.
From GreenMedInfo:
The EPA, whose mission is to “to protect human health and the environment,” has approved Monsanto’s request to allow levels of glyphosate (Roundup) contamination in your food up to a million times higher than have been found carcinogenic.
“EPA has concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk to humans. Therefore, a dietary exposure assessment for the purpose of assessing cancer risk is unnecessary.” (Read full article here)
The USDA was equally as reticent in actually assessing the biological harm from glysophate.
Summary:

We are being systematically and systemically poisoned and exposed to deadly diseases as a result of the over application of herbicides and pesticides applied to agricultural fields and used in other agricultural processes. The corporations forcing this chemical farming and ranching on the country, along with facilitating state and federal agencies are fully aware of the impending disaster that is culminating around land and water contamination.
I cannot help but note that the same areas suffering from this growing contamination are almost identical to the areas mapped out by the United Nations in their Wildlands projects, marking them for eventual non-human habitation and use. Is it possible that these projects are simply the cover for land and water devastation? Are these projects simply the advance creation of cover for corporations who are responsible for the damage, but who also donate massive amounts of money to the United Nations?
There are many questions that arise and need to be answered here.
Before the chemical castration of agriculture by bio-pirates and global corporations began, our farmers and ranchers were able to produce nutritious and abundant food without creating a poisonous environment.
The biggest question that should be asked is:
Why is our government supporting the continued expansion of chemical laden, toxic food production when we know historically that it can be produced without endangering the land, the water and the public?
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Some of the Resources:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/ofr03-069/
http://www.pca.state.mn.us/index.php...ace-water.html
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/aw...razineand.html
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/epa...dup-ready-cake
http://www.oregon.gov/odf/board/docs...glyphosate.pdf
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distrib...ms/dc3770.html
http://www.lymphomahelp.org/chapter_three.pdf
http://www.lymphomahelp.org/feinsteintestimony.php
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/...idence-of.html
http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/s...ancer_2012.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/reregistration/atrazine/

http://ppjg.me/2013/08/05/big-ag-destroying-our-land-water-and-our-farmers/