Human Rights and big corporations

Don't just lie there! Do something! 

A bonus post? Maybe and perhaps not! Today is Blog Action Day and lots of bloggers around the world are taking to the blogosphere to post something on Human Rights today. So what do I have to say on Human Rights? Sometimes quite a lot - too much my children might say at times, but today I want to concentrate on the influence of corporations on human rights. This week was a sad week with the announcement that Monsanto are due to receive the World Food Prize for their contribution to agriculture. It was not just a sad day, it was a day of disgrace. And what has that to do with human rights? A great deal.

Don't let farming become like a prison

The world trade in agricultural seeds is increasingly dominated by fewer and fewer corporations with aggressive approaches to patenting genetic material. Farmers throughout time have grown plants from seed they have retained from their own crops, seeds that have adjusted over time to the specific conditions of the area and in so doing have increased the genetic pool from which we can derive the next generation of plants. Monsanto and other corporations like them, however, want the farmers to buy seed from them each and every year and woe betide you if you are found to have a crop that contains plant material with "their" genes in them, they will pursue you in the courts for that, even if that material has arrived in your field by means other than your own hand.

Seed for next year

Monsanto would have us believe that it is fair reward for investing in seed for improved productivity, but the reality is that the seed is bred with traits that means it is not affected by their own herbicides, which they are only too willing to sell you as well. The seed may also be selected for certain disease or pest protection, all well and good, but these expensive seeds can still drive developing world farmers to bankruptcy when crops fail due to the pests and diseases that they are not immune to.

Farming for the future

So what has this all to do with human rights? Farmers have a right to a livelihood and not be threatened with court action when contamination arrives in their fields. Farmers should also have the right to be able to sell their products to the markets they intend and the problem with contamination is that organic farmers or non-GMO farmers cannot sell their produced in the higher value GMO free market, they are forced to sell in the conventional market at lower prices. Farmers should have the right to buy seed at reasonable prices that do not leave them bankrupt, as and when they need and not have to rely on seed companies for seed every year. When the profits of farmers are reduced to a minimum and large corporations have increasing profits, something is wrong with the system. Let us fight for the farmer's right to farm in such a way that the profits are not accrued to the biggest in the market, the corporations. Let us fight for the right to healthy food, free of pesticides and herbicides. Let us fight for more sustainable food that does not rely on fewer and fewer seed types and fewer and fewer companies to supply those seeds.

Creative moments

This picture of Riga was from 2004 but then my photos
were not so good that I took this year. Not a good idea to
take photos in a travelling car.

We visited a textile exhibition this last week in Riga which was well worth the trip, just a shame that the main reason for our trip was to pick up Ian's powerbook which couldn't be fixed. He's not a happy bunny! I have to say though, that creativity in others excites me and inspires me, I can't wait to get out the paints and the fabrics and get creating again. I just now have to find some time. Creativity also reminds me what an exuberant, creative God we have, as he did not settle for one tree for example with one colour but such a range of trees, such shapes, such colours, such uses, it's breathtaking. The joy of creating something helps me to identify with our creative God and the sheer joy he must have put in to creating the universe, I wonder how much experimenting and tinkering he did before he got the creation just right. I know some folks think that he spoke and that was that, but since his creation reflects him and artists have as much joy in the creating as the creation I am sure God must have had such fun creating stuff, the sheer pizzazz of creation speaks of it - well it does to me! The sheer abundance of ideas he had for each piece of his creation amazing, I can almost imagine him going "well what do you think blue or white butterflies? Spots or plain? All of them? Good! Just what I was thinking. Now what else can I do with this model?" Now if you don't believe me, take a look at this site to see the process of creating ideas for artwork and look through the sketchbook projects. One idea leads to another creating spin offs and rabbit trails of ideas, now if God didn't do something similar how come we ended up with duck-billed platypuses and the range of butterflies we have? 

Our Amish tomatoes were looking a little sad
and not likely to produce much more so they
were uprooted and some autumn veg put in.
Lettuces, swiss chard, mustard greens,
cabbages, not shown are beetroot and calabrese.
This is a bit of a trial to see how far into autumn/
winter we can grow stuff in the polytunnel.

Isn't it just typical! Not all of creation has a happy ending. The first time I can recall seeing a thrush in Latvia was a dead one after it broke its neck flying into our window. We threw the last bird, that died after flying into our window, over the balcony expecting a cat to pick it up in the night but instead one of the little chaps from downstairs picked it up and was carrying it about the next day. Whoops! Didn't think of that. Where is a hungry cat when you need one? Talking of typical it was also typical that I dropped a full litre bottle of milk on the step outside the only family in our block ie the one with little chappie that picks up dead birds, the family where the kids regularly go outside without shoes (not because they haven't got any but because they want to), the only family in our block that has a dog that they let in and out without supervision and so is often outside their door, also the ground floor (first floor) step and we live on the second floor (third floor - confused! We were when you realise that most folks count from the ground floor as first) and so I had to dash upstairs to get suitable implements to deal with it, hoping that someone didn't walk in it in the meantime. I wouldn't have minded quite so much but I had forgot to put out a milk bottle the night before and so had only just hurriedly got dressed to put out the milk bottle for our milk lady before she disappeared off and pick up the milk that had already been put out. Emotiocons at this point would be wonderful to express the exasperation of that morning. Definitely one of those mornings when you just want to crawl back into bed and start again. Why is it that dropping a bottle of milk always seems such a tragedy? It's not the expense that's for sure. 

Barn foundations. Unfortunately those trees nearby are not
big enough for our barn supports. By the way, how far is the
forest from the barn? Where would you measure too? We
found out the other day it should be 4m away, but they
didn't tell us that before and goodness only knows if there
is a definition of the forest edge to measure too.

For anyone following our long running sagas to get things built we now know why there is not enough wood in the country of Latvia, exports have increased by 43.1%. So if you are in Sweden, Germany or Britain could you send a little of it back so that we can get our barn built? We may have found a possible solution in our friend who has recently started up a firewood business as he has a large saw, no not the one Ian brought back for him last week but another one - it's huge. Now all we have to do is source enough trees to cut down to build a barn - easy peasy heh? Somehow think not. At least the foundations will be well settled in. We did get a demonstration of the saw that Ian brought back last week though, it is an amazing piece of equipment, cuts the logs to length and then it has a log splitter, which makes cutting firewood a whole lot easier than by hand (should have had a video clip here I think, my words don't conjure up the ease of the whole thing) and the power of the log splitter. Scary! It is a good job it is so easy as last weekend he cut up 54 pallets worth of wood, and that is a lot of wood as a pallet is about a metre cubed. Ian ended up helping him out again this week by taking 3 pallets of wood to a collection point to make up a delivery load. Our neighbour's wife expressed thanks to us for helping them out again when they needed it and yet they have been such a blessing to us too, so how can we not help out? We would also be daft to pass up the chance of being connected to some Latvians and getting to know them a bit better, it's also good to hear the language being spoken. All good practice! It is nice to be appreciated though, even if we are only doing what is asked of us and sharing our resources - that's what we are supposed to do, right? 

One ripe melon

It has been a good week of getting to know our neighbours better. The neighbours to the land jokingly said that we should invite them to a melon fest once our melons ripened in return for the bbq we had with them. Well our melons ripened and so the invite was duly extended and we hosted our friends for a meal. Trying to decide what to eat was a struggle, what would give them a taste of English cooking, well my version of it? Do I go for the roast? How English do I go? Well in the end I decide to make a mince and onion pie, only with minced (ground) pork instead of beef since that is hard to get, teamed with Mediterranean roast veg since we had loads of peppers and our first aubergine and a good way of using up those dratted errr I mean wonderful patty squash, potatoes and broccoli. We would have had beans too but forgot to get them out of the pan. Duh! Dessert was coffee cake, melon (of course) and apple (with grated patty squash, but don't tell anyone) crumble. So we had a great time talking about food again, and life in Latvia and England, showing them where we lived on the map and getting to see photos of their life too. It's fascinating seeing the photos of them collecting hay by horse and cart and seeing how they stack it on their Latvian style hayricks and all of this in the last 13 years. In fact the family are thinking of getting another horse to help on the farm as it is cheaper than a tractor. A horse is certainly tempting from our point of view (well maybe more mine than Ian's- can't think why!) as it doesn't make as much of a mess on wet ground as a tractor, the big downside though is that you can't park a horse up over the winter and sort of forget about it and that at the moment is important. We know that once we have animals it won't be as easy to travel and so we are holding off on that for a while longer, after all we have just booked our tickets to Australia to see our daughter getting married this winter (well summer, err winter, well you know what I mean!). 

We have had a number of big thunderstorms
over the summer this year. This is one brewing

Going back to the melons it has been interesting raising them, seeing how they grow and try to take over the world in the process requiring several hackings to keep them under control; I think they sulked and rewarded us with just one melon per plant instead of 5 that we were expecting. It does mean we still have a lot of melons but judging when they are ready is really hard. I thought it was when they were soft at the end, but how soft is soft? I hadn't realised that one type of melon goes yellow when it's ready and we ate one a bit early as it seemed soft enough, it tasted alright but nothing to write home about and we were a bit disappointed. A quick look at the seed packet later though, which fortunately I kept, revealed the truth that we should have waited till it changed colour. Well we waited and we waited and the melons just sat there looking very green for ages and then suddenly quite a few of them all turned yellow in the space of a few days and caught us by surprise. Some of them, however, exploded! Not a pretty site, or a particularly nice smell. Not sure if a certain little visitor to our polytunnel is responsible for some of it by nibbling some of them and encouraging the rot. He or she had better beware as the traps are set!!!! 

I love stormy clouds!

I found a surprising fact about Latvia this week, technically it is the only European country to retain the death penalty although in practice no one has actually been executed since 1996, thank goodness. Still, I did find it strange that it has not been struck off the statute books yet, especially as they have now joined the EU which is abolitionist as regards the death penalty. The death penalty now only remains for murder in wartime or treason in Latvia and so is not likely to be enacted, fortunately or at least I hope not.

The corncrakes packed their bags last week, or at least we
hope so as we have now removed their summer residence
and cut all the grass in the main field now.

As many of you know Latvia has undergone radical cuts prompted by the global crisis which hit this nation particularly hard and resulted in Latvia having to take out a loan from the IMF. The new cuddly IMF apparently does not "dictate" to countries that they "help" as they have done in the past, which is widely reported to have resulted in wrecked economies where the rich get richer and the poor suffer badly, all for their own good of course! They just have to understand that they are undergoing a "bit of pain" so that their country gets better. Yeah right! A slight case of death by starvation or illness you can't afford to treat is okay then to pay off the loan incurred under a despotic regime? Anyway off my rant and back to what the cuddly IMF has being saying recently "Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania should make sure wages do not rise faster than productivity, that business is not taxed excessively, that public finances are kept tight and that prices do not rise faster at home than abroad." Well that's okay then, after all they only said that is what they should be doing and included Estonia and Lithuania who do not have loans with the IMF, so it is only an opinion right? The fact that once again the poor should be kept on a tight rein and the rich businesses should not suffer unduly is okay? That if Latvia chooses not to follow this advice they won't get any further installments of their loan, is okay isn't it? That's not pressure or dictating to after all! Yet the most equal countries in the world such as Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden all tax their businesses and the rich heavily and have generous benefits for the poor which most of the people accept is the right way to do things (well they do in theory, I know the practice is not quite as squeaky clean as they would like you to believe but people are people!) and their economies are doing fine but of course they are exceptions to the rule. Perhaps!

And the game is ....spot Ian! You would think he would find
a better hiding place than that at his age.

Talking of all things cuddly, cuddly Monsanto and DuPont, the saviours of the world - well so they seem to think and like to let everyone know it, are up to old tricks by touting the benefits of drought resistant corn that yields up to 13% greater yield than non-drought resistant corn in times of drought (doesn't say how it compares in years when there isn't a drought). Roedale has been piloting trials in organic methods of raising corn and in drought years their methods produce 31% more than using conventional growing methods. I know which option I would prefer. It also makes a lie that choosing organic methods always leads to a loss of production. 

Our baby oak grove.

Good times

Our attempt at a Latvian style hay rick. Not too bad for our
first time

It has been a busy week this week, still hot and humid with lots of thunderstorms too which has added to the mix making planning work on the garden interesting. My young helper left on Tuesday and we had great fun chatting about faith and gardens, squishing caterpillars and building our first hay rick on Latvian style wood supports. There is so much that can be learnt from the garden which relates to faith, such as the necessity to remove those things which maybe good in themselves and yet inhibit the growth of other things which could be developed, a useful lesson to learn in a busy life. Anyway she did not leave empty handed and took with her bags of carrots, lettuces, beetroot and beans and pots of marjoram, sage, mint, lemon balm and chives to start her own indoor garden. My young helper is very concerned about the way tea plantation workers are treated in many places and since fair trade tea is not readily available here in Latvia she decided that growing her own herbs to make teas in the winter would be a better option. I love it when the younger generation get passionate about justice and she is hoping to get a website up and running soon to voice her passion, so as soon as it is set up I shall pass on the website address.

Gančauskas 2002. This building was originally a KGB
place, can't remember if it was for training or for holidays

This week was an important milestone for us as it is 10 years since we first visited Latvia. This was the start of our journey that took us to Denmark, America and finally to live in Latvia. Our Latvian experience started at Gančauskas camp where we travelled to this last Thursday to meet some friends of ours from our old church in the UK. They had come to help out at an English camp for young Latvians wanting to improve their English, just as we had done all those years ago. Normally when we visit our friends in camp we only manage to snatch some conversations as they travel between activities and so it was great to be able to sit around in the staff kitchen drinking tea and chatting away during some free time. It was also an important milestone for some of our friends who have lead the teams to Gancauskas for many years as it was their last year, time for them to move on too!

Our indoor mini forest of sweetcorn. It
is now around 3m high, only another
metre to hit the roof!

We had a visit from Simon Bell who I first contacted after finding papers he had written for a PhD on how Latvians feel about their countryside. Very few academic papers are written on Latvia in English, I found out whilst doing my studies, and to find a paper written by someone with an English sounding name was very exciting and I wondered what connection he had to Latvia. An internet search lead to his website and I contacted him. I was surprised to get a response and we met up last year at his holiday home in Latvia and chatted about forestry which is his main area of expertise, PhD's and life in Latvia. This week he and his wife paid us a visit and we went for a walk in the forest, or rather Ian and Simon went for a brisk hike through and his wife and I wandered through at a more sedate pace. What we did glean from the walk though was an outline management plan and it confirmed to us the trees we need to keep and those that need to go, we also found out the most common tree in our forest, alder a pioneer species, does not live very long before getting diseased and dying and so it wasn't a problem to get rid of it and let in some light to other more valuable species like spruces, oaks, maples and birches. At least we feel much more confident with our approach to managing the forest. By the way getting rid of many of the alders is not a major problem as there are still lots of the other trees too.

A ginormous mushroom, possibly a cep and edible but we
didn't try it.

I still managed to keep up with some of the internet feeds that I keep an eye on for the sake of my studies and it was great to read that in Brazil they managed to pass a major anti-corruption bill that bans anyone convicted of a serious crime from standing for office for 8 years. I have been to Brazil three times and I have sat in one of the states government buildings and I know from those times the way corruption weaves itself into the life of Brazil and so this is a major major breakthrough. Even more amazing is that 1.5 million people signed a petition to get the bill through the governmental processes despite the fact that 147 out of 513 members of the lower house and 21 of the 81 senators will be affected by this law and not able to stand at the next election. This is a huge victory for democracy and for people power and I really pray that Brazil can go from strength to strength as they clean up not just their governance but also their society at large.

Meet Fred! I found him (or her) in the cabbage patch and
thought I would keep him as he is huge, rather than squish
him like his numerous cousins. I was wondering though
if he is edible!

Another article was the way that Haiti's peasant farmers have said no to Monsanto "aid" and yes to local native seeds. Monsanto have seemingly generously offered 400 tonnes of seeds of which 60 tonnes have already been delivered. The Haitian farmers though have realised that this will then lock them into future purchases of seed as the local native seed will be ousted and not grown. Reduction in native varieties of seeds puts farmers in greater danger of pests and diseases. Greater variability of seeds developed for the various environments is the ideal situation for a healthy vibrant seed bank, and not reliance on expensive herbicide dependant seeds from a major international conglomerate.

The oddest cucumber we have ever grown, looks rather like
a duck we think

The Latvian fireservice have had a major boost this last week too with news that the US army corps of engineers are to fund developments in many fire stations. Amazingly they will actually pay for local companies to be employed to do the work so that they are not only improving the safety of communities but boosting the local economy too. Wish many missionary organisations would take note too, instead of well meaning goods being shipped from long distances which are not always useful if the goods need repairs which cannot be accessed locally and sending folks to work on projects when people here need jobs to boost much deflated wages. The funds are being made available to fit roll top doors to fit the new larger fire engines which have been funded by the EU, so many of the fire engines in service at the moment are ancient looking beasts that look like they came out of the ark, rugged four wheeled drive but ancient looking nonetheless (must get a picture of our local fire engine). Our own local village fire station was offered a newer engine by a German twin town and it makes me wonder if it will be too big for the little place, I guess I will have to wait and see.

Our neighbours are rather generous, these are the second
gift of zucchini we have had this week. The first lot there
were three of them. Good job we have a freezer and a
food drier

These strange contraptions are the internal structures of
the Latvian hay ricks that Ian made ready for the grass he
cut the other day.

Ian is on a roll with the two-wheeled tractor and spent a
whole day cutting this steep, pig roughened, bank 

And while Ian was making hay ricks I was carting stones to
build up this bank. Our second pond is still emptying fast
which gave me a chance to get lower down to add more rock.
Good job as that night it absolutely lashed it down and now
the pond is full again and staying full for the time being.