Ahimsa

Click to enlarge Created with Wordle

Coal v Food v Water - on the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales

Fiona Simson

From Pauline Roberts of the Caroona Coal Action Group, via Networker Denis Wilson of The Nature of Robertson:

Dear All

We were delighted to welcome Lee Rhiannon MLC and Tony Windsor MP to our 1 Year Blockade Anniversary Thanksgiving Party today. Yes, we have kept this community-based blockade on the Duddy's property "Rossmar Park" going for one year preventing access for further damaging coal "exploration" on Prime Agricultural Land.

We held a multi-denominational service of thanksgiving today in the glorious sunshine, thankful for our productive land, our critical above-ground and aquifer supplies and our strong and resilient community. 130 people attended this great day with an open fire, enjoying mulled wine, hearty stew and damper and sticky date pudding laid on by the SOS Liverpool Plains girls. We were very pleased to find Graham Brown and Lance Batey in our midst and are grateful for the pledges of support from other similarly affected communities on the Darling Downs, like Felton.

Whilst we wait for a proper Water Study to begin, we are as committed as ever to preventing coal and gas mining on Australia's scarce Prime Agricultural Land, so this Blockade continues.

This Monday 20th July at 8.30pm, Four Corners will be running a story about our area: "The Good Earth" [www.abc.net.au/4corners] on ABC1. (It is repeated 11.35pm on Tuesday 21st) We hope you will be able to watch and that it has a positive result for those of us who believe food and water security is important.

Our thanks to Coal Communities for your continued support and good wishes.

Kind regards

Pauline Roberts

www.ccag.org.au

CCAG & SOS Liverpool Plains

~~~~~~~~

There is an excerpt of the transcript on the ABC website here.

~~~~~~~~

If you watched The Good Earth on Four Corners last night, you will have confronted one of the major issues facing us in Australia. What is happening on the Liverpool Plains, as Mrs Duddy so emotively pointed out, goes to the heart of our identity as Australians.

The Liverpool Plains is rich agricultural country - with its own underground aquifers. George Clift pointed out that in his seventy years of farming, he had suffered only one crop failure. On the dryest inhabited continent on earth, that is a boast that can seldom be made.

Under the ground is not only water, but coal which two separate companies, BHP Billiton and Shenua, have exploration rights for which they have spent stratospheric amounts of money to the cash-strapped New South Wales (NSW) government.

The Liverpool Plains is not the only place in Australia or the world in which this is occurring. I recently posted on the situation on that other place of great fertility, the Darling Downs in Queensland.

The essence is that one resource is being played off against another and against another: coal -v- food -v- water. What seems to have been forgotten by both miners and government is that we, in Australia, can survive without coal. We cannot survive without clean water and quality food.

Socially and politically, the protests and blockade on the Liverpool Plains is interesting.

The situation has the landed gentry whose huge agricultural holdings date back several generations and whose traditional political allegiance is to the conservative National Party resourcing the blockade and treating with The Greens as well as the local independent of National Party origins, Tony Windsor.

The Nationals are angry as can well be seen in the persons of Queensland Nationals, Barnaby Joyce (Senate Leader) and Ron Boswell. In fact, the anger, the action and re-action of The Nationals brought back memories of a similar response to the in-roads made into The Nationals vote by Pauline Hanson. It brings a smile, because decades - and a couple of generations of politicians - ago, Jack McEwan, Minister for Trade, did his best to provide an insurance policy for The Nationals who are reliant on a declining agricultural electoral base still by orienting his party to the mining industry.

Now, on Four Corners, is displayed Barnaby & Co on the horns of a dilemma for The Nationals: miners -v- agriculture; Australians -v- Chinese; Australians -v- international conglomerate pretending to be Australian.

So that gives one an idea of the politics and the economics involved. Then there is the personal, the social. Farmers on the blockade are promising not to succumb to financial blandishments from the miners. George Clift says that it won't happen with him. He will go out in a box first, he says. The much younger Chris Howarth has sold to Shenhua.

Chris is not the only one - but he, commendablyl, came to the camera and explained. And who can blame him. This is a man in his middle years with a wife and a young family. Shenhua are offering farmers more than the value of their property. Chris says that if he stayed, the situation of his property in relation to the geography of Shenhua's rights is such that his family would be living next door to an open-cut mine. How could one live with that? Lifestyle gone; livelihood jeopardised; property declining in value and the opportunity to underwrite the family's future. Surely, a no-brainer?

What is needed here is a clear-thinking response from government. Government must break the nexus of the clash of rights and resources. Government must stop behaving like an addict with its hand in the till and prostituting itself for every dollar it can get while selling the birthright of Australians - to food security - for the Biblical mess of pottage.

It is also high time that the electorate became able to see politicians withstanding the "winning ways" of international corporates and high-flying lobbyists, many of whom have long-standing personal and political connections to the government which happens to be in power at the time which means corporations frequently have a choice of political attractive lobbyists depending upon who is in power.

So we wait to hear what happens next?

• Will the agricultural interests of the Liverpool Plains be successful in the latest round of Court proceedings?
• Will the farmers of the Liverpool Plains remain entrenched within the National Party (my own prediction given the disciplined nature of the National Party vote) or defect to The Greens?
• Will the major and far-reaching environmental issues facing Australia transcend political, factional and social boundaries to establish cross-party support for intelligent and sensible policies on resource management?
• Will the miners be checked now that their behaviour has been aired on television?
• Will governments begin to look and act as if they represent the interests of Australians?
• Will governments take a tack away from the cynical and self-serving glad-handing of corporates and lobbyists and desist from forelock-tugging?

Ethical eating: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Firstly, let me declare my bias. I am a Barbara Kingsolver fan. I haven't read everything she has ever written - but quite a lot from her first novel, The Bean Trees, through to her most recent work, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle written in collaboration with her husband Steven Hopp and her elder daughter Camille Kingsolver and ably and practically assisted by the youngest family member, Lily Hopp.

Kingsolver's pictorial representation of a Year of Local Food eaten seasonally - The Vegetannual.

Please reverse months for the Southern Hemisphere

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is subtitled Our Year of Seasonal Eating. It could, as easily, have been subtitled "How to Organise Your Local Food Menu". The Hopp-Kingsolver menage resolved to eat locally and eat seasonally - within the parameters of traditional food preservation methods. Their resolution included a determination to move from long-time residence in distance transport dependent Tucson, Arizona where the water travels long distances as do the fruit and veges and much else that supports modern life there. Fortunately, Steven Hopp long possessed a run-down farm and farmhouse in the Appalachian Mountians of Virginia.

There has been mention, some critical, of the magical or fairy tale quality of Kingsolver's description of the family's Appalachian lifestyle. I do take issue with this. If her description sounds magical, fairy tale, or idealistic, perhaps it is because it speaks to an ideal or fantasy within ourselves which is imbued with such qualities. True, not all of us - even if we wished - could replicate the Kingsolver-Hopp project. This family was particularly well resourced in more ways than one.

For starters, they did not risk their livelihood. Kingsolver has a high profile as a writer - not least because her best selling Poisonwood Bible was featured on that automatic provider of best selling status, Oprah's Book Club. One presumes that this provided some sound financial resource. Hopp is Adjunct Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Emory & Henry College in Emory, Virginia which is classified as a college that changes lives. Biology appears to be a family interest as Camille Kingsolver includes it in her studies at Duke University. Lily was too young to enter into a book contract but she, too, was committed every inch/centimetre of the way.

Secondly, they had the Appalachian farm - with house - which Steven had owned for a long time. Not everyone has one of those tucked away in their Glory Box.

Thirdly, they brought scientific training and literacy to the project. Having such skills backing the project has to be a plus.

Fourthly, the necessary resource of the free labour of three adults and one enthusiastic child. One adult (although she was absent at college for large chunks of the project) was young with, one assumes, the energy to match her age. Kingsolver and Hopp were hardly over the hill. I mention this because at my great age and antiquity I can get tired just thinking about consistent, strenuous, and demanding activity.

Lastly, the motivation of the entire family is a great spiritual resource. There is nothing quite like energetic, resourceful people reinforcing one another in their mutual resolve. It provides large quantities of fuel for the journey, particularly when the going gets tough or you wonder why you ever set out on the journey - although there did not appear to be much self-doubt in the Kingsolver-Hopp unit.

So, when these factors are present, I see nothing magical, fairy tale, or idealistic about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle merely a wonderful, imaginative, determined, and sensible use of resources by two people in mid-life. The Kingsolvers and Hopps appear to have done the project very well, very intelligently and in a well recorded manner - complete with detailed website. For those who wish to emulate them, there is a clear trail to follow.

Some of the clear, factual information provided in AVM is shocking:

Humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes, three quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy and canola.

Garden seed inventories show that while about 5,000 non-hybrid vegetable varieties were available from catalogs in 1981, the number in 1998 was down to 600.

Hardly good stewardship of the planet's resources, is it?

The last chapter about the turkeys had me all but rolling on the floor with laughter - until the final paragraph when I was in tears. But it was life and death stuff Kingsolver was describing. The life and death of the re-creating pro-creating skills of created beings. If plain statistics make your eyes glaze over, the life and lot of an American turkey will not. Perhaps one day a futuristic Dr Strangelove will have wreaked the same havoc on humanity as has already been visited on the American turkey. It is our choice. Our questions, our demands, our very own actions will be the deciders. We can eat and die or we can eat and live.

I will be returning my copy to the Upper Ferntree Gully Library this afternoon, dear Reader, so get ye down there and check it out (641.0973 KIN). If it has disappeared from the shelf, great. Just get the friendly staff to put a hold on it.

It will take me a while to process all the information contained in AVM. For instance, I am a vegetarian and, for me, ahimsa/respect is a huge issue. My main motivation is the disrespect shown to animals by the industrial food chain. Kingsolver provides a rationale against vegetarian/vegan lifestyles in favour of respect and gratitude for animals while killing them for food. I do agree with her - in principle and in necessity. In reality, would I move to her side of the fence? I don't know.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is another contribution in the genre of think about what you eat or, in brief, ethical eating. We have philosophers, locavores, the 100 mile diet, seasonal eating, and the slow food movement. Kingsolver points out that when the family embarked on its project locavores and the 100 mile clubs were unknown. By the time the AVM was published, everyone was talking about ethically eating.

My view is that Prodigal Summer and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle should should be read in tandem. The first (written earlier than AVM) is fiction, the second non-fiction but each informs the other. Prodigal Summer deals with some issues that are not dealt with in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Some issues dealt with in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are dealt with more explicitly and graphically in Prodigal Summer. Otherwise, what else is fiction for?

Woolworths, Grog and Complaints

Well, dear Reader, it took a while. They didn't meet their own standard. Was beginning to think I'd never hear from them. But lo and behold they called. What on earth am I rabbiting on about I hear you ask?

You may recall my post Woolworths, Safeway, Liquor and Fuel - but not food which was posted on Friday, 8 June 2007. Woolworths pride themselves on having a seven-day response in replying to customers. Answering my complaint took them two days short of six weeks. Ah, well, better late than dead on time, eh!

Anyway, the call came from John McInnes who is in charge of buying for the liquor stores. As I expected, John didn't see my point. You might recall the issue was a promotion prior to the Queen's Birthday long week-end where, if you were to buy $60 worth of liquor from their liquor shop, you would get an 8c a litre discount on fuel (twice the usual 4c a litre discount when you produce your cash register docket for purchasing more than $30). My argument was the link between alcohol and driving and putting a value on alcohol which food did not attract.

John tried to claim that they did not target anybody in particular with the promotion. I explained to him that this was not true. He had in fact targetted two groups of people: those who drove and those who drank alcohol. A mum buying food for her family of six and didn't drink had no chance of getting 8c a litre off her fuel.

John didn't seem to be able to see the problem that alcohol was for all of us. He told me that following this nation-wide promotion, out of two and a half million customers he had received only eleven complaints apart from mine and they were all from the Northern Territory. Funny that, Miss E said, I'm an old Territorian. Perhaps we are a bit more conscious of grog issues than other people? I lived in the only town that had the pubs shut by Aboriginal people - Tennant Creek. Read all about in Grog War by Alexis Wright, this year's Miles Franklin Award winner.

Back to explaining community responsibility re alcohol consumption. For instance, we all pay taxes for the hospitals and these have a high rate of alcohol related admissions. In fact, when one considers the links between violence and alcohol and road trauma and alcohol, alcohol is a community problem. So there was more conversation in this regard which didn't bring about one ounce of regret or remorse from John. Youth drinking? Parental problem. Miss E said that when they stabbed someone or killed someone on the road it was a community problem, a problem for all of us.

I explained to him that what I would like from him was for him to say that he would never link alcohol and driving again or give preference to alcohol over food again. He said he couldn't say that. Suprised? Are you kidding? But I did suggest something else to him.

I suggested that he enable food purchasers to have access to an 8c a litre discount on fuel for purchases over $60. I suggested that such a promotion be held the week before the First Sunday of Advent. Brief reference to an election and what's-his-name's threat/promise on food pricing should he become Prime Minister.

Wouldn't that be good? Just when you're buying the fruit for the cake and the pudd and associated Christmas jollies. Just when you're about to set off on hols. with the kids and all the camping gear.

I said if he didn't know when the First Sunday of Advent was he should buy a calendar and learn - and I did a deviation to say that chocolate chips do not belong in Hot Cross Buns and and that Hot Cross Buns should not be on sale before we had even got to Epiphany. Didn't bother to ask if he understood what Epiphany was. All that will have to be the subject of a separate complaint. (Poor pun warning: Should I wait for an epiphany from Woolworths?)

Poor John. He's to do with liquor and not food...but he said he could bring it up because he is on the team that discusses this. Mmm.

Perhaps if I make a complaint about the keeping of Christian festivals now and go over my request for the 8c a litre discount in late November....mmm...letter to the CEO do you think?

Woolworths, Safeway, Liquor and Fuel - but not food

Miss Eagle has sent the following email to Liz in Victorian Regional Office of Safeway (the name used by Woolworths in Victoria). It is self-explanatory. If you, dear Reader, agree with Miss E, please feel free to write to Woolworths in your state. If you are writing in Victoria, please send to ejamieson@woolworths.com.au.

This afternoon, I was in the Safeway store at Burwood Highway, Ferntree Gully (not the Mountain Gate store). I was stunned to see an advertisement stating, that if customers purchased $60 of goods from Safeway Liquor, they would receive a 20c a litre discount on fuel.

I am amazed at the ethics of such a campaign. I have been told by Kerry in the Area 5 office that this was part of a national campaign organised by the Marketing Division of Woolworths. M

The campaign has certainly not been well thought through. It sends very mixed messages to the community:

1. Alcohol is more valuable than food because it attracts a larger discount on fuel at the bowser.
2. $60 worth of alcohol far outweighs in value at the bowser any amount large or small spent on food.
3. The campaign links alcohol to driving in an encouraging way - in more or less the same way that large car parks at suburban hotels encourage a drink and drive mentality.
4. Woolworths, whose income is derived - in the main - from families, encourages a significant slice of the family budget to be devoted to alcohol.
5. The campaign seeks to encourage a significant amount of spending on alcohol which is the root cause of violence and road deaths in our society and ties the name of Woolworths/Safeway to it.

I would ask you to immediately withdraw this marketing campaign from all Woolworths and Safeway stores and to refrain from any similar type of marketing in the future.

I also wish to complain about the way complaints are handled within Woolworths and Safeway.

I am told that the Woolworths system means that someone in the local regional office will email someone in Sydney but that the system does not allow for me to be cc'd. So I have no way of knowing the accuracy of material forwarded to the responsible person regarding my complaint. I have rung the corporate office in Sydney who referred me back to the local regional office. Sydney refused to give me the name of the person with responsibility for the campaign. I then asked for the title, the phone number and the email of the person responsible for the marketing campaign. This too was refused. There is clearly no way for the customer to be in direct contact with the person with corporate responsibility. I am told that the matter will take two business days and I am familiar with the time limit that Woolworths sets itself to respond.

I fear that the manner in which Woolworths deals with complaints means that the complaint will not be acted upon in a positive manner leading to the withdrawal of the campaign and that Woolworths will go on its merry way regardless.

Yours sincerely,

[Name supplied]

[address supplied] Email: [supplied] Phone: [supplied] Blogs: Oz Tucker at http://oztucker.blogspot.com/ The Trad Pad at http://tradpad.blogspot.com/ The Eagle's Nest at http://eaglesplace.blogspot.com

We'll wait to see what - if anything - happens.

Over at The Elegant Sufficiency, Stephanie has drawn our attention to a grave ethical problem in the eating habits of human beings. Miss Eagle is a great lover of Chinese culture and food. Chinese cuisine is the pinnacle for Miss E. But Miss E deplores the depredation of whole species to meet Chinese demands for exotic foods and traditional medicinal ingredients. Miss Eagle's health has not been the best in recent times and she has considered resorting to traditional Chinese medicine - but there is a major hurdle. The impact of Chinese medicine on animal life. Read here and here to add to your understanding, dear Reader.

However, while one can recoil in horror at these tales, one also has to question our own Australian ethics in regard to our Standard Australian Diet.

We are wrecking our land. None of us question that anymore. Part of the wrecking of our ancient and fragile soils has been the importation of hard hooved animals. Sheep and cattle undergird the carnivorous diet favoured by most Australians. Goats and camels run wild in large numbers in the inland of Australia far from the eyes of the comfortable congregating in the urban fringes. The Northern Territory sends more cattle overseas in the inhumane live export trade than find their way to Australian slaughter houses.

What are the ethics involved in supporting the diet of most Australians?

For information about beef, cattle, sheepmeat, sheep, and goats go here. If you want to know more about live animal export, please go here.

As Jim Mason and Peter Singer point out (see sidebar), ask questions about your food - where it comes from, the means of its production - and ask questions about the treatment of animals and survival of animal species. Animals share this planet with us. We owe it to them. We owe it to ourselves.

The family that tables together.......

• 
  Throughout history, humans have tabled together to break bread.
  The simple ritual of the shared meal reunites us with our families and brings balance to our lives.
  These words are taken from the review of Art Smith's book, Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family. Art is Oprah's personal chef.
  Counterbalance this with the views of Australian educationists that more children than ever are present at school with language difficulties. And what do they think is to blame:
  "Families aren't sitting around the dinner table any more every night talking about what's happened during the day and engaging with the children," Ms Trimper said. "Children are sitting in front of televisions more and computers playing computer games. It's dinner in front of the television, video games after dinner, or parents both working and time poor — all those issues have to impact on children."
  Back in 2005, Miss Eagle recalls hearing or reading that Kathy Letts, that well-known expatriate Australian, had rid her London house of the dining room table so that the room could become a home theatre. Miss E was horrified. Letts was reported as saying that, if the family wanted to eat together, they went out to eat. More horror!
  What about privacy - what if something unforeseen invaded mealtime: argument and debate, outrageous laughter and hysteria, practical jokes. All of these Miss E knows can arise at family meal time and a good thing too. But what happens in a restaurant or some public eating place: a child’s terror of having to behave?
  The failure to table together as a family shows no respect: no respect for the food, where it came from, the person who prepared it. It shows no respect for ourselves and what connects us to life and to each other. And now the kids are paying the price at that most basic form of human connection, language.
  In Britain, there is now a movement called Back to the Table - because Mealtime is Realtime they say. There are some big names swinging behind the campaign - including celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay. Miss Eagle would love to hear from you, dear Reader, on this subject: your projects involving food and kids; kids recipes; fun meal time stories etc. If you want to email me to include your contributions as a post complete with pictures, all the better. If you really have something to say about families, food, and connection you might also like to guest on Food from Oz. Please email me. Lets put fun, families, and people into meals. Let's get rid of the pit stop mentality where food is just a refuelling of whatever is handy. Let's take time to think about our food, how it is produced, where it comes from. Then let's take time with its preparation. And above all, let's take time for one another.

Where does it all come from?

J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate, now resides in Australia. To-day there is an opinion piece in The Age: an edited version of a speech Coetzee will give in Sydney to-night. Here is an excerpt:

The transformation of animals into production units dates back to the late 19th century, and since that time we have already had one warning on the grandest scale that there is something deeply, cosmically wrong with regarding and treating fellow beings as mere units of any kind. This warning came so loud and clear that one would have thought it impossible to ignore. It came when in the mid-20th century a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter - or what they preferred to call the processing - of human beings. Of course we cried out in horror when we found out what they had been up to. We cried: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like cattle! If we had only known beforehand! But our cry should more accurately have been: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like units in an industrial process! And that cry should have had a postscript: What a terrible crime, come to think of it - a crime against nature - to treat any living being like a unit in an industrial process!

My life: it is a'changing

Food from Oz has been silent for nearly four months. Something happened in August which has taken quite a bit of thinking about - including thinking about where Food from Oz fits. In August, Miss Eagle went to the desert. See more about it on To the Desert (linked on the sidebar). Miss Eagle was visiting a sheep station when she came across a situation which struck her, shocked her to the core of her being. Why this should have been so, Miss Eagle doesn't know. Miss Eagle has worked in a meatworks and continued to eat meat. Miss Eagle is not naive in regard to the realities of agriculture and raising animals for food. About ten years ago, she was even vegetarian for a period as a response to the inhumane inclusion of animal products in feed for herbivores. The current situation, however, struck deeper, penetrated spiritually. This was the line in the sand. Enough was enough. The word that came out of this was "Respect". Miss Eagle, when she returned home, blogged the word and it was met with another word "Ahimsa". Miss Eagle remembered this word. Miss Eagle is a scholar of religion and she knew what ahimsa meant. Again, for some strange reason, this had not connected with the original event and the emergence of the word "Respect". Now it all sunk in. It all came together. And issues of respect kept coming into her life and consciousness. Firstly, there was the elimination of all animal flesh with the exception of food from the sea. The exception was because of certain health necessities but Miss Eagle is keeping a watching brief and - if it is possible - seafood will be eliminated too. Miss Eagle has taken care for some time with the species of fish eaten and the quantities because of the stripping of our oceans and poor fishery practices. Secondly, Miss Eagle is endeavouring - with mixed success - to eliminate eggs and dairy products from the menu. Difficulties here are finding a reasonable and palatable substitute for cheese and the needs of others in Miss Eagle's life. It is early days though and Miss Eagle is reasonably hopeful of sorting out this situation. So why has Miss Eagle not edited her blog to take into account this new respect for ALL life. For two reasons: firstly, in a time when people are generally ignorant of their food - where it comes from, its history, how to prepare it - Food from Oz has tried to address this situation in a traditional manner. This general principle will continue with the provision of cooking tips and recipes. Miss Eagle is learning herself - although off an extensive base - and would welcome input of an instructive and constructive nature from others walking the same path. Secondly, it is good to remember from where once has come. That is one of the values of a blog - one can return to former thoughts and consider how much has changed on the way to the present. So, dear Reader, Miss Eagle hopes you will bear with her. It would be nice to have you on the journey too.