[Ffa-readinggroup] Reading Group Notes from February 28

[Jula]

Hey all,

In our second reading group session we had a discussion about 
fertilizers. See a summary of what we talked about below. You can also 
have a look at this pad <https://pad.riseup.net/p/ihCiZ-p7DA0GvBMNOtFi> 
for more details.

The next meeting will probably be organized by Taste Before You Waste. 
You will get the relevant info on time.

Cheers

Jula


/During the second meeting of the Fossil Free Agriculture Reading Group, 
we had a discussion about synthetic fertilizers based on the report "The 
Exxons of Agriculture" by GRAIN; a short introduction to the differences 
between synthetic and organic fertilizers; and a text from the Yara web 
page./ /The main questions we focused on were:/

/Can a plant feel the difference between synthetic and organic 
fertilizers? Are nutrients really nutrients?
/

/How do synthetic fertilizers create addiction?/

/No definitive conclusion was reached for the former, but regarding 
fertilizer addiction we discussed the urgency of soil depletion. 
According to some estimations we may only have decades left until soils 
are entirely depleted. This is a business opportunity for fertilizer 
companies such as Yara as they can promote their advanced technologies - 
but these are false solutions. We need a response to the argument of the 
fertilizer industry that food security cannot be ensured without 
synthetic fertilizer in the winter due to decreased microbe activity!
/

/Some topics that arose as areas to be researched/ potential action 
points were:/

/- Looking into the narratives of lobby groups of the fertilizer industry/

/- How can urea-based fertilizer be switched to nitrate-based 
fertilizer? (One of the "environmentally friendly" practices that Yara 
promotes itself with)/

- /Creating a concise and informative document with the main 
environmental crimes of the fertilizer industry, demonstrating why Yara 
needs to be stopped - spreading an accessible message (considering that 
the GRAIN report is already 4 years old and hasn't gotten the 
appropriate attention!)/




Am 19.02.2019 um 18:07 schrieb Jula:
>
> Hello all,
>
> As the next reading group meeting is already approaching, here is a 
> summary of what we talked about last time.
>
> Katie took detailed notes during our discussion in the first meeting, 
> and we wanted to share a bit of these.
>
> /During the first meeting of the Fossil Free Agriculture Reading 
> Group, we had a discussion about yields in organic and industrial 
> agriculture. Something that accompanied us throughout the discussion 
> was a critical inquiry of terminology/language: We talked about the 
> strictness of definitions of "organic" and "agroecology" and the need 
> to distinguish such terms from small-scale agriculture. From a 
> discussion about food waste and its relation to yields, we then moved 
> on to issues of responsibility, talking about the role of civil 
> servants and our communication with policy makers. This brought us 
> back to the issue of language and how public discourse often presents 
> behaviors (such as eating meat) as inevitable, which makes it seem 
> like system change is impossible. Yields are an example of a 
> terminology that appears to have no alternative, and we came up with 
> possible other measurements, such as how many people are fed./
>
> /Some of the questions that came up are:/
>
> /What is the value of having a (legally) regulated definition with a 
> very clear meaning (e.g. certified organic) vs. a less clearly defined 
> but more expansive definition (like agroecology)?/
>
> /Where does the discourse we have today, for instance regarding yields 
> as a quantification of agricultural productivity, come from?/
>
> /What else could we quantify instead of yields?/
>
> /
> /
>
> Looking forward to seeing you soon,
>
> Jula
>

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