Only a few years ago, stories about Whole Foods Market became famous for their poetic quality, as journalists waxed lyrical about how the fresh, organic fruit in their stores was proof that you could be a successful business while remaining environmentally friendly. Last year, however, sustained questioning by consumers and regulators alike saw the shine come off the company’s glossy image.
It’s 2008, and feeding ourselves has never been easier. We take for granted a supply of every agricultural commodity on the planet, 365 days a year. Food is cheap. Never in living memory have we spent less on it as a proportion of our total expenditure. Even our poorest citizens can afford the luxury foods of yesteryear, like salmon and chicken.
A year ago, my brother, who is probably a better gardener than me (even though he does insist on giving half his land over to mangel-wurzels, whatever they are) gave me a book called "Gardening and Planting by the Moon"
It was a bad year for the biotech barons. At a conference in January 1999, the consulting firm Arthur Andersen revealed Monsanto executives’ vision of an ideal future – a world in which natural seeds were virtually all extinct and where commercial seeds were genetically modified (GM) and patented.
