There is a positive side to Codex, and its VERY positive, believe it or not.

With the looming potential horror that is the Codex Alimentarius Commissions increasing power and influence, we are forced to make some choices. We can oppose and challenge, which we should, but it shouldn’t be the only thing we do! Since what if our opposition and challenge does not come out enough in our favour, what then?

Let’s talk SOLUTIONS.

Codex is relatively easy to get around. Really. In my opinion, the real problems and dangers from Codex lie in local implementation by individual member nations, exclusion (of developing and poorer nations or suppliers who can’t afford the ‘scientific risk assessment’ – which someone will obviously be making money from), and SEEDS.  We’ll talk about those in a minute.

The rest of Codex can be avoided by a good diet fuelled Personal, Local and Community non-international supply. Anyone seeking to engage in International export or import will come within the clutches of Codex. So don’t.

These solutions are scaled…you will most likely start at 1 and end up at 4 through networking, but if you can’t grow your own, you can get involved with others.

1) Grow Your Own.

Any food you grow for yourself is food someone else doesn’t have to. It’s the ultimate in taking responsibility for your food. You know what goes in. You are involved throughout and its as good as it gets. This is a skill virtually all of us would have had in days gone by, and one of the most positive things about Codex is in encouraging us to re-skill in this area.

2) Grow ‘n Share/ shared allotments

Codex’s second great positive after re-skilling is it presents a chance to re-build community with this and the next few solutions. Not only have we de-skilled in growing, we don’t speak to our neighbours like we used to! Grow n’ share is a chance to re-connect on the most basic level – Food.

Find those who are also growing and concerned about commercial food and agree to share crops – everyone tends to overproduce at least one type of food, so share that one in exchange for others. Grow ‘n Sharing has been around a long time, but if you cultivate it, it can become a powerful force both for building community and for a food solution. Shared allotments are similar, except you all contribute your efforts on the one plot. Fantastic!

3) Community Gardens

Get a bunch of neighbours to either use allotments, open spaces or unused spaces in the community to grow on. If needs be, apply to the council – tell them its educational, environmental etc etc and you never know, there may even be funding in it for you! Leaf Street in Manchester (celebrating its 10^th birthday this year) is a fine example of a community garden that worked. There isn’t much growing and harvesting taking place on it now, but that may change, and there’s nothing wrong with a community garden being set up as a community food garden from outset.

4) Local Co-Operative

This is where networking works. Get together with like minded friends and neighbours and find out who local organic suppliers/farms/large allotment suppliers are – make arrangement with them for a co-operative making their produce available, and extending that to folks who grow their own, or who have community gardens. A community co-operative brings food to people and gives people access to GOOD food. You can still go national looking for suppliers, since that should still be under the Codex ‘net.’

These all represent ways of both empowering and skilling yourself, but also in rebuilding the very essence of community at its fundamentals. How amazing that something as sinister as Codex can present a get-out clause that points in the very direction we should have been going in anyway.

It really is perfect. The solutions are a perfect carrot…and Codex is the perfect stick. Watch the fantastic example of Cuba who dealt with an artificial ‘peak oil’ crisis through trade sanctions and see how community growing worked for them. Watch the film the Power of Community if you haven’t seen it. It’s just under an hour long.

That being said, there is a potential spanner in the above lovely ideas. That is the three problems I mentioned above.

1) Local Implementation of Codex

IF, and I say IF, we allow local legislators to push through Codex guidelines and standards to apply to INTERNAL and LOCAL trade and exchange of food, then that could potentially CRIMINALISE the above solutions. Based on some of the horror-bills that legislators in other countries have tried to pass in recent years (eg Canadian bill C-51, which was quashed thankfully), local application could pave the way to the 21^st Century Witch Trials where you really could be criminalised for saying raw or fresh produce can make you feel better or treat ailments, or for directing someone to herbs and herbal remedies, or even for offering someone organic produce for money! We REALLY have to watch out for this and focus and collaborate on a concentrated opposition and campaign against it. If effort should be saved for battles worth fighting, this is the one to save your juice for!

Exclusion

Developing nations, poor nations, poor suppliers all may be strangled and excluded from Trade with WTO nations further by Codex, potentially splitting the world into ‘those under the WTO and Codex’ and ‘The Rest’, where The Rest would not be able to afford to pay for the risk assessment tests on their foodlines and therefore unable to trade with nations openly under Codex. This has potentially terrible implications for already struggling nations.

Further, since ‘Codex’ is allegedly presented for use with trade disputes then it opens the door for Wealthy nations or wealthy suppliers (specifically Big Pharma, a real problem within Codex due to their heavy handed influence) to haul poor nations or suppliers into the WTO courts and fleece them.

Seeds

As personally serious as the first item, but already a very real and live threat, the manipulation and cornering of the seed market and seeds by maniacal nutters like Monsanto, Dupont and the like mean that getting good, healthy and untainted seeds is becoming more and more of a problem. This hugely affects ALL the solutions since who cares if you can grow if you can’t get non-gmo or chemicalised seeds to plant?

Watch films like ‘the world according to Monsanto’ for an idea. Do some research on the Indian farmer suicides due to GMO seeds and their mis-selling (as ‘magic seeds’!) – up to 1000 farmers a month are killing themselves due to repeated crop failures (some due to world weather). These are just examples. Start looking at the seeds-related films and websites around and build up your own impression – the Seed situation is very concerning indeed and we ALL need seeds to grow.

So, for growing your own, try Heritage seed banks. They, by law (since the big corporates had it made it illegal to freely offer you real and untainted seeds!), are required to operate as clubs and sell only to their ‘members,’ so don’t think its a scam when they ask you to join – they have to.

Seeds are not a direct Codex thing, but they are a massive factor in strategies for getting around Codex, like the ideas above.

Rob at the Manchester Permaculture Network made the very valid point on the recent Solutions Day in Manchester that not everyone can grow, and it is perhaps not desirable that EVERYONE grow, so don’t be put off if you can’t. This is where networking and community come in.

If you can’t grow, then meet with people who can or do. Offer to help out or exchange skills/services for food. This is perhaps one of the very fabrics of community. Find out whats going on in your area growing-wise, and seek what you can offer! Non-growing and growing skills can meet to offer excellent community growth, for example, web developers, marketers, designers etc can help promote and ‘put a face to’ community or growing solutions while the growers and tenders get on with their work and gradually both awareness, and your community project, can and will grow. These are just ideas.

The whole point of re-skilling and re-building community is that WE DON’T KNOW what its like or how to do it! That’s what’s great about it – we are all learning together and bringing different things to meet the needs of OUR community. As we hear more and more: ‘Think Global, Act Local’..So bring YOUR ideas, YOUR skills and YOUR passion for your food to bear and meet with others in your friend or community network (or start one!) and take it from there.

Codex and all the other BIG world issues just now are all sending us the same message – Personal Responsibility. We have to take personal responsibility and personal action. It’s that simple. You can’t, and shouldn’t, expect others to work it all out or do it for you, and we are being shown that those we gave the responsibility and the job to have done us a disservice. So we have to take that responsibility back. Codex is our incentive to doing that over food. If you were thinking about changing your habits but were complacent, then Codex is the perfect kick up the backside…so long as you make use of it!

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