Whenever I see that someone is involved with, praises, associates themselves with the views of, Rachel Carson (Silent Spring and all that) I know I’m in for a prime piece of idiotariansim. Just to get it straight, yes, she did point out that DDT harmed certain birds….later research showing that it was highly specific to raptors. The hysteria that followed and the current near total ban on the use of DDT has killed more than most dictators, certainly more than Pol Pot and the like, getting close to Stalin and Hitler’s totals. No, this doesn’t make her or anyone who supports her views a fascist or a communist but it does rather highlight the fact that life is about choices….dead eagles or dead children, you choose.
 

Manufacturers use
these raw materials instead of good-quality, fresh food because
enormous subsidies, mostly paid by western taxpayers, have made them
cheap. About 70% of the value of the US soya bean comes from the US
government. No wonder soya derivatives are found in two-thirds of all
processed foods. Subsidised US corn is turned into ubiquitous corn
sweeteners and modified starches for the same reason.
The
money made from food has shifted from those at the bottom of the chain,
the farmers and producers, to those at the top, the tiny number of big
transnational food processors, manufacturers and retailers who control
our food as never before.
Protectionist
subsidies have done little to save farmers, who are going out of
business everywhere. The value of agricultural commodities, on which so
much of the developing world depends for its livelihood, has slumped.
As other barriers to trade have been removed, inequalities in wealth
have grown. Half the world now starves for lack of food while the other
half suffers from diseases of excess.

Well yes, agreed, agricultural subsidies have indeed caused great turmoil…they should be abolished, preferably yesterday. But what’s this about "other barriers to trade"? Subsidies are the major barrier to free trade.
Oh, and this slump in the value of agricultural commodities? That’s been going on since the neolithic. It’s a precondition of city life….you might note the connection between city and civilisation via the Latin "civis".

Ten years ago coffee
producing countries kept 30% of the retail value of the coffee we buy.
Today they keep just 10%. When we buy a jar of instant coffee we pay
7,000% more than the farmer got for it.

You might note that this is, as EU Serf pointed out, simply a function of the fact that we do not have free trade in coffee. If people were allowed to manufacture instant coffee in those countries where it was grown then ship it, the problem would not exist. It is our very own EU that causes this problem.

Their demand for cosmetic
perfection and a perpetual global summer can be met by producers only
if they use agrochemicals intensively and allow for a profligate degree
of waste – a third of Kenyan green beans are thrown away because they
are the wrong size or shape.

Again, it is a lack of free trade that causes this. In the past, when green beans were grown in allotments and gardens across the country, all ripened at the same time. Howling mites would find their porridge flavoured with them for the three weeks they were in season. Finally, the excess would be made into chutney (Yum Yum!). Why do the Kenyans not do this with those that are rejected upon cosmetic grounds? Because our very own EU places immense import duties on such manufactured foods. Abolish CAP and the subisidies and the markets will take care of these problems.

but it depends on the
extravagant use of that most politically charged and polluting of
substances – crude oil – for the food miles, for the pesticides, for
the packaging that makes up 40% of our domestic waste. It depends, too,
on an endless supply of cheap outsourced labour that can be turned on
and off like a tap. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers now live
in Britain in conditions that would make Dickens blush.

Huh? You want to reduce the amount of food produced by poor people in poor countries and transported here. You thus want an expansion of farming here. This will increase or reduce the demand for farm labour here? There will be more or fewer migrant workers here?
Just to um, reinforce, the point about how our current diet is unhealthy. It is quite correct to state that the biggest cause of cancer in the western world, after tobacco, is the inadequate consumption of fruits and vegetables. So, the proposal is that such items should not be grown in countries with cheap land, in places where labour is a dollar or two a day. No, the solution is that such things should be grown here, on our small island, where land is 4,000 a hectare, where labour is, at minimum, 4 pounds an hour. Er, raising the price of fruits and vegetables will increase consumption in just what manner?
Abolish CAP, trade more. That’s the solution.