Get your Gear Growing!
Growing one's own vegetables has many advantages: the grower receives much Eastern inner peace by raking and fumbling about in one's little garden. And afterwards, one gets even more inner peace through the consumption of one's own self-grown crops! Way cool, man!
To stimulate its members to engage in this exalting passtime, FYEG starts a growing contest! All Member Organisations have about 5 months to plant, nourish and harvest a plant of their own choice. Preferably, the member organisation does this in its office buildings, however the criminal nature of the plant may force the member organisation to find other growing places: deserted attics, slightly dodgy glasshouses or your nutty aunt's garden house are recommended.
So get growing! The rules are simple: actually just about anybody (except for Frits Bolkestein, sorry Frits...) can participate. MO's, individual people who cherish the green idea or just people who feel they are pretty good at growing stuff and have a herd of children to prove this bold statement. You just send us a monthly photo of your seedling (to Gert), so we can monitor its progress. What isn't allowed: using napalm or cluster bombs to destroy other MO's plants, punching opposing growers on the nose or neglecting your plant once it becomes old and brownish...
Judgement day will be in March, during the GA. Then we will lign up all plants, and pick out the glorious winner. What the winning organization receives? Infinite glory and a jolly good cup of tea! So, my petty minions, be filled with a good-tempered spirit, grab thy gardening gloves and slightly hilarious gardening cap and start sowing them seeds! Yi-haw!
Disclaimer: FYEG does not wish to guide its members to delinquency through this action. We advise all of our members not to grow any illegal plants!
Europeanwide Action
On September 14th 2005, a Europeanwide action will launch the campaign. This action will take place in every Member organisation on the same day. The action consists of people wearing Fyeg (Campaign) T-shirts and MO's T-shirts asking people in the streets questions about Organic Food and GMO's. The people get a score according to their right answers. After answering all questions, they get a reward (always give the reward, even if they answered none of the questions correctly). The reward is a small bag of seeds with instructions on how to grow the seeds in an organic way and with the Fyeg Campaign 'Tell me what I eat'-sticker.
This action will be more successful if you have an eye-catcher : we propose the action people to stand close to a famous statue carrying organic food (of course, it was you who put the organic food in the hands of the statue !). In Helsinki for instance, you could put organic hay in front of the horse of Mannerheim with a sign saying 'Even Mannerheim's horse prefers organic food'. After asking the questions, you can ask people whether they don't notice anything strange at the statue. The discovery of the organic food on the statue will make them laugh. The statue with organic food will be a nice picture for the papers as well.
The questions offer a lot of possibilities: you can print them on a flyer (A4 size), with the questions on the one side and information about your MO and/or Fyeg on the other side. This is very interesting for MO's in an election campaign (Germany and Poland). If the questions are interesting enough, people will want to take the flyer home.
Possible Questions
- What are GMO´s? (genetically modified organisms, organisms in which the genetical code has been changed by crossing it with the genetical code of another organism)
- What is organic food? (food produced in an environmental friendly way, taking care of the balance between humans, animals, plants and environment, using no pesticides, hormons, artificial fertilizers, GMO's, antibiotics)
- How large was the area devoted to organic crops in the European agricultural landscape in 2000 ? 100 000 hectares, 1,3 million hectares or 4.4 million hectares? (right answer : 4.4 million hectares).
- What are the advantages of GMO's? (you can produce more, you don�t need pesticides, the crops are more resistant)
- What are the disadvantages of GMO's? (multinationals having patents, a resistant bacterium can destroy the whole field of crops, GMO´s spread via wind and insects so you can´t stop them, there is no scientific proof that they are safe)
- Can organic food feed the world ? (yes, check http://www.greens-efa.org/pdf/documents/greensefa_documents_42_en.pdf)
You can translate these questions or decide to compose your own questions and answers, according to the specific situation in your country.
You can make the small bags with seeds yourself: you buy a large bag with seeds and divide them into smaller bags. In the bags, you put guidelines (in your own language) on how to grow the seeds in an organic way. On the bags, you can put a sticker of the Fyeg campaign ´Tell me what I eat !´ and of your own MO. Your MO can choose itself what seeds it wants to distribute.
Download the Action flyer here:
Download the Action Press Release here: Press Release Maltese Young Greens