Archive for the ‘GMO’s’ Category

Found this article this week, and had seen this is the news. I find it so sad that this foundation is using their money to support big ag and not on the way to reliably and sustainably feed the worlds hungry. – Mom

As it has come to dominate the agenda for reshaping African agriculture over the years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been very careful not to associate itself too closely with patent-protected biotechnology as a panacea for African farmers.

True, the foundation named 25-year Monsanto veteran Rob Horsch to the position of “senior program officer, focusing on improving crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Yet its flagship program for African ag, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), explicitly distances itself from GMOs. “AGRA does not fund the development of GMOs,” the organization’s Web site states.

But AGRA—co-funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, proud sponsor of the original Green Revolution—is just part of what Gates does around African ag. What precisely is the foundation getting up to over there? Is it pushing GMOs on African smallholder farms?

[I have a call into the foundation to ask directly about the role GMOs play in its efforts. I’ll report on the response.]

It has been surprisingly hard to say. Until now.

In a speech at the World Food Prize gathering last week, Bill Gates himself chided the critics of GMOs—and shed some sunshine on the foundation leadership’s philosophy on ag development. At one point, he declared, “some of our grants [in Africa] do include transgenic approaches, because we believe they have the potential to address farmers’ challenges more efficiently than conventional techniques.”

Gates’ speech seems like a significant event to me—the World Food Prize website describes it as his “first major address on agriculture.” One of the major knocks on the foundation’s Africa efforts is the lack of democratic accountability and transparency. Since the foundation’s careful message management makes it hard to figure out precisely what it’s getting up to, I’m glad to see its leading light airing his views freely.

Gates opened with a standard-issue awestruck paean to Norman Borluag, recently deceased architect of the original Green Revolution. Gates delivered a rather unnuanced assessment of Borlaug’s legacy. Gates declared: “He [Borlaug] proved that farming has the power to lift up the lives of the poor.”

Really? To be sure, Borlaug’s “dwarf” hybrid seed varieties, when coupled with the heavy fertilizer and pesticide doses they need to thrive, dramatically increased yields in the places where the Green Revolution took root—the main success story being India.

But higher yields drive down crop prices—and increased use of imported inputs requires the taking on of debt. Rather than boosting the fortunes of most farmers in its purview, the Green Revolution drove hundreds of thousands into ruin. The survivors consolidated land holdings. The big got bigger and the poor tended to leave the land—too many of them ending up as excess labor in urban slum zones.

Maybe Gates didn’t mean that Borlaug’s efforts improved the lives of farmers, but rather the lives of non-farming urban dwellers. As he later says in the speech, also in the context of Borluag’s legacy, “better farming can end hunger and poverty and lift whole countries out of poverty.”

To be sure, many people were predicting famine for India in the 1960s, and the availability of cheap grain engendered by the Green Revolution no doubt forestalled widespread starvation. But it’s demonstrably wrong to claim that the Green Revolution ended hunger and poverty in India.

Indeed, hunger rates remain appalling in India—site of the Green Revolution’s greatest putative success. From a 2008 report by the International Food Policy Research Institute:

    According to the 2008 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 66 out of 88 nations (developing countries and countries in transition). Despite years of robust economic growth, India scored worse than nearly 25 Sub-Saharan African countries and all of South Asia, except Bangladesh.[Emphasis added.]

The bit about India faring worse than “nearly 25 Sub-Saharan African countries” is particularly noteworthy, given that the Gates Foundation is explicitly spearheading a “new Green Revolution for Africa.” Of course, the original Green Revolution in India lies in shambles —the water table has been tapped near dry by massive irrigation projects in the zones where the Borlaug program took hold, and the remaining farmers there are struggling mightily with crushing debt loads and heightened pesticide-related cancer rates.

To be fair, Gates did point to “excesses” of the first Green Revolution, naming “too much irrigation and fertilizer” as examples. He vowed to avoid those mistakes in Africa. He insisted, more than once, that ecological sustainability was critical to the foundation’s project. Yet he repeatedly emphasized that increasing gross production—the Borlaug project of squeezing as much yield out of a piece of land as possible—was the key.

And that led him to the most fiery moment of his speech (if this dour man’s demeanor can ever be described as “fiery”): the part where he denounced unnamed “environmentalists” who are somehow blocking GMO seeds from entering Africa.

“This global effort to help small farmers is endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two,” Gates declared. He decried what he called a “false choice” between a “technological” approach geared to boosting productivity and an “environmental” one geared to sustainability. “We can have both,” he said.

He went on: “Some people insist on an ideal vision of the environment which is divorced from people and their circumstances. They have tried to restrict the spread of biotechnology into sub-Saharan Africa without regard to how much hunger and poverty might be reduced by it, or what the farmers themselves might want.”

The Gates Foundation, by contrast, isn’t so demure. In an apparent reference to this project with GMO seed giant Monsanto, Gates allowed that “one of our [unnamed] private-sector partners” is working on a genetically modified drought-tolerant corn variety for African farmers. The seeds will be available to farmers royalty-free—meaning that farmers will pay market price for the seeds themselves, but not pay the hefty biotech premium Monsanto normally slaps on top. It’s unclear whether seed-saving will be allowed under the arrangement.

According to the above-linked press release, the magic seeds are expected to come online in 2018. Gates emphasized repeatedly that as climate change proceeds apace, greater and greater swaths of Africa will face persistent drought conditions. In pushing for drought-tolerant seeds, Gates is swinging for the fences—looking for a single big solution to feed Africa’s drought-stricken areas.

For me, this deal raises questions that cut to the heart of the Bill Gates approach to African ag.

First of all, it can’t be noted often enough that a) GM agriculture’s much-hyped ability to boost yields, taken as a given by Gates, has thus far proven purely spectral; b) there’s serious evidence, despite a paucity of cash for critical research and heavy-handed control of research by seed companies,  that GMOs cause health problems; and c) GMOs have so far proven quite proficient at generating unintended ecological consequences, such as the rise of “superweeds.”

There’s no room for any of that in Gates’ discourse.

Further, I absolutely agree with Bill Gates that there’s no zero-sum tradeoff between productivity and sustainability. But I urge him to tear his gaze away from the biotech lab and train it toward the field, where the best research on organic ag is being done. Indeed, one of the great benefits of organic farming is its long-term focus on soil health—and healthy soils can increase productivity over time without massive ecological externalities.

Here’s a summary of a 2005 paper published in Bioscience comparing yields of organic and conventional corn. The 22-year study compared yields of corn and soy for the following systems: 1) conventional chemical-based agriculture; 2) organic ag using manure for soil fertility; and 3) organic ag using “green manure” (nitrogen-fixing cover crops) for fertility. From the summary, here’s the key nugget of the study:

    “First and foremost, we found that corn and soybean yields were the same across the three systems,” said [researcher David] Pimentel, who noted that although organic corn yields were about one-third lower during the first four years of the study, over time the organic systems produced higher yields, especially under drought conditions. The reason was that wind and water erosion degraded the soil on the conventional farm while the soil on the organic farms steadily improved in organic matter, moisture, microbial activity and other soil quality indicators. [Emphasis added.]

Note well the “especially under drought conditions” bit. Here is a technology for “drought-tolerant” corn that’s ready right now—no need to wait until 2018. It doesn’t rely on the benevolence of Monsanto to waive a technology fee; and there are no questions about seed-saving. It asks no one to accept a drop in long-term productivity as the price paid for sustainability. And not only does it help farmers adapt to climate change with its drought-tolerant qualities, but it helps mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon. From the summary:

    The fact that organic agriculture systems also absorb and retain significant amounts of carbon in the soil has implications for global warming, Pimentel said, pointing out that soil carbon in the organic systems increased by 15 to 28 percent, the equivalent of taking about 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per hectare out of the air.

Moreover, in a 2008 paper (PDF), the U.N.‘s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) endorsed organic ag as a way to boost food security and improve farmer livelihoods in Africa. Concluded the FAO:

    Organic agriculture can increase agricultural productivity and can raise incomes with low-cost, locally available and appropriate technologies, without causing environmental damage. Furthermore, evidence shows that organic agriculture can build up natural resources, strengthen communities and improve human capacity, thus improving food security by addressing many different causal factors simultaneously … Organic and near-organic agricultural methods and technologies are ideally suited for many poor, marginalized smallholder farmers in Africa, as they require minimal or no external inputs, use locally and naturally available materials to produce high-quality products, and encourage a whole systemic approach to farming that is more diverse and resistant to stress. [Emphasis added.]

Gates cash could go a long way in dispersing the skills and (relatively low-cost) equipment needed for effective organic farming in Africa. Why not, for example, fund a dramatic expansion of the Soil, Food, and Healthy Communities project that’s proving so successful in Malawi?

So where’s the Gates cash, and the fiery speech from the foundation’s leader defending organic ag from its critics? Now, it’s true that the Gates Foundation does fund research into alternative, low-input agriculture. Just this past spring, the foundation awarded $1.3 million to World Watch to study such techniques for improving ag productivity in Africa.

But let’s look at funding levels. The above-mentioned Monsanto GMO corn project got $42 million from Gates—and an additional $5 million from the Howard Buffet Foundation, run by the son of investor/insurance magnate Warren Buffet. The Worldwatch grant is loose change in comparison. (When I get a Gates official on the phone, i’ll ask about other organic-style programs they’re funding.)

Given the pro-high-technology thrust of Gates’ speech, this imbalance is hardly surprising. As I took in the video of Gates’ speech and heard him go on about the “needs of small farmers” and the critical role of biotech in serving those needs, I couldn’t help but think of him as a kind of unelected agriculture commissioner for the African continent. And I wondered how many African farms will survive the embrace of the great software magnate.

From: http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-21-bill-gates-reveals-support-for-gmo-ag/

Read more great, Fight Back Friday posts here: http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-friday-october-30th/

Join Organic Consumers Associations campaign to mobilize one million consumers to end Monsanto’s Global Corporate Terrorism.

Below are just a few reasons to join OCA’s campaign:

Multi-Billion $$ Monsanto Sues

More Small Family Farmers

Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Saskatchewan Canada, whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto’s genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Canola by pollen from a nearby farm. Monsanto says it doesn’t matter how the contamination took place, and is therefore demanding Schmeiser pay their Technology Fee (the fee farmers must pay to grow Monsanto’s genetically engineered products). According to Schmeiser, “I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract.

canola field and tractorIf I would go to St. Louis (Monsanto Headquarters) and contaminate their plots – destroy what they have worked on for 40 years – I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away.”

Rodney Nelson’s family farm is being forced into a similar lawsuit by Monsanto.

Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.

Sign OCA’s “Millions Against Monsanto” petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings.

Monsanto Brings Small Family Dairy to Court

Oakhurst Dairy has been owned and operated by the same Maine family since 1921, and Monsanto recently attempted to put them out of business. Oakhurst, like many other dairy producers in the U.S., has been responding to consumer demand to provide milk free of rBGH, a synthetic hormone banned (for health reasons) in every industrialized country other than the U.S. Oakhurst Dairy

Monsanto, the number one producer of the rBGH synthetic steroid, sued Oakhurst, claiming they should not have the right to inform their customers that their dairy products do not contain the Monsanto chemical. Given the intense pressure from the transnational corporation, Oakhurst was forced to settle out of court, leaving many other dairies vulnerable to similar attacks from Monsanto.

Monsanto Hid PCB Pollution for Decades

Anniston, Alabama CitizensANNISTON, Ala. — On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn’t know their dirt and yards and bass and kids — along with the acrid air they breathed — were all contaminated with toxic chemicals. They didn’t know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.

Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” — show that for decades, the corporate-giant concealed what it did and what it knew… (Read more…)

Monsanto’s Agent Orange: The Corporation Continues to Refuse Compensation to Veterans and Families for Exposure to the Toxic ChemicalChild at Vietnam War Memorial

The negative health effects, due to exposure to Monsanto’s Agent Orange, have been well documented over the past three decades. The dioxin in Agent Orange has been accepted internationally as one of the most toxic chemicals on the planet, causing everything from severe birth defects, to cancer, to neurological disorders, to death. But Monsanto has successfully blocked any major movement towards compensating veterans and civilians who were exposed to the company’s Agent Orange.

Long before Agent Orange was used as a herbicide in the Vietnam war, Monsanto knew of its negative health impacts on humans. Since then, Monsanto has been unsuccessful at covering its tracks and has even been convicted of fabricating false research documentation that claims Agent Orange has no negative health effects, other than a possible skin rash. Thanks to Monsanto’s influence, the Center for Disease Control also released a report claiming veterans were never exposed to harmful levels of Agent Orange.

Agent Orange VictimAs a note, from 1962 to 1970, the US military sprayed 72 million liters of herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, on over one million Vietnamese civilians and over 100,000 U.S. troops. As a result, within ten years of the close of the war, 9170 veterans had filed claims for disabilities caused by Agent Orange. The VA denied compensation to 7709, saying that a facial rash was the only disease associated with exposure.

In 2002, Vietnam requested assistance in dealing with the tens of thousands of birth defects due to Agent Orange. In order to avoid medical compensation expenses, Monsanto continues to claim this now banned chemical is not toxic. (Read more..)

Taxpayers Forced to Fund Monsanto’s Poisoning of Third World

Monsanto has also been implicated in the indiscriminate sale and use of RoundUp Ultra in the anti-drug fumigation efforts of Plan Colombia. Of the some $1.3 billion of taxpayers’ money earmarked for Plan Colombia, Monsanto has received upwards of $25 million for providing RoundUp Ultra.

Damaged Banana CropsRoundUp Ultra is a highly concentrated version of Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide, with additional surfactants to increases its lethality. Local communities and human rights organizations charge that Ultra is destroying food crops, water sources and protected areas in the Andes, primarily Colombia.

Paradoxically, the use of RoundUp Ultra has actually increased coca cultivation in the Andes. As local farming communities are increasingly impacted by RoundUp Ultra fumigations, many turn to the drug trade as a means of economic survival. Regional NGOs have estimated that almost 200,000 hectares have been fumigated with Ultra under Plan Colombia.

Monsanto’s Roundup Pesticide Killing Wheat

Monsanto also produces the most commonly used broadleaf pesticide in the world, glyphosate–or Roundup. In addition to its inherent toxicity as a chemical pesticide, Roundup has now been found to aid the spread of fusarium head blight in wheat. This disease creates a toxin in the infected wheat, making the crop unsuitable for human or animal consumption. Canada’s wheat industry is currently being ravaged by this disease. At the same time, the widespread use of Roundup has resulted in the formation of “super weeds” — unwanted plants that have developed an immunity to these pesticides. Read study linking Monsanto’s Roundup to Cancer.

Monsanto Takes Ownership of Public Water Resources

Polluted Farm Water

Over the past century, global water supplies have been contaminated with the full gamut of Monsanto’s chemicals, including PCBs, dioxin and glyophosate (Roundup). So now the company, seeing a profitable market niche, is taking control of the public water resources they polluted, filtering it, and selling it back to the people. In short, Monsanto is making a double profit by polluting the world’s scarce freshwater resources, privately taking ownership of that water, filtering it, and selling it back to those who can afford to pay for it.

Monsanto’s GE Seeds are Pushing US Agriculture into Bankruptcy

Genetically engineered crops are causing an economic disaster for farmers in the U.S. So says a new report released by Britain’s Soil Association. The report is a massive compilation of data showing GE crops have cost American taxpayers $12 billion in farm subsidies in the past three years. “Within a few years of the introduction of GM crops, almost the entire $300 million annual US maize exports to the EU had disappeared, and the US share of the soya market had decreased,” the report said. In addition, the study says that GE crops have lead to an increased use of pesticides, while resulting in overall lower crop yields.  Read more here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/exposed091702.cfm

Cotton Farmers Going Bankrupt from Monsanto’s GE Cotton

In India the financial figures for the recent cotton growing season have finally been crunched. Indian Cotton FarmersiaAlthough Monsanto convinced many of India’s farmers that buying the more expensive GE cotton seeds would result in higher yields and better cotton, the reverse is actually true. Crop yields for GE cotton were 5 TIMES LESS than traditional Indian cotton and the income from GE cotton was 7 TIMES LESS than conventional cotton, due to Monsanto’s cotton having lower quality short fibers. As a result of the insurmountable deluge of debt accrued from paying more for the GE seeds and having a weak crop, more than 100 Indian farmers committed suicide in the last year. Read more here, http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/bt_cotton.cfm

Join Organic Consumers Association, Millions Against Monsanto campaign here,

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

There are a lot of great action alerts on the page to sign as well.

Jeffrey M. Smith, the brilliant author of Seeds of Deception has released a wonderful video, called Everything you HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods.

You can watch the video here or at his site, http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/HealthRisks/NewVideoPage/index.cfm

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.

If you watch it here at Moms for Safe food, I highly recommend that you visit Jeffrey’s site, http://www.responsibletechnology.org  as well.

Jeffrey M Smith is an international best selling author and is the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). He documents how the world’s most powerful Ag biotech companies bluff and mislead critics, and put the health of society at risk.

He has a wealth of great articles and you can find a wonderful, free, Non-GMO shopping guide that everyone should have a copy of.

Thank you Jeffrey, for all you do!

Mom

Read more, great, Real Food Wednesday posts here: http://www.cheeseslave.com/2009/09/23/real-food-wednesday-september-23-2009/

Below’s a link to Jeffrey’s bestselling book, Seeds of Deception.  I highly recommend it too.

by Chris Hedges

Our most potent political weapon is food. If we take back our agriculture, if we buy and raise produce locally, we can begin to break the grip of corporations that control a food system as fragile, unsafe and destined for collapse as our financial system. If we continue to allow corporations to determine what we eat, as well as how food is harvested and distributed, then we will become captive to rising prices and shortages and increasingly dependent on cheap, mass-produced food filled with sugar and fat. Food,

along with energy, will be the most pressing issue of our age. And if we do not build alternative food networks soon, the social and political ramifications of shortages and hunger will be devastating.

The effects of climate change, especially with widespread droughts in Australia, Africa, California and the Midwest, coupled with the rising cost of fossil fuels, have already blighted the environments of millions. The poor can often no longer afford a balanced diet. Global food prices increased an average of 43 percent since 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund. These increases have been horrific for the approximately 1 billion people-one-sixth of the world’s population-who subsist on less than $1 per day. And 162 million of these people survive on less than 50 cents per day. The global poor spend as much as 60 percent of their income on food, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

There have been food riots in many parts of the world, including Austria, Hungary, Mexico, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Yemen, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan. Russia and Pakistan have introduced food rationing. Pakistani troops guard imported wheat. India has banned the export of rice, except for

high-end basmati. And the shortages and price increases are being felt in the industrialized world as we continue to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs and food prices climb. There are 33.2 million Americans, or one in nine, who depend on food stamps. And in 20 states as many as one in eight are on the food stamp program, according to the Food Research Center. The average monthly benefit was $113.87 per person, leaving many, even with government assistance, without adequate food. The USDA says 36.2 million Americans, or 11 percent of households, struggle to get enough food, and one-third of them have to sometimes skip or cut back on meals. Congress allocated some $54 billion for food stamps this fiscal year, up from $39 billion last year. In the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, costs will be $60 billion, according to estimates.

Food shortages have been tinder for social upheaval throughout history. But this time around, because we have lost the skills to feed and clothe ourselves, it will be much harder for most of us to become self-sustaining. The large agro-businesses have largely wiped out small farmers. They have poisoned our soil with pesticides and contaminated animals in filthy and overcrowded stockyards with high doses of antibiotics and steroids. They have pumped nutrients and phosphorus into water systems, causing algae bloom and fish die-off in our rivers and streams. Crop yields, under the onslaught of changing weather patterns and chemical pollution, are declining in the Northeast, where a blight has nearly wiped out the tomato crop. The draconian Food Modernization Safety Act, another gift from our governing elite to corporations, means small farms will only continue to dwindle in number. Sites such as La Via Campesina do a good job of tracking these disturbing global trends.

“The entire economy built around food is unsafe and unethical,” activist Henry Harris of the Food Security Roundtable told me. The group builds distribution systems between independent farmers and city residents.

“Food is the greatest place for communities to start taking back power,” he said. “The national food system is collapsing by degrees. More than 50 percent of what we eat comes from the Central Valley of California. What happens when gasoline becomes $5 a gallon or drought sweeps across the cropland? The monolithic system of food production is highly unstable. It has to be replaced very soon with small, diverse sources that provide greater food security.”

Cornell University recently did a study to determine whether New York state could feed itself. The research is described in two articles published in 2006 and 2008 by the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. If all agricultural land were in use, and food distribution were optimized to

minimize the total distance that food travels, New York state could, the researchers found, have 34 percent of its food needs met from within its boundaries. This is not encouraging news to those who live in New York City. New York once relied on New Jersey, still known as the Garden State, instead of having food shipped from across the country. But New Jersey farms have largely given way to soulless housing developments. Farming communities upstate, their downtowns boarded up and desolate, have been gutted by industrial farming.

The ties most Americans had to rural communities during the Great Depression kept many alive. A barter economy replaced the formal economy. Families could grow food or had relatives to feed them. But in a world where we do not know where our food comes from, or how to produce it, we have become

vulnerable. And many will be forced, as food prices continue to rise, to shift to a diet of cheap, fatty, mass-produced foods, already a staple of the nation’s poor. Junk food, a major factor in obesity, diabetes and heart disease, is often the only food those in the inner city can buy because supermarkets and nutritious food are geographically and financially beyond reach. As the economy continues to deteriorate, the middle class will soon join them.

“It is clear to anyone who looks carefully at any crowd that we are wasting our bodies exactly as we are wasting our land,” Wendell Berry observed in “The Unsettling of America.” “Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of the manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics. Our bodies have become marginal; they are growing useless like our ‘marginal land’ because we have less and less use for them. After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to

transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.”

Berry, who lives on a farm in Kentucky where his family has farmed for generations, argues that local farming is fundamental to sustaining communities. Industrial farming, he says, has estranged us from the land. It has rendered us powerless to provide for ourselves. It has left us complicit in the corporate destruction of the ecosystem. Its moral cost, Berry argues, has been as devastating as its physical cost.

“The people will eat what the corporations decide for them to eat,” writes Berry. “They will be detached and remote from the sources of their life, joined to them only by corporate tolerance. They will have become consumers purely-consumptive machines-which is to say, the slaves of producers. What… model farms very powerfully suggest, then, is that the concept of total control may be impossible to confine within the boundaries of the specialist enterprise-that it is impossible to mechanize production without mechanizing consumption, impossible to make machines of soil, plants, and animals without making machines also of people.”

The nascent effort by communities to reclaim local food production is the first step toward reclaiming lives severed and fragmented by corporate culture. It is more than a return to local food production. It is a return to community. It brings us back to the values that sustain community. It is a return to the recognition of the fragility, interconnectedness and sacredness of all living systems and our dependence on each other. It turns back to an ethic that can save us.

“[The commercial] revolution … , ” writes Berry, “did not stop with the subjugation of the Indians, but went on to impose substantially the same catastrophe upon the small farms and the farm communities, upon the shops of small local tradesmen of all sorts, upon the workshops of independent craftsmen, and upon the households of citizens. It is a revolution that is still going on. The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air

remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.

“The inevitable result of such an economy,” Berry adds, “is that no farm or any other usable property can safely be regarded by anyone as a home, no home is ultimately worthy of our loyalty, nothing is ultimately worth doing, and no place or task or person is worth a lifetime’s devotion. ‘Waste,’ in such an economy, must eventually include several categories of humans-the unborn, the old, ‘disinvested’ farmers, the unemployed, the ‘unemployable.’ Indeed, once our homeland, our source, is regarded as a resource, we are all sliding downward toward the ash heap or the dump.”

© 2009 TruthDig.com

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should

Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/07-3

* By Alexis Baden-Mayer, Esq.

      Organic Consumers Association

      Straight to the Source

Genetically modified foods are not safe. The only reason they’re in our food supply is because government bureaucrats with ties to industry suppressed or manipulated scientific research and deprived consumers of the information they need to make informed choices about whether or not to eat genetically modified foods.

Now, the Obama Administration is putting two notorious biotech bullies in charge of food safety! Former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor has been appointed as a senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food safety. And, rBGH-using dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff is rumored to be President Obama’s choice for Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety. Wolfe spearheaded anti-consumer legislation in Pennsylvania that would have taken away the rights of consumers to know whether their milk and dairy products were contaminated with Monsanto’s (now Eli Lilly’s) genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

Please click here to send a message to President Obama, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (oversees FDA) demanding Michael Taylor’s resignation, and letting them know that you oppose Dennis Wolff’s appointment. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27042

About Michael Taylor

Michael Taylor is a lawyer who has spent the last few decades moving through the revolving door between the employ of GMO-seed giant Monsanto and the FDA and USDA. Taylor is widely credited with ushering Monsanto’s recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) through the FDA regulatory process and into the milk supply — unlabeled. A Government Accounting Office (GAO) investigated whether Taylor had a conflict of interest and or had engaged in ethical misconduct in the approval of rBGH. The report’s conclusion that there was no wrongdoing conflicted with the 30 pages of evidence that Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) described as proof that “the FDA allowed corporate influence to run rampant in its approval” of the drug.

Taylor is also responsible for the FDA’s decision to treat genetically modified organisms as “substantially equivalent” to natural foods and therefore not require any safety studies. The “substantially equivalent” rule allowed the FDA to ignore evidence that genetically engineered foods, including soy, are in fact very different from natural foods and pose specific health risks.

In November 2008, Tom Philpott reported that Taylor was among President-Elect Obama’s “team members” looking at energy and natural resources agencies, including USDA. In March 2009, President Obama announced the creation of a White House Food Safety Working Group to improve and coordinate the government’s approach to the nationwide food safety crisis. Agri-Pulse reported that Taylor was “the leading candidate to staff the White House [food safety] working group.” While anti-GMO activists, including the Organic Consumers Association, protested — OCA members sent 13,435 letters to USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack, who co-chairs the Food Safety Working Group with HHS Sec. Sebelius — Taylor laid low. He was nowhere to be found at the White House Food Safety Working Group’s May 13th Listening Session. But, the rumor proved true. On July 7, 2009, the FDA announced that Taylor had joined the agency as senior adviser to the commissioner.

As Philpott describes in a July 8th article, Taylor’s food safety agenda is to “shift much more of the burden for funding food-safety operations to the state and local level” and to promote HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) systems where the points in a process that pose the most risk are identified and “fixed” with remedies like ammonia washes and irradiation. Taylor’s approach — putting a few bandaids on an industrialized food system gone wrong — is in direct conflict with organic practices and is likely to unduly burden small producers.

Taylor has long been hostile to real food safety. While working as a lobbyist, Taylor authored more than a dozen articles critical of the Delaney Clause, a 1958 federal law prohibiting the introduction of known carcinogens into processed foods, which had long been opposed by Monsanto and other chemical and pesticide companies. When Taylor rejoined the federal government, he continued advocating that Delaney should be overturned. This was finally done when President Clinton signed the so-called Food Quality Protection Act on the eve of the 1996 elections.

Taylor is featured in the documentary,  The World According to Monsanto, which you can watch on OCA’s Millions Against Monsanto page.

About Dennis Wolff

Dennis Wolff is the Secretary of Agriculture for the State of Pennsylvania. Wolff also is a dairy farmer and owns Pen-Col Farms, a 600-acre dairy cattle operation. Wolff has championed agribusiness interests as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Agriculture, including banning local dairies from marketing their products as free of Monsanto’s rBGH. Wolff is a member of the Agriculture Technical Advisory Committee to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO has been largely credited with forcing so-called “free trade” on farmers and consumers around the globe, undermining national sovereignty and food safety. Finally, Wolff  was a strong proponent of the “ACRE” initiative (Agriculture, Communities and Rural Environment), which gives the Pennsylvania state attorney general’s office the authority to sue municipalities over local farm ordinances deemed to exceed state law, depriving communities the right to ban toxic sewage sludge, factory farms, and GMOs.

Aside from having absolutely no experience in meat inspection, the chief food safety responsibility of the USDA, Dennis Wolff should be rejected for any post within the Obama Administration for the hostile position he has taken, as Pennsylvania’s Agriculture Secretary, against consumers’ right to know what is in our food. According to the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, Wolff:

* Tried to ban all labeling of dairy products that didn’t use genetically engineered growth hormone (rBGH or rBST). This was an outright violation of freedom of speech of the dairy processors and the farmers who supplied them.

* Said that consumers were “concerned or confused” about the labeling and said his department received “many calls” about it. Yet when a New York Times reporter asked him about this, Wolff couldn’t provide any surveys showing consumers were confused and could not come up with the name of ONE CONSUMER who had complained.

* Held one meeting of the so-called Food Labeling Advisory Committee and said they recommended the labeling ban. Yet the committee never voted on anything and never made any recommendations specific to dairy. Moreover, the group most affected by the rules and most opposed to them, the PA Association of Milk Dealers, was never even invited to the meeting.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18635.cfm

Read more great Real Food Wednesday posts here, http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/08/join-in-on-real-food-wednesday-81909.html

We had a very dear friend visiting over the Christmas holiday and she was surprised at the number of organic food items we have around here.  “Organic Coffee!” she said, surprised.

It got me thinking about why we eat organic foods.  I’ve been eating natural and healthy food since college.  I was ill in my freshman year and the school doctor suggested I eat a bit more carefully.  So, I started researching diet, food, and various methods of alternative healing.  I learned a lot about how the food you eat can effect your health.

When my kids were little the news started discussing pesticides being sprayed on apples and how it was potentially unsafe for kids.  Then I heard the same about grapes and raisins.  I started looking for organic foods.  At that time (late 1980s) it wasn’t always easy or affordable!  Organic farming was still relatively new and you could only get organic produce and products at the local health food store, but I got what I could and found that even if the produce sometimes looked a little funny (organic used to be less perfect most of the time) it tasted great.

As the kids got older there were more important reasons to look for organic alternatives.

We’ve been having a quiet takeover going on in our food industry.  Monsanto and some of the other food giants have been replacing all of our commercial crops with genetically engineered food crops.  Corn and soy have been the most prevalent and there are a lot of health concerns. What’s really ‘food for thought’ is that corn and soy are in most commercially processed foods. High Fructose corn syrup is in everything from frozen foods to soda.

Dr. Joseph Mercola (http://www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/ge_food.htm) says:

“The technology of genetic engineering (GE), wielded by transnational “life science” corporations such as Monsanto and Novartis, is the practice of altering or disrupting the genetic blueprints of living organisms — plants, animals, humans, microorganisms — patenting them, and then selling the resulting gene-foods, seeds, or other products for profit.”

There’s also been genetic engineering going on in our milk products with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH/BST).  Shirley’s Wellness café has a great article.     Here’s a snippet:

What is rBGH?

Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone is a genetically engineered copy of a naturally occurring hormone produced by cows. Manufactured by Monsanto Company, the drug is sold to dairy farmers under the name POSILAC, though you’ll also find it called BGH, rBGH, BST and rBST. When rBGH gets injected into dairy cows, milk production increases by as much as 10-15%. The use of rBGH on dairy cows was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in late 1993 and has been in use since 1994. While rBGH is banned in Europe and Canada, and has been boycotted by 95 percent of US dairy farmers, the FDA, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture continue to license the drug (and other new genetically engineered foods) without pre-market safety tests. You can read the rest of the article at the link below.

http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/bgh.htm

Just like you can find food labeled organic (which also means that it’s NOT genetically engineered you can find milk and cheese products labeled ‘No rBGH/BST’.

I figure it’s another good reason to eat organically as much as you can. Every little bit helps.

In recent years organic has gone mainstream.  Most supermarkets have an organic produce section and we can even get organic products at Costco. Farm stands and Farmers markets are another great way to find organic and local produce. The costs have become more reasonable too.  The more we buy organic foods the more incentive there will be for farmers to switch their growing process and it’s a great opportunity for small/medium family farms that have been run out of business by the big corporations.  It’s healthier for the growers not to be around all those pesticides, it’s better for the environment and it’s safer for us to eat.

And, don’t forget the good taste!

Here is a UK site that has a great article on the 10 Top reasons to go Organic: http://www.organicfood.co.uk/topten.html

Here’s another one, in the US by the Soil Association:

http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/Living/10reasons.html

This is a great resource about all things organic. They have a great newsletter as well as tons of info (and action alerts if you’re so inclined) about genetically engineered food: http://www.organicconsumers.org

Read more great Real Food Wednesday posts here, http://www.cheeseslave.com/2009/07/29/real-food-wednesday-july-29-2009/

by Sailendra Nath Ghosh

According to a report in The Hindu of April 13 last, the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice issued three welcome directives to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee while giving a verdict on a PIL petition filed by the Convenor of Gene Campaign, Ms Suman Sahai, an internationally famous Indian geneticist. The directives to the GEAC are that it must (i) consider the toxicity and allergencity of the proposed GM crop; (ii) study the requirement of isolation distance of the experimental field from other fields to prevent contamination; and (iii) post the relevant data on the web so that independent experts could examine the data obtained from the experiments. Pursued in letter and spirit, these could be safeguards against the misuses that the GMO producers are now indulging in, in large parts of the world.

The hon’ble Chief Justice, again, in his speech at the seminar at Chandigarh on “Law and Environment” organized by the Asia-Pacific Jurists Association, warned against corporates “making a fast buck at the cost of nature” and advised the shelving of projects which appeared suspicious from the ecology angle. These were wise sayings indeed and were in accord with the “precautionary principle’ which is basic to good science.

Genetic modification is variously known. It is called “transgenic engineering”, “horizontal gene transfer technology”, and also “recombinant DNA technology”. To call it a “suspicious” project, in 2009, is, however, a gross underestimate. It is the most dangerous technology that mankind has ever known. It is more lethal than nuclear bomb manufacturing technology. Man, even after manufacturing nuclear weapons, can keep these bottled up. But once the products of transgenic genetic engineering are released, their chain reactions are unstoppable.

This brings us to the basics of this technology. Transgenic engineering, by definition, is implanting the gene of an organism into the genome of an unrelated species – for example, the gene of a pig into a tomato, the gene of a snake into an orchid. Since every organismic species has its own natural defense mechanism, the implantation of a foreign gene requires a carrier which can pierce through the target organism’s defense barrier. Commonly, viruses, or combinations of viruses or of infectious bacteria are the vehicles for this kind of gene implantation. Can such atrocious violation of the natural order produce any beneficial result?

The next question is: Will the gene or genes implanted in a species remain confined to the targeted species? Science is clear on this issue. “The very cellular mechanisms that enable the foreign genes to ‘force-integrate’ into the genome can also mobilize these genes to jump out.” Which means, the foreign genes can re-insert into other sites of the targeted organism and also jump out to re-integrate into other organisms by secondary, tertiary, quarternary transfers. Thus, it is a demonic technology. This is tearing apart the genome of every species of the plant and animal kingdom. This is Genetic holocaust. Certainly it is more lethal than nuclear holocaust. In nuclear-bomb-devastated Hiroshima, after 60 years, blades of grass have started growing. But the effects of transgenic engineering are Irretrievable and will last till eternity.

There is a world of difference between genetic engineering—of the type that Borlaung did in the 1960s—and the transgenic engineering that is now being pushed through.

It is because of this that the highly venerated Nobel Laureate in Medicine, George Wald, eminent Professor of Biology, Harvard University, had, at the very beginning of this concept, warned against its pursuit with the following trenchant words:

Recombinant DNA technology faces our society with problems unprecedented not only in the history of science, but of life on Earth. It places in human hands the capacity to redesign living organisms, the products of three billion years of evolution. Such intervention must not be confused with previous intrusion upon the natural order of living organisms: animal and plant breeding……. All the earlier procedures worked within single or closely related species….Our morality up to now has been to go ahead without restriction to learn all that we can about nature. Restructuring nature was not part the bargain…this (new) direction may be not only unwise, but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics.

To hide this hideous character, the companies selling GM products try to allure the farmers by falsely advertising their higher productivity, their lesser requirement for pesticides, hence their supposed environment-friendliness. Some other companies indulge in advertisements about their higher herbicide tolerance.

Its deceptive appeal is so great that even the most enlightened people often get deluded. During a PIL hearing on GMOs, at least one honorable judge out of a three-member Supreme Court Bench headed by the Chief Justice, permitted himself the expression: “GM foods, capable of dramatically increasing productivity, could be the answer to hunger and poverty in India…GM seeds could possibly be a means to eradicate hunger and poverty. Poverty is probably more than dangerous than the side-effects of GM seeds.” (As reported by the Delhi edition of The Times of India of May 1, 2009)

If the honorable judge takes the trouble of making enquiries about the experiences of the people of Argentina, and the farmers of South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and our country’s BT. Cotton growers, he will hasten to revise his own opinion. Brief mention of a few experiences from different countries where “poverty alleviation through GM crops” were tried, would be revealing.

i) Argentina, which was a country that used to produce a surplus of diverse and health-giving food for eight times its population, is now, thanks to its widespread use of GM soya crops, having to import milk, lentils, peas, cotton etc and “communities all over the country are suffering the effects of agrotoxins”.

ii) The use of GM cotton in South Africa, GM sweet potato in Uganda, GM. maize and sweet potato in Kenya—all showed lower yields, proliferation of super-weeds, compulsive use of many times more of pesticides/ herbicides, soil toxicity, and emergence of newer and newer diseases of both mankind and cattle.

iii) In our country itself, the limited use of GM cotton—named B.T. cotton after the bacillus thuringiensis—led to farmers’ suicides due to higher costs and lower yields

iv) The three-year farm-scale evaluation of three spring-sown GM crops—oilseed rape, beet and maize—in the UK by the Royal Society conclusively showed their damaging effects on biodiversity, which is the very basis of sustainability of agriculture. The Royal Society had made it very clear that it would not focus on key questions such as gene flow, transgenic contamination, creation of ‘superweeds’ and ‘superpests’ and would observe only the impact of managing GM herbicide-tolerant crops on farmland biodiversity.

v) In the USA itself, studies showed that in most field trials, the GM crops called “Round-up ready” soyabean showed lower yields than the conventional varieties. Still, the clout of GMO producing companies—Monsanto, Novartis, Du Pont etc.— is so strong that they are being allowed to experiment with many GM crops with impunity.

However, it is worth noting that Mexico has imposed a ban on not only the cultivation of GM corn but also on its research. The anti- GM sentiment in the countries of European Union is so strong that Monsanto, the leading GMO producer, had to discontinue its transgenic wheat and barley seed-making and seed-selling business in Europe as far back in 2003. It had also to withdraw from its kind of research in plant pharmaceuticals.

A question can yet be asked: if GM crops are so unsafe, why are the Americans, who are eating some GM crops for a decade or more, not falling ill on a mass scale? The answer is: hardly anybody dies immediately after eating a GM crop. Apart from acute toxins and allergens, other harmful effects are likely to appear in the longer term, just as the carcinogenous effects of tobacco became apparent after years of smoking. There is no doubt, however, that the health standards of US citizens are fast deteriorating. A review paper by Nathan B. Battalion of Jonathan Campbell’s publication 50 harmful effects of Genetically Modified foods says: “Whereas in 1900, cancer affected only one person in the USA, it is now one out of two men, and one out of three women.” While water, air and food pollution made their contributions to this increase throughout the century, it is the acceleration of use of chemicals as antibiotics, pesticides, weedicides, herbicides that led to galloping increases in “systemic, whole body immune system breakdowns”.

GM crops are inevitably linked with multiplying uses of chemicals in the above forms. According to the review paper mentioned in the preceding para, scientists have found that random combinations of chemicals (mostly pesticides) can cause one thousand times more cancer than the sum of the individual chemicals indicated in separate tests. Even more startling was the fact that some chemicals which were earlier thought to be harmless by themselves, proved lethal in combinations.

In a word, GM crops are fraught with famine, hunger, disease and death.

After these pointers, it is necessary to point out how the Supreme Court’s salutary directives mentioned at the outset may be scuttled.

1. It is common knowledge now that, in the USA, the decision making positions in the FDA (Food and Drug administration), which is supposed to be authority to allow or disallow the cultivation of GM crops have been usurped by persons linked with GMO producer companies. In India, how many among the members of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee are, or would be, really independent and endowed with holistic understanding would need to be probed. As of today, men like Dr P.M. Bhargava, the founder-Director of India’s Centre of Molecular Biology Studies, has no voice there, even though his pointers tally with people’s experiences. Genuine environmentalists have now no place on GEAC. Who will decide the composition of the GEAC?

2. Since transgenic engineering is gunshot-like violence that pierces the nuclear membrane of the cell, should not the GEAC’s every decision be reported to the Parliament and debated before any trial of GM crop in the field is allowed?

3. For the first time in history, the GMO issue has brought about a new nexus—the academic-industrial-military complex. (Earlier, it was industrial-military complex.) Hence the scope for free unbiased debates on the scientific technological level is getting virtually shut out. Prestigious science journals like Science, Nature, New Scientists, Lancet have now come to be dependent on corporate advertisements and sponsorship, often of the whole series of pro-biotech (read pro-GMO) articles. They are now refusing to publish papers by scientists which confirm the early whistle blower’s predictions. Only the involvement of farmers in open debates can clinch the issue. If the debates are limited to the position-holding experts, the Supreme Court’s expectations are likely to be belied.

4. As a result of widespread and mounting consumer rejection of GM crops in the countries of European Union, the US agribusiness is now seeking to profit more from Africa, Asia and Latin America—all in the name of ‘poverty alleviation” and “fighting hunger”. If they can monopolize the seed market and the market for its concomitant agrochemicals, these will be the richest business corporates in the world. Hence they will seek control the research institutes and the Faculties in the Universities by lavish funding. A recent study by the Third World Network—Africa, after offering evidences to show that the GM projects are inappropriate for poverty alleviation, have concluded that “their claim is a public relations strategy to reduce public resistance to GM products and that their carefully crafted and well-funded campaigns are designed to recruit GM advocates: “Politicians have latched on to biotechnology to illustrate their otherwise absent commitment to the poor. Academics have found another fad. Corporations try to sell their (GM producers’) products. Scientists have projects that need funding. The result of all this unjustified publicity is muted debate.”

5. Apart from the above ways of controlling scientific and technological manpower, questions will be raised about the “unfeasibility” of maintaining distance from non-GM crop-growing fields for preventing contamination. A famous case in Canada may be mentioned here. The University of Manitoba sought to establish the distance that genetically modified pollen could travel. They found that wheat pollen would stay airborne for at least one hour. They related it to wind speed. If you had a 35 kilometres per hour wind speed, how far can it travel? Canola pollen stays airborne for nearly three hours. So, if there is 35 kph wind, how far should be isolation distance? If your pollen gets into a whirlwind, it could travel over 60 km! In our country, the problem can be even greater. Hence maintaining safe contamination-free distance will be more problematic.

The solution is to ban GM research and GM cultivation altogether. As the great scientist-philosopher Heisenberg said, demonic technology-based enterprises should never be allowed.

Armchair politicians would ask: is there any way to increasing food production without using GM seeds, without the use of chemical fertilizers? In our country, there are numerous examples where organic farming, aided by Earthworm culture (vermiculture), yields much more, both quantitatively and qualitatively, than these anti-natural methods ever can.

A book titled Organic Farming Source Book, which was originally published a decade and half back, is being republished by the Other Book Store, Mapusa, Goa. The stories narrated there are living proofs of the truth that bounteousness is in-built in Nature. We need to know how to harness it.

A Postscript

India is home to a vast reservoir of biological—hence genetic wealth. This is the foundation of the country’s food and nutritional security. Preserving the wild relatives of crop plants in the vicinity is the surest means of infusion of healthier germplasms—and hence of crop improvement and abundance. Selection by farmers and cross-breeding, if necessary, is a superior alternative to any kind of genetic engineering, which invariably reduces diversity. As for transgenic engineering, it should never, never be allowed.

The author is one of the country’s earliest environmentalists and a social philosopher.

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1488.html

Read more Real Food Wednesday posts here, http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/07/real-food-wednesday-72209.html

I got to hear and meet Vandana Shiva last March. She’s an amazing women and is doing a lot to help the farmers in India get away from GMO’s.  Here’s a recent interview with her.

Activist Vandana Shiva Recently Spoke at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo

Indian activist and author Vandana Shiva spoke at Western Michigan University last Thursday on the theme of sustainability, the topic of one of her most recent books,Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace.

Shiva began her talk by saying that we live in extremely important times, because the paradigm of fossil fuels consumption is killing us. She also used a comment from the founder of the Indian Satyagraha movement, Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi, when writing about the Western World, said that it “only promotes consumerism and comfort.” But, this model, according to Gandhi, is one that is self-destructive.

Corporate Globalization is a Dictatorship

Shiva then went on to talk about corporate globalization as a form of dictatorship. Corporate globalization uses force to achieve its goals as well as legal and institutional constructs such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). One example the author gave was how the global grain giant Cargill took control of the agricultural policies under the GATT/WTO. Shiva said they wrote the agreement and essentially represented the US at the international level to push through an agricultural policy that would allow them control of much of the world’s grain market.

Another way that Cargill has negatively impacted local agriculture is their dumping of soy oil on the market in India several years ago. Shiva said they were able to do this with huge subsidies, also part of the WTO agreements, which undercut the local market. People could not compete with the price of the soy oil, which was not nearly as good for human consumption as the dozens of other oils that Indians used. In response, women organized a Satyagraha campaign and made their own oil in defiance of the law.

Intellectual Property Rights and Seed Theft

The other main issue that Shiva addressed was the destructive consequences of intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights were essentially an expansion of traditional property rights that included seeds, humans, and any other form of life. India had a non-patent framework for products built into their constitution, but that changed with the WTO. What this has meant is that Monsanto controlls 95% of the global seed store. Seeds–which are the ultimate regeneration resource–have now been privatized.

This control of the global seed stock is being manifested in three ways. First, corporations are using genetic modification that necessitates the use of more pesticides, most of which are manufactured by the same corporations. Second, the control of global seed stock means that these corporations can control the price of seeds. So for example, last year Monsanto raised corn seed costs from $200 a bag to $300, which meant that they profited even more off world hunger. The third way they control seed stock was to legally insert into the WTO agreements the inability of farmers to save their own seeds, thus making them dependent on companies like Monsanto to buy their seeds.

One crop where this seed control has been devastating for Indian farmers is with cotton. The GMO cotton seeds that Indian farmers are now forced to buy also require large amounts of pesticides and farmer just end up going into debt. This crisis has resulted in a great deal of resistance, but it has also meant that many Indian farmers have taken their own lives. Shiva said that over 200,000 farmers have committed suicide as a protest of the seed control. One irony with this is that the highest areas of suicide are the same area of Indian where Gandhi’s campaign of homespun cotton began, a campaign that complimented a national boycott of British made clothes from cotton.

Climate Chaos or Earth Democracy

Shiva also addressed the issue of Climate Change, which she said is an inaccurate way of naming the problem. We should call it climate chaos, because with Global Warming, weather patterns have become unpredictable and destabilizing. This, the author/activist said was due to our addiction to fossil fuels.

    “We are not phasing out fossil fuels, because they are now used in agribusiness. The toxic nature of fossil fuels agribusiness is killing the soil. 40% of greenhouse gases are produced because of the way we grow and distribute food.”

Shiva believes that the only way to move away from this addiction to fossil fuels, as it relates to agriculture, is a shift to localism, “The local level is where the change must happen, with food production and energy creation. Local food systems are very important and are even an antidote for wars,” Shiva said. “Why did the US go to war in Iraq? Oil. The same is true for Afghanistan and other parts of the world.” She then said that a shift to bio-fuels is not a sustainable solution either. “If all of the corn that is grow in the US right now is used for bio-fuel it would only provide 7% of the fuel needs. So, if the appetite of resource consumption continues then wars are inevitable.”

The author/activist said that the only viable transition away from this corporate structure is what she calls earth democracy:

    “The current economic system is based on theft. We have to restore our economy. I started the seed saving group Navdanya as a way of defending life. Life is to be shared, not bought and sold. The earthworm does not eat up the soil that it lives in, it enriches it. We need to catch up to these other species. We need to look to them as teachers, these species, the soil, because that is where life gets renewed. The soil is an alternative to the collapsing economy, to the fossil fuel destruction, and it is an alternative to wars.”

Shiva concluded by saying that earth democracy is different than electoral democracy because in electoral democracy you expect someone else to do it for you, but with earth democracy we must make the changes ourselves.

Posted by Jeff Smith http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2009/03/vandana-shiva-earth-democracy-wmu.php

Read more great, Fight Back Friday posts here,http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-fridays-july-17th