Monsanto's Assault on Agriculture - Troubled Times Ahead.

[Guest guest]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-s-Assault-on-Agri-by-Marti-Oakley-090311-16.html

(Courtesy Kavitha Kuruganti of GMFREEINDIA group)

Monsanto's Assault on Agriculture

by Marti Oakley Page 1 of 1 page(s)www.opednews.com

 

Monsanto

is a corporation reviled for its genetic tampering and attempts to

seize control of agriculture around the world. While trying to change

its public persona into one of benevolence towards the public, the

history of Monsanto is littered with continuous efforts to not only

seize control of food production, but also supply. Monsanto's history

also includes lives destroyed either financially and/or physically as

the result of its activities.

1969-2002 Source: Northern Illinois Business and Industry Data Center

Here in the US, Monsanto goon squads routinely

trespass onto privately owned land, take samples of privately owned

crops and then claim Monsanto's frankenseed crops are being grown

illegally...their patents have been violated. According to Monsanto,

these are "unauthorized seeds." Those two words are a harbinger of

things to come and should give you an idea where all of this is headed.

Courts have ruled that

if Monsanto's seeds sprout in a ditch near the uncontaminated natural

crops of a farmer who refuses to grow GMO, the crop belongs to Monsanto

along with fines and penalties.

Monsanto attempts to minimize their harassment of

non-participating farmers by saying that out of about 250,000 farmers

they have only sued about 120. Monsanto goes on to say that farmers

will report other farmers who save seed, and that many of the tips they

get about seed saving are from other farmers in the community. I think

the probability of this actually happening is slight and would tend to

think more along the lines of the Goon Squads illegally trespassing and

reporting; after all, that's what they get paid for.

On top of this, Monsanto came up with a new in-house

rule after the fact, claiming they had not sold the seeds to the

farmers but had merely leased the seeds to the farmer. This was a de

facto legal maneuver. After all, if you SELL something, how it is used

is no longer your business, it doesn't belong to you. If you lease the

same product, you now have continued interest in the use.

Monsanto knows that genetic traits can be passed

between grains or other plants either during handling and processing or

as a result of pollination and that GMO transfers more readily than

traditional seed. As a result, they also know that genetic traits and

makeup indicating the purity of any seed at this point in time is not

achievable as a result of the contamination of traditional crops

resulting from genetically altered crops being totally uncontrolled and

uncontrollable.

Knowing that wind drift, bird droppings and other

natural happenings would by necessity cause the contamination and cross

pollination of natural crops with the genetically modified crops,

Monsanto continued to push its malignant creations onto farmers who

believed the hype that Monsanto's "authorized seeds" would increase

productivity and increase profits. The passing of time and the

analysis of these claims tells a different story.

In the case of soybeans:

Roundup Ready Soybeans use two to five times more herbicides

than non-GE Varieties. When you add royalties, fees and other costs

the resulting profit for the farmer is $0. The increase in production

is negligible and usually less than a traditional crop. These crops

also require 2 to 3 times more water to grow.

Then there's that problem with cotton (Excerpted from the original article at Global Research):

The cotton's agronomic performance is also erratic.

When Monsanto's GM cotton varieties were first introduced in the US,

tens of thousands of acres suffered deformed roots and other unexpected

problems. Monsanto paid out millions in settlements.

[4] When

Bt cotton was tested in Indonesia, widespread pest infestation and

drought damage forced withdrawal of the crop, despite the fact that

Monsanto had been bribing at least 140 individuals for years, trying to

gain approval. [5] In India, inconsistent performance has resulted in more than $80 million dollars in losses in each of two states. [6] Thousands

of indebted Bt cotton farmers have committed suicide. In Vidarbha, in

northeast Maharashtra, from June through August 2006, farmers committed

suicide at a rate of about one every eight hours. [7] (The list of adverse reactions reported from other GM crops, in lab animals, livestock and humans, is considerably longer.) (end excerpt) These are just two of the crops being

devastated by genetic tampering and the attempts to lay claim to crops

traditionally grown successfully without patents, tampering or

alteration.

Wherever Monsanto has inserted itself in agriculture, food

supplies dwindle, become unaffordable or have devastating affects on

human health. Traditional and proven seed stocks are destroyed or

forever contaminated with genetically altered material that can include

everything from human DNA to that of numerous animals or many times

unidentified genetic material.

And about that Artic Seed Vault...

as I asked before, if what Monsanto produces is so beneficial, if it in

fact is far superior to traditional seeds, why was none of their

mutated stock included in the Vault?

Maybe because it isn't fit for human consumption? © 2009 Marti OakleyHippocrates once said “Give me a fever and I can cure the childâ€. By understanding that a simple fever is a symptom rather than a condition orillness in itself, you soon come to realise that it is an ally and notan enemy. Fevers are the first sign that your child’s immune symptom isfunctioning as it should. By increasing core body temperature, feversenable the immune system to swing into action, indicating the body’sdefences are fighting an infection and consequent temperaturefluctuations indicate how the body is coping. - Natural Parenting.

Add more friends to your messenger and enjoy! Invite them now.