TV Propaganda Sponsored & Funded by American Farm Bureau & Monsanto

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" Zeus " <info

TV Propaganda Sponsored & Funded by American Farm Bureau &

Monsanto

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 13:30:39 +0100

 

 

 

www.americasheartland.org/ is the website about the new TV program

beginning in September telling about agriculture in America. It is

produced by KVIE Public TV [www.kvie.org] in CA. It is sponsored and

funded by American Farm Bureau and Monsanto.

 

Ken H.

http://tinyurl.com/ *******************************************

 

Hi - Not sure if you all have seen this yet - it's a sign on letter

for organizations about PBS' attempt to show a pro-industry program on

agriculture. Please email Chris Cooper at ccooper

if you would like to sign on. Thanks! D

 

 

 

PLEASE REPLY TO: ccooper

 

Dear friends:

 

We need your help!

 

This fall, Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau Federation (with

additional funding from the American Soybean Association, National

Corn Growers Association, National Cotton Council, United Soybean

Board and U.S. Grains Council) have teamed up to produce a piece of

propaganda designed to whitewash the true story of industrial

agribusiness in the United States.

 

America’s Heartland is a weekly television series that these shills

of industrial agriculture intend to offer to more than 300 public

television stations for airing in September. The 20 half-hour

episodes claim to help “raise awareness of the significant

contribution American agriculture makes to the quality of life here

and abroad.†However, the failure to include any group representing

America’s traditional family farmers raises suspicions that the

series is nothing more than a public relations ploy by corporate

agriculture interests.

 

We have drafted a letter (below) to alert public television station

managers to the bias behind this rogue gallery of corporate players

presuming to represent the state of agriculture in rural America. It

is critical that those who make programming decisions for America’s

public television stations understand that there is another, more

destructive side to industrial agriculture.

 

Please join us in this effort by having your organization sign on to

this letter. Also, pass it along to other organizations that might

want to join in. A final letter, signed by all supporting groups,

will be distributed to every public television station manager in

mid-July.

 

Please RSVP your support to Chris Cooper at GRACE (ccooper)

 

Thank you!

 

GRACE (Global Resource Action Center for the Environment)

 

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«GreetingLine»

In the next few weeks you will be solicited to carry a television

program produced by KVIE Public Television entitled America’s

Heartland. Contrary to the producers' press release, this program is

not a celebration of our nation's agriculture. Instead, it is a piece

of bald-faced propaganda from those who make their money from

corporate agriculture ­the Monsanto Company, the American Farm Bureau

Federation, the American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers

Association, National Cotton Council, United Soybean Board and U.S.

Grains Council.

 

The destruction of America’s rural communities and the disappearance

of its small farmers is an important story that needs to be told.

This story, one of rural depopulation, dwindling economic

opportunities, industrial levels of pollution and their attendant

health and social concerns, is the ugly reality of the excesses that

come from the unregulated large-scale industrialized agricultural

system promoted by corporate America. America’s Heartland is being

produced to put a friendly face on the very forces that are causing

these problems.

 

Policies promoted by Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau, if

successful, will place the US food supply into the hands of a few

major corporations. This would devastate independent family farmers

who will be priced out of the market not because they can’t compete,

but because corporate farms are specifically structured to capture

government subsidies.

 

Lobbyists for corporate agriculture and the Farm Bureau use political

pressure to direct federal subsidies to corporate farms where a

significant part of these subsidies then flows directly to Monsanto

from the purchase of genetically modified seed and artificial hormones

(to increase milk production at mega dairies) that put small farmers

out of business. The American Farm Bureau, which sells insurance,

supports this strategy by investing its assets in corporate

agriculture while claiming for lobbying purposes that its 5 million

insurance policyholders are active Farm Bureau members. (There are

less than 2 million actual farmers in the US and many don’t belong

to the Farm Bureau).

 

There is a growing backlash in both rural areas and urban and consumer

markets against the practices advocated by Monsanto, the Farm Bureau

and the owners of factory farms. Shoppers are flocking to organic

products in an effort to escape the health consequences of the kind of

agriculture these groups promote. Traditional family farmers are

working to expose the corporate whitewashing of industrial

agriculture. The program you are being asked to show is an important

part of a strategy to silence this backlash by making American

consumers think that corporate farming practices are harmless and

inevitable. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

We ask you to please make a fully informed decision about America’s

Heartland and either not air it or, if you elect to show it, schedule

it alongside a program presenting the alternative point of view as you

would for any other piece of propaganda. There is another side to

this story and the public deserves to hear it.

Sincerely,

[NAMES OF SIGNATORIES]

 

 

Find out why over seven million people have watched the Meatrix!

http://www.themeatrix.com

 

Diane Hatz of Marketing and Special Projects

Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE)

215 Lexington Avenue, Suite 1001

New York, NY 10016

tel. 212-726-9161

fax 212-726-9160

www.sustainabletable.org

www.factoryfarm.org

www.gracelinks.org

 

 

 

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