"Movimento SEM TERRA. Not sin tierra. If you are going to discuss Brazil, at least get the language right."

Depends on the language you're using. I'm more familiar with the movement in Spanish speaking countries and therefore used that language. REgardless of the country, the issues are similar and far from black and white.

See this address for a Spanish language overview of MST in Brazil:

http://www.movimientos.org/cloc/mst-br/

There are a familiar arguments here about the impacts of industrialized agriculture and global capitalism in general, how people are displaced from the land and farmers are squeezed and pressured economically to adopt industrial methods, etc. I would say that much of this critique is valid, but a missing perspective is that without the much-maligned "Green Revolution" there would be no way to feed the world's present population. If the population explosion is partly a result of the abundance of food, it is also partly a result of modern medicine, sanitation and so on. This does not make a compelling argument for returning to the days of leeches, cholera and 50% childhood mortality (which still exist in some places). Rather, it shows the need for a still higher level of management to keep (or restore) balance in the world.

While this philosophical and economic argument is interesting, it says absolutely nothing about bioengineering per se, and whether there is something unwholesome or sinister about "GM crops" just because some genes have been engineered, whether the technology poses a unique and severe danger to the environment, or whether there is any justification other than some kind of religious dogma for a law that defines "GM" as "not organic."

I think the same thing would happen if sweatshop workers at a factory sub-contracting with "The Gap" went on strike and demanded some ownership of the wealth. Security firms would exercise their carte blanche to kill the lead troublemakers. There are a lot of Blackwaters operating within the global empire. And GM is just another mechanism to further enrich the super-rich as Vidana Shiva has told us about what is happening in rural India. India or Brazil, it's the same phenomenon.

and to continue with what rtdrury is saying: there is no 'free market'. prices are fixed. and american tax dollars go to subsidizing the cost of food so that farmers can be undercut. this works with the tactic of food dumping, where a country will be hit with very low priced corn or something that will undercut the farmers and put them out of business. next time you donate to a charity that gives free food, beware, because this acts as food dumping. real charity would be to facilitate the farmers to keep their livelihood and feed their own people, ex: ethiopia. as millions of people there died of starvation, the country was growing grains for cows in europe, to pay off debts as part of the IMF's Structural Adjustment Programs.

and that touches on another of dkm's points, that of population. population is another bogus argument to keep us away from the real issues. the problem is not, nor has it ever been, that there is not enough food. the problem is the inequitable distribution of resources.

this earth is abundant, if we just work within the wisdom of nature. let me ask: have humans created anything that is greater than its prototype in nature? the computer cannot touch the brain; robots cannot emulate something as simple as walking like us, or our ambidexterity, or our voices; planes cannot do what birds do; factories are not as sophisticated or efficient as the cell; there are millions of examples. so why the heck do people think they can bioengineer food so that it is better than the original?

dkm: And remember that no one is forcing farmers to use the GM seed.

Farmers are squeezed between living costs and commodity prices and are unable to take responsibility for the well-being of the environment and the society. The capitalist system proved very effective in the United States so the capitalists are trying it elsewhere. Here's how it works - the capitalists keep a stream of synthetic farm inputs in the pipeline. At the introduction of each new synthetic input, the capitalists push the commodity price down, forcing farmers to adopt the synthetic input, increasing yields to compensate for the price drop. The synthetic inputs therefore never benefit the farmers. The increased yields come to consumers with many hidden costs - environmental problems, military security for fossil fuel production, theft of the people's self-determination, damage to their health, and cost of living inflation pressure from the capitalists sponging off the economy.

GM foods wouldn't be the issue, needn't be the issue if one solution is agreed upon by all : ZPG

Movimento SEM TERRA. Not sin tierra. If you are going to discuss Brazil, at least get the language right.

and one more thing, brazil was the first plantation country created in the 1500s. that is a long history of oppression and injustice and puppet governments.

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Mercy Giving.

dkm, first, i appreciate the civil manner in which you presented your opposing arguments. i have noticed that some people cannot offer an opposing argument without attacking and becoming hostile.

these issues are very complicated. of course, today we see some of the largest money-making industries are weapons and drugs, so bioengineering food is like child's play - it is easy to see why the moral implications are so lightly passed by.

but morals aside. the green revolution, which by the way, handed agriculture to MNC's on a silver platter, proved to be a disaster resulting in the depletion of almost 70% of the earth's arable soil, and the green revolution is also responsible for the rapid and unprecedented depletion of fresh water, which only about 2% of the earth's water is fresh water. in addition, monocropping, which is basically what the green revolution is, requires ever larger amounts of chemical inputs resulting in severe environmental and human health hazards. i have only skimmed the surface!

GM crops - which some people will argue is not much different than hybridizing, and they will further say that it is more efficient than hybridizing - is about further controlling the global agricultural industry. there are now about 5 MNC's that control the global agriculture. they are vertically integrated so that they control the whole line from production to retail - making farmers into serfs at best, and slaves at worse. they are able, and do, influence and manipulate governments, in this country they call it a revolving door between corporations and the government!

Because of WTO, IMF and free trade laws, MNC's, like cargill, do not even trade between countries anymore, they trade between their own company in different countries. MNC's usurp raw commodities (it used to be the colonizers that did that), such as oil, corn, soy, labor (yes, labor too), coffee, chocolate, etc, for almost nothing, leaving nations of people in poverty. they then turn around and sell the processed and packaged goods at ridiculous mark-ups. for example, bananas from plantation countries (which dont even require processing) are marked up by the end retailer by 40% while the growers wont even see 10% of the money.

calling anti-GE people luddites is not an accurate statement. it would be like saying people who are against WMD's are luddites. there are a number of arguments here, one is that bioengineering should be used with maximum caution.

my argument is that this is an argument that is distracting people from the real issues! there is ample (but conveniently buried) evidence showing that diversified farming not only does NOT require chemical inputs, but is FAR MORE efficient and productive than monocropping. and aside from being far more sustainable, diversified farming requires knowledge and skills that MNC's cannot mass produce, so it sets farming communities free.

and in this country, 5 out of 7 million farmers have lost their livelihood in less than a century. how long will it be before there is a landless labor movement here? because nation-states are an illusion, we are on one planet, we are all one race - humans. if there is oppression and injustice anywhere on the earth, like a cancer it will devour the whole of humankind.

i wrote a whole long article about factory farming aka agribusinesses, if anyone is interested you can read it at www.seehearspeak.com/?p=5

oh, and as far as MNC's being responsible for the landless labor, it may not be obvious, but if you connect the dots you will see it clearly. colonization has not ended, only transformed into corporate imperialism. one opened the way to the other.

we are still living in the global 'western civilization' that began with colonization. we have not entered a new civilization yet. before western civilization was the global Islamic civilization. in the Islamic era, cultures and communities were kept intact and independent. local economies and communities thrived, although there was a great deal of unprecedented global mobility of goods, knowledge and people. it is actually a very interesting period of almost 1000 years to study because 1) most people today know nothing about it except for propaganda and indoctrination about Islam and 2) there is a great deal to learn from a civilization built on different worldviews - premises, paradigms - than modernity; a civilization that was based on justice in practice and not just in words.

and please, before anyone starts to criticize Islam, do a little homework, don't bring the same old tired propaganda arguments that hold no factual or historical basis.

thanks.

"And why aren't the local farmers allowed to own their own land? Because the government sold them out to corporate interests."

Unfortunately, the situation in Brazil and other Southern Cone countries is far more complex than this. In many cases, the Sin Tierras are composed of people who sold their land voluntarily to outside interests, then discovered they could not buy more and did not receive enough to establish another viable business. Sad, but whose fault? In other cases, they sold under threat or intimidation. I've personally seen instances where Sin Tierras have squatted on the land legally owned by others, including indigenous groups deeded the land by governments as compensation for a long history or mistreatment. I've seen cases where organized campesino groups have occupied some of the few remaining areas of unaltered forest, assaulted and murdered the rangers hired to protect the land, then deforest it to grow soy. I;ve also seen armed thugs hired by large land owners assault and kill groups of campesinos. I know of situations where the Brazilian government has worked with campesino groups to move people into the Amazon, thus accelerating the rate of forest loss in that region. It's an ugly, dangerous situation down there, but paint things in simple black and white just doesn't describe reality.

More corporate murders to add to the long list of those already killed for profits. The insanity of all this is sad and so unnecessary, but profits too often do not have a conscience, and those that interfere are sometimes killed for the sake of the almighty dollar. History goes in circles, and we are not as advanced morally as some like to think, not when these kinds of actions take place.

And why aren't the local farmers allowed to own their own land? Because the government sold them out to corporate interests. I admire the activists for trying to own and farm their land. it won't be long before the same struggle will implode in America when foreign interests buy up so many of Texans property so they can install the huge highway that will enable goods from China to be trucked easily through America's farmland. And while GM agriculture will cause havoc with our environmemt, local farmers will no longer be able to grow organic food.

Will someone, please, explain why genetically modified plants (or animals, for that matter) are qualitatively different from organisms developed by "standard" breeding techniques? I have yet to see anyone of the Luddite persuasion even try to defend their position based on anything except "magic." Bush is trying to wage a war against a technique and the Luddites are doing the same thing. No wonder there is so little progress against the war. Both groups have the same frame of reference.

littlem85 shows the results of not being even vaguely familiar with history. Blaming GMO or even multinationals for the landless problem in Brazil is evidence of complete ignorance. Sin Terra has a loooong history that predates even the first attempts at genetic modification of anything, so obviously GM crops had nothing to do with it, unless you believe that effects predate actions. Pope JPII, early in his reign, clamped down on the priests who had been backing Sin Terra. This was decades ago, so you can't blame recent developments for past problems. Furthermore, the reason that SOME GM plants produce only sterile seeds is because people in the Luddite group INSISTED on it, so that the genes were not spread to nonGM plants. You can't have it both ways. Either you insist that the plants be sterile or that they produce viable seeds. For what it is worth, in some situations, but not enough, the global agribusinesses have decided to allow third world countries to save back seed from GM crops without being sued for patent infringement.

And remember that no one is forcing farmers to use the GM seed. The reason they are doing it is that the yields are so much better than for conventional seeds. Otherwise the farmers would have to cut down and burn even more forest than they are now in order to meet the demand for food. Another history lesson is that the first Green Revolution resulted in a tripling of food production on the same amount of land. If it hadn't been for that, we wouldn't be having this argument about saving the rain forest because it would have been cut down long ago. Now the world population has outstripped the production capacity of the original Green Revolution. Which do you prefer? Double and triple the production on the present amount of arable land, i.e., GM, or double and triple the amount of land under plow, i.e., world-wide deforestation and desertification, or let several billion people starve, i.e., hell let loose.

I realize that most of the antiGMers are also antipoor people (it comes with the territory of being comfortably middle class), but unfortunately the poor people will not have the grace to just sit there and die. They will first emigrate, legally or illegaly, to places where food does exist, and then react violently if that option is restricted.

War should be declared on capitalism - unless capitalism ceases its war on indigenous peoples everywhere. If you cannot see how this is the norm then you must not have been paying attention to anything going on around you for years.

New T-Shirt or bumper sticker idea:
PAY ATTENTION - YOU ARE BEING SCREWED!!

Sadly, violence is all that MNC's seem to understand. In truth this only shows the fear they have of people who organize and who really holds power. Syngenta has murdered Valmir Mota de Oliveira but they cannot kill his ideas and the movement they are part of.

WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sorry it printed twice...I am having computer problems...

In the name of God

Corporate farms like Syngenta not only create GMOs so that the seed of a crop is only useable once (hence farmers are forced to buy seeds, OWNED by the corporations, every single year), they also systematically (and very efficiently) undermine and destroy the local and national economies of the countries they go in to (invade really). This way, once the country's economy is completely destroyed, they are forced to take out loans from the World Bank, IMF etc. At this point they are official slaves of the Corporatocracy.

This is why there are 4 million landless peasants in Brazil.

In the name of God, the All Merciful, the Mercy-giving

Corporate farms like Syngenta not only create crops that are genetically modified so their seeds are used only once (hence, every year new seeds must be bought: more money for the corporations, they systematically (and VERY efficiently) undermine and destroy the local economies of the countries they invade and bully their way into. At this point, because the local/ national economy is destroyed the country is forced to "take out loans" from the World Bank, IMF, etc...At this point they are official slaves of the Corporatocracy.

This is why Brazil has 4 million landless peasants.

So, we finally know what is wrong with using the most up-to-date biology to transfer selected genes from one species to another, thereby creating crops that are more resistant to disease or pests, less dependent on fertilizers or pesticides, more nutritious, or that can produce lifesaving medicines at low cost, remove poisons from soil, produce energy, or have other desirable properties.

Now we know that such genetic manipulation causes trigger-happy security guards to shoot land rights activists. As the critics always said, nobody could have predicted such consequences from gene transfer technologies. It just goes to show how dangerous it is to fool around with Nature.

What the Brazilian peasent farmers need to do is come with a big enough mob to burn that place to the ground like Indian farmers did to a similar facility in their country.

Genetically modified or "Frankenfoods" as they are known throughout the EU are a death sentence on open polinated varieties of perenial food crops. The same varieties which produce enough hardy varieties to resist extinction due to variouos pests and diseases which routinely ravage all plant life.