Farm Broadcaster Ousted After Ripping Monsanto’s Goon Squads
If you have heard of Learfield Communications, it is probably from listening to college football and basketball games.
The Jefferson City, Missouri based Learfield is one of the nation’s largest broadcasters of college sports.
But it also produces news programming heard throughout the farm belt.
Learfield was started 35 years ago by Clyde Lear and Derry Brownfield.
Lear went on to be the chairman of the company. He bought out his friend and partner Brownfield in 1985.
Brownfield went on to do market news reports for the Learfield news division until 1997 or so, when he started broadcasting a daily call-in show called The Common Sense Coalition.
Derry Brownfield would broadcast The Common Sense Coalition from the studios of Learfield Communications.
Learfield would subsidize the program and allow Brownfield to use its studios and satellite hook-up.
Monsanto happens to be a big advertiser of the Learfield news division — to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Brownfield happens to think that Monsanto is an evil corporation.
Therein lies the rub.
For weeks, Brownfield had been ripping Monsanto on air for its policies of enforcing its seed patents against farmers.
On the April 16 show, Brownfield’s topic was seed industry concentration in America.
His guests were Fred Stokes, president of the Organization for Competitive Markets, and Michael Stumo, general counsel of the group.
Stokes and Stumo were promoting a new project to study corporate concentration in the seed industry.
Monsanto is the dominant player in the global seed industry and has a reputation for playing rough.
On air, Brownfield quoted from a newly published Vanity Fair article titled “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear” by Donald Barlett and James Steele.
“Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country,” Barlett and Steele write. “They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops, infiltrate community meetings, and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the ‘seed police’ and use words such as ‘Gestapo’ and ‘Mafia’ to describe their tactics.”
After reading from the Vanity Fair article, Brownfield then begins to riff on the Mafia theme.
“Multinational corporations are doing everything possible to change agriculture — and not for the better,” Brownfield says on the show. “I know a little bit about this — not a lot, just a little bit — but Monsanto literally they have Mafia goons out, do they not? They show up on farmers’ property, they try and harass them, they say if you don’t sign this, we are going to take you to court. They have literally tried to destroy agriculture as we know it. They have a goon squad. Maybe that’s not what they like to be called. But if it was the Mafia, we would call them the goon squad.”
Calling Monsanto’s patent enforcers goons was apparently the straw that broke this camel’s back.
Brownfield’s stint at Dearfield was about to end.
Last week, Brownfield was told that he could no longer broadcast out of the Dearfield studios. His buddy, Clyde Lear, posted a blog on the Learfield web site saying that Brownfield’s last show will be in mid-May.
“The Common Sense Coalition grinds to a halt on our system,” Lear wrote.
“Most of his listeners loved him as did his affiliates,” Lear wrote about his buddy. “He didn’t mind controversy or taking on giants like the Monsanto Corporation. He thought they were bad for farmers, too big for their britches and generally bad for America. Increasingly he’s been saying so, without seeking balance, in my opinion.”
And then later, in response to listeners who were upset that Brownfield was being let go, Lear wrote:
“Some seem to think the reason Derry is leaving is because Monsanto threatened to stop advertising if we didn’t put a gag on him. If that were the only reason Derry was asked to leave, then I can see why they think we are selling out. We’ve parted ways because accusations being made about not only advertisers, but individuals, corporations, government, (fill in the blank) were based on fear and lies with absolutely no truth to back them up. I abhor radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh…and Derry Brownfield where half-truths are articulated. I won’t be a part of them. And, that’s my right.”
But in an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter, Lear admits that the Monsanto issue is what drove his buddy Brownfield out.
“If the Monsanto issue had not come up, we would not be here today,” Lear said.
Lear said that the President of Learfield Communications, Roger Gardner, talked recently with John Raines, Monsanto’s director of public affairs.
“John Raines talked to Roger Gardner about the difficulties they felt Brownfield is giving them,” Lear said. “(Gardner) told me he talked to John Raines about the Vanity Fair article.”
“The pressure I got came from the president of the news division, Stan Koenigsfeld,” Lear said. “Stan is the guy that has responsibility for selling and maintaining the financial viability of our news division. Stan is a no nonsense guy. So, Stan comes in and says — why are we doing this? Why do we continue to do this? We give him all of these things and he spits in our face by lambasting our good advertisers, without giving them an opportunity for fair and balanced reporting. And it is not reporting — it’s just entertainment. Why do we continue to do this?”
Lear says that the complaints have been mounting over the past five years about Brownfield.
“And I’ve been saying to Stan, settle down, it will all be alright,” Lear said. “But I imagine Stan is getting a lot of pressure from his sales executives. We have three that call on Monsanto for different products. And I would assume that he is getting pressure from those sales executives. When those sales executives call on Monsanto, Monsanto is complaining to the sales executives. That is where the connection happens. But you would have to talk to them about the kind of leverage Monsanto is putting on them. They have never to my knowledge threatened to pull any advertising.”
Lear finally confronted Brownfield.
“I went to him and said — Derry, look, lay off of this,” Lear said. “Lay off of this Monsanto thing. I am getting a lot of complaints.”
Lear said he was the only one in the company who could approach Brownfield.
“I’m the only one who can talk to him,” Lear said. “No one else in the company will go to him. He is kind of persona non grata. He is one of the guys who helped start the company years ago. He was my partner for years until 1985 when I bought him out. He is a dear friend of mine. So, there is no one else — all of the rest of the guys are half my age. They won’t go to him. They are afraid of him. They just won’t go and talk to him.”
“They all came to me and said — go talk to Derry,” Lear said. “We’ve got to quit doing this. Plus, it came at a bad time. It came during the same week that the National Association of Farm Broadcasters national convention was being held in Kansas City. And at that convention, of course, Monsanto was omnipresent. They are there trying to woo farm broadcasters, because they want them to say nice things about them, right? So, here are all of the Monsanto people at this convention. And their advertising agencies — Osborne & Barr out of St. Louis — among others. They were all there. And it was embarrassing, because all of that week, Derry is lambasting Monsanto.”
“We have explained to Monsanto, in any way we can, that the Brownfield Network has nothing to do with Derry’s show,” Lear says. “This is a completely independent show that he puts on. Well, Monsanto says - he’s doing it from your studios, isn’t he? And we say yes, we give him space because of the history.”
“And they ask — how else do you help him? If he weren’t doing the show, would this problem disappear?”
“So my guys came to me and said — we’ve got to do something about this.”
“So, I went in to Derry and I sat down with him,” Lear said. “It was very good natured. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t planning on doing anything. I said — let this Monsanto thing go for awhile. Just let it go.”
“He said — ‘Clyde- - Monsanto is an evil empire,’” Lear recalled. “‘This is evil. He said — every farmer hates Monsanto. You know what they have done — and then he would lambast Monsanto and lay out this litany of stuff that they do. It included milk. Apparently there is a human growth hormone that they put in the milk. I don’t know a thing about it, but apparently they won a court case that prohibited milk retailers from putting on the milk carton the label — hormone free. I didn’t know anything about this, but Brownfield was complaining about how the liberal judges of America are siding with the evil empire. And Monsanto pays them off. All kinds of allegations which I’m sure are not true. But Derry believes them.”
“So, I said — will you let Monsanto be on the air? And he said — I’m not going to give them a forum. But then he changed his mind and said — yeah, bring them on. I’ll let them on the show.”
Lear then went to hole up with his executives. And his execs told him — “It’s bigger than this now. We just don’t need to be associated with him.”
“So, I just walked back there and said to Derry — you say you are not going to lighten up. And he said no, I’m staying the course. And I said — not with us you are not. You are going to have to find some other way to distribute your program, and you are going to have to find some other office to do it out of.”
Given that he was willing put Monsanto on his show, why not keep him on?
“Maybe we should have,” Lear said.
Would you reconsider your decision?
“I don’t think so,” Lear says. “It is just not a business I want to be in anymore.”
Lear says he feels sad about parting with his old buddy, but he wants to help set up an internet radio studio for Derry out of Derry’s home office.
“We are helping him build a new facility in his home,” Lear says. “But we won’t have a connection to him. Then we can easily say to Monsanto — we don’t have a thing to do with Derry. We don’t have a thing to do with him. He’s not on our property. We can’t control him.”
Brownfield said he couldn’t comment on the situation until after May 30.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.
Lear is a chickenshit who has no loyalty or principle. He sells out his friend to stay friends with a company that doesn’t give a shit about people. That’s the problem with America today. Making a buck is more important than doing the right thing.
Hoa binh
This is the result of “free-market capatilism” A corporation like Monsanto attempts to control not only the market but any voices against it.
The article tells it all, the only change I’d make is in the statement:
“…didn’t know anything about this, but Brownfield was complaining about how the liberal judges of America are siding with the evil empire.”
I would change the word “liberal” to “conservative”
It seems that somewhere along the way, Liberal has become bad, and that should change.
Until the majority of the US voter hate Monsanto and the other global corporations as much as the farmers hate Monsanto, nothing will change. The corporations are controlling the US government and most voters don’t consider that to be an issue. Name any of the biggest problems facing America today…Iraq occupation, healthcare, inflation, air and water pollution, jobs, poverty, etc. None of these will be solved until the corporations no longer control the US government.
“When those sales executives call on Monsanto, Monsanto is complaining to the sales executives. That is where the connection happens.”
“…Monsanto says - he’s doing it from your studios, isn’t he? And we say yes, we give him space because of the history.”
“And they ask — how else do you help him? If he weren’t doing the show, would this problem disappear?”
“So my guys came to me and said — we’ve got to do something about this.”
Now, I suppose a battery of lawyers and politicians could twist and spin those statements as to make an olympic gymnist in the midst of a floor excersize look like a candle stick, but that is the proverbial smoking gun to me.
Edward1793 May 1st, 2008 1:35 pm
This is the result of “free-market capatilism” A
I disagree, and I want to say so, because I want you capitalism-hating types to have the advantage of seeing the other side. I’m a poor representative of the contrary opinion, but banging on capitalism just won’t get us very far, imho.
I want to point to the law, I blame our government, I blame our justice system. Laws were broken or changed to accomodate greed, and I think it’s important to remember this fact. They had to break laws to do what they’ve done.
Monsanto has no right to harass farmers, they have no right to try to dictate to them what kind of seed to use, spy on them or to threaten to sue them in a corrupt system that guarantees Monsanto will win. If farmers have no legal way to protect their rights, then it ISN’T justice. Isn’t that the real problem? Isn’t crime, with no ability to seek redress, the real problem? Monsanto should not be able to get away with this, period.
I’m not saying capitalism in the USA hasn’t lived down to every negative expectation the left ever had of it. It’s been a learning experience to see how much it has lived down to EVERY negative expectation, and I come from the far right saying that, so don’t think I’m here to defend it. I have no idea if the failures were as inevitable as the failures of communism.
It’s all about little people getting pushed around by people with money and power, being told what to do, where to live, how many kids they can have, what job they may have, how much money they can have…or what kinds of drugs they may use legally, or whom they may marry, or what kind of seed they have to buy and use and from whom. Loss of individual rights to state control. See? Same same.
But I AM saying that it was the breaking of many laws that made this possible and ruined our nation. I’d like everyone to remember, THAT can happen anywhere, in any system, and personally I’d really like it to stop no matter WHAT economic system we have. It’s people breaking the law, subverting the justice system, and a government that DOES NOT represent the will of the people.
Face it, if our government does not represent us, we do not control it, and so does it really matter what our economic system is, or was, or thought it to be?
If we want to stop this from happening, happening again under any system, we’d better recognize how the system was perverted. We’d better understand which laws were broken, and how and why.
Blame the very concept of captalism itself if you want to, and that’s fine, but please recognize that THIS is FACISM. Our government has been complicit all along, and made bank on it, and that is something that isn’t unique to capitalism at ALL, so we better not let them continue to do it under some other guise.
I ask all of my friends here to get on radio talk shows and tell the world what Monsanto is doing to the food supply. Most Americans don’t have a clue.
I ask you to start by calling the Ed Schultz radio show. He has the largest progressive audience in the country.
You must be relentless. Keep calling.
His show is on from 12 eastern to 3pm eastern.
The phone number is 1-800-WE-GOT-ED
Transnational corps like Monsanto don’t give a fig about the U.S. population or farmers. they just want their product to monopolize the market so they can us all to f**k off. “Free market” capitalism–which has been a rigged game from the start–always ends in greed: ever heard of the Robber Barons? The only way to stop it is through government regulation, and there isn’t a prez candidate that looks likely to fight for those regs. It’s up to us, so, please, DO SOMETHING.
If you ever read the Jefferson City Missouri newspaper you would more clearly understand. In my opinion it’s about as hard right in it’s reporting and editorials that a paper can get. Most of the farmers in the area love it. So their just getting a dose of their own medicine. What better way to learn than to realize that your strangling yourself. If the strident hate in their veins ever turns against Monsanto, look out. Some of these farmers don’t know where the limits are. I have had enough personal experience with some of them to know. I live to tell about it not out of luck but grit. They don’t like ndn’s either. Cargill and Monsanto pretty much own the public opinion and much of the business there. The people who work for Monsanto live in nice neighborhoods in St. Louis County. They are mostly represented by Rep. Todd Akin, a strong anti-environmentalist and ex-military man who strongly supports the MIC. Boeing is also strongly represented in his district. Senator Bond of Missouri who was once seen as a moderate is now hard right too. The people in this district feel essentially immune and well protected given their economic actions. Additionally, national environmental groups tend to concentrate on the East and West and consider Missouri fly-over country. That is how these people retain their power, no one ever challenges them. It would seem that the actions of Monsanto would require more attention from them and also work to defeat Todd Akin, their enabler.
Monsanto appears to be deaf, dumb and blind to the consequences of introducing monoculture into every microbe and insect at the root of the chain of life. In the mean time it underwrites a substantial part of the genocide of indigenous peoples in SA - twisting jurisprudence along with its monoculture allies. ‘It’ cannot learn the hard way, because ‘it’ has the rights of a hyperfinanced legal individual without the responsibilities. It is a goliath of control without brain or heart that has shown no vision of reciprocity or coexistence - from the microbial level to the human level. The GREEN DESERT mentality will soon hit the wall. Nature is not a ‘thing’ standing in correlation to a Monsanto ‘it’.
Pew research calling for ending the mass food animal production paradigm is only a first step.
It is still possible to buy seed that is not genetically engineered, if that is what one wants. However, most farmers plant all of their acres possible to GM seed as it gives better yields with much less problems to handle. They do have to plant a portion to a refuge ,however, to keep the insects from becoming resistant, and some farmers may have gotten in some fuss over not doing that properly. There does not seem to be any trouble using it in the this area-midwestern.
Just Google “The Monsanto Files” - interesting…
Also check up and see how many farmers like Monsanto:
US Family Farmers
http://www.nffc.net/issues/geissues.html
and in Australia the ‘Network of Concerend Farmers’ see their excellent web site: http://www.non-gm-farmers.com
While Canadian family farmers are calling for a moratorium on GM crops, see http://www.nfu.ca/gmfood-ban.htm
And of course, global and international farmers hero www.percyschmeiser.com
Maybe the Monsanto employees and the Monsanto world headquarters in St. Louis need a have Roundup dumped on their beautiful lawns. Just a thought.
Pacifica Radio should pick this guy up.
Kernal May
You are talking absolute trash.
YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T READ SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.
Better yields from GM crops. Ha, ha, ha, ….
I really don’t like spin doctors and dumb farmers that prostitute themselves to such lies.
Show me the scientific research that GM crops are higher yielding….
You are a laugh a minute.
I live at the opposite end of the world to you and I look forward to what you say when I wake up tommorrow.
Idiots guide to “higher yielding” GM crops:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/20/8405/
HIGH CRIMES
In fact what Kernal May claims makes me very angry. Small scale farmers in South Africa have lost the shirts on their backs by switching to GM cotton, and 2 000 farmers in India have committed suicide by switching to so-called “higher yielding” GM cotton.
People who claim that GM crops are higher yielding should be tried for crimes against humanity.
The World According to Monsanto
Great video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19738.htm
Like on all of the other sites which have this rivetting video, it seems to have been disabled; further testimony to to the fascistic power of this corporation.
Andrewe Taynton May___You sound like a real nice guy to know. I don`t know what your business is besides reading, but my business is raising corn, and I do not need some smart alec telling me about what I know after raising corn for many years and have seen with my own eyes. Farmers would not voluntarily pay around $200 for one bushel of seed corn if it did not get results. I have seen corn yields go up considerably with nuch less spray and soil treatments using GM seed.
Perhaps your conditions and methods are somewhat different in Africa and India than in the heart of the USA. I have no experience with cotton and that may be another story. So nice to hear from you experts that may not know corn from cotton.
Once upon a time in America, there was a concept in media organizations of a ‘wall’ between the new operations and the business operations. The idea was that the news division was free to say what it felt it needed to say without pressure from the ad salespeople.
That is long since gone. This is just one more data point that backs that up. And with it is gone the very core of integrity in journalism. This should be the problem that “learfield’ should face.
They’ve just publicly announced that the advertisers control what is said on their news programs. Which means that the very core credibility of their news should now be openly questioned. And if you can’t trust the credibility of a news source, why would you listen to it? If you know they are willing to say what their advertisers tell them to say, then that means if you do listen to them you must question and seek independent confirmation on anything you hear. And if you have that little trust in a news source, why would you listen in the first place.
Same goes for the other media story up here. The Pentagon generals pushing Pentagon talking points on the corporate media. Shouldn’t the very fact of that story’s existence lead to the conclusion that you should not watch those channels at all?
I think “conditions and methods” is exactly the point -Kernel-.
Its possible that GM Maize has better yeild than Real Maize in a “fencerow to fencerow” Monoculture Corn-Soy-Fallow rotation in the Current Climate and Soil of the midwest of the U.S. using lots of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbacides, and lots of petroleum or Bio-fueled internal-combustion engine powered machinery. I’d sure believe it.
But this is hardly the entire story of agriculture.
Will the yeild be just as good in other conditions?
Or using other methods?
The weather can change, and the sweet light crude that makes those engines purr in the combine and the tractor -and the Natural Gas that makes all those chemical goodies- is beginning to get scarce.
Also is single crop-yeild the best way to measure this?
I understand maize Hybrids are mostly only viable for one crop, but what about other varieties?
Who gets the maximum return for his money,in the long term, the seed-saver or the seed-buyer?
And if farmers aren’t thinking “long-term”, then what has gone wrong with our agriCULTURE?
Perhaps we shoudn’t expect our farmers to be immune to the “think not of the future” narcissistic apocolyptic TeleCuture that has swallowed so much of our Society.
But remember that the only thing keeping all of this wonderful “corn yeild” turning from Blessing to Bane is massive Central Government subsides.
The Government is now in hock past its top hat, and the subsides are being attacked from all sides.
Conditions and Methods, that is the question.
-matti.
Sampson, thank you. You got to the core of the problem here. It’s called extortion. And Monsanto knows all about that.
And to Kernel, I’d say that your focus is wrong. Even if the GM corn works for you as a farmer and a business man, that does not excuse the criminal behavior of Monsanto. It seems to me that supporting this criminal gang with your hard earned dollars to plant their seeds and use their products, has a moral backlash. You are voting with your dollars to support this monster.
I also recommend that everyone read the original Vanity Fair article that is linked above. It is six pages long but is well worth the read. You will get the history of Monsanto going all the way back to 1917. This evil has been growing here like a cancer for over 90 years. Now, THAT is scarey. Even Rumsfeld is connected.
Are we eating food that bugs won’t eat?
WHATEVER4: You are a voice of hope in the forum… as when the center no longer holds, members of “the right” and “the left” find common ground! Amen to that! Little question the “leaders” have corrupted every nuance and fiber of our nation, and we must act in unison to bring the beast down.
OLD GOAT: Excellent post. I first learned about Monsanto in an indepth expose featured in Mother Jones Magazine. Noting the link between Monsanto’s interest in genetic engineering, its “spy on farmers” policy and related lawsuits, and–most egregious of all–its WAR profits through KILLER chemical polymers, all I could think of was… this is NO company to trust our nation’s foodstuffs to!
EDWARD 1793: Good points, too.
Two older Russian men are walking down a street in Moscow, noting with amazement the changes in their world.
“You know what’s terrible, Sergei?”, asks the first, “Everything the old government told us about Communism was a lie.”
“Yes, Igor,” replies the other, “but you know what’s worse? Everything they told us about Capitalism was true.”
Lear is selling out, there is no other way to put it and he will be sorry as he loses his integrity…you can’t buy it back.
wcdevins, so much wisdom in that one. i wrote it down, & will share!
The key in this article is the place where lear confesses that he hadn’t known about “apparently there’s a hormone in the milk.” I’ve known all about that for ten years and I’m not a farmer–sure, lots of people aren’t aware of rBGH. But a guy doing a farm-oriented radio show who hadn’t even heard of it? Strains credulity. And then when Brownfield changes his mind and says, okay, we’ll have Monsanto reps on my show–but it doesn’t matter. Lear decides to terminate Brownfield’s show anyway. Why? Because the last thing Monsanto wants is a debate with someone knowledgeable and not afraid to speak his mind. What they want is lots of advertising and nobody allowed to speak back. And what Monsanto wants, it gets—helps to have former and future top employees at top levels of the US government and the USDA and the FDA, just like it helps to have the media dependent on advertising dollars.
Unless you’re collecting your food from the wild, everything you eat (with the possible exception of some mushrooms) has been genetically modified. Even wild-grown foods have evolved over time due to biotic and abiotic selection pressures. There are a lot of questions about certain genetic modifications which confer insect or weed protection. I hate to break the spell but all plants produce secondary metabolites (what normal people call “poisons”) to deter predation by animals and competition from other plants.
The bottom line is the size of earth’s human population which necessitates maximum production with all its pre- and post planting spraying, the cost of which has led to the insertion of genes that will allow the plants to protect themselves genetically. But rather than have an ignorance-driven, kneejerk reaction to all GM crops, I just avoid those with the poisons that won’t wash off. An all-organic diet would be nice but my budget won’t allow it.
AND why do rich and powerful corporations/people want to become ever more rich and powerful? What’s it all for? Will it be OK for their decendents to suffer in a world without Nature and with enormous food shortages? I suppose I am naive. I just don’t get it. These days I just have to remind myself that GREED runs everything, EVERYTHING! I am usually an optimist but I have made peace with the idea that it will be OK if my own children don’t have children. I cannot imagine anything more evil than modifying the genetic makeup of our food and robbing farmers of their ability to produce safe, nutritious food. Farmers are the most important humans on the planet and should be honored. Seeds were given to us by Nature and cannot be owned. What do they think future generations are going to eat? MONEY? Someone at Monsanto must wake up and stop what is happening. Is there not anyone with morals at Monsanto?
matti___Even if all farmers were convinced that long term, we would be better off by going back to the old methods, it would be almost impossible for them to do that.
I started raising corn and wheat when we were still using our own seed from year to year. We had to till the ground several times before planting, and then cultivate twice, using much labor and fuel. Our corn made a maximum yield of 50 bu per acre. We used no herbicide, no fertilizer except manure, and no insecticide, but the seed had to be treated with a poisonous product to ward off worms, etc.
Now the same ground is gone over one time before planting, and fertilizer applied then. Seeed does not have to be treated as GM seed does not require using insecticides. Planting is accomplished with a minimum of labor and the same field that took one day years ago now takes one hour to plant. Then later the corn is irrigated a few times with an automatic sprinkler and usually makes 200 bu per acre instead of 50.
How many farmers do you think are going to go back to the hard, slow, dangerous chemical handling method to produce a fraction of what is possible with new developments? You can demonize Monsanto all you want, but unless you figure out how to compensate farmers for going backwards, they will not do it.
Many do not realize the immense businesses that are involved in production agriculture now. The plan to move back will not be accepted by machinery companies, fertilizer companies, and dozens of related industries that are keeping our economy functioning. You will quickly find that without modern production agriculture, our country will slow to a crawl and will not be able to provide for its people.
Some that believe it is so simple to just put Monsanto out of business and solve all of our problems may never have set foot on a farm, much less spent their entire lives fighting the elements with their families, and trying to figure out how to cope with producing food and fiber to make a living, and have a decent lifestyle while doing it.
The radio show was a mouthpiece, and was funded by sellers to farmers. That’s the way AM radio works.
Goon squards, death squads, more of the same old caca. Try Military or Market-Driven Empire Building: 1950-2008 this on for size.
“Is there not anyone with morals at Monsanto?”
Answer: No! Money cancels morals, buries them deep. WCDevins’ joke says it all.
Money Sancto , money is sacred. People and farmers are not. Its profit , profit, profit, and lock in and make dependent, the customers and consumers. As if having a monopoly on genes and plant breeding was the entire and only means of improving agriculture.
Kernel May
Farmers regularly believe that GM crops are more profitable and use less chemicals, this perception is as a result of good marketing by the biotechnology industry.
However when you look at the scientific research you can only feel sorry for these unfortunate people.
Check out the fully referenced “GM Crops Failed” document by the Institute of Science in Society. Some good documented research on US farmers as well, see
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMcropsfailed.php
Hey Kernel May:
Perhaps you should ask employees of Monsanto why they won’t eat any GM foods in the corporation’s cafeterias.
Those employees knew the real skinny on GE “foods” so they raised holy hell and demanded REAL ORGANIC food be made available for consumption; the company gave `em want they wanted!
Since you claim to be a farmer, maybe you can explain to me and others here why farmers like yourself who apply Roundup herbicide, keep a portion of lands set aside for nonGE crops.
And maybe you can also explain why those same farmers wait three weeks after spraying Roundup before they’ll glean the crops.
Why is it no farmers and their wives and children will eat any of those GE foods?
Don’t they trust Monsanto’s propaganda?
Or maybe some of us smell a Monsanto rat when we read their skewered opinions.
Death to the Evil Monsanto!
GM Crops Increase Pesticide Use (referenced document):
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMCIPU.php
Kernel May
My previous post is awaiting moderation, however for the sake of continuity Google “Misinformed US farmers buy Bt corn seed”
The discussion around GMO seeds giving higher yields or not reminds me of the opening section of Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The goal of higher yields seems to stem from the commoditization of food crops and the ag policy introduced by Nixon in the early 70s. The fact that genetically altering plants is a crime against nature (and therefore humanity) isn’t really acknowledged by proponents, and the question of whether yielding 200 bushels of chemical-laden nutrient-deficient corn on an acre of ecological desert is indeed “moving forward” isn’t asked either.
I understand the economic imperative of increasing yields to a farmer-businessman growing for a commodity market, but the same rationale of “economic imperative” has given us a whole litany of crimes in the past and present, including slavery, sweatshops, superfund sites, asbestosis, pollution, deforestation, black lung, forced migration, genocide, corruption, and medical neglect… I’m just wondering if it’s really worth lending credence to the same tired excuse.
I can not do justice to this subject, but I urge you to look at a film about GMO’s and corporations, including Monsanto, and what they’re doing in Hawai’i.
http://www.pinkyshow.org/archives/presents/080210/
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQDOdnRBLqc
This will add to the above article, and help you better understand what’s going on with GMO corporations.
*(I have no affiliation with PinkyShow, other than that I like to watch their productions. All of my rants seen here and anywhere are my own frustrations with injustice, so don’t firebomb Pinky for anything I’ve said.)
Learfield deserves a little credit for keeping Brownfield on the air for so many years, when there’s nobody as critical of any corporation at CBS, NBC, ABC, or almost anywhere else on the airwaves.
The real bad guys here are Monsanto and the Democrats who allowed corporations to achieve the status of “full legal persons,” so that Monsanto could sue Learfield out of existence, even if they don’t have much of a case for libel or slander or whatever. By the time the lawsuit was settled, Learfield would be out a zillion dollars in legal fees, and probably bankrupt.
The Democrats enabled corporations to achieve their current legal staus, where they can legally intimidate everybody who dares to criticize them, and neither one of the Democratic contenders is likely to oppose this overwhelming corporate power, even if one of them manages to get elected.
Obama with his friend the slum-lord Rezko and Hillary with her friends at Walmart…
Monsanto will still rule the airwaves no matter which one of these corporate tools gets elected, and it isn’t much of an excuse for the Democrats that McCain would be even worse.
I thought you’d like to check out the political allegory of mine that I just found a literary agent for. It’s a story set in the context of a teacher discussing with his class all of the evidence that the Bush administration is as corrupt as it is incompetent…and how to rectify the Constitutional crisis we face. It’s couched in a discussion about the urgent need to stop abusing Mother Nature. I wrote in 3 dozen celebrities to play the students, so it’s very funny despite how infuriating it is. You can read it at www.stoplittering.com/theswitch.htm and, yes, StopLittering.com is my site.
Indian farmers took on monsanto over their attempts to patent seeds. India has hundreds of thousands of small farmers and they can have a real impact. In this case- I think it was Vandana Shiva’s idea, they made a declaration of seed freedom, asserting that life cannot be privatized, owned and manipulated the way monsanto attempts to do. capitalists may be able to get anything they want from the u.s. patent office, and they may be backed by the wto, but Indians have been farming their land for thousands of years, and know what they are doing and do not need american agribusiness to tell them how to farm.
or who owns the seeds.
STOP GM FOOD
This is a lot of very interesting of reading, but click on this item and then read/scroll down and find how “Grassroots Consumer Action Could Halt Use of GM Crops in US”
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_10691.cfm
Glad I remembered to come back and check to see if anyone had a laugh or a bone to pick with me,
“Siouxrose May 1st, 2008 9:24 pm
WHATEVER4: You are a voice of hope in the forum… as when the center no longer holds, members of “the right” and “the left” find common ground! Amen to that! Little question the “leaders” have corrupted every nuance and fiber of our nation, and we must act in unison to bring the beast down.”
I’m glad I checked back, thank you, especially today, it’s such a quiet lonely day today, ‘cept for the little earthquake this morning. We don’t get many of those, except of course for the little one’s that keep happening since Apr 29. I’m not far from Monsanto, and New Madrid is alive and well.
Speaking of the left and the right and sanity, lately, when I read and hear about Supreme court justices saying such insane things, knowing they’re a few of the people who REALLY let us down, it just amazes me. Selling books. and people buy them. All that education and experience wasted, trust of the people betrayed, sold out, flushed down a toliet. Our justice system hasn’t guarded our rights, as if rights now are inconvienent and silly to the bottom line.
Fascism takes many forms. One definition is the merger of business and government. Another sign is the suppression and repression of individuals and personal expression. Corporations are dictatorships. The shareholders are powerless to control just about everything. So it should come as no surprise that this would occur and they board will say that they are doing it on behalf of the…you guessed it, shareholders.