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Why I Still Oppose Genetically Modified Crops
For the past dozen years, I've been writing editorials opposing the introduction of genetically modified crops. When I began, genetically modified corn and soybeans were still just getting a foothold in American fields. Now, of course, hundreds of millions of acres here and abroad have been planted to these new varieties, which are usually engineered to withstand the application of pesticides - pesticides usually made by the same companies that engineer the seeds. Even wheat and rice producers, latecomers to the genetically modified table, are feeling the pressure to convert.
There has been a frenzy in the grain markets in the past couple of years - a new volatility in futures and in prices on the ground - that seems to favor genetically modified crops. It makes sense. The cost of conventionally-grown grain goes up and up because there is less and less of it. This leaves the world open to the nearly unchecked proliferation of genetically modified varieties.
After a dozen years, I still oppose genetically modified crops. This may sound like sheer truculence on my part - a Luddite reluctance to accept the future. It is certainly dispiriting. Like many people, I feel, as I did a decade ago, that genetically modified crops were introduced with bland assurances of safety based on studies from small test plots, a far different thing from the uncontrolled global experiment we now find ourselves in the midst of.
Scientists are still discovering the extent to which genetic fragments from these new crops can drift into other organisms. There is no evidence yet of catastrophic drift, where a genetic shard from a new crop cripples other organisms. But there is plenty of evidence to show that genetically modified fragments are turning up in places they're not wanted. The worry is not just how widespread the altered versions of familiar crops, like corn and soybeans, are becoming. It's also that many more conventional crops are being modified and that many more landscapes and ecosystems, yet untouched, will be planted with genetically modified varieties.
These crops close the circle on the farmer's knowledge, finally eliminating, after 10,000 years, the farmer's role in the genetics of agriculture. Genetically modified crops are rigorously licensed forms of intellectual property. Every seed is a binding contract with stiff penalties attached. This represents the final transfer of the collective farming wisdom of the human race into corporate hands. Only the minutest fraction of the DNA in a genetically modified crop has been modified. The rest is the result of the infinite elaboration of working farmers choosing their own seeds, season after season, over all those thousands of years.
But the trouble with genetically modified crops isn't merely the fact that they're genetically modified. It's that they embody so completely the troubling logic of modern agriculture. They demonstrate the tendency of commercial seeds to drive out traditional, locally adapted varieties, a pattern that has been intensifying since the introduction of hybrid corn in the 1930s. They exemplify the consistent bias toward expensive high-tech solutions, when, in much of the world, simple low-tech solutions still make much better, and much more affordable sense. They foster the spread of commodity crops, grown for cash, in place of subsistence crops.
Genetically modified crops create the illusion of more and better choices when, in fact, they represent a narrowing of genetic ownership and a model of genetic diversity that is unattainable outside the laboratory. Because of that, they may well turn out to decrease food security, especially as new non-food varieties - crops genetically modified to produce pharmaceuticals, for instance - go into production. The risk is enhanced by the licensing restrictions on genetically modified seeds that prevent independent research on their environmental impact. In effect, the GM seed industry is able to stifle research, even by agricultural scientists who are sympathetic to the technology.
Above all, genetically modified crops give the illusion of revolutionizing farming without actually changing much of anything. Farmers who plant them do spend less time - and less fuel - in the field, which is a good thing. But trying to pack a revolution into a seed won't do when the entire system needs revolutionizing. Industrial agriculture is antithetical to diversity of every kind - biological, social, cultural, political. To understand its real effects on diversity you have only to look at Brazilian soybeans, a commodity crop, growing where there was once Amazonian forest.
There is no disputing the enormous productivity of industrial agriculture, as long as you measure productivity solely in terms of the relationship between yield and labor and pay no attention to the health of the land or the well being of the people who live there. But in pursuing the unrelenting logic of an industrial version of agriculture we have left a world of alternatives unexplored.
The human species is still running ahead of the Malthusian prediction that we will outgrow our ability to feed ourselves. But this is a deeply troubling time for agriculture, as even a quick scan of the headlines reveals. Soaring food prices in the poorest parts of the world, soaring profits in the richest, ongoing - and wholly unnecessary - subsidies, growing competition between food and non-food crops, the list goes on and on.
To Americans, the continued resistance to genetically modified crops in other parts of the world may look Quixotic, a refusal to accept a done deal. But it is more than resistance to a type of seed. It is also resistance to a model of agriculture whose failings are all too plain.
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Show All"But the trouble with genetically modified crops isn't merely the fact that they're genetically modified. It's that they embody so completely the troubling logic of modern agriculture. They demonstrate the tendency of commercial seeds to drive out traditional, locally adapted varieties,"
Not just modern agriculture, but modern food production in general. Thus, generic food that tastes like crap, pumped full of synthetics is everywhere, whereas food made with care and love with good quality ingredients, with all the aroma, flavour and variety of local variations, is hard to find. For example, "cheese food" instead of real cheese made from raw milk from cows / goats raised on foraging in that particular area.
Sioux Rose
RFLOH: A local (North Florida redneck zone) couple helped me move a few years ago, so I thought I'd treat them to breakfast. There was a wonderful cafe that had a variety of vegetarian items and its whole grain blueberry pancakes were great. The poor guy barely touched those pancakes. He was so accustomed to pancakes tasting like a fake Aunt Jemina mix that he was repelled by the taste of something more healthy or natural!
I know another guy who lives near me that thinks iceberg lettuce with a tomato = a healthy salad. The poor thing eats white bread sandwiches and doesn't like the taste of whole grain bread.
My point is that following an analogy to US politics, so many have been spoonfed the artificial for so long that they cannot even recognize the genuine element. Food for thought, at essence! And the vast majority are overfed faux filler, but totally under-nourished which must factor into the lack of intellectual engagement in real events, and the pervasiveness of things like road rage and rage in general.
The worst thing is that so many people have never even really tasted real food. It isn't just that they are used to crap synthetic food, often, they have never even tasted the real stuff.
Similarly, they dislike vegetables / vegetarian food, because they think that eating vegetables mean eating some dry wilted iceberg lettuce with a couple slices of tasteless tomatoes and dried out cucumbers as you point out..
Heirloom seeds provide us with a healthy choice, usable seeds for replanting, and a diverse seed supply. Millions of backyard gardens are preserving these plants and providing not only healthy food but freedom from centralized agricultural oppression by corporations. Organic gardens are all that may separate us from starvation by design.
I agree with the message, but not the number. There are but a handfull of farmers who actually save seeds, and the number is shrinking from what I've encountered. I'd like it if you are right on this though. Monsanto has bought out most of the seed companies in the US, so even if you buy 'normal' seeds, you are still growing the Monsanto till.
I wonder, with agra-business gaining more and more of the genetic patents, who long will it be before it becomes 'illegal' to teach someone how to save seeds? Infringement upon corporate 'protected technology'.....
the gmo debate is yet another "fruit" (pardon the pun) of the non-tax paying rockefellers and their dr strangelove desire to control the world, not through high minded and carefully reasoned public policy but rather by brute force and subversion.
originally there were four or five brothers - now reduced to one - the 92 year old vampire david, * brother nelson died of a heart attack banging his "secretary" late one night at the office.
together these sick fucks set out to control the world's oil supply and the world's food supply.
their agent was the nwo vampire henry kissinger once described thusly: "like sludge out of a swamp without a spark of life....no soul, a slip of life, a kind of ghoul (and) a sort of lubricant (to keep the ship of state running)." So he did by "tak(ing) complete control (of) US foreign policy" as both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. Further, he "was to make food a centerpiece of his diplomacy along with oil geopolitics."
In the midst of a worldwide drought and stock market collapse, consider Henry Kissinger's classified memo in April, 1974. It was on a secret project called National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) that was shaped by Rockefeller interests and aimed to adopt a "world population plan of action" for drastic global population control - meaning to reduce it. The US led the effort, and it worked like this - it made birth control in developing countries a prerequisite for US aid. summed it up in blunt terms: "if these inferior races get in the way of our securing ample, cheap raw materials, then we must find ways to get rid of them."
"control oil you control a country - control food and you control the people" Kissinger
let's not forget monsanto as well as the rockefellers
their policy is called eugenics, a term which they used until ww2 when the nazis destroyed its semantic cache
the nwo descended on brazil in the 70's and began their mass, forced sterilization program
After 14 years of the program, the Brazilian Health Ministry discovered shocking reports of an estimated 44% of all Brazilian women between ages 14 and 55 permanently sterilized. in addition, an estimated 90% of Brazilian women of African descent were sterilized - without consent, typically dr's tied their tubes when they gave birth
Kissinger embraced a policy of killing off 500 million people by 2000 (a target he met with ease through war, starvation and inoculation/pandemics)
food is a weapon he said, and he developed the argument that if "we" 5% of the world wished to continue to squandering of 50% of the world's resources then an austere program of eugenics needed to be embraced to prevent "them" from stopping us. "no more mr nice guy" was his motto
Long before Kissinger (and his assistant Brent Scowcroft) made population reduction official US foreign policy, the Rockefellers were experimenting on humans. JD III led the effort. In the 1950s, while Nelson exploited cheap Puerto Rican labor in New York and on the island, brother JD III conducted mass sterilization experiments on their women. By the mid-1960s, Puerto Rico's Public Health Department estimated the toll - one-third or more of them of child-bearing age (unsuspecting poor women) were permanently sterilized.
john d rockefller III expressed his views in a 1961 UN Food and Agriculture Organization lecture: "To my mind, population growth (and its reduction) is second only to control of atomic weapons as the paramount problem of the day." He meant, of course, its unwanted parts to preserve valuable resources for the privileged. He was also influenced by eugenicists, race theorists and Malthusians at the Rockefeller Foundation who believed they had the right to decide who lives or dies.
we the sheeple have paid for he rockefller's world domination plan and always have - they hide their money in their tax exempt foundation
now we are in iraq, pakistan an afghanistan for the rockefllers who have ironically abandoned us to unemployed-with-no-health-care peasantry while they sit back counting the cash bailout for their bank - the funds they are using to cash finance their hostile takeover of the world banking system, to bring in the nwo
we are paying for it all...
gmo's are just a part of a larger plan of evilness beyond even stephen king's imagination - and like i say - we are financing it all...
Can you say "spermacidal race-specific corn"?
Even a ghoul like Kissinger can be partly right though his aims, methods, intent and reasoning are wrong.
Science shows that the biosphere can support only so many humans, their animals, agriculture, energy and resource consumption before nature's intervention re-establishes equilibrium to our global ecosystem. We are currently getting a taste of natural ecological corrections through resource scarcity, wars, plagues, crime, pollution, impoverishment, global warming and more.
Why do some think humans are exceptional? The dinosaurs lived far longer than we have been on earth. They were far more successful than our species because they lived in balance with their environment. Were it not for a meteor, they might still be the ruling species.
To deny the science behind limits to growth is the fundamentalism that we can continue to grow, consume and expand our populations forever.
ez: how long have you been flying the nazi party line - this false notion of over population
you don't work for the rockefellers do you - they believe the same thing
btw: the nazis based their eugenics program on(and were financed by_ the rockefllers
in mein kampf hitler gave a shout out to the americans for their eugenics programs - he admired the ameican initiative in racial purity
ar nuremburg the nazis based their defense on american public policy and often quoted oliver wendell holmes - another noted racist - as jusitfication for their own programs in eugenics, after all, they said - the rockefellers funded us
you can't read about american nazism because the rcokefellers own the education system and it don't fancy them to teach real history
for obvious reasons
Yes, the world can support only so many living things. Yes, at some point, population becomes a problem. The question is what is that point?
There is no real science that "shows" just how many living things can be supported.
"We are currently getting a taste of natural ecological corrections through resource scarcity, wars, plagues, crime, pollution, impoverishment, global warming and more."
There have always been wars, plagues, crime, pollution, impoverishment, resource scarcity. Even when the human population was much much much smaller. Where is your scientific evidence that wars etc are "ecological correction"? Asserting that it is so does not make it so.
Sioux Rose
LEBEAU: I don't know if ONE case proves your post and what it states, but I know one such Puerto Rican woman from New York. She conceived a child at the tender age of 14 and her parents more or less forced her to give that baby up for adoption. I met her many years later and her tale moved me profoundly. Indeed when she went to the hospital to deliver that baby the doctor sterilized her against her will (or knowledge). At an opportune moment, this young woman then 15 fled the hospital with the baby she had begged the nurses to get a glimpse of. She rode the New York subway well into the night, with that baby in her arms. A stranger, a true good samaritan asked, "Little girl, what are you doing on this train so late... with a baby?" And the woman took this girl and her child in and allowed her to live there for 2 years. In that time she got her GDE. I met her in Puerto Rico when she was in her late thirties, her GORGEOUS well-educated son by her side, looking almost like her brother due to their closeness in age. I thought her story was one of raw courage. Had she not taken HER baby, she would have never been able to give birth to another child or exercised her right to be a Mother. It was criminal what was done to her... although she outwitted the racist system. I wonder if your statistics are true? Many women might not admit this fact, particularly if they were faced with giving birth to out-of-wedlock children thirty or so years ago. Given the church creed of penance, some might have been led to believe they deserved sterilization for having out of wedlock sex!
sr: its not my case to prove - i am quoting from the puerto rican government - public record
nothing personal in there - it is a quote...
Sioux Rose
Okay: If you stipulated where you found your source in the original posting, I must have missed it. Thank you for elaborating. News can seem like mere numbers, whereas a true story tends to personalize what those integers actually mean.
sr: its public record
here:
The intentional use of non-consensual sexual sterilization has been a tool for controlling indigenous and Latin American women for many decades. Many of these violations of a woman or girl's right to self- determination are only coming to light now.
Within Latin America, Peru and Mexico are examples of countries where sterilization targeting indigenous women and youth has continued to be used in recent years. Mexico continues this practice today. Sterilization is often accompanied by threats from medical doctors just before childbirth. These doctors lie about the irreversibility of the procedure, or they psychologically force vulnerable female patients to permanently give up their life-long right to have children.
Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, has the highest percentage of sterilized women in the entire world.
The racist anti-Latina and anti-indigenous nature of such forced sterilization is more than obvious.
from this web site:
http://www.libertadlatina.org/Crisis_Forced_Sterilization.htm
the complete rockefeller psyop is laid out by f william engdahl in his must read book called the seeds of destruction
here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/books/SoD.html
hope this is helpful - i know how caring you are and you should ask yourself if you want to assume the burden of learning the truth about our country and our history before getting into this stuff
its real ugly...
Sioux Rose
LEBEAU: I'll have to work up to reading it, build up a tolerance. I'd like to see THIS type of info broadcast to all the right-to-life groups who presume their political favorites are on their side! If they knew of the forced sterilization campaign, perhaps they'd see their "oh, so life-savoring" leaders for what and who they truly are! I have to admit, I had no idea how pervasive this campaign was. It's interesting I did know quite well one of its (apparently many) victims!
Ah, Lebeau, thanks for your paranoid rantings! They help me digest my lovely genetically modified lunch!
You may want to check your sources again. You quote the National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200)as saying: "if these inferior races get in the way of our securing ample, cheap raw materials, then we must find ways to get rid of them." But when I searched the document (here's the link http://www.lifesitenews.com/waronfamily/nssm200/nssm200.pdf), I found that this quote does not exist.
Then in a later post on the subject, you claim this: "in mein kampf hitler gave a shout out to the americans for their eugenics programs - he admired the ameican initiative in racial purity" Once again, I searched Mein Kampf (link: http://meinkampf.nfshost.com/index.php) and no such reference is made.
Either you are making things up, Lebeau, or your tinfoil hat needs to be adjusted so you get better reception!
This oft-ignored (in the USA at least) facet of the creeping corporatization of modern life, with all its' looming and disturbing facets that smack of "Soylent Green" & the original "Rollerball," is a truly disturbing trend that ranks right up there with Global Warming & nuclear waste.
Just say no to Frankenfood!
"There is no evidence yet of catastrophic drift...", perhaps, but we do know of the environmental catastrophe of the ever increasing loads of herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers on our water, soil and air. Turning the land into a factory that produces herbicide resistant plants that have pesticide in every cell will eventually turn the planet into one big dustbowl.
It just kills me how Monsanto can continue using "marketing" lies to promote its products. I know there are other genetic mutilation laboratories out there, but Monsanto is the one with the ad money, and they even underwrite NPR with their lies.
"There is no evidence yet of catastrophic drift..." What defines a catastrophe? Many an organic crop has been contaminated by GMO pollen drift, leaving the grower with a crop that cannot be sold at all, or can only be sold well below an organic grower's cost.
Monsanto is a tough cookie to conquer. First, St Louis has a dumb mayor who gets into controversial plans such as stadium building and misc buildings as his high priority. Second, like the country, like the city, ignorance in the electorate. The good news is a lot of older people are actually starting to question Monsanto though I wished I could say the same for people around my age. Third, Washington is subsidizing that company just like it does every other big agri corp. Fourth, then there's the UN of all things which defends such giant weasels.
Most older folks in the city are very sensitive to health care so maybe they can do a better job of getting through to the mayor. Maybe then Monsanto will be forced to spend its money defending itself than on misleading ads and controlling NPR. Stay tuned.
Sioux Rose
BLISS DOUBT & CPADDOCK: Excellent posts, and thanks for connecting "the dots." Edgar Cayce through channeled transmissions spoke about the legendary lost continent of Atlantis, and he warned during readings given during the l940's and l950's that the Atlanteans were reincarnating and bringing their genetic technology (part of the soul memory & record) along with them. As the near total loss of the hybridized banana crop teaches, this focus on mono-culture and lining up fields of the same type plant is an invitation to that pest that would prove disastrous for the whole damned thing; and damned it is, since it is MOTHER NATURE'S way to plant entire communities based on reciprocity as well as a rich and vital diversity.
When I see the rows of orange trees in Florida, or lately watermelon, or even the animals penned in, the linearity of their lives, everything dictated to fall, military-like into neat, orderly rows... it demonstrates what to me constitutes an insult to Life, itself. This "penning in" is a form of imprisoning the very force OF life. The same arrogance is seen in the way the forest department sets up "controled burns." Seems to me that approach intends to pre-empt Mother Nature from deciding where SHE wants to prune out the undergrowth. A lightning strike can go anywhere... burns or otherwise.
It can also be asked, who gets to define what is a catastrophe? Many people, including myself, will say it has already taken place and grows larger with each passing day, because the only thing that makes GM viable, as a business, is if a large, expanding and hungry population is there to be taken advantage of and profited through, from the start.
An ever growing world population is indeed the main premise forwarded by this industry and their promoters, when making the case for the necessity of these crops and creatures. They shall feed the world we are told, however in their world, the number of bellies to satisfy, will continuously and necessarily have to increase, if successful growth of the bottom line and the company is to be realized.
Should we not then consider the certainty of the catastrophic effects of such a project on the planet, if GM's success is solely dependant on an ever increasing world population? Today, with over a billion people living within the grasp of starvation, the question of GM's viability to feed the world is, as I believe, effectively mooted. In other words, the catastrophe is here already.
Regardless of the threat of genetic drift or contamination by recombinant organisms, the problem that GM claims to solve, may actually exacerbate a catastrophe in progress, and that shall continue unabated, so long as we disregard the limitations of the environment, the planet and those of the human species. I have one last question; can human over population, of the planet, be considered a form of pollution? Discuss.
Discuss.
Okay. I think that some of the most populous countries use their resources much more gently and respectfully than some of the less populous countries. In some countries where people have a dozen kids routinely, they use less resources than a family of four in our own country. Here are some links about that:
http://worldpopulationbalance.org/population_energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
I also think that what we'd call excessive reproduction is related to poverty. In poverty conditions people tend to have more children. Health care, including birth control methods, are out of reach, and more children die before reaching adulthood. When people from wretchedly poor countries immigrate here, the generations born here thereafter will have fewer children. Thus, human overpopulation of the planet is not a form of pollution but an expression of poverty, usually related to injustice. Again, currently the world has 6 billion in population, and grows enough food to feed 9 billion, while each night grocery stores close the doors on piles and piles of unsold food, and billions in the world live in poverty.
The only kind of external population control, or government population policy, that I believe in is universal reproductive freedom. People who don't believe in abortion are lately proposing that even the birth control pill is morally wrong. When women know they are free, they will more vigorously seek ways to prevent pregnancies and to provide good health care to the children they have.
Your turn.
VK I completely agree with your stand on GMO's but I don't think your condemnation goes nearly deep enough. GMO's are a plague upon the land and its inhabitants. Monsanto and Co. are sowing the seeds of destruction around the planet, and they truly know not what they the long term effects of their actions will be. This represents one of the most insideous and monstrous corporate schemes ever devised, resulting in nutritionaly deficient food-like substances which are labeled "substancially equivilant" for patent purposes, but not labeled at all for the consumer to have a choice. The tendrils of the GMO plot are invading every corner of our lives, from government agencies to pristine rainforests, from indigenous farmers to the world bank. It is all interconnected and has but one motive....profit. It is a system which is energy-intensive and will leave us stranded with contaminated croplands and a dependance on petro based
industry, just at a time when peak oil effects are going to be felt more and more. This is the same sort of callous disregard of individual rights and the suffering their greed is causing as we got from the Banksters. They are all part of the same club, and we aren't in it. Get your heirloom seeds and start a garden now.....get off of meat and dairy as they are the primary recipients of the GM crop..... Watch "Food Inc."...... Read William Engdahl's "Seeds of Destruction".....Since you ARE what you eat, do you really want to consume "Frankenfood"? The people of earth are being held hostage to the twisted values of the corporatocracy, and all the wrong people have all the power.
Rescinding corporate person-hood, and perhaps a permanent ban on copyright protection for any form of live seeds, animals, and the like, would be best. Unfortunately, nothing that sweeping will ever take place. The green revolution myth began with rice that had extra Vitamin A content. Rather than developing a wider array of plant varieties, better crop rotation, and less damaging tillage methods, the agricultural industrial complex removed agriculture from the commons. The hunger for quarterly growth will always be more insatiable than the hunger for things so quaint as heirloom crops. The wrong people do indeed have all of the power.
The real reason for the conversion to GMO is the same reason small farmers were duped into allow Big Agri to buy and crush their farms. It all has to do with clinging to the same old for profit system of putting quantity before quality. Before, there happened to be a lot in supply and some clowns on this planet thought that it was ok to just go right ahead and do their whole sale volume sale for cheaps all for the want of money. No attention would be paid to people's health, the environment, or even the people's economy. All that mattered were that the big weasels won hook or crook. So now the supplies are dwindling and even imports cannot keep up so it's my guess that GMO is their next desperate move. With GMO, they can pretend healthy foods and good environment and yet keep their disastrous for profit system running.
One objection I have to the author is where he says that Americans are looking at the resistance as queer. I disagree. A lot more Americans are seeing through this and are trying to grow their own. Unfortunately, most of big agri is not only protected by Washington but also by the UN as well. Both the UN and Washington need to butt out of subsidizing Big Agri and leave the companies to local and state governments to tackle.
"Farmers who plant them [gm]do spend less time - and less fuel - in the field, which is a good thing." Yes, indeed. The yields of gm soy are just now catching up with conventional varieties. The yields of corn hybrids and gm corn are tremendously increased over the heirloom open pollinated choices. Ideally a greater diversity of crops would be good for a wide variety of reasons, but the drawbacks of additional equipment requirements and increased marketing risks make most farmers quite reluctant to change.
Quantity vs. quality. GM = nutritionaly deficient food. Furthermore, pesticide or "Round-up ready" resistance genetic modification means that the plant produces its own pesticide, and this goes into your gut when you eat it, and thrives there, killing off beneficial flora, for the rest of your miserable life. Thanks for caring, Big Ag
CEOs, HMOs, IPOs, GMOs - they are all killers.
Every species -- the flies in the fields, the crops in the fields and the humans who eat the crops -- has outliers and limits. The flies are modified by low levels of pesticide to die off again and again until the survivors can all tolerate pesticides.
Genetic modification specifically puts vast numbers of new chemicals where they don't belong. When fish genes are inserted into a plant, an enormous length of DNA goes in, not just one little part. Genes have never been transplanted from an animal to a plant before, not that we know of. In any case, the strange parts of the genes haven't had a million generations to breed out of the new plant.
Certain humans can't eat the new chemicals in the genetically modified foods. They get allergic reactions. They get ill. It's not good enough that 99% of humans can eat the new food without dying. We need 100% safety. If we lose 1% of the population from one safety issue and 1% from another, pretty soon we have 50% of our families dying from cancer, from diabetes, from dementia, from multiple sclerosis, from heart disease. Every one of these illnesses is caused by cheapened-out food. Which of your own family members has died early from something the government could have prevented?
And so, humans will evolve under stress. One type of humans will trust their government and will trust major food corporations. These people are often going to be dead. Their children are often going to be dead too, and their future generations are all dead. The other type of humans will not trust their government and will not trust major food corporations to protect them from personal death. These are the breeding survivors.
OK, there's no specific Monsanto gene for sheer stupidity in humans. You don't need to choose a breeding partner based on a DNA test. Not trusting the government to safeguard your family's lives is a learned behavior.
"It's not good enough that 99% of humans can eat the new food without dying. We need 100% safety."
Please name one item anywhere on the planet that can be guaranteed 100% safe in all circumstances. Total safety does not exist, and never will.
"...dying from cancer, from diabetes, from dementia, from multiple sclerosis, from heart disease. Every one of these illnesses is caused by cheapened-out food."
All caused by food? Can you recommend a reputable source?
"Which of your own family members has died early from something the government could have prevented?" Can you point to the place in the Constitution that provides the government the power to prevent illnesses in individuals? Not trusting the government or others to provide personal safety is wise. It is also called personal responsibility.
But, but...what if we might stumble upon genetically modified marijuana....that was immune to theft!
Perhaps a strain that could read your heart if you touched it and make you see God if you were misbehaving.
I’ve lived in the Midwest for all of my 57 years and I can remember as an adolescent I was tasked with washing the windshield with every purchase of gas during bug season (full service was available back then but we used self service).
Today the number of bugs smashed on the windshield of my car is about 15% of what it was 40 years ago when I started driving. Yes today’s cars are more aerodynamic and the 65 mph speed limit of my youth is now 55 on most rural roads. I do not think these differences can account for not having enough bugs smashed on the windshield after driving 250 miles on a tank of gas to not require the cleaning of the windshield. In Indiana most rural roads that are lined by GM corn and soybean fields many of which have been genetically modified to grow their own insecticide.
And while we are on the topic, Roundup, the herbicide that many crops have been modified to tolerate, even when applied according to label directions, kills 100% of the amphibians it comes into contact with. You ask how did it ever get approval. Simple, the approval did not require any testing on amphibians.
When there are no more tree frogs singing at night will the book that wakes America to the problem be called “Silent Night”?
I doubt it Rachel Carlson’s “Silent Spring” wouldn’t find a publisher today.
Something like 90% of those bugs that used to mash on windshields were corn borer moths. Bt corn has greatly reduced their numbers. Come to think of it, cleaner windshields may have saved a few lives! Gm corn saves lives!
I'd hesitate to accept your comment as 'fact', in that over 90% of all insects in the world are benign to agricultural crops, and less than 1% is actually harmful. Patting ourselves on the back for getting rid of a few of the detrimental insects is no consolation for all the beneficial insects distroyed.
The transfering of GM genes to unintended species has alread been reported with the GM cotton farmers. Though it seemed like a great idea for three or four years, today there is a reported 'super' pig-weed that is invading the fields which is said to be more devistating than before GM cotton was introduced.
Nobody can 'prove' that GM crops are related to the decline of bees (all types, not just the honey bee), butterflies and bats, but history has a way of vindicating the skeptics. By the way, how many months out of the growing season was the corn borer in the 'moth' stage, and was that the only season that the windshields got messy? Can't say "you're wrong", I just doubt that you're right.
Weeds developing resistance to herbicides are and will always be a problem. Farmers deal with it. Prior to the introduction of bt in corn, the corn borer moths were generally very thick in the corn belt from about mid-June until corn maturity. Generally there were 3 generations per year. The larvae would tunnel into and weaken the stalks bringing on disease and increasing down corn at harvest. The season's last generation would generally feed on the ear, causing kernel damage and sometimes ear dropage. When I was younger, before bt corn, farmers would use windshield bug splatter as a reminder to begin assessing fields for the need to spray insecticides for the first generation. The second and third generations were generally active over a wider time frame, making further insecticidal treatments difficult and financially uncertain.
There are strains of corn which resist the corn borer naturally. One giant monoculture that we continuously try to manipulate, to our own detriment, is a problem, not a solution.
I assume you mean varieties of corn with especially thick stalks. It is true that they will maintain their standability quite well, even under heavy assault. However, the plant energy needed to produce that stalk leaves less energy for ear development. I don't harvest silage. I only harvest the ear. The large amount of remaining "trash" is wonderful for my soil. I don't monoculture. I rotate with beans. I do understand that having a rotation with more than 2 crops is preferable, but is more difficult from a financial standpoint, especially because of increased equipment needs and generally lower financial profits from other crops. With farming, the finances are extremely important. I have to compete with others for land rent. Otherwise I'm out of business.
GM corn puts the insecticide IN YOU. You can't wash it away...
If we do not have Genetic diversity we will have death. A species must adapt to an ecosystem. Forcing an ecosystem to adapt to a species is contrary to natural law.
The "arms race" we try to carry on against Mother nature will result in Mutually assured destruction with Mother Nature ultimately prevailing because she can afford to wait 200 million years after she has eliminated us.
She does not need US. We NEED her.
"There is no disputing the enormous productivity of industrial agriculture, as long as you measure productivity solely in terms of the relationship between yield and labor and pay no attention to the health of the land or the well being of the people who live there."
This doesn't even account for the hugely expensive inputs of industrial agriculture beyond labor. The elites are plundering the earth, causing enormous environmental damage in order to produce food in a terribly inefficient way. Just compare petro-corn with carob. Carob produces three times the yield of petro-corn. Now let's compare the costs and benefits of each of these. Carob thrives on marginal land, petro-corn requires very rich soil. Carob needs no irrigation. Petro-corn depletes great aquifers. Carob needs no fertilizer. Petro-corn requires tons of synthetic fertilizer per acre, year after year, on and on. Carob needs no pesticides. Petro-corn requires Round-Dupe and buddy you better have the cash. Carob seed costs nothing. Petro-corn seed costs you an arm and a leg, year after year, decade after decade. Carob needs no cultivation. Petro-corn requires petro-intensive disking, planting and toxin-application. Carob supports ecosystems of many other species by pulling minerals up, provides shade, regulates temperature and humidity, cleans the air. Petro-corn depletes the soil and destroys ecosystems. This is just one comparison. Compare all of the industrial crops with various natural food-bearing species and you'll see why US elites are insane.
Excellent post, thank you.
So much depressing news in the world. I really think corporatist's would sell their families lifeboat seats on the Titanic for a few hundred percent profit. They leave no stone, leaf, tree, wave, or cloud untouched when it comes to profit.
I go to India every year for a month and there are constant stories and unbelievable numbers of stories/persons about farmers who commit suicide as a last out from the failed promise of GMO crops. The lie continues. A most interesting book on the total social, moral, and health crisis is Will Tuttle's " World Peace Diet... Eating for Spiritual health and Social Harmony."
Voltaire in the last thoughts in his famous book "Candide" said we must "Cultivate our gardens."
The food production model is totally out of whack, and the GMO Monsanto is the crowning pathology of such. Never has so much "food" been grown by so few people - completely unnatural and sustainable. Now with collapsing economies and loss of jobs. Many of us must return to the land and live and grow healthy food and ideas. We will not be helpless peasants but a cross section of like minded survivors that will set examples on how to live sustainable and holistically. We will be doctors, lawyers and indian chiefs who will not be easily manipulated because of our wisdom, education, and truthful and honest purpose. Find your peer group of friends and head for the hills ..... or a big back yard.
Good luck