Every time I'm about to finish my story on drought resistant wheat, I come across more horror stories, some of which you may have already heard. In any case this is worth repeating a thousand times: a report by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations (the relevant passage is 51). This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country’s food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.
Welcome to the Monsanto World.
As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers are no longer permitted to re-use seeds of "new" plant varieties registered under the law. In practical terms, this means they cannot save those seeds for re-use either. Instead, they are forced to buy seeds from US corporations — which can include seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. The new law is presented as being necessary to ensure the supply of good quality seeds in Iraq and to facilitate Iraq's accession to the WTO. What it will actually do is facilitate the penetration of Iraqi agriculture by the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical - the corporate giants that control seed trade across the globe. Eliminating competition from farmers is a prerequisite for these companies to open up operations in Iraq, which the new law has achieved. Taking over the first step in the food chain is their next move. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve.
The following video should be viewed by anyone who eats:
Food sovereignty, I would have thought, is the right of people to define their own food and agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, what should be grown locally and what should be imported. The demand for food sovereignty and the opposition to the patenting of seeds has been central to the small farmers' struggle all over the world over the past two decades.
Another report shows how GM crops have led to a rise in the use of pesticides worldwide. They have failed to address hunger and poverty including for farmers in developing countries. Yet the biotech industry has promoted GM crops as solutions to these issues. Friends of the Earth's assessment of GM crops shows there is little evidence to support the industry's claims.
Take Action! Sign the Millions Against Monsanto petition, demanding that the Monsanto Corporation: stop intimidating small family farmers. Stop force-feeding untested and unlabeled genetically engineered foods on consumers. Stop using billions of dollars of US taypayers' money to subsidize genetically engineered crops - cotton, soybeans, corn, and canola.
Writing about Monsanto and what they really do would take several hundred pages to properly table. There are a number of books written on the subject and comprehensive online articles here, here, here and here. Sad, sad and sad.
But don't be fooled into buying "BioEvolution", a book by Michael Fumento, a writer who got $60,000 from Monsanto to sing its praises: he listed some of the products Monsanto has on tap, such as drought-resistant corn, crops that could reduce the need for environment-damaging fertilizers, and soybeans that might reduce heart disease etc...where have I heard that kind of story before?
If you're still not convinced that Roundup is a highly toxic and persistent pesticide, rock on, while at the same time remembering the other contributions that Monsanto has made to society such as: Saccharin, Astroturf, agent orange, dioxin, sulphuric acid, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), plastics and synthetic fabrics, research on uranium for the Manhattan Project that led to the construction of nuclear bombs, styrene monomer, an endless line of pesticides and herbicides (Roundup being the best selling), rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone that makes cows ill), genetically engineered crops (corn, potatoes, tomatoes, soy beans, cotton), and its most significant product to date: Lies, Factual Distortions and Omissions. Here's one of the distortions that Monsanto had on its website a while back. "Sustainability - the idea that the resources and people of this world are finite. That for any business decision we make, we must consider the effect it will have on us and our children. That the products we make must not use up all of a natural resource, or even worse, contaminate what is left behind." Nuff said.