For weeks now I have watched as Scared Human has been posting about Monsanto intimidation tactics and methods regarding seed cleaners in the midwest. And though his writing style is not the one I would use, his facts are in order and Monsanto does use mafia style bullying on small producers and farmers. If you follow his links you can see he isn't the only one sounding the alarm, even if the TM isn't covering this.
Why is it this community can believe the TM doesn't do its job about everything else, but not about this?
Today I saw an essay on HuffPost by a UK writer (because this story wouldn't even be allowed to be written by US TM reporters).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Its about the history and pending death of the humble banana, which is not so humble as it turns out. It is a frightening story of what happens when unregulated food conglomerates are allowed to create a monoculture of a natural product.
bananas are dying. The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it turns bananas brick-red and inedible.
There is no cure. They all die as it spreads, and it spreads quickly. Soon - in five, 10 or 30 years - the yellow creamy fruit as we know it will not exist. The story of how the banana rose and fell can be seen a strange parable about the corporations that increasingly dominate the world - and where they are leading us.
This is what Monsanto is now doing with corn, wheat and soy. They are creating monocultures with genetically modified seeds. The terminator seeds are even worse. They are in use in India, how long before they come here. We saw what unrestricted corporate policy has done to our economy. What do you think will happen if we give them unrestricted power of that which sustains human life - our food chain- for the purpose of squeezing out maximum products?
For a hundred years, a handful of corporations were given a gorgeous fruit, set free from regulation, and allowed to do what they wanted with it. What happened? They had one good entrepreneurial idea - and to squeeze every tiny drop of profit from it, they destroyed democracies, burned down rainforests, and ended up killing the fruit itself.
But have we learned? Across the world, politicians like George Bush and David Cameron are telling us the regulation of corporations is "a menace" to be "rolled back"; they even say we should leave the planet's climate in their hands. Now that's bananas.
So, the next time you want to ridicule Scared Human or Stranded Wind or any of the other people on this list who have the small and sustainable farmers' back - don't, because one day you may really need that store of open pollinated seeds that I and they and others who ARE seeing what the future holds are growing and saving in our gardens.
Update: Comments that I didn't research enough. Well, I did look around online and did not find anything that made me think that this is a false story. In fact there is an entire book on the subject called Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel.
Here is a small piece from it:
A global effort is now under way to save the fruit-an effort defined by two opposing visions of how best to address the looming crisis. On one side are traditional banana growers, like Aguilar, who raise experimental breeds in the fields, trying to create a replacement plant that looks and tastes so similar to the Cavendish that consumers won't notice the difference. On the other side are bioengineers like Rony Swennen, who, armed with a largely decoded banana genome, are manipulating the plant's chromosomes, sometimes crossing them with DNA from other species, with the goal of inventing a tougher Cavendish that will resist Panama disease and other ailments.
Banana experts disagree on when the Latin American and African crops will be hit by the Panama fungus. Ploetz won't venture a guess, but he notes that the Malaysian plantations went from full-scale commercial operations to "total wipeout" in less than five years. Currently, there is no way to effectively combat Panama disease and no Cavendish replacement in sight. And so traditional scientists and geneticists are in a race-against one another, for certain, but mostly against time.
Regardless if you think the HuffPost article is a bit too much hyperbole, the disease exists and is wiping out plantations that produce this banana variety. Monsanto is reducing the variety of seeds available to farm in other crops. Between nature and big agribusiness we would all do well to keep our eye on stories like this one.
Update II: adding link from tpp -thanks.
http://www.npr.org/...