I was surprised when talking with some fellow Occupiers the other day that they were unaware of what Monsanto corporation makes, and why it’s a threat to human and plant life. I explained it this way:
WARNING: The following is suitable for small children and mature audiences. Some people may be extremely disturbed after viewing. Political action is advised.
Monsanto is a chemicals company that attained fame for producing “Roundup”. They’ve since created Genetically Modified Organisms like Roundup-Ready Canola (BT-Cotton, GMO flax, etc.) with the idea that Roundup can be sprayed on a field of GMO plants, and only the broad-leaf weeds will die. Their excuse for doing this is that it helps feed the world. The costs include modified soil fertility, probable risks to our food supply from unintended GMO effects, and chemical health effects. The financial effects on farmers include the need for purchase of more Roundup, required seed buying each year (no seed saving allowed under license), and an annual licensing fee for using the GMO seed (which tends to spread by itself, and contaminated farms must pay Monsanto for unintentionally growing their GMO-weeds). Monsanto encourages farmers to rat-out their neighbours suspected of growing GMO crops without also paying the annual license fee.
There’ve been thousands of suicides blamed on BT-cotton, in India. A Saskatchewan farmer named Percy Schmizer has spent the last two decades fighting Monsanto in court, with some success.
A little over a year ago, Percy gave a rousing speech at the UofR that I was fortunate enough to attend and take notes for.
You should also know that Europe has banned many GMO products (due to health and plant-life risks), and so the growth of GMOs in Canada limits our export markets to people who do not live in Europe. This is possibly why a scientist in Saskatchewan went rogue and used school children to contaminate farms in SK with GMO “Triffid” flax. The issue is now forced, with Canada already very contaminated with Monsanto’s “technology” that just happens to be a chunk of our food supply. It is quite literally out of a sci-fi disaster novel, except that it’s real life, unfolding before our eyes.
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UNIVERSITY OF REGINA
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY SEMINAR
SPEAKER: Dr. Renata Raina
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of ReginaDATE: Thursday, November 24, 2011
TIME: 1:15 p.m.
PLACE: CL-435 (Classroom building)
TITLE: Pesticides: Up in the Air
There are over 500 pesticides currently registered for use in North America and they have the potential to be transported long distances in the atmosphere in the particle and gas phase. This presentation will highlight some of the challenges faced searching for pesticides and their transformation products up in the air. Some examples of what we have been able to discover and the direction we are working towards to assess the potential for regional and long-range atmospheric transport in agricultural regions of western Canada (Lower Fraser Valley, Okanagan Valley, and Prairies) will be presented.
– ALL FACULTY, STAFF, STUDENTS AND VISITORS ARE WELCOME –
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The UofR’s own Emily Eaton [PDF], wrote the following:
[P]roponents of RR wheat themselves often undermined their own arguments for free and just markets in their interviews with me. An interesting excerpt from an interview with a representative from Croplife Canada (a trade association representing numerous plant biotech companies) illustrates this well:
[R]ight now canola is moving … from open pollinated, which is where farmers can save their seed … to hybrid seed because they get better yields and better return on their investment … [T]he choice is there … a farmer can choose to grow an open pollinated variety, but increasingly hybrids are what the farmers are buying because they get better yields, they’ve got better traits because again the research and the development is going into the hybrids where the company can capture its investment. So, just like you and I buying quality products or CDs or anything like that, if the artist doesn’t get the money back from what they’ve produced then they can’t produce anymore (interview, Croplife Canada).
Here the interviewee uses the example of hybrid varieties, instead of GM varieties, in order to make the point that farmers, through their market actions, are determining which varieties succeed and fail. In the initial section of the quotation this participant presents the planting of hybrid versus open pollinated seed as the individual choice of the farmer. However, in the next breath the participant goes on to explain how the existence of hybrid crops is directly dependent on the concentration of resources and research on their development based on their potential to earn private profit. While farmers may have the opportunity to choose between the products on the market, their spectrum of choices is narrowly
constrained to the capacity of new varieties to earn profit. In a breeding environment where patents on genes are increasingly the norm, products of genetic modification promise opportunities for enhanced accumulation of private profit. Thus, GM crops are similarly overrepresented in the spectrum of market choices.
ADDED: For Monsanto’s ‘version of events’ (AKA lies) check out this http://www.monsanto.com/food-inc/Pages/FAQs.aspx
The World According to Monsanto is required watching if you want to understand why people passionately believe that Monsanto’s monopoly must be stopped.
Food Inc. is another must see movie, both horrifying and inspiring.
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