Monsanto Now Owns Your Garden

The issue here is not whether GMO food is safe to eat.  The issue is for-profit corporations having control of our food supply.

For more than ten thousand years, human beings have grown food by saving seeds from the harvest to plant next year.  As long as we can grow food this way, we can survive.

But now Monsanto and other giant agriculture corporations are destroying subsistence agriculture.  No more growing food unless you pay Monsanto for seeds you have to buy again every year.

And because you commie hippies might object to losing control over your own food supply, Monsanto is making sure you can't say anything about it.

Mother Jones:

With little notice, more than two dozen state legislatures have passed “seed-preemption laws” designed to block counties and cities from adopting their own rules on the use of seeds, including bans on GMOs. Opponents say that there’s nothing more fundamental than a seed, and that now, in many parts of the country, decisions about what can be grown have been taken out of local control and put solely in the hands of the state.

“This bill should be viewed for what it is — a gag order on public debate,” says Kristina Hubbard, director of advocacy and communications at the Organic Seed Alliance, a national advocacy group, and a resident of Montana, which along with Texas passed a seed-preemption bill this year. “This thinly disguised attack on local democracy can be easily traced to out-of-state, corporate interests that want to quash local autonomy.”

Seed-preemption laws are part of a spate of legislative initiatives by industrial agriculture, including ag-gag laws passed in several states that legally prohibit outsiders from photographing farms, and “right-to-farm” laws that make it easier to snuff out complaints about animal welfare. The seed laws, critics say, are a related thrust meant to protect the interests of agro-chemical companies.

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Organic farmers can lose their crop if it becomes contaminated with genetically modified material. Even conventional farmers who rely on exports to Asia, where GMOs are banned by some countries, face risks from contamination. There are currently no plans to push for a GMO ban anywhere in Texas or Montana, and neither state requires companies to disclose the use of GMOs. (In Montana, at least, Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, added an amendment to the preemption bill when he signed it, preserving the right of local governments to require that farmers notify their neighbors if they’re planting GMO seeds.) Yet critics of the preemption laws fear that they tie the hands of local governments, which will make it harder for communities to respond to problems in the future. 

Still, the fight isn’t just about GMOs, says Judith McGeary, noting that seeds coated with neonicotinoids — a class of pesticides linked to colony collapse disorder in bees — are also at issue. Under the Texas bill, a local government can’t ban neonic seeds in order to protect pollinator insects, and in the current political climate, it’s hard to imagine that such a ban would happen on the state level.

“We have an extremely large state with an incredible diversity of agricultural practices and ecological conditions, and you’ve now hobbled any ability to address a problem that’s found in one local area,” says McGeary. “Until it’s a big enough issue for a state of 23 million to pay attention to through the state legislature, nothing is going to happen,” she says.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Give Monsanto Control Over the World's Food

Throughout human history, as long as you had the tiniest patch of ground and a few seeds, you could feed yourself.

If the U.S. approves the TPP, that ends.

Ellen Brown at Counterpunch:

“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.  “Control food and you control the people.”

Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.

Profits Before Populations

Genetic engineering has made proprietary control possible over the seeds on which the world’s food supply depends. According to an Acres USA interview of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, two modified traits account for practically all of the genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals). Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants genetically modified to resist it.

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Sixty to seventy percent of the foods in US supermarkets are now genetically modified. By contrast, in at least 26 other countries—including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Russia—GMOs are totally or partially banned; and significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

A ban on GMO and glyphosate use might go far toward improving the health of Americans. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade agreement for which the Obama Administration has sought Fast Track status, would block that sort of cause-focused approach to the healthcare crisis.

Read the whole thing.

Illegal Gardening Won't Matter When the Food Supply's Gone

And no, I don't mean pot.

From Firedoglake:

“Meet Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll, a South Florida couple who’ve been growing what they say is 80 percent of their food in a front-yard vegetable garden for the past 17 years. As it turns out, their self-sufficient lifestyle counts as illegal activity in Miami Shore — the couple was told to either rip out their garden, or pay $50 per day in fines.”

This is the anti-garden, anti-nature prejudice infesting suburbs nationwide.  But it's not just a matter of hippie-bashing any more. The pesticide- and herbicide-drenched chemlawns are killing the insect cycle on which the global food supply depends.

Jim Robbins at the New York Times:

ON the first of November, when Mexicans celebrate a holiday called the Day of the Dead, some also celebrate the millions of monarch butterflies that, without fail, fly to the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico on that day. They are believed to be souls of the dead, returned.

This year, for or the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.

“It does not look good,” said Lincoln P. Brower, a monarch expert at Sweet Briar College.

It is only the latest bad news about the dramatic decline of insect populations.

Another insect in serious trouble is the wild bee, which has thousands of species. Nicotine-based pesticides called neonicotinoids are implicated in their decline, but even if they were no longer used, experts say, bees, monarchs and many other species of insect would still be in serious trouble.

That’s because of another major factor that has not been widely recognized: the precipitous loss of native vegetation across the United States.

“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” said Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, who has long warned of the perils of disappearing insects. “We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said. “But what do you think is happening to everything else?”

A big part of it is the way the United States farms. As the price of corn has soared in recent years, driven by federal subsidies for biofuels, farmers have expanded their fields. That has meant plowing every scrap of earth that can grow a corn plant, including millions of acres of land once reserved in a federal program for conservation purposes.

Another major cause is farming with Roundup, a herbicide that kills virtually all plants except crops that are genetically modified to survive it.

As a result, millions of acres of native plants, especially milkweed, an important source of nectar for many species, and vital for monarch butterfly larvae, have been wiped out. One study showed that Iowa has lost almost 60 percent of its milkweed, and another found 90 percent was gone. “The agricultural landscape has been sterilized,” said Dr. Brower.

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(Restoring it) means reversing the hegemony of chemically green lawns. “If you’ve got just lawn grass, you’ve got nothing,” said Mace Vaughan of the Xerces Society, a leading organization in insect conservation. “But as soon as you create a front yard wildflower meadow you go from an occasional honeybee to a lawn that might be full of 20 or 30 species of bees and butterflies and monarchs.”

First and foremost, said Dr. Tallamy, a home for bugs is a matter of food security. “If the bees were to truly disappear, we would lose 80 percent of the plants,” he said. “That is not an option. That’s a huge problem for mankind.”

Jim Robbins is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and the author of “The Man Who Planted Trees.”

Monsanto Reaps Rewards for Destroying Global Food Supply

Again, regardless of the risk GMOs may or may not pose to human health, they are an immediate and lethal threat to the safety and longevity of the world's food supply, not to mention the livelihood of the world's farmers. When Monsanto and other corporate giants own every seed on the planet, only the rich will eat.

From The Nation:

The GMO wars escalated earlier this month when the 2013 World Food Prize was awarded to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive vice president and chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, responsible for development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The choice of Fraley was widely protested, with eighty-one members of the prestigious World Future Council calling it “an affront to the growing international consensus on safe, ecological farming practices that have been scientifically proven to promote nutrition and sustainability.”

Monsanto’s Man

The choice of Monsanto’s man triggered accusations of prize buying. From 1999 to 2011, Monsanto donated $380 million to the World Food Prize Foundation, in addition to a $5 million contribution in 2008 to help renovate the Hall of Laureates, a public museum honoring Norman Borlaug, the scientist who launched the Green Revolution.

For some, the award to Monsanto is actually a sign of desperation on the part of the GMO establishment, a move designed to contain the deepening controversy over the so-called biotechnological revolution in food and agriculture. The arguments of the critics are making headway. Owing to concern about the dangers and risks posed by genetically engineered organisms, many governments have instituted total or partial bans on their cultivation, importation, and field-testing.

A few years ago, there were sixteen countries that had total or partial bans on GMOs. Now there are at least twenty-six, including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Russia. Significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

Restraints on trade in GMOs based on phyto-sanitary grounds, which are allowed under the World Trade Organization, have increased. Already, American rice farmers face strict limitations on their exports to the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and are banned altogether from Russia and Bulgaria because unapproved genetically engineered rice “escaped” during open-field trials on GMO rice. Certain Thai exports—particularly canned fruit salads containing papaya to Germany, and sardines in soy oil to Greece and the Netherlands—were recently banned due to threat of contamination by GMOs.

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Unfortunately for the biotech corporations, more people are listening to the words of scientists like Dr. Oscar Zamora, vice chancellor of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, who says: “For every application of genetic engineering in agriculture in developing countries, there are a number of less hazardous and more sustainable approaches and practices with hundreds, if not thousands, of years of safety record behind them. None of the GE applications in agriculture today are valuable enough to farmers in developing countries to make it reasonable to expose the environment, farmers and the consumers to even the slightest risk.”

Surprise Small Victory in the End-Shutdown Bill

They'll be back, of course, with even more campaign cash for cooperative congress critters, but for the moment, there's a ray of hope for those of us who value safe, available, affordable food.

Zoe Carpenter at The Nation:

Other than re-opening the government and averting a global financial crisis, one good thing about the funding bill passed last night was that it put an end to a corporate giveaway known colloquially as the Monsanto Protection Act.

Formally called the Farmer Assurance Provision, the measure undermined the Department of Agriculture’s authority to ban genetically modified crops, even if court rulings found they posed risks to human and environmental health. Republican Senator Roy Blunt worked with the genetically modified seed giant Monsanto to craft the initial rider, and it was slipped into a funding resolution that passed in March. There was concern that an agreement to end the shutdown would extend the provision, which is set to expire at the end of the month.

Jon Tester, a farmer and Democratic Senator from Montana, removed the measure from the bill yesterday. “All [the Farmer Assurance Provision] really assures is a lack of corporate liability,” Tester argued in March. “It…lets genetically-modified crops take hold across the country – even when a judge finds it violates the law.”

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  Meanwhile, Monsanto is facing at least 16 lawsuits for failing to contain genetically modified wheat, which was found growing on an Oregon farm earlier this year. Concerns about the company’s aggressive patent policies and their implications for food sovereignty are global: this summer, Chileans protested a law protecting GMO manufacturers, and activists rallied in dozens of countries this weekend as part of the second “March Against Monsanto” demonstration. 

When the Bees Go, So Does All the Food

If like me you tend to think the world will end with a whimper rather than a bang, put this one at the top of your list of likely scenarios.

Divine Irony:

Barely two weeks after 25,000 bees were found dead in a parking lot in Oregon, another round of bee devastation has been reported. This time, the mass die-off was far worse. More than 37 million honeybees were found dead in Elmwood, Ontario, according to beekeeper Dave Schuit, who lost the bees from 600 hives in June. He and many others are pointing to insecticides called neonicotinoids, used in planting corn and some other crops. "Once the corn started to get planted [in Elmwood] our bees died by the millions," Schuit said. After a record-breaking loss of honeybees in the U.K., the European Union banned several pesticides in May, including neonicotinoid pesticides.

this should be concerning a lot more people than it is

not only because bees are one of the most important animals in the world and their job is a lot more than gathering honey but also because they are what scientists refer to as an “indicator species”

this means that when their populations start dwindling and then rapidly dropping, humans need to watch their shit because that means that environmental factors are too difficult for THEM to live in, so it might be difficult for US to live in, too. bees basically act as an indication that humans have a lot to worry about and when they start dying like this it deserves a lot more than a few headlines.

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Get excited, motherfuckers. Without bees, we will die off. Bayer and Monsanto continue to produce the chemicals that have been proven to kill them, and the government has their backs. Bees pollinate 30% of our food in the US and we are passing legislation to PROTECT the scumbags responsible for killing them.

think about your future life without kiwis, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, sunflowers, cotton, apples, plums, pears, mustard, celery, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, beans, cherries, melons, turnips, canola oil, alfalfa, soybeans, lemons, oranges, and I could go on forever. Bees are amazing creatures who are responsible for the comfortable lives we lead in this country and we cannot sustain and feed our population without them.

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We can do something to help and YOU CAN HELP, YES THAT MEANS YOU. ALL YOU NEED IS DIRT, A FEW BUCKS, AND A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME TO MAKE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE, LITERALLY. Plant flowers that bees like and that attract them.

Bees prefer flowers that are blue, purple, and yellow. Choose flowers that bloom successively over the spring, summer, and fall seasons such as coreopsis, Russian sage, or germander. They especially love clover! Other plants include sage, salvia, oregano, lavender, ironweed, yarrow, yellow hyssop, alfalfa, honeywort, dragonhead, echinacea, bee balm, buttercup, goldenrod and English thyme. Buy seeds online.

GET RID OF THE PESTICIDES!!

If pesticides are killing off the bees so easily, what do you think it’s doing to us? The EPA says studies have shown pesticides can cause birth defects, nerve damage, and cancer. There are other ways to get rid of pests in the garden than using chemicals. Organic Garden Pests shows you how to keep off the bugs the organic way.

Give the bees a free home!

Giving bees a “bee block” alone is a huge load off their backs! You can buy homes here or You can even build your own.

Please, if you have already reblogged this, reblog this is again with what I have posted onto it so you know what you can do to help. We can make a difference.

Sources and other helpful links:

5 ways to help our disappearing bees

How to “Friend” Your Native Bees

Why gardening is good for your health

Silence of the Bees

The Solution to Everythiing?

It's very damn close to way too good to be true.  But if it is true, ExxonMobil and Monsanto will stop at nothing - up to and incuding taking over nations - to stop it.

From the Independent:

A GROUNDBREAKING new Irish technology which could be the greatest breakthrough in agriculture since the plough is set to change the face of modern farming forever.

The technology – radio wave energised water – massively increases the output of vegetables and fruits by up to 30 per cent.

Not only are the plants much bigger but they are largely disease-resistant, meaning huge savings in expensive fertilisers and harmful pesticides.

Extensively tested in Ireland and several other countries, the inexpensive water treatment technology is now being rolled out across the world. The technology makes GM obsolete and also addresses the whole global warming fear that there is too much carbon dioxide in the air, by simply converting excess CO2 into edible plant mass.

Obviously, this puts Monsanto out of the seed-monopolizing business.  But why should ExxonMobil and the rest of the fossil fuel industry hate and fear super water? A CO2-eating substance might take the pressure off CO2-producing fossil fuels.

Answer: most oil drilled out of the earth goes not for fuel but for petroleum-based products like everything plastic and - most of all - chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

Super water frees farming from its 70-year dependence on petroleum-based additives and deals a mortal blow to fossil fuels.

If it really works.  And if the inventors can prevent Exxon-Mobil and Monsanto from buying up the patent and either burying it or charging their usual bankrupting prices for it.

In recognition of the groundbreaking technology, the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, London, recently took the hitherto unheard-of step of granting Professor Austin Darragh and his team the right to use their official centuries-old coat of arms on the new technology – the first time ever that Kew Gardens has afforded anyone such an honour.

The Kew Gardens botanists were not just impressed with the research; they used the technology to restore to life a very rare orchid which had been lying dormant and practically dead in a greenhouse bell jar since 1942. Amazingly, the orchid is now flourishing once again.

Intriguingly, chickens and sheep fed the energised water turned into giants. . . but that's another story!

Limerick University off- campus company ZPM Europe Ltd, who are based in the National Technology Park, Limerick, is now manufacturing the Vi-Aqua technology.

Monsanto Lobbyist Setting U.S. Trade Policy

Organic food had a nice run, but it's over. All your tomatoes are belong to Monsanto.

From Firedoglake:

Trans-Pacific Partnership: “Something is looming. . . that could . . . erode our basic rights and contaminate our food . . . .. The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddiqi”

Monsanto Destroys $9 Billion U.S. Wheat Export Industry

Destroying an entire sector of the American economy. I'd say that calls for a fine. One equal to the economic value of that sector.  Times three.

From Firedoglake:

 “Unapproved genetically engineered wheat has been found growing on a farm in Oregon”, endangering wheat exports, a major blow since Oregon exports 90% of its wheat.  Update: Japan has already suspended US wheat imports.  Update: The EU is on the lookout for “Monsanto GMO strains” in US wheat imports.

The U.S. exports approximately 30 million metric tons of wheat per year, times $300 per metric ton, equals $9 billion.

Don't help Monsanto kill the rest of American agriculture.

Scroll down to the list of seed companies that have “safe” seed and those that don’t.

Roundup Found Poisonous: It's the Year to Go Organic

If you're still using pesticides and herbicides from chemical killers like Monsanto and Dow, doing business as Ortho, stop right now for the sake of your health and life.

Firedoglake:

A French court in Lyon “ruled that Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller formula . . . caused [farmer] Paul Francois to develop lifelong neurological damage”.   Compensation to be established.

And from Nation of Change:

A new review of hundreds of scientific studies surrounding glyphosate—the major component of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide—sheds light on its effects within the human body. The paper describes how all of these effects could work together, and with other variables, trigger health problems in humans, including debilitating diseases like gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Glyphosate impairs the cytochrome P450 (CYP) gene pathway, which creates enzymes that help to form and also break down molecules in cells. There are myriad important CYP enzymes, including aromatase (the enzyme that converts androgen into estrogen) and 21-Hydroxylase, which creates cortisol (stress hormone) and aldosterone (regulates blood pressure). One function of these CYP enzymes is also to detoxify xenobiotics, which are foreign chemicals like drugs, carcinogens or pesticides. Glyphosate inhibits these CYP enzymes, which has rippling effects throughout our body.

Because the CYP pathway is essential for normal functioning of various systems in our bodies, any small change in its expression can lead to disruptions. For example, humans exposed to glyphosate have decreased levels of the amino acid tryptophan, which is necessary for active signaling of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Suppressed serotonin levels have been associated with weight gain, depression and Alzheimer’s disease. This paper does not claim to yield new scientific discoveries. Instead, it looks at older studies in a new light. Critics will say the links between glyphosate and health problems made in this paper are purely correlational, but this work is important because it brings all of the possible health effects of glyphosate together and discusses what could happen: something the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have failed to do.

Just as Monsanto attempted to discredit scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini’s study on rats fed genetically engineered corn, the company called this peer-reviewed journal article “another bogus study” due to its “bad science.” In a classic pot-calling-the-kettle-black scenario, what Monsanto doesn’t mention is that the majority of research showing glyphosate’s safety has been done by Monsanto itself, which could be called bad science as well due to its limited and biased nature.

The authors of the new review call for more independent research to validate their findings, stating that “glyphosate is likely to be pervasive in our food supply, and contrary to being essentially nontoxic, it may in fact be the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment.” If the body of independent research on GE foods and the herbicides used with them shows one thing, it is that there are unanswered questions begging for unbiased research. And while these questions remain unanswered, Americans have the right to know how their food was produced.

 Going organic takes more initial time and effort, but from the very beginning it's far cheaper than using synthetic chemicals.  And after the first establishing year, it takes even less time and effort than it does money. Find out how to get started here.

Organic Farming Boosts Yields, Could Save the Planet

Don't liberals ever get tired of being right about everything all the time? *

Samuel Knight at the Washington Monthly:

In another development that could boost the morale of campaigners pushing to cut fossil fuel consumption, the Guardian - through a story supported by the transgenic agriculture-promoting Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ironically - reported that Indian farmers are boosting yields to record levels through a completely organic technique. The method that they’re using, the so-called System of Root Intensification, “has dramatically increased yields with wheat, potatoes, sugar cane, yams, tomatoes, garlic, aubergine and many other crops and is being hailed as one of the most significant developments of the past 50 years for the world’s 500 million small-scale farmers and the two billion people who depend on them.”

* No, we don't.

R.I.P Real Food. Murdered by Monsanto and the U.S. Ag Dept., November 2012

Every person who plants an heirloom seed, cultivates organic vegetables, seeks to provide healthy nutritious food for her family and others is an immediate existential threat to giant Robo-Ag corporations.

Because the existence of even a single non-GMO food plant proves that there is an alternative to the FrankenFood proliferating worldwide. So Big Ag went crying to the federal government - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Monsanto and its ilk - and demanded protection from those horrible farmers.
 

Aviva Shen at Think Progress:

Every year for the past 13 years, biotechnology giant Monsanto Company has sued about 11 farmers per year for patent infringement of their genetically modified corn and soybean seeds. Many of these farmers have had to pay a settlement to the corporation even when their fields were accidentally contaminated with GM seeds from a neighboring farm. Monsanto simply outspends the defendants, dedicating $10 million a year and 75 staffers for the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting farmers. Farmers who have sued Monsanto back have been soundly defeated. 

Monsanto is likely to continue this winning streak with an assist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which released a final report Monday absolving the biotech industry of contamination of non-GM seeds with their products from other fields. The USDA report concludes that organic and other non-GM farmers should simply buy insurance to protect against GMO contamination.

Essentially, Monsanto can sue these farmers all they want for patent infringement, but they are immune to challenges from organic farmers whose products are contaminated by GMOs. As one dissenting committee member commented:

Any farmer/seed grower contaminated will not want to disclose the contamination because they are illegally in possession of a patented material and could be subject to legal action for theft of intellectual property. The committee refused to ever recognize this fact.

The report is just the latest example of the USDA’s cozy relationship with the biotech industry. In fact, the agency has never denied a single application for GM crop approval. Monsanto’s power extends beyond the USDA — also on Monday, the Department of Justice dropped their antitrust investigation into Monsanto’s near monopoly on the nation’s seeds. The stalled Farm Bill in Congress also contains a so-called “Monsanto rider” that would entirely deregulate GM crops and allow Monsanto to basically approve its own product.

There is a slim chance Monsanto’s fortunes could change with a Supreme Court case on this term’s docket. In an unprecedented move, the high court agreed to take on an Indiana farmer’s appeal after he was ordered to pay Monsanto $80,000 for patent infringement. Though the current Supreme Court is quite openly sympathetic to corporate interests, their decision to hear the case at all bodes well for farmers grappling with the agricultural giant all over the country.

 Fuck Monsanto. Grow your own food.  A single planter on a sunny balcony will supply fresh tomatoes all summer long. Order heirloom seeds here. Learn how to grow organically here.

Secret Franken-Corn Coming to Your Nearest Walmart

If you still need a reason to start buying organic at your local farmer's market - or growing your own - here it is.

From Nation of Change: 

Like it or not, Monsanto’s genetically modified sweet corn will soon be arriving on grocery store shelves of the world’s largest retailer, Walmart Stores, Inc., and will not be labeled as such. Despite an onslaught of consumer pressure, the company confirmed late last week with the Chicago Tribune that it has no objection to selling the new crop of Monsanto’s genetically modified (GE) sweet corn.
Other retailers, including the grocery chains Safeway and Kroger, have not responded on the issue, however Whole Foods, Trader Joes and General Mills have all vowed to not carry or use the GE sweet corn. As the country’s largest grocery retailer, Walmart sells $129 billion worth of food a year, giving it unmatched power in shaping the food supply chain.

The GE sweet corn is the first consumer product developed by Monsanto that will go straight from the farm to the consumer’s plate, rather than first being processed into animal feed, sugars, oils, fibers and other ingredients found in a wide variety of conventional food. It is engineered to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, the active ingredient of which is glyphosate. The product is also designed to produce a Bt toxin that will kill insects that feed on the plant. Monsanto’s new sweet corn is being harvested in the Midwest, Northwest, Southeast and Texas. 

Genetically-engineered (GE) crops, or Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMO) pose an existential risk to the world's food supply.  GE crops' engineered resistance to pests and to herbicides permits the rise of super-weeds and super-bugs that cannot be controlled. GMO crop pollen drifts with the wind, contaminatng nearby fields and destroying organic farms.

Yet Monsanto's corporate control of U.S. politicians means we are not even allowed to know when we are buying or eating GE and GMO "food."

Labeling GE products is a crucial way to identify products containing GE ingredients in an effort to sway consumer demand. The European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia and China, require labeling for GE foods .... Enough signatures have been collected to put on the California ballot Prop 37—Genetically Engineered Foods. Mandatory Labeling. Initiative Statute—to require labeling of food produced with GE ingredients, and the industry is now fighting back with a well-funded campaign campaign. More information on the campaign for PROP 37 can be found at the California Right-to-Know website.

However, the only sure-fire way you can avoid the genetically modified food is to buy and support organic. Genetically modified crops are not permitted in organic food production. Researchers are continuing to discover the environmental and health benefits of eating and growing organic food.

To Shut Them Up, Buy Them Out

If you are a super villain out to control the world, you don't have to indulge in expensive, risky nuclear weapons. You can bring the nations of the world to their knees by destroying their ability to feed themselves: Poison their bees.

Anthony Gucciardi, via Nation of Change:

Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.

It can be found in public company reports hosted on mainstream media that Monsanto scooped up the Beeologics firm back in September 2011. During this time the correlation between Monsanto’s GM crops and the bee decline was not explored in the mainstream, and in fact it was hardly touched upon until Polish officials addressed the serious concern amid the monumental ban. Owning a major organization that focuses heavily on the bee collapse and is recognized by the USDA for their mission statement of “restoring bee health and protecting the future of insect pollination” could be very advantageous for Monsanto.

SNIP

It appears that when Monsanto cannot answer for their environmental devastation, they buy up a company that may potentially be their ‘experts’ in denying any such link between their crops and the bee decline.

For you non-farmers out there, without bees there is no food.

It's now a matter of life and death - of pure self-defense - to assume corporations guilty until proven innocent.

Racing Backwards on Protecting the Food Supply

To the long list of 20th-century liberal achievements making progress toward equality and liberation of race, sex and income that repugs are rapidly reversing, you can add protecting health and safety.

Yes, now giant corporations are demanding the right to bring back deadly poisons that were permanently banned decades ago.

From Richard Schiffman at Truthout:

In a match that some would say was made in hell, the nation's two leading producers of agrochemicals have joined forces in a partnership to reintroduce the use of the herbicide 2,4-D, one half of the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, which was used by American forces to clear jungle during the Vietnam War. These two biotech giants have developed a weed management program that, if successful, would go a long way toward a predicted doubling of harmful herbicide use in America's corn belt during the next decade.

The problem for corn farmers is that "superweeds" have been developing resistance to America's best-selling herbicide Roundup, which is being sprayed on millions of acres in the Midwest and elsewhere. Dow Agrosciences has developed a strain of corn that it says will solve the problem. The new genetically modified variety can tolerate 2,4-D, which will kill off the Roundup-resistant weeds, but leave the corn standing. Farmers who opt into this system will be required to double-dose their fields with a deadly cocktail of Roundup plus 2,4-D, both of which are manufactured by Monsanto.

But this plan has alarmed environmentalists and also many farmers, who are reluctant to reintroduce a chemical whose toxicity has been well established. The use of 2,4-D is banned in several European countries and provinces of Canada. The substance is a suspected carcinogen, which has been shown to double the incidence of birth defects in the children of pesticide applicators in a study conducted by University of Minnesota pathologist Vincent Garry.

SNIP

Some agricultural scientists advocate developing a system of integrated weed management to replace the unsustainable use of chemicals. But the big agrochemical companies have no interest in supporting the sustainable agriculture that would put them out of business. So long as there are billions of dollars to be made in selling herbicide and herbicide-resistant genetically modified seed, there won't be much research money available to explore the natural alternatives to the destruction of our nation's heartland.

It is misleading to call non-chemical methods of fertilization and weed/pest control "alternatives" to Monsanto and Dow's deadly cocktails, because chemical additives do not benefit crop growth in any way. They destroy healthy soil, weaken plants and poison the natural systems that strengthen and protect plants.

Chemical farming is not an effective system with toxic side effects that we just have to live with; chemical farming is a massive, lethal failure that poisons the very food supply it purports to benefit.

Reject the Roundup Spring

Thanks to Big Oil and Big Coal, we're suffering the earliest spring in memory. "Suffering" because not only did we have to mow the lawn in March, but we're already having to deal with weeds invading the patio, sidewalk and driveway.

Put the Roundup down and back away slowly.



The label is a lie; that shit is deadly.

If you ever turn over a bottle of Roundup, one of the most popular chemical weed killers in the world, you’ll see glyphosate listed as the active ingredient. What you won’t see is a list of inactive ingredients. And that’s problematic. Because researchers who recently (2009) tested the product’s active ingredient in combination with certain inert ones found the combo makes this weed killer much more toxic than previously disclosed. “It’s not as benign as people are led to believe,” says Greg Bowman, editor of the Rodale Institute’s New Farm online publication, which focuses on nontoxic farming methods. And even the listed ingredient may be more dangerous than was previously thought. “More and more studies by medical and agricultural specialists are revealing the subtle, low-level impact that Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, has on wildlife, soil life, and—directly and indirectly—people themselves,” Bowman says.

But you don't have the read the study or even the label. All you have to know is that Roundup is manufactured by Monsanto.



Roundup is, indeed, the least of Monsanto's crimes. I'll be visiting those over the next several days.

But in the meantime, no, you don't have to use toxic chemicals to fertilize your garden or kills weeds or pests. Safe alternatives are plentiful, cheap and not as difficult as you think.

Find out more here.

Going Organic: Tools for Transition

If you're still getting pushback from neighbors, farmers and extension agents when you reject chemical additives for your garden and yard, here's an idea to get started in your county.

Phoenix woman at Firedoglake:

While browsing around the website of Lanesboro Local, a cooperative dedicated to promoting local foods in southeastern Minnesota (and filling the gap left when Lanesboro, Minnesota’s last grocery store shut down three years ago), I ran across this:

Tools For Transition is a project, partially funded through a grant at the U of MN, that will compile actual production and income/expense data for farmers transitioning to certified organic production. This data has been deemed important and useful to the extent that it has long been anecdotally surmised to cost too much money to transition to organic. This data is compiled through the Farm Business Management (FBM) programs throughout the state. FBM is basically an accountant for the farm that assists with developing annual cash-flows, business plan development and tax-planning. Once the data for the farms is collected, it is anonymously compiled into a database that provides analysis on profit and loss measures for the various enterprises (i.e. dairy, beef, row-crop, vegetable, swine, etc.) which then can be used to measure financial and production performance of transitioning farms against conventional or certified organic farms.

In 2001, Paul Schmidt and a select few organic farmers who were participating in the FBM program met with U of MN and developed the criteria and specific account codes to be used for organic enterprises for the FBM system. Since that time, there has been specific data compiled for organic producers, but it has not been differentiated between transitioning and certified. Hopefully this project will provide the data.

This sounds like a really good project, and just the thing to help put smiles on your faces after a long week of hard work.

Here’s some more info about it. Got anything similar going on in your neck of the woods?

For 70 years, since Robert Rodale founded Organic Gardening and Farming magazine, Big Ag and Big Chemical have pushed the same myth among farmers: "Organic is really cute, and may be OK for backyard hippies who don't mind losing 90 percent of their crop to bugs and weeds, but it can't work on a large scale for cash crops and livestock."

It was lies then and it's still lies today. Learn the facts about organic here.

Fight the Food Thieves

One of the few ways that working Americans can give the back of their hands to corporations is to plant an organic vegetable garden.

Whether you have a big back yard, a share in an urban community garden or room for a container on a patio or balcony, harvesting your own food after planting heirloom seeds in rich finished compost without chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides denies Big Ag and its chemical handmaidens like Monsanto not just profits but what they really crave: total control over the planet's food sources.

So they will stop at nothing to stop you.

Millions of Americans who demand a higher standard of news reporting turn to public radio because it's supposed to present information that isn't bought and paid for by corporate interests.

Unfortunately, American Public Media may be making an exception for GMO giant, Monsanto.

Marketplace, a program of American Public Media, has provided a soapbox to opponents of organics with a recent report titled "The Non-Organic Future." Their GMO propaganda aired on a program that has received substantial sponsorship from Monsanto, the corporation responsible for producing roughly 90% of genetically modified seeds around the globe.

Even if NPR is scrupulous about its own coverage of Monsanto, many of its member stations air programs that are created by American Public Media and come pre-packaged with their own underwriting announcements that NPR can neither approve nor strip out. That's why it's essential that we make sure American Public Media knows that it can't continue to sell out our public radio airwaves to the likes of Monsanto.

Tell American Public Media: Report the facts, not anti-organic propaganda paid for by Monsanto. Click here to sign the petition. In a recent report entitled "The Non-Organic Future" Marketplace featured several outspoken proponents of industrial agriculture who presented as fact the false notion that organics are not a scalable, or even viable option for feeding the planet. Not one counter-argument or undisputed proponent of the organics industry was presented.

Tell American Public Media: Report the facts, not anti-organic propaganda paid for by Monsanto. Click here to sign the petition. Marketplace's one-sided reporting hasn't gone unnoticed. Renowned author Anna Lappé is quick to point out that Marketplace failed to acknowledge the 2009 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Report — a critical study by the U.N. and multiple other international groups that required 400 experts and nearly 5 years to complete.

The results from the IAASTD study couldn't be farther from what was presented in the Marketplace report.

According to Lappé: "Business as usual is not an option, was the radical consensus. Instead, small-scale and mid-scale agroecological farming holds our best hope for feeding the world safe, healthy food, all without undermining our natural capital."

Marketplace airs on 486 public radio stations nationwide and is no stranger to controversy surrounding its financial ties to Monsanto. Despite the fact that Monsanto is perhaps best known for pesticides and genetically engineered agricultural products, in 2009, the program ran frequent underwriting announcements touting the company as "committed to sustainable agriculture."

Public media is beholden to serve the public interest, not press for the corporate interests of those who make donations to underwrite their programming. In a media landscape that is dominated by for profit, corporate news, it's vital that we fight to keep public radio free from such clear conflicts of interest. American Public Media has responded to criticism about Monsanto in the past. We need to make sure they know that we're listening and that we will hold them accountable when they uncritically promote anti-organic propaganda.

Tell American Public Media: Report the facts, not anti-organic propaganda paid for by Monsanto. Click here to sign the petition. Thank you for standing up to Monsanto's corporate lies.

Mark Anthony Dingbaum, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Learn more about simple, inexpensive organic gardening at Organic Gardening Magazine. It is published by the Rodale Institute, which has been testing and perfecting organic growing techniques since 1940.

"M is the new BP"

From tristero:

That's M as in Monsanto:

One of the primary concerns with transgenic (aka genetically modified) crops is the risk of genetic contamination, i.e. the transfer of engineered genes to wild versions of the same plant. The corporations involved in genetic engineering, such as Monsanto and Bayer CropScience, have time and again assured regulators and the public that this risk is minimal. Still, the government mandates “buffer zones” around such crops’ plantings and the corporations who sell the seeds have created their own protocols to ensure this kind of thing never happens.

Well, surprise! It’s happened. Big time.

Scientists from the University of Arkansas announced at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting the results of a study that showed genetically engineered pesticide-resistant canola growing like a weed in North Dakota. They found that up to 80 percent of wild canola in their sample from various North Dakota roadsides contained genes that conferred resistance to either glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready pesticide) or gluphosinate (from Bayer’s LibertyLink seeds).

But it gets better, er, worse. The scientists also found wild canola with both properties. And as lead scientist Cynthia Sagers observed in an accompanying news report, “these feral populations of canola have been part of the landscape for several generations” — plant generations, mind you, not human generations. Still, this is not a new phenomenon. It’s true that biotech companies do sell seeds with multiple forms of pesticide resistance, so-called “stacked trait” seeds. But these wild canola plants managed this interbreeding feat all by their lonesome.

So, these genetically engineered plants — which, when out in the wild, are considered weeds — are cross-pollinating and transferring “alien” genes that confer pesticide resistance. The next step in the chain is for the canola to interbreed with other related weeds. Suddenly, the prospect of our nation’s bread basket infested with superweeds becomes very, very real.

And from the link within the quote above:

The scientists behind the discovery say this highlights a lack of proper monitoring and control of GM crops in the United States...

The extent of the escape is unprecedented," says Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who led the research team that found the canola (Brassica napus, also known as rapeseed)...

Monsanto sez No Big Deal, the situation is just fine, and so on, so on, so on, so on.

I believe them. Who wouldn't?

Told ya so.

Greenies in Denial: Monsanto Won and We're All Gonna Die - Really

This is the most hilariously tragic thing I've read in years:

It should be no surprise that Monsanto's PR machine is working hard to spin the truth in this morning's decision in the first-ever Supreme Court case on genetically engineered crops (Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms). Despite what the biotech seed giant is claiming, today's ruling isn't close to the victory they were hoping for.

The ones who are frantically spinning, unfortunately, are the sustainable agriculture advocates whose failure to stop Monsanto has lethally endangered the ability of human beings to feed ourselves.

Here's Grist's take on the ruling:

The sustainable agriculture world is abuzz today with news of the Supreme Court's ruling regarding an earlier lawsuit, brought by alfalfa farmers, that sought to stop any planting of Monsanto's genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa seed. While the press coverage heralds the ruling as a decisive victory for Monsanto, a close reading shows that, in fact, it's a fairly significant win for opponents of biotech crops.

And why do they think such a thing?

Despite the news reports claiming victory for Monsanto, the Supreme Court did not overturn the central tenet of the case: that the USDA prematurely approved Roundup Ready alfalfa. The District Court, in effect, made it once again illegal to plant Roundup Ready alfalfa -- and the Supreme Court endorsed that ruling. While the Justices did declare that the USDA, if it wants to, has the right to give the seed a preliminary approval (i.e. for limited, restricted planting), the Supreme Court decision does not by itself give Roundup Ready alfalfa the green light.

And it's important to note that the USDA has not yet formally announced any intention to re-authorize the restricted plantings, which would come in the form of a rule for "partial deregulation" of Roundup Ready alfalfa. In fact, the agency and Monsanto hed preciously submitted such a plan to the District Court in hopes that it would be incorporated into the final ruling, and instead, they received an injunction.

To some, that move appeared to be an attempt at an end run around the official rulemaking process. It's not clear if the USDA will move forward with anything other than the "final" environmental review.

[Update:] The USDA office that oversees biotech crops, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), just released a brief statement via email in response to the Supreme Court's ruling. In it, the agency leaves the door open to some sort of preliminary approval for the alfalfa seed, without indicating its intention one way or the other: "APHIS is carefully reviewing the Supreme Court ruling before making decisions about its next regulatory actions related to the deregulation of Roundup Ready alfalfa." It also announced its intention to complete the full environmental impact statement "in time for the spring planting of alfalfa crops in 2011." That start date presumes they get through the process without any more lawsuits or injunctions -- not a safe bet, at all.

In other words, NOT a loss for Monsanto, a HUGE WIN for Monsanto, and a HUGE LOSS for sustainable agriculture.

"The USDA will protect us." ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? The USDA's devoted fellating of its "regulated" industry (agriculture) makes the Minerals Management Service's massaging of the oil industry seem like waterboarding.

Wanna destroy an entire food crop across a continent? Make it "Roundup Ready."

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”

Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.

Think you're safe because you buy organic or even grow your own non-Monsanto seeds? Do you know the source of every seed being planted within two miles of where your "safe" food is grown? Because chances are somebody is planting Roundup-ready corn - and soon alfalfa and then everything else - close enough to contaminate your organic crops.

Make no mistake: this decision is a fucking catastrophe.

Which should have been obvious from the fact that the Criminal Conservative Cabal that passes for a Supreme Court majority made it possible.

And all of you Obama-bots who railed at us liberals to shut up about Sonia Sotomayor's deference to corporate power? Yeah, she voted with the majority.

The sole dissenter was John Paul Stevens. Who is about to be replaced by non-liberal Elena Kagan.

There will never be a Supreme Court ruling against corporate power again in our lifetimes.

We. Are. So. Completely. Fucked.

UPDATE: Blue Girl reminds me that Monsanto uses the contagion of their Frankenfood seeds to steal other people's land. See here and here.