http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-s-Assault-on-Agri-by-Marti-Oakley-090311-16.html
(Courtesy Kavitha Kuruganti of GMFREEINDIA group)
Monsanto's Assault on Agriculture
by Marti Oakley Page 1 of 1 page(s)www.opednews.com
Monsanto
is a corporation reviled for its genetic tampering and attempts to
seize control of agriculture around the world. While trying to change
its public persona into one of benevolence towards the public, the
history of Monsanto is littered with continuous efforts to not only
seize control of food production, but also supply. Monsanto's history
also includes lives destroyed either financially and/or physically as
the result of its activities.
1969-2002 Source: Northern Illinois Business and Industry Data Center
Here in the US, Monsanto goon squads routinely
trespass onto privately owned land, take samples of privately owned
crops and then claim Monsanto's frankenseed crops are being grown
illegally...their patents have been violated. According to Monsanto,
these are "unauthorized seeds." Those two words are a harbinger of
things to come and should give you an idea where all of this is headed.
Courts have ruled that
if Monsanto's seeds sprout in a ditch near the uncontaminated natural
crops of a farmer who refuses to grow GMO, the crop belongs to Monsanto
along with fines and penalties.
Monsanto attempts to minimize their harassment of
non-participating farmers by saying that out of about 250,000 farmers
they have only sued about 120. Monsanto goes on to say that farmers
will report other farmers who save seed, and that many of the tips they
get about seed saving are from other farmers in the community. I think
the probability of this actually happening is slight and would tend to
think more along the lines of the Goon Squads illegally trespassing and
reporting; after all, that's what they get paid for.
On top of this, Monsanto came up with a new in-house
rule after the fact, claiming they had not sold the seeds to the
farmers but had merely leased the seeds to the farmer. This was a de
facto legal maneuver. After all, if you SELL something, how it is used
is no longer your business, it doesn't belong to you. If you lease the
same product, you now have continued interest in the use.
Monsanto knows that genetic traits can be passed
between grains or other plants either during handling and processing or
as a result of pollination and that GMO transfers more readily than
traditional seed. As a result, they also know that genetic traits and
makeup indicating the purity of any seed at this point in time is not
achievable as a result of the contamination of traditional crops
resulting from genetically altered crops being totally uncontrolled and
uncontrollable.
Knowing that wind drift, bird droppings and other
natural happenings would by necessity cause the contamination and cross
pollination of natural crops with the genetically modified crops,
Monsanto continued to push its malignant creations onto farmers who
believed the hype that Monsanto's "authorized seeds" would increase
productivity and increase profits. The passing of time and the
analysis of these claims tells a different story.
In the case of soybeans:
Roundup Ready Soybeans use two to five times more herbicides
than non-GE Varieties. When you add royalties, fees and other costs
the resulting profit for the farmer is $0. The increase in production
is negligible and usually less than a traditional crop. These crops
also require 2 to 3 times more water to grow.
Then there's that problem with cotton (Excerpted from the original article at
Global Research):
The cotton's agronomic performance is also erratic.
When Monsanto's GM cotton varieties were first introduced in the US,
tens of thousands of acres suffered deformed roots and other unexpected
problems. Monsanto paid out millions in settlements.
[4] When
Bt cotton was tested in Indonesia, widespread pest infestation and
drought damage forced withdrawal of the crop, despite the fact that
Monsanto had been bribing at least 140 individuals for years, trying to
gain approval.
[5] In India, inconsistent performance has resulted in more than $80 million
dollars in losses in each of two states.
[6] Thousands
of indebted Bt cotton farmers have committed suicide. In Vidarbha, in
northeast Maharashtra, from June through August 2006, farmers committed
suicide at a rate of about one every eight hours.
[7] (The list of adverse reactions reported from other GM crops, in lab
animals, livestock and humans, is considerably longer.) (end excerpt)
These are just two of the crops being
devastated by genetic tampering and the attempts to lay claim to crops
traditionally grown successfully without patents, tampering or
alteration.
Wherever Monsanto has inserted itself in agriculture, food
supplies dwindle, become unaffordable or have devastating affects on
human health. Traditional and proven seed stocks are destroyed or
forever contaminated with genetically altered material that can include
everything from human DNA to that of numerous animals or many times
unidentified genetic material.
And about that Artic Seed Vault...
as I asked before, if what Monsanto produces is so beneficial, if it in
fact is far superior to traditional seeds, why was none of their
mutated stock included in the Vault?
Maybe because it isn't fit for human consumption? (c) 2009 Marti Oakley
Hippocrates once said “Give me a fever and I can cure the child”. By
understanding that a simple fever is a symptom rather than a condition
orillness in itself, you soon come to realise that it is an ally and notan
enemy. Fevers are the first sign that your child’s immune symptom isfunctioning
as it should. By increasing core body temperature, feversenable the immune
system to swing into action, indicating the body’sdefences are fighting an
infection and consequent temperaturefluctuations indicate how the body is
coping. - Natural Parenting.
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