/obscure?
Posted on 08/14/2008 7:56:34 AM PDT by Toddsterpatriot
Relying on "gigantic corporations" for food, he said, would result in "absolute disaster".
"That would be the absolute destruction of everything... and the classic way of ensuring there is no food in the future," he said.
Snip.."If they think this is the way to go....we [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Sounds like dialog/copy from Kingfish's(Obamas) last speech..
No doubt a Calhoun written speech..
LOL. I remember being out playing as a kid and the planes going over, am in upper 60's now. Now we have West Nile, have seen the effects on crows with my own eyes when it hits here, usually late in summer. I make a half-hearted effort to protect myself from mosquitos but hate that Deet stuff. Since it primarily affects elderly, young, especially those with compromised immune systems, not much alarm has been raised overall.
I did read Silent Spring, and just don't know if DDT is as harmful as they say.
I am glad they have, to large extent, cleaned up pollution in lakes and rivers. You can go salmon fishing and probably other fish in the Great Lakes again. Not much into fishing but big sport here. The river is still pretty unsanitary overall. Recent flooding didn't help, untreated sewage spilled into a mighty waterway.
I don't know how it is in other parts of the country, but farmers can't get as easy and fast access to the internet we urban dwellers are able to do, and I had to wait several years for dsl to become available in my area. Many parts of the country are shut out because it is not cost effective. Satellites or dialup are the only answer for those, notice many in places like N NH are still on dialup.
Newsflash for Prince Charles:
All crops are genetically modified.
/obscure?
I am glad you figured that part out.
I am still trying to figure out what a “GM” is?
And if they don’t like it, why not just buy a Ford?
I don't know that as a fact, but I suspect that is true. I've heard rumors of lawsuits against farmers who were using non-hybridized seed corn and saving some of the resultant crop to reseed the next year. The seed companies were trying to force farmers to go hybrid across the board as each plant is actually a clone and is sterile. That forces the farmer to buy seed corn every season. It also presents a major problem down the road in that wide areas are populated by what is genetically a single plant. If a pest develops to which the plant(s) have no resistance, you loose the whole crop. It's risking a biological "pandemic", and that's the truth w/o sugar coating. All the seed people say is "It ain't happened" (yet)!
Regards,
GtG
The seeds will grow. They just won't be the same hybrid as the store bought seeds. If you ever grew tomatoes and "volunteers" pop up the next year, they're never the same.
If the corn or wheat were sterile, there would be no crop.
It used to be that farmers would set ears of corn asside so that they would have seed for the next year (thus they would not need to buy seed).
I’m saying that, according to someone I spoke to recently, I’ve forgotten who, but he said that farmers now have to buy seed each year since the saved seed will not germinate due to the way it has been engineered.
This may not be not be the tinfoil hat topic that many here think.
Genetic diversity is the best guarantee against famine. Remember the Irish potato famine? A blight affected the single strain of potato the Irish were growing. Large agribusinesses also practice monoculture for reasons of scale, conformity and economy. With the disappearance of small family farms, many genetic strains will go extinct, because the large corporations will not maintain them. The seeds locked away in some remote arctic vault will not germinate forever.
If you try to plant GM seeds that you grew yourself, instead of buying from Monsanto (for example), Monsanto can sue you for violating their patent. And they'll genetically test your plants to prove it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1339473/posts?q=1&;page=51
When Petoseed was gobbled up by Monsanto, it ushered in a new era of agro-feudalism. Now there are only 5 commercial seed producers in the world. Incidentally Monsanto devised the "Terminator" technology that produces sterile wheat seed thereby eliminating the millienum-old practice of planting part of the previous years crop. Monsanto threatened legal action against recalcitrant farmers, I didn't know they actually had the huspa to follow through.
For all of the backyard gardeners out there, crop patents expire like any other patent. You can legally save,plant, and exchange non-patented and heirloom seed. And by planting different varieties at crosswind vs upwind/downwind orientations, by monoculture or by isolation, or even with the use of floating row covers, you can minimize unwanted cross-pollination.
Good sources of non-GM seed are seedsavers exchange www.seedsavers.org and in Maine, www.fedcoseeds.com. Fedco is a group of ex-hippies who no doubt all voted for Nader last November, but they are whizzes at offering reliable sources of rare and unique heirloom seed, and their agro-politics are shoulder-to-shoulder with those farmers who stood up to the British at Concord Bridge.
Charles is illiterate, that is certain.
Farmers have been recombining DNA from desirable plants for 5,000 years. They just didn’t have test tubes until very recently.
A cutting placed in the ground is a clone. Shock!!!!!!
Shut up, Chuck.
Just shut up.
We may both be right...
US Patent 6815577 - Method of hybrid seed production using conditional female sterility...
Regards,
GtG
PS I'm not in my area of expertise w/ biology, I just read a lot and may have missed some of the details. I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express though.
Wow! What will they think of next?
Many seeds are coated with inoculants, fungicides or pesticides for increased germination and survival when young.
You shouldn’t eat treated seed.
On soybeans, it could be any one of a half dozen things that the beans were treated for. One of the most common is root rot, aka “damping off” - often caused by Phytophthora or Pythium fungi.
Thank God the Founders saw fit to ban his type here.
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