Posted on 01/26/2009 8:10:34 AM PST by TenthAmendmentChampion
A Northern Arizona University political science professor is working with Southern African farmers studying their agricultural expertise and exposing trade agreements that could threaten the world's food supply.
For more than 30 years, Carol Thompson has been consulting on international agriculture trade issues, spending months or years at a time living in Southern African countries studying agricultural expertise and working to "expose constraining trade agreements imposed upon African farmers."
Her recent book, Biopiracy of Biodiversity - Global Exchange as Enclosure, analyzes current international agricultural trade policies, explains how they originated, and how they are impacting the world and indigenous cultures.
"The future of the planet depends not so much on military power nor on capital speculation but on each one of us making daily food choices that affect global exchange or enclosure of biodiversity—our collective nourishment, our wealth," Thompson explains.
Cowritten with Andrew Mushita, director of the Community Technology Development Trust in Zimbabwe, the book analyzes international policies for sustainable farming, the successes and failures of industrial agriculture, and the need to preserve biodiversity as a policy for future food security.
"Today only 12 plants provide 75 percent of the food in industrialized countries, making us all vulnerable," Thompson says. "Africans still rely on 2,000 plants for their food biodiversity."
The book tackles complex issues such as the World Trade Organization's patenting strategies that are "exploiting natural resources," she says.
"Biopiracy may be a new word, but the act is old," remarks Thompson, who often dresses in colorful African fabric dyed by some of the plants she is hoping will be protected. "Biopiracy is the taking of organisms, such as plants or seeds, from communities where they are shared by all, and their patenting by corporations, which privatize a living organism for profitable gain."
The problem is that although it is traditional for farmers in Southern African countries to share seeds and their knowledge about them, it also is becoming common practice for other countries to profit from the seeds and their healing benefits without compensating the original farmers.
"Pharmaceutical corporations are privatizing and patenting the genes of plants to sell for profit," she continues. "It is actually the stealing of plants that were once shared and given as gifts from indigenous farmers throughout 7,000 years of agriculture."
Thompson says the corporate pillaging of seeds is destroying the world's biodiversity, and the book stresses the need for policy alternatives.
"With trade policies as open as they are, fields and species are often destroyed or polluted by newer genetically modified organisms," Thompson notes. "The healing properties of indigenous plants also define local communities, which are becoming powerless as corporations get stronger."
Thompson cites the plant hoodia, nurtured by the San peoples in Southern Africa, as an example of trade agreements gone wrong. When nomadic hunters and gatherers pointed out its characteristics as a hunger-suppressing plant, corporations quickly produced a diet pill, making millions in profit, but only .0001 percent of the profit goes back to the San.
"I am a political economist who is seeing that if you only spend time taking local initiatives, you can be crushed by international laws and control," she says.
Thompson's current work with Southern African farmers includes working on policies to protect their knowledge about adapting crops for the implications of climate change.
She has served as a consultant for various international organizations, including the Southern African Development Community, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and UNICEF. Her primary research focus is on the impact of international finance and trade on food security.
How can you “patent” a naturally occurring thing like a plant seed. Genetically modified, yes. Natural seed no.
They only can patent genetically modified seeds they create. They cannot patent non-modified seeds.
"Pharmaceutical corporations are privatizing and patenting the genes of plants to sell for profit," she continues. "It is actually the stealing of plants that were once shared and given as gifts from indigenous farmers throughout 7,000 years of agriculture."
This was brought about by a court decision back in the Clinton administration. Monsanto has been quietly buying up and patenting seeds since then. A local farmer who grows organic vegetables says it is harder and harder to find non-patented (heirloom) seeds.
More:
http://earthfirst.com/seed-savers-exchange-saving-and-sharing-non-gmo-heirloom-seeds/
Seed Savers Exchange: Saving and Sharing Non-GMO Heirloom Seeds
December 25, 2008 · Print This Article
Corporate giant Monsanto is quietly and stealthily acquiring variety after variety of vegetable, fruit and other crop seeds, effectively taking control of agriculture across the world. Chances are, if you buy fruits and vegetables from a grocery store, you’re eating Monsanto products on a daily basis. Monsanto acquired the world’s largest vegetable seed company, Seminis, back in 2005 and Seminis supplies the genetics for 55% of the lettuce, 75% of the tomatoes and 85% of the peppers on supermarket shelves. And, surprise, Seminis seeds are used by a large number of organic farmers as well.
What does this mean? Well, among a number of other consequences, Monsanto’s growth comes at the expense of agricultural diversity. And, as Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide patent nears its expiration date, it will be increasingly turning toward biotechnology for profits.
Luckily, there are organizations like the Seed Savers Exchange to ensure that our entire food supply isn’t homogenized. Seed Savers Exchange saves and shares heirloom seeds to form a living legacy to be passed down through generations. Thanks to this non-profit organization’s work, thousands of varieties that might have otherwise disappeared are being preserved.
From the Seed Savers Exchange website:
Seed Savers Exchange exists to serve its members, and the public, through its charitable mission to (1) save the world’s diverse, but endangered, garden heritage for future generations; (2) build a network of people committed to collecting, conserving and sharing heirloom seeds and plants; and (3) educate people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity.
If you’re looking to start an organic garden, the Seed Savers Exchange is an excellent source of high-quality varieties of practically any fruit, vegetable or herb you can think of. Flower seeds are also available. You can purchase seeds on the website or join the Seed Savers Exchange as a member and get access to an additional 11,000 rare varieties of vegetables, fruit and grains.
Get more info about the Seed Savers Exchange and view the seeds available at the Seed Savers Exchange website.
Ping
Conveniently ignoring that 1988 of them are virtually worthless nutrition wise, like Kasaba roots.
The Europeons do block a lot of bio engineering that could benefit Africa immensely, but would have a negative impact on highly subsidized Europeon farming practices.
What a bunch of nonsense. Refining natural derivatives extracted from plants is how western medicines are made, it's not "patenting genes", its patenting compounded formulas and methods.
That's like saying everyone should get a fee car because the dirt and rocks supplied all the parts cars are made of, and dirt and rocks were always free for the last 7,000 years or so that we know of that man used them, and shared their knowledge of using dirt and roacks.
Even more:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Raids-on-Seeds-life-itsel-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-081215-45.html
Raids on Seeds (LIFE, itself) ... by Monsanto
by Linn Cohen-Cole Page 1 of 1 page(s)
MONSANTO’S DESTRUCTION OF SEED CLEANERS AND THE IMMENSE THREAT TO HUMAN ACCESS TO SEEDS
I have been reporting on the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s raids on Mennonite dairy farmers, on the recent Ohio Department of Agriculture SWAT team raid on an organic coop, on the USDA’s terrible weapon against all farmers with animals (NAIS - the National Animal Identification System) - trying to give an idea of the destructive forces being used intentionally against non-corporate farming.
But unless one sees what is happening to seeds themselves, one misses the scope of things.
Life itself depends on seeds.
Multinational biotech corporations such as Monsanto have been genetically engineering them, promoting GE-seeds as producing better yields, helping the starving of the world, using less pesticides and as a boon to small farmers.
Independent studies already show crop failures
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July06/Bt.cotton.China.ssl.htmland
and a link between GE-crops and organ damage and various
diseases
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=LEN20080222&articleId=8148
and it’s clear they are designed to require petroleum-based pesticides and the use of pesticides has gone up with their use.
http://www.pan-international.org/panint/files/WG2%20Genetic%20Engineering%20and%20Pesticides.pdf
But even if the GE-seeds were wonderful and all that was promised, the real problem with them are the patents they come with. The biotech companies are monopolizing seeds themselves, actually privatizing the DNA of life. They sell the GE-seeds at many times the price of normal seeds. In India, where Bt-cotton farmers have been committing suicide in huge numbers because of debt, Monsanto sells Bt-cotton seed at 1000% higher than normal seeds. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html.
And the seeds come with a contract that must be signed, preventing farmers from collecting seeds off their own land at the end of the season - an historic rupture of humankind’s free access to natural growth. For it is important to notice that the biotech multinationals are not just claiming a patent on their process of altering the seeds but claim to own growth itself.
As astounding a move as that is on human resources of survival, they are doing more. They are removing actively and aggressively and thoroughly removing access to normal “open pollinated” seeds, the ones we have known since the beginning of time, that farmers have collected and saved and shared among each other.
In the Midwest, where Monsanto sells GE-corn and GE-soy and now owns most of it, it also bought up the “normal seed” companies so farmers no longer have places to go for normal corn or soy. And though GE-corn cross pollinates over miles and miles with normal corn so maintaining organic corn is nearly impossible now, if its GE-crop is found on a farmer’s land, Monsanto sues. It’s a rare farmer who can stand up them, even if the farmer has done nothing wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser
Having bought up the normal seed companies, having locked farmers in the Midwest (only an example, it is true worldwide) into patent contracts that remove their right to collect seeds anymore, having set loose a biotechnology that contaminates normal seeds of farmers who do not buy into the patented seeds, having made plain it will sue if even a volunteer plant comes up, Monsanto is now working to eliminate the last man standing between humans and corporate privatized seeds - the seed cleaner.
The farmers has had three choices - to buy normal seed (now almost gone), to buy GE-seeds at huge cost (and going up
http://www.opednews.com/articles/During-a-world-food-crisis-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-080723-548.html)
or to collect their own seeds and use them the next season. If a farmer has even 10 acres, collecting and cleaning those seeds is a huge task. If he has 1000, it would be an impossible task without the seed cleaner whose equipment can separate out seed in just a few hours and whose costs are 1/3 that of buying normal seed.
Thus, the move to eliminate seed cleaners.
The seed cleaner is the man who makes sustainable agriculture possible.
So, Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners now across the Midwest, in Missouri,
http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/2008-07-11/Monsanto_patent_fight_ensnares_Missouri_farm_town/
in Indiana,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/eveningnews/main4048288.shtml
and now in Illinois where they are going after Steve Hixon.
Shortly after someone broke into Mr. Hixon’s office and he found his account book on his truck seat where he would never have left it, evey one of his remotely located and very scattered customers had three men (described as goons with “no necks”) arrived at each farm, going out onto it without permission, and serving close to 200 farmers. Mr. Hixon and state police who were called in, believe a GPS tracking device may have been put on Mr. Hixon’s equipment. All of his customers being sued and are being intensely pressured to settle, with the men coming back again and again and with daily calls and letters. It appears they are being a choice between being sued or settling out of court or testifying against him that he encouraged them to clean GE-seeds.
Monsanto has made a fortune on those kinds of Mafia extortion settlements since no one has the money to stand up to them and paying them off some huge amount even if the farmer has done nothing, saves them from legal costs they can’t possibly manage and then a potentially worse fate as one little local lawyer goes up against not one but multiple legal teams working for Monsanto and present in court.
The first words out of the judge’s mouth when Moe Parr, a seed cleaner in Indiana was sued, were “It’s a honor to have a fine company like Monsanto in my courtroom.”
In addition to the personal attacks on seed cleaners, Monsanto is getting laws put into place that themselves are overwhelming and destructive of seed cleaners and all those who save normal seeds.
http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/news/10040.htm
If Monsanto can eliminate seed cleaners, they would have accomplished a TOTAL monopoly in the Midwest, the bread basket of the world, and they would control world food, feed and now bio-fuel prices at will. They would, as well, have broken the fragile dam that seed cleaners and seed bankers now provide against the insanely-fast and just plain insane on-coming tide genetic engineering.
And Monsanto is working closely with the FDA in redefining seeds as a potential health hazard, subject to bioterrorism, and under that rubric to create rules for importation (controlling access)
Interim final rules on Prior Notice of Importation
http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/03-25877.pdf
rules for registering acceptable facilities (setting up corporate standards for the storage seeds, threatening small farmers)
http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/03-25849.pdf
Interim final rules on Registration of Food Facilities
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/2004/NEW01073.html
rules for talking police control of the seeds (allowing for raids on farmers)
http://www.fda.gov/oc/bioterrorism/records_fs.html
Final rules on Administrative Detention
and rules for a level of record keeping almost impossible for small farmers and ordinary people to achieve.
Upcoming final rule on Establishment and Maintenance of Records.
“These new rules will allow FDA to better identify potentially dangerous foods, as well as respond more quickly to new threats and to handle foodborne illness outbreaks more efficiently.”
Using the Bioterrorism Act and the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN), the FDA now has a focus on seeds which includes
* Prevention (federal and state surveillance sampling programs to monitor the food supply)
* Preparedness (strengthen laboratory capacity and capabilities)
* Response (surge capacity to handle terrorist attacks or a national emergency involving the food supply), and
* Recovery (support recalls, seizures, and disposal of contaminated food or feed to restore confidence in the food supply).
For those of you painfully familiar with what is happening to real milk dairy farmers and the government use of false “contamination” reports to raid farms, steal products ad equipment and terrorize and destroy farmers, it will be important to see how “bioterrorism” has now moved control over normal food even more tightly into the hands of government/corporate agencies, giving them national reach, crushing regulations for farmers, immense policing power over food, and the use of an emergency to be able to seize and destroy anything they choose.
At the level of seeds, it is important note that Monsanto is promoting every part of this.
http://www.fda.gov/oc/speeches/2004/asta0629.html
The laboratories that FERN uses represent the FDA, FSIS, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Defense, Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, the Agricultural Marketing Service, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Agency. Other federal members of the FERN include the Agricultural Research Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security, the Laboratory Response Network (LRN) and the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN).
The FDA talks about “a safety net” for human health but it is one defined by corporation and one that is closing on small farmers’ existence.
And even the FDA’s basic food safety is being “set” in a way aimed to destroy seed cleaners and (if you will notice in the short list below) organic farming itself.
FDA’s guidance on good agricultural practices (GAPs) can be found in the FDA Guide to Minimize Microbial Hazards for Fresh Fruit and Vegetables
http://www.foodsafety.gov/~dms/prodguid.html
where the key sources of contamination in seed production include:
* Agricultural water sources
* Use of manure as fertilizer
* Harvesting, transportation, and seed-cleaning equipment
* Seed storage facilities
Please note the FDA does not include Monsanto’s petroleum-based fertlizers or pesticides, or GE-labs, as potential sources of contamination.
In addition to buying on seed companies, suing farmers, eliminating seed cleaners, putting laws against seed cleaning and saving into place, influencing the FDA and Homeland Security regulations on seeds that set farmers up to lose theirs in “food safety” or “bioterrorism” raids, a law in Canada pushed by the FDA, USDA and the WTO (all heavily involved with Monsanto) would criminalize all natural substances. Thought it initially seems to be “only” an attack by the pharmaceutical industry on all natural health substances, it would include seeds and seed banking. And it would become law in the US - and without any ability to vote against it - if the North American Union is passed.
articles.mercola.com/.../archive/2008/06/ 19/vitamin-c-about-to-be-made-illegal-in-canada.aspx?source=nl
We need to understand that the effort to defend Steve Hixon, a seed cleaner, is an effort to defend the right of all of us and of our farmers worldwide to OPEN access to normal seeds. We must protect those who collect and clean them and we must roll back the massive corporate efforts to utterly control them - by criminalizing any aspect of owning, growing, collecting, storing and re-using of them.
Seeds are life and survival itself and our human right to access to them is being taken over. That is why people are coming together now to help defend Steve Hixon, a seed cleaner.
For those interested in joining FarmOn, a list aimed at providing funds to support the legal teams gathering to help Hixon, go to farmon@googlegroups.com and request to sign on.
I’m a mother and grandmother. There is no way I can leave my family or anyone else’s children, things as they are now.
They are patenting the seeds of natural plants that they never grew!
I suppose Monsanto has a right to patent their GMO soybean seeds, but they should not have the right to patent heirloom seeds to control the food supply and limit choices as to what farmers can plant. That’s what she is saying. Read the other posts on this thread and I’d like to hear back what you think.
Our country is allowing itself to be controlled by the fascist democrat party and its allies in the media and big businesses that donate to them.
No one thinks to sue over contamination of their own crops by the GE-corn? Control your emissions, so to speak.
Food for thought for the Garden list!
BTW folks, January is National Mailorder Gardening Month. Check out the info in post #5 about Seed Savers Exchange. I was flipping through their catalog this weekend and the more I look at it, in comparison to other catalogs I get, Seed Savers has some of the best prices for seeds around, plus they have the added benefit of being heirlooms, so you can save the seeds from your harvest for planting next year -— extremely economic in the long run.
“The future of the planet depends not so much on military power nor on capital speculation but on each one of us making daily food choices that affect global exchange or enclosure of biodiversity—our collective nourishment, our wealth,” Thompson explains”
I don’t care about feeding an ungrateful world. Nor do i care about the “collective nourishment” (socialist key word)
of the ungrateful world either.
We have pumped billions of dollars of food into africa and that collective has become even worse.
Africans still rely on 2,000 plants for their food biodiversity
Yeah we should all eat tree bark, wild grass and smoke dagga, that will solve our problems-well maybe the last won't solve any problems but we'll at least no longer give a sh*t about them
LOL! OK I get your point but I have a huge concern that corporations are monopolizing anything that might be used as a crop or a medicine, and suing those who then grow the crops they’ve always grown, but didn’t buy the newly-patented seeds from Monsanto!
I agree the world is ungrateful to us no matter how much we give them. That’s not the issue - the issue is that once seeds are patented by these corporations, you can’t grow them as crops unless you pay them a royalty. Worse, not only can YOU not grow them, the farmers can’t grow them. It gives one company a worldwide monopoly over all farming.
And those newly patented Monsanto seeds will not be heirlooms, thus guaranteeing the end of seed saving as the seeds from this year’s crop will not be able to reproduce, thus guaranteeing the need to purchase new seed each and every year.
For more than 30 years, Carol Thompson has been consulting on international agriculture trade issues, spending months or years at a time living in Southern African countries studying agricultural expertise and working to "expose constraining trade agreements imposed upon African farmers."The only constraints on African farmers are imposed by their own local governments. Exporting food is not a good idea for most of Africa. Thanks Gabz.
No, they are not. The two posters immediately after your initial comment are correct. You CANNOT patent a naturally occurring plant. Either Monsanto is producing a genetically modified, more "efficient" version, or they are patenting a specific gene sequence, both of which are perfectly legit. The "poor Africans" can use the seeds from the natural for as much as they like, with no patent interference.
the cost of one of Pioneer’s hybrids last spring was $28.50 per acre (with 25% over seeding), IIRC. The yield if average, would be about 450.00 per acre.
1,000 acre farm = $28,500 to seed
1000 acre farm = 450,000 in gross revenues
The yield figure used above is 152 bushels per acre at about 13 to 15% moisture content. Thirty thousand plants per acre. The average yields reflect the enhanced yield of hybrids. I am not at all sure what legacy corn would run yieldwise, particularly averaged over a five year period (cutworm, stalk strength concerns, etc.)
The hybrid companies have really gone overboard with their enforcement though.
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