Boycott Monsanto // Current

Monsanto expects Roundup to generate 1.8 billion in profits for 2008

That's a lot of poison in our rivers, streams, food, air and stomachs. Poison for profit. That should be their slogan. And... more

JanforGore
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12 responses

2 months ago

Lower crop insurance rates for GMOs: USDA gift to Monsanto

The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) is part of the Risk Management Agency (RMA) that serves under the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), a Federal Executive Department (or Cabinet Department).The USDA-FCIC safeguards the economic stability of agriculture through a system of crop insurance and provides the means for research in devising and establishing such insurance. It is managed by a Board of Directors, subject to the general supervision of the Secretary of Agriculture.

On 12 September 2007, the FCIC Board of Directors approved a Biotech Yield Endorsement (BYE) pilot programme submitted under section 523(d) of the Federal Crop Insurance Act. The result is that farmers growing Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) maize receives crop insurance at a greatly reduced cost of between 20 and 70 percent.

The BYE programme was crafted by the Monsanto Corporation and its first beneficiary is limited to its GM maize. This insurance bonanza is intended for farmers planting Monsanto’s GM maize that has Bt genes against corn borer and root worm stacked with a gene for tolerance to Round-up herbicide. The FCIC Board of Directors, at its 14 August 2008 meeting, approved additional seed technologies for premium rate reduction for producers planting certain corn hybrid varieties; i.e., those containing Bt genes for corn borer and rootworm stacked with genes for tolerance to herbicides such as glyphosate and glufosinate. The companies benefiting from the largesse of the USDA give-away insurance include besides Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta and Pioneer Hi-Bred [1, 2].

The crop insurance policies insure producers against yield losses due to natural causes such as drought, excessive moisture, hail, wind, frost, insects, and disease [3]. It is clear that the stacked GM maize lines are protected against corn borer and rootworm, but not particularly well protected against drought, excessive moisture, hail, wind, frost and disease, nor against the numerous insect pest that are likely to take advantage of reduced competition from borer or root worm. It may be that the stacked maize lines will benefit from a USDA give-away insurance that specifically protects against any such secondary insect pests; for they have indeed already emerged in China and India as the result of growing Bt cotton [4, 5] (see Why Prince Charles is Right, SiS 40 and Deadly gift from Monsanto to India, SiS 39)

FCIC is presuming that the stacked GM maize lines will consistently produce more than conventional or organic maize, but that has not been proven scientifically. It is based solely on an act of faith on the part of the USDA bureaucrats.

Why then do these new GM constructs deserve the gift of reduced insurance cost at the US taxpayers’ expense? Have the taxpayers been consulted before such egregious largesse has been doled out to well-heeled farmers and the corporations who licence the GM seeds?

The rest of the farming community may feel especially aggrieved at this blatant display of favouritism on the part of the FCIC. After all, insured organic farmers were not compensated for damages from epidemics of fungal disease, even though the conventional fungicides were ineffective against the fungus disease. It seems that FCAC is taking on the role of sugar daddy to the GM industry and compliant farmers. And that may go a long way towards promoting universal GM farming practices and bankrupting the public coffers.

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So not only do consumers pay for their frankenfood at the markets of America without proper disclosure as to health effects of it; US taxpayers are now footing the bill for their crop insurance, thanks to a gift from the USDA. Are you outraged yet?The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) is part of the Risk Management Agency (RMA) that serves under the USDA (United... more

JanforGore
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3 months ago

Millions Against Monsanto Campaign, from Organic Consumers Association

Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.
Sign OCA's "Millions Against Monsanto" petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1265

The petition can also be found half way down the subject page above organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm after the following story.

Multi-Billion $$ Monsanto Sues More Small Family Farmers

Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Saskatchewan Canada, whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto's genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Canola by pollen from a nearby farm. Monsanto says it doesn't matter how the contamination took place, and is therefore demanding Schmeiser pay their Technology Fee (the fee farmers must pay to grow Monsanto's genetically engineered products). According to Schmeiser, "I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract.
If I would go to St. Louis (Monsanto Headquarters) and contaminate their plots - destroy what they have worked on for 40 years - I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away."
Rodney Nelson's family farm is being forced into a similar lawsuit by Monsanto.
Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.
Sign OCA's "Millions Against Monsanto" petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings.Monsanto Takes Ownership of Public Water Resources

Over the past century, global water supplies have been contaminated with the full gamut of Monsanto's chemicals, including PCBs, dioxin and glyophosate (Roundup). So now the company, seeing a profitable market niche, is taking control of the public water resources they polluted, filtering it, and selling it back to the people. In short, Monsanto is making a double profit by polluting the world's scarce freshwater resources, privately taking ownership of that water, filtering it, and selling it back to those who can afford to pay for it.

Sign OCA's "Millions Against Monsanto" petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings

Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by... more

SeaJade
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7 responses

3 months ago

Farm and food: Monsanto's prices to rise on RoundUp and seeds

In late March, Monsanto Co. sent a Dear Valued Customer letter to most U.S. corn and soybean farmers. The reason, wrote Jim... more

JanforGore
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30 responses

3 months ago

An open letter to Monsanto: The Ethicurean

A clever little analogical letter to Monsanto....the evil bully on the playground.

wholefreespirit
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5 responses

3 months ago

Monsanto to pursue divestiture of POSILAC

Interesting... Is Monsanto feeling the heat from farmers, people in the medical field, consumer groups, and state attorney... more

JanforGore
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16 responses

3 months ago

Small Farmers, Ecofeminism, Vandana Shiva

For more than a century, farms have been getting bigger while seeds, fertilization and pest control have been getting more uniform. Led by farm suppliers, it has raised productivity. But negative byproducts of this trend include increasing chemical dependence and loss of biodiversity. Ecofeminist Vandana Shiva is at the Organic World Congress to protest the human and environmental cost of monoculture. The pendulum may be swinging back her way as consumer preference (among "locavores") for locally grown food and organic food increases, as the public becomes more aware of the impact of chemicals on the environment, and as higher petroleum prices result in pricier fertilizers and pesticides.

Vandana is one of the speakers at the opening ceremony of the Organic World Congress in Modena's large Piazza Grande, which fills the center of the city behind the famed (Michelin three-starred) Romanesque Duomo, shown below earlier in the day as the seats were being set up.

An eloquent defender of the property rights of small farms in India and other countries, Vandana has devoted much of her life to research on the effects of loss of biodiversity resulting from monoculture and has allied herself with the Slow Food Movement. Her books include The Violence of the Green Revolution and Monocultures of the Mind. She decided that science was not serving the interests of small farmers, so she left the academic world and formed her own organization, Navdanya.

Because she associates monoculture with a masculine wish to dominate -- and sees it as threatening both small farmers and biodiversity in the name of temporarily higher productivity -- Vandana has been called an ecofeminist, a term attributed to the late Francoise d'Eaubonne describing someone resistant to abuse of either women or mother nature, and adds in empathy for the small farmer in developing countries.

Small-farm consolidation continues, as was highlighted in South Africa just this week. The Valley Trust has for years been working with rural communities to provide health and other services and support organic farms. It has recently broken ranks with the South African Department of Agriculture for its pressure on small-scale farmers to join cooperatives. Small farmers are promised financial help, farm equipment, water piping and free seeds in return for joining the larger farming unit. The catch is that the small farmer must plant genetically modified seeds, which create farmer dependence on commercial monoculture. The director of Biowatch, an NGO promoting alternatives to GMO farming, says: "In the end, most farmers end up in huge debt, because they can't save seeds and are obliged to buy the matching GM fertilizers and pesticides" .
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Dr. Shiva was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2005. I think she should be nominated again and win in this year for her work to sow seeds of hope and peace in place of the seeds of deception and environmental destruction that have been planted by Monsanto.
For more than a century, farms have been getting bigger while seeds, fertilization and pest control have been getting more... more

JanforGore
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12 responses

4 months ago

Monsanto & ADM Set Up New Front Group to Deflect Ethanol Criticism & Promote GMOs

Doug Cameron reported in today's Wall Street Journal that, "A group of U.S. agribusiness companies including Archer Daniels Midland Co. are uniting in the intensifying food-versus-fuel debate, forming an alliance to promote the idea that technology can ease global supply shortages.

"The Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy - which includes seed makers Monsanto Co. and DuPont Co., as well as farm-gear maker Deere & Co. - wants to spread its belief that renewable fuels won't cut into food supplies if new technologies, such as genetically modified crops, are used to their fullest. The group is also working hard to protect government subsidies for ethanol production.

"ADM, Monsanto and others have seen their own profits soar in recent years, as booming demand for agricultural products in emerging markets has pushed up commodity prices and spurred additional production."

And Reuters writer Lisa Shumaker reported yesterday that, "A new group is adding its voice to the debate on using crops to produce alternative fuels such as ethanol amid rising food prices and shortages in some countries.

"The Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy in Washington D.C. was created by Archer Daniels Midland Co, DuPont Co, Deere & Co, Monsanto Co and the Renewable Fuels Association (www.foodandenergy.org ).

"'There are critics who are trying to create an either-or decision between food and fuel,' said Mark Kornblau, the alliance's executive director. 'We believe this is a false choice. Today, more than 90 percent of crops in the United States and around the world are used exclusively for food.'"
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Keith Good
President FarmPolicy.com, Inc.
Champaign, IL
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There you have it. Unequivocal proof that these biotech agribusiness corporations don't care one whit about you.The battle lines have been drawn. It is them against us and this planet. Profit trumping sustainability and fair access to food and water. I don't think it is then too dramatic to state that this is a battle for our lives. These companies with the full backing of our own government, including those who voted for their subsidies (and yes, that also includes Obama) are set on total control of our food and water supply in order to control us.

In the last post I placed here on this topic today regarding Monsanto raising the price of corn seed during a food crisis it was stated that it is time this be given serious attention... well, I go one further here... this requires serious ACTION.

Please go to the article link and there you will find a petition calling for the boycott of Monsanto. The people this will affect, mainly the poor, farmers, and people living in developing countries must join together to fight this insidious takeover of our lives. And yes, it's that serious. Click on the tag, 'Monsanto' to see much more on exactly what is transpiring on a global scale and why the majority of this world is AGAINST GMOs and allowing Monsanto to patent life itself.Doug Cameron reported in today's Wall Street Journal that, "A group of U.S. agribusiness companies including Archer... more

JanforGore
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4 months ago

During a world food crisis, Monsanto raises corn seed prices to $100.00 a bag

Do you know who Monsanto is? They are a chemical corporation which made Agent Orange and after that, PCBs, with which they drowned... more

JanforGore
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18 responses

4 months ago

Monsanto's Sordid History

Monsanto, best known today for its agricultural biotechnology products, has a long and dirty history of polluting this country and others with some of the most toxic compounds known to humankind. From PCBs to Agent Orange to Roundup, we have many reasons to question the motives of this company that claims to be working to reduce environmental destruction and feed the world with its genetically engineered food crops.

Headquartered near St. Louis, Missouri, the Monsanto Chemical Company was founded in 1901. Monsanto became a leading manufacturer of sulfuric acid and other industrial chemicals in the 1920s. In the 1930s, Monsanto began producing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PCBs, widely used as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, waterproof coatings and liquid sealants, are potent carcinogens and have been implicated in reproductive, developmental and immune system disorders.

The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state. By 1982, nearby Times Beach, Missouri, was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated. Dioxins are endocrine and immune system disruptors, cause congenital birth defects, reproductive and developmental problems, and increase the incidence of cancer, heart disease and diabetes in laboratory animals.

By the 1940s, Monsanto had begun focusing on plastics and synthetic fabrics like polystyrene (still widely used in food packaging and other consumer products), which is ranked fifth in the EPA’s 1980s listing of chemicals whose production generates the most total hazardous waste.

During World War II, Monsanto played a significant role in the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb.

Following the war, Monsanto championed the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture, and began manufacturing the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which contains dioxin. Monsanto has been accused of covering up or failing to report dioxin contamination in a wide range of its products.

The herbicide “Agent Orange,” used by U.S. military forces as a defoliant during the Vietnam War, was a mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D and had very high concentrations of dioxin. U.S. Vietnam War veterans have suffered from a host of debilitating symptoms attributable to Agent Orange exposure, and since the end of the war an estimated 500,000 Vietnamese children have been born with deformities.

In the 1970s, Monsanto began manufacturing the herbicide Roundup, which has been marketed as a safe, general-purpose herbicide for widespread commercial and consumer use, even though its key ingredient, glyphosate, is a highly toxic poison for animals and humans. In 1997, The New York State Attorney General took Monsanto to court and Monsanto was subsequently forced to stop claiming that Roundup is “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly.”

Monsanto has been repeatedly fined and ruled against for, among many things, mislabeling containers of Roundup, failing to report health data to EPA, and chemical spills and improper chemical deposition. In 1995, Monsanto ranked fifth among U.S. corporations in EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, having discharged 37 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land, water and underground.

Since the inception of Plan Colombia in 2000, the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in funding aerial sprayings of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicides in Colombia. The Roundup is often applied in concentrations 26 times higher than what is recommended for agricultural use. Additionally, it contains at least one surfactant, Cosmo-Flux 411f, whose ingredients are a trade secret, has never been approved for use in the US, and which quadruples the biological action of the herbicide.

cont...Monsanto, best known today for its agricultural biotechnology products, has a long and dirty history of polluting this country and... more

JanforGore
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17 responses

4 months ago

South Africa: small farmers pushed to plant GM seed

Baphethile Mntambo has been farming organically for the past five years because she knows that avoiding chemicals will in the long-term benefit her yield.

She decided not to plant genetically modified seeds because she has heard that they cannot be saved for the next season and will eventually deplete her soil. But she is not entirely sure how and why.

"I have heard about GMO, but I don't understand what it is exactly," she says. "The only thing I know is that it will cost a lot of money to buy the seeds, the fertiliser and the pesticides."

Mntambo is one of 50 small-scale farmers in the Valley of a Thousand Hills in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province who have been taught how to farm organically by non-governmental organisation Valley Trust. The farmers learn to plant seasonal crops that will provide their families both with food security and an opportunity to generate income by selling their produce at local markets.

"We decided to promote organic farming to create sustainability for small-scale farmers. We believe it is the only way to give them food sovereignty and stability," explains Valley Trust food security facilitator Nhlanhla Vezi.

The Valley Trust used to cooperate with the Department of Agriculture, according to Vezi, but the collaboration ceased when the department started to put pressure on small-scale farmers to form cooperatives if they wanted its support. "The Department makes very attractive offers to provide farming equipment, water piping and seeds, but then uses this as a strategy to push GMO because of agreements they have signed with multinational GM seed patent holders," says Vezi.

Rural farmers are often lured into planting GM seeds by the Department of Agriculture by promises of substantial bank loans and the prospect of huge earnings, agrees Lesley Liddell, director of Biowatch, an NGO promoting alternatives to GMO farming by encouraging farmers to inter-crop, use natural fertilisers and non-chemical crops. "But in the end, most farmers end up in huge debt, because they can't save seeds and are obliged to buy the matching GM fertilisers and pesticides."

Yet, small-scale farmers are often so desperate for financial support that they consider planting GMO crops against better knowledge if they are offered the seeds for free. "I know that GMO is not good in the long run, but if someone gave me these seeds I would still plant them," says Tholani Bhengu, another small-scale farmer who works with the Valley Trust. "For me, the most important thing is to bring food on the table every week. I can't afford to think now about what will happen next year."

Because small-scale farmers in rural Africa often have little or no formal education, they are generally unable to make informed choices around GMO farming. "We encourage them to attend portfolio committees that discuss GMO regulations, but the farmers' knowledge is very limited, so it's difficult for them to contribute. They understand the issues but not the legislation," says Liddell.

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That last quoted paragraph is exactly why these small scale farmers are the targets of multinationals like Monsanto. And as well in South Africa, mandatory labelling is not required.

They are using the poverty these farmers live in as a way to force them into planting GM crap... and when their GM crops fail because of drought or cross contamination, no one is there to bail them out and they have to rebuy seed and "herbicide" again if they wish to plant as they get deeper in debt while Monsanto and other companies reap the benefits.

Insidious.Baphethile Mntambo has been farming organically for the past five years because she knows that avoiding chemicals will in the... more

JanforGore
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23 responses

4 months ago

The great GM crop yield myth exposed

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions". He added: "People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'"

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

The GM crop – engineered to resist Monsanto's own weedkiller, Roundup – recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the modification hindered the crop's take-up of the essential element from the soil. Even with the addition it brought the GM soya's yield to equal that of the conventional one, rather than surpassing it.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a "decrease" in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over.
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GM food is not the answer to world hunger. Addressing the cause of hunger is. This is only a profit making scheme for CEOs like Hugh Grant of Monsanto to make over THREE MILLION dollars a year not even counting the hundreds of thousands of shares he has in the company while people continue to starve in the world.

And our own FDA has helped them put something on the market that goes in our bodies and the bodies of our children that was not scientifically vetted and is not labelled on our food. It is time to expose the corporate frauds that seek to control our food and water and send more poor farmers in this country and in Asia, Africa, and South America into debt. Patenting life is immoral as is deceiving the public about what they are eating and devastating our environment.

We need to boycott Monsanto, Cargill, ADM, and any other multinational in the business of profit over people until they are held accountable for their deceptions.Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a... more

JanforGore
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18 responses

4 months ago

Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death To Paul Bremer's Order 81/GM Foods

Heard about the thousands of farmer suicides in India? Well, Iraqi farmers may be next thanks to the work of U.S. diplomat Paul Bremer and his Monsanto friends.

Anyone hearing about central India's ongoing epidemic of farmer suicides, where growers are killing themselves at a terrifying clip, has to be horrified. But among the more disturbed must be the once-grand poobah of post-invasion Iraq, U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer.

Why Bremer? Because Indian farmers are choosing death after finding themselves caught in a loop of crop failure and debt rooted in genetically modified and patented agriculture -- the same farming model that Bremer introduced to Iraq during his tenure as administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American body that ruled the "new Iraq" in its chaotic early days.

In his 400 days of service as CPA administrator, Bremer issued a series of directives known collectively as the "100 Orders." Bremer's orders set up the building blocks of the new Iraq, and among them is Order 81 [PDF], officially titled Amendments to Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law, enacted by Bremer on April 26, 2004.

Order 81 generated very little press attention when it was issued. And what coverage it did spark tended to get the details wrong. Reports claimed that what the United States' man in Iraq had done was no less than tell each and every Iraqi farmer -- growers who had been tilling the soil of Mesopotamia for thousands of years -- that from here on out they could not reuse seeds from their fields or trade seeds with their neighbors, but instead they would be required to purchase all of their seeds from the likes of U.S. agriculture conglomerates like Monsanto.

That's not quite right. Order 81 wasn't that draconian, and it was not so clearly a colonial mandate. In fact, the edict was more or less a legal tweak.

What Order 81 did was to establish the strong intellectual property protections on seed and plant products that a company like the St. Louis-based Monsanto -- purveyors of genetically modified (GM) seeds and other patented agricultural goods -- requires before they'll set up shop in a new market like the new Iraq. With these new protections, Iraq was open for business. In short, Order 81 was Bremer's way of telling Monsanto that the same conditions had been created in Iraq that had led to the company's stunning successes in India.
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Insidious bastards.
Heard about the thousands of farmer suicides in India? Well, Iraqi farmers may be next thanks to the work of U.S. diplomat Paul... more