Bill Nye the Scinece Guy on GMOs

[sabrina 1]

172. Here are a few links regarding the tragedy of Indian Farmers.

The Seeds of Suicide How Monsanto Destroys Farming

This is a desperate attempt by Monsanto and its PR machinery to delink the epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India from the company’s growing control over cotton seed supply — 95 per cent of India’s cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto.

Control over seed is the first link in the food chain because seed is the source of life. When a corporation controls seed, it controls life, especially the life of farmers.

Monsanto’s concentrated control over the seed sector in India as well as across the world is very worrying. This is what connects farmers’ suicides in India to Monsanto vs Percy Schmeiser in Canada, to Monsanto vs Bowman in the US, and to farmers in Brazil suing Monsanto for $2.2 billion for unfair collection of royalty.

Through patents on seed, Monsanto has become the “Life Lord” of our planet, collecting rents for life’s renewal from farmers, the original breeders.

Patents on seed are illegitimate because putting a toxic gene into a plant cell is not “creating” or “inventing” a plant. These are seeds of deception — the deception that Monsanto is the creator of seeds and life; the deception that while Monsanto sues farmers and traps them in debt, it pretends to be working for farmers’ welfare, and the deception that GMOs feed the world. GMOs are failing to control pests and weeds, and have instead led to the emergence of superpests and superweeds.

These are a few of the countries that now ban Monsanto AUSTRIA, BULGARIA, GERMANY, GREECE, HUNGARY, IRELAND, JAPAN, LUXEMBOURG, MADEIRA, NEW ZEALAND, PERU, SOUTH AUSTRALIA, RUSSIA, FRANCE, AND SWITZERLAND! A total of 30 so far have joined the growing bans on Monsanto and its GMOs and pesticides.

Monsanto Rural Debt and the Suicide Epidemic in IndiaMonsanto Rural Debt and the Suicide Epidemic in India]

The website of US-based biotech giant Monsanto boasts that the corporation qualifies as "a sustainable agriculture company."

Given Monsanto's legacy as a producer of the lethal defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, Southeast Asian agriculture would presumably beg to differ with this characterization.

Sustainability is also not the first word that comes to mind when contemplating Monsanto's policy of sowing the earth with genetically modified seeds that destroy soil and are designed with nonrenewable traits so as to require constant repurchase as well as acquisition of a variety of other company products like fertilizers and pesticides.

Nor would the term appear to define a situation in which nearly 300,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995 after being driven into insurmountable debt by neoliberal economics and the conquest of Indian farmland by Monsanto's Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton.

In tragic irony, many kill themselves by imbibing pesticides intended for their crops.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vandana-shiva/from-seeds-of-suicide-to_b_192419.html

In 1998, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.

Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.

The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture. The district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh used to grow diverse legumes, millets, and oilseeds. Now the imposition of cotton monocultures has led to the loss of the wealth of farmer's breeding and nature's evolution.

Of course Monsanto has denied any of this, and our media either tries to debunk the facts about the destruction of not just India's farmers but many other parts of the world, or cover them up.

There is an excellent documentary about all of this which I will post when I have more time to find it. Bush Sr. appears in it in a segment demonstrating Monsanto's promotional efforts, he was VP at the time.

Sorry to be so angry, but this truly is something I never thought we would have to redo on any Democratic website. I guess you have to keep on repeating thing or the Corporations will take advantage of our not doing so. And they spend millions to overcome the exposure of their practices.