On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:04:55 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

higgledy wrote:
I am sure you expereinced gardners already know this, but Gurney's is
crazy with thier prices. Which mail order places do you buy from?


Actually, I've been thinking of buying some non-hybrid seeds to
begin growing my own seed plants... cut out the middle man so
to speak. Anyone else have experience with that?

Thad

Perfect segue into the plight of poor Third World farmers who
used to save seek and replant each year -- until Monsanto starte
forcing them to buy "Terminator" seeds, genetically engineered
so they couldn't be saved and replanted.

Interested gardeners (and people with a world view) might
be interested in this cri de coeur on the subject, and might want
to send on to your Lists.

Persephone

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Monsanto, the global agritech company [1[ is about to reneg on its
pledge NOT to force indigenous farmers to buy new seed every year
by selling sterile "terminator" seed that can't be saved. Farmers
saved their seed every year for millennia, and replanted the next
year -- until Monsanto came along and commodified seed.

[1] BTW - they also seek to commodify WATER in these poor countries!
See http://newtimes.rway.com, as well as numerous URLs
quoting Ken Silverstein's research in Mother Jones Magazine on
Monsanto's drive to make the poorest people on earth buy their bottled
water. Keywords such as "Mother Jones Magazine - Monsanto -
indigeneous farmers- water" will get you a load of URLs on this and
related subjects.]

For example, http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/env...2oughties.html
will get you a timeline from 2000 to the present on the worldwide
politics of environmental destruction.

===

So -- Why should our fat and comfortable nation worry about the ruin
of indigenous farmers in Third World Countries? YOU know the answer
to THAT one! Even if we have no moral obligation to protect the weak
and helpless, and prevent the destruction of our only home, the Earth,
there's self-interest in not ruining our own agricultu

As Pastor Niemoeller famously said in 1945 the Nazi regime:

"First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Monsanto Turns About on Terminator
By Jim Thomas and Lucy Sharratt
t r u t h o u t | Report

Wednesday 22 February 2006

Biotech giant revises pledge on sterile seed technology as global
alliance calls for a ban.

It turns out you can't trust Monsanto. The world's largest seed
and agbiotech company made a landmark public promise in 1999 not to
commercialize "Terminator Technology" - plants that are genetically
engineered to produce sterile seeds. Now, seven years later, Monsanto
seems to have changed its mind. It says it may develop or use the
so-called "suicide seeds" after all. A newly revised pledge from
Monsanto now suggests that it would use Terminator seeds in non-food
crops and does not rule out other uses of Terminator in the future.

Monsanto's modified stance comes to light as the biotech and seed
industry confronts peasant and farmer movements, indigenous peoples
and their allies, in an escalating battle at the United Nations over
the future of Terminator that will come to a head next month.

It's the latest in a seven-year struggle over what has been called
"the neutron bomb of agriculture" - genetically modified seeds that
can't be saved. In 2000, the United Nations Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD) adopted a de facto moratorium on sterile seed
technologies (known in UN-speak as Genetic Use Restriction
Technologies or GURTs). But, at next month's high-level meeting of the
CBD in Curitiba, Brazil (March 20-31, 2006), the biotechnology
industry will intensify its push to undermine the six-year-old de
facto moratorium.

In response, over 300 organizations have declared their support
for a global ban on Terminator Technology this week, asserting that
sterile seeds threaten biodiversity and will destroy the livelihoods
and cultures of the 1.4 billion people who depend on farm-saved seed.

"The world's farmers and Indigenous peoples cannot trust
Monsanto," declared Alejandro Argumedo from Asociación ANDES - Potato
Park in Cusco, Peru, one of many indigenous groups backing the Ban
Terminator call. "Monsanto's broken promise is a deadly betrayal
because indigenous peoples and farmers depend on seed saving for food
security and self-determination."

Terminator technology was first developed by the United States
Department of Agriculture and the US seed company Delta & Pine Land to
prevent farmers from saving and re-using harvested seed, forcing them
to buy new seeds each season. Delta and Pine Land refer to Terminator
as Technology Protection System (TPS) and are currently testing the
crops in greenhouses. Delta and Pine Land's Harry Collins has vowed
that his company will commercialize Terminator within the next few
years

A few years ago, Terminator's fortunes weren't looking so good. In
October 1999, in response to worldwide opposition, Monsanto publicly
pledged not to commercialize Terminator seeds. Then-CEO, Robert
Shapiro, wrote an open letter to the Rockefeller Foundation stating,
"I am writing to let you know that we are making a public commitment
not to commercialize sterile seed technologies, such as the one dubbed
'Terminator.'"

Now it turns out that Monsanto has quietly revised that
commitment, pledging to keep Terminator only out of food crops. Their
new wording opens the door to the use of Terminator in cotton,
tobacco, pharmaceutical crops and grass with sterility genes.
Referring to new versions of GURTs, Monsanto's "pledge" now says,
"Monsanto does not rule out the potential development and use of one
of these technologies in the future. The company will continue to
study the risks and benefits of this technology on a case-by-case
basis."

"Monsanto's revised pledge resonates closely with the actions of a
few rich governments that have been promoting Terminator at the UN
recently," points out Chee Yoke Ling of Third World Network. "It looks
like Monsanto and other corporations are behind the strategy to
unleash Terminator at the upcoming meetings of the CBD."

Indeed, Monsanto's new stance on Terminator is part of a wider
industry attempt to undermine the de facto moratorium that was
established six years ago. In the past year, government delegates from
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, working hand in hand with the
biotech industry, have used UN meetings to introduce new text that
will be considered at next month's CBD meeting in Brazil. This text
recommends Terminator technologies be approached on a "case by case
risk assessment" basis - echoing the language of Monsanto's new
"pledge." The intention behind the "case by case" approach is to
regulate Terminator just like any other genetically modified crop -
looking only at health and environmental impacts. This would ignore
the uniquely devastating societal impacts of genetic seed sterility.

"Terminator is a direct assault on farmers, indigenous cultures
and on the food sovereignty and well-being of all rural people,
primarily the very poorest," said Chukki Nanjundaswamy of India from
La Via Campesina, an organization representing hundreds of millions of
peasant farmers worldwide. "If Monsanto bullies the UN into allowing
'case by case' assessment of Terminator, it means farmers will be
carried off the land coffin by coffin."

"These companies have a clear and simple vision that nothing
should be grown without a license from Monsanto and a few other
masters of sterility and reproduction," explains Benny Haerlin of
Greenpeace International. "They pursue this strategy step by step or
'case by case' as they now call it. If governments at the CBD give in
to Monsanto and erode the Terminator moratorium we will all have to
pay the bill tomorrow - and the collateral damage will be the
integrity and fertility of nature."

The Ban Terminator campaign this week announced the names of over
300 organizations worldwide that are demanding a ban on Terminator
technology and encouraged others to join the alliance. The list of
organizations is available at www.banterminator.org/endorsements These
organizations are from every region of the world and include peasant
farmer movements and farm organizations, indigenous peoples'
organizations, civil society and environmental groups, unions, faith
communities, international development organizations, women's
movements, consumer organizations and youth networks.

"We are particularly alarmed that Monsanto's edited pledge no
longer rejects commercialization of this dangerous technology," said
Lucy Sharratt, who is coordinating the International Ban Terminator
Campaign. "We invite all civil society and social movements to join
with us for the battle against Terminator next month in Brazil."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++


--

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile,
hoping it will eat him last."

Winston Churchill