http://www.theatlantic.com/life/arch...-for-biodivers
ity-monsanto-and-farmers-clash/73117/

The Battle for Biodiversity: Monsanto and Farmers Clash
By ANNA LAPPÉ

MAR 28 2011, 12:48 PM ET

Does genetic modification lead to more and better crops? Or will it
destroy the foundations of our food systems?

Two weeks ago, Monsanto announced the latest genetically engineered crop
it hopes to bring to market: a soybean rejiggered to resist the
herbicide dicamba. The new product, says Monsanto, will aid in weed
control and "deliver peace of mind for growers."
Meanwhile, half a world away, La Via Campesina, a farmers' movement of
150 organizations from 70 countries, had a slightly different idea about
what would bring peace of mind to its millions of members: protecting
biodiversity. In its statement to those gathered*in Bali*for the United
Nations*treaty on plant genetics, the organization urged treaty drafters
to*reevaluate the legal framework that allows seed patenting and the
spread of genetically engineered crops, like those Monsanto soybeans.
These genetically modified crops and the international patent regime, La
Via Campesina said, block farmers' ability to save and share seeds,
threatening biodiversity and food security.

(cont.)


If you like weekends (8 hr./day & 40 hr./week), thank a labor union.


Bush's 3rd term: OBAMA

----
--
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

On Mar 29, 2:02*pm, Billy wrote:
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/arch...-for-biodivers
ity-monsanto-and-farmers-clash/73117/

The Battle for Biodiversity: Monsanto and Farmers Clash
By ANNA LAPPÉ

MAR 28 2011, 12:48 PM ET

Does genetic modification lead to more and better crops? Or will it
destroy the foundations of our food systems?

Two weeks ago, Monsanto announced the latest genetically engineered crop
it hopes to bring to market: a soybean rejiggered to resist the
herbicide dicamba. The new product, says Monsanto, will aid in weed
control and "deliver peace of mind for growers."
Meanwhile, half a world away, La Via Campesina, a farmers' movement of
150 organizations from 70 countries, had a slightly different idea about
what would bring peace of mind to its millions of members: protecting
biodiversity. In its statement to those gathered*in Bali*for the United
Nations*treaty on plant genetics, the organization urged treaty drafters
to*reevaluate the legal framework that allows seed patenting and the
spread of genetically engineered crops, like those Monsanto soybeans.
These genetically modified crops and the international patent regime, La
Via Campesina said, block farmers' ability to save and share seeds,
threatening biodiversity and food security.

(cont.)

If you like weekends (8 hr./day & 40 hr./week), thank a labor union.

Bush's 3rd term: OBAMA

----
--
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

i'd like to comment, first, on your labour union colonnard:
do you like everything you wear, use for your house & personal self,
food for your pets to eat & toys with which to play??? AND they're
'almost' ALL being made in china; more americans out of work since the
"great depression" just because workers were convinced they NEEDED a
40-hour week, 2-full day weekends, and a minimum of a 2 week paid
vacation??? then, thank an american labour union!!!!!!!!
(don't forget, when the govt. is counting unemployment numbers,
they're ONLY counting those ppl. who ARE working 40-hr. weeks of 8/hr./
day)


as to your original posting: one of monsanto's original genetic
experiments was to intermix fish genes into 'beefsteak' tomatoes----
PLEASE, oh please, tell me how fish genes in tomatoes could do
ANYTHING to enhance the lives of humans??!!!!???
and then, too, there have been similar experiments meant, of
course, to improve mankind....??? wha? HUH???

In article
,
Skylark wrote:

On Mar 29, 2:02*pm, Billy wrote:
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/arch...-for-biodivers
ity-monsanto-and-farmers-clash/73117/

The Battle for Biodiversity: Monsanto and Farmers Clash
By ANNA LAPPÉ

MAR 28 2011, 12:48 PM ET

Does genetic modification lead to more and better crops? Or will it
destroy the foundations of our food systems?

Two weeks ago, Monsanto announced the latest genetically engineered crop
it hopes to bring to market: a soybean rejiggered to resist the
herbicide dicamba. The new product, says Monsanto, will aid in weed
control and "deliver peace of mind for growers."
Meanwhile, half a world away, La Via Campesina, a farmers' movement of
150 organizations from 70 countries, had a slightly different idea about
what would bring peace of mind to its millions of members: protecting
biodiversity. In its statement to those gathered*in Bali*for the United
Nations*treaty on plant genetics, the organization urged treaty drafters
to*reevaluate the legal framework that allows seed patenting and the
spread of genetically engineered crops, like those Monsanto soybeans.
These genetically modified crops and the international patent regime, La
Via Campesina said, block farmers' ability to save and share seeds,
threatening biodiversity and food security.

(cont.)

If you like weekends (8 hr./day & 40 hr./week), thank a labor union.

Bush's 3rd term: OBAMA

----
--
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

i'd like to comment, first, on your labour union colonnard:
colonnard????
do you like everything you wear, use for your house & personal self,
food for your pets to eat & toys with which to play??? AND they're
'almost' ALL being made in china; more americans out of work since the
"great depression" just because workers were convinced they NEEDED a
40-hour week, 2-full day weekends, and a minimum of a 2 week paid
vacation??? then, thank an american labour union!!!!!!!!
I buy American, as I do organic, if I have a choice. Most jobs that I've
had didn't include paid vacation time. There are 5 unemployed for every
employment offer, and I do thank labor unions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair even when some of them
became predatory in their own right. The Knights of Labor, IWW, and the
International Longshoremen's Association are to to be respected for the
benefits that they brought to American workers, that elevated them to
the middle class, and created the backbone of American prosperity. Once
again we see that workers who want a piece of the wealth that they
produce are being called "Communists".
(don't forget, when the govt. is counting unemployment numbers,
they're ONLY counting those ppl. who ARE working 40-hr. weeks of 8/hr./
day)


as to your original posting: one of monsanto's original genetic
experiments was to intermix fish genes into 'beefsteak' tomatoes----
PLEASE, oh please, tell me how fish genes in tomatoes could do
ANYTHING to enhance the lives of humans??!!!!???
They were hoping to create a frost tolerant tomato.
and then, too, there have been similar experiments meant, of
course, to improve mankind....??? wha? HUH???
It was more of an offering to Mammon, rather than an attempt to improve
the bottom line, and in their rush to riches they turned a blind eye to
any danger that their "creations" could pose for humanity.

Bottom line is that despite some cautionary studies on GMOs and their
effects on the environment, and the animals that eat them, there have
been no feeding studies done for the unmarked GMO food in the market
place. We are the guinea pigs.
--
- Billy
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953
http://wn.com/black_panther_party
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug

Billy wrote:
i'd like to comment, first, on your labour union colonnard:
colonnard????
do you like everything you wear, use for your house & personal self,
food for your pets to eat & toys with which to play??? AND they're
'almost' ALL being made in china; more americans out of work since
the "great depression" just because workers were convinced they
NEEDED a 40-hour week, 2-full day weekends, and a minimum of a 2
week paid vacation??? then, thank an american labour union!!!!!!!!
I buy American, as I do organic, if I have a choice. Most jobs that
I've had didn't include paid vacation time. There are 5 unemployed
for every employment offer, and I do thank labor unions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair even when some of them
became predatory in their own right. The Knights of Labor, IWW, and
the International Longshoremen's Association are to to be respected
for the benefits that they brought to American workers, that elevated
them to the middle class, and created the backbone of American
prosperity. Once again we see that workers who want a piece of the
wealth that they produce are being called "Communists".
(don't forget, when the govt. is counting unemployment numbers,
they're ONLY counting those ppl. who ARE working 40-hr. weeks of
8/hr./ day)

And as we lose our unions, we are losing our middle class. Heading our way to
being peons as "trickle down" does what it's designed to do.

In article , "Bob F"
wrote:

Billy wrote:
snip
I buy American, as I do organic, if I have a choice. Most jobs that
I've had didn't include paid vacation time. There are 5 unemployed
for every employment offer, and I do thank labor unions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair even when some of them
became predatory in their own right. The Knights of Labor, IWW, and
the International Longshoremen's Association are to to be respected
for the benefits that they brought to American workers, that elevated
them to the middle class, and created the backbone of American
prosperity. Once again we see that workers who want a piece of the
wealth that they produce are being called "Communists".
snip

And as we lose our unions, we are losing our middle class. Heading our way to
being peons as "trickle down" does what it's designed to do.

"Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given
ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the
health of ecosystems. Greater biodiversity implies greater health."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity

What does this then say about the loss of diversity over agricultural
land ownership, and the loss of diversity over the ownership of the
plants that grow on it? What are the consequences of the very few owning
more and more of the agricultural land, and owning more and more of the
plants that grow grow there?
-----

The history of agriculture in the United States during the
twentieth-century involved a transition from a nation of independent
farmers and craft workers to a nation of landless workers and urban
consumers dependent on increasingly transnational corporate agribusiness
producers, processors, and distributors of food. According to the U.S.
Bureau of Census, in 1900, over one out of every three Americans was
part of the farm-based population (29.8 million out of a total
population of 76.2 million). By 1940, there were still 30.5 million
individuals in the farm-based population out of a total population of
132.1 million or 23.1 percent. Rapid change followed after mid-century,
and by 1970 only 9.7 million persons remained categorized as farm-based
or roughly 5 percent of the total population of 203.3 million. The
downward trend has continued, and in 1990 only 4.5 million persons were
categorized as farm-based, or less than 2 percent of a total population
of 248.7 million.
http://www.jrank.org/cultures/pages/3576/Agriculture-Agribusiness.html
----

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myt...ability/dp/160
4860804/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297274630&sr=1-1
(Available at a library near you)
p. 43-44
Two-thirds of the earth's land is unsuited for annual crops, destructive
or not. It's simply too wet, too drv, too hot, too cold, or too
steep to even try it. But where agriculture can be done, to approach
soil susiainability, the rain has to be gentle and come fairly evenly
across the warm season. The climate must also be temperate‹too hot
and wet, and the biological activity burns through the organic material
quickly, leaving topsoil that's naturally too thin for agriculture
(think rainforest). It the climate is too cold, then there isn't enough
biological activity to degrade organic matter (think Greenland). The
proper conditions are only matched in a few places on earth. Jackson
mentions northern Europe and Japan. Note well the list doesn't include
the major grain-growing regions of the world like the American
Midwest. The summers are too hot, the rain too infrequent, and the
storms too intense.
-----

And we are losing agricultural land every year.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/gl...ctures/land_de
g/land_deg.html
---

"An estimated 50 million hectares of fertile land * an area double the
size of the UK * has been acquired overseas over the last few years by
companies, investors and sovereign wealth funds, and very often to the
detriment of poor people and local economies."

"Experts say food speculation alongside climate conditions is amongst
the main factors behind the recent escalation of world food prices and
things could get worse very quickly if we don¹t act to curb it.
Speculators are gambling with poor peoples¹ food and livelihoods, and so
we¹re urging the UN to recommend curbs on speculation as soon as
possible."
http://www.actionaid.org/main.aspx?PageID=1489
----

Spiraling food prices are in large part the result of market
manipulation. They are largely attributable to speculative trade on the
commodity markets. Grain prices are boosted artificially by large scale
speculative operations on the New York and Chicago mercantile
exchanges. It is worth noting that in 2007, the Chicago Board of Trade
(CBOT), merged with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), forming the
largest Worldwide entity dealing in commodity trade including a wide
range of speculative instruments (options, options on futures, index
funds, etc).

The reproduction of seeds at the village level in local nurseries has
been disrupted by the use of genetically modified seeds. The
agricultural cycle, which enables farmers to store their organic seeds
and plant them to reap the next harvest has been broken. This
destructive pattern – invariably resulting in famine – is replicated in
country after country leading to the Worldwide demise of the peasant
economy.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8877
------

In January 2005 Monsanto announced that they were buying Seminis for
$1.4 billion in cash and assumed debt. Noted for its aggressive advocacy
of genetically modified crops and its dominance in biotechnology,
Monsanto will now have a major presence in the vegetable seed business
for the first time. No one knows if or when they will incorporate
transgenes into their vegetable varieties.

The current industrial seed system rests upon the unholy trinity of
biotechnology, corporate concentration and intellectual property rights.
Each is mutually reinforcing and none of the three stands without the
support of the other two.

Court decisions in 1980, 1985 and 2001, however, have brought all
products of plant breeding under the standard utility patent. Unlike PVP
(Plant Variety Protection Act), utility patents protect not just
finished varieties, but also individual components of those varieties
and processes used to create those varieties. There are no exemptions
for farmers to save seed and none for research and breeding.

We have chosen to use Monsanto¹s buyout of Seminis as a wake-up call. We
do so because Monsanto epitomizes the road down which we no longer
choose to goŠthe road that leads to our complete surrender of control of
our seed and therefore of control of our food system.
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/monsanto.htm
-----

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/17/4627

What Do Brazil, Mexico, Russia and the USA Have in Common?
by Russell Mokhiber

A rapidly expanding billionaire class. Rampant poverty. And a distressed
middle class.

That's the take of Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter David
Cay Johnston in a soon to be released book - Free Lunch: How the
Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick
You with the Bill) (Portfolio, December 2007).

In it, Johnston seeks to afflict the comfortable top one tenth of one
percent of Americans -- the 300,000 men, women and children who last
year made more money than the bottom 150 million Americans.

Yes, we all have the right to vote and change this unbalanced state of
affairs.

But political power in the United States is exercised by this narrow,
rich segment of the population.

Much of the wealth transfer upstairs has come at the hands of corporate
welfare artists who have shifted billions from the middle class to the
billionaire class.
-----

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government
Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Wea...ernment/dp/B00
2CMLQXY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301520870&sr=1-1
(Available at a library near you.)

p. 15
In less than three decades presidents of companies have gone from
apologizing when they had to lay off workers to boasting of the riches
they obtained through mass firings. We sing the praises of investors who
owe their wealth not to creating businesses, but to buying companies in
deals that required destroying lives and careers, just so that they could
squeeze out more money for themselves. Too many of us missed the
irony when Gordon Gekko, rewriting the eighth and tenth commandments,
looked into the camera and declared "Greed ... is good. Greed is
right. Greed works."
(Gordon Gekko is the main antagonist of the 1987 film Wall Street)
---

Still with me?

Diversity is a good thing whether you are talking plants or economics.
The wider the base, the more stable the system. Basing agriculture on a
few plants, or an economy on a few people, inherently makes the system
less stable. I think the direction we are going is obvious. Without the
well paying jobs that supported it, the middle class is disappearing.
Our educational budgets are being cut which makes it more difficult for
American to be competitive in the world. America of yesteryear was the
middle class. Where are we going? Forward to the past.
----
p.211-213
A sheriff in the Hudson River Valley near Albany, New York, about to
go into the hills in the fall of 1839 to collect back rents from tenants
on the enormous Rensselaer estate, was handed a letter:

.... the tenants have organized themselves into a body, and resolved not
to pay any more rent until they can be redressed of their grievances. .
The tenants now assume the right of doing to their landlord as he has
for a long time done with them, viz: as they please.

You need not think this to be children's play. . . . if you come out in
your official capacity ... I would not pledge for your safe return.... A
Tenant.

When a deputy arrived in the farming area with writs demanding the
rent, farmers suddenly appeared, assembled by the blowing of tin horns.
They seized his writs and burned them.

That December, a sheriff and a mounted posse of five hundred rode
into the farm country, but found themselves in the midst of shrieking tin
horns, eighteen hundred farmers blocking their path, six hundred more
blocking their rear, all mounted, armed with pitchforks and clubs. The
sheriff and his posse turned back, the rear guard parting to let them
through.

This was the start of the Anti-Renter movement in the Hudson
Valley, described by Henry Christman in Tin Horns and Calico. It was a
protest against the patroonship system, which went back to the 1600s
when the Dutch ruled New York, a system where (as Christman
describes it) "a few families, intricately intermarried, controlled the
destinies of three hundred thousand people and ruled in almost kingly
splendor near two million acres of land."

The tenants paid taxes and rents. The largest manor was owned by
the Rensselaer family, which ruled over about eighty thousand tenants
and had accumulated a fortune of $41 million. The landowner, as one
sympathizer of the tenants put it, could "swill his wine, loll on his
cushions, fill his life with society, food, and culture, and ride his
barouche and five saddle horses along the beautiful river valley and up
to the back-drop of the mountain."

By the summer of 1839, the tenants were holding their first mass
meeting. The economic crisis of 1837 had filled the area with unemployed
seeking land, on top of the layoffs accompanying the completion
of the Erie Canal, after the first wave of railroad building ended. That
summer the tenants resolved: "We will take up the ball of the Revolution
where our fathers stopped it and roll it to the final consummation of
freedom and independence of the masses."

Certain men in the farm country became leaders and organizers:
Smith Boughton, a country doctor on horseback; Ainge Devyr, a revolu-
tionary Irishman. Devyr had seen monopoly of land and industry bring
misery to the slumdwellers of London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, had
agitated for change, had been arrested for sedition, and fled to
America. He
was invited to address a Fourth of July rally of farmers in
Rensselaerville,
where he warned his listeners: "If you permit unprincipled and ambitious
men to monopolize the soil, they will become masters of the country in
the certain order of cause and effect...."

Thousands of farmers in Rensselaer country were organized into
Anti-Rent associations to prevent the landlords from evicting. They
agreed on calico Indian costumes, symbol of the Boston Tea Party and
recalling original ownership of the soil. The tin horn represented an
Indian call to arms. Soon ten thousand men were trained and ready.

Organizing went on in county after county, in dozens of towns along
the Hudson. Handbills appeared:

ATTENTION

ANTI-RENTERS! AWAKE! AROUSE!...
Strike till the last armed foe expires,
Strike for your altars and your fires‹
Strike for the green graves of your sires,
God and your happy homes!

Sheriffs and deputy sheriffs trying to serve writs on farmers were
surrounded by calico-clad riders who had been summoned by tin horns
sounding in the countryside‹then tarred and feathered. The New York
Herald, once sympathetic, now deplored "the insurrectionary spirit of
the mountaineers."
--
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
by Howard Zinn
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Histor...resent/dp/B004
HZ6XWS/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301948477&sr=1-4
(Available at a library near you, as long as they remain open.)



Bush's 3rd term: Obama




If you like weekends (8 hr./day & 40 hr./week), then thank a labor union.
They paid for it in blood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair


===
--
- Billy
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953
http://wn.com/black_panther_party
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug