The nightmare just got worse.........

[Mega]

http://www.theguardian.com/global-de...nology-farmers

I wish i could just wake up & find myself back in the 70's....lots of jobs factory work unions etc...
Mike

[Fox]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

Although I wouldn't shed a tear if Monsanto disappeared tomorrow. Isn't this actually a good thing. If GM crops can't re-seed themselves then doesn't that mean you can actually keep them out of your field?

One of the horrible evils about GM crops is you can't stop them from infecting your seed supply. Then once they are in your field, and your seed supply, the lawyers swoop down and make you pay for it whether you want it or not.

At least with terminator seeds, the GM plants would be gone the next season.

Am I missing something?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

Thanks Mike, I read the article.
I cannot believe I am about to defend Monsanto, but here goes.

As I understand it, these "terminator" seeds require farmers to buy new seed from Monsanto every year because seeds saved from last year's crop will not grow.
The Monsanto terminator seeds are genetically modified to give the farmer some benefit in yield, or time-to-harvest, or pesticide use.
To get the benefit, the farmer must pay Monsanto every year.

But none of this prevents any farmer from keeping the traditional way, using heirloom variety seeds, and saving seed corn for next spring, as they can do now.

Why not let Monsanto et al try to sell this product, and let any farmer who wants to not participate just go on without the GM terminator seed?

Yes, I know Monsanto is evil and their goal is to get a nickle from every bite of food on the planet.
That goal may be overly ambitious.

[santafe2]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

Although I wouldn't shed a tear if Monsanto disappeared tomorrow. Isn't this actually a good thing. If GM crops can't re-seed themselves then doesn't that mean you can actually keep them out of your field?

One of the horrible evils about GM crops is you can't stop them from infecting your seed supply. Then once they are in your field, and your seed supply, the lawyers swoop down and make you pay for it whether you want it or not.

At least with terminator seeds, the GM plants would be gone the next season.

Am I missing something?

GM crops are primarily designed to allow the spraying of Round-Up like products on a crop that kills the weeds and leaves the GM crop unharmed. This technology is designed to protect intellectual property and makes the seeds sterile after one season. An agent is often, (always?), required to activate the seeds for the season. The biggest issues I see are lack of seed diversity and GM seeds becoming the only viable planting product. Monsanto and others will not be satisfied owning the source of production on farms currently controlled by large, highly mechanized farming companies. They, and their partners will move into all areas and take over farming. They can create this franken-food for a lot less money and economics will prevail. Either we will have policy and law to control GM food products or we will likely only have GM food products.

I'm certainly not anti-technology but I would like to continue to have a choice in the food I eat. if GM wins there will likely be a time when nature helps us understand faults in our thinking that we had not previously understood.

Here's a plug for some local folks with a great track record.
http://www.seedsofchange.com/

[Wheed]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

But none of this prevents any farmer from keeping the traditional way, using heirloom variety seeds, and saving seed corn for next spring, as they can do now.

I was informed by my farmer that it is illegal to re-plant with last years harvest. I asked my farmer, how would anyone know if we just plant last years harvest? Apparently "they" can see from space, or fly over and know what your growing.

Would you risk a harvest & fines to grow with last seasons harvest? Farmers also have to report just about everything in farming to the local FSA, and insurance agent. Everything you do on a farm is monitored.

Note: I'm new to farming (1 year).

[Forrest]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

Although I wouldn't shed a tear if Monsanto disappeared tomorrow. Isn't this actually a good thing. If GM crops can't re-seed themselves then doesn't that mean you can actually keep them out of your field?

One of the horrible evils about GM crops is you can't stop them from infecting your seed supply. Then once they are in your field, and your seed supply, the lawyers swoop down and make you pay for it whether you want it or not.

At least with terminator seeds, the GM plants would be gone the next season.

Am I missing something?

The GM plants would be gone the next season...and percentages of every natural cross breed with them (about 25% die out of natural production the first year, and of course, every succeeding generation.) So to grow anything useful for production, you have to pay Monsanto for another year of terminator seeds. And that's if they work without other genetic complications.

This gives Monsanto a strangle hold on anything that can be grown...even if it's indigenous. The poor will have to sell their land to those who can afford to farm them, or share-crop to get seeds...so the poor lose.

Did you really think Gates was storing away all the natural genetic seed in his Seed Bank for posterity? If you have all the heirloom and hybrid genes, you can own the food supply.

I buy hybrid seeds that do not produce viable seed for my greenhouse production...you don't need bees for the pollination...which is fortunate since the hive die-off due to EMF radiation is killing them too.

But I will use my heirloom seeds a little every year, and hand pollinate if I must to make sure that I can grow something to eat that isn't modified, grown without soil, and without minerals, and paid for by more and more money. That way I get fresh seeds every year, and I protect them from cross pollination.

Once the Banks have control of all the money (which is nearly so, right now) and the NSA has all your information, which they do, or can get, and the Corporations control what grows and what doesn't, you are completely helpless...a slave with only the right to die, and that too will no doubt be controlled.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

seed companies owned by or having a strong relationship with monsanto...

Anderson’s Seed & Garden, Inc
Audubon Workshop
Ball Horticultural Company
Breck’s Bulbs
Bunton Seed
Burpee – I get dozens of emails a month about Burpee. They admit to getting non-GMO seed from Seminis. As stated above, my goal is to in no way support Seminis/Monsanto/GMO, therefore, they will stay on the avoid list.
Cook’s Garden
Corona Seeds
DeBruyn Seed Company, Inc.
Dege Garden Center
Dixondale Farms/The Onion Patch
Earl May Seed
Early’s Farm & Garden Centre
E & R Seed Co
El Seed
Farmer Seed & Nursery
Flower of the Month Club
Ferry Morse – For more information on Ferry Morse please see my note on facebook.
Fukuda Seed Store
Gardens Alive
Germania Seed Co
Garden Trends, Inc.d/b/a Harris Seeds
Germania Seed Company
Grimes Horticulture
H.F. Michell Company
HPS
Jungs
Lindenberg Seeds
McClure and Zimmerman Quality Bulb Brokers
Meyer Seed Co of Baltimore, Inc
Mountain Valley Seed
Ontario Seed
Ornamental Edibles
Osborne
Otis S. Twilley Seed Co., Inc.
Park Seed
Park Bulbs
Park’s Countryside Garden
P. L. Rohrer & Bro., Inc.
Pinetree
R.H. Shumway
Rocky Mountain Seed Co
Roots and Rhizomes
Rupp
Seeds for the World
Seminova
Seymour’s Selected Seeds
Snow
Southern States Cooperative, Incorporated
Stokes
Spring Hill Nurseries
Totally Tomato
T&T Seeds
Tomato Growers Supply
The Page Seed Company
The Vermont Bean Seed Company
Tomato Growers Supply Company
Vesey’s Seeds
Vis Seed Company, Inc.
Wayside Gardens
Willhite Seed Co.
William Dam Seeds

[Forrest]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

seed companies owned by or having a strong relationship with monsanto...

Anderson’s Seed & Garden, Inc
Audubon Workshop
Ball Horticultural Company
Breck’s Bulbs
Bunton Seed
Burpee – I get dozens of emails a month about Burpee. They admit to getting non-GMO seed from Seminis. As stated above, my goal is to in no way support Seminis/Monsanto/GMO, therefore, they will stay on the avoid list.
Cook’s Garden
Corona Seeds
DeBruyn Seed Company, Inc.
Dege Garden Center
Dixondale Farms/The Onion Patch
Earl May Seed
Early’s Farm & Garden Centre
E & R Seed Co
El Seed
Farmer Seed & Nursery
Flower of the Month Club
Ferry Morse – For more information on Ferry Morse please see my note on facebook.
Fukuda Seed Store
Gardens Alive
Germania Seed Co
Garden Trends, Inc.d/b/a Harris Seeds
Germania Seed Company
Grimes Horticulture
H.F. Michell Company
HPS
Jungs
Lindenberg Seeds
McClure and Zimmerman Quality Bulb Brokers
Meyer Seed Co of Baltimore, Inc
Mountain Valley Seed
Ontario Seed
Ornamental Edibles
Osborne
Otis S. Twilley Seed Co., Inc.
Park Seed
Park Bulbs
Park’s Countryside Garden
P. L. Rohrer & Bro., Inc.
Pinetree
R.H. Shumway
Rocky Mountain Seed Co
Roots and Rhizomes
Rupp
Seeds for the World
Seminova
Seymour’s Selected Seeds
Snow
Southern States Cooperative, Incorporated
Stokes
Spring Hill Nurseries
Totally Tomato
T&T Seeds
Tomato Growers Supply
The Page Seed Company
The Vermont Bean Seed Company
Tomato Growers Supply Company
Vesey’s Seeds
Vis Seed Company, Inc.
Wayside Gardens
Willhite Seed Co.
William Dam Seeds

Heirloom seeds...really heirloom seeds are still available as Seed Savers...a member ship club that trades seeds, and has some sellers, and of course Heritage Seeds.

To grow large amounts of seed for farming, it will take building up, and fortunately, I have no big growers near me...but I am not buying seed for veggies to sell just yet. As for my Hybrid seeds, I use Stokes, but I am buying well know seeds strains only for Greenhouse use...mostly Tomatoes and Cucumbers (Gynoescious - a lot less bees in the winter here in SoCal!) that have high disease tolerance)

Also, I bought a few packets of Tomato Agro Hybrid...which is from Germany through Park Seed, but I don't know much about them yet. One hopes that Europe, being touchier about food purity, might be better sources. Thompson and Morgan have many good hybrids, and you can order their English bred stuff through Canada.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

For sure, there are plenty of alternatives for seeds, at least for the American gardener, but man-o-man seeds are getting expensive, to the point where there is a growing black market. The restrictions for retailers are downright goofy, “six week window for this line” the owner of a healthfood store told me last summer.

My point in posting the list was to once again point out hidden monopolies.

In my late 20’s I toyed with the idea of getting into landscaping and went around talking to people in the business. They were all getting out because of issues like this.

I am going to a conference on seed saving not far from Chiang Mai in January. Looking forward to listening to talk from sly people breaking bad laws.

Northern Thailand used to grow great apples. When Thaksin was in office, he made a deal with China to cut down all the apple orchards. All apples here now come from China or all the way from Washington State. The prices are going up and the quality is going down.

Farming is politics.

[bungee]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

I though a problem with GM was that pollen from the GM crop containing the new genes cross-pollinates with local non GM crops and plants? The fact that the seeds produced by the GM crop will not grow does not stop the seeds produced when the GM crop pollinates a different non GM plant from growing and reproducing the GM genes?

Even if the cross pollinated seed was 100% certain not to grow this would affect local non GM farmers. Imagine if you kept enough seed for next year and then discovered that 90% of it would not grow as the farmers around you were all using terminator seeds which cross pollinated your seeds and killed them? Now you have to buy new seed as well as yours are dead.

And all that is before you get into the genes put in to enable modification of the crop DNA (such as antibiotic resistance ) which then get carried into the food chain.

[kescwi]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

I was informed by my farmer that it is illegal to re-plant with last years harvest. I asked my farmer, how would anyone know if we just plant last years harvest? Apparently "they" can see from space, or fly over and know what your growing.

Would you risk a harvest & fines to grow with last seasons harvest? Farmers also have to report just about everything in farming to the local FSA, and insurance agent. Everything you do on a farm is monitored.

Note: I'm new to farming (1 year).

I grew up in Indiana, Lafayette to be exact and across the Wabash river is Purdue University. My family owned a farm but we did not live on it or work it ourselves, it was about 45 minutes away in a different county, Benton, but we still had many friends who were farmers in the county we lived in, Tippecanoe. Anyway, at one point, mid/late 80's IIRC, farmers in Tipp. started being fined for planting on set-aside land. My mother managed our farm for the extended family and became a little concerned that our partner who farmed it may be doing the same. After researching it, he was not.

At some point in the mid 90's I was watching a lecture on TV given by someone from NASA and he mentioned that they had the ability to tell from satellites what was being grown and they had developed this with he help of Purdue. He then told a story of how Purdue students would plant alternating rows of crops to try and fool the technology... He then said that because of all the U-2 flights over Tipp. Co. during the development phase they had noticed that farmers there were violating their agreed upon set-aside land, I forget what the program was/is called, and the Ag dept. began fining them. Eventually an Indiana Senator had to get involved and put a stop to it on the grounds Tipp. Co. farmers were the only ones being scrutinized so closely.

[Fox]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

well there is still the issue that if you don't want the seeds, or hybrid cross, they just don't use the GM seeds in replanting. Eventually those with the terminator gene will die off. And you would only have to worry about what cross-pollinates from your neighbour's field.

Right now GM crops are like a virus that once they infect your field you have to pay royalties for use; even if you didn't plant them. Unfortunately the courts upheld this (in Canada they found a little nobody farmer and lawyer him into the ground until Monsanto won their precedent and established the new rule of law)

GM crops are primarily designed to allow the spraying of Round-Up like products on a crop that kills the weeds and leaves the GM crop unharmed.

However I believe this is were Monsanto's evil plan kicks in. The weeds will build ever greater resistance to round-up. Until they become uncontrolable without massive amounts of round-up poured in a field.

If these weeds enter a field without GM crops that can handle the round-up, the field will be over run until the farmer is forced to buy GM crops.

[wayiwalk]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

Can't this GM terminator seed approach work to hurt Monsanto, too?

Shouldn't a farmer who is using say, heirloom seeds that were never under any kind of contract/agreement, with demonstrated practices of collecting next year's seed crop from the current harvest, be able to show that a crop that was cross pollinated by GM terminator seed and was thus economically impacted by plants that did not provide sufficient harvest, be able to sue Monsanto?

The DNA trail would be there for evidence - Ithink this would be the easiest part.

Like Superfund law and pollution of soils and groundwater at sites, it would seem to be a very similar parallel with an "FDA-Superfund". Companies are drawn into being responsible for cleanup costs if they have deep pockets and known associatiation with a contaminated site.

I'm sure Monsanto has already lined up its lawyers, but I would be surprised that cases like this don't already exist, and I don't see how Monsanto isn't worried about this.

[wayiwalk]

Re: The nightmare just got worse.........

Just saw the next to last paragraph in that linked article:

"Since then, the moratorium has held firm. But the GM companies have shifted their arguments, saying that gene-use restriction technologies now allow seeds to reproduce, but could "switch off" the GM traits. This, they argue, would reduce the possibility of the seeds spreading sterility. In addition, they say the technology could protect organic and conventional farmers from the spread of transgenes to wild relatives and weeds, which plagues GM farmers in the US and elsewhere."