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**GRG55** · March 12, 2009, 09:03 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Originally posted by petertribo View Post

The War On Drugs now comes to Vegetables:

Supermarket chains and Food Manufacturers will love this also since they are the purveyors of all the Industrial, Processed, highly chemicalized material passed off as "food". Nothing like getting the Government to criminalize your competition...

ROTFLMAO. The supermarkets sell what YOU BUY. Just as the people that line up at the McDonald's order counter ask for burgers and fries far, far more often than they ever ask for a salad.

Unless you're a quadrapalegic, nobody, supermarket chains, your local hot-dog vendor, gloabl agribusiness giants, Chinese makers of melamine-laced milk powder included, forces you to eat anything. When people finally stop buying overprocessed, highly chemicalized food then the supermarket will devote shelf space to something else. Until then....

How bad is it? A few weeks ago I was at the checkout counter of one of our local markets and the teenage gal manning the till asked me "What are these?" holding up the two bunches of radishes in my basket. I had a similar experience with aubergine at another store a while back. WTF are we teaching kids in school these days anyway? Apparently nothing about proper nutrition and preparation of meals.

That yet another agribusiness friendly bill is moving through the system should be no surprise. It's no secret that the vast majority of the obscene sized agricultural subsidies in the USA do not go to that proverbial "family farm", but to the ag giants like Cargill and ADM. Why should anyone get exercised about one more?

**ricket** · March 12, 2009, 09:06 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Maybe they will devalue the dollar enough to where the $1,000,000 will be considered 'sales tax'...

**don** · March 12, 2009, 09:22 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Monsanto and the boys are busy in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Indications are Iraq was seen as the New Chile, a blank slate for hyper neo-liberalism. Replacing Iraq's seed stock with patented lab seed would fit that scenario. Iraq, of course, is the cradle of western agriculture.

**D-Mack** · March 12, 2009, 09:38 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Originally posted by ricket View Post

Maybe they will devalue the dollar enough to where the $1,000,000 will be considered 'sales tax'...

I wonder is it 1 mil for every tomato ?

**don** · March 12, 2009, 09:42 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Hello Guerrilla Gardening

Pssst....I have Zucchinis.....Pass it on ;)

**rtchoke** · March 12, 2009, 10:06 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Originally posted by petertribo View Post

The War On Drugs now comes to Vegetables:

Supermarket chains and Food Manufacturers will love this also since they are the purveyors of all the Industrial, Processed, highly chemicalized material passed off as "food". Nothing like getting the Government to criminalize your competition.

http://blog.friendseat.com/rosa-dela...s-small-farms/

Obama has only been in a short time but the Lobbyists had this bill all ready to go and pillage the American Farmer and Consumer. Obviously, Agribusiness made sufficient "contributions" to get this bill started. Thanks a lot, Barry.

NO WAY! Not in the U. S. Of A!!!!

**BigLandbaron** · March 12, 2009, 10:26 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Guess I'll have to grow POT instead. The fine (if caught) is in the $1,000s, not $1,000,000s. Way better ROI for the farmer too.

That bill will be DOA. Rosa DeLauro is an idiot and should be out of office in the next election. What blatant cronyism!!

**fliped42** · March 12, 2009, 10:27 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

NYT editorial linking pig farming to "flesh eating bacteria". A coincidence? :eek:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/op...ristof.html?em

And a follow up is due on Sunday!

**goadam1** · March 12, 2009, 10:39 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

I'll put this one in my pile of "slow evil." I'll put it on top of Google wanting my dna for the betterment of humanity.

**mcgurme** · March 12, 2009, 11:23 AM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Come on guys, can't we do at least a little bit of background research before posting fear-mongering stuff like this?

In case you hadn't noticed, there have been significant outbreaks of food borne diseases lately; spinach, tomatoes, peanuts, halapenos, and so on. The article about MRSA in pigs posted upthread is downright scary. Speaking as a scientist who works with antibiotic resistance, this could be very, very bad news if it is true.

Does self-regulation in the industry work? Apparently not. Just look at the record.

Just a bit of googling reveals that this act was introduced by Rep DeLauro to try to address the issue. There are mixed opinions about whether the bill would really work, but it seems clear that it contains some ideas worth discussion.

To post a fear-mongering statement that this means that you and I are going to be fined $1M for growing tomatoes in our backyard is a stretch, to put it mildly.

BTW - the link you posted is down - maybe it was taken down because it was so libelous?

Originally posted by petertribo View Post

The War On Drugs now comes to Vegetables:

Supermarket chains and Food Manufacturers will love this also since they are the purveyors of all the Industrial, Processed, highly chemicalized material passed off as "food". Nothing like getting the Government to criminalize your competition.

http://blog.friendseat.com/rosa-dela...s-small-farms/

Obama has only been in a short time but the Lobbyists had this bill all ready to go and pillage the American Farmer and Consumer. Obviously, Agribusiness made sufficient "contributions" to get this bill started. Thanks a lot, Barry.

**skidder** · March 12, 2009, 12:06 PM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Here is some more fearmongering by george over at www.urbansurvival.com that attempts to draw a more complete picture of his view of where this is going.

"

Coping: And the Next Shortage Is...
Since we were able to tell you about the impending ammunition shortage about three years ahead of its arrival, you'll no doubt have noticed that I am really ragging on folks to get - plant - and begin harvesting their own seed supplies for future food crops from open-pollinated, heritage (non-genetically modified) vegetable seeds.

So it was very much on point that this email arrived today:

"If you and your family plan to start growing vegetables and fruit for your consumption or for sale to your neighbors as the food supply available at the supermarkets begins to dwindle and prices increase in the days and years ago, it would be prudent to buy a large supply of open pollinated seed now, before these seeds become is short supply.

The reader was kind enough to send a link to a story headlined "The Multiple Ways Monsanto is putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach."

The linked story is doubly important because of two stories which are making MSM headlines headlines this morning: The first deals with how scientists think they will be able to create artificial life in the laboratory within five years, while the second advises us that yet one-more-worry for the year 2012 is that the world's population will click over to 7-billion. Both stories deserve special emphasis and a little head-space.

In the case of the genetically modified seed story, my problem with those companies which presently hold 'patents' on particular seeds is that they have no sense of morality and there has been woefully inadequate study of the environmental impacts of such seed. I'm sure you're aware of the Canadian farmer who had to pay damages to a chemical farming outfit because some genetically modified canola seeds from a neighboring farm blew into his field. The chemmie-company wanted dough, while the farmer took the position that it was pollution, not a lottery ticket to give the chemmie-boyz a piece of the action. But the farmer lost. It took from 1999 to 2008 and a battle in the Canadian Supreme Court before Percy Schmeiser won on appeal.

On the other hand, the UN Convention of Biodiversity has been pushing toward a ban of so-called 'terminator seed technology' and at the core of that monstrosity are seeds which would only live once and yield nothing edible in future crops. Sort of like fields of eunuchs.

Nevertheless, the seed companies are continuing to work both sides of the street. On tyhe one hand they are working on technologies which really can increase productivity under certain conditions for this veggie or that gain. The problem is that Ma Nature knows one hell of a lot more about running the world than does any number of PhD's the profit-driven boards of such outfits can hire.

In my recent readings of such books as Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

, what has become clear to me is that optimizing a GMO plant has boundaries and tradeoffs. Drought resistance might be improved, for example, but at the expense of hardiness. Or, you get back the drought resistance and the fertility/propagation potential drops...that kind of thing.

The bottom line here? Just like I told you a couple of years ago that few things would have 'collector' or 'investment value' like ammunition and guns, and you see what's happening to price and availability on this front? So too, I expect that heritage/open pollinated seeds will be of increasingly high value.

Not that it will stop ThePowersThatBe from trying to put a stranglehold on the very food you eat, of course: It won't.

The problem which always faces those at the top of the socioeconomic heap is that they always maintain control of society through some pretty basic tools: They steal control of the money supply (a slow-motion process that started with the takeover via the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, or they try to control the availability of food, and as we know from the recent Iraqi experience, if people don't use government-issued seeds there these days, they can be jailed.

And worse, of course is the presently pending disaster called HR 875 and S 425 which would essentially end farmer's markets and small farming completely. Go watch this video if you have the bandwidth - less than 2-minutes worth. It's how the chemmie-food lobby is making sure that just in case some upstart like me actually puts together a case that GMO-food is really a form of pollution more dangerous than, say, fluorocarbons (which is well may be) they will have another way to control the food supply: By making all but their own sources illegal.

Of course, the design pattern in this has been around for years. That's why the liquor lobbies have been so down on the growing and sale of pot. While a lot of science says that someone who's partly baked can drive a car better than someone who blows a 'two-oh' on the Breathalyzer, the problem for the PTB is that they may not be getting their pound of flesh on pot which has about zero in the ways of barriers to entry for competition.

So that's why this morning's warning about the collector/investor value of GMO seeds is so important: In order to have a society which has a high level of resilience to catastrophes other than the man-made variety, having things like GMO seeds, many bricks of .22 ammo, maybe even some 7.62 X 39 and a set of good hand tools are all so important to glom onto for the PTB.

A population that is well-fed, well-armed, and Constitution following is just not the easiest thing to rule if you're trying to transition to a socialist-centrally governed model of the world. It's like the PTN (and their shadow government minions) want all the power/authority benefits of a workable UN, but when the UN comes up on the side of smaller carbon footprints, or bio-diversity, well those things clearly need to be co-opted, which is how we come full-circle to beating the global warming drum loudly enough to kick off carbon-credit trading schemes and the like.

Think control and monetize...and you'll do just find if you ever get around the PTB. Thinking like them can also put you ahead of the game a fair bit.
---
And that's the governance problem in a nutshell. As the old paradigm (cannibal corporatist globalism) collides with what Lessinger labels "responsible capitalists" and other call sustainable capitalism, we seem destined to see all kinds of frantic power-grabbing/control-freak kinds of thrashing about. Which is why banker bailouts and all manner of misnamed "patriot Acts" get slammed through CONgress without debate. Which means without dissent.

A few patriotic types (who actually read and live the Constitutional framework of the Founders) might ask: "Say, if no one reads the bills, isn't this 'taxation without representation'? And to carry the point one step further along, If a bill was passed by a previous generation, none of whom is alive today, shouldn't we have to reauthorize things like the Federal Reserve Act so that governance under our beloved Constitution is continuously renewed like it's supposed to be?

Well of course! But it's not likely to happen, even though it would make a dandy class-action lawsuit: Especially with recent, crystal-clear and undeniable, examples like passing the Bankster Bailout Bills or the Emergency Stimulus Bills without so much as anyone reading them. Sounds like taxation without representation to me. Oh, and what do you think those tea parties in places like Pennsylvania, Chicago, and California have been all about?

Of course, if you don't hear about them, or see them on teevee, it's not because they didn't happen: It's because the media is another tool of control used extremely effectively by the PTB and it's lobbyist cadre that pulls the strings of 'nominal government' on behalf of the real seat of power - the 'shadow government'.

Presumably, you know all this stuff, but it doesn't hurt now and then to slap ourselves smack in the face and wonder "What's to be done?"

Damn little, it turns out. You don't make progress by stepping on the 'tail of the beast' and getting all uppity about planning a "Second Revolution". We don't need to. It'll come along on it's own account without anyone firing a shot or doing anything else.

Because while folks like Kurzweil right about a dreamlike "Singularity" where invention will be instantaneous and we'll all be able to take the time to evolve into more spiritual beings" the track record of humans argues for the opposite. Kurzweil and other 'singularists' ignore that someone's gonna own those work-saving, instant-inventing machines. And they're going to exploit those who would seek to use them to they very limits of their power and authority, which need to be limited.

A much clearer vision of the "Singularity" comes from contemplating a world with an infinite number of lawyers, auditors, and police, enforcing an infinitely large set of rules, with worthless money at stake, and increasing less nutritious food.

History teaches us, if we take the time to read books like Joseph Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies" that complex systems eventually fail on their own when the marginal rate of return falls below zero for any particular group. Which is why we no longer bow down to the descendants of Genghis Khan, why we don't speak Mayan, and we don't write ancient Egyptian.

Militia? Paramilitary? No thanks. I'll just buy more seeds and put up more fencing, and watching the systemic instability from here in the East Texas outback. Guess I'm just a meat & potatoes kinda guy. But ya'll have fun. I'll be back later to pick up the pieces in, say, 2013.

Mine: Your Own Business?
Folks in the mining industry are all worked up over new legislation which, if adopted as proposed, would shut down "All mining in the US'. Yup, geniuses back in DC - and no need to read this one, either, huh?

So I will add a couple of gold pans to my stores here...
---"

**D-Mack** · March 12, 2009, 12:13 PM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Social Collapse Best Practices

by Dmitry Orlov
14 February 2009

...

Although it was generally possible to survive on the foods available at the government stores, the resulting diet would have been rather poor, and so people tried to supplement it with food they gathered, raised, or caught, or purchased at farmers’ markets. Kitchen gardens were always common, and, once the economy collapsed, a lot of families took to growing food in earnest. The kitchen gardens, by themselves, were never sufficient, but they made a huge difference.

The year 1990 was particularly tough when it came to trying to score something edible. I remember one particular joke from that period. Black humor has always been one of Russia’s main psychological coping mechanisms. A man walks into a food store, goes to the meat counter, and he sees that it is completely empty. So he asks the butcher: “Don’t you have any fish?” And the butcher answers: “No, here is where we don’t have any meat. Fish is what they don’t have over at the seafood counter.”

Poor though it was, the Soviet food distribution system never collapsed completely. In particular, the deliveries of bread continued even during the worst of times, partly because has always been such an important part of the Russian diet, and partly because access to bread symbolized the pact between the people and the Communist government, enshrined in oft-repeated revolutionary slogans. Also, it is important to remember that in Russia most people have lived within walking distance of food shops, and used public transportation to get out to their kitchen gardens, which were often located in the countryside immediately surrounding the relatively dense, compact cities. This combination of factors made for some lean times, but very little malnutrition and no starvation.

In the United States, the agricultural system is heavily industrialized, and relies on inputs such as diesel, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and, perhaps most importantly, financing. In the current financial climate, the farmers’ access to financing is not at all assured. This agricultural system is efficient, but only if you regard fossil fuel energy as free. In fact, it is a way to transform fossil fuel energy into food with a bit of help from sunlight, to the tune of 10 calories of fossil fuel energy being embodied in each calorie that is consumed as food. The food distribution system makes heavy use of refrigerated diesel trucks, transforming food over hundreds of miles to resupply supermarkets. The food pipeline is long and thin, and it takes only a couple of days of interruptions for supermarket shelves to be stripped bare. Many people live in places that are not within walking distance of stores, not served by public transportation, and will be cut off from food sources once they are no longer able to drive.

...
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/ind...d=325&Itemid=1

Looks like it worked to survive with your own food in the Soviet bloc

**GRG55** · March 12, 2009, 12:41 PM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Originally posted by skidder View Post

...In my recent readings of such books as Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

, what has become clear to me is that optimizing a GMO plant has boundaries and tradeoffs...

Unfortunately "optimizing" anything has "boundaries and tradeoffs".

Optimize a car for the Formula 1 race track, and it makes a lousy ride to get the groceries. Optimize an airplane to carry and drop a huge bomb load on the other side of the world, and you won't see any of that type performing aerobatics at next summer's air show. Optimize the financial system to concentrate all the wealth in the hands of a few of the politically connected [with a healthy royalty payable to politicians], and watch how well it supports the productive economy. And so it goes. GMO plants are not unique in that characteristic, and have both real benefits and real risks [and the benefits are not all to Monsanto's account].

**GRG55** · March 12, 2009, 12:44 PM

Re: USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

Originally posted by mcgurme View Post

Come on guys, can't we do at least a little bit of background research before posting fear-mongering stuff like this?

In case you hadn't noticed, there have been significant outbreaks of food borne diseases lately; spinach, tomatoes, peanuts, halapenos, and so on. The article about MRSA in pigs posted upthread is downright scary. Speaking as a scientist who works with antibiotic resistance, this could be very, very bad news if it is true.

Does self-regulation in the industry work? Apparently not. Just look at the record.

Just a bit of googling reveals that this act was introduced by Rep DeLauro to try to address the issue. There are mixed opinions about whether the bill would really work, but it seems clear that it contains some ideas worth discussion.

To post a fear-mongering statement that this means that you and I are going to be fined $1M for growing tomatoes in our backyard is a stretch, to put it mildly.

BTW - the link you posted is down - maybe it was taken down because it was so libelous?

Thank you! I can stop laughing about the original post now.

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USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

USA: Possible $1,000,000 Fine For GROWING A Tomato

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