A few days ago now I posted a story about the Monsanto documentary "The World According to Monsanto", a film that was originally aired in Europe on March 11th this year, but very unlikely to ever to be screened in America. (28.4.08 Sorry but Google pulled this video, so the link no longer works. Details of the documentary can be seen here, and copies of the DVD can be sourced here .)
The documentary is a detailed exposé on the company, how it has developed a stranglehold on American agriculture and by default, American food production, and how it is now stretching its tentacles around the globe, with similar Gestapo-like jack-booted authority and tactics.
For me, one of the most surprising moments came in the first ten minutes of the documentary: a Monsanto-friendly farmer standing in his field looks straight down the barrel of the camera and states that his crop of Round Up Ready plants, and the technology behind them "is good for the environment and is sustainable". It was pretty much downhill all the way from that point on.
I also placed similar posts on four forums that I belong to, and as these are mostly US- based, the response threads made for some excellent reading. A few excerpts follow:
Alan from Gardening Organically (Yahoo groups) wrote; "What I would like to know, is why is this not being shown on, at the very least, some PBS programs? We can guess that answer. This clip is so shocking and disturbing .... it's truly scary. I'm freaking out here, thinking of building a green house to protect what i grow from cross pollination and contamination from their products my neighbours may be using. I knew they were a company not to be trusted, because of other info I have read, but this program shows the dire need for the protection and propagation of truly organic / non GMO plants of every variety. Which I'm not sure is even possible with the transgenic strains now polluting the genes of crops."
And this from prairiewd Gardening Organically (Yahoo groups);
"It is truly tragic and frightening that this company has been allowed
to get away with these tactics and flaunting the law and the health of
people in the US and around the world. The only way it has been able to
do this is surely with the blessing of the Government agencies, the
lawmakers and yes, even the leaders such as Bush and Blair/Brown. The
evidence is there in the article, with Rumsfeld benefiting from it's
practices and Fox News in its pocket. What on earth can be done to stop
this company from ruining the earth and it's peoples, for that is what
it will do if left unchecked. For my part, I intend to send this
article to as many garden centres, gardening forums and friends as I
can. I will also lobby the governments."
Dan from City Garden Farms in Portland OR, on the Spin Farmers (Google groups) had this to say; “Along a similar thread, there is a great documentary called "The Future of Food ". It does talk extensively about Monsanto and other topics. If you subscribe to Netfilx you can watch it online. Here is the description of the documentary from the Netflix website:
Before compiling your next grocery list, you might want to watch this eye-opening documentary, which sheds light on a shadowy relationship between agriculture, big business and government. By examining the effects of biotechnology on the nation's smallest farmers, director Deborah Koons Garcia reveals the unappetizing truth about genetically modified foods: You could unknowingly be serving them for dinner.”
So in all this doom and gloom is there anything that can be done? Or are we as David’s just going to lie down and let Goliath walk all over us? Thankfully not.
The bright ray of light amongst this murky mire is the Weston A. Price Foundation. Thankfully, M Attwood from Gardening Organically (Yahoo groups) posted this; "If you have not heard of the Weston A Price Foundation, you can go take a look at it. Read its mission statement and you'll find this group fits right in. You can access a local chapter almost any place in the world. (After you enter the site, click on local chapters for a full listing). We are VERY much involved world wide with petitions and many other works. This is the best way to affect it as a group of people. There truly is strength in numbers and one women, Sally Fallon and her Phd friend, Mary Enig have done what seems like the impossible and that is to unite us all worldwide in a meaningful way to stay off the forces of hell that wage their war against us."
The following from the Foundations website details it's aims: - "The Weston A. Price Foundation is a non-profit, tax-exempt charity founded in 1999 to disseminate the research of nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston Price, whose studies of isolated non-industrialized peoples established the parameters of human health and determined the optimum characteristics of human diets. The Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism. It supports a number of movements that contribute to this objective including accurate nutrition instruction, organic and bio-dynamic farming, pasture-feeding of livestock, community-supported farms, honest and informative labelling, prepared parenting and nurturing therapies." The website provides a wealth of material and details local chapters that exist in many US States and indeed many countries throughout the world.
In Australia, Nourishing Australia represents the Weston A. Price Foundation, with chapters in most mainland states.
More recently, the current issue of Vanity Fair, appropriately their 'Green Issue', has a lengthy investigative article titled "Monsanto's Harvest of Fear" by journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. It details the activities of Monsanto throughout the grain belt of America, and the impact of these activities around the globe.
So what's really at stake here? Ownership of nature is what's going on - companies patenting seed DNA that has belonged to OUR SOCIETY for a millennium or three.I know that in the limited space and readership of this blog that solving a major ethical dilemma is a big ask, but this is an important issue, and it needs to be discussed.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Does it matter that one or a few companies in the not too distant future may well own the rights to all the food producing crops that exist? How did we allow our Governments let this occur? DO WE CARE?
WHOEVER CONTROLS THE SEED CONTROLS THE FOOD.
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