THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take ?

Silent Spring - Rachel Carson

Home - Or the way to human extiction

Seeds of Death

The Truck Farmer

The Future of Food by Lily Films

SEEDING FEAR

Seeds of Death

Seeds of Death

we are killing the bees

modified

Farmageddon

bionic burger

why a Happy Meal won't decompose

round-up

(naturalnews.com)

(food inc.)

monsanto is evil

The Monsanto Company is a U.S.-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as "Roundup". Monsanto is also the leading producer of genetically engineered (GE) seed; it provides the technology in 90% of the world's genetically engineered seeds. It is headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri.

Agracetus, owned by Monsanto, exclusively produces Roundup Ready soybean seed for the commercial market. In 2005, it finalized purchase of Seminis Inc, making it the world's largest conventional seed company.

Monsanto's development and marketing of genetically engineered seed and bovine growth hormone, as well as its aggressive litigation, political lobbying practices, seed commercialization practices and "strong-arming" of the seed industry have made the company controversial around the world and a primary target of the alter-globalization movement and environmental activists. As a result of its business strategies and licensing agreements, Monsanto came under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department in 2009.

In June 2007, Monsanto acquired Delta & Pine Land Company, a company that had patented a seed technology nicknamed Terminators. This technology, which was never known to have been used commercially, produces plants that have sterile seeds so they do not flower or grow fruit after the initial planting. This prevents the spread of those seeds into the wild, however it also requires customers to repurchase seed for every planting in which they use Terminator seed varieties. Farmers who do not use a terminator seed could also be affected by his neighboring farmer that does through natural pollination. In recent years, widespread opposition from environmental organizations and farmer associations has grown, mainly out of the concerns that hypothetical seeds using this technology could increase farmers' dependency on seed suppliers.

Despite the fact that in 1999, Monsanto pledged not to commercialize Terminator technology, Delta Vice President, Harry Collins, declared at the time in a press interview in the Agra/Industrial Biotechnology Legal Letter, "We’ve continued right on with work on the Technology Protection System (TPS or Terminator). We never really slowed down. We’re on target, moving ahead to commercialize it. We never really backed off."
(read more) (millions against monsanto) (food inc.)

this has to stop

December brings the biggest showdown with Illinois' and possibly the nation's most gluttonous corporate freeloader: the corn ethanol industry.

Symbolically, the upcoming battle of budget hawks against ethanol's special pleaders is as significant as the fight over continuing the Bush tax cuts.

At issue is whether Congress will allow corpulent ethanol subsidies and a tariff against some imported ethanol to expire on Dec. 31. The ethanol industry has been tromping around Washington like starving bears, hoping to get the deal done during this lame-duck session of Congress, before budget-cutting hunters arrive in the next Congress.

Ethanol's supporters assert that it is an environmentally friendly, renewable and cost-effective gasoline additive. Its opponents dispute it on every point, arguing, among other things, that ethanol costs more than gasoline to make, raises food prices, increases tailpipe pollution and encourages cultivation of fragile lands. But dare to question ethanol, which consumes 41 percent of the corn crop, and snowstorms of studies are produced, from both sides. Clearly, the science supporting ethanol is "unsettled." Which makes spending billions of taxpayers' and consumers' dollars on ethanol at best a costly crapshoot.

Despite that, the Environmental Protection Agency recently decided that we aren't consuming enough of it. Instead of mandating that 10 percent of gasoline sold at the pump be ethanol, as has been required for years, the EPA issued its so-called E15 rule, which raised to 15 percent the allowable blend of ethanol for cars and certain trucks built since 2007. In that, the EPA ignored studies pointing to the harmful effects that 50 percent increase will have on cars, including the agency's own conclusion that it would damage the catalytic converters of tens of millions of cars now on the road.

Wait, that's only the start. The ethanol industry also receives a tax credit amounting to 45 cents a gallon and is aided by a tariff on sugar-cane ethanol valued at 54 cents. In addition, the 2007 energy act mandates the use of renewable fuels, including ethanol: 10.5 billion gallons in 2009, 14 billion in 2011 and 36 billion by 2022.

This is extraordinary. And insane. Here, the government creates a fake market for ethanol, then subsidizes the market, and then protects the market against foreign competition.

This has to stop. But don't count on it.

Agribusiness is an American biggie, especially in Illinois, loaded as we are with ethanol giant Archer Daniels Midland Co., commodities markets, corn farmers and countless refiners, processors, haulers and investors. Their people sit on important corporate boards and their campaign contributions flow into Congress and state legislatures. Even cost-cutters will pretend not to notice the need to carve away at this turkey, one of the most heavily subsidized businesses in America. And, I haven't even mentioned the tens of billions of federal dollars that go for crop subsidies and other boons for wheat, cotton, sugar, peanuts, dairy, wool and other types of farmers.

Critics of these subsidies get it from the right and the left. But opposing the subsidies is a growing coalition from the right and left. Among them are the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Working Group, Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, International Dairy Foods Association and Grocery Manufacturers Association. As their Web site (followthescience.org) illustrates, they are united in their opposition to the EPA's E15 rule for a variety of environmental and economic reasons, including, no doubt, their own self-interest. The coalition earlier this month filed a federal lawsuit charging that the EPA exceeded its statutory powers by issuing the rule. (chicagotribune.com)

a better way

"What is wrong with us? Why do we seem to care so little about our own safety, our own health, and the future of our children?" asks Maria Rodale, farmer, author and CEO of Rodale Inc. "Why are we willing to pay thousands of dollars for vitro fertility treatments when we can't conceive, but not a few extra dollars for the organic food that might help to preserve the reproductive health of our own and future generations?"

In her powerful and informative new book, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe, Maria Rodale has done all of the thinking and the research about organic farming for us. Yay, we don't have to think! Following in the path of her grandfather, JI Rodale, who launched Organic Gardening and Farming magazine in 1942 and her father Robert Rodale, who devoted his life to educating others on health and environmental issues, Maria Rodale explains why and how we must immediately begin to undo the damage we have done to the environment and to ourselves.

The 'Farming System Trial' that her father, Robert Rodale began in 1990, is now the longest running scientific study comparing 'synthetic-chemical' versus 'organic' agriculture. After 20 years of experiments, the trial clearly shows that organic farming is not only more productive than chemical farming, especially during times of flood or drought, but that soil farmed organically is a necessary step toward solving our climate crisis. 'Mycorrhizal fungi' which grow at the roots of plants, stores carbon. These miraculous fungi build our soil and its health while also sequestering excess carbon and pulling it underground.
(read more) (rodaleinstitute.org)

food slavery

(watch full-length movie)

Biodynamic wine

Do California wineries really pack cow-horns full of cow manure and crystals, then plant them at various locations picked by a Shaman, during the autumnal equinox ? Yes they do. Is that the whole story? No it’s not, otherwise I’d have to agree with folks from out-of-state who call us loco. No wait, I may have to agree with them anyway. The point is, manure from dairy cows is superior to shit from horses or chickens. Why?

“Because a dairy cow has an unequaled digestive process which is enhanced by cosmic life-giving forces in her hooves and horns that enable the nitrogen in her manure to rekindle life within the earth.”

Does the story end there? No, otherwise I really would have to concede lunacy. The story continues:

“When vintners dig up the horns six months later, they find the manure transformed into a dark, rich, moist substance that smells surprisingly sweet and earthy. Then they mix it with water and spray it over the crops like regular fertilizer.”

Does it work ..? Research is slim, but it has been practiced in Bavaria since 1924, when Austrian scientist Rudolf Steiner introduced biodynamics to the farming industry. I mean, there’s good reason why Bavaria scores the most stellar dairy products on the planet.

Information courtesy of Barefoot Winery

HAPPY EARTH DAY EVERYONE ..!

How Three Firms Came To Rule The World

"One often hears the statement that agriculture is changing and we must adapt to the changes", says William Heffernan, a professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri. "Few persons who repeat the statement really understand the magnitude of the changes and the implications of them for agriculture and for the long-term sustainability of the food system. It is almost heresy to ask if these changes are what the people of our country really want or, if they are not what is desired, how we might redirect the change. These changes are the result of notoriously short-sighted market forces and not the result of public dialogue, the foundation of a democracy. Neither are the changes the result of some mystical figure or an 'invisible hand'."

Earlier this year the Farmers' Union hired Heffernan to undertake a study on consolidation in agricultural trade. Heffernan concluded that once you disentangle a web of subsidiaries, mergers, joint ventures, parternships, side agreements, marketing arrangements and alliances you find that "three food chains dominate the global food production system". These chains are: Cargill/Monsanto; ConAgra and Novartis/ADM. Even so, Heffernan notes that because of lax reporting requirements it's difficult to get a fix on precisely what these companies own and how they go about doing business. "Cargill has operations in 70 countries and it's a privately held firm. How do we get all of the necessary information? We've exposed the tip of the iceberg, but exposure only indicates the type of information needed to understand the global food system."

Heffernan points to the Cargill/Monsanto cluster as one of the most dangerous of the new alliances. In 1998 Monsanto and Cargill announced that Cargill had sold its vast seed operation to Monsanto (the world's leading biotech outfit) and entered into an agreement with the chemical company to develop new kinds of crop biotechnology. This alliance presents distinct benefits to both companies but dangers to consumers, farmers and the environment. A case in point is the alliances' so-called terminator gene. "No longer will Monsanto have to depend on access to farmers' fields for collection of tissue samples to make sure farmers do not keep seed from one year's crop to plant the following year", Heffernan warns. "Use of the terminator gene will mean that all crop farmers must return each year to obtain their seed from seed firms, just as corn producers have had to do for the past half-century."

If the press, which rarely mentions agricultural issues anymore, doesn't take this turn of events seriously, the corporate leaders of the agri-conglomerates certainly do. And they are not the least bit bashful about what's at stake. Dwayne Andreas is the politically wired former CEO of Archer Daniels Midland. He recently boasted to Reuters that he wanted to make ADM the world's dominant agriculture firm because, to his way of thinking, there's simply nothing more powerful than controlling the world's food supply. He said agribusiness is more powerful than the oil industry.

"The food business is far and away the most important business in the world," Andreas said. "Everything else is a luxury. Food is what you need to sustain life every day. Food is fuel. You can't run a tractor without fuel and you can't run a human being without it either. Food is the absolute beginning." (read more)

King Corn

USDA forecast the largest U.S. corn yield in history for the 2009/10 marketing year. Corn production is forecast at 13.0 billion bushels. For all this food potential, this corn will be used to fatten cattle and make high fructose corn syrup to sweeten our soda pop and snacks.

King Corn