axis of agricultural evil must be stopped forthwith.
The Cuban farmers are actually succeeding at growing crops without using Monsanto's expensive GMO seeds and soaking their fields with poisonous agri-chemicals. They'll no doubt pass on their knowledge to Venezuelan farmers. What sort of example is that going to set for all the other poor, third world farmers who have been carefully taught that the only way to farm is to pay premium prices for Monsanto's poisonous GMO seeds or their high priced hybridized seeds and to use lots of artificial fertilizers and pesticides (which Monsanto no doubt happily provides at a price) as well.
GM Ban Long OverdueDozens Ill & Five Deaths in the Philippines
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members' website. Unexplained sicknesses and deathsIn July 2003, a farmer living in a small village in the south of Mindanao Island of The Philippines, found himself and his entire family suddenly falling ill with fever and respiratory, intestinal and skin ailments. They were not alone; at least fifty-one residents of Sitio Kalyong (Barangay Landan, Polomolok, South Cotabato Province) had similar complaints at around the same time. They all lived within 100 m of a field planted with GM maize, and their illnesses coincided with the GM maize flowering time.
Another resident of Sitio Kalyong, said <1> that the GM-maize pollen made him dizzy, gave him severe headaches, chest pains and caused him to vomit.
The field in Sitio Kalyong belonged to a local official who bought five bags of Monsanto's Bt maize seed (Dekalb818YG with Cry1Ab from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis ), enough to plant 5 hectares. He paid 4 500 pesos per bag, which was more than twice as much as the non-GM variety at 2 200 pesos per bag. The premium price included the promise of a small vehicle if the harvest turned out to be good, as it was supposed to. In the event, the promise was broken on both counts: the harvest of 93 sacks compared poorly with the usual 150 sacks per ha, and the small vehicle was never delivered. The local official stopped planting the Bt maize after 2003.
As part of an investigation to determine what made the villagers ill, one of the farmers was “volunteered” to venture inside the Bt maize field in the presence of more than 10 witnesses, as he explained to me via an interpreter. “Within 5 minutes, I could not breathe and felt something extraordinary on my face,” he recalled. The others could see that his face had swollen up and remarked that it was “very dangerous”.
SNIP
Commenting on some of the evidence presented here, Dr. Michael Antoniou, Reader in Medical and Molecular Genetics at King's College London, had this to say <18>: “ If the kind of detrimental effects seen in animals fed GM food were observed in a clinical setting, the use of the product would have been halted and further research instigated to determine the cause and find possible solutions. However, what we find repeatedly in the case of GM food is that both governments and industry plough on ahead with the development, endorsement and marketing
GM foods despite the warnings of potential ill health from animal feeding studies, as if nothing has happened. This is to the point where governments and industry even seem to ignore the results of their own research! There is clearly a need more than ever before for independent research into the potential ill effects of GM food including most importantly extensive animal and human feeding trials.”
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMBanLongOverdue.php
Agriculture without Farmers
The WTO and EU agricultural policies are sweeping farmers off the land in droves and threatening world food security. Rhea Gala
SNIP
The WTO Agreement on Agriculture
US agricultural policy has traditionally promoted cumulative growth <19> and privatisation of seed at taxpayer’s expense <20>. That has wrung all the profit out of farming and into trading, processing, and retailing, controlled by a few TNCs <11,19, 21>. Research shows the share of the US agricultural economy going to farmers declined from 41 percent in 1910 to 9 percent in 1990, while farm input and marketing industries’ shares increased by a similar amount <21>.
As small farmers are pushed out, others enlarge their operation, for example, in the US pig industry a quarter of all producers went out of work between 1998 and 2000, leaving just 50 businesses controlling 50 percent of all US production. Yet, independent pig farmers produce more jobs, more local retail spending, and more local per capita income than larger corporate operations; and profits generated by small producers (of any commodity) are more likely to remain in the community and benefit the local economy <21>.
As in Europe, these policies have led to low plant and animal genetic diversity, low prices, many failing small farms, and environmental degradation, and because they are geared towards maximising export, similar effects are spreading all over the world. Seventy percent of the world’s poorest people, who directly depend on the land, are forced to compete with the rich nations <11>.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/AWF.php
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