The
past 15-20 years has seen major changes in the industrialization of agriculture, primarily from the evolution of
agriculture in comparison or relationship to the industrial revolution. Agriculture
developed at a different pace, a pace that was closely linked to the changes
that happened as a result of the industrial revolution, the development of
fossil fuels, chemical pesticides, factory farming and genetically splicing
living organisms. The reality of the Supreme Court decision from the Chakabraty
case whereby living organisms were allowed to be patented, spurned a gold rush
within the agri-business industry to develop and focus on vertical integration
by owning not only the right to patent life itself but secure the future rights
to its patent. In an interview with Vandana Shiva a physicist and food
revolution activist in India, she states " Patents became the way to
say, “Only we will use this technology”. The way they expanded this power was,
on the one hand, extending the life of patents. It went from seven years to
fourteen. Now, under WTO (World Trade Organization), for the first time it is
twenty years -- extendible in a period where technologies are becoming so
obsolete that if you have that kind of monopoly for twenty years you are
totally controlling the technology. And
the second thing is constantly increasing the domain over which patents will
apply. For example, in India’s patent law agriculture could not be touched.
Agriculture was free of monopolies. And in medicine you could not have a
product monopoly. You could not monopolize a medicine but you could monopolize
a method of making a medicine. But, medicine has been brought into monopolies.
Seed has been brought into monopolies. Cells have brought into monopolies.
Genes have been brought into monopolies. Animals have been brought into
monopolies.
Basically, the ’80s saw a twist in this and a lot
of it had to do with the rise of the big industry and their convergence into
one set of giants, which are the health giants, the pharmaceutical giants, the
gene giants controlling all life."
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/vshiva4_int.html#Anchor-16557
So, unknowing farmers,
who are themselves planting an organic crop driven by the policies and stricter
standards of the organic industry are seeded by the windblown genetically
manipulated seed of the of the neighboring conventional farmer who has
essentially sold his/her soul to Monsanto, Tyson, Dole, Syngenta (the list goes
on).
The farmer Percy Schmeiser,
who now considers his crop contaminated, is sued instead by Monsanto,
for growing its seed on his/her soil. Monsanto by property right laws now owns
that farmer, and destroys the "freedom of the farmer".
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/conflict.htm There are many farms and farmer
lineages where generational agriculture and the history of Americans as
agrarians is permanently lost, from the complete loss of financial resources
due to the lawsuit from Monsanto to the tool sets and loss of future knowledge
of that farm lineage, its history. In a well known case that Mr. Schmeiser
brought against Monsanto, after he was sued and his wife and himself sustained
the loss of over 50 years worth of natural seed engineering from selection of
each year's crop. Percy fought back and has become an activist within the food
revolution. The conventional farmer often wages another battle with the mega-corps
whereby the terminator rights of that seed are forcing farmers to re-buy seed
each year, creating a terminal dependence on the Mega-corp.
Round-up ready soy
for example is fully protected from any other living organism since it destroys
everything in the plants environment except the plant. The plant has been genetically
manipulated to resist the chemicals the farmer will spray on it (Round-up). The
spraying of the chemicals used in the conventional farming industry also affect
the farmer his/her family, the soil, future damage to the soil and soil erosion.
These pesticide giants originally manufactured DDT, Agent Orange and developed
PCB's all of which have been known to
produce remarkably undesired effects in human beings, from death to disfiguration,
chronic sickness and deformities in children. This is proven science "real
time" so why were they allowed to develop within an industry that is
supposed to feed, fuel, nurture and heal us?
The results of the last 15-20 year exploration into factory farming within
the animal industry and the vegetable and grain seed lineages has been
devastating to the environment, the health and well being of animals the future
purity of seeds and soil erosion that is unprecedented. The health of the
consumer has been unjustly compromised and uninformed as to the dangers of ingesting
unknown combinations of genetically manipulated ingredients and new evidence
suggest that the bees which are globally experiencing a phenomenon known as
Colony Collapse might be directly linked to factory farming, The farmer
themselves have been seriously compromised many in India have committed suicide
due to the introduction of BT Cotton that failed as a crop and left farmers who
were already considered poor by U.S. standards poorer still from lack of
abundant crop and terminator seeds which kept the farmer enslaved to the
multinational agri-business giants.
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