Order 81: Re-Engineering Iraqi Agriculture

[beetbox]

ORDER 81: Re-engineering Iraqi agriculture
The ultimate war crime: breaking the agricultural cycle

By Jeremy Smith

August 27, 2005

The Ecologist, Vol 35, No. 1, 2005

Under the guise of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out to totally re-engineer the country's traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness. They’ve even created a new law – Order 81 – to make sure it happens.

Despite its recent troubles, Iraqi agriculture’s long history means that for the last 10,000 years Iraqi farmers have been naturally selecting wheat varieties that work best with their climate. Each year they have saved seeds from crops that prosper under certain conditions and replanted and cross-pollinated them with others with different strengths the following year, so that the crop continually improves. In 2002, the FAO estimated that 97 per cent of Iraqi farmers used their own saved seed or bought seed from local markets. That there are now over 200,000 known varieties of wheat in the world is down in no small part to the unrecognised work of farmers like these and their informal systems of knowledge sharing and trade. It would be more than reasonable to assume that somewhere amongst the many fields and grainstores of iraq there are samples of strong, indigenous wheat varieties that could be developed and distributed around the country in order to bolster production once more.

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The US, however, has decided that, despite 10,000 years practice, Iraqis don’t know what wheat works best in their own conditions, and would be better off with some new, imported American varieties. Under the guise, therefore, of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out to totally reengineer the country’s traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness. Or, as the aforementioned press release from Headquarters United States Command puts it: ‘Multi-National Forces are currently planting seeds for the future of agriculture in the Ninevah Province’

First, it is re-educating the farmers. An article in the Land and Livestock Post reveals that thanks to a project undertaken by Texas A&M University’s International Agriculture Office there are now 800 acres of demonstration plots all across Iraq, teaching Iraqi farmers how to grow ‘high-yield seed varieties’ of crops that include barley, chick peas, lentils – and wheat.

The leaders of the $107 million project have a stated goal of doubling the production of 30,000 Iraqi farms within the first year. After one year, farmers will see soaring production levels. Many will be only too willing to abandon their old ways in favour of the new technologies. Out will go traditional methods. In will come imported American seeds (more than likely GM, as Texas A&M's Agriculture Program considers itself ‘a recognised world leader in using biotechnology’). And with the new seeds will come new chemicals – pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all sold to the Iraqis by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SMI20050827&articleId=870

[ecoalex]

1. Bondage to Monsanto, U S ag corps.

Sad. The loss of seed stocks is lunacy. Where are stocks with disease/pest resistance supposed to come from? I remember the Southern Corn Leaf Blight in the early 70's decimation. Seed stocks from Hawaii, and other parts of the world saved the next years crop. 2 bad years nation wide. If we hadn't had new resistance seed stocks, and the ability to grow them off season, we would of had a tough time filling in the gap.

The introduction of GMO is troubling. No long term testing, and some questioned industry only testing has been allowed, a heresy. I am troubled in the pollution of the alfalfa seed stocks with RR genes. Monsanto is expected to release it soon, a boon for those who want to play in the devils pantry, a scourage to those who don't want foreign introduced genes in their primary protein source. Like canola,corn seed stocks in Mexico, I expect all alfalfa seed to be polluted with RR genes in about as long as it took canola to be polluted.

The bloated immoral Monsanto with it's patent police harass farmers, whose crops they have sampled in the cloak of darkness, and if you have their patented genes in your plants, you must pay irregardless of whether you bought their gmo tech seeds or not.

Monsanto is an example of capitolism, and WTO access to markets gone berserk with it's influence in the courts, and law makers, ag schools.They have a careless attitude to the pertinent questions of pollen crossing into wild species of flora.

[cap]

2. can we add more people to the insurgency?

they wont want to do it. If it is not economical the farmers wont go for it. Farmers are inherently conservative. What about the price of food for the rest of the population? Rengineering the country’s traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness equals kicking people off the family farm.

[wli]

3. Monsanto = post-WWII I.G. Farben business partner n/t

[beetbox]

4. WW 1 Monsanto Supplied Chemical Precursors for Many High Explosives

World War I also saw the rise of Monsanto as a major player. Founded in 1901 to bring the production of the artificial sweetener saccharine into the United States, Monsanto increased its profits a hundred-fold from $80,000 to well over $9 million per year. Monsanto supplied the chemical precursors for many high explosives. They manufactured phenol, which is a precursor of TNT (trinitrotoluene) and was also used as a battlefield antiseptic. They made the nitric acid used to nitrify the phenol-derived toluene, as well as sulfuric acid, various precursors for the production of poison gas, and additives to strengthen rubber (and later synthetic rubber) for many military applications. 



When we examine how our food is grown today, it becomes clear that most of the chemical “tools” taken for granted by modern agribusiness are products of warfare. Is this an indirect consequence of the tragic history of the 20th century or does it suggest that the currently dismal state of our soils, fresh water supplies, and rural economies is an outgrowth of agribusiness’s emergence from wartime in some important ways? Virtually all of the leading companies that brought us chemical fertilizers and pesticides made their greatest fortunes during wartime. How can this help us understand the ever-deteriorating quality of mass produced food? What does it tell us about the new technologies of genetic manipulation that every one of these companies posits as the centerpiece of the current generation of crop “improvement” technologies? 


In the 1930s, chemists working for the German company Bayer discovered the highly poisonous properties of organophosphate compounds. By then, Bayer had already merged with BASF, Hoechst, and other companies to form the huge chemical conglomerate I.G. Farben; today Bayer is poised to become the world’s largest manufacturer of herbicides and pesticides—and a leading source of genetically engineered seed varieties—with its recent takeover of the biotech giant Aventis CropScience. (Aventis is the company responsible for the “Starlink” variety of insecticidal GE corn, which was never approved for human consumption and thus forced the recall of some 300 name-brand processed food products during 2000-2001.) As all of German industry became absorbed into the growing Nazi war machine, Bayer’s organophosphate compounds were developed simultaneously as agricultural pesticides and as nerve gases for military use. 

http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/sep02tokar.html

[OneBlueSky]

5. I just find this so thoroughly disgusting . . .

that it almost makes me more angry than all the death and destruction that we've rained on Iraq in the past two years . . .

almost . . .

[indepat]

6. Flirting with genocide predicated on starvation? Who will hold them

accountable? Who will tell the people?

[ecoalex]

7. It is a U.S. directive from Bremmer, it supercedes any Iraqi laws

The Iraqi farmers have no choice, they must use the imported inputs, and on bended knees accept the new farming tech, or get off the land, for another farmer willing to buy the imported inputs for industrialised farming.India rejected the green revolution, it was a disaster, will Iraq be another India?