The plot against maize

[nosmokes]

original-latin america press
Saturday, March 10, 2007


MEXICO:

The plot against maize

John Ross. Mar 7, 2007

Big biotechnology firms take advantage of corn crisis to force farmers to purchase genetically-modified seeds

World corn prices are currently at an all-time high due to burgeoning interest in ethanol production as a petroleum substitute. In Mexico the price of corn has been pushed upwards by the cost of diesel and petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides despite the fact that Mexico is a major oil producer.

Crop failures due to drought, flooding, and even ice storms have contributed to the price surge. But whatever the immediate causes, the dismantlement of government agricultural programs and the brutal impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have deepened the Mexican corn production crisis.

Competing with highly subsidized US farmers is driving Mexican farmers into bankruptcy. Guaranteed prices for farmers’ crops is a thing of the past in Mexico, while corporate corn growers in the United States can receive up to US$21,000 an acre in subsidies from their government, enabling them to dump their corn over the border. The impact of this inundation has been to force 6 million farmers and their families to abandon their plots and leap into the migration stream, according to a 2004 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study.

Problem will only worsen

This assault on poor farmers down at the bottom of the food chain will be exacerbated at the end of this year when all tariffs on US corn are abolished.
~snip~
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complete article here

[Redstone]

1. Funny how nobody seems to make that connection. Maize needs a LOT of water.

Redstone

[nosmokes]

4. corn doesn't use any more water than other veg crops.

as for an actual plot against maize, it's called NAFTA and it was around before the shrub ever learned how to say ethanol. the whole push for ethanol has simply exacerbated the situation.

[pushycat]

10. Corn is a 'heavy feeder': Lots of Water + fertilizer + GMO = ???

[EFerrari]

2. We need to attend to this. K&R

[omega minimo]

7. There was a suggestion for a food/politics forum by another OP

can' remember who :blush:

but this would fit right in.
the subtle title may drip down the page
but this is big

K/R

[EFerrari]

8. Yes, it is big. Especially when simply the wind can contaminate

organic crops. And has. :(

:kick:

[Buzz Clik]

3. I'm not sure this is a "plot", but I get the point.

It seems unlikely that ethanol from corn will fizzle soon, and the corn market will return to normal. The energy margin on ethanol from corn is just barely positive. Fuels from high biomass, cellulosic crops like switchgrass have a much greater positive margin, but the research and development is behind corn. When switchgrass catches up, the attractiveness of corn will be gone, and the market will collapse once more.

Of course, at that time, growing switchgrass will be more profitable that growing food crops, and the problem will not be the high price of corn but the low profits and, thus, lack of interest in growing it.

Energy problems will be hard on everyone.

[sutz12]

5. Why do you think Georgie is shopping for sugar in Brazil? nt

[Buzz Clik]

6. What's your point?

[Jcrowley]

12. And biotech crops

are extraordinarily energy intensive. And that's before they even get out of the testing process. You should check into the amount of giga-joules used in Monsanto's monstrosity on the St. Charles River. Check into it, really.

I see a disturbing pattern here:

Biotech GM Seeds Buccaneers Destroy India's Rice Economy

<snip>

The India Government is firmly under control of buccaneers of biotechnology and spurious Life Sciences multinational corporations. Despite rules to the contrary, GM experiments have been going on across India with the complicity of the Indian Government. Most importantly, the attack is now on rice. Thus, the big seed companies have committed crimes against humanity with full connivance of officials of the Department of Biotechnology and members of GEAC .

This is a crime against the people of India and against India’s farmers because these approvals have been given knowing the fact that in the last two years, 70% of the farmer suicides in the Maharashtra belt are Bt cotton farmers suicides.

"During the latter part of April, the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) uncovered deadly toxic reaction in sheep and goats in Warangal in AP from grazing in Bt cotton fields in Feb/March, post the last cotton harvest of 2005-2006. Local shepherds estimate the total mortality for the area to be around 10,000 dead sheep and goats."

This is not a new war

The United States of America declared a war on Indian rice way back in the early 1960s when India’s No 1 scientist mole, Dr M.S. Swaminathan, stole the gene bank of rice, evolved over decades by Dr Riccharia, and passed it over to the Americans. How many genetic varieties have been stolen? No one really knows.

<snip>

http://myiris.com/shares/company/reportShow.php?url=AMServer%2F2001%2F09%2FMONCHEIA_20010925.htm

Destruction of people's autonomy. Control and domination disguised as "feeding the world."
The biotech robber-barons are the most cynical of corporate criminals. This bad science being forced upon folks has nothing to offer the world but suffering. There is no redeeming aspect to this whatsoever except for the venture capitalist.

[Buzz Clik]

13. LOL!

[Nikki Stone1]

9. Damn this is important

K & R

[Jcrowley]

11. GENE DUMPING IN MEXICO

GENE DUMPING IN MEXICO

A number of the biotech giants have been involved in initiatives that bring transgenic crops to small-scale farmers in the South. The motivation for doing so is presented as philanthropy. But a closer look uncovers a hidden agenda.

Monsanto, for example, donated genes for Potato Viruses X and Y (PVX and PVY) to Mexican researchers for introduction into varieties grown for local consumption. This is an example of effective market segmentation. The company had nothing to lose because its own interests are in the commercial market (particularly the export market), and because of the difficulty of transferring the genes into other varieties. Monsanto provided the genes and training for Mexican researchers, one of whom studied field trial protocols and regulatory issues in the US. Here was the big gain for Monsanto. According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications, which brokered the deal, it "helped Mexico establish regulatory procedures and a biosafety review system ... The US companies were able to supply Mexican authorities with information on field problems, on potential risks that field testing might pose, and on how to deal with them."

In this way, Monsanto gained not only from getting farmers used to the idea of transgenic crops, but also in managing to export the US' industry-friendly regulatory procedures to Mexico. In doing so, Monsanto managed to ease the entry of its commercial varieties into the country. Small-scale farmers, meanwhile, are being drawn onto the technology treadmill and down the diversity drain, albeit in a more subtle fashion than sometimes (ie by impregnating their own favourite varieties rather than introducing new ones). Rosita, one of the Mexican varieties transformed using Monsanto's genes, and some virus-resistance genes for sweet potatoes, have now been dumped on Kenyan farmers, along with the same biosafety regulations.

Other examples of gene dumping by corporations include Asgrow's donation of cucumber mosaic virus resistance genes for melons in Costa Rica and Mexico; and Novartis' contribution of sweet potato weevil resistance genes to Vietnamese researchers.

Source: “The ISAAA Biotechnology Fellowship Program,” ISAAA, Ithaca, New York.

A few quotes I've collected over the years:

""Corn diversity is essential to the future of our agricultural systems. Jack Harlan, the famous botanist, has noted that genetic diversity 'stands between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine." Press Release by Greenpeace Mexico 9/1/01

"We have to get away from the romantic anachronism that developing countries should strive for self-sufficiency in food." John Block, former US Secretary of Agriculture, 1986

"For people who want to buy corn, there really isn't much choice but to come to us." Bob Kohlmeyer, Cargill Corporation, Des Moines Register 11/15/00

"We have a saying in our company. Our competitors are our friends. Our customers are the enemy." James Randall, Archer Daniels Midland Corporation, quoted in Fortune magazine 4/26/99

"Farmers don't like to hear that we're essentially a ward of the government, that we're on a workfare program," Alan Libbra, Illinois farmer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/5/01

"Regardless of what the biotechnology industry wants us to believe, agricultural genetic engineering is an imprecise science. it relies on methods that include the haphazard insertion of genetic elements into a plant's genome. This in turn may result in the disruption of complex gene interactions and may lead to potentially catastrophic results." Dr. Michael Hansen & Ellen Hickey, Global Pesticide Campaigner, April 2000

K&R