Meet the people fighting resource grabs, cultivating traditional crops, and defending their communities from exploitation by multinationals. When it comes to ‘feeding the world,’ agribusiness keeps selling the same old “solutions” that are actually undermining people’s access to healthful and sustainable food: massive industrialized farming operations, biotech (GMO) crops, pesticide-intensive mono-cropping, and so-called “free trade” agreements. They insist we just need to produce more food (with their seeds and petrochemicals) for the nearly one billion people who go hungry each year—yet landfills overflow with food waste in countries where agribusinesses have gained control of seeds, livestock, markets, and prices. In spring 2013, Monsanto grabbed headlines when its genetically modified wheat, MON71800—not approved for production or consumption—was found growing in a farmer’s field. Yet in June, Monsanto and […] Read More
Tag: Genetically modified organism
by DAVID GUTIERREZ (NATURAL NEWS) (April 15, 2010) Drug and chemical giant Bayer AG has admitted that there is no way to stop the uncontrolled spread of its genetically modified crops. “Even the best practices can”t guarantee perfection,” said Mark Ferguson, the company”s defense lawyer in a recent trial. Two Missouri farmers sued Bayer for contaminating their crop with modified genes from an experimental strain of rice engineered to be resistant to the company”s Liberty-brand herbicide. The contamination occurred in 2006, during an open field test of the new rice, which was not approved for human consumption. According to the plaintiffs” lawyer, Don Downing, genetic material from the unapproved rice contaminated more than 30 percent of all rice cropland in the United States. “Bayer was […] Read More