Is there anything Reagan and the Bushies DIDN'T fuck up?

You have a very well written post here that touches a passion for me Monkey and that would be food. I often ponder if anyone notices the food they eat. I often like to ask if they have met the farmer who grew it of where it came from.
But Monsanto is just evil. What they are doing to the seed supply and to the food supply is calculated evil. We will all pay in the end.
Big time.

I saw the movie Food, Inc. a couple weeks ago and wanted to come home and write this exact post: Why aren't we all screaming mad at Monsanto? (among other corporations and practices). It's so overwhelming to contemplate; I think each person just takes care of the little bubble around them, looking narrowly at their own families, jobs, schools, relationships, lives. It's so awfully hard to take a step back and look at the meta picture because we're so busy with the smaller, seemingly urgent stuff. Mostly, we don't feel like our one voice can do a damn thing about the big guns like Monsanto. Thank you for this little post in the wilderness. I hope it comes to fruition.

no, there is nothing they didnt' fuck up but this goes waaaaaaay back. way way back. i worked for a strategic consulting company called Bain and Co. back in the 70s and Monsanto was the biggest client. Mitt Romney worked there. at that time they were helping Monsanto with a product of theirs that turned out to be carcinogenic. PVCs or something. they were already poisoning the world decades and decades ago. it sickened me. so does it surprise me that this has been going on all of this time and goes on now? no. people are so overwhelmed by all that is wrong in the world that they can only focus on one or two issues at a time. well, i'm speaking for myself. thanks for doing such a fabulous job of putting light on this. love love love and gratitude

Amazing - these are the posts I live by. Truth and firmness, Gandhi would be proud! (Rated).

Food is delicious! Look, why stress? If it's not plastic, the air we breath, the soy we continue to drink in place of milk, or in this case the food we eat; Everything causes Cancer. Not to sound like I don't care, but, why be anxious about it?

All I can say is,

EEK!!

I loves my non-modify corn!!! Straight from Farmer Brown!!!

Actually this started back in the 60's or earlier. The advent of newer, more potent pesticides, the development of decease-resistant vegetables and faster growing grain was at the time hailed as the savior of mankind. Famine was to be a thing of the past.

Ranchers began to chemically alter the genetic make-up of cattle in order to grow bigger cows with less fat. Poultry farmers did the same with chickens and turkeys. The steak you eat today tastes very little like one you ate forty years ago or so because of this.

This process has gone across party lines and if you think it was merely the Republicans trying to poison the world you would be sadly mistaken.

I have yelled about this for years now and no one really listens. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

"Is there anything Reagan and the Bushies DIDN'T fuck up?"

NO, not as far as I can figure out.

Rachel Carson convinced me long ago in her book, Silent Spring. Then I started with "Let's Cook it Right" by Adele Davis. Pretty soon I learned about organic gardening and dug up my entire back yard with a shovel for a garden, because that is all I could afford. Wherever I have had a yard, I have had a garden.

Tonight we ate the last corn from our garden. It was delicious, juicy, not quite as tender as I had hoped, but that is probably our fault for not picking it last week when we were busy having a breakdown with our old stove.

Those pictures up there look SCARY. I also recommend, in addition to organic gardening, shopping at Farmer's Markets, eating food grown organically and locally is good for the planet and it just tasted heavenly for every good reason. Corn picked today tastes way better than that junk shipped from somewhere, sitting in a hot truck running down the Interstate.

I bet if that corn could talk it would tell you it was car sick.

Ugh. And WalMart has corn on sale, 4 ears for a buck. You make me want to run right over there before it's all gone. I'd better hurry. When word of this gets out there will be a rush on corn like it was Christmas.

Seriously though, were do you draw the line between what is healthy and feeding an ever growing population? It's a real dilemma and I don't have an answer for that. Oil is running out and we are the bread basket of world. How will we farm when all the oil is gone in 50-75 years and there is another 5-6 billion mouths to feed? I don't want to think about that either. Ugh.

Happy Sunday!

Great and informing post frills!! This is getting so bad that "real" seeds are being infected, and one day, probably sooner than latter, there will be no "natural" food, just modified shit that Monsanto and others can use to make actual policy. People need to get their heads out of their asses. Dupont, who has put Teflon on everything from frying pans to carpet, are now facing mounting lawsuits that say Teflon is cancerous. It's predicted that over 90% of the worlds population now has this chemical in their bloodstream. Again, a great post frills!!

I hear you and I understand. I am not well informed on this topic. How do we feed everybody on this planet otherwise? Really?
Fewer people would help a lot...but in the mean time?
Befuddled is my name on this topic sadly.

"how do we feed everybody on this planet otherwise? Really? "

Genetic modification makes it impossible for the small local farmer to compete or even to continue to raise crops in the vacinity of farmers who use corporate seed. Please watch the video links I've provided. The information provided is shocking, while presented in an interesting format.

My concern is that even organic farmers will have difficulties with organic crops if they're not already. If a farmer choose to not to use corporate GM seed, in the natural process of pollination - the wind can move seed across states and even countries - the modified gene contaminates ALL seed. Farmers have to pick odd plants out of their crops by hand IF they can identify them, so they don't continue to pollinate their crops. That was the problem in (I think it was) Paraguay. The country eventually could no longer resist corporations like Monsanto's efforts to control their seed. Subsequently ANY successful crops would have to be treated with chemicals because of problems they began seeing in their products. It's THAT pervasive.

GET THIS: GM seed MUST be fertilized and treated with the herbicides these corporations produce! This is the point - farming and food will be completely controlled by corporations, making them richer and more powerful.

A farmer will produce a larger crop with a built in roundup resistant gene, but they must be treated with Roundup and chemical fertilizer in order to for it to grow to maturation successfully. Farmers are no longer permitted to sow seed for the next crops, either. They have to purchase new seed from these companies, forcing poor farmers into even more debt or worse, making it easier for rich, large farmers to buy off their smaller competition.

In the case of India, cotton farmers encountered parasitic infestation on their cotton plants because "friendly" parasites were weakened and killed off by a once less destructive parasite. When you create imbalance in nature, it tends to run amok.

We HAVE to at least be aware of what's happening to our food, the source of OUR LIVES. We can at the very least demand to be informed when processed food or produce comes from genetically modified sources. What these genes are doing to plants is horrific. But what type of gene restructuring may be occuring in the rest of the life on our planet? That's something to think about....

who are the other of the handful you mention? there is a lady in India who is working to stop the corporates taking over 'food' - one ...