Seed: From biotech giants' patents and lobbying, to my thankfulness for local organic growers

According to Forbes, Monsanto spent $1.3M on lobbying, just in the first quarter of this year. They lobbied ''Congress, (the) White House, (the) US Trade Representative's office, (the) Federal Trade Commission'' and the ''Agriculture Department'' on ''farm bill provisions and biotechnology'' as well as ''organic standards, patent reform, theft of agricultural seeds, endangered species, timber, greenhouse gas emissions legislation, international trade, ethanol production'' and other things. The crazy thing is that $1.3M to them is spare change.

In other news... It seems the rush is now on for companies to patent plant genes for crops that are tolerant of climate change. As biotech giants continue to buy up more and more seed companies, and farmers' and gardeners' GMO-free options become increasingly scarce, somebody's going to be making a whole heap of money, and it's not gonna be farmers. The time to start saving organic seed is now; I'm putting it on my list of things I need to try out this season.


On a related note, I popped by my local organic health food store, True Food Organics, yesterday and noticed for the first time that they were selling seed. They were kinda buried behind some dried shiitake mushrooms at the back of the far end of the counter, so I'd never noticed them before. That sucks, since there were tomato, basil and pepper seeds I would have loved to have sown, but it's too late in the year now to start from scratch for those. So I picked up some lettuce seed (arugula, Jericho and Black Seeded Simpson) and beans (Contender green beans) from Hope Seeds, as well as some wax beans from Mapple Farms. I couldn't help but bemoan the small selection available; I sure as heck hope to have more luck at the Farmer's Market tomorrow. I wish I knew more local vegetable gardeners.

Amy Goodman and Vanity Fair's James Steel on Democracy Now!

A month ago, I'd written about Vanity Fair's recent weighty exposé on the monstrously huge biotech bully Monsanto. Tuesday's episode of Democracy Now! featured Amy Goodman's interview with James Steele, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who co-authored the Vanity Fair piece. You can listen to (or watch) the interview here, or read the transcript here.

Democracy Now! also provides a link to the five page letter written by a Monsanto PR rep to Steele in response to his original article. In the letter, Monsanto attempts to disassociate itself from its previous incarnations, referring to the companies it was as if it's completely unrelated to them, instead of having evolved from them. The rep absolves the ''new'' Monsanto of any sort of ethical accountability and beats it all down to so much legal mumbo-jumbo, as if changing a company's name cleans the slate.

The rep refuses to discuss anything having to do with their bullying and harassment of farmers in what the rep refers to as ''patent infringement cases'', except to describe the manner they go about investigating claims as this almost genteel process. Then, as if to make the whole thing smell even more benevolent, he adds that funds gained by blackmailing and intimidating farmers go towards agricultural education and scholarships. Nice.

The letter response is well worth reading, just to get a sense of the time and energy that this company puts into manipulating its image. And the interview is a must-see.

Ug99 and your loaf of bread

As wheat prices soar, another danger is lurking just around the corner (or across the ocean, to be more precise) -- actual wheat shortages. A fungus called Ug99 has wiped out 70% of Africa's wheat crops, and it's expected that in some areas there, crops will be a total loss. First discovered in 1999 in Uganda, the fungus has already spread to Asia thanks to its wind-borne spores. Scientists are concerned that it will inevitably make its way to Europe and North America.

In a New York Times piece from this past Saturday, Norman E. Borlaug, the Nobel Prize winning and biotech / genetic engineering promoting ''Father of the Green Revolution'', calls for the development of a stem-rust-resistant (no doubt genetically modified) form of wheat and for it to be used to replace ''almost all of the commercial wheat grown in the world today'', for the sake and safety of the global wheat supply.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently handed Cornell University a $26.8 million dollar grant to initiate a three year study to develop (primarily and mostly through genetic modification), a stem-rust-resistant variety. Details of the project are available here in its executive summary.

I'm wondering what all of this will mean for organic wheat farmers.

GMOs in EU Revisited

I wrote about France's recent banning of Monsanto's genetically modified corn (MON810) last Monday. European farm ministers met today to discuss whether to allow it, three other types of maize and a type of genetically modified potato to be grown in Europe. The farm ministers couldn't reach an agreement, one way or another, which is tantamount to waving it through. According to Reuters:

EU law provides for rubberstamp GMO authorizations when ministers are unable to agree after a certain time. Since 2004, the Commission has authorized a string of GMOs -- nearly all maize types -- in this way, outraging green groups.

In the news, as well, concerning GMOs and the EU: Europe is purportedly facing a ''crisis'' in its meat supply because of political resistance concerning the use of genetically modified protein in animal feed. Without being able to either grow or import the feed, it seems livestock totals will have to be cut back and that the price of meat could increase drastically, and that the recourse would be to import meat from outside of the EU -- ironically enough, from animals raised on genetically modified feed. It's funny how the idea of just encouraging consumers to lessen their consumption of animal products couldn't be factored in somehow. I mean, is it really so unthinkable? Did I miss the part about the sky falling?

Richard Heinberg and Technology

An American friend of mine introduced me to the ideas and significance of Richard Heinberg a little over a year ago. At the time, I'd heard of Hubbert's Peak Oil theory, but it was sorta at the edges of my radar at best, and certainly overshadowed by concerns like global warming and its associated environmental issues. I picked up a copy of Heinberg's Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, and I spent the next several months reading nearly everything about Peak Oil I could get my hands on via the internet. These days, even some of the more conservative experts and the most mainstream authorities are making public statements about the coming of the permanent decline of fossil fuels. It seems, though, that as long as people are able to afford to keep filling their gas tanks at the fuel pump, that the general public is transfixed by this notion that the planet's oil supply are endless and that life as we've known it during the oil age will continue. Or that, at least, there'll be easy solutions "just in time" so that our rate of consumption need never be affected.

In this month's MuseLetter, his monthly essay on energy, civilization and economics, Heinberg's re-issued an eight year old essay of his on the future of technology. Rather than being dated, it still holds water. Lots. It's definitely worth a read if you have an interest in the impact of runaway advances in biotechnology. He's a lucid writer, and probably one of today's most important voices.