High and Dry: Why Genetic Engineering Is Not Solving Agriculture's Drought Problem in a Thirsty World (2012)

High and Dry is the third in a series of reports highlighting genetic engineering’s limitations and demonstrating the importance of increasing public investment in more effective—but often neglected—agricultural technologies. The first two reports in the series are Failure to Yield and No Sure Fix.

Droughts can be devastating to farmers and to the people who depend on the food those farmers produce. The historic Texas drought of 2011 caused a record $5.2 billion in agricultural losses, making it the most costly drought on record.

While extreme droughts capture the most attention, mild and moderate droughts are more common and collectively cause extensive damage. Climate scientists expect the frequency and severity of such droughts to increase as the global climate heats up.

Furthermore, agriculture accounts for the lion's share of water extracted from rivers and wells, setting up conflicts between food production and other uses. Other important organisms, such as fish, also compete with humans for fresh water. So there is a vital need for crop improvements that will increase drought tolerance and water use efficiency (WUE).

Biotechnology companies such as Monsanto have held out the promise that genetic engineering can accomplish these goals, creating new crop varieties that can thrive under drought conditions and reduce water demand even under normal conditions. High and Dry offers an analysis of the prospects for delivering on that promise.

Read More:

http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/high-and-dry.html

Anthony Gucciardi - 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion

Launching a lawsuit against the very company that is responsible for a farmer suicide every 30 minutes, 5 million farmers are now suing Monsanto for as much as 6.2 billion euros (around 7.7 billion US dollars). The reason? As with many other cases, such as the ones that led certain farming regions to be known as the ‘suicide belt’, Monsanto has been reportedly taxing the farmers to financial shambles with ridiculous royalty charges. The farmers state that Monsanto has been unfairly gathering exorbitant profits each year on a global scale from “renewal” seed harvests, which are crops planted using seed from the previous year’s harvest.

The practice of using renewal seeds dates back to ancient times, but Monsanto seeks to collect massive royalties and put an end to the practice. Why? Because Monsanto owns the very patent to the genetically modified seed, and is charging the farmers not only for the original crops, but the later harvests as well. Eventually, the royalties compound and many farmers begin to struggle with even keeping their farm afloat. It is for this reason that India slammed Monsanto with groundbreaking ‘biopiracy’ charges in an effort to stop Monsanto from ‘patenting life’

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/5-million-farmers-sue-monsanto-77-billion-1338912068

Rady Ananda - Celeb Bono Partners with Monsanto, G8, to Biowreck Africa

At the G8 Summit held two weeks ago at Camp David, President Obama met with private industry and African heads of state to launch the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a euphemism for monocultured, genetically modified crops and toxic agrochemicals aimed at making poor farmers debt slaves to corporations, while destroying the ecosphere for profit.

And Bono, of the rock group U2, is out shilling for Monsanto on this one.

It’s phase 2 of the Green Revolution. Tanzania, Ghana, and Ethiopia are the first to fall for the deception, with Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and other African nations lining up for the "Grow Africa Partnership," under Obama’s "Global Agricultural Development" plan.

In Obama Pitches India Model of GM Genocide to Africa, Scott Creighton writes:

Read More:

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/05/29/u2-bono-monsanto-africa/

Alexis Baden-Mayer - G8 Gives Monsanto Power to End Hunger in Africa

At the Group of 8 (G8) meetings this past weekend, President Obama and the leaders of the rest of the world’s richest nations abandoned their governments’ previous commitments to donate $7.3 billion a year to end hunger in Africa, after disbursing only 58 percent of the total pledge of $22 billion and giving less than 6 percent in new money they pledged three years ago.

Instead, rich nations will leave the problem in the hands of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition where private corporations will invest $3 billion over 10 years — Monsanto has committed $50 million – beginning in three countries, Tanzania, Ghana and Ethiopia.

Human-rights activists have questioned the inclusion of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, noting that his authoritarian government has jailed dissidents and banned media access to hunger zones. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a letter to President Obama that the Ethiopian government “routinely downplays the extent of the crisis by denying journalists access to sensitive areas and censoring independent news coverage.”

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/31/g8-leaves-monsanto-in-charge-of-ending-hunger-in-africa/

Ethan A. Huff - Exposed: Monsanto planted GM alfalfa before USDA approved it, federal agency knew all along

A little more than a year ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made the disastrous decision to deregulate Monsanto's Roundup-Ready alfalfa, even though the agency's sham of an environmental impact report failed to prove that GM alfalfa is at all safe or necessary. It has now come to light that Monsanto released GM alfalfa into the wild years before it was initially deregulated in 2005 -- and the USDA was apparently fully aware of this, but did nothing about it.

Reporting for Activist Post, Cassandra Anderson and Anthony Gucciardi explain that a letter to the USDA dated April 5, 2007, from Cal/West Seeds, a California-based seed company, shows that Monsanto's GM alfalfa had been in cultivation years before the first deregulation of the crop in 2005. That letter reveals that Monsanto's GM traits were already turning up in conventional alfalfa seed in 2005, which means GM traits were in use at least two years before that in 2003.

"We first discovered the unintended presence of the Roundup Ready gene in our conventional alfalfa seed in 2005," says the letter. "It was identified in one of our foundation seed production lots grown in California. We tested the foundation seed lot prior to shipping it to a producer who intended to plant it for organic seed production.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/036023_Monsanto_GM_alfalfa_USDA.html

Jack Adam Weber - GMO Alert: Startling New Research

Time for a little GMO update and heckling of our nemesis, Monsanto and friends. New research demonstrates what most of us have suspected for years: GMOs and the poisons used on them are bad for everything on the planet. For ethical reasons, as well as the obstruction of research by Monsanto, little comprehensive GMO research has been done on humans. But finally, we are beginning to see more hard evidence showing the dangerous effects of the GMO industry.

A little over a year ago, the journal Reproductive Toxicology published the results of a study done In Quebec, Canada. It showed that Bt toxin, the pesticide now routinely genetically engineered into GE corn and cotton, was found in the blood of pregnant women and in their fetuses, as well as in non-pregnant women. This same study also discovered that glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, was found in the blood of non-pregnant women. This is not good news.

Until recently, the Quebec study has been one of the few pieces of sound scientific evidence demonstrating the absorption of Bt-toxin into human blood, an occurrence Monsanto reportedly claimed would not occur when they proposed their nasty little invention for approval some years ago. Are we surprised that they were proven wrong? Not at all. Does this stop them? Not in the least. So we have to. Read on.

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/18/gmo-alert-startling-new-research/

EU Food Agency Rejects France Ban on Monsanto's YieldGuard GM Maize

Europe's food safety agency EFSA on Monday rejected the grounds for a temporary French ban on a genetically modified strain of maize made by U.S. company Monsanto (IW 500/94).

"Based on the documentation submitted by France, there is no specific scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment," EFSA said in a scientific opinion issued on its website.

A spokesman for Europe's health commissioner John Dalli said the EU executive "will consider how to follow up on this ruling, though technically we could ask France to raise its ban" on MON 810.

"The commission will wait for the conclusions of the next environment ministers' meeting June 11 in Luxembourg and hopes for a positive outcome to its proposals for cultivation, which have been blocked for almost two years by France and others," spokesman Frederic Vincent told AFP.

Paris had asked Brussels in February to suspend the cultivation of MON 810 on the basis of new scientific evidence after France's top administrative court in November overturned a government order banning the planting of genetically modified crops from Monsanto.

The court said that in a November 2008 ban, the government had failed to prove that Monsanto crops "present a particularly elevated level of risk to either human health or the environment."

Read More:

http://www.industryweek.com/articles/eu_food_agency_rejects_france_ban_on_monsantos_yieldguard_gm_maize_27415.aspx?Page=1&SectionID=2

Anne Peterman - New study on Monsanto corn suggests GMO trees could devastate forest ecosystems

Bioengineering agricultural giant Monsanto has touted the safety of genetically modified crops, but a new study has found that insecticide-containing corn can be harmful to the overall health of soil ecosystems.

Genetically modified corn has been linked to a decrease in a subterranean fungus that forms a symbiotic bond with plant roots, allowing them to draw in more nutrients and water from the surrounding soil in exchange for carbon.

Researchers at Portland State University conducted a study to examine the effects of corn genetically engineered with the bacteria-derived insecticidal toxin, Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, on growth of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF).

AMF is important for the overall health and fertility of soil ecosystems, and was found to form less bonds with the roots of Bt corn than with non-Bt corn.

“Because these fungi rely on a plant host for nutrition and reproduction, they may be sensitive to genetic changes within a plant, such as insect-resistant Bt corn,” Tanya Cheeke, a PhD student in biology at Portland State, told theAmerican Journal of Botany.

Cheeke conducted the study as part of her doctoral research into the impact of genetically modified crops on soil ecosystems.

Read More:

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/04/24/new-study-on-monsanto-corn-suggests-gmo-trees-could-devastate-forest-ecosystems/

Jim Hightower - Monsanto, Dow and Genetically Modified Trouble

Thanks to the blessings of nature and good farmers, you and I can enjoy such scrumptious delights as fresh corn-on-the-cob, popcorn and many other variations of this truly great grain. And now, thanks to Dow Chemical and federal regulators, we can look forward to "Agent Orange Corn." The chemical giant is in line to gain approval for putting a genetically altered corn seed on the market that will produce corn plants that won't die when doused with high levels of 2,4-D.

This potent pesticide was an ingredient in Dow's notorious Agent Orange defoliant, which did such extensive and horrific damage to soldiers and civilians in the Vietnam War. However, the corporation and the feds claim that 2,4-D was not the deadliest ingredient of the killer defoliant and has not yet been proven to cause cancer in humans, so they're pressing ahead to let this corporate-constructed seed be planted across America.

Dow now sells 2,4-D to help kill various weeds, but the herbicide is so strong that it also kills nature's own version of corn plants. Thus, Dow's genetic engineers went into the corporate lab and manufactured a new corn that's immune to the weed-killer. This would let the chemical maker profit from selling the patented seed, plus enjoying a huge increase in sales of its 2,4-D herbicide. How happy for Dow! Not so happy, though, for consumers worried about the untested long-term health consequences of the altered corn and the carcinogenic possibilities of ingesting more 2,4- D. Also, when sprayed, this herbicide can vaporize and spread for miles, killing crops that are not immune, poisoning the surrounding environment, and endangering the health of farmers and townspeople throughout the area.

Read More:

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9030-monsanto-dow-and-genetically-modified-trouble

Anthony Gucciardi - Mother Wins Top Environmental Award for Beating Monsanto

After experiencing the traumatizing death of her daughter to kidney failure just three days after her daughter was born, Sofia Gatica from Argentina became determined to find out what killed her daughter. Her conclusion? Monsanto’s genetically modified soy fields that surrounded her neighborhood, laced with damaging insecticides negatively affecting nearby neighborhood children and adults alike. Gatica began to detail how her small town was plagued with astronomically high birth defect rates, respiratory disease, and even infant mortality.

From this point, the courageous mother decided to take on Monsanto. Amazingly, she is not alone in her struggle against the biotechnology colossus when it comes to causing birth problems, as a large group of farmers — also from Argentina — have launched a lawsuit against Monsanto for causing ‘devastating birth defects‘ in children. Gatica was initially alone, however, when she first began her uphill battle. Forming a group of concerned mothers in her local area of Ituzaingó after hosting an event at her home to discuss her experiences, the mother would be one of the very few who has actually beat Monsanto.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/mother-wins-top-environmental-award-beating-monsanto-1335626115