Who Owns Nature’s Genes? How Secure is Your Food Supply?

By B. McPherson



This is the time of year when avid gardeners are pouring over seed catalogues planning for the summer’s bounty. Few people who are not gardeners and farmers are aware of the diminishing variety and number of seed houses. Regulations enacted by the US government now prevent seed suppliers from sending specialty seeds from Canada to the US, further restricting the supply of specialty and heritage seeds.

Some gardeners are dealing with the dwindling varieties by saving seeds from open pollinated(plants that will breed true) varieties and activists have arranged for seed exchange days. There are small companies that offer heritage seeds over the internet. Some of the older seed houses in Canada still cater to the farmer who is planting fields, but the really big industrial farms are increasingly turning to the big seed producing corporations.

These large seed manufacturing corporations have in a few decades come to dominate the commercial seed industry. Monsanto is perhaps the best known of these, but there are other large corporations that engineer gene altered seeds. The gene altered seeds(GMOs) are sold with the promise of higher yields and little competition from weeds if sprayed with Roundup(glyphosate).

Those corporations selling GMO seeds retain ownership by asserting that the genetically engineered seeds are their intellectual property. The farmer who plants GMO seeds is obligated to sell all of his crop to the corporation. Inspectors on site ensure that no seeds are saved for the following year. Representatives of the corporations will prosecute other farmers who happen to have their crop infiltrated with the GMO plants. Some seeds have now been so altered that when a crop grown from them matures, none of the fresh seed will germinate. These have been dubbed “terminator seeds” by their critics.

The thousands of years old cycle of saving seed from a good plant is broken with the signing of a contract to sell all the crop back to the vendor. The farmer loses in two ways: he is at the mercy of price raises by the corporation and is unable to save seed from good plants which leads to fewer and fewer varieties.

Seeds are at the base of our food chain. Without the healthy competition among commercial seed growers, the varieties needed to flourish in our changing climatic conditions may not be available when conditions dictate a change. The increasing similarity in the genetic makeup of major food crops puts them at risk for a catastrophic epidemic should one occur.

GM Watch is an organization that tries to education people about this centralization of control of our seed supply. The GMO seed industry is a multi-billion dollar business.

The following was taken from their web page, based on 2007 figures. The revenues are in US millions of dollars and show a market share.
1.Monsanto (US) - $4,964m - 23%
2.DuPont (US) - $3,300m - 15%
3.Syngenta (Switzerland) - $2,018m - 9%
4.Groupe Limagrain (France) - $1,226m - 6%
5.Land O' Lakes (US) - $917m - 4%
6.KWS AG (Germany) - $702m - 3%
7.Bayer Crop Science (Germany) - $524m - 2%
8.Sakata (Japan) - $396m - <2%
9.DLF-Trifolium (Denmark) - $391m - <2%
10.Takii (Japan) - $347m - <2%
Top 10 Total - $14,785m - 67% [of global proprietary seed market]
Source: ETC Group


Comments

  1. MaBear9 January 2012 at 14:06

    This is what they did in India. The farmers became broke and alot of them commited suicide being indebted to these companies and they could not feed their families. Until the farmers fought back and went back to their old way of farming. Farming practices like alot of other things should revert in ways back to the old way. And these farmers had to do just that. these companies are bad news. Fight back!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abandoned Oil Pipelines What Lurks Below?

Image
These photos were taken July 2012 in the historic Turner Valley, Alberta B. McPherson Controversy over new oil pipelines is reaching boiling point in many circles. Heated debate is taking place over the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway and Keystone Pipeline proposals. Safety, disruption to landowners  and more are being weighed against the money to be made transporting and selling petroleum products. It got me thinking about the old pipelines. What happens to a pipeline when it is too old to use or not needed? It’s a bit of an Alice in Wonderland scene. The US laws and regulations are different from ours in Canada. The Pipeline and Gas Journal is a source of information about abandoned pipelines in Texas. Apparently a pipeline in Texas may be abandoned by a company, but it still retains ownership and may choose to reactivate the line at a later date. In the meantime, the right of way or easement is no longer maintained, but the through which the pipe extends is not ...
Read more

Prince Rupert Says No to Enbridge Pipeline

Image
B. McPherson Prince Rupert city council joined a growing list of BC coastal communities that are saying “No” to the Enbridge proposal to build a twinned pipeline from Edmonton to the coast. The decision of the Prince Rupert city politicians was unanimous. Already the village of Kitimaat, Terrace and the Skeena Queen Charlottes Regional District have voiced their opposition to the project. There are ongoing hearings by a federal court appointed Joint Review Panel which are gathering input from interested parties about the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline which would bring crude petroleum from the oil sands of Alberta to the coast of British Columbia. The proposal would see a twinned pipeline run over the Rocky Mountains and through wilderness to the treacherous west coast. The proposed terminus at Kitimat would require tankers to wend their way through the maze of islands and reefs to load up at the head of Douglas Channel. While the hearings and the finding...
Read more

Scientists Beginning to Sound Warnings About Atmospheric Nitrogen Compounds

Image
B. McPherson                                                 This short film explains very well the greenhouse effect on Earth. While the world is focussing on the production and release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, other gasses are quietly adding to the catastrophe. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and nitrous oxide is 300 times more efficient at keeping the Earth warmed. While much of the Earth’s atmosphere is made up of the element nitrogen, it is the nitrogen in reactive compounds that is starting to worry atmospheric scientists. The Green Revolution was made possible by the industrial production of chemical fertilizers. It, combined with antibiotics has allowed the Earth’s population of humans to swell from 1.6 billion at the beginning of the 20 th century to seven billion this year. Nitrogen is a key nutrient in plant growth. Unfor...
Read more