baylian
Cathlete
This is an article written by Jerry Cook of Wisconsin.
King of the hill
The American nursery trade is a 39.6 billion dollar a
year industry. With the purchase of Seminis in January
of 2005, Monsanto is now estimated to control
between 85-90% of the U.S. nursery market. This
includes the pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer markets.
By merging with or buying up the competition,
dominating genetic technology, and lobbying the
government to make saving seeds illegal, this monolith
has positioned itself as the largest player in the
gardening game.
Monsanto holds over eleven thousand U.S. seed
patents. When Americans buy garden seed and
supplies, most of the time they are buying from
Monsanto regardless of who the retailer is.
Most home gardeners started noticing the initials PVP
appearing next to selections in the mail order garden
catalogs a few years ago. This stands for Plant Variety
Protection. It means the seed or plant carries a U.S.
patent. It is illegal to save seed from or otherwise
propagate PVP varieties. Consumers will have to buy
more each year if they wish to grow a PVP variety.
Greenpeace chides, "Monsanto — no food shall be
grown that we don't own."
They could be right.
Terminator Technology promises to be a big money
maker for Monsanto and its subsidiaries. Plants are
genetically modified so they won't produce seed, or if
seed is produced, it is sterile. With this maneuver they
are guaranteed a continuing market for vegetable, fruit,
and flower seed.
Consider the newest Frankenstein called Traitor
technology. This charming little piece of genetic
engineering will help Monsanto's chemical division
rake in billions of dollars a year from across the globe.
It allows growers to control the genetic traits of plants
by applying an array of chemicals, all owned by
Monsanto. Do your genetically modified watermelons
have blight? No problem, for a price you can buy the
chemical that will turn on the plant's blight fighting
gene. No kidding. It is estimated Traitor technology
could dominate world seed supply with an astonishing
80% of the market by 2010.
Six companies Du Pont, Mitsui, Monsanto, Syngent,
Aventis and Dow control 98% of the world's seeds.
These companies are opening research facilities and
acquiring local seed companies and farmland on every
continent, and they can't do it fast enough.
Imports of seed and stock from Pakistan, India,
Mexico,Thailand and of course China, are on the rise.
Countries like Thailand boast of seed exports rising at
12% per year from 1998-2001. American seed exports
fell at twice that rate for the same time period.
As biotechnology forges on, something is lost. At first
it is barely noticeable, just a sense that something is
different.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
Before it was acquired by Monsanto, Seminis
eliminated 2,000 varieties of seed from its inventory.
The first things to go were the older open-pollinated
varieties; vining petunias, butterfly weed, butter beans,
German green tomatoes, and other heirlooms grown by
gardeners for generations, replaced by geneticallyengineeredHigh-tech patented hybrid varieties are far more
profitable for transnational seed companies to produce
and sell. These new frankenseeds are bred to perform
adequately over a wide geographical area, giving the
patent holder a much larger market.
As consumers are losing the freedom to choose what
they will buy and grow, thousands of varieties of
garden seed are walking the plank, straight into the
abyss of extinction. Consider this, in 1981 there were
approximately 5,000 vegetable seed varieties available
in U.S. catalogs. Today there are less than 500, a 90%
reduction.
Seeds removed from commercial production are left in
private corporate seed banks. Open-pollinated seed
will not store indefinitely, it must be propagated to
ensure its survival. This is an expensive proposal, one
not likely to happen in the world of capital
consolidation and wide profit margins.
The more likely scenario is the "unprofitable" heirloom
seeds will be allowed to expire and patented hybrids
will take their place. Seed biodiversity will be
compromised globally, while the corporate
stranglehold tightens around the throat of the
consumer.
Kent Whealey, the co-founder of Seed Savers
Exchange, says, "Few gardeners comprehend the true
scope of their garden heritage or how much is in
immediate danger of being lost forever."
Taking the ball and going home
Like the glaciers that rolled across North America,
heaving and prying the earth into new forms, giant
transnational seed companies are changing the face of
gardening as it once was. What's left behind is the
product of a destructive force to be sure, but something
beautiful and promising also remains.
Across the globe people are growing and saving
heirloom seeds, ensuring the promise of diversity and
heritage for future generations. Groups like Seed
Savers Exchange are blooming in the remains of
corporate devastation. Some of these organizations are
large, offering seeds from across the globe. Others are
neighborhood and regional groups saving and trading
local favorites. Whatever their size, they are dedicated
to preserving the earth's biodiversity.
All it takes to form a seed saving club is for one
neighbor to pick up the phone and say to another, "Do
you want to trade some seeds this year?" There you
have it, a seed saving club.
Imagine if one neighbor called another neighbor and
that neighbor called yet another, and so on. The next
thing you know black gardeners and white gardeners,
southern growers and northern growers, farmers and
city folk, church goers and non-church goers, would be
united in an effort to prevent the extermination of
thousands of varieties of seed. What a beautiful thing it
would be.
Before you could shake a dollar at it, the landscape of
the nursery trade would change. It's the age old law of
supply and demand, if no one wants patented hybrids,
then they become unprofitable in short order. The
reigning corporate kings of the gardening game would
be forced to take their ball and go home, leaving
consumers free to choose a more sustainable pastime.
It could happen.
King of the hill
The American nursery trade is a 39.6 billion dollar a
year industry. With the purchase of Seminis in January
of 2005, Monsanto is now estimated to control
between 85-90% of the U.S. nursery market. This
includes the pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer markets.
By merging with or buying up the competition,
dominating genetic technology, and lobbying the
government to make saving seeds illegal, this monolith
has positioned itself as the largest player in the
gardening game.
Monsanto holds over eleven thousand U.S. seed
patents. When Americans buy garden seed and
supplies, most of the time they are buying from
Monsanto regardless of who the retailer is.
Most home gardeners started noticing the initials PVP
appearing next to selections in the mail order garden
catalogs a few years ago. This stands for Plant Variety
Protection. It means the seed or plant carries a U.S.
patent. It is illegal to save seed from or otherwise
propagate PVP varieties. Consumers will have to buy
more each year if they wish to grow a PVP variety.
Greenpeace chides, "Monsanto — no food shall be
grown that we don't own."
They could be right.
Terminator Technology promises to be a big money
maker for Monsanto and its subsidiaries. Plants are
genetically modified so they won't produce seed, or if
seed is produced, it is sterile. With this maneuver they
are guaranteed a continuing market for vegetable, fruit,
and flower seed.
Consider the newest Frankenstein called Traitor
technology. This charming little piece of genetic
engineering will help Monsanto's chemical division
rake in billions of dollars a year from across the globe.
It allows growers to control the genetic traits of plants
by applying an array of chemicals, all owned by
Monsanto. Do your genetically modified watermelons
have blight? No problem, for a price you can buy the
chemical that will turn on the plant's blight fighting
gene. No kidding. It is estimated Traitor technology
could dominate world seed supply with an astonishing
80% of the market by 2010.
Six companies Du Pont, Mitsui, Monsanto, Syngent,
Aventis and Dow control 98% of the world's seeds.
These companies are opening research facilities and
acquiring local seed companies and farmland on every
continent, and they can't do it fast enough.
Imports of seed and stock from Pakistan, India,
Mexico,Thailand and of course China, are on the rise.
Countries like Thailand boast of seed exports rising at
12% per year from 1998-2001. American seed exports
fell at twice that rate for the same time period.
As biotechnology forges on, something is lost. At first
it is barely noticeable, just a sense that something is
different.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
Before it was acquired by Monsanto, Seminis
eliminated 2,000 varieties of seed from its inventory.
The first things to go were the older open-pollinated
varieties; vining petunias, butterfly weed, butter beans,
German green tomatoes, and other heirlooms grown by
gardeners for generations, replaced by geneticallyengineeredHigh-tech patented hybrid varieties are far more
profitable for transnational seed companies to produce
and sell. These new frankenseeds are bred to perform
adequately over a wide geographical area, giving the
patent holder a much larger market.
As consumers are losing the freedom to choose what
they will buy and grow, thousands of varieties of
garden seed are walking the plank, straight into the
abyss of extinction. Consider this, in 1981 there were
approximately 5,000 vegetable seed varieties available
in U.S. catalogs. Today there are less than 500, a 90%
reduction.
Seeds removed from commercial production are left in
private corporate seed banks. Open-pollinated seed
will not store indefinitely, it must be propagated to
ensure its survival. This is an expensive proposal, one
not likely to happen in the world of capital
consolidation and wide profit margins.
The more likely scenario is the "unprofitable" heirloom
seeds will be allowed to expire and patented hybrids
will take their place. Seed biodiversity will be
compromised globally, while the corporate
stranglehold tightens around the throat of the
consumer.
Kent Whealey, the co-founder of Seed Savers
Exchange, says, "Few gardeners comprehend the true
scope of their garden heritage or how much is in
immediate danger of being lost forever."
Taking the ball and going home
Like the glaciers that rolled across North America,
heaving and prying the earth into new forms, giant
transnational seed companies are changing the face of
gardening as it once was. What's left behind is the
product of a destructive force to be sure, but something
beautiful and promising also remains.
Across the globe people are growing and saving
heirloom seeds, ensuring the promise of diversity and
heritage for future generations. Groups like Seed
Savers Exchange are blooming in the remains of
corporate devastation. Some of these organizations are
large, offering seeds from across the globe. Others are
neighborhood and regional groups saving and trading
local favorites. Whatever their size, they are dedicated
to preserving the earth's biodiversity.
All it takes to form a seed saving club is for one
neighbor to pick up the phone and say to another, "Do
you want to trade some seeds this year?" There you
have it, a seed saving club.
Imagine if one neighbor called another neighbor and
that neighbor called yet another, and so on. The next
thing you know black gardeners and white gardeners,
southern growers and northern growers, farmers and
city folk, church goers and non-church goers, would be
united in an effort to prevent the extermination of
thousands of varieties of seed. What a beautiful thing it
would be.
Before you could shake a dollar at it, the landscape of
the nursery trade would change. It's the age old law of
supply and demand, if no one wants patented hybrids,
then they become unprofitable in short order. The
reigning corporate kings of the gardening game would
be forced to take their ball and go home, leaving
consumers free to choose a more sustainable pastime.
It could happen.
