axisofevil
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- May 10, 2009
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Capitulating to Monsanto and Wall Street: What Future for India?
Capitulating to Monsanto and Wall Street: What Future for India? | Global Research
By Colin Todhunter
Global Research, March 24, 2014
Indian Oil and Environment Minister Veerappa Moily has added fuel to the debate about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by approving
field trials of 200 GM food crops on behalf of companies like Monsanto,
Mahyco, Bayer and BASF. This is despite Supreme Court appointed Technical
Expert Committee (TEC) recommending a ten-year moratorium on GM
organism approvals until scientifically robust protocols, independent
and competent institutions to assess risks and a strong regulatory
system are developed.
This will involve a
deliberate release of GM organisms in the open environment and a
potential contamination of non-GM crops, as has been the case in the US,
with GM open field trials having contaminated parts of the wheat supply
(1). Despite mounting evidence appearing in peer-reviewed journals that
GM and glyphosate are adversely impacting human health, the nutritional
value of food crops, plant immunity, soil fertility, biodiversity, the
environment and yields (2 – 15), politicians seem hell-bent on
facilitating the aims of the GM biotech sector.
It was a similar story with
the ‘Green Revolution’. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations backed this
chemical-laden revolution in agriculture and managed to co-opt
strategically placed scientists, institutions and politicians in various
areas of the globe (16). With their compliance, the result has been
that over the past 50 to 60 years, thanks to chemical fertilizers and
pesticides, agriculture has changed more than it did during the previous
12,000 years.
We need look no further than
Punjab to see the impact of the Green Revolution. Reports of water
scarcities and contamination, increasing levels of cancer, farmer
indebtedness and decreasing yields highlight the unsustainable and
deleterious impacts of chemical-industrial agriculture (17). It all begs
the question, what was wrong with agriculture in the first place that
warranted this disastrous shift towards chemical agriculture and now
GMOs? The answer to that is, by comparison, probably not a lot.
In 2013, researchers at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand concluded
that the GM strategy used in North American staple crop production is
limiting yields and increasing pesticide use compared to non-GM farming
in Western Europe
(18). Led by Professor Jack Heinemann, the study’s findings were
published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.
The study found that Europe is
decreasing chemical herbicide use and achieving even larger declines in
insecticide use without sacrificing yield gains, while chemical
herbicide use in the US has increased with GM seed. In effect, Europe has learned to grow more food per hectare and use fewer chemicals in the process.
Moreover,
a September 2013 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) states that farming in rich and poor nations alike
should shift from monoculture towards greater varieties of crops, reduce
the use of fertilisers and other inputs, provide greater support for
small-scale farmers and move towards more locally focused production and
consumption of food. More than 60 international experts contributed to
the report (19).
The
report states that monoculture and industrial farming methods are not
providing sufficient affordable food where it is needed, while causing
mounting and unsustainable environmental damage. The system actually
causes food poverty, not addresses it.
As for India, Arun
Shrivastava notes that the world doesn’t need modern technology of
poisonous pesticides, destructive fertilizers and patented GE seeds that
can’t match 1890 or even 1760 AD yields in India (12). But even if we
discard the debate over yields, Shrivastava (and others) asserts that
modern technology has actually destroyed the nutrition in common foods
and that, failing to set any yield or nutrition standard in any food
crop, it is part of an insane industry that has muddled through.
So, how did we arrive at
this stage, whereby 12,000 years of conventional farming were swept
aside in favour of chemical/oil-based agriculture?
As William F Engdahl argues,
the Green Revolution was a Rockefeller family plan to monopolize global
agriculture as it had done with oil. It was aimed at removing
traditional agriculture from farmers and placing it in the hands of
corporate agribusiness. As a result, large multinational seed companies
were able to control seed supplies. Moreover, the introduction of modern
US agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial seeds
made local farmers in developing countries dependent on US agribusiness.
Developing nations could not
pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This
new form of agriculture was also water intensive and required large
irrigation projects. Nations would therefore get credit courtesy of the
World Bank and special loans made large US banks to construct huge dams
and flood previously fertile farmland. The loans went mostly to the
large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked
differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and
other modern inputs and had to borrow money at higher rates of interest
from elsewhere.
Engdahl notes that
super-wheat produced greater yields only by saturating the soil with
huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of
nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the
Rockefeller-dominated major oil companies.
After two generations of the green revolution, is it any surprise
that agriculture in India is in the grip of a combined social, financial
and environmental crisis (20)?
Ordinary people, if they are
not to be what Vandana Shiva calls ‘ignorant links in a malicious
corporate-controlled food chain, therefore need to question why
governments have kowtowed to a US-driven agenda of chemical and now GMO
agriculture. Africa is now targeted for more of the same as the Gates
Foundation spearheads the GMO onslaught in that continent (21).
12,000 years of traditional agriculture and biodiversity are being
swept aside along with ordinary farmers by vested interests in the US
whose geopolitical aim has to been to monopolize markets and ultimately
use food as a weapon to control nations and people by destroying
national food sovereignty and potentially using food as a means to
depopulate (22,23).
“If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food,
you control the population.” – Former US Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger (12)
Wider ‘corporate America’ is already setting the broad political, ‘development’ and economic agenda in India:
“And something Americans don’t know much about, the nuclear deal with India
has a twin agreement, and that twin agreement is on agriculture. It’s
called the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, and on the board of this
agreement are Monsanto, ADM and Wal-Mart. So a grab of the seed
sector by Monsanto, of the trade sector by the giant agribusiness, and
the retail sector, which is 400 million people in India, by Wal-Mart.
These are issues that are preoccupying us regarding democracy in India
right now.” Vandana Shiva (24).
It’s not just ‘American’ that don’t know about this, but most ordinary Indians too!
But even with the upcoming national elections, no one should expect
self-proclaimed Hindu-nationalist party BJP to protect the country from
the foreign jackals if it gains power. BJP candidate for PM Narendra
Modi is fully backed by Wall Street (25).
What future Indian agriculture?
What future India?
600 million booted off the land and the further hollowing out of
Indian agriculture and society at the behest of Wall Street (26)?
Notes
1) WRAPUP 1-US genetically modified wheat stokes fears, Japan cancels tender| Reuters
2) Argentina Is Using More Pesticide Than Ever Before. And Now It Has Cancer Clusters. | Mother Jones
3) Entropy | Free Full-Text | Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases
4) http://nhrighttoknowgmo.org/BreakingNews/Glyphosate_II_Samsel-Seneff.pdf
5) GMO and Morgellons Disease | Global Research
6) Institute for Responsible Technology - Health Risks
7) Children Of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance | Glyphosate & GMO Chemicals – 101 Scientific Studies
8) An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
9) Monsanto's Bt Cotton Kills the Soil as Well as Farmers
10) US farmers may stop planting GMs after poor global yields - 06/02/2013 - Farmers Weekly
11) Of falling Bt yield and disastrous second Green Revolution
12) India: Genetically Modified Seeds, Agricultural Productivity and Political Fraud | Global Research
13) Monsanto's Bt Cotton Kills the Soil as Well as Farmers
14) Dramatic Increase in Kidney Disease in the US and Abroad Linked To
15) Glyphosate and GMOs impact on crops, soils, animals and man - Dr Don Huber
16) “Doomsday Seed Vault” in the Arctic | TruthTheory
17) Punjab: Transformation of a food bowl into a cancer epicentre
18) US Genetically Engineered Agriculture is Outclassed by Europe’s Non-GM Approach | Global Research
19) GRAIN — Yet another UN report calls for support to peasant farming and agroecology: it's time for action
20) WSF 2007- Green Revolution? A Warning from India with Dr. Vandana Shiva | Indian Agrarian Crisis
21) Eric Holt Gimenez: Monsanto in Gates' Clothing? The Emperor's New GMOs
22) Glyphosate/Roundup & Human Male Infertility
23) Genetic Engineering, Eugenics and the Ideology of the Rich | Global Research
24) Vandana Shiva on Farmer Suicides, the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Wal-Mart in India and More | Democracy Now!
25) General Elections in India: The Choice is “Globalization” or “More Globalization”. The Role of the Wall Street Lobby | Global Research
26) Mass Poverty and Social Inequality in India: The Devastating Impacts of the Neoliberal Economic Development Model | Global Research
http://edge.********.com/80281E/ll_a_s/2014/Mar/24/********-dot-com-856_1395686708-xmnghgmghm_1395686764.jpg.resized.jpg?d5e8cc8eccfb6039332f41f6249e92b06c91b4db65f5e99818bade934a44d8df84a2&ec_rate=230 http://edge.********.com/80281E/ll_a_s/2014/Mar/24/********-dot-com-856_1395686708-fbfxnfxn_1395686765.jpg.resized.jpg?d5e8cc8eccfb6039332f41f6249e92b06c91b4db65f5e99818bade934a44d8df84a3&ec_rate=230 http://edge.********.com/80281E/ll_a_s/2014/Mar/24/********-dot-com-856_1395686708-monnn_1395686765.jpg.resized.jpg?d5e8cc8eccfb6039332f41f6249e92b06c91b4db65f5e99818bade934a44d8df84a3&ec_rate=230 http://edge.********.com/80281E/ll_a_s/2014/Mar/24/********-dot-com-856_1395686708-monsanto3_1395686766.jpg.resized.jpg?d5e8cc8eccfb6039332f41f6249e92b06c91b4db65f5e99818bade934a44d8df84a3&ec_rate=230
Capitulating to Monsanto and Wall Street: What Future for India? | Global Research
By Colin Todhunter
Global Research, March 24, 2014
Indian Oil and Environment Minister Veerappa Moily has added fuel to the debate about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by approving
field trials of 200 GM food crops on behalf of companies like Monsanto,
Mahyco, Bayer and BASF. This is despite Supreme Court appointed Technical
Expert Committee (TEC) recommending a ten-year moratorium on GM
organism approvals until scientifically robust protocols, independent
and competent institutions to assess risks and a strong regulatory
system are developed.
This will involve a
deliberate release of GM organisms in the open environment and a
potential contamination of non-GM crops, as has been the case in the US,
with GM open field trials having contaminated parts of the wheat supply
(1). Despite mounting evidence appearing in peer-reviewed journals that
GM and glyphosate are adversely impacting human health, the nutritional
value of food crops, plant immunity, soil fertility, biodiversity, the
environment and yields (2 – 15), politicians seem hell-bent on
facilitating the aims of the GM biotech sector.
It was a similar story with
the ‘Green Revolution’. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations backed this
chemical-laden revolution in agriculture and managed to co-opt
strategically placed scientists, institutions and politicians in various
areas of the globe (16). With their compliance, the result has been
that over the past 50 to 60 years, thanks to chemical fertilizers and
pesticides, agriculture has changed more than it did during the previous
12,000 years.
We need look no further than
Punjab to see the impact of the Green Revolution. Reports of water
scarcities and contamination, increasing levels of cancer, farmer
indebtedness and decreasing yields highlight the unsustainable and
deleterious impacts of chemical-industrial agriculture (17). It all begs
the question, what was wrong with agriculture in the first place that
warranted this disastrous shift towards chemical agriculture and now
GMOs? The answer to that is, by comparison, probably not a lot.
In 2013, researchers at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand concluded
that the GM strategy used in North American staple crop production is
limiting yields and increasing pesticide use compared to non-GM farming
in Western Europe
(18). Led by Professor Jack Heinemann, the study’s findings were
published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.
The study found that Europe is
decreasing chemical herbicide use and achieving even larger declines in
insecticide use without sacrificing yield gains, while chemical
herbicide use in the US has increased with GM seed. In effect, Europe has learned to grow more food per hectare and use fewer chemicals in the process.
Moreover,
a September 2013 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) states that farming in rich and poor nations alike
should shift from monoculture towards greater varieties of crops, reduce
the use of fertilisers and other inputs, provide greater support for
small-scale farmers and move towards more locally focused production and
consumption of food. More than 60 international experts contributed to
the report (19).
The
report states that monoculture and industrial farming methods are not
providing sufficient affordable food where it is needed, while causing
mounting and unsustainable environmental damage. The system actually
causes food poverty, not addresses it.
As for India, Arun
Shrivastava notes that the world doesn’t need modern technology of
poisonous pesticides, destructive fertilizers and patented GE seeds that
can’t match 1890 or even 1760 AD yields in India (12). But even if we
discard the debate over yields, Shrivastava (and others) asserts that
modern technology has actually destroyed the nutrition in common foods
and that, failing to set any yield or nutrition standard in any food
crop, it is part of an insane industry that has muddled through.
So, how did we arrive at
this stage, whereby 12,000 years of conventional farming were swept
aside in favour of chemical/oil-based agriculture?
As William F Engdahl argues,
the Green Revolution was a Rockefeller family plan to monopolize global
agriculture as it had done with oil. It was aimed at removing
traditional agriculture from farmers and placing it in the hands of
corporate agribusiness. As a result, large multinational seed companies
were able to control seed supplies. Moreover, the introduction of modern
US agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial seeds
made local farmers in developing countries dependent on US agribusiness.
Developing nations could not
pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This
new form of agriculture was also water intensive and required large
irrigation projects. Nations would therefore get credit courtesy of the
World Bank and special loans made large US banks to construct huge dams
and flood previously fertile farmland. The loans went mostly to the
large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked
differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and
other modern inputs and had to borrow money at higher rates of interest
from elsewhere.
Engdahl notes that
super-wheat produced greater yields only by saturating the soil with
huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of
nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the
Rockefeller-dominated major oil companies.
After two generations of the green revolution, is it any surprise
that agriculture in India is in the grip of a combined social, financial
and environmental crisis (20)?
Ordinary people, if they are
not to be what Vandana Shiva calls ‘ignorant links in a malicious
corporate-controlled food chain, therefore need to question why
governments have kowtowed to a US-driven agenda of chemical and now GMO
agriculture. Africa is now targeted for more of the same as the Gates
Foundation spearheads the GMO onslaught in that continent (21).
12,000 years of traditional agriculture and biodiversity are being
swept aside along with ordinary farmers by vested interests in the US
whose geopolitical aim has to been to monopolize markets and ultimately
use food as a weapon to control nations and people by destroying
national food sovereignty and potentially using food as a means to
depopulate (22,23).
“If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food,
you control the population.” – Former US Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger (12)
Wider ‘corporate America’ is already setting the broad political, ‘development’ and economic agenda in India:
“And something Americans don’t know much about, the nuclear deal with India
has a twin agreement, and that twin agreement is on agriculture. It’s
called the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, and on the board of this
agreement are Monsanto, ADM and Wal-Mart. So a grab of the seed
sector by Monsanto, of the trade sector by the giant agribusiness, and
the retail sector, which is 400 million people in India, by Wal-Mart.
These are issues that are preoccupying us regarding democracy in India
right now.” Vandana Shiva (24).
It’s not just ‘American’ that don’t know about this, but most ordinary Indians too!
But even with the upcoming national elections, no one should expect
self-proclaimed Hindu-nationalist party BJP to protect the country from
the foreign jackals if it gains power. BJP candidate for PM Narendra
Modi is fully backed by Wall Street (25).
What future Indian agriculture?
What future India?
600 million booted off the land and the further hollowing out of
Indian agriculture and society at the behest of Wall Street (26)?
Notes
1) WRAPUP 1-US genetically modified wheat stokes fears, Japan cancels tender| Reuters
2) Argentina Is Using More Pesticide Than Ever Before. And Now It Has Cancer Clusters. | Mother Jones
3) Entropy | Free Full-Text | Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases
4) http://nhrighttoknowgmo.org/BreakingNews/Glyphosate_II_Samsel-Seneff.pdf
5) GMO and Morgellons Disease | Global Research
6) Institute for Responsible Technology - Health Risks
7) Children Of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance | Glyphosate & GMO Chemicals – 101 Scientific Studies
8) An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
9) Monsanto's Bt Cotton Kills the Soil as Well as Farmers
10) US farmers may stop planting GMs after poor global yields - 06/02/2013 - Farmers Weekly
11) Of falling Bt yield and disastrous second Green Revolution
12) India: Genetically Modified Seeds, Agricultural Productivity and Political Fraud | Global Research
13) Monsanto's Bt Cotton Kills the Soil as Well as Farmers
14) Dramatic Increase in Kidney Disease in the US and Abroad Linked To
15) Glyphosate and GMOs impact on crops, soils, animals and man - Dr Don Huber
16) “Doomsday Seed Vault” in the Arctic | TruthTheory
17) Punjab: Transformation of a food bowl into a cancer epicentre
18) US Genetically Engineered Agriculture is Outclassed by Europe’s Non-GM Approach | Global Research
19) GRAIN — Yet another UN report calls for support to peasant farming and agroecology: it's time for action
20) WSF 2007- Green Revolution? A Warning from India with Dr. Vandana Shiva | Indian Agrarian Crisis
21) Eric Holt Gimenez: Monsanto in Gates' Clothing? The Emperor's New GMOs
22) Glyphosate/Roundup & Human Male Infertility
23) Genetic Engineering, Eugenics and the Ideology of the Rich | Global Research
24) Vandana Shiva on Farmer Suicides, the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Wal-Mart in India and More | Democracy Now!
25) General Elections in India: The Choice is “Globalization” or “More Globalization”. The Role of the Wall Street Lobby | Global Research
26) Mass Poverty and Social Inequality in India: The Devastating Impacts of the Neoliberal Economic Development Model | Global Research
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