Corn // Current TV

DOW And Monsanto in deadly race on the pesticide treadmill

You’ve all heard the news: farmers across the country are losing their fields to superweeds so formidable and fast-spreading that they break farm machinery and render millions of acres of farmland useless. These superweeds have evolved as a direct consequence of Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready pesticide-seed package. Now superbugs are emerging, resistant to Monsanto’s transgenic insecticidal crops. Ecologists predicted this ecological disaster 15 years ago.

The big question is, can we possibly learn from this ecological and agronomic disaster? The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Monsanto’s rival, Dow Chemical, apparently cannot.

From bad to worse
Instead of abandoning this losing strategy, Dow is trying to get us running faster on the same old broken pesticide treadmill. Dow and USDA are hoping to quietly approve a new genetically engineered corn seed that basically swaps RoundUp (glyphosate) out and an even worse weedkiller (2,4-D) in. Bad idea.

As with Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready lines, the herbicide with which these seeds are engineered to be used (2,4-D) will surge in use. Dow aims to get 2,4-D-resistant corn to market this year, soy next year and cotton in 2015. These three crops dominate U.S. agriculture, blanketing over 100 million acres of mono-cropped countryside and driving the pesticide market. Only this time, the fallout will be even worse. Here’s why:

2,4-D is a more toxic herbicide, both to humans and to plants. 2,4-D is a reproductive toxicant (associated with lower sperm counts) and its formulations have been linked to cancer (in particular non-Hodgkins lymphoma), disruption of the immune and endocrine (hormone) systems and birth defects. EPA has also expressed a “concern for developmental neurotoxicity resulting from exposure to 2,4-D.”

2,4-D does and will drift off of target crops – both through spray drift and volatilization. The latter enables chemicals to travel with moving air masses for miles. Neither applicator nor innocent bystander can prevent such movement. The spread of 2,4-D across our lands will damage non-target crops and vegetation, devastate adjacent ecosystems and poses a very real threat to rural economies and farmers growing non-2,4-D-resistant crops. Conventional farmers growing their product miles away will suffer severe crop losses, while organic farmers will lose both crops and certification, resulting in business failures, job losses and an economic unraveling of already-stressed rural communities.

2,4-D-resistant “superweeds” will arise and spread just as RoundUp-resistant “superweeds” have taken over farms and countryside in the Midwest and Southeast. Where will this leave struggling farmers? What even more deadly pesticide will the biotech companies resort to next?
Corn is wind-pollinated which means that genetic material from 2,4-D corn will contaminate non-GE corn. You cannot put a GE genie back in the bottle.
What next?

Will Dow provide compensation to farmers, their children and rural communities for the harms likely to occur should the company secure approval of its 2, 4-D resistant corn? I rather doubt it. Dow has still refused to assume responsibility for the deaths and devastation arising from the pesticide explosion in Bhopal, India in 1984, so why would the company show any integrity now?

It will take an active, engaged public to get USDA back on track and in the business of serving the public interest.

What about USDA? Can we expect our public agency to carefully scrutinize the likely fallout of approving 2,4-D resistant corn? One problem is that USDA does not really want to know what the public thinks.

More at the linkYou’ve all heard the news: farmers across the country are losing their fields to... more

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Keep pesticide ridden corn off your dinner plate

Surveys over the past decade have consistently shown that Americans don’t want to eat genetically engineered (GE or GMO) food. Despite the overwhelming opposition to this risky new food technology, the biotech giant Monsanto continues to impose its unlabeled GMO’s onto our dinner plates.

The latest: Monsanto’s new GMO corn, intended for the frozen and/or canned corn market. This experimental corn will not be labeled, so consumers cannot know when they may be eating a GMO food that contains a toxic pesticide in every bite. Monsanto’s corn is a new GMO variety that has been genetically modified for three different traits, to resist two different insects and to withstand heavy spraying with Monsanto's toxic Roundup herbicide. Because there are already varieties of other insect-resistant and Roundup-Ready varieties on the market, federal regulators are not requiring ANY approval process—which means NO public comment on its introduction into our food supply.

CFS has teamed up with the Center for Environmental Health to urge major companies that make frozen and/or canned corn to take action to avoid Monsanto’s new crop. We need tell Del Monte, Bird’s Eye and other major food makers to reject this new GMO corn. General Mills (Green Giant, Cascadian Farms) and Trader Joe’s have already indicated that they will not use Monsanto’s new GMO sweet corn in their products—so can the other top companies!

Take action today! Send food makers a message that we don’t want Monsanto’s food experiments!

Targets:

Neil Harrison, Del Monte (Del Monte, S&W)
Robert J. Gamgort, Pinnacle Foods/Bird's Eye
Roderick L. Allen, Allen's Inc. (Veg-all, Allen's, SteamSupreme, Freshlike, Freshlike Selects)
Kraig H. Kayser, President & CEO, Seneca Foods (Libby's, Aunt Nelly's, Read, Stokely's, Festal, private label brands)
Steven A. Burd, President & CEO, Safeway
David B. Dillon, Kroger
Michael T. Duke, Walmart
Craig R. Herkert- President, CEO, & Director, Supervalu
John P. Mackey, Co-CEO & Director, Whole Foods
Gregg Steinhafel, Chairman, President and CEO, Target (Archer Farms, Market Pantry)

https://secure3.convio.net/cfs/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=385&JServSessionIdr004=s9a7fa67h3.app306a
PetitionSurveys over the past decade have consistently shown that Americans don’t want... more

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Smart and Funny Political News Satire: What's Next? Bachmann/Palin Jello Wrestling? Ironic News Report, Sept. 12, 2011

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For First Time, More Corn Used for Ethanol than Livestock

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How Many U.S. Senators Does It Take To Screw A Taxpayer?

"Today, the government decides and they misdirect the investment to their friends in the corn industry or the food industry. Think how many taxpayer dollars have been spent on corn [for ethanol], and there's nobody now really defending that as an efficient way to create diesel fuel or ethanol. The money is spent for political reasons and not for economic reasons. It's the worst way in the world to try to develop an alternative fuel." - Ron Paul

When bipartisanship breaks out in Washington DC, check to make sure your wallet is still in your pocket. Every time you fill up your car this winter you are participating in the biggest taxpayer swindle in history. Forcing consumers to use domestically produced ethanol is one of the single biggest boondoggles ever committed by the corrupt brainless twits in Washington DC. Ethanol prices have soared 30% in the last year as the supplies of corn have plunged. Only a policy created in Washington DC could drive up the prices of gasoline and food, with the added benefits of costing the American taxpayer billions in tax subsidies and killing people in 3rd world countries.

The grand lame duck Congress tax compromise extended a 45 cent incentive to ethanol refiners for each gallon of the fuel blended with gasoline and renewed a 54 cent tariff on Brazilian imports. The extension of these subsidies, besides costing American taxpayers $6 billion per year, has the added benefit of driving up food costs across the globe, causing food riots in Tunisia, and resulting in the starving of poor peasants throughout the world. This taxpayer boondoggle is a real feather in the cap of that fiscally conservative curmudgeon Senator Charley Grassley. He was joined in this noble effort by another fiscal conservative, presidential hopeful John Thune. It seems these guys hate wasteful spending, except when it benefits their states. The bipartisanship in this effort was truly touching, as Democrats Kent Conrad and Tom Harkin also brought home the pork for their states.

A bipartisan group of 15 senators signed a letter in late November demanding an extension of U.S. ethanol subsidies. I wonder if the fact they have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions during the past six years from pro-ethanol companies and interest groups like ADM, Monsanto, the National Corn Growers Association, and the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association had anything to do with this demand. You can always count on a Senator to do what's best for his re-election campaign rather than what is best for the country. These symbols of political integrity will always spout the standard talking points:

Full Article: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25621.html"Today, the government decides and they misdirect the investment to their friends... more

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What Monsanto Doesn't Want You To Know-The Genetic Food Conspiracy

We are told genetic foods are safe but in the following documentary we are told something very different, and what we are told is backed up by shocking facts. The connections between Monsanto and the FDA are very alarming. Many highly influential politicians have worked for and or have ties with Monsanto. We are told that the FDA can be trusted but when you look at the facts they prove they can't when it comes to Monsanto. Look at this: Clarence Thomas Prior to being the Supreme Court Judge who put George W. Bush in office, was Monsanto's lawyer. Anne Veneman, Former US Secretary of Agriculture, was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Calgene Corporation. Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Searle pharmaceuticals. Tommy Thompson, former US Secretary of Health received $50,000 in donations from Monsanto during his winning campaign for Wisconsin's governor, and the two congressmen receiving the most donations from Monsanto during the 2000 election were Larry Combest (Former Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee) and Missouri senate candidate John Ashcroft, who became the Attorney General during the Bush administration. (Source: Dairy Education Board)

In order for the FDA to determine if Monsanto's growth hormones were safe or not, Monsanto was required to submit a scientific report on that topic. Margaret Miller, one of Monsanto's researchers put the report together. Shortly before the report submission, Miller left Monsanto and was hired by the FDA. Her first job for the FDA was to determine whether or not to approve the report she wrote for Monsanto. In short, Monsanto approved its own report. Assisting Miller was another former Monsanto researcher, Susan Sechen. Deciding whether or not rBGH-derived milk should be labeled fell under the jurisdiction of another FDA official, Michael Taylor, who previously worked as a lawyer for Monsanto.

There are also major deals and connections between not only the Bush administration but to Bush himself and his entire family. If your interested then do an internet search for "Bush" and "Monsanto" and you'll find tons of very good investigation on the subject.

In the 2010 growing season Monsanto plans to unleash its latest Frankenfood experiment on the American and Canadian public, a new version of genetically mutated corn with eight abnormal gene traits called Genuity SmartStax corn. It is the culmination of an astonishing scandal that has been steadily
building over the past decade. During this time Monsanto’s mutated seeds have grown to 90% of the U.S. soy crop and 85% of the corn crop – and wheat is next on their agenda.

More at the Link......Part 2 and 3 of the video!
http://mysticalmusingsandpolitics.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-monsanto-doesnt-want-you-to-know.htmlWe are told genetic foods are safe but in the following documentary we are told... more

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Corn industry brazenly turns Gulf disaster into marketing opportunity

If being bombarded with oil from below and chemical dispersants from above weren't enough, the Gulf of Mexico also has to endure marketing rhetoric from a long-time tormentor: the corn industry.

Industrial corn production is indisputably linked to the massive hypoxic "dead zone" that emerges in the Gulf every year. According to a 2008 peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "Nitrogen leaching from fertilized corn fields to the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system is a primary cause of the bottom-water hypoxia that develops on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico each summer." And as corn production ramps up to satisfy government ethanol mandates, the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf will likely increase by between 10 and 34 percent by 2022, the report states. That surging nitrogen load will make it "nearly impossible" to slow the growth of the already New Jersey-sized dead zone, the report concludes.

Meanwhile, how the Gulf's two ecological calamities--the spill and the dead zone--will interact is anyone's guess. Early indications are not encouraging, reports the Minnesota Post.

So you might expect the corn shills to maintain a respectful silence as BP's oil disaster unfolds. Instead, the corn industry is ludicrously presenting itself as the Gulf's salvation.

From the Nebraska Corn Board:

As those along the Gulf Coast work tirelessly to manage a disaster due to an offshore oil drilling accident, this tragic situation provides even greater impetus for others to move the ball forward on renewable fuels.

Um, Gulf? It's the Corn Board calling. The guys who brought you the dead zone, pictured above, claim they have the answer to your troubles.

NASAA Corn Board functionary added: "Those green fields [in the Midwest] are a tremendous reminder of the potential and promise of renewable fuels like corn ethanol, and will stand in stark contrast to the images we'll see from the Gulf ... It is renewable, very safe for the environment and does not have the lingering and environmentally damaging impact of oil."

(How can a "renewable fuel" command up such titantic amounts of nitrogen synthesized from natural gas and mined phosphorous -- so much of which ends up in the Gulf?)

continuedIf being bombarded with oil from below and chemical dispersants from above... more

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