Will
Genetically Engineered Foods
Feed the World? 

Paul Goettlich / Mindfully.org 

Rev. 3jun2006

[More by Paul Goettlich]

Introduction

First, please note that this is a work in progress, 
and that your comments and questions are quite 
welcome. Comment on this page.

This article examines the premise that Genetically Engineered Foods (also known as genetically modified foods; GMOs; GE foods; Frankenfoods; and so on) are the answer to ending world hunger. I feel that asking if GE foods will feed the world is at best an illogical primary question. Even more so, the question itself is a tactic meant to divert public attention from the real problems — inequality, discrimination, selfish leaders, war, flooding and drought, snow and rain, extreme temperatures and more. The diversions are made possible by political contributions, and lobbyists and media consultants hired by the agbiotech industry, as well as their gifts and contracts to academia, which is presently in the dark ages with respect to honesty. No sector is without fault. And it is far easier to list the innocent than the guilty. 

Most biotech industry studies and publications are highly visible forms of disinformation* that impact public opinion by both confusing the issues and intentionally providing false information that put GE foods in a favorable light. The intent of the massive, lobbying, public outreach, and advertising expenditures has been to rocket the proliferation of GE foods throughout the world before anyone was aware of the consequences. And indeed, nobody can predict the consequences because there is no precedent in the history of life on earth.

* dis·in·for·ma·tion 
Pronunciation: (")di-"sin-f&r-'mA-sh&n
Function: noun
: false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth 
Merriam-Webster 

The impetus for beginning this study came from a relative who asked my opinion of a commentary by Dr. Florence Wambugu in the Los Angeles Times on November 11, 2001 entitled “Protesters Don't Grasp Africa's Need” [below]. In it, Dr. Wambugu complained that protesters of GE foods are the wealthy of developed nations who do not know the problems of the starving African. Her comments are both compelling and convincing if one has no knowledge of genetically engineered crops or the causes of hunger. And because she is a native of Kenya and a GE scientist, she makes a wonderful poster child for the industry as well. And use her they most certainly do. 

Background: Wambugu Wambuzling Again: Says GM Sweet Potato a Resounding Success?

For the most part, people in developed countries, especially the US, believe that hunger is caused by a lack of food. They think that hunger is something that happens to backwards people in far-off lands where they do not have the magnificent technology and determination that "Americans" have. These starving people are seen as slovenly and lazy. And much like a child's fable about the little animals who did not store nuts for the winter. They might say, "Of course, it is through their own fault that they are hungry."

On the surface, and in a literal context, hunger, starvation and death can most definitely caused by a lack of food by the hungry. I do not argue with this point. But what causes this great lack of food is not so easily relieved by producing more of it. 

And Wambugu, because she is African and black, transnational corporations (TNC) in agribusiness spotlight her, telling us that the only way to feed these people is to improve the efficiency of farming through the use of these advanced technologies — that the output must increase if we are to feed the starving people. It always comes to this point and this point alone. The logic also goes that anyone who is against this wonderful new technology that will obviously save the poor from starvation is a monster, hence her complaint about protestors. It is from this extremely limited view, biotech corporations attempt to corral the arguments and hawk their wares.

So, if you are like those who only hear the heart-break reasoning without understanding the deeper issues at hand, then read no further, for this article is not for you. Go to CNN or Fox News to be fed the usual nonsense that has been heavily censored so as not to upset the advertisers income.

However, if you're willing to work to understand a few parts of the issue, please read on. What follows is of course not the only issues to be discussed, but it is a beginning.

 

There are many causes of hunger and starvation that have little to do with the amount of food that is produced in the world. Just as they know nothing of the causes of hunger, many in the US have no concept of the ramifications of propagating GE foods on massive monocultured farms, nor do they know how the likes of Monsanto came to control much of the world’s food supply. For decades, these TNCs have been undermining legislation, public policy, and law enforcement. There is a readily available history of deception, bribery, bullying, and outright lying by Monsanto.* 

__________________________________
*  Fagan, D., Lavelle, M., and the Center for Public Integrity. How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law, and Endangers Your Health. Birch Lane Publishing Group 1996 

* Much more on Monsanto

Done for the sole purpose of profit and control, Industry sees the expenditure of vast amounts of money to facilitate these acts as nothing more than just another cost of doing business. To them, there is no shame involved, although we see them as something much worse than dishonorable and despicable. For they see the poor and hungry as a market to profit on by any means. And the means employed are, in many cases, ingeniously circuitous and deceptive. In other cases they simply buy off congress in order to expedite legislation that improves their market in some way. There is essentially a mainstream media news black-out with regards to the negative effects of GMOs, as well as with most subjects that would make us all healthier and happier.

Controlling public opinion is a delaying tactic that has worked most excellently. It certainly worked with progressive activist organizations for a few years. And by the time consumers come to the conclusion that they have been duped, the control will have been won. At this time — 2006 — it looks as if most people have heard only the promises of GE foods and nothing of the horrors besides the cute little Frankenfood posters from Greenpeace in the US. While US citizens sit mesmerized by TVs and are content to eat mostly inedible food from a mega-corporate agricultural machine, people in other countries are much more connected to food and production methods, and demand wholesomeness and honesty. 

The prospect of a handful of companies controlling the world’s food supply should elicit fear in hearts all around the world. But the rapid loss of biodiversity and complete contamination of all genetic code is quite a bit more permanent than human control. Once these strange new genes are let lose, there is no taking them back.

The purpose of GE foods is the final coup d'état of the world’s food supply. It has nothing to do with science, or benevolence. The eyes of corporate CEOs’ are strictly on the prize. And it’s a fantastic prize where, in their minds, any price paid is worth it. The price includes forcing millions to live in misery, a loss of biodiversity and culture, and the eternal pollution of the genetic coding of all living things. This is no small feat. Such things bring to mind a triptych, the Garden of Earthly Delight*(large file 3 x 200 Kb), painted in about 1504 by Hieronymus Bosch. Named for the garden depicted in the central panel, featuring an orgy of nudes, giant birds, and fruit. It illustrates the history of the world and progression of sin. From the left, it begins with Adam and Eve’s original sin and evolves through the central Garden of Delights that illustrates a world deeply engaged in sinful pleasures, and on to the torture of eternal hell, with no savior. With Bosch's work providing the correct visual accompaniment, Carl Orff's O Fortuna from Carmina Burana* (1934) is equally appropriate music to set the mood.

______________________________________
* Bosch, Hieronymus. The Garden of Earthly Delight. c. 1504; Triptych, plus shutters; Oil on panel; Central panel, 220 x 195 cm; Wings, 220 x 97 cm; Museo del Prado, Madrid. 

* Carl Orff (1895-1982) From Carmina Burana, Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi- O Fortuna 1934 - played by the Berkeley Community Choir and Orchestra (1997)

s

Since the greatest increases in the world’s population are in Least Developed Nations (LDN), this is where TNC priorities are concentrated. Having spent many billions of dollars promoting and defending GE foods, the assumption is that people are hungry because there is not enough food. To them the answer is obvious, to increase production. Their answer was arrived at before they asked a logical question. Furthermore, logical questions are purposefully avoided in order to maintain profitability. But this is the state of science today in both academic and corporate sectors. It is a fairytale land where the players wear firmly-fitted blinders in order to continue merrily on their way to a paycheck. This is in no way an exaggeration and is easily witnessed where ever one looks. Profit is the starting point of all their work and it is the only justification required to produce any of their products. In some instances, even less justification is required — I can, therefore I must.

There are many different theories on increasing food production; small-scale organic farms; large-scale organic farms; large-scale commercial farms using synthetic chemical inputs; and large-scale farming using genetically engineered crops and synthetic chemicals. The type of farming employed is most important to the topic of sustainability, but it will not put food on the plates of the starving masses. It may help, but one must focus in a completely different direction for the answer to starvation. Before increasing food production as a means of ending world hunger, one must ask why they are hungry when so much food is available? There are more than 6 billion people on Earth presently, and enough food to feed 9 billion.

There are many reasons why hunger exists in spite of the extreme abundance of food. At some point in time, most of us have heard that it is “a problem of distribution.” What does this really mean? Are any of us exempt from at least attempting to understand what it means? Indeed, through every aspect of our daily lives—our habits and preferences—we each play a role in the cause of hunger throughout the world. We are each, in some way, responsible for the hunger and death by starvation of many thousands of people as we attempt to navigate through each day. Here are a few examples:

Today, with global warming increasing the incidence of storms, heat, cold, drought and flooding, harvest totals can be drastically short of expected yields. With whole areas of land being flooded or burned to the ground, nothing at all will be grown there. Many people are being displaced and/or killed by freak storms and armed conflicts. Realistically, GE crops cannot make up for bad weather and wars. GE crops will not solve the problems of the real world because they are created in the make-believe worlds of laboratories and corporate board rooms full of people who lack common sense. And in fact, they do not deliver on those expansive promises, for GE crops are lower in yield and nutrition, plus they use more petroleum-based chemicals than the normally terrible corporate farming methods.

american flag 4th of july

Americans lived in ignorant bliss until the horrific day of the 11th of September 2001. 

Today, the bliss is gone, but the ignorance remains. Just as ignorance of the law is no excuse, ignorance of scientific and social history is also no excuse. 

Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear physicist, was held in solitary confinement from December 10, 1999 to September 13, 2000 after being wrongly indicted on 59 felony counts alleging he transferred nuclear weapons information to unsecure computers and tape. On his release, the judge said, “"I sincerely apologize to you for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch. [The Departments of Energy and Justice] have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."[i] Even after he was arrested, Dr. Lee believed in the US government and thought it would protect him because he did his work and never paid any attention to political issues. As a result of his experiences with justice in the US, he strongly advises people pay attention to the political arena. He hopes that the youth learn a different type of citizenship than he was taught.[ii]

"Not knowing my rights as an American to be free of cruel and unusual punishment, I was constantly cold, shivering most of the time because all I had was a red jumpsuit ... an undershirt and two very thin blankets. I do believe the American system is the best system in the world, [h]owever, I want to say when the system is handled by the wrong people, our lives can be very miserable."[iii]

Reasons for hunger include, but are not limited to, war, poverty, inequality, discrimination, drought, flooding, and extreme temperatures. Many of these are the direct result of past and present US governmental policies. The US sells arms to many countries, initiating and/or prolonging conflicts. The brutal mishandling, poverty, and deaths of thousands of Palestinians are directly related to the continuing supply of military equipment, moral and financial support the US provides to the right-wing Israeli government. The history of the US is littered with illustrations of its brutally strong-handed and murderous tactics throughout the world. Without much stretching of the facts, even some weather-related issues can be attributed to the US government in part because of the reluctance to wean the country off of fossil fuels and establish sustainable energy use policies and to be a role model for other countries.

  1. Marshall, JM. Wen Ho Lee is free. Salon 13sep00

  2. Zia, H. (co-author of Wen Ho Lee's memoir, "My Country Versus Me.") Interview KPFA radio in Berkeley CA. 16jan02

  3. Associated Press. Wen Ho Lee Speaks Briefly in S.F. 17jan02
    Also see: Stowers, E. Anatomy of a Scandal Pressing Times v.4, n.1, Spring02

Lies

Excuse me for momentarily straying from the main subject of GMOs, but the crash of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers is also a lie. 

Of course it fell. But not the way they would have you believe. I think we live now in a very dark time, for we lack the essentials of truth, honor and justice.

I spent more than 20 years as an architect, coming in contact with the design and construction of a few high-rise buildings. At one point, I worked for the designer of the restaurant at the top of the WTC, Windows on the World. I ate there once and toured the kitchen. When I was a student, my structural steel professor was working on the design of the WTC. He also did some structural design work on Madison Square Garden. He would regularly describe the complex steel structure of the WTC. From my dormitory building, I could see the WTC creeping its way into the sky. And more recently, my nephew was one of the people running from the dust cloud created by the crashing WTC. When I watched the towers falling, what I saw reminded me very much of a planned building demolition. It came straight down. It has taken me a long time to admit to what I actually saw on TV because of the magnitude of such a spectacle. But, if those buildings had actually been weakened by jets — and yes the jets were real and did crash — then the building would have bent in the direction of that crashing jet. Another fact is that jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt or to weaken steel enough to cause a failure, especially that steel with fire proofing on it. I won't get into detail here because this is more about GE foods, but don't you think that if the president could fool the nation about a few buildings falling that the transnational GE industry could fool those same people about their product? I certainly think both are more than possible because I see this is what has happened. To read more on 911, please see 9/11: The Myth and the Reality by Dr. David Ray Griffin. 

The Green Revolution

The Green Revolution* was the chief method of increasing food production from about the mid-20th century until just a few years ago when the Gene Revolution began. Green Revolution farming is a high-output method characterized by the use of massive synthetic chemical inputs on very large fields containing one variety of crops. Over the last 50 years, the inputs have become greater and the machinery has gotten larger, more specialized, and substantially more expensive. These machines have replaced many people who used to be needed in the fields, making it possible for one person to manage hundreds of acres. Massive irrigation and drainage systems have been built over the years.

When this whole thing with GE foods started, not all that long ago, the researchers advised the managers that they weren’t ready to go to full scale planting. But the response they got was, what could go wrong? EXPLAIN and get references.

Q: Will GE foods feed the world? 
A. The quick answer: 
Only if they get them for free or at a drastically reduced price.

The more detailed answer: Dr. Wambugu instructs anti-GMO protesters to “ask many questions.” Therefore, as an initial response to her assertions to “let the science and the data provide the answers,” and that “[t]he farmers and hungry people of Africa need this technology,” I will ask this one simple question of her:  Why are so many people hungry when there is so much food to spare?

A Closer Look

An enormous spotlight, powered by billions of multinational corporate dollars, shines brilliantly on the potential of GE foods to feed the world, and deliver drugs that will prevent sickness, cancers, and blindness. The operative word is potential, not ability or track record, but potential, as in maybe, and buyers beware. Many people believe that the corporate answer to hunger, genetically modified organisms (GE foods), is the one and only solution. However, logic has been short-circuited when the initial question is: Will GE foods feed the world? The focus is then mistakenly on symptoms rather than problems. A more reasonable initial question is Why are they hungry?

Without initially questioning why they are hungry, it is highly likely that the mountain of money being poured into agbiotech research would be better off being incinerated to warm those in colder climates, or perhaps being used to build shelter for the homeless. By this method, one searches for questions that may be answered with questions that maximize profit, rather than beginning with a hypothesis. Asking if GE foods will feed the starving masses of the world is one such question.

Advertising, Appearances, and Reality

Advertising plays a major role in the attitude of consumers, more so in the US than in the EU. People in the US have faith in the system to protect them, and they believe much of what they are presented in the popular media; television, radio, or newspapers and magazines. Drive through any neighborhood in the US after dark, whether it is rich or poor, and the shimmering light of the television sets will illuminate the windows of house after house. Most people are searching for answers, hoping to learn something.

Unfortunately, programming on TV is a vacuum, draining the minds of America. It is nothing more than a method to enter millions of homes each evening. One might as well read only comic books or cartoons for all the news that is delivered on TV. Even PBS is highly underwritten by many large corporations with something to sell or agenda to promote. A.G. Edwards, Archer Daniels Midland, Chase Manhattan, Fidelity Investments, and Salomon Smith Barney all gave more than a million dollars. Even the US Department of Energy and Army were in the under $1 million range.*

PBS does not bite the hand that feeds it. Sometimes a special program will air nationally PBS. A recent exception was the Bill Moyers’ special “Trade Secrets” about the decades-long conspiracy of the PVC industry to withhold information on the toxicity they exposed their workers to. That night, the NY Times cranked out industry’s denial, much the same as it did when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out in 1962.*

In April of 2001, the local San Francisco PBS station, KQED aired a program about GE foods on the regularly scheduled “This Week in Northern California.” The title was Sowing Science, and it featured many widely known authorities on the subject of GE foods that consumers purchase. Immediately after the show aired it was stricken from any future reruns or reprints available to the public. It is not a mystery why it disappeared. I can only conjecture that industry pressure led PBS to pull it.*

Corporate advertising giant, BSMG Worldwide created an advertisement called "good ideas are growing” for a $50 million dollar campaign by a cartel of biotech corporations including DuPont Co., Monsanto Co. and Dow Chemical Co.* According to their website, BSMG Worldwide is “a leading public relations firm, has successfully managed corporate and marketing communications campaigns that have shaped or shifted public opinion for many of the most respected corporations, brands, industry associations, coalitions and nations of the world. The goal of all our campaigns is to shape opinion. Whether that means launching a new product or revitalizing an existing brand, ensuring that a company's employees and shareholders understand corporate strategy, or giving industry a voice on legislative issues that affect future regulation, we deliver strategic, thoughtful and creative programming to achieve the desired goals.”

Jeffrey Bergau, Monsanto’s spokesman for the advertising project said,

"The more people are exposed to information from a variety of sources, the more likely they are to embrace the technology. Our goal is to try to link people to information and data that's based on sound science."

Monsanto has a long history of misleading advertising and has been criticized many times. In March 2001, the UK Advertising Standards Authority said in their annual report that Monsanto among the 10 most complained about last year. Complaining that they were misleading the public about the benefits of [GE foods]. Monsanto had incorrectly stated that it had conducted safety testing throughout the last 20 years. Monsanto apologized and continued churning out other misleading information.*

The Facts?

"Approximately one-fifth of the world’s population live on less than US$ 1 per day
  and nearly a half live on less than US$ 2 per day."

Factual, peer-reviewed, long-term testing is absent for most of the assumptions and claims of agbiotech corporations. Because authoritative views critical of GE foods are routinely misstated, ignored, and/or withheld from the mainstream media, there is practically no way for people to realize that it is an extremely dangerous smoke and mirrors act.

The Malthusian view of the world states that hunger is inevitable because the population grows faster than the rate food production. However, there are presently 6 billion people on earth, and enough food to feed 9 billion. Dr. Miguel Altieri, a professor and entomologist at UC Berkeley, regularly cites this fact. He works directly with peasant farmers in developing countries, and collaborates with many universities, NGOs and research centers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, promoting research, training and sustainable agriculture. He believes that the massive scale of corporate agribusiness is both unsustainable and inaccessible to the poor.

After becoming experienced in ancient agricultural systems, he “realized that Western knowledge is inadequate to deal with the complexities of Third World agriculture.” His deep understanding of the peasant farmers’ needs is what drives his work. Combined with his knowledge of genetic engineering, his love of the people gives him a special insight, making him an authority on exactly what is the best way to feed the millions of malnourished and hungry people.

“The real problems are poverty and distribution: Three billion people live on $2 a day, and people lack access to land to produce the food they need. Furthermore, most of the food that is being produced is fed to cattle. In the United States, seven out of ten pounds of grain are fed to animals. In Latin America, Asia, and Africa there are huge amounts of land that are devoted to soybean production for export to Europe to feed cattle—which, by the way, the Europeans are killing because of mad cow and foot-and-mouth diseases.”

“In Latin America, 80 percent of the agricultural land is in the hands of 20 percent of the farmers; and this is the best agricultural land. And all those farmers are exporting their crops for feeding cattle in Europe. Twenty percent of the land is in the hands of 80 percent of the farmers, the peasants. But they are the ones who are producing 50 percent of the potatoes, 60 percent of the corn, and 70 percent of the beans. It is the small and poor farmers who are feeding the continent—not the large farmers.”

“What’s happening today, as globalization takes hold, is that countries are forced to become agro-exporters, to exploit their ‘comparative advantage.’ There’s no reason for Chile to be growing corn when they can grow fruits to sell here in the winter when it’s summer down there. That’s their comparative advantage. But it doesn’t feed their own people.

The fact remains; there are 370 million rural households that are poor and exist in marginal environments. These people have a very important role in food security.”*

Nearly one in three children in the developing world, or 150 million are underweight.[i] There are those who haven’t enough food while at the same time, there are those who are getting far too much. Whether poor or wealthy, most nations are experiencing undernourished and overnourished people living side-by-side. "Obesity has become so rampant that there is no group in the population left unaffected," said Dr. Kelly D. Brownell, a professor of psychology and epidemiology at Yale.[ii]

  1. Gardner, G., Halweil, B. Underfed and Overfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition. Worldwatch Institute. Worldwatch Paper n.150, Mar00

  2. Angier, N. Who Is Fat? It Depends on Culture. New York Times 7nov00

Dr. D. Gale Johnson is the Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and Director of the Undergraduate Program, Department of Economics and the College, The University of Chicago. She has an amazing CV that spans about 60 years in academia, as a consultant and economic advisor on countless governmental committees; has served as director and on boards of directors of many organizations dealing with food and economic issues; and has numerous honorary designations. She believes that there is sufficient food to feed all people at the present time, yet hunger prevails because of the lack of peace.

"[T]he world is a bountiful place providing sufficient plenty to eliminate hunger and malnutrition. And this has largely been accomplished where there is political stability and people live in peace."*

In every country, there are groups of people who cannot realize their full human potential, either because their diets are inadequate or, because of sickness, their bodies are unable to benefit fully from the food they consume. In the poorest countries, the majority of people are affected by hunger, greatly magnifying the scope of other correctable defects in efforts to meet basic human needs.*

Help Waldo Find the Logic

Help Waldo Find the Logic - Will Genetically Engineered Foods Feed the World? Paul Goettlich / Mindfully.org 24oct02

One must seriously question the logic of the agbiotech industry when it emphatically states that GE foods are needed to feed the growing masses. Before the discussion ever gets to the point of GE foods, we should first be asking why are so many hungry when there is so much food?

Journalist Mark Hertsgaard has traveled extensively and written about the causes of hunger in Africa. Please note that none of the reasons he notes have to do with the capacity of world food supply.

“African hunger has various causes, not least of which is the terrible poverty and poor climate that characterizes so much of the continent, not to mention the larceny often practiced by its rulers and the inequitable trade and financial arrangements imposed upon it by the global economy. Every year, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa pay some $12 billion in interest to service their debt to Western financial institutions; this money would more than cover the immediate food, health, education, and family planning needs of the entire continent.

But what often propels these underlying causes of poverty into full-scale famine is war. War not only kills people directly, it reduces the freedom to plant and harvest and disrupts the transportation networks needed to connect food growers and buyers."*

Each year about 80 million new lives are created. More than 90% of them are in developing countries. This rate is expected to decrease to about 30 million per year 2050. At that time, in sub-Saharan Africa, it will account for 50% of the yearly population addition, compared with only 20% presently. The rate of poverty reduction in the developing countries is predicted to be much slower than in those that are industrialized.

Reductions in price trends on world markets indicate a reduction in demand, but only at the global level, not on the local level. Great disparities exist within countries and regions. World market prices do not adequately reflect the problems of the poor and the food insecure.* In other words, an abundance of food does not create a lack of hunger. People still need cash to pay for it. With no work, they have no money for food.

Countries that are net-exporters of food still having hungry populations

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 78 percent of all malnourished children under the age of five live in countries with food surpluses. What’s worse, food that’s exported generally feeds livestock of developed countries, which has a higher profit than feeding children.

India's wheat production in 1999 was 6 million tonnes more than in 1998. And it had surplus of 10 million tonnes. In spite of at least 250 million people going to bed hungry every night, the surplus stocks were exported. In 2000, the numbers of hungry Indians had increased, and yet foodgrain surpluses were at 44 million tonnes of wheat and rice. To make matters worse, a great deal of the surplus is piled on the ground without cover because there are not enough storage facilities. Much of that grain which is unprotected from the elements—sun, rain, mold, fungus, rats, mice, and insects—will not be edible. More than 33% of the world's 800 million hungry people live in India, with a large part of those being children under the age of 5 years old. Hunger at the global level would be greatly reduced by ending hunger in India.*

"In a country, which alone has one-third of the world's 800 million people who go to bed hungry every night, hunger no longer evokes compassion and reaction. News of hunger and starvation no longer adorns the front pages of newspapers. Politicians of all political parties, without exception, talk more about disinvestment and ministry expansion. Policy makers spend more time with industrialists and business houses, and agricultural scientists have little time for the small and marginalised farming communities. The new breed of modern scientists find it below their dignity to soil their feet. They instead prefer the cool confines of the biotechnology labs, howsoever unproductive the end result may be."*

Not in the USA!

Most would agree that the US has the best food supply in the world. Many people might also assume that hunger and malnutrition are not a problem in the US. However, about 10 million US households, or nearly 10%, are food insecure. Food insecurity is defined as limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways. Hunger is found in 3.5% of US households. Hunger is defined as the uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food.*

“Hunger remains a very real problem in America and that problem has gotten worse over the past four years.” - Robert Forney, President and CEO of America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest hunger-relief charity.

The US Conference of Mayors’ released a study on December 12, 2001 indicating that the average increase in requests for emergency food assistance, in 25 of the 27 cities surveyed, to be 23%. The largest increases were in Santa Monica (50 percent), Phoenix (44 percent), Charlotte (42 percent), Salt Lake City (35 percent), and Portland, Oregon (34 percent). Thirty-three percent of the cities have to turn away people in need because of lack of resources. On average, 14 percent of the requests for emergency food assistance are estimated to have gone unmet during the last year. Fifty-four percent of the people requesting emergency food assistance were members of families — children and their parents. Thirty-seven percent of the adults requesting food assistance were employed.*

During the last ten years, there has been an increase in the number of working women, and preschool children enrolled in daycare, leaving less for food.*

In 2001, San Francisco had 7,305 homeless people, an increase from 5,376 in 2000 of 36%. The data are from a census study by the City of San Francisco, released in October. There was a 55% increase in the number of those living on streets.

George Smith, the director of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office on Homelessness, said:

"The fact that this is happening in all of these cities raises the question, 'Where is the federal government?’”

One explanation of why the feds lack responsiveness is that the Bush administration is diverting billions of dollars to his preoccupation with the “War on Terrorism.”

Where, Oh, Where Did My Food Dollars Go?

In 1910, a dollar spent on food paid $0.45 for marketing, $0.40 for the farmer, and $0.15 for chemical inputs. In 1990, we paid $0.65 for marketing, $0.10 for the farmer, and $0.25 for chemical inputs. Since just 1984, the farmer's share of a food dollar has plummeted by 36%. The rate of return on investments for retail food chains was 18 %; 17% for food manufacturers, and about 2% for farmers. 

In 2001, about 10% of the average grocery bill paid for packaging (mostly paper and plastics) - that's more than goes to the farmers. 

And Where Did All the Farms Go?

The picturesque American family-run farm is disappearing rapidly as large corporations buy them out for pennies on the dollar. Some are incorporated into much larger farms. Others are replaced by urban sprawl, highways, and strip malls. The number of US farms peaked in 1935 at about 7 million. At that time, farms averaged less than 200 acres in size. Today, there are fewer than 2 million farms with an average size of nearly 500 acres. In 1979, Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland undertook a comprehensive study of agriculture in the US. Comparing what exists now with back at the beginning of the 1950’s, it is evident that the warning was not heeded. In the report that came out in 1981, he said,

"[U]nless present policies and programs are changed so that they counter, instead of reinforce or accelerate the trends towards ever-larger farming operations, the result will be a few large farms controlling food production in only a few years."*

A Department of Agriculture report published in 1998, stated the same thing in more ominous terms:

“Looking back now nearly 2 decades later, it is evident that this warning was not heeded, but instead, policy choices made since then perpetuated the structural bias toward greater concentration of assets and wealth in fewer and larger farms and fewer and larger agribusiness firms. Federal farm programs have historically benefited large farms the most. Tax policies give large farmers greater incentives for capital purchases to expand their operations. Large farms that depend on hired farmworkers receive exemptions from Federal labor laws allowing them the advantage of low-wage labor costs.”

“Today, we have 300,000 fewer farmers than in 1979, and farmers are receiving 13 percent less for every consumer dollar. Four firms now control over 80 percent of the beef market. About 94 percent of the Nation's farms are small farms, but they receive only 41 percent of all farm receipts.”

“Like most major industries, the ownership and control over agricultural assets is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Farmers have little to no control over setting the price for their products. The basic tenets of a "competitive" market are less and less evident in crop and livestock markets today."*

The problem with this development is that the large-scale corporate farms that are replacing small family-run farms are less productive and are extremely damaging to the social structure of the local communities. Small farms are healthier for local communities health and economies, and the environment.*

Dr. Walter Goldschmidt, now professor emeritus of UC Berkeley and UCLA, schools of anthropology, studied this issue more than a half century ago. He discovered that where the predominant farms were large-scale, there was a highly negative effect on the towns surrounding that community. The contrary was true in communities with smaller-scale family farms, where the local economies were healthy and vibrant. In general, the signs of a healthy community were present in the communities with small farms, and absent from those with large farms. Where larger farms were found there was greater decay in the surrounding towns with regards to all aspects of life. They have seen a breakdown of the rural way of life; it’s families’ makeup, social attitudes and solidarity, and the towns’ infrastructure. Dependence on technologies to solve problems aided large corporate interests in carving out increasingly larger pieces of the farming income pie. In 1937, farming income was 18% below that of 1929, but International Harvester made record-breaking profits.

“It carries with it the promise of more food for the consumer, cheaper production, more income for agriculture and therefore a better life. Wherever the industrial revolution has touched, it has carried this promise of greater wealth and leisure for humanity. Wherever it has touched it has, ironically, carried with it the threat of estrangement, depersonalization, and impoverishment. It carries now to agriculture and rural society both this promise and this threat. Yet the enrichment can be assured only if the impoverishment is prevented. It is for that reason that the principal of equity takes on particular significance in the formulation of rural policy."*

Today, many small sustainable farming businesses are being bought out when they reach national levels of attention. Horizon Organic, the main producer of organic milk in the US, introduced its first products in 1992. In 1998, Suiza Foods Corporation purchased Horizon. It has more than 35 national and international brands. Suiza also owns about 43% of Consolidated Container Company, which produces a large part of the rigid plastic containers in the US.* Our sights must reach beyond short-term profits to realize long-term benefits of the small sustainable farm.

Few representatives in any branch or level of government truly understand the consequences of our agricultural system being controlled by a few people. If the few noble ideas that exist could be played through, the results would be glorious. The alternative is to ignore what is happening and live with what comes along. By not attempting to understand and then act on that knowledge, we are essentially approving it. But can we allow our freedoms to be stolen from us by those who have nothing but short-term profit as a means of control in mind? The present Bush administration is accelerating this loss of freedoms at unprecedented rates. Please attempt to understand the severity of the situation we are in as explained by the 1998 Department of Agriculture report:

“It is our resolve that small farms will be stronger and will thrive, using farming systems that emphasize the management, skill, and ingenuity of the individual farmer. We envision a competitive advantage for small farms realized through a framework of supportive, yet responsible, government and private initiatives, the application of appropriate research and extension, and the stimulation of new marketing opportunities. As small farms and farmworkers succeed in this nurturing environment, not only will they continue their valuable contribution to the Nation's food supply, but they will also fuel local economies and energize rural communities all across America. In the process of flourishing, small farms will contribute to the strengthening of society, providing communities and the Nation with opportunities for self-employment and ownership of land, and providing a cultural and traditional way of life as well as nurturing places to raise families."*

Corporate Terrorist at Home and Abroad

The Devil's Dictionary (1911), defines the CORPORATION as;

n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Bush’s, ‘War on Terrorism’ is a cover story that obliterates the real intentions of his administration. With regards to popularity and perceived success, his presidential career was in definite need of the good press this war is delivering. While advising all citizens to be united by waving flags and increasing their consumerism, he is also pushing for corporate bailouts that benefit only the high-level executives and shareholders while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of laid-off workers. Enron, PG&E, and the airlines industries are a few examples.

Bush's Corporate Crime SWAT Team

Larry D Thompson FRAUD

Larry D. Thompson, head of the federal task force on corporate fraud and former director of Providian Financial Corp., made a profit of between $1 million and $5 million when he exercised his Providian stock options in July 2001, according to his annual financial disclosure statement released yesterday.

Thompson, who was also chairman of the troubled credit card firm's audit committee until his resignation to become U.S. deputy attorney general in May 2001, exercised his options and sold Providian stock worth nearly $5 million in a series of transactions in early July last year, according to the disclosure statement. His total profit from the transactions remained uncertain, however, because Thompson is not required to disclose exactly how much his gain was, but only a range. 

PG&E’s “Public Relations Problem”

Since the corporate leaders of PG&E knowingly destroyed their corporation, rates have increased 62% for its California customers. This is the highest increase in the state’s history. Customers will lose more than $3.9 billion through 2010. Many thousands of consumers, including PG&E workers who lost jobs in the mismanagement debacle, are now choosing between electricity and other essentials such as food.

On the opposite end of the scale, the top-level executives that caused the financial collapse were given $50 million in bonuses. Six senior officers, including the chairman, and seventeen other executives, received a bonus equaling 100% of their base salary. Seventy-seven directors and attorneys got up to 75% of their base salary. Another 126 managers and attorneys got up to 50%. This boosted the pay of chairman Robert Glynn close to $2 million for the year. Not only were these bonuses immoral, they should have been illegal. A company is ruined, its employees and customers made to suffer, and the executives that are the cause get million-dollar bonuses!

Two weeks later, they asked for $17.5 million more. A PG&E spokesman said that the utility is prepared to shrug off the public relations hit inevitable with any such request. With all the compassion and logic so typical of the corporate world, the fact that thousands of families were left without a source of income is perceived as a “public relations problem.”

Enron’s “Public Relations Problem”

Enron and VP Cheney played the lead role in bilking consumers and investors out of billions of dollars. Enron's Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay’s scam was made much easier by major roles played by Gov. Gray Davis, and V.P. Dick Cheney. Power that normally sold for $40 increased in price up to $3,880. The effect of this on already hungry people of California is not difficult to comprehend.

Recently released documents stated that VP Dick Cheney met directly with Enron's Mr. Kenneth Lay, "during which [they] discussed 'energy policy matters' including 'the energy crisis in California." The day after meeting with Lay, Cheney told the LA Times that the administration would not support price caps. And a month later the vice president's energy task force recommended an expansion of oil and gas drilling on public land and ramping up nuclear power. “[The meetings ended] just six days before Enron announced the $1.2 billion in reduction in shareholder equity."

Mr. Lay’s total compensation for 2000 was $11,957,642, plus $484,977,092 in options, totaling $496,934,734.[i] In other words, Mr Lay made more than $1.3 million per day. According to the US Census Bureau, the median household income in the United States was a little over $42,000 in 2000. He made enough on a daily basis to support more than 11.8 million median income families, or 47.2 million individuals. In 2000, there were nearly 276 million people living below the official poverty threshold.[ii] An example of the poverty threshold as defined by the US Census Bureau is a family of four earning less than $17,524.[iii] At that level, Mr. Lay would be able to support 28.3 million families, or 113.2 million individuals.

  1. Wall Street Journal website data 31dec01

  2. US Census Bureau website 31dec01

  3. Ibid.

The only way that GMO sweet potatoes would be of aid to those who have been most affected by this gross mismanagement—better defined as fraud—is if they were provided gratis. Through rate and tax increases, the people most affected, and least able to afford it, are the ones who pay the most for the actions of these corporate thugs. The movement of billions of dollars in the US certainly can be felt on a global scale.

The 6.2 million people (837,200 in CA) recorded as being unemployed in the 2nd quarter of 2001 had an average length of unemployment of 13.2 months. The Department of Labor does not record data on those who are not eligible or have exhausted their benefits.* For these people, whether or not represented in the Department of Labor data, more food on the shelves is not going to give them more on their dinner tables. Insufficient funds are the cause of their food insecurity, not a lack of food for sale.

It is difficult to imagine a GMO sweet potato having a positive effect on the lives of the thousands affected by the intentional abuse of trust by Enron, PG&E, or any other major corporations, unless provided gratis to all who needed such aid. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine is that a GMO sweet potato would be of use to the poor starving populations of a Least Developed Nation (LDN). If made available for free, their lives would merely be sustained, rather than improved. There is a big difference between having enough to survive and living a fruitful happy life.

Airlines

After September 11th, 100,000 workers airlines laid off “in an attempt to control costs.” And while these thousands of workers pondered how they would purchase food and pay their rent or mortgage, high-level executives continued being inundated with money.[a] According to the Wall Street Journal online database of corporate finances[b], Delta Airlines performed the worst of all US airlines during the 3rd quarter of 2001, losing $259 million. Using the same online source, Delta’s Chairman/CEO Leo F. Mullin’s compensation was $859,516, with $6,156,950 in options, totaling more than $7 million in 2000. Its Executive VP/CFO M. Michele Burns’ compensation was $457,784, with $221,900 in options, totaling $679,684. In general, the workers are seen as one of the major problems these executives must control. One corporate manager commented that replacing the CEO would be difficult without offering millions in compensation. My response to that is I could find several people in the 100,000 laid off workers who would be better qualified and work for significantly lease money.

  1. Airlines' Awful Year. San Francisco Chronicle 26dec01
  2. Wall Street Journal.

The “War on Drugs”

The average yearly cost per inmate in California in 2001 was $25,607. For about $500 more, that inmate could pay the cost of tuition and fees at Yale University.[i] In the US, there were 158,759 inmates, 24,278 of which are in for life, maintained by a staff of 47,916 on a budget of $4.8 billion for the fiscal year 2000-2001. Nearly 71% are nonwhite and 28% related to drugs.[ii] Sentence lengths are increasing. Between 1993 and 2001, the average sentence length has grown by 20 percent, from 47.9 months to the current 54.6 months.[iii] Since 1984, California has built a whopping 21 prisons but only one university.[iv]

  1. College Board website 26dec01
    http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail6.jsp?buttonPressed=&collegeId=1846&detailPageId=0&collegeName=Yale+University

  2. California Department of Corrections Fourth Quarter 2001 Report. (23dec01) http://www.cdc.state.ca.us/factsht.htm

  3. Thompson, D. California sends fewer inmates to prison, but for longer sentences. AP 26oct01
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/10/26/state1927EDT0105.DTL

  4. Suro, R. More Is Spent Building Prisons than Universities, Survey Shows. Washington Post 24feb97
    http://btp.tao.ca/news/news7.html 

As a national total in the US, imprisonment now costs $46 billion annually. Most of this is related to drug offenses. There are many options to remedy this situation. One is to educate the inmates at Yale. Another, more reasonable solution is to first put all addicts through an intensive drug treatment program. The RAND corporation found that dollar spent on treatment instead of imprisonment saves $7 in state costs. Therefore, spending $6.6 billion on treatment rather than incarceration leaves $39.4 billion to better the lives of the poor. This could be accomplished through education, meaningful employment, healthcare, childcare, family planning, and much more.

Telecommunications

These days, Vincent Galluccio spends most afternoons at the wheel of a tractor, overseeing his $5.2 million Long Island vineyard, Galluccio Family Winery. Mr. Galluccio, 57 years old, was a top European executive of Metromedia Fiber Networks Inc., a high-flying White Plains, N.Y., telecom-network builder. As Metromedia's value soared to its peak of $31 billion, Mr. Galluccio began selling small amounts of shares. Leaving the company in 2000, he liquidated all of his holdings, for a total of about $27 million. He used the proceeds to buy the 160-acre winery known for its Chardonnays. Metromedia has since landed in less idyllic territory: In May, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and the [SEC] is examining the accounting practices the company used after Mr. Galluccio's departure. Mr. Galluccio is unapologetic about his haul. How will MFN's finances effect its more than 1,700 employees? And what about the more than half million shares of stock that people purchased?*  

The “War on Drugs” in Colombia

The U.S. has funded herbicide spraying as a means to eliminate illegal drugs in Colombia for years. Beginning in 2001, herbicides containing glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, were used kill opium poppy and coca plants. Many human rights workers have reported that the use of this herbicide is not limited to the elimination of drugs.

Plan Colombia, which has gotten $1.3 billion in US aid to date, was supposed to be an concentrated development program to end the violence that has claimed more than 35,000 lives in the last 10 years and left some 1.2 million people displaced. Of the U.S. aid to Colombia, 70 percent is earmarked for military equipment and training to counter the drug trade — mostly for helicopters and training for Colombia’s counter-narcotics troops.

Critics, though, say that spraying with herbicides has in fact thwarted the very development it aims to boost. Further, some critics in Colombia, including some Catholic bishops, see the plan as a U.S. attempt to consolidate its political, economic, and military power in the area. Catholic Bishop Gonzalo López of Sucumbíos, the Ecuadorian province that borders Putumayo, where the bulk of Colombia’s coca cultivation is done believes that the aim of the US has nothing to do with aiding the country or eradicating drugs.

“They want to steamroll over Putumayo, to wipe everything out, then they’ll come with their oil-drilling rigs, pipelines and highways and, despite the hunger and poverty, say they’re rebuilding civilization. If they say 3 percent is for human rights and legal reform and no more than 10 percent is for development of the region, and that the rest goes for helicopters, soldiers, military advisers and spraying of coca crops, they’re not talking about a peace plan or a development plan.”[45]

The herbicide Roundup has been shown to inhibit the creation of steroids in humans.[i] It is interesting to note that Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup, did not release the complete list of its ingredients. Being proprietary, they were protected by law from releasing this information to the researchers studying its health effects. Roundup has also been linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), a form of cancer.[ii] Both the incidence and mortality rates of NHL have increased between the years 1973 and 1997 by more than 80%, and 45% respectively.[iii]

  1. [46] Walsh, LP., McCormick, C., Martin, C., Stoccol, DM. Roundup Inhibits Steroidogenesis by Disrupting StAR Expression. Environmental Health Perspectives v.108, n.8 Aug00 http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Roundup-Inhibits-Steroidogenesis.htm

  2. Hardell, L., Eriksson, M. A case-control study of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and exposure to pesticides. Cancer v.85, i.6 12mar99. http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Non-Hodgkin-Lymphoma-Pesticides.htm

  3. Ries, L., et al. (eds.) SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1973-1997. National Cancer Institute. NIH Pub. No. 00-2789. Bethesda, MD.

When a consumer in the US knowingly chooses to use a product that causes cancer, it is a personal choice. However foolish, it is a personal choice. But when the US flies over Colombia, pouring Roundup on unsuspecting peasants in wholesale quantities using air tankers, that is terrorism. In the first two months of this year, local authorities reported 4,289 humans suffering skin or gastric disorders, while 178,377 creatures, including cattle, horses, pigs, dogs, ducks, hens and fish, were killed by the spraying. Chemical additives, including the untested surfactant Cosmo-flux, are being mixed into the Roundup in Colombia to improve its efficacy.[49]

In a recent interview with CBS 60 Minutes, Massachusetts Congressional Representative Jim McGovern said that spraying Roundup on coca in Colombia doesn’t work and it is a health hazard to thousands of innocent people. He witnessed people with rashes caused by the herbicide. Rashes are common and fevers, diarrhea, and allergies were up 100 percent. More than 2000 families have complained of sicknesses. Sounding much like a subsidiary of Monsanto, the US State Department says that Roundup is as safe as shampoo. How can the State Department go on record as saying this when readily available governmental information states exactly the opposite? It is being sprayed indiscriminately in concentrations 26 times above the recommended strength along with Cosmo-Flux, which quadruples the biological action of Roundup.

"[The herbicide] is powerful stuff and I think it’s ridiculous to say that we shouldn’t worry about the health impacts…Nobody really can tell me…what the health effects of this spray might be." - Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA)

Since the subject at hand is hunger, it should be noted that by dousing the Colombian countryside with Roundup, the US government is destroying the possibility of self-sufficiency for many thousands of peasants that have already endured 40 years of guerrillas and paramilitaries.

Go Global

The image of globalization through the eye of mainstream media is one of a planet encircled by people joined hand-in-hand, singing, “We are the world.” This is simply high-priced corporate advertising bending the minds of people through the popular media. When the curtain is parted, one finds that the wizard is actually a daemon.

Dan Rather’s audience has difficulty understanding what dancing around in the streets of Seattle with puppets has to do with the WTO and globalization, and why these motley lawbreakers dislike the WTO. Dan would have us all line up behind George Bush and do whatever he commands. CBS news is but one part in the deception of Americans by the corporate elite.

Just as they buy police protection, the planners and directors of this grand coup are also willing to spend millions of dollars on products to protect themselves. A recent auto show in Los Angeles featured armored Cadillac DeVilles weighing 3 tons and costing up to $154,000 dollars. In an Associated Press interview, a Cadillac representative said, "If you are going to go global you need to address armoring.” If their brand of globalization is so benevolent, and the citizens of developing nations welcome them with open arms, why then do they need to armor their inefficient and ostentatious cars?[52] Are there implications for the corporate leaders of globalization beyond merely being an added cost of doing business? One would hope they might also think about the safety of loved ones that may not be so well isolated from reality. Better yet, they might ask what it is that makes them a target for so much anger that they need armored cars, personal bodyguards, and electronic security devices.

The plain fact is that the globalization of the World Bank, WTO, GATT, and NAFTA is not about bringing the world together by making it a better place for all to live. It is also not about making sure that everyone has enough food. And it is not about love, understanding, or equality. Its dominant paradigm is control of the masses by a select few. The reality of globalization is the wealthy living on the backs of the poor, exploiting them regardless of race, religion, or color. So, to some degree, in an intensely perverted way, globalization is nondiscriminatory.

In a 1991 internal World Bank memo, their chief economist, Lawrence Summers, wrote:

“Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [less developed countries]?... The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that .... Under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City .... The concern over an agent that causes a one-in-a-million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under-five mortality is 200 per thousand."*

During 1997 to 2000, Joseph Stiglitz was the chief economist and vice president of the World Bank, and is now a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served on the president's Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1997. He resigned from his position with the World Bank to freely voice his opinions of globalization. With his new-found freedom, he stated that the IMF is arrogant, deaf, secretive and lacks unaccountability, and that economic conditions are often made much worse after they “help” a country “—turning slowdowns into recessions and recessions into depressions.”

“It's not fair to say that IMF economists don't care about the citizens of developing nations. But the older men who staff the fund—and they are overwhelmingly older men—act as if they are shouldering Rudyard Kipling's white man's burden. IMF experts believe they are brighter, more educated, and less politically motivated than the economists in the countries they visit. In fact, the economic leaders from those countries are pretty good—in many cases brighter or better-educated than the IMF staff, which frequently consists of third-rank students from first-rate universities. (Trust me: I've taught at Oxford University, MIT, Stanford University, Yale University, and Princeton University, and the IMF almost never succeeded in recruiting any of the best students.)”

“I was often asked how smart—even brilliant—people could have created such bad policies. One reason is that these smart people were not using smart economics. Time and again, I was dismayed at how out-of-date—and how out-of-tune with reality—the models Washington economists employed were. “

“Open discussion would have raised profound questions that still receive very little attention in the American press: To what extent did the IMF and the Treasury Department push policies that actually contributed to the increased global economic volatility? (Treasury pushed liberalization in Korea in 1993 over the opposition of the Council of Economic Advisers. Treasury won the internal White House battle, but Korea, and the world, paid a high price.) Were some of the IMF's harsh criticisms of East Asia intended to detract attention from the agency's own culpability? Most importantly, did America—and the IMF—push policies because we, or they, believed the policies would help East Asia or because we believed they would benefit financial interests in the United States and the advanced industrial world? And, if we believed our policies were helping East Asia, where was the evidence? As a participant in these debates, I got to see the evidence. There was none.”

In conclusion, globalization is being sold as being good for the world economy. The recipients of the benefits of globalization are the rich. Greed is the driving force behind globalization, and nothing good can come from it. It overrides everything that is good so that the few may profit from the labor of the many.

Patents as Master

The patent is the chosen weapon of the new world order. Through patents, the entire world’s food will be controlled by a handful of powerful multinational corporations. With patents in hand at the court of the WTO, they are able to deny peasants the right to live as they have for many thousand of years. Corporate bioprospectors scour foreign countries for useful genetic material. They search remote jungles, rain forests, and even rice paddies. One key to the value of what they “discover” is that the more people use or need that gene, the greater the value. In the eyes of the corporations, value is what the market will allow. And in turn, that depends on what the variables or controls are. When the control is absolute, the profits can be absolute. Therefore, the protection patents offer to corporations is exceedingly valuable. This is especially true when US patents are backed up on the global level, as by the WTO.

Many products have been designed to protect the patents of the corporations. Monsanto produces Roundup, a herbicide and crops that are genetically modified to withstand it. The farmer must sign a “technology agreement” in order to purchase these products. The Monsanto Technology Agreement covers Roundup Ready™ cotton, Bollgard™ cotton, Bollgard™ with Roundup Ready™ cotton, Roundup Ready™ soybeans, YieldGard™ corn and Roundup Ready™ corn.[55] In this agreement farmers must sign away rights to legal recourse should Monsanto Crops fail to perform, which happens quite frequently.

The future of these gene giants is highly questionable. Many protections are required for them to exist; patents, the WTO, and most of all, consumers’ ignorance of the facts by way of control of the government and popular media. Their corporate lies must be hidden from view; otherwise people would see them for the demons they are.

According to Monsanto's corporate mission statement, they claim to conduct [themselves] with integrity based on: courage, respect, candor, honesty, humility, consistency, and keeping [their] promises. They are especially efficient at one part of that statement, consistency. They consistently lie, cheat, bribe, conceal data, and bully without reservation. The record shows overwhelmingly that they will do anything to profit, no matter who or what is at stake.

In the last century, when foreign occupiers forced starving peasants of Bengal and Bihar to raise indigo, the peasants rose up in a series of "indigo revolts." Earlier in this century, two million people died of starvation in India while white rice was being exported by the British. In the subsequent Tebhaga uprising, the peasants declared, "We will give our life before giving our grains." Today, Indian peasants find their rights to their grains once more threatened by foreign powers, and once more, Indian society must resolutely defend their rights to utilize and grow what they choose.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is an outspoken Indian critic of the patenting of life. She founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology was founded in Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, India in 1982. The foundation works “towards increasing awareness to the importance of conserving our valuable genetic heritage, while challenging and opposing the forces responsible for its rapid erosion and usurpation.” Dr. Shiva was trained as a physicist and has authored many books on the subject of food security, globalization and genetic engineering. She sees patents for what they are; a method of controlling peoples’ food sources.

“People have survived in the third world because in spite of the wealth that has been taken from them, in spite of their gold and their land having been taken from them, they still have biodiversity. They still have that last resource in the form of seed, medicinal plants, fodder, which allowed them access to production It allowed them to meet their needs of health and nutrition. Now this last resource of the poor, who had been left deprived by the last round of colonialization is also being taken over through patenting. And seeds which peasants have freely saved, exchanged, used, are being treated as the property of corporations. New legal property formations are being shaped as intellectual property rights treaties, through the World Trade Organization, trying to prevent peasants of the third world from having free access to their own seed, to have free exchange of their own seed. So that all peasants, all farmers around the world would be buying seed every year thus creating a new market for the global seed industry.”[i]

In India, agriculture provides livelihoods for more people than any other sector. It also has been the cutting edge of global corporate penetration of the Indian economy. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) has been one of the main instruments of monopoly penetration. Specifically, the intellectual property rights regimes being put into place through GATT set the stage for foreign corporations to gain a total monopoly control of our food production by displacing traditional seed varieties with patented hybrids.[ii]

In these economics of genocide, largely white, male elites of the North create class, race, and gender boundaries to exclude other social groups from the fundamental human rights to life and safety. This blatant disregard for the rights of Third World people was reinforced in 1996, when the European Union lifted its ban on the export of possibly BSE-infected U.K. beef and bovine products for Third World countries.[iii]

  1. Paget-Clarke, N. Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva. In Motion Magazine 14aug98 http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Shiva-Interview-InMotion14aug98.htm 

  2. People-Centered Development Forum. Profile of Vandana Shiva. PCDForum Paradigm Warrior Profile #3 Release date June 1, 1996. http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/1996/shiva.htm 

  3. Shiva, V. Stolen Harvest: The Highjacking of the Global Food Supply. South End Press. Cambridge, Mass. 2000

The World Bank reported recently that the events of Sept. 11th would cause an additional 20,000 - 40,000 children under five years old to die from the economic consequences of the September 11 attack as poverty worsens.

"Outside of the US and OECD countries, the ripples from the September 11 attacks will be felt across all of the world's regions, particularly in countries dependent on tourism, remittances from populations living overseas, and foreign investment.

The worst hit area will be Africa, where in addition to the possible increases in poverty of 2-3 million people as a result of lower growth and incomes, a further 2 million people may be condemned to living below $1 a day due to the effects of falling commodity prices. Commodity prices were forecast to fall 7.4 percent on average this year, and are likely to fall even more as a result of the events of September 11. Farmers, rural labourers, and others tied to agriculture will bear a major portion of the burden. Travel and tourism represent almost 10 percent of merchandise exports for the region and are also likely to be disrupted. The 300 million poor in Sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable because most countries have little or no safety nets, and poor households have minimal savings to cushion bad times. About half the additional child deaths worldwide are likely to be in Africa."

The Tanzanian ambassador to the WTO, speaking on behalf of the Least Developed Countries (LDC), criticized the preamble of the draft declaration drawn up in anticipation of the planned Doha ministerial meeting of the WTO.

[It does not recognize] "the points made by LDCs and other developing countries on the downside in the operations and implementation of the system, such as the imbalances in the rules, the inequitable distribution of benefits and losses, the lack of tangible benefits to poorer countries, the massive losses to poor countries and poor people from the continuous decline in commodity prices and terms of trade, or the threats to livelihood and jobs when small firms and small farmers are unable to cope with the flood of cheap imports. In short, the marginalisation of LDCs and some other developing countries should be mentioned so that there is recognition of these problems by Ministers with the view to resolving them."

Afghanistan

Afghanistan owes $38 million debt to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. According to Oxfam, a nonprofit relief organization, because of a third year of drought, the harvest of Afghanistan was half the normal harvest, and much lower in some regions. Before the start of Bush's "war on terrorism," 20% of the population, or 5.5 million people were at risk of starvation. The drought has "increased the deep, underlying poverty, resulting in an annual life expectancy of only 44 years. Some 75 per cent of Afghans do not have safe water, 90 per cent do not have adequate sanitation, and more than 75 per cent do not have access even to the most basic health care. As a result, 25 per cent of children die before the age of five."

Whether or not one supports Bush’s “War on Terrorism,” it is, without question, an additional cause of extreme hunger for millions of people in Afghanistan who were already extremely miserable. According to Adrienne Smith of the World Food Programme (WFP), estimates of the numbers of Afghans requiring food aid are at 7.5 million, including 1.5 million refugees. The WFP is the United Nations frontline agency mandated to combat global hunger that afflicts one out of every seven people on earth. WFP believes that there is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for healthy and productive lives. In 2000, WFP operations reached some 83 million people in 83 countries. WFP works with more than 1,000 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to distribute its food aid. Typical food rations - in situations where no other food is available - call for more than half a kilo of food per person per day (or 2,100 kilocalories). This amounts to 15 kilos in food rations for one month, or 182.5 kilos for a year. The rations possibly consist of wheat, maize, sorghum, rice, beans, peas, vegetable oil, salt, sugar, cereal-blended foods, high-energy biscuits, and bread.

On September 16, 2001, the New York Times reported that the US demanded that Pakistan eliminate the food convoys entering Afghanistan from their country.*  Fortunately this demand went unnoticed by most of the press, and there was no mention of it or response from anyone, anywhere. If there had been compliance with this demand, it would have meant certain death by starvation for possibly 3-4 millions of Afghans. The US made this demand with complete knowledge of the consequences. Like other actions the US has a long history of, this would have been a silent massacre by starvation of many millions of people over the period of a few weeks, most of whom are only guilty of being alive and in Afghanistan.**

President Richard Nixon’s “war on terrorism” was loosed on Nicaragua with frightening results. Unprecedented in history, his representatives recruited and commanded one of the largest terrorist networks in the world. His thugs raped, tortured, and slaughtered tens of thousands of people. They destroyed Nicaragua’s farms, businesses, infrastructure, society, and economy. To this day, it has not been restored. The country of Nicaragua took this case of international terrorism to the World Court. They had no trouble at all putting the evidence together, and the court accepted their case. The court condemned the unlawful use of force (terrorism). It ordered the US to terminate the crime and to pay massive reparations. The US dismissed the court judgement with total contempt, and stated that the US would not accept the jurisdiction of the court henceforth. Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council, proposing a resolution calling on all states to observe international law, which was aimed specifically at the US’s terrorism. The US vetoed the resolution. The US is now the only country on record of being condemned by the World Court and having vetoed a resolution for all nations to observe international law.

These examples illustrate that war, terrorism, and global financial enslavement play a large role in hunger. The US has played a major role in causing hunger, starting with the death of millions of Native Americans after forcefully ejecting them from the land they live on for centuries. And the legacy of cruelty lives on today, as we bomb millions of innocent Afghan civilians.

Somalia

  Somalia is on the eastern border of Dr. Wambugu’s country, Kenya. In mid-December, the FAO reported that this year's harvest was the worst in the last seven years because of late and erratic rainfall. About 800,000 people were having problems finding enough food. 300,000 people, mainly in the southern regions, were in danger of starvation.

After the attack on the World Trade Center, the US froze the assets of Al-Barakaat, the main banking and telecommunications system in the region. This, in effect, has cut off financial aid to many Somali families who rely on money from relatives abroad. The US has led proposals for military intervention in Somalia.

According to Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), a branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Somalia “is on the verge of an economic collapse ‘unparalleled in modern history’. It is standing on the threshold of ruin. The Somali people don’t understand why the US do this. They have been enduring the effects of two years of drought, and a ban on livestock sales to Arab states because of the cattle disease, Rift Valley fever.

ActionAid, one of the UK’s largest development agencies, works in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, listening to, learning from and working in partnership with over six million of the world’s poorest people. In a recent press release, Robin Le Mare, ActionAid's policy officer for Somalia stated that:

"Targeting Somalia because it is alleged that some unnamed individuals may support al-Qaida [terrorist network] is not going to resolve the wider issue of terrorism," said. "The US 1992 'Operation Restore Hope' effectively strengthened the positions of warlords in southern Somalia and further entrenched the clan-based system of self-governing territories. That action was a fiasco and this is no time to attempt anything similar." He also said that such actions would only strengthen the position of those in Somalia "who claim legitimacy through military might."

More than Food

“According to an ancient Indian Upanishad

Whether the subject is sweet potatoes, corn, soybeans, or rice, much more is involved than merely something that we stuff our faces with, like so much junk food of America. To many, it may be just that. But its significance is far greater than the four letters convey. To Indians rice is the “breath of life.” In fact, the word for rice, gift and wealth is the same. The Japanese equate it with the self. Native Americans believe that their folk crop varieties are sacred gifts of the Creator.

In areas where conversion from subsistence to a cash agricultural economy progressively occurred, a number of ecological and social problems became evident: loss of food self-sufficiency, genetic erosion, loss of biodiversity and traditional farming knowledge, and permanence of rural poverty.

In the past, whole families and villages joined forces during the harvest in order to accomplish the common goal of storing enough food for the winter. After the work was done, great gatherings of workers would eat, trade stories, and play music. In this way, the community’s communication and vitality were increased.

Green revolution farming, grows one variety of a crop as far as the eye can see, allowing massive machinery to sweep large areas. This machine requires only one person’s labor. Those lone drivers blaze across hundreds of acres a day, cocooned in an air-conditioned cab. The lack of diversity doesn’t end with the crops. They listen to endless streams of computer-programmed and played music that corporations decide should be played. And when the work is done, there is no reward of one’s neighbor’s company.

Seed Saving

Saving, sharing and trading seed is a tradition around the globe that has been practiced for thousands of years. It increases the social interaction that binds communities together and benefits all. It increases biodiversity by transporting seed long distances. Immigrants entering the US bring seed from their homeland as a remembrance and a first crop. Even the Internet hosts many seed saving groups.

Today, seed saving is vital because corporations such as Monsanto are destroying the world’s biodiversity. If they had their way, there would be only one of each variety of crops in order to maximize profits—one seed, packaged in one container, advertised in one way.

Biodiversity

Biodiversity can be thought of as a bank of genetic material. By having lots of money in the bank, one worries less about times of need, such as sickness or unemployment. Biodiversity works the same way. When the stores of genetic code are high, plants and animals are better able to deal with adverse conditions—disease, drought or flooding, too much or too little heat. The greater the number of crop varieties, the greater the chances of survival of that species.

Genetic engineering is but an extension of the green revolution, in that it is reducing the diversity of genetic code available for the future. The biggest reason for the mad scramble on the part of many groups to save seed is that once the code is lost, it cannot be regained.

Only 100 years ago, there were about 1,500 different plants, and thousands of varieties of those plants. Because of the industrialization of farming during the so-called green revolution, fewer than 20 different plants provide most of the world’s nutrition. Wheat, rice, and corn account for about 60% of the calories and 56% of the protein that humans consume from plants.

The loss of genetic diversity caused by today’s high yielding monocultured industrial farming can greatly heighten adverse environmental effects, thereby erasing massive amounts of potential profits. Without a robust environment, humans cannot survive.

In 1970, for instance, the U.S. corn crop suffered a 15 percent reduction in yield and losses worth roughly $1 billion when a leaf fungus (Helminthosporim maydis) spread rapidly through the genetically uniform crop. Similarly, the Irish potato famine in 1846, the loss of a large portion of the Soviet wheat crop to cold weather in 1972, and the citrus canker outbreak in Florida in 1984 all stemmed from reductions in genetic diversity.

In the 1994-1995 marketing year, the US market share of corn exports stood at 82%. As a result of the introduction of GMO corn in the US, the market share of world export of US corn has dropped to zero. Each year saw a steady decline from 82% in 1995, to 53%, 71%, 10%, 7%, 5%, 1%, 2%, 1%, and finally to 0% in the 2003-2004 year.(i) And as it looks now, the only way the US can get rid of the stuff is to force it on developing nations with the hope that they will not find out about the problems they will encounter as a result of accepting US corn food aid from USAID. In a typical assertion of power, USAID cut off all food aid shipments to Sudan, stating that "[A]s of March 7, 2004, USAID has ceased all further food aid shipments to Port Sudan due to the GOS' insistence that US commodities be certified free of genetically modified organisms ("GMO")." (ii) Starvation is common in Sudan, but they prefer to starve than to take the genetically mutated corn food aid from the USA. 

  1. Schubert, R. The Loss of Corn Exports to Europe: Something to chew on at the Commodity Classic - CropChoice 5mar04

  2. Winter, R. USAID Has Ceased All Further Food Aid Shipments to Port Sudan Due Insistence that it be on free of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) -  United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 11mar04

The genetic engineering of agbiotech hasn’t stopped at the garden. There are also GMO trees being developed.

It is said that Mexico is the keeper of the genetic diversity of corn.

proliferating GMO varieties throughout the world without the benefit of preliminary long-term testing

Through so-called terminator technology, seeds are produced that grow crops without the ability to further reproduce. It would destroy this tradition, which is well documented in stories, music, art, and dances, and handed down through many thousands of generations. Terminator technology is a method of control that would be used to force the world’s farmers to purchase their seeds, and chemicals from one source.

Changes in dietary preferences come with increased affluence.

With a trend towards greater meat consumption, even in places where it is shunned, world meat production has more than doubled between 1950 and 1997, from 37.5 to 79.4 pounds per person. One-third of the world’s grain production is presently fed to livestock. And much that livestock is served to customers of the golden arches and the likes. The trend toward greater meat consumption is continuing and grazing lands are becoming scarcer as meat production increases and humans sprawl across the world. As this all happens, larger quantities of grains will need to be diverted from human consumption to livestock. This puts more pressure on the poor, who are unable to compete with the livestock that is going to feed more affluent populations.

Diets in the US have an impact on the rest of the world.

Over half of the water used in the United States goes to beef production. “The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer would float a destroyer.”[71] It takes less water to produce a year’s food for a pure vegetarian than to produce a month’s food for a meat-eater.[72] This enormous use of water is not sustainable. It is also a hidden cost of producing meat that the taxpayers are force to pay for through taxes. One pound of red meat takes an average of 2,500 gallons, as much as it takes a farmer to grow up to one hundred pounds of grain. That one pound of beef will feed four people for one lunch, but one hundred pounds of grain can feed four people for a month.

“Rainforest beef is typically found in fast food hamburgers or processed beef products. In both 1993 and 1994 the U. S. imported over 200 million pounds of fresh and frozen beef from Central American countries. Two-thirds of these countries' rainforests have been cleared, in part to raise cattle whose meat is exported to profit the U. S. food industry. When it enters the U. S. the beef is not labeled with its country of origin, so there is no way to trace it to its source.”[73]

The USDA reports that animals in the US meat industry produce 61 million tons of waste each year, which is 130 times the volume of human waste - or five tons for every US citizen.[74] North Carolina's 7,000,000 factory-raised hogs create four times as much waste - stored in reeking, open cesspools - as the state's 6.5 million people.[75] According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

Corporate Benevolence

The benevolence of agbiotech corporations to feed the world’s masses is a sham. Its professed mission of feeding the world’s starving masses is in stark contrast to the reality of its investments. Most of the billions of dollars being invested are for products catering to capital-intensive, large-scale farmers of developed countries of the US and EU. The few products with relevance to poor, subsistence farmers actually divert attention from hunger’s underlying causes and other alternative interventions that would prove more appropriate, and safer.

Rice, called “Golden Rice,” a genetically modified rice that was to marketed as the cure for blindness in millions of children. The Rockefeller Foundation funded the project. As justification for such technology, the industry marketed it as being able to save the sight of 500,000 children a year. The perceived problem was a vitamin A deficiency in the rice diet of children in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. Industry’s solution was to genetically modify rice to contain beta-carotene, which then is converted to vitamin A in the body. The beta-carotene turns it yellow, consequently it is named golden rice.

Dr. Vandana Shiva insisted that this GMO rice is a distraction from well-known and proven methods of providing sufficient vitamin-A in diets. Before the green revolution was introduced to India, these plants were much more abundant. She explained that it was the technology that had created the problem of vitamin-A deficiency in the first place.

“Genetically engineered rice as part of the second Green Revolution is repeating the mistakes of the Green Revolution while adding new hazards in terms of ecological and health risks.

The "selling" of Vitamin A rice as a miracle cure for blindness is based on blindness to alternatives for removing vitamin A deficiency and blindness to the unknown risks of producing Vitamin A through genetic engineering.

The lower cost, accessible and safer alternative to genetically engineered rice is to increase biodiversity in agriculture. Further, since those who suffer from vitamin A deficiency suffer from malnutrition generally, increasing the food security and nutritional security of the poor through increasing the diversity of crops and diversity of diets of poor people who suffer the highest rates of deficiency is the reliable means for overcoming nutritional deficiencies.

Sources of Vitamin A in the form of green leafy vegetables are being destroyed by the Green Revolution and Genetic Engineering, which promote the use of herbicides in agriculture. The spread of herbicide resistant crops will further aggravate this biodiversity erosion with major consequences for increase in nutritional deficiency. For example, bathua a very popular leafy vegetable in North India has been pushed to extinction in Green Revolution areas where intensive herbicide use is a part of the chemical package.”[76]

Many human rights and environmental watchdog organizations denounced the rice as a hoax. A Greenpeace study revealed that it wasn’t humanly possible to eat enough of the wonder rice:

“[A]n adult would have to eat at least 3.7 kilos [8.2 pounds] of dry weight rice, i.e. around 9 kilos [nearly 20 pounds] of cooked rice, to satisfy his/her daily need of vitamin A from "Golden Rice". In other words, a normal daily intake of 300 gram of rice would, at best, provide 8% percent of the vitamin A needed daily. A breast-feeding woman would have to eat at least 6.3 kilos [13.9 pounds] in dry weight, converting to nearly 18 kilos [39.7 pounds] of cooked rice per day.”[77]

In February of 2001, after the Greenpeace study and months of industry claims that a single month of marketing delays would cause 50,000 children to go blind, the Rockefeller Foundation, which funded it’s development, made the unexpected statement that "the [agbiotech industry’s] public relations uses of Golden Rice have gone too far.” It continued to say that claims by the biotech industry and some US politicians that genetically engineered "golden rice" would save the sight of 500,000 children a year are exaggerated.[78] Even the inventor of the so-called ‘golden rice’, Ingo Potrykus, responded by saying that he “acknowledge[d], that Greenpeace [was] arguing on a rational basis.”[79]

Gifts of Agbiotech Industry Shunned

The Case of rBGH (Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone)

Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is a genetically engineered growth hormone injected into cows. Monsanto produces it under the name Prosilac. The purpose of rBGH is to increase milk production. It is used mostly in extremely large and inhumane factory farms, where cows rarely see the light of day and calves are not allowed to suckle. The growth hormone is administered by injection.

It causes an increased rate of udder infections, known as mastitis. To fight mastitis, enormous quantities of antibiotics must be used. Residues of the antibiotics and puss from the mastitis are found in the milk of rBGH-treated cows. Studies have shown an increased risk of breast cancer from other residues in milk from treated cows.[80], [81] Most milk produced in the USA is produced on a large scale within this environment; one of cruelty, confinement, sickness and death. It is the norm of factory farming and agribusiness, in general.

After researchers revealed that Monsanto submitted false data with their application for approval to market rBGH in Canada, it was banned. The Canadian Broadcasting Company reported that Monsanto had attempted bribing Health Canada to have them approve the growth hormone. In spite of an attempt by Monsanto lawyers to kill a story by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, they reported that Monsanto attempted to bribe Health Canada with a significant amount of money in order that rBGH be approved without a need for subsequent safety data. [82]

For three years Monsanto blocked attempts by British researchers to publish important findings regarding increased mastitis in cows. Monsanto also threatened to sue the Chicago Board of Education unless it reversed its decision to pursue rBGH-free milk and dairy products for participants in the school lunch program.[83] They sued two milk processors that labeled milk as free of the hormone. [84]

Ever since the mid-1950s, US milk production has outpaced demand. Federal subsidies have amounted to billions of dollars, in an effort to stabilize milk prices. At the same time that billions of dollars were paid by taxpayers to large corporations, thousands of small, family-run dairy farms have gone out of business each year because the milk prices are so low. In 2000, two-thirds of the federal farm subsidies went to 10% of the farm owners. Subsidies are based on farm size, rather than need. Ted Turner, one of the largest private landowners in the United States, was paid at least $190,000 in subsidies in 2000 for ranches he owns in Montana, South Dakota and Florida.[85] The number of farms in the US is rapidly dwindling from a high of about 7 million down to about 1.6 million, the number in the year 1850. The size of farms in that year was about 200 acres and is now at about 500 acres.[86]

Monsanto consistently blocks legislation to monitor the use and effects of rBGH. Even the FDA admits that humans gain nothing from rBGH. So why is rBGH still used when there is so much known about it and its maker? There is only one answer, profit at any cost by a multinational corporation with little regard for life, health, dignity or values. This is one example of many illustrating that Monsanto cannot be trusted at any time, no matter what they promise or how benevolent they appear to be.

The Percy Schmeiser Case

In March of 2001, a Canadian court ordered Percy Schmeiser, a farmer in Saskatchewan, to pay Monsanto over $15,000 plus damages, which could amount to another $75,000, after Monsanto’s genes were found in his canola crop. To obtain a test specimen, Monsanto company investigators t