Organic vs Chemicals.....

[seedcorn]

Roundup I will never use.

I refuse to encourage a company that uses the tactics that the makers of that stuff use.

Imagine; You develop a variety of commercial crop. You sell seed for that crop to a lot of farmers. A nearby farmer grows a different variety that he's been saving seed from for generations. Some pollen from the patented variety pollinates some of this old time farmer's crop. That farmer grows some seed from his crop like his family's been doing for generations. Your big huge multibazillionaire company sneaks onto the old time farmer's farmland, takes some seed, spends money to see if any of the new patented variety's genes are in the old timer's crop. They sure enough find it is part patented. SO THE BAZILLIONAIRE COMPANY SUES THE OLD TIME FARMER!!!

That, is just plum sick.

Turns out, they've been doing worse things to old farmers in India, even causing farmers there to commit suicide. No. Can't possibly turn me to having any appreciation for that company. No tactic will change my mind. Call me old fashioned.

Signed, Marshall Hugh Smyth

This does not happen in India as they do not hold to ANY patent laws. They killed the moped industry. They buy well built new versions built with well paid workers who work under child labor and environmental laws and copy and make it with child slave labor for 1/4 the cost. Sell it world wide thus putting honest companies out of business.

Imagine you spend billions and years to research, develope, legalize, etc. a new line of genetics only to have some thief steal your genetics and claim he didn't in a self pollinating crop. Of course this same thief didn't use any common practices to keep his crop pure or else how could he steal genetics. He also sold his seed as pure KNOWING it wasn't.

What is xxxxxx is that people defend thieves out of envy or ignorance.

 

[hoodat]

If someones livestock gets on my property and cases damage the owners are held liable. Why aren't the owners of patented plants held to the same standard?

 

[NwMtGardener]

I found out that we could have been held liable for any damage done when thieves (probably stupid kids) took our Jeep from our driveway for a joyride because we left the keys in the ignition. Luckily they didn't cause any damage, and our Jeep was fine, and only a few blocks away. It's really weird, all the different perspectives you can take on the question of who is liable, and property rights.

 

[nittygrittydirtdigger]

"Sneak" is a polite term, Marshall. What they did was trespass and steal the corn. Not nice, no, not nice at all.

 

[seedcorn]

1) no one is held liable for pollen-unless it's illegal pollen. Which is why respnsible plant breeders use normal methods to keep their genetic material untainted.

2) livestock can be controlled unlike pollen.

3) the only case I'm aware of anyone stealing genetics is famIlies stealing from companies. See Pioneer against Holden's.

4) the lawsuits against Monsanto were claims in a self fertilizing crop. Where they manually pollinate the crop

 

[seedcorn]

"Sneak" is a polite term, Marshall. What they did was trespass and steal the corn. Not nice, no, not nice at all.

Please tell me any company that stole corn from a private citizen.

 

[897tgigvib]

Much of the world's morality has turned entirely backward Seedcorn.

For instance, this farmer was in Canada. I'm not sure about the moped industry in Canada, or the price of tea in China. (When a person changes a geographical place, often we use a new paragraph. I also space my paragraphs. I don't pretend to be a great author. But I think I separated the two pretty well.). But ya know, I do not understand what could be the impetus to stand up for this huge monopoly type company. It's not a person. It's a company. with power. More power than a million humans. Maybe half a billion humans could equal Monsanto's power.

Hear me well. You may well change your thinking about this non human company. They really are sneaky. I wanted to get some seeds from europe. Turns out the only way I can, without going the black market route, or the smuggling route, is to purchase them through Monsanto. You try it. Monsanto has tons of open pollinated seed, yet George Ball, owner of Burpee, says in his blogs, (Heron's voice?), that Monsanto's seed company holdings are only a miniscule part of the Monsanto company. He did say last year he'd be phasing out the few monsanto varieties. Not sure if he did. Yes, I got into an argument with George Ball, kind of. But he sure is intelligent, and strong minded. I think he'll keep to his word. Seedcorn, even Burpee's is reducing to stop having any thing to do with Monsanto. But it is hard for George to do that and still have certain hybrids and varieties.

And Try going to a garden center and make sure you don't buy any Monsanto stuff. You have to look closely at the bottom of the labels, and see if any of the known Monsanto subsidiaries is on the label. There are a lot of them.

Now, if Monsanto had an actual human to come forward saying things like "yes. your food should be labelled if it has any gmo products in it. yes. we donate tons of roundup so that folks will become used to using it. yes. we encourage overpopulation so we can sell more stuff." Ya know, that would be an honest start.

From there, this real human representing Monsanto could start saying things like, "yes, we will be creating organic products such as truckloads of weed suppressing sterilized mulch from recycled paper and garbage using the proper mycorrhizae and microbes. yes, we will begin working on being responsible humans in this world, expoising our names to the world and taking respoinsibility for our formwerly greedy actions. Yes, we plan on continuing to make money and growrth, but not at the expense of taking power over humanity's food supply."

Now, when they do that kind of thing, the world becomes a better place. When Monsanto admits what they own, and what they do. I do not even know if Monsanto owns Ortho anymore. Do they? And, what companies donate so much to agricultural schools and master gardener programs, just so the voices of, what...normalness...are the lower ranked folks. Powerful invalidations of voices. The leaders turned to, well, I'll say it. (what the hay), the voiceboxes of the company that deep in their hearts they know is doing wrong.

What if you certified organic, gritted your teeth, turn your soil to life, with the same fervor you now have, and begin a multi year advancement to sustainability. Multi crop. Local market. Tell your friends who are now with you in strength, "no. i changed my mind guys! I'm going organic." watch. try that. i think a few will say things to you like," i'm gonna do that too." Really though, it'll take some time for your eyes to change direction, to get a larger vision. Right now, it is the same kind of thinking that the hunters of passenger pigeons had during the 50 years of that species decline. Just wrong. Strongly wrong. I'm no diplomat. I probably said things out of turn. Nothing here is meant to hurt your feelings. That's for certain. The initial stages of change can hurt. But watch how folks smile at you for the change!

I mean well here. Noticed nobody's said these things. so i did. Please sit and reread this several times.

I'd like to see you make a post that says you are thinking about it.

 

[nittygrittydirtdigger]

Standing on my chair and applauding Marshall!

 

[seedcorn]

Marshall, I take nothing personal. I've read your post 2X so far and really don't understand what you are trying to say except you hate Monsanto. I get that. I don't like them either for different reasons than some on this board. To try to answer some of your concerns....

1) We want to stop ALL importation of different species of plants/animals into USA from other places without it going through some (I hesitate to call it proper) channels to reduce the enviromental impact. See Asain carp (all carp really) corn borers, starlings, sparrows, more weed species than I want to count.

2) All seed companies carry a whole arsenal of open pollinated, old hybrids, inbreds, etc. to use in their breeding program. In fact a plant breeder will make over a 1,000,000 new inbreds every year and throw all but a few away. It is a huge undertaking that some on this board would have them "give" away.

3) Most people in the USA (world for that matter) do not believe that GMO is a problem but rather a solution to certain issues. Some disagree, that's the American way to disagree and each do their own thing. Don't want GMO, buy products that are produced to whatever standards you want, it will cost you more but no one tells Porsche to sell their cars at Yugo prices.

4) Organic??? My garden is chemical free but not "organic". Organic fails for one and only one reason--the consumer will not pay for it, PERIOD. A fair minded person will not lay that at corporate America's feet as they don't make the consumer buy it.

5) The case you now infer to, was in Canada (your first post said farmers in India were killing themselves because of Monsanto), was a self-fertilizing crop that had to have been done by the farmer himself to get that much RR pollen in his canola. Monsanto decided it was cheaper to pay him off than to fight it in the courts--by the way the farmer agreed, he wanted the $$$$$$$ as he could have cleaned the RR gene out of his crop in one harvest and had his product clean.

6) Companies are in business to make $$$$$ for the employees and owners, PERIOD. People work to make money otherwise they would do something besides work--hobby, garden, fish, etc...

7) What Burpee's are telling you is they can't buy seed and make the money they want to. So start their own breeding program, it's a free country. It's expensive and time consuming but there are companies willing to do it, Burpee's isn't one of them. That's like a person unwilling to work complaining his neighbor has more than him because he has a job.

8) Morality????? I agree on that as I believe in the New Testament as God's will and most of the world doesn't. But that has always been the case so nothing new. If you don't go by God's laws, then who gets to set the morality standards? If you go by old west standards or early civilization standards, power set the moral compass. I don't want to go there.

 

[plainolebill]

I completely agree with Marshall with respects to Monsanto, they want nothing less that to control the world's food supply. As far as GMO I'm afraid you are misinformed: Europe has banned GMO foods as should any other civilized country. Hybrid is one thing but GMO constitutes a threat to survival of species that are modified.

The majority of our corn crop, which is to say the largest crop grown in the US, is GMO to be resistant to Roundup and Corn Borers. Guess what? The weeds are adapting as are the corn borers. This has the potential to have disastrous consequences.

I won't plant any seed from any subsidiary of Monsanto.