Genetically Modfied Seeds: Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach

by Linn Cohen-Cole

Global Research, February 14, 2009
opednews.com - 2009-02-03

People say if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, just don’t buy their 
GMO seeds. 

Not so simple. Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days? How 
are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops? How are 
they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from 
using helicopters to fly over spying on them?  

Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and 
if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, 
saying they own the crop. It’s a way to make money since farmers can’t fight 
back and court and they settle because they have no choice. 

And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and 
everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving 
of NORMAL seeds. 

1.  They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.

2.  They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them 
through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in 
terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being 
subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS 
approach to wiping out normal seeds). Does your state have such a seed law? 
Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in 
the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends 
and neighbors, selling some if they wanted. That’s been killed.

In Illinois, which has such a seed law, Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his 
staff is Monsanto lobbyists. 

3.  Monsanto is pushing anti-democracy laws (Vilsack’s brainchild, actually) 
that remove community’ control over their own counties so farmers and citizens 
can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops. 
So if you don’t want a GM-crop that grows industrial chemicals or drugs or a 
rice growing with human DNA in it, in your area and mixing with your crops, 
tough luck.

Check the map of just where the Monsanto/Vilsack laws are and see if your state 
is still a democracy or is Monsanto’s. A farmer in Illinois told me he heard 
that Bush had pushed through some regulation that made this true in every 
state. People need to check on that.

4.  For sure there are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA right now that 
make a farmer’s seed cleaning equipment illegal (another way to leave nothing 
but GM-seeds) because it’s now considered a “source of seed contamination.” 
Farmer can still seed clean but the equipment now has to be certified and a 
farmer said it would require a million to a million and half dollar building 
and equipment … for EACH line of seed. Seed storage facilities are also listed 
(another million?) and harvesting and transport equipment. And manure. 
Something that can contaminate seed. Notice that chemical fertilizers and 
pesticides are not mentioned.  

You could eat manure and be okay (a little grossed out but okay). Try that with 
pesticides and fertilizers. Indian farmers have. Their top choice for how to 
commit suicide to escape the debt they have been left in is to drink Monsanto 
pesticides.

5.  Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest. In Pilot Grove, 
Missouri, in Indiana (Maurice Parr), and now in southern Illinois (Steve 
Hixon). And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police to 
show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their 
seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across 
that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear 
and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto 
sowed. Hixon’s office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking 
device on his equipment and that’s how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers 
in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his 
business within 2 days. 

So, after demanding that seed cleaners somehow be able to tell one seed from 
another (or be sued to kingdom come) or corrupting legislatures to put in laws 
about labeling of seeds that are so onerous no one can cope with them, what is 
Monsanto’s attitude about labeling their own stuff? You guessed it - they’re 
out there pushing laws against ANY labeling of their own GM-food and animals 
and of any exports to other countries. Why?   

We know and they know why. 

As Norman Braksick, the president of Asgrow Seed Co. (now owned by Monsanto) 
predicted in the Kansas City Star (3/7/94) seven years ago, “If you put a label 
on a genetically engineered food, you might as well put a skull and crossbones 
on it.”  

And they’ve sued dairy farmers for telling the truth about their milk being 
rBGH-free, though rBGH is associated with an increased risk of breast, colon 
and prostate cancers. 

I just heard that some seed dealers urge farmers to buy the seed under the seed 
dealer’s name, telling the farmers it helps the dealer get a discount on seed 
to buy a lot under their own name. Then Monsanto sues the poor farmer for 
buying their seed without a contract and extorts huge sums from them. 

Here’s a youtube video that is worth your time. Vandana Shiva is one of the 
leading anti-Monsanto people in the world. In this video, she says (and this 
video is old), Monsanto had sued 1500 farmers whose fields had simply been 
contaminated by GM-crops. Listen to all the ways Monsanto goes after farmers. 

Do you know the story of Gandhi in India and how the British had salt laws that 
taxed salt? The British claimed it as theirs. Gandhi had what was called a Salt 
Satyagraha, in which people were asked to break the laws and march to the sea  
and collect the salt without paying the British. A kind of Boston tea party, I 
guess.  

Thousands of people marched 240 miles to the ocean where the British were 
waiting. As people moved forward to collect the salt, the British soldiers 
clubbed them but the people kept coming. The non-violent protest exposed the 
British behavior, which was so revolting to the world that it helped end 
British control in India.   

Vandana Shiva has started a Seed Satyagraha - nonviolent non-cooperation around 
seed laws - has gotten millions of farmers to sign a pledge to break those 
laws.   

American farmers and cattlemen might appreciate what Gandhi fought for and what 
Shiva is bringing back and how much it is about what we are all so angry about 
- loss of basic freedoms. [The highlighting is mine.]



The Seed Satyagraha is the name for the nonviolent, noncooperative movement 
that Dr. Shiva has organized to stand against seed monopolies. According to Dr. 
Shiva, the name was inspired by Gandhi’s famous walk to the Dandi Beach, where 
he picked up salt and said, “You can’t monopolize this which we need for life.” 
But it’s not just the noncooperation aspect of the movement that is influenced 
by Gandhi. The creative side saving seeds, trading seeds, farming without 
corporate dependence–without their chemicals, without their seed.

” All this is talked about in the language that Gandhi left us as a legacy. We 
work with three key concepts.”

” (One) Swadeshi…which means the capacity to do your own thing–produce your own 
food, produce your own goods….”

“(Two) Swaraj–to govern yourself. And we fight on three fronts–water, food, and 
seed. JalSwaraj is water independence–water freedom and water sovereignty. Anna 
Swaraj is food freedom, food sovereignty. And Bija Swaraj is seed freedom and 
seed sovereignty. Swa means self–that which rises from the self and is very, 
very much a deep notion of freedom. 

“I believe that these concepts, which are deep, deep, deep in Indian 
civilization, Gandhi resurrected them to fight for freedom. They are very 
important for today’s world because so far what we’ve had is centralized state 
rule, giving way now to centralized corporate control, and we need a third 
alternate. That third alternate is, in part, citizens being able to tell their 
state, ‘This is what your function is. This is what your obligations are,’ and 
being able to have their states act on corporations to say, ‘This is something 
you cannot do.’”

” (Three) Satyagraha, non-cooperation, basically saying, ‘We will do our thing 
and any law that tries to say that (our freedom) is illegal… we will have to 
not cooperate with it. We will defend our freedoms to have access to water, 
access to seed, access to food, access to medicine.’”

Global Research Articles by Linn Cohen-Cole

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12309

http://waronyou.com/topics/genetically-modfied-seeds-monsanto-is-putting-normal-seeds-out-of-reach/

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