Jane Smiley: What's Wrong with American Agriculture

[chelaque liberal]

I just ran across this article that I saved a while ago. I believe that Jane Smiley summarizes our global situation; not just agriculture but war, energy, the environment, etc., (because it is all connected) extremely well. The two years since it was published, with the Bush Administration frantically trying to manufacture an excuse to nuc Iran, have only intensified her message. I agree whole-heartedly with her 'big picture.'


<snip>

After I left Iowa and started writing about other things, the ag companies (according to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and the film "The Future of Food"), continued to perpetrate vicious idiocies, and to do so in a more and more aggressive manner, challenging the rights, and the abilities, of people in all parts of the world to have any say in the nature and composition of the food we put into our bodies. They have done so, as far as I can tell, solely for profit. They have exhibited greed that crosses over from mere selfish immoral criminality into actual insanity.

Here's an example. By the time I was writing A Thousand Acres, it had been apparent for some twenty-five or thirty years that insecticides and herbicides were contaminating the landscape and the water supply, killing off wildlife, destroying fertility in males and females of all species, and causing disease in the farmers themselves and their families. The common sense solution to this increasing problem would have been to acknowledge the destructive power of these unnatural chemicals, and to have shifted American agriculture away from their use. The ag companies, however, preferred to remake the ecosystem so that farmers would use more chemicals rather than fewer; they genetically modified seed to make it resistant to an herbicide, Round-up, that when applied would destroy every living plant around it except the proprietary seed plants also owned by the corporation that formulated Round-up. This is exactly analogous to an act of war against the natural ecosystem. It produced acts of war against the farmers, too, because Monsanto aggressively pursued royalty payments from anyone and everyone who had those genetically modified plants in their fields, no matter how they got there, and even if the farmer didn't want them there. Let's say vandals invade your house, eat all your food, drink all your liquor, and make a terrible mess. After they burn the house down, they send you a bill, and sue you if you don't pay it. And the judge backs them up. That is what Monsanto has done to the farmer, and what it is doing to the ecosystem. Still, it's a no-brainer. If chemicals are killing us and our world, we stop manufacturing the chemicals, unless we are insanely greedy and demonically possessed by the idea that every single element of life, every seed and bit of DNA can and must be owned by someone. Here's what the big ag companies want to do - they want to own and contaminate the entire gene pool of all the world's food resources for their own profit and without the knowledge or input of anyone who will actually be eating the food or living in the world they create. So far, the French and the Japanese and some other nations are standing firm, but the US government, our government, your government, is trying to enforce the will of the big ag companies. With regard to ag policy, Clinton and Gore were bad, but Bush and Cheney are infinitely worse. Let's call a spade a spade here. By means of corrupting the Congress and the Executive and the Judiciary branches of our government, the ag companies have changed the rules, and deregulated themselves. They have given their crimes against humanity technical legality, but they are still crimes against humanity (and, in fact, against the entire natural world).

More at:http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_1784.cfm


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NPR reported today:
"France's Bill Allowing Genetically Modified Crops Fails"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90425705

[Robbien]

1. The Ag companies are scary dudes

and they sue the pants off of everyone in their way. Hell, they even sue the pants off of anyone who is not in their way.

Intimidation is their standard operating procedure.

[truedelphi]

2. Yeah Jane Smiley. Having read "Moo" wherein she hints at some of the evil

Surrounding Big Ag, I am not surprised to read this from her.

People don't realize that at the time of the huge protests in Seattle, the protesters prevented the very meetings tht would have forced GMO upon Europeans. So Europe remains one area that not only has decent food, but also has independent scientists who can study the deplorable nature of the GMO's.

[barbtries]

3. jane smiley is a great writer.