A Farmer Weighs In

Well, he got after me, as he sometimes does. Had I been fair? Had I slammed Monsanto without giving the company a chance to defend itself? What if it were true that this technology not only was improving yields but also was capable of doing a host of other things? If, for example, Monsanto could breed a drought-resistant strain of wheat, how beneficial to humanity would that be?

It was in vain to tell him—my long dead father—that Monsanto was hardly likely to take my call. No, he was as persistent in death as he was in life, and so I did what I had always done: sighed and caved.

Right—so who would take my call? Cousin Marshall, I decided. He’s family and a farmer, so it was the work of a moment to call him.

Well, he confirmed what I suspected: yes, he uses Roundup-Ready seeds from Monsanto, which in this case come from a local seed dealer, Dairyland Seed. And yes, he’s seen an increase in his yields; in addition, he’s using much less pesticide / herbicide. Even better, what he’s using is far less toxic—before, he had been using pesticides / herbicides with a low LD 50 (a measure of toxicity, and the lower the LD 50 the more toxic); with Roundup, he doesn’t have to worry about applying near streams and killing fish.

Well, LD 50 was new to me, so I googled it, and discovered that it stood for the lethal dose (LD) of 50 percent of a given population. Right—so I looked that up and discovered that Roundup has an LD 50 of 5,600mg / kg for rats. In short, if you give 5,600 mg / kg to 100 rats, you will kill 50 of them.

Wow—the stuff you learn as a blogger!

All that led to the question: was Roundup really less toxic? The answer—par for the course—is that I don’t know. I can tell you that I went to Table 6 of the Pesticide Safety Fact Sheet; Roundup’s LD 50 seemed to be in the mid-range—there were others with an LD 50 of over 10,000 mg / kg. But what do I know about farming? There may be other factors to consider….

Marshall’s one problem with Roundup? Well, at one point he was farming with both Roundup-ready and with non-Roundup-ready seeds (in other words—regular seeds), and somehow he forgot which was which. So he applied Roundup to one of his fields, with the result…

You could tell it still hurt, so I didn’t tell him, though I was tempted, “typical Newhouse!”

In short, for Marshall, Monsanto has made his life easier. And guess what? Anything that makes a farmer’s life easier is—usually—something I’m all in favor of. Because a farmer’s life is seriously hard, and never more so than today. And so I assured him that I bore him no grudge for using genetically-modified seeds. After all, I well remember the howls I got from people who learned that I worked for Wal-Mart—who am I to talk?

Marshall was then good enough to write an email, in which he pointed out…wait, let him tell it:

Over 90% of the acreage in the Corn Belt is under cultivation using GMO’s (as I stated earlier).  The problem with that scenario is that it represents millions of square miles of a man-made monoculture.  That is not anything you will find in nature anywhere on this planet and not at any time in the past.  Earth’s systems will fight that and will eventually win the battle.  That is already occurring with weeds developing resistance at various places around the country.  As numbers of species of resistant weeds increase and areas infected with these resistant weeds expand, the efficiency of GMO’s (Roundup in this case) always yields to the environment.

Marshall went on to state, “Each GMO breakthrough is a short term solution designed to last a decade or two if the industry is lucky.”

Well—that’s definitely a cause for concern. In short, we’re skirting with disaster, hoping to outwit Mother Nature. Can we sustain that?

If I were a farmer, I might very well do as Marshall has done: join the crowd and grow GMO seeds. The problem? I’m not a farmer, but an eater. And which foods and products have GMO’s? At the moment, I have to assume that they all do—at least until I go onto a site that has a list of GMO-free foods.

As I said yesterday, we have taken part in an experiment without being told that we were guinea pigs. And what have been the consequences? Since I had written about the possibility of GMO foods being linked to autism, I decided to check it out. Here, from the Washington Times, is a comparison of US’ versus Britain’s—which has banned GMO foods—rates of autism:

As of 2010, their article said, autism prevalence rates for 8-year-old British boys was about four cases per 1,000, and 0.8 per 1,000 for British girls. This was essentially the same as in 2004.

By contrast, autism rates for 8-year-old U.S. boys rose from a range of 8.9. to 15.8 cases per 1,000 in 2004 to an average of 18.4 cases per 1,000 in 2008. For U.S. girls, rates went from 1.5 to 3.7 cases per 1,000 in 2004 to four cases per 1,000 in 2008.

Maybe it’s true what Mom always said: you are what you eat!

Monday Morning Bastards

Well, well—Monday morning, and time to find out what all my favorite bastards are doing.

They don’t stop, you see—which is curious, because...aren’t they reading? Aren’t they paying attention? Surely this blog should put the fear of God into at least a few people….

There’s Monsanto, for example, and what, by the way, ever became of that genetically modified wheat that somehow sprang up in a farmer’s field in May of last year? Remember that? An Oregon farmer sprayed the herbicide Roundup on his field, and some wheat plants refused to die. So he sent them off to Oregon State University—which unsurprisingly is quite interested in wheat, since the state sells 700 million bucks of it mostly to Asia—and yup, it was Monsanto’s experimental wheat. And the experiment? It had ended more than a decade before.

Japan suspended purchases of wheat; the USDA guys were scrambling to try to determine how the wheat got there. Then, in a conference call, some Monsanto spokesman came up with an ingenious idea: sabotage. One of those nutty foodies, you see, had snuck into Monsanto—presumably any soul can drift in and out of their facilities, rather like a mall—and copped the wheat. Then, he had gone into a field, planted the seed, and pointed the finger at Monsanto, to tarnish the company’s reputation! Hah! Foiled that dude!

The complete inanity of the explanation was of no importance. What’s important, as anybody in corporate America knows, is that somebody says something. Anything. Whatever….

Because they know—the public forgets. We go on. We worry about North Korea until it’s time to worry about the Crimea, and then, guess what? The North Koreans detonate a nuclear missile and then we all start worrying again.

And so I googled “GMO wheat Oregon,” and was unsurprised to learn: we still don’t know, the story went cold. I did, however, discover the name of the professor who identified the wheat—Carol Mallory-Smith, professor, Weed Science.

Weed Science?

This, I have to say, greatly improves the Monday morning experience. Who knew, for example, that there is the Weed Science Society of America, or the WSSA, which takes its weeds very seriously? And I regret to inform the readers of this blog that I completely screwed up by not informing you guys about National Invasive Species Awareness Week, which was February 23-28. (Though it does seem curious—don’t most weeks have seven days? Or do invasive species move so fast….)

Right—so I have emailed Professor Mallory-Smith, to see if there’s any more information on the Oregon wheat situation; the professor, curiously, has not immediately responded. She may be out in the field; stay tuned.

What else did I find? Well, take a look at this….

And the caption for this photo?

Michael Doane, Monsanto's wheat industry affairs director, looks at growth in a wheat field in an undisclosed location in North Dakota in this undated file photo. (Reuters / Carey Gillam)

And the date of this article? January 15, 2014.

Guys? Who the hell decided to allow Monsanto to test their new GMO wheat in—of all places—a North Dakota field? And why, by the way, did The New York Times publish an opinion piece entitled “We Need G. M. O. Wheat?”

Well, I read it, which turns out to be an op-ed written by guys seriously in bed with the “biotech industry.” One of the authors, in fact, has written a book, The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution—does that tell you the story?

According to the authors, the soybean and corn farmers made the switch to GMO seeds in the 1990’s, and they’ve been happy as Chesapeake Bay clams ever since—enjoying increased yields, using less herbicide, making more money. But those fussy foodies won’t let the biotech industry approve GMO wheat, since 15 percent of it is exported to countries that don’t want the stuff. Oh, and the authors go on to say:

The scientific consensus is that existing genetically engineered crops are as safe as the non-genetically engineered hybrid plants that are a mainstay of our diet.

Whew—what a relief!

Or is it? Because I had been watching a documentary about Monsanto, and something stuck in my mind. So I googled “GMO food autism” and sure enough, there’s a body of research out there—done in admittedly iffy institutions like Harvard and Massachusetts General—that suggest that there may be a link between autism and GMO foods.

Why? It appears that GMO foods cause the intestines to weaken and become inflamed. Here’s what one article had to say:

One of the earliest indications that GMOs might cause GI tract distress was a 1999 study published in the Lancet. After rats were fed experimental GMO potatoes for just 10 days, the cells of the stomach lining and intestines were significantly altered.[¹²]

When California pediatrician Michelle Perro reviewed the study in 2011 and saw the photos of the increased cellular growth and abnormal architecture, she thought to herself, “Uh oh -- we’ve got some problems.” Based on her experience treating children for 30 years, she said, “You can extrapolate that the same thing may be occurring in babies clinically. They are not digesting their food. They are malabsorbing. . . . And I’m seeing that commonly now.” Digestive issues are skyrocketing among her patients. 

Does this gastric distress lead to or cause autism? Nobody knows. What’s more interesting, though, is the research on rats fed GMO. Consider this:

Dr. Irina Ermakova, PhD, a senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, reported to the European Congress of Psychiatry in March 2006 that male rats fed GM soy exhibited anxiety and aggression, while those fed non-GMO soy did not [³]. Ermakova reported the same behavior in GM soy-fed female rats and their offspring in her study published in Ecosinform. The animals “attacked and bit each other and the worker."[⁴]

(Far more shocking, however, was that more than 50% of the offspring from the GMO-fed group died within three weeks when compared with a 10% death rate among the group fed natural soy. The GM group also had high rates of infertility and had smaller members.)

In one of his books, Michael Pollan writes of being given GMO potatoes, which he kept for a while. Then the question came up—could he make a potato salad and take it to a pot luck supper? And if so, was he morally obliged to let people know? Pollan eventually tossed the potatoes, and came to the conclusion any sane person would: even if the potatoes were safe, why take a risk?

In fact, we have all taken the risk—everyone who has eaten “normal” food for the last 20 years. And now, one in 68 kids in the US may have autism; in New Jersey, one in 28 boys has autism.

Oh, and the guys who are regulating the “biotech industry?” Unsurprisingly, they’re not even in bed with the industry, they’re in flagrante with them.

It’s a cynical as it is evil.

PS—The good professor came through!

Update on an Old Villain

OK—if you want to read anything good about Barack Obama or Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, I wouldn’t suggest clicking on the YouTube video below.

Right—the name should have given it away: The Zionist Coverup. And the video is almost embarrassingly homemade; the music is awful and the text is at times unreadable. But if the facts are true, it’s chilling: we have an agriculture secretary who is in bed with the biotechnology giants who are providing us with genetically modified food.

Vilsack was a state senator and later governor of Iowa; as a lawyer, his firm represented Monsanto. As a state senator, he voted for a bill that stripped counties of the right to impose restrictions of genetically altered food. As governor, he was named “governor of the year” by the Biotechnology Industry Organization in 2001. And as you’ll see in the clip below, the biotechnology giants love him.

Confession—I had no idea who our secretary of agriculture was until this morning, when it got into my head: whatever happened to rogue wheat? You remember—an Oregon farmer found Roundup resistant wheat in his field, and went off to his local Ag representative. The wheat was found to be identical to a genetically modified wheat that Monsanto had tested in 2005, and subsequently withdrawn.

How did the wheat get there? The answer, it appears, is nobody knows, although Monsanto floated the idea that somebody had sabotaged the company by stealing the seed and planting it. But Japan and South Korea subsequently halted their purchase of wheat; the USDA is in talks with those countries. In the meantime, various farmers have taken Monsanto to court.

Now then—what genetically modified organisms have been approved under Obama’s watch? Here’s the list, according to naturalnews.com:

Monsanto GMO alfalfa.

Monsanto GMO sugar beets.

Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.

Coming soon: Monsanto's GMO sweet corn.

Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.

Syngenta GMO stacked corn.

Pioneer GMO soybean.

Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.

Bayer GMO cotton.

ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.

A GMO papaya strain.

In fact, the site claims that Obama is “the most GMO-dedicated politician in America.”

If true, we have a problem: according to a recent New York Times poll, 93% of Americans support mandatory labeling for genetically modified foods. So that means that Congress will pass the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act, right?

Don’t count on it—the biotechnology industry spent 46 million dollars in California, defeating a similar measure. Can you imagine the millions that they will spend on the national level?

So it’s the old story—the unholy marriage of money and politics.

You're thinking I’m cynical? Remember the number of people who favored imposing universal background checks on firearms? And Monsanto is used to getting its way—it got Congress to pass the Monsanto Protection Act, which “allows Monsanto to override U.S. federal courts on the issue of planting experimental genetically engineered crops all across the country. Even if those experimental crops are found to be extremely dangerous or to cause a runaway crop plague, the U.S. government now has no judicial power to stop them from being planted and harvested.”

Think there’s anything genetically modified in Michelle Obama’s White House garden?