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?

Monsanto Marches On

Is there anything this company does that doesn’t piss me off?

Look, I worked for Wal-Mart for seven years, and I still shop at Wal-Mart, even after they laid me off. And yes, they get it wrong sometimes; yes, they do colossally stupid things like tell Joe Biden they’re too “busy” to run up to Washington to talk about gun violence. Then everybody jumps on them and they get a guy out there to do the PR stuff—in short to mop up.

And they could be paranoid. The people from DACO, our local consumer protection department, were in the stores at 4AM every Black Friday, watching us—note that pronoun—like a cat hovering over a fishbowl. So why didn’t they check the local toy stores, my students would complain. “Get over it,” I would say, “it’s the price we pay for being number one.”

I’m trying to tell you—I’m not intrinsically against big business. But I’m finding it hard not to be completely annoyed by Monsanto.

This perhaps won’t make anybody in the corporate office in Creve Coeur, Missouri, wince. But they are, I’m sure, wincing at the news that nine years after testing genetically altered wheat, that same wheat turned up unexpectedly in a farmer’s field in Oregon.

Back up for people just coming in on the story. Monsanto was set up in 1901 by a guy named John Francis Queeny—stop that sniggering out there—and named after his wife’s maiden name. Queeny’s father-in-law, in fact, was Puerto Rican, a wealthy sugar producer in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Queeny’s expertise was in pharmaceuticals, and the company’s first product was saccharine.

Over the years, the company produced mainly chemicals. Then it got into herbicides, and struck it rich with a product called Roundup. Introduced in the ‘70s, it was touted as being completely safe and wonderfully effective at killing anything green.

Monsanto then churned its way into the world of genetically modified seeds. And came up with a brilliant idea—they could make a seed that was resistant to Roundup—their very own product—and sell it to farmers. Then, the farmers would plant the crop, spray the hell out of the field with Roundup, which would kill everything but the Roundup-resistant crop. Think napalm, or maybe Agent Orange.

There were predictable glitches, of course, and those damn fussy Europeans got it into their heads that they didn’t want genetically modified food. And what’s wrong with Canada, normally a quiet, well-behaved country? They don’t want the stuff either. Fine, you say, let ‘em. They can eat whatever they want.

Well, there is a problem—we sell half of our wheat, the world’s largest crop, overseas. And if our trading partners don’t want genetically modified wheat, and especially if they don’t trust us not to be mixing genetically modified wheat into the regular wheat—well, we’re screwed.

And yes, Monsanto was doing testing on genetically modified wheat between 1998 and 2005.

You know what’s coming. A farmer in Oregon was preparing a field that had been lying fallow for the upcoming planting. There were a few stray wheat plants, so he nuked them with Roundup. No luck, try again. And again. So sometime in early May of this year he yanked the plants, which looked identical to regular wheat, and sent them to Oregon State. And yes, they were the genetically modified wheat plants that Monsanto had been testing…

…in 2005.

That’s eight years ago. More, here is the list of states in which the testing took place:

Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming. 

Seventeen states, over 100 field tests, and all this approved by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Nor is this the first time. Monsanto, according to one report, in the past 13 years has sued 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses, almost always settling out of court (the few farmers that can afford to go to trial are always defeated).

Oh, and what’s the size of the problem? According to the same source, thinkprogress.org:

Organic and conventional seeds are fast becoming extinct — 93 percent of soybeans, 88 percent of cotton, and 86 percent of corn in the US are grown from Monsanto’s patented seeds. A recent study discovered that at least half of the organic seeds in the US are contaminated with some genetically modified material.

So that tofu you’ve been eating virtuously—no Big Mac for you—is likely made with genetically modified soy seed. Is it a problem? Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know, but the Europeans, the Canadians have logically decided—why find out? Why be the guinea pigs in Monsanto’s experiment?

All right, let’s turn onto a different, though parallel, street. Remember that stuff, Roundup, that farmers have been dumping on crops since the 70’s? It turns out—it may be making us fat.

According to a peer-reviewed paper published in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) journal Entropy, even small amounts of Roundup can build up over time—one of the researchers compares it to arsenic. There are no effects at first, but then you get sick.

How? Apparently, Roundup contains antibiotic properties, which attack the gastrointestinal microbes that—thanks, guys—digest our food. So that leads to an overgrowth of the pathological bacteria, which in turn leads to absorption problems. So we eat and eat—we don’t feel full.

As well, Roundup interferes with the production of the amino acid tryptophan, which is needed to make the neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates mood and also—get ready—appetite. So I just ate a tuna fish sandwich—am I OK? Have I just gotten a little zap of Roundup? Here’s the author of the study on the subject:

 “If you are eating the typical Western non-organic diet that includes anything made from corn, soy, canola, wheat, sugar (both cane and sugar beet), cottonseed oil, sunflower, carrots, okra, potatoes, lentils, beans, and peas, or meat, then you’re almost certainly consuming glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup),” notes Samsel.

Still want to defend Monsanto? Consider the list of products made by this wonderful company:

1.     Saccharine

2.     PCBs

3.     Polystyrene

4.     Plutonium for the A bomb

5.     DDT

6.     Dioxin

7.     Agent Orange

8.     Petroleum based fertilizer

9.     Roundup

10.  Aspartame

11.  Bovine Growth Hormone

12.  Genetically modified organisms

Sure is quiet around here….

A Change of Bastards

It’s a relief, almost, to take a break from wrestling with seriously bad bastards—that would be the National Rifle Association, and do they know, I wonder, that I’m after them?—to deal with another seriously bad bastard.

That would be a little company called Monsanto—which, by the way, my computer seems to know, it corrected me when I spelled it with an “a”--founded in 1901 and located in Creve Coeur, Missouri.

And you probably know that it’s an “agribusiness” and producing genetically modified seeds—indeed, it was one of the first companies to produce and market a genetically modified seed, a soybean that was created in 1983 and tested in the field in the late 80’s.

What you may not know—I didn’t—was that Monsanto started out as a chemical company, and it produced everything from plastics to DDT, Agent Orange, and PCBs.

At about the time that they discovered how to play with genes, they got rid of most of that part of the business. They are still making, however, an herbicide that they tout as “as safe as table salt.” (Or at least they did, until the New York Attorney General got after them. They settled out of court, agreed to drop the slogan in New York, and paid $250,000—small change for them—and denied wrongdoing.)

Roundup is by far the most commonly used herbicide, and its toxicity was for years thought to be low. Is it? As always, it depended on whom you asked—when I was gardening in a public park, I would avoid the garden for days or until a good rain after the city had used the stuff. Oh, and I was growing flowers, not food.

And there is evidence that the studies—funded by guess who!—may have been either poorly done or frankly fraudulent. But two things are known: the stuff is all over the place and farmers who refuse to use the herbicide are at a great disadvantage.

Now then, having created an herbicide of questionable toxicity, Monsanto cooked up a great scheme—create a seed that is resistant to Roundup! This way, the farmer sows the seed, waits around until the weeds appear, and then douses the hell out of his field with Roundup. So Monsanto wins twice, if not three or four times (depending on how often Farmer Jones sprays his field). 

Monsanto wins—but does the farmer? Do we, eating the farmer’s crop? One source reports that over 90% of the soy and canola harvested come from Roundup Ready (as the seeds are called) seeds. Since a lot of soy is used for livestock, nobody knows how high up the food chain Roundup really has gotten.

And Monsanto is not a company particularly easy to like. It tends to go after the people least likely to be disliked—those good farmers out there in the field. Such as the Canadian farmer, who the company charged had a Roundup Ready canola plant growing in his field.

“Hey,” said the farmer, “I don’t use that stuff. The pollen blew in from my neighbors field…”

And are you wondering—how can a company go after a farmer for having a plant in his field?

Because that’s no plant, that’s intellectual property. Yes, in 1980, the Supreme Court decided that the patent laws applied to manmade living organism. So now, 93% of soybeans are from Roundup Ready seeds. Oh, and guess what? The price of seed has tripled since then.

Nor is Monsanto content just to operate this scheme, it is today arguing before the Supreme Court that a farmer violated the law by first buying seeds from Monsanto and then buying seeds from a local grain elevator to plant a second crop. The farmer argued that he had already bought seed for the season, and that the second crop would be less productive, and less profitable. Monsanto said he had no right to buy Roundup Ready seed from anyone except the company.

Can it get worse?

Of course. If memory serves from reading Michael Pollan, Monsanto is now developing sterile seeds, which will have the farmers really locked in a corner. And what will happen if the genes causing the sterility in the seed are transferred to other seeds—not genetically modified? Oh, and what will happen—as it has happened—when the plants develop resistance to Roundup? Already, farmers are told to use multiple herbicides.

Five minutes ago, I decided I was hungry, and so I am eating a peanut butter sandwich. Since I didn’t grow the peanuts, and since the peanut butter in not organic, I am very likely eating a food made from genetically modified seed. Shouldn’t I know? Shouldn’t Skippy be required to label that?

Wanna guess my answer?