Family Seed Business Takes On Goliath of Genetic Modification

by Marian Scott
Heather Meek leafs through the seed catalogue she wrote on the family computer, on winter nights after the kids went to bed.There are Kahnawake Mohawk beans and Painted Mountain corn; Tante Alice cucumber and 40 varieties of heritage tomatoes.

Selling seeds is more than just an extra source of income on this organic farm an hour northwest of Montreal.

For Meek and partner Frederic Sauriol, propagating local varieties is part of a David and Goliath struggle by small farmers against big seed companies.

At stake, they believe, is no less than control of the world’s food supply.

Since the dawn of civilization, farmers have saved seeds from the harvest and replanted them the following year.

But makers of genetically modified (GM) seeds — introduced in 1996 and now grown by some 70,000 Canadian farmers, according to Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company — have been putting a stop to that practice.

The 12 million farmers worldwide who will plant GM seeds this year sign contracts agreeing not to save or replant seeds. That means they must buy new seeds every year.

Critics charge such contracts confer almost unlimited power over farmers’ lives to multinational companies whose priority is profit. They say GM seeds are sowing a humanitarian and ecological disaster.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/25/9189/

This whole debate is about profit over people.

And about control and power over food and agriculture. The arguements about GM crops problems vs benefits really has nothing to do with the major issue. And that is freedom to farm. And when GM crops contaminate any other farmer’s crops, that farmer’s freedom has been sacrificed because his freedom to choose has been taken away. And the community that depends on that independent farmer has also lost its freedom to choose what they eat.

Monsanto, ADM, Cargill, et al are some of the enemies of our freedom and independence as human beings. For me, I’m no longer going to engage in the details of why GM is evil. I have seen the forest from the trees, and I think I now know who my enemy is. That’s a start.

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We have met the enemy and they be the Monsanto, ADM and Cargill profit driven earth rapists.

May they rot in hell.