Erick, just as a note, almost every farmer buys their seed every year from a monopolized seed market. With the highly genetically altered seeds sold these days, most seeds planted by the average farmer would most likely not develop correctly. Saving seed went away 2-3 generations ago. The monsanto and duponts of the world have ready, monopolized markets. With the combining, in recent years, of the seed producers into monopolies, competitive seed markets and prices are gone. Where's Teddy Roosevelt when we need him.

I agree that we need to develop native species for biomass fuel development, instead of messing with our food supply, if we are to gather our fuel, instead of pumping it out of the ground. Increasing yields may happen for a while, but eventually will level off. Seems like a short sighted, selfish venture to satisfy investers immediate needs instead of looking for the long term benefit of the world.

Genetically altered crops (transgenic) can and do contaminate organic farming operations by natural pollination from nearby GE crops, thus enabling Monsanto to sue you for patent infringement and your crop becomes worthless.

Saving seed (at least in Canada) is still done today, at least where genetic contamination hasn't occurred yet. It's also the way the most of the world farms, and it's actually re-gaining popularity in an organized effort to combat the monopolistic practices of Monsanto and friends in the third world.

Yes, and farmers are not forced into buying monsanto seeds. They have always had the option of using 'freeware' corn and saving the seeds for next year, but somewhere along the way, people realized Monsanto and friends provided value and were able to increase profits for them by introducing technology in the seed. Farmers put more cash of front in the seed instead of spraying it on the field after planting. And by the way, their is no monopoly. The seed business is very competitive. People will change in a heartbeat depending on yeild results.

Uh its not monsanteos fault . You cant save seed not just because monsanto doesnt wantyou yo is becuse monsanto doesnt want you to because its a fricken ge crop and they are required to keep a draconian lockdown on it. Yes thierlawyers and all crafted the laws and regs but in general it would have been far more draconian and bizzantine otherwise,

As for corsspolisation. Because if the stupid way copyright law works as well as the way crop growing works they have to threaten to sue in order tokeep thier patents. AND they have to try to force you to not do anything with the corrsbred plants seed wise because again if they dont they lose patents. Thats billions of bucks at stake because of an antiquated law.

And most of this mess is YOUR fault for being soo paranoid and freak9n out about ge crops in the first place. As a result they have to be all stormtrooper on everyone just to keep[ running.


On top of all that its a multi nationalmega crp so duh ita not warm and fuzzy none of them are!

Monsanto- the company that gave us pesticides, PCBs, Agent Orange and GE growth hormones for cattle.

There are no restrictions on growing most of these GE food crops, they get approved as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) and therefore are treated NO differently than any other crop and there's no labelling requirement on food so that when someone has an adverse reaction it can't be traced to the transgenic crop.

When the seed from that GE crop lands in my field that's serious contamination and I should be able to sue whomever owns it or was responsible for it polluting my land, but instead we have pantent laws that protect the multinationals so that it's them suing me for patent infringement. Farmers ARE losing their livelihoods because of this, and unfortunately it's getting worse, not better.

The farmer that decided to try some Monsanto seeds one year will be forced to pay the technology fee forever because as long as there's a single plant growing on his land with the patented genes, Monsanto can (and does) sue unless you pay the fee, regardless of what seeds the farmer is actually planting.

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

Everything is relative.

Indigenous corn originally had kernels size of a thumb. All carrots we are eating today are “invasive species” originated from Afganistan. Our domestic dogs are clear mutant freaks long away from their natural origin – wolves. Apples have about 300 identified naturally occurring pesticides, herbicides, toxins, and carcinogens – luckily to us in very small quantities. Not the case with opium, marihuana, tobacco, or 2/3 of wild mushrooms.

All agricultural crops we eat today are heavily genetically modified mutants, carefully selected over thousand of years of natural mutations (mostly from natural radioactivity). Non of them will survive a single season in the wild without extensive human care. Last century natural mutation of agricultural crops was significantly enhanced by chemical agents, and last 50 years by broad irradiation by X-rays or even exposure to nuclear reactors.

But somehow all these mutants are considered now as being natural organic foods.

Now, when finally science gets us instrument of open-eye precise engineering of our agricultural crops, without broad and unpredictable forced mutation of initial genes, all the hell got loose. We consider 20-years old mutants as “organic”.