Earth Day 2008

[allngood]

Seed Companies and Monsanto
There was some misinformation in a recent PCC newsletter regarding Monsanto purchasing many of your favorite garden and farm seed catalogs. Territorial Seeds, Johnny's Seeds, Park Seed, Burpee, Cook's Garden, Spring Hill Nurseries, Flower of the Month Club, and Audubon Workshop are NOT owned by Monsanto. PCC has now corrected their error here.
Copied and pasted from http://www.seedalliance.org/index.php?page=Home

There is a lot of misinformation and emotion with any discussion of seeds. GMO and otherwise. This discussion has helped create new markets for sellers of heirloom and traditional seeds. If issue is near and dear to you, your best option to protect these kind of seeds is with your pocket book.

[PaulW]

Damon, the subtitle of that HawaiiSeed website is "Protecting Hawaii and its people from the risks posed by genetically engineered organisms". Wow, great place to learn more about it. How about something a bit more informative and unbiased:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically...d_organism

Rob, I can't find any information about Monsanto buying up seed companies. The Norwegian initiative sounds like a good idea, if only someone had done that 50 years ago.

[aprild]

A new approach to innovation used by governments is the Precautionary Principal." It calls for going slowly and carefully when implementing new ideas that are untested or have no track record. It just seems extremely logical to me to proceed with caution when making changes that are widespread and irreversible.

Monsanto is producing these GMOs in order to make money. Period. Their crops have no altruistic benefit at all. GMO corn, soybeans, et al are reconfigured in order to survive their chemical spray, Round-Up. These crop seeds are called "Round-Up Ready." That is their only benefit--the benefit that 1. the seeds (which do not reproduce, thus farmers MUST buy from the chemical company) are bought, year after year from the chemical company and 2. the farmer must buy Round-Up from the chemical company.

Are you, Paul W, working for Monsanto? Or are you just a contrarian? Also, if you are convinced that GMOs are beneficial, can you state your research and support your claims?

april

[aprild]

JWFitz,

What are you expecting on the world front? And why do you pick November as a date when we will begin to see more evidence of economic and other problems?

Please share as you seem fairly prescient. ; )

Aloha,



april

[JWFITZ]

Hi April, thanks for that. I'm hardly prescient. I just do a lot of reading and I live a lifestyle that allows me more time to do that than many and have for years. There's nothing going on today that couldn't have been researched in detail 10 years ago. In the financial realm especially it's a mark of our culture that the big players are too pathologically stupid and criminal to create profitability other than through fraud and market manipulation. Of course a small player that understands who is gaming the system and how can profit by standing knowledgeably on the sidelines. Unfortunately at this point the big players have lost control.

Actually, in deference to Rob's vision for this forum, I'd direct the conversation here, as that discussion requires topics outside of the scope of Punaweb's approved topics.

http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/forum/

And oh, standing for the grand tradition of making assertions and walking away, that I've recently embraced--and I must tell you, I ALREADY feel far more smugly entitled and complacent than I did even a week ago--anyhow.

Here's the unfounded assertion for the day.

Some seem to feel the need to be spoonfed. And not only spoonfed, but with reserving the right to reject or spit out anything that they might find bothersome. It's probably pointless to enter discussion with that sort of thinking, but whatever. Here's some help for the research impaired. Try Google. Search "Montesano" and "Lawsuit." Regardless of one's view of the science in GMO's--which in concept I personally could support--when you look at how the technology is applied by the big players, well, any sensible person would have to oppose the status quo.

And in the interest of proving that some people are actually capable of being persuaded by the evidence, let me state for the record and some may remember about this time last year I was questioning pretty hard the State GMO ban. I thought it was bad law, and bad policy, and would have advocated against the ban, and did so. Today, I no longer could support GMO research, as the application of the technology has been so irresponsible. Today, I would indeed support a wholesale ban of GMO's in Hawaii, or even GMO research in foodcrops.

Oh, the seed vault in Sagvard that some have termed the "doomsday vault" interestingly has Montasano as one of it's prime participants. Worth knowing.

[Jon]

Yep, everyone is so pathologically stupid that 30 years ago it was predicted by the smart people that the earth could not feed 7 billion people and the pathologically stupid people ignored them... we see today just how smart they were.

Again if you want to fix the food/population problem you guys should be begging Pres Obama to force all these third world counties into becoming capitalistic democracies... Only in capitalistic democracies do you get more food production with better care of the land, and zero or negative population growth.. win/win...

Of course if you wanted to fix the problems with known workable solutions you would not have hated Pres Bush so much.





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I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.
HBAT

[PaulW]

If Monsanto produces a strain that can reproduce, they're accused of "cross-contamination".
If they then change that seed to be sterile, then they're forcing farmers to buy new seed
every year. They can't win.

"Are you, Paul W, working for Monsanto? Or are you just a contrarian?"
There's no other possibility? If someone doesn't think Monsanto is evil then they
must be working for them?

"new ideas that are untested or have no track record"
They are tested and they do have a track record.

"Monsanto is producing these GMOs in order to make money. Period."
I agree. That's what companies do. That's how progress is achieved.

"can you state your research and support your claims?"
See the wikipedia article I referred to, above.

Now, if you have any proof (reliable sources only, please) that GMO is
harmful, then I'd like to see that. As far as I know it has not harmed
a single person on the face of this planet. As I see it, GMO provides
a choice for farmers to grow crops for a lower cost due to resistance
to cold, bugs, pesticides etc. As such it is beneficial, not harmful.
But maybe I'm wrong, maybe Monsanto really does want to enslave us all.
Let's see the evidence.

[JWFITZ]

Jon, you're missing the point. The whole idea of the "unsupported ignorant assertion" dialectic is that I completely get to completely ignore any responses to my positions. No point in even typing.

[Jon]

Well, then you can ignore all my posts... as being just a computer geek and not a PHd, anything I could add to the discussion is just an "unsupported ignorant assertion"... [] just like the other 7 billion of us.

-----------------------------------------------------------
I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.
HBAT

[JWFITZ]

As for Paul, perhaps you can form an intelligent opinion on your own time, and on your own efforts. It's possible.