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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permagriculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permagriculture] Plant list for the tropics + comment on gmo
  • Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2015 12:39:58 -0400

Here is another perspective.

On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 12:02 PM, Georg Parlow <g.parlow@gmx.at> wrote:

>
> > "Nature has never put genes of bacteria, fish, animals, etc into plants.
>
> This statement is simply not true.
>
> Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to advocate genetic modification by
> humans, I do not think artificial GMOs are a good idea, the contrary. But
> nontheless have I been gathering (from Lynn Margulis "Evolution"), that
> cross-species and even cross-kingdom gene migration is actually quite
> common. I even recall having read (do not remember sources, but it was more
> than once), that even the human genome contains quite a big percentage of
> bacterial genes.
>
> You scientists on the list, please correct me or help me out!
>

From:
gail raby amberflame@comcast.net [pfaf] pfaf@yahoogroups.com

The natural ancestors of our fruit and veggie plants are so
much different from our modern day vegetables. Sometimes
a cross between related species occurs naturally and sometimes
by the hand of man. Squash to squash hybrids, by fertilization by bees,
are so easy & common that gardeners who save seeds are warned to keep them
separated
so that crosses will not occur. Bees are the primary pollinators in nature
but
other insects (and for some plants, even bats) are pollinators.

Every once in a blue moon, there is a made in nature cross made at the
genus level
level but primarily it happens at the species level. Thats it, nature does
not do any gene mixes at higher levels (see taxonomy chart) or between
Kingdoms.

Taxonomic Hierarchy
Kingdom:Plantae <http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Plant>
Division:Magnoliophyta
Class:Magnoliopsida
Order:Cucurbitales
Family:Cucurbitaceae
Genus:Cucurbita
Species:*C. maxima* - hubbard squash, buttercup squash

*C. mixta* - cushaw squash
*C. moschata* - butternut squash
*C. pepo* - most pumpkins, acorn squash,
summer squash, zucchini
Not Shown on this chart are cultivars. Cultivars are named, cultivated
varieties of a species,
such as Big Boy Tomatoes, Brandy Wine tomatoes, Early Girl Tomatoes. Or
dozens and
dozens of other named tomatoes you can buy at any nursery. And same with
zuchinni,
or eggplants (etc. etc.)

But this is not what is the modern day practice
of genetic modification as done by the biotech companys.

What Nature or man does with pollen which is spread by wind, or
pollinators,
.........thats called fertilization if from one cultivar to another which
results
in a slightly or very different cultivar, its called hybridization. Flowers
are the
sex organs of plants. You take the
pollen (from the Tmale organ) of one plant that is compatible with another
and dust the
stigma (female organ) of another plant. Some hybridizers specialize in
certain flowers or
veggies, looking for some unique trait or quality to be passed on to the
offspring (babies, new
generation of plants through seeds). This is what seed growers do for the
seed market.
they do it each year, the seeds are call F-1 meaning first generation. You
can't count on those
seeds giving you the same thing as the parent plant had....they don't often
"come true".

Old timey farmers used to note that when they sewed seeds, sometimes one
plant's fruit /veggie would be more resistant to pests or more
flavorable. They would save seeds from this plant and sew the next year,
each year selecting out the best over many generations until
the new fruit/veggie genetic sturcture was pretty much stabelized. If old
enough, these stable
hybrids that come true are called heirlooms. Newer ones are called open
pollinated.

Now what the bio tech companies are doing is radically different. They
bypass the reproductive system of the plant and go straight to the cell
level using various bacterial or viral carriers or using gene guns to
blast material into the cells, or use other ways of cutting cells open to
insert foriegn genetic material. And they will insert just about anything
into anything. Spider genes into goats, human genes
into mice, fish genes into tomatoes, BT a toxic to worms bacteria into
corn.

They once told us that this insertion only affected one
gene - but that is not true. They don't know what this sort of mixing of
plant genetics at all taxonomic levels of plants or using genes from
different kingdoms will result in. New unknown plant proteins, allergens,
unsaught after toxins all can occur. Its a game of russian roulette.

And -- its evil in my opinion. Partly because by making some plants
manufacture posion,
in every cell, we now have posion food. I know not to eat a posion
mushroom, if I don't know
its GMO I can't choose not to eat it -- and unlike the immediate damage
from a posion mushroom, the affects of GMO are more subtle, less obvious,
and over time result in damage to varous body parts or organs or compromise
various metabolic processes.

Because these biotech companies then patent and own the new
plants, and cannot be sued when pollen from their patented plant fertilizes
your plants and ruins your organic status or makes you conventional crop
bear GMO seeds, your screwed.

But they sure can sue
you for patent infringement if that does happen. Seed saving from season to
season has always been the right of farmers but now thats a risky process.


No one should own life or life processes (in my opinion) but the courts
don't agree. Once biotech companies
GMO engineer a plant, they own the new plant and all the seeds it produces.
Farmers of GMO products must buy new seeds every year, the GMO contract
they sign specifies they may not save the seeds.

I read the article posted -- it stated: " *Agrobacterium *is ubiquitous in
soils all around the world — and infects more than 140 plants species. So
it doesn't take much imagination to see how the bacteria's DNA could
eventually find its way into our food." Speculation. Where is the proof
that this happens, or if it happens how it happens and where it can and
cannot happen. And if it does happen and is rare, then we have NOT been
eating genetically modified food for hundreds of years. And he did not say
those super huge potatoes had
been created by agrobacterium in nature --- it could have been a natural
hybridization by
way of pollen exchange.

The whole article had the feel of a cheerleader cheering on the home team
but not understanding much about how to play football. Or maybe he was just
a corporate shill.

Monsanto, the first company to use GMO, stated that it wanted to GMO all
commercial crops.
That means it would own the food supply.

They and other biotech seed companies have bought up a major percent of
small independent seed houses and retired many conventional seed lines
making it difficult for the farmer to get enough of them to grow a crop.
You and I may plant a patch of beans but farmers need enough seed to cover
multiple acres.

A Rothchild, a major player in the controlled money market - the federal
reserve (has no reserve and is not a federal agency) once said: "Give me
control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" —

*Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild Big Money rules the fate of nations*
Henry Kissinger said “if you want to control the people, you control the
food.” Vandana Shiva <http://www.navdanya.org/> said “if you want to
control the food, you control the seed.”

That is what genetic modification by biotech is all about. Not feeding the
world, but control of the market place. By law, corporations have one
feduciary responsibility and thats to make money for the stockholders.

They have lied about the productivity
and viability of their plants, bribed and/or colluded with government
regulatory officials to get their product in various countries against the
will of the people (eaters) and farmers (growers). They told us genetic
material in bacteria they use would not pass into our gut
bacteria -- wrong, it does. So how do you like the idea of your probiotic
good guy gut flora making BT for you. Even the EPA now classifies BT corn
as a pesticide. Pollen has jumped from veggie crops to related weeds and
now we have round up ready super weeds infesting
farmer land. And on and on --

Mother nature knows what she is doing; these
profit driven biotech companies either don't know the ramifications of
their work or don't care.

Hybridization whether by the hand of man or by Nature's pollinators is not
the same as
genetic modification. They (the GMO promotors) are trying to confuse the
issue in the
mind of the masses to make their patented plants seem natural, normal, and
safe

g



--
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/




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