Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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http://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/article/2008/03/12/l-univers-monstrueux-de-monsanto-par-dominique-dhombres_1022016_3232.html

    The Monstrous Monsanto Universe
    By Dominique Dhombres
    Le Monde

    Wednesday 12 March 2008

    The charge sheet is horrifying, inexorable and convincing. The 
multinational firm Monsanto, which sells 90 percent of genetically modified 
organisms (GMO), massively lies to many people and even the whole planet with 
great success - the power that money and the - apparently unlimited - support 
of the United States government bestows. You already know all that if you 
watched Marie-Monique Robin's extraordinary documentary, "Le Monde selon 
Monsanto" ["The World According to Monsanto"], March 11 on the Arte channel.

    The case is conducted as a personal investigation, and the director has 
herself filmed as she plays her computer keys to research, most often through 
Google, the information accessible to everyone, as long as one is willing to 
try to separate the wheat from the chaff in the mass of available documents. 
And there's an abundance of chaff, given how the company has proliferated 
effective advertising (intended for farmers in every country and in every 
language) and dubious scientific studies over the years. "On its Internet 
site, Monsanto presents itself as an agricultural company the mission of 
which is to help small farmers produce healthier food, while reducing 
agriculture's impact on the environment," the director explains. Neither 
assertion is true. Some of these foodstuffs are dangerous and their effect on 
nature is catastrophic in the long term. Founded in 1901 in Saint Louis 
(Missouri), the firm is a dangerous recidivist. It began as an industrial 
company manufacturing chemical products.

    It has, notably, concocted impressive quantities of dioxin, the 
hyper-concentrated poison contained in the Agent Orange American airplanes 
dispersed over forests to destroy vegetation during the Vietnam War. Its 
consequences are still being felt today, with the births of deformed children 
and after-effects on a goodly number of American war veterans exposed to this 
frightening product. Is that nightmare in the process of resuming under a new 
form right under our eyes? There's this hormone injected into milk cows to 
increase their yield that invariably transforms them into Frankenstein 
animals.

    We are now very familiar with - because José Bové has so often 
"prematurely" reaped it - the surprising corn that yields a bigger ear than 
the others. At the moment, no one knows whether it also has death-dealing 
properties. But we are certain that it is in the process of eliminating, 
little by little, all other corn species, even from the plant's original 
birthplace, Mexico.

    Obviously, we should have liked to have Monsanto's response to these 
accusations. The firm declined that offer. That's too bad.