Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Desert Eagle" <jimi@hdc-nm.com>]

FYI Looks like they're "picking up the pace" to destroy mankind...

You, or someone you know, may be interested in this subject that (in 
reality) affects us all.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Raids-on-Seeds-life-itsel-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-081215-45.html

Headlined on 12/15/08:
Raids on Seeds (LIFE, itself) ... by Monsanto
by Linn Cohen-Cole Page 1 of 1 page(s)
www.opednews. com

MONSANTO'S DESTRUCTION OF SEED CLEANERS AND THE IMMENSE THREAT TO HUMAN 
ACCESS TO SEEDS

I have been reporting on the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's raids 
on Mennonite dairy farmers, on the recent Ohio Department of Agriculture 
SWAT team raid on an organic coop, on the USDA's terrible weapon against all 
farmers with animals (NAIS - the National Animal Identification System) - 
trying to give an idea of the destructive forces being used intentionally 
against non-corporate farming.

But unless one sees what is happening to seeds themselves, one misses the 
scope of things.

Life itself depends on seeds.

Multinational biotech corporations such as Monsanto have been genetically 
engineering them, promoting GE-seeds as producing better yields, helping the 
starving of the world, using less pesticides and as a boon to small farmers.

Independent studies already show crop failures

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July06/Bt.cotton.China.ssl.htmland

and a link between GE-crops and organ damage and various diseases

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=LEN20080222&articleId=8148

and it's clear they are designed to require petroleum-based pesticides and 
the use of pesticides has gone up with their use.

http://www.pan-international.org/panint/files/WG2%20Genetic%20Engineering%20and%20Pesticides.pdf

But even if the GE-seeds were wonderful and all that was promised, the real 
problem with them are the patents they come with. The biotech companies are 
monopolizing seeds themselves, actually privatizing the DNA of life. They 
sell the GE-seeds at many times the price of normal seeds. In India, where 
Bt-cotton farmers have been committing suicide in huge numbers because of 
debt, Monsanto sells Bt-cotton seed at 1000% higher than normal seeds. 
http://www.dailymai l.co.uk/news/ worldnews/ article-1082559/ 
The-GM-genocide- Thousands- Indian-farmers- committing- suicide-using- 
genetically- modified- crops.html.

And the seeds come with a contract that must be signed, preventing farmers 
from collecting seeds off their own land at the end of the season - an 
historic rupture of humankind's free access to natural growth. For it is 
important to notice that the biotech multinationals are not just claiming a 
patent on their process of altering the seeds but claim to own growth 
itself.

As astounding a move as that is on human resources of survival, they are 
doing more. They are removing actively and aggressively and thoroughly 
removing access to normal "open pollinated" seeds, the ones we have known 
since the beginning of time, that farmers have collected and saved and 
shared among each other.

In the Midwest, where Monsanto sells GE-corn and GE-soy and now owns most of 
it, it also bought up the "normal seed" companies so farmers no longer have 
places to go for normal corn or soy. And though GE-corn cross pollinates 
over miles and miles with normal corn so maintaining organic corn is nearly 
impossible now, if its GE-crop is found on a farmer's land, Monsanto sues. 
It's a rare farmer who can stand up them, even if the farmer has done 
nothing wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser

Having bought up the normal seed companies, having locked farmers in the 
Midwest (only an example, it is true worldwide) into patent contracts that 
remove their right to collect seeds anymore, having set loose a 
biotechnology that contaminates normal seeds of farmers who do not buy into 
the patented seeds, having made plain it will sue if even a volunteer plant 
comes up, Monsanto is now working to eliminate the last man standing between 
humans and corporate privatized seeds - the seed cleaner.

The farmers has had three choices - to buy normal seed (now almost gone), to 
buy GE-seeds at huge cost (and going up

http://www.opednews.com/articles/During-a-world-food-crisis-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-080723-548.html)

or to collect their own seeds and use them the next season. If a farmer has 
even 10 acres, collecting and cleaning those seeds is a huge task. If he has 
1000, it would be an impossible task without the seed cleaner whose 
equipment can separate out seed in just a few hours and whose costs are 1/3 
that of buying normal seed.

Thus, the move to eliminate seed cleaners.

The seed cleaner is the man who makes sustainable agriculture possible.


So, Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners now across the Midwest, in 
Missouri,

http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/2008-07-11/Monsanto_patent_fight_ensnares_Missouri_farm_town/

in Indiana,

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/eveningnews/main4048288.shtml

and now in Illinois where they are going after Steve Hixon.

Shortly after someone broke into Mr. Hixon's office and he found his account 
book on his truck seat where he would never have left it, evey one of his 
remotely located and very scattered customers had three men (described as 
goons with "no necks") arrived at each farm, going out onto it without 
permission, and serving close to 200 farmers. Mr. Hixon and state police who 
were called in, believe a GPS tracking device may have been put on Mr. 
Hixon's equipment. All of his customers being sued and are being intensely 
pressured to settle, with the men coming back again and again and with daily 
calls and letters. It appears they are being a choice between being sued or 
settling out of court or testifying against him that he encouraged them to 
clean GE-seeds.
Monsanto has made a fortune on those kinds of Mafia extortion settlements 
since no one has the money to stand up to them and paying them off some huge 
amount even if the farmer has done nothing, saves them from legal costs they 
can't possibly manage and then a potentially worse fate as one little local 
lawyer goes up against not one but multiple legal teams working for Monsanto 
and present in court.

The first words out of the judge's mouth when Moe Parr, a seed cleaner in 
Indiana was sued, were "It's a honor to have a fine company like Monsanto in 
my courtroom."

In addition to the personal attacks on seed cleaners, Monsanto is getting 
laws put into place that themselves are overwhelming and destructive of seed 
cleaners and all those who save normal seeds.
http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/news/10040.htm
If Monsanto can eliminate seed cleaners, they would have accomplished a 
TOTAL monopoly in the Midwest, the bread basket of the world, and they would 
control world food, feed and now bio-fuel prices at will. They would, as 
well, have broken the fragile dam that seed cleaners and seed bankers now 
provide against the insanely-fast and just plain insane on-coming tide 
genetic engineering.
And Monsanto is working closely with the FDA in redefining seeds as a 
potential health hazard, subject to bioterrorism, and under that rubric to 
create rules for importation (controlling access)
Interim final rules on Prior Notice of Importation
rules for registering acceptable facilities (setting up corporate standards 
for the storage seeds, threatening small farmers)

Interim final rules on Registration of Food Facilities
rules for talking police control of the seeds (allowing for raids on 
farmers)

Final rules on Administrative Detention
and rules for a level of record keeping almost impossible for small farmers 
and ordinary people to achieve.

Upcoming final rule on Establishment and Maintenance of Records.

"These new rules will allow FDA to better identify potentially dangerous 
foods, as well as respond more quickly to new threats and to handle 
foodborne illness outbreaks more efficiently."
Using the Bioterrorism Act and the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN), 
the FDA now has a focus on seeds which includes

Prevention (federal and state surveillance sampling programs to monitor the 
food supply)
Preparedness (strengthen laboratory capacity and capabilities)
Response (surge capacity to handle terrorist attacks or a national emergency 
involving the food supply), and
Recovery (support recalls, seizures, and disposal of contaminated food or 
feed to restore confidence in the food supply).
For those of you painfully familiar with what is happening to real milk 
dairy farmers and the government use of false "contamination" reports to 
raid farms, steal products ad equipment and terrorize and destroy farmers, 
it will be important to see how "bioterrorism" has now moved control over 
normal food even more tightly into the hands of government/corporat e 
agencies, giving them national reach, crushing regulations for farmers, 
immense policing power over food, and the use of an emergency to be able to 
seize and destroy anything they choose.

At the level of seeds, it is important note that Monsanto is promoting every 
part of this.

http://www.fda.gov/oc/speeches/2004/asta0629.html

The laboratories that FERN uses represent the FDA, FSIS, the Environmental 
Protection Agency, the Department of Defense, Bureau of Customs and Border 
Protection, the Agricultural Marketing Service, the Animal and Plant Health 
Inspection Service, and the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Agency. 
Other federal members of the FERN include the Agricultural Research Service, 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland 
Security, the Laboratory Response Network (LRN) and the National Animal 
Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN).

The FDA talks about "a safety net" for human health but it is one defined by 
corporation and one that is closing on small farmers' existence.
And even the FDA's basic food safety is being "set" in a way aimed to 
destroy seed cleaners and (if you will notice in the short list below) 
organic farming itself.
FDA's guidance on good agricultural practices (GAPs) can be found in the
FDA Guide to Minimize Microbial Hazards for Fresh Fruit and Vegetables
where the key sources of contamination in seed production include:


Agricultural water sources
Use of manure as fertilizer
Harvesting, transportation, and seed-cleaning equipment
Seed storage facilities

Please note the FDA does not include Monsanto's petroleum-based fertlizers 
or pesticides, or GE-labs, as potential sources of contamination.

In addition to buying on seed companies, suing farmers, eliminating seed 
cleaners, putting laws against seed cleaning and saving into place, 
influencing the FDA and Homeland Security regulations on seeds that set 
farmers up to lose theirs in "food safety" or "bioterrorism" raids, a law in 
Canada pushed by the FDA, USDA and the WTO (all heavily involved with 
Monsanto) would criminalize all natural substances. Thought it initially 
seems to be "only" an attack by the pharmaceutical industry on all natural 
health substances, it would include seeds and seed banking. And it would 
become law in the US - and without any ability to vote against it - if the 
North American Union is passed.

articles.mercola. com/.../archive/ 2008/06/ 19/vitamin-c- about-to- 
be-made-illegal- in-canada. aspx?source= nl

We need to understand that the effort to defend Steve Hixon, a seed cleaner, 
is an effort to defend the right of all of us and of our farmers worldwide 
to OPEN access to normal seeds. We must protect those who collect and clean 
them and we must roll back the massive corporate efforts to utterly control 
them - by criminalizing any aspect of owning, growing, collecting, storing 
and re-using of them.

Seeds are life and survival itself and our human right to access to them is 
being taken over. That is why people are coming together now to help defend 
Steve Hixon, a seed cleaner.

For those interested in joining FarmOn, a list aimed at providing funds to 
support the legal teams gathering to help Hixon, go to farmon@googlegroups 
.com and request to sign on.
-- 
Remember this statement:
"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people 
fear the government [or the IRS, for that matter], you have Tyranny."
(Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence of the United 
States)
Thanks,
Mike Golden