From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
To: Market Farming <marketfarming@lists.ibiblio.org>, permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group <SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU>
Subject: [permaculture] The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 20:53:21 -0500
The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?
* By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Jan 27, 2011
Straight to the Source
"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other
GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must." - Whole Foods Market,
Jan. 21, 2011
In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically
Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic
farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing
betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by
Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided
it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies
have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass
commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup
Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for
"coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.
In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its
customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support
for organics and "seed purity," gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats
to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's genetically
engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. Beyond the regulatory
euphemism of "conditional deregulation," this means that WFM and their
colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a
chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to
spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to
contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to
massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil
food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce
Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly
herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa
across the U.S.
In exchange for allowing Monsanto's premeditated pollution of the
alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants "compensation." In exchange for a new
assault on farmworkers and rural communities (a recent large-scale
Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers' and
rural residents' risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech
USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto. In payment
for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil's crucial ability to provide
nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous greenhouse gases
(recent studies show that Roundup devastates essential soil
microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and sequester
climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the Biotech Bully of
St. Louis to agree to pay "compensation" (i.e. hush money) to farmers
"for any losses related to the contamination of his crop."