Counter-productive technologies now in the pipeline are taking to higher levels the bizarre goal of attacking natural abundance to create artifical scarcity.
The precursor of these technologies is the “Terminator Technology”, which genetically modifies plants to make their seeds sterile, ending the 350-million-year-old process of reproduction through seeds. Truly, it is the “death of birth.”13 U.S. patents have been granted, though commercial application seemed a long way off. The real question is: will farmers use them? The idea was so outrageous that its promoters backtracked for a while, trying to find a spin that would make their idea more publicly palatable.
They soon found one. Engineered seeds led to a seemingly intractable problem: genetic contamination. Engineered soya and canola, which survived despite herbicide applications, were showing up in places where they were neither expected nor wanted - in farms which had used no engineered seeds, especially organic farms where strict safety standards prohibited such seeds. So Monsanto sued. The farmers insisted that they had used no engineered varieties. Yes, some plants in their farm tested positive for Monsanto's patented genes. Many farmers, intimidated by Monsanto's legal and financial muscle, paid the fines and suffered the conseqences such as losing their organic certification. However, one celebrated case that dragged on for years, Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser stood his ground and fought the legal battle to the end. The Canadian Supreme Court issued an ambiguous decision which each side interpreted as its victory.14
Terminator Technology promoters now say that their technology can prevent genetic contamination from engineered crops, by further modifying these crops to produce sterile seeds.
New ideas in the pipeline fine-tune the concept further to allow finer-grained control of sterility. Known as genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs), these will enable the seed companies to control seed sterility in the field through external triggers like a chemical (presumably patented too). By spraying this chemical on a GURT-modified plant, the plant can be induced to turn its sterility (or fertility) on or off - scarcity and abundance marketed under full corporate control. A similar technology can also be used for turning genetically-engineered traits themselves on or off.
The common thread in these developments is the counter-productive corporate bid to control abundance in agriculture and create artificial scarcity. This opens a market for substitute products and leads to a supply system completely under corporate control through various technological and legal mechanisms.15
The use of hybrids and genetic engineering have been justified in the interest of “feeding the world”. Yet, a U.S. Department of Agriculture study in 2006 found that 10% of U.S. adults and 17% of children went occasionally hungry for lack of food.16 If they cannot even sufficiently feed all Americans, how can they feed the world?
Post new comment