In a book, entitled ‘Food, Inc., Mendel to Monsanto — The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest’, Peter Pringle published in 2003 his thoughts and research on the food industry and the growing reticence of consumers who had an inkling to project their own opinions on the matter of food, health, biotechnology, and also Monsanto’s monopoly of seeds, across the globe. Needless to say, a lot’s happened since Pringle wrote the book.

In fact, the rate of suicide amongst cotton farmers in India has greatly and grossly exploded into a yearly epidemic, leaving families without their breadwinners — men who were leased into deals with Monsanto seeds, unknowingly left to suffer the consequences of a trait they didn’t know how to correctly divulge and irrigate. In other words, they were screwed into thinking that Monsanto’s Bt cotton seed was the answer to their prayers to relieve themselves from poverty as a cotton farmer.

Of course, that wasn’t true. At least not from the perspective of the populations in India, where suicide amongst farmers is at a rate of nearly 15,000 per year, over the course of the last 20.

A story from Russia Today (“India GMO Cotton Suicides“):

“‘Nationally, in the last 20 years 290,000 farmers have committed suicide – this as per national crimes bureau records,’ agricultural scientist Dr. G. V. Ramanjaneyulu of the Center For Sustainable Agriculture told a team from RT’s documentary channel RTD, which traveled to India to learn about the issue.

“A number of the widows and family members of Indian farmers with whom the journalists have spoken have the same story to share: in order to cultivate the genetically modified cotton, known as Bt cotton, produced by American agricultural biotech giant Monsanto, farmers put themselves into huge debt. However, when the crops did not pay off, they turned to pesticides to solve the problem – by drinking the poison to kill themselves.”

When I first heard this story, as I was watching the RT channel back at the apartment where we don’t have cable, just whatever signals come from over the air, I sat watching the report and immediately reminded myself of the times I’d thought the same thing. Well, I’ve got all this debt, I’d told myself, just from traveling and/or trying to live. Working these jobs — sometimes two or three at a time — never really getting anywhere … never really moving forward … still working hard …

Maybe I’ll just sleep on the factory floor? I thought.

Lucky I had the sense to always repudiate these symptoms of distress and take to the road, finding a new way, expelling the ghosts of my own mind and creations. Still, I’d been given a bad taste in my mouth from having to earn my living which was really slowly killing me.

To know that this same thing is happening in distant lands, which Americans so commonly refer to as in the “Third World.” Well, where do we stand on this issue? Are we really that much different than those in India?

The farmers in this country got really wracked and pillaged by the same kind of corporate monolithic behavior that scams. (See: John Corzine.)

Now, I’ll get to Monsanto. I told myself I’d be writing up a report on the recent worldwide protest marches (in over 400 cities in 38 countries). For now, it’s India and Monsanto monopoly of “suicide seeds.”

WHEN DID GMOs BECOME MAINSTREAM?

According to Mr. Pringle:

“A decade ago, Americans took their first bite out of a transgenic food. Scientists had found the ripening agent in a tomato that makes the fleshy part go soft, so they flipped the gene upside down and backwards, as they put it. The modified tomato then had an extra few days before it started to rot in the normal fashion. The clever idea was to everyone’s benefit.”

Everyone, as in everyone but the personae actually eating the food. Well, we’re not there quiet just yet …

“At the time, farmers were picking tomatoes from the vine when they were green and turning them pink artificially with a whiff of ethylene gas. This crude technique allowed the tomato to be picked unripe by machines and travel longer distances, thus making more money for farmers, food carriers, and supermarkets.”

Bingo.

“Consumers were the only losers. The gassed tomato was hard and tasteless. By contrast, the new gene-altered tomato turned red on the vine without going soft, and the farmer had time to pick his crop by machine and get a handsome tomato to market. The new sort of tomato also had a sporting chance of tasting like the garden varieties of yesteryear.”

Wait. What? GMOs started out as totally harmless and with no intention of bulging into a giant super-strain market of monopoly and corporate control?

“Today [2003] plant breeders are still tinkering with tomato genes, but the real push in plant genetics has not been for the benefit of the average consumer’s taste buds or nutrition. Instead, biotech companies have concentrated on altering genes in simple staple crops like corn, potatoes, and soybeans to give them new defenses against pests and allow them to survive being doused by stronger herbicides. These changes have benefited the seed company, the chemical company (often now the same outfit), the farmer, and the food processor.”

Which, of course, has led to total insanity across the globe, as our food supply is wagered, lobbied and compliant with the rules and laws of a system that has been bought out by giant corporations, one of them being Monsanto, making limp and tasteless federal regulators, soft and cushy as their relationships might become with their corporate benefactors.

No wonder I could relate to those Indian farmers committing suicide by drinking their own pesticides, after realizing they’d been scammed into being debt-slaves. Although I hadn’t wanted to drink pesticides — it was anti-freeze.

But I’m glad I didn’t. All those times, back and forth, and upside down, as they say. Some of us keep fighting. While others head out to the fields with a bottle of pesticides, thinking: well, I don’t see any other way out.

SUICIDE ENDEMIC OF COTTON FARMERS IN INDIA UNDER MONSTANTO’S CORPORATE CONTROL

Monsanto is seeking to control the food supply, wherever it’s not banned to sink it’s teeth into the soils of the earth. Like the banking conglomerates who don’t have a side (or a soul), Monsanto is just another monopoly who is “too big to fail.” Whatever that means.

Breaking it down, we realize that honest people have to suffer under the scallywag scam of convincing Indian farmers that their product will offer them Valhalla. It isn’t true, of course. It’s just that Monsanto wants to dominate the market. One market, in India, being the trade of cotton. There is no ban on Monsanto’s GMOs, and thus, the monster seeks out its bloodlust.

“It was the third year in a row his crops had failed – first due to a year of drought and then two years of untimely rain…” says a recent story out of the BBC about the subject.

“And with debts of $35,000 (£22,600) – money borrowed for his farm and to pay for his daughter’s wedding – Mr Panchlenvar has no idea how he will get back on his feet.

“Now he picks the little cotton that wasn’t ravaged by weather, desperately hoping the authorities can support farmers like him.”

[…]

“Unseasonal [sic] rainfall and hailstorms in many parts of India in recent weeks have destroyed crops, putting further strain on impoverished farmers and driving many of them to kill themselves.

“In the first four months of this year alone, 257 farmers in Maharashtra [a state in the western region of India with over 110 million inhabitants] have taken their own lives, according to the state government.”

[…]

“…Ramesh Ghodam killed himself two months ago because he was overcome by worries about money … He had racked up debts of about $3,000. And his crop too, had failed.

“Now Mrs Ghodam says she is surviving by taking casual work on other farms when she can find it.

“‘There is nothing left in my life. The crops are destroyed on the farm, it is all empty land and I can’t sow new seeds this season. There’s hardly any food at home to cook. I am left alone with my daughter and son.’

“Mrs Ghodam’s home is dark. She could not pay electricity bills for the last two months and the power has been cut off. And there is no money left for her 20-year-old daughter’s wedding.”

This is not a problem that is localized in India, either. In fact, these symptoms are rampant worldwide. Just as in Detroit, where water shut-offs have plagued the city beleaguered by debts and little prospects. What theBBC story fails to mention is the collusion between banks and giant corporations who see this sort of agricultural downfall as a business venture to swoop in, like loan sharks (as even in Detroit and elsewhere), binding farmers to their debts while the particular corporate seed sows suicide as a consolation from being an indentured slave to “profit and progress.”

While Monsanto’s stock bulges and buckles at the domination of this marketplace and the response of the populations the company affects, farmers are scourged of their lands. And if they cannot pay their debts — as is, and has been, commonplace — the land will most likely be given up to their corporate/banker overloads, awaiting more pillage of the food supply, and everything else along with it.

“Back in Mr Panchlenvar’s village, a group of farmers discuss the future. Cotton is the main crop here but because global prices have slumped and demand from China is plunging, the prospects are bleak.

“They have little choice but to accept prices offered by the government and mill owners. One farmer in the group, Bhaskar Deovalvar explains that the entire village relies on farming. Most are in debt to local money lenders who charge interest rates of 25%.

“His hopes now lie in his younger son who is studying science in a college about 20km away. Mr Deovalvar prays he’ll get a job in the city after graduating.

“‘There is no future in farming, it is a lot of investment but no returns,’ he says.”

Sadly, there is a future in investing in the badlands of wreaking further havoc on localized economies by turning their insolvent dissolution into corporate-fueled profit. With little rain and no prospects — banks and corporations take over. That is the end result.

The question, though, is who or what made the problem so bad in the first place?

“With no productivity from the farms and constant pressure from banks and money lenders there is no option left for farmers but to kill themselves.”

Could it be the pressure of the days? Drink up, baby. Forget all about it.

“Monsanto’s GMO crops were supposed to feed the world hunger and starvation but instead the diverse sustainable organic agriculture was replaced with globalization, GMO crops and monopoly…” says a story from a Seattle Organic Restaurants website.

“According to a report by Daily Mail, every 30 minutes an Indian farmer commits suicide as a result of Monsanto’s GMO crops. In the last decade, more than 250,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves because of Monsanto’s costly seeds and pesticides. Globalization and monopoly have forced farmers to buy GMO seeds and since GMO crops have become pest resistant, the farmers have no choice but to purchase Monsanto’s popular herbicide.

“In 2008, the Daily Mail called the continuous suicide of Indian farmers a ‘genocide’ in the human history. What’s really disturbing is that often time farmers commit suicide by drinking the insecticide shipped to them by Monsanto.”

Wait. Don’t drink that.

[…]

“The high cost of GMO seeds, extensive use of herbicides and great reduction in crop value have often times left farmers bankrupt and as a result many farmers are falling into the endless cycle of debt, depression, hopelessness and despair and they have no choice but to ends their lives. The figures provided by NY University School of Law show that just in 2009 alone, 17,638 of farmers committed suicide.”

Think of GMO seeds as currency. And this startling trend becomes just as effectually unsound as ingratiating the world at large with unending debt and death and an intolerable disregard for human life. Enter a giant monopoly like Monsanto.

“Monsanto’s domination is threatening sustainable organic agriculture and the livelihood of Indian farmers and health of all of us as consumers. Thanks to biotech companies, what was once a sustainable diverse way of agriculture is now replaced with unsustainable globalized agribusiness in the hands of few people consumed by greed and power. We as consumers cannot even choose to boycott GMOs since biotech companies like DuPont and Monsanto give millions of dollars to lobbyists to bribe politicians in order to aggressively pursue their anti-GMO labeling policies.”

One note about lobbying. Remember? When the highest court of this country allotted corporations to give as much money to politicians as they saw fit. That’s the Supreme Court, allowing for the flow of blood and money to intermix and become a concoction of corrosive American ballast. Corporate control isn’t just influencing policy-decisions of Third World countries anymore. It’s affecting each and every one of us, right here at home.

“Every year, DuPont pays millions of dollars to food lobbyists to buy politicians and members of congress. Last year DuPont spent about $4.8 million for lobbying. In fact, most of the food lobbyists who aggressively pursue the policies of DuPont & Monsanto have worked or are working for the government. In [the] 2008 presidential campaign Obama mentioned that the department of agriculture wasn’t the department of agribusiness and he promised to put people’s need ahead of politics. However after his election, he appointed officials in charge of USDA or FDA that have been defending, lobbying or working for biotech companies like Monsanto and DuPont. Here are the lists of these individuals:

Michael Taylor: Former VP in Monsanto who is now FDA deputy food commissioner.

Tom Vilsack: Former pro-biotechnology governor of Iowa that was assigned as USDA secretary.

Roger Beachy: Former director of Monsanto who is now director of USDA.

Elena Kagan: Took Monsanto’s side against organic farmers in Roundup Ready Alfalfa case and is now nominated to Supreme Court.

Rajiv Shah: Former director of pro-biotech Gates Foundation who served as USDA secretary.

Linda Strachan: Monsanto’s and DuPont’s representative who is assistant secretary for U.S. Department of Agriculture and EPA.

Islam Siddiqui: Former DuPont and Monsanto VP who is now the representative of agriculture negotiator for US trade.

Ramona Romero: Corporat Counsel to DuPont that now is nominated as General Counsel for USDA. In 2002 based on the Institute of Political Economy Research DuPont was marked the number one among 100 of contributors to air pollution in the US.

There you have it. Certain policies of the American government in collusion with corporate dollars are responsible for the death of economies. What is a bad taste in our mouths becomes a big fat loan for somebody else to get buried under. Or for somebody to get rich. Really rich.

In India as well as in America.

What about in your neck of the woods?

Image Sourced: Farmer in India