Saturday, June 21, 2008

Seeds of Destruction

"Pause to think: a normal healthy person can at the most go without food for perhaps seven days but it takes a full season, say around four months, for a seed to grow into food crop. Just five agri-biz corporations, all US based (Cargill, Bunge, Archer Daniels, et al), control global grain trade, and just five control global trade in seeds. Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, and Dow Chemicals control genetically engineered seeds. While these powerful oligopolies were being knocked into place, anti-trust laws were diluted to exempt these firms. Engdahl writes, “It was not surprising that the Pentagon’s National Defense University, on the eve of the 2003 Iraq War, issued a paper declaring: ‘Agribiz is to the United States what oil is to the Middle East.’ Agribusiness had become a strategic weapon in the arsenal of the world’s only superpower.”"

A review of
“Seeds of Destruction” By F William Engdahl.

1 comment:

Leila Abu-Saba said...

Meanwhile there's Seed Savers Exchange:

http://www.seedsavers.org/

The sustainable/climate change/peak oil/environmentalist activists all urge us to save organic seeds. Sharon Astyk has written about the issues of not enough seeds for the gardens we'll need to plant in our property given the various crises on our doorsteps.

Save your seeds! We know Rami does this.