Well done El Salvador for standing up against Monsanto!
By
Christina Sarich via Natural Society
Farmers from El Salvador make many US biotech farming practices look
like the work of a bunch of crazed lunatics. At least in El Salvador
they realize the importance of non-GM food and heritage seed saving.
After outperforming Monsanto’s biotech seed with record crop yields, they have also now managed a giant defeat of Monsanto by preventing the company from supplying El Salvador with its poison seeds.
Monsanto’s biotech crops have been linked with kidney disease, liver
failure, reproductive problems, and more. Most recently, the
WHO called glyphosate, the main chemical ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Round Up, ‘probably carcinogenic.’
The El Salvador farmer resistance is great news considering the
monopoly that Monsanto and other biotech companies have managed to hold
over much of the rest of the world.
Monsanto will deny having sway over the government, including federal judges in the US – but they actually do. Though they don’t have control
everywhere. El Salvador farmers are working with the Minister of Agriculture there to lessen local farmers’ dependency on biotech seeds.
Juan Luna Vides, the director of diversified production for the
Mangrove Association,
a nongovernmental organization that was created to support a grassroots
social movement for environmental conservation in El Salvador,
says:
“Remember that Monsanto is together with DuPont,
Pioneer, all the large businesses that control the world’s seed market.
Unfortunately, many of the governments in Latin America, or perhaps the
world, have beneficiary relationships with these companies.”
The Ministry of Agriculture just released a new round of contracts to provide seed to subsistence farmers across the country.
Monsanto attempts to do business in other markets with other company
names, or brands, but the transnational hold is the same. And make no
mistake, it is run by Monsanto and the other Big Six.
For example, companies like Pioneer generate commercials for various
media outlets in El Salvador marketing their agrochemical products, and
exerting great influence over the local farmers of the country.
Many farmers see the importance of keeping their seed supply local,
though. small-scale seed producer Santos Cayetan told Truthout:
“We are losing the traditions of local seed, so we
are trying to maintain it here. Native seeds don’t have what these other
seeds have that come with the chemicals, based in chemicals.”
Cayetan, who is a recipient of corn seed from the government program
that uses local, GMO-free seeds and also works to grow native corn, said
that the difference between using local seed versus Monsanto’s is quite
amazing.
“[Native seeds are] always the same, they always
produce, and they’re always there,” he said. “[Native seeds] are drought
resistant.”
This and other farmers also comment on the fact that local seed has
been adapted to the conditions specific to the region, and Monsanto’s
seed has not. The local seed grows well even in dry soil. Farmers can
also save and re-use seed without having to worry about patent
infringement, as well as having to repurchase seed every season since
much of the GM seed Monsanto, Pioneer, and others sell is meant to
self-destruct after just one season, otherwise known as suicide seed.
As in many areas of the world, one of Monsanto’s sinister goals is to
force farmers to purchase the company’s seeds every year, at highly
inflated prices. These seeds also rely on toxic industrial fertilizers
and their best-selling herbicide, Round Up.
“[Using only local seed] would be much better [for
Salvadoran farmers]; they wouldn’t have to buy seeds every year,” Vides
added. “It has to do with generating the conditions to promote food
security … you can produce what you consume … produce and consume the
same product.”
Cayetan explains that most farmers in El Salvador cannot afford Monsanto seeds – but that is by design.
“If all the producers produced [imported] seed, [local producers] would lose their businesses … this is what [Monsanto] wants.”
