Monsanto in Mexico | Who are the Mayan beekeepers? What do they claim? What do they want?

http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2016/07/monsanto-in-mexico-who-are-mayan.html

Indigenous beekeepers face ruin despite supposed rule of law
MEXICAN AUTHORITIES COLLUDE WITH TRANSNATIONALS TO UNDERMINE COURT RULINGS

Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | July 4, 2016

Who are the Mayan beekeepers leading the struggle against Monsanto’s GMO soybean plantings in the Mexican state of Campeche? This question is the most important one we can ask and answer in order to arrive at a deeper appreciation of the depth and historical nature of the challenges facing the indigenous consultation process that was ordered by the Supreme Court last year to resolve the dispute over the planting of transgenic soybeans in a core culture area of Mexican indigenous autonomy.

GM(Woes) | Ghostbusters, GMOs, and the Feigned Expertise of Nobel Laureates

http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2016/07/gmwoes-ghostbusters-gmos-and-feigned_2.html

 Last week a controversy erupted just as the Roberts-Stabinow Digital Divide GMO labeling law was being discussed in the Senate. It involves a letter signed by 100+ Nobel laureates attacking Greenpeace for being “anti-scientific” in its stance against the proliferation and continued use of genetically engineered organisms.

The letter is a defense of “Golden Rice”, a GMO said to address vitamin deficiencies associated with blindness in the Global South and perhaps one of the worst of the frequent scientific frauds perpetrated by biotechnology interests. The Nobel Prize recipients fell for a zombie rice story that refuses to die and persists as a central legitimizing narrative in the pseudo-humanitarian rhetoric that regularly spews from the pro-GMO propaganda machine. I have written about this in the past to show how Monsanto and the other Gene Giants are spending hundreds of millions on a deceptive campaign to misinform the public about the fake scientific consensus they spin based on inadequately designed industry-led studies of risk, toxicology, and food safety (see the post of May 2, 2014).

It should be further noted that scientists and activists in the food and seed sovereignty movements, including Vandana Shiva, have shown two things about this so-called miracle rice crop: (1) Advances in eliminating blindness among children in the Global South, where they have been possible, worked by addressing access to healthy and culturally appropriate foods and diets; getting rid of hunger and poverty greatly reduces the prevalence of nutritionally triggered blindness, and many other maladies for that matter. (2) The scientific claims about Golden Rice are fabricated exaggerations. Researchers with Vandana Shiva’s Seed Freedom project explain the gist of the problem:

Since the daily average requirement of vitamin A is 750 micrograms of vitamin A and 1 serving contains 30g of rice according to dry weight basis, ‘Vitamin A rice’ would only provide 9.9 micrograms which is 1.32% of the required allowance.  Even taking the 100g figure of daily consumption of rice used in the technology transfer paper would only provide 4.4% of the RDA. In order to meet the full needs of 750 micrograms of vitamin A from rice, an adult would have to consume 2 kg (272g) of rice per day.  This implies that one family member would consume the entire family ration of 10kg. (See the research on this question at Seed Freedom, here).

Moreover, it has been noted by numerous scientific experts and other observers that none of the signers of the letter have any substantive research experience in the fields of environmental risk science, toxicology, or food safety. The group of Nobel Laureates includes: 1 peace prize, 8 economists, 24 physicists, 33 chemists, 41 doctors. One critic of the letter, Claire Robinson of GM Watch, adds the observation, quoting Phillip Stark, Associate Dean, Division of Mathematical snd Physical Sciences and Professor of Statistics at University of California-Berkeley, that science is “about evidence not authority. What do they know of agriculture? Have they done relevant research? Science is supposed to be ‘show me’ not ‘trust me’…Nobel Prize or not.”

This leads me to make another observation about the unethical nature of this letter which is an example of the deception of scientific authority masquerading as expertise. The only expert in agriculture on the list of signers is the ghostly Norman Borlaug, who is of course the “Father of the Green Revolution”. And herein lies the basic problem: Borlaug was no friend of Indigenous farmers, seed savers, and plant breeders. He was guilty of imposing high-input hybrid seeds developed by technicians in lab-white who never consulted or developed relations of solidarity with farmers. This was arrogant top-down agricultural managerialism and did a lot to damage the prospects for food sovereignty. As one recent study of the failure of Golden Rice notes:

The Green Revolution spread generic, disembedded high-input seeds to replace locally adapted landraces as well as peasant attitudes and practices associated with them. The disembeddedness of Golden Rice that boosts its value as a public relations vehicle has also been the main impediment in it reaching farmers’ fields, as it has proved difficult to breed into varieties that grow well specifically in the Philippines.[1]

The disembeddedness of GMO crops is the heart of this problem and the Nobel laureates have failed to understand how culture intersects with agriculture in ways most physicists and neoliberal economists cannot fully comprehend unless they open their minds to other ways of knowing and being in the world. Anyone with the intelligence to become a Nobel laureate surely has a moral obligation to understand this cultural context before participating in an act of epistemic violence designed to justify continued corporate domination of our food systems and dismiss our scientific counter-claims and evidence as ideological puffery.

We may also need to recruit the Ghostbusters since at least two of the signers are dead. Alfred G Gilman died on Dec 23 2015 and Norman Borlaug died on Sept 12, 2009.

I am reposting the insightful critique of the letter prepared by Claire Robinson of GM Watch. The original post can be found here at: GM Watch.

- Devon Peña

Source note:

[1] Glenn Davis Stone and Dominic Glover 2016. Disembedding grain: Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines. Agriculture and Human Values. April 16, 2016. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-016-9696-1. doi:10.1007/s10460-016-9696-1.

Monsanto in Mexico Update | Indigenous farmers threaten to end consultations if GMO planting continues

http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2016/06/monsanto-in-mexico-update-indigenous.html

Comment by Devon Peña:

When we last reported on the situation with GMOs in the southern Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán, there were many reasons to celebrate since a federal judge had overturned the approval of GMO soy plantings in this region as a threat to the indigenous beekeepers of the region (see our posts of March 16 2014and July 24, 2014).

Those rulings profoundly recognized Mayan indigenous autonomy. As quoted in our report of March 2014:According to press reports…(Mar 11, 2014) the court “determined that the effective protection of indigenous rights requires the exercise of certain human rights of a procedural nature, mainly the access to information, participation in decision-making and access to ensure justice.” 

You would think this was a clear victory. It apparently is not. This is, after all, Mexico, a place where the state of economic exception remains just as brutal and anti-indigenous as always. Here is the problem: While the courts have ruled that consultation with indigenous peoples is required as part of the process for reviewing permits for GMO crops, the planting of transgenic soybean (and maize) apparently continue unabated, without the proper legal permissions and in defiance of standing federal court orders prohibiting transgenic crops until the indigenous consultation process runs its course, and then presumably only if there is indigenous consent.

I am posting a report from the Mexican site, Desinforménos, that discusses the current situation in the peninsular Mexican state of Campeche. It is vital that nonGMO movement activists remain aware of and engaged with the continuing indigenous struggle against transgenic soybeans which remain an active threat to bees and beekeepers. This struggle is far from over and if we disengage and take the pressure off, then the Mayan beekeepers struggles will have been for naught. The translation is mine.

Acequias, GMOs and bioregional autonomy | Report on the condition of agriculture in Costilla County, Colorado

http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2015/11/acequias-gmos-and-bioregional-autonomy.html

With special reference to center of origin land race cultivars and GMO crops

PART 1 | ECOLOGICAL, CULTURAL & HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Devon G. Peña | Viejo San Acacio, CO | November 15, 2015

Moderator’s Note: This is the first in a three part series plus a source bibliography. The author is Co-Founder and President of The Acequia Institute and prepared this report during August-September 2015. The report is intended as a contribution to local agricultural, scientific, and environmental education for Costilla County residents, farmers, and public officials. The information or views presented in this report do not reflect the official views or policies of The Acequia Institute or its Board of Directors and Officers or the University of Washington.

Acequia farmers in Colorado set to declare ban on GMO corn and alfalfa

http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2015/11/nongmo-movement-acequia-farmers-in.html

Selection of the 2015 native heirloom maize harvest of the seed library of

The Acequia Institute in Viejo San Acacio, CO

Photo by Devon G. Peña

Costilla County introduces ordinance establishing a GMO-free zone to protect traditional farmers’ varieties

CULEBRA WATERSHED IS A CENTER OF ORIGIN AND DIVERSITY OF MAIZE

Devon G. Peña | Viejo San Acacio, CO | November 12, 2015

THE CENTER FOR FOOD SAFETY (CFS) has issued a press release this morning announcing support for a new ordinance introduced today in Costilla County, Colorado that would establish a “Center of Origin” GMO-Free Zone of Protection to preserve the county’s unique agricultural products and traditional farming systems. The ordinance is intended to protect the county’s traditional acequia (community irrigation ditch) farmers and their land race heirloom maize varieties that are unique to the Upper Rio Grande watershed.  The GMO-Free Zone will help traditional and organic farmers avoid the serious risk of transgenic contamination from nearby genetically engineered (GE) crops, particularly GE corn.

RNA threat

Transgenics and microRNA

A BIGGER THREAT TO HUMAN HEALTH?

From Devon Peña's environmental justice blog

FULL ARTICLE AT: http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2012/06/geo-watch-microrna-threat.html?m=1

For several decades now, scientists have been warning of the dangers of genetically-engineered crops. Many of these concerns have focused on environmental risks. One pattern of such risks involves development of so-called Super Weeds. A well-known example is mutating wild Pigweed  that has developed resistance to Monsanto's flagship glyphosate herbicide, Roundup. 

These mutated weeds pose a bigger threat to organic farmers who rely on natural and cultural controls that can be undermined by these anthropogenic (human-induced) changes in weed morphology, reproduction, and biogeographic distributions.  

Many scientists  also share longstanding concerns over introgression and horizontal gene transfer (HGT). While HGT occurs in nature as in the transfer of genetic sequences between bacteria and plants, the advent of transgenic crops presents a novel set of circumstances and basically involve the contamination of native land races and wild weedy plant genomes by the altered transgene sequences of the bio-engineered crops. 

Charting the GMO threat

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2014/11/geo-watch-data-base-for-gmo-crop.html

Charting the transgenic threat

A TOOL FOR ACTIVISTS AND FARMERS

Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | November 4, 2014

Note: In the world of seed saving and plant breeding, this is the biggest news all year. A new peer-reviewed scientific journal, Food Contamination, has just published a meta-analysis of the GM Contamination Register that was compiled over the past ten years by Genewatch and Greenpeace.  Janet Cotter (Greenpeace) and Becky Price (Genewatch) were the lead compilers of this important database. Here is my take on the significance of this sort of data mapping for  farmers concerned with protecting the genomic integrity and organic or biodynamic status of their land race and heirloom crop varieties.

Image courtesy of Transgenic Study Blog

One of the most significant issues in the debate over the environmental impacts of transgenic[1] crops is the irrefutable scientific fact posed by gene flow.  As a farmer, seed librarian, and plant breeder, I am deeply concerned with the threat of genetic contamination posed by transgenic crops to center of origin land race varieties grown across all of the indigenous First Nation territories of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Other farmers and scientists who share this concern have been presenting evidence of this transgenic threat since 2001 when Ignacio Chapela and David Quist of the University of California-Berkeley documented introgression of transgenes in native land race populations of Zea mays (maize) in Oaxaca, Mexico.

It has been a challenge to keep track of the growing number of such events in which genetic materials from GMO/GE cropsintrogress[2] (contaminate) the native genome of land race crop varieties. Transgenic introgression is a real, verified, direct, and immediate threat to the genomic integrity of center of origin land race varieties.

From Devon Peña's blog: Seed Savers Exchange Statement on Seed Libraries and the CRG Safe Seed Pledge

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2014/09/seed-sovereignty-seed-savers-exchange.html

Seeds. Jyoti Thomas. Source: absolutearts.com

Devon Peña’s Note: The Seed Savers Exchange has actively served the nation’s farmers, gardeners, plant breeders, and seed librarians since 1975 as a reliable source of non-GMO heirloom seed. The Seed Savers released a statement in support of seed libraries last week. I am reposting their eloquent declaration in defense of seed libraries; for the original, please visit the Seed Savers home page.

The statement makes a strong declaration of support for the principle tenet that seed saving is part of our deepest cultural heritage and people have been saving and sharing seeds for millennia. Moreover, “Despite what some institutions have suggested, seeds can be valuable, safe and healthy without laboratory germination tests or government licenses.”

Seed Sovereignty | Grassroots seed savers and libraries organize

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2014/08/seed-sovereignty-grassroots-seed-savers.html

Seed libraries are one strategy to avoid the compression of seed

 biodiversity we have seen under the practices of commercial seed houses.

Seed Library Social Network calls for discourse

BIOPIRACY AND GMO BIOSAFETY MUST BE ADDRESSED

Devon G. Peña | Las Colonias de San Pablo, CO | August 31, 2014

On August 5, I reported on the closing down of a seed library in Pennsylvania by the state’s Department of Agriculture.  A week later, August 13, I posted an analysis and position paper on U.S. seed laws prepared by Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC).

Continuing with this series on Seed Sovereignty in the U.S., I am posting this call for a discussion of a National Seed Library Protocol prepared by Leslie Goldman affiliated with the Seed Library Social Network (SLSN). The call was posted on August 27 on the SLSN homepage. I have re-posted Leslie Goldman’s announcement and call for discussion below (unedited). Goldman also reports on initial email correspondence with state officials in Pennsylvania.

Devon Peña responds to Neil Degrasse Tyson's defense of GMO's

Is Tyson the Red Queen of GMO myth-making?

Big Bang About Chilling-Out?

ASTROPHYSICIST TYSON WAXES POETIC ABOUT GMOS

Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | August 1, 2014

In an interview posted on YouTube on July 24, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the charming and brilliant host of the popular TV documentary series, Cosmos, defended the  use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for food crops. Tyson emphasized that opponents needed to “chill out” and characterized opponents as unwitting victims or manipulative purveyors of the “fear factor”.

Responding to a question from a French journalist, the usually humorous interlocutor seemed somewhat stumped at first and then responded by rifting away with an explanation of how humans have been genetically modifying plants for more than ten thousand years; ever since people first domesticated wild plants and animals in the invention of agriculture. Fair enough.

Are conventional (Mendellian) breeding techniques and the beautifully varied and highly localized forms of cultural selection really the same in nature as a technology derived from lab-based gene-splicing, qua recombinant DNA (rDNA), of genetic materials engineered together from plant, animal, bacterial, and viral sources? Hmmm. Maybe astrophysicists don’t understand that this sort of combination across the boundaries not just of species but phyla does not occur in conventional breeding, so any presumed similarities end there.

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2014/08/geo-watch-modify-qualify-politics-in.html

Monsanto is feeling the heat

http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2014/05/geo-watch-consumer-education-monsanto.html

World Food Prize winner outlines shift in strategy

FOCUS ON CONSUMERS NOT JUST GROWERS

Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | May 2, 2014

Robert Fraley, Monsanto’s Chief Technology Officer and this year’s winner of the dubious World Food Prize, recently admitted that Monsanto made a huge strategic error by focusing educational outreach on growers and ignoring consumers. An interesting analysis of this admission is presented in an overlooked report by Joan Faus published in the April 12, 2014 edition of El País (Spain). Faus quotes Fraley admitting the error: “In the last twenty years almost all of our communication activities and education have been focused on farmers and it went very well. But the mistake we made is that we did not put enough effort toward consumer education.”
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Monsanto does seem acutely aware that the battle between supporters and opponents of GM has heated up and is extremely fierce. Moreover, after years of accumulating what Fraley views as an unfairly bad reputation, the Gene Giant has decided to change strategy: It plans to get closer to the consumer so it can work at convincing skeptics and critics of the safety of its products and the positive effects biotechnology presumably has on world agriculture [sic].
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Monsanto would have you believe that people opposed to GMOs are irrational and basing their choices on pure fear. Is this presumption of irrationality justified? Not really since the scientific evidence against GMOs is fast mounting, but this is the wrong question posed by too many pundits. More important is what this tells us about Monsanto’s efforts to reframe the public discourse that has ascribed to the brand such a nasty, super-loaded or ‘monkey’ signifier in the form of its nefarious status as the world’s “Most Evil Corporation”.
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Despite all this Monsanto’s basic problem will fortunately always be driven by the unavoidable fact that the most enduring controversies go well beyond a simplistic focus on consumer food safety. Our critiques are formidable and play across an evolving set of perceptions covering the entire range of economic, environmental, cultural, and public health effects associated with all of the stacked-traits GMO product lines and their ancillaries. The challenges posed by a diverse and expanding public of scientists, farmers, seed savers, plant breeders, and consumers who question Monsanto’s credibility has now reached a critical mass that will not be easily suffocated by PR stunts and publicity pirouettes.
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The legitimation crisis facing transgenic technologies and GMO foods has apparently led Monsanto to start rethinking corporate PR strategy. Faus’s notes have Fraley stating that: “Consumers [must] see us as the first step in the food chain and they want to hear more about us...We must do better” [brackets added]; also see Fraley interview with Agriculture.com. Faus observes how Monsanto has “stepped up its communication on social networks where opponents are very strong”. It has also provided several pages with more consumer-oriented ‘food-safety’ information on the company’s website – go to Monsanto Food Safety.

Anatomy of an Internet troll. Image credit: Frankniceleyfiles.

One of my sources in the Midwest confirms that Monsanto has some company staff doubling asInternet Trolls – persons who stalk and harass the targets of misinformation campaigns and like agent provocateurs disrupt or interfere with public discourse. The ultimate aim of trolling is to create a hostile language environment that often drives many people out of the non-GMO social networks, creating a false air of scientific uncertainty and controversy or the reframing of expressions of fear as an unnecessary and Voodoo-like threat to the science of food security.