Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

The Government Has a Seed Bank Savings Account — Why Shouldn’t You?

August 25, 2010

Activist Post - On the CSU Campus, there is a storage facility for seeds that is described as “insurance against global change.” It houses billions of seeds under the auspices of a Fort Collins division called The National Center For Genetic Resource Preservation.

William Engdahl has even written about a Doomsday Seed Vault in the Artic where, “Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway.”

If the governments and Elites of the world are taking seed protection so seriously, then it behooves the individual to develop a similar seed bank savings account that can offer real value in a world where traditional currency continues to show weakness and pressure. By saving your own seeds, you can take part in evolution, as well as increase your self-sufficiency.

Before the rise of commercial seed giants like Monsanto, local gardeners were adept at selecting seeds from the healthiest plants, saving them, and introducing them to the harvest for the following year, thus strengthening the species. Through local adaptation to pests, genetic diversity was further ensured; it was long-term thinking at its finest.

Farmers are the pillars of rural living, even though their endeavors have been corrupted in tandem with America’s short-attention-span consumer who has been encouraged to forget their own history. However, there has been a recent revolution among farmers across the globe . . . and abject poverty does not seem to influence their mission. Even Haiti, despite their natural disaster and the worst general poverty imaginable, has rejected Monsanto’s “gift.” They know it is a Trojan Horse of the worst kind.

Seed prices still seem low enough for most people to buy packages at their local nursery, but the consumer must be aware that the quality of mass-produced and genetically modified seeds is akin to mass produced food these days: you had better know its provenance. Many of these genetically modified seeds are deliberately engineered by Monsanto not to germinate when the seeds of the mature fruit are re-planted. Seed cultivation and storage is not an area that is tailor-made for fast and cheap. However, with some basic knowledge, patience, and dedication, food independence is attainable.

In nature, the strongest harvests will come from the land where the species has proven its worth against the elements specific to that area. The resulting harvest will generally be much more bountiful and enduring than what a standardized package of seeds can provide. That said, there are some basics to know in order to insure that personal seed production and storage result in a growing savings account. The guide below provides a very general overview — seed production and storage contain many variables based on climate, plant or flower type, number of crops, and area biodiversity.

1. Pollination methods – there are three methods to take into consideration: air-borne, insect, and self. Of these, self-pollinated crops offer the best opportunity for seed saving; to avoid cross pollination, it is necessary to separate varieties by a few rows of another crop.

2. Root crops — not all garden plants produce their seed at the end of the growing season. It may be necessary to dig the roots in fall to obtain seed, then store and re-plant when weather permits.

3. Hybrids – Hybrids result from a deliberate cross between inbred lines. Although popular for vegetables due to being more vigorous and uniform, hybrids can be a disappointment for a gardener who has unknowingly planted a hybrid. Only the person who controls the original parents can produce the hybrid seed.

4. Harvesting – Seed is extracted from fruit after it ripens, but before it rots. Separate the seed from its pulp and dry at room temperature. Leave pod crops on the vine until the pod dries. Harvest before the seed is dispersed.

5. Storage – Once the seed is dried, gently hand rub to rid it of any chaff, then store it in an envelope in a cool, dry, rodent free location. The seed will germinate best the following year. It is best to re-plant every year and select the best plants for seed.

There has never been a better time to re-connect with nature and your local community. The giants of GMO are engineering servitude to their inferior products. As the global financial crisis continues to produce additional dependence and insecurity, a seed savings program is a wonderfully productive solution that will pay dividends year after year.

Genetically Modified Crops Pop Up in the Wild

The discovery of canola in North Dakota raises concern that engineered plants could take over native species and cause hardy 'superweeds' to develop.

August 13, 2010

Los Angeles Times - Genetic engineering has been hailed as a tool to produce crops that are left unharmed by weed-killing pesticides and that are more productive than their forebears. But critics have worried that modified plants might take over land used by native species and that increasingly hardy "superweeds" may develop. A new study supports some of these fears, detailing an abundance of genetically modified canola crops found outside cultivation in North Dakota.

The so-called feral canola is the first report of a genetically modified crop found in the wild in the U.S., although another genetically engineered plant designed for golf putting greens, creeping bentgrass, was found in Oregon in 2004. Feral modified canola has also shown up in the last decade in Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Japan and Australia.

In the U.S., 90% to 95% of commercially grown canola is genetically modified to be herbicide resistant; the researchers said that 80% of the wild canola identified in the most recent discovery had at least one of two herbicide-resistance genes.

Furthermore, a small number of the plants contained both genes, although plants containing both have never been commercially released. The combination's existence suggests that engineered genes can be highly mobile and could potentially be transferred to pernicious weeds, although canola has few weedy relatives.

"The canola study is a signal that gene movement into the environment is a general phenomenon," said Doug Gurian-Sherman, an agricultural biotechnology scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit organization that focuses on environmental issues.

This phenomenon means that the original benefit of the genetic engineering is ultimately lost, he says, forcing farmers to come up with new ways to control weeds — such as turning to the more toxic, longer-lasting herbicides used in the past.

"The effectiveness of the technology breaks down over time," Gurian-Sherman said, "and as it moves forward to genes that can have a bigger impact on the environment, these gene-movement issues will be more and more important."

The study's researchers, who presented their research last week at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting, were more measured in their response.

"The first message is, don't freak out, but let's figure out what's going on," said Cynthia Sagers, the University of Arkansas ecologist who led the study.

An obvious question is what will happen if, or when, these novel traits get into native species.

But one of the next steps, she said, is to investigate whether herbicide use is connected to the canola's spread. The conventional wisdom is that these chemicals are used only on agricultural fields, where they kill weeds but leave the engineered crop unharmed — but it's possible that the herbicides are also spreading beyond the farms, perhaps allowing the modified canola to survive where native plants can't.

The finding and the unanswered questions take on added weight with researchers working to produce plants resistant to drought or disease. Such versions could produce hardier crops, but also increasingly dangerous weeds.

The concerns go beyond genetic engineering. Traditional breeding has recently produced drought-tolerant corn and sorghum; if these genes are introduced to weeds, the result would be the same, regardless of whether the source was genetic engineering or traditional breeding.

"Genetically engineered crops and non-genetically engineered crops tend to create the same classes of problems," said UC Riverside plant geneticist Norm Ellstrand.

Artificial Meat? Food for Thought by 2050

August 18, 2010

The Guardian - Artificial meat grown in vats may be needed if the 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2050 are to be adequately fed without destroying the earth, some of the world's leading scientists report today.

But a major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, suggests that even with new technologies such as genetic modification and nanotechnology, hundreds of millions of people may still go hungry owing to a combination of climate change, water shortages and increasing food consumption.

In a set of 21 papers published by the Royal Society, the scientists from many disciplines and countries say that little more land is available for food production, but add that the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable.

Although more than one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet today, many of the papers are optimistic.

A team of scientists at Rothamsted, the UK's largest agricultural research centre, suggests that extra carbon dioxide in the air from global warming, along with better fertilisers and chemicals to protect arable crops, could hugely increase yields and reduce water consumption.

"Plant breeders will probably be able to increase yields considerably in the CO2 enriched environments of the future … There is a large gap between achievable yields and those delivered ... but if this is closed then there is good prospect that crop production will increase by about 50% or more by 2050 without extra land", says the paper by Dr Keith Jaggard et al.

Several studies suggest farmers will be up against environmental limits by 2050, as industry and consumers compete for water. One group of US scientists suggests that feeding the 3 billion extra people could require twice as much water by then. This, says Professor Kenneth Strzepek of the University of Colorado, could mean an 18% reduction in worldwide water availability for food growing by 2050.

"The combined effect of these increasing demands can be dramatic in key hotspots [like] northern Africa, India, China and parts of Europe and the western US," he says.

Many low-tech ways are considered to effectively increase yields, such as reducing the 30-40% food waste that occurs both in rich and poor countries. If developing countries had better storage facilities and supermarkets and consumers in rich countries bought only what they needed, there would be far more food available.

But novel ways to increase food production will also be needed, say the scientists. Conventional animal breeding should be able to meet much of the anticipated doubling of demand for dairy and meat products in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, but this may not be enough.

Instead, says Dr Philip Thornton, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, two "wild cards" could transform global meat and milk production.

"One is artificial meat, which is made in a giant vat, and the other is nanotechnology, which is expected to become more important as a vehicle for delivering medication to livestock" ...