Crop corporations like Monsanto help to sink farmers into a debt they can’t get out of. Here’s how to help.
Photo: foxypar4
Just as I was finishing up my latest health newsletter, which included a story on the “Food Safety” bill HR 875, is-it-or-isn’t-it suspiciously tied to the Monsanto corporation, I came across an article on Alternet.org 1,500 Indian Farmers Commit Mass Suicide: Why We Are Complicit in these Deaths.
The headline says it all, but of course we need a deeper explanation. Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association:
Farmers’ suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death.
The article also quotes the UK’s Daily Mail, enlightening us further:
…The death of this respected farmer (Shankara Mandaukar) has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops. Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Oh yes, the promise of feeding the poor of every country via genetically-modified (GM) seeds. This approach to dealing with worldwide hunger and poverty is touted by the United Nations, NAFTA, and the US government.
And as the Daily Mail article later notes, “pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and ‘agrarian distress’ that is the real reason for the horrific toll.”
While poverty and drought have likely contributed somewhat to poor harvests, leading the farmers to stress about their family and land, the mass suicides might have more to do with the bank loans sometimes totaling $3,000 US that these farmers have to take out in order to buy Monsanto’s (the leader in GM) seeds.
The way Monsanto approaches these farmers reminds me of 19th century snake oil salesman:
The salesmen tell farmers of the amazing yields other Vidarbha growers have enjoyed while using their products, plastering villages with posters detailing “True Stories of Farmers Who Have Sown Bt Cotton.” Old-fashioned cotton seeds pale in comparison to Monsanto’s patented wonder seeds, say the salesmen, as much as an average old steer is humbled by a fine Jersey cow.
Farmers have traditionally used seeds year after year and rotated their crops in order to get the most benefit from the land. Monsanto’s seeds, on the other hand, have to be paid for every year in order to “re-license” the seeds, sinking them deeper into debt.
And oh, yeah, most of these seeds are “Terminator” seeds, which means they don’t actually produce viable seeds of their own.
Farmers throughout the world are dealing with these issues. What can we do as travelers to help?
- Buy local, unsprayed, non-GM food as much as possible when you are traveling (beware of even things labeled organic–sometimes it’s a better choice to buy local, because the organic food has been shipped thousands of miles)
- Be aware of both your own water usage and that of the hostels, hotels, and restaurants you frequent
- Educate others that you meet about GM’s role in the deaths of farmers
- Check out Grocery Store Wars: May The Farm Be With You for a funny take on the battle of organic vs. conventional foods.
What are some other ways that we can help the plight of farmers throughout the world? Share your thoughts below.
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10 Comments... join the discussion!
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The whole issue of “patenting” seeds and selling “terminator” seeds is disgusting. This is food we’re talking about.
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This Monsanto Corp sounds utterly vile. Thanks for making readers aware, Christine. This is information is extremely relevant to everyone.
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But you misunderstand! Capitalism and libertarianism are HELPING people around the world! They LIKE living on virtual plantations! I can’t help but think: how do I get in on a deal like they’ve got? Frankenfood AND living “quaint” – wow, dare to dream…
http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2009/04/14/me-myself-and-mine-the-philosophy-of-liberty-explained/
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Thanks, Christine. I had heard about this ten years ago in Guatemala and Mexico where Maya farmers were being pressured. What a pathetic world we live in when industrial giants need to squeeze cash out of subsistence farmers in “third world” countries. Wouldn’t they be better off beating up the homeless guy for his Dixie cup of change? Less money on R&D.
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This is sickening. Another example of big business killing off the little guys – this time literally.
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I have little problem with any of what you have described.
1. Monsanto may or may not have misrepresented their product (It’s hard to tell from one short reference.), but the farmers also bear responsibility for the purchasing decisions they made. It’s their fault for rushing into (what seems to be) a get-rick-quick scheme without looking into it more fully and realizing what they were getting into. A good analogy would be the people who fall for the Nigerian email scams where you have a long lost dead relative who had $10 million in an African bank somewhere. It’s bad that it happens, but it’s really their fault for not using common sense and careful consideration.
2. Aside from the intellectual property issues, why do you hate GM foods? There is nothing particularly wrong with organic, unsprayed foods, but they’re often more susceptible to insects and may not be easily produced to feed large numbers of people, even though they require similar amounts of labor to grow and distribute. Genetically modified non-food products are used all the time, particularly in medicine. Why not go tell all the diabetics to stop using insulin, or the cancer patients to stop using monoclonal antibodies, because there are genetically modified? That would be ridiculous. Why is food any different?
3. The intellectual property issue is disturbing. But if it’s really such a problem, why hasn’t a competing company engineered a genome that does not terminate? Although that would be a more short-term market opportunity, they could make substantial profits if companies like Monsanto are as horrible as you depict, and their good reputation would help them expand into markets in new regions.
4. “This is sickening. Another example of big business killing off the little guys – this time literally.” — Again, no one likes to see people die, but the farmers committed *suicide* (ie, SELF-killing) secondary to poor decisions that the farmers themselves made. The responsibility for these deaths lies with the farmers.
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Common sense is a rather silly term as it is typically tied to a variety of cultural and socioeconomic factors. I’ve been to college and consider myself well read but what I would screw up on a farm my grandfather would call my lack of common sense. Furthermore, you’d be surprised how easy it is to convince a person without any serious education that the people with the big magic money and fancy technology living way beyond the no weekends, no vacation, permanent calluses world have all the answers and are benevolent creatures. Not too many of them are getting on Google at the internet cafe to look up research claims. Blame the victim. Like that naive girl who went to Hollywood and ended up in a porn flick. Completely their own fault, right? Just pop that old DVD in and watch it again. Wasn’t YOUR doing or your daughter/sister anyway.
Farmers aren’t even in the realm of getting rich quick. We are often talking about eating next week or maybe some day sending a child to university or at least a better life in a country where parents are often forced to give up their children to orphanages due to an inability to provide for them. I hadn’t heard too much about greedy farmers. As a farmer friend of mine always jokes, “My dad left me a million dollars and said, Son, farm until it’s gone.” And that’s in America with the big ole fancy tractors and subsidies. And if these farmers made a mistake and were fooled is the price their entire world? We can shake our heads at those who trusted Madoff, but it is still Madoff who is being held to account for ruining lives.
The Nigerian email hopefuls look foolish and get stung for their mistake in a socioeconomic world where knowledge is readily available and the scam is widely known and understood, but it is unlikely their family starves or they lose everything they own. What do you do when you cannot provide for your family and there is no system to bail you out? Do you watch everyone wither away? Do you do desperate things like steal, sell a child or become a prostitute? We are not talking about America where we can be smug and snort and say Go get a job. That’s not the way it works in a majority of the countries in this world.Yes, killing oneself is one’s own act obviously. Like Jews in concentration camps hanging themselves. And people who lost everything they have may have to sell their children or watch them starve, so they DO have a choice. We are not talking about the small American farmers here, who also have gotten a real screw job in many ways by the way.
But I am sure Monsanto just didn’t know any better when they set these farmers up with massive debt. I’m sure it wasn’t their intention to make a profit from others’ misfortunes or naivete. Perhaps they lack common sense? Watch next year when shareholder (as opposed to sharecropper) demands “force” them to increase the number of these debts by a nice percentage because this year’s profit just isn’t enough for next year. Those damn little money grubbing farmers always standing in the way of my stocks and all that time they spend lounging around at the country club talking crop yield strategy and chatting around the water cooler about the World Cup of Cricket.
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Hi Bryant,
I decided not to go into Monsanto’s long and involved history with attempting to bankrupt farmers throughout the world with their patented seeds because this post would have been about 20 times as long, but it has little to do with trying to get-rich-quick. Here’s a couple of articles:
Monsanto Sues Midwest Farmers for Saving Soybean Seeds, http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/farmerssued.cfm.
And the well-known case of an organic Canadian farmer who battled Monsanto for years because they said he illegally used their GM seeds when the seeds from another farm blew onto his farm (which actually hurt his business because then his crops could not be certified organic):
Percy Schmeiser’s battle, http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/genetics_modification/percyschmeiser.html
As for your point about what could be wrong with genetically-modified foods, I’m not sure where to start. To genetically-modify something that is already chemically-based, and has been modified chemically many times over in its creation, as is the case with medicine, is a completely different beast than genetically-modifying foods (and some argue that the modification of herbs and vitamins into medicine IS in fact harmful, causing side effects that weren’t previously there).
Since the dawn of humans (and really, the animals that existed beforehand), our bodies have evolved to have particular enzymes in order to digest what foods, etc. were available in nature. That means that all the nutrients you get when you eat, say, lettuce — things like beta-carotene, magnesium, and calcium — nutrients that make up your bones, your tissue, your brain, are all “recognized” by the body the moment they touch the saliva in your mouth, which signals your pancreas to start releasing the proper enzymes so you can actually use all the good stuff available in that lettuce.
Say, for instance, that this lettuce has been genetically-modified with a peanut gene, because that peanut has some sort of natural protection against frost. What happens if the person who ends up eating that lettuce is deathly allergic to peanuts? For some people, having allergic reactions to foods they aren’t allergic to has become a reality, and is one of the reasons certain groups are pushing for at least the labeling of GM foods (which we currently do not have in the US).
That is a more mild example of a negative effect–there are larger possibilities that are implicated with GM foods, including cancer, since some experts believe we aren’t able to process and digest these GM foods correctly.
And the belief that larger farms with GM foods are feeding more people are false–studies show that smaller, organic farms are more sustainable, have proper crop rotation, therefore working with the land instead of killing it with pesticides and other chemicals, and is a way to keep food diversification, and us, alive (most large farms have one to two crops, often corn, wheat or soy, and we have such an overabundance of these crops that people are developing allergies to them left and right and the US has tried to force our excess production on developing countries: Eat GM or starve, America tells Africa, http://ngin.tripod.com/forcefeed.htm).
I’ll stop here, because I know this is incredibly long already, and I think Kevin did a good job of handling some of your other points.
Thanks for all your comments and debates; I think the subject of GM foods is important in all of our lives for different reasons.
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The mere fact that one purchasing Monsanto seeds cannot have the ability to save those seeds and reuse them is preposterous! The seeds (if they actually get any) may or may not even be the inital product they planted if the seed was a hybrid. Still, it should be THEIR right to plant it again should they so desire.
Even someone who owns a CD is allowed to copy it for his/her own use.
Monsanto is not good for our future. They certainly have the right to do business, but they do NOT have the right to come into my back yard and attempt to dictate what I do or do not grow…even if someone else’s GM seed comes into my organic, heirloom yard.
Amy
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