Hijacking the Future
Dr Caleb @ Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:34 am
I saw last night, an excellent program on Global in their documentary show 'Currents' called 'Hijacking the future'.
http://www.canada.com/globaltv/globalsh ... index.html
Global Currents Global Currents:
But why should we care about a farmer’s seeds? Aren’t companies developing new seeds all the time? They are -- and that’s part of the problem -- because who controls the seeds, controls our food. More and more, that control is in the hands of a few multinational corporations whose bottom line is profit for their shareholders not necessarily an abundance of healthy food. Should anybody, the film asks, own seeds?
“Hijacked Future” takes us from the grain fields of Saskatchewan, to farmers and seed banks in Ethiopia, to north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, where the “Doomsday” vault is being built to stockpile seeds in the event of a global crisis.
The documentary looks at the increasingly fragile base of our North American industrial food system in order to bring all of us consumers of food to a better understanding of just what’s at stake with our daily bread. It asks us to question the wisdom of a system precariously based on oil and corporate seeds while we’re at the same time witnessing the impact of climate change.
As the film says, “It all starts with the seed, and the stakes are high… because who controls the seed, controls the food… Who will control the seeds we plant, and the food we put on our tables?” Will our future be…Hijacked?
“Hijacked Future” takes us from the grain fields of Saskatchewan, to farmers and seed banks in Ethiopia, to north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, where the “Doomsday” vault is being built to stockpile seeds in the event of a global crisis.
The documentary looks at the increasingly fragile base of our North American industrial food system in order to bring all of us consumers of food to a better understanding of just what’s at stake with our daily bread. It asks us to question the wisdom of a system precariously based on oil and corporate seeds while we’re at the same time witnessing the impact of climate change.
As the film says, “It all starts with the seed, and the stakes are high… because who controls the seed, controls the food… Who will control the seeds we plant, and the food we put on our tables?” Will our future be…Hijacked?
And I had a thought. The Percy Scheissmier (sp?) had a precedent in Canadian law - Montaso owns the genes that protect it from Montaso's herbicides. But Montaso didn't create the whole canola Genome, it was cultivated from grasses, sorted, selected and traded for it's unique properties by farmers over tens of thousands of years. Don't they own the rest of the canola genome, and therefore Montaso is using that genome against farmers wishes and corrupting the whole seed stock?
Can't farmers use the system to protect their Intellectual Property to stop Montaso from destroying thousands of years work? That would be the other edge of the double edged sword.
Diogenes @ Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:05 am
By Googling Doomsday vault* I was presented with 278,000 references one leapt out at me, Doomsday vault to avert world famine - earth - 12 January 2006 ..., and as the world is experiencing a grain shortage righy now, to-day best we be opening the vaults cause doomsday is now.
* http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=na ... sday+vault
sasquatch2 @ Sun Mar 23, 2008 11:33 am
This genetically modified seeds thing has opened up a lot of questions with intellectual property rights as the starter.
Then you have the alarmist luddites which bitterly attack these things. Trade barriers to GM crops have been erected in Europe by the same elements that desperately support KYOTO---with the same factual basis---little to none.
There have been claims that consuming GM crops leads to birth defects even.
Basically it is a legal/economic problem not a moral or health issue.
Xort @ Mon Apr 21, 2008 4:56 pm
The suggestion is that one day Montaso will stop making seeds and cause mass starvation if we don't pay them, ONE MILLION DOLLARS?
Ya.
sasquatch2 @ Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:06 pm
What we have with the GM seeds is nothing other than a legal issue. The intellectual property issue which China disregards on everything from copywrited CD's to patented devises. Nobody owns disease either but drug patents exist and this dillema must be addressed.
The problem is not so much Monsanto holding mankind hostage as Monsanto ending research if it cannot be rewarded for it's R&D.
The nutbars which lable GM foods as "frankenfoods" and imagine all manner of hazards is an entire other matter.
I attended a lecture by a "scientist", who turned out to be an activist with a english BA, where he decryed the contamination of groundwater by Monsanto's "roundup" herbicide. This creep didn't know or conceal the simple FACT that glyphosate is neutralized by clay colloids.....but then I doubt he knew what a clay colloid is.