A desolate world without GMO crops: Inside Monsanto’s demented spin campaign
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In Silent Spring, Carson dared to take on the world’s biggest chemical companies, explaining that their products were not only harmful to birds and bees, but to humans, too. In the wake of its publication, the chemical industry PR machine kicked into gear. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent attempting to discredit not only the book but the ‘hysterical’ woman who wrote it,” says Kaiulani Lee, the playwright and actor who wrote and performs the definitive play about Carson, A Sense of Wonder.
In addition to paying spokespeople to tarnish Carson’s reputation, Monsanto also sent a parody to newspapers around the country. In “The Desolate Year,” Monsanto painted a frightening picture of a world without chemicals. It was a bleak place. “Genus by genus, species by species, sub-species by innumerable sub-species, the insects emerged,” the article warned. “Creeping and flying and crawling. … They were chewers, and piercer-suckers, spongers, siphoners and chewer-lappers, and all their vast progeny were chewers – rasping, sawing biting maggots and worms and caterpillars.” It goes on and on like this for five pages. (As we now know, that diatribe was fear-mongering, not fact-marshalling. Organic and low-chemical farmers across the United States are proving that you can eliminate, or greatly reduce, toxic chemical use on the farm without having to worry about being overrun by pests, weeds, or diseases.)
I can’t help but notice that in its recent PR missives against anti-GMO activists, Monsanto, which is today the world’s largest manufacturer of genetically modified seeds, is using the same fear tactics. Only this time, it’s stirring up fear of a world without biotech crops.
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Despite Fraley’s dire warnings, feeding the future doesn’t depend on GMOs. In fact, the spread of GMOs is actively undermining our ability to feed future generations by locking farmers into dependence on expensive seeds and inputs, by undermining soil health, by reducing biodiversity, and more.
Keep in mind that the main GM traits that have been commercialized convey just two qualities, or a combination of them: pest- and weed-resistance. Industry promises for big nutrition or yield improvements have not borne fruit. Studies show that non-GM corn and soybean yields in Europe, for example, are similar to the yields achieved with GMOs here in the US.
What’s more, we know that the ecologists who warned that GMOs would spur weed and pest resistance were right. As Jonathan Foley, the head of the California Academy of Scientists, has said: “You can’t put out a weed-resistant crop and expect the weeds to sit still. They will evolve.” They will, and they have. Today, we have Roundup-resistant weeds, some with stalks so thick that they can damage farm equipment. And we have Bt-resistant bugs so defiant they’ve got corn growers in our Midwest worried. “Every ecologist predicted that,” Foley says.
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http://www.salon.com/2015/03/26/a_desolate_world_without_gmo_crops_inside_monsantos_demented_spin_campaign_partner/
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