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AgriCulture | Autonomía Zapatista and Agroecology

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Maíz resistente. School for Chiapas . Moderator’s Note: As part of a series on the 20 th anniversary of the Zapatista movement for Indigenous autonomy, we offer this first and original unauthorized translation of a report by Gallo Téenek. The report originally appeared in Spanish on Regeneración Radio in October 2013 and offers a “social perspective” on the meaning of direct democracy as constituted by Zapatista communities in the form of caracoles – which literally translates as “Snails” and figuratively alludes to the spiral shape of the snail shell. Don Durito and other Others might explain this as a symbol for the organizational form of Indigenous nurturing of deep place-based knowledge and also a nest or nido offering protective harbor for the social, biological, and cultural life of the organism and community.   Téenek desribes Zapatista grassroots institutions of collective action through a lengthy depiction of the Oventic Junta de Buen Gobierno or Good Government Coun...
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Monsanto and environmental racism

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Moderator’s Note: I am presenting a “Letter to Monsanto” prepared by Jeff Nguyen, a Vietnamese American. Mr. Nguyen was a young child when the defoliant chemical known as Agent Orange was sprayed all over Viet Nam during the American War (1961-71). The Air Force code name for this assault on the people, wildlife, plants, and ecosystems of Viet Nam was known as Operation Ranch Hand , an ironic and somewhat foreboding reference given the subsequent history of Monsanto’s billion-dollar domination of the agricultural herbicide market. The targets on the ground were not the only ones that suffered from the effects of the use of Agent Orange and the pilots and airmen [sic] involved in the spraying missions – which were called trail dust missions – were misinformed about the hazards of the chemical they were spraying. One of these former airmen recalls: I remember the sight and the smell of the spray.    In the early morning low angle sunlight, it appeared to have an orange hue – at...
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GEO Watch | Consumer Education Monsanto-Style

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Internet troll. Credit: Splitreason . 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.” Faus attended a press conference hosted last month by Fraley in St. Louis with invited members of the European press corps. The extended session revealed much about th...
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