Environmental for Food Justice

  Moderator’s note: In 2005, in a widely-noted move, Monsanto acquired Seminis , a seed company that at the time controlled 40 percent of the U.S. vegetable seed market and 20 percent of the world market. Reports from the Organic Seed Alliance at the time found that this acquisition gave the Gene Giant control of 55 percent of the lettuce on U.S. supermarket shelves, 75 percent of the tomatoes, and 85 percent of the peppers, with strong holdings in beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, broccoli, cabbage, spinach and peas. In a more recent report issued last year by the Center for Food Safety and Save Our Seeds ( 2013:2 ), the top three agricultural biotechnology corporations – Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta – were found to control 53 percent of the global commercial seed market. This is the agricultural equivalent of a monopoly in biopower. It is worth noting that the proponents of GE crops champion adoption of the technology as an economic panacea for all that ails the profit-hungry i...

Moderator’s Note: We are three days away from the global 2014 March Against Monsanto on May 24. Events and protests are planned in hundreds of cities across more than fifty countries. It will be another important day for political organizing, testimonials, educational workshops and classes, films, lectures, and much more. There will certainly be plenty of direct action protests. This year we have much to celebrate in the struggle for food democracy. There are multiple clear signs that the no-GMO movement is finally turning the tide against Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, Dow Agriscience, and the rest of so-called Gene Giants. These include the successful passage of the Vermont labeling law last month; this week’s overwhelming voter support for the Jackson County, Oregon ban on transgenic crops; the ban on transgenic corn in Mexico in effect since October 2013 and upheld two months ago; another Mexican ruling against Monsanto, this one involving the planting of transgenic soybean...