GM: facts and assumptions

The transgenic are examples of the most brutal corporate concentration in the history of industrial agriculture and, in general, of all industries. Only five companies control field crops worldwide, and one, Monsanto, over 90 percent. The other four are Syngenta, Bayer, Dupont and Dow. These are the founding members of "civil partnership nonprofit" Agrobio Mexico, firing from their website of a campaign to send letters to Members of Congress in Mexico, asking for "approval as the Senate has approved" in Biosafety Bill because it "involves increasing biotechnology crops, improving food and stop using fertilizers and other harmful chemicals, which will improve the lives of millions of farmers and consumers."

None of these statements is true in countries where it most of the GM is, but this is not a relevant figure for Agrobio Mexico. Indeed, what will mean to "responsibly" in the mouth of the largest producers of biological weapons such as napalm and Orange Agent.

Of course multinationals producing GM would not put a text reading: "GMOs are produced by all companies that are promoting this campaign and they intend to establish a control unit and a never seen on producers and consumers, then gentlemen, to see if we already passed, and as this law, because, despite the damage we've done so far achieved in Mexico, everything is on the edge of the law or is illegal: the cultivation of transgenic cotton and soybeans are 'semi-pilot experiments', though, thanks to agricultural policies that favor large agricultural industry, are subsidized with public funds' for campo', but the contamination of native corn, which we are responsible is completely illegal and make us somewhat uncomfortable. This law can legalize all this and continue to pollute with impunity. "

The reality

As they won’t say this, that's the truth, let’s analyze the message of the web that sustains these multinationals.

Scenario One: crops grow.

Fact: GM crops produce less. The main GM crop-soybean with herbicide resistance (61 per cent of the global crop) – produces less than conventional soybeans with chemicals. According to studies compiled by Charles Benbrook on the first eight years of GM in the U.S., the average reduction is 5 to 10 percent, while the average in some areas reaches 19 per cent less. The average total, taken all crops, indicating less production.

Scenario Two: better food. 

Fact: no, unless for these companies improving food is increasing waste in consumption of pesticides. More than 80 percent of field crops are tolerant to herbicides, and therefore apply greater amounts of pesticides at once, which leaves a much larger percentage of waste in what is consumed (it is found in baby food transgenic soybean containing a percentage up to 200 times more herbicide residues).

Scenario Three: they would stop using harmful chemical and fertilizers.

Fact: GM crops have not been manipulated to decrease the use of fertilizers, on the contrary, increase the demand for chemists because low soil fertility with massive applications of herbicides and other pesticides. Based on official statistics, another study Benbrook compiles the use of pesticides in the United States from 1996 to 2003, noting that GM has increased the use of agrochemicals in 23 million kilograms.

Scenario Four: improve the lives of millions of farmers and consumers. 

Fact: GM crops have led to an increase in the expulsion of peasants and farmers in Argentina and the United States-countries that together account for nearly 90 percent of world output, making a genuine agrarian reform, it due to capital and increasing areas involving the cultivation of these patented seeds. GM farmers are taking to new forms of slavery: if GM is still expanding, they have no other choice than proprietary seeds is illegal for the next planting season, and are also more expensive than the hybrid.,

In Paraná, Brazil, the state was declared free of GM, conventional soybeans produced almost twice the transgenic smuggled to other states by land companies and subsequently legalized by Lula. Biosafety law in Brazil, which started as a promising initiative for the interests of society and farmers, has been distorted to the point that it is unrecognizable, approaching the aberration that is being discussed in Mexico.

But, as they say in Paraná: those requiring biosafety laws are transnationals. Everyone else can do something much simpler: to ban GMOs.

Silvia Ribeiro
ETC Group's Research Published in, Mexico November 29th, 2004

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