An Organized Worldwide Battle Against GMO's Is Underway

Global area of biotech crops 1996 - 2008

Even as a broad coalition of farmers, health groups, and organic food manufacturers wage war against biotech companies and organize to demand GMO-labeling of foods in a California, UK environmentalists have banned together against the use of genetically modified (GM) crops under the banner "Take the Flour Back" to organize direct action against GM wheat.

Volunteers and staff from the California Right to Know Campaign are submitting nearly 1 million signed petitions from registered voters across the state to county officials (click here to help raise money for the campaign) to place Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act on the Ballot for November 6.

When California voters pass this ballot initiative, the Label Genetically Engineered Food Act will also not allow the common practice of mislabeling genetically engineered foods as "natural" or "all natural." California has the eighth largest economy in the world, so passing a labeling law for genetically engineered foods in California will have the same powerful impact as passing a federal law.

The UK's Take the Flour Back campaign has planned a day of "decontamination" for May 27th to rid a Rothamsted field of the GM wheat planted by scientists at Rothamsted Research. 

While the scientists say their wheat has the potential to curb pesticide use by repelling aphids, Take the Flour Back correctly insists there is no market for GM wheat anywhere in the world. Lucy Harrap from Take the Flour Back told the BBC:  "So far, the evidence doesn't indicate that GM fields need less pesticide - in fact they tend to need more."

Wheat is wind-pollinated. In Canada similar experiments have leaked into the food-chain costing farmers millions in lost exports.

"This experiment is tax-payer funded, but Rothamsted hope to sell any patent it generates to an agro-chemical company. La Via Campesina, the world’s largest organization of peasant farmers, believe GM is increasing world hunger. They have called for support resisting GM crops, and the control over agriculture that biotech gives to corporations."

Around the world, people are resisting GM and corporate control of food [source]

France
Numbering over 500 members, the ‘Voluntary Reapers’, or ‘Faucheurs Volontaires’ are a self-organised group of French activists who decontaminate GM field trials set up by biotech corporations. They argue that direct action is necessary to defend land and food from private interests backed by public authorities.

Spain
National demonstrations against GM in Spain drew 8000 people in Zaragoza in 2009, and 15,000 in Madrid in 2010. The ‘Field Liberation’ movement take direct action to defend their food from contamination, by pulling up GM crops.

India
Bt cotton is the only GM crop approved in India. Bt cottonseeds are modified with the toxin Cry to control the bollworm pest. Bollworm have developed resistance to Bt cotton, so a new version, ‘Bollgard II’, has been created, containing 2 additional toxic genes. As pests become more tolerant to insect-resistant GM crops, more toxins have to be developed, adding increasing amounts of toxins to the food supply.

Bt cotton has been linked to a wave of smallholder farmer suicides in India. Over the last 20 years, India’s agriculture has been opened up to the global market, increasing costs and trapping many farmers in debt. As agriculture in India has become more focused on producing cash crops, multinational corporations have increased their control. Big agribusinesses like Monsanto market expensive biotechnology as a solution to farmers struggling to compete in the global market.

Between 1995 and 2010, more than a quarter of a million farmers have committed suicide in India. Debt and poverty is driving many farmers to suicide, some of whom have swallowed the poisonous pesticides used to spray their Bt cotton crops. The highest rates of suicide are in areas producing the most cotton.

Over 50,000 farmers took their own lives in Maharashtra between 1995 and 2010. Maharashtra was the richest state during that period. Monsanto argue that their Bt cotton produces higher yields as it is insect-resistant, and that therefore farmers will need to use less insecticide.

Yet a survey carried out in Vidharba by Navdanya (a network of seed keepers and organic producers from 16 states in India) found that pesticide use had increased 13-fold since Bt cotton was first introduced. Expensive Bt cotton seeds and pesticides have displaced cheaper local seeds.

This has driven up costs for farmers. And Monsanto have dramatically exaggerated the potential yields of GM cotton – Navyanda states that Monsanto’s claims of yields reaching 1500kg is false, as the average yield is only 400-500kg per acre. Poor harvests and the high costs of pesticides and GM seeds push subsistence farmers into ever-increasing debt. The majority of suicides are committed by farmers growing cash crops and not crops for food.

However, people have been resisting GM and corporate control of agriculture across India. The Karnataka farmers’ movement adopted the slogan “Cremate Monsanto” and pledged to burn all GM trial sites in the south of India. In 2006, farmers’ unions burnt trial plots of GM rice in two northern India states. In 2005, 3000 women made a bonfire of hybrid and GM seed, saying the GM seeds had pushed them into a cycle of poverty and debt.

Brazil
Since 1984, the landless farmers movement in Brazil has been occupying unused land to highlight issues around access to land, and to promote food sovereignty and agro-ecology. The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST) now has over 1.5 million members.

Big agribusiness has been engaged in violent landgrabs to displace small farmers from their land. In October 2007, the MST leader Valmir Mota d’Oliveira was murdered during an occupation of a GM field trial in the state of Paraná. MST had been occupying the site to stop Syngenta illegally testing GM crops there. Around 40 private armed guards employed by NF Segurança, a private security company hired by Syngenta, attacked the camp.

La Via Campesina Brazil have been taking direct action by pulling up GM crops. In Sao Paulo in 2008, 300 women decontaminated plant nurseries containing Monsanto GM maize. (16) In 2007, MST and La Via Campesina destroyed GM corn and soya seedlings at a Syngenta farm in Ceara, demanding that the company leave Brazil.

La Via Campesina is an international movement bringing together millions of peasants, small and medium-sized farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. La Via Campesina “defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity…[and] strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.”

 “Peasant farmers and indigenous peoples are rediscovering and revaluing the conservation and exchange of native seeds, which can increase the genetic biodiversity that underpins our world food systems. By prioritising agro-ecology we can help tackle hunger and poverty in a changing climate. Challenging the dominance of the seed industry is central to protecting peasant seeds. The seed industry is profiting from the use of genetic engineering and pesticides, which are being used to push farmers into dependence on corporate-owned seeds.”

Haiti
In June 2010, over 10,000 people in Haiti took to the streets in opposition to Monsanto, demanding food sovereignty and local control over native seeds.

Argentina
GM soya was introduced into Argentina in 1996 without parliamentary debate. Many small and family farmers have been pushed off their land to make way for GM soya plantations, ruining their livelihoods and pushing them into poverty.  Many communities have resisted these evictions, for example the Gurani community in Capoma, N.Argentina in 2008.

In 2008, the ‘Rural and Urban Women for Food Sovereignty’ held a protest lasting two days on a railway line used to transport GM soya.

Mali
In November 2008, a sit-in outside the national assembly in Mali called on politicians to vote against a new ‘biosafety’ law. The National Coordination of Peasant Organisations (CNOP), who represent over a million people, said the law would make small farmers dependent on seeds from western agribusiness.

“All arguments used by seed multinationals and their allies – GMOs will help fight hunger in Africa, decrease the use of pesticides, and save water- are easily demolished by existing analysis and research. And what is clear is that the underlying private economic interest of multinational seed corporations is driving the push for promoting genetic engineering in Africa.”