5/8/2006 9:25:00 AM A New World Order for crop seeds
Bill Horne
Folks, recently a reader wrote to me and asked for a copy of a past column on changing the definition of milk. As I was looking for this article, I realized I have shared thoughts with you on mercury in fish, milk, and milk again, carbon monoxide in our beef, large concentrated animal feed lots, chickens and live stock identification, and unmarked food.
Twice we have looked at situations where the U.S. government sided with large corporations against small regional companies who just wanted to test 100 percent of their products.
In these last two cases, if you will remember, our government said that the small companies guaranteeing their product was 100 percent good implied that the large corporations, food products might not be as good just because the large corporations did not test. So, the small companies were required to stop doing the good things like testing to assure us that our food was healthy.
Now comes word that the large agriculture chemical companies have purchased most of the small seed companies that you and I send off to for our garden seeds. The reason is our courts have ruled that it is legal to patent all seeds.
I thought it was bad enough when companies that had genetically modified their seed could get patents; but now whoever gets to the patent office first, owns the rights to any seed. One large chemical company now has patents on more than 11,000 different seeds.
You and I won’t even be allowed to save seeds without paying a fee to the company who owns the patent. It sounds crazy, but they receive this fee not because they invented something but because they were the first into the patent office.
Now, why did you and I not think of this? I believe it is because we think owning a patent on something that we did not invent would be morally and ethically wrong. And, owning a patent on seeds that have been developed by farmers and gardeners for thousands of years is unthinkable.
When I talk to people raised in the large cities about this, they look at me, shrug their shoulders, and say things like, “So what?” Those of use raised in rural communities either don’t believe that such a thing can happen or wonder how our government could allow this to happen.
I believe things like this happen because we have lost contact with the soil and in many cases each other. We have lost the personal connection to our food. The average distance our food travels to get to us is 1,500 miles, and in the stores it is packaged so we can’t touch it until we get home.
Tip O’Neill wrote “All Politics Is Local.” I know all food cannot be grown locally, but we should be growing a lot more in our communities than we currently produce.
Folks, I believe that there will be an awakening when we as a society begin to realize that we have lost complete control over what we eat. I also believe that it won’t be too far into the future.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled that all countries must stop agricultural subsidies and that includes our country. This ruling could be the single thing that awakens us all. It could very well bankrupt thousands of family farms.
Every once in a while you can read something that says that our farmers receive only 5 to 10 cents of every retail dollar spent on food. Well, most farmers don’t even receive that. They lose money and it is easy to see why.
Farmers have always been squeezed because they cannot control the cost of supplies they purchase or the price they receive for the products they sell. This squeeze is rapidly becoming a chokehold.
I listened to a local restaurant owner berate some of his farmer customers the other day because they were receiving subsidies from the government. He was accusing these farmers of receiving welfare.
What this told me was that the restaurant owner didn’t have the foggiest notion as to what is happening to our farmers and just as importantly to the United States’ food chain as a whole.
If farmers received a fair price for their produce subsidies would not be needed. When the farmer is losing money this means that the subsidy money just passes right through the farmers hands and into the pockets of the large agri-business corporations.
Folks we are now, as a country, a net food importer, a net oil importer, a net ammunition for our weapons importer, a net plastic junk from China importer, and we owe money to just about every country on the face of the earth.
It is time to circle the wagons and take control of our lives. We can start with our food. All over the country farmers are beginning to produce for local customers.
If you are a gardener the small seed companies are asking that you save seeds for the future.
They are asking that we save seed for the purpose of diversity.
Many types of produce are already down to just a few varieties. For example, there used to be thousands of different kinds of potatoes, and now there are just a handful of different varieties remaining.
The same thing is true of apple varieties. So don’t cut down that wild apple tree.
Bill Horne is a professor of economics at Southern State Community College and a columnist for The Times-Gazette.
