{"id":55997,"date":"2015-03-30T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=55997"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:54","slug":"a-desolate-world-without-gmo-crops-inside-monsantos-demented-spin-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/a-desolate-world-without-gmo-crops-inside-monsantos-demented-spin-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"A Desolate World without GMO Crops: Inside Monsanto\u2019s Demented Spin Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty years after “Silent Spring” hit bookstores, Big Ag is still trying to win the public’s hearts and minds.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A still from a Monsanto ad.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the fall of 1962, a group of chemical companies including Monsanto \u2013 at the time the largest producer of the cancer-causing chemical compound, PCB \u2013 launched a full-throttle public relations campaign against\u00a0Silent Spring<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and its author, biologist Rachel Carson.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Silent Spring<\/em>, Carson dared to take on the world\u2019s biggest chemical companies, explaining that their products were not only harmful to birds and bees, but to humans, too. In the wake of its publication, the chemical industry PR machine kicked into gear. \u201cHundreds of thousands of dollars were spent attempting to discredit not only the book but the \u2018hysterical\u2019 woman who wrote it,\u201d says Kaiulani Lee, the playwright and actor who wrote and performs the definitive play about Carson,\u00a0A Sense of Wonder<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In addition to paying spokespeople to tarnish Carson\u2019s reputation, Monsanto also sent a parody to newspapers around the country. In \u201cThe Desolate Year,\u201d Monsanto painted a frightening picture of a world without chemicals. It was a bleak place. \u201cGenus by genus, species by species, sub-species by innumerable sub-species, the insects emerged,\u201d the article warned. \u201cCreeping and flying and crawling. \u2026 They were chewers, and piercer-suckers, spongers, siphoners and chewer-lappers, and all their vast progeny were chewers \u2013 rasping, sawing biting maggots and worms and caterpillars.\u201d It goes on and on like this for five pages. (As we now know, that diatribe was fear-mongering, not fact-marshalling. Organic and low-chemical farmers across the United States are proving that you can eliminate, or greatly reduce, toxic chemical use on the farm without having to worry about being overrun by pests, weeds, or diseases.)<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but notice that in its recent\u00a0PR\u00a0missives against anti-GMO\u00a0activists, Monsanto, which is today the world\u2019s largest manufacturer of genetically modified seeds, is using the same fear tactics. Only this time, it\u2019s stirring up fear of a world without biotech crops.<\/p>\n

In a recent debate on NPR, Monsanto\u2019s Chief Technology Officer, Robert Fraley, sounded remarkably like \u201cThe Desolate Year.\u201d \u201cWhat I\u2019d like to do is [describe] what it would be like to live in a world without GMO crops,\u201d Fraley said in his closing statement. \u201cWithout GMOs, farmers would need to dramatically increase their use of herbicides and insecticides. [T]he pressure \u2026 will drain more wetlands, will cut down more forests. We [will] have to take tractors and run up and down the fields \u2026 and release more greenhouse gas emissions. Banning GMO crops is equivalent to putting 26 million new cars on the road. \u2026 I hope, for the sake of all the people \u2026 that you vote to \u2026 support\u00a0GM\u00a0food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Fraley\u2019s dire warnings, feeding the future doesn\u2019t depend on GMOs. In fact, the spread of GMOs is actively undermining our ability to feed future generations by locking farmers into dependence on expensive seeds and inputs, by undermining soil health, by reducing biodiversity, and more.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that the main GM traits that have been commercialized convey just two qualities, or a combination of them: pest- and weed-resistance. Industry promises for big nutrition or yield improvements have not borne fruit. Studies show that non-GM corn and soybean yields in Europe, for example, are similar to the yields achieved with GMOs here in the US.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, we know that the ecologists who warned that GMOs would spur weed and pest resistance were right. As Jonathan Foley, the head of the California Academy of Scientists, has said: \u201cYou can\u2019t put out a weed-resistant crop and expect the weeds to sit still. They will evolve.\u201d They will, and they have. Today, we have Roundup-resistant weeds, some with stalks so thick that they can damage farm equipment. And we have Bt-resistant bugs so defiant they\u2019ve got corn growers in our Midwest worried. \u201cEvery ecologist predicted that,\u201d Foley says.<\/p>\n

As with the chemicals Carson raised the alarm about, when it comes to genetic engineering, the risks are too great, the rewards too minimal, the alternatives too ample to do anything but to stand up to this latest wave of industry fear-mongering.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 salon.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years after “Silent Spring” hit bookstores, Big Ag is still trying to win the public’s hearts and minds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organic-gmo-genetic-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}