Monsanto Encourages Farmers To Use New Seeds Resistant To Powerful New Herbicide, Causing Widespread Destruction

Death And Destruction Follow In Their Wake: Monsanto Ruining Farmers Crops By Encouraging Illegal New Herbicide Use

If there were ever a company you could count on to do the wrong thing, it would be Monsanto.

The fact that there is one single corporate entity responsible for so much damage–saccharin and its cancer-related problems, PCBs and the global spread of human and animal damage they have caused and are still causing as municipalities struggle to clean them up, Agent Orange, genetically-modified crops and the glyphosate and other chemicals they require to live being spread by the billions of tons around the world–the fact that it hasn’t been put down like a rabid dog speaks to the insanity of the current system under whish we live.

However the corporation–stunningly–may have sunk to a new low, in rolling out their next generation of genetically modified crop seeds.

As glyphosate use has increased exponentially over the past two decades–we’re up to around 300 million tons of the stuff being sprayed every year in the U.S. alone–so to have weeds abilities to resist it. thus farmers sprayed more and more in an attempt to save their crops–an arrangement that has worked out quite well for Monsanto stockholders, if no one else.

However, a tipping point is fast approaching at which glyphosate and Monsanto’s Roundup brand herbicide that contains it will no longer be effective no matter how much is applied. So Monsanto, forward-looking as always, has developed a new strain of genetically modified soybean and cotton seed that is resistant not only to Roundup but also to a powerful, older herbicide called dicamba, which is much more dangerous to humans and animals than even glyphosate. They have begin marketing these seeds to farmers.

The problem lies in the fact that dicamba is illegal. The herbicide is not approved by the EPA for use with these plants.

But that hasn’t stopped desperate farmers from using it off-label, applying it illegally to crops they see threatened by ever-encroaching weeds as Monsanto’s flagship business model for farms fails and glyphosate by the ton becomes ineffective.

But dicamba is highly volatile, and has a tendency to drift far and wide. This means that neighboring farmers who are growing non-GMO crops like melons, peaches and tomatoes are seeing their crops die off as the dicamba blows across their orchards and fields. And while Monsanto has claimed it warns farmers not to use dicamba–on its dicamba-resistant crops–other farmers in the area can see where this is heading.

“If we don’t do anything to stop this, it’s going to happen year after year until everyone’s planting dicamba-resistant crops or they’re not planting anything at all,” said Kade McBroom, a farmer and operator of Malden Specialty Soy

“That seems to be the path we’re on,” he added.

Indeed, and ain’t it a lovely path, if you are a Monsanto stockholder? First you force farmers’ hands once your glyphosate technology fails as many predicted it would, then you wait until there is enough dicamba around so nothing will grow without dicamba resistant genes you have manufactured, then you pressure the EPA to loosen its restrictions.

It’s a win-win for Monsanto, but it’s a losing prospect for the future of the planet and the human species. So again, why hasn’t this demonstrably evil company been put down like a rabid dog?
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http://www.alternet.org/food/monsantos-botched-rollout-new-ge-seeds-leading-widespread-crop-damage

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