Hey, Monster Monsanto: Nature Bats Last!

When I first saw the title to this article, I thought the author was referring to people! People as weeds. We grow anywhere, especially in “disturbed soil.” We are hard to kill off. We morph when necessary. We work together. We help each other survive. We are nature. Nature bats last.

See: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 billion.

Monsanto Vs Nature: The Weeds Fight Back

So much of Monsanto’s poison was spread in the past decade that weeds naturally developed a resistance to it.

June 5, 2012

by Jim Hightower

alternet.org

Rather than find ways to cooperate with the natural world, America’s agribusiness giants reach for the next quick fix in a futile effort to overpower nature. Their attitude is that if brute force isn’t working, they’re probably not using enough of it.

Monsanto, for example, has banked a fortune by selling a corn seed that it genetically manipulated to produce corn plants that won’t die when sprayed with the Roundup toxic weedkiller. Not coincidentally, Monsanto also happens to manufacture Roundup. It profits from the seed and from the huge jump in Roundup sales that the seed generates. Slick.

But Mother Nature, darn it, has rebelled. So much of Monsanto’s poison was spread in the past decade that weeds naturally began to resist it. As a Dow Chemical agronomist explained, “The real need here is to diversify our weed management systems.”

Exactly right! We need non-chemical, sustainable systems that work with nature and without genetically altered crops.

But, no, the Dow man didn’t mean that at all. He was calling for more brute force in the form of Dow’s new genetically altered corn seed that can absorb Dow’s super-potent 2,4-D weedkiller, which it markets under the “Enlist” brand name. Use this stuff, he says, and nature will be defeated.

Wrong. Nature doesn’t quit. The weeds will keep evolving and will adapt to Dow’s high-tech fix, too. By pushing the same old thing relentlessly, says an independent crop scientist, agribusiness interests “ratchet up [America’s] dependence on the use of herbicides, which is very much a treadmill.”

It’s time to start listening to the weeds — and cooperating with Mother Nature. To advance this common sense approach, a national coalition is backing a California “Right to Know” initiative requiring the labeling of genetically altered foods. To help, go to the Organic Consumers Association at www.OrganicConsumers.org.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, “Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow.” (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly “Hightower Lowdown,” co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

About Ann Kreilkamp

PhD Philosophy, 1972. Rogue philosopher ever since.
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One Response to Hey, Monster Monsanto: Nature Bats Last!

  1. Susan McElroy says:

    You know, Nature DOES bat last and if we keep being such boobs, I can fully imagine her simply batting we humans right out of the park.

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