GMO’s: Scare Mongering at Its Worst! Part VIII

By Rich Kozlovich

*Update

Mike Adams, who publishes Natural News and styles himself as the Health Ranger recently posted an article entitled, The Agricultural Holocaust explained: the 10 worst ways GMOs threaten humanity and our natural worldon July 27, 2014.

He claims "genetically modified organisms (GMOs) a serious threat to humanity and the environment? The reasons span the realms of science, social justice, economics and the environment, and once you understand this, you'll readily understand why so many environmentalists, humanitarians, responsible scientists and social justice advocates are strongly opposed to GMOs", and lists ten reasons why? This is a ten part series. Here is Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI,Part VII

He next claims that,“GMOs put control over the food supply into the hands of profit-driven corporations.”

Before corporate agriculture, food production used to be under the control of local farmers who cared for their families and communities. But now, food seeds are monopolized by greed-driven corporations that care nothing about families or communities (but worship profit at all costs).

It almost goes without saying that these corporations make decisions in the best interests of their shareholders, not the best interests of humanity or the environment.

Expecting corporations to place the long-term sustainability of life on Earth as a higher priority than their own quarterly profits is a form of insanity. Corporations only exist to maximize short-term profits, regardless of the long-term cost to humanity or the planet.

When food production was under the control of local farmers was at a time when a very large portion of the population was involved in agriculture. Before WWII America was still a largely agrarian society with approximately 75% of the population involved in agriculture. (*Editor's Note:  That 75% figure is inaccurate - faulty memory - in 1940 18% were actual farmers, but that doesn't include all those that were a part of agriculture, so I will try and find where I got that number and correct it.) Currently it stands around 2%, and that amazingly small number is feeding not only the other 98%, but a substantial number of people in the rest of the world. And doing so at prices that are very low! Except lately!

Now government policies are demanding we put food into our gas tanks in the form of biofuels to overcome a problem that doesn’t exist –anthropogenic climate change – causing the price of grains to rise, which has caused a corresponding rise in the price of food – worldwide! And those self same government policies are set up to force more of the same, with the ardent support of the eco-activist community.

So then – who are making decisions that are not in the best interests of humanity? These “greed-driven corporations” who have abundantly provided an amazing variety of foods at very reasonable prices, or the eco-activists and their cats paws in government who are placing restrictions on farmers for what’s grown, how it’s grown, when it’s grown and how it’s to be used.

Is it true that large scale agriculture places a priority on quarterly profits? Of course! Agriculture is now and has always been a business venture. If there’re no profits– there’s no food. As for the long term cost to humanity – well so far it means more people will live, and those lives will be longer and healthier lives than ever before.

In agriculture making decisions that are best for the stockholders has consistently been what’s best for humanity because they’re in the business of providing what humanity needs.

I would also like to see the evidence where these corporations worship profits at all costs because they don’t care about the communities in which they live. I don’t think he can support that claim. However, I can. When you see corporations start “going green”!

Corporations have been ‘going green’ mostly because it’s subsidized by the taxpayers. In Spain every green job (which is virtually impossible to define) ended up costing two plus jobs. Green energy is raising the price of energy worldwide and cannot be maintained without government subsidies, tax breaks and outright grants. All this is costing humanity billions of dollars of borrowed money going to the few well connected and the activists. All this causes taxes to go up, and taxes cause all prices to go up.  Why isn't he and his cohorts attacking the real reason for these added costs to everything, which in turn must impact the cost of food.

So what’s his solution? Apparently he wants everyone to go back to farming and live a 19^thcentury life style. Does anyone really believe that’s possible? I’ve said it before and it’s worth repeating now. Twenty five years ago Norman Borlaug noted that if we were to abandon modern agricultural techniques we would need a land mass as large as everything east of the Mississippi with the exception of three states. That was twenty five years ago. It would be ever greater today. And almost everyone would have to become subsistence farmers.

Is there anyone out there who can remember what happened when Pot Pol overthrew the government of Cambodia and forced everyone out into the fields? Pot Pol was a Cambodian communist who lead a revolution against the Khmer Republic. As is the case with all communists he replaced an ineffective and corrupt government with a totalitarian dictatorship imposing "a radical reform of agrarian socialism" on the Cambodian people. Urban dwellers were forced into the countryside to work on collective farms and forced labor projects. He lasted four years.  In four years he managed to kill twenty five percent of the Cambodian population.

As to the Health Rangers' statement that, “GMOs put control over the food supply into the hands of profit-driven corporations”, I say – good! Because government control over the food supply has never been anything except disastrous to humanity, especially when in the hands of socialists (Editor's Note: Communism is the left wing of the socialist movement and fascism is the right wing. Two sides of the same coin.) like Stalin and Mao, both of whom starved tens of millions to death for political reasons. As for small farmers, they would be unable to feed the world, especially if they were all to adopt agricultural policies in accord with what the Health Ranger wants - everyone to “go green” and embrace “organic” – a sure system to bring about the eco-activists goal of reducing the world’s population to one billion people, with no more than two billion.

So the choices are twofold. Turn everything over to the activists and their myrmidons in government who have been, and always will be, unanswerable for their decisions, or those with a profit motive, who must respond to the market place to continue in business.

We need to understand this once and for all. History has shown the policies and schemes of the eco-activists and eco-bureaucrats - at every level, not just agriculture - have been irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. Putting what’s best for humanity in their hands is a proven formula for dystopia. 

 

Why is that so hard to understand? Why is that so hard to get? 

 

Here are the links to the entire series:   Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI,Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX and Part X