Aunty Belle's Front Porch: bio-diversity

Da' Troll-nag has jes' hounded ya'll's poor ole Aunty on the matter of heritage (or heirloom) seeds. The whole thang started when Aunty said her hedge against The Great Depression of 2009, an' fiat money, was gonna be to sell or barter wif' her goodly store of heritage seeds. Ya cain't eat no gold.

An soon enough ya' ain't gonna be able to grow your own food :10 companies worldwide control jes' over half of the planet's seed production and sales. These corporate conglomerate seeds is hybrids-- an' many are somethin' called "Terminator seeds" (and their kissin' cousin, the "verminators" who specia DNA is matched to the terminator seeds so ya have to ALSO buy this special pesticide to control vermin on the plants that terminator seeds produce) . So folks, PLEASE doan buy no more store boughten seeds.

Why not jes' any ole seed? Why heirloom seeds? An' what is they anyhoo? Heritage seeds is NON-hybrid seeds.

The old fashioned kind of seed the way nature grew 'em. Modern seeds is pretty good the first crop-- mostly..but they doan germinate the same when ya save their seeds. Only open pollinated (or “heirloom” “traditional”) varieties can make seed the same as the parent fruit/veggie (from which ya saved the seed).

Them hybrids doan re-produce the same high quality plant as the parent. But thar's some real --ain't foolin' none, now--real bad seed thangs loose in the world. They's called "terminator seeds" cause they not only WILL not grow again if ya save the seed, the pollen from these alien species will TERMINATE the flowers of other species. I know I know....sounds like pure T sci-fi fiction, but it ain't. It is a real live horror show. How's that ya ask? Heh.

Here's what the fancy edoocated an' quietly alarmed an' worryin' folks say:

"With control of seeds and agricultural research held in fewer hands, the world’s food supply is increasingly vulnerable to the whims of market maneuvers."

Yeah, okay, uhm....hit the panic button NOW! what that REALLY means chickadees is that "he who controls the food controls the world."

Suppose youse an regular farmer-- not a conglomerate wif' billions in ag sales-- an' ya scrape up enough $ to buy some of that fancy hybrid corn seed that promises a fast crop, resistant to bugs and wif high sugar content (All the better to make corn whiskey!). Great. Ya plant the stuff wif' hopes to save some of the kernels, dry 'em and plant next year.

Whoops! No can do, dumb donkey hayseed farmer in overalls. no.can.do.

The hybridizer hegemony headed up by Monsanto and DuPont doan want ya to have no saved seed. They want you to HAVE to come back to them each year and buy more seed--at whatever price! So they engineer the seeds they hybridize exactly so they cannot germinate--in other words, sterile seeds is they bidness.

(The reason fer this nightmare? They say they want to protect their intecllectual property rights. Doan want you growin' their seed wifout payin' fer it, so they make sure it makes sterile seeds--got it. BUT, the thang to keep in mind is that these freak seeds poision other plant pollen growin' nearby. It literally terminates its neighbors.)

Thar' was such an outcry against this that Monsanto promised not to use this "terminator techonolgy" as part of its biotech productions, but they renegged on their promise. Now the trouble is two fold: first, the new hybrids is vigorous growers and easy to grow so farmers like 'em an' start usin' them almost exclusively--to the neglect of the more stolid un-sexy plain old reliable seeds. Next thang ya know, they ain't many varieties of the non-hybrid, old timey seeds left. Know what that means?

It means youse gonna starve. Oh yeah, baby, no old time self-germinatin' seeds but only the hybrid hyenas that youse FORCED to buy at inflated prices cause the hegmony boys controls them seeds. ("In less rich countries, hundreds of millions of people rely heavily on small farms which produce foods for the region. If these farms begin to use Monsanto's terminator technology, and cannot afford to buy new genetically engineered seeds from Monsanto the following year, many of the people in the region may starve. Under normal circumstances, food could be brought in from other regions. However, many of those other regions will likely have the same problems with famine due to Monsanto's terminator technology.")

Second point is worse--some of these hybrids is TERMINATORs. So even if ya is a seed saver who has a handful of old timey heritage seeds, when ya grows them in a field wif'in a five mile radius of a terminator seed, that terminator pollen will blow onto your corn/wheat/barely/millet an KILL THEM. Not assassinate yore crop, but neuter them--thas' right--terminator species pollen causes sterility in everythang it touches!

This stuff is the brain chile of Monsanto (bought it from Delta Pine) --who was sued over it...guess who won? Then in 2005 Monsanto paid 1.5 billion fer a big veggie seed company-- Makin' Monsato the dominant purveyor of the vegetable seed market for fruit and vegetable growers in 150 countries.

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Ya'll prolly never knowed that since the 1960s they has been "seed laws." yep. Idea of course was we were wantin' to help developin' nations-- but no nation needed a local version of kudzu gettin' loose on the farmlands.

But now nations is passin' new and more an' more repressive seed laws that are designed to protect the BIG HEGEMONY of the agri-terrorists. An' the World Bank gigs the local farmer too.

Here's how: When the Masagana 99 project ( Philippines) wanted to shove farmers into usin' hi-yield GMO (genetically modified organisims) they fixed the credit requirements so farming families or even whole villages were forbidden to plant the village's traditional seeds. This same World Bank thuggery happens all over South America. The Banks dictates the terms of the loan--even to tellin presidents of nations that unless you reduce the number of child-bearin' women, you cannot have $$ for schools and hospitals, no more agricultural assistance, etc. (Doan even git me started on the horror of vicious population control--Peruvian women sterilized without their knowledge when they go to UNFPA clincs. )

Now, Aunty does know that nuthin' is ever as simple as it seems--thang is, in some ways the GMOs and modern seed technology is wonderful--truly it has meant that the same 10 acres can produce more food than in 10 acres in 1900. And it means India doan need to starve. BUT But but but...the happy wish fairy is now the evil fairy wif' famine at the end of her wand--the thang is out.of.control.

"The world food crisis, rapidly defined by those in power as a problem of insufficient production, has become a trojan horse to get corporate seeds, fertilisers and, surreptitiously, market systems into poor countries. As past experience shows, what looks like “seed aid” in the short term can mask what is actually “agribusiness aid” in the long term."

(I could tell ya how globalization is movin' to consolidate ' humans under one computer- in- the- sky controlled terrarium, but I wouldn't wanna depress ya no more than necessary)

Workin' an honest week's work took me onc't to a Food and Agricultural Organization shindig whar a lady Ph.D from India sat wif me fer a spell and we yakked a bit. She done said how the Monsanto and Bayer (German corp) folks done a test over acres of her province--and how ever' butterfly that landed on those plants was kilt--an so was neighbor corn.

Same happened in a test trial in Mexico. Hmmm? So, ah. lemme think this out a bit. Iffin' some big agri-bidness owns most of the world's seeds an' can kill of the rest so it won't never germinate again and thus species of varieties will disappear into the anti-cosmos, then who will control populations and nations?

The folks wif food, thas' who. I could think more on it...uh, ya know, how if one continent was resource rich and the people would not die off naturally, why, food shortage is weapon, I reckon. (small note: it ain't necessary to use conventional weapons these days--jes' an engineered famine or plague will do nicely.) As the fancy talkin' worry-worts say " Corporate control and ownership of seeds – the first link in the food chain – has far-reaching implications for global food security.

Now, for a whole heap of other reasons, some people are seed-savers. They cut a good 'mater and decide to grow is chillen next season--save the seeds. Some hunt up interestin' varieties of vegetables and fruit that are old timey favorites --all are non-hybrid seeds.

But most important is that these old fashioned seeds have a gene pool that we need on this earth. (We's loosin' bio-diversity in food crops. )Cause the fancy hybrids often are engineered by sacrificing one aspect to increase another.

But when the odd thang happens-- the 33 year smite mold--a hybrid fancy pants is decimated. Whar'as the NON -hybrids is hundreds of seasons, hundreds of years old and has SURVIVED the once in a century suckin' tick plague that cuts doen miles of the hybrids, but leaves the heritage varieties alone--that is because the heritage developed nature's own defenses over the years. Well, Troll-Man, thar' ya have it.