Seed + Soil

Seeds really are building blocks of life. Those who control seeds control life itself. Monsanto, the world’s largest seed corporation, has made farmers everywhere dependent on its seeds and made an example of those who refuse to go along.

Where farmers once cultivated their own seeds, which were strong, nutrient-rich, and diverse, they are now largely reliant on seed varieties owned by transnationals that have been manufactured to bear infertile offspring. In other words, Monsanto and others have found a way to profit by preventing farmers from reusing their seeds. And Monsanto has lashed out at farmers who object to this one-sided policy.

• Learn more about Monsanto and other seed corporations’ underhanded tactics at the True Food Network, or see Brian Tokar’s award-winning investigation of Monsanto’s checkered history in The Ecologist.
• Learn more about corporate lawsuits against small farmers. Check out Vanity Fair’s exposé, “Harvest of Fear.”
• Why are hundreds of Indian farmers committing suicide? Watch the FRONTLINE/World Rough Cut “Seeds of Suicide” to find out.  

 
Pesticides
Many of the largest seed corporations are also the largest pesticide corporations. And this synergy benefits them well. Monsanto, for instance, has patented a Roundup ready seed, where the seed is modified to withstand the harmful effects of a toxic pesticide – a pesticide that Monsanto exclusively manufacture.

But Monsanto has not yet developed the science to make humans impervious to the harmful effects of its pesticides. Pesticides can affect the endocrine, immune, and nervous systems of both adults and children. Farmworkers bear a disproportionate burden of pesticide exposure. The long-term effects of pesticide exposure in farmworker communities include respiratory problems, cancers, memory disorders, skin conditions, miscarriages, and birth defects.[3] 

Children are particularly at risk for the negative health effects of pesticide exposure due to their developing detoxification and immune systems. Kids exposed to high levels of organophosphorus pesticides are at high risk for bone and brain cancer as well as childhood leukemia.  

• Pesticide Action Network International is an organization leading the fight against industrial pesticide use and abuse.
• For background on the many issues at play in the use of industrial pesticides, see Sustainable Table’s Pesticides issue page.
• Grist writer Tom Philpott reviews the evolution of farmworker health risks from industrial pesticides over the past 50 years.

Fertilizers
In addition to pesticides, mixes of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers used on factory farms also damage our health and the environment. As soil becomes leeched of nutrients as a result of industrialized farming methods, farmers all over the world are applying more fertilizers in order to maintain agricultural production. Fertilizer use can lead to groundwater contamination, which bears dangerous consequences for human health, as well as the eutrophication of waterways, which creates “dead zones” in which aquatic life cannot survive.

• The Environmental Working Group explains how "dead zones" come about.
• For a case study in the destructive tendencies of industrial fertilizers, see Greenpeace’s report, Agrochemical Use in the Philippines and Its Consequences to the Environment.
• Also check out Berkeley professor Miguel Altieri’s essay, “Modern Agriculture: Ecological Impacts and the Possibilities for Truly Sustainable Farming.”

Before the seeds are planted, the nutritional quality and safety of our food has already been compromised in a corporate laboratory. Since the 1950s, transnationals like Cargill and ADM have forced many of family farms that produced a diverse variety of crops to consolidate into massive, heavily-fertilized, single crop factories.

The result? USDA figures show a decline in the nutrient content of all forty-three crops tracked since the 1950s: Vitamin C declined by 20 percent, iron by 15 percent, riboflavin by 38 percent, calcium by 16 percent.[4] Many researchers remain concerned that even subtle micronutrient deficiencies have a profound link to chronic diseases, including cancer.

• See this GRAIN briefing on vitamin deficiencies and how corporate control of food is responsible.