More GM Fun, Now with Bees!

Posted: February 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: crops, Farming, Food | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

I recently commented that I thought GM crops had more to do with colony collapse disorder in the European Honey Bee than is normally suspected. I want to expand on that comment. But first, we need to go over colony collapse disorder.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) first appeared in North America in 2005/2006. It has also been reported from Europe and from Taiwan in 2007. It is characterized by the disappearance of the worker bees in a typical honey bee colony, leaving the baby bees to die a slow death. Once the workers are gone, the colony collapses. This could be a good lesson for conservatives, come to think of it.

A Bee on Borage

A Bee on Borage in my Garden

The causes are unknown at this point. It seems that colonies collapse from a variety of reasons; diseases, pesticides, viruses, pathogens and parasites and cell phones have all been implicated.

The reason CCD is important is that honey bees pollinate a lot of our crops. Now, European honey bees are not native to North America, and there are native pollinators that do well here. But they don’t pollinate with the vigor and fecundity of the honey bee. Modern agricultural honey bees are managed something like livestock, and their colonies are moved around the agricultural areas of the country to provide pollination during the specific times that crops need their services. Almonds, for example, are entirely pollinated by bees. Oranges, peaches, cotton, blueberries, corn and other crops are also partly or almost completely pollinated by the sturdy little workers. The movement of the bee hives, of course, stresses the colony but normally the colonies survive such stress. The advent of CCD has changed this.
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Follow-up: GM Alfalfa

Posted: February 2, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: crops, Farming, Food, gardening | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

I wrote about GM Alfalfa several days ago, and wanted to post a short followup.

First, do we really need GM Alfalfa? Probably not. It’s not like Alfalfa is riddled with a weed problem in this country. Michael Pollan points out that 93% of the alfalfa in this country is raised without any herbicides at all. This makes sense, alfalfa as fodder can benefit from the addition of other plants (although not poisonous ones, obviously). My goats thrive on weedy alfalfa. Anyway, GM Alfalfa says Pollan, ‘is a bad solution to a problem that doesn’t exist’.

The Center for Food Safety is going to continue bringing Monsanto to court over GM Alfalfa. ‘by tackling a new angle, Page Tomaselli, staff attorney at the Center for Food Safety, explained Friday at the Eco-Farm Conference. Their strategy will hinge on the “gene flow” risk accepted by the Supreme Court last June as harmful and illegal under current environment protections.’ The Public Patent Foundation is also going to sue Monsanto (or continue suing Monsanto. The foundation has been fighting Monsanto’s patents for a while now). If the foundation succeeds (and it just won a court battle to declare patents concerning human genes invalid), most of Monsanto’s patents concerning living things will be rendered irrelevant. Yes!

The Center for Food Safety has issued a press release pointing out that Vilsack’s decision leaves many problems. Who’s liable if a farmer’s crop is destroyed by GM pollen? Who pays damages? WHo is going to monitor and control herbicide useage on a crop that doesn’t need it, unless it’s ‘Round-Up Ready’? Who is liable for the super-weeds that will result?

From the Department of ‘Of Course, We Should have Known!’ (via Kat) comes this news. Media reports suggest that the reason Vilsack disregarded the comments of 200,000+, the recommendations of Aphis and so on has to do with pressure from the White House. So I wonder, is Obama actually fake? I mean, is he, like, made by Monsanto and the others? Just a gas-bag filled with whatever, maybe Round-Up, and tuned to say certain things that get frat boys excited? I wonder what Michelle, organic gardening proponent that she is, thinks about this? I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Just more proof everyone up ‘high’ is bought and paid for by the time they are weaned.

More Proof that the World is run by the Rich for the Rich

Posted: January 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: crops, Farming, Food | Tags: , , , , | 36 Comments


The Center for Food Safety took the USDA’s decision to allow unregulated planting of Round-Up Ready Alfalfa to court in 2005, all the way to the Supreme Court, and managed to stop any planting of the bio-mutated forage crop until the USDA had a full environmental impact statement ready. No more sneaking GM crops in the back door by pretending not to notice they were being planted, and then when forced to notice saying, ‘Oh My, Imagine that, how did THAT get there?’, with a hand to a cheek and a distressed look on their pretty little faces.

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