Monsanto’s ‘GM Genocide’
Posted by feww on November 9, 2008
GM Genocide: Relieving farmers of hardship and misery!
Painful Suicides, But the Debts Stay!
About 150,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide because their genetically modified crops failed, according to official statistics.
Millions of farmers throughout India have been promised bumper harvests and unheard of income if they switched to planting genetically modified (GM) seeds.
Enticed by the promise of wealth, they borrowed large sums of money at extortionate interest rates to buy Monsanto’s GM ‘magic seeds’ at staggering prices. They paid “£10 [$16] for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds,” an investigative report said.
To promote the GM seeds, Indian government even banned traditional varieties from most of its seed banks.
Unfortunately the expensive ‘magic seeds’ failed to resist pests. The GM cotton seeds, for example, were devastated by bollworms.
THIS IMAGE WAS REMOVED BY WORDPRESS. REINSTATED by FIRE-EARTH on NOVEMBER 27, 2013.
Vaibhav, left, and Yash, orphans of farmer Rajendra Shankarwar, who committed suicide, stand at the doorway of their house in village Akoli, India, Thursday, April 24, 2008. India’s cotton belt, a land of searing temperatures and backbreaking work, has been hit hardest by an epidemic of suicides. With debts larger than their incomes, these steadiest of workers have become gamblers of the highest stakes, betting their land—and their lives—on one more good crop. Photo: Reuters/DayLife. Image may be subject to copyright.
But the misery didn’t end there. Soon the farmers in drought-stricken areas realized that the GM seeds need twice the amount of water as the traditional seeds.
After two years of drought, the GM crops died; farmers crippling debts mounted; hope disappeared.
Enter the ‘Terminator Technology’
A triple whammy had awaited the unsuspecting farmers all along. Whereas the farmers were previously able to save seeds and replant them the following year, if the crops failed, the GM genetic use restriction technology (GURT) or the ‘terminator technology,’ which renders the second generation of seeds sterile, meant farmers had to buy new seeds every year.
Many farmers, unable to find a way to repay their debts, took their own lives the cheapest way they knew, with a cocktail of insecticides—a very painful death!
The debt isn’t written off with the farmers deaths; it stays with the land. The widowed wives and their young children have to pay the debts. They are the real victims of what is called the ‘GM Genocide.’
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