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They're based on what's called recombinant DNA (rDNA), and cuts in already reduced social services. it works by genetically introducing foreign DNA into plants and By 1991, Argentina was already a "secret experimental animals to create genetically modified organisms (GMOs), but not laboratory for developing genetically engineered crops". In without risks. London Institute of Science in Society chief effect, the country's agriculture had been handed to Monsanto, biologist Dr Mae-Wan Ho explains that there are dangers because Dow, DuPont and other GMO giants to exploit for profit. Things the process is imprecise. "It is uncontrollable and unreliable, and would never be the same again. By the mid-1990s, Menem was typically ends up damaging and scrambling the host genome, with "revolutioniz[ing] Argentina's traditional productive agriculture" entirely unpredictable consequences" that might unleash a deadly to one based on monoculture for global export. unrecallable "Andromeda Strain". Research continued anyway, From 1996 to 2004, worldwide GMO crop plantings expanded to amidst lies that risks were minimal and a promised future lay 167 million acres, a 40-fold increase using 25 per cent of total ahead. All that mattered were huge potential profits and worldwide arable land. An astonishing two-thirds of the acreage geopolitical gain—so let the good times roll and the chips fall (106 million acres, or 43 million hectares) was in the USA. By where they may. 2004, Argentina was in second place with 34 million acres (14 One project was to map the rice genome. It launched a 17-year __ million hectares), while production was expanding in Brazil, China, effort to spread GMO rice around the world, with Rockefeller Canada, South Africa, Indonesia, India, The Philippines, Colombia, Foundation money behind it. It spent millions funding 46 science Honduras, Spain and Eastern Europe (Poland, Romania and labs worldwide. It also financed the training of hundreds of Bulgaria). The revolution was on a roll; now it looks unstoppable. graduate students and developed an "elite fraternity" of top In 1995, Monsanto introduced Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans scientific researchers at Foundation-backed research institutes. It with its special gene-gun-inserted bacterium that allows the plant to was a diabolical scheme aiming big: to control the staple food for —_ survive being sprayed by the glyphosate herbicide, Roundup. 2.4 billion people and, in the process, destroy the biological GMO soybeans are thus protected from the same product which is diversity of over 140,000 developed varieties that can withstand used in Colombia to eradicate drugs but harms legal crops and droughts and pests and can grow in every imaginable climate. humans at the same time. After Monsanto's RR soybeans were Asia was the prime target, and Engdahl explains the sinister tale licensed by the US FDA in 1996, in Argentina "a once-productive of the Philippines-based, Foundation- national family-farm-based agriculture funded, International Rice Research system [was turned into] a neo-feudal Institute (IRRI). It had a gene bank It was a diabolical scheme state system dominated by a handfu with "every significant rice variety Pa . of powerful, wealthy" owners who known" that comprised one-fifth of aiming big: to control the exploited it for profit. Menem went all varieties. IRRI let agribusiness staple food for 24 billion along. In less than a decade, he had giants illegally use the seeds for . allowed the nation's corn, wheat an exclusive, patented, genetic people and, In the process, cattle diversity to be replaced by modification so they could introduce i i i i corporate-controlled monoculture. It them in markets and dominate them destroy the biological diversity was a Faustian sellout, and it helpe: by requiring farmers to be licensed of over 140,000 developed Monsanto's stock price hit an all-time and forced to pay annual royalty fees. varieties... high by the end of 2007. By 2000, a successful "Golden Rice" was developed that was enriched with beta carotene (vitamin Earlier decades of diversity an crop rotation preserved the country's soil quality, but this changed after A). It was marketed on the fraudulent claim that a daily bowl soybean monoculture moved in, with its heavy dependence on could prevent blindness and other vitamin A deficiencies. It was chemical fertilisers. Traditional Argentine crops vanished, and a scam, as other products are far better sources of this nutrient, cattle were forced into cramped feedlots the way they are in the and to get enough of it requires eating an impossible nine United States. Engdahl quotes a leading agro-ecologist who kilograms (about 20 pounds) of rice daily. predicts that these practices will destroy the land in 50 years' time Nonetheless, Gene Revolution backers were ready for their next if they continue. Nothing suggests there'll be a stoppage. move, "the consolidation of global control over humankind's food Argentina's economic crisis of the late 1990s—early 2000s made supply", with a new tool to do it: the World Trade Organization. vast, additional amounts of land available, and bankrupted Corporate giants wrote its rules to favour themselves at the farmers had to give up their holdings for a few cents in the dollar. expense of shut-out developing nations. Corporate predators and Jatifundista landholders took full advantage. With mechanised GMO soybean monoculture, the Unleashing GMO Seeds: A Revolution in World Food country's dairy farms were reduced by half and "hundreds of Production Begins thousands of workers [were forced] off the land" into poverty. By the end of the 1980s, a global network of molecular Monsanto was on a roll and used various exploitative schemes. biologists trained in genetic engineering was ready to kick off the In 1999, the company got Menem to allow it to collect "extended "Second Green Revolution". Argentina was its first test royalties", even though Argentine law prohibited the practice. laboratory, the first "guinea pig" nation in a reckless experiment Smuggling Roundup Ready soybean seeds into Brazil, Paraguay, with untested and potentially hazardous new foods. Bolivia and Uruguay also went on sub rosa. Argentina was an easy mark when Carlos Menem became Monsanto then pressured the government of Argentina to President in July 1989. He was a corporatist's dream, a willing recognise its "technology license fee". A Technology Compensation Washington Consensus subject, and he even let David Fund was established and managed by the Ministry of Agriculture. Rockefeller's New York and Washington friends draft his It forced farmers to pay a near-one-per-cent fee on GMO soybean economic program with Chicago School dogma at its heart: sales; Monsanto and other GMO seed suppliers got the funds. privatisations, deregulation, local markets opened to imports, and By 2004, nearly half the nation's crop land was being used for aiming big: to control the staple food for 2.4 billion people and, in the process, destroy the biological diversity of over 140,000 developed varieties... Unleashing GMO Seeds: A Revolution in World Food Production Begins By the end of the 1980s, a global network of molecular biologists trained in genetic engineering was ready to kick off the "Second Green Revolution". Argentina was its first test laboratory, the first "guinea pig" nation in a reckless experiment with untested and potentially hazardous new foods. Argentina was an easy mark when Carlos Menem became President in July 1989. He was a corporatist's dream, a willing Washington Consensus subject, and he even let David Rockefeller's New York and Washington friends draft his economic program with Chicago School dogma at its heart: privatisations, deregulation, local markets opened to imports, and 22 = NEXUS APRIL — MAY 2008 It was a diabolical scheme www.nexusmagazine.com