I have to digress slightly from working on my nutrition blogs, but this is just too important to let go by. I received an email from the Center For Food Safety.
About them: The Center for Food Safety (CFS) is a non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy membership organization established in 1997 for the purpose of challenging harmful food production technologies and promoting sustainable alternatives. CFS combines multiple tools and strategies in pursuing its goals, including litigation and legal petitions for rule making, legal support for various sustainable agriculture and food safety constituencies, as well as public education, grassroots organizing and media outreach. Their website is: www.centerforfoodsafety.org
What they do:
Center for Food Safety uses multifaceted strategies, including legal actions, submission of policy comments and public education, to accomplish its goals of curtailing industrial agricultural production methods that harm human health and the environment, and promoting sustainable alternatives.
Here is the information I received in the email. This does not only happen to US farmers but also farmers in Canada, India, South America just to name a few. You can help support their work by joining not monetary obligation, but you can donate if you are able to. They send out email updates on important issues and ways to help.
New CFS Report Exposes Devastating Impact of Monsanto Practices on U.S. Farmers
Today, one week before the Supreme Court hears
arguments in Bowman v. Monsanto Co., the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and
Save our Seeds (SOS) launched our new report, Seed
Giants vs. U.S. Farmers.The report investigates how the current seed patent regime has led to a radical shift to consolidation and control of global seed supply and how these patents have abetted corporations, such as Monsanto, to sue U.S. farmers for alleged seed patent infringement.
Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers also examines broader socio-economic consequences of the present patent system including links to loss of seed innovation, rising seed prices, reduction of independent scientific inquiry, and environmental issues.
Among the report’s discoveries are several alarming statistics:
- As of January 2013, Monsanto, alleging seed patent infringement, had filed 144 lawsuits involving 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in at least 27 different states.
- Today, three corporations control 53 percent of the global commercial seed market
- Seed consolidation has led to market control resulting in dramatic increases in the price of seeds. From 1995-2011, the average cost to plant one acre of soybeans has risen 325 percent; for cotton prices spiked 516 percent and corn seed prices are up by 259 percent.
While agrichemical corporations also claim that their patented seeds are leading to environmental improvements, the report notes that upward of 26 percent more chemicals per acre were used on GE crops than on non-GE crops, according to USDA data.
At the launch of the report via teleconference today, experts from the Center for Food Safety and Save our Seeds were joined by Mr. Vernon Hugh Bowman, the 75-year-old Indiana soybean farmer who, next week, will come up against Monsanto in the Supreme Court Case. When asked about the numerous comparisons being drawn between his case and the story of David and Goliath, Mr. Bowman responded, “I really don’t consider it as David and Goliath. I don’t think of it in those terms. I think of it in terms of right and wrong.”
In December of 2012, the Center for Food Safety and Save Our Seeds submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of Mr. Bowman, which supports the right of farmers to re-plant saved seed. Arguments in the case are scheduled for February 19th.
Download the report here: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Seed-Giants_final.pdf
Love and Light
Liana
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