Death by International Agribusiness

Anyone hearing about central India's ongoing epidemic of farmer suicides, where growers are killing themselves at a terrifying clip, has to be horrified.

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It may be that [Monsanto’s genetically engineered] Bt cotton isn't well-suited to central India's rain-driven farming methods [...]

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It may be the unpredictable and unusually dry monsoon seasons that have plagued India of late. But in any case, the result is that more and more of India's farmers are finding themselves in debt, and with little hope for finding their way out.

And the final way out that so many of them -- thousands upon thousands -- have chosen is death, and by their own hands. Firm statistics are difficult to come by, but even numbers on the low end of the scale are downright horrifying. The Indian government and NGOs have estimated that, so far this year, at last count more than a thousand farmers have killed themselves in the state of Maharashtra alone. The New York Times pinned it as 17,000 Indian farmers in 2003 alone. A PBS special that aired last month, called "The Dying Fields," claimed that one farmer commits suicide in Vidarbha every eight hours.

  AlterNet

Will Paul Bremer’s Order 81 paving the way for Monsanto in Iraq eventually drive Iraqi farmers to the same fate? What about the rest of the world?

[Percy Schmeiser, a] Canadian farmer argued [in a lawsuit] that he had purchased no Monsanto canola seeds, had never planted Monsanto seeds, and was frankly horrified to find that the genetically modified crops had taken hold in his acreage. Perhaps, suggested Schmeiser, the plants in question were the product of a few rogue GM [genetically modified] seeds blown from a truck passing by his land?

Monsanto was uninterested in Schmeiser's theory on how the Roundup® Ready plants got there. As far as the company was concerned, Schmeiser was in possession of an agricultural product whose intellectual property belonged to Monsanto. And it didn't matter much how that came to pass.

Monsanto's interpretation of the impact of seed contamination is, of course, a good one if its goal is to eventually own the rights to the world's seed supply. And that goal may well be in sight. In fact, a 2004 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that much of the U.S. seed pool is already contaminated by GM seeds. If that contamination continues unabated, eventually much of the world's seeds could labor under patents controlled by one agribusiness or another.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.