Weed defeats Monsanto

Monsanto, the monopolistic monster that is behind most transgenic crops and related herbicides, notably Roundup, is facing an unexpected enemy: evolution.

After some time of preeminence of genetically modified crops in the USA, crops immune to Roundup, unlike any other plant (in principle), some weeds are taking advantage of the unnatural situation and adapting faster than the mega-corporation can research and react: Amaranthus palmeri, also known as pigweed, has developed immunity to Roundup and is rapidly expanding by the US crop fields, having already caused abandonment of more than 5,000 hectareas, as farmers just don't have any easy solution against it.

The massive use of Roundup in transgenic crop fields has simply exterminated all other plants and weeds, but those who have been able to adapt, in this case this species of amaranth, thrive without competition (as crops are never efficient competitors). The only option would be to supress the weeds manually but that's not any realistic option in the industrialized conditions of US agriculture.

It is suspected that amaranth may have obtained the resistence gene from the very genetically modified crops it is now killing, maybe by crossing or maybe by viral transmission. The massive use of Roundup has only created the perfect conditions in which this weed can now thrive without rivals.

Nature 1 - Capitalism 0 (or did anyone ever believed we could defeat Nature?)

Sources: Rebelión, Wikipedia.
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Patents: a patent abuse and a patent failure

Even the BBC is echoing the voices that are rising, every day more loudly, against the patent system as we know it.

According to the various scientists pooled by the BBC the current patent system that allows to patent nearly everything, at every stage of developement and even discoveries that are not any invention, is not favoring anymore scientific research, much less the developement of innovative solutions. The case seems clear for genetics (including genomics), where has been created a "fortress" of patentsaround newly discovered genes, closing off avenues of research for their competitors... and for humankind as a whole, specially because it hinders basic research at universities.

European citizens cannot enjoy the benefits of cancer screening for instance because the public health services find its price way too expensive. Genetically modified rice rich in vitamin A that was intended to be freely distributed in countries where this nutrional problem is endemic, find themselves legally unable to do it because of the intricate network of related genetic patents that have to be negotiated. It has taken years just to figure out how many [related] patents there are and who owns them, complains its developer Prof. Gold.

Pat Mooney of ETC Group, protests that the patenting system is not working, it is more a barrier than an incentive. He says that innovation in pharmacology has dropped to nearly null levels, while in nanotechnology the too broad patents have cut off whole areas of research.

But in Spanish too, the voices arising against the current patent system (nearly no one wants to fully scrap off patents, just radically reform the system) are many. There have been several articles recently at Rebelión on this issue.

For example, L.P. Vargas writes an interesting article on the history and modern reform of the patent system. He mentions that, as of late, not just what the human ingenuity has created can be patented but also what someone has merely discovered, for example: the genome. This is not waht the original patent system was created for, it is a most new developement, dated just to 1994: the TRIPS agreement reached at the WTO.

He finds in this treaty two goals: to create informational monopolies (such as could be the one of Microsoft, for instance) to accumulate new wealth, earlier freely available, into private hands and specially those of the multinational corporations.

Still in 1983, for instance, the law of patents of Costa Rica said that medicines would only enjoy exclusive patent for a year. Listening to the corporative speakers, who always complain that they need to make money from research, one wonders how even existed pharmaceutic corporations at all before the agreement of 1994.

Another author, D. Standeford, follows a conference by J. Stiglitz and J. Sulston (founders the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation) , who have strongly criticised the current intellectual property system, because it actually hinders innovation, instead of promoting it. In the words of Stiglitz (nobel laureate of Economics in 2001) : the current mess of patents by which any person who developes a succesful software program is used for alleged breach of patent shows that the current system of does not allow to promote innovation.

Another problem is that there are little social benefits with this system and he also mentions the cancer screening system, sold for so much that most people in the USA cannot afford it, in spite of the system itself being extremely cheap to produce and use.

Sulston (nobel laureate of Medicine in 2002) claims that science can be largely motivated by mere curiosity and need but that this needs of a great level of opennes and trust among the agents. He complains that the increased privatization of science and research, so welcomed by corporations and some governments, is only causing it to exclude those research areas that are not considered profitable (like finding a cure for malaria).

Another byproduct of the current draconian patent laws is that falsification of medicines has become very profitable. If medicines would be sold only reasonably above production costs, then the falsifiers would have no margin where to operate, but at the current absurd prices demanded, medicine falsifiers have found a huge market with high profits to make.

Sulston suggests to return to the old practice of separation of research and developement from production. He finds that the hybridation of both only causes corruption in the system. He concludes that the very success of humankind will depend on who owns sience.

Who and whith what purpose controls production is what some Marxists, like Toni Negri, have suggested to be the real battlefield of class war in this Toyotist new phase of Capitalism.

I said before that nearly no one is asking to totally supress the patent system but there are some voices that certainly have arisen in favor of mere expropiation of intellectual property for the sake of humanity and common sense.

This is the case of F. Pena, who demands the expropiation of all food patents with the clear objective of making a healthier humankind now, following the equally humanitarian path of medicines, where too expensive patents have already been legally breached with the same humanitarian goal.

In Negri-style words: if this intellectual property is nothing but the collective production (often not even production, just deduction) of the workers of the world (Humankind by another name) , how can we tolerate that it falls in the greedy hands of the corporative masters, who will use it only for their profit? It is nothing but knowledge (and nothing less than it) what Capital has targeted as the latest frontier of its accumulation process. But, unlike it happened in earlier accumulations, this one is not working altogether: it doesn't help to produce (research) more but less.

In the beginning of this 21st century, when huge problems like global ecology and loss of demand cramp the Capitalist system, it doesn't appear like this system can afford to destroy research that can save the system itself (at least in theory), yet, quite suicidally, the Capital is cutting the grass of free research under its own feet, hampering further developement and delaying much necesary solutions to its problems.

Would I be Paulson, I would certainly think in saving the economy by allowing more and better resarch, instead of giving prizes to the worst bankers of the planet. But all these people have only one master, and certainly this is not the public. I can just imagine that this serious problem will hang around for a while, until, in the midst of other convulsions, one country after another decide to denounce the TRIPS agreement and allow research to return to some normality.

More on the food crisis

Al Jazeera has a couple of interesting articles on the food crisis. One is specifically on Haiti, where last week's food riots triggered the alarms on the crisis somewhat, the other is more focused in India but it deals with some reasons behind the crisis that can be extrapolated to the whole planet, it is a very interesting interview with an Indian ecologist: Dr. Vandana Shiva.

Haiti has seen rice prices double in the last few months. Rice is not a local produce but it became staple food in the Caribbean country when import taxes were lowered after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship: this allowed everybody to buy rice then but destroyed the local agricultural economy, making the poor country even more dependent from the exterior.

Aristide, 'Titid', was again claimed as the legitimate Haitian president in the food riots last week.

India is not yet at the levels of food stress of Haiti, Philippines or Egypt. But it's builiding up, with many people going hungry for hours or days, and the reasons are largely the same: agriculture has become a globalized industry, where benefits are more important than feeding the people. This doesn't happen in the rich developed countries, by the way: in the USA, EU, Japan... agriculture is protected by the state, making sure that local farmers, or at least some of them, get much more than just market price for their produce.

Dr. Shiva says:

There is a huge agrarian crisis but it's not from the beginning of our freedom, it's not a leftover of feudalism. The agrarian crisis is a result of globalisation. The farmers who are committing suicide in India are precisely in those areas where genetically engineered cotton is being grown by Monsanto.

He points out that, at the same time that India and the USA signed a nuclear treaty, they also signed an agricultural one, almost ignored by the media that leaves India exposed to foreign food imports, specially from the USA.

With the price rise, I can see about 70 to 80 per cent of India will be pushed into hunger and starvation.

Asked for a short term solution, Dr. Shiva says:

There is a very short term solution: give up the industrial agriculture using fossil fuels, high cost imports. Give up the forced linking with an international commodity market. Allow farmers to grow and give them a just price.

We can solve the problem tomorrow. I work with 400,000 farmers in India growing organic food. We have doubled yields and doubled output on farms. Nobody is dying of starvation in the villages where there is organic farming.

He warns that, if the government does not adress the problem of having the people fed, riots will increase and can even overthrow governments. After all it's a matter of life or death.

IMF in most serious food crisis warning

Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives.

These are the words of one of the most important global financial leaders: IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington was scheduled to talk about the credit and structural crisis but the food-related problems could not be avoided, specially after several countries already had food riots.

Strauss-Kahn also warned that it's not a humanitarian problem only: the food crisis will fuel conflicts and trade imbalances that can't but eventually affect the rich countries too.

Source: BBC: IMF head gives food crisis warning.

Map of Food Crisis (click to expand)

Map of the food crisis

Just made this map of the current food crisis situation based in FAO and media data:

Click on thumbnail to expand

Sources:
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO)
- BBC: the cost of food: facts and figures (and other articles)
- Al Jazeera (several articles)

Bread and rice revolutions have started.

Hungry masses have attempted to seize the Presidential palace in Haiti (read more). They have failed by the moment but the situation is untenable anyhow.

Ironically, Haiti is occupied by a multinational force since the USA and France decided that they did not want popular (and rather socialist) premier Aristide to stay in power anymore, in 2004. They sold it as a "peackeeping mission" but was the typical colonialist intervention in the line of those of Roosevelt one hundred years before. These forces have done nothing to alleviate the poverty and lack of prospects of the most impoverished country of America and to that it's been added the brutally rising staple food prices everywhere, fuelled by speculation basically.

The rioters, that have been demonstrating and plundering around Haitian cities these last days at the cry of "We are hungry!"

Revolters retreated only under heavy fire from UN troops.

Haiti's wealth is concentrated in some 1% of affluent families while the vast majority of people lives in the most abject poverty. In 1990 the last brutal dictatorship was ousted by a popular revolution that placed fromer priest Bertrand Aristide as new President. The revolution was soon followed by another coup. Aristide returned in 1994 supported by US President Bill Clinton who had vowed to do so in his campaign. But as soon as the conservatives took power in Washington again, they started plotting against him, causing some obscure conflicts with mafious bands that were used as pretext for the joint US-French intervention: they kidnapped Aristide and sent him to Central Africa.

Since then the country has been under an occupation force under the pretext of the UN. The 2006 elections gave massive victory to a former Aristide ally: René Preval. While this helped somewhat to restore political stability after the colonialist coup, the real deep socio-economical problems of the country have been unadressed for these last years and now they seem to come back as surge that may oust not just the President but also the UN force, that has already become a target of the rioters.

Haiti is not the only nation that is suffering major unrest related to food prices but the tension is still building up. In the next months and years, as the deep structural global economic crisis becomes more and more evident everywhere we will see more and more conflicts caused by such matters and many governments toppled by the revolters one way or another, while agricultural lands are seized and companies nationalized in an effort to save something from the market-generated chaos.

As someone I know used to sign with: it has already begun.

Food crisis begins with rice

Rice is the staple food of about half humankind and it's beginning to be in short supply. As analyzed by Al Jazeera in 'Asian rice crisis starts to bite', the situation can be very difficult for certain countries like Philippines, where uncontrolled population growth has run parallel to loss of farming lands.

Until now rice was cheap and easily available but in the last weeks many exporters, like Vietnam or Cambodia have imposed restrictions with the intent of securing food for their own populations. Countries like affluent Japan that have a strategic food policy, purchasing and storing rice every year, should face no problem at least in the short term but others like Philippines, poor and with no food planning whatsoever, may be brought to the brink of disaster.

And most revolutions began with hungry desperate people.

Anyhow, the problems caused by more expensive food prices will not just affect a handful of countries, nor just those whose diet gravitates around rice. The recent confrontations in Argentine about food export taxes are clearly motivated by greedy landowners wanting to get more from the current speculative state of affairs of global food markets. Food is every day more expensive everywhere: some, the most affluent ones, can maybe take from other consumptions to make sure they do not get hungry but that will affect other sectors of the economy that will see their demand plumetting.

Keep an eye in Egypt.

The food crisis is apparently striking Egypt heavily. While the government has traditionally made sure people could buy bread at state controlled prices, being the staple food for many of its 80 million inhabitants, now soaring prices are causing corruption in the distribution chain, leaving many out of it.

Al Jazeera: Warning over world food shortages (in spite of the title half of the article deals with the Egyptian situation actually).

A couple of quotes:

"People are fighting. Killing for bread, some are even pulling out knives. What is happening? What is this? Famine?"

"I've been standing here from 7am. Its now 2pm and I can't get hold of even one loaf of bread. I have five children. What am I supposed to do? You now need to bribe someone to get bread, if you do not want to get trampled on."

Food and housing are the basics for people's lifes, amybe along with healthcare. When they get nothing of such basics, no matter how hard they struggle for them, then revolution is at the gates.