Monsanto - is the devil working for an agricultural company?

Picture from Vanity Fair feature on Monsanto dominating the American food chain (Barlett and Steele). Picture by Melvyn Calderon /Greenpeace HO / AP images. Anti-Monsanto crop circle made by  farmers in the Philippines.

It seems Monsanto are officially making their move to spread their questionable crops across Nepal (see Himalayan Times or Agro News or USAid.

Who makes the decisions about which companies, crops and farming practices should be promoted and celebrated in Nepal? I mean, which individual person is responsible for the incredibly stupid move to ACTIVELY PROMOTE Monsanto to farmers in Nepal? I want to meet this man (and in Nepal it'd be a man) and give him one word of advice: GOOGLE.

A search on Monsanto will return 17, 400, 000 results. The first page of links reveals "Monsanto - World's Most Unethical and Harmful Investment", a title like that has to at least give you pause, if not cause for further investigation. There is an abundance of articles discussing the failure of Monsanto crops, the possible health effects and the risks to food sovereignty and food security posed by the companies aggressively promoted GM, Hybrid and alarmingly pesticide dependent crops. 

So not the reading type but that's not really an excuse, there is also a video: "Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years". but I guess with the slow internet it might take too long to load it. 

I know politicians are not known for their unbiased appraisal  of proposals put forward by international big business but this is a joke. 

Why is USAID, a development agency, working so hard to push US products and companies on to developing nations? I have ethical issues with USAID, their food aid policy is despicable, they allow people starve to death in order to use their own boats and crops but that's another blog post entirely. My problem with USAID and Monsanto working together is it gives Monsanto the appearance of being motivated by concern and caring. Let's not forget this is the company who produced Agent Orange, the chemical used in the Vietnam War. 400,000 people killed or disabled and 500,000 children born with birth defects due to exposure to the chemical. We are talking about giving a company with no soul freedom to promote itself to farmers in Nepal. 

In my opinion (and feel free to argue) the long term health effects to consumers and farmer and the ecological impacts of hybrid and GM crops and the pesticides which come with them, have not been adequately established.  Rather than spend an appropriate amount of time and money figuring out if these things are safe they flog them off to poor countries in the name development and wait and see what happens. 

There have been studies which indicate some Monsanto crops MAY lead to decreased fertility in mice. The studies have been labeled inconclusive and no one can say IF this could also be the case in humans. Maybe its just me but i'd like to know if something is going to lower my fertility chances before i eat it, not in 20 years when the tests are finished! Why are they allowed to give this stuff to farmers if they aren't even sure if it is safe? In Haiti farmers are refusing the vegetable seed given to them by Monsanto because: 

"The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram. Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them."  Beverly Bell Huffington Post 2010

And what about sustainability and food sovereignty. There has been a lot of noise about Monsanto coming into Nepal to help local farmers increase maize output and help with food security. Trials in the Tarai region saw the crops fail. The crops grew but there was not actual corn. The farmers were the big losers as thousands of hectares had to be destroyed and monsanto have refused to pay compensation. The cause of these crop failures? According to monsanto it was cold weather... Nepal is a cold place, maybe it isn't the best country to be pushing crops which are sensitive to cold climates?

Ok, i could keep ranting but i have run out of steam. If you want to read about Monsanto and the unhappy maize farmers in India the look at Tehelka. Or check out the Organic consumers Association - millions against Monsanto.

**NOTE** if your wondering how i got on to this topic it was over here at With love, from KTM

Occupy Wall Street

 Photo by Getty Images. Sourced from Daily Mail UK

 Photo by Getty Images. Sourced from Daily Mail UK

Photo by Michael Nagle - Getyy Images. Sourced from the Atlantic.

It has been going on for a few weeks now, protests which started in Manhattan have spread to Boston, Chicago and LA. In Manhattan protesters have set up a makeshift camp in a park and are threatening to stay all winter. Hundreds have been arrested in the demonstrations and police have been criticized for their use of violence and capsicum spray.

There is some confusion what the protests are actually calling for. A range of issues are being highlighted, such as: an end to corporate greed, unemployment, the war and bank bail outs.

For more pictures and the full story see:

• Occupy Wall Street 
• The Atlantic
• Daily Mail
• Digital Journal
• news.com.au

Power to the people. I love a good protest, even if it seems some what disorganized, leaderless and lacking in any real objectives. I've always want to take to the streets, shouting slogans, waving placards. I've just never had anything to really believe in or an angry mob to back me up. 

And sadly i was born in a country where it seems the only thing we care enough about to gather in the streets about is beating up foreigners (if you don't know about the Cronulla riots don't worry it was just a very low point in Australia's history which brings much embarrassment to sane and respectable Australians).

In Nepal people take to the streets so often it has actually lost all meaning. Every time there is an enforced strike people shut up shop but half the time we don't know why people are protesting or what for... who cares right, its a day off work! The only people involved are fanatical fringes. It isn't fashionable to care about politics anymore, and why would it be politicians, strikes, government workers, the constitution - its all so ineffectual why waste your time.

There must be a way to get people involved again. It happened in Egypt, in the Middle East and now people are trying it in America. Maybe it is time for the rest of us to take another look at people power and have a think about what we would be willing to take to the streets for? 

Why can't we all call Nepal home?

**WARNING** This is a bit of a rant and i am not a citizenship expert so please feel free to shoot holes in my ignorant complaints.

I've been looking into Nepali citizenship and i can't believe the patriarchal, hierarchical, power hoarding bullshit which works its way into every aspect of life in this country. I am seriously floored by the fact that women have to rely on their father or husbands to get proper documentation. Without a father or a husband a women isn't even a real person in Nepal.

I had heard about the problems of getting citizenship for people who's father had numerous wives or if your father wasn't in the picture but i didn't realize how difficult it truly was for women. I just figured your born in a country and that makes you citizen. Trust Nepal to make something relatively simply in most parts of the world a complex human rights issue which causes pain and anguish for children and women. 

The 2007 Interim Constitution allowed women to pass their citizenship on the their children (in theory though i heard in many VDC made it almost impossible). But the High Level Task Force appointed to sort out issues which arose from the 2007 Interim Constitution decided that giving women the power to do anything other than clean and cook and die quietly during child birth way a bad idea. The proposed new rules from the task force require that mother and father both have Nepali citizenship and both be present in order to register a child for citizenship. So now single parents, widowed parents, couple were one of the parents are foreign can no longer register their children... i guess at least now the discrimination won't be gender based it will just be racist and vulnerability based, that's so much better.

And becoming Nepali by choice... forget about it. Men have to live in Nepal for 15 years and renege their previous claims to citizenship in any other countries. Women can become citizens immediately after they marry a Nepali but they must loose their existing citizenship. Children of mixed couples will only be allowed citizenship if their foreign parent takes up Nepali citizenship.

So we have all these kids, half Nepali and half something else, educated abroad, maybe a bit of savings. They want to come live in Nepal, maybe help their country (only it isn't their country because one of their parents do not want to loose their citizenship) but they can't because of some stupid rule. It just doesn't make sense to me.

What i want to know is what are you safeguarding? By allowing people dual citizenship, or in the least an easy way to take up citizenship, aren't you encouraging stronger ties with foreign countries, encouraging people with money to invest to stay here longer and spend that money. I just don't see the down side.

And i mean what is it that is really being safeguarded? I would be proud to say i am a Nepali citizen but it isn't for the free health care or amazing welfare system. I'm not trying to live off the hard work of honest tax paying Nepalis. I wouldn't be clamoring for my children to receive an education in the world class schools on offer. I really want to know what is it the government is so worried about.

In a time when half the population is desperate to get a visa to anywhere why is it so scary to let the few people who want to call Nepal home do so officially?