The role of biotechnology giant, Monsanto, in all of this cannot be underestimated. Monsanto has something like monopoly in gmo seeds. It has bought out rivals. It has a long history of litigation to reach its goal of dominance. It goes after farmers that it thinks have replanted its seeds. Currently it is investigating many farmers in the Midwestern section of the United States. Monsanto has opposed legislation in the United States aimed at limiting its monopoly position such as the competition policy proposed in federal legislation. Where Monsanto fights through legal means, it also fights through claiming the terms utilized by its organic and sustainable agriculture opponents. It is now claiming that it deserves the term sustainability. It has run full-page ads in major newspapers claiming that biotechnology is sustainable agriculture. This is the very point of Peter Raven’s speech at the study week, as it was in 2004, biodiversity is enhanced, not diminished, by biotechnology. Where Monsanto cannot fight you, it claims to join you. These are the machinations of Monsanto, willingly put on the world stage as a claim for feeding hungry people and in the name of development. Such claims need to be challenged. Certainly it should not be provided the veneer of responsible policy at the Holy See. It is as unseemly as giving welcome to the deniers of the Holocaust. If fully implemented, these views would create a new holocaust among the billions of the world’s poor farmers and their communities, not to speak of the havoc to be reaped on earth itself.
It is surprising to me that the Pontifical Academy of Science seems mindlessly unaware of the recent scientific studies on the capacity of agro-ecology and organic agriculture to address the issues of hunger and poverty. The International Agreement on Science and Technology in Agriculture (IAASTD) was a four-year study with 400 experts funded for twelve million dollars by the World Bank that released its report in April of 2008. It has a central report and five regional reports. It was a project that Monsanto requested of the World Bank. The results though ran counter to what Monsanto hoped for. Monsanto was hoping to have these 400 scientists, economists, sociologists, indigenous people, farmers to come to the conclusion that biotechnology was the silver bullet to solve hunger and poverty. Instead the group found that agro-ecology was more of the solution. So, Monsanto walked out. Now they are turning to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to do for them what IAASTD did not do. I suspect that its sponsorship will not redound to the credit of this facility within the Holy See. I think the word of Cardinal Martino about the unscrupulous has relevance here. That is a tragedy. It would be better for the Pontifical Academy to cancel the study week, or at minimum, to host a dialogue between some of the members of the IAASTD study and their biotechnology proponents. That at least would provide a meaningful debate. Instead it has moved into the position of advocacy and enabling virulent efforts to convert countries to adopt gmos. The conference participants will be marshaled to carry forth in every part of the world efforts to grow gmos. It is strange that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is allowing itself to be used in this way, contrary to the official policies of the Holy See on agriculture, poverty and hunger in light of a development agenda. It is indeed, a sad state of affairs.
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