THE GMO SCRAPBOOK: CHINA, PESTS, AND HIGH-NON-PROLIFERATION-OCTANE SPECULATION
Russia Today(RT) is reporting on a couple of stories and I thought you should known about them. First, US corn(maize) exports to China have fallen some 85%, due to that nation’s government not having yet approved one GMO additive:US corn exports to China drop 85 percent after ban on GMO strains – industry report
While most might be expecting me to comment that this might be another stage in the BRICSA nation’s eventual direct challenge to American-backed GMOs, and a challenge to its GMO-based agribusiness industry and hence, a kind of BRICSA sponsored economic warfare, I’m not going there right at the moment (though we’re going to get there eventually, but via a rather different route).
Recently I have also blogged on the topic of GMOs, indicating that the great “Boon” that so many think they have brought, might in effect be backfiring, since some studies suggest that per/acre productivity of GMOs, which initially and over the short term, are impressive, over the long term, seems to fall relative to the old fashioned use of heirlooms and pesticides (University of Iowa Study: Non-GMOs increase productivity, and New Study Collapse Genetic Diversity). Last March 18, RT is also reporting another development, and that is that mother nature has once again adapted, and pests are showing immunities to GMO toxins:
Rootworms developing resistance
Now here is my high octane speculation of the day. For some time I have been arguing that there would be an inevitable pushback from the BRICSA nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), and that this would come in the form, eventually, of entering the agricultural market with natural, non-GMO, heirloom crop seeds, and to do so as a challenge to American agribusiness, which has become almost wholly GMO-based and “subsidized” via a short-circuited “scientific process” and a revolving door of personnel between agribusiness and government agencies. As I’ve indicated, there does appear to be a growing, gradual pushback from those countries, as environmental and regulatory concerns have been raised. Russia, as is now known, is calling for an almost complete moratorium until inter-generational scientific studies of their effects, can be undertaken.
And it takes little imagination to see how stories of productivity over time between GMO crops and non-GMO crops, or growing resistance of pests to GMO toxins, would be of concern to nations with large populations to feed, such as China and India.
So herewith my high octane speculation of the day, and there have already been hints coming from those nations. As the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations continue in secret, negotiations to guarantee an unlevel playing field and even further extension of American concepts of jurisprudence internationally, there is a golden opportunity presenting itself on the stage of world opinion, a golden opportunity for the BRICSA nations. In the early days of the Cold War, the USSA and USSR (joined later by the “USK” and France), conducted atmospheric tests of their nuclear and thermonuclear bombs, the largest of which was the Russian test of the 57 megaton monster “Tsarbomba” (or was it 67…well, who’s counting?). It was a way of refining yield calculations, and demonstrating to “the other side” that “our science is able to do this.” (Thankfully, no one has lit off anything like the Tsar Bomba since). But the fallout effects were suffered by everyone. President Kennedy, of course, called a moratorium to atmospheric testing, and eventually this led to the test-ban treaty between the United Kingdom, United States, and Soviet Union.
So why am I raising this topic? Simple: GMOs have spread to fields where farmers do not even want them on their fields. Additionally, farmers found in this circumstance through no fault of their own have been sued for license and royalty violations on the part of agribusiness giants.
This “genetic fallout” has not yet gone international, at least, not in this sense. But all it will take to provoke BRICSA calls for a GMO “test ban” treaty is for it to do so. Such a call would, of course, be rejected by the corporate oligarchy that constitutes the government of the USSA. But such a call would at least reveal the USSA’s handling of the whole GMO issue to be the hypocrisy that it is, and it would be a geopolitical coup for the BRICSA nations, who could emerge as “standard setters” for a global standard for agricultural products, both GMO and non-GMO. Given the range of reports coming from India, Brazil (and other South American nations), China, and Russia concerning GMOs, I rather suspect that this will be the next thing to watch for: calls for an international mediating body that is not disproportionally “pro-American” and thus “pro-GMO.” This may be one to watch.
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