The Winnipeg Free Press November 17, 2012 contained a special pullout – Manitoba’s Top Employers for 2013 – Monsanto made the list. I read the article and discovered that Monsanto’s Canadian head office is in Winnipeg, Manitoba – the heart of the wheat belt, but this line really got my attention:
“With global population expected to grow by 40% in the next few decades, agriculture will need to become more productive and more sustainable in order to keep pace with rapidly increasing demands. Experts say we need to grow as much food in the next 50 years as we did in the past 10,000 years combined if we are to sustain our planet.”
No person of average intelligence can look around them and think that we are going to be able to continue to reproduce at our current rate and grow sufficient or nutritious food to feed anywhere near 9 billion humans and the article states – ‘this is a huge challenge, compounded by… limited resources such as water, land and energy … population is growing but these basic inputs are not, so Monsanto is focused on helping farmers get more from every acre of land … by the year 2030 Monsanto has committed to developing seeds that will double yields from 2000 levels for corn, soybeans, cotton and spring-planted canola.’ Their commitment includes the following goals:
- The highest yielding conventional and bio-tech seeds on the planet
- Advanced traits and technologies that enable more nutritious and durable crops
- The safest and most effective crop protection solutions
Monsanto goes on to say ‘We do this by selling seeds, traits developed through biotechnology, and crop protection chemicals’
Let’s consider this by first looking at population growth and its relation to the global food supply. Daniel Quinn and David Suzuki among others speak about population growth, exponential growth of the current human experiment – the Agricultural Revolution.
Dr Suzuki does not go into the cultural reasons, but attempts to remain within the limits of science to prove his theory his Test Tube Theory shows in just a minute what exponential growth is – check it out @ http://testtube.nfb.ca or watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x98KFcMJeo&feature=colike
Daniel Quinn uses historical, cultural and basic ecological science to support his theories and presents a different analogy found in The Story of B:
“Imagine if you will a cage with movable sides, so that it can be enlarged to any desired size. We begin by putting ten healthy mice of both sexes into the cage, along with plenty of food and water. In just a few days there will of course be twenty mice, and we accordingly increase the amount of food we’re putting in the cage. In a few weeks, as we steadily increase the amount of available food, there will be forty, then fifty, then sixty, and so on, until one day there is a hundred. And let’s say that we’ve decided to stop the growth of the colony at a hundred. I’m sure you realize that we don’t need to pass our little condoms or birth-control pills to achieve this effect. All we have to do is stop increasing the amount of food that goes into the cage. Every day we put in an amount that we know is sufficient to sustain a hundred mice- and no more. This is the part that many find hard to believe, but trust me, it’s the truth: The growth of the community stops dead. Not overnight of course, but in very short order. Putting in an amount of food sufficient for one hundred mice, we will find – every single time- the population of the cage soon stabilizes at one hundred. Of course I don’t mean one hundred precisely. It will fluctuate between ninety and a hundred ten but never go much beyond those limits. On the average, day ager day, year after year, decade after decade, the population inside the cage will be one hundred. Now if we should decide to have a population of two hundred mice instead of one hundred, we won’t have to add aphrodisiacs to their diets or play erotic mouse movies for them. We’ll just have to increase the amount of food we put in the cage. If we put in enough for two hundred, we’ll soon have two hundred. Enough for three hundred ….. Of course there is nothing special about mice in this regard. The same will happen with crickets or trout or badgers or sparrows.”
What does this have to do with Monsanto and human population growth?
Our current Agricultural practices are based on Totalitarian Agriculture. Totalitarian Agriculture is based on the idea that, since the world itself belongs to us, all the food in it belongs to us as well. In other words, we can (1) take any food formerly available to other species and lock it up for our exclusive use, (2) destroy any species that competes with us for our food, and (3) clear any piece of land of food formerly available to other species and use that land to grow food for our exclusive use.(see explaination here http://youtu.be/bTsg5r9oKic)
Monsanto supports the Totalitarian Agricultural experiment and takes it a step further to not only eliminate all natural competitors, but human competitors as well. They (Monsanto) have been accused of working hand in hand with eugenics proponents, ‘control the food, control the people’. I found this image on their web site:
This image suggests that by the year 2050 Monsanto expects the global human population to be 9 billion and they have a plan for feeding all of them. Remember they stated the need to grow as much food in the next 50 years as we did in the past 10,000 years combined if we are to sustain our planet. According to Daniel Quinn – we are in a food race – and the more food we grow – the more people we grow – many argue, including Monsanto that we need to grow more food to feed the starving populations, but the food never reaches the starving populations and that population is growing at the same exponential pace as the rest of the human population – we grow more food to feed more people, then we grow more people because we have more food – people are made up of food. Like mouse in the eastern corner of the cage may never meet its neighbor in the western corner – it is the overall amount of food that counts – so if doesn’t matter if mouse A determines not to breed, mouse B will breed more because there is enough food to grow more, even if the starving mice C in the northern corner of the cage cannot access it.
According to Quinn we know that humans lived on the planet for at least three million years and did not overrun the earth – while engaging in some growth through migration. That the population was estimated at ten million at the beginning of the Neolithic period around 9500–9000 BC. We know that after three million years we were ten million, but that in the last 10,000 years have grown to 7 billion and according to Monsanto 9 billion by the year 2050! But if we are a product of the food supply and like all other species will grow to our food supply – while not decreasing the number of starving people, but simply growing more starving people – is the estimate of 9 billion reasonable? Would it not be more like 14 billion? 10,000 years = 7 billion, grow the same amount of food in 35 years = 14 billion. Because we are made up of food!
What is the impact of Totalitarian Agriculture on the population of the human species?
Watch the doubling – (remember the bacteria in the test tube?) – our cultural model is based on exponential growth – doubling – this means we are not going to be 9 billion in 2050
- 10,000 B.C.E. – 10 million
- 7000 – 20 million (3000 years)
- 5000 – 3000 – 50 million (2000 years)
- 3000 – 1400 – 100 million (1600 years)
- 1400 – 0 – 200 million (1400 years)
- 0 – 1200 C.E. – 400 million (1200 years)
- 1200 – 1700 – 800 million (500 years)
- 1700 – 1900 – 1.5 billion (200 years)
- 1900 – 60 – 3 billion (60 years)
- 1960 – 96 – 6 billion (36 years)
- 1996 -2011 – 7 billion (15 years)
When we look at these figures – we see that the availability of food – plentiful food led to the doubling of the population – and also quickening of that doubling – from the first doubling taking place in 2000 years – to the last in only 36 years. From these numbers one can easily say that the population will double to 14 billion in just 7 – 10 years – leading us to conclude the population of the human species could be at 14 billion by 2020 – not 9 billion in 2050! Or even higher – at the current ‘sustained’ rate of food production we are doubling exponentially – so if we plan to manufacture as much food as in the last 10,000 years in only 35 years …… 30 billion?
So what are we to conclude from this – Daniel Quinn makes the following observations about the effects of population, our cultural paradigm – based on exponential growth and Totalitarian Agriculture:
First came war: War as a social fixture, war is a way of life. For two thousand years or more, what seems to have been the only voice in the chorus. But before long it was joined by crime: crime as a social fixture, as a way of life. And then there was corruption: corruption as a social fixture, as a way of life. Before long these voices were joined by slavery: slavery as world trade and as a social fixture. Soon revolt followed: citizens and slaves rising up to vent their rage and pain. Next, as population pressures gained in intensity, famine and plague found their voices and began to sing everywhere in our culture. Vast classes of the poor began to be exploited pitilessly for their labor. Drugs joined slavery as world trade. The laboring classes – rose up in rebellion. The entire world economy collapsed. Global industrial powers played at world domination and genocide.
Global industrial powers played at world domination and genocide. When I look at the 9 billion people who require food, fuel and water as stated by this global industrial power – Monsanto – I wonder – they cannot be unaware of the population growth based on this paradigm – therefore their numbers are low – Domination and Genocide?
Monsanto claims that the public should not be concerned with eating GMO or GE food products,and claim it on their website:
“Bio tech crops and their food products have been used worldwide for about 14 years, since the first commercial planting in 1996. Since then, more than two trillion meals containing ingredients from bio tech crops have been safely consumed.”~Monsanto
Of course the long term effects will not be known – regarding cancers and other chronic health morbidity until at least a generation (40 years) has consumed it – but it may not be the soy bean or corn kernel itself, but the associated pesticides and herbicides. Saying that – I do not think it reasonable to assume they are planning to kill off 6 billion persons through poisoning the food chain. Monsanto seems to be a proponent of Agenda 21, particularly in their language use of ‘sustainable’ agriculture etc.
I am left with the question – if the population growth for the last 10,000 years is a predictable pattern and it seems to be – where are the 6 billion they are not counting?
::Sources for this Article::
http://www.howtoboilafrog.com/
http://www.monsanto.com/food-inc/Pages/default.aspx
http://roundup.ca/labels-and-msds
The Truth Denied writer Izora Woods
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