What is happening in Paraguay seems to be the typical consequences of corporate globalization. This involves the destruction of long-standing local economic and ecological systems in order to generate profits for large TNCs whose interests don’t relate to those of most people either north or south of the equator. The TNCs listed in the article that are involved in the creation of the new Soy based agribusiness model in Paraguay are the very same ones who want to monopolize the global seed industry and reduce the world’s nearly one and a half billion farmers to peons of the seed, fertilizer, and pesticide industries. They are also the same group that has contributed to the destruction of more than three quarters of the world’s biodiversity with all the negative ecological consequences.
The income concentrating effects of transnational agribusiness and the WTO rules which promote them will result in more problems for the US like increased immigration, shrinking foreign markets for US exports and increased foreign debt for Latin America. The global income shift to TNCs isn’t worth it. We will all pay the price while gleaning little if any benefit.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 12, 2007 at 10:53 AM
Three-quarters of the world’s biodiversity destroyed by the same companies ? You have any refs for this ? I have seen you play fast
and loose with stats many times, so I’d appreciate some documentation here for a change. I have a mixed view on this subject so
I’m not entirely discounting your observations but they seem very hyperbolic. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that this is an exclusively JOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH
trait but yo’ peepul are known to GREATLY exaggerate. Other groups have other vices. What Commie sources do yo’ “facts” come from ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 12, 2007 at 2:42 PM
Some ecology group that’s concerned with organic farming. Actually the entire organic farming/ecological sustainability movement believes that about three fourths of the earth’s biodiversity has been killed off mostly by GM seeds that replace varieties of hybrid seeds permanently. Most of this destruction is due to the highly concentrated seed market which aims to reduce global food production to a select group of highly resistant strains of GM seeds which will be controlled by the top six seed companies. The aim is to monopolize the means to produce food on a global scale.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 12, 2007 at 10:55 PM
Maybe so but how can we verify this blanket assertion ? And how long has this alleged killing off of three quarters (!) been going on ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 13, 2007 at 8:53 AM
The UNFAO found that 75% of the genetic diversity of traditional crop varieties, which numbered in the thousands, were lost to replacement by GM seeds. The promotion of GM seeds, a $23 dollar industry utterly dominated by just six TNCs as of 1999, the year Pioneer HiBred was bought by DuPont for $7.7 billion, was the single biggest contributor to this dangerous trend.According to the Rural Advancement Foundation, approximately 97% of USDA lists have been lost over the past century.
In order to grasp how this “Green Revolution” has impacted the third world we can look at the Phillipines where only two varieties of rice account for 98% of all the area currently sown in rice. Mexico has lost over 80% of its traditional maize varieties while China, which produced over 8,000 varieties of rice produced only 50 by 1970. In India, new transnational corporate controlled patented varieties of grains threaten traditional ones by putting millions of farmers out of business who can’t afford the new seed varieties and the expensive fertilizer and pesticide packages tied to them.
Check out UNFAO and the Rural Advancement Foundation. Also anything by Vandana Shiva is good. She has wriiten extensively on how the concentrateed control of both water resources and GM seeds has eliminated millions of traditional farmers, the very source of agricultural biodiversity, and concentrated land for GM seed cultivation. The real goal of transnational agribusiness is to globalize food markets and transform local agriculture into ecologically destructive monocultural for export. The goal is not feeding the hungry as much as corporate profit and accumulating foreign exchange to pay foreign debts and import goods from the Northern tier economies.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 14, 2007 at 6:45 AM
Reader Comments
What is happening in Paraguay seems to be the typical consequences of corporate globalization. This involves the destruction of long-standing local economic and ecological systems in order to generate profits for large TNCs whose interests don’t relate to those of most people either north or south of the equator. The TNCs listed in the article that are involved in the creation of the new Soy based agribusiness model in Paraguay are the very same ones who want to monopolize the global seed industry and reduce the world’s nearly one and a half billion farmers to peons of the seed, fertilizer, and pesticide industries. They are also the same group that has contributed to the destruction of more than three quarters of the world’s biodiversity with all the negative ecological consequences.
The income concentrating effects of transnational agribusiness and the WTO rules which promote them will result in more problems for the US like increased immigration, shrinking foreign markets for US exports and increased foreign debt for Latin America. The global income shift to TNCs isn’t worth it. We will all pay the price while gleaning little if any benefit.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 12, 2007 at 10:53 AM
Three-quarters of the world’s biodiversity destroyed by the same companies ? You have any refs for this ? I have seen you play fast
and loose with stats many times, so I’d appreciate some documentation here for a change. I have a mixed view on this subject so
I’m not entirely discounting your observations but they seem very hyperbolic. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that this is an exclusively JOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH
trait but yo’ peepul are known to GREATLY exaggerate. Other groups have other vices. What Commie sources do yo’ “facts” come from ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 12, 2007 at 2:42 PM
Some ecology group that’s concerned with organic farming. Actually the entire organic farming/ecological sustainability movement believes that about three fourths of the earth’s biodiversity has been killed off mostly by GM seeds that replace varieties of hybrid seeds permanently. Most of this destruction is due to the highly concentrated seed market which aims to reduce global food production to a select group of highly resistant strains of GM seeds which will be controlled by the top six seed companies. The aim is to monopolize the means to produce food on a global scale.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 12, 2007 at 10:55 PM
Maybe so but how can we verify this blanket assertion ? And how long has this alleged killing off of three quarters (!) been going on ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 13, 2007 at 8:53 AM
The UNFAO found that 75% of the genetic diversity of traditional crop varieties, which numbered in the thousands, were lost to replacement by GM seeds. The promotion of GM seeds, a $23 dollar industry utterly dominated by just six TNCs as of 1999, the year Pioneer HiBred was bought by DuPont for $7.7 billion, was the single biggest contributor to this dangerous trend.According to the Rural Advancement Foundation, approximately 97% of USDA lists have been lost over the past century.
In order to grasp how this “Green Revolution” has impacted the third world we can look at the Phillipines where only two varieties of rice account for 98% of all the area currently sown in rice. Mexico has lost over 80% of its traditional maize varieties while China, which produced over 8,000 varieties of rice produced only 50 by 1970. In India, new transnational corporate controlled patented varieties of grains threaten traditional ones by putting millions of farmers out of business who can’t afford the new seed varieties and the expensive fertilizer and pesticide packages tied to them.
Check out UNFAO and the Rural Advancement Foundation. Also anything by Vandana Shiva is good. She has wriiten extensively on how the concentrateed control of both water resources and GM seeds has eliminated millions of traditional farmers, the very source of agricultural biodiversity, and concentrated land for GM seed cultivation. The real goal of transnational agribusiness is to globalize food markets and transform local agriculture into ecologically destructive monocultural for export. The goal is not feeding the hungry as much as corporate profit and accumulating foreign exchange to pay foreign debts and import goods from the Northern tier economies.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 14, 2007 at 6:45 AM