When just five corporations dominate the world’s seed, pesticide and biotech industries, they control the fate of food and farming. Between them — Monsanto, DowDupont, BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta — have historically unprecedented power over world agriculture, enabling them to control the agricultural research agenda, heavily influence trade and agricultural agreements and subvert market competition.
Along the way, these companies intimidate, impoverish and disempower farmers, and undermine food security, all while making historic profits — even as their genetically engineered seeds fail to deliver as promised. Contrary to what the marketing campaigns say, these corporations are in the game of expanding their marketshare. Period.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), corporate concentration of the agricultural input market “has far-reaching implications for global food security, as the privatization and patenting of agricultural innovation (gene traits, transformation technologies and seed germplasm) has been supplanting traditional agricultural understandings of seed, farmers’ rights, and breeders’ rights.”
Swedish climate activistGreta Thunberg drew the ire of police prosecutors in India on Thursday after she used social media to offer running commentary and advice on violent protests by the country’s farmers. The 18-year-old left-wing eco-activist shared — and then quickly deleted — a message that detailed a list of “suggested posts” about the ongoing civil disorder, according to a report in the NY Post, which her critics say ... Read More
All wireless and/or “Smart” technology is vulnerable to hacking (see , , , , ) and other significant mishaps (see , ). Serious warnings about Internet of Things (IoT) technology’s high failure rate and enormous vulnerability to hackers have been ongoing for years. Last August, IBM warned about a security flaw in millions of IoT devices including “Smart” Meters and medical implants. In December, President Trump signed IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020 to create standards and guidelines on the use ... Read More
The storming of the Red Fort in Delhi on January 26 marked an escalation of tensions between the Indian government – led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi – and farmers who have been protesting against agricultural reforms since August 2020. With footage of the farmers clashing with police going viral, the Red Fort incident also marked a spike in interest in the farmers’ movement around the ... Read More
A recently leaked database has revealed that 1.95 million registered members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have been employed at universities, major corporations, and British consulates around the world. Some members have been employees of U.S. aerospace manufacturer Boeing and pharmaceutical maker Pfizer. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a global coalition of lawmakers, obtained the database from an unidentified Chinese dissident, then shared the material with four media organizations, according ... Read More
With the FDA expected to grant emergency-use approval for the Pfizer-BionTech COVID vaccine Thursday after releasing a preliminary assessment of the trial data that the panel will use to assess the drug earlier today, the agency has admitted Tuesday that two participants in the Phase 3 trials have died. One of them was immunocompromised, according to the Jerusalem Post, citing data released earlier. The FDA is expected ... Read More
When just five corporations dominate the world’s seed, pesticide and biotech industries, they control the fate of food and farming. Between them — Monsanto, DowDupont, BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta — have historically unprecedented power over world agriculture, enabling them to control the agricultural research agenda, heavily influence trade and agricultural agreements and subvert market competition.
