BREAKING: HAITIANS TO PROTEST AND BURN MONSANTO SEEDS!!

"A new earthquake" is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto's seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation's presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is left our environment in Haiti."(1) Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected Monsanto's offer of Roundup Ready GMOs seeds. In an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMOs.

Elizabeth Vancil, Monsanto's director of development initiatives, called the news that the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture approved the donation "a fabulous Easter gift" in an April email.(2) Monsanto is known for aggressively pushing seeds, especially GMOs seeds, in both the global North and South, including through highly restrictive technology agreements with farmers who are not always made fully aware of what they are signing. According to interviews by this writer with representatives of Mexican small farmer organizations, they then find themselves forced to buy Monsanto seeds each year, under conditions they find onerous and at costs they sometimes cannot afford.

The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram.(3) Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. Pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label, the EPA ruled. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, because it assumes that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing.(4) Monsanto's passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds.

Haitian social movements' concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMOs imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto's arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.
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"People in the US need to help us produce, not give us food and seeds. They're ruining our chance to support ourselves," said farmer Jonas Deronzil of a peasant cooperative in the rural region of Verrettes.(5)

Monsanto's history has long drawn ire from environmentalists, health advocates and small farmers, going back to its production of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Exposure to Agent Orange has caused cancer in an untold number of US veterans, and the Vietnamese government claims that 400,000 Vietnamese people were killed or disabled by Agent Orange, and 500,000 children were born with birth defects as a result of their exposure.(6)

Monsanto's former motto, "Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible," has been replaced by "Imagine." Its web site home page claims it "help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods ... while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment."(7) The corporation's record does not support the claims.

Together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer, Monsanto controls more than half of the world's seeds.(8) The company holds almost 650 seed patents, most of them for cotton, corn and soy, and almost 30 percent of the share of all biotech research and development. Monsanto came to own such a vast supply by buying major seed companies to stifle competition, patenting genetic modifications to plant varieties and suing small farmers. Monsanto is also one of the leading manufacturers of GMOs.

As of 2007, Monsanto had filed 112 lawsuits against US farmers for alleged technology contract violations of GMOs patents, involving 372 farmers and 49 small agricultural businesses in 27 different states. From these, Monsanto has won more than $21.5 million in judgments. The multinational appears to investigate 500 farmers a year, in estimates based on Monsanto's own documents and media reports.(9)

"Farmers have been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone else's genetically engineered crop [or] when genetically engineered seed from a previous year's crop has sprouted, or 'volunteered,' in fields planted with non-genetically engineered varieties the following year," said Andrew Kimbrell and Joseph Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety.(10)

In Colombia, Monsanto has received upwards of $25 million from the US government for providing Roundup Ultra in the antidrug fumigation efforts of Plan Colombia. Roundup Ultra is a highly concentrated version of Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide, with additional ingredients to increase its lethality. Colombian communities and human rights organizations have charged that the herbicide has destroyed food crops, water sources and protected areas, and has led to increased incidents of birth defects and cancers.

Vía Campesina, the world's largest confederation of farmers with member organizations in more than 60 countries, has called Monsanto one of the "principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples."(11) They claim that as Monsanto and other multinationals control an ever larger share of land and agriculture, they force small farmers out of their land and jobs. They also claim that the agribusiness giants contribute to climate change and other environmental disasters, an outgrowth of industrial agriculture.(12)

The Vía Campesina coalition launched a global campaign against Monsanto last October 16, on International World Food Day, with protests, land occupations and hunger strikes in more than 20 countries. They carried out a second global day of action against Monsanto on April 17 of this year, in honor of Earth Day.

Nongovernmental organizations in the US are challenging Monsanto's practices, too. The Organic Consumers Association has spearheaded the campaign "Millions Against Monsanto," calling on the company to stop intimidating small family farmers, stop marketing untested and unlabeled genetically engineered foods to consumers and stop using billions of dollars of US taypayers' money to subsidize GMOs crops.(13)

The Center for Food Safety has led a four-year legal challenge to Monsanto that has just made it to the US Supreme Court. After successful litigation against Monsanto and the US Department of Agriculture for illegal promotion of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, the court heard the Center for Food Safety's case on April 27. A decision on this first-ever Supreme Court case about GMOs is now pending.(14)

"Fighting hybrid and GMO seeds is critical to save our diversity and our agriculture," Jean-Baptiste said in an interview in February. "We have the potential to make our lands produce enough to feed the whole population and even to export certain products. The policy we need for this to happen is food sovereignty, where the county has a right to define it own agricultural policies, to grow first for the family and then for local market, to grow healthy food in a way which respects the environment and Mother Earth."

Thats pretty sad to know that peasants in Haiti are smarter than people in the U.S.


.

I wish the whole world would do the same.

Why shouldn't peasants in Haiti be smarter than Americans?

Because only half of them have even a 2nd grade education, and the other half have none at all.

(Although it isn't their fault.)

YCM

.

Why should they be smarter than people in the U.S. that actually go to school? It only goes to show that the education that people in the U.S. get is a fraud.

.

Way to go Haiti tell em you mean business!!

Even they are smart enough to know when someone is trying to kill them

Being smart doesn't have all that much to do with going to school to be dumbed down. Obviously someone knows all about Monsanto and told the peasants, and the peasants made an "informed" decision. You can thank France for keeping the people of Haiti unschooled.

That goes for all "British" colonies.

Hooray for Haiti! Let's hope they start something big here.

BUMP if politically correct.
Movement is going somewhere if Haiti will revolt against the "US" and our perpetual popcorn popper of crapola.

Stupid french

They are smarter because they have NOT spent their lives being propagandized to worship Monsanto under disguise of 'schooling.'

A++++++++++

good job

They have common sense. Something an education cannot give a person. Usually education takes away common sense and brain washes people.

Good for them.

I agree

Haitians are too dumb to grow corn, they would have burned them to cook dirt pies with anyway.

Let em burn their seeds. Starve you lazy fucks.

Yes, mud cookies are sooooo much better...

Too bad you're not...

haiti sucks assgas and maybe they should just go back to eating dirt cookies

haiti: a little bit of africa right at our doorstep.

That's a great bumper sticker!!

Indian farmers are committing mass suicide because of Monsanto seed crop failures have left them bankrupt and starving. Iraq is FORCED to use Monsanto crap by the US-it was forced into their constitution! Now South African farmers Monsanto crops are failing. When these GM crops cross contaminate normal fields Monsanto sues and wins to confiscate/destroy the seeds produced. Studies have shown that eating GM crops have screwed up the digestive tracts of people/animals. The Haitians should have force fed this crap to the Monsanto representatives. Smart move to destroy this GM genocide WMD but their puppet leaders will probably not ban Monsanto GM seeds because they are corrupt like so many other gubmint goons.

If this movement gains any media traction,

and Wyclef Jean says nothing at all,

you will have a bullseye case study that the entertainment industry is rife with obeisance to the new world order and its military aims.

they got more balls than all of america combined

Those two or so years of education might be better than being the product of years of our liberal education system, as it appears that they know how to use common sense.

Which just goes to show that in Haiti ( and most of the world ) political positions are more important than FEEDING YOUR PEOPLE.



Remember all the emergency food supplies the Haitians threw away because their leaders told them that the date of manufacture was the expiration date?

They then threw a massive protest demanding "fresh" canned food.




The real reason the leaders organized the protest was the food was packaged in such a way that it was clear where the food had come from (the USA) and the political class in Haiti couldn't claim that it had come from them.....so they told starving people the selfish Americans had sent them spoiled food and threw it away.



Haitians are masters of self-destruction.