The
Future of Food and Multinational Agricultural Biotechnology Corporations
When one hears the
line “Whoever controls the seeds controls the food”, they should take a moment
to think about the meaning of that statement. It is a quote from the 2004
documentary film The Future of Food which looks at how
genetically engineered foods are being sold in America ’s grocery stores. The
public is not aware that they are eating this food because corporations like
Monsanto do not want it labeled as being produced from genetically modified
seeds. They fear that consumers will question the safety of their products
(web). Multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations such as Monsanto
have financially acquired most of America’s seed companies and their former employees
have taken control of U.S. government agencies. The U.S. government has allowed
Monsanto to form a monopoly and there will be adverse consequences associated
with this political decision. There are two consequences that come to mind. The
first one is that when a mono-culture crop is a dominate species; there is a
higher possibility for crop failure. The other is that when we treat seed as a
commodity, there will be starvation because all people will not have equal
access to food.
It
has been repeatedly proven that when a farmer plants only one crop there is a
higher possibility for failure. Monsanto promotes the idea that they have
improved the genetic strain of the seed, but in reality, they have altered them
to resist only specific climate changes. Through centuries of agriculture,
mankind has developed multiple strains of seed and whenever there has been a
crop failure of one strain, another strain has compensated for the lose. In my
opinion, Monsanto thinks that food supplies need to be produced using their
modified seeds with an assembly line approach. We, as the consumer, are not
paying attention because our main concern is food cost and not food security.
When a crop fails, we automatically assume that corporations have our best
interest in mind. Since they control the seed market, they control the food
production.
Monsanto
also claims that genetically modified seeds are the answer to ending world
hunger. According to The Future of
Food, a farmer will enter into a contract which allows them to plant
modified seeds and new seed stock must be purchased after each harvest. This
adds to the cost of food production. Family farms are gradually being
eliminated and corporate farms are becoming the norm with reliance on
biotechnology companies for their seed. Over one-half of the world's farmers
reduce operating cost by saving seeds from each harvest to plant the next year.
When biotechnology companies begin to treat seeds like a commodity, there will
be the inequality to afford them for food production. The biotechnology
companies will gain control of food supplies by contracting with only the
producers that can afford their seeds. Thus, world hunger will increase as the
population is unable to afford the food produced from corporate farms.
Monsanto
is taking more control of the foodstuff market each year. They already dominate
the herbicide and insecticide markets and within the last few decades, they
have begun to monopolize the seeds that are planted to produce food crops. They
argue that genetic engineering is a simply modification of the plant breeding
processes; therefore, it does not require regulation. Monsanto scientist can
achieve in months what it takes nature decades to accomplish. These same
scientists do not know the long-term effects of genetically modified grain on
human health. I think we should seriously question how America can trust the
security of our food to a corporation that produced toxic chemicals like Agent
Orange and dioxin. They have a long history of deception.
Works Cited
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