This is a very interesting article. It's long but worth reading. I'm pasting the whole thing into my blog here so you can use the built-in dictionary function my blogs have (just double-click any word for a definition of it--[*note: just tested this and it doesn't seem to be working right, but maybe it will for you. If not, try www.onelook.com for definitions.) since there are a few technical words here and there. But don't let that stop you. Not if you value your and your family's health. Monsanto is bad news in my opinion. BAD news.
An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton From a Wellesley College Alumna
Linn Cohen
Dear Hillary,
By polling logic, I should be your supporter- Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with youin college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and
others, I need to speak out.
I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto's Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they'd ever experienced.
And farmers couldn't collect seeds from their own fields to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto "patents" their DNA-altered seeds as "intellectual property." They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers. Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.
Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.
What does this have to do with you?