Doesn’t it seem a little dumb to give one giant corporation power over the global food supply? Why yes, it does!
Seed catalogs are starting to arrive in mailboxes across the Northern Hemisphere with home gardeners everywhere starting to plan which seeds they will sow in their spring gardens.
A positive trend in recent years is the growing number of gardening enthusiasts choosing to plant gardens using organic and/or heirloom seeds.
What most of these home gardeners don’t realize is that corporate behemoth and GMO titan Monsanto has been gobbling up the seed market faster than a caterpillar can munch a tomato plant! With one fell swoop in 2005, Monsanto grabbed approximately 40% of the US vegetable seed marketwith its acquisition of Seminis.
This means that a home gardener could unknowingly be supporting the development and proliferation of genetically modified crops if the seeds used are from Seminis. In addition, Monsanto now apparently owns many of the names of the seed varieties themselves!
Planting a sustainable home garden is much more than just choosing certified organic seeds and seedlings because Monsanto has cleverly positioned itself to make money off the home gardening trend.
Does this mean that even if you buy organic or heirloom seeds from a completely independent company some of your purchase might be supporting the bad guys?
Yes, it does.
Surprise!
And out Powers That Be, they say, “What, we worry?”
Monsanto really disturbs me. This is a very scary trend. 🙁
Could a korporation be more evil??? Hard to choose – Walmart/Monsanto….Monsanto/Walmart.
Sorry Allie your nightmares need full color. Walmart, Monsanto, Koch Industries, Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, BP, Halliburton, Remington, Ben and Jerry’s (just checking to see who reads a list to its end)…
That’s a shame. I had read a gardening book a few years ago that made the point that there was a sharp drop off in quality of seeds sold to your average weekend back-yard gardener in comparison to the far better products sold to business-size enterprises and farmers.
Hence, the book suggested that the backyard gardener start doing business with those relatively few seed firms that took the time to do germination studies on seeds they sold to consumers, the same as they do with their commercial customers, and make that information available to all.
A couple of the seed companies that I started ordering from for that reason were Johnny and Territorial.
Now I see they’ve gone over to the Dark Side.
I really try to stay away from any product denoted as an F1 hybrid. Hopefully they haven’t tampered with the seeds denoted as “heritage”, but who can say these days?