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http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/11/boxoffice.ap/index.html
Bloggie VI. As with all things natural, bloggies too must come to an end. I’ve learned more than I had intended to. I began this semester with such little knowledge of Genetically Modified Seeds, but have realized that this form of genetic engineering is a field that still requires much needed research. Knowledge of GMS is still limited, with many new updates arising daily. Corporate lobbying successfully granted Monsanto special priority when it came to promoting their modified seeds by offering a cut in federal crop insurance for farmers. These farmers are required to sign a five to seven year lease agreement and are sued for violating copyrights after the lease expires if they continue to grow the GMS. But in April 2008, Swedish researchers discovered that some of these modified seeds are found ten years after they had been last grown, meaning that a lease expiration does not stop the soil from growing some GMS. The farmers that had been found guilty and forced to pay restitution should be pissed. But what can we do? What should we all learn from this? The answer lies within the new “Speed Racer” movie.
They tried to make a number one hit. They spent $120 million producing and marketing it, but it failed to meet expectations. Monsanto and other genetic engineering corporations should take a lesson from this. You can’t simply redo something that has already been done once and expect it to be some great success. Besides, mixing CGI and real-life is lame. I mean, is this a muppet movie? Does Roger Rabbit do a cameo? Are the Looney Toons characters participating also?
All in all, sometimes people need to step back and recognize that somethings should only be done once, whether they be fruits and vegetables or crappy shows and movies. For the sake of society and it’s members, stop.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19425983.700-billions-at-risk-from-wheat-superblight.html
Hello? Hello? This is Bloggie entry number five. It is April 28, 2008. If you’re reading this, then hopefully we found a way to save each other. Three days ago, earth was reminded of an ancient Roman god. What we commonly referred to as a myth, god Robigus returned to prove his presence and demand our worship. Because of our complacency, the fertility god (who gave protection to crops from various diseases) was pissed that the population once again ignored his festival day of April 25. One man tried to warn us. One man who we all ignored back in April 2007. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug warned that this thing had immense potential for social and human destruction. . . and he was right.
The disease was Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust fungus that destroys wheat fields. In 1954, North America suffered a 40 per cent wheat crop loss. Since the Green Revolution in the 1960s, farmers everywhere had grown wheat varieties that resisted stem rust. But Ug99 evolved to take advantage of those varieties, and almost no wheat crops anywhere were resistant to it.
The strain spread slowly at first, across east Africa, but in January 2007 spores blew across to Yemen, and north into Sudan. Our first line of defense was fungicide, but the impoverished farmers generally couldn’t afford it, or didn’t have the equipment and know-how to prevent the spread. Governments ignored Dr. Borlaug’s solution that funding was necessary to produce new, resistant varieties of wheat. Eventually, it was too late, and earth’s populations suffered severe food shortages. Much of the human race turned to vampirism, voluntarily or not.
Although a fictional depiction, this could very well be the result of a real wheat seed that was modified to resist a particular fungus. It worked for forty years, aiding in higher wheat yields and ending chronic hunger in much of the world. But the fungus evolved. It’s currently destroying wheat crops in Africa and in the Middle East. We have two options, have governments fund research towards a better Ug99 resistant wheat seed, or make offerings to Robigus in the form of the color red (red wine or the ancient sacrificing of red dogs). Actually, I guess we have a third option of vampirism.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7324654.stm
Bloggie IV. An article, written by journalist Richard Black with BBC News. Apparently, the Swedes have constantly been on top of their seeds, because they planted genetically modified canola seeds ten years ago to see what it would do to the soil. “The Swedish Board of Agriculture has been spraying the field intensively with chemicals that should kill all the remaining plants,” wrote Black. But the GM canola seed said, “No, thank you,” and it decided that 15 plants should spring up 10 years later and carry the genes that scientists had originally inserted into their experimental canola variety to make them resistant to the herbicide glufosinate. But wait! What does this mean, Clare Oxborrow, GM campaigner with Friends of the Earth (FoE) UK?
“It appears that once it is planted, it is virtually impossible to prevent GM contamination of future crops,” she said. “The government must now tear up its weak proposals for the ‘coexistence’ of GM with organic and conventional crops, and put in place tough rules that protect GM-free food and farming.”
Let’s see what Professor Mark Westoby, a plant ecologist from Macquarie University in Australia, had to say. “This study confirms that GM crops are difficult to confine,” he said. “We should assume that GM organisms cannot be confined, and ask instead what will become of them when they escape.”
I wonder what another world renowned escape artist would do. How could you possibly confine something or someone that always found a way out? Reported eyewitness accounts say that Harry Houdini (who said that he could take any blow to the stomach) was unexpectedly punched multiple times in the stomach by a challenger in Montreal, Canada. Several days later Houdini’s appendix burst and he died. Although he probably had a bad appendix, he still died, so what I’m thinking is using brute force against the GM canola seed.
Bloggie: The Third. An interesting article dating February 8, 2008 about an all natural biopirate who has literally stolen the life from dozens of cotton fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 to 2006. These cotton fields were planted with “genetically modified cotton that was designed to make the Bt (that’s short for Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium) toxins that kill boll weevils has been thwarted by the bugs,” according to new research to be published in Nature Biotechnology. Researchers from the University of Arizona have classified this species of bollworm as the the first to evolve a resistance to the Bt crops.
Now, that’s interesting. But before we get carried away and think that all these Bt crops are going to fail, lead researcher Bruce Tabashnik reminds us that the resistance occurred in one particular pest in one part of the U.S. The other major pests attacking Bt crops have not evolved resistance. And even most bollworm populations have not evolved resistance.
Regardless, the extent of this article should serve as a constant reminder of our underlying prejudices. I hate to admit it, but I was the number one advocate for the bollworm to be thwarted by the Bt crops, but I had no idea that the thwarting would be reversed. I was prejudice against them from the start. I was wrong, but it didn’t take this article for me to realize my faults. It took an event that I’m sure the bollworm could identify with 110%. Revenge of the Nerds was released July 20, 1984. This fine work depicted the adaptation of a group of nerds (Bollworms), and how they overcame the taunts of the Alpha Beta fraternity (Bt crops). Just when you counted the nerds (Bollworms) out of the social game, they form their own fraternity (resistance) and get the girl. It’s as if director Jeff Kanew envisioned the thwarting of the Bt crop all those years ago and made a movie to capture the events. Tagged as, “They’ve been laughed at, picked on and put down. But now it’s time for the odd to get even! Their time has come!” Mr. Kanew has surely made the bollworm proud.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/monsanto-herbicides-corn-seeds-47010403
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/genetically-modified-47122604
For my second bloggie, I found the first article from Investor’s Business Daily by Marilyn Much, regarding Monsanto and their share increase. Up 188% from last year, with sales growing to $2.1 billion within the past four years, Monsanto’s Roundup and corn seed sales in Brazil and Argentina brought particularly high returns. But of course Monsanto estimates an 88-million-acre U.S. corn market in 2008, with most of it being spurred by ethanol subsidies. “The U.S. corn business is still their biggest driver in fiscal 2008,” said Mark Gulley, senior specialty chemical analyst at Soleil Securities.
I stumbled upon the second article which described how the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and Monsanto wheeled and dealed an agreement to give farmers a cut on federal crop insurance if they planted crops that resisted pests and were able to produce higher yields in 2000.
Apparently Monsanto is doing pretty well, and they project a steady growth into 2012. But I’m afraid that Monsanto has overlooked a lesson that history taught us back in 1984. Written by Stephen King, Children of the Corn instilled the fear of corn fields and communities in tens of thousands of United States citizens. I sincerely hope that Monsanto remembers how that ole’ saying goes of history repeating itself. Since 1984 history has repeated itself seven times with the latest tragedy occurring in 2001, that being Children of the Corn: Revelation. With such a steady growth of corn fields, it’s only a matter of time before we are all Children of the Corn.
