This is among the many critical issues of our times that is profoundly under-reported, or not reported at all, in the American corporate owned media. I share below some highlights from this article. And I illuminate above the fiercely courageous, passionate and loving Vandana Shiva, a Bodhisattva of the highest order who works tirelessly on behalf of the higher good of all. Something we can all do is educate ourselves and share what we are learning. Tag - we are all it! - Molly
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The inside story of how the government let one company
squash biotech innovation, and dominate an entire industry
From http://seedfreedom.in/
Last November, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly closed a three-year antitrust investigation into Monsanto, the biotech giant whose genetic traits are embedded in over 90 percent of America’s soybean crop and more than 80 percent of corn. Despite a splash of press coverage when the investigation was initially announced, its termination went mostly unreported. The DOJ released no written public statement. Only a brief press release from Monsanto conveyed the news.
The lack of attention belies the significance of the decision, both for food consumers around the world and for U.S. businesses. Experts who have examined Monsanto’s conduct say the Justice Department’s decision not to act all but officially establishes the firm’s sovereignty over the U.S. seed industry. Many of them also say the decision ratifies aggressive practices Monsanto used to entrench its dominance and deter competition. This includes highly restrictive contractual agreements that excluded rivals, alongside a multibillion-dollar spree to buy up seed companies.
When the administration first launched its investigation, many antitrust and agriculture experts believed it was still possible to imagine an industry characterized by greater competition in the marketplace and greater diversity in seeds. That future may now be foreclosed...
It is not just a matter of higher prices. The resulting loss of diversity from Monsanto’s dominance may restrict our ability to adapt plant stocks to an increasingly volatile climate. Many of the seed breeders and retailers Monsanto purchased were regional experts, familiar with the soil and adept at breeding crops suited to the vagaries of local pests and climate. That sprawling network of local knowledge and experimentation has been severely thinned...
Experts echoed concerns about how Monsanto’s monopoly threatens future biotech advances to DOJ officials at a public workshop in Iowa in March 2010, as well as in reports submitted during the investigation. They say DOJ’s inaction cements Monsanto dominance for the foreseeable future.
In at least one recent instance, the Obama administration has supported that dominance. In Bowman v. Monsanto – the highly publicized case heard by the Supreme Court last month that pits the company against a 75-year-old farmer – the administration argued in favor of Monsanto’s position. The case asks whether Monsanto can employ patents to control how farmers use not just its seeds but also their progeny. In his brief the solicitor general argued that if patent rights for Monsanto’s crops were reduced, “[t]he incentive to invest in innovation and research might well be diminished.”
“It’s a great frustration,” Carstensen says. “If the Obama administration really cared about technological innovation, they would have come in and tried to free technology from being captured by a single company.” Instead, he says, they have “protected Monsanto’s interest.”
The Obama administration opened the Monsanto investigation as part of a signature effort to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement. In the end the administration appears mainly to have fortified the immense power of a chief target.
It has also ensured that future developments in our seeds – the basis of our food supply – will be driven not by tinkering farmers or scientists competing to discover the next breakthrough, but by the private interests of a single giant.
For the entire article, please go here: http://seedfreedom.in/how-monsanto-outfoxed-the-obama-administration/
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Gandhi is the other person. I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy — not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based.... In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life. ― Vandana Shiva
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