Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

A few examples of the 100 Orders are illuminating:

• Order 39 allows for the tax-free remittance of all corporate profits.
• Order 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, immunity from Iraq’s laws.
• Orders 57 and 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector general in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations. (1)

Back to one of the most blatant orders of all: Order 81. Under this mandate, Iraq’s commercial farmers must now buy “registered seeds.” These are normally imported by Monsanto, Cargill and the World Wide Wheat Company. Unfortunately, these registered seeds are “terminator” seeds, meaning “sterile.” Imagine if all human men were infertile, and in order to reproduce women needed to buy sperm cells at a sperm bank. In agricultural terms, terminator seeds represent the same kind of sterility.

Terminator seeds have no agricultural value other than creating corporate monopolies. The Sierra Club, more of a mainstream “conservation” organization than a radical “environmentalist” one, makes the exact same case:

“This technology would protect the intellectual property interests of the seed company by making the seeds from a genetically engineered crop plant sterile, unable to germinate. Terminator would make it impossible for farmers to save seed from a crop for planting the next year, and would force them to buy seed from the supplier. In the third world, this inability to save seed could be a major, perhaps fatal, burden on poor farmers.” (2)

What makes this Order 81 even more outrageous is that Iraqi farmers have been saving wheat and barley seeds since at least 4000 BC, when irrigated agriculture first emerged, and probably even to about 8000 BC, when wheat was first domesticated. Mesopotamia’s farmers have now been trumped by white-smocked, corporate bio-engineers from Florida who strive to replace hundreds of natural varieties with a handful of genetically scrambled hybrids.

Where does such hubris come from? It comes from the entire mission surrounding the invasion of Iraq, which, upon closer inspection, had been planned years in advance by a faction of “neo-cons” who adopted Leon Trotsky’s glorification of the state, his theory “permanent revolution,” and his goal of exporting revolution worldwide. The neo-con revolution aims to alter the economic, political and cultural foundations of nations on the other side of the planet (rejecting old-fashioned notions of self-determination, popular sovereignty and even the nation-state system). This mission includes the transformation of agriculture and the establishment of “food control” over local populations.

Order 81 fits into this revolutionary program, and it is quite diabolical upon closer inspection. First, it forces Iraq’s commercial farmers to use registered terminator seeds (the “protected variety”). Then it defines natural seeds as illegal (the “infringing variety”), in a classic Orwellian turn of language.

This is so incredible that it must be re-stated: the exotic genetically scrambled seeds are the “protected variety” and the indigenous seeds are the “infringing variety.”

As Jeffrey Smith explains, author of Order 81: Re-Engineering Iraqi Agriculture:

“To qualify for PVP [Plant Variety Protection], seeds have to meet the following criteria: they must be ‘new, distinct, uniform and stable’… it is impossible for the seeds developed by the people of Iraq to meet these criteria. Their seeds are not ‘new’ as they are the product of millennia of development. Nor are they ‘distinct’. The free exchange of seeds practiced for centuries ensures that characteristics are spread and shared across local varieties. And they are the opposite of ‘uniform’ and ‘stable’ by the very nature of their biodiversity.” (3)

Order 81 comes with the Orwellian title of “Plant Variety Protection.” Any self-respecting scientist knows, however, that imposing biological standardization accomplishes the exact opposite: It reduces biodiversity and threatens species. So Order 81 comes with an Orwellian title and consists of Orwellian provisions.

Jeffrey Smith peels away the layers of mischief behind Order 81, finding it nonsensical that six varieties of wheat have been developed for Iraq:

“Three will be used for farmers to grow wheat that is made into pasta; three seed strains will be for ‘breadmaking.’

Pasta? According to the 2001 World Food Programme report on Iraq, ‘Dietary habits and preferences included consumption of large quantities and varieties of meat, as well as chicken, pulses, grains, vegetables, fruits and dairy products.’ No mention of lasagna. Likewise, a quick check of the Middle Eastern cookbook on my kitchen shelves, while not exclusively Iraqi, reveals a grand total of no pasta dishes listed within it.

There can be only two reasons why 50 per cent of the grains being developed are for pasta. One, the US intends to have so many American soldiers and businessmen in Iraq that it is orienting the country’s agriculture around feeding not ‘Starving Iraqis’ but ‘Overfed Americans’. Or, and more likely, because the food was never meant to be eaten inside Iraq at all…” (4)

Just in case Iraqi farmer can’t read, Order 81 enforces the new monopoly on seeds with the jackboot. Order 81 makes this clear in its own text, buried at the bottom of the document, as is most screw-you fine print:

“The court may order the confiscation of the infringing variety as well as the materials and tools substantially used in the infringement of the protected variety. The court may also decide to destroy the infringing variety as well as the materials and tools or to dispose of them in any noncommercial purpose.” (5)

Order 81 is about power and profit, but it disguises itself as humanitarian legislation.

Topping it all off, the entire document puts on rather magisterial airs. It was signed by L. Paul Bremer himself, with his own hand, and presumably with his own pen:

“Pursuant to my authority as Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority…”

Like the Roman Proconsuls, Paul Bremer also spent a year in the provinces, governing the so-called barbarians…

-The above is an excerpt from Andrew Bosworth’s new book: Biotech Empire: The Untold Future of Food, Pills, and Sex, available at Amazon.

-Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Government at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) district agronomist at Cowra, Jan Edwards, said for some reason the aphids were particularly attracted to drought-stressed crops.

She said typically the aphids could strike crops at any time during the growing season but this year they had made their presence when canola was at the grain-fill stage.

“There seems to be more aphids about this year; and we don’t see them every year,” she said.

“We have definitely got some aphid numbers in this district and right across the region.”

Ms Edwards said the aphids could wreak havoc on moisture-stressed crops by sucking the sap from the stems.

“It results in a fair bit of damage,” she said.

Landmark Temora, agronomist Craig Warren said it was the worst outbreak of aphids he had witnessed in his 13-year career.

The kangaroo population could be devastated by climate change, putting a cloud over suggestions roo should replace beef and lamb as the nation’s favourite meat, new research shows.

A temperature rise of 2 degrees, which is likely by the second half of this century, would reduce the range of most kangaroo and wallaby species by half, the James Cook University study found.

A 6-degree increase, which is at the extreme end of possible temperature rises predicted for 2070, would lead to the territory where kangaroos can survive reducing by 96pc – a level that would cause large-scale marsupial extinctions.

“The area where kangaroos and wallabies are able to survive is probably going to get smaller, so you would have to expect the populations to drop quite significantly,” said Dr Euan Ritchie, who drove 150,000 kilometres around northern Australia compiling data for an epic, three-year study.

“Although rainfall in northern Australia may increase as the climate changes, the temperature will also be going up, so you might see a net loss of water through evaporation.”

Dr Ritchie said the study findings did not rule out the expansion of kangaroo farming

  

Lyons Press, 2008, $24.95.

Referencing the French experience with Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), Schacker implicates IMD, a relatively new pesticide and close cousin to DDT, manufactured in its most widespread form by Bayer. This revelation has a feeling of inevitability to it, like finding out that the murderer who drew the light sentence was the Congressman’s cousin. Though Schacker’s tone can sometimes get a little strident, any initial annoyance on the reader’s part is dissipated by the urgency of his message. By the time we get to the section titled “The Government Responds?” we are very much with him.

As the front flyleaf of the book points out, it’s been 100 years since the birth of Rachel Carson, and A Spring without Bees makes a fine testament to how right she was—and how little she’s been heeded. Looking beyond IMD and Bayer to uncover the deeper whys, Schacker makes it crystal-clear that deregulation of pesticide manufacturers—and the lobbyists who currently steer the EPA and the FDA—have brought us all to the brink of a new definition of CCD. That would be Civilization Collapse Disorder, and intervening at this point will take a vast and basic paradigm shift. But Schacker doesn’t merely wring his hands and moan. He offers a potpourri of hopeful small suggestions that, if widely adopted, could have big results: nontoxic lawns, starting our own bee gardens, planting our streetscapes with lovely silver linden trees and our agricultural fields with hedgerows. Organic and regenerative agriculture, he points out, are things we know how to do. Natural predators can take care of bee mites without hurting a soul, and the Earth, properly understood, can still rebound enough to help us heal its biosphere. But there is no time to waste.

Schacker has not only written a book that manages to convince, educate, and somehow amuse at the same time, he’s also the founder of The New Earth Institute, an online transformative learning center. At this writing, he’s recovering from a catastrophic stroke. He should be in all our thoughts. Not only is his heart very clearly in the right place, but his boring-but-erudite statistics are relegated to appendices, a habit more science writers might emulate. A Spring without Bees poses the question: could the humble honeybee be the agent of our planetary awakening? Michael Schacker’s book is a powerful wake-up call.

Gardening personality Don Burke has been hired by timber company Gunns to help win support for its northern Tasmanian pulp mill.

The move pits Burke against former ABC TV gardening identity Peter Cundall, who has been a vocal critic of the controversial project.

The $2 billion proposal has stalled as tighter credit conditions force Gunns to look overseas for funds.

Burke has told ABC Local Radio he does not feel his role as an adviser to the company compromises his integrity.

“The majority of the people on the planet have a job but that doesn’t mean their integrity is purchased by their employer,” he said.

“I would have thought my track record stands out pretty clearly; that nobody buys my integrity.”

Burke says he has received assurances from Gunns’s chairman John Gay that the role will be independent of the company.

“So I’ve got access to the entire company. He asked me to monitor what’s going on, and work in the best interests as a green person,” he said.

“At no state has he hinted that there would be anything other than objectivity.”

From the Land

Supplies of farm chemicals are running tight as crop producers battle to control a spring flush of winter crop pests and diseases.

Aerial spraying operators, who have pulled out all stops containing an unprecedented epidemic of stripe rust, have now joined the fight against the latest outbreaks of aphids in canola, ascochyta fungal disease in chickpeas, and a growing mice plague.

Landmark’s State agricultural chemicals manager, Dave Wood, Dubbo, said while pesticide stocks were tight, suppliers had been able to meet demand by moving product to areas of greatest need.

Some stocks had been moved to hot spots in the north from southern regions where the demand for chemical had been tempered by drier conditions.

“As one area has started up and another eased off, we have just been moving stock from one area of the State to another to keep things going,” he said.

“In some areas farmers haven’t had to spray twice, but if they had, supplies would have been extremely tight.”

Mr Wood said some chemicals for aphid control had been particularly hard to source.

“Products like pirimicarb and aphidex, which are the popular ones because they are softer on beneficial bugs, are extremely tight,” he said.

“To date we have been able to source enough to keep our clients on the go, but we are still chasing stock all the time.”