Seed Hunter

Last night we watched Seed Hunter, the fantastic ABC doco about the Australian scientist, Ken Street. Street is charming and candid and oh so likable as we follow him and his team on their noble crusade.

The spiel:

As Australia and much of the world wrestles with hotter weather and a dwindling water supply, mass starvation at a global scale is on the cards if we can’t find ways to improve crop resilience. Scientists are exploring many solutions to adapt our food supply, including going back to mother nature herself to locate the genes that can withstand our changing climate; genes that, thanks to a high yielding monoculture, have almost disappeared. Australian scientist, Dr Ken Street, aka the ‘Seed Hunter’, spends his life searching for the tiny seed that could play a role in helping food producers around the world.

Two and half months ago I wrote about the harvesting of the first GM canola crops since the GM ban was lifted. Then yesterday I read that this harvested canola is now on its way to our grocery shelves.

We might think we can avoid GM ingredients if we want, but we can't. How can we when the canola oil that's being sold to us as cooking oil is not labelled as being GM? How can we when this oil is being mixed into our processed foods, and the leftover meal fed to our livestock?

While biotech giants such as Monsanto are racing towards their desired 100% seed ownership, Ken Street and his crew are scouring the globe in search of ancient seeds that will help ensure the survival of all Earthlings. There's no question as to whose team I'd rather be on.

Plotted Out

I love being an editor and writer, and I take the work I do very seriously. My decisions don't affect whole States or economies or greenhouse gas abatement targets, but I stand behind every one of my capitals, colons and commas.

Which is one of the many reasons I despise premier John Brumby; because his decisions have hugely negative ramifications; and because he is surprised when the people he affects want to hold him accountable.

One of these loathsome decisions has been not to disclose the location of the farms where genetically modified crops have been planted, (let alone ending the moratorium in the first place). If GM produce is so good for us, what have you got to hide, Mr Brumby?

Earlier this year, the Victorian government ended the 5-year ban on growing commercial GM canola. Soon the planted GM canola will flower and be harvested, which poses a huge contamination threat as GM seed and pollen can quickly transfer their genetically mutated traits to GM-free plants.

The 5-meter buffer zone between GM and non-GM crops is a joke. Many non-GM growers, apiarists, seed cleaners, harvesters, organic growers, food processors, local councils, the Municipal and Victorian Local Governance Associations, and many conscientious citizens asked Brumby for a public register of GM crop sites, but were told NO. 

As a public service, Executive Director of Gene Ethics, Bob Phelps, has printed a map on his website of the locations of GM canola in Victoria. The map shows farms where Monsanto's Roundup-tolerant GM canola is reportedly being grown or is intended for planting.

Mr Brumby, who once said he would have no problem growing GM crops, is now kicking up a fuss because his farm has also been listed on the map.

If you are happy to make decisions such as allowing untested GM crops to be planted in our soil, you need to stand your ground, Mr Brumby. You can bet that we'll be watching.

Bullshit

PJ worked on our chook house yesterday afternoon while I went for a long bushwalk. It felt so great to be back in the forest; with the green and the waters gushing.

Then we stayed in and watched Bullshit, the film about Vandana Shiva, the Indian nuclear physicist and environmental activist.

It's not the best made doco I've ever seen, but it's a great portrait of Shiva, as we follow her around over a two year period, as she tries to hold back the forces of globalisation, with her sharp mind and her joyous outlook.

It is this joyous outlook that inspired me the most. In the face of globalisation, corporatism, gene patenting, bio-piracy and genetic engineering, Shiva not only uses her money and reputation to fight the good fight against Goliaths such as Monsanto, but she doesn't let the injustices she has devoted her life to campaigning against, get her down.

PJ and I feel alive and a sense of self-sovereignty by doing such things as walking through the bush, sharing seeds and vegies with others and building chicken coops that bring us one step closer to self-sufficiency. We take it personally when we read that governments will do everything they can to feed their dirty oil habits. 

This film is a welcome reminder that all is not lost. She shows us how to fight the bastards. With grace and humility.

Some trivia: I'm not sure why, but Bullshit is the only major film I've ever seen that doesn't appear on IMDB.

My Dad & Ronald Hollowell

Happy birthday to my dad who today is celebrating his 61st birthday. Happy birthday to my dad who is one of the most ethical and dependable people I know. 

One of the qualities I inherited from him and my mum is the need to make sense of things in my own way.

If you have a look at the very bottom of this page, you'll see I have an Add Free Stats logo that when I click, takes me to a page where all my blog visitor info is listed: how many page visits, how many return visits, what browsers people are using, their IP address, what keywords they googled to find me etc.

And so, I was able to see that at 4.38pm yesterday, someone in St Louis visited the Land of Meg using a Netscape browser and that they googled the word Monsanto to find me. Following the thread of their IP address, I was able to discover that it was a man named Ronald Hollowell, who touristed this site from the Monsanto world HQ in Creve Coeur.

Hello Ron! If you like what you read on my blog, you might also like to check out my dad's blog. He, like me, or should I say, I, like him, am a proponent of human rights over shareholder profits, of the natural over the unnatural, of good over evil.

Want to know what other beliefs I champion, Ron? Come back and visit my blog tomorrow.

I'll be able to tell if you do.

The Seed

We sat up in bed last night eating popcorn and watching The World According to Monsanto - a frightening doco that shows how the US corporation, Monsanto, through its genetic engineering technology, is strategically destroying worldwide biodiversity and social harmony, all in the name of shareholder profits.

PJ stayed up to write a letter to premier John Brumby, urging him to see the film and speak to independent researchers who have been studying the effects of GE technology.

Today, PJ, Z and I spent the morning in our garden. It was a beautiful few hours with each other and the earth, but still I have a very uneasy feeling in my belly.

We plant seeds in our soil and think that with water and sun and nurturing that they will grow, and that wanting to do our own thing on our own land is enough. 

This isn't just about the infusion of the unnatural into the natural, this is about the corporatisation of our basic human rights. This is about converting food to a patented product of intellectual property, that is owned by greed, not communities.