DNC, Obama Hype and Agriculture

August 25, 11:51 AMDenver Urban Agriculture ExaminerClaudia Kuhns

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Obamania has taken overtaken the real issues important to Americans.  Barak Obama is charismatic, certainly.  However, if you look at his top advisers, his rhetoric may not match his corporate agenda.  In November of 2007, Obama criticized  government policy which gives large subsidies to corporate farms over family farms.

In 2007, Obama hired Moses Mercado from Ogilvy Government Relations to be one of his top advisers.  Ogilvy Government Relations represents Monsanto among other not so squeaky clean corporate interests. 

Monsanto is well known for promoting the use of toxic substances like the artificial sweetner, Aspertame, commonly knows as Nutrasweet. 

Monsanto was also the inventor of the growth hormone that was used in milk as well as other agrichemicals.  Perhaps the most egregious products that Monsanto produces are genetically modified grains like rice, soy and corn.  When a farmer plants these seeds from Monsanto, a crop will be produced, but some seeds are sterile. Because of broad patent laws upheld by the Supreme Court, Monsanto owns the rights to these seeds that are not sterile. This is a huge problem for the survival of family farms and locally produced grains.  First, many farmers save their own seed for planting the following year.  With sterile seeds this is not possible. Since Monsanto also claims to own the seeds, farmers cannot plant what they saved, and farmers are forced to purchase seed every year.  Second, the pollen from this genetically engineered grain migrates into other adjacent or nearby fields and cross-pollinates with non-genetically engineered grain and may cause the seed produced from these other fields to become sterile as well or claimed to be owned by Monsanto.  

 In order to maintain food security, we must promote the production of food outside the corporate industrial farming complex.  The actions of Monsanto and other agricultural seed producers undermine family farms and small farming of all kinds.  Democracy can only be served by the people maintaining control of the food supply, not corporate interests.  The greater the Urban Agriculture movement becomes, the more secure we are.