GMO Corn and Trees Replace a Rainforest

After spending the last three and a half months back in Brazil, reaching our 5,200 tree mark for reforestation, I have very little to say. I am silently processing what I discovered: GMO corn and eucalyptus trees are rapidly replacing the most diverse rainforest on the planet.

This article contains a link to the documentary “Silent Forest” and describes what I have now observed within a few miles of our planting areas. “Genetically enhanced” eucalyptus trees are covering once forested hillsides and mountains. They will be turned to pulp and shipped abroad, primarily for paper products: diapers, tissues, books and pharmaceuticals. Some of it may even land in your “organic” food and supplements as powdered cellulose.

And the trees will release pollens that we can only pray, Nature will refuse to mingle with the native species.

Corn. We discovered the GM corn in rural fields near one of the nurseries. They are silent places, unlike the native forests. No birds, no insects, no bees, no butterflies.

The small Brazilian NGO I work with said school children had described these dead forests and fields to them, while no one knew why it was so. Poor rural families simply accepted money offered to them to plant the trees on their barren hillsides, or for the promise of higher prices paid for their crops of the new corn in the cities.

When I asked people in both countryside and city, what they knew about GMOs, known there as Transgenics, few had any knowledge at all. No one seemed aware that the Lo-Cal sweetener they were using instead of natural sugar, the corn they ate in a multitude of forms, the greens, and even the rice that filled our plates, were loaded. They were unaware that Monsanto had bought up the vast majority of commercial seed company’s and funded the international NGO that funds the majority of environmental education.

Monsanto executives described a world with 100 percent of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Anderson Consulting then worked backwards from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct.

Integral to the plan was Monsanto’s influence in government, whose role was to promote the technology worldwide and to help get the foods into the marketplace quickly, before resistance could get in the way. A biotech consultant later said, “The hope of the industry is that over time, the market is so flooded that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender.”

The anticipated pace of conquest was revealed by a conference speaker from another biotech company. He showed graphs projecting the year-by-year decrease of natural seeds, estimating that in five years, about 95 percent of all seeds would be genetically modified.

While some audience members were appalled at what they judged to be an arrogant and dangerous disrespect for nature, to the industry this was good business. Their attitude was illustrated in an excerpt from one of Monsanto’s advertisements: “So you see, there really isn’t much difference between foods made by Mother Nature and those made by man. What’s artificial is the line drawn between them.”

To implement their strategy, the biotech companies needed to control the seeds-so they went on a buying spree, taking possession of about 23 percent of the world’s seed companies. Monsanto did achieve the dominant position, capturing 91 percent of the GM food market. Read more…

The preceding quotes are excerpts from “Seeds of Deception” by Jeffrey M. Smith

Reading a rural magazine, I discovered that in Brazil’s Cerrado, a method of reforestation had been used through Monsanto’s partnership with Conservation International. There they pay local people handsomely, to collect native tree seeds that are then mixed with GM crop seeds, and spread using farm equipment to do cheap agroforestry.

I can’t find words to describe these feelings yet. I feel as silent as the forest. And from that silence, I trust some form of guidance will emerge.

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