Last month, thousands of farmers joined together to protest the GMO industry and their influence over the Indian government. The farmers who gathered had a number of different complaints, the most common among them was Monsanto, GMO’s, the world trade organization and policies which they believe were written by the biotech industry.
In a recent statement, Shri Rakesh Tikait, National Spokesperson for the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) said that:
“The government is exhibiting its pro-industry stance by pushing for unneeded, unwanted and unsafe GMOs in our farming. We want all open air field trials of GM crops stopped immediately in the country since such open air trials pose not only a risk of contamination but also risk of trade rejection. Further, any moves towards trade liberalization in agriculture whether through the WTO route or through free trade agreements are unacceptable to us.”
The current goal of Monsanto is to completely dominate the whole agriculture industry using their genetically modified food and seeds. Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds only produce one plant cycle, what this means is that once a seed has sprouted there will be no more seeds produced by this plant. If their plan works, which it is, farmers will have no choice but to buy every seed for every crop directly from the Monsanto Corporation. To make matters even worse, Monsanto has used their political pull and financial backing to take independent farmers to court for using their own seeds!
This is a measure that the company and their supporters have been pushing for all over the world for a number of years. India was one of the first places on Earth to adopt these types of policies, and in recent years there has been a surge in suicides among farmers as a result. Forcing GMO seeds on farmers has also not been proven to be beneficial in any way, in fact, most farmers would reject GMO products if they had the choice.
John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.
