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How GMOs will destroy Indian agriculture

Introduction of Bt and HT crops will harm the health of 1 billion Indians and their animals

Aruna Rodrigues

Hybrid Bt cotton, the only commercialised GM crop in India, has failed conclusively. Based on this failure and the evidence on GM crops to date, the Union of India’s proposal to commercialise herbicide-tolerant (HT) mustard will destroy not just Indian mustard agriculture but citizens’ health.

There have been five days of intense hearings on this matter in the Supreme Court (SC) — the GMO Public Interest Writ filed almost 20 years ago in 2005 by the author, which ended on 18 January 2024.

In these last 20 years, piecemeal hearings have dealt with submissions relating to individual crops like hybrid Bt cotton, the attempted commercialisation of hybrid Bt brinjal (2010) and now the attempt to commercialise hybrid HT mustard.

The evidence provided here is a distillation of the critical inputs of those 60+ submissions based on the affidavits and studies of leading, independent scientists and experts of international renown.

However, there is a serious and proven conflict of interest among our regulators, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Agriculture along with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which promote GMOs in Indian agriculture. This evidence reflects the findings of the TEC Report (Technical Expert Committee) appointed by the Supreme Court (SC) in 2012 and two Parliamentary Standing Committees of 2012 and 2017.

‘Modern biotechnology’ or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are products where the genomes of organisms are transformed through laboratory techniques, including genetically engineered DNA (recombinant) and its direct introduction into cells. These are techniques not used in traditional breeding and selection.

GMOs create organisms in ways that have never existed in 3.8 billion years of evolution and produce ‘unintended effects’ that are not immediately apparent. This is why rigorous, independent protocols for risk and hazard identification are the sine qua non of correct regulation in the public interest. The Indian ‘Rules of 1989’ describe GMOs as “hazardous”.

Contamination by GMOs of the natural environment is of outstanding concern, recognised by the CBD (Convention on Biodiversity), of which India is a signatory. India is one of 17 listed international hot spots of diversity, which includes mustard, brinjal and rice. India is the centre of the world’s biological diversity in brinjal with over 2500 varieties grown in the country and as many as 29 wild species.

India is a secondary centre of origin of rape-seed mustard with over 9000 accessions in our gene bank (National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources). With a commercialised GM crop, contamination is certain. The precautionary principle must apply, is read into the Constitution and is a legal precedent in India.

Hybrid Bt cotton was introduced in 2002 and remains the only approved commercialised crop in India. It has been an abject failure.

Failure of Bt cotton

India is the only country in the world to have introduced the Bt gene into hybrid Bt Cotton. It was introduced in hybrids as a ‘value-capture mechanism’, according to Dr Kranthi, ex director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR).

The hybrid technology disallows seed saving by millions of small farmers. Conservative estimates indicate that Indian farmers may have paid an additional amount of Rs 14,000 crores for Bt cotton seeds during the period 2002-18, of which trait fees amounted to Rs 7337.37 crores, (Dr Kranthi). There was also a phenomenal three-fold increase in labour costs in hybrid cotton cultivation.

Prof. Andrew Gutierrez (University of California, Berkeley) is among the world’s leading entomologists and cotton scientists and provided the ecological explanation of why hybrid Bt cotton is every bit a disaster that it is in India. Most hybrid cottons are long season (180-200-day duration). This increases the opportunities for pest resurgence and outbreaks because it links into the lifecycle of the pest. The low-density planting also increases the cost of hybrid seeds substantially.

Hybrids require stable water too (therefore, irrigation, as opposed to rain-fed) and more fertiliser. Some 90% of current Bt cotton hybrids appear susceptible to sap-sucking insects, leaf-curl virus and leaf reddening, adding to input costs and loss of yield. Most telling is that India produces only 3.3 million tonnes from its irrigated area of 4.9 million hectares compared to 6.96 million tonnes from an equivalent area in China.

Hybrid Bt cotton in India has resulted in a yield plateau, high production costs and low productivity that reduce farmer revenues, correlated with increased farmer distress and suicides. It has stymied the development of economically viable high-density short-season (HD-SS) Non-Bt high-yielding straight-line varieties. The failure of hybrid Bt cotton is an abject lesson for GMO implementation in other crops.

Yet, the regulators attempted to repeat history in the form of hybrid Bt brinjal and Hybrid HT Mustard.

Field trial solutions (CICR data) of high-density short-season (HD-SS) NON-GMO pure-line (non-hybrid), rainfed cotton varieties have been developed in India that could more than double yield and nearly triple net income.

The Central Government admitted in its affidavit in the Delhi High Court (22 Jan 2016), adding, (on 23 January 2017), that Bt “cotton seeds are now unaffordable to farmers due to high royalties charged by MMBL (Mahyco Monsanto Biotech Ltd) which has a near monopoly on Bt cotton seeds and that this has led to a market failure”.

Moreover, there is no trait for yield enhancement in the Bt technology. Any intrinsic yield increase is properly attributable to its hybridisation in both Bt cotton and Bt brinjal. Lower insecticide use is the reason for introducing the Bt technology worldwide.

The pink bollworm has developed high levels of resistance against Bollgard-II Bt cotton, leading to increased insecticide usage in India, increases in new induced secondary pests and crop failures. The annual report 2015-16 of the ICAT-CICR confirms that Bt cotton is no longer effective for bollworm control

Insecticide usage on cotton in 2002 was 0.88 kg per hectare, which increased to 0.97 kg per hectare in 2013 (Srivastav and Kolady 2016).

Matters were deliberately muddied in India, leading to any hybrid vigour being attributed to the Bt technology! Yields have stagnated despite the deployment of all available latest technologies, including the introduction of new potent GM technologies, a two-fold increase in the use of fertilisers and increased insecticide use and irrigation. And yet, India’s global rank is 30-32nd in terms of yield.

In 13 years, the cost of cultivation increased 302%. In 15 years, there was 450% increase in labour costs. The costs of hybrid seed, insecticide and fertiliser increased more than 250 to 300%.

Net profit for farmers was Rs. 5971/ha in 2003 (pre-Bt) but plummeted to net losses of Rs. 6286 in 2015 (Dr Kranthi, Cost of cultivation)

Regulatory failure: Bt brinjal

Regulators tried to commercialise Bt brinjal and in hybrids in 2009. The Bt gene is proven to be undeniably toxic (Profs. Schubert of the Salk Institute; Pusztai, Seralini and others have confirmed this).

In August 2008, the regulators were forced to publish the Developers’ (Monsanto-Mahyco) self-assessed bio-safety dossier on their website, 16 months after the order of the SC to make the safety dossier data public (15 Feb 2007).

Bt brinjal was the first vegetable food crop in the world to be approved for commercialisation, by the collective regulatory body and their expert committees, virtually without oversight. When the international scientific community examined the raw data, their collective comments were scathing.

Prof Jack Heinemann stated that Mahyco has failed at the first, elementary step of the safety study:

I have never seen less professionalism in the presentation and quality assurance of molecular data than in this study”.

He criticised Mahyco for using outdated studies, testing to below acceptable standards and inappropriate and invalid test methods.

Prof David Andow, in his comprehensive critique of Monsanto’s Dossier, ‘Bt brinjal Event EE1’, listed 37 studies of which perhaps one had been conducted and reported to a satisfactory level by Monsanto. He concluded:

The GEAC set too narrow a scope for environmental risk assessment (ERA) of hybrid Bt brinjal, and it is because of this overly narrow scope that the EC-II is not an adequate ERA… most of the possible environmental risks of Bt brinjal have not been adequately evaluated; this includes risks to local varieties of brinjal and wild relatives, risks to biological diversity, and risk of resistance evolution in BFSB.”

The Central Government itself declared an unconditional and indefinite moratorium on Bt brinjal in Feb 2009 based on the collective responses of the scientific community.

Disaster in the making: GM Hybrid HT Mustard

Like Bt, HT is a pesticidal crop (to kill weeds). These two GMO technologies represent about 98% of crops planted worldwide, with HT crops accounting for more than 80%. Neither has a trait for yield. In its 2002 Report, the United States Department for Agriculture stated:

“currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential… In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars… Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of GE crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative.”

 
The developer’s (Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants University of Delhi) bio-safety dossier, in contempt of the SC orders, has never made its data public. A Right to Information (RTI) request was filed in 2016 with the Directorate of Rape-Seed Mustard Research, which conducts protocols of non-GMO mustard trials for crop improvement programmes for our farmers, for varietal stability and performance. The RTI was an eye opener.

Virtually all the directorate’s norms were flouted in the field trials, making them invalid. Hybrid mustard HT DMH 11 was out yielded by more than the 10% norm by non-GMO varieties and hybrids, which forced the developers to admit this fact in their formal reply affidavit in the SC.

Hybrid HT mustard DMH 11 employs three transgenes: the male sterility gene, barnase, the female restorer gene, barstar, and the bar gene that confers tolerance to Bayer’s herbicide glufosinate ammonium or BASTA. Each of the parent lines has the bar gene that makes them both HT crops along with their resulting hybrid DMH 11.

The reason for employing barnase and barstar is because mustard is a closed pollinating crop (even though it out crosses pretty well, 18%+) and this technology (a male sterility technology) makes it easier to produce mustard hybrids. It is not a hybrid technology. Its counterpart in non-GMO male sterility technology is the CMS system (cytoplasmic male sterility). Employing male sterility in mustard allows it to be used more easily in already existing hybridisation technology.

It is curious the extent to which the regulators have tried to obfuscate the facts and muddy the waters. Their first response was that the acronym HT in mustard DMH 11 means ‘hybrid technology’. When this didn’t work, the next ‘try’ was that DMH 11 isn’t an HT crop!

This too was easily proved wrong because of the presence of the bar gene. Now, this fact has been admitted.

Furthermore, the regulators have failed either intentionally, or because they are simply unable to stop, illegal HT cotton being grown on a commercial scale for the last 15 years or so. This is the state of GMO regulation in India.

Bayer’s own data sheet states that glufosinate causes birth defects and is damaging to most plants that it comes into contact with.

Like its counterpart, glyphosate, it is a systemic, broad spectrum, non-selective herbicide (it kills indiscriminately soil organisms, beneficial insects etc) and is damaging to most plants and aquatic life. The US Environmental Protection Agency classifies glufosinate ammonium as “persistent” and “mobile” and is “expected to adversely affect non-target terrestrial plant species”.

Glufosinate is not permitted in crop plants in India, under the Insecticide Act. Since it is very persistent in the environment, it will certainly contaminate water supplies in addition to food. Surfactants are used to get the active ingredients into the plant, which is engineered to withstand the herbicide, so it doesn’t die when sprayed. The herbicide and surfactant are sprayed directly on the crops and significant quantities are then taken up into the plant. The weeds die — or used to!

The US Geological survey noted that while 20 million pounds/year of glyphosate was used prior to GE crops (1992), 280 million pounds/year was used in 2012, largely as a result of glyphosate-resistant crops. In the U.S. alone, glyphosate-resistant weeds were estimated to occupy an area of over 24 million hectares as of 2012. This is a failed and unsustainable technology anywhere, and for India it will be disastrous.

The stated objective by the regulators themselves for HT mustard is that the two HT parent lines (barnase and barstar each with the bar gene), will be similarly employed in India’s best (non-GMO) varieties to create new crosses resulting in any number of HT hybrid mustard DMH crops. Thus, Indian mustard varieties (non-GMO) in a very short time will be contaminated and Indian mustard agriculture (which is non-GMO) destroyed.

The regulators claim that GMO HT hybrid DMH 11 will create a significant dent in India’s oilseeds imports. Given that GMO mustard has no gene for yield enhancement, is significantly out yielded by non-GMO mustard hybrids and varieties, this is indeed a magic bean produced from thin air by the regulators, defying all logic and commonsense. Mustard Oil imports are virtually zero (ie rapeseed mustard as distinct from canola rape oil which is also illegal GMO).

The story of the current steep decline in oilseeds production in Indian farming must be laid at the door of a wrong policy decision that comprehensively ignored national and farmers’ interest to severely slash import duties on oilseeds of around 300% to virtually zero.

In 1993-94, India imported just 3% of our oil-seed demand; we were self- sufficient. Then we happily bowed to WTO pressure and now import almost 70% of our demand in edible oils! (Devinder Sharma). This is the real reason for our heavy import bill.

The TEC recommend a double bar on GM Mustard — for being an HT crop and also in a centre of mustard diversification and/or origin. It is hoped that our government will recognise the dangers of GMOs, bar HT crops, including GM mustard, and impose a moratorium on all Bt crops.

Aruna Rodrigues, Lead Petitioner in the GMO PIL filed in 2005 for a moratorium on GM crops.

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Categories: GMO, India, latest, war on food
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R Anand
R Anand
Feb 13, 2024 5:40 PM

At this point in history, seed diversity and seed protection have become very important.

Here is a report from 2012 from an Indian agri entity — http://navdanya.org/attachments/article/34/SFGlobalCampaign_24-12-2012copy.pdf

It says “… campaign to alert people, communities,… to the serious risk to the future of
the world’s seed and food security and what must be done to reverse it. The report has been written through a participatory process by over a 100 individuals, communities, networks and organizations. It takes stock of the erosion of seed and seed sovereignty and the deepening seed emergency. It combines stories from seed savers with those from seed defenders. It captures both the history of past initiatives for liberating the seed as well as creative alternatives which are shaping a future beyond mono cultures and monopolies towards
diversity and the commons…”

R Anand
R Anand
Feb 13, 2024 5:29 PM

Good article by Aruna. Here, in India, the government and its agencies and regulatory bodies are horribly infiltrated with agents and local partners of world oligarchs. India’s agriculture is an important strength of the country. They, who seek to weaken it, will, however, fail, and fail big time.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 13, 2024 1:11 AM

General elections are expected to be held in India between April and May 2024.

February 13th 2024: Talks collapse, (Punjabi) farmers to march to Delhi
“As the five-hour-long second round of meetings held on Monday with Union Cabinet Ministers Piyush Goyal and Arjun Munda in Chandigarh also failed, the farmers belonging to the Samyukt Kisan Morcha-Non Political (SKM-NP), a splinter group of Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), have decided to continue with ‘Delhi Chalo’ protests as planned on Tuesday. The leaders said the protests will begin at 10 a.m. The farmers’ leaders said that the Centre failed to give any assurance on their demands. The main bone of contention was an assurance on guaranteed MSP. “The Ministers did not give us any assurance on MSP. The talks collapsed. We will continue our protests,” K.V. Biju, a senior farmers’ leader told The Hindu after the meeting. Their other demands — freedom from debt, hiked import duties on all agricultural products, cancellation of all free trade agreements and other deals with the World Trade Organisation, suspending privatisation of electricity boards, a ban on Foreign Direct Investment and corporatisation in agriculture, and a pension for farmers — remained unanswered as well.”

Remember the “color revolutions” organized by the WEF’s CIA, like in Ukraine 2014, Egypt etc?

Well, here is another round. Foreign NGO support essential for $$$$$$$$, no real farmer goes without pay on the road for months.

At the last Punjabi farmer protest WEF clown Justin Trudeau was deployed in India. Later he himself froze bank accounts from any Canadian donating to the trucker protests against Covid lockdowns and jailed many. Notice that other Indian farmers barely join these Sikh games. Khalistan is also part of the plot.

Let's be Frank Joshua
Let's be Frank Joshua
Feb 13, 2024 3:31 PM
Reply to  Antonym

Well, here is another round.

Can you substantiate that claim with evidence?

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 13, 2024 4:23 PM

Look at the timings: just before the national elections once in 5 years. Also always only some Sikh farmers, hardly others.

India is not toeing the anti-Russia line so the Angloes strikes back via some Sikhs
See Indian embassy attacks in Canada and UK too.

Let's be Frank Joshua
Let's be Frank Joshua
Feb 14, 2024 10:06 AM
Reply to  Antonym

So, you are just speculating. No serious evidence of funding by Soros, NGOs or foreign state actors. Aside from organisations from Punjab and Haryana, unions from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are also participating in the march to Delhi. Your concerns are valid, but we must also be aware that farmers’ demands (MSP for multi crops, debt waivers, roll back of pro-corporate policies etc) are genuine. It is easy to dismiss farmers’ protest as ‘anti-national’ but isn’t it anti-democratic to shut down dissent, freedom of movement, freedom of protest, social media accounts and so on. Legal, democratic rights. Total govt power. Isn’t it anti-national to allow Microsoft, Cargill, Amazon, Bayer, Facebook etc into the agrifood sector to take control of it. Because that is the plan. I’ve NEVER heard you express any concern about that. You just embark on the tactic of shooting the messenger – attacking anyone who discusses the issue.

R Anand
R Anand
Feb 15, 2024 4:47 AM

The oligarchs fund both sides. Soros and his groups will fund one while Rockefellers and Rothschilds will fund the other (government and its institutions camp). India’s own oligarchs are present in both groups.

But farmers’ concerns are real. What they are demanding are simple protections, which any country genuinely concerned about food security will do.

Protests by all sides must be allowed.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 15, 2024 11:11 AM
Let's be Frank Joshua
Let's be Frank Joshua
Feb 15, 2024 12:31 PM
Reply to  Antonym

Feel free to post as many links as you want. It still doesn’t legitimize my most recent comment to you and you still remain silent on the issues I raised. In fact, your silence on the foreign corporate takeover of the sector says quite a lot.

Let's be Frank Joshua
Let's be Frank Joshua
Feb 15, 2024 5:55 PM

that should be ‘delegitimize my latest comment to you”

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 14, 2024 5:01 AM
Reply to  Antonym

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 11, 2024 3:24 AM

India is not in tight enough lockstep with the WEF cabal so must be singled out, again and again. GMOs destroy only Indian agriculture, non other.

Let's be Frank Joshua
Let's be Frank Joshua
Feb 12, 2024 3:39 PM
Reply to  Antonym

What do you want Aruna Rodrigues to do? Focus on the situation in China? She is Indian and is naturally concerned about what’s happening in India. It’s a pity you don’t seem to be. Why is that I wonder.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 13, 2024 2:03 AM

You put my answer above in Pending….

Penelope
Penelope
Feb 11, 2024 12:02 AM

If you’re interested in regenerative agriculture this video will be up for only a day or two
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/02/10/biodynamic-agriculture.aspx

Paul
Paul
Feb 10, 2024 1:47 PM

Presumably the so called elites will not be eating this franken food. They will be eating organic.
That is what we must do. Be the change you wish to see. The more demand, the more produce.
But few people want to give up their sky subscriptions to spend a few extra quid on organic food.
Yes I would rather the so called elites weren’t doing this, but are they going to listen to mere lamentation?

niko
niko
Feb 10, 2024 12:26 PM

It’s a war on the natural world, which still incudes us, despite generations domesticated by industrial capitalism’s commodification of existence. It’s been waged as long as I can remember, raised in Amerikan Dream consumerism to conceive of food, processed and packaged, from the store, not the farm; the early ‘green’ revolution, as in the color of U$ dollars, to convert earth’s ecology to chemical control by corporate monopoly, eventually to colonize life by means of synthetic substitutes down to the genome, madness of the monoculture marching us into another totalitarian dead end.

And as long as I can remember, there’s been ample documentation of the silent springs the Frankenscience brings, even as the Frankenfood multiplies. As if pumping poisons into land, water, air…anything (including us, as by medicine for our health) needs to be proven harmful, that’s what the age of enlightenment brings. It’s been one long chronicle of our own demise, along with all the other living beings the sick setup is bringing down. Maybe we’ll keep learning of all the ‘unintended effects’ until the last meal of the last of our kind proves once and for all just how late we’ve been to our own death sentence.

There’s nothing conclusive to the continuing failures but the success of a suicidal system hellbent on replacing life with simulacra representing the psychopathy of “masters of mankind” (Smith) feeding off a planetary host reduced to plastics. What kind of mind manufactures suicide seeds that drive dispossessed and debt-ridden farmers by the hundreds of thousands to suicide in India alone? Or manufactures climate change for sustainability of natural assets leading to the last enclosure of the commons by earth’s owners (stakeholders) overseeing us useless eaters?

Bayer, IG Farben, Monsanto…what a rogue’s gallery of pharmafia gangsters and petrochemical polluters. Enough to make one wonder just how unintended are the effects of their solutions in search of problems, given such goals, memorably articulated by Kissinger/Killinger, as food and population control, and depopulation.

Johnny
Johnny
Feb 10, 2024 6:40 AM

Ideologically opposed but united by truth. This is worth the time to watch:

https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/02/russell-brand-responds-to-coordinated-smear-campaign-against-him/

As usual, Russell exposes a wide variety of government and corporate evils.

Veri Tas
Veri Tas
Feb 10, 2024 5:53 AM

Vote with your dollars. Cook with coconut oil which, as yet, is not genetically engineered, as are 95% of all rapeseed plants from which “Canola” oil is obtained in the USA.  (The name Canola is a contraction derived from Canada + “ola” – the ola ending was a branding trend in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though not necessarily used as a reference to oil).

Canola oil is also highly processed and toxic due to the remaining trans fats following high-temp processing, and the synthetic antioxidants added to the oil.

More details here: https://www.fuckcancer.org/canolaoilhealthrisks/

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 10, 2024 5:12 AM

Only the Green Revolution was a bigger disaster for the masses. This pseudo-science took off before the discovery of the human gut micro-biome, hologenome theory, epigenetics, transposons and exosomes. It began with a blunderbuss approach: irradiating genes and inserting taxonomically alien ones, i.e., genetic mutilation. The propaganda was all lies, i.e.,
:- viability in being hardier and producing more
:- less need for agro-chemicals
:- safety of produce.

The permanent danger is the contamination of crops, farmed animals, fields and biomes by the frankenstein organisms and agro-chemicals. Many of our diseases may be due to them and to the poisons added to processed food.

This is classic oligarchy:
:- treachery, coercion, delay and dogged evasion by all branches of government
:- making food private property.

Johnny
Johnny
Feb 10, 2024 4:51 AM

India, the world’s largest corporate laboratory.

uncle pho
uncle pho
Feb 10, 2024 2:39 AM

OFF T

Dishonesty in our household was and is still frowned upon
Moving on from the imposed lock-downs seems to be an adventure
Cachaca and samba takes the edge off sometimes
Where’s the comeuppance for those lying bastards?
Yeah, I get it, we are stuffed
But hang on Family
If interested
For the purposes of the FOI Act in your respective countries
I implore keen tax payers to request document/s from your public broadcaster that provide viewership numbers of *** from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2021(monthly figures are sufficient)
***denotes the name of any show that played host to the extra terrestrial’s – usually during prime time
For instance, TV show xyz between 6-7PM etc
The data is accessible

OFF G – if it’s not too much of an imposition, please create a page / portal where the data from various countries can be uploaded and viewed

I have a theory that paves way to justice
Thank you all for your attention.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 10, 2024 1:38 AM

A little outside but related to everybody’s health. New report that the vaxx side effects are within the frame of acceptable saying 0,03% serious. Just confirming my claim and ref to figures.https://www.swissmedic.ch/swissmedic/en/home/news/coronavirus-covid-19/covid-19-vaccines-safety-update-19.html

Paul Watson
Paul Watson
Feb 10, 2024 8:27 AM
Reply to  Erik Nielsen

“Everybody’s health”
Er, you mean the vaccinated.
The unjabbed are happily avoiding turbo cancers, blot clots, amputations, myocarditis and a whole plethora of side effects…

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 10, 2024 5:08 PM
Reply to  Paul Watson

The unjabbed and their health says 99,97% would not have got any serious side effects if they have been jabbed 1-2-3 times.

Only 0,03% of the unvaccinated would have got serious side defects, and the study says this is within the acceptable of all medicine.

But if you and the 3 down voters wants to cling to your dark fantasies, feel welcome. I am unjabbed myself but prefer reality from fear mongering.

Just saying this study looks like the figures I have seen during the case. Remember both sides lie. The bad guys and their controlled do-gooder opposition.

Hope everybody understand it now.  😋 

Freddy
Freddy
Feb 9, 2024 10:39 PM

These little fireflies are a fascinating species. Not just
aesthetically. But also in the sense of a population.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pwXKKaSJ58

Johnny
Johnny
Feb 10, 2024 8:57 AM
Reply to  Freddy

Beautiful Freddy, thank you.

Penelope
Penelope
Feb 9, 2024 10:19 PM

Now they’re screwing w the soil microbes– already spraying across millions of acres of US farmland.

“Genetically engineered soil microbes are fundamentally different from GE crops,” said Dana Perls, food and technology program manager at Friends of the Earth. “Microbes can share genetic material with each other far more readily than crops and can travel great distances on the wind, so the genetic modifications released inside GE microbes may move across species and geographic boundaries in unpredictable ways. The scale of release is also far larger, and the odds of containment far smaller, than for GE crops. An application of GE bacteria could release approximately 3 trillion/acre.”

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 10, 2024 1:55 AM
Reply to  Penelope

They are doing everything opposite of what they should do. They should adapt themselves to the perfect organic constellation.
Instead they are fumbling fiddling trying to improve what already did function perfectly.

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 10, 2024 5:25 AM
Reply to  Penelope

Plants too share genetic material easily. That is how the vaunted GM resistance – to pests, diseases or biocides – spreads to weeds. Even the synthetic fertilizers and excessive plowing leave little of not just bacteria but other denizens, nitrogen compounds, etc. And this is not just a problem for USA.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Feb 10, 2024 6:57 AM
Reply to  Penelope

I have yet to understand why ‘soil microbes’ need to be ‘improved’. If you manage soil properly, the networks of microbes, fungi etc provide all that plants need to grow.

This is technology in search of a problem, not a problem in search of a solution.

underground poet
underground poet
Feb 10, 2024 11:59 AM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

But industry has a problem in search of their solution, so why not create a poison problem (kelp), and then promote it as a Grade A solution, put plenty of dirty political money behind it and you have the recipe for an environmental disaster just waiting to happen.

This is a possibility.

Penelope
Penelope
Feb 10, 2024 5:38 PM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

Rhys, they must “improve” soil microbes for the same reason they give perfect newborns hep B shots.

Penelope
Penelope
Feb 9, 2024 10:05 PM

Whew– 4.6 earthquake LA County just minutes ago. I was on the phone speaking to someone near epicenter when suddenly everybody there started shouting. When it’s close to the surface you feel it more strongly. This one was Thousand Oaks, Malibu area.

TPTB cd trigger a major one along existing fault lines as they’ve done elsewhere– Turkey being the most recent.

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 10, 2024 5:56 AM
Reply to  Penelope

Japan was the biggest. Remember those US sailors there who got radiation burns.

Penelope
Penelope
Feb 10, 2024 6:21 PM
Reply to  mgeo

No I don’t remember about the radiation burns. They set the quake 15 km offshore, so how did they get radiation burns? Did they also act directly on Fukushima?

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 11, 2024 4:59 AM
Reply to  Penelope

There was a geological fault at the site of the sub-sea quake. A few days thereafter, a news report mentioned some US sailors being treated for radiation “burns”. If they had been monitoring radiation from the disaster at Fukushima, there was no excuse for them to get close, at least without protective gear. So, where had they been, and what had they been up to? I suppose the “Trusted News Initiative” coordinating selected major enterprises in the propaganda industry had not been set up at that time.

Hemlockfen
Hemlockfen
Feb 9, 2024 9:09 PM

Field trial solutions (CICR data) of high-density short-season (HD-SS) NON-GMO pure-line (non-hybrid), rainfed cotton varieties have been developed in India that could more than double yield and nearly triple net income.

What is the development method for NON-GMO pure-line (non-hybrid), rainfed varieties? Wouldn’t the NON-GMO varieties be genetically modified too, but just using a different (more traditional) method of genetic modification? Thinking out loud.

Freddy
Freddy
Feb 9, 2024 8:28 PM

For my British friends (not to be published, only for you)

Who is Bill Mensch? An American with a not-so-common German last name, which he apparently inherited from his German ancestors in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne1ApyqSvm0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mensch
https://forebears.io/surnames/mensch

Bill’s 6502 microprocessor was also used at the time by an Austrian named Hermann Hauser in UK. Hauser’s company Acorn produced with it the BBC Micro, with which Vince Clarke made music in the 80s (before our time together in Hamburg).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0sC3lT313Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hauser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7cAAq_iLe4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro#Use_in_the_entertainment_industry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaonVYOTSsk

Nice: “Schaumburg schall et heiten!” (The English translation: “It will be called Schaumburg!”). At that point, the township became officially called Schaumburg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaumburg,_Illinois#Sarah's_Grove
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola

Freddy
Freddy
Feb 9, 2024 9:04 PM
Reply to  Freddy

The counter-model to the BBC Micro were, as described in the movie “Micro Men” (interesting concept), Sinclairs models. I remember that I knew the term from Pete Shelley’s album XL-1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhKQy580STQ

However, as a heterosexual non-English speaker, I was not aware at the time that “Telephone Operator” could be homosexual poetry, although today the lascivious delivery alone suggests it. His hit “Homosapien” makes it all the clearer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3qjW_bqPuQ

Mr. Shelley is said to have been bisexual. He died of a heart attack in Estonia, where he was married to a local woman. The sad end of a puck rock idol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Shelley#Personal_life_and_death

Interestingly, there’s also a remix of “Homosapien” by Vince Clarke from 2001, but Simple Minds weren’t gay, were they? He still considers the song a milestone today, as he told his homosexual interviewer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosapien_(song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrw-g0lWNa8

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 10, 2024 1:47 AM
Reply to  Freddy

Simple minds. The name alone says it all. When it sounds like, walks like, looks like, what is it?

Freddy
Freddy
Feb 10, 2024 4:16 AM
Reply to  Erik Nielsen

Speaking of simple minds (“Don’t you forget about me”)

There are only two dangers in Berlin: 1. suicides (for the train drivers), 2. being pushed onto the tracks (by “neo-Germans”). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5G58uw1hdo

Jewyork’s subways now derailing (illegal
“vole activities” by da Chabad Lubavitch?)

https://nypost.com/2024/01/11/metro/nyc-subway-derailments-at-decade-high-post-analysis/

I once read somewhere that it was
Germans who built them (Steinway?).

Freddy
Freddy
Feb 10, 2024 4:58 AM
Reply to  Erik Nielsen

The channel has a good format/concept. Finally
something that isn’t boring like Putin & Carlson!
(Two hours for just one person, I really like that.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kVPk9yHIew

Freddy
Freddy
Feb 9, 2024 9:45 PM
Reply to  Freddy

Anyone with a bit of a musical ear will immediately find out where Vince stole the bass pattern for his Homosapien remix: from Mr. Sky, who in turn borrowed his stage name from a Polish “ufologist”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP0tgNYuxRM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_(Adamski_song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Adamski

NickM
NickM
Feb 9, 2024 8:08 PM

Welsh Tractors muster for New Boer War
https://youtu.be/EX1SwMrzIJs?si=BMyju9nPiFVIc_Qd

Canadian Tractors join Truckers in New Boer War
https://youtu.be/pKOLSr3PGec?si=t455CBxcH5qeN33j

sandy
sandy
Feb 9, 2024 7:28 PM

And yes, we can stop this bullshit if we have the juevos to stand up and shut them down. Just a tip o’ the iceberg of possibiliies…

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/eu-bends-knee-farmers-drops-key-provisions-2040-climate-proposal

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 9, 2024 10:11 PM
Reply to  sandy

Tyler and Zerohedge finally found Yuri Bezmenov interview 40 years after we the conspiracy theorists and vaxx deniers made its reference.

The sheep always find these stuff when its too late….. Bezmenov was rightmuhaa, muhaa, muhaa, we are doomed.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-wokeness-took-over

Paul Watson
Paul Watson
Feb 10, 2024 8:30 AM
Reply to  sandy

Watch the farmers get arrested one by one over the next few months and tractors confiscated.
Tyrants are not stopped by demos.
Snakes and heads.

sandy
sandy
Feb 9, 2024 7:23 PM

Universe is analog. Ecosystems are analog. Life is analog. Trying to overrule analog Life with binary digital science hacks like GE and AI has, and will cause, massive dysfunction and disaster on Earth. Analog Industrial pollution is already catastrophic and unchecked. The elite decision making that pushes all of this forward at barrel of a gun, must be defunded and deauthorized by we 99% of Humanity. Digital technologies are for simulation, reproduction and research, tools to help Humanity advance knowledge. Using them to replace Universe’s functionality is suicidal magical thinking as we see everyday. This agenda is only pushed forward because the elite decision makers, the 1% of Earth, believe digital replacement technologies will bring their class a finale of total control and total wealth. It’s up to us to shut this Pandora’s Box of insanity uleashed on Humanity, and return to acceptance of living in a natural analog Universe. Imho.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 9, 2024 8:21 PM
Reply to  sandy

Bravo. I would give you 100 thumbs up. But OffG are censuring all free speech and only allow mainstream single thumbs.
So this is the sour conditions we have in our lives at this very moment.
Natural mustards UNITE!!!

Joshie
Joshie
Feb 10, 2024 12:32 AM
Reply to  sandy

Just find yourself a sure spiritual foundation to stand on, and everything that happens on earth or anywhere in the universe will cease to matter.

Balgorg
Balgorg
Feb 9, 2024 4:56 PM

Why are English farmers so late to join the protests taking place throughout Europe and in Wales and Ireland.
Check out what the Welsh are up to.
I know farmers are often far wealthier than most of us because they own their own land, and therefore are able to produce products for the market in ways most can’t, but they are the mainstay of an autonomy that a country like ours requires.
I Dont own any land, actually I don’t own nothing, and am I happy, nope.
And I guess if I did own land I would be in a much better position in life.

The WEF agenda though seems keen to undermine the way in which food is produced on this island, and the Welsh are standing up for themselves.
Come on the rest of you English farmers, there’s plenty of people like me who will support your protests.

Paul
Paul
Feb 10, 2024 1:54 PM
Reply to  Balgorg

Most farmers have and will be bought off. Several around here (Yorkshire) now do sod all but collect thousands a month from government for the wind turbines and solar panels now on their land.

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 11, 2024 5:32 AM
Reply to  Balgorg

Everywhere in the world, the primary producers of untainted food including fishermen and gatherers live hand to mouth. You can thank the “magic of the market” for that.

Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Feb 9, 2024 3:06 PM

Them G.M.ing us through there frankingfoods to save the planet.

Human values
Human values
Feb 9, 2024 2:16 PM

”Hybrid Bt cotton in India has resulted in a yield plateau, high production costs and low productivity that reduce farmer revenues, correlated with increased farmer distress and suicides.”

Yes, but it’s for the greater good: billionaires need more money, murderers need people to be killed, and liars just enjoy lying.

Money is the reason for all this anti-human and anti-nature evil. It’s been destroying human life and nature since it was invented.

Few people know what money is. Those who know what it is, probably don’t worship it.  

Balgorg
Balgorg
Feb 9, 2024 10:02 AM

Bit of a random article about Indian agriculture.
But it got me thinking about the barn loads of wool that get almost thrown away in the UK.
There was once a vibrant industry here with lots of wool mulls and lots of jobs, but not any more.
It seems insane that in some parts of the world they are messing around with the substance of life to produce more, but elsewhere a totally viable byproduct is on the junk pile.

Peter Blaby
Peter Blaby
Feb 9, 2024 9:34 AM

I cut a tomato in half a couple of days ago to find the seeds germinating inside with small green leaves how is that possible unless it’s been genetically modified in some way and how can the leaves be green without sunlight?

Sam - Admin2
Admin
Sam - Admin2
Feb 9, 2024 11:53 AM
Reply to  Peter Blaby

Tomatoes are quite translucent I think. Still weird though!!

underground poet
underground poet
Feb 9, 2024 12:41 PM
Reply to  Sam - Admin2

It was strange enough to take a pic to show the world of its veracity, but I doubt the poster has one.

Human values
Human values
Feb 9, 2024 1:55 PM
Reply to  Peter Blaby
Pete S
Pete S
Feb 9, 2024 2:19 PM
Reply to  Peter Blaby

It’s called Vivipary, can happen in a few different fruits, apples, peppers, squash etc.

It could be a hormone deficiency, I forget what the hormone is but it prevents seeds germinating, it’s why we ferment or wash off the jelly coating tomato seeds to store them.

Over fertilisation with N, or a K deficiency, can cause it too. it’s pretty rare tho because most people store tomatos in the fridge, leaving an over ripe tomato out of the fridge in a warm spot will increase the chances.

Penelope
Penelope
Feb 10, 2024 5:30 AM
Reply to  Peter Blaby

Peter, happens a lot w peppers & tomatoes. The leaves don’t have to be exposed to sunlight. Remember that all the parts of a tomato or pepper are connected to one another. So long as ANY part is getting light– even lamplight– the pepper or tomato can transfer the light energy to other parts of the plant.

Example 1: If one leaf is shaded by others it may nevertheless remain green

Example 2: In Fall when the leaves “turn colors” what you are really seeing is the plant retrieving the stored energy (chloroplasts, glucose, etc from the green leaves, leaving the subcolors like yellow visible. The products of photosynthesis will now be stored elsewhere in the tree.

Here’s a 1 min video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04_2EmG1de0

PS: Here’s one that stumps me: I read about a man w an acute respiratory problem. He’d inhaled a pit down the wrong pipe, into his lung & it’d germinated, supposedly producing stem & leaves. I imagine the leaves were yellowish. Sorry I can’t remember what kind of pit (tree seed) it was.

Pete S
Pete S
Feb 10, 2024 2:46 PM
Reply to  Penelope

Given the story originated in a Russian Tabloid, and there’s never been another example, not sure how much faith I put in the story…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169861/Shocked-Russian-surgeons-open-man-thought-tumour–FIR-TREE-inside-lung.html

Penelope
Penelope
Feb 10, 2024 6:37 PM
Reply to  Pete S

Thanks for the follow-up, Pete. This one is a peaplant in the US, w many articles about it:
https://nationalpost.com/news/doctors-find-pea-plant-growing-in-mans-lung

But the one I read about long ago was a fruit tree of some kind, I think.

I once dropped a cardboard box over a clay pot. When I noticed something was pushing it up I found a foot tall tomato plant was growing under it.

Pete S
Pete S
Feb 11, 2024 7:26 AM
Reply to  Penelope

Maybe it’s a thing.

There’s an awful lot we don’t know about plant (and human) interactions with the microbiome, mycorrhyzal fungi and ecto/endo bacterias form symbiotic relationsips with plants to feed them nutrients in return for carbs, there must be somthing feeding them nutrients to grow without any light at all. I find feet of thick fiberous roots from fireweed quite a lot, often well before any shoots sprout up.

If you want to get real deep into soil nerdyness Dr James white (Rutgers) was on the John Kempf podcast recently talking about facinating discoveries in this field (Advancing Eco Agriculture on YT) he mentioned what we think of as plant pathogens can also be symbiotic, depending on conditions, he exampled Fusarium specifically! He also talked about the microbiome effect on genetics as they’ve discovered microbes are passed on in seeds and actually get into the germplasm/nucleus of cells, kind of natural genetic engineering! Lots of implications for seed saving/naturalising land race strains and how bad it could be to rely on Big Ag to supply seeds.

The Human body is made up of 10 Trillion human cells, and 90 million microbial cells..you are what you eat….mic drop.

Penelope
Penelope
Feb 12, 2024 5:15 AM
Reply to  Pete S

Thanks Pete. There’s sure a lot we don’t know & microbes are more primary than is obvious.

Sunface Jack
Sunface Jack
Feb 9, 2024 9:12 AM

“Hybrid Bt cotton was introduced in 2002 and remains the only approved commercialised crop in India. It has been an abject failure.”

That claim I find difficult to believe for the simple reason that Hybrid Zea Maize has been very successful in most Africa.

While it is true that GMO is problematic is because it is true that hybrid technology (genetic engineering) disallows seed saving. Its a contractual obligation placed on the buyer of the product. A condition of purchase.

It is the problem with privatisation and patents that has allowed conglomerates to get away with theft using legal plunder in that the claim is that the unused seed remains property of the seed breeder because they manufactured/created a product not found naturally in the environment. Ignored is the fact that the customer (farmer) bought and paid for the seed and is now in effect his property. I don’t know if commercial farmers get compensated for seed returned to the seed suppliers?

It is the very same problematic issue that has now been used by the telecommunications market that allows them to take away cellular air time and data under a pretext that it was not consumed in a particular time scale, even though it has been bought and paid for by the user.

It would be a different issue if the excess product was credited (paid back) to the owner after it is expropriated.

Balgorg
Balgorg
Feb 9, 2024 12:00 PM
Reply to  Sunface Jack

The thing you mention about data you paid for being taken away if you don’t use it. Often thought about that, and how they get away with it.
Are there companies that don’t do that?

In regards to the seeds though, surely it’s a good thing otherwise there would be gmo seeds just about everywhere and as a consumer you couldn’t tell obe way or another unless it was glowing in the dark.

Let's be Frank Joshua
Let's be Frank Joshua
Feb 9, 2024 2:21 PM
Reply to  Sunface Jack

You mention condition of purchase and a contractual obligation. Indian cotton farmers did not freely choose to purchase or adopt GM seeds. I won’t go into it all because Andrew Flachs wrote the book ‘Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India’, which details the lives of cotton farmers. Flachs shows that rational choice – as we commonly know it – has little to do with seed purchasing behaviour.
The other point is that hybrid zea maize in Africa is an issue in itself and not relevant to the situation of Indian GM cotton. The author of the piece above – Aruna Rodrigues – has submitted copious amounts of data to India’s Supreme Court in her numerous affidavits to support the claim of Bt cotton failure in India and also describes why it has failed. That evidence includes peer-reviewed papers and grey literature from internationally renowned scientists and official sources in India. Yet the Indian govt is pushing a false narrative of Bt cotton success to push through other GM crops.  

NickM
NickM
Feb 9, 2024 8:54 AM

“Prof Jack Heinemann stated … at the first, elementary step of the safety study:

I have never seen less professionalism in the presentation and quality assurance of molecular data than in this study”.

And that’s from a man who has seen 3 years of Con-19 RNA Vaxx molecular quality assurance.

“Thou shalt not Lie” — The Good Book