Agriculture is thought to have begun around 8000 B.C., in the semi-arid mountains of Mesopotamia. Flint sickles and grinding stones discovered in the region suggest that the first farmers collected wild grains, which were developed over time into wheat and barley.Farmers learned to keep back a portion of the harvest for it's seeds, for the next years planting,think of it as a seed bank.You must take good care of your seed bank,keep it dry and protected and let nothing destroy the reproductive promise held in the seed.

When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1493, on his second voyage, he brought the seeds of plants known only in the Old World, among them wheat, onions, citrus, melons, radishes, olives, grapes, and sugarcane, and he took away seeds of plants known only in the New World, including corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, squash, pineapples, and sweet potatoes. During the colonial period, the world's ecological boundaries were redrawn, as domesticated plants were carried far afield.

Now misguided biotech giants desire to redraw the ecological boundries again,but this time in a frightening and devastating way, a way that could destroy the natural seed banks of the world.

          The TERMINATOR SEED

Gene splicing, first performed by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer in 1973, allowed seed companies to offer a limitless range of products. Today's plant breeders can incorporate genes from plants that are not sexually compatible with each other. Indeed, because all living things share the same coded language of DNA, breeders can choose genes from outside the plant kingdom altogether--genes from bacteria, and even from fish, were used to create new kinds of genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s. This technology, in turn, led to a new type of seed company, the avatar of which is Monsanto, an agrichemical corporation headquartered in St. Louis, which is today the largest seed company in the world; other leading seed corporations include Bayer, Syngenta, and Dow, all of which have roots in the chemical or the pharmaceutical sector, rather than in the seed trade. Monsanto was not a seed company but a chemical company that saw seeds as a delivery vehicle for its product, which was genes.

In March 1998, US patent no. 5,723,765 was granted for a genetic engineering technology that the ETC  group soon dubbed the "Terminator". The Terminator seed is an elegantly designed product of misguided science that programs seeds which mature but are steril.If commercialized,it will have a profound impact on agriculture and food worldwide,and on farmers everywhere who save seed one year to plant the next.The technology was jointly  developed and patented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and US seed company Delta and Pine Land. It's inventors have explicitly set their marketing sights on the millions of farmers who now save seeds from one season to the next. The Terminator seed has no redeeming agronomic value. It's sole purpose is to force farmers back to the commercial seed market every year.  For patent-holders, it is a biological guarantee that farmers who use it will be forced to buy seed every planting season.In short it will keep farmers from saving seed and having seed banks.

Delta and Pine Land was bought by Monsanto August 2006,but the negative publicity,outcry and lawsuits resulting from the Terminator seed forced Monsanto into evasive action,some we will try to follow here. In 2000 Monsanto merges with Pharmacia and Upjohn, and ceases to exist. Later in the year, Pharmacia forms a new subsidiary, also named Monsanto, for the agricultural divisions. In 2002 Pharmacia spins off its Monsanto subsidiary into a new company, the "new Monsanto. In 2005 Monsanto purchases Seminis, the largest seed company in the world not producing corn or soybeans. In 2008 Monsanto purchases the Dutch seed company De Ruiter Seeds for about 855 million dollars.This is only part of the trail of deals and  mergers, some fell through because of negative publicity, a lot of it coming from the group formerly known as RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) which now has become the ETC group.Once again we see the desire to monopolize the worlds seed supply,the following is one example.

The Iraq Initiative

For generations, Iraq's indigenous farmers have saved seeds from a previous year's harvest to plant the next year. To facilitate new crops, they have also informally swapped seeds with one another. A new amendment to Iraq's patent law, enacted by former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III, provides for the 'protection of new varieties of plants(read genetically modified) .To qualify for protection under the law, and thus to be legal for agricultural use, plant varieties must be new, distinct, uniform, and stable. The seed supply that Iraqi farmers have used for years cannot meet these criteria. So U.S. corporations, who have the means to modify and 'stabilize' the seed varieties, now dominate the market and can sell to farmers without domestic competition.The intellectual property rights that the patent law grants last for 20 years for crop varieties and 25 years for trees and vines. So, while the U.S. military occupation may be over within in the next two decades, the corporate occupation could last for generations.Iraq Seeding

We will reap what they sow

The group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, said it had detected tiny quantities of genetically modified seeds in most of the bags of unmodified corn, soybean and canola seeds it tested.If seeds do contain the traits, the group said, it would be virtually impossible for farmers to grow crops that are completely free of genetic modification. That could mean disruption of crop exports to countries that do not allow genetically engineered foods. It also makes it harder for organic farmers to supply customers who will not accept even tiny degrees of genetic engineering.

''The door to seed contamination is wide open,'' said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who added that her group's study was the first to systematically look at the issue. In a conference call with reporters, she said the genetically engineered seeds might have come from a mixing of seeds by farmers or seed companies or from pollination of seed crops by genetically engineered crops.

The Union of Concerned Scientists bought six varieties each of corn, soybean and canola seeds and sent samples to two commercial laboratories for testing. One laboratory detected genetically engineered seeds in three of six varieties of the corn and soy samples and some in all six canola varieties. The other laboratory found genetically engineered traits in five of the six varieties of each crop.

The genetically modified seeds were found in low levels, ranging from 0.05 percent to 1 percent. The traits detected were the ones used in widely grown genetically engineered crops -- herbicide tolerance and insect resistance.

Dr. Mellon said a bigger health risk would occur if genes now being tested to produce pharmaceuticals from crops were to get into seeds for food crops. Her group could not test for such genes because in general their identity is not known. ''If the door to the seed supply is open to contamination,'' she added, ''it is likely that drug genes will be able to pass through it, right to our breakfast tables.'' The Seed door is ajar

 
This is beyond the realm of sanity ,to be tinkering with the worlds seed bank, what traits can be crossed over to unintended seed? What if the sterilization trait lofted on the wind contaminates some other seed, and that seed goes on to contaminate other seed. Monsantos roundup ready seed has already brought about "Super weeds" and "Super pests" what will this "Terminator Seed" end up doing? These companies issue statements saying what they always have, "everything is ok, we have solutions". One of these so called solutions they themselves have named appropriately, " The Exorcist Seed" which we will cover in part 3.  It is hoped that  at this point we are beginning to see that the real terrorists that we of this living world should be fighting are the Pharmaceutical Giants whose greed and incompetence, may eventually cause us to die silently of starvation, not so much different than the dinosaurs before us.