As ye sow
So shall ye reap.
I am all for everyone being at the table. I support bringing various folks together to talk. I hope that the new secretary of agriculture will not only represent large-scale agriculture, but also a healthy ecosystem that will let our children and grandchildren inherit a rich biosphere.
Companies like Monsanto, who would like a single monoculture may very well be profitable in the short term, may very well be endangering the future. A single strain of a crop is far less resistant to danger than multiple strains. A genetically modified variant may be more fragile than a natural one that varies over time to the environment. Imagine the equivalent of smallpox affecting the native American population. Less resistance to new disease because of a small genepool.
Perhaps because I was raised on Johnny Appleseed, who spread seeds far and wide, I have an aversion to single sources of food. What happens if Roundup suddenly mutates in the wild and kills all the soybeans and cotton? If farmers can save other seeds, and hybridize them, not so much of an affect.
Also, I’d like to know how a governor from a corn-growing state would investigate the effects of corn syrup in the diet, and how the corn lobby has increased the cost of real sugar so that now everything has corn syrup in it. Even tuna fish sandwiches at a deli. I’d love to see some studies on the relationship between corn syrup and diabetes. It seems to me that they have increased at a similar pace in a similar time frame.
At the same time, it will take people who have industry relationships to change the industry, should they choose to do so. I hope they will.
