Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Baptists, Muslims, the National Council of Churches and others are issueing warnings against GM seeds. Monsanto again, up to no good.

Farmer links seed patents to the Antichrist



Michael White says genetic manipulation eradicating God's gift
Friday, November 21, 2008
By KAY CAMPBELL


Times Faith & Values Editor, kay.campbell@htimes.com
DUTTON - Michael White, who farms near Scottsboro, keeps a Mason jar full of wheat grains next to his well-worn Bible.

Capped with an antique zinc lid, the jar was filled by his grandfather decades before anyone dreamed of genetically altering plants or animals. The jar reminds him of what he considers God's first earthly gift to humanity: seeds.

It's a gift that is in danger of being eradicated, White says, through increased genetic manipulation of plant genes, hybridization and the patenting of living genes by large corporations. God's gift of seeds, given the day after he separated dry land from water and the day before he hung the sun, moon and stars, according to Genesis, is not something that should be taken away from a farmer. To forbid a farmer or gardener from gathering his own seed to replant the next year is something White sees as one of the signs of the end of time.

"The Antichrist will use seed to control nations and people," White writes in the book he published in May, "The 666's Are in the Seed," a title that refers to the traditional number of the Antichrist of Revelation. "He will also use seed to create food shortages. Patented seed will become the most prized possession of the Antichrist."

Seedtime and harvest

White, like many Christians, believes the years before Jesus returns to Earth will be a "time of trouble," filled with the chaos predicted in Matthew and Revelation: war, famine, pestilence, plagues and a world-wide totalitarian government. Many Christians believe a globally idolized figure, the Antichrist, will rule the world.

White has been through his own "time of trouble" over seeds. A few years ago he and his father were sued by Monsanto for patent violation - it is illegal to save seed from patented plants for re-planting. White denies he ever saved the altered seed, or that he cleaned such seed for other farmers in his seed-cleaning business. At the time of the lawsuit, he said, his retired father hadn't farmed in years.

The lawsuit against his 85-year-old father was dropped in the spring of 2006, shortly before White agreed to settle out of court with Monsanto. White cannot comment on the details of that settlement.

But who won or lost in the legal tussles he had, White says, is immaterial. What matters is that people understand that seed patents, non-reproducing hybrids and plants engineered to produce seeds that terminate a germinating seedling are part of what he considers an immoral corporate and legal control of one of God's first gifts to humankind.

Most seed scientists claim that genetically modified plants are the key to future bounty. Monsanto and other agri-corporations argue that protecting their patents through their Seed Stewardship programs enables their scientists to make more discoveries and ultimately to benefit all.


In fact, patents "facilitate technology innovation which benefits all farmers, including the most resource-poor," says John Combest, an issues manager for Monsanto, who commented about criticism of seed patents and genetic engineering by e-mail Wednesday. Monsanto, he said, is helping to develop seeds to produce plants that tolerate drought and increase yields. Those seeds will be licensed to the African Agriculture Technology Foundation for distribution without royalties to farmers, Combest wrote.

Hunger abroad

Marie Hollinsworth of Madison says from what she has seen in Africa, poor farmers desperately need an affordable or free source of reproducible seeds.

Hollinsworth, who returned to the U.S. last week, has worked alongside her husband, Winston, for 10 years in a rural part of Kenya near Lake Victoria. Winston, 71, has worked at a school in the area since 1985.

There at present, Hollinsworth said, government representatives tell farmers that their own seed is no good, and that they must use modified seed - which is available for a price. The hybridized seed produces sterile plants that don't make usable seed and also require more water than indigenous plants, Hollinsworth said.

Combine government control of seed with escalating international fights over the use of the polluted water of Lake Victoria for irrigation, factor in the AIDS epidemic's decimation of healthy workers, and what you get is a perfect storm of hunger, Hollinsworth said.

"We know in the end times there will be famine," Hollinsworth said. "Whether this is the end-time harvest, I don't know, but this world is shaping up for the last end time."

Hollinsworth and her husband have read White's book and agree with his basic theology.

"Michael is writing out of a lot of hurt from what happened to him," Hollinsworth said. "But deep down, it has to do with all the government takeovers."

Useful 'weeds'

Part of the problem may stem from the ill-conceived transfer of agricultural assumptions from one culture to another. In India, for instance, the "weeds" that grow between rows are hand-pulled by people who then use those for greens to feed their families or livestock. American-style cultivation, in which herbicide-resistant crops are sprayed with weed-killers, increases farmers' costs and decreases food supplies for impoverished field hands.

Many farmers worry that plants engineered to produce their own pesticides could also be contributing to the worldwide decline in insect pollinators like honeybees.

Many religious thinkers have warned against the practical and long-term effects of tinkering with a system God put into place at creation. Statements of concern over genetic engineering and patenting of seeds have been issued by Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Baptists, Muslims, the National Council of Churches and others.

One of the most recent was circulated by the International Catholic Rural Association, signed by some 250 religious leaders and faith groups, and presented to a United Nations' meeting on food security in June. The goal of these groups, says Jaydee Hanson, who worked on bioethics issues for the United Methodist Church and now works at the Center for Food Safety, is to make sure farmers are not restricted from saving or exchanging seeds. That saving or exchanging is currently prohibited by Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

"TRIPS ... hinder farmers' innovations," Hanson wrote in a recent e-mail. "Plants, seeds and genes (should be) part of creation which cannot be claimed by intellectual property rights."

Navdanya is one organization that uses a religious philosophy, in this case Hinduism, to resist the imposition of altered seed. Most altered seed is geared toward export business, not the diverse, organic, sustainable, self-sufficient farming of small landowners in India, says Dr. Vandana Shiva, a physicist and ecologist who helped found Navdanya.

According to Navdanya and to a report in the German newspaper Deutsche Welle, the shifting control of seeds and resulting increase in poverty has contributed to the suicides of some 140,000 small farmers in India over the last 10 years.

'Altar call' in the garden

Michael White sees a blessing in his own troubles, although, he says, the three-year legal fight over seed patents cost him his business, his first marriage, his health and nearly killed his father. The shed at White's seed-cleaning business, was shuttered for four years when his customers quit coming after they received query letters from Monsanto's lawyers, he said. The shed is now stacked with bags of the foundation seed he bought from Auburn University.

These seeds, he says, are like his grandfather's wheat. They will germinate plants that produce seeds that anyone can save and replant for the next year's harvest. His own yields this summer were 35 to 45 bushels an acre, a yield that surpassed that of several nearby farmers who were using genetically modified seed, he said.

White is now getting orders for the heritage seed from farmers who haven't planted conventional seeds in eight or nine years.

"I hope there's some good news in this picture," White said this week. "It's a monster, but people are waking up. The trend is finally turning around and going back to conventional. I hope I can wake some people up and get back to growing their own food."

Even more important, White says, he hopes his book points out one of the ways people can see that the end of earthly time is at hand.

"Unsaved reader, it's altar call again," White writes in his book's conclusion. "Give your life to Christ before you die or the rapture takes place ... The food shortages have begun. The honey bees are almost gone. The Terminator Gene with its altered fertility is being approved and planted ... In the fall of 2007, many farmers could not find wheat seed to plant. It is now spring of 2008 and farmers are begging for soybean seed and having little or no success in finding them ... The 666's are in the seed."



©2008 Huntsville
© 2008 al.com All Rights Reserved.




http://www.al.com/printer/printer.ssf?/ ... xml&coll=1