Monsanto Killing U.S. Agriculture

June 5, 2013 by Bob Livingston

There was a time when America was the world’s breadbasket. As the global agricultural power, American crops like corn, wheat and soy fed the world.

No more.

While some of the reduction in U.S. food exports can be attributed to improvements in agricultural practices around the world, much of it can be laid at the feet of Monsanto and proliferation of genetically engineered crops, also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Protesters at the Monsanto Chemical Company headquarters to bring attention to the spraying of Round-Up Ultra herbicides. Credit: UPI FILE

The world is rejecting GMO foods. Europe has rejected it to the point that Monsanto has given up on a multi-million dollar expenditure to force its GM crops on to dinner tables in Britain and Europe.

“We are no longer working on lobbying for more cultivation in Europe,” Monsanto spokesman Brandon Mitchner told UK Daily Mail. “Currently we do not plan to apply for the approval of new genetically modified crops. The reason is, among other things, low demand of the farmers.”

Last week, South Korea joined Japan in announcing a halt on imports of U.S. wheat after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that commercial wheat grown in the U.S. is contaminated with genetically engineered wheat. Europe is also testing its wheat supplies from the U.S. and will reject any found to be contaminated.

The frightening thing is that U.S. farmers had rejected GMO wheat, so it had only been grown in Monsanto’s test fields in Hawaii and North Dakota. Fields used to test GMO crops varieties are burned and then checked for surviving plants, but unapproved strains of Monsanto’s GMO wheat still turned up in a field in eastern Oregon, an indicator that there is no telling how much of America’s wheat crop is contaminated.

Monsanto is killing America’s agricultural industry, and GMO contamination may be out of control. And while the world is rejecting GMOs, in the U.S., even getting special labeling on GMO foods is being resisted because Monsanto owns Congress.

http://personalliberty.com/2013/06/0...s-agriculture/