MONSANTO TWITTERS WHILE...
1.'The perfect weed' refuses to be rounded up
2.Monsanto rounds up support, dissent for Idaho mine
3.Science and Indian Genocide
4.Monsanto embraces social media
EXTRACTS: In Arkansas alone, the [Roundup resistant] weed has invaded some 750,000 acres of crops, including half the 250,000 acres of cotton. In Tennessee, nearly 500,000 acres have some degree of infestation, with the counties bordering the Mississippi River hardest hit.
The infestation is cutting farmers' cotton yields by up to one-third and in some cases doubling or tripling their weed-control costs. (item 1)
As it races to replenish phosphate supplies for its weed-killing cash machine Roundup, Monsanto Co. insists its history of polluting southeastern Idaho's high country shouldn't prevent it from digging fresh open pits here.
Three of the St. Louis-based chemical company's previous mines in this region of broad valleys and forested ridges are under federal Superfund authority; a fourth is now violating federal clean water laws. [Superfund is the U.S. government's program to investigate and clean up the worst uncontrolled and abandoned toxic waste sites] (item 2)
..."the seed of the Zapotec people is our corn and when you kill our corn, you kill us." Recent non-government studies indicate that the incidence of transgenic corn has spread to maize-growing regions in at least five non-contiguous states. The surge of transgenic corn threatens to overwhelm and homogenize native species and obliterate millions of years of genetic history. (item 3)
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1.'The perfect weed': An old botanical nemesis refuses to be rounded up
By Tom Charlier
Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 9 2009
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/aug/09/the-perfect-weed/
HUGHES, Ark. - At the seasoned age of 54, Willie Cutler figured he'd never be doing this again -- swinging a hoe to cut weeds in a field of waist-high cotton.
But one recent morning, as the sun crept above the treetops and mosquitoes and dragonflies hovered in the sticky air, there he was, with a dozen or so other laborers, chopping cotton just as he'd last done some 40 years ago.
"You've got to do something to get some money," said Cutler, a Hughes native who also drives trucks and farm equipment.
Chopping cotton, a chore and tradition recalling the days of the preindustrial South, is making a comeback this year for reasons that have nothing to do with nostalgia and everything to do with the limits of technology.
Curtis Burgess, 16, works with a chopping crew in fields outside Hughes, Ark., using hoes to rid pigweed before 8 a.m. and before the sun becomes unbearable. The stubborn pigweed has become resistant to Roundup herbicide and must be attacked by hand and hoe.
[image caption: Curtis Burgess, 16, works with a chopping crew in fields outside Hughes, Ark., using hoes to rid pigweed before 8 a.m. and before the sun becomes unbearable. The stubborn pigweed has become resistant to Roundup herbicide and must be attacked by hand and hoe.]
All across the Mid-South, hundreds of thousands of acres of cotton and soybean fields have been infested with a rapacious, fast-growing weed that's become resistant to the main herbicide on which farmers have relied for more than a decade.
Palmer pigweed, often called "careless weed" by field hands, often is surviving and even thriving despite treatments with the chemical glyphosate -- most commonly sold under the trade name Roundup.
In Arkansas alone, the weed has invaded some 750,000 acres of crops, including half the 250,000 acres of cotton. In Tennessee, nearly 500,000 acres have some degree of infestation, with the counties bordering the Mississippi River hardest hit.
The infestation is cutting farmers' cotton yields by up to one-third and in some cases doubling or tripling their weed-control costs.
Reminiscent of the premechanized, preherbicide days when cotton was a labor-intensive operation, growers have resorted to hiring chopping crews. They're made up of laborers who generally are paid about $7.50 an hour to manually cut the weeds.
"We haven't chopped cotton in a long time, so it's kind of a first," said Lee Wiener, who farms in Crittenden and Mississippi counties.
Beyond the novelty of requiring manual labor, the resistance problem will force growers to make wrenching and costly changes if they want to stay in business in the coming years, agriculture experts say.
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the U.S., with some 100 million pounds annually applied to crops and lawns.
It's so prevalent that cotton, soybeans and other plants have been genetically engineered to withstand it, allowing farmers to spray the chemical quickly and easily to kill weeds without worrying about harming crops.
"I think this threatens our way of farming more than anything I've seen in the 30-plus years I've worked in agriculture," said Ken Smith, weed scientist with the University of Arkansas' division of agriculture.
In fact, some officials draw parallels between the pigweed resistance problem and the effects of the boll weevil infestation of cotton fields in the early 20th century.
What makes the weed such a formidable threat is its rapid growth rate -- more than an inch per day -- and the proliferation that results from a single plant producing 50,000-100,000 seeds.
Rising up to 10 feet tall, with stalks as thick as baseball bats, the plant also can wreck any mechanical cotton-pickers sent into heavily infested fields. Since it outcompetes cotton for water and other resources, infestation easily can cut yields by 300 pounds per acre.
"If you wanted to draw up the perfect weed, this is it," said Larry Steckel, extension weed specialist with the University of Tennessee Extension Service.
Officials with Monsanto Co., maker of Roundup, acknowledge the resistance problem. They say it resulted from over-reliance on that one product since it became the herbicide of choice in the 1990s. The resistance has intensified as weed strains that survive the spraying reproduce.
"As you continue to use just that one single herbicide, you wind up selecting weeds that are a bit more tolerant. And as you do that year after year, you increase those populations until you have the resistance problem we've got," said Rick Cole, a Monsanto technology development manager specializing on weed resistance.
Monsanto has been advising farmers to add other chemicals, especially pre-emergents and other "residual" herbicides, which form a chemical barrier in the soil, to their weed-fighting regimens.
Monsanto also has begun a test program that pays farmers up to $12 an acre to treat crops with other chemicals, including those made by competitors, Cole said.
Steckel and many growers say if Roundup was overused it was because the chemical was so easy to apply and so widely effective.
"Roundup was a victim of its own success," Steckel said. "It was the perfect herbicide -- it controlled regardless of timing, with no crop injury."
Steckel said he and other experts were "blindsided" by how quickly the resistance problem began this year.
"It got a pretty good foothold last year in some fields, and this year it blew up into many fields," Steckel said.
The changes wrought by the resistance problem can be seen in places such as Looney's Implement Co. in Hughes, which sells tractors, combines and pickers that can cost $300,000 or more.
This year one of the hottest items in the store has been the $25 garden hoe.
"We sell them as quick as we can get them," said clerk Don Arnold.
The tools are being used by the growing ranks of choppers. Some growers have hired as many as 40 to 60 of the laborers. But even during a recession in which jobs have been scarce, it hasn't been easy finding enough workers, they say.
"We're paying comfortably above the minimum wage, and still we have problems getting people," said Larry McClendon, a Marianna, Ark., farmer.
He and others say the best workers often are the older residents who chopped cotton in their youth.
"You can tell the old hands -- they can go out there and work eight to 10 hours and never miss a beat," McClendon said.
Chopping cotton in a field outside Hughes, 40-year-old Arthur Powell said the work is good experience for younger people. His 14-year-old son, Freddrick, however, disagreed.
"No, it ain't," he said, his clothes soaked with sweat.
The crew of which the Powells are a part works from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. to avoid the day's worst heat. But by 8:30 a.m., the sun already is beating down with a vengeance, forcing an occasional water break.
"We do what we can," Arthur Powell said.
As they turn to manual labor for this year's crop, farmers are wondering whether new herbicide strategies will work in the coming years.
Some, however, are fatalistic about the prospects of chemicals ever controlling weeds for any extended period of time.
"Mother Nature's going to win," said Wiener, the grower who farms in Crittenden and Mississippi counties. "There's going to be another (weed) down the road."
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2.Monsanto rounds up support, dissent for Idaho mine
By JOHN MILLER
Associated Press, 8 August 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jCsOvdk7vx41BCgVdGKIpWzYc4FAD99UQUPO3
SODA SPRINGS, Idaho ”” As it races to replenish phosphate supplies for its weed-killing cash machine Roundup, Monsanto Co. insists its history of polluting southeastern Idaho's high country shouldn't prevent it from digging fresh open pits here.
Three of the St. Louis-based chemical company's previous mines in this region of broad valleys and forested ridges are under federal Superfund authority; a fourth is now violating federal clean water laws. In all, several companies are responsible for polluting at least 17 sites southwest of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
With its current mine in the region nearly played out, Monsanto now wants federal regulators to let the company open a new one by 2011, contending safeguards on the project will keep poisons out of the Blackfoot River. The trout stream just a few hundred yards away is among 15 southeastern Idaho waterways where selenium that leaked from mines exceeds legal state levels.
David Farnsworth, Monsanto mining manager, walked the 1,400-acre Blackfoot Bridge site in late July, describing a liner meant to stop pollution. Even if it fails, he said, vast containment ponds below will keep poisons out of rivers downstream.
"The best laid plans show that Mother Nature changes the game plan," Farnsworth said. "The water shouldn't become contaminated, but if it does, there are the means to handle it."
Marv Hoyt, of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in Idaho Falls, counters Monsanto and fertilizer makers J.R. Simplot Co. and Agrium Inc. have squandered all trust with their past pollution.
At J.R. Simplot's Conda site, hundreds of sheep died in the 1990s after eating toxic forage. Nearby, Canada's Agrium is spending $500,000 at its North Maybe Mine to control selenium discharges blamed by state wildlife officials for killing all aquatic life in a creek.
"Shouldn't you figure out how to fix the old problems before you start new ones?" asked Hoyt, a former environmental consultant for coal industry.
About 240 million years ago, southeastern Idaho was covered by a warm sea where dead fish and plankton piled up, creating a prehistoric muck that hardened to phosphate- and selenium-rich rock. Today, phosphate mined here provides raw materials to help keep teeth white, doughnuts rise, crops grow and weeds under control. And it forms the backbone of the regional economy.
Monsanto's Roundup will generate over $1 billion in gross profits annually, the company forecasts. In Caribou County, where 7,000 people live, Monsanto alone pays more than $29 million in wages and benefits.
And in June, J.R. Simplot threatened to slash more than 100 jobs at its Smoky Canyon Mine if a court-ordered halt to expansion ”” the result of a lawsuit by Hoyt's group ”” wasn't lifted. On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled against Hoyt's group.
Hoyt pledged to appeal, something that doesn't sit well with Soda Springs locals who rely on Agrium, Simplot and Monsanto to pay the bills.
"Sixty or 70 percent of the people in our community have a financial interest in what happens in the mining area," said Mayor Kirk Hansen, whose 17-employee fuel distributorship makes about 30 percent of $90 million in annual sales to mining companies.
"Some would consider it a threat to their livelihoods," he said.
In a sign of just how important the mine is to Monsanto's future, it's paying the public relations firm of former U.S. Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus to promote Blackfoot Bridge as "a new way to mine." Andrus didn't return phone calls seeking comment.
Bureau of Land Management officials now reviewing the Blackfoot Bridge proposal insist government regulators and industry have learned from mistakes of the past that led to mines that decades later are leaking toxic metals and will likely cost millions to remediate.
For instance, after livestock died in the 1990s and officials realized selenium was a problem, the BLM began requiring more stringent reviews of new mining plans.
"The public has a right to be damned mad," said Jeff Cundick, the BLM minerals chief in Pocatello. But "I believe we're rising to the challenge. The past just can't happen again."
The last project approved under the less-stringent review was Monsanto's existing mine, South Rasmussen Ridge. A decade ago, the BLM concluded the company's design "would not allow selenium and other contaminants to migrate from the lease."
But federal Environmental Protection Agency officials now monitoring South Rasmussen say its waste dump is leaking selenium, cadmium, nickel and zinc into a Blackfoot tributary. On Aug. 18, 2008, for instance, selenium levels measured more than 30 times what Idaho law allows.
"There are serious, ongoing violations of the federal Clean Water Act that continue to this day," said Dave Tomten, an EPA geologist.
Farnsworth said his company is doing everything it can to remedy South Rasmussen's violations and insists precautions at Blackfoot Bridge will prevent repeat problems, protect the environment ”” and allow it to dig enough phosphate to pump out more than 200 million gallons of Roundup and other herbicides yearly.
"Monsanto has recognized the same old things we've done are not acceptable," Farnsworth said.
Chuck Trost, a retired Idaho State University wildlife biology professor in Pocatello, wrote the BLM in 1997 that he feared South Rasmussen's dump would leak. Those concerns now realized, Trost worries about Blackfoot Bridge, in spite of the company's assurances.
"There are problems in the Blackfoot River and they're not being addressed," he said. "It's a problem that's not staying where the mine is."
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3.Science and Indian Genocide
John Ross
San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 7 2009 [extract]
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/08/mexico_report_science_and_indi.html
The manipulation of the genetic mapping of the indigenous peoples of Mexico is only one front on which Big Science aids and abets ethnic cleansing. The contamination of native maize by transgenic corn and the forced privatization of Indian lands also place scientists in the service of ethnocide.
For eight millenniums, indigenous Mexicans developed and cultivated 300 families of native corn, each with properties designed for the soils and climates in which they were grown. Indian culture and civilization are indelibly entwined with corn cultivation -- indeed the Mayans are "people of the corn," literally made from maiz. "No hay pais sin maiz!" ("We have no country without corn!) is the battle cry of Indian campesino movements.
The penetration of transgenic corn into Mexico is the result of massive importation of biotech grains under provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.) Some like Zapotec Indian leader Aldo Gonzalez consider the contamination of native corns by transgenic strains developed by U.S. biotech titans like Monsanto tantamount to genocide.
The discovery that genetically modified corn had been introduced into the rural Oaxaca outback in 2001 alarmed Zapotec farmers in the Sierra Norte, sometimes known as the Sierra of Benito Juarez because it is the birthplace of Mexico's only Indian president. Three years ago, at a forum in the state capital that brought together scientists from the three NAFTA nations to evaluate the impacts of the penetration of transgenic corn on the native crop, Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the Union of Social Organizations of the Juarez Sierra (UOSJS), shook a drying cornstalk at the distinguished panel and accused its members of nothing less than genocide: "the seed of the Zapotec people is our corn and when you kill our corn, you kill us."
Recent non-government studies indicate that the incidence of transgenic corn has spread to maiz-growing regions in at least five non-contiguous states. The surge of transgenic corn threatens to overwhelm and homogenize native species and obliterate millions of years of genetic history.
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4.Monsanto, A-B, Brown, Ameren, Schnucks embrace social media
Angela Mueller
St. Louis Business Journal, August 8 2009 [shortened]
http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2009/08/10/story5.html?b=1249876800^1890241
At first Monsanto was just listening.
The company was keeping a close eye on the ongoing online conversations regarding sustainable agriculture ”” reading the blogs, the posts and the tweets.
Now Monsanto has entered the cyber conversation. Last fall, the agricultural company put together a team of communications professionals to focus solely on social media. They started a Monsanto blog site ("Monsanto according to Monsanto") and launched a Twitter account, a Facebook page and a YouTube channel.
The three-member social media team is now part of the leadership team for Monsanto’s recently reorganized corporate communications department. Mica Veihman leads the company’s three-employee social media team.