Read The botany of desire: a plant's-eye view of the world Online
Authors: Michael Pollan
Tags: #General, #Life Sciences, #SCIENCE, #History, #Horticulture, #Plants, #Ecology, #Gardening, #Nature, #Human-plant relationships, #Marijuana, #Life Sciences - Botany, #Cannabis, #Potatoes, #Plants - General, #Botany, #Apples, #Tulips, #Mathematics
The botany of desire: a plant's-eye view of the world (33 page)
*In fact, “intellectual property” has been defined under recent trade agreements in such a way as to specifically exclude any innovations that are not the private, marketable property of an individual or corporation. Thus a corporation’s new potato qualifies as intellectual property, but not a tribe’s.
*What the emergence of Bt resistance might mean for the environment is harder to say. We have lots of experience with pests developing resistance to man-made pesticides, but what will happen if one of nature’s own “pest controls” loses its effectiveness?
*Before Heath’s operation can be compared to a conventional farm, you have to factor in the additional labor (many smaller crops mean more work; organic fields must also be cultivated for weeds) and time—the typical organic rotation calls for potatoes every fifth year, rather than every third as on a conventional farm. Even so, Heath gets almost twice the price for his spuds: $9.00 a bag from an organic processor that ships frozen french fries to Japan.
*Recently, McDonald’s and several other large food companies, responding to growing public unease about genetically modified food, have stopped using genetically modified crops in their products.
*Worldwide, it’s estimated that some 1.4 billion people depend on saved seed.
*I say “such as the Terminator” because, after an international barrage of criticism, Monsanto has forsworn the technology. However, it has not forsworn a group of related technologies that achieve the same end: Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURT), which make it possible to turn genetic traits on and off by applying certain proprietary chemicals to genetically modified plants in the field. So even if the plant in question still produces viable seed, those seeds will produce worthless plants—plants with their disease or herbicide resistance turned off—unless the farmer buys the chemical activator.
*In fact, internal documents that have come to light as part of a consumer suit against the FDA reveal that several of the agency’s own scientists also reject the notion of “substantial equivalence.”
*All URLs cited were accurate as of November 14, 2000.
