“Simply put, the Monsanto Doctrine is the right of agrochemical corporations to spray unlimited quantities of industrial poisons regardless of any local law passed to protect human or environmental safety. If it is upheld by the federal Appeals Court, then local governments around the country will be rendered powerless to protect its citizens’ basic civil right to health and safety.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-greenberg/will-the-new-monsanto-doc_b_10452008.html

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the new World Bank when it comes to using finances to influence policies in agriculture. The Gates Foundation is a major funder of the CGIAR system — and through its funding, it is accelerating the transfer of research and seeds to corporations, facilitating intellectual property piracy and seed monopolies created through intellectual property laws and seed regulations. Control over the seeds of the world for ‘one agriculture’ is Mr Gates’ target!”

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/20/great-seed-piracy

“‘I’ve had scientific colleagues tell me they raised 300 bushels of corn [per acre] with an application of fertilizer, and I ask how the control plots, the ones without the fertilizer, did,’ Haney says. ‘They tell me 220 bushels of corn. How is that not the story? How is raising 220 bushels of corn without fertilizer not the story?’ If the natural processes at work in even the tired soil of a test plot can produce 220 bushels of corn, he argues, the yields of farmers consciously building soil health can be much higher…

“Ray Weil, the University of Maryland ecologist, believes that farmers will someday fertilize their fields using nothing but cover-crop combinations, carefully selected for specific market crops and growing conditions.”

https://orionmagazine.org/article/dirt-first/

” The remarkable conclusions from this study, published last May, are the latest shoots in a growing thicket of data revealing the unexpectedly complex ways that plants exchange information with one another. Researchers are unearthing evidence that, far from being unresponsive and uncommunicative organisms, plants engage in regular conversation. In addition to warning neighbors of herbivore attacks, they alert each other to threatening pathogens and impending droughts, and even recognize kin, continually adapting to the information they receive from plants growing around them. Moreover, plants can ‘talk’ in several different ways: via airborne chemicals, soluble compounds exchanged by roots and networks of threadlike fungi, and perhaps even ultrasonic sounds. Plants, it seems, have a social life that scientists are just beginning to understand.

“‘In the last 15 years the idea that plants are communicating has become much more accepted,’ says Richard Karban, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of California, Davis. ‘The evidence for that is now substantial, and it’s exciting to unravel all these different realms of plant communication.'”

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38727/title/Plant-Talk/#.VsYUW5oBOz0.facebook

“’Golden Rice is still not ready for the market, but we find little support for the common claim that environmental activists are responsible for stalling its introduction. GMO opponents have not been the problem”…

“In a recent article in the journal Agriculture & Human Values, Stone and co-author Dominic Glover, a rice researcher at the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex, find little evidence that anti-GMO activists are to blame for Golden Rice’s unfulfilled promises…

“‘The rice simply has not been successful in test plots of the rice breeding institutes in the Philippines, where the leading research is being done,’ Stone said. ‘It has not even been submitted for approval to the regulatory agency, the Philippine Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI)’…

“…’The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, Golden Rice is still years away from being ready for release’…

“As Stone and Glover point out, it is still unknown if the beta carotene in Golden Rice can even be converted to Vitamin A in the bodies of badly undernourished children. There also has been little research on how well the beta carotene in Golden Rice will hold up when stored for long periods between harvest seasons, or when cooked using traditional methods common in remote rural locations, they argue.

“Meanwhile, as the development of Golden Rice creeps along, the Philippines has managed to slash the incidence of Vitamin A deficiency by non-GMO methods, Stone said.”

https://source.wustl.edu/2016/06/genetically-modified-golden-rice-falls-short-lifesaving-promises/

“Five of the global issues most frequently debated today are the decline of biodiversity in general and of agrobiodiversity in particular, climate change, hunger and malnutrition, poverty and water. Seed is central to all five issues. The way in which seed is produced has been arguably their major cause. But it can also be the solution to all these issues.

“During the millennia before modern plant breeding began, farmers were moving around with seeds and livestock, and because neither were uniform, they could gradually adapt to different climates, soils and uses. Whenever farmers settled, they continued to improve crops and livestock. In the case of crops, the way they did it can still be seen today in a number of countries and consists of selecting the best plants, which give the seed to be used for the following season. This process was highly location-specific in the sense that each farmer did it independently from other farmers and for his/her conditions of soil, climate and uses. The enormous diversity of what we call ancient, old, heirloom varieties originated through this process.
“The transition to modern plant breeding was accompanied by a change from selection for specific adaptation to selection for wide adaptation: this became the dominant breeding philosophy and was the basic breeding principle adopted by the Green Revolution.

“…Combining seed saving with evolution and returning control of seed production to the hands of farmers, it can produce better and more diversified varieties. These can help millions of farmers to reduce their dependence on external inputs and their vulnerability to disease, insects and climate change and ultimately contribute to food security and food safety for all.”

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/un-sustainable-farming/the-centrality-of-seed-building-agricultural-resilience-through-plant-breeding/