Who ya' wanna to buy your seeds from and who you wanna to buy your plants from? The local nursery and plant house now sells plants started from Novartis and Syngenta seed. They get no more of my dimes. A little investigation shows Novartis and Syngenta gobbling up other seed producers. The monsatanos of the garden.
Keep your fkn frankengenes away from my gardens !!!!!
Bigger picture articles.........
Excerpt from: (note areas of infection and note last bullet point)
But in 2007, it jumped the Red Sea, possibly as a result of Cyclone Gonu, and is now widespread in Yemen and Iran. Wheat is a major crop in Iran, but its progress has been slowed by a long-term drought that has inhibited its growth.
"Kenya is having recurring epidemics, the situation is getting worse in southern Sudan and it is now widespread in Ethiopia," said Rick Ward, co-ordinator of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project, based at Cornell university. "The likelihood is that it has already spread beyond Iran. We would be foolish to believe that other countries in central Asia, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, are not already at risk. Places like Kazakhstan, Turkey, Ukraine are all susceptible."
Ward predicted that Ug99 would inevitably spread much further, potentially into regions where wheat is a staple crop for hundreds of millions of people. "It is a certainty that it will expand its area," he said. "It will continue to move and wherever it is present and the crops are susceptible it will potentially lead to a disaster of catastrophic proportions, which will translate into widespread food insecurity and civil unrest." Global wind models suggest the crop disease may next spread into Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.
Ug99 "stem-rust" fungus
? Ug99 is resistant to the three major anti-rust genes used to protect nearly all the world's wheat.
? The fungus reproduces to release billions of identical spores, which can blow hundreds of miles in the wind
? It attacks the above-ground part of plants and unlike other strains, can cause 100% crop loss
? The US army produced wheat rust as part of its biological weapons programme in the 1960s"
Excerpt from: (note next to last paragraph, indicating collusion between monsatano and the USDA ARS? )
In 2004, Roundup-ready wheat, poised to be the first biotech trait in wheat released to growers, was mothballed by Monsanto. The company cited strong resistance from US and Canadian wheat growers who feared losing export markets if US wheat was known to be GMO.
That GMO technology would have allowed farmers to apply Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, glyphosate, over a growing crop to kill weeds. Were Monsanto now to unveil a patented Ug99 resistant wheat variety, large new seed markets formerly hostile to genetically engineered wheat would open. Syngenta, which has developed a biotech trait that provides resistance to fusarium head blight or scab, is also seeking regulatory approval. Now their attention is turned to Ug99."
(**My note...Rockefeller Foundation?)
"Borlaug, the former Rockefeller Foundation head of the Green Revolution, is active in funding research to develop a fungus resistant variety against Ug99, working with his former center in Mexico, the CIMMYT and ICARDA in Kenya, where the pathogen is now endemic. So far, about 90% of the 12,000 lines tested are susceptible to Ug99. That includes all the major wheat cultivars of the Middle East and west Asia. At least 80% of the 200 varieties sent to CIMMYT from the United States can't cope with infection. The situation is even more dire for Egypt, Iran, and other countries in immediate peril.
Even if a new resistant variety were ready to be released today it would take two or three years' seed increase in order to have just enough wheat seed for 20% of the acres planted to wheat in the world, CIMMYT agronomists estimate.
Work is also being done by the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the same agency that co-developed Monsanto's Terminator seed technology. The spreading alarm over the Ug99 fungus is encouraging Monsanto and other GMO agribusiness companies to demand that the current voluntary ban on GMO wheat be lifted to allow spread of GMO patented wheat seeds with the argument they are Ug99 stem rust resistant.
The influential USA National Association of Wheat Growers reportedly is softening its opposition as fears of the deadly Ug99 spreading to North American wheat increase.:
F William Engdahl is a geopolitical risk consultant and the author of Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Grow yer Own....NOW! And SAVE seeds from non-hybrids. If you don't care, just whistle on past the graveyard....everything is gonna be just fine. The megacorps and the gummints are working hard to save us all.
*********From Bill W ...... "The issue is not the plant but the plant variety. One of the joys of gardening is growing what we love to eat and have fond memories of. Sure it is arduous but the labor of gardening is not for you if you consider it work. It is pure joy."And it is pure joy, and work, knowing that we preserve the old genetics and refuse to give into the prevailing wisdom and plan.
Keep on fighting the good fight, those few of you.