Effect and Cause....

Editors note: It has come to my attention that some may have taken my comments on the Organic Seed Aliance the wrong way. This was not my intention in any way shape or form whatsoever. I have strong faith and conviction in what the Organic Seed Aliance does, instead of critisizing them for the use of the word "organic" I was trying to make a comment on the way the public percieves the word "organic" and "USDA certification" as a gold standard as it were. I am in no way critical of what the OSA stands for and wish them all the best of luck with what they do, I simply want others to be aware that with the skewed USDA rules organic certification doesn't mean much, if anything at all.



Just spent my morning reading a ton of articles and blog posts about the USDA's suggestion that there be co-existence between organic and GMO. What can I say about it? Really, other than calling a spade a spade and stating some obvious things, I'd just say it's more bullshit propaganda.

The USDA is pushing it as it's next big idea, the next "good" thing their "solid" and "scientific" research can bring to us. Right, like they haven't ever sold us ideas as good that turned out to be absolute trash over the past 100 years. But that's beside the point, everyone knows Tom Vilsak is a Monsanto lackey, no need to tell you, the intelligent reader, what an ass kissing, suck up, profit driven, corporate piece of trash he is! Right?

Really, what we are looking at here is the tide changing in this country, people waking up and realizing that things are amiss in our world and realizing that genetic modification is just one of many agitators in the system. So let's take a look at some of the more important and bizarre issue brought up in the discussion.

First you will notice that the two parties that are mentioned in the media are organic farmers (as in USDA certified) and conventional farmers using GMO seeds, putting the attention on the farmer sort of breaks the fall of the transnationals right? As long as there is a perceived animosity between the two types of farmers they will always have a watchful eye on each other, and as human history proves time and again, when there is suspicion of harmful activity it usually escalates the situation in some form or another. Here we would have neighbor vs neighbor, or so the USDA and the corporations would have us believe. That said, I don't blame the farmers for this at all, in general of the many farmers I know here locally the vast majority running larger farms either regret signing their name away to the corporations or just don't know how they would make it economically if they had to look at things from and eco-logical perspective.

You might also have notice that they use "Organic" farmers as opposed to naturally grown, or eco-logically grown, or any other word to denote who has a "say" in this fight. Just like the 3'd political party in the US it seems no one else gets a say, this keeps rebels like us, the free thinkers, the ones who realize that the USDA Organic Standard is a joke in terms of sustainability and *gasp* definitions of what is organic. Really in a lot of ways, the organic standard only works for corporations with the money to actually keep up with certifying every crop they grow.

Yes, I know, a myriad of seed companies are organically certified, and at heart that's what this fight is all about, their right to grow organic seeds without cross contamination, I get it, but by buying into the USDA's organic standards and following only those rules and regulations instead of using independent and clear judgment of humanity as the standard they are only playing into a loosing corporate game, one that locks seed producers who are a bit rebellious such as myself and other "eco" growers out of the equation, in a fight like this they need all the help they can get.

By far however, the most disturbing part of the whole ordeal (other than obvious backroom deals and open doors between the USDA and various transnationals) is the type of philosophy I've been reading today coming from the GMO propaganda machine; comments like "Their pollen cand destroy transgenic crops as well." For example, there was a story about an organic farmer and a conventional (How the hell did the green revolution become so "conventional" or "traditional" to begin with? Plant the seed and the idea grows I suppose) farmer were growing sunflowers next to one another. The organic farmer for cut flowers, the conventional farmer for feed crop, pollen from the open pollinated ornamental flowers got into the field of the farmer growing the feed sunflowers. Supposedly the farmers got together to avoid a lawyer and the conventional farmer gave the organic one pollen less (yes, sterile) seed to grow. According to the GMO lackeys, this is a solution! A real solution! Oh, shit, yeah, that's right, except for the fact that this all started over SEED to begin with. How the hell is that a solution?

But see, these people don't think about that sort of thing, they are all mixed up and don't understand effect and cause, at least not on any logical level of reality. There is a song from the White Stripes called "Effect and Cause" that sums it up quite succinctly I think;

I guess you have to have a problem
If you want to invent a contraption
first you cause a train wreck
And then you put me in traction
well first came an action
And then a reaction
But you can't switch around
For your own satisfaction
Well you burnt my house down
Then got mad at my reaction

Well in every complicated situation
There's a human relation
Making sense of it all
Take a whole lot of concentration
Well you can blame the baby
For her pregnant ma
And if there's one of these unavoidable laws

It's just that you can't just take the effect and make it the cause

[Chorus:]
Well you can't take the effect
And make it the cause
I didn't rob a bank
because you made up the law
Blame me for robbing peter
Don't you blame Paul
Can't take the effect
And make it the cause



Oh, and BTW, as a proponent of the natural course of human agriculture, living in a reality based in the soil, the air, the water, and the land, as someone who sees the beauty of the natural world coupled with the ability of man to manipulate plants in only the ways allowed by natural evolutionary factors, I can promise you, there is an army of people like me, willing to do whatever legally possible to keep "co-existence" from ever being accepted as the "status quo".


-Alan Reed Bishop