Tag Archives: Water

Monsanto Takes Molokai’s Water

molokai11024x768.jpg Monsanto grows much of its seed corn on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, apparently including its new “water-efficient maize”:
In law, two-thirds of the water from the Molokai irrigation system should go to homestead farmers. In practice big landowners, especially Monsanto, take 84% of the irrigation system’s water consumption. Monsanto alone, according to Yamashita, takes almost twice as much water as all 200 homesteaders.

So I think I have this right. In the cause of developing crops that will allow the world’s farmers to use less water, Monsanto is so overusing the water in its own backyard that local farmers are have resorted to legal action to get their water back. As the Molokai Dispatch’s headline has it: “Monsanto could be its own worst enemy.”

We would expect nothing less from the company that brought us Agent Orange.

Radical Food Rethink for Britain?

According to Peter Griffiths in Scientific American, 10 August 2009, Britain wants “radical rethink” on food production:
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain must find ways to grow more food while using less water, energy and fertilizers to help feed a growing world population and offset the effects of climate change on agriculture, the government said on Monday.
OK, that makes sense. But where’s the radical part?
Farmers will have to adopt new methods to grow bigger crops while being more careful with increasingly valuable commodities such as water and fuel for machinery and fertilizers, Benn said.
OK, less water, fuel, and petrochemical fertilizers; good. But why a few farmers growing bigger crops? As The Institute for Optimum Nutrition points out,
Good food seems to have been erased from our cultural identity, yet Britain was once considered the gastronomic centre of the world.
I would bet Britain didn’t do that by cranking out bigger crops.

How about more small farmers, as well, plus urban gardens?