I don’t want to get embroiled in sensitive political issues, but hey – it’s a nice day and I hate political propaganda, especially if it is designed to swell the already obscene profits of a giant biotech seed corporation, so why not?
Yesterday afternoon we were sitting on the patio enjoying a well-earned cuppa. It was another gloriously sunny day with just a slight breeze. On that breeze was carried a virtual snow flurry of tiny white airborne seeds (from willow tress, I understand). It brought to mind something that I had read in an article about GM crops. The article quoted a spokesman for the said biotech seed corporation as saying that farmers whose land lay adjacent to fields in which GM crops were being grown need not be concerned about the threat of contamination of their crop by GM seeds. Why not? Because an uncultivated strip of land had been left around the GM fields so that seeds would be unable to get as far as the adjacent fields. As if such a strip around a field could possibly prevent the normal distribution of seeds.
If ever proof were needed that this person’s statement is at best a pious hope and at worst a downright lie, it was there in that cloud of seeds blowing across our garden yesterday. I know that not all seeds float through the air. I accept that some seeds are heavy and simply drop to the ground not far from the parent plant. But I also know that nature has a way of distributing seeds, via air, water, wind, birds or animals, that can scatter them over a wide area. To think that contamination from GM crops can be prevented by the simple means of leaving a wide boundary around a field is disingenuous to say the least, and just another example of how big corporations try to burnish their image as caring sharing people whilst operating in a profit-motivated, shareholder-dependent, self-serving way.