Originally published September 17 2014
Conventional, organic plant breeding offers natural way to overcome pests and weeds while improving food security
by PF Louis
(NaturalNews) As the biototech industry crows on with their "feeding the world" nonsense, several studies have demonstrated that the best way to feed the world is by smaller, organic, regional farming.
One of the largest studies was even sponsored by the UN. But that doesn't get touched by the mainstream media (MSM). Nor does the MSM bother checking into the small groups of dedicated organic farmers who are doing their best to keep traditional farming alive.
Apparently, MSM would rather play like it's a debate between agricultural "science" and "anti-science" activists. The actuality is that Big Ag and their GMOs, protected by big government alliances, are anti-life. It's a war for survival in which the so-called anti-science activists are engaged.
Unfortunately, the efforts to label GMOs ignore a very important factor. Anti-GMO activists need to find a way to cooperate and help organize small organic farmer groups effectively. Crops for human food and livestock don't come from stores. They come from the ground.
So it's basic that resisting GMOs and Big Ag's insistence on using literally tons of toxic materials on those huge monoculture farms must involve direct cooperation among consumers with small organic farm groups.
Guerrilla warfare against Big Ag and GMOs
Those groups are isolated and struggling even as their members increase in numbers. One such group, the Organic Seed Alliance (OSA), has focused on teaching beginning and seasoned organic farmers how to produce crops that can withstand the diseases, infestation and weeds that tend to destroy yields and force Big Ag monoculture mega-farmers to demand more pesticides and herbicides.
That resilience can come from the seeds themselves. Unfortunately, most seed companies and state-run agricultural departments cater to Big Ag and the biotech industry. They help develop seeds suitable for Big Ag's commercial farming, which has a huge appetite for toxic pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers. As Bob Dylan once quipped in one of his songs, "While money doesn't talk, it swears."
But OSA has created a solution. They are teaching would-be and current organic farmers how to create weed- and disease-resistant crops from the ground up, literally. They have created four instruction manuals to put the organic farmer in charge of breeding their own plants to provide better seeds, which in turn will thrive better under organic standards.
OSA Executive Director Micaela Colley put it this way:
To increase organic farmers' success, we must increase the number of varieties bred for organic systems. One of our goals is to empower organic farmers to breed their own crop varieties. The methods described in these manuals can immediately be adopted by farmers to improve their skills in plant breeding, and, ultimately, improve their operations through seed varieties that are well-suited to their farms.
The basic manual is Introduction to On-farm Organic Plant Breeding, which provides farmers with a foundation of basic genetics, farm-based experimental design and breeding techniques, and lays the scientific foundation for the instruction provided in the three crop-specific guides regarding sweet corn, tomatoes and carrots.
This OSA push is vital. Monsanto has been greedily grabbing non-GMO seeds and managing to patent them, and they, along with the "philanthropic" Gates Foundation, have a hefty stake in the "Doomsday Seed Vault."
With the way the world is turning out so far, the song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" may be changed to "Where Gave All the Seeds Gone?"
These manuals may be helpful for those who can manage to garden for their own food as well as our heroic organic farmers. The link in the first source below will get you to the page that offers these four free downloadable manuals at the bottom of that page.
Sources for this article include:
Manuals linked at the bottom of this page: http://ofrf.org
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://ofrf.org
http://www.naturalnews.com
https://seedalliance.org
http://science.naturalnews.com
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