Ugggh. Monsanto. The name alone makes me shiver. It's sad what's happening to our food.

That's just scarey!!!
DH and try to buy only organically grown foods.
We have a garden in the summer months and never cook from box mixes because of all the additives.
Organic eggs, milk etc.
We also try to purchase at farmer's markets and only grown in the USA

Linda

Yup. I am on the waiting list for 'Seeds of Deception'. Monsanto wants to contol the entire seed market. I can find non-GMO canola at Whole Paycheck for $10/bottle, ouch. Yes I can find alternatives (olive oil etc.) but I want to support the non-GMO grower.

I am leaning more towards distant/non-gmo than local/GMO. And encouraging local growers to go non-GMO and non-Monsanto. I think Oregon has taken the lead, and Michigan farmers are trying as well to get out from under Monsaanto, I need to look into it a little more.

I was going through my seed catalogue and found no heritage/heirloom seeds. They are all hybrids. Also, when I got my seeds from a company last year they were all sprayed orange with a fungicide. I didn't even bother to google as to why and what it was, I didn't want to know...
Anyways, Here is another article about a farmer who fought Monsanto and won. I really liked the article.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/25/percy-schmeiser-farmer-who-beat-monsanto.aspx?e_cid=20111225_SNL_Art_1

I was just going through my 2012 catalog from Bountiful Gardens (Heirloom, Untreated, Open-Pollinated Seeds for Sustainable Growing) and getting an order together.

Monsanto - one more reason to avoid soy....or "Frankensoy" as Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN puts it in her book, "The Whole Soy Story".

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Bountiful Gardens

Thanks for the link Grainlady. OT, do you eat soy? I don't and limit a lot of foods in general. Also, you gave me a list of books to look into and I really like Nourishing Traditions so thanks for that too.

I highly recommend Fedco for non-GMO and organic seed, fedcoseeds.com. They identify seeds as to which are organic and/or non-GMO. I've had fabulous results with their seeds and trees.

I raise, wild forage, can and freeze about 70% of the vegetables and fruit we eat but the remainder I buy at the grocery store. I have a hard time justifying the price of organic produce when it usually is GMO and I don't like the use of heavy metals being called organic. It's all a matter of perspective. I use only organic shellfish compost in my gardens but who knows exactly what is in the shellfish given the amount of contaminants in the oceans today. I don't spray my fruit trees so the apples are ugly but they taste amazing so it's worth the extra prep work. the best apples come from a couple of feral apple trees. OMG the applesauce is to die for but the sauce is a pain to make since the apples are very small and require a lot of paring.

I buy farm raised eggs from free range heritage breed chickens fed organic feed but I canâÂÂt afford heritage grass fed meats and poultry with the Thanksgiving turkey being the exception. I have the acreage to raise animals and grew up raising sheep, pigs, ducks, chickens, and steer but DH is not the farming type and will not allow it. I donâÂÂt buy bake goods, I bake my own using KA organic but I wonder if the wheat is GMO.

I do the best I can to feed the family âÂÂgoodâ food within my monetary and time budgets.

I'm almost shivering as I read this. How does Monsanto sleep at night?!

moosemac, from the little reading I have done, organic by definition is non-GMO.

Here is a link that might be useful: non-gmo shopping guide via google

Yep, organic food has to be GMO-free. That's why I choose to spend my money eating organic. It's a little more expensive but it makes me feel better. I believe that what you feed your body is the #1 most important thing to spend money on. It affects how you feel, how you look, how you age, if you get sick or not, and a host of other things. It's worth it to me to pay an extra $20 at the grocery store each week to know I'm not eating pesticides or GMO products.

I wish the US required GMO labels like in Europe. It's awful that certain industries can buy their way through government approvals. But then again, eating poorly makes you sick, and sick people need medications which are made by certain other pharmaceutical giants. So really it's no surprise that consumer health seems to be the lowest priority!

Jessyf,
Thank you for correcting me. I apologize, I'm so militant about grocery store organic vegetables that I expressed an opinion as fact hence I disseminated incorrect information.

My opinion is: I am very skeptical that many organic labeled vegetables are non-GMO. When I see certain organic vegetables in the grocery store or even some times at the farm stand, I suspect some are GMO based on their characteristics. Now I'm not a scientist but I've been raising non-GMO vegetables and fruits for a long time and certain traits are darn near impossible without GMO for example: a super sweet corn on the cob that holds its sweetness more than a few hours after picking. Obviously without a genetic analysis, it's just my observations.

I think most grocery store organic vegetables and fruits have their own inherent issues and aren't worth the added expense. Local organic, local naturally farmed or home grown items where you know the source are a far better option.

Just to clarify things. No GMO seeds are sold through any vegetable catalogs. Also, hybrids are not GMOs. Hybridization is done by transferring pollen from one variety to another. GMO is done by transferring DNA from one organism, often one completely unrelated, to another. It's a modern technique possible only since the manipulation of DNA. Hybridization is a very old technique practiced for centuries. The only difference between hybrid plants and open pollinated ones is that you don't want to save seed from hybrids since the progeny will not be like the parent plant.

laceyvail, you beat me to it.

Hybridizing is done by Mother Nature all the time.

GMO is different. It goes beyond playing with Mother Nature. It is playing God.

microRNA is troubling, but playing devil's advocate, can Monsanto say that they are developing GMO plants with beneficial microRNA to humans?

Will microRNA and GMO technologies be the next frontier of biological warfare?

dcarch

I thought GMO meant "growing my own", and I expected a story about your own vegetable garden.

Lars

There are often good reasons for hybridization; you can end up with something called 'hybrid vigor'. Mules are hybrids between horses and donkeys, and have some advantages in some circumstances. Likewise, you can breed a plant hybrid to have good characteristics of both parent strains. Drawback is that you can't reliably save the seed from the plant for re-use. That's okay for the seed company but not so much for the consumer.

This is possibly questionable journalism but I'll add it here with that caveat.

Here is a link that might be useful: Whole Foods Market Caves to Monsanto

More information:

'The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto
by RONNIE CUMMINS
"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must."

��" Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep MonsantoâÂÂs Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nationâÂÂs 25,000 organic farms and ranches, AmericaâÂÂs organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided itâÂÂs time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as MonsantoâÂÂs controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.'

Here is a link that might be useful: The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto

Grains are the bulk of the GMO, so eating organic produce isn't going to help you if you eat a lot of processed, packaged food products. Since January of 2010 I have been eating and living a Primal lifestyle - no grains, legumes, sugar. I use butter or olive oil for cooking.

Wonder what will happen Monsanto and Walmart merge?

"Court rules organic farmers can sue conventional, GMO farmers whose pesticides 'trespass' and contaminate their fields"

Here is a link that might be useful: www.naturalnews.com

Nature hybridizes and also passes DNA (or maybe it's RNA or both, don't quote me I'm rusty on this) from one organism to the other through viruses. In fact, that's one way we genetically modify things, using viruses to transmit the sections of DNA that we want transferred. Like all things human, we seem to rush into things willy nilly without considering the long term consequences. Go ahead Eve, eat the apple. The issue is not whether it's natural or not, the issue is whether we should be going at it at the pace we are going at it, without carefully considering the LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES. But that seems to be the ethos of the modern era, perhaps brought on by our culture of instant gratification. Just do it! etc. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, IMHO! There's a consumer backlash agains these changes in our food supply, but with the current economic climate always being hauled out as the excuse for everything (it'll lower the cost . . . in the short run), and with the deck stacked against responsible agriculture . . . I dunno.

Oh, and I should add for anyone not familiar with the issue, that the genetic modifications are not usually done to improve taste or nutrition, but rather to make the plants contain a natural pesticide (Bt) or make them resistant to herbicide. Besides possible allergy indications, planting large swaths of plants that contain Bt toxins (a natural and biodegradable pesticide) will only shorten the time span that this tool will be available to organic famers, as the mass use of herbicide and pesticides shortens the time that it takes pests to evolve resistance to it. Mass use of herbicide and pesticide goes against the principles of integrated pest management; IPM was created with the science of ecology behind it, not to fly in the face of it. But it's fussy and cuts into mass profits. Oh, and speaking of the fact that nature passes DNA around, there is nothing to stop WEEDS from picking up the resistance-to-herbicide gene, making the whole thing moot, but that's fine with Monsanto, they'll come up with some other product you have to buy to solve the problem they help create. They've got a great little scam going on there.

This was my favorite quote from that article Barnmom linked to:

Whole Foods and UNFI are maximizing their profits by selling quasi-natural products at premium organic prices. Organic consumers are increasingly left without certified organic choices while genuine organic farmers and ranchers continue to lose market share to "natural" imposters. It's no wonder that less than 1% of American farmland is certified organic, while well-intentioned but misled consumers have boosted organic and "natural" purchases to $80 billion annually-approximately 12% of all grocery store sales.

I've known this for a long time. Only go to WF and other such markets for specialty items. I try to buy my produce and staples from producers I can keep a closer eye on. I'll bet half the time the organic label gets put on a product by a bribe.

Access to high quality food is not an automatic in this world. Never was, never will be. What's a consumer to do? Caveat emptor! Know your shopping cart contents! With the Internet and a little information literacy, it's not hard to find out about the products you buy. It's also not hard to find folks desperately trying to make a living doing it the right way. But they usually communicate with their customers on a more individual basis, not through mass markets.

Oh, and there are a whole lot of reasons farmers don't certify their products as organic, there's a whole lot of bureaucratic baloney you have to go through and some believe the whole process was designed to squeeze out small producers.