"MULTIPLE TRENDS CREATING CONCERN AT HARVEST TIME Agnet Sept 21,

September 21, 1998 Nebraska Web Lincoln Journal Star

As they prepare to haul in record harvests this autumn, Nebraska’s farmers already are facing huge uncertainties caused by plummeting prices for CORN, SOYBEANS, beef virtually all agricultural commodities.That might be the good news.At least those uncertainties are traditional. Through history farmers have faced the familiar foe of low prices in a cyclical pattern, in the same fashion they have faced drought, insects and plant disease. Those are well-known adversaries for those who earn their living from the soil.Entirely new conflicts loom ahead, created by the exploding field of genetic engineering and the sudden concentration of the world’s seed and agricultural chemical companies in the hands of three companies.

"In the past year, Monsanto, DuPont and Novartis (which has facilities inLincoln) ... have acquired or merged with dozens of the companies thatproduce much of the world’s SOY, CORN and WHEAT seeds. Since the three also produce most of the world’s insecticides and herbicides, they are now poised to exercise major control over what gets planted, how it’s grown and how much it costs," Congressional Quarterly’s Researcher magazine reported this month.

Bill Heffernan, a University of Missouri sociologist quoted by themagazine, said, "People are just dumbfounded by this. It happened so quickly. Nobody was paying much attention."CQ Researcher quotes a number of experts alarmed by the recent developments. "We’re headed toward enveloping the food system in enormous industrial conglomerates, said Harold F. Breimyer, a 30-year employee ofthe U.S. Agriculture Department. "In my nastier moments I call it industrial feudalism."

The concentration of economic power in the three agricultural giants isamplified by a new discovery in the field of genetic engineering. The firms now have the ability to sell seeds that have been genetically modified to prevent them from producing seeds that will germinate. Inother words, any farmer using the seeds no longer could save seeds for usenext year.The patented discovery is referred to as "terminator" technology by itscritics. Although using saved seeds from patented strains of seed isillegal, use of the new biotech technique gives the seed companies total control over their product. Of course, as a consequence of capturing control of the world’s supply of economically viable seeds, the companies have altered a natural process that has existed since the dawn of time.Heffernan says that the trends mean the giant companies now have enormous leverage to tell farmers what to plant and which pesticides to use.