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Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt hopes to create a legislative framework that would cover cultivation bans on genetically modified plants, but leave them up to the regions. Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks, meanwhile, is insisting on a national GMO ban. EurActiv Germany reports.

Barbara Hendricks has rejected a draft bill from Christian Schmidt for regional cultivation bans on genetically modified plants.

The bill is just an initial working draft, Hendricks said on Monday (16 March), in a statement to ZDF.

“It will still be voted on by the federal government,” she said.

The Social Democrat is calling for a national ban on the cultivation of genetically modified crops. This is important, she said, to achieve legal certainty. “If we have a fragmented cultivation ban, we would have an incredibly high amount of legal disputes,” Hendricks pointed out.

Thousands of farmers have taken to the streets in a Kisan Maha Panchayat (farmer meeting) in Delhi, India, in protest at the Modi government’s anti-farmer policies, which include uncritically promoting open field trials of GM crops.

There is some speculation in India that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, led by Narendra Modi (now prime minister), may have come to power with the help of generous funding of their election campaign by the GMO lobby. It is said that this may explain their conversion to the pro-GMO cause.

Though there appears to be little transparency in political funding in India, we hope the Modi government will move to allay fears of corruption by publishing full details of its election campaign funding.

The Seeds Of Wrath Part 1 - Transcript

PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT: Monday, 16 March , 2015

CAROLINE JONES, PRESENTER: Hello. I'm Caroline Jones. Wherever we may live, it's a fine thing to have good neighbours. Tonight we’re off to the wheat belt of Western Australia for an epic saga of friends and neighbours falling out. It all began with the planting of genetically modified crops next to an organic farm but it escalated to the Supreme Court, where it’s drawn international headlines. The battle is far from over. With the case about to return to court we hear from both farmers, and their families, for the first time.

ROSYLYNE ALLSOP, MICHAEL’S SISTER: To get to Perth it’s a three hour drive. It’s not a short trip. On verdict day, Michael would have left first thing in the morning.

MICHAEL BAXTER: Steven, you know, to put me through what he’s put me through: well, there’s no forgiving for that. He could possibly, he could have done things a lot easier. Could've come over the fence and had a chat and, you know, have a beer and somehow maybe sorted it out a little bit different.

STEVE MARSH: I don’t think a lot of people realise just how much goes on in preparing for particularly a big court case. After going through so much, everything is beyond your control. So you’ve just got to just, just wait and hear what the judgement is.

EU Directive Allowing Countries To Ban GMOs Signed

RTT News 3/16/2015

Zanda Kalnina-Lukaševica, the Latvian Parliamentary Secretary for European Affairs, and Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, Monday signed the Directive on Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMOs) approved by the European Union Council. The Directive will come into effect 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

The new European Union Directive allows Member States to ban or restrict the cultivation of genetically-modified organisms on their territory.

Restrictions are an effort to combat pest resistance

In an effort to combat pest resistance in corn crops around the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing restrictions on the amount of corn containing the Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) trait that farmers are allowed to plant.

The specific reason for the proposed restrictions is to try and reduce the impact of the corn rootworm. Michael Gray, an entomologist from the University of Illinos at Urban-Champaign told The Wall Street Journal corn rootworm can cost farmers between $1 and $2 billion in damages.

If the EPA’s proposal is successful, farmers would have to follow better insect management protocols like crop rotations or planting a "refuge area" that includes corn witthout the Bt trait in areas that are susceptible to rootworms. The EPA’s concern is that if the rootworm becomes even more resistant, farmers will be forced to use more synthetic products which could pose a threat to the environment.

The EPA is suggesting about 35% of corn fields to be planted with another crop after two consecutive years of corn.

THIRD WORLD NETWORK BIOSAFETY INFORMATION SERVICE

Transgenes Found in Small Farmers’ Maize Seed Supplies in South Africa

Genetically modified (GM) crops were introduced in South Africa in 1997. By 2013, South Africa had 2.3 million hectares of GM crops under cultivation, 78% of which was insect-resistant and/or herbicide-tolerant maize.

A first study of its kind has found that GM maize has penetrated the informal seed supplies of smallholder farmers in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The study screened for transgenes in external fields, home gardens and local household seed holdings in a village where GM insect-resistant maize had been previously grown from 2001–2008 and also analysed the seed management practices of farmers there.

The researchers found that the commonly used transgene promoter p35s occurred in one of the 796 maize leaf samples (0.0013%) and in five of the 20 seed batch samples (25%). Three of the five included herbicide-tolerant maize (NK603) while the remaining two included genes for insect resistance (from MON810).

Agra Europe

The European Commission will almost certainly not authorise EU cultivation of GM maize ‘1507’ before June, as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is reconsidering its risk management advice for the crop in light of new research.

EFSA is revisiting its risk mitigation recommendations on the dispersal of GM maize pollen and its effect on non-target pests, with the findings likely to be published at the end of May, a spokesperson told Agra Europe today (March 9).

Gov. Alfredo Marañon Jr. said yesterday that the provincial government will stand firm in its stand against the entry of GMO (genetically modifiedorganism) products into Negros Occidental.

“We have an ordinance, they cannot come in. In Negros we are GMO-free, we are an organic island,” he said, stressing the need for vigilance against such products.

(.....) Chito Media, MASIPAG national coordinator, said in a press release that Golden Rice has not been tested for safety.

The testing of golden rice to determine its agronomic traits through open field testing in Pili, Camarines Sur was strongly opposed by farmers and consumers, who uprooted the genetically modified rice, it said.

Press Release International Women’s Day, 8th March 2015

Diverse Women for Diversity

Mahila Anna Swaraj

Initiative for Health , Equity and Society

Navdanya

Moms Across the World

BIODIVERSITY OR GMOS: WILL THE FUTURE OF NUTRITION BE IN WOMEN’S HANDS OR UNDER CORPORATE CONTROL?

Women have been the primary growers of food and nutrition throughout history, but today, food is being taken out of our hands and substituted for toxic commodities controlled by global corporations. Monoculture industrial farming has taken the quality, taste and nutrition out of our food. As a result, India is facing a nutritional crisis: every fourth Indian goes hungry, and in 2011 alone, diabetes took the lives of 1 million Indians. Globally, there is a disease epidemic because our food is nutritionally empty but full of toxics.

Now, the same companies who created the crisis are promising a miracle solution: GMOs. Genetically engineered Golden Rice and GMO Bananas are being proposed as solutions by corporations hiding behind the cloak of philanthropy as a solution to hunger and malnutrition in the Global South. But these are false miracles. Indigenous biodiverse varieties of food grown by women provide far more nutrition than the commodities produced by industrial agriculture. Golden Rice is 350% less efficient in providing Vit A than the biodiversity alternatives that women grow. GMO ‘iron-rich’ Bananas have 3000% less iron than turmeric and 2000% less iron than amchur (mango powder). Apart from being nutritionally empty, GMOs are part of an industrial system of agriculture that is destroying the planet, depleting our water sources, increasing green houses gases, and driving farmers into debt and suicide through a greater dependence on chemical inputs. Moreover, these corporate-led industrial monocultures are destroying biodiversity, and we are losing access to the food systems that have sustained us throughout time. When we consider the number of patents involved in these initiatives, it becomes all too clear that the only beneficiaries of these supposedly ‘people-led’ ventures are large companies operating for profit - not for people.

This needs to stop now. On this international women’s day, we call on all women – the world’s primary food-growers and food-givers – to stand together and join us in reclaiming our knowledge, our farming, and our food. To expose the lies generated by the GMO industry, to reject the false promises of Golden Rice and GMO Bananas, and to reclaim the planet for all living beings.

The alternative lies in women’s hands and minds

On International Women’s Day 8th March 2015, we the women of India and the world commit ourselves to reclaiming our seed, food, and knowledge sovereignty so that we can all enjoy healthy, safe, nutritious, tasty and diverse food. And through our food, we will reclaim our health and the health of the planet.

We will not allow a further degradation of our food systems and knowledge systems. We do not have to go down the road of replacing our biodiversity with GMO monocultures and our rich knowledge of food and nutrition with scientific and ethical fraud. We will not sacrifice our seed and food sovereignty for corporate control and profits.

Victory! CTNBio Occupied: Meeting Cancelled! FuturaGene Taken Over

MARCH 5, 2015 BY GETREES

300 peasants took over the building where CTNBio was meeting to decide about whether to approve GE eucalyptus trees. The meeting was cancelled. On the same morning, 1,000 women took over operations of Futuragene across Brazil. The action included the destruction of GE eucalyptus seedlings.

About 1,000 women of the MST occupied the Suzano company (parent corporation to GE tree company Futuragene) in Itapetininga, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

This morning about 300 peasants organized by La Via Campesina occupied the meeting of the Brazil National Biosafety Technical Commission (CTNBio), which was convening to discuss the release of three new varieties of transgenic plants in Brazil including genetically engineered eucalyptus trees. The meeting was interrupted and decisions were postponed. Earlier in the morning on Thursday, another 1,000 women of the Brazil Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) from the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais occupied the operations of FuturaGene Technology Brazil Ltda, a subsidiary of Suzano timber corporation, in the municipality of Itapetininga, in São Paulo.