Brian Scott the guy I posted a link to earlier, the Farmer who blogs about his experiences did an OUTSTANDING response to a greenpeace blogger who tried to suggest he was a parody by supporting GMO, after her rather insulting blog he replied in the comments and continued to do so responding to questsions by the very anti GMO crowd.
This is how you debate people who see you as hostile before you even speak:
http://understory.ran.org/2012/03/06...omment-1129591
Quote:
In the lead up to Occupy Our Food Supply, I published a blog post titled, “Monsanto and Cargill: The Thugs of Big Food.” Someone named Ben left a comment. He said I was misguided for suggesting that family farmers are negatively impacted by Monsanto and Cargill and asked me to read a blog post about Big Ag by a farmer named Brian Scott to “get a clue.” So I did.
I found the article to be hilarious, in a sad kind of way. In fact, it was so “hilarious” that I wanted to see what you thought: Does Brian’s post read like a parody or paid media? You be the judge (see the underlined sections) and let us know in the comments if you think he is on the Monsanto payroll or just drinking glyphosate in his Kool-Aid…
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His intial reply in the comments, I recommend your read through them all, excellent stuff.
Quote:
Or maybe I’m just your average everyday farmer. It’s not a parody, although I do tend to have a sarcastic wit about me. It’s not paid media either. If my check from Monsanto shows up in your mailbox, let me know because I haven’t received one yet. The point of this post was to lay out for people what I actually agree to when I use biotech seeds. You left out the link to my PDF of an actual copy of the agreement we signed last year. That’s what I really want people to see so they can read it word for word for themselves. I’ve got nothing to hide from anyone.
Why would I be worried about Monsanto checking my storage? I might not particularly care for it, but they wouldn’t find anything out of line. Even if we went with all non-GMO crops it change virtually nothing about the way we farm. We would have to alter our weed, disease, and insect management a bit differently, but most of what we do would remain the same.
We grow non-GMO popcorn. If fact we are upping our contracted acreage nearly 50% for 2012. This is probably the crop that has the most corporate control attached. Understandably so because it goes into your mouth basically the way it comes out of the field. We don’t farm it much different than the rest of our corn though other than taking extra special care at harvest not to damage the kernels and to delivery a pure product. We raise the corn cutting head a bit higher along the roadsides to avoid the errant glass bottle, etc, and we might even leave a couple rows standing in the field if we feel the neighboring corn is a bit too close. The place we supply doesn’t tolerate dent corn in the popcorn.
I’m not ignorant to issues of resistance from pests, and I do question my own farm’s methods from time to time. I just want to do the best job I can like anyone else. I did right about Bt sweet corn because the subject interests me and thought it might be of interest to others. Two posts directly correlated to Monsanto out of 130+ so far does not an agenda make. If I have an agenda it’s debunking scare tactics with real world experience.
I am certainly neither of the options you have given your readers to choose from. I’m just doing the social media thing for ag in my spare time. I hope the people who read this post read the parts you haven’t underlined. And if they came to this post via your homepage, I hope that misleading picture of a syringe getting ready to inject an ear of corn with something scary doesn’t cloud their judgement. I would hope that like me, they’ll do their homework and come to their own conclusions.
Here’s the entire post should anyone care to read it. http://thefarmerslife.wordpress.com/...pply-everyday/
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