NUCLEAR NEWS FOR LIFE ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM TERMINATOR TECHNOLOGY

A Seedy  Business

A new "terminator" technology will make crops sterile and force farmers to buy seeds more often—so why did the USDA invent it?
Plus: USDA Inc.: When public research goes corporate

by Leora Broydo
Mother Jones News
April 7, 1998

It's a practice as old as farming itself: As sure as the rooster crows at dawn, farmers save seeds from one growing season and plant them in the next. In South America, poor farmers use knowledge passed down over centuries to select seeds best suited to the local climate and soil. Across the equator their counterparts in South Dakota do it too; 80 to 90 percent of wheat farmers there save seeds from harvests. Those seeds are carefully cleaned and conditioned and then planted. They've been doing it for generations, year after year.

But the practice of seed saving may soon go the way of the steam tractor, and farmers have little say in the matter. A new genetic technology, patented in March, will make it possible for companies to sell seeds that will only work for one growing season, so farmers have to buy each time they plant. Crops will grow as usual, but their seeds in turn will be duds, unable to germinate. Seeds of this kind are expected to come to market by 2004. <<END EXCERPT

The balance of this article may be read at: Mother Jones News