I realize that many companies under license produced Agent Orange, White and the rest of the Rainbow chemicals during the Vietnam War but there is little doubt that Dow and Monsanto were the two largest producers of defoliants for use in Vietnam. In Canada they were also the principal producers of the defoliation chemicals used in CFB Gagetown New Brunswick, where although the drums supplied were with their chemical names or symbols instead of the colored strips, they were the identical chemicals which these two companies were shipping to the US for use in Vietnam.
But I am neither here to tell you about the thousands of deaths and millions of medically compromised citizens of the world attributed to these chemicals nor am I going to dip into the sufferings of countless humans which have been more of less a way of life for many victims, ever since these chemicals were introduced to humanity and I use that word cautiously because there is nothing humane about them. They were designed to kill and that is exactly what they do - KILL.
Today I would like to address Dow and Monsanto because of the recent news stories concerning their operations in today’s world. This is not to suggest that they have actually stopped producing defoliants; in fact, if anything, they have increased their chemical defoliant production, distribution and have also begun adding watered down versions into our food, cosmetics and everyday household articles under the disguise of disinfectants or antimicrobials.
What caught my eye were a couple of news articles which seemed to portray that these two companies were at it again --- you know making money regardless of the damage done, albeit this time they seem to be at opposite ends of the stick. Once again tax payers were not only being soaked for the increased costs of production and development but were actually paying tax monies to construct what I can only describe as a giant hamster wheel.
I’m talking about, "Dow and NREL Partner to Convert Biomass to Ethanol" and "Monsanto awarded state grant for seed plant near Independence.”
These two seemingly unrelated stories when you stop and think about it, are gold mines for these two companies; while one (Dow) produces oil from food, the other (Monsanto) produces food by using oil. Now correct me if I am wrong, but these two things seem counter productive.
Wile Dow will be telling the world that the price of biofuels have gone up because of the increases in food costs (the bio part of biofuels), Monsanto will be telling us that the increased cost of food is because of the increased costs in fuel (due to the oil based (fertilizers, defoliants, insecticides,) which their GMO seeds require to grow.)
Each of the above stories seems inconsequential on their own; Dow with
government help trying to lessen the world's fuel shortages wile Monsanto is busy using tax payer money to lessen the world's food shortages which are both noble causes on their own. It only becomes a problem when Dow is using food to make fuel and then Monsanto is using fuel to make food and both are using our Tax Dollars to accomplish these goals.
The only people that this could possibly make any sense to (in fact dollars,)
are Dow and Monsanto as a money maker prospect and the Government because of the increased taxes they will receive from all this nonsense.
Does anyone besides me see that this is counter productive? Shouldn't we be trying to make Bio-fertilizers with our left over food and food bi-products
and leaving fuel as fuel? This might reduce our dependence on fuel based
farm products; increase both our food and fuel stocks and have the potential benefit of reducing health problems attributed to chemicals we are now using.
Now I don't expect to get a thumbs up from either Dow or Monsanto because there is not much money for them in this approach and to be honest the government is so deeply into bed with these two that I doubt they will have anything good to say about it either.
Besides this makes too much common sense wile also generating lower tax revenues making it not so acceptable to any cash strapped government.
Because there may be more people seeing the futility in what is now proposed by these two companies, there is a third story which may be only smoke and mirrors: “Major agribusinesses form food, biofuels alliance,” which includes Monsanto, may in my opinion only be more window dressing in order to keep the masses off of their back wile they continue to take over full control and ownership of the worlds future food supplies.
Cpl. Kenneth H. Young CD (Ret'd).Nanaimo, BC
