cannot be easily made into food and could easily contaminate our food supply and the obama administration might be the first to approve a genetically engineered animal the fast growing up were about to ban and so i think that's probably what brought alternative an alternative vision for how to increase food production and feed the world into the future after our presentation jeffrey smith is doing an event at the main stage and this is very exciting he is an expert and the head the implications of genetically modified foods and i diet so we're not going to cover that topic right now one of the exciting parts of the program is going to be that afterward team convening and activists on it where we can all talk about how to take and how to get organized in washington state in seattle and where all you all are from so this is a great program on the green festival has provided us and i'm so excited to be here with you all today so bill is  important to make money and to control the world's food supply is to get control over the seed over the genetic information and the seed that's coming from traditional farming farms all across the world ac internationally that has a broad perspective so about three years ago we were invited to a meeting with a farmer who is from kenya has named joseph machinegun and somebody from the gates foundation to talk about the future of agriculture in africa and by the time we were through with that conversation we were horrified just at michigan was talking about having learned a kind of agriculture actually that comes from the northwest but was brought into the african context and made african by a group called manor house in kenya and they've trained thirty seven now fifty thousand farmers in bio intensive agriculture that keeps  farmers in their community using on farm and puts and basically sustainable inorganic techniques and with very little money this technique was taught to lots of farmers and it's working in the gates foundation guy said well that's really interesting because we don't think that again it works on the continent that the soils are too poor that there's that the environmental conditions and so on are not really up for that they've changed their tune a little bit if you look at some of their propaganda but basically they think that high industrial agriculture with lots of money fertilizer hybrid seeds and genetically modified seeds are the way to feed africa and to consolidate farms they talk about land mobility what's land mobility you know it's not kind of farming it is privatizing land so people can sell the farm if they need to so they can actually mortgage their farm so they can be a part of these loan packages that are being pushed by the gates foundation and usa id and other international aid organizations and so the idea is that you can you can borrow against and if you can't pay for it you don't have any other resources so the farm gets goes back to the bank effectively  that's one thing the second thing is that they believe that farms need to be large in order to feed people the needs to be efficient by having larger and larger farms just like in the united states is the model but in africa seventy six percent of the food is produced mainly by some but by small farm holders so the idea that the gates foundation is has is like in order to feed the future which is another term you'll hear later on we need to consolidate farms and have people move to the city where they're going to make their fortune and in cities like nairobi which is a huge mega city and so on so we were really hard fight and we started working with folks in seattle and then in kenya and in zimbabwe and zambia and some other countries in africa to start to look at what their thinking was about how they should feed themselves and we started to interact with groups like food first and other international and national organizations to see what solutions we could come up with collectively to suggest to the gates foundation and to promote to the american public that there are other ways to feed africa besides creating industrial farms so we've been working at it for about three years as i said and in those three years we discovered some interesting thing s the first thing is this project called agora which is the alliance for a green revolution in africa funded by the gates and the rockefeller foundation was founded to bring the green revolution to do people remember that term who heard the before ok so a lot of you already know about this excesses of the failures of the green revolution in the philippines and india other parts of asia in latin america it was tried in africa and failed miserably because they didn't understand the continent so this new green revolution thirty years later forty years later was meant to correct those problems so the case foundation and the rockefeller foundation which was involved in the first green revolution said we've got the answers and we're going to we're going to work in thirteen countries to promote industrial agriculture and integration into the world markets and so on but we're not going to do g m o it's because we want mainly in africa with the exception of south africa at the time and a few other countries now jim those are not part of the  and there's actually a lot of resistance on the part of governments and people again against g m but the gates foundation didn't stop with funding nagra which is promoting these more conventional methods to put another nine hundred it's really about is creating the regulatory environment by which the most can be brought into the country supposedly safely the particular ways that gates was doing that is to fund the j putting money into this agra project and on the other hand they're putting lots of money into g m o research so so what we started to realize was that while acker was funding a lot of projects in particular in kenya eighty six percent of those projects were also being funded by month santo and we can see we started to see that there is a direct relationship between the way that case was working in the way that monsanto is working that's why we're so excited at this project that you guys are doing we further started to note that old pattern will get what we want by impacting policy in all these different ways is happening again so it's not a new a new product it's a not a new method a lot of organizations are foundations and corporations have used this is a way to influence policy before we started to put out information about that got a lot of response from around the world that they want to try to stop the gates foundation to the other thing that the gates foundation and month santa fe other thing that the gates foundation did was it invested twenty three million dollars in months and two in the last year and we started to put that out in the in the global press with other organizations and people were hard at that as well because this continuing direct linkage between the gates foundation and months after another biotech companies so just to cap it off at this point we've been working with grassroots organizations in africa who are promoting agro ecological what we wouldn't call alternatives what are called alternatives ways to use organic and sustainable methods that come from traditional a blend of traditional and more modern techniques for having food grown by local farmers again mainly women and that will support the earth and the people there so we're promoting agro ecological alternatives and working with others to stop the gates foundation for from but in these kinds of techniques and to maybe start to shift some of their money toward sustainable we're not even asking them to do that we think that's their job to figure out what to do we know that around the world people are in resistance to to the kinds of practices that monsanto has and then also that gates has around that so  that one of the connections not only this investment connection between the gates foundation and month santo is a personal connection the same people who work for monsanto's research firm the danforth plant science institute got jobs at the gates philanthropic arm of the u s government but their mission it's couched as a humanitarian mission but their mission is to help companies like monsanto break in to poor countries that want to resist monsanto feed an excellent example is haiti after the horrible earthquake in haiti you would think the people there were so desperate they would take any type of help monsanto and usa id led by r shah who worked at the gates foundation they said we've got a wonderful gift for you we're going to donate hundreds of tons of seed to you and haiti government said is a genetically modified and they said yeah we want to give you genetically modified see if they said no way we're not taking your genetically modified feed they did end up accepting some seed hybridise seed that had a fungicide on it and they said the government ended up accepting that but the farmers resisted the farmers didn't even want month santo's hybrid fungicide seed they didn't want any month because they know what happens when rich come to countries dump agricultural resources on poor countries for one thing they put the indigenous farmers out of business this donation of seed is going to be sold in the market so it's not that it's just dumped for free and the only alternative that way it's going to be sold but at a reduced price and it's going to push the indigenous seed suppliers out of business there and it's going to discourage people from saving their seed and producing seed in their own country now this is the very story of haiti  not necessarily related to genetic modification but haiti used to be a food self sufficient country they got a whole lot of american rice dumped on their market and pretty soon the indigenous farmers were put out of business and reliant now on food imports from the united states so these food aid can be used in a very destructive way and even when it's not connected to genitally modified food so that's just one example of somebody who's connected to monsanto and the gates foundation working in the obama administration and there are many more examples but we should probably cover other topics are you all ready to participate ok i'm from america too i mean i just don't know what you're doing to fight this and what we can all do is so i don't i'm not familiar with your organization's i'd like to hear more about that so i'm with the millions against month and to a campaign of the organic consumers association and i remain to demand right now is to give consumers the ability to choose whether or not to support companies like monsanto that are forcing their genetically modified crops on us in the u s food supply and on the world and the trouble is if you decide you want to boycott month santo and you go into the grocery store there's no way of telling what products can say contain monsanto's ingredients if you memorize a list of genetically my if i cry i guess you can read but spend all day reading the label in the grocery store but most people aren't going to do that only about a quarter of the u s population is actually aware that genetically modified foods are in our food supply so until we have let labeling we're not going to have a level of awareness that could result in a mass boycott of monsanto is caught and actually we really need to get the companies to phase out my infantilizing premiums but that's not going to happen and still consumers are aware that they're there in the first place so our labeling our demand is for genetically opportunity right now so many people so many more people are aware because of the recent bad actions of the obama administration approving new genetically engineered crops considering the first genetically engineered animal we have this opportunity th we have a packed house in our little community action five billion and i know that a lot of you all came from far and wide to to come be part of this movement so i think we've got energy we've got awareness and we have an opportunity here it's true that the bills in congress to label genetically modified foods have received very little attention dennis kucinich has valiantly worked on this issue for years and years sense about one nine hundred ninety nine introducing bills to label genetically modified foods the most co sponsors these bills have ever gotten out of four hundred thirty five members of congress is about fifty and i just heard from one of your friends here in the area that congressman jim mcdermott doesn't know anything about this issue he thinks wheat is genetically modified and that it's a good thing he probably confuses conventional breeding with genetic modification so congresspeople and legislators are uninformed just like most americans and they i don't know that it's a problem so i say yes we we have not been successful to fight alexis how many people in the american public if they knew it was labeled would reject g m o food ninety percent those are those are from lots of different polls that have been conducted over the last several years last twenty years and it's true that monsanto and the other companies keep pushing back around labeling back in the ninety's there was a struggle in vermont and i actually helped to make a movie called risky business which is about agricultural biotech back then it's still a really useful movie to see and we went to vermont and what we noticed was this very independent state legislature you know vermont's the kind of the show me state that's not their model but it's close enough they were about to they did pass a labeling law for dairy products in particular for to stop b t h which is the first genetically modified food and it was a full court press by monsanto's lobbyists and i won't go through the whole story but they've been trying to fight it they've fought it in this state when we introduced labeling stuff back in the same period of time so they're really afraid of label i was just wondering if there's a legal defense fund formed for people whose crops were infected and contaminated by nearby genetically modified growing operations so that they can sue them i think it's a great project especially for this region now that sugar beets had been approved by the obama administration farmers will inevitably be contaminated and it's very important to support them there are farmers in the northeast that are are becoming proactive they've filed a lawsuit that would respect their right to be free of contamination and i think it you know so far all of the lawsuits have been months santa against the farmers now this is a lawsuit the farmers against month santo and it's  open legal question and i think the farmers have a really really good chance in this fight to prove that they should be free of that contamination from month let's get some more questions please come out so well it's coming up alexis the other thing is in this state g m o alfalfa is a real issue because one of our biggest acts it's a small crop at a very important crop that goes to japan organic alfalfa more precisely and alfalfa is very promiscuous g c and it will spread really rapidly and so farmers conventional and organic are really concerned about having g m o off alpha so they're beginning to conventional farmers as well are beginning to think about lawsuits in this state what situations you would you think jim what would actually be a positive thing that's a great question what would it be a genetically modified crop that we'd all like santo is currently trying to zero yeah that might be the answer but let's let's take this seriously let's take this seriously and think you know outside the box and try to figure out what what kind of genetically modified crops would be desirable monsanto is currently marketing and trying to get approved a drought tolerant corn and that's what they've been saying they're working on all the time right of course all their other genetically modified crops are just assigned to sell their herbicide ground up they're genetically modified to resist the the herbicide so that farmers can spray unlimited amounts of herbicide on their crops so monsanto is a chemical company they sell chemicals and that's the purpose but they have this so called drought tolerant corn now the food sorry the u currently released just this month an environmental impact statement on month santo's new corn and they found that it actually did not any more than any normal conventional crop resists drought so you know these they've been doing at least a decade of research on how to make a crop that actually benefits humanity and it's a failure this is the best they've got and it doesn't work and they're trying to get it approved and the u s d a said well it's not any better than conventional corn but we don't see why it shouldn't be approved so now's the time to write letters to your congressman to the obama administration about approving failure why should we approve monsanto's idea of a drought resistant crop when it doesn't work in the context of africa they've been promoting both drought resistant maize and drought resistant rice what's interesting is there's at least ten or fifteen varieties of drought resistant rice that already exist on the continent and also of maize better come from conventional breeding techniques and so the idea that we need genetically modified organisms to get these traits just right is it's not accurate there's so many flaws with the technology if you if you go to the consumers the union the concerned scientists are lots of research that shows the actual instability of the genetic material that goes into plants when you cross the species barrier i can talk to people more about that but what it means is for example there why we have some speculation about how that works but there they had to withdraw the g m o because it is it's just became too unstable to support local agriculture and support your co ops all up and down the puget sound the co ops are providing the information they have geoffrey smith's books up and in mount vernon co op and in a nice stump it's really quite sweet to see that this is a real source of information also supporting your local economy my question was what research has been done and the effect that it has on human health i'll just give you a short summary and i really encourage you to go see jeffrey smith speak right after this in the main stage at five o'clock but the main things are allergies cancer and a lack of nutrition in our food and one of the interesting things in the context of feeding the world is that the crops that have been genetically modified to withstand herbicides the way that this works is that the  it would kill the plant by depriving it of nutrients it blocks the plants ability to take nutrients from the soil and when the plant doesn't get nutrients it jives month center found a bacteria that could withstand i herbicide roundup it did not allow the plant to take the nutrients it just enabled the plant to withstand the diseases it would succumb to if it lacked nutrients so we've got this sort of plant it can take in nutrients but it's still not going to die and and that's what we're eating reading a plant that doesn't have nutrients but still didn't die now what does that make us where we're like people walking around that are managing to live without having enough nutrition in our body does that have anything to do with the fact that most americans are fat and thick are we are eating all this food that has lots of calories but nutrition this is the obviously going to impacts there's environmental impacts and there's that question of how farmers can continue to make a living independently there's so many other issues that it's not just about health that we need to look at and the impact on all the environment and the economics of farming as well as the health of our people is at stake one of the problems that i'm aware of with and things like the gates foundation and all that what about the senators and house of congress and all of them they have people all around different major companies that they can't really control and they have a vote and so they can just vote for whatever monsanto want and then wants their little shift  over they can just go back to their monsanto jobs and it just kind of an unbelievable thing but i want to know how you can beat it i'm going to take the opportunity to say that that's a really tough question and a lot of us been trying to work on it for a while and as you were saying there is that movement around g m o since fluctuated over the last twenty years or so the third here is even and now it's come back with a vengeance partially because of what you're saying and partially because people are becoming more aware and in washington state i was talking to the league of women doing and one of the reasons why we're excited to have jeffrey and the cia in town is that we can start to talk about a multi organization in a multi community effort across the state to fight against am i was i've been doing this for a long time in the ninety's we fight against g m o wheat in eastern washington with the farmers and and the far west and we were able to defeat g m o wheat because they impact on the economics we sell so much of our way to japan in the philippines and they don't still don't want g m o those and so the farmers here are saying we don't want to be there because if there's any g m o wheat in the country anywhere the japanese would invite even from the from the far west so that's one strategy is to get the farmers together and what you're talking about is an electoral strategy that we're going to work on together for a long time so thanks my question is when we get to the point if we get to the point where there's enough public awareness or enough people are making enough noise which i have great hope and faith that that will happen how can we phase it out if there's like ninety was it ninety eight percent of the soil in the u s is genetically modified and  ninety percent of corn up leave how how can we turn the tide and phase that out if there's so much in an environment