In this 4-part series, journalist, environmentalist, and author of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, Claire Hope Cummings speaks out on behalf of the natural world, and for a new approach to solving the environmental, social, and philosophical problems inherent in our present food system. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, a comprehensive, 4 year study commissioned by the United Nations, over the past 50 years, human activity has altered the planets ecosystems more than any comparable time in human history. Industrial agriculture plays a big part in this report. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment concludes that we have degraded 60% of the (Earth’s) infrastructure services, and that this “has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth”.

Claire Hope Cummings explains that the Capitalist system often relies upon “the mentality of scarcity” model to increase profits. In agriculture, this mentality of scarcity takes many forms, including that of major seed companies restricting the uses (through utility patents) of their GMO seeds (non-GMO seeds can not be granted an utility patent); thus, by restricting supply, drive up their monetary value. Formerly, what may have been freely available to reuse for future harvests, or for breeding research by farmers, or public institutions, may no longer be available for such purposes. For some, this is how capitalism—at its finest—operates. But, we are not talking here about industrial widgets, we are talking about the control of seeds. Cummings, warns in her book, “whoever controls the future of seeds controls the future of life on earth”. Should any private entity be granted the right to control the future food supply?

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