I was listening to our local radio station over the weekend, and heard this radio ad of “America’s Farmers”.  My ears immediately perked up and I listened for the reason behind the ad…political? PR? Raising awareness?

I found it at the end of the ad, when they quietly disclosed it was brought to you by….Monsanto.  Um-hmmm…

Here’s the website:  http://www. americasfarmers .com/  I’m not linking to it for obvious reasons.  I’ve made spaces in the addy, so you’ll have to close them up to look it up in your browser.

The website is just *this close* to equating farming with patriotism…

I clicked on the “Hear their stories’ link, and to the right is a paragraph with the sentence “They get up everyday just to ensure we have food on the table and clothes on our backs. and they do it without being asked.”  They do it because they get PAID for their work.  They do it so they can put food on the table and clothes on their own families’ backs.  They do it without being asked?  WTH does that mean, really?

I clicked on the “Meet the Families” link.  The first family are the Boyds:  Will and Wendy, and their children Wilson, Weston, Waylon, and Wenslie….(I already don’t like them because of being cutesy while naming their kids.)  Let’s see…they’ve had the farm for five generations…that would put them back in the times of slavery… and the farm is in Georgia….hmmmm….and they are politicians with being a County Commissioner, along with being deep in the Farm Bureau, which is no longer representative of the farmers, but a part of the political machinery….kind of like the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA–or Bossy Indian Around).  So…yeah, don’t see a lot of free thinking here who would question Monsanto or their motives.

The rest of the families basically all say the same thing–Farming is not a job, but a way of life.  Yep.  Anyone around here (Indiana being a big corn producing state) knows somebody who’s a farmer and how farming IS a way of life. What they don’t understand is how they are destroying that very life by supporting an organization that couldn’t care less about messing with nature.

Four years ago, I worked on an organic farm for one summer, and if my adrenals didn’t start crashing, I would have loved to have gone back and worked on another farm the next summer.  It’s great being outdoors tending to the plants.  No one is around–just you and the quiet….and the birds perched nearby singing or the occasional grasshopper or flutterby’s that happen in your path.  Watching clouds form and wondering how long you can push it until you need to run for cover…being caught in a rainstorm… or at lunch time, sitting by the “wild” pond (i.e., it’s not been made “pretty” by landscapers…nature “scaped” it).

Farm families know their survival depends on the family working together.  I fail to see how Monsanto ties into that.  If anything it’s the opposite—  Ask Percy Schmeiser, or any farm family that has been sued by Monsanto. What Monsanto means to say…is that they support chemical farmers, but sue organic farmers…

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organicconsumers.org has this up–more legal tactics by Monsanto.  Their legislators need backbone transplants….

More here on the changes in tadpoles after exposure to RoundUp.

Here’s another link from organic consumers about an organic farmer and their trials.  It sounds like a good book.  From the little tidbits mentioned in the article, she “gets it”–that all things are connected–the earth, the animals, etc.