Farmers and consumers face a new kind of chemical terror: pesticides. Since it is very difficult to detect the presence of toxic chemicals in various crops, an Israeli organization has deployed a failsafe method to root out the threat using the same kind of equipment used by America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to protect citizens against chemical warfare.
Vernon Hugh Bowman, farmer vs Monsanto, billion dollar seed and biotech company.
It sounds like something from a book about the perils of the future, a future that is strangely today reality: The seed-engineering company Monsanto genetically engineers seeds to have desirable traits that make them hearty or the plants resistant to the effects of herbicides like Roundup. But when farmers buy and use these seeds they must sign away rights to use the seeds of future generations. After all, Monsanto is investing in the biotechnology (the company reasons) and it needs to ensure future business for its investment.
Holding back the use of one’s self-made seeds sounds almost as bizarre as bottled air in the Lorax, or the bottling of water. But in the case of water, bottled O2 and seeds: these things do happen in our polluted world.
Environmentalists typically are against the practices of Monsanto, claiming that there are certain inalienable rights people and farmers have when they buy seeds. Some farmers in Egypt have resisted Monsanto’s GM maize, while a new company from Israel called Morflora claims to have a new way of washing seeds to avoid Monsanto’s ethical problems altogether. But farmers need to think about their future, and profits. They buy Monsanto seeds because in some markets it is the only way to stay relevant.
So far Monsanto has been a winner in cases against farmers it has taken to court who have gone against the company’s terms, recounts a recent story in the New York Times. Now an American farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman, from Indiana has gone against Monsanto by using soy seeds produced by his crop. The trick: he bought his own seeds back from a grain elevator which sells the seeds for animal food.
According to the Times article: “the 75-year-old farmer from southwestern Indiana will face off Tuesday against the world’s largest seed company, Monsanto, in a Supreme Court case that could have a huge impact on the future of genetically modified crops, and also affect other fields from medical research to software.”
Bowman pleads that he honored Monsanto’s agreement and didn’t use the seeds from his harvest and noted that the contract he signed didn’t make provisions for him buying the same seeds back from another party. He told the NYT that he didn’t want to pay Monsanto huge sums of money for their soy seeds because he planted his crop late in the season, after the wheat harvest, and that it was bound to fail.
He lost to a district court hearing in 2007, and had to pay Monsanto more than $80,000 for infringing on patents owned by the company.
But now Bowman who is planning to fight till the end says, “I was prepared to let them run over me, but I wasn’t getting out of the road.”
Once the beans are sold to the grain elevator, Bowman claims that Monsanto has no more rights to them. And this is what he is bringing with him to court.
He is being helped by lawyers working pro bono.
The question about patenting living organisms has long been considered immoral, but it is the only legal tool in place that can support and grow the biotechnology industry, proponents for the industry argue.
Sources say that any Supreme Court ruling on this new case could have monumental impacts on the biotechnology industry.
I have to note that the seeds in question are ones Monsanto produces to make crops tolerant to Roundup (a Monsanto product ), a strong herbicide that kills weeds but not the crop. Roundup has also been linked to birth defects and God knows what else. Were more farmers to return to permaculture methods of farming, ones that use organic-friendly and natural pesticides, and sometimes heirloom seeds, all this business of Monsanto would be irrelevant.
Yet when I say this people I know who argue for genetic engineering they say GMOs are the only choice for feeding a hungry world. What do you say?
Image of Vernon Hugh Bowman via the NYT
Update 2013: United States Supreme Court patent decision in which the Court unanimously affirmed the decision of the Federal Circuit that the patent exhaustion doctrine does not permit a farmer to plant and grow saved, patented seeds without the patent owner’s permission. Vernon lost.
Recyclable plastics or wastes for the dump? The choice is ours.
Plastic items that usually get discarded and wind up being buried in landfills or washed out to sea are serious issues brought up during annual events like Earth Day. The seriousness of large amounts of plastic debris in the worlds seas and oceans have raised fears of giant plastic garbage patches in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as in the Mediterranean Sea.
When I lived on a roof in Tel Aviv with my boyfriend Elad more than a decade ago, I would spend some evenings watching the Cypress trees sway and pray in the wind, and above them flocks of starlings painting the sky with their moves like tea leaves in a cup. Without a television it was the perfect form of entertainment. But unless you had your head angled straight up to the sky, you’d miss them.
Earlier this month a large flock of Starlings decided to give a show of a lifetime to a dozen or so families in the Negev Desert, Israel. Birds in the desert are easier to see: As the sun sets the birds in this 8-minute video start to get trickier and trickier with their coordinated air show, or aerial antics. According to Israel Forever this is the first time these Starlings have appeared in the desert for the last 20 years.
“The common starling, first sighted last year at Kibbutz Ein Gev on the eastern shore of the Kinneret, used to fly to Israel from Russia and Eastern Europe until about 20 years ago in mind-boggling flocks numbering some 15 million. But for unknown reasons, the population declined to about a tenth of its former size, and for that reason is no longer seen in Israel.
“But now that their numbers are climbing back, they can now be sighted again in Israel, particularly at dusk when the flocks begin their spectacular aerobatic display before retiring for the night,” the website reports.
Watch the video. It builds to a crescendo by minute 8. They say God is in the details. But obviously, also in the birds.
A new research paper traces the roots of the wild olive to one location.
Olives, staple of Mediterranean cuisine, have dubious origins. Called the “tree of life” for the sustenance it provides and its myriad non-food uses (read our list of 10 weird and wonderful ways to use olive oil), the domesticated olive tree is central to Greek, Roman and early Christian mythology. Today, Spain is the world’s top producer, but where did it all begin? Wild olive trees (oleasters) have been harvested since 10,000 BC, and crop domestication was believed to have started in the Near East (ancient Palestine, now modern Jordan) about 6,000 years ago. Using genetics, fossil records and climate modeling, an international team of experts have determined that the olive tree’s roots lie in one place:
Egypt has certified the country’s first female dive master – a devout Muslim who refers to herself as a feminist. With coveted dive spots scattered all along the Red Sea, the ecologically-threatened Sinai Peninsula attracts scores of Egyptian and foreign visitors every year. But until now, not one Arab or Egyptian woman has taken their passion as far as Suezett al-Fallal.
Hamdy Anan has been leading diving trips for the last 17 years, and in all that time, he told Egypt Independent, there has not been a single female dive master. Anan helped to oversee al-Fallal’s three month certification course, a process that requires extraordinary commitment and physical stamina, but there is more to the newly ordained dive master than meets the eye.
Israelis are not only clean tech startup masters but also – increasingly – big fans of public transportation, which is why Moovit makes such good sense. A dynamic new mobile app that tracks buses, planes, trains and other forms of transport in 30 cities across the globe, this user-generated platform makes getting from point A to point B a snap. It’s like the Waze of the public transportation world, and gives current bus and train schedules, while letting users notify each other if the air conditioning is on or if the bus is too crowded.
Given that 85 percent of the country’s residents lack access to electricity, it is no surprise that Ethiopia has pursued an aggressive hydropower plan. But the Grand Renaissance Dam and similar projects are expected to create significant environmental and social disruptions, problems that the former President Meles Zenawi both denied and defied.
But the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCO) recognizes the danger of relying too much on hydropower, which is an erratic and possibly endangered source of energy. While the country has the staggering potential to produce 45,000 megawatts of hydroelectricity, geothermal also offers promise – so much so that the World Bank has backed a plan to conduct preliminary exploration and drilling.
The bard believed that a “rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but labeling mid-February fun as a Valentine’s event is controversial in the Middle East.
What began as a quiet Western tradition, indulged by the leisure class, got a post-industrial kick-in-the-pants thanks to annual promotion from a growing news industry. Simply scrawl some treacly verse on colored paper or splurge on an affordable mass-produced card, and a low-cost Lovefest for the masses was born. This holiday with dubious origins (did you know there are over a dozen Saint Valentines?) has been a runaway commercial train ever since.
The Zorlu Group, one of Turkey’s biggest business conglomerates, has its eyes on another behemoth: Israel’s largest gas field, the Leviathan.
Under a new plan proposed by Zorlu, an undersea pipeline would deliver 8-10 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year from the Leviathan, 130 kilometers west of Haifa, to Turkey’s southern coast, reports Haaretz. The plan makes sense for Zorlu, one of Turkey’s biggest gas consumers, and for Leviathan’s partners, for whom this is the most profitable way to sell Levithan’s output. But will tense relations between the two countries allow the deal to proceed?
Morocco Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, Mayor of Fez and Secretary General of Istiqlal Party Hamid Chabat, and security official at the inauguration of a restored synagogue in Fez. AFP
Islamist Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane represented King Mohammed VI in an inauguration ceremony marking the completion of a 17th century synagogue restoration project in Fez yesterday.
In 2011, when a new constitution was adapted, the king said that Jewish places of worship throughout Morocco should be restored, even as the Arab spring roared across North Africa.The newly renovated Slat Alfassiyine synagogue in the heart of one of the world’s oldest medieval cities, the country’s cultural and spiritual nucleus, symbolizes how seriously he took that mandate.
Got the Foggiest Notion How to Drive in Desert Fog?
Camel caravans and soaring sand dunes demand backdrops of sun-bleached skies (or star-strewn heavens). But what happens when the fog rolls in? Dense fog is a key feature of a desert environment, a natural result of rapid temperature swings. Topography also plays a role in fog formation, as moist cool air condenses it forms fog banks at ground level. It’s not just London and San Francisco that get the misty treatment, many Middle East locations can best Washington D.C. for the Foggy Bottom title.
Southwest monsoons cloak the east coast of Yemen in thick fog from June to September. Along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, an area of scant precipitation, fog brings the moisture necessary to sustain both flora and wildlife.
On Oman’s Jiddat al Harasis, when prevailing winds come off the Indian Ocean, the sea breeze causes a rapid drop in air temperature while increasing relative humidity. This means fog, a critical moisturizer for this area where annual rainfall averages less than 50 millimeters (fog precipitation along the Dhofar coast is among the highest in the world).
Descend from the hills of Amman to the outlying Jordan desert on any cool morning and be slapped in the face with a misty wall that cuts vision and halts traffic. Visibility deteriorates in a matter of seconds. In a region where vehicle maintenance is inconsistent and driving skills questionable in the best weather conditions, do you have the right stuff to navigate fog?
Sound the alarms? Where has Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq’s underground freshwater sea gone?
NASA’s imaging technology recently brought some bad news about Mideast air pollution. Now NASA brings more bad news about the Mideast water supply. We already knew that the Dead Sea is shrinking. Some people are even trying to do something about it. But the Dead sea is– dead, its water is too salty for our energy guzzling desalinization plants. So it isn’t practical for human consumption or irrigation. But what if by some miracle the Mideast had access to a body of fresh water the size of the Dead Sea?
Pink slime, an Egyptian muscleman with freakish biceps, and horse-burgers: what makes news go viral?
Ages back, the day after actress Natalie Wood died, I got two phone calls from my brothers – each on an opposite American coast – with the same awful joke*. How could something so bad get near-instant attention of people 3,000 miles apart? This was pre-internet, and those scratchy calls came in on landlines. Decades later, the phenomenon still baffles me: why is it so easy to get folks incited over absurdities when it’s impossible to get them to, say, unite over recycling, embrace Meatless Mondays or quit plastic bags?
People helping people. Is there a better way to burn a few calories?
Habitat for Humanity Jordan (H4H) recently teamed up with Sahhyieh Jamia, a community association in Deir Alla (Salt province), and American Community School to help build homes in a village near Salt. You’d think this architect would record the event with artsy construction snaps: turns out the house was the least important part of the day. I’m guessing that’s should be part of H4H’s motto. The American Community School (ACS) is a private international school in Amman. Rigorous curriculum, great facilities, but its middle name says it all: this place is about community. Look on for our photos and day out with the organization.
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