[A-List] Revenge of the weeds

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

A small cloud  on the horizon of capitalist genetic modification: nature
can modify genes faster than we can.

The widespread use of Roundup is promoting resistant weeds in Delaware,
Maryland, California, western Tennessee and at the edges of the Corn Belt
in Ohio and Indiana.

Monsanto is confident that new products can be produced, but what is
significant in this story is to reminder about the limits of commodity
production, certainly as it relates to nature.

It is close to the fundamental contradiction of a commodity. While it has a
use value in itself in the eyes of the purchaser that is for use in a wider
self-organising environment. It will not be safe to leave the regulation of
this process to the private ownership of the means of production.

Consider also the stories, which seldom reach the sensational headlines
they deserve, about how precariously balanced is our advantage over
bacteria in the development of antibiotics. We are a decade away from the
individual antibiotics that have contributed to a great rise in health care
in the last 50 years, being swamped by the natural biodiversity of bacteria.

No doubt the class forces in society will continue to privilege the
position of those running finance capitalist companies, but in areas
involving the environment, the trend is inevitable towards increasing
social control.

>    A new risk for altered crops: weeds Andrew Pollack The New York Times
> Wednesday, January 15, 2003
>
> The world's most widely grown genetically engineered crops - soybeans,
> cotton, corn and canola, developed to be impervious to a popular herbicide
> - are facing a new challenge to their continued long-term use. The
> herbicide, known as Roundup, is beginning to lose its effectiveness in
> controlling weeds.


http://www.iht.com/articles/83374.htm

Chris Burford

London