Farmers and Biowatch say no to GMOs 

and prepare to march against Monsanto

 On Saturday 23 May 2015, Biowatch South Africa 

and rural farmers in northern KZN 

will join the global March Against Monsanto, 

saying loudly and clearly: No to GMOs; No to industrial agriculture; 

No to the corporate control of our seeds and our food. 

 The March Against Monsanto (MAM) is a global protest against Monsanto and GMOs. Since the first march in 2013, MAM has grown into an international grassroots movement and at least 428 cities in 38 countries around the world are expected to take part in MAM 2015.

Although this global protest targets Monsanto because it represents some of the worst products and practices, it is also aimed at other agribusiness multinationals responsible for the globally damaging industrial agriculture system. The other major corporations profiting from toxic agricultural chemicals and GMOs are Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow Agroscience and DuPont Pioneer.

Why we will be marching

There is increasing evidence of GMOs creating environmental and health risks and having dubious economic advantages: promised crop yields failing to materialise, increased dependency on pesticides, and contamination of farmers’ seeds.

“Even those farmers and consumers who reject GMOs and industrial agriculture are at risk of having their seeds, water and soil contaminated by unwanted genes and poisons because these products cannot be contained once they have been released in the environment,” said Rose Williams, Biowatch director.

“The corporate control of seeds and the food system makes farmers and society dependent. GMOs are yet another technology that furthers the industrialisation of agriculture, replacing ecologically and culturally appropriate and diverse traditional seeds, foods and farming methods to make farmers and consumers dependent on a limited and expensive range of corporate products. This industrialisation makes communities economically vulnerable to hunger and puts the entire food system at risk of collapse in the context of disease outbreaks and climate change,” she said.

The products of industrial agriculture, 

including GMOs and pesticides, 

cannot co-exist alongside agro-ecological farming and must be rejected.