If this sounds like a replay of the British East India Company, dictating conditions and trade in rice, indigo, cotton, tea, opium, and other goods of their time, it should. And, of course, they thwart any and all attempts at national food self-sufficiency.A rancher, who does not sell his beef at the depressed price offered by these five firms, will starve.They position their operations to control retail-final distribution of food-and dictate prices and standards to suppliers.They dominate fertilizer and other agro-chemicals-development, pricing, and availability.They dominate world crop and livestock research and genetics with wrongful patent/intellectual property rights, to seeds, breeds, and even biotech procedures.They engage in, and often set, speculation on the commodity exchanges.They intervene to determine where crops are grown, which they call “export sourcing,” and “value chain” development.They dominate the export and import of basic foodstuffs-wheat, soy, corn, rice, sugar, dairy tropical products, etc.In this report, we will explain how the global grain and food cartels function. To see more, visit KUNC-FM.Here, we continue with our report on the food cartel. With the investigation turning in other directions, this beige building in Colorado can return to business as usual: securely storing the world's seeds.Ĭopyright 2016 KUNC-FM. That's how all eyes fell on the vault's doors when news broke in June about Monsanto's glyphosate-resistant wheat, commonly called Roundup Ready, found growing in small volunteer patches in a field in Oregon.ĭierig said he's unable to comment on the Oregon case as the USDA is still investigating the exact source of the errant wheat plants. There'd have to be some kind of extenuating circumstances, for them to say, 'We need you to keep this seed,' " Dierig said.Įven though it is rare, privately owned, genetically modified seed does make it into storage. "It would really be a rare case where we would keep another company's seed. Private companies such as Monsanto and Dupont can also store their seeds in the federally owned building. Other seed vaults throughout the world store their back-up collections here because of the facility's reputation not just for the promise of security but also the ability to preserve the viability of seeds for longer periods of time. It serves as another reminder of the building's emphasis on security.
#DUPONT DOOMSDAY VAULT TV#
To the right of the large, gray metal vault doors, a TV screen shows a live stream of the seed vault. You need access to a secure database to find out what's inside. Looking at a seed pouch, there's nothing that tells you what kind of seeds you're holding, just a bar code. Another security measure is the labeling system. "They're all bar-coded so we know exactly where everything is," said Dave Dierig, research leader at the center and one of six people in the building with access to the vaults. The temperature is kept at a level similar to a home freezer, at low humidity to arrest seed degradation and keep them viable longer. In this room, there are 600,000 seed packets, which puts the total number of seeds in the billions. Upstairs in the facility's main cold storage vault, ceiling-high shelves hold seemingly endless rows of white pouches. Inside, it holds one of the world's largest collections of seeds, genetic material for livestock, microbes and endangered plants under highly sophisticated lock and key. From the outside it may not look like a bastion of the American agriculture industry. Just a friendly welcome video playing in the lobby and a warm-natured receptionist behind a desk, who hands you a clipboard with a sign-in sheet.īut that doesn't mean the center is lax on security. It's a nondescript, beige building just off the quad at Colorado State University. Officially, the Fort Collins facility is called the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation. But the investigation raises the question of how secure these seed vaults actually are. Department of Agriculture spokesman says all of Monsanto's 1,500 pounds of wheat seeds held at the vault were incinerated a year and a half ago at the corporation's request. The facility has been cleared of wrongdoing since then. A flurry of initial finger-pointing cast potential blame on a federal seed vault in Fort Collins, Colo., which housed the same strain of wheat, developed by Monsanto Corp., for about seven years up until late 2011. When unapproved genetically modified wheat was found growing in Oregon earlier this year, it didn't take long for accusations to start flying.
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