Here is a disturbing story about how Monsanto is trying to intimidate family farmers and organic farmers in the USA which involves, oddly enough, the company suing these farmers if and when seed that blows from Monsanto-seeded farms contaminates the organic farmer's planting beds and these plants grow up and are harvested.
One of the biggest problems we face in our challenge to help preserve the heirloom coffee genome around the world is agribusiness pushing GMO and hybrid coffees onto farmers, while buyers essentially blackmail farmers that they will not buy if the farmers don't convert to higher-yield but poorer-tasting coffees.
http://www.nationofchange.org/300000-organic-farmers-sue-monsanto-federal-court-decision-march-31st-go-trial-1329059467
It does not help the cause of organic and heritage farming when the current government administrations signs agreements allowing the free spread of GMO seed stock. It does always amaze us here at Heirloom Coffee when a supposed Democratic administration sides with big business over small farmers and the safety of the food supply...
Like invasive fish species in our rivers and boa constrictors invading the Everglades, new species of plants can overtake the old ones unintentionally and cause contamination in the continuous passing-down of critical food genes, effectively removing them from our future food supply forever. In a recession as bad as the current one, we need to look at anything that might create jobs and increase yields of exports, etc., but not at the risk of creating a monolithic gene structure of our food supply that could be at risk for very specific parasites or diseases down the line, wherein we could see something like the great coffee blight of 1870, which wiped out 90% of the world supply of coffee.
Losing 90% of the world supply of coffee to a new blight could ruin a lot of people's whole day!
