A global event challenging the agricultural behemoth Monsanto’s efforts to dominate the world food supply is taking place across the globe as millions of anti-GMO activists join forces against the biotech giant.
Dance off against GMOs in Seoul, South Korea.
Civilian Media is live streaming from the March Against Monsanto Event in Toronto, Canada.
Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director at Organic Consumers Association, told RT the claim we need genetically modified food to feed the world “is completely false.”
“We actually have enough grassland in the United States to pasture and raise 100 percent grass-fed beef. So no, the feed the world argument is entirely accurate in the slightest,” she said.
Protesters deploy anagrams to express their Monsanto ire in the heart of Europe.
March Against Monsanto Founder Tami Canal has told The Anti-Media that Saturday’s event will mark the largest event ever carried out by the movement.
“The 3rd global March Against Monsanto (MAM) is expected to be the biggest one yet. With 43 countries on 6 continents, MAM has coordinated 366 official events, with countless others not officially registered.”
Canal notes how what once started as a California ballot measure requiring the labeling of genetically modified food “has turned into a global movement to educate against all fallacies of Monsanto.”
“From Agent Orange to Monsanto’s pending patents directly affiliated with weather modification to the gross government corruption, MAM has evolved to expose all the insidious tentacles that Monsanto possesses.”
Dozens of Indians protest against so-called terminator seeds, genetically modified sterile seeds which present farmers from saving their seeds for the next year.
Monsanto says it has never “commercialized sterile seeds.
“Fact: Monsanto has never commercialized a biotech trait that resulted in sterile – or “Terminator” – seeds. Sharing the concerns of small landholder farmers, Monsanto made a commitment in 1999 not to commercialize sterile seed technology in food crops. We stand firmly by this commitment, with no plans or research that would violate this commitment.”
March against Monsanto in London.
A comprehensive list has been made available by March Against Monsanto. According to a statement by organizers:
“On May 24, millions of activists from around the world will once again March Against Monsanto, calling for the permanent boycott of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and other harmful agro-chemicals. Currently, marches will occur on six continents, in 52 countries,with events in over 400 cities. In the US, solidarity marches are slated to occur in 47 states.”
An interactive map giving details on individual march locations can be viewed here.
Anonymous activists take a less than subtle approach to get the word out about the March Against Monsanto in Miami.
GMO protest in Seoul, South Korea with cellist outside of Monsanto HQ.
As North America wakes up, March Against Monsanto marches and rallies are planned for scores of cities across the continent.
March Against Monsanto hits the port city of Durban, South Africa.
The March Against Monsanto has hit the Down Under, with rallies taking place from coast to Golden Coast.
March Against Monsanto hits Cape Town, South Africa.
Protesters in the Northern Italian city of Trento gather outside a Eurospar supermarket to protest the use of GMOs and fight for what they describe as “food sovereignty.”
Peasant farmers in Accra, the capital of Ghana, join the global day of action against Monsanto.
Russian activists against genetically modified organisms are holding a rally in downtown Moscow under the banner “Russia without GMOs.”
“It is the only day of protest against the dominance of GMO on the planet. On this day, people are gathering in more than 50 countries in order to state their civil stance,” said Elena Sharoykina from the National Organization of Genetic Safety, Interfax News Agency reports.
According to her, the activists are in favor of a moratorium on GMOs in Russia.
“Of course we can’t ban [GMO’s], as we’ve joined the WTO (World Trade Organization)”, she said.
But Sharoykina says that shouldn’t stop the introduction of legislation which would require produce sellers to inform customers about the composition and origins of their goods, giving people the opportunity to choose products with or without GMOs.
The Tauranga New Zealand “March Against Monsanto” rally on Red Square.
Protesters take to the streets of Bangalore, one of seven locations across India where Monsanto has R&D seed breeding stations. The other six locations are in Abohar, Aurangabad, Dharwad, Ghaziabad, Kallakal and Sonepat. The firm also has a seed processing plants at Shamirpet near Hyderabad.
Within India, Monsanto’s vegetable seed products include broccoli, cabbage, carrot, leek, cauliflower, cucumber, lettuce, sweet corn, tomato, pepper, onion and eggplant.
The most controversial Monsanto stables in India, however, have been Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton and Bt brinjal.
According to March Against Monsanto’s press release: “in India, more than 250,000 farmers have committed suicide after Monsanto’s Bt cotton seeds did not perform as promised.”
Many others have accused bio-tech firms of marginalizing farmers’ rights.
Monsanto and other biotech companies are campaigning to prevent the public from realizing that GMOs are actually a pollutant and must be treated as such, Robert Verkerk from the Alliance for Natural Health told RT.
“GMOs are effectively polluting non-GMO agriculture. In every other facet of our lives polluters must pay. This is one very unique example where polluted doesn’t pay any penalty, and everyone else pays instead,”he said.
“I think we will not see a change until we see a more widespread recognition that GMOs are in fact a polluting agent,” he added. “The GMO and biotech interest groups work very hard to try and prove that there is no significant difference between the health effects of consuming GM foods versus non-GMO foots by controlling research and damning research that might oppose to what they are saying.”
South Korean activists protested against Monsanto in front of the company’s HQ in Seoul.
Veterans for Peace, a Missouri-headquartered anti-war NGO, stands in solidarity with the March against Monsanto, it said Saturday in a statement. The organization blames Monsanto for the toxic legacy it left in Vietnam, being the prime producer of the defoliant Agent Orange, used extensively by the US military during the Vietnam War.
Around 5,000 activists plan to attend March Against Monsanto in San Francisco, scheduled to start on Union Square at 12:00 PST. The organizers encourage costumes in protest of the insecticides killing many of the bee and butterfly populations.
To encourage people to attend the rally, social media activists flooded the event’s SF Facebook page with videos of their interpretation of Monsanto’s role in global food production.
In North Dakota’s capital, Bismarck, organizers are also planning to make their voice heard.
“GMOs are plants or animals that have been genetically modified using DNA material from other plants, animals, bacteria or viruses,” March organizer Jessica Horst was quoted by a local publication. “While there are a number of agriculture biotechnology companies engaged in producing GMOs, Monsanto is the largest.”
One of the main hotspots of the world’s wine industry, Sonoma county in California plans to march on Memorial Day.
Occupy Sonoma County is collaborating with the March against Monsanto global action and is planning to host a potluck and barn dance to make the event fun for the entire family.
Free food samples will be provided by some whom the organization calls “Food Heroes” listed in “GMO Food Heroes and Health Food Traitors Shopper’s Guide.” A free non-GMO seed exchange is also organized.
The GMO Free Sonoma County movement is working locally on an ordinance to prohibit propagation, cultivation, raising and growing GMOs in Sonoma County.
Hacktivist group Anonymous gave their blessing for a March against Monsanto, saying that “those who oppose Monsanto’s destructive impact on our biosphere and our food supply will have their voices heard.”
In a video posted ahead of the global event the activists accuse Monsanto of a profit-driven approach.
Activists in five Ohio cities this weekend are joining up to protest the practices of the biotech giant.
March Against Monsanto events will be held in Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton and Maumee to draw attention to the use of GMOs that are thought to impact human health.
“In other countries, genetically modified organisms are altogether banned or they at least have labeling laws that require the companies to label if there are genetically modified organisms in the food,” Hannah Daniels, an organizer of the march in Cleveland told the local news station ahead of the event. “And in America, there is nothing like that at all.”
Thousands of Arizona residents are expected to gather in downtown Tempe to take part in the global action day against Monsanto.
The march is being described as a family event where parents are encouraged to dress their kids as ladybugs, bees with wings and antennae. Adults are welcome to wear hazardous materials suits, gas masks, and gardener attire.
Chattanooga, the fourth-largest city in the US state of Tennessee is also hosting an anti-Monsanto rally, with face-painting scheduled to begin at 1pm local time, before marching starts through downtown. The organizers will be giving away seedlings and information about Monsanto.
Participants are asked to bring signs, music makers, extra seedlings and a wagon or wheelbarrow. The event is organized to be kid-friendly with chalk art, seed-bomb making, and sliding down a grassy hill.
“I don’t think a chemical company known for producing Agent Orange should produce and control the majority of our seeds. It is time we demand transparency and accountability,” Drew Miller, lead organizer of the Chattanooga March Against Monsanto said.
Agroecology and not biotechnology is the way to sustainable agriculture and to tackle world hunger, believes the organizer of the march in Ecuador.
“Monsanto’s harmful practices are causing soil infertility, mono-cropping, loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction, and contributing to beehive collapse. GMO crops cross pollinate with traditional crops, risking peasant farmers’ livelihood,” Josh Castro, organizer for the Quito March Against Monsanto movement.
In India Monsanto controls about 95 percent of the cotton seed market trapping the country’s small farmers in unpayable debt.
“284,000 farmers have committed suicide in India because of debt linked to seed and chemicals,” Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmental activist and anti-globalization author said in a press release ahead of the March Against Monsanto.
“Monsanto have claimed more than 1500 climate resilient patents, and are hoping to use the climate crisis to make even bigger profits,” Shiva says claiming that “Monsanto wants super profits through total control over nature and humanity.”
“If we fail to realize that March Against Monsanto is not about GMOs alone, then we have already lost the battle,” said the founder of the March Against Monsanto’s Agent Orange awareness program, Kelly L. Derricks ahead of the march, Center of Research for Globalization quotes.
The organization’s main role is to increase awareness of Agent Orange, manufactured by Monsanto during the Vietnam War era and used by US forces in herbicide warfare that killing tens of thousands.
Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG) and the Coalition of Farmers against Genetically Modified Organisms will take part in a silent march in Accra against the imposition of GMOs on Ghanaians.
“There is a lot that is at stake here: our health as a people, our environment, our sovereignty, and our prosperity! It is unacceptable that even though an overwhelming number of Ghanaians who know what is going on are strongly opposed to it, but our political class and some agents of the multinational corporations are so keen on imposing it on Ghanaians,” the movement states on their website.
Last year over 2 million people in 436 cities in 52 countries worldwide marched against the largest producer of genetically engineered seeds.
Just before the global march kicks off, RT’s Abby Martin calls on her viewers to take part in the March Against Monsanto.