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The Corporatizing Of Nature

Have you ever given much thought to the journey of a seed?

Technically, they’re little baby plants with protective shells that live in a quiet, dormant state, until someone or something comes along and puts into motion its intended fate.

They’re kept fairly happy for a while in this dream. They’ve got their own supply of food within their shells, and nothing but time, really, before their desire to spring to life will become an overwhelming need.

If you are the gardener, both you and the seed will make the decision to change its course.

If you water a seed once, it will not be convinced. It will wait a while longer to gauge the true sincerity of your gesture. The seed is wondering how responsible you really are.

If the water supply passes muster, then and only then will it send its roots down into the soil where there’s likely to be even more moisture. It’s getting its feet wet, so to speak.

Still not certain, the seed awaits some perfect moment, where just the right amount of water will penetrate its shell and then, by no choice of its own, a set of chemical changes will take place inside.

Once it’s built its trust, there will be a moment where it cannot possibly turn back. The shell stretches and splits, letting in more water to assist it on its way.

Despite the fact that the seed is split open and vulnerable, it has made up its mind. Respiration begins-a signal to the universe that it is alive.

It needs to get organized now, and there’s the small matter of leftover food to deal with – the food it carried inside during its dormancy. It breathes deeply and the swirling air converts the leftovers into sugar and proteins, and then into amino acids which are the building blocks of the plant’s tissues. It is taking shape – a shape that’s visible to the human eye.

What the seed needs now is balance, and this is up to you. Not too much sand in the soil! And give it some breathing room. Too much water will drive out the air and too little water will fail to bring it moisture.

And then, more than anything, it needs the light of day. And then it will grow, as sure as anything.

This process has repeated endless times through millennia, and is one of the great mysteries of life, but what you might not know is that great changes are taking place in the world of seed.

More than ever, plants are dependent on us. Once we domesticated them to create food, we took away their ability to self-perpetuate. No longer natural, a plant like corn really needs us to care for it. And perhaps this is why we’re losing. We’re actually losing food.

Fewer and fewer farmers are growing certain types of food-especially ancient breeds. Because of this, their seeds have all but disappeared. Biodiversity is in jeopardy.

And, according to people who know about such things, 94 percent of seed varieties available at the turn of the century in America and considered a part of human history have been lost for good.

But this is not the only assault on seeds. The modern food chain has launched its own attack.

Corporations have declared seed to be private property. At present, seed is largely controlled by industrial giants like Monsanto, who say their genetically modified seed is an “invention” and must be strictly regulated.

Seed, in the opinion of many, is not an invention. They have evolved by nature and farmer across millennia. Once upon a time, the United States Patent and Trademark Office refused to grant patents on seed, and saw them as life forms that have too many variables to be patented.

But that’s not true any longer. Now farmers must buy new seed every year instead of saving them after a harvest and replanting them in the spring as nature intended. It’s not a secret that Monsanto relies on a sinister army of private investigators and agents in the American Midwest to strike fear into farm country. They’re the seed police.

Almost all conventional, genetically modified organisms and organic hybrid seeds are patented and cannot be saved for use in the next planting season. So, in effect, we have corporatized nature.

Man has been carrying seeds with him for eons, in little sacks and rustic bags on long roads through time. How have we gotten to a point where nature has become the domain of profiteering men? Seeds are a gift to us from nature.

I tell you this: A Forbes magazine writer famously pointed out that just 147 global corporations own a great deal of the world. And there are things that they endeavor to do that are not in our best interest.

Henry Kissinger once said, “He who controls the food supply controls the people.”

Maybe it’s time we wrestled back some of that control and remembered that the miracle of life belongs to all of us.

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