What's Wrong with Monsanto Helping Post-Earthquake Haiti?

As attention has faded from the earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti, Monsanto has taken the opportunity to plant its GMO seeds in a new market, and it is trying to get away with calling the effort a donation meant to help earthquake relief.

Monsanto has donated the first round of what Global Research calls a new earthquake and a deadly gift: 475 tons of genetically modified seeds, along with the accompanying fertilizer and pesticides—the demand for which tends to increase directly with use of GMO seeds.

IPS News quotes a peasant farmer saying, "we have a problem today with Monsanto and all the multinationals who sell seeds. Seeds and water are the common patrimony of humanity." The story continues on about the growing opposition among farmers:

Earlier this month, in the central square of Hinche, an agricultural town in Haiti's Plateau Central region, a mass of small farmers wearing red shirts and straw hats burned a symbolic quantity of hybrid corn seed donated to Haiti by the U.S. agricultural-technology giant.

The 200,000-member national coalition is encouraging farmers around Haiti to burn Monsanto seeds that have already been distributed, and is calling on the government to reject additional shipments. Farmers want to preserve their traditional "organic agriculture that respects the environment and fights against its degradation. We defend native seeds and the rights of peasants on their land," the same peasant leader, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, told IPS.

The country's food sovereignty is also at risk—farmers want to retain the right to decide their own food policy, especially regarding GMO seeds, which cannot be withdrawn from the environment once they are released. And while Monsanto is calling the seeds a donation, it isn't hard to see how the company will benefit from, as it has done elsewhere around the world (probably most successfully in the U.S. and Canada), getting farmers hooked on a need that only it can supply.