[Pollinator] Fwd: Monsanto research grants.....

[Ladadams at aol.com]

Thanks to Kathy Christy for this posting
 
 
  
____________________________________
 From: kc at globalcommunicators.com
To: Ladadams at aol.com,  roger at langstudios.com, tom at vanarsdall.com
CC:  charlotte at rphanes.com
Sent: 5/15/2012 5:47:49 A.M. Pacific Daylight  Time
Subj: Monsanto research grants.....



Maybe worth  circulating this notice (circulated by Paul Growald’s and my 
chum  Charlotte Hanes) about Monsanto’s  involvement with research grants to 
the NAPPC and pollinator contact lists  …. 
Good luck/wishes on  all fronts, Kath 
PS good piece about  bee health and seed coating harm to them, reported on 
NBC recently.   
 
  
____________________________________
 
From:  Charlotte Hanes  [mailto:charlotte at rphanes.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 8:02  AM
To:  charlotte at rphanes.com
Subject: It does not surprise me,  but......
 
 
 
Thanks for your  comments on this......Charlotte
 

 
 
MONDAY,  MAY 14, 2012 08:50 AM EDT






_Monsanto’s  college strangehold_ 
(http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/monsantos_college_strangehold/singleton/) 
A  new report has shocking findings about the connection between corporate  
funding and agricultural research
BY  _JILL  RICHARDSON_ (http://www.salon.com/writer/jill_richardson/) , 
_ALTERNET_ (http://www.alternet.org/)    
·                                   
In  a Thursday, May 10, 2012 photo, a farm worker prepares a tomato field 
near  Oneonta, Ala. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves) (Credit:  AP)   
 
 
This  article originally appeared on _AlterNet_ (http://www.alternet.org/) .
Here’s what happens  when corporations begin to control education. 
 (http://www.alternet.org/)  (http://www.alternet.org/) “When I approached  
professors to discuss research projects addressing organic agriculture in  
farmer’s markets, the first one told me that ‘no one cares about people  
selling food in parking lots on the other side of the train tracks,’” said a  
PhD student at a large land-grant university who did not wish to be  
identified. “My academic adviser told me my best bet was to write a grant for  
Monsanto or the Department of Homeland Security to fund my research on why  
farmer’s markets were stocked with ‘black market vegetables’ that ‘are a  
bioterrorism threat waiting to happen.’ It was communicated to me on more than  
one occasion throughout my education that I should just study something  
Monsanto would fund rather than ideas to which I was deeply committed. I ended 
 up studying what I wanted, but received no financial support, and paid for 
my  education out of pocket.” 
Unfortunately, she’s  not alone. Conducting research requires funding, and 
today’s research follows  the golden rule: The one with the gold makes the  
rules. 
A report just  released by Food and Water Watch examines the role of 
corporate funding of  agricultural research at land grant universities, of which 
there are more than  100. “You hear again and again Congress and regulators 
clamoring for  science-based rules, policies, regulations,” says Food and 
Water Watch  researcher Tim
Schwab, explaining why he began investigating corporate  influence in 
agricultural research. “So if the rules and regulations and  policies are based 
on science that is industry-biased, then the fallout goes  beyond academic 
articles. It really trickles down to farmer livelihoods and  consumer choice.” 
The report found  that nearly one quarter of research funding at land grant 
universities now  comes from corporations, compared to less than 15 percent 
from the USDA.  Although corporate funding of research surpassed USDA 
funding at these  universities in the mid-1990s, the gap is now larger than ever. 
What’s more, a  broader look at all corporate agricultural research, $7.4 
billion in 2006,  dwarfs the mere $5.7 billion in all public funding of 
agricultural research  spent the same year. 
Influence does not  end with research funding, however. In 2005, nearly one 
third of agricultural  scientists reported consulting for private industry. 
Corporations endow  professorships and donate money to universities in 
return for having  buildings, labs and wings named for them. Purdue University’s 
Department of Nutrition  Science blatantly offers _corporate  affiliates_ 
(http://www.cfs.purdue.edu/fn/outreach/corporate_affiliates/corp_affiliates.ht
ml)  “corporate visibility with students and  faculty” and “commitment by 
faculty and administration to address [corporate]  members’ needs,” in 
return for the $6,000 each corporate affiliate pays  annually. 
In perhaps the most  egregious cases, corporate boards and college 
leadership overlap. In 2009,  South Dakota  State’s president, for  example, joined 
the board of directors of Monsanto, where he earns six figures  each year. 
_Bruce  Rastetter_ 
(http://www.farm-news.com/page/content.detail/id/502982/GUEST-COLUMN.html?nav=0)  is simultaneously the co-founder and managing  
director of a company called AgriSol Energy and a member of the Iowa Board of  
Regents. Under his influence, Iowa  State joined AgriSol in a venture in  
Tanzania that would have _forcefully  removed 162,000 people_ 
(http://allafrica.com/stories/201202170856.html)  from their land, but the  university later 
pulled out of the project after public  outcry. 
What is the impact  of the flood of corporate cash? “We know from a number 
of meta-analyses, that  corporate funding leads to results that are 
favorable to the corporate  funder,” says Schwab. For example, one _peer-reviewed  
study_ 
(http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005)  found that corporate-funded nutrition research on  soft drinks, juice 
and milk were four to eight times more likely to reach  conclusions in line 
with the sponsors’ interests. And when a scrupulous  scientist publishes 
research that is unfavorable to the study’s funder, he or  she should be 
prepared to look for a new source of  funding. 
That’s what happened  to a team of researchers at University of Illinois 
who were funded by a statewide  fertilizer “checkoff” after they published _a 
 finding_ (http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/5/52/Mulvaney_et_al_2007.pdf)  
that nitrogen fertilizer depletes organic matter  in the soil. Checkoffs 
are a common method used to market agricultural  products, and they are funded 
by a small amount from each sale of a product –  in this case, fertilizer. 
Richard Mulvaney, one of the U of I researchers,  feels it is twisted that, 
in this way, farmers fund research intended to  promote fertilizer use with 
their own fertilizer  purchases. 
But often the  industry influence may be more subtle. Joyce Lok, a graduate 
student at  Iowa  State University, said, “If a corporation  funds your 
research, they want you to look at certain research questions that  they want 
answered. So if that happens it’s not like you can explore other  things they 
don’t want you to look at… I think they direct the research in  that way.” 
John Henry Wells,  who spent several decades as a student, professor and 
administrator at land  grant universities sees it a different way. As an 
academic, he hopes that his  research is relevant to real world problems that 
agriculture faces at the  time. “When you ask the question, did I ever outline 
a research plan with the  explicit notion of is this going to be fundable, I 
would say no. But I thought  very deeply about whether my research plan was 
going to be relevant, and one  of the indicators of relevancy would be if 
the ideas I put forward would get  the attention of trade associations, 
private industry, benefactors,  etc.” 
If scientists use  fundability as an important criteria of selecting 
research topics, research  intended to serve the needs of the poor and the 
powerless will be at a  disadvantage. However, Wells says that this is hardly a new 
phenomenon: land  grants have existed to serve the elites since their 
creation in the 19th  century. 
“As its basis, the  land-grant university was intended to cater to a narrow 
political interest of  landowners and homesteaders – individuals who had 
the right to vote and  participate in the political structure of a 
representative democracy.” he  says. “Contemporarily, it is not so much that the 
land-grant university has  been corrupted by modern agro-industrial influence, as 
it has been  historically successful in focusing on its mission in the 
context of our  Constitutional framework of governance. For the land-grant 
university, its  greatest strength – a political collaboration spanning the 
top-to-bottom  echelons of influence – has been its greatest  weakness.” 
Land grant  universities and the USDA itself first came into being at a 
time when the  academic view of agriculture was fundamentally changing – even 
if most farmers  at the time ignored the advice of academics, dismissing them 
as “book farmers”  who knew little about actually working the land. Will 
Allen writes about this  period in his book ”The War on Bugs,” telling the 
story of  Justus von  Liebig, a prominent agricultural chemist in  Germany. 
“In  the 1830s, Liebig began asserting that the most essential plant 
nutrients were  nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. His theories fueled  the 
development of chemical fertilizers and ushered in a new age of  agricultural 
science and soil chemistry in the 1840s and 1850s. Though many of  Liebig’s 
theories were wrong, he was the first great propagandist for  chemistry and for 
chemical-industrial agriculture.” Perhaps  the most  significant of his 
mistakes was his belief that organic matter in the soil was  unimportant. 
Dozens of Americans  studied under Liebig and returned to the U.S. to  
continue their work. Two of these students established labs at Harvard and  
Yale, and soon “all agricultural schools and experiment stations in the  country 
followed their lead.” Thus,  practically  from the start, the elites in 
this country served the interests of those who  peddled chemical fertilizers 
and other agricultural  inputs – even if that  wasn’t their intent. No doubt 
many were enticed by the prospect of founding a  new, modern, scientific 
form of agriculture, as they felt they were  doing. 
The unholy trinity  of industry, government and academics promoting 
industrial agriculture and  de-emphasizing or dismissing sustainable methods has a 
long history and it  continues today. In its report, Food and Water Watch 
advocates a return to  robust federal funding of research at land grant 
universities. But government  is hardly immune from serving the corporate agenda  
either. 
Take, for example,  Roger Beachy, the former head of the  National 
Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the agency in the USDA that  doles out 
research grants. Beachy spent much of his career as  an academic, collaborating 
with Monsanto to produce the world’s first  genetically engineered tomato. 
He later became the founding  president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science 
Center, Monsanto’s non-profit arm,  before President Obama appointed him to 
lead NIFA. 
As Schwab noted,  policy is often based on research, but good policy 
requires a basis in  unbiased, objective research. In a system in which 
corporations and government  both fund research, but due to the revolving door, the 
same people switch  between positions within industry, lobbying for industry, 
and within  government, what is the  solution?
  
____________________________________
 
No virus found in  this message.
Checked by AVG - _www.avg.com_ (http://www.avg.com/) 
Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus  Database: 2425/4999 - Release Date:  05/14/12
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20120515/60edc0c5/attachment-0001.html>