NOFA co-opted by Monsanto?
Do you know who will deliver the keynote speech at NOFA, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont this weekend? A Monsanto man who was put in charge of the USDA. Yet another case of the fox entrusted to guard the hen house. Remember James Watt?
This is a slap-in-the-face to every small farmer in Vermont.
Today I learned that I have been censored from asking any questions in the staged Q&A session after the Monsanto keynote speech.
What could the NOFA board be thinking? Reached one of them on the phone today, learned that NOFA believe in ‘constructive engagement’ with Monsanto/USDA. Unacceptable. Bishop Desmond Tutu, in the context of the Reagan administration’s policy of ‘constructive engagement’ with the apartheid regime in South Africa, declared that ‘constructive engagement is an abomination, an unmitigated disaster’.
‘In my view, the Reagan administration’s support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian… You are either in favour of evil or you are in favour of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can’t be neutral.’
And so it will be a disaster for Vermont, if NOFA continues down this ill-advised path. Biotech was one of the sponsors of this year’s Maine Agricultural Trades Show. Their new tactic is to co-opt, to promote ‘constructive engagement’ to get everyone to ‘get along’.
You don’t get along with corruption, you confront it! Wherever you find it. Take the moral high ground, against representatives of a corrupt government that has lost all moral authority.
The NOFA Board are naive enough to believe that if we give the Monsanto man the red carpet, that it will inspire some ‘positive change’ in Washington’s policies of agribusiness subsidy, and some ‘awareness’ of what we’re doing in Vermont.
To that I say, ‘Confront, confront.’ The federal government has already shown that it’s corrupt to the core and controlled by corporations such as Monsanto. An independent Vermont would turn this guy away at the border, and embargo every single seed from his company! The least NOFA could do, is not give him a stage.
Here’s my question, the censored question of the small farmer:
Since the time of Scott Nearing we have been working hard in Vermont and have proven that a diversified, sustainable organic farm could win in the marketplace. Some of these farms have succeeded without any government support, despite having to compete with federally subsidised mono-crops and the corporate food industry that YOU Mr. Secretary of Agriculture, represent. So why are you here, since this conference is about sustainable and organic agriculture and you represent everything that all of the NOFA Vermont rank-and-file members are fighting against?
Let’s see some spine, NOFA. Or at least tell the rank-and-file, what your price was.
