Carbon credits for cutting down rainforest and farming no-dig

GM Watch

SOUTH AMERICAN GM SOY CLOSE TO GET CARBON CREDITS-AGRIBUSINESS LOBBY IN THE CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS
Javiera Rulli
La Soja Mata, September 2009
http://lasojamata.org/es/node/397

Nice work if you can get it! Encourage people to chop trees and replace them with soy beans. Then sell them expensive GM seed and qualify for carbon credits because the farmers are using a bit of no-till. Of course with the lack of clay and miniscule humus layer, why turn over mostly subsoil?

That's like selling ciggies to kids and then getting a subsidy because the package encourages them not to throw their butts down on the ground.

There seems to be no limits to the absurd and exploititive schemes multinationals such as Monsanto will hatch. And which governments resist? Next thing we hear will be how successful, thus the implication of rightiousness, GM must be coupled with sales figures.

U.S.: KILLER PIGWEED THREATENS CROPS IN THE SOUTH
"Glyphosate (Roundup)-resistant pigweed is choking more than a million acres of cotton and soybeans in America's South, according to a report by ABC News. In the last three months, Jim Hubbard of Double H Farms has spent more than $500,000 fighting the pigweeds, and they still won't die."
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11561:killer-pig-weeds-threaten-crops-in-the-south
http://bit.ly/kiGsL

Will this news reach the South Americans? I don't think so.




"As the UN Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15) gets closer, a new agreement has to be signed for the period after 2012.It is becoming clear how agribusiness attempts to gain profits from the massive carbon credits market. Under the term "Conservation Agriculture", Monsanto and other biotech allies have penetrated the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aiming to get carbon credits for agribusiness. A voluntary 'responsible' label for Roundup Ready soy sponsored by World Wild Life Fund (WWF), and a newly approved Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) methodology are important steps for Agribusiness to get access to this three billion dollar business.

Proposals to include agriculture in carbon offsetting focus on changes in tillage practices and reductions in methane and nitrous oxide emissions. All these practices are included in the concept of "Conservation Agriculture", which is based on three principles: minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotations . However, in the name of Conservation Agriculture and with the explicit consent of FAO and UNFCCC, very different agricultural methods are included. Under this label a range of systems from biological agriculture to No-till GM industrial agriculture can be labelled as sustainable and so receive carbon credits.


For agribusiness, the combination of RR soybean and No-till is an economical success. When glyphosate is sprayed on soy monoculture, all plants die except the GM soy, which significantly simplifies the job of weed control. Mechanical weeding (with the use of ploughs) is substituted by chemical weeding. No-till makes herbicide use indispensable for the weeding; in this sense the best way to name it would be 'Chemical No-till'. The combination of RR soy monocultures and No-till has lead to an overall exponential increase of pesticide use and millions of dollars of profit for seed and chemical companies. The production scale has increased to monocultures of thousands of hectares, with a minimal labour requirement of only 2 people per 1000 hectares, basing all pest management on pesticide spraying machines and airplanes.

The expansion of RR soybean crops is causing massive contamination because of the intensive pesticide use. This leads not only to biodiversity loss, but in countries like Argentina and Paraguay, also people are being exposed to live under "chemical war" conditions. Studies in Argentina and Paraguay demonstrate higher malformations rates in areas of soy production ."

For more information:
javierarulli()yahoo.com


http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/11563-monsanto-penetrating-carbon-credit-mechanism