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Comment by kephra | Hacker News Reader

I'm missing some points:

- Land grabs: Big investors buy agriculture land to produce cash crops for export, e.g soy beans to feed pigs.

- Colonial past: Most land in 3rd world countries is owned by a few rich people. E.g. Namibia was a hunger country before 1990, but is now one of the biggest meat exporters after a successful land reform.

- Frankenfood: Monsanto and other big seed companies destroying the ability of farmers to grow their own seeds.

- Food laws: One of the first things Bremer did after invasion of Iraq was to install US food laws, basically forbidding people to sell traditional food on the market. Forcing them to buy hybrid seeds.

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I was intrigued by your statements and looked up some information on them. "Forcing them to buy hybrid seeds" appears to be a baseless statement. Apparently "Order 81" by Paul Bremer institutes certain patent laws regarding plant seeds, however as noted in a clarification in the following article "The law does not prohibit Iraqi farmers from using or saving 'traditional' seeds." (http://www.grain.org/article/entries/150-iraq-s-new-patent-l...) You can read the actual language of Order 81 at http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_..., which was linked as a citation in the grain.org article.

I can't find anything relating to "forbidding people to sell traditional food on the market" either.

Frankenfood is the one I take issue with: there are plenty of things to criticize Monsanto for, but being able to 'grow your own seeds' has little to do with GMO's.

Crops like corn/maize haven't been replantable in the USA since hybridization caught on in the 1940's.

Could you expand on how "Frankenfood" is causing hunger? From what I've read from the farmers that use Monsanto seed, they claim that their crops' yields are more predictable. This claim is backed by recent research: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/do-gmo-crops...

e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=monsanto+india+suicide

The base problem is: Once your neighbor starts to use Monanto and round up, the ground water and soil is poisoned and you need to grow resistant crops also. Using Frankenfood crops means that you can no longer grow your own seeds. You have to buy the expensive seeds, the expensive herbicides, and you end up in debt and poverty.

You can also no longer do classical crop rotation, once you start poisoning your field with roundup. The result is a monoculture that calls for even more fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides.

This is not limited to Frankenfood, but also to hybrid plants. So we come back to food laws, who only allow to sell crops of certain strains. Those strains that are sold by big seed companies.

Tempting fate there, don't you mean "after invasion of Iraq"

oups thanks - corrected this!

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