Gates and Brown Support GMOs and Chemicals

When animals are raised according to regenerative agriculture, a complete ecosystem is created, one that is both healing for the land and productive for the farmers who keep it. Eating meat is not synonymous with harming the environment; it’s industrial farming practices that inflict the damage. Some also believe eating meat means ripping out more forests so animals can graze, but often it’s grasslands and prairies that have been plowed up to plant a surplus of corn for ethanol.

U.S. cropland is already dominated by a two-crop planting cycle of corn and soybeans, largely for industrial animal feed. Like concentrated animal feeding operations, these chemical-laden monocrops are devastating the environment, and even though they’re plant foods, are part of the problem, not the solution.

Rather than reverting to regenerative agriculture, in which livestock and crops are integrated into a symbiotic, complementary system that mimics the way nature works, agrochemical companies like Syngenta are using gene editing, genetic engineering, chemicals and biologics to create hybrid seed lines, crops resistant to winds, flooding and droughts and other lab-created agricultural elements.

It’s all based on technology to advance seed and crop protections, in what’s referred to as “the new paradigm of farming.” If Gates has his way, organic will be pushed out of the picture. Fortune reported:¹⁰

“Gates — America’s biggest owner of farmland — acknowledges that organic farming is more harmful to the environment than conventional farming. Asked by Rashida Jones on a December 2020 podcast, ‘Does eating organic help [reduce emissions]?’ Gates replied, ‘No, organic produce requires more land than typical farming techniques. I know that’s not a popular answer.’ Jones riposted, ‘Hard take, Bill!’”

Brown is also pro-GMOs and chemical herbicides. Fortune continued:¹¹

“In an article from 2019, Brown wrote that Impossible was facing a shortage of soy because it relied on farms that didn’t use genetically modified seeds. The reason: Non-modified seed wasn’t nearly as resistant to disease, lowering output and forcing farmers to use far more herbicide.

Brown found that going with genetically modified crops provided both the extra supply he needed, and gave burgers the ‘beefy texture’ his fans craved. ‘The safest and most environmentally friendly option to allow us to scale up production and provide the Impossible Burger to consumers at the lowest possible cost is GM soy,’ he said.”

It’s an incredibly short-sighted statement, however, that completely ignores the many downsides of GM soy, which include devastating effects on insects like monarch butterflies as well as the promotion of herbicide-resistant superweeds.

Testing by Moms Across America also revealed the Impossible Burger contains glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, which has been shown to alter the gene function of over 4,000 genes in the livers, kidneys and cause severe organ damage in rats at levels of just 0.1 part per billion.¹²The Impossible Burger contained 11.3 ppb (glyphosate and its break down AMPA).

Biotech PR Campaign to Convince You to Eat Synthetic Food

U.S. Right to Know reporter Stacy Malkan tweeted in March 2021 that Bill Gates’ plans to remake our food systems are a problem for both farmers and consumers who don’t want to eat GE corn and soy that’s turned into processed, synthetic food products.¹³

Whether or not it’s “unpopular” doesn’t matter, though, as Gates said he thinks rich countries should be eating all fake meat. When asked whether he thinks plant-based and lab-grown meats could “be the full solution to the protein problem globally,” he says that, in middle- to above-income countries, yes, and that people can “get used to it”:¹⁴

The plan to get consumers used to replacing their burgers with synthetic, fake food has been underway since at least 2014, when a group of powerful agribusiness executives met to organize a PR campaign that would put synthetic biology and GMOs in a more favorable light. Dana Perls, from Friends of the Earth, attended the meeting and later wrote:¹⁵

“The meeting was under Chatham House rules — which means I can’t disclose who said what. However, I can say that the meeting was an alarming insight into the synthetic biology industry’s process of creating a sugar-coated media narrative to confuse the public, ignore the risks, and claim the mantle of ‘sustainability’ for potentially profitable new synthetic biology products.

Over the course of the day, primarily CEOs, directors and PR people from powerful chemical and synthetic biology companies, bounced around tales of promise, discussed how to position synthetic biology as a ‘solution’ to world hunger, and made blithe claims of safety that were not backed up by any actual data.

… When I asked how biotech companies will protect small farmers who are producing the truly natural products, I was met with a hard cold stare, silence and a non-answer about needing to meet consumer demand.”

In a recap of the key take-away points from the meeting, Perls said the industry’s PR strategy included not using the terms “synthetic biology” and “genetically engineered,” which have negative connotations, and trying to change the public narrative by capturing emotions and flooding the media with feel-good stories about synthetic biology.

The group agreed that the industry should remain self-regulated as much as possible, and that the results of corporate studies should not be public knowledge. They even suggested that the industry should present the image that they’re looking out for food sustainability, transparency and food sovereignty. But, Perls noted, “When I pointed out that corporate-controlled synthetic biology is the antithesis of ‘food sovereignty,’ I was met again with stony silence.”¹⁶

UN Food Summit Boycotted Over Agribusiness Influence

Corporate interests are also dominating the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit, and hundreds of farmers and human rights groups are boycotting it as a result. They believe it favors agribusiness interests, elite foundations and the exploitation of African food systems.¹⁷

The Summit claims it is convening to “launch bold new actions to transform the way the world produces and consumes food,”¹⁸ but critics say it is biased toward industrial, corporate farming while leaving out those in regenerative agriculture and the knowledge of indigenous people.¹⁹

The controversy began right from the start, when U.N. secretary general António Guterres appointed Agnes Kalibata as the event’s head. Kalibata is the former Rwandan agriculture minister who is now the president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an organization funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.²⁰

AGRA is essentially a Gates Foundation subsidiary, and while some of its projects appear to be beneficial, most of its goals are centered on promoting biotechnology and chemical fertilizers. AGRA was launched in 2006 with funding from Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

After more than a decade, AGRA’s influence has significantly worsened the situation in the 18 African nations targeted by this “philanthropic” endeavor. Hunger under AGRA’s direction increased by 30% and rural poverty rose dramatically.²¹

Concerns that the Summit was dominated by corporate industry heightened when its concept paper included precision agriculture, data collection and genetic engineering as pillars for addressing food security while leaving out regenerative agriculture.

As reported by The Guardian, Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, wrote to Kalibata stating that the Summit was focused on “science and technology, money and markets” while leaving fundamental questions about inequality, accountability and governance unaddressed.²²

Corporate Ideology Is Pushing Out Real Regeneration

Unfortunately, the U.N. Food Summit is now poised to bow down to corporate ideology instead of embracing the small farmers and regenerative practices that have true potential to feed the world and heal the planet. As for Gates’ increasing monopoly on farmland, it’s worth noting that when you own the land, you also own the water that’s beneath it.

For those who control resources like food and water, power is limitless, and with his vast amounts of land, he can grow all the GE soy necessary to create the fake meat he’s so heavily pushing — or perhaps it’s even worse than that. As noted by The Defender about several of Gates’ more questionable endeavors:²³

“Thomas Jefferson believed that the success of America’s exemplary struggle to supplant the yoke of European feudalism with a noble experiment in self-governance depended on the perpetual control of the nation’s land base by tens of thousands of independent farmers, each with a stake in our democracy.

So at best, Gates’ campaign to scarf up America’s agricultural real estate is a signal that feudalism may again be in vogue. At worst, his buying spree is a harbinger of something far more alarming — the control of global food supplies by a power-hungry megalomaniac with a Napoleon complex.”